The Core dragged its attention away from the slumbering Danians to find the creature heading for the entrance to the second floor. Panicked, the Dungeon summoned its reliable champion. Its mouse guardian let out its bellow and charged into battle. The creature was half inside the entrance to the second floor but let out a long hiss as it was dragged out by the Dungeon's Monster. The mouse, its teeth firmly locked onto the thing's hide, struggled to keep it from slithering further. Inch by inch the mouse began to win the tug of war.

  As its head left the entrance to the second floor the creature let out a hiss of rage and turned to engage the mouse directly. The Core couldn’t sigh in relief but it would have if it could’ve and then waited for its guardian to finish this foul intruder. This was no helpless ant though. It was a long and sinuous creature with green scales and a flickering tongue.

  The two creatures battled it out with the mouse’s bites leaving scarlet blood pouring down the enemy’s sides. The scaled one would not be outdone though and bit the guardian repeatedly curling its body around the mouse to strangle it. Wheezing as the coils grew tight, the mouse kept biting and biting until finally it caught the head of the creature and bit into the space behind its skull. As the creature’s coils slackened in death another tiny burst of Aether occurred, with half going to the mouse and the other half going into the Dungeon.

  Still wheezing the mouse pulled itself out of the coils before slumping to the ground, limp. Frantic for an entirely new reason, the Core tugged on its Aether reserves to patch up the worst of the mouse’s wounds. It almost flinched when golden light began to pour out from beneath the mouse’s skin. It looked exactly like what was happening to the Danian Queen so the Core quickly summoned the younger mice to carry its guardian below.

  As they complied the Core turned wearily to the creature that had caused such wounds. Despite the panic it had felt earlier its instincts cried out to consume the creature.

  So it did.

  Motes of light lifted from the corpse and flowed down to the Core. A phantom ding sounded again as new knowledge bathed the young nascent mind. Tiredly the Core gathered what Aether it could and fueled the pattern in its mind. With its guardian brought low and sleeping it needed another to take its place.

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  Expanding beyond its entrance it claimed the earth beyond as well as the tall, green, fibrous protrusions that grew from it. Those protrusions required much more Aether to claim and came with another phantom ding but the Core was too tired to care. Creating a set boundary it settled the new creature within it, just outside the entrance to the outside, with orders to guard the dungeon. The Core finally retreated to its pedestal feeling a weight come over it. It slipped into oblivion, unaware of the golden light beginning to radiate from its crystalline body.

  End of Chapter System Notifications: