Dragonheart Core

Chapter 86: Greater Continuations

Perhaps unsurprisingly, spending five minutes just staring at my core did not help me choose an evolution.

All three of the options were very lovely, really. Shadow, intelligence, strength—a perfect marriage of all the cave bear's abilities, but I had to choose only one. Very unfortunate.

Lesser bugbear called to me—not the word lesser, admittedly, but the phrasing of it. I could still remember the available schemas from my own evolutions, the ones that started out with sapience instead of having to evolve it like the horned serpent or obtain it through exposure to my own brilliance like Seros. Lesser bugbear seemed to follow a similar vein, rising through the ranks of their own brutish strength and learning intelligence alongside it, although I imagined it was still a lesser form of sapience like the kobolds than the type that could sit down and have a proper conversation with me. Ah well.

Midnight cave bear as well—that lined up with what he had been studying, sticking to his shadow-attuned mana and the darkness he had so learned to coat himself in. Combined with Nuvja's blessing, I could see how this choice would blossom him to new heights, protecting both him and all those he wanted, hidden from both the moon and day as he hunted. A wonderful image, really.

And then two-headed bear.

I could practically taste the potential through the words, the lingering power that lurked on the edge of my core like jagged claws. With his shadow-magic and her brute strength, they would be a monster upon my halls; stalking through the darkness of the fourth floor or a towering force on the fifth, there would be little that could ever stand in their path.

Objectively, it was the strongest choice. Ignoring everything else, two heads were better than one, and already my mind swam with the potential of staggered sleep schedules, dual attacks, training, split awarenesses—a brief mention of slavering wreck, sure, but power beyond power as well.

But. Well.

If I were a purely power-focused beast, I would have killed Seros on the first day, brought down the cavern to crush his head and claim his schema. I would have evolved all my creatures into only the fiercest and most vicious options, crafted my halls as only endless hallways of monstrous beasts and hidden traps, burrowed straight down and murdered all those in my path.

But that wasn't me.

I didn't want that to be me.

Because as much as I shoved it off, as much as I would never mention it, I looked forward to my chats with Seros, discussing the going-ons of the dungeon and what he should try hunting next. I enjoyed watching the mage ratkin train her underlings to harness their own magic, watching the horned serpent command her army with tyrannical precision, Nicau grow into his Name and the power with it. The floors I built thrived under my care and detail—because they were ecosystems, not just floors, not just corridors to kill invaders.

I was building something in the way that I wanted to, and I cared for my creatures.

A life spent in grief is no life at all.

Not an untrue phrase, but equally pressing was the concern that the two-headed bear only functioned if the two heads actually got along. And for all they had been mates, they had been rivals first, and both bore the scars of their fierce and bitter fights.

Would they be able to work together if I evolved him? Perhaps. And perhaps bringing her soul back would be enough for him to get over his grief, to learn to live with her and work together in this new form, but.

But.

But maybe it made him miserable, maybe it trapped him alongside an endless reminder of what could never be, maybe they ripped each other to shreds in a desperate attempt for freedom that their shared body could never provide.

I poked through his mind, glimpsing his most recent thoughts—grief, raw and jagged, echoed back at me, but also the understanding that she was dead. He was a dungeonborn creature and death was no stranger; she had been the closest to him, but already he had watched generation after generation of burrowing rats meet their end in the Fungal Gardens. He understood death.

And past his grief for his mate, there was also the new, rising thought of his cubs.

They were almost grown, nearly self-sufficient, but still young; the world was dark and cruel and cold, and he had just watched his mate die. Past the grief, past the pain, there was the deep promise that he would protect them.

And for his strength in the past, he had always turned to shadows.

I loved my creatures. In the end, I would always listen to them for their future.

I selected midnight cave bear.

He slumped further to the ground as light overtook his fur, spiraling through the den even as Nuvja's shadows fell to blanket it; he curled in on himself, still next to the dead body of his mate, but changing. Growing.

Once he evolved, I would help guide him further below, to the fourth floor and the stone jungle within. It was a temporary solution—he wouldn't fight well in the cramped corners of the twisting tunnels, for all his shadows would help, but it was the best I could offer now. But I would carve a path for him to return above, to keep shadowed watch over his cubs, to protect them.

It was what he wanted, and as much as I would urge him to delve to deeper floors, I would not deprive him of his original home.

Just as soon as I, you know.

Finished said deeper floors.

Gods. Once I finished these evolutions and properly restocked my halls, I needed to jump head first into planning new floors. The sixth would be my coral reef, the seventh some type of forest for all my larger creatures, and then something relating to fire for the eight—you know, if I ever got time to build them all.

