I had finally finished the third floor spawning chamber and connecting tunnels, happily watching as my commander slimes ordered each new spawn into position. The tunnels were a little more expanded than I had first planned for, widening them so my ramp bugs could comfortably make their way to the trap rooms, and connected loot rooms. I was looking at the layout and felt a little disappointed that I didn't have the room to give the spawning chamber an artistic flare, as the overhead area reminded me of wasps that would capture tarantulas and use them as hosts for their eggs. It would have been a nice addition but I'd just have to stick to a more utilitarian design.

For the drop down areas I'd also expanded small rooms so I could have spare monsters sit above the holes. Spiders and hoppers chittering away at delvers that beat the trap ought to keep them at bay, with the monsters above matching those below in force. Any delver foolish enough to make the attempt would have to climb up the hole and face down the monsters alone until their companions could join them. Even if they won the fight, a ramp bug would have spawned soon after the trap room was defeated and would easily block the way until more monsters were spawned, and others could be called up from other drop down rooms. The delvers would find themselves beset on both sides by monsters uninhibited by my commands and in terribly cramped conditions that would play well with my monsters abilities. I could already imagine a swarm of hoppers surging down the tunnels like a bullet to slam into the interlopers. To further compound the delver's disadvantages I'd not placed any flora nodes in the tunnels so my monsters would be covered in complete darkness.

It was a brutal design but the delvers needed to learn that, despite my fair appearance, I was a dungeon and ultimately would put them down like rats if they went poking around where they shouldn’t. With the third level completed, nodes placed and monsters being spawned and moved into position I finally had time to move on to more interesting things. The fourth level had begun and I was excited to see its bounty.

I moved down to the fourth level and quickly started to prepare it for the move. Stone was consumed and I moved past the drop tunnel, heading deeper below the third level in a downward angle. It was customary at this point to hide my core behind each level's entrance and I didn't feel a need to change things up. All I did was to dig a slime sized pipe about a hundred meters from the main chamber before digging out a space for my orb. I’d consider adding space for defenders in the future but I wasn't feeling the crunch at this moment. The third level should keep anyone distracted long enough for me to get my defenses in order should others start to show up.

Everything ready, I selected the center of the room and initiated the move. The vertigo hit me and I had to endure it for a few seconds but it passed as quickly as last time and I was left standing in a room with my core gently illuminating the roughly hewn walls in a green glow.

Seeing my new information tab was a good feeling, level four felt like a real accomplishment, but I was starting to feel an odd sensation. I felt tired. Or not quite tired in the sense that I was sleep deprived but maybe physically strained. It was like I'd worked for a good while and just felt drained. I still had energy but it was muted now by the new sensation and I couldn't quite pin it down. It didn’t feel like something sleep would fix, or that odd meditation I'd sometimes done. Maybe strain was just catching up with me, I'd already expanded more on my third level than I had on my first and second so it could be a physical limitation for dungeons to keep them from growing out of control. Or it could just be growing aches taking a strange form. For now I couldn't do anything and didn’t want to stop so I'd endure and see just how this new feeling would progress.

For now, I had new monsters, now resources, and a new floor to clear and fill. So I moved back to the slowly expanding chamber and brought up my options, eager to have new toys to play with.

Spawners available.

Slime pool: 1

Cave hopper:1

Cave spider clutch:1

Ramp bug: 1

Core accumulator:1

Golem core spawner:

A golem core spawner spawns golem cores that accumulate material to form their bodies.

Cores may also be placed within a suitable body.

Cores may also accumulate to form larger golems.

Now this was finally something closer to the fantasy I was looking for. Sure, my slimes, and the ember slimes, were something straight out of a video game but not entirely outside the realm of possibility, considering jellyfish. But a golem is just straight up magic rocks shifting around and breaking shit. And if the material accumulation worked how I hoped it did, I'd be able to make a lot of variations, some supremely tough or fast. This was completely amazing in my mind. The information on them was very bare bones but I figured that was because of their variability. Put a core on sand, you get a sand golem, magma and a magma golem, metal and a metal golem. I’d have to learn more about them myself by exposing them to materials and forming them. I might also be able to get more information on them once I've actually spawned one.

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I managed to push back my excitement, really having to keep myself from just popping one down and letting it spawn away, and moved on to my nodes.

Nodes available for spawning:

Glowmoss: 5 per cycle.

Glowshroom: 4 per cycle.

Creeping Crone: 3 per cycle.

Stone Wheat: 2 per cycle.

Stone wheat is a wheat like plant capable of growing, and thriving, on bare stone, commonly found on mountains. The berries are often considered as tough as the stone it's grown on, and the bread made from it marginally less so. Produces oxygen.

General mineral: 4 per cycle.

Copper ore: 3 per cycle.

Iron ore: 2 per cycle.

Appears as an orange dusted stone that, when refined, produces raw iron.

