It took Argent finally rocking me on my pedestal with a wave of kinetic force to pull me from my obsession. I had begun reading immediately, absorbing each rich tile in turn - their words, I was not quite so far gone as to consume the History. Disoriented briefly, I realised that almost an hour had passed. Argent had been trying to attract my attention throughout, though she had not yet called on me by Name. It was sheepishly indeed that I answered her, accepting her admonition to create my new tribes and set them to work before continuing.

But the highs and lows I had read already! Detailed instructions for mechanisms, animals and plants. Chapters of the lives of seven Dungeons. Spells, rituals and wards. Such a wealth of knowledge - though little of it complete. The entire middle section of a great ritual, seeming to contain almost everything but the preparations and result. A conversation between two Dungeon directly, no ambassadors sent - with no indication as to how it had come to pass or what had happened. I now knew how to manifest lightning directly from the ether, crafting my mana to electricity - but no clues as to the second half of the spell that instructed on how to release and guide it. The drive to fill in the incomplete knowledge...the need burned in me but Argent was right.

I created three Matrons, filling each with the thoughts and purposes to which I would set their tribes. Argent greeted them in my name, setting each to choose the name of their tribe. The Ochre Tile Tribe became my farmers under Matron Sower, the Craftwind Tribe my smiths and miners under Matron Delver, and the Granite Mob Tribe my guardians under Matron Striker. Argent laid out their tasks and responsibilities, our proposed mix of professions. The matrons tweaked their requirements, ratios of male and females, layout of their dorms, every little tiny thing. I had been looking forward to it in truth, to the schemes and plots, to hone my teeth observing their cunning.

I barely paid attention. I whelped their tribespeople and trusted Argent to organise them. I was impatient, diverting my attention only for so long as was absolutely necessary. I had to experiment.

The brief insights into the lives of other Dungeons had shown me something utterly unexpected. Almost all had turned their Dungeons into fertile hunting grounds where their creations would breed, fight, and die. The competition bred stronger guards, led to evolutions and above all had created a rich source of mana. By allowing them to reproduce naturally, the offspring were independent from the Core's mana and so their deaths led to a net benefit. It was a connection I had not yet formed, I had been born to such a desolate ruin I hadn't had the opportunity to experience the return. What little insect and plant life inhabited me wasn't potent enough to return mana or Dungeon Points. I would have to rectify this.

My second floor was empty, a ruin I had intended to fill with more lethal traps - and now I had designs. For now I would begin seeding it with simple life. I began with a serpent, the Helmet Snake, one of the animals I had learned from the History. A dungeon creature their eggs hatched in a matter of hours, making them perfect candidates. Their hard skulls made them surprisingly resilient and lent them their name but it was their poison that made them valuable guardians. I created six, simple creatures but being non-schema beasts they were amusingly more costly than my goblins at 8 mana. I instilled every fiber of their being with lust and desire for procreation as I made them, bone forming around nerves, flesh and muscle encasing the long sinuous spine and eyes ballooning to fill sockets in the skull. Thick gleaming scales armoured them, a single solid plate encasing the skull in a shape reminiscent of a dragon. They soon began to rut in a writhing heap.

For opposition I chose a second creature, the Crundle. Another Dungeon-spawn, they are small bipedal beasts with large claws and horns. Like the Helmet Snake their eggs hatched quickly and in large clutches. Their numbers would allow them to attempt to kill the serpents with their pack tactics, the snake's venom would kill the crundles. Crundles too were cheap, barely 5 mana each to birth. I created eight of them at the other end of the floor and left them to breed.