They didn't tell you about things like this when you became a dungeon core. Incredibly irritating.

But for now, I slipped down a floor, letting the Fungal Gardens drift back to its previous hustle and bustle as I floated my points of awareness to the Drowned Forest and all the golden treasures within.

Of which there were many.

I'd handled most of them—stone-backed toads into ironback toads, cave spiders into webweavers, whitecap mushrooms into lacecaps. Even more than those, though, I mourned the losses—there had been several electric eels so bursting with power, so ready to evolve, and before they'd even had a chance their lives had been cut short. I mourned them with a ferocity that honestly surprised me; but I'd collected the schema for the electric eels what felt like forever ago, back when my dungeon was small and barely growing, and they hadn't had a chance to really shine since. When they'd almost stumbled across that opportunity, it had been ripped from them.

For all that I wanted my creatures to grow and fight and thrive, sometimes there was nothing I could do. Moving them lower wouldn't help, where there were more dangers that their unevolved forms couldn't handle, and moving them up meant there wasn't enough mana to really help in their evolutions. No right answer beyond hoping that one day they would reach that intangible barrier and break through.

In a similar vein, both the greater crabs and lichenridge turtles on this floor also hadn't reached their barrier; they'd gotten close, but not each yet to what they needed. The greater crabs needed more mana than others given they were on their second evolution—kind of? They had been born into their second evolution, given both their parents were greater crabs, but apparently that counted for their own evolution? The rules were confusing—and the turtles were ambush predators that weren't supplied with targets at the same frequency as other creatures in my halls. Sure, they snapped down feet lovingly detached from legs and welcomed the mana bursting through their channels, but it wasn't enough.

Soon, though. There were a few I already had my eyes on that were looking particularly bright and growing.

But for all that the lesser creatures in the Drowned Forest were still waiting on evolutions, others were already there.

One group in particular.

The kobolds had spread out in a handful of separate hunting parties, one led by the female chieftain and others by her subordinates; for all they'd been clumsy and limited by their primitive weapons, their efficiency could not be denied. They stole swarm tactics from the burrowing rats, used the same hidden lunges as the luminous constrictors, even the raised blocks as the ironback toads—for all that they weren't trained fighters, they were infinitely more coordinated than my other monsters, and what they lacked in quality they more than made up for in quantity.

The three adventuring parties they'd attacked had all gone down.

Not flawlessly, unfortunately—of the perhaps five, six dozen kobolds I'd had, they'd lost some fifteen in the attack, and more were prone and injured around the halls. I darted to and fro, dissolving some lesser corpses for bursts of mana needed to soothe their minds and heal their wounds—scales and muscles reknitted under my careful claws, stitching back together and leaving gnarled scars in their wake.

If anything, the kobolds seemed more pleased at their newly-earned scars than the fact I was healing them, warbling excitedly as they traced their dull claws over their pockmarked arms and torsos. Foolish, but I supposed when you were a kobold, proof that you could do any fighting at all was probably welcome.

If any of them willingly tried to get more scars just to look cool, I wasn't going to heal them.

But under my curling swoops of mana, the kobolds were able to stand back up, though wincing and limping under muscles that had been pushed past exhaustion in the battle; I didn't have enough spare mana to heal them all completely, so I just carried them to the point they would be okay and then let their actual healers patch them up the rest of the way.

I wanted more mana. Infuriating not to have enough.

But for the moment, I guided them back to their den, soothing the surrounding creatures so they had an uninterrupted journey back. One comfort, at least.

At the entrance, Nicau emerged, shins splattered with drying blood and eyes wild—there was a moment where I almost worried over what he would do, looking more than a bit like he was about to collapse and crumble to pieces.

But then the leader kobold stepped forward, churring quietly, and Nicau's shoulders slumped. He chirped something back, a trickle of mana spilling into his voice, and then he was stepping forward, getting another kobold's arm and helping guide them inside. Between him and the uninjured kobolds, they were able to get everyone inside and situated on moss beds and flat surfaces, healers pulling out rolls of billowing moss and half-carved cups of water to clean their wounds.

I watched with a strange sense of glee. They'd truly come so far from the savage, primitive little brutes just sprinting through my dungeon.

But only some of them had to be healed, because others were glowing with an incandescent inner light.

Those I guided to the back of the den, side-stepping other kobolds and pushing them to set their spears down, and let them curl up in a massive, slumbering pile in a room I'd already carved for this express purpose. No one could say I wasn't an overachiever.

Then, with a giddiness only accented by the near dozen and a half evolutions presented to me, I read the message scrolling across my core.

