Since I had just invited a guest, I realized I needed a place in my dungeon for Rebekkah to relax. Her centipede lower half made normal chairs difficult, I would imagine, so I created a room near my core with a bed large enough for her to lie on properly, and snaked the trail Rebekkah was walking on towards the little room. Rebekkah followed the trail until she found the room, and smiling, crawled onto the bed.

  “So, what’s your deal?” Rebekkah suddenly said as she shifted into a more comfortable position. “I have seen dungeons before. None of them hold a candle to you. That was also rather dangerous to bring your core up to us, like I told you up there. Any other dungeon that tried that would not have been able to defend itself or me from that attack. Thanks.”

  “And like I told you up there, I came up to tell my side of the tale, as it were,” I replied, filling in the tunnel Rebekkah had entered in so that the other five party members wouldn’t be able to follow her. I still didn’t trust them after that incident of Grimm trying to roast Rebekkah immediately after she was declared the “party leader.”

  “I would have been able to do a bit better with convincing them, maybe, if you had warned me before you shot through your dungeon to join us. That still seemed reckless,” Rebekkah said as she collapsed further onto the bed, her grey hair covering her yellow eyes. “I need to rest for a moment, if you would go and busy yourself with whatever dungeons do.”

  I abided with Rebekkah’s suggestion, and let her rest. When Rebekkah finally went to sleep, I very quietly moved the structure inside my mountain so that when she wanted to leave, she wouldn’t have to walk as far. I moved all my other structures away from the room she was in so that I could shift it straight to the surface when she was ready to depart.

  While I was doing that, I also checked up on where everyone else in her former party was. Rui and Seirah had found each other, and had started to run back the way they came, before realizing how far they would have to go if they couldn’t fly on Grimm’s back. Greyson and Solaire were both circling the mountain, looking for the rest of the party, but hadn’t found Rui and Seirah yet.

  Grimm, on the other hand, had at some point become his dragon form again, and had perched himself up at the top of my mountain. Red scales glistening in the sun, I could feel him dragging my mana into his dragon body, not enough to hurt me, but starting to get more intense as he stood on all fours, hunched over and concentrating on seemingly speeding up the process. The draconic form grew before my many eyes, wings lengthening, claws becoming sharper, and when he seemed to be satisfied, a beam of pure energy erupted from his mouth, straight down.

  Grimm was attempting to bore a hole straight through my dungeon. I tried to create barricades to protect myself, but the pure energy went straight through. I tried to throw a rocky fist at Grimm’s face, trying to disrupt his attack, but the mana that was empowering my punch started to get absorbed by his draconic body as it approached, causing the fist to lose speed and scatter harmlessly around Grimm.

  Tracking Grimm’s beam, it was aiming straight down towards the Goddess. My core was close to where the beam was descending, but it would miss my core. However, I had sworn to protect the Goddess, so I had to do something soon.

  Coming upon a realization, I put a plan into motion. I first nudged Rebekkah awake, then made all my mana pull itself away from Grimm. The results felt very weird to me. As Grimm slowly realized what had just happened, his draconic form lost cohesion, and his beam of pure mana fizzled out. By the time he stood up, he had barely any dragon features left as my trick to starve him of mana, like one would starve a fire of oxygen, had done the job. It felt weird to me because I had to prevent my mana that wanted to fill up every available space from touching Grimm. Without his dragon power, he was slow enough that I could keep the mana shaped around him so that it didn’t touch him.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  As I did this, Rebekkah finally woke up. I started to shift her room towards the summit of the mountain, as I needed her help. “I have Grimm contained for a moment. I need you to talk to him. Otherwise, he will just try and dig me up again,” I said mentally to Rebekkah.

  ”I can’t,” Rebekkah said, recoiling in fear. “Grimm is a Dracomorph. Their culture views other Demihumans as lesser. They can’t be reasoned with.”

  “Well, you will need to try,” I said. “If nothing else, I will negotiate with him, but I still need you as my translator.”

  “In all the chaos, I don’t even know your name, how am I supposed to talk on your behalf?”

  “My name is Felix, nice to meet’cha,” I said to her, opening her room up to the summit where Grimm still was. “Let’s calm things down a bit.”

  Once Rebekkah was at the summit, Grimm immediately turned towards her, a feral look in his red eyes. Rebekkah cowered slightly at this, her antennae shivering, but steeling herself, she crawled forward on all of her centipede legs.

  “Why are you here,” Grimm yelled. “You feel sorry for this Dungeon? I will rip this dungeon apart, remove the Death Blight, then make you regret ever being born!”

  I felt a little bit peeved at that, but stayed my hand. I instead gave Rebekkah some instructions on what to say back in my stead.

  “The Dungeon does not take kindly to threats, to itself or to me,” Rebekkah blushed as she said that last part. “It does, however, recognize that the threat of the Death Blight needs to be removed if possible. If you will agree to stop destroying it for a moment, it will release you from the mana prison you are in and will escort us to the source of the Death Blight so you can deal with it directly.”

  “How dare you talk to me like that!” Grimm roared out, but then as Rebekkah stepped back he seemed to have calmed down. “But fine, I will agree to this Dungeon’s proposal.”

  At those words, I released my hold on my mana so that it could return to its normal state, then formed the closest equivalent I could to an elevator and told Rebekkah to get Grimm and herself in. Once they had done so, I pulled solid stone out of the way so that the elevator would carry them straight down to the block of ice that was holding the Goddess.

  As the elevator stopped, Grimm looked at Rebekkah menacingly, and as he got out, he quietly said “Don’t expect any pity from me, pest. You are still going to die along with this Dungeon once the Death Blight is taken care of.”

  Rebekkah stayed near the elevator, while Grimm walked out onto the ice. He got near the center of the corpse, right above her chest, which made him look tiny even in dragon form, then he started to breath a blast of fire straight down into the ice.

  I watched with my vision that could see mana directly as he did this, how quickly he absorbed the death mana that was defrosting out of the ice as he went. His draconic body increasing in size as he was basically eating it. Considering my own experience with comparing the taste of Death mana with other types, that surely tasted awful to get so much so quickly. Everything seemed to be going fine, until the ice had melted far enough that the skin of the Goddess was now exposed to the open air.

  It took half a second for everything to go wrong. The surge of pure death mana, which had been held back by the ice, hit Grimm full force. I was able to handle it because my Dungeon Core had literally been formed in that tomb, but Grimm wasn’t so lucky. I created a barricade to separate Rebekkah from what was about to happen, as Grimm’s body exploded. Like a cancerous growth, scales, claws, teeth, and horns sprouted all over Grimm’s body where they didn’t belong, and in that split second the disgusting sight had filled the entire cavern, then detonated into bloody chunks.