“Rule # 1 - The dungeon is trying to kill you, don't die. Dead adventurers don't spend gold.”

  

  
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    50 Rules For Dungeon Divers
  
    


  

  ==Caden==

  For a moment, I was struck dumb with surprise, too shocked to even begin to think of a proper reply. After a moment I pulled myself out of it.

  ‘Exsan?’

  ‘No. I Exsan. Who you?’

  ‘No, I meant… never-mind. I am Caden.’

  ‘Caden. Core Exsan Caden. Core mine. Caden mine.’

  I took a moment to think that line of thought through.

  I suppose I belong to Exsan, from a certain point of view. We are both part of the same core. And by that logic, Exsan would belong to me, too. We belong to each other, and any actions we take will impact the other.

  I had been in the driver’s seat before, with Exsan being the mostly ignored backseat driver. Now… we had to act as partners.

  ‘Yes. We can look at it that way. We are both… two parts of a whole. How did you learn to start speaking, uh… thinking?’

  ‘All broken. Shattered. World dim. Put together. Is better. Felt Caden. New. New thoughts. Lost in them. Saw you. Felt you. You learned. Language. Took knowledge. Took English. Tried understand. New language. Thoughts, words. Speak.’

  English? Honestly I hadn’t thought about it, but I was always speaking English in my head. This was the first time…

  Right… That wasn’t odd at all… Both Exsan and the snarky language.

  Sadly, it was probably easier to understand the snark. The system had told me that it had customized the interface. Apparently my own sarcasm was being reflected back at me. Yep, still expecting that slow clap feature any day now... The customization of the system probably also explained why I was getting the skill now. I had thought about English and then it showed up.

  As for Exsan... apparently he had been changed a great deal by… whatever process had repaired us. Not sure I was happy that Exsan was getting knowledge from me, but it was what it was. Hopefully, he was just getting it because it counted as a skill, and he wasn’t going be able to just riffle through my thoughts at will.

  Already crowded with me, myself and I’s own voices, thank you very much. Plus even more, considering all the shards.

  The next question was, what now? I was about to ask when I noticed that Exsan was doing something else. Exsan had started to extend aura outwards, in the shape of two cylinders, hollowing the stone out of them as he went along. The two tunnels sloped gently downward, going in almost totally opposite directions.

  ‘Exsan, why are you making those tunnels?’

  ‘They come. Prepare. Make path.’

  So informative. Thank you for that bounteous wisdom.

  ‘Who is coming?’

  ‘They heard song. Lure. Prey comes.’

  ‘What song? What prey?’

  Ugh, enough of this and I am starting to sound like him already.

  Would creatures be lured into the dungeon? Was that how dungeons grew? I wondered if we would be eating the creatures, making them into part of the dungeon, or both. It would be interesting to see, a natural life cycle that helped a dungeon to grow.

  ‘Dungeon sings. Prey. Prey is prey. Caden know. Stone. Prey by core.’

  I took a moment and tried to figure out what he meant. I could feel the constant flow of mana back and forth across my aura, rippling back and forth across the dungeon.

  Is that the song?

  As for prey… I looked around the core room and quickly saw the statues of Tam.

  Oh. Prey. Right.

  Suddenly I could see myself as a red crystal shark talking to Exsan, who was black crystal shark. “Humans are friends, not food.”

  That just… isn’t going to work, is it?

  ‘Why do we even need humans, uh, prey? We already get plenty of mana.’

  ‘Not enough. Grow good now. Eat mana. Only mana stop. Not grow.’

  ‘Need more than mana to grow, eventually?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I would need to take his word for it. Guess all those instinct are still his. Don’t miss them, but it would be nice to just know all this shit. For whatever reason, mana would not be enough to keep growing. I wasn’t sure, exactly, what else we could need. And why would anyone come to the dungeon if it ate them? Well, there was a simple enough answer to that. People would come to the dungeon for loot.

  ‘You don’t eat all of the people right?’

  ‘No. Let escape. Offer bait. Bait bring more. More come. Test. Some die. Some escape. Grow.’

  I didn’t particularly want to kill anyone, but I knew that this could be the literal purpose of the dungeon. People were going to come here seeking treasure and expect the dungeon to do its best to kill them. Actually… how was Exsan planning on killing them? We had no monsters and Exsan honestly didn’t seem bright enough to make decent traps yet.

  ‘How are you going to offer bait? How are you going to… test them?’

  ‘Possess bait. Good bait. Grow strong. Test with monsters. Strong survive. Weak eaten.’

  ‘What monsters? Where will they come from?’

  This was the most frustrating game of twenty questions ever. I knew Exsan was probably trying to answer as best he could, but that didn’t help much.

  Okay. To be fair, for speaking English for all of a few minutes, he is actually doing amazingly well.

  However, it was obvious that he and I were using very different viewpoints. I wonder if Exsan found my lack of understanding equally frustrating.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Exsan was looking at the world and taking parts of the universe as simply given. Unfortunately I had no idea what they were. Not entirely true. I knew human nature enough to guess that the bait he was referring to was the gold, silver, etc… which I had absorbed before in the sewers.

  ‘Monsters here. Dungeon make monsters.’

  What was I supposed to make of that?

  Perhaps the dungeon simply created monsters automatically when people entered. Honestly that would be no stranger than any of my other abilities. I scanned through the dungeon again, just in case.

  The usual life filled it, and there were no signs of monsters yet.

  What would be the point of buying the various creatures, plants, and so on in the AP store then? Hmm… well I suppose it could simply allow a larger variety of monsters, or make stronger ones. Maybe each dungeon has a normal type of monster that they produce? Of course, I hadn’t seen anything in my status like a monster type. This was all just guesswork anyway. Hopefully, Exsan would pick up more English fast enough that I wouldn’t need to have too many conversations with a caveman.

