Quinn had questions. She had many questions.

  We worked our way through what she had seen and experienced room-by-room. If I had previously expected my companion to be like a dungeon fairy, then her inspection of my dungeon completely disabused me of that notion.

  Quinn had naught but a smattering of elemental strategy (but could she ride a horse?).

  This wasn’t a bad thing, however. Quinn still was a pair of fresh eyes and it was clear she had common sense and her own intuitions when it came to the system, skills, and the demesne. So, like a five year old, she asked a lot of questions, such as “Why?” and “Does it work?” Having to defend myself from the latter did a number on my ego.

  First, we did some micro-analysis, with Quinn and I talking about individual rooms.

  She thought the first room with the spike trap was a decent introductory space for the dungeon. The trap had proven its effectiveness already, but wasn’t overwhelming.

  For the mushroom grotto, Quinn was less generous. “Can you explain this room to me?”

  “Sure,” I texted back. “The mushrooms provide a type of terrain that allows the snake to move around quickly. It can hide in the webbing to avoid attacks and make quick ranged acid attacks from many different points. The acid should degrade the delvers’ armor and clothing.”

  “Has it worked?”

  “It hasn’t been tested yet,” I admitted.

  “But–why only one snake?” she asked.

  I explained that I was trying to conserve some mana when I originally made the room. Also, the snake was a new monster, so it’s effectiveness was unknown.

  Quinn made an exaggerated sigh, “It’s just that you allow five people in at a time. I think that many people can spread out and cover a lot of the grotto’s area and kill the snake pretty quickly. I think you should add one or two more snakes.”

  I winced at the anticipated mana cost for up to two more snakes, but she was right. The room really needed another snake or two to make it impactful when facing a full-team delve.

  We moved on.

  Quinn thought the bridge room looked more challenging than it actually was. The narrow bridge with a precipitous drop into a spiked basement looked dangerous, but was still wide enough to walk comfortably across. The pendulum that crossed the room was very big, but also moved very slowly. Plus [Vulpine Agility]made navigating it even easier.

  I told her about the previous version that had the stonefall trap in the ceiling that collapsed the bridge and how it was very successful.

  “Why did you get rid of it?” she asked.

  “At the time when I made the pendulum, I didn’t have the ability to make a Holding,” I explained. “Such a trap would have interfered with or broke the pendulum, so I got rid of it. Plus, there were some issues with the timing. But, I guess now that isn’t a worry, so I could put it back.”

  “Yeah,” Quinn answered, but she clearly didn’t think much of the idea. “I feel like, maybe, we can be a bit more creative, though? For example, what if, instead of the trap triggering on the way in, it triggers on the way back? That would be a surprise!”

  “That’s a good idea!” I made a note of the idea and we moved on to the next room.

  The skeleton room.

  I explained in detail the room’s concept, the design elements, the problems I had, and potential solutions I had come up with so far. I admitted that, currently, the room was a complete bust. We went back and forth for some time discussing the room’s problems, but an easy solution didn’t present itself.

  “It’s the fighters,” Quinn finally said, resolutely. “They are just too weak, too simple.”

  “From what you’ve told me,” she continued, “The average level of a group of delvers seems higher than you expected. The dwarves were all at least level six.”

  She then looked at my core pointedly, “So, why did you even bother to make level two skeletons?”

  I bristled a little at the accusation. “It was the very first monster I created! Besides, a level two monster was a perfectly reasonable introductory monster for newbies at first or second level.”

  “But you don’t have delvers at first or second level.”

  “Yeah–but–like–that’s how it always goes!” I tried to defend myself. “The first group of adventurers are always low level in the stories I read.”

  “You just assumed the first people coming to your dungeon would be the lowest possible level?” Quinn smirked.

  Had I done that? I tried to remember what I did. I had to admit that I didn’t know what I was doing. I had just wanted a monster and the system provided. I did not specifically say to the system I wanted a level 1 or level 2 monster, but it was possible that the system matched my unconscious expectations regarding early dungeon monsters. I had to admit Quinn was right.

  Quinn waved her hand, “Well, the answer is easy at least–just delete it.”

  “You mean the units?”

  “Yup–the units and the template itself. Delete everything!”

  Could I do that?

  “I don’t think that’s possible.” I answered. The choices made for dungeons were always irreversible. I mean, I didn’t see anything that allowed me to take back a mistake, Absorption excepted–but that was only for things I made with mana!

  “Have you tried deleting a monster completely?”

  “No.”

  Quinn smirked again, “You just assumed you couldn’t do it, didn’t you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Okay. Well, try it, right now.”

  I quickly Absorbed the four skeleton fighters, getting a small amount of mana in return. I then brought up my Monstruary screen, which I also shared with Quinn via the tablet.

  I focused on the words ‘Skeleton Fighter (lvl. 2) and will for it to be deleted. Even after trying several times, it didn’t work.

  But I didn’t give up. Instead, I had the idea of leveraging my skills and having the mechanics of the system work for me.

  I started again. This time, I used the same skill as I used to delete the skeleton fighters–Absorption. I activated the skill and applied it to the words in my status screen. I felt resistance from the system, but this signaled to me that I was on the right path. My insights with Interface came to mind, and I realized the solution. The words were not what I needed to delete; they merely denoted what I needed to remove.

  So I used Interface to guide Absorption through the Monstruary’s status screen, into its connection with my own being, my core. I stretched my own senses with Interface active to make a crude scan of myself. I felt the inside of my core, sensing my main mana well at the center and the supplemental one too. The connection made by Interface guided me to a small area that seemed to house a number of small organs. That must be my monsters and creatures. I narrowed down the connection’s string and found the specific one. Absorption flowed through the connection, looking to devour its target at last. But before it could, I stopped it.

