The group I saw was composed of 6 people, 3 girls and 3 guys, though one girl and one guy were a bit stranger than the others. The strange man was covered in scales, had horns, and a small set of wings covering his back. The strange woman seemed to be a combination of human and centipede, with her lower half being long and having more legs than the rest of the group combined.

  “Rui,” the centipede girl called out to a girl with a cloak. “How far are we from the destination?”

  “We should be to the area we need to map out by sundown,” Rui answered back. “Because of the trees we can’t see it but when we get close it will be obvious Rebekkah.”

  The centipede girl, Rebekkah, stopped walking and started twitching her feelers around. The five other members of the party all stopped moving and turned questioningly to her.

  “Is there something wrong?” the other girl, who had the appearance of a cleric from my old world, asked Rebekkah.

  “Yes, Seirah, I’m already feeling mana in the air,” Rebekkah said back as she started spinning to look all around them.

  “This doesn’t look like an area afflicted with death mana, though,” the scaled man said.

  “Grimm, that’s not what I’m sensing,” Rebekkah answered back, then looked at the other two men. “Greyson, Solaire, get ready for combat, I think we have just entered a dungeon.”

  The entire team tensed up at that, like I was some sort of boogeyman. I didn’t realize that a dungeon could cause this much alarm, but they all pulled out every weapon they had, and Grimm seemed to be some sort of shifter as his appearance looked more bestial than it did before, with the horns and wings getting bigger and his hands becoming adorned with claws.

  “When did we cross into it?” Grimm asked her as he continued to shift into what almost looked like a dragon now.

  “Not too long ago, just as we started across this clearing,” Rebekkah answered.

  “Well, Solaire, what is the plan?” Greyson looked towards Solaire, his rather large hammer at the ready in case of danger.

  “We need to pick up the pace,” Solaire said. “We need to find the source of this dungeon. Rebekkah, what mana is the dungeon giving off?”

  “It seems to be mostly giving off life mana, but there’s very small quantities of death mana in there, which worries me as if that means what I think it means…..”

  “……This dungeon originated from the death mana explosion,” Lui finished for her.

  I thought that I had turned most of the death mana into life mana, but upon closer look I realized they were right and I still had pockets of death mana lying around even where they were, which was a bit concerning.

  “Grimm, we need faster transport, how long can you maintain your magic?” Solaire asked as he hurriedly walked over to where Grimm was keeping watch.

  “I will get us to the mountain, no problem, besides,” Grimm said in a very self-assured voice, “a dungeon increases the necessity to get there quickly.”

  I watch them all get on Grimm’s back as he finishes his transition into a dragon large enough to carry them all into the sky and take off. I took notice that when I pushed some of my eyes closer to the group Rebekkah started twitching her centipede feelers. I was curious if I could get her attention that way, but I couldn’t move the eyes close enough after they picked up speed in the air.

  I watched them approach my mountain very quickly compared to their previous travel speed. Grimm’s altered form was only maintained because of how much of my mana he was soaring through. Every few seconds, Grimm’s body would start to contract in on itself, but then he would open his jaws and inhale my mana and solidify again, which was very weird to watch in action from my perspective. It didn’t cause me pain, but it didn’t feel comfortable either. I didn’t want to think about what this Grimm fellow experienced every time this happened.

  I pondered how to approach interacting with them. I was worried with how they were suddenly in a hurry when Rebekkah identified that I was a dungeon. My thoughts trailed back to some of the stories about dungeon cores, and how in several of them the dungeons that went wild and unchecked were dangerous threats. Was that how this group viewed me? My memories drudged up one story where an adventuring party tried to put a restraint on the dungeon to hold it back. If this group had such a device, I would be very grateful to clamp down on this constant size issue. I just needed a way to communicate with them.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  After a very quick flight, they landed on the top of the mountain. Rebekkah got off Grimm first and examined the mountainside.

  “I am sensing heavy mana concentrations here,” she reported to the rest of the group. “The dungeon’s center is right here where the death blight originated from.”

  “Well team,” Rui said in a lackadaisical tone as she motioned around them. “We were sent out to do something about the death mana, but now this dungeon has done our job for us.”

  “Not quite,” Solaire said as he brandished a very exquisite sword. “The giant corpse is gone, but we have a new issue to deal with that also relates to mana. We need to get down to the core of this dungeon.”

  “Solaire, wait,” Rebekkah said, turning to him. “The dungeon hasn’t done anything compared to how much damage the death blight caused. We should return to town and report the change to the situation.”

