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  [Dungeon]

  Once I’d blown open the entrance to my dungeon, the ambient mana had begun to pour into the entrance spilling down into the dungeon, I hadn’t realised it, but I had sucked out a lot of the mana in the mountain surrounding my dungeon, depleting the whole area. The mana in the air rushed into my domain to equalise the densities. I felt alive again and charged with energy.

  Mana carried on the air far easier than through the ground and it didn’t take too long before I had regained all my mana. Since I was eager to get to work, I decided not to level up and instead I set about building the next floor.

  I had planned for a rest area; hoping to encourage adventurers to rest up and challenge the harder floors that followed, hopefully with false confidence. The first five levels would challenge adventurers at a decent level, but I had no illusions that the top tier ones wouldn’t just breeze through it.

  First, I carved out the room. Much smaller this time, I might as well make minimal work for myself, right?

  About 200 metres wide, it was a circular room with a 15-metre ceiling. The stairs from the fifth floor led into a hallway that extended half-way into the room.

  On either side of the hallway was a two-layer building of sorts. There were a number of rooms, three metres in all dimensions, with a wooden bed frame, a chest and a locking door.

  At the end of the ten room rows, a toilet was placed for a total of 44 rooms, toilets included. It was just a small room with a raised box. Like an outhouse; it had a hole that led to a banishment enchantment.

  Whilst I didn’t care about how dirty the adventurers were, I did care about my dungeon, it just wouldn’t do for something as high class as myself to have faeces all over the floor. I wasn’t some sort of sleazy lowbrow whorehouse, filled with crass philistines after all. I was a dungeon! A dignified existence for sure.

  Opposite to the exit onto the safe floor, was the entrance to the sixth floor, though I hadn’t built it yet.

  The sixth floor I had decided, would not carry on the woodland theme. No, I would change it up, five levels and then a break sounded good to me. The plan was to use the atmospheric regulators that I had got from the level 30 perk to change it up.

  I had never planned on being just a nature dungeon, it was too simple, too easy and not different enough, I wouldn’t be just another dungeon, one mark upon millions, just a star in the sky. No! I would be the sun to their stars, unique and respected.

  The woodlands were the easy levels, to ease people in. An organised party would have no trouble passing by the obstacles, they would have to get to know it first though, it still held dangers.

  What should the theme for the next five be?

  Ice?

  Fire?

  Water?

  Air?

  Or…or…or…

  My ideas were endless, and I could sit here pondering it until the dwarves passed out. But, I digress, I had work to do, and that was what I should be thinking of, rather than cheap idioms about the ever-drunk dwarven folk.

  The remainder of the rest area housed an empty bar and merchant section. The merchants would be able to set up tents or gazebos with a little stall in it to sell their items.

  Any life within my territory would grant 5% of its mana regeneration to me at all times, so the longer I could keep them in the dungeon the better.

  The amount of mana it took to build this place and maintain it would hopefully be recouped from the overnight rests and merchants.

  At the end of the day, even if I was losing monsters and life to the adventurers, I wasn’t really losing, I would almost always end up gaining, either from the items they dropped, the experience of fighting or the occasional death. The mana tax was just another thing to help my growth.

  If this wasn’t the case, then there would never be Dungeons as they would slowly die. A dungeon that had adventurers and wasn’t killed would grow to be prosperous and big.

  I built several stone tables and chairs to cover the empty expanse of floor. They were for people to socialise at and hopefully to prolong the time they spent resting.

  There was no need to give them a whole lot of comfort, after all, I was trying to kill them.

  As a last thought before I moved on, it occurred to me to continue the woodland trend here too. I quickly covered the floor with a layer of dirt and cut in some paths and a nice winding stream.

  The natural spring in the corner flooded through the channels, the stream ended up cutting through the middle, separating the housing from the social area and a series of small footbridges were the only dry way over.

  I managed to grow a few fruit bushes, it took another couple of hours, and a small investment in mana but I thought it was worth it.

  There were a range of currents; red, black, white and a few other berries as well.

