I was standing on my fourth floor and smiling. Progress had been made on all fronts, everything was going swimmingly and I was in a fantastic mood.

I’d spent hours working by hand, something I now found almost therapeutic, and had finally managed most of my plans. The water generator was still a bust, I just didn’t have the sap generation I'd need to get it fully operational. But I could maintain the first tube and that was a major plus. Sadly, a lot of the steam was wasted as it would condense throughout the boiling chamber and fall back into it, but I was still gaining a steady unit per hour of operation, give or take. I’d be able to keep my elf alive.

The water generator had also given me some new information on my moss. It grew while submerged, more than that it grew faster. I did some tests and estimated that it grew half again as fast while submerged in sap. That offered some new options for my farms. If I made a new generator with multiple sap harvesting ramps I'd be able to run farming tubes off of the output pipe and have higher output farms. Granted I probably wouldn’t be able to make them overly long or they’d just take too long to fill and might consume some of the sap that was used to speed their growth. It would be something I'd have to figure out later.

Thinking of the elf I'd even made progress there. Sadly, she’d dressed by the time I got to her but it was a small price to pay to keep her comfortable. She’d taken to the provided children's stories and flash cards with enthusiasm, though I figured she was just glad to be doing something other than watching moss grow and be eaten. She had taken to the English language very well, slowly piecing together words until she’d managed to write out, and understand, some of them. I’d even prompted her to share her name. Yalena.

Her name sounded pretty old school to me, making me think of my grandparents, but it did feel good to know it. I’d even spelled out her name for her, then again in cursive because she actually seemed offended to see it in such plain text. She became quite interested in English then, asking if I'd invented it as simple lettering at first and slowly improved its artistic qualities. Honestly I didn't know how to respond to that, as I'd not been the one to invent it in any form. I wasn’t even that good at cursive, but I did my best to fill out a cursive alphabet just to give her something else to practice and fill out her days. However, without an answer to her question I just left it unanswered.

Something I didn't expect to come out of our little education session was her asking if I'd named myself. It was not something I was ready to answer as I didn't think John the dungeon would go over well. It seemed too simple and too human and I didn’t want anyone getting any ideas of my origins, as resurrected or reincarnated held a lot of uncomfortable insinuations. I didn’t want these people to think I was a second coming when I was just some truck driver jammed here to get over his own death. So I remade my simple three floor map, three lines with the third having the skull and cross bones. To that I added a thin line at the top and a small elf holding a gun in one hand and a chisel in the other. I’d have Yalena name me.

Her reaction to that was a bit odd. She’d gotten a glazed look to her eyes and looked a bit lost for a while before she came back to herself and nodded. She didn’t ask any more questions after that so I left her to it. She had a new objective, name me, and studying to do, so I wouldn't bother her more. I also had work to get done and was itching to get to it.

The sap mill went smoothly, which I attested to my simple design, and worked fairly well. The stone went down without building too much speed but the area I'd planned out for the slowing zone just wasn’t enough. So I added an incline instead of a flat zone. The stone would roll down, building up speed and squishing a good bit of the moss then roll up to squish more, spending its momentum, before rolling back down and settling. It did take eight spiders to pull up, though not for a lack of strength. My spiders were surprisingly strong and could move the stone, they just lacked grip, so four more sharing the load allowed them to haul the stone up. The upward rolling had an added bonus of crushing what moss had been overrun and I considered it an overall success.

My filter was also working well. It caught almost all the pulp that was generated, though I had to abandon the end chamber idea. I’d had to make the filter run along the lower portion of my ramp and incline, setting it a few centimeters lower than the stone floor. The mill stone had enough room on either side so it wouldn’t push in or bend my filter and I'd added a couple slime sized holes in the retention walls so the slimes could slide out and consume the pulp while the stone was hauled back to the top. A couple orders for the slimes to alert me if the filter started to sag, or failed to drain the sap meant I could let it operate independently. My water generator was happily hands free and generating enough sap to keep the operational boiler tube topped up and slowly start filling the other bottom tubes.