Congratulations! Your creature, a Kobold, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Kobold Warrior (Rare): In a world of dangers, one rises to match. This creature fights with a brawn well beyond what its body should hold, ending battles with the sheer strength of its will and an unwillingness to concede.

Lizardfolk (Common): Some dreams are so large they crush those who dream them. Abandoning its previous legacy, this creature turns to its own strengths, growing in both physical and mental prowess as it seeks to carve its own destiny.

Kobold Hunter (Rare): In tune with beasts and birds, this creature stalks through the undergrowth with raised claws and keen eyes. Either solitary or serving a greater tribe, they strike from the shadows and drag home corpses large enough to feed dozens.

Exceedingly welcome options. Similar to my last sapient race evolution, actually—not changing the species but merely the position within it, though I imagined that eventually I would get a different option. Hopefully. It would be rather boring to simply move from warrior to champion.

Hunter was an interesting choice, seemingly less outwardly combative but more resource-gathering focused; still certainly helpful. Most of the kobolds spent much of their time hunting to feed their growing population, and any number that they could spend better developing their weapons and traps would always be good. And I had already seen just how powerful a kobold warrior could be.

Unlike with Rihsu, I could see myself selecting lizardfolk—these kobolds were still followers of dragons, as given by the crude carvings they'd littered the walls of their den, but they weren't nearly as fanatic. They could do well by striking off on their own, hunting for meaning in their piddly little lives, but, well.

I rather liked that kobolds worshipped dragons. I was decidedly uninterested in losing that.

Also unlike Rihsu, rather unfortunately I imagined this would be a similar case to the horned serpent—her strength and sheer force of will as a kobold warrior was not the norm. Any kobolds I evolved wouldn't be as overwhelmingly fierce as she was, for all that she'd mostly kept to training over the past few weeks; she was just in a different boat altogether. None of these kobolds had really achieved the same raw, potent persistence she had.

Ah well. Some were better than none.

I poked through each of their minds, scanning the bare outlines of their thoughts and dividing them into two categories; those that were flashy and brilliant, mostly covered in scars, and had been the ones to do the frontal charge when commanded became kobold warriors; those that had stuck more to the shadows, gone unnoticed and unheeded, became kobold hunters. About six for each, which was convenient. All their scales, dappled and speckled and variegated, disappeared under a hazy glow—with all the light, I couldn't even tell what type of dragon they were descended from.

Still far too many fire-drake kin. Maybe I could do the same trick with the luminous constrictors and just shove them into the Underlake in hopes they'd evolve into a much more pleasing form.

But in the pile, two kobolds stayed unglowing, sleeping but not yet having their evolutions chosen—because their messages were different.

Congratulations! Your creature, a Kobold, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Kobold Warrior (Rare): In a world of dangers, one rises to match. This creature fights with a brawn well beyond what its body should hold, ending battles with the sheer strength of its will and an unwillingness to concede.

Kobold Shaman (Rare): For all they are limited by dull claws and diminutive size, this creature rises above with a grasp on something greater. They become crucial to both the fight and the recovery, prized more than any gold or treasure won, and protected by loyalty fiercer than death.

Kobold Hunter (Rare): In tune with beasts and birds, this creature stalks through the undergrowth with raised claws and keen eyes. Either solitary or serving a greater tribe, they strike from the shadows and drag home corpses large enough to feed dozens.

I preened.

Glorious, glorious magic. All my creatures were shifting in a lovely direction towards mana—with the mage ratkin, the jeweltone serpents, and now shining, gleaming, brilliant kobold shamans. I wasn't exactly positive what had given them this evolution, but a quick peek inside their most recent memories revealed at least part of the story. They'd been in the fighting groups, hunting alongside their brethren, but not as actual warriors—they were the healers brought to make sure that any kobolds didn't bleed out when there was still a chance to save them.

Mana was won and earned in strange ways, I was finding. Though neither of them had killed anything, they'd apparently gained mana from healing kobolds—or maybe taken mana from the kills of the kobolds they were healing?

Again, I was no mana scholar. When I'd been a dragon, this had all happened in the background—I'd just taken what mana I was given and went along with it. Much easier to deal with.

But either way, they'd reached the peak of evolution and were ready to blossom in proper little shamans.

They disappeared under light as I selected kobold shaman for both, slumping into the pile of scaly bodies and curling up with a breathy warble. Already mana hissed and snapped at the air in the den, so many evolutions happening all at once, and kobolds meandering outside who hadn't earned enough mana shot vaguely jealous looks at those within.

I imagined once they saw what their brethren were becoming, that would only light hotter fires under their asses to go find their own growth. Everyone wanted to become stronger, after all, and seeing warriors and hunters and shamans in full force would be inspiration beyond inspiration.

