Claiming the edge of my cave allowed me to view the outside world fully, and it was beautiful. A long sprawling forest stretched out before me, thick and massive trees grew in abundance and the sun shone beautifully in the morning sky.

It was beautiful and I wanted to make something as beautiful as this one day, hopefully. Eventually, I tore my eyes off the forest and mentally reviewed the newly gained patterns.

The first one was dirt, which was nice since I would be using dirt a lot on my upcoming floors. The second was the pattern for a tree, likely the ones that grew in the distance. The third and final one though was the most interesting of them all, it was a pattern for a C-shaped fruit which I dubbed moon fruits since they remind me so much of the moon with their shape.

This was good though, perfect even. The only thing left for me to acquire was water, which was easily acquired after I, in a stroke of pure genius, gathered all the moisture from the air with a bit of soul essence.

That was enough for me to unlock the water pattern and with that, I had all the necessary elements for my second floor. I still didn’t have a proper entrance though and I wanted to fix that before anything else.

I willed into being two large square stone beams as tall as two humans stacked onto each other and fused them with the stone at the cave entrance and shaped the cave opening into a perfect square. Next, I made a large stone double door and fused it to the stone beams, with a bit of soul essence I was able to get the stone to function like plastic at the edges.

This would allow the door to be pushed inward without breaking the stone connecting to the beams. I waited for my soul essence to fill up quite a bit and layered an enchantment over the entire thing, it would ensure that the stone door wouldn’t be destroyed that easily and could only be pushed inward.

Next, I moved on to decorating, for the stone beams I carved in intricate detail the body of a serpent with massive scales wrapped around each stone beam and transformed the top into the head of a serpent that faced outward into the clearing with vertically slit eyes that held the sign of infinity.

For the front of the door, I carved the massive body of a serpent eating its tail on each door, and then I carved robed figures kneeling at the bottom, praying to the serpent. At the top of the door, I carved a massive eye with a vertically slit pupil that watched everything below with mild interest.

And in the middle, just above the serpent, I wrote the word “ouroboros” in English.

Honestly, I was very proud of myself when I was done. I went above and beyond, and I was sure this was going to make the invading humans stop and stare for a good bit, the last bit was just for fun, and I couldn’t wait to see the reactions of all who came to my dungeon.

On a whim, I decided to decorate all my doors with the ouroboros symbol, I wonder what the humans will think when they see this symbol reappearing over and over in my dungeon.

I couldn’t wait to see it, but enough of that! It's time I made my second floor. I shifted my attention to the carved-out room. How did I want to do this? Did I want a typical jungle or something more unique?

The question pushed me to look at my goals and motives, what kind of dungeon did I want to be exactly? How would my dungeon be different? I didn’t know, honestly, I only had a vague idea about what type of dungeon I wanted to be.

I had creative freedom, there was no system binding me, or limiting my growth artificially. So technically I had no real reason to stick to a specific theme for all my floors, which I was planning to do. My only limiting factor was the lack of usable patterns and soul essence, both of which I was sure could be solved in time.

While I didn’t know what type of dungeon I really wanted to be yet, I knew it wasn’t limited. I wanted my floors to be intricate and detailed, each one feeling like a slice of a different world. Even the first floor, as it was now, didn’t meet my standards and I was going to reshape it until it did, later of course.

My thoughts were intruded when I sensed two balls of light approach my dungeon entrance, I switched to my HD vision and saw that it was the human lady and a male, all clad in armor. The human lady wore a mix of what I assumed to be iron and leather armor while the male was clad in shining iron armor with a massive shield and an iron axe.

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The woman stopped as soon as she saw my entrance, slapped the chatting male on the shoulder, and gestured to my double door.

“Gods above and below, what is that!?”

“Lady Sero-, Gods above!”

If I had a mouth and a voice box, I would’ve giggled like a child, this was exactly the type of reaction I wanted. Extreme wariness washed over her face as the woman, who I will now call Sero, gazed at my dungeon entrance.

The man, clad in iron armor, flipped off his helmet and grinned wolfishly.

“Hahaha! This is it Lady Sero! A chance to catapult our noble lineage back to the upper echelons of noble society! Bardum’s shiny bosom! Just think about how rich we’ll be!”

The man began advancing towards to entrance, heedless of what his female companion was saying.

“MARKUS!”

