Mathias reached out to the ant hill and contemplated both increasing its size and growth rate. He winced at the cost, as both upgrades required about half the mana he had left. With a mental sigh, he activated both upgrades, knowing they would be necessary. He then centered his mind to begin pushing the bounds of his influence once more.

  "Hey," Lucy called out. "If you make the ants too big, Steve won't be able to eat them," she protested from her spot on the pangolin's back. It had decided that, with no nearby danger, it was nap time.

  Matthias inspected Steve and saw the guardian designation in his status screen. Being a guardian increased health, defense, and size growth. Being named on top of that seemed to double all other growth buffs.

  "I am sure Steve will be fine," Matthias responded dryly.

  Chloe nodded. "Steve will be a good defender once he grows in level and age," she agreed. "But I am guessing you want the ants to mold your dungeon rather than shape it by hand?"

  "Indeed," Matthias admitted. "I figure they will make a much more secure nest-like structure than I can plan at the moment. I will just focus on compressing dirt and rock into solid support structures so they can get the bones set up. My plan is to take their initial work and refine it into something of an underground castle."

  "That is a bit ambitious for a young dungeon," Chloe warned.

  "Again, future plan. I am a fully sapient mind. I am capable of patience. Besides, the ants are a long way off from shaping the earth into anything." When he had tried to say he had a human mind he felt the words die, like they had never existed, and sapient came out instead. He brought his attention back to the ant hill. With his size upgrade, the ants looked to be about double their original size. Looking at the mushroom node, he contemplated upgrading it but decided against it, as it would take nearly all the mana he had left. With a sigh, he let his mind cycle mana through his influence to slowly grow it.

  "I noticed I could not summon goblins," Matthias noted.

  Both fairies flinched. "Why would you want goblins?" they asked in disgust.

  "I am starting to get this idea for what my dungeon will be," he answered with a mental shrug, noting the disgust he felt from them through the bond. "I am thinking more ecosystem than curated experience."

  "What happened to your castle idea? That implies a bit of curation," Lucy countered, still lazily petting the sleeping Steve.

  "The castle will be for the best of the best. The most dangerous denizens. The upper floors will be for the denizens to prove themselves. An ecosystem for the start, and once minions get strong enough to disrupt the balance, we move them lower to restore balance in the higher-floor ecosystem."

  "That is an interesting idea," Chloe noted, pacing. "So you will be throwing monsters loose into a survival-of-the-fittest type war?"

  "No, think of a massive forest. There are many niches needed to keep it healthy. Everything is part of a food web. But with EXP and mana involved, some things will adapt faster than others. Instead of wiping them out to keep balance until everything is at their level, simply create another environment where everything is at that level," Matthias explained.

  "So your dungeon is more a filter," Lucy speculated. "But instead of filtering out the big stuff, it only lets the big stuff sink to the bottom. It keeps the chaff at the top."

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  "That is a really good way to put it," Matthias agreed.

  Chloe's eyes sparkled. "I see. Such a dungeon would have a slow growth curve but would eventually spike. There is a critical mass needed for such an idea," she pointed out.

  Matthias shrugged mentally. "And we will get there eventually. But you still did not tell me why I could not summon goblins."

  "You can't just summon sapient monsters," Chloe explained.

  "You have to start with a beast," Lucy continued. "You then upgrade the species to beast goblin. A medium beast would be best. That might be a ways away—Steve is still considered a small beast. But he is a good boy. His scales mean he can't become a beast goblin. It needs to be something furry."

  Matthias took a minute to parse that. The need to upgrade an animal to make a bestial goblin, and that such things were even possible, made his mind reel.

  "Indeed," Chloe interrupted. "All sapient life in this world can be traced back to dungeons."

  "Dungeons created the first bits of life," Lucy picked up. "Gods were born of faith, and demons from unbridled emotion."

  Chloe scoffed. "We demons came from dungeons like the rest of you. The first god was a dungeon core, and the first demon lord was also a dungeon core."

  "You mean demons corrupted a dungeon core," Lucy said, eyes narrowing at Chloe.

  "Be that as it may," Matthias interrupted, "that means dungeons can actually make anything with enough time?"

  "Well... sapient life is not strictly under your control," Lucy said.

  "When you upgrade a species, only about one-third will be affected," Chloe added. "It gives the dungeon a pyramid of mobs: more weaker mobs for low-level and admin jobs, while higher-ranking mobs are both more expensive and harder to control. There are stories of some dungeons falling under the dominion of dragons they created simply because they did not have the infrastructure to counter its greed."

  "That is something I will need to keep in mind," Matthias agreed. "Especially with the way I am planning to run my dungeon. Does the base species of a beast influence the way the later sapient race acts?"

  "Yes," both fairies responded at once.

  "I see," Matthias mused. He made little benches for them to sit on while facing his core as he contemplated more questions. As he did so, he noted that his influence had finally reached all the edges of the room he was in.

  "So badgers would be a really bad idea for beast goblins," Matthias noted.

  "That is actually a very common upgrade," Chloe cut in.

  "But they would be very aggressive," Lucy added.

  "He needs aggression if they are to compete," Chloe countered.

  As his fairies argued, Matthias fell deep into thought. If the base beast carried its benefits to the species, then he needed to pick carefully. His mind raced through all the medium beasts he knew, realizing that badgers were small. So he could technically take any beast, make it medium, and then make a beast goblin. His mind spun with possibilities. He was so lost in thought that he did not even notice when both fairies turned towards him with shocked expressions. It was only when Steve poked him that he snapped out of it. Matthias realized both his fairies were staring at him with wide eyes, pupils blown wide.

  "Is everything all right?" he asked.

  "How?" Lucy asked. "That was so much information. How... where..."

  "What kind of world did you come from?" Chloe asked.

  "A world where there was only one dominant race," Matthias answered. When he tried to say humans, he once again felt that void rip the word from him. It was not so much censorship as the word simply did not exist. But he did not have time to dwell. "A world where we took predators and began breeding programs to make new breeds with only the traits we wanted. It got to the point that the result looked nothing like the original species."

  "And how old was your society?" Lucy asked.

  "A few thousand years. But no kingdom or power ever ruled for longer than 300 years," Matthias answered. "Most societies began to fall apart around the two hundred year mark, and momentum is the biggest reason it ever exceeded that point."

  "Impossible," Chloe accused. "Life has existed here for much longer, and the full world is still yet to be mapped."

  "Maybe your world is bigger," Matthias offered. "Or your world is more prone to total annihilation and secrets. My world had a tendency to centralize knowledge. Knowledge is power, after all."

  "That level of progress," Lucy noted, "I shudder to think what kinds of magic your world had."

  "No magic. Did it all the hard way," Matthias countered cheekily.

  Both fairies were flabbergasted. They seemed almost offended by the idea that a society without magic could progress faster than one with magic.