Quinn kept her body in a corner of two walls with her legs and arms spread to buttress herself. She half-climbed half-shimmied down the hole that way. When she reached the bottom of the shaft, she used [Vulpine Agility] and jumped down the rest of the way. As she prepared to land, she crouched her body and when her feet touched ground, she started to dive forward to roll her body . . .

  . . . and her feet slipped. She tumbled down and landed hard on the uneven floor. The tablet flew from her hand and sailed across the room before clattering against a wall and dropping to the floor. I panicked, concerned that Quinn had suffered a grievous injury or concussion.

  Fortunately, Quinn moved, slowly and gingerly rolling over and sitting up. She felt around her like a blind person, trying to sense what was around her by touch. It was then I realized that she couldn’t see because there was no light–I hadn’t put any glowmoss in yet! I quickly grew vertical strings of moss on the columns closest to Quinn as well as clumps of moss scattered about along the floor, lighting the water similar to an airplane’s running floor lights. I also grew a brighter clump to highlight where the tablet had landed so that Quinn could find it easily.

  Quinn purchased her hand on a column and completed standing up. She spied the highlighted tablet and slowly walked over, nearly slipping a couple times on the way. Fortunately the table still worked (but it had lost a point of durability).

  “What the–what did you do?” she panted.

  I explained to her how I used Landscape to make the sewer exceptionally slippery without having to make a trap. “Oh, that’s nasty,” she said. “If we add a monster, it would be a real nightmare!”

  “To be honest, I haven’t even thought about what kind of monster would be good here,” I admitted. “Anyways, I’m still building out the rooms for the second ‘level.’ Just be really careful as you go down the sewer and make sure to take the side passage to the door.”

  Quinn slowly made her way down the sewer (Since Quinn did not have dark vision, I installed some more running lights as she went), nearly slipping and falling a couple more times as she went. Eventually, she turned off to the side passage and went through the door.

  “This is the ‘courtyard’ for the next section of the dungeon. It will act as a neutral ‘safe’ room, meaning that I’m going to keep it empty of my demesne,” I explained. “I’m thinking of having three portals: one acting as the entrance to the main area of the second level, one that can be used to leave the dungeon entirely, and the third one–I’m not sure about that one yet.”

  Quinn quite reasonably objected to the idea of giving delvers a safe space. However, when I explained how I could exploit the empty space, she conceded the advantages of it.

  Quinn, with a bit of effort, opened the front double doors to reveal the inert portal. I told her to wait for a little bit and made a simple connection between the two portals (I would have to change it later). Once again, making the connection was normal and easy–

  –and then I panicked again. I was struck with a spike of concern that the black magic in the portals would strike out at Quinn. She had been a target of the Tenebrous Portal skill when I was creating her, and these portals were products of that very skill. What if she went through the portal and came back changed by them? I must warn h–

  –she went into the portal–

  –and stepped out into the empty room.

  “Quinn! Quinn!” I screamed. “Are you okay?”

  My senses didn’t catch any shenanigans, but I also quickly scanned her with Sigilmancy and checked her status as well. Everything appeared normal.

  “Yes! I’m fine!” Quinn answered,surprised by my excited texting. “What’s the matter?”

  I explained to her my concern, but she just confirmed that she didn’t feel anything amiss (her status screen also showed that it was the same as before).

  Again, I added some lights to the room to give Quinn a view, but since the room was completely empty there was nothing to see. “Well, can you tell me what you planned for this room, at least?” Quinn asked.

  “This will be the grand staircase. A grand entrance, but also a large open space that affords itself well to ranged attacks.” I explained. “I’m thinking of a bunch of skeleton archers in the gallery, raining down bone bolts.”

  “What level?”

  “Well, they don’t need much–maybe level 3? Ranged skills for accuracy and speed, maybe.” I answered.

  “You just deleted a low-level unit and now you want to make another one?” Quinn whined.

  “With ten of them, they would have devastating volleys, though. Numbers have a quality all of their own.” I countered.

  “You can’t afford that many,” Quinn was right; my mana stores were not enough.

  “I guess I can try to make something more efficient,” I concluded.

  Quinn yawned, “Good. Anyways, what’s after this? A staircase usually leads to somewhere.”

  “A throne room–your throne room.” I answered.

  Quinn’s eyes gained a slight twinkle at that, although she diplomatically said, “Our throne room, don’t you mean?”

  “I think I’d rather remain the stone behind the curtain, so to speak,” I didn’t want to have my core so blatantly visible, even if the idea of having my core set into a scepter that Quinn could wave about had a modicum of childish appeal.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Okay, so a new room for your core, behind the throne room. But perhaps a door instead of a curtain, unless you have a trick about it?”

  “Um. No, not a curtain, of course.”

  “Yeah. Of course. And can I get a room to rest in as well?” Quinn asked. She stifled another yawn, “It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but I’m getting a bit tired.”

  “Stay with me for a bit; while I build you some sleeping quarters, let’s wrap up the review,” Quinn had been very helpful in spotting issues, but we hadn’t really come up with any solutions.

  Both of us agreed on the fundamentals: how much mana I had to spend. I was currently at 73 mana (the bulk of my recent mana spending was on the portals). Quinn thought it was best to focus as much mana as possible on powerful monsters for defense. It was a very pragmatic view.

