"And … what exactly is an adventurer training fort and why would it be either good or bad?" I had no idea what her comment meant, but Ari obviously thought it was a big deal.

  Ari was still hovering in my entrance tunnel. "The adventurer's guild created three massive forts for training new adventurers. They basically put all of the new adventurers in the same place and told the rogue dungeons 'come get 'em!' This had two impacts, and I don't know which is bigger. Do you want the good news or the bad news first?"

  I wasn't a fan of bad news. Better get it out of the way. "Bad."

  Ari nodded. "Because these forts are so important, they are really not going to like a dungeon showing up inside, and will be very distrustful of you. That will definitely skew their decision towards destroying you."

  That didn't sound good. "And the good news?"

  Ari took a deep breath. "There is no good news." Then she laughed. "Sorry, trying to lighten the mood." It didn't work very well, but I appreciated the effort. "The good news is we have dozens or hundreds of brand new adventurers waiting for a chance to be taken to some out-of-the-way dungeon to start their time as real adventurers. Most adventurers have to work for months or even years to get their first chance in a dungeon. Your position right here means you are extremely valuable to the adventurers, more because of the opportunity to get a bunch of new adventurers stronger quickly than for your loot. This will make the adventurers want to keep you around." She was wringing her hands. "I just don't know which will be stronger."

  Well, again, it didn't seem like there was anything I could do to affect the outcome. "What can we do?"

  Ari sighed. "Really, not much. I'm going to go actually get some patterns this time, but we might not survive the next 24 hours. You can see if there are any last changes you want to make in the dungeon." With that she flew back out into the darkness.

  Hearing that there was nothing I could do to affect my fate was discouraging. Still, I looked around to see what I could do. I noticed Night just sitting in the middle of the boss room. He didn't really fit too well with the theme. I started to smile. That I could fix. I started changing all of the white marble I'd used in the room to black marble. At first I was going to use the same stone Night was made of, but I didn't want it too easy for him to camouflage himself. I realized this was a bit of a brute force thing and set a master shard changing it all.

  Then I looked at the carvings I'd made on the walls leading to the room. I didn't want to give too much away, but I wanted the design to match the mob. I started creating lizards in the carvings. To keep the adventurers guessing, I added many kinds of lizards, from the little soil lizard I'd created as my first mob, to skeleton lizards, to Night, to dragons, to lizards made from polygons. That one was actually pretty cool looking, and I made a mental note that it was an option for an animated object at some point.

  Next was the room itself. Really, the room was already pretty good. The larger size would allow him more room to sneak around in the shadows, and I added some pillars within the room to give additional shadows. Then I thought of a great idea. I added a bit to the walls of the tunnel so it actually extended a bit into the room. Then I built ramps on either side of the entrance. This meant Night could be on top of the tunnel, and either jump down or use his tail from behind. It would probably only work a few times, but still. Then, as the final touch, I made a normal soil lizard, exactly like Night before he evolved. I had it stand in the middle of the room, while Night stayed on the balcony-like place I'd created. Hopefully they'd think the little lizard was the boss and give Night time to strike.

  Ari still wasn't back. To be fair, I was a pretty fast worker and I'd told her to be careful. But still. What else to do?

  I had a gut feeling. Those Balance people weren't going to send me here with excess time. Assuming I survived, I had a feeling problems were going to show up pretty soon. I might as well start planning for that now. What are some things I couldn't do quickly in an emergency? I looked at my dungeon actions. The one that stuck out was increase influence. The time required to make things or even mobs was pretty short, but expanding my influence took both time and essence. I dug a tube from one corner of my boss room, where the artwork made it nearly invisible. A hole with no light coming out in a carved wall of black stone was practically invisible. I carved a decently long tunnel, then started digging a big room. Pretty soon it was delegated to a greater mind shard. Realistically, it could probably be a lesser mind shard, but I had lots.

  Again, I had nothing to do. Mind shards were super handy, but they made filling time much harder. That meant I needed something that required creativity. I looked at a project that had held my interest for a while, but that I had purposefully ignored, because it didn't help me currently. I looked at the loot drop I'd found way back when I began. Low quality uncut diamond.

  Ari had said I might be able to improve the quality of this item. And due to my project right before I died, I knew a lot about diamonds. The first step was to clean it up. I dissolved the excess material on the outside of the diamond. Soon I had cleaned off most of the rock. Next step was to cut it. Fortunately, this was made easier by my ability to hold it in midair without touching it and make perfectly straight cuts at exactly the angles I wanted. First I formed a rock of about the same size. Then I cut the rock into a few shapes, trying out what I wanted the diamond to look like.