Gods, I was going to have to wait forever to see any of these evolutions. That was a particular sort of hell.

And there was one more kobold still waiting.

I'd saved her for last but it seemed she was in a similar vein, withholding her evolution through sheer force of will—though light burst and crackled under her scales, still she marched around her den, checking on each kobold and making sure that they were either getting healing or food. Everyone she passed looked up at her in awe, seeing the raw mana just begging to be unleashed, but she refused to let it until she had made sure her tribe was in good order.

Because it was her tribe. There was no doubt in my mind. Of my three original kobolds, Rihsu had sworn herself to Seros, the dappled male had stayed focused on lesser creatures, and only she had stayed to watch over the other kobolds I created. They were hers as much as they were mine.

Nicau called her Chieftess, like he had any naming rights in my dungeon, but even I couldn't deny that it fit.

What made it fit even more were her evolution options.

Congratulations! Your creature, a Kobold, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Kobold Warrior (Rare): In a world of dangers, one rises to match. This creature fights with a brawn well beyond what its body should hold, ending battles with the sheer strength of its will and an unwillingness to concede.

Kobold Hunter (Rare): In tune with beasts and birds, this creature stalks through the undergrowth with raised claws and keen eyes. Either solitary or serving a greater tribe, they strike from the shadows and drag home corpses large enough to feed dozens.

Kobold Chief (Rare): A group of scavengers no longer—a leader rises to claim dominion over its brethren, leading them to greater peaks than ever before. With a vastly improved intelligence and sense of self, this chief commands its fellow kobolds to rise above.

There wasn't even a question in my mind. She would be wasted as a brutish warrior and for all she had stealth and cunning, hunting was not where she needed to spend her time. The way that the other kobolds in the den looked up at her, alert and ready for any instruction, awe-filled and determined to prove themselves.

She was already their chief. This would just be confirming it.

I helped her out as best I could, carving new beds into the walls and blooming moss to soften the edge, shifting stone to stack up spears in polite little piles off to the side, burrowing into limestone until splashes of fresh water raced into shallow pools. Nicau trotted at her heels, a little like a lost guppy if it wasn't for the splattered blood over his legs and the corpse of an invader he'd already dragged out of the den, and with our efforts combined, she managed to finish checking up on every kobold.

Then, and only then, did she walk to her own bed in the back of the den and curl up.

I pushed soothing thoughts and whispered encouragement through our bond as I selected kobold chief. Something distinctly pleased and proud echoed back as she disappeared under the glow of evolution.

The last big invasion she'd been a part of, she'd been throwing rats and sprinting away from any active combat. Gods that I would never admit it, but there was a brilliant, burning pride in my core as I watched over her, as I watched over them all.

My creatures. My lovely, lovely creatures.

And there was still one more on this floor.

Watching the kobold chief—I suppose I could call her Chieftess, so long as everyone was very, very aware that it was not a Name—had given me an idea. Seros, still on the fourth floor and bursting with power, had a stronger will than the Chieftess; it took me a second to properly convey my plan, his own thoughts drifting with a vague sense of confusion, but still he dutifully suppressed the mana crackling over his frills and padded deeper into the Jungle Labyrinth to complete my mission.

Because there was something I wanted to test.

Clearly, I could manipulate evolutions. I still remembered my hatchling days—could I still call them that when I was a rock instead of an actual hatchling?—when I'd brute-forced my whitecap mushroom into an evolution, just shoving enough mana into it until it decided that yes, it did want to evolve. Given how much mana I'd wasted even with the truly weakest plant in my dungeon, I'd decided against doing that again.

But I had influenced the evolution.

I also guessed that my shining intellect had given other options; there was no other source for my horned serpent to have unlocked her psychic abilities, and same for Seros' own intelligence. So changes I made did seemingly alert the evolutions.

Which brought me to the last message from the Drowned Forest. I hadn't read it, specifically dragging my attention away from whatever was inscribed in golden letters over my core, but I was very aware of where it led to.

A vampiric mangrove.

Tall and proud in the second room of the floor, sprawling half in and half out of the canals, broader than its brethren with dozens of knotting roots alight in jagged little thorns. It'd managed to kill one lonely little fool who'd thought she could go through this floor alone, cradling her bone-dry corpse in its roots, skin pale and ghostly white. A very fine kill, if I did say so myself, done by an equally fine tree.

This one hadn't been injured in the raid, thanks all the gods—although one of its lower branches had been removed, bark stripped by some sort of serrated blade. I spared a moment to ponder that. It looked a little too deliberate for just losing a branch to a hollow core or bad connection, but I couldn't imagine what could have possibly gotten close enough to remove a stick without also getting stabbed like the other invader.

