If Matthias had hair, he would be pulling it out. How was he supposed to know that feeding mana into the swamp would do all this? He had been busy balancing so many other plates that he never noticed the turtles had become massive super?predators—or that the leeches were starting to show hive?level coordination. And to top it all off, a caravan had pulled up at the soft barrier of his influence.
Matthias had discovered that setting up layers of varying density allowed him to spread his influence faster. But when the caravan arrived, he had to act. The entire swamp smelled fresh blood. So he forced his entrance up and out. He hadn’t meant it to be so big, but the center of the swamp was a bog that really did not want anything poking up through it. He had to blast the whole thing away just to make sure his goblins could pour out.
As for the goblins, the project had been successful. Their population had exploded, and aggression scaled with age. Younger goblins were curious, busybodies; older goblins became warriors. He sent them out with simple orders: find a niche in the swamp and hold it. He prayed they could keep the denizens of the swamp from—well—swamping the adventurers.
Matthias was so focused on preventing ambushes that he barely noticed how absurd the battlefield had become. Leeches that were far too smart coordinated strikes, while turtles fought on equal footing with what felt like dinosaurs.
“Is everything all right?” Chloe asked, tugging part of his attention away from the chaos.
“Why are leeches this smart?” he grumbled.
“Hiveminds are a common upgrade for them,” Lucy said. “They do lean heavily toward the chaos side, though.”
“Okay, killing leeches is now priority one,” Matthias updated his mental to?do list. “Honestly, Steve would be great against them.”
In the last two months, Steve had gone from house?cat size to gorilla?sized. He couldn’t eat the ants whole anymore, but he could crack them open and sip their insides. It had been a learning experience.
“You know, as a dungeon core, you should be capable of multiple threads of thought,” Chloe offered.
“I’m currently balancing eight different situations,” Matthias admitted. “These turtles are way too aggressive, and the leeches adapted by getting smarter. It’s a bit more tense than I might be letting on.”
“Eight?” Lucy and Chloe asked in unison. “Already?”
Matthias sent them a mental shrug. “I’m going to need to focus soon, though. I might have to take direct command of a goblin to kill this snapping turtle. It’s really angry today. I mean, I’d be upset too if I were so fat I couldn’t pull my legs back into my shell.”
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Both fairies snickered before Lucy added, “A byproduct of the dire upgrade for turtles is that they can’t pull into their shells anymore.”
“Ah,” Matthias said. “So I have dire snapping turtles. Great. As if it wasn’t hard enough to purge this swamp of megafauna already. I was hoping not to rely too heavily on toxic mushrooms, but maybe chemical warfare is the way forward.”
“Give your goblins time,” Chloe encouraged. “Dungeon mobs evolve under pressure.”
“You mean like how my beetles are the size of house cats?” he asked hopefully.
They both just blinked at him.
“I wasn’t aware you had beetles,” Lucy said carefully. “Just how much have you not told us?”
Matthias groaned. “Probably a lot. I’ve got all kinds of things in the swamp. I fleshed out the ecosystem hoping to make it more vibrant and varied. It’s all still there—it’s just that the leeches and turtles are growing to match me.”
“Makes sense,” Chloe said. “Leeches and turtles are actually from rival dungeon cores. The fact that they’ve spread this far suggests their rivalry runs deeper than they let on.”
Lucy nodded. “And you’re a growing dungeon. They’ll keep pace. The only real way to get rid of them is to replace them with another super?predator—or wait for your goblins to evolve.”
Matthias sent a pulse of acknowledgment as he guided a goblin’s ironwood spear through the eye and into the brain of a snapping turtle. The rush of mana from its death was immense—so strong it knocked both fairies off their feet.
“How many was that?” Chloe asked.
“One,” Matthias replied, already shifting focus to another skirmish as he covered the adventurers’ withdrawal. He was holding the line, and it seemed they hadn’t noticed yet.
“A single turtle shouldn’t give that much mana,” Chloe said.
“That one was guarding eggs,” he reasoned. “So I’m guessing it was a brood mother with the dire modifier.”
Lucy winced. “You might need to create a boss. The turtles are approaching mini?boss levels. Two modifiers are dangerous, especially with your entrance open now.”
“I’m not sending Antoinette out there,” Matthias said firmly. “She’s still designing her boss room.”
“I still can’t believe you named the queen ant Antoinette,” Chloe sighed.
“And I can’t believe Lucy thought Steve was a good name for a pangolin,” Matthias shot back.
“But he looks like a Steve,” both fairies insisted, pouting. “Look at him and tell me he isn’t a Steve.”
“I would argue he’s more of a Kevin,” Matthias teased.
“You know, it was a missed opportunity,” Chloe said thoughtfully. “I think he looks like a Gregory.”
“He is my Steve and you can’t have him!” Lucy declared.
“Huh,” Matthias interrupted. “The big one just tossed a bag into the swamp. It’s full of singular items—several different gems, coins ranging from copper to platinum, a set of thieves’ tools, and a few other odds and ends.”
“That’s the sign you passed,” Chloe said blandly.
“It’s the ‘Congratulations, we’re going to farm you now’ bundle,” Lucy finished. “That could’ve gone a lot worse.”
“So we passed?” Matthias asked. “Then maybe we celebrate. I think I know just the thing.” He conjured a small table and stools for them.
“What new food are we trying today?” Lucy asked as she bounced into her seat.
“Ice cream,” Matthias said, conjuring a variety of small bowls.
The fairies’ eyes sparkled as they descended upon the treats.