  “Igg talk good. Igg bash with rock.”

  I went silent for several minutes as I thought, but Exsan didn’t interrupt. For the moment that was probably for the best. At least I had some crucial information. Humans were going to be coming for the dungeon, even if I wasn’t sure exactly what drawing them. However, there would also be monsters in the dungeon. I wasn’t sure about that either, but Exsan had the dungeon instincts, not me.

  Of course, Exsan wanted to kill some of the people coming. Not exactly a surprise, fits right in with the instincts I felt before. Honestly, I should probably be glad that he wanted to farm people, rather than an omnicidal maniac. Nope, just a homicidal one. He saw the approaching people as food and bait to acquire more food.

  And what am I supposed to do about it? Until Exsan had a better grasp of English, we weren’t likely to have any good conversations either. Exsan seemed content with things as they were. He viewed me, and him, as belonging to each other and that was enough for him.

  Honestly I could remember how possessive those instincts had been. All the space around me had belonged to me, and only me. They wanted me to never let it go.

  Guess I should just be glad it didn’t end up a fight between us. Sharing all our skills… talk about a pointless battle.

  And now I needed to prepare for visitors. Getting them far sooner than I thought. I mentally shrugged, continuing to extend my aura, gradually expanding the dungeon. The most I could do at the moment was prepare by opening up space.

  Exsan’s tunnels both started from a single point. Best to have that as the entrance, then. I started to create a large room, shifting things so that tunnels would actually enter the room some distance apart.

  This would be the main area… probably. Honestly, not idea what else Exsan might do with the tunnels. Hopefully, this would be the main area people entered, and I wanted it to impress. People should know this dungeon is special. Unique means its destruction is a loss… Unless there are special rewards for destroying special dungeons… damn, I wish I knew more. Stupid paranoid brain, always overthinking things.

  I didn’t know how common dungeons were, or how people would treat a new one. I was hoping for a symbiotic relationship, but I was going to be practical and prepare for the worst anyway.

  I considered trying to stop Exsan, to get more time, but I didn’t know what that might do. I might be able to cause a stalemate with him, but he might also get angry. Plus, a stalemate meant I wouldn’t get anything done. I had no way to properly communicate why I was doing what I was doing. Not yet. I was literally attached to him, so it would be a bad idea to make him my enemy. I needed to bide my time until I had more information. I could confront Exsan later.

  The amount of mana that Exsan and I were using was just below the natural rate at which we were recharging. However, as the hours passed our combined mana kept increasing as the feeder slowly chugged away. The moment our combined total hit sixty I got a prompt.

  

  Good to see that leveling up works. Just draws from both of us to get the proper total.

  I briefly reviewed the message and willed yes. The notification light blinked into life and I opened it.

  Guess that customization is still working. A lot more labels on the skills now. Oh, they can have more than one… affinity, I guess? Hmm, and what exactly is this skill?

  Not much in that description, is there?

  Honestly, despite this being my second skill with life affinity, I wasn’t exactly certain what qualified as life magic. Obviously there were certain skills that used it, probably spells too. Or maybe it only counted when I broke down or created living material? I doubted that though, there had been mentions of death and soul magic as types too. It would just have to be added to my ever growing list of things to learn about later.

  I had made some decent progress on clearing out and reinforcing a large area. I wasn’t sure how the decorations would turn out, but having the option to use living materials without bankrupting my mana added an entirely new dimension to consider.

  Part of the problem was that I simply had no idea how many people to expect. I had no frame of reference for this. Exsan would probably say something like “few prey, then many prey.” Should I be expecting a few people each day, or hundreds? Probably depends on how far away I was from civilization, or how dense it is. I could be a mile from a city, and I would have no idea. Exsan had detected people responding from two different directions, but I had no idea how far that sense extended.

  Eh, considering the California Gold Rush, if I have some thing valuable, people will travel to come and get it. Don’t even need to tear down a corn field to make a baseball field… Not that I could furnish the ghosts, regardless.

  Not like baseball would be nostalgic here, anyway. Unless things are weirder than I thought.

  At least I should be able to gain some perspective soon. Knowledge was key, and there was a reason I wanted to get to the surface. The stone was slowly growing colder as my aura continued to reach upward.

  Not long after leveling up, I reached the surface.

  More accurately, I reached the end of the rock and dirt. Calling it the surface was a bit of a stretch, since my aura was still buried in the snow. At least I knew how far my aura would extend past the rock now. A whole three feet, which was definitely less than I was hoping.

  I stored away the ice and compacted snow. More fell in, and I stored that too. Eventually no more snow fell into my aura, but I couldn’t sense any light or air moving.

  Probably just cleared away a little snow cave, leaving a pocket of air, buried beneath more snow.

  Well then, looks like I need to be more proactive.

  I made a drill tip of stone, gradually widening it from below until it was five feet wide. The top was out of my aura after only a few moments of growth. I twisted the drill, extruding more from the bottom until I stopped feeling resistance. I tried extending my aura up the drill, but nothing happened. Apparently, for whatever esoteric rules governed me, it still counted as being the surface.

  Since I couldn’t extend my aura up farther, I simply reabsorbed the drill until it was gone. More snow promptly fell into my aura. Honestly, not even surprised. With a sigh, I absorbed the snow, until no more fell in. Now I could feel air moving, and sense a dim light.

  This would eventually get me more information. I sent out my aura along the surface in every direction, absorbing the snow in my aura and any more that fell. Which it did, repeatedly, but soon an enormous amount of snow was cleared away, leaving a section of bare stone. I should be able to see now. As soon as my aura there converted to dungeon, I would find out where I was.

  Unfortunately, the wait would probably be awhile.