A bulge appears in the blanket covering the entrance. It disappears as soon as it appears, then reappears once more, though deeper. The blanket starts to lift up from the point at which pressure is being applied, and a humanoid creature is revealed to Avery’s senses beyond the cave entrance. She still can’t see anything past that area, no matter how she messes with the map function, which appeared to be the only thing not to turn off when someone enters the ‘dungeon’, but the fact that there’s anyone at all is a nice change of pace. Hopefully she’d be able to figure out how to communicate or something. Oh wait a second.

Avery opened up the Status menu again. That still worked.

Dungeon Statistics Age 3 Weight 7723 Structure Points 258/258 Mana Points 2318/8500 Structure Regeneration 0 Mana Regeneration -157 Power 8 Intelligence 15 Finesse 12 Wisdom 8 Hardness 15 Charisma 6 Menu Options Build Spawn Demolish Map

DAMN IT. She transposed the numbers. That was way more reasonable. For some reason she thought she had to overcome six hundred and thirteen negative mana recovery per hour. She could finish this off with just thirty two rooms, and that would only cost six hundred forty mana. After calculating time remaining, then closing the status menu, she had immediately forgotten what numbers she had and was thinking she only had four hours left to go before being dead, panicked, and started making mistakes. Clearly eight was below average for wisdom.

And whoever that was trying to get in was below average for something, since they were now a lump of blanket struggling to get out from the apparent unintentional trap that was 'a blanket loosely secured to the entrance by putting rocks on it falling over on them'. It looked like a rock had fallen on either side of the blanket, and the lump inside was trying to figure out which end wasn't being held down. The rocks weren't exactly heavy, Avery had no idea why they didn't just lift the thing off of them.

Three mana later, the thing in the blankets finds an edge, and wriggles its way to the edge.

“Come on already, I left for like five hours to give you space for you to do your weird pagan rituals in my cave, and this terrible scratchy blanket is still here, and you don’t even have the decency to either say something or help me out of your annoying primitive deathtrap?”

Ok, it was at the very least intelligent, and it had language ability. Avery zoomed in closer on the part protruding out of the blanket, and inspected it. Humanoid head, but the mouth was closer to a goblin’s than any of the civilized creatures. Sharp spikes of teeth jutting out like the stalactites and stalagmites she had refrained from wasting mana on. Those might have been traps, now that she thought about it. If a rock fell from the ceiling, it would do some damage to whatever it hit. Not that she was bitter about her terrible mistakes or anything.

“Augh, fine. I’ll do this myself.”

The thing was just scrunching up and trying to squeeze out of the gap like a worm pushing itself out of wet ground during a rain. Avery activated the ‘Inspect’ option, figuring it was probably the only thing she was going to be able to do while stuck with only one active option. As she focused on the various things within her corridor, she noticed each discrete object didn’t necessarily come up as its own inspectable entity. When looking at the clutter of rocks on the ground, the entire assemblage lit up in her mind, whereas the book and her body were ‘inspectable’ separately. She could inspect the book?! That would have been useful to have back when she had an intact body!

Probably better to inspect the subject that prompted the menu to make that change in the first place though.

Invader Statistics Name ??? Race ??? Soul Power ? Health Points 8/??? Mana Points ???/??? Strength 4 Intelligence ?? Dexterity 7 Constitution - Special Qualities Special Features ??? ??? Mana Gain from Dungeon Presence -42

Lots of question marks. Maybe they’d get filled in as the thing did things? Avery supposed there probably wasn’t much to be gleaned from… Wait a minute, more negative mana regeneration? Whyyyyy.

Oh, it got its arms out of the cocoon. Seemed fairly humanoid typical, no claws or anything. Probably would be able to bite someone anyway, if it wasn't so incredibly weak. The thing had lower strength than Avery had Wisdom or Charisma. Not that she had a point of reference as to what any of these meant. From what she could tell, the only two stats she had in common with the 'invader' was mana and intelligence. And it was draining mana from her.

Bah, that was annoying her.

Just looking at this stupid face, existing and making her fall ever closer to death with each passing second. If only she could use spells, she could run the necromantic energy straight into that uninvited jerk and make them run screaming into the canyon. One wave of her hand, and ‘Cause Fear’ would-

A black bolt of necromantic energy shot out of the orb, straight into the creature’s face. Avery waited for a moment, but nothing happened. Anger started to rise in her, because that should have worked. Unless they were far more powerful than she was, even if a creature wasn’t frightened because of having a powerful mind and resisting the effect, they would at least have a shudder of dread run through them for a moment. This kind of lack of reaction was not something that a creature that comes up with these kind of stats should have. Nothing this thing had was better than Avery’s wisdom, and she was fairly certain that was not a high number. She pulled up her status for a moment to check her mana…

Mana Points 2215/8500

Then pulled up the ‘Inspect’ tool again to check the creature, which had managed to get all the way out now.

