A few days after the meeting, I’m floating in my true form, watching people in the cavern town go about their day.

Is it a bit creepy? Sure, but it's basically just people watching.

A human mother is carrying a baby that has large fluffy ears through a marketplace, buying food for her family. She’s probably the wife of one of the miners, or maybe a mercenary. She picks up some strange looking fruits, and puts them in her bag before handing over some coins. The ears of the baby twitch as their little face scrunches up, displeased with something.

After taking in a big lungful of air, the baby starts loudly crying.

I watch, totally engrossed, as the mother puts down her bag and soothes the child, rocking them gently and patting their head.

My mind moves away from the town, into the empty tunnels. My heart filled with confusing feelings.

Wanting to distract myself, I do something I haven’t done in a long while, and open up my menus.

Flicking through the different panels, I look over the basics.

〘〜〜〜〜〜〜〙 _u_4_: Oubliette

Dungeon Adolescent Female

Honeypot Kingdom No Affinities Extreme Endurance, Extreme Vitality, High Spirit, High Lifepool, Otherwise Average Blessing of Territory Floor One: Cave Floor Two: Unfinished 〘〜〜〜〜〜〜〙

I blink, surprised at what I’m seeing.

…Floor two? I can make a second floor? What does… how does that work?

Looking through my menu tabs, I see a new one labeled ‘Floor management’. With a small amount of mental effort, I open it.

A window opens up, a spreadsheet of various information and options displayed on it.

Floor One: Unnamed Cave Assigned Generals: Azrael of Shadows, Maddi of Flames, Freako of Slaughter, Tilly of Beatdowns, Sine of Mad Stars Associated Settlements: Cavern Town, Corina Associated Races Aves, Aware Monsters, Demons, Humans, Muuts, Stequillians, Sylvans Associated Monsters: Kobolds, Spiders, Dusties, Demons, Plesiosaurs, King Carp, Serpents, Wishfish, Lurkers Floor Two: Undefined

Details Not Available

I stare in shock at the new information being thrown at me all at once.

I can make a second floor? The demon generals have titles? What the hell are mad stars? Tilly is really the general of beatdowns, for real? Freako is a demon general? What’s with all the weird monsters I didn’t make? The kobold city is named Corina?

My mind reels, totally overwhelmed. I float in silence, watching some rats swarm a dustie, my thoughts jumping around.

Alright, let’s put all the not useful information to the side for now. What actually important things did I just learn?

Freako is a demon general, somehow. There’s monsters in the dungeon I didn’t make, and there seems to be a lot of them. I can make a new floor, somehow.

Three big points, one way bigger than the other two.

My mind clearer, I notice something at the bottom of the menu.

Create new floor: 50k lifeforce

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So… I can just make a new floor, just like that. I pull up my stats, and run through the list until I find my lifeforce amount.

Lifeforce: 71,238

So I have enough, with extra to act as a safety net.

…I should probably talk to the others, think over my options, de— Oops!

Constructing new floor, which direction do you wish to build?

Which… direction? Like up and do—

Up chosen. What theme do you wish the new floor to have: Forest Cave Desert Plains Ocean

Uh… Forest?

Forest theme chosen, choose whether to move your core to the new floor.

My core? If the dungeon expands up, it might go above ground. I don’t want my core more exposed. So leave it where it is.

Core to be left on floor one, beginning generation of floor two.

I’m immediately bombarded by a myriad of new sensations, all of them unpleasant. I feel like I’m being burned, stretched, and sliced open, all at the same time, my body pulled on from all directions. My mind instinctually shifts to the source of the discomfort, and I’m greeted by a cool desert night.

The surface.

As I stare at the sandy ground above my buried body, I feel my nonexistent muscles all flex at once, the pain of them tearing ripping through me.

Red sand explodes outwards as a large pillar of stone punches through the still night air. It rises into the sky, around five stories tall, before stopping, sand pouring off it. The perfect cylinder is almost exactly in the center of my body, directly lined up with my core.

As I watch, the top of the stone column begins to shift, the edges becoming battlements, raised walls with openings every so often. Windows start to push inwards from the column’s sides, the surface gaining the texture of large cut stones. A giant doorway opens at the base, reinforced wooden doors growing from nothing to fill the gap in the wall. Electric lights fill the rapidly expanding network of rooms and halls inside the cylinder, lighting the many windows from within.

Where there had been nothing minutes ago, now stands a small castle.

The moment the castle is finished, a new sensation covers me. An itching, almost burning, that gets worse and worse as seconds pass. As the feeling gets more intense, I notice the desert sand becoming disturbed.

Small, purple saplings push their way through the dunes, their wispy forms reaching for the sky. Like a sped up timelapse, the plants grow, rapidly becoming large trees of every kind. The trees grow strangely close to one another, their outstretched branches entwining with their neighbors to create a natural roof.

I move my view under the canopy, and am shocked to see grass and other smaller plants begin to gain a foothold under the trees. Dark soil begins to push through the remaining sand, creating the forest floor. Near the castle, a large stone emerges from the ground, a river bursting from a jagged crack in its side.

The young river quickly cuts through the newborn woods, winding around unnaturally, before falling into one of the many holes created by the ants, and into the dungeon. I follow the water, and watch as the river crashes into Lake Luck, creating a waterfall.

I move back up, above the treeline, and look at the forest as a whole.

Its outermost layer of trees have grown practically on top of one another, creating a wall of wood. On one side of the forest there is a large archway, the only entrance into the woods. Lording over the new growth is the grey castle, its windows glittering with warm light.

With that, the sensations come to a stop.

And I pass out.

────────────

“Oubi? Oubi!”

My mind shudders into consciousness, a voice calling from somewhere.

As my vision returns, I’m greeted by a massive purple forest, with an intimidating steel grey castle in its center.

“Oubi!” Maddi screams into my mind.

“Y-yeah? What… What’s happening?” I reply, my mental voice startlingly weak.

“Oh thank the gods…” Maddi mutters, letting out a short sigh. “You’re alive.”

My mind blanks for a split second.

“A-alive? Why wouldn’t I be?” I ask, concerned.

“You suddenly ran out of lifeforce.” She says anxiously. “Everything just… stopped, for a few minutes. Then someone must’ve tripped and broke their neck or something and restarted everything.” Her voice is shaky, so unlike her usually calm presence.

“It was… cold.” She adds quietly.

“I…” I try to stop my mind from spinning, try and make a coherent sentence. “I don’t understand… What took all…” My eyes drift to a probably two miles around forest. “Oh…”

“Oh?” Maddi repeats.

“I… I think I know what did it.” I admit.

“What?! What was it?” She snaps, not in anger but out of fear.

“Did… did you all check the surface?” I ask.

“The surface, why the hell would we…” She trails off mid sentence.

I grit my nonexistent teeth in anticipation.

“Oubi… What is this?” She asks, her voice frighteningly level.

“Haha…” I laugh nervously. “It’s… it’s ah… the second floor?”

Maddi says nothing for a few seconds, the silence drilling into me.

“The second floor? How’d that get there?” She asks.

“I uh… made it.”

Again, silence falls between us.

A long sigh rattles my mind. “You made it… Of course, you made it, and used up seventy thousand lifeforce growing trees?!” She asks, her voice becoming increasingly angry as she goes.

“Y-yeah…” I say meekly.

Another sigh.

“Fine, it's done. No reason to make this a huge deal.” She says, her tone disagreeing with her words. “So what are you going to use it for?” She asks.

“Oh… I hadn’t thought about that yet.” I admit.

Maddi goes quiet.

“Time for a meeting.” She eventually says.