My final addition to my dungeon was a metal farm. It was as simple as I had planned, though I had made an addition. At the top I added general mineral and copper ore in equal measures, placed on the ceiling so they grew downwards. The spiders were placed below it and it was all contained in a single long room. The final, new, addition was thick general metal grates that wouldn’t allow anything wider than a thumb to get through. The spiders would first break off chunks of ore that would land on the grates then they would focus on the chunks, breaking them down until they could fall through the gaps and slide down to the trough I'd built just a few meters below. I’d first thought to make the trough wider than necessary, so I could collect ore if I ever felt the need to, but that proved to be a mistake as the ore piled up well away from the hoppers and built up to the grates without allowing any processing. So I had to lower the entire room and lengthen the ramp so it would bunch up closer to my hoppers and give more space for the pile to rise before it clogged the grates.

From there I had to make a couple additions. First was a line of slimes, leading up to the spider chamber, that would start wobbling if the pile reached a level I marked, alerting the spiders so they’d stop breaking up ore and allow my hoppers to work through some of the build up. I’d also added a retention wall, short enough that the hoppers could get their heads over it and get at the ore. It also helped avoid ore dropping down and bouncing over into the processed metal ramp. I also added pillars that the hoppers could slot between, looking like cattle at a feeding trough. All of it was built to keep the ore and hoppers in place so I'd end up with processed metals rather than a huge amount of ore.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The final part was the processed metal ramp. At first I'd envisioned a V shaped ramp that would funnel all the metal into a singular point and allow a single slime to collect it, however that proved a poor design as dust and small chunks of ore would make it past the hoppers and build up in the corners, slowing down and jamming the funnel. So I went with another flat and wide ramp that a couple slimes would patrol and collect from, needing more than one as a single slime just couldn’t keep up with production and ore leakage.

As it stood the farm was an effective processing plant that generated about two hundred units of metal per hour, one of copper and another of general metal, alongside an extra twenty units of mixed ore as it was hardly perfect. I also had the entire farm stop every fifth rotation, a rotation being the slimes alerting the spiders, so that slimes could come out and clear the entire farm of dust. I was surprised at the sheer amount of dust building up but with the spiders hammering away and the hoppers being wildly messy eaters, dust built up quickly and I didn't want jams that I'd have to personally clear. So I took the hit to productivity and had everything cleaned up on a regular basis. I had to wonder if facilities in my old world had to deal with dust as regularly as I did.

So. I had water, I had ore, I had metal, I had sap and I had a fourth level just starting. I was feeling great and planned to move my core down shortly, I just wanted to set up the spawns on the third floor and I'd be ready.

I moved back up to my third floor, letting slimes and spiders continue their work to expand my fourth floor, and stood in the entrance chamber. My idea of a foreman and pack leader setup had worked pretty well. The ‘legs’ of my spider floor were a little uneven in their slight downward slope, some pitching down slightly more than others, but I felt that it added a touch of character to the level and would keep things from feeling too artificial. The moss had been placed, all nodes sitting on a rough hewn ceiling that added a bit of texture to the tunnels that would lead to the loot rooms. The loot rooms themselves were fairly well mined without much variation on how level the rooms were. And the ambush rooms worked well, my tests with the spiders making doorways that looked like collapsed tunnel entrances but had exposed silk strands. Anyone looking at it would notice the silk acting as a mortar and should immediately become suspicious of them.

I decided to start above it, moving up to start digging out the monster spawning room and its accompanying tunnels. I had to move one of my slime pools, extending the pause I'd put on my slime mutation efforts, but I couldn't just have my boys jiggling down the same ramp delvers would use. I’d start up slime mutations again once I'd moved my orb down a level.

