As the group occupying Azotreh's soul began their own collective training, whether that be physical, mental, or spiritual, the cold awareness slowly began to spread its own consciousness between the prime avatar and the nexus.
The grand eye watched as the slime champion it had created began to sort and move items, the nexus itself reshaping its core chamber to better accommodate the various items and materials collected by its… others.
The cold awareness didn't have a term for those it occupied one existence with. They had their own names, but it couldn't create a word for what they were collectively. As a being made to hold records, it troubled the cold awareness.
Feeling such things was normally beyond a construct such as itself, but it knew it was strange even compared to others of its kin. It had not created a prime avatar, nor inherited an ego from that which ended. It had not been given anything, but instead had been taken by another. It felt the connection it shared with its patron god, with a prospective second patron still in the works. But that connection didn't grant it the instincts normal to a dungeon.
It felt isolated. Not from those it shared its existence with, but from those like it. Occupying the prime avatar gave it purpose, but other than its work at stabilizing their aura, and now at purging the impurities created by its own foolish actions, it did nothing within the avatar.
Worse, the avatar's awareness, that of Azotreh, had begun to use the technique it had created to purge those impurities. The instinctive nature of most arcane powers allowing them to advance the technique without the cold consciousness.
It was even purging the impurities created by the potion used to advance the technique. While that was the original concept behind the technique, it did not give the cold awareness something to work with. Something beyond instincts it didn't have and functions it barely served.
There were three possibilities for its next purpose. The task of record collection and creation, which was already its specialty. It could also fulfill either divine task, that of pushing fifty of their skills to Journeyman, or a great act of diligence. It was not a difficult choice, but one it was still unsure about.
Suddenly, its vision shifted to the main hall of its dungeon. To the large collection of rabbit-kin still held there. They were holding up alright, but they were still clustered tightly together. There were some homes made, but when the ant person had entered their dungeon, the concern of the rabbit-kin had been pushed aside.
What was a greater act of diligence than setting itself to the task of homing all those people properly? It had some basic resources, but needed more.
First, it cut off the existing homes besides that of Atu and Azotreh, then expanded the tiny channel from its core room to that space. It would begin to send ants once Fuzem did whatever she was doing. It knew that she was creating a new kind of monster, a champion to defend the tunnel out of the dungeon. They shared the same existence, so it was impossible to be unaware of her goals or her repeated failure. But it didn't accelerate her progress by spending its perk options. If they could keep earning free perks through her efforts, then it would not impede her.
It then began to carve another tunnel, also generally leading downward, but not as steeply. The tunnel Nicholas and Azotreh had carved was steep, easy to navigate for the slime and colossal orc that could reshape the ground at their feet, but not for a rabbit-kin with simple heightened reflexes.
Finally, it began to carve rooms, or began as rooms anyway. Before it even completed the first of its new homes, it decided to be ambitious.
The small zone of life the ant woman had emerged from was its inspiration as it began to shape stone once again. It repeatedly transferred its awareness to the new slime champion after sending it into the new zone, using the fact that all champions could access the same inventory to store chunks of stone.
The dungeon had few of its original instincts. It had no way to spawn monsters through mere thought, instead having to focus as the others did. It also had to channel mana to move the stone of its home rather than simply will it and have it be done. But it had some of those instincts, and its most important for this task was the use of stone.
The realm to which its kin were native was made from some homogenous, constant stone, but it still had the instincts to shape other kinds, such as the nightshade gneiss it was working with.
The twilight and poison-infused rock was not great for structurally building, but was easy to carve away. The problem for the dungeon was the possibility of cave-ins. The nightshade schist was also not naturally suited to this kind of construction. The existence of the giant hole the ant woman had emerged from made little sense to the dungeon. It defied its understanding of the stones it was made from.
But this was not a recipe that couldn't be worked around. Columns would be fine for it, but it was hoping to create a domed central area large enough to accommodate the rabbit-kin. It had to be large and mostly open. So it set its eyes instead on the nodes it could make.
Like monsters, it had to envision the nodes it wanted to generate before it could place them. But this would assist it in this specific situation. It could reshape those nodes, the same way Fuzem was attempting to reshape the nightshade recluse.
As it began to shape the stone to create its dome, it also began to place nodes of shadow iron. Small ones at first, but expanding as it went. It felt Fuzem go unconscious as it began to use the shared intuition resource at its command to multitask. Azotreh appeared strained, though Nicholas sent no response through the connection he had to their soul.
It reached out to Errazorrus, who had returned to observing his own scattered memories within their hall of records. It needed more intuition if it was to continue its task, and it knew how.
The dungeon nexus naturally concentrated mana into a far denser substance. Regular mana could conjure items, but at a high cost most of the time. Dungeons needed not only to conjure materials in their nodes, but also to conjure monsters. To create a living thing was a severely different process to the creation of an object, as they required at least four partially formed aspects. So it needed a different material, dungeon mana.
Due to its highly dense mana, the conversion rate between resources was massively changed compared to most other archetypes. So, just a small constant mana expenditure was enough to keep the incredibly high intuition cost affordable.
[New Ability: Mana to Intuition (1)]
After spending only ten units of dungeon mana on the shift to the intuition resource, they got the new ability. Without relying on the lower conversion rate of devouring the mana to shift to intuition, they started accumulating more and more of the energy.
Even with the relatively small expenditure, the ability advanced rather quickly. Unlike their ability to change mana into one of the potens, going over the limit of their intuition resource did little damage. That, and potens weren't spent by many abilities, but intuition was relevant to all things mental. Multitasking as the nexus did, or envisioning something over and over in their mind, as Fuzem had been doing. She still hadn't woken, but the dungeon's awareness wouldn't wake her. If she stopped drawing on their intuition, they'd have more to focus on this project. Her project would be completed after they figured out if this would count as the great act of diligence.