  “No,” Seirah stepped forward in front of Rebekkah. “Dungeons are a disease. Left unchecked, they cause more devastation than that death blight did. We need to go in and kill it.”

  “I really wish you hadn’t said that out loud,” Rebekkah said angrily back to Seirah. “The moment I realized we were in dungeon mana, I felt like we were being watched. I had a hunch it was the dungeon, but since that feeling hasn’t stopped even now on top of a mountain, I can guarantee you it is watching us and just heard you say we plan to kill it.”

  “Ah, I thought she sensed me. Good to know,” I thought to myself and saw Rebekkah’s antennae twitch towards my nearest invisible eyes. She then looked right at it as though she was trying to have a staring contest with me, but then she looked back at her companions.

  “So, what do we do?” Greyson asked Solaire with a very confused expression.

  “Well, as you said Rebekkah, this dungeon is most likely aware we are here, yet it hasn’t attacked us yet,” Solaire said nodding to Rebekkah. “However, Seirah is also right that something needs to be done. The last person to track how far the death blight had reached returned not too long ago, and in such a short time this dungeon removed the entire stain and extended its borders even further. A dungeon with that much unbridled growth is a very dangerous element.”

  I felt like they were going to get into an argument again, so before they had a chance, I extracted my core from its ice cocoon with tendrils of rock and moved the rock of the mountain to lift myself up to the conversation.

  “Can the dungeon you speak of have a word in here?” I tried to mentally say, hoping someone could hear me since Rebekkah reacted to my thoughts earlier.

  Rebekkah and the others jumped backwards. Grimm tried to put himself between the group and me, but Rebekkah pushed forward towards my core.

  “Why would the dungeon come up here?” Lui asked everyone.

  “I wanted to negotiate,” I mentally said, and Rebekkah’s eyes widened as her feelers twitched.

  “I can hear its thoughts,” Rebekkah said almost in a daze. “It just said it wants to negotiate.”

  Solaire looked back and forth between the rest of the group. “Rebekkah, I am giving you my position as the temporary leader as you are the only one that can hear what the dungeon said. We need you to talk to it and figure out what it wants to negotiate.”

  “Why did you do that?” Rebekkah asked as she got closer to my core. “Some of our group want you dead.”

  “I figured this was the easiest way to show that I am not a threat,” I responded to Rebekkah. “And to interject that I did not remove the death blight issue as you called it, I am containing it.”

  “You are doing what?” Rebekkah shouted.

  “The source of the death blight is still below us, I could not get rid of it, but I have contained it with ice and am absorbing the mana, which is why you picked up traces of death mana leaking out of me. Very embarrassing for me when you pointed it out that you still saw traces of it.”

  “But then……” Rebekkah’s eyes went wide as she heard a member of her party run behind her. She turned around to see Grimm, who I had already seen make his move, transform into his dragon form, and try to blast Rebekkah and my core with his dragon breath. I immediately created a wall of solid stone that blocked all the flames from hitting me or Rebekkah, then formed a giant rock fist that I launched upwards at Grimm to hopefully knock him out. The punch hit him, but he was still conscious.

  “That was rather rude of him,” I thought out loud. “He would have caught his own party member in the crossfire if I hadn’t intervened to save you.”

  Rebekkah looked at me blushing and twitching her feelers, but before she could say anything Greyson and Solaire ran forward, each on one side of my wall, and tried to slam the ax and the sword into my core. As they were mere inches from me, I made large chunks of ice erupt from under both adventurers and wrap around both of their weapons, so that neither one could move forward. I looked over at Lui and Seirah, the only members of this party that weren’t attacking, and they were just watching everything with worried expressions on their faces. I mentally sighed at how fast this situation turned violent.

  “Negotiations have broken down, I’m sorry,” I said to Rebekkah. I reshaped the mountain under me again to lower my core back down to my little hiding spot, then created mini avalanches to send everyone off the mountain. I made sure to not kill any of them, but sent each one in a different direction so that they would have to try to reconvene.

  As I started to try and find a way to rest my thoughts, I took one last look out to where everyone ended up and noticed Rebekkah curled up where I sent her looking depressed. I created an entryway near her and tried to give her a mental nudge. She opened her eyes at that and looked around until she noticed the entrance.

  “You were friendly towards me, and your team tried to kill you while attempting to kill me,” I said to her. “You are welcome to come in, if you like, unlike the rest of them.”

  At those words, she rushed in on her many insectoid legs. I wasn’t expecting her to take the offer so willingly.