  In a few spots there were some overhanging trees, in small groves that provided a much-needed texture to the room.

  Along the water’s edge were some bamboo shoots and a few reeds; small fish wove in and out using them as cover. Unlike the monsters though these wouldn’t respawn readily.

  After one month any that were killed would respawn and I thought I might have to change that. Too small to eat they shouldn’t be killed by the adventurers; but you never knew.

  I finally looked back on the room and decided it only needed one change.

  The stone buildings had to be turned into wooden cabins, it fit the aesthetic more.

  I tore down the buildings and instead built a series of small log cabins throughout the resting side of the room.

  This would be a safe zone and I decided to mark the boundary of the stairs with a short pulse of golden light to signify such.

  When entering the safe zone, it would flash gold and when exiting the second half of the staircase would flash red.

  I took a second to add a black mist to the entrance of floor six. It would obscure the adventurer’s vision and it was just there so that no-one would be able to plot and plan from outside.

  They would have no idea what the inside state would be, and they wouldn’t be able to gain anything that they hadn’t already found out before entering. I also thought that it gave off an ominous feeling. I liked that.

  I had finally finished the safe zone!

  It was time to move on to floor six, but what should I do? I was definitely planning on using the atmosphere regulators, so my main choice was between fire or ice themed floors, cold or hot.

  I could also do a maze, labyrinth or puzzle type floor but I thought I would save that for later. Straight forward floors would be more accessible and would let the dumb ones challenge me just the same as the clever ones. Thus, I didn’t feel like a puzzle fit properly so I would save that, they also required a lot more planning and I was wanting a few more levels before the adventurers came. Labyrinths had such versatility too, they could be really cool, but I couldn’t make them at floor six, that would be a waste of something that could be extremely dangerous.

  Hmmm what to do? What to do?

  Ideas trickled through my mind like leaves in a wind, yet none seemed to stick.

  I had visions, but they seemed to just stay out of reach in the fuzziness on the edge of my mind. Concepts not ideas.

  As I pondered, time passed quite quickly, too much time in fact, by the time I had grasped the basic concept of what I wanted almost six hours had elapsed.

  I once again started the rather tedious process of excavating a chamber to begin.

  All in all, it took a good four hours to open up the cavern to a sufficient size; about 700 metres long and 300 wide with a height of almost 100 metres. However, this time the ceiling was not a picture of uniformity.

  It went up to a 100 metres only once and in several places the ceiling was only five metres high. On average though, I estimated that it was about 40 metres.

  With the base done I set down the environmental regulators and poured my mana into them. They looked like they were made of crystal, but rather than being angular, they were smooth sided and rectangular in shape, like small pillars. I embedded one in the ground and struggled to figure out how to get the desired effect. The mana rushed into it, and seemed to get absorbed by the object, doing nothing.

  How does this work?

  There has to be some trick to it, how to get it to put out ice mana. It took me a very long time, but eventually I figured out the input criteria for it to begin outputting what I wanted, the trick was in rotating the mana input. Now I just had to wait for the room to cool down.

  Once it was freezing cold, I started conjuring water until it settled to a depth of about half a metre above the floor. Freezing it was next and that took a significantly greater proportion of my available mana, but once it was frozen the regulator would be able to keep it so.

  I had used about 5000 mana just excavating and covering the floor in ice. And I felt that I would just have enough mana left to complete the floor, it was touch and go but I reckoned I was going to manage.

  The next task was to cover the walls and ceiling in ice, it wouldn’t look right if it was only the floor. This was much harder as I would need to hold the water against the walls while it froze, otherwise it would all flow away.

  In the end, I got around this issue by raising some stone walls and filling the intervening space with water. After it had frozen solid, I had a nice thick wall of ice and a thin ceiling that slowly dripped water.

  The atmospheric regulator coped reasonably well and with just a small trickle of my mana it was capable of keeping the room chilly enough that the ice wouldn’t melt.