  I, on the other hand, had always enjoyed roleplaying games, both tabletop and computer. A dungeon with featureless rooms filled with cookie-cutter monsters was near anathema to my sensibilities.

  80 mana was enough to get me a level 8 monster, the highest leveled yet and probably a good match for Mr. Crazypants. But that was putting all of my eggs in one basket. If the monster was hard countered by the dark goblins, then I had nothing to fall back on to protect myself. At the same time, splitting the mana into two monsters might make them too weak and easy to overcome.

  I made a decision and Quinn concurred. I was going to spend one DP on refilling my mana. That, plus the mana I had now, plus the small amount I would generate, meant I had a total mana budget of about 200.

  I could get more mana by spending more DP. Specifically, I pondered the idea of using one to increase the size of my mana well. If I spent 1 DP and my reservoir went from 100 to 200, then it would actually get me more mana in the long term. The problem was as it always was–I couldn’t be sure how much I would get. It was equally probable that I would get an increase of 1 as it was 100 or whatever. Anything less than 100 would be a clear short-term loss.

  At the back of the staircase, I made a small door and another small room. Eventually this door would be under the upper landing of the grand staircase, something like a servants door. In the room, I tried to make it as comfortable as possible: I made a bed out of wood, with ropes to act as the mattress and blankets using the mats for cloth I got from the dwarves. I added a moss light for lighting.

  While I was working on Quinn’s space to sleep, I continued to think about my mana well problem.

  Also, my core room problem.

  Seemingly separate problems, but I thought there might be a way I could work on both at the same time.

  Vestigial Propulsion came with its own mana well. I didn’t remember it expanding in size when the skill increased to level 2. That seemed unusual to me.

  So I started pumping mana in and out of it like it was a lung and I was a runner trying to increase my lung capacity. After a dozen times, I started trying to push just a tiny bit more mana into it, trying to stretch it out. It felt uncomfortable, but not outright painful. I took that as a good sign.

  I took a short break to say good night to Quinn (promising her a real bedroom in the next iteration), then went back to my exercises. Fortunately, it wasn’t cumbersome so I also worked on preparations for my move.

  This reminded me of the time Quinn was in middle school and had to do an egg drop challenge. The kids (generously helped by their parents, including me) had come up with many design ideas, but they all fell generally into one of three types of concepts for protecting their eggs: parachutes, pyramids made of sticks, and sponges. For my egg, a parachute was too limited, since I wanted to move laterally and not just down. The stick idea might work but still seemed risky. I had spongy material though, so I went with that. I covered myself with a full coat of thick moss, and bound it into place with a bunch of string.

  With my safety harness equipped, it was now time to begin my own move.

  I expelled some mana in a continuous stream out of my core, but made sure to direct it in a narrow stream pushing down. My core rattled a bit, so I increased the power. All the while, as the mana left the propulsion’s reserve, I kept adding more and more back in to the reservoir, trying to overfill it. This pushed more mana out, creating even more thrust. My core achieved liftoff and floated in the air.

  Then I added a second thrust, throwing mana out from the side of my core, even while the first thrust kept going. I slowly maneuvered my core into the basement and then had it float over the open grate to the sewer.

  Now came the tricky part. I reduced the downward thrust by the smallest margin I could. It worked, my core slowly dipped and lowered itself through the opening and down. I kept it going until I was fully into the sewer and then brought the thrust back up so my core floated in place.

  I carefully meandered my way through the slalom that was the sewer’s passage. The slippery floor wasn’t a problem as long as I stayed afloat, only having to go around the various columns and protrusions. Amazingly, I managed to make it all the way to the courtyard without incident.

  Only then did I face my next conundrum.

  It was now my turn to go through a portal. There would be no issue–should be no issue–assuming it was safe. It was almost certainly unlikely, but there was the recursive factor–my core going into a portal which was also in my demesne. Plus, the portal mana was weird and scary and the skill sometimes acted on its own. It was also possible the skill would try to do something directly with my core.

  What, me worry?

  I blasted a jet of mana and shot my way to the portal, my overthinking be damned. My core touched the surface of the portal, entered without any resistance–

  –and came out the other side.

  I was fine.

  I slowed my core to a stop and then lowered it to the floor, near the center of the room.

  I felt around my core and double checked to see if anything was amiss. Something had reacted, as evinced by the skill leveling up. Fortunately, the changes appeared to be benign.

  I checked my status and was extremely pleased to see that there was a third minor change: “Supplemental Mana” now had a cap of 20 instead of 10!

  Just to be sure, I flew around the empty room testing to see if there were any differences in my ability to use my skill. It appeared there were none. In other words, the benefit of the skill increase went to increased capacity rather than increased ability. But what was most important was that I was able to directly influence the skill’s growth. This suggested it was possible to guide all of my other skills too.

  I felt that this new ability probably was the result of my higher skills and my better understanding of how to manipulate mana and my intent. Still, I regretted not trying earlier. I was a little relieved that Quinn was resting and not around to comment on “assumptions.”

  Anyways, there was no use lingering on it. Also, I was excited to get to work on my castle.