It felt like hours as I watched the slimes going about their work, the four gelatinous globes doing their level best to accomplish my goals in a timely manner, making me think they rather appreciated my little commander play. In the meantime, when I wasn't watching rocks melt, I was playing with my moss, which is sadly not a euphemism for anything. I planted little circles here and there, eventually getting a close look at the stuff for a lack of anything better to do.

Though I lacked any corporeal body, save for the glowing rock, I could numbly feel the stuff my mind interacted with. My fingers found the moss to be somewhat spongy and soft, I also think it is damp but the sensations I could pick up were muted. Sadly the glow in the room didn’t increase, my orb putting out enough light that whatever glow this stuff generated it wouldn’t beat it out.

It was while inspecting my original patch Nob approached me, or I believed it was bob. He jiggled at my orb, I think, and I moved down to inspect the new expansion. It was pretty much as ordered, a tunnel punched straight into the rock that looked like someone with a cookie cutter took a sample. The grooves in the rock were obviously made by the slimes moving in formation, leaving long lines in the stone where rock pointed out like a blunt blade for the length of the tunnel, which came to, what i guessed would be, around fifty feel long, angling down gradually enough that it might have been some fifteen feet below the floor of the first room.

I looked around and nodded. ‘This is going to take much longer than I anticipated.’ I heaved a sigh and moved back up, looking down at my digging crew. ‘Alright, good job boys, it’s fantastic but it’s only a start. For now I want you to keep digging but do your best to level off. I don’t want that floor to go any higher or lower since it might interfere with any other levels I might make later on. For now I want a similar sized tunnel going directly south, that’s the direction you guys dug already.’ They wobbled an affirmation and raced off again to get back to work. After a few minutes I felt they were out of the way enough to get on with my tasks.

First I turned to my orb and pondered it for a few minutes, wondering if there was a way I could just shift it down to my new level. After a few minutes I moved in and set my hands on the orb, feeling an odd tingling sensation at the contact, sending a shiver through my mind, before I pulled up on it sending my world into a vertigo induced mess.

I quickly dropped the orb the bare inch I'd lifted it, the short drop sending a spike of pain through my mind and giving me a headache to add onto the spinning sensation as my stomach did flips and I resolved to ‘sit’ down and let the world slow down. With that done after a few minutes, along with the headache, I resolved to never move my orb at any pace other than geriatric snail. At that thought I moved down into the tunnel to collect one of the slimes from my work crew, escorting it back up the ramp to my orb. ‘Alright, your new name is Ben.’ The slime seemed to ooze in delight at its new designation. ‘And with your new name comes new responsibilities.’ I pointed at the orb. ‘You need to, very gently, move that down to the next level without damaging it.’ And for the first time since I arrived, I felt a form of communication with this creature.

A sense of apprehension and confusion filtered weakly into my mind. I was a little stunned at the sudden foreign emotions but I overcame the feeling. I might have been feeling it earlier, perhaps even inspiring the commanding tone I took with them, but it would have been entirely subtle. If I felt this now, even slightly, then that must have meant the emotions coursing through its gelatine mind were about as powerful as it could have. So that worried me as the slime may know something that I don't.

‘Alright, I hear you. You wait right there while I take a look at this. If I can’t get this thing moved then it’s going to be up to you.’ I turned my attention back to the orb and sighed, holding my hands out to try a new slew of words that might affect my surroundings. ‘Move.’

Dungeon core selected, designate new position.

I stared at the new text window then blinked. ‘Alright Ben, you head back down and get back to work, I think i’ve got it working now.’ The slime started to move, following me slowly as I walked down the tunnel and selected the small patch of open ground that had been made so far. I was overcome with a new sense of vertigo though this passed much quicker than before, my vision clearing quickly and showing the pedestal had moved down to the second floor and appeared undamaged.

I shook my head, not understanding the cause for the vertigo but accepted it as a thing that dungeons just had to deal with, possibly a system born defect to keep dungeons from just teleporting around when in danger.

‘Dungeon info.’

Unknown Dungeon Level:2

Classification: unknown.

Forces: 4.

Resources: 1000.

I looked into the resources tab and found that most of the resources available were from stone mined, and were quickly ticking up as the slimes continued chewing out the main tunnel. ‘New level, new resources?’ I quickly checked the walls and found it was more Basalt. While a little disappointing it wasn’t unexpected, I was now only level two so I couldn't hope for too much. ‘Forces available’. I was finding that the windows were popping up easier, taking less focus to summon.

Forces available for direct spawning: 0.

I scratched my chin and thought for a few moments, considering the text. I couldn’t spawn anything directly so maybe the four slimes were just a primer for new dungeons to get started, like an ant and her first brood. I tried a different approach. ‘Indirect forces available.’

Spawners available:

Slime pool: 2

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Cave hopper:1

Cave spider clutch:1

I felt a grin steal across my face as I read the last line, spiders. I hated the little bastards with a passion and normally couldn’t stand them, which made them sound perfect for dungeon activities Though i contained my excitement and directed my focus on spawners.

Spawners:

A point where forces can be spawned from at the cost of materials dependent on the type of force being spawned.

It was pretty much what I thought it would be so I checked the spider spawner first.

Cave spider clutch:

A spawner for the cave spider allowing, depending on its setting, one cave spider to be deployed per five minutes to a maximum of five, or more depending on the volume of the spawner location. Regenerates upon destruction or removal.