  The smooth walls also weren’t right and so I had to texture it. I found out quite quickly that throwing rocks at the walls chipped them and it gave me a fairly natural look. I was pleased with this and felt pride at my discovery suffuse my core. I didn’t even have to be precise, in fact the sloppier I was with my mana the better, as the rocks hit almost randomly, avoiding the trap of creating a pattern by mistake.

  A good while later, the texturing was done, small shards of ice and powdery snow formed small piles on the floor where I had been smashing the floor. Looking at it, I decided that the floor also needed the same treatment, as it was just a touch too smooth, even if I would be covering much of it up later with snow. This time I used smaller rocks so that the divots and cracks were small enough to provide enough grip so that it was feasible to walk across without too much trouble.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I of course left some super smooth sections as well – I wanted to see adventurers dance around on the slippery surface – but in general it was possible to walk around.

  Now it was time to fill the room. The piles of ice and snow from the texturing provided enough inspiration and I found that with a minor water summon enchant I could produce an effect of perpetual snow falling as it froze mid-air: perfect. It was just what I was looking for.

  After playing around with it, I got it to the point that over the course of a day a good four to six inches of pristine snow would settle on the floor and a light dusting that would settle on the shoulders of anyone walking through. Enough that by exploring the floor you would end up sodden and cold as the snow melted with body heat. I would have to remove the snow periodically to keep the floor useable, but that wasn’t that hard.

  Hopefully the room was cold enough to chill adventurers but not to kill them, otherwise I imagine they would all go and buy heat enchants which would be rather beside the point. My goal, as always, was to make people take risks and compromise on their safety; be a bit cold and slow or spend lots of money on an expensive enchantment.

  I hoped many adventurers would risk it and get caught out as their muscles and reactions slowed in the cold; perfect.

  Although if it did kill a few, I wouldn’t be complaining. Though I’d save that level of cold for later. Stalactites hung tight from the ceiling, looming like the sword of Damocles, whilst the stalagmites protruded like buttresses from the floor, ready to impale any adventurer that took a fall on the ice.

  Unlike the traditional cone shaped ones, these had a triangular profile with razor sharp edges and wicked points.

  My first traps were the stalactites or the ‘stalac-not-so-tites’ as I called them fondly.

  Some of them were loose enough to be dislodged either by spells or impacts with the walls, hopefully resulting in some being knocked down during a fight. They would come crashing down with no warning either shattering into deadly flechettes or impaling the floor and anyone – monster or adventurer – that came between.

  The room still felt incomplete, however, and I decided that I needed a centrepiece. Thus, in all my wisdom, I spent several hours painstakingly carving it out of a giant block of ice, using my mana as a chisel, but at the end of the process I was very proud of my accomplishment.

  In the very centre of the room, where the ceiling climbed to the monstrous height of 100 metres, I built a huge ice arch, 40 metres wide and 30 high with the ice a couple of metres thick. Into the ice I etched decorative runic designs. The actual ice was frosted whilst the runes were clear enough to peer through. It was the minor details that brought my floors to life and that was what I spent a lot of my time on.

  Within this wonderous arch, I placed my centrepiece; a beautiful, majestic statue, illustrious. An ice dragon. It had a slender body and large wings that arced up into the arch over it, coming to rest at the centre. The dragon was depicted as if it was landing, mid-roar.

  Such a beautiful piece though would be wasted if it had no function and so I spent even longer debating with myself on how to incorporate it into my floor.

  In the end it was a quick scouring of the store that provided my answer and for a positively cheap 35 points I picked up an enchantment that I sunk into the dragons head.

  Periodically, it would allow the dragon to spray the entire room with its frost breath, a timed attack and my second trap. The breath was frigid and piercing, much colder and damaging than the room itself. It was a very dangerous attack for those that felt this room was a challenge, and I thought it might catch lots of people unaware of the danger.

  Next, I needed monsters, and huge lumbering Yetis were my choice, they had shaggy white fur and ice blue eyes that glowed when they awoke, curved horns protruded from their foreheads and followed the line of their jaws ending in sickled points by the hooked mouth that looked mighty dangerous, filled with large sharp teeth as it was. Their horns and teeth were aided by the sharp claws on their hands and feet. A tough package for the adventurers.

