Dungeon Status:

Floors 15

Heart 45,000(38,449)/45,000 Kills 455 Toxin 38,449

Minions 298/80

Situational Quest: Empty the nearby city. Good luck! (⁠*⁠˘⁠︶⁠˘⁠*⁠).｡.:⁠*⁠♡⁠

Travis could do nothing now other than stare at the statistics. An icy chill had run through him at the knowledge that people were dying because of him. The number of minions kept going up and up, now too high for him to be able to make more undead himself.

"Bookkeeper?" Travis asked, mental voice soft.

Hey! You're winning! The rest of the garrison is already infected, and what civilians were still in the city have fled. ヽ⁠( ⌒o⌒⁠)⁠人⁠(⁠⌒⁠-⁠⌒ )⁠ﾉ⁠

The realization of how much these people mattered to Bookkeeper sank in. Travis had no doubt at all that she'd celebrate the deaths as much as a person would celebrate the deaths of ants. "Can I leave, then? Just let the dungeon heart have its victory."

Okay. Give me a moment to… (⁠ﾉ>ω<)⁠ﾉ :⁠｡⁠･⁠:⁠*⁠:⁠･⁠ﾟ⁠'⁠★,｡⁠･⁠:⁠*⁠:⁠･⁠ﾟ⁠'⁠☆⁠

Bookkeeper had been surprised, when Travis first arrived in the safe demiplane, that he was so distressed. She quickly built a body for him and slipped him into it. "Is something wrong? You were winning!"

"I thought I could do this. I'm sorry. I can't just—" Travis shivered and dropped to sit on the featureless ground. He looked down at hands that hadn't had anything to do with the mechanics of running a dungeon, but nonetheless looked dirty in his eyes. "Why? You gave me a big talk about them needing to die, but then you managed to get most of the people away. What purpose was I there for?"

"To drive them out. To make the people who left spread word about a terrible enemy they couldn't beat." Sitting down herself, Bookkeeper leaned against Travis and, when he reached an arm around her, she blushed up a storm and hugged him back. "To teach a dungeon how to use a broken design."

The words begged almost as many questions as they answered. "What are they doing? Why is that area important?"

"They're one of several new cities along the coast that are working feverishly to provide their empire with lumber. It's important because of what they're doing with the lumber. Big, strong trees used for building big, strong ships." She sighed. "I should have explained it first, I guess. The people who came here, who begged for help to survive, they were a group of escaped slaves from the empire. They made the crossing in whatever ships they could steal, and I've spent the last few centuries distracting the empire from giving chase. I don't think I can fully stop them, even with clever dungeons."

"You're a god. Why don't you tell them to stop? Or make them stop?"

"I am one god. The reason I could help the refugees in the first place was they prayed for help and I got to them first. If I attacked the empire's cities and people directly, their gods would attack me." Closing her eyes and imagining the brief flash of glory that would give her, Bookkeeper shook her head. "And strong as the knight and the kitty think I am, and I am strong, I can't face that many gods."

It was such a human situation, writ far larger than any one person, that Travis could actually sympathize. "So this is the first steps of a war? They'll build ships, locate the kingdom, then send an army to kill them all? Pacify them? Enslave them again?"

"Take your pick. I don't want any of them to happen, which is why I'm giving the empire a poisoned gift. That dungeon you taught? I will have them teach others and refine that technique. I would also like to make an advanced dungeon type that will coordinate and lead other dungeons. You've helped me slow down their eventual invasion."

"But not stop it. Won't they get wise to the undead Rot rush? Weren't you going to fix this as a bug?" Travis got the distinct impression his exploiting the undead Rot dungeon was going to be a literal blueprint for Bookkeeper to have her dungeons follow in the empire. "You wanted me to optimize it as a weapon."

The words stung. Bookkeeper knew she'd hidden her motives, or at least some of them. She nodded and felt tiny. "Sorry."

"Just tell me next time. Trust me. You had good intentions, and a good reason, so I can't hold it all against you." Harder—much harder—than forgiving Bookkeeper was ending their hug. Travis hadn't been able to make physical contact with someone since arriving, and even if she wasn't exactly one of the two people he dearly wanted to touch, hugging the small goddess was the next best thing.

He sat there, basking in the ability to touch someone and be touched by them. He wasn't sure if Bookkeeper had needed the hug too, but she sure seemed to. Eventually he asked, "You weren't always the god of this stuff, were you?"

Shaking her head, Bookkeeper wiggled a little and leaned into Travis a bit firmer. "Libraries. Quiet places where people who love reading books and organizing them rule over all. It's why I made them such a big part of cities."

"You saw what I've done for ours?" Travis asked, only to get a big double-arm hug from Bookkeeper. "I'll take that as a yes," he said with a laugh.

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"I get distracted too much by all this…" Bookkeeper gestured at herself, but when Travis looked confused, she added, "Dungeons and cities. I had to remake a lot of myself to support that. I don't regret it, but it doesn't leave room for me to make libraries and learning what they should be."

"Well, I'll talk to the Kingdom, Polfay, and Northridge about that. We can get more libraries and schools established. Maybe we can even make them shrines to a certain goddess of books?" Travis was startled how fast Bookkeeper moved, her lips brushing his cheek.

