Phong did not waste time staring in awe.
Selena did enough of that for all three of them.
He was already moving, practical as ever, pulling open his status menu with a thought. The request the Sky Emperor had sent him still sat there, marked by the same impossible weight only a floor boss could leave behind. If there was anyone who could tell him what kind of disaster this was, it was the dragon who had asked for this scorched patch be fixed in the first place.
Phong tapped into the message thread.
[Is... the green bull, the walking mountain... the progenitor of elves?]
The answer came almost at once.
[Yes. Elves are Little Yama's children. You shouldn't engage them. They are at least level 120. Too high for current human.]
For one full second, Phong only stared.
Level 120.
At least.
He gulped.
Somehow, out of everything in that message, his mind skipped right past the fact that the Sky Emperor had just called Horns of the Earth Little Yama.
His fingers moved again.
[I just grew some.]
This time, there was no instant reply.
The silence stretched.
Beside him, Selena was still staring at the nearest pod with the wild look of a researcher who had just been handed the greatest paper of her life and several new reasons to lose sleep forever. Alex leaned in close enough to read over Phong's shoulder, and he felt her go still as her eyes caught the number in the earlier message.
Level 120.
Inside the glowing pods, the sleeping figures drifted softly in their fluid, pale and ethereal and very much not the kind of thing anyone below triple digits should be poking with a stick.
Then the Sky Emperor answered.
[Should have known you humans are crafty. Little Yama's seeds were taken during his stroll, weren't they? I'll find a way to deal with this.]
Phong let out a long breath.
That was not comfort, exactly.
But it was at least a sign that the dragon was treating this as a problem to solve and not a crime worth smiting him over on the spot.
Alex looked at him, then at the chat, then back at him again.
"You handled that fast," she said, and there was real approval in her voice. "Good thinking."
Phong rubbed a hand over his face. "I just asked the biggest thing available before Selena did something terrible."
"That is still good thinking."
She bumped lightly against his shoulder, warm and solid and very clearly trying to keep him from spiraling into the part where he had to admit he had somehow grown elves in a dungeon patch destroyed by floor bosses.
"You did well," she added. "See? My boyfriend is smart."
Phong gave her a look. "Your standards are strange."
Alex smiled. "And yet correct."
Selena, meanwhile, had gone the exact opposite direction.
The shock only lasted so long before it burned into excitement. Her breathing had gone quicker. Her eyes had that bright, dangerous shine they always got when research stopped being hypothesis and became something she could touch.
"No," she whispered, stepping closer to the nearest pod. "No, this is incredible."
Phong looked over just in time to see her pulling a small knife and sample vial from her pouch.
"Selena."
"She had an umbilical connection to the root system," Selena said rapidly, barely hearing him. "Do you understand what that means? Botanical gestation of a humanoid magical species. I need tissue. Fluid. Root matter. Pod membrane. Maybe hair if it separates naturally, but tissue would be better."
She took another step.
Alex opened her mouth.
Then Selena's gaze flicked back to Phong's status window, still open in the air between them.
Her eyes landed on one line.
At least level 120.
She froze.
The knife stopped halfway out of its sheath.
The whole mad scientist rush hit a wall so hard it was almost visible.
Slowly, very slowly, Selena looked from the words in the message to the nearest pod, where the sleeping elf floated in pale light like a very pretty murder machine still under construction.
Then she slid the knife back in.
"…I can wait," she said.
Phong snorted despite himself.
Alex laughed outright.
Selena folded her arms, trying and failing to recover her dignity. "That was a strategic decision."
"Mmhm," Alex said.
"I am a serious researcher."
"You were about to biopsy a level one hundred and twenty baby elf."
Selena pointed at her. "A potential level one hundred and twenty baby elf. There is a difference."
"Not enough of one."
Phong closed the status window and looked back at the grove of giant pods.
The pale light still pulsed through them, steady and alive. Thick roots spread under the scorched land the moletatoes had reclaimed. Inside the pods, the elf-shaped figures drifted on in perfect silence, untouched by the fact that three very confused humans were standing nearby trying to decide how much of a disaster this counted as.
The Sky Emperor would deal with it, apparently.
That was good.
Because Phong had reached the edge of what practical thinking could do for him today.
He had asked the right person. He had not let Selena start cutting things open. He had not, as far as he knew, triggered an elf apocalypse.
For now, that would have to count as success.
Selena kept staring at the pods anyway, muttering under her breath.
"Botanical gestation," she said again, almost mournful now. "Do you understand how much this changes."
"Yes," Phong said.
Alex glanced sideways at him. "Do you?"
"No," he admitted. "But I understand enough to want the dragon to handle it."
That earned him another approving look from Alex.
Selena sighed, long and deep, like a woman forced to walk away from the greatest bad idea of her career.
Then all three of them stood there in the reclaimed scorched land, watching the giant pods sway faintly in the dim dungeon light, and waiting for whatever answer the Sky Emperor would bring next.
Phong had every intention of turning around and heading back to camp.
Slowly.
Very, very slowly.
He had already grown elves in a dungeon. He had already messaged the Sky Emperor about it. The Sky Emperor had already, in the calm tone of an ancient dragon, confirmed that Horns of the Earth was apparently the progenitor of elves and that those elves should have been at least level one hundred and twenty.
That was enough problem for one walk.
So naturally, that was when something stepped into the path ahead of them.
It was small.
Small enough that for one stupid fraction of a second, Phong's mind tried to place it as just a calf.