  I planned to incorporate these monsters on my ice floors as they seemed perfectly suited.

  They would be disguised as huge snow drifts and beneath each sleeping form would be a treasure chest to reward those that managed to kill them.

  Another creature I had found whilst browsing the store was the ice phantasm. They sounded like perfect harassment mobs to distract adventurers whilst the yetis took them down. They came in groups of four and I planned to buy one group for each yeti, hoping I would be able to get them to work together.

  They were fast, nippy little creatures, made of crystalline ice infused with mana. Ice phantasms were often made by mages or summoned from the frozen wasteland to the south where the crystallising mana allowed them to form.

  They moved by floating around and lashing out with small bites and frost damage, unlike their more powerful counterparts; the elementals, they were restricted to small serpentine forms that posed little danger to the adventurers on their own. But in combination with the yetis, I was hopeful this would be a powerful paring.

  Some more loot was in order, but I couldn’t make it too easy. A few minutes browsing the store got me to an entry I thought was interesting.

  One purchase gave me 20, and that seemed like a perfect number for the room. Perhaps people would chase them and accidentally tread on a yeti, enraging it.

  By this point I had used up three quarters of my mana and I had finished, there wasn’t enough to start the next room. So, I sat back and pondered where to put the hidden treasure this time.

  It was obvious really. On top of the arch!

  A small chest with the customary prizes, done. A few small tweaks finished off the level.

  The ice was colder, much colder enough to begin freezing the adventurer’s hands if they touched it with exposed skin for any length of time.

  Small patches of spikes were spread over the surface. Only five millimetres in length and fairly fragile, they would be painful but not even useful to help climb.

  The rest of it I made smoother, and more difficult to scale, and hid the chest behind a well frosted ice. In fact, there was no way to see the prize until you had already climbed the arch.

  Mages with flying familiars would be the ones to discover this. Hopefully, once this one was discovered it would lead to people trying to find the rest of the hidden secrets, though I expected it would take a few people finding them in multiple levels before people caught on.

  I sat back and admired my work, five levels of nature-based floors, a safe-room and an icy dragon lair. All was going well. I decided that now was time to purchase the monsters and with 1300 points I could choose five of my yetis and ice phantasm groups to populate the floor. It was just about enough to fill the floor, but it wouldn’t allow me to buy anything for the subsequent floors. I truly needed more points, but how on earth did I get them?

  In the end I bought them all and placed them around the room, giving strong instructions to work together.

  It didn’t work and almost instantly the yeti lashed out, crushing the ice phantasms with a single blow. I sighed mentally and began working.

  It took several hundred attempts and I think the yeti eventually grew weary of destroying my ice phantasms every time they respawned, but they eventually seemed to get used to their presence. Now they just needed to work together.

  For that I needed a challenge, but that was something I was sorely lacking.

  Having spent several hours coaxing the yetis into not pulverising my cute little ice phantasms I had expended all of my mana and I decided to browse the store to give myself ideas.

  To my surprise, I found something amazing. It was insanely expensive, but wouldn’t it be brilliant to have?

  It sounded like a skill that would allow me to create my own monsters and although there would be other costs involved in doing so, namely mana and dungeon points it could be invaluable as a skill. Something I would have to aim to get.

  The mana heart seemed cool even if it cost several times more points than my other monsters, but it might just allow me to make monsters far stronger and more unique than could be found using the dungeon store.

  I sighed, making the dragon even more functional would take a lot of my points, but I felt it would be worth it. I just needed an insane 5,970 points to do it. Something I definitely couldn’t achieve at the moment.

  The last task was of course, to carve out the stairs. Curving around three times, these were some the longest stairs I had done yet, and obviously they were still covered in ice.

  Just as I finished carving out the ice banister to go along with it, I felt a small electric shock. It ran straight through my mind and then a huge thump, thump. A monotonous beat that demanded I focus on it. Almost like a heart.