The dungeon carved the stone apart to form the dome and shaped the stone chunks into small cubes. The cubes were then taken by the slime champion and placed into their inventory.
It didn't take long for the slot to fill and the skill system to notify them.
[You have met a condition. Would you like to add a sub-ability to your ability: Inventory? Costs 1 SP.]
The dungeon gave the question an affirmative.
[You have gained sub-ability: Nightshade Gneiss Inventory (1)]
The filled slot entered another sub-inventory tab along with the ones for the nightshade mushrooms and pet storage, now taking up no space in the main inventory.
The slime continued to insert nightshade gneiss cubes into the inventory while the nexus was distracted, as the nexus had realized simply commanding it to do so would accomplish the same end as overtaking it.
[You have gained title: Hoarder II]
It took a second full slot of eighty-four items to upgrade the title. It wasn't difficult to fill two slots with the cubes, since each one was only twenty-five cubic centimeters, and the new chamber was going to be around fifty meters in diameter.
As the dungeon carved the dome, they continually expanded the shadow iron nodes, creating curves along the walls to support the dome. Each arc was placed equidistantly across the dome, numbering at 25 in total. They weren't just pressed against the walls, but had small extensions into the solid stone behind them. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it would do until the dungeon figured out how that giant chamber the ant woman had emerged from was held up. It wouldn't collapse either, though the dungeon still had to be a bit careful in its further work.
It also wanted to make the central area look better than just a dome of flat rock with metal arches. They weren't sure how, but knew that at least one of the beings they shared a soul with would have some idea of it.
It took them hours to complete the dome; even if it was a monotonous task, it knew it was the best suited to such things.
Nicholas was starting to get irritated. The constant buzz of blue in the corner of his vision wasn't making this any easier.
He wanted a skill to punch, and then to figure out other basic physical skills. He'd killed nearly two dozen monsters at this point with his bare fists, using the power of the dungeon to regenerate his monstrous body.
He'd been told that his actions had accumulated depth and concentration in their strength, endurance, and fortitude potens, but that wasn't as important as figuring out how to acquire the punching skill.
He'd also gotten some new titles, including an insulting one called 'meat-headed' that increased the power of the physical potens by a tiny amount while reducing those labeled as mental potens. The titles did not help him in the slightest in his goal.
He'd tried punching with an open fist, punching with his thumb inside his hand, which only ended up with him having a broken thumb. He wasn't sure how, since several monsters had cut open his orcish body and proved he didn't have bones. But the skill system still told him that he had a broken thumb after pummeling a monster to death with punches while keeping his thumb within his fist.
But he kept trying anything and everything he could think of for hours and hours.
He'd discovered that the mana in the air slowly increased as he ventured deeper, and that the monsters grew stronger as well. He didn't know how strong at their toughest, or how deep these tunnels went, but also didn't want to find out. Especially after encountering some giant hedgehog that stabbed him with one of its quills and turned half of his body into a fine blue and green mist. Thank goodness the body of a monster didn't have internal organs, and doubly thank goodness it had obliterated his legs rather than his chest.
Still, it had taken an hour for the legs to regenerate completely, even with the assistance of the dungeon. So he had no intention of going that deep again.
According to the kill notifications, most monsters around this level were considered D-grade, with a standout C-grade once in a while. He'd found that they were tough, stronger than him by a pretty substantial margin, but not unbeatable with the raw force of his punches, though he'd needed Scales of the Black Dragon pretty often to mitigate the damage he was taking from the higher-grade monsters.
More interestingly, the higher-grade monsters had started dropping more alchemic coins. E-grades dropped twenty, D-grades dropped forty, and C-grades dropped eighty. He'd also discovered that some monsters dropped items other than body parts when slain. Most dropped legs or organs, like eyes. Giant arthropods usually dropped their exoskeleton, while furry or scaly ones dropped pelts. He'd even fought some kind of flightless bird with eight legs called a Spiderwing Lyrcni that had dropped both some giant chicken wings, but also a pile of feathers directly into his inventory.
But one had dropped a resilience potion, one had dropped some oversized sickle that was curved the wrong way from its blade, and a third had produced a nugget of onyx. Regular onyx, too, not some weird shadow variety.
Two monsters had also granted them an item called a synthesis stone, each of which was a round, unfaceted sphere of sky blue crystal. Their description said they were the focus point of a synthesis ritual, though he had no idea what that was either.
He sighed as he activated Eye of the Cerulean Dragon again to seek out more monsters. There had to be a skill for punching something, right?
It didn't take long after that for Nicholas to appear back in the soul realm, unsure how the avatar had even died.
[Your champion monster: Nightshade Orc has died. +10DP]
That did not help.
The dungeon felt another one of its champions die, and Nicholas returned to the soul. While Errazorrus was probably not the best option for the decoration the dungeon wanted, Nicholas was a good one. That, and Errazorrus was once again busy looking over memories, and the dungeon did not want to do that.
It called upon Nicholas to begin decorating the new dome before moving to its desired task, creating the homes for the rabbit-kin.
Nicholas didn't start decorating at first; instead looking over the list of nodes they had access to, which he also considered strangely limited. While the nexus began to carve proper homes, Nicholas created and sent out a second blue slime champion. He created a small channel from the central room to the original room to the outside. The one just behind the waterfall. He had it devour some of the water from the waterfall to gain it as a node before sending it off to find more.
He set up some stone columns in the room for future possible renovations and had the second slime also grab some dirt before shifting the ground to be made from soft dirt.
The project would likely take days of continuous work, but it's not like the computer-like dungeon intellect or Nicholas, who was stuck without a body until it regenerated, could do much in that time.