Even with low mana, I couldn’t afford to rest on my laurels too long. Plus, I still had a lot of improvements that I could do, even now. At the top of the list was, of course, fixing my entrance. At this moment, I still had the old entrance, the stairs, open; the new entrance via the portal went to my future antechamber but actually was just a room to nowhere.

Naturally, it made the most sense to remove the staircase entrance first, an extremely easy fix. And yet–and yet, the antechamber could be opened quickly too. Yes, that made sense.

No.

That wasn’t right.

I took a moment and reset my gears. What was I thinking? Right, the first thing I should do is immediately remove the staircase entrance. Ehhh–no, I really needed to make sure the antechamber was open so people would use it and trigger everything necessary for the traps. I wanted to start with the–

–Goddamnit!

This–this was a mindfuck and a half. Was this the system’s nefarious influence? I didn’t think so. The system was a stubborn ass for giving things, but it had never acted outside its own mechanics or what I pushed for. No, this was something else.

I tried a couple more times, but the results were the same. Every time I thought about closing my entrance, I lost focus, almost as if I couldn’t even comprehend the idea! I really should get a better understanding–no, right now I needed to finish immediate solutions and worry about philosophical stuff later.

Again!

Fine.

I adjusted the antechamber to be a square of about 25 feet of solid stone wall on each side, with the portal inset into the “back” wall. I extended my demesne through the thin layer of ground above the room and immediately absorbed everything, effectively giving the antechamber an open-air room.

I immediately went back to the first room and easily sealed up the stairway with a proper wall and fill.

Since I had already started on it, I decided to finish the antechamber. At the front side, I extended the space by making a wide set of ascending stairs of ten steps up to the ground level put in a stone landing. In the middle of the landing I erected a stone wall with an arched space in the middle that would act as the entrance. I then installed two large ten-foot tall wooden doors. I attached them to the stone with medieval-like black iron hinges that extended out across the doors and helped reinforce the wood.

I extended the other three stone walls up until they were even with the front wall then added arches that extended up and into the room. With the arches, I shaped a curved, vaulted ceiling, then topped it off with a slightly pitched stone roof (I did not want my dungeon flooding when it rained). The doors I made must be openable because I didn’t encounter any mental blocks when I finished the roof.

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The room was absolutely pitch black, though. So I molded from the center of the arched ceiling a cast-iron canopy that held a large iron chandelier by chain. In the five large arms of the chandelier I clumped together glowing moss that I made to have a color as close as possible to the soft-yellow of old-style incandescent light bulbs.

I had one final small, but important, change to make to the antechamber. I slowly, carefully, withdrew my demesne until it matched exactly to the edges of the walls. For the portal, I kept the edge of my demesne about an inch in front, just to make sure it would work (I also left more demesne around the chandelier). Finally, for the doors, I kept some demesne for where they would swing inwards, but no more. It was a little weird and disconcerting though, as I couldn’t “see” the antechamber any more. When I looked at the empty space, I definitely felt an urge to fill the hold with my demesne again. I guess that was another Demesne Core thing.

The idea was simple: when a person opened the doors and went through, they would briefly enter my demesne, freezing me but allowing me to inspect them. When they fully moved into the antechamber, I would be free again. Hopefully, this would allow me the opportunity to adjust the dungeon ad hoc based upon the delvers’ characteristics.

A quick check on my status showed I was hitting the bottom of the barrel in terms of mana. I could probably just afford to add another “safe” room between the bridge and skeleton room, but I also wanted to save up for my boss monster. If a level 2 skeleton fighter cost 20 mana, then a level 5 skeleton boss probably cost 50 mana. That meant days of waiting.

I did still have all six DP from leveling up. They were burning a hole in my pocket.

Yeah. I had big plans for them.

When I was writing my assessment of what I dubbed the “Initial Run,” I had the crazy idea of turning my entire dungeon into a trap. After all, if a trap could be reset automatically after each run, then a dungeon that was a trap could also be reset automatically. I think there could be other benefits too–very important benefits.

I took a moment to steel myself for my biggest initiative yet.

The front doors would be the central mechanic of the trap, everything weaving through them and the conditions they were given. With a mental tap and hold of the doors, I then slowly scanned over each part of my dungeon to include into a sort of zone representing the trap’s room. When I got past the second room, Trap Creation started to whine in protest. By the time I had all of the rooms, it was giving me a bit of a headache. Still, I held it together until I got to the very last piece–the little room housing my core. Even after trying a few times, Trap Creation simply refused to include the room in the trap zone. Fine.

With the zone set in my mind, I threaded the connections between the portal and the door. Specifically, I set the portal to be “one way” (going in) while the door was open and vice versa when the door was closed. So far so good.

Now came the tricky part–I began to set the zone of the dungeon as an “escape”-type trap room. First, the trigger for the trap room to start was immediately after a fourth person entered through the portal, at which point the doors would close (creating the trap). Trap Creation was really resisting now; I was barely holding it together. Now it was time to add the completion trigger: there were no more delvers alive in the trap room (i.e. whether by actual death, by exiting the dungeon through the (now-reverse one way) portal at the entrance, or by entering the core room).

Trap Creation was positively screaming the trap was done and wanted to set it in place, but I held onto the schema firmly and didn’t let go. I was not done yet!

With as little thought as I could manage, I brought my status and pushed a Demesne Point into the entire contraption, willing it to fuse with the entire trap and turn it into a true instance. The power of the Demesne Point touched the center of the trap and spread out across the dungeon. The power was overwhelming and the entire structure was starting to collapse. In a panic, I willed a point straight into Trap Creation to increase its level. Fortunately, this seemed to work, as the stresses waned slightly from overwhelming the structure back to being just barely contained. Shit, it wouldn’t be enough–I put another point into the skill.

The first point infused into the trap was not enough to get what I wanted, it demanded more power.

Now, with the frame of the trap having enough strength, I knew I could put a second demesne point into infusing my concept directly into the trap. I didn’t hesitate and pushed it into the trap, watching the cloud of power start expanding again. It was filling the last parts of the trap when–

–it all collapsed. The cloud dissipated into itself in a moment! The schema and connections all disappeared! Everything was gone!

Not now! Not NOW! NOT NOW!!