Then the rest of his brain caught up.
The calf's body was compact and young-looking, but on its back sat miniature mountains. Little trees. Little lakes that reflected light. A whole impossible moving landscape rested across its back like the memory of a world. Its horns were made of something like diamond, clear and hard and catching every bit of dungeon light into cold fractured gleams.
Phong stopped so fast Selena nearly walked into him.
Alex went still beside him.
All three of their status menus flickered at once.
Phong saw the calf's status and felt his stomach drop.
Everything was red.
Name: ???
Stats: ???
Weaknesses: ???
Everything: ???
No useful system read. No point of leverage. No comfortable lie from the menu pretending this thing belonged to the same scale of reality as them.
They knew immediately.
Horns of the Earth.
Not the towering walking mountain that had stopped at camp Stymphalian to watch, not the disaster on legs from the trade town story. Not that full world-breaking presence.
But him.
Or some part of him.
The calf looked up at them with dark, irritated eyes.
Then it spoke in a voice far older and more annoyed than its size had any right to carry.
"Big brother told me some of my children were taken."
Selena made a tiny sound that was halfway between terror and scientific heartbreak.
The calf's gaze shifted past them to the giant glowing pods rooted in the scorched land.
It looked at them once.
Just once.
Then it said, "They grew by you, nursed by your plants. They were no longer mine."
Phong did not move.
Did not blink much either.
This was not the kind of conversation where you tested patience by being the first human to say something stupid.
The calf turned its head slightly, mountains and little lakes on its back shifting with the motion in a way that made Phong's eyes hurt if he focused on it too hard.
Its voice remained calm, but there was something absolute in it.
"I am in no position to snuff out life, for that is against my nature."
Alex's shoulders eased by the smallest amount.
Selena's did too, though only until the calf continued.
"However, I shall not hand the inheritors of a Pillar's power to a human, either."
That stole the breath right back out of all three of them.
Phong felt his throat go dry.
Inheritors of a Pillar's power.
That was not a phrase anyone sane wanted attached to something growing out of a field they personally managed.
The calf looked at the pods again, then back to Phong.
"So I will place a limit on these elves."
The pale light inside the pods pulsed once, as if responding.
"They shall begin at level one," Horns of the Earth said, "and grow with you. How far they grow will depend on your nurture, farmer."
Phong stared.
Selena stared.
Alex stared.
For once, none of them had a joke.
The calf had just deflected the problem.
Made it Phong's responsibility.
Of course it had.
Because apparently that was just how his life worked now.
The little creature took one last step, and then its body began to change.
Stone spread across it in a ripple.
Flesh became rock, hide became mineral, diamond horns dulled into fixed crystal. In less than a breath, the calf was a statue.
Then the statue cracked.
Chunks broke away from the legs first, then the body, then the tiny mountain-laden back. The whole thing crumbled inward and collapsed into a pile of lifeless stone fragments on the dark soil.
Silence rushed in after it.
Phong looked at the rubble.
Then at the pods.
Then back at the rubble again.
"…that was a clone," he said.
Alex let out a breath. "Apparently."
Selena whispered, "I just met Horns of the Earth and he used the phrase 'my children' while standing in front of homegrown elf pods."
Phong nodded once. "Yes."
"I hate your life."
"That makes two of us."
His status menu pinged.
All three of them flinched a little from the sudden sound.
Phong opened it.
Another message from the Sky Emperor.
[There, your problem dealt with. Heal that land as promised, farmer. You have asked for quite a few favors from me already. I expect results.]
Phong read it once.
Then again.
Alex leaned in over his shoulder and read it too. Selena came up from the other side, still pale, still trying to recover from the fact that one of the most terrifying beings in the dungeon had appeared as a calf, judged Phong's accidental elf grove, and then assigned him long-term parenting consequences.
Phong exhaled through his nose.
The message was clear enough.
The Sky Emperor had stepped in. Horns of the Earth had accepted a compromise. The elves would not hatch as instant level one hundred and twenty monsters.
Instead, they would start at level one.
And grow with him.
Which was somehow better and worse at the same time.
Alex read the message fully, then glanced at the crumbled stone remains of the calf and back to the pods. "Congratulations."
Phong looked at her.
"You now have restricted-growth dungeon elves."
Selena covered her face. "Why are those words real."
Phong closed the message and rubbed both hands over his face. "I need coffee."
"We don't have coffee here," Selena said automatically.
"Then I need a different life."
Alex actually laughed at that, soft and helpless.
The giant pods still swayed in the scorched land, pale and silent, their roots deep in soil the moletatoes had reclaimed. The rubble of Horns of the Earth's clone lay scattered nearby, already looking oddly ordinary for something that had, seconds ago, carried mountains on its back.
Phong stood there for another moment, staring at the field he was still supposed to heal.
The Sky Emperor wanted results.
That was fair.
Unfortunately, the land now included a grove of level-capped baby elves that depended on his nurture.
Of course it did.
He straightened slowly. "We're going back to camp."
Selena lowered her hands. "To do what."
Phong started walking.
"To pretend," he said, "that this is somehow manageable until I figure out how to make it actually manageable."
Alex fell into step beside him. "Reasonable."
Selena hurried after them, glancing back at the glowing pods one last time with the haunted look of a woman who had just been denied the greatest research opportunity of her life by common sense and a level warning.
Behind them, the scorched land pulsed softly in the dungeon dark.
And under that pale light, Phong's elves kept growing.