Perhaps unsurprisingly, spending five minutes just staring at my core did not help me choose an evolution.

All three of the options were very lovely, really. Shadow, intelligence, strength—a perfect marriage of all the cave bear's abilities, but I had to choose only one. Very unfortunate.

Lesser bugbear called to me—not the word lesser, admittedly, but the phrasing of it. I could still remember the available schemas from my own evolutions, the ones that started out with sapience instead of having to evolve it like the horned serpent or obtain it through exposure to my own brilliance like Seros. Lesser bugbear seemed to follow a similar vein, rising through the ranks of their own brutish strength and learning intelligence alongside it, although I imagined it was still a lesser form of sapience like the kobolds than the type that could sit down and have a proper conversation with me. Ah well.

Midnight cave bear as well—that lined up with what he had been studying, sticking to his shadow-attuned mana and the darkness he had so learned to coat himself in. Combined with Nuvja's blessing, I could see how this choice would blossom him to new heights, protecting both him and all those he wanted, hidden from both the moon and day as he hunted. A wonderful image, really.

And then two-headed bear.

I could practically taste the potential through the words, the lingering power that lurked on the edge of my core like jagged claws. With his shadow-magic and her brute strength, they would be a monster upon my halls; stalking through the darkness of the fourth floor or a towering force on the fifth, there would be little that could ever stand in their path.

Objectively, it was the strongest choice. Ignoring everything else, two heads were better than one, and already my mind swam with the potential of staggered sleep schedules, dual attacks, training, split awarenesses—a brief mention of slavering wreck, sure, but power beyond power as well.

But. Well.

If I were a purely power-focused beast, I would have killed Seros on the first day, brought down the cavern to crush his head and claim his schema. I would have evolved all my creatures into only the fiercest and most vicious options, crafted my halls as only endless hallways of monstrous beasts and hidden traps, burrowed straight down and murdered all those in my path.

But that wasn't me.

I didn't want that to be me.

Because as much as I shoved it off, as much as I would never mention it, I looked forward to my chats with Seros, discussing the going-ons of the dungeon and what he should try hunting next. I enjoyed watching the mage ratkin train her underlings to harness their own magic, watching the horned serpent command her army with tyrannical precision, Nicau grow into his Name and the power with it. The floors I built thrived under my care and detail—because they were ecosystems, not just floors, not just corridors to kill invaders.

I was building something in the way that I wanted to, and I cared for my creatures.

A life spent in grief is no life at all.

Not an untrue phrase, but equally pressing was the concern that the two-headed bear only functioned if the two heads actually got along. And for all they had been mates, they had been rivals first, and both bore the scars of their fierce and bitter fights.

Would they be able to work together if I evolved him? Perhaps. And perhaps bringing her soul back would be enough for him to get over his grief, to learn to live with her and work together in this new form, but.

But.

But maybe it made him miserable, maybe it trapped him alongside an endless reminder of what could never be, maybe they ripped each other to shreds in a desperate attempt for freedom that their shared body could never provide.

I poked through his mind, glimpsing his most recent thoughts—grief, raw and jagged, echoed back at me, but also the understanding that she was dead. He was a dungeonborn creature and death was no stranger; she had been the closest to him, but already he had watched generation after generation of burrowing rats meet their end in the Fungal Gardens. He understood death.

And past his grief for his mate, there was also the new, rising thought of his cubs.

They were almost grown, nearly self-sufficient, but still young; the world was dark and cruel and cold, and he had just watched his mate die. Past the grief, past the pain, there was the deep promise that he would protect them.

And for his strength in the past, he had always turned to shadows.

I loved my creatures. In the end, I would always listen to them for their future.

I selected midnight cave bear.

He slumped further to the ground as light overtook his fur, spiraling through the den even as Nuvja's shadows fell to blanket it; he curled in on himself, still next to the dead body of his mate, but changing. Growing.

Once he evolved, I would help guide him further below, to the fourth floor and the stone jungle within. It was a temporary solution—he wouldn't fight well in the cramped corners of the twisting tunnels, for all his shadows would help, but it was the best I could offer now. But I would carve a path for him to return above, to keep shadowed watch over his cubs, to protect them.

It was what he wanted, and as much as I would urge him to delve to deeper floors, I would not deprive him of his original home.

Just as soon as I, you know.

Finished said deeper floors.

Gods. Once I finished these evolutions and properly restocked my halls, I needed to jump head first into planning new floors. The sixth would be my coral reef, the seventh some type of forest for all my larger creatures, and then something relating to fire for the eight—you know, if I ever got time to build them all.

They didn't tell you about things like this when you became a dungeon core. Incredibly irritating.

But for now, I slipped down a floor, letting the Fungal Gardens drift back to its previous hustle and bustle as I floated my points of awareness to the Drowned Forest and all the golden treasures within.

Of which there were many.