Two species of carnivores weren't exactly enough to create a thriving and sustainable biosphere but for that I would need more native resources. The Craftwind Tribe were already working towards that end, at the direction of the Ochre Tiles. Matron Sower had been swift to point out an oversight I had utterly failed to consider - I had no water source beyond myself. Water was an extraordinarily cheap resource to create but it would be cheaper still to simply acquire. Argent assured me that from my upper floors the sound of running water could be heard but I had not yet unlocked the ability to send expeditions. The digging began on the third floor, if my miners encountered some foe they would be able to retreat quickly without being caught on my traps. Their tunnels would be added to me, allowing them to expand and for me to help guide them based on the moisture in the stone. They dug to the Northwest, where Argent determined the most likely source of the water to be.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

My new warriors had begun training, divided up into tiny cohorts of slingers, spearmen and two crossbowmen. It would be some time before my new amateur smiths finished arguing about what was needed and began to produce any work of their own, my new warriors used surviving dwarven salvage. I distracted myself swinging targets, tilting flagstones and throwing rocks at the recruits. They reacted better than I could have hoped for, apart from one slinger. He eyed my interference with an evil gleam in his eye, a mischievous sense of defiance exuding from every pore. I genuinely considered killing him and starting over until he spoke.

"Traitors!" He screamed, letting a stone fly at an officer. "How dare you strike at our Dungeon!"

The stone whizzed past the ducking lieutenant, far off course. The little cretin continued to hurl taunts and abuse along with his slingstones, together we put the assembled recruits through their paces. They retaliated of course, excepting the crossbows who I blocked from interfering or interference with a raised ledge. The infantry formed a shield wall, skirmishers taking position behind at the bellowed orders of their commander. It was sadly flawed, the myriad shapes and sizes of shield raised by inexperienced warriors and many felt the bite of my lone, self declared loyal soldier's sling. Also my own thrown pebbles.

I confess I enjoyed the experience immensely, particularly when my compatriot was struck down. His protracted dying words and dramatic gestures were made all the more amusing by the fact he was somehow able to use both arms while hanging upside down from the ceiling with his toes tightly jammed into the gaps between stones. It must have been agony - I celebrated his determination to the craft by ever so slightly sliding the gap closed.

His imprecations were impressive. I truly have no idea how he knew what a goat was. I certainly didn't yet.

I left the little monster's friend's to pull him free, whispering to Argent there might be a recruit in need of healing. I so desperately wanted to devour the writing that surrounded me but forced myself to have patience. I would have time. If I gave in to my greed now I'd miss the results of my experiment, the first eggs from both species already laid. I wouldn't be able to stop myself. Not even a little peek...

I diverted myself designing a trap. I had found most of the mechanism in one of the first tablets, a simple bellows connected to a reservoir. It would serve for my first simple trap. The mana component seemed to come in maintaining the fluid, whether to keep acid from reacting or a pyrophoric substance from igniting until it was fully outside the device. Designing it was relatively cheap, a glass lining the inside of a hollow granite cube, filling it correspondingly more expensive. I chewed a hole in a wall by the entrance to the third floor to fit my trap inside. I filled it with the stomach acid from the Thaumivore. It felt appropriate - and would also form a gas hazard. The bellows I could control from a simple powered rune. I felt the steady drain on my mana begin, slowing my native regeneration. I directed my focus on it and thought of it as part of myself and the drain disappeared. It was now my first 'simple' trap. If an invader made it from the upper floors to the third they'd be broadsided with gallons of acid.

This time I saw the fatal flaw. I raised the flagstones slightly, filling in a layer of glass below them until the stream of horror would be safely contained even after chewing through the stone - the 'reservoir' capable of holding almost twice the acid I had equipped the trap with.

My reserves were ebbing low now, the influx of goblins having reduced my regeneration to a slender 1.4 a second before I had spawned my test subjects. My regen was now barely trickling in at 0.02 a second. At this rate it would be at least an hour before I could make a second trap or replace a minion. I observed the miners beginning their labour, splitting stone with steel picks. Into cracks they hammered metal spikes, again and again until it gave. I listened to the Matrons, already jockeying for position with the Ochre Tiles and Craftwind allying against the numerically superior Granite Mob. I was distracting myself but there was so much happening now that it was easy.

At last the first hatchlings emerged. Crundle and Snake had already discovered each other by now and to my surprise first blood was spilled by the Crundles. While the two males distracted the mother, one of the females darted in to snatch up a handful of infant snakes. One of the males was struck down, the Helmet Snake's poison causing necrosis throughout the crundle's body, but the hunter escaped. As she fed her own babies, the remains turned to mana - a tithe, a few slivers of a point of mana and a much more precious point - each infant granted me a single Dungeon Point.