  I eventually settled on the classic diamond shape. First I cut the top completely flat. I had the ability, as a dungeon core, to make it nearly circular with no edges, but I knew the edges were one of the more important things in a diamond's cut. I decided to do a triangle on the top and an icositetragon in the middle, then collapse into the classic point at the bottom. I cut thin lines into the top where I wanted to cut it. For some reason I wasn't able to use diamond as a material, so I couldn't add back anything I removed erroneously. I could restart, which was better than if I were doing this on Earth, but I still wanted to get it on my first try if possible.

  I had cut the rock into the exact shape I wanted, so I had an example to look at. I cut down to the edges of the triangle. I marked the point of the bottom. I removed sliver after sliver. Soon the pattern I'd wanted was showing through. I continued slowly cutting down the edges until … eventually … it was perfect. The top was a perfect triangle, which split into a hexagon, which split into a dodecahedron, and by a third of the way down it expanded into a perfect icositetragon. Each corner of the dodecahedron created a triangle with one of the twenty four sides of the icositetragon, with the sides of the dodecahedron shrinking down to become the remaining twelve sides. Likewise, the hexagon became a dodecahedron and the triangle became the hexagon. The icositetragon remained, shrinking, all the way to the bottom point. I had gotten down to the atomic level with the point, it was literally as close to a perfectly cut diamond as physically possible. Well, maybe not with the upper area, I hadn't gone atomic level with that, but it was super, super close.

  As I absorbed the newly improved diamond, Ari flew in the entrance. "Sorry that was so long. I hope you haven't been too worried."

  I bashfully realized I hadn't even thought about Ari since I started working on the diamond. "I was worried some, but I also knew you'd do your best to be careful."

  Ari raised an eyebrow. "So, what did you get distracted with?"

  I sighed internally. Lying to women never worked. "I fixed up that diamond loot drop."

  Ari clapped her hands. "Ooh! I'd been wondering when you'd get around to that! Well? What'd you get?"

  "I, uh, haven't looked yet. I literally just finished." I looked at it. It had increased in rarity! "It is now a Low quality perfectly cut diamond." That seemed kind of hurtful. "Ari, why is it still 'low quality' after all of my work fixing it?"

  Ari smiled. "That has to do with the quality of the diamond itself. What you can affect is the quality of the cut, and yours is, well, perfect. Even most dungeons only get excellent cuts, let's see yours."

  I summoned the diamond in the core room. Ari had just made it through the dungeon. Ari hovered around the diamond. "Oooh! I see why yours is so high! This cut is nice!" She glanced at my core. "Most dungeons just do a pentagon or hexagon that then widens a bit then goes down to a point. Yours is far, far more impressive." She looked at the diamond again. "It's a pity the diamond itself isn't of higher quality. Did anything change in the effects area?"

  I looked. "No, but I get the impression that the essence well effect will be stronger."

  Ari nodded. "That's about what I expected. Now, for new patterns!" She took a bag made from leaves off of her shoulder. I made a mental note to make her a bag so she could carry stuff easier next time. Still, the leaves were very cleverly folded into a quite manageable sack. It could also hold quite a bit. I knew that Ari was far stronger than she looked, and could carry quite a lot for her size.

  First she pulled out a handful of different seeds. "You emerged on what appears to be a farm, so I'm guessing many of these seeds I found in a nearby building are for things that might be grown on a farm. If you absorb them and then grow each of them you can get the patterns for all of the parts." She glanced at my core. "That's actually another thing. You should make a room close to your core room with dirt and let a bunch of plants grow there. With higher essence density, the plants will have a chance of evolving and developing magical properties. Then you can use them throughout the dungeon."

  She moved on to the next item. It was actually held in another leaf, so I got a bonus pattern. "Here's some lamp oil, you could use it for lamps if you wanted. And here's a small piece of a candle." She pulled out a tiny stub of a candle. She'd been smart while collecting stuff and only got a tiny bit of each item, enough to give me the pattern but little enough so she could carry lots of stuff. "And because we're at an adventurer training fort, I found some things I'm not even sure what they are." She flipped over a fold in the leaf to reveal her last treasures. I couldn't help it. I started laughing.

  Ari was visibly confused. "What's so funny?"

  I calmed down a bit. "Ari, you haven't spent much time around adventurers outside of dungeons, have you?"

  Ari shook her head. "I've never been around adventurers, period. But no, dungeon fairies don't usually leave the dungeon once adventurers show up, and if they do they try to avoid said adventurers." Ari was a bit worried. These things had comprised the majority of the weight she'd been able to carry. Hopefully they weren't useless.

