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  [A Dimly Lit Guild Office, Day 23, Mid-day]

  “You can't be serious! Are you really considering sending people to that island!? Haven't you read the report I handed in!?” Anya was furious. She glared at her grandmother, one of the highest ranking guild members in the city, and also someone who refused to listen to her.

  “I did read your report. And what it says is impossible. You and I both know that dungeons can't control their mana that close to humans—thank the goddess—and spirits don't manifest their physical forms like that. Now, if you don't have anything else to say, then this meeting is over. Besides, if it really is an ant dungeon it'd be a great place to train the silvers.”

  Anya was fuming. Her grandmother had read about all the strange things that happened on that island, the fog, the strange figure who guided them, the missing crew, and even that black ant! She even had the cloth that the dungeon held! But for some reason, she thought that Anya was just making things up! She huffed, and rolled her thoughts around before speaking again.

  “Grandmother,” Anya said through gritted teeth in her best fake smile, “if you must insist on setting up a guild hall on that island, then I'd like to offer myself as the guild master there.”

  Her grandmother raised her eyebrows in surprise. Anya seemed to be someone who would never act as a guild master, heavily opposed to the boredom and tedious nature of the job. But for her to ask her sweet gram-gram for something like this… her granddaughter was finally growing up! She nodded, breaking out into a grin.

  “I'd never thought that you had an interest in this line of work, dear! I'm so proud that you're finally getting a job! I'll make sure that you can work as the guild master there, don't you worry. Alright now, gram-gram has some paperwork to do, but I'm sure that you'll love your new job!”

  Anya gritted her teeth a little harder at her grandmother's blind enthusiasm, but managed to force a grin anyway. “Thank you, grandmother. I'm sure that I'll like the job.” She stood up and turned to walk out of the room, trying her best not to stomp on her way out. Anya's hands were balled into fists, her fingernails poking into her palms uncomfortably, and she almost slammed the door behind her as she stepped into the hallway.

  She rubbed her temples as soon as she was out of sight of her door, and walked down the stairs at the end of the hallway, turning into her rented room and collapsing on the soft bed. Working as a guild master was something she'd never wanted to do, but if her grandmother was going to send guilders to that island anyways Anya felt a duty to help them not die. She sighed into her pillow and hugged it closer as she started thinking about what she could be able to do that'd help the most.

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  [A Quiet Island, Day 24, Morning]

  I've finished the fourth floor, and lemme tell you, it's a doozy. It's about as big as the third, but the main theme is completely different. I'm hoping that I'll have enough time to work on the fifth and sixth floors once the humans return. If they return. I hope I didn't scare them off.

  Anyways, I've had a worrying thought ever since I absorbed those sailors. If I can absorb the memories of humans after killing them, who's to say that they can't do the same? It'd be a disaster if someone got a hold of the ants memories of me because then they'd know where my core is and easily be able to kill me, or even enslave me, according to some of the memories!

  I've also been increasingly conscious of the local wildlife outside the dungeon, because apparently, most animals don't have the “mana cores” that humans and “monsters” have. The mana cores are what those weird balls of mana are called, and apparently they're some kind of crystal that can be used to channel mana. Monsters are animals with mana cores, but there are also something called “mutants”, which are animals that mutated because of mana. Most of this knowledge is second hand or considered common sense to those men, but to me they're invaluable.

  Number one is that apparently mana causes mutations, which led me to check every animal I have, ending up with me reversing a few mutations that'd already occurred and restricting everything so that they can't mutate without my permission. The next thing I focused on was the memory problem. It was simple work to get a few of the workers to harvest a few large cores from some nearby rats so I could work on my idea.

  Once the cores were clean enough and placed in a separate room for experiments, I tried to enlarge them using the same method I used for my core, and after a bit of infusing mana into one of the marble sized cores I'd successfully increased it to around the size of a baseball. I stopped there, and began the next step.

  I formed a thin film of mana around one of the nearby ants I'd ordered into the room and led a thin string of it over to the core, willing it to connect and pull in the ant's mana once it died. After a bit of resistance and nausea from that feeling of wrongness again, something snapped into place and I felt the connection between the ant and the core settle into place.

  I feel bad about this, but I need to do it to see if it worked. I reach out with my mind and ask the ant if it's willing to do this, and was surprised by the ant's response of determination and trust. I form a large spike on the ceiling right above the ant's head and let it fall, crushing its head and killing the ant instantly. The net of mana activates and pulls the resulting cloud of mana into the core, none of it escaping into the atmosphere.

  I reach out to the core to see if it absorbed the mana properly, and something strange happens. I feel the mind of the ant that just died inside the core, confusion and bewilderment running through its head. I reassure it with a feeling of pride and begin connecting every ant to the core, making sure that they'd all end up returning to that core once they died. I made one of the workers move it onto a small pedestal inside their egg room, and leave it there.

  With those problems addressed, I guess I'd better get started on digging out the fifth floor. I don't have anything planned for that floor, wanting it to be more of a rest stop and transition into the deeper levels of the dungeon. It's just going to be a massive underground ravine with a bridge in the middle, and I don't think I'll have any enemies there. Probably. We'll see.

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  [A Quiet Island, Day 43, Mid-day]

  Oh shoot, that's another set of white sails on the horizon. I've mostly been tweaking the floors a bit, and I hadn't finished floor five completely yet. I also moved Alectryon to a private room and made the boss fight for the first floor a bunch of majors. Alectryon is just too powerful for the first floor, especially if she's fighting normal people. She nearly chased off the survey team, who were clearly experienced professionals. I'll send her out if I need to, but for now she'll just have to wait. Practice your mana control for now sweetheart, I'm sure something will happen soon.