The air around Sero burst into flames and her eyes and hair shone a fiery red. I instantly switched to my soul sight, hoping to catch how she was doing that. The light around her body was fire, there was no other way to describe it.

Before it was colorless and calm, now it was raging and burned white hot, in a metaphysical sense. A few seconds passed and I watched in fascination as the flaming soul essence retracted, washing away, and pulled itself back to the top of her head, where it formed into a ball of red soul essence before disappearing behind a cloud of colorless soul essence that moved to cover it.

I switched back to my HD vision and saw her flames sputter out and die as she willed them out of existence when the armored man, who I now knew as Markus began to turn back. Fear was now written all over his face, a stark contrast to his previously wolfish look.

Sero was absolutely furious and grabbed Markus by the neck and dragged him into the forest, scolding him for his reckless behavior and greed as she did. I was deeply amused by their antics but returned my vision to the second floor.

I wanted a forest floor, one that was filled with unique animals and hummed with life. I began by digging out the bottom of the floor some and filled it up with soil. I made sure it was deep enough for roots to spread and thrive. I then layered a growth enchantment on the soil, inputting thoughts of growth and nutrients into it.

The soil visibly changed once the enchantment was complete, moving from a dry brown to a rich and earthy black color. Satisfied, I moved on to seeding the floor with trees. I formed a seed from the pattern and dropped it into the soil, with a touch of soul essence the seed sunk deep and burst forth a second later, rapidly growing into a tree.

I thought it was a pattern for a tree I saw in the forest but oh boy was I wrong, the tree that grew from the soul was so different. Its deep red leaves reminded me of maple trees, but they weren’t shaped like maple leaves, they were pointed and thin, almost like pine leaves.

Its smooth and thick trunk fully dispelled the notion that it was a maple tree, the tree was unique, and I wondered how it got near my cave entrance, I had gotten it from a rotten branch, so it wasn’t native to the forest either. In the end, I decided to name the pattern ember trees, since the general color of its leaves and bark reminded me so much of small embers at the fire.

I quickly populated the edges of the floor with ember trees, willing some of their roots to grow along the walls until the black and grey stone was blocked out. I felt like stone would break the forest theme so I covered most of the walls up with thick moon fruit vines, leaving only a bit at a tunnel that I caved out that would eventually lead to my third floor.

After, I was left with a room that was starting to look like a forest. Now I just had to populate it. I planted ember trees at random but made sure that there was room to run and walk, at the middle of the room was the largest ember tree. Growing up to the height of the floor and its branches spread outward, painting the entire ceiling a deep red.

I then hollowed out the stone above the ember tree a little and placed the largest soul lantern to date in the hollowed-out section. With a thought and a bit of soul essence, the light spread out over the entire floor, bathing the entire floor in a beautiful scarlet color as the rays of light passed through the ember tree leaves and onto the trees below.

At the base of the massive tree was a clearing that spanned from the trunk to the ring of smaller ember trees that surrounded it. Here, I spawned my first anole lizard and contemplated what type of mob I should turn it into.

Lizardmen were the first thing that came to mind, but I rejected the thought, I wanted something unique. I want to make lizardmen, eventually. But not now, and even they would have their own unique touch that separated them from common lizard men typically found in dungeon core novels.

I began by growing it until it was the size of 12 inches, and then I changed its color to a deep red, similar to the color of the ember tree leaves. Next, I willed red bone spikes to grow along its back and gave them the ability to shoot them at will. These bone spikes were very sharp, and I layered an enchantment within the anole that would ensure that all future offspring would possess this.

The enchantment had cost me half of my entire reserve, which was totally unexpected. What gives? I needed to find out about that later, I had to wait another hour before my soul essence tank had regenerated, by that time night had already fallen plenty of nocturnal creatures began to show themselves.

After my soul essence was back to usable levels, I layered another costly enchantment over the creature. This one would make it have an easier time digging through dirt and would make sure that none stuck to its body, while also giving it something akin to a sixth sense that would help it dig structurally stable holes that it burrows in.

I waited for my soul essence reserves to regenerate again before I copied the lizard, it cost a lot more than my ratlings, which was expected, they were a lot more special, after all.

The cost of replicating them was still negligible though and wouldn’t impact my soul essence pool or its rate of regeneration.

I changed one to female, dug a hole that led to the bottom of the floor, and designated it the as the ember lizard’s home. The male quickly followed after her and I silently upped the female’s egg-laying rate and boosted the maturation speed of her eggs by a large margin.