Matthias was having a bit of a lazy day. He was lounging on his bed with his fairies in the new bedroom he had designed himself.

  Ever since he had hit Ultra-Rare rarity—or whatever was going on now—his fairies had been steadily growing. They had been putting on several inches a day until they stopped at around four feet tall. As a result, they now had proper rooms and wardrobes of their own.

  It was no surprise to Matthias that Lucy preferred togas and dresses. What had surprised him was that Chloe preferred jeans and backless shirts to accommodate her wings. Not the jeans with holes, but proper full-length pants and shirts that were a bit baggy, with full sleeves despite having no back.

  Neither of them stuck to a single color palette either. Some days they wore dark colors; other days they wanted bright, eye-searing colors.

  Matthias was more than happy to let them experiment, so long as he did not need to actually talk about fashion.

  He was dozing, one fairy on either side of him using his chest as a pillow, when something he had been analyzing finally produced results. They were not the results he wanted, but they were results.

  “Well, that is disturbing,” he could not help but murmur.

  “What?” Lucy asked.

  “I finished breaking down those Demon Queen samples,” Matthias explained. “I learned quite a bit and was able to reverse-engineer the ritual that created her, at least partially.”

  “Oh?” she asked, not looking up yet.

  “It seems that the ritual involves a dungeon… eating its own fairy,” he slowly confessed.

  Lucy looked up at him in horror, while Chloe simply stiffened.

  “Why?” Lucy asked in shock.

  “It symbolizes betrayal,” Chloe answered somberly. “It symbolizes a fall from grace. The act of only a desperate individual.”

  “Sounds like you know quite a bit,” Matthias prodded. “I can understand if you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Being a demon ruler is not supposed to be something one desires,” Chloe admitted. “It is a corruption of the system—the natural order and intent. To become a demon ruler, one must cannibalize their own dungeon. The fairy is the last step. The more of their own dungeon they cannibalize, the more power they gain as a demon ruler.”

  “So a dungeon that had to rely on getting mana passively probably had a smaller dungeon to sacrifice than a land-bound dungeon?” Matthias offered.

  “You noticed?” Chloe asked.

  “Don’t get me wrong—the Demon King would have been a terror to fight if conditions had not lined up just right,” Matthias began. “But he would not have been capable of throwing an ancient dragon. It would have taken very specific circumstances for him to ever achieve that.”

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  “Becoming a demon ruler also allows the dungeon to enhance a single facet of their new existence far beyond what the system ever intended for the world. As you probably guessed, the system was imposed by the gods, so becoming a demon ruler is the ultimate rebellion against it.”

  “So the king chose survivability,” Matthias guessed. “And the queen chose physicality? Neither of those seems ideal for fighting gods.”

  “The change reflects their deepest desires,” Chloe admitted with a sigh. “The queen wanted to be seen. The king simply did not want to die. They did not have the right desires to awaken the full potential of a demonic ruler.”

  “I would not call it potential,” Matthias countered. “I would call it madness. Dungeons grow stronger by consuming and gathering mana. Their influence is made of mana, so eating themselves is paradoxical. It is madness. They are invoking chaos to try to empower themselves—and madness is exactly what it is, because it does not truly work.”

  “What do you mean it does not work?” Chloe demanded as she shot upright. Tears ran down her face. “My sisters died to bring those monsters into existence! What do you mean it does not work?”

  “What I mean is that they were unstable,” Matthias explained calmly. “Their lives were on a timer. Hunting and consuming other dungeons prolongs their existence; it is a way of stabilizing themselves. The Demon Queen never actually struck the other dungeon’s core—it would have been too deep underground. The reason she was so hard to kill was that she was consuming the other dungeon’s influence to bolster herself, slurping it up like soup.”

  “Then why did the king not do the same with you?” Lucy asked.

  “My density was higher than his,” he replied easily. “Basically, he was choking on my influence.”

  “But your influence is not that heavy,” Lucy countered. “We told you that the older dungeons are so thick with influence that weaker people simply die from exposure.”

  “And I figured out how not to do that,” Matthias explained calmly. He pulled both fairies into a hug. “Look, there is more than one way to express power. I could flood my domain with enough mana to kill anything unsuited to that environment, forcing my denizens to evolve under the sheer weight of it. But that is not who I am. I do not rule my dungeon to crush others with power. My dungeon is a place of life, and my influence reflects that.”

  “So where is all that extra weight going?” Chloe asked. “What are you doing that other dungeons are not?”

  “I am not subjugating the world,” Matthias said. “I figured out that there is a will deep within it. It almost feels like another dungeon core. The deeper a dungeon pushes, the harder it becomes. The only way down is to grind against that foreign will.”

  “What?” both fairies asked.

  “It makes sense if you think about it from a different point of view,” he tried to explain. “Would you call a world alive?”

  “Maybe,” Lucy offered.

  “Not this one,” Chloe countered. “More like a rotting corpse.”

  “But to die, it once had to be alive,” Matthias continued. “I posit that the world was the first dungeon—that it created this world and pushed life out beyond its borders. But then chaotic energy was unleashed on the surface and scoured away all potential for more basic forms of life unless they were protected.”

  “Is that why we don’t see as much chaos mana underground?” Lucy asked.

  “Indeed,” Matthias agreed. “The chaos mana is pouring in from somewhere. That tumor we found? Not the source—just a pocket. A large one, but nothing more than a pocket.”

  “This still doesn’t tell us what you are doing that makes your influence less toxic,” Chloe said, trying to redirect the conversation.

  Matthias sighed. “Most other dungeons treat their influence like water pressure. The deeper you go, the heavier it becomes. Or they treat it like radiation, which is even worse for most forms of life. I am more akin to light. My influence is not water drowning the world, but light—infusing, rebounding, and flowing. Diffuse enough that most don’t notice it, yet still able to be focused into a weapon when necessary.”

  “I don’t get it,” Lucy admitted.

  “That’s fine,” Matthias sighed. “I struggle with it at times too.”

  He then felt a prickle from the south, and his attention flitted toward that region of his influence.

  “It seems we have guests once again,” Matthias groaned. “I wonder what Xalt is going to try this time.”