  I chuckled. "Well, the thing on the left" I gave a mental point. "is called a pocket watch. It allows adventurers to know what time it is."

  Ari's face fell. "Oh. Most dungeons just use the light from outside to know what time it is."

  I quickly tried to encourage her. "No, no, Ari! Don't you see? This will allow us to tell accurate time. This brings all kinds of possibilities. We could have a room with waves of mobs released every twenty seconds. Or a room with a bunch of timed traps so they have to go through at the exact right moment." I was even getting myself excited about the watch. "Or I could create puzzles that adventurers only have a set amount of time to solve before they are killed!" I had an evil idea. "Or, if I can get the clock to run faster or slower, I can make adventurers think I've messed with time! They might hurry, thinking that every minute they spend in a certain room is wasting half an hour outside!" I was now actually way excited to see what I could do with this watch, and I let some of it leak over the bond.

  Ari smiled, reassured. "Oh, good. I'm glad it'll be useful. What about these other things?"

  I chuckled. "Those are why I laughed. The two on the left are called a fork and a spoon. They are used to move food from a plate, the third item, to your mouth. I'm guessing you found those close together?" The fork and spoon matched, so I was guessing she'd just found them all together.

  Ari nodded. "Yeah, they were all together."

  I chucked again. "Well, while I probably won't need the pattern for any of these anytime soon, I'm pretty sure I'll get a new material pattern from the plate, so still good!" I didn't want Ari to be too disappointed. I absorbed the dinnerware, and as I'd assumed, I got a pattern to create the glass of the dinner plate. "Are you going to go back out?"

  Ari shook her head. "It's getting close to dawn, and I saw someone running away from your entrance as I got back, so I'm sure we'll see some commotion soon." I looked at the entrance. While I couldn't expand my influence out of my entrance, I could sort of see a little beyond where my influence ended. "Ari, why can I see outside of my influence a little bit at my entrance?"

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  Ari smiled. "You can actually see because of your essence infusing the influence, not just because of the influence. And at the entrance to your dungeon, the essence is slowly leaking into the surrounding area. It soon is too dispersed for you to see with it, but over time you'll be able to see more."

  That was handy. Seemed like having lots of essence in my dungeon was really useful. Just as I was about to ask Ari a question, I heard a group of people arrive outside of my dungeon. I couldn't see them, but I realized that as long as the sound reached my influence I could hear it perfectly. There was a lot of hustle and bustle around my entrance for a while. I was listening closely for any clues as to what they planned to do.

  Ari said that if they destroyed me immediately it would be within a day, but if they decided to wait for a group from the guild headquarters then we had a little while. I sighed in relief when I heard someone say "Not a single person goes into this dungeon until a crew from guild HQ gets here. Not one person, you hear me?"

  Ari, fortunately, could see out of my entrance, and she went and took a quick peek. She told me they were building a fortification around my entrance, and it looked like we had until the crew from the guild headquarters arrived. "Ari, why are they building a fortification? I can't even see outside of my entrance!"

  Ari nodded. "True, but you could send your mobs out. Remember the rogue dungeons? They don't expand their influence to a village before attacking, they just send their mobs in the direction of the village, telling them to attack everything they see."

  That made sense. I could see how something like Night could cause massive problems if it went on a killing spree. Now I had nothing to do but wait. Then I remembered my question from earlier. "Ari, I know both you and the mana tree live on essence, you say adventurers like high essence density, and lots of essence in my dungeon would let me see outside faster, right? Is there any downside to high essence density?"

  Ari nodded. "All of those are true. And," She thought about it for a second. "I don't think there's really a downside to high essence density. Unless it's crazy high, which will give adventurers problems."

  I nodded mentally. I'd remembered that. "Well then what's to stop me from making a bunch of diamonds in the core room to increase the essence density?"

  Ari froze. "Well, … uh … nothing? I guess? No one's ever done that, as far as I know, but I see no reason it shouldn't work. It might even increase how quickly you gather essence!"

  I got ready to create a bunch of diamonds in my core room. Then I paused. "Low quality". That still bugged me. Ari had said I couldn't fix that, but why not? I summoned one in the big room I was creating. I looked at its dull, off yellow color. It really was a rather poor quality diamond. Still, I knew that the problems with the diamond were just impurities, either incorrect elements or mistakes in the crystal lattice. And, as I'd discovered with the point, I could look all the way down to the atomic level. I zoomed way close to the diamond, then moved inside of it. Right away I noticed a problem in the lattice. Fortunately, with my abilities, it was a quick and easy fix. And since I was working at the atomic level, it didn't take much essence either.