I'd handled most of them—stone-backed toads into ironback toads, cave spiders into webweavers, whitecap mushrooms into lacecaps. Even more than those, though, I mourned the losses—there had been several electric eels so bursting with power, so ready to evolve, and before they'd even had a chance their lives had been cut short. I mourned them with a ferocity that honestly surprised me; but I'd collected the schema for the electric eels what felt like forever ago, back when my dungeon was small and barely growing, and they hadn't had a chance to really shine since. When they'd almost stumbled across that opportunity, it had been ripped from them.

For all that I wanted my creatures to grow and fight and thrive, sometimes there was nothing I could do. Moving them lower wouldn't help, where there were more dangers that their unevolved forms couldn't handle, and moving them up meant there wasn't enough mana to really help in their evolutions. No right answer beyond hoping that one day they would reach that intangible barrier and break through.

In a similar vein, both the greater crabs and lichenridge turtles on this floor also hadn't reached their barrier; they'd gotten close, but not each yet to what they needed. The greater crabs needed more mana than others given they were on their second evolution—kind of? They had been born into their second evolution, given both their parents were greater crabs, but apparently that counted for their own evolution? The rules were confusing—and the turtles were ambush predators that weren't supplied with targets at the same frequency as other creatures in my halls. Sure, they snapped down feet lovingly detached from legs and welcomed the mana bursting through their channels, but it wasn't enough.

Soon, though. There were a few I already had my eyes on that were looking particularly bright and growing.

But for all that the lesser creatures in the Drowned Forest were still waiting on evolutions, others were already there.

One group in particular.

The kobolds had spread out in a handful of separate hunting parties, one led by the female chieftain and others by her subordinates; for all they'd been clumsy and limited by their primitive weapons, their efficiency could not be denied. They stole swarm tactics from the burrowing rats, used the same hidden lunges as the luminous constrictors, even the raised blocks as the ironback toads—for all that they weren't trained fighters, they were infinitely more coordinated than my other monsters, and what they lacked in quality they more than made up for in quantity.

The three adventuring parties they'd attacked had all gone down.

Not flawlessly, unfortunately—of the perhaps five, six dozen kobolds I'd had, they'd lost some fifteen in the attack, and more were prone and injured around the halls. I darted to and fro, dissolving some lesser corpses for bursts of mana needed to soothe their minds and heal their wounds—scales and muscles reknitted under my careful claws, stitching back together and leaving gnarled scars in their wake.

If anything, the kobolds seemed more pleased at their newly-earned scars than the fact I was healing them, warbling excitedly as they traced their dull claws over their pockmarked arms and torsos. Foolish, but I supposed when you were a kobold, proof that you could do any fighting at all was probably welcome.

If any of them willingly tried to get more scars just to look cool, I wasn't going to heal them.

But under my curling swoops of mana, the kobolds were able to stand back up, though wincing and limping under muscles that had been pushed past exhaustion in the battle; I didn't have enough spare mana to heal them all completely, so I just carried them to the point they would be okay and then let their actual healers patch them up the rest of the way.

I wanted more mana. Infuriating not to have enough.

But for the moment, I guided them back to their den, soothing the surrounding creatures so they had an uninterrupted journey back. One comfort, at least.

At the entrance, Nicau emerged, shins splattered with drying blood and eyes wild—there was a moment where I almost worried over what he would do, looking more than a bit like he was about to collapse and crumble to pieces.

But then the leader kobold stepped forward, churring quietly, and Nicau's shoulders slumped. He chirped something back, a trickle of mana spilling into his voice, and then he was stepping forward, getting another kobold's arm and helping guide them inside. Between him and the uninjured kobolds, they were able to get everyone inside and situated on moss beds and flat surfaces, healers pulling out rolls of billowing moss and half-carved cups of water to clean their wounds.

I watched with a strange sense of glee. They'd truly come so far from the savage, primitive little brutes just sprinting through my dungeon.

But only some of them had to be healed, because others were glowing with an incandescent inner light.

Those I guided to the back of the den, side-stepping other kobolds and pushing them to set their spears down, and let them curl up in a massive, slumbering pile in a room I'd already carved for this express purpose. No one could say I wasn't an overachiever.

Then, with a giddiness only accented by the near dozen and a half evolutions presented to me, I read the message scrolling across my core.

Congratulations! Your creature, a Kobold, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Kobold Warrior (Rare): In a world of dangers, one rises to match. This creature fights with a brawn well beyond what its body should hold, ending battles with the sheer strength of its will and an unwillingness to concede.

Lizardfolk (Common): Some dreams are so large they crush those who dream them. Abandoning its previous legacy, this creature turns to its own strengths, growing in both physical and mental prowess as it seeks to carve its own destiny.

Kobold Hunter (Rare): In tune with beasts and birds, this creature stalks through the undergrowth with raised claws and keen eyes. Either solitary or serving a greater tribe, they strike from the shadows and drag home corpses large enough to feed dozens. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.