  I did everything the same, but added a requirement for Interface to give me a notification before triggering the final step.

  I had learned by now that the system was terse, but meaningful. If the system was saying “permanently,” it meant permanently.

  Fortunately, I could now ask someone to confirm my thoughts, “Quinn–I found a way to delete Skeleton Fighter, but the system is warning me it would be ‘permanent.’”

  “Permanent?” Quinn’s ears twitched down and forward as she thought about the implications. “If the system’s saying it’s permanent, that might mean you can’t recreate the same monster later.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I think too.”

  “But do you think you would ever want the unit back?”

  I didn’t have to think hard about that question; the answer came quickly: a resounding “no.”

  I went back to the prompt and mentally selected “Yes.”

  And that was that. I checked the Monstruary and Skeleton Fighter had disappeared.

  “Mission Accomplished” I texted Quinn along with an updated Monstruary list showing the change.

  She nodded her head, but stared at the screen a little longer. “By the way,” she drawled out, which indicated she was preparing to ask yet another question. “What’s with the question marks?”

  “They indicate that the maximum number of types of units for that template is unknown.”

  Quinn furrowed her brow, confused. “So, the system is telling you it’s unknown?”

  I thought that was a silly question because of course the system was telling me that. But then I remember that I made the Monstruary a long time ago, to clean up the poor format of information given in my original status screen. Now that I could use Interface to check the threads of connection, I reviewed the Monstruary again. The question marks held no connection. I had manually typed them into the screen.

  I cursed myself for my apparent stupidity. “No, I added them because I didn’t know,” I admitted. “The limits on the number of flora and fauna are real, but the system never said anything about limits on Monsters. I had inferred–assumed, I suppose–that there must be limits on them too.”

  “So the system never told you there were limits.”

  “No.“

  Quinn rolled her eyes. “So if there are clearly limits for flora and fauna and clearly no stated limits for monsters, then it makes sense there are no limitations for monsters.”

  “We can’t assume that!”

  Quinn was clearly flustered by the circular logic, “Yes, but–I don’t know! Can you just ask the system then?”

  I thought it didn’t work that way, but that didn’t mean Quinn was completely wrong either. I had been able to get the system into giving me information a few times before, if I did it the right way. In fact, I had just done it.

  So I repeated what I had done before, only this time in reverse. I took a new interface screen, rolled it up and made it as narrow as possible, like a needle. Then I firmed it up and stuck right into my core like I was injecting myself with a syringe. However, I wasn’t doing so blindly. Deleting my skeleton fighter had caused a specific part of my core to react; I assumed this was the correct place so sent in my Interface syringe to the same part.

  Once the connection was made, I carefully coaxed the system to pull out descriptive information on the size of this well, as well as how “full” it was.

  An answer it was, but not a clear one.

  Kitsune was easier to understand because I didn’t have any templates for them. I also like the fact that Quinn, even though she was one herself, didn’t count towards the limit. The eight was the limit, probably a combined number from the two levels in the archetype.

  The numbers for the undead were more confusing. Even though the undead archetype was also level 2, the total capacity was 13.

  The used amount showed six, which was a number I couldn’t make a connection to either. I had only two templates now, I had 3 units in the dungeon total, and even the total levels of the templates and units was 9 and 15, respectively. Whence “six” came from was a mystery.

  Quinn didn’t know either. “However, making a new Kitsune unit will help a lot to understand what’s going on,” she pointed out.

  “And whatever we put in the room to replace those skeletons,” I added. We agreed that this puzzle was not a high priority.

  We moved on.

  Quinn liked the secret trap room with the spiral staircase, but not what was in the room. “It doesn’t look like your core,” she explained.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I look at your core, I can sense a very powerful sigil, maybe even sigils, like they are stacked into each other.”

  “Like a Matryoshka doll?”

  Quinn paused for several beats, then quietly spoke, “I guess so.” Then she perked up again, “ Anyways, the rock you have there just looks like a ball of rock. I don’t know if it will fool anyone.”

  “Perhaps, we can just change it to a secret treasure room,” I suggested, but then corrected myself, “However, everyone that I’ve met so far just seems interested in my core. Perhaps some sort of litmus test is better.”

  “Another key?”

  “In a sense, yes! Another key.”

  We discussed the keys. I explained my rationale on what the keys were supposed to be: a mechanism to force delvers to do their homework, to do more than just fight and move and to interact with their environment. Quinn conceded the point, but still felt the keys didn’t work and that they were too simple.

  Then I told her about the latest key I had made. She immediately went back to the basement and checked the skeleton knight with a key hanging around his neck. She grabbed the key and pulled it until the necklace was taut, “The knight can be avoided if a person steals the key. That’s a big flaw!”

  “Why? If they steal it, good for them! They solved the challenge in an alternative way. And besides, they would have to use the key, open the grate, and drop into the sewer while the knights are still attacking them.”

  “Why would you want them to be creative? You want them to be dead!” Quinn groaned in frustration. “Link the grate to the skeleton directly–that way you ensure they have to fight.”

  Quinn’s suggestion was actually really good, but I wasn’t willing to give up on the keys yet. There were ways I could try to make them more meaningful.

  But to prove her point, perhaps, Quinn took the key off the statuesque skeleton knight and checked each of the grates until she found the right one. She then inserted the key into the keyhole, twisted it, and opened the grate.

  She crouched down and stared down into the hole, “So this was what you were working on. Can I see it?”

  Before I could even answer, Quinn dropped herself down.