Alright, so that cleared some stuff up about spawners and made it pretty clear that my four slimes were indeed a sort of primer, otherwise I'd probably be out of luck if I needed to collect resources manually, however I might go about that. I then focused on cave spiders.

Cave spider:

A normally small to medium sized creature found in caves. Fulfilling multiple roles Cave spiders are fast creatures that can attack suddenly, injecting venom into unsuspecting victims, and fleeing to let the victim succumb to a paralyzing venom that allows eating or egg implantation. This creature is also capable of mining at an accelerated rate compared to slimes but lacks any ability to capture resources.

I read carefully over the text then shivered slightly. Egg implantation and live feeding were not terribly enjoyable sentences to read. Should any adventurers be captured by my spiders, i might just have to avoid watching whatever fate may come to them. I then turned my attention to my other insectile spawner.

Cave hopper:

A tiny creature found mostly in dungeons. These creatures eat ores and, through taking nutrition from the stone, process those ores into very small nuggets of pure metals. Ineffective in combat alone, a swarm would prove devastating due to the tremendous bite force of their mandibles.

I was becoming slightly annoyed by the variety, and quality, information the system was giving me but it was more than enough to figure things out. My cave spiders were my quick warriors, my slimes the slow ambush boys, or more likely marginally less static traps, and my cave hoppers would be my horde group. I could see an effective enough defense idea forming but it would be on the backburner for now. Though, with the cave hoppers description, I was sure I had a new node so I turned my focus.

Nodes available for spawning:

Glowmoss: 3 per cycle.

Glowshroom: 2 per cycle.

General mineral: 2 per cycle.

Okay, I was getting a new herbalism node and a form of mineral, the names leaving something to be desired. Time to check them.

Glowshroom:

A gently glowing mushroom that is edible and has some poison relieving qualities.

General mineral:

An ore that, once mined and processed, produces a lightweight metal that resists corrosion but lacks durability.

I thought about them for a few minutes, deciding to head back up to try my new mushroom and ore in a less confined space. The mushroom made enough sense, i had venomous spiders so something that might counteract them would just be fair, this was only a two floor dungeon it shouldn’t be difficult for newer adventurers to survive. The general mineral was a bit more rough in my mind. It sounded vaguely like aluminum but I knew aluminum was very much a difficult to process ore, and add to that the odd name which made it seem like an easy to process, and widely available, ore.

I passed Ben shortly before I arrived, the poor guy moving at his best speed. A quick look around showed that the glow moss, while less bright than my orb, lit the room in a low blue light that was almost pleasant. I figured I'd start around the edges and work my way back, pointing out a new spot for my mushrooms. A small green dot appeared, something I was attributing to my core spawning things now that I'd seen it often enough, and a cluster of varying sized mushrooms grew out along from that point in the same circular spawn style as the moss. It also seemed to give off the same blue glow. It didn’t seem to be doing much, and I wasn't sure why I thought it might, so I moved onto the general mineral node.

I moved to the center of the room and tried to spawn it but felt an odd blocking sensation as a window popped up.

Notice:

Selected node too high level for current floor.

I was a bit curious as to why this node was too high level and my mushrooms weren’t but I shrugged it off, thinking I'd have to do some level requirement searching later on. It was a bit concerning to be restricted so quickly though. I moved on to try a slime spawning pool since I could probably put one on both floors.

Notice:

Lacking material -biomatter- in sufficient quantities.

That managed to draw a sigh out of me and I moved over to holler at Ben before he moved any further along. ‘Come back up Ben, I've got a new job for you.’ With that taken care of I figured I had an hour to kill before Ben would be on the first floor. So I found a spot to sit back and plan some things. My first floor was still really lacking anything at all, and I attributed that to rushing. I hadn’t been thinking about things and just trying to move quickly and gain more power, for some goal I hadn't thought of yet, so time to at least make some short term plans.

Floor one would probably work best as a very basic gathering spot, maybe some training or something for whoever delved into my dungeon. My second floor probably wouldn’t be much tougher but the first floor could be baby's first steps, a couple slimes to weed out the truly inept and unteachable and maybe some traps. I leaned over from where I ‘sat’ and started to draw on the cave floor, planning out a map of floor one. Then I had to pause and look at the marks I'd just made in the stone as easily as if etching in sand.

I shook my head and stood up, striding over to my mushroom patch, kneeling down and plucking a mushroom from the patch as easily as one could imagine, the cap disappearing into a green dot that vanished a heartbeat later. A quick check of my resources showed I hadn’t gained any biomatter, but I figured that was more of a quantity issue. I stood and reached up, starting to pull down some of my glowmoss, taking out neat strips and rolling it up like turf. It had been growing, slowly, but I didn't want the nodes to start from zero so I only trimmed about half of what I had planted. Once done, with the moss vanishing as well, a quick check showed I had ten biomatter. It didn’t seem like much but it hadn’t even been a day, the fact I had so much stone was merely because my slimes ate it up like crazy and they’d been at it non stop. I could risk going to the surface to try my hand at gathering trees and such but I wasn't sure my slimes could survive a journey out of my dungeon, or if it was a smart move without much in the way to defend me. So, I sat back down and did the only thing I could do. Waited. Waited and planned.