  I continued looking for a few seconds before realizing something. I knew if I'd still had a face a grin would be slowly creeping onto it. This was effectively brute force work. It didn't take much smarts to see what the crystal lattice was supposed to be like, and it just took time to find and fix the impurities. And I had only two mind shards currently working. One was watching the entrance, set to alert me if anything bigger than an insect entered, and to have the mice kill any insects. I didn't want a bug problem in my dungeon. The other one was currently expanding the big "emergency room" I was working in. I did some mental math and grinned mentally as I realized that left me with 160 mind shards not currently doing anything. I started summoning shards as fast as I could, all with the same job: perfecting the diamond. I knew that a perfect diamond would be completely clear, and soon this low quality diamond started becoming clearer and clearer.

  The diamond was also pretty small, currently, so I moved a few dozen of the more intelligent shards to increasing the size of the diamond. Strangely enough, while I couldn't use diamond as a material, I could create individual carbon atoms. Which fortunately turned making diamond into a brute force job. Even with over a hundred shards, it was still pretty slow going. Working at the atomic level was very precise, but not very quick. At all. I had the shards start adding bigger batches of carbon atoms at once with approximately the right crystal latice, and kept just fixing any impurities created. This was far faster, though still pretty slow. Still, all I was doing right now was waiting anyway, so I jumped in with all of the shards and started expanding the diamond.

  I told the shard watching the entrance to alert me every time it was dawn, so I wouldn't get too carried away with the diamond. There were still a few things I needed to prepare before the crew from the headquarters arrived. Part way through the work on the diamond, I felt myself hit G1, and threw the additional mind shards I gained from the increase in subtier into the work. With the amount of pure brute force I was throwing at the diamond, soon there were no more impurities found by any of the shards for a few hours. I did a quick glance, the diamond looked perfectly clear. After a final swoop through the diamond, I set all of the mind shards to increasing the size of the diamond. The growth was still very slow, so I had them start adding even more carbon. If I watched from a distance it looked pretty funny. The diamond would get a splotch of imperfection, then slowly that area would become clear. This was happening all over the diamond, dozens of times per second. Originally the diamond had been absolutely tiny, but now it was quickly increasing in size. Well, quickly is a relative term when you work at the atomic level. Still, it was progressing nicely. Increasing the amount they added at once was definitely the right move.

  Pretty soon it was the size I wanted. It was about two inches across at the widest and three inches tall. The top was about a half inch across. I knew that was absolutely massive for such a high quality diamond, but why not? I could, so I did! I had kept the same shape, figuring "perfect cut" meant I shouldn't change it. After a final check to make sure there were no miniscule imperfections, I absorbed it. I looked at the new option and grinned mentally. "Hey, Ari. I've got something to show you!"

  She laughed. "I figured you got distracted by something. You were totally ready to add some diamonds to the core room, then you suddenly started focusing super hard on something for quite a while. Let's see what you managed to create this time!"

  As she hovered by my core expectantly, I summoned my new diamond. It took less essence than I had expected. Ari's eyes grew wide in shock. She examined it. "Alex … you made a …" She examined it again, as if unsure about the first time. "How on earth did you make a perfect diamond? That's an Epic item!"

  I was glad she was impressed. "Well, I know a thing or two about diamonds. So I just fixed the problems that were making the old diamond low quality and made it a bit larger." Realistically it was more than "a bit" larger, the original diamond had been incredibly small.

  Ari shook her head like she didn't believe what her eyes were seeing. "And this new effect?"

  If I'd had a mouth, my grin would be reaching from ear to ear. The first effect had stayed the same, though I could tell it would be far, far stronger than the effect of the old diamond. But the new effect is what I was most excited by. "Essence bestowal. It has two effects. First, any adventurers near the diamond will receive benefits from high essence environments quicker and safer. Second, …" I paused. I had a feeling this next one was going to be a doozy.

  Ari wasn't very patient. "Yes?"

  I was super excited about this. "Second, if an enchantment, including one that's out of energy, is placed within a few inches of this diamond, it will fill back up with energy, just like if it were anchored to a diamond itself." I waited for her reaction.

  It didn't disappoint. Her eyes got wide, her jaw slack, and she had to try to talk three or four times before any sound came out. "It can … it can what?!? Recharge an expended enchantment?" I sent a mental confirmation. Ari shook her head in disbelief. "I almost don't believe it. That drop might be almost Legendary! Recharging any expended enchantment? I'm guessing the recharge is fairly slow, that's the only way it isn't rarer. You're certain there isn't any requirement about the kinds of enchantments it can recharge?" There was nothing of the sort.