Invader Statistics Name ??? Race ??? Soul Power ? Health Points 8/??? Mana Points 98/??? Strength 4 Intelligence 18 Dexterity 7 Constitution - Special Qualities Special Features ??? Multitask ??? Unfazeable Mana Gain from Dungeon Presence 0

Whyyyy. Did it just absorb the entire spell? Well, judging by the mana statistic, it would take about two hours for that mana to be absorbed. Two special features found, and oh it has a prehensile tail. That explains why it had multitask, she supposed. The thing was holding a stick in the grip of its third appendage and poking the rocks littering the ground with it as it carefully stepped into spots where the stones didn’t shift upon force being put upon them.

Disgusted by absolutely everything, Avery Inspects the rocks. Oh look, if she had the ability to demolish right now she could recover six mana from that. And it would all be removed in one chunk. Great. Might as well inspect her body.

Corpse Statistics Name Avery Lithnor Race Human Soul Power 2 Structure 3/9 Hardness 1-5 Special Qualities Special Features None None Mana Gain from Dungeon Presence 0

Augh. Well just because her body doesn’t have anything special about it doesn’t meant that she herself isn’t special! Avery was able to find this gem, and able to cast this spell. Not just anyone could do that!

“Alas poor whoever you were. I didn’t know you at all. I imagine you were a person with good humor, a generous soul willing to do anything for the people around you. If not for believing the best about those who have survived on this mortal plane until they fail to do so, how can we be sure that what we do to improve their ability to survive is similarly for the best? This world, full of people, it has to be worth the sacrifices made to ensure its continued existence. Why else would they have gone out of their way to make sure of that? If you lived, and lived while you lived, the lives that live no longer gave what they had for a purpose.”

What were they on about? Nonsense, that’s what. The gods made the world, and then they gave power to whoever asked for it, and went off to let things sort themselves out on their own. Oh wait a minute, there was a spell for this. Message. Avery could tell them exactly how wrong they were.

Ten more mana, and Avery was able to start yelling.

“Hey jerkface, quit soliloquizing at my body! I’m not dead, just laying down.”

The creature blinked, then poked Avery’s unmoving form with its stick.

“Seem fairly dead to me. Based on what I see, you collapsed the cave with yourself inside it, died, and started haunting the location of your death as a ghost.”

“Quit that! And no, I cast a spell to transmit my consciousness to a slime, which is dead now.”

“Ah, so you collapsed the cave with yourself inside of it while you were possessing a slime, died as a slime, and started haunting where the slime died.”

“I’m not haunting anything, I’m not dead!”

“If you’re not dead, just stop me from poking you.”

“You! Get out of here, you’re a jerk!”

“I’m afraid I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request. This was my cave before you showed up and killed yourself in it twice.”

“Well it’s mine now, so leave me alone, you’re sucking up all the mana.”

“Interesting. You can tell. I’ll have to file that in my next report.”

The creature makes its way to the back of the tunnel, into the square room with the Core within it.

“You certainly got a good deal accomplished while I was out and about.”

“If you’re going to be annoying and keep being here, could you at least open that book on the ground over there? There’s a particular page I was on, and I want to read it again.”

“I don’t see why not, since we’re going to be roommates for a while.”

As if. Avery was going to get into her body and… Well, she couldn’t actually do much. Necromancy was her field of specialization, and one of the schools of magic she had firmly neglected was Evocation, the one with all the fire. That unfazeable special feature seemed to be what the dungeon core interpreted the spell absorption dragons and the like possess, and Avery was fairly sure that if that was the case she’d be unable to do much even if she could throw exploding pearls of fire around.

At least they were good to their word, as they opened the book precisely to where the crease from being open an hour straight had been.

“Ew, botany. Hate plants. I’ll see you in a bit roomie, need to grab my things I took with me out on my walkabout. Would rather not forget where I left the thing and then look like a fool in front of the minions when they get back.”

More annoying words. Avery didn’t care what they were saying, she was already casting the spell. Kind of. Every time that creature moved through the mana she was trying to manipulate it messed up her patterns, which was annoying when she was trying to modify a ritual on the fly to account for the fact she was already in the focus of the spell and just needed the ability to swap her soul’s space with… Huh, what if she got this thing trapped in the gem? Would they be able to manipulate the world? Would the negative regenerations add or subtract? Why did they have to leave just as Avery started to think clearly and not just rage about them being in the cave?

Ah well. At least without distractions, she’d be able to focus on which parts of the ritual she could safely ignore. Time was mana.