I dug out enough room to add in the spawners, including my ramp bug spawner. It was an interesting spawner. My hoppers got a crack in the wall, my slimes got a pool, and my spiders got egg sacks. The ramp bug spawner required nearly five meters in all directions just to fit and looked like a collection of chitinous black cones. I almost wept for the poor thing that had to spit these out as they were spiky as all hell, a spiral of sharp spines trailing down the length of the egg and ending in a bird's nest of upward facing spikes. I hoped, for the poor mothers sake, that the eggs came out nest end first. The eggs were also bunched together, a large egg at the center and more following in a spiral that ended with an egg about as large as my fist, the largest being nearly three feet high and about a foot and a half wide at the base.

Curiosity burning at me I decided to spawn one and sat back to watch. The central egg shook, slowly at first then gaining energy until a crack split it down the middle, and out slithered something curious. It reminded me of a bee larva, pale and compact in its egg. It moved over the other spiked eggs with long, unsteady legs, until its wedged head reared up and it took its first breath. It wasted no time, starting to consume its egg as my spiders did, growing in size and deepening in color until it became alarmingly large. I started to widen the spawning chamber in a slight panic, not wanting my first ramp bug to crush itself in its attempt to spawn. My quick fix proved necessary as it grew to its full size, finally giving me a break from my frantic digging.

It was an awesome sight to behold as I roamed around, taking it in. It stood at, and I measured to be sure, two point six meters in height, eight and a half feet, and one point seven meters in width. The darn thing was near as wide as a person was tall. And that was just at rest, I was sure it could stand a little taller, though I didn't have the space to test it.

The thing was fairly intimidating looking, the head was simple, a circular head that was wedge shaped with two rounded triangular chinks to allow its eyes to see past its own skull, though as it blinked plates came down to cover those exposed sections. Its build was like that of a thick ant, a big torso and wide neck holding up its hefty head, and triangular spikes running down its back in two rows. The thorax was nearly as wide as its head, sporting rings of conical spikes that seemed more for planting its body in place rather than for warding off predators. The legs however were much more vicious looking. The segments connecting the legs were thick, easily able to support the weight of its body, and connected to shins like hardened plates that looked more akin to knightly greaves, the outer portion of the plated leg coming up in a sharp triangle nearly a foot long. The feet of the ramp bug looked like plated boots, four wide ‘toes’ coming away from the ankle joint and being rounded. If it wasn’t for the shin section ending in four wickedly sharp spikes, akin to a logger's climbing spikes, I'd say it was the least deadly part of the bug. The six legs flexed as the bug adjusted itself, pressing into the ceiling and walls. A sudden influx of feeling from the bug had me stop gawking and get back to work, a strong sensation of confusion and fear coming from it. Apparently it was feeling claustrophobic.

“I apologize little one, I'll clear the way quickly.” I grinned as I called it little one, then set quickly to digging a fitting tunnel to the first trap room. The feelings I was receiving from the bug relaxed, apparently calmed by my words. “That’s right buddy, I'm here, don’t you worry.” I could only imagine the thoughts running through its mind, being spawned into a room barely big enough to contain it. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

I worked quickly, pushing myself to dig hard so I could get my poor bug into a more fitting room. I broke through quickly, then widened my tunnel so the ramp bug could move through it. Then it surprised me. The ramp bug, at my command, surged through the tunnel with a speed that was stunning for a creature of its size. It was faster than my spiders, creatures much smaller than it was. When it finally dropped into the room, with more grace than I was expecting, it stretched itself out, easily reaching eleven feet in height, nearly three and a half meters.

At nearly fifteen meters long I might have to expand the trap rooms a little so they could maneuver. Or did I? The ramp bugs were meant to be the hammer of my trap. The trap room shouldn’t be hard to defeat if it was discovered and dealt with. Limiting their movement would give delvers an advantage, a prize for discovering the trap and defeating it before it was sprung on them. It was a bit rough to make my spawns sitting ducks but I had to balance rewards and punishments. If they found the trap then they should win, simple as that.

I took one last look at my ramp bug, the burgundy horror that it was, and smiled. I liked my new monster and would enjoy adding it into the dungeon as a mainstay. Speed and agility tests could wait for now, I needed to expand my spawning chamber and add in tunnels then have commanders set up so spawns could be readied and ordered into place. The work never ended and I couldn't be happier for it.