Realizing what she'd done, Bookkeeper tugged away from Travis and got back to her feet, her cheeks flushed and a buzz of embarrassment forcing her to separate herself physically from him. "S-Sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"Relax." His mind racing, Travis tried to figure out how best to state the obvious without embarrassing either of them further. Getting up, he said, "Being a dungeon, I haven't exactly had a lot of physical contact with people. I hope I wasn't giving you the impression that we—"

"Oh! No-no-no! It wasn't you! I just— We're both kinda stuck, aren't we?" She slumped her shoulders in defeat, doing her best to keep standing and not flee to another plane of existence.

"Then, in the interest of us keeping each other sane, let's stick to hugs from now on. An unlimited supply of them, though." Travis held out his arms, and didn't need to wait long for Bookkeeper to walk back and settle down. He wasn't even sure where the little nest of pillows and cushions came from, but he could appreciate that they were assembling themselves into the coziest dungeon ever.

Honor could feel the malevolence of the dungeon rise. Gone was the driving mind of Travis and in its place was a passive air of implied violence. Yet, despite this, she felt a weird twisting of it because it wasn't aimed directly at her—but rather through her.

She had classes from the dungeon, which from what the conversation between the Northridge and King's guards seemed to figure out, mattered. The dungeon system considered her to be closely aligned with the dungeon, and while those without classes weren't being driven mad from the malevolence, they were less welcome in the inert dungeon.

The wyverns at her sides were no less dripping in the dungeon's displeasure. She calmed them using her aura, keeping them at her side and not rushing off to tear something apart. "Soon, do you think?"

Fife had read a lot of Travis' books and thus knew the "are we there yet?" game. "I doubt it will be more than a month. We're two weeks in already. So, soon he'll wake up and we'll be a whole floor down. I hope it doesn't move one of these entrances up a floor."

"What's it like?" Honor asked.

Pausing in her solo game of cards and looking over the edge of the table at where Honor was sitting on the stone floor with the two wyverns leaning into her, Fife raised an eyebrow. "What's what like?"

"Becoming something else? I don't know if you've noticed, but you're a little different now." Honor was relieved to see Fife grin at the sarcasm-laden tone. "So, what was it like to change, and are you going further?"

"I'm the final floor boss. If anyone other than Pen is going to end up being a dragon, it'll be me. I don't know what that will mean for my weapon skills. Watching her fight, it changed everything for her. She used to use daggers and a light blade." Reaching down to her hip, Fife drew what for her was a shortsword, but for anyone else would be a longsword. The weapon's hilt bore a pair of dragons wrapped around each other with their heads stretched out to form the guard. There were plenty of marks on the blade where it had seen action, but it looked to be polished to within an inch of its life. "This is almost twice as long as the sword I used when I was human. Maybe I should borrow Pen's new blade."

"You can't, she—" Honor felt a wing shove her sideways and had to brace and push back, only to get another jostle from the wyvern. "Hey! I was talking!" Diving onto the wyvern, Honor wrapped one arm around its neck and with the other started rubbing at the ridges of scale on its head.

"You're serious about joining, then?" Fife asked, moving several cards from one pile to another.

"Not right now. I've got to wait at least until Stewart and Elanor have an heir. Then I want to kick-in a few dungeons, taking these guys with me of course." Honor took a moment to give each a bit of attention. "But then… Yeah. I'll be stronger and have more of Travis' classes under my belt. I'd be a prime target for getting picked up as a strong monster."

"Yeah." Fife finished arranging all the cards in order and carefully shuffled them as she spoke. "Trav is such a big softie he'll actually do it, too. He's got a pile of slots spare, anyway. It's not like we're producing armies to fight the…" She stopped shuffling and stared off into space. "Damn. I'll tell him to make a few hundred wyverns when he gets back."

"'A few hundred'? How many monsters can he have at the moment?"

"Last he said, over six hundred. It might become a problem to keep them all fed, but we still have Breeze who can give Travis obscene amounts of food. Then—" Fife cut herself short as a serious feeling of dread and anger rolled through her. She looked up and saw who was the source of it and did her best to fight it back. "Outside, please?" she begged through a clamped jaw.

Breath of Spring backed up and turned, leaving the dungeon to wait for her partner. When Fife joined her, she looked up at her girlfriend's face. "That bad?"

Nodding, Fife reached down and picked Breath of Spring up to hug her. "That bad. Honor seems fine, since she has dungeon levels from Trav, but you are too powerful to register as anything but a threat." She buried her snout into Breath of Spring's hair and inhaled deeply, letting the familiarity wash away her ill feeling.

"Perhaps I should use my beguiling powers on you and steal you away to my dungeon for some intensive relaxation therapy?" Breath of Spring giggled as Fife nuzzled further under her hair and around her neck. "Not that I would, of course. You take your oaths very seriously."

"So does Honor. She wants to join up with us eventually." Fife's nerves were calming with each breath. She knew Breath of Spring could beguile and distract with her magic, and though she didn't think her girlfriend was using it currently, she responded to the idea of it. "Placebo," she whispered.

"Us? You mean us us?" Breath of Spring asked. "And what's that word mean?"

"Placebo? It's when you think an effect will happen, so you get some or all of it just because you believe it. And no, babe, I don't mean us. I mean she wants to join the dungeon—Travis—as a monster."

"It's only fair she does. The King took on a group of dungeon monsters as his knights, and there's Heart helping Polfay. We should get our own nobles to balance it out." At the surprised look Fife gave her, Breath of Spring lifted one hand up and booped the big draconic snout. "Gotcha."

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