Interesting choices for my nodes as well. I finally had a food source for my elf, if apparently a bit tough, and iron. It was a good addition to my metals but I already knew I wouldn't be making any steel any time soon but even cast iron would be good for some things. At least I could make something my elf could cook on. If I could refine it into something a bit more useful than just cast iron then I might even be able to make armor or weapons for my spawns. Chainmail would be a neat addition and could add to their toughness or appearance. Hell, just giving one a big metal club could make them pretty dangerous.

Thinking about uses for my new nodes did give me an idea for floor four. I wanted to make more use out of my ramp bugs and I'd just gotten some things that might make their presence make sense. They were elephant sized, though certainly longer, and would fit right into the large floor I was planning to make. Throw in golems alongside them and you’ve got a makeshift cow and herder. Add in the wheat and you’ve got crops. So I could make the entire floor something of an underground farmland with golems and ramp bugs spaced around here and there. Throw in some iron nodes, more near the farm houses I was now planning, and a delver might just have something to explore and a reason to explore it. The only things I was missing were sunlight and a big river.

I sat down and thought more. Big fields of wheat were a little silly and wouldn’t work too well. The golems and bugs would be too stationary and easy to just bypass, or even lure away so others might mine, or reap, what they wanted. I had to sit back and think about it differently. Instead of houses I could do cave homes, big pockets in the chamber walls that could fit the rock boys and their pet bugs. I’d break up the terrain then, make the floor uneven and hilly, so vision wouldn’t be perfect and delvers would need to move slowly. To the hills I'd add my ore nodes, more terrain breakup, and place wheat in patches here and there so it would look more like a mountainside with sparse foliage.

With that idea I could have the golems walk the ramp bugs around the floor to collect the wheat, maybe I could even get the ramp bugs to eat moss so it would look like they were being grazed. I was wondering now if i could make the entire floor out of wheat based golems, or if i’d have to go with more solid materials. I really needed to test them out. I had imagined great hulking boulder boys but they could also end up as piles of pebbles.

However the golems ended up i liked my idea for the floors design, it fit with my whole cave aesthetic so i wouldn’t change it. I’d just have to keep the farm idea in my pocket for now, a dungeon with a literal farm was a pretty funny idea in my mind so I had to try it. For now I sat back and thought about how to accomplish the look. I pulled up my blueprint and started to fool with it, deciding I'd have to lower the floor in areas rather than raise it and waste a bunch of effort building up stone hills. With the hills though I'd have good sized dips that I could fill. Water was the first thing that came to mind, but I just didn’t have the production or any way to replace it. Thinking about it though, I could put down moss and cover the entire floor. If the golems were big enough then constantly patrolling would inevitably end with sap being made while they patrolled. A slow effort but I might end up with puddles and pools of sap that I could stick a few ember slimes into.

The idea of ember slime pools was pretty good in my mind. It would make the entire floor humid and I'd have water dripping off the ceiling like rain, if sap accumulated enough. The floor would become slick as all hell with moss and water everywhere so delvers would have to be careful with their footing. The ramp bugs were quick monsters but their feet didn’t have much surface area. A delver would only have to get out of the way of their charge and the bug would go skidding along with its ass end exposed, making things a more fair fight.

I also had boss monsters to consider. I could make them now and this floor was just begging for a huge golem boss and his big ramp bug counterpart. I also needed to throw in a boss spider for the third floor but I'd been busy and it didn’t seem like too much of a necessity for now. I’d have to push that priority up further to test things out.

Another problem I had was my plans. I’d planned to slam floors out quickly and sitting here fiddling with an expansive and complex floor design would be the opposite of that. I’d already botched that plan with floor three becoming as complex as it had, but I could justify that by saying it added a good layer of protection to my core. A boss room and eight tunnels to explore would keep attackers busy for a time but it had also kept me busy. I could excuse floor three but floor four was gearing up to be even bigger and more complex. I had to wonder why I hadn't just stuck to my plan and made new levels like a mine craft miner hunting diamonds. I should have shot straight down with a floor here and there to keep adding levels to my count. However, even thinking that, produced a spike of anxiety in me that felt foreign. ‘It won't be safe.’ Said a part of my mind that was more dungeon than John.

I sighed and had to agree, to a point. I’d continue with my hundred meter drops and big rooms but I'd have to at least plan to add some meat to the floors or I wouldn't be able to relax. So, new idea in mind, I kept planning the complexities of the floor but decided I'd do another drop as soon as the floor had been dug out. I could leave foreman behind to do the simple things, like digging out the hills. All I'd have to do is stop by and add nodes and spawners every now and then until it was done. I had monsters and needed to use them more.

With that in mind I moved up my dungeon, planning to spawn more slimes and spiders to bring them down to level four. It was a big floor and needed every hand available to get dug out quickly. I’d expand my metal farm later to add iron, maybe stop by the elfs house and build a wheat garden. I don’t know why but it felt like the more i built the more i needed to build. Not an unwelcome thing to someone who rarely slept, but annoying in the thought that I could never finish the job.