Curious. Maybe one of the kobolds had figured out a way to use fresh wood for their spears instead of fallen branches. Their scales might have protected them.

But what mattered was the power I felt lurking beneath its bark.

This tree was special in ways that I was only now starting to realize.

I'd long had a suspicion that something was happening on my second floor, which had been sent from suspicion into actively noticing when I'd caught Chieftess talking to a mangrove—this specific mangrove, actually.

This specific mangrove that had, when I'd last noticed it, been back at the kobold's den.

The kobold's den that was half a floor away.

Yeah. That didn't just happen by coincidence.

Trees were, rather famously, stationary beings—but vampiric mangroves weren't the trees I was familiar with. They were much more ancient, coming from the Old World, and I'd been a fool to treat them like any old plant. I was learning that lesson now with the armoured jawfish and the sarco crocodile, who needed special care to keep them alive in a world that had already managed to kill them before, and now once more I could fight through it with the mangroves.

Somehow, this plant was talking and thinking and moving, and Rhoborh's boon had rapidly sped up whatever it had planned. So.

Henceforth why I was very, very determinedly not looking at its evolution options yet. I had a theory, and a theory that needed to be tested, and a choice that had to be made.

With a low rumble, Seros pulled himself out of the canal, shaking water off his dazzling scales—literally dazzling, considering that their sea-green colour was hidden under an incandescent light. He was moving stiffly, not with injuries considering that I'd already healed them, but with the sheer effort of holding back all the mana that begged and pleaded and leapt at the chance to evolve him. I wasn't pleased at asking him to hold back just to help me, but he was the only one who could both understand me well enough and traverse all my floors to do so. Even then, I sent a burst of apology through our shared connection.

He crooned back his acceptance around the corpse in his mouth.

Because if I wanted to help my mangrove evolve, I just so happened to have two invaders who had provided very helpful corpses.

Seros spat the body of the dryad onto the mangrove's roots.

She was near bisected, entrails split and stinking, mossy green skin splattered with red both old and new, eyes glassy and distant; but a pure blooded dryad. Southern variant, I thought, which would help more given a mangrove's inherently tropical nature. I urged Seros with another series of instructions and he padded off to a nearby room, where the other corpse I wanted was—not a true dryad, but a human with dryadic ancestry. Hopefully that would be enough.

It took a little effort, considering Seros had claws and these were small, fragile little bodies, but eventually he got them both wrapped around the mangrove's base. No reaction from it yet, just the shift of its branches in the cloudskipper wisps' wind, but I'd expected that. Evolution tended to flatten out any thoughts from my creatures, and this was a full plant who had only just started to break over the barrier of awareness.

But hopefully after this, it would be something more.

So I reached down and dissolved both the corpses.

They exploded into motes of white-silver light, but I didn't let it flow into my core just yet—I shoved outward, forcing the motes into the scarlet-red bark. Just as it had with the whitecap mushroom all those months ago, most of it splashed uselessly off, drifting away in eddying spirals—but some entered the mangrove and stayed there. Influenced it.

I waited a breathless second as the last of the mana faded away, points of awareness arrowed in on the tree. No visible reaction, but.

But.

But maybe the evolution message had changed.

With excitement thrumming through my core strong enough that even Seros could feel it, I finally read what it said.

Your creature, a Vampiric Mangrove, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Fungal Mangrove (Uncommon): It spreads in a sprawling, shambling growth, leeching roots through stone and soil and sea alike. Needing no light, there is nothing that can stop its encroaching habit, devouring the land before it in endless waves of green.

Bloodhunt Mangrove (Exotic): No longer will passive thorns satiate its thirst. Its roots grow and spread as living whips, lashing for anything that moves, disguised as simple foliage until they choose to strike and drag its victims back to be pierced by countless thorns.

Vampiric Dryad (Exotic): This Ancestral Tree is one of death and consequence, and so too is its servant. It stalks the world for blood to deliver back to its home, armed with piercing fangs and the loyalty that brings empire to their knees.

A-fucking-ha.

Did my trick with the corpses do anything? Gods if I knew.

But either way, I'd gotten exactly what I wanted.

Was it even a choice? The fungal mangrove would be something I would bring down to my fourth floor to swallow the tunnels in another devastating threat, and the bloodhunt mangrove would pair absolutely beautifully with the silvertooths in the canals, but they were simple, fleeting things in comparison to the absolute glory of the last option.

I burned with a fierce, brilliant hunger as I selected vampiric dryad.