  Ari shook her head. It was kind of funny how hard she was finding this to believe. "Ari, is it really that huge of a deal? If the enchantment runs out, I get that this is useful, but couldn't they just make more enchantments?"

  Ari shook her head. "Alex, I'm not thinking about fairly recent enchantments. Remember the war between adventurers and dungeons? Well, before that there were people who could enchant things that no one today can match, or even come close! Most of those have eventually run out of charge, but if they could be refilled …" She shook her head again. "The repercussions … I can't even imagine."

  That did sound … like a pretty big deal. "Ari, what are some of these old enchantments that are out of energy?"

  Ari shrugged. "Just about anything you can imagine. Weapons that could level cities, necklaces that make you practically invincible, cities built on clouds, rings that halt aging, vials that turn any liquid placed inside into a high quality health potion, you name it!"

  Now I understood why she was so awestruck. "With just this diamond, people could get access … to all of that?"

  Ari tilted her hand in a so-so motion. "Kind of. Most of these items have been either destroyed or lost. For example, when the enchantment keeping a city on a cloud fails, there's not much left afterwards. And when an enchantment is out of energy, it no longer shows up when you examine an item. However, it is still harder to get a new enchantment on the item, as if you were trying to get two enchantments on the same item. For this reason, most people believe the expended enchantment is still there, just dormant." She looked at the diamond. "Looks like this proves it."

  Still, this seemed like an insanely powerful item. "So, is this valuable enough to prevent them from killing me?" I knew it would likely stunt my growth to drop something this valuable, but if it were that or death, stunted growth started to feel nice.

  Ari shook her head emphatically. "Nope. Well, yes, it is valuable enough. Problem is, it's so powerful that you would be basically guaranteed to start a war over who could control you, and you'd probably be killed by someone in the process. So, unfortunately, dropping this still wouldn't solve our problems."

  I remembered something. "Also, Ari! This cost a lot less essence to summon than I assumed. Do you know why?"

  Ari smiled. "Pull up the menu to create it! That'll tell you the different discounts you're receiving."

  I'd totally forgotten about that menu. I hadn't used it in a good while, creating stuff was now second nature. I pulled up the menu like I was going to make another diamond.

  That was … unexpected. I focused on the question marks, trying to get additional information.

  That … made sense. I'd noticed that sometimes I got bigger benefits than at other times, I guessed it had to do with how pure the specific essence I was using at the time was. Still, it made it harder to plan. I knew where the first benefit was probably coming from, I'd assume a diamond is very heavy in earth essence. I focused on the second discount, the 50% off one.

  That was nice, but also somewhat confusing. While I had made significant edits, I hadn't created a new item. At least, I didn't think I had. Oh well, I wasn't going to complain about a better discount. "It says I got a fifty percent discount due to my creating the item personally."

  Ari nodded. "I'd assumed that was what it was. Most dungeons eventually try to make loot items themselves in order to get that discount. If it weren't for your purified essence and that discount, you'd probably have a hard time making that diamond."

  She wasn't wrong. Even with those, it took a decent percentage of my maximum essence to create even one. "If I made the diamond bigger, do you think I could get it to Legendary rarity?" I could just have my mind shards working on it. It would take a while, but eventually it would be very large.

  Ari shook her head. "Size has relatively little to do with rarity. If this were still the size of the original diamond, it might only be Super Rare, but at this point increasing its size isn't going to do much." She chuckled. "Be happy with what you have, I doubt there's ever been a dungeon with a loot drop of that rarity before a single adventurer enters their dungeon."

  That was true. She'd said only powerful adventurers had access to Epic items like the diamond I'd created, and Legendary ones were held by entire cities. Still, I couldn't help but think about ways I could increase the value of this diamond. Nothing came to me, but I figured I'd keep thinking.

  I'd originally been planning on using the diamonds to increase the essence density, and even with just the one I was starting to notice a difference. I summoned a couple more, then looked at the rest of my dungeon. Despite the looming threat of impending death, I thought things were going pretty well in my dungeon.

  Ari settled on my core. "OK, now there's only one more thing to do before the crew from the adventurer’s guild gets here."

  Huh? I thought my dungeon was adventurer ready. "What's that?"

  Ari slowly got an evil grin. I gulped (mentally). Something told me whatever we were doing next was going to be either really fun, or really, really painful.