In the end, I decided I'd have to let the chips fall where they may. I wasn't intending (initially) to start throwing around complete lunacy like powerful monsters or deadly traps on the first Floor, but at the same time I didn't think I could tolerate passing myself off as a normal Dungeon for more than about ten seconds without driving myself up the wall (or possibly every wall in my Territory.)
Sapphire, as my initial Subtype, had already been of Legendary - purple - class. So it was clear there were different sorts of Dungeons. Now that I was Divine-level? Well, I could get away with at least some unusualness, surely?
On the other hand, the risk of attracting Godly attention was all-pervading, and, quite frankly, fucking terrifying. I likely couldn't even handle the big-name adventurers as I was; entities that could smash them to paste with an idle thought? Not a tauntaun's hope on Mustafar.
If I wanted even the slightest chance, I'd have to make something new, something the Gods and Goddesses had never seen before and couldn't prepare for. I'd need to take normal animals and modify them, or even make changes to standard monster types. But that would take time, and almost certainly incredible quantities of mana.
Which, all in all, was why I was so relieved to be embedded in a tiny cave (perhaps two meters tall by two and a half wide by five deep) in a gigantic mountain in the middle of nowhere.
Thankfully, while my Awareness principally related to knowing what was going on in my Territory, being a sort of combination of a sixth sense, the 'Appraisal' skill - or whatever it was called here - and a localised scrying effect, the other thing it did was make me very, very sensitive to mana, even outside the bounds of what I'd claimed. Like having permanently active mage sight, except it was mental rather than physical.
And in a world like this, everything had magic. Hell, even the world itself; the atmosphere around me pulsed and flowed in colours without name, massive currents hundreds of metres wide and countless kilometres long soaring high above me, split and muddled by the mountain-peaks, occasionally siphoned away by distant, twinkling brightnesses in my mind's eye.
More important in the short term, however, was that everything I could perceive was untamed, untouched by the controlling presence of a Kingdom or Empire belonging to any of the 'adventuring races', whatever they actually were around here. The Holy Fantasy Trinity of human, elf and dwarf were probably present, but even that wasn't certain and trying to guess beyond it was more or less an excercise in futility.
Instead, I focused on what a newborn Dungeon should always focus on: building up my first Floor.
Since there was no sign of civilisation, and the jungle sprawled out past the horizon, I decided I could risk being a little overt in favour of not immediately dying. I didn't want to claim any surface land long-term without first finding out whether or not that was a sign of a corrupted or insane or actively, outwardly malicious (and, in all cases, therefore to be put down with prejudice) Dungeon, but I did need some real-world base to work off for my first monsters or I'd end up having to spend huge amounts of magic all the time, and temporarily stretching my Territory out into the jungle that surrounded my tiny cave was almost certainly the cheaper option.
That, of course, raised the question of how I could get monsters without having anything real to base them on. All Dungeons are naturally and deeply connected to the world's magic, and that magic has an exceptionally strong conceptual component, to the point that the ideas of things - of spells, of traps, of buildings and substances and monsters - are engraved ever more firmly into the background magical field the more common and well-known they were.
So depending on what sort of Dungeon you are, and where you're situated (and the phase of the moon and what the leylines and background field currents are looking like today and a whole bunch of other stuff that means it's never quite the same), you'll have a different resonance, a different level of affinity, with different 'patterns'. To use a completely wrong analogy that nevertheless makes it much easier to understand, they would be closer to the 'surface' of the magic for you, and therefore easier to get to. More powerful - more conceptually 'weighty' - things would be 'deeper'.
So you could do two things: expend mana to look for something specific you wanted, and then expend more mana to reach out and grab the pattern, learning it for yourself, or you could just coil up any amount of mana you liked and throw it like a spear, then reel it in to see what you managed to harpoon. The more mana you used, the 'deeper' the spear would penetrate, and the better a result you were likely to get.
In other words, even though this world isn't a game... I have a gacha.
The drawback to those systems is, fairly obviously to anyone who has ever encountered microtransactions, that they're expensive. If, by contrast, something were to die in my Territory, I would not only receive its pattern, but all the mana contained within its body, meaning I would profit twice over.
And to my fortune, I had a rainforest, one of the richest and most biodiverse environments in the world, right outside the mouth of my cave. Moreover, it was a fairly magical one at that - I could clearly pick out most of the plants in my mental perception, the magic running through them strong and defined enough to show me their shapes and sizes. Many of the animals, too.
So I decided, given I was almost certainly unsurveilled for the time being, that I needed to take a risk and sieze the opportunity I had for fast growth, and hopefully be reasonably safe by the time I was discovered rather than out in the open. Of course, that meant I needed to frontload a monster or two to do the killing, really, since I didn't favour relying on luck to find me something I could use right out of the gate.
And thus, for the first time, I drew on my mana.
I got the strangest sense of being stretched out, despite the fact my physical body was a perfectly spherical crystal. Then again, it wasn't a bodily strain, but a spiritual one - to use the lungs as a metaphor, I was exhaling only very slowly, and I still had plenty of air, but I couldn't breathe in while I was still exhaling. Or, well, I could, but it required a rather odd and slightly unpleasant twist of the mind, analogous in this rather overextended metaphor to circular breathing.
Magically, it was perhaps even more curious a sensation, a multitude of sparks shimmering and roiling below and/or within me in a sea of light, each one a different shade and hue and brightness, giving off a different sound and smell and - somehow - taste, and about five other sensations aside.
The flavour of the day, it seemed, was electric blue, smelling like rain and an incoming storm, and conveying the sensation of a cool flow of water hiding powerful currents beneath the surface; sparks like that were visibly brighter than the others on the same 'level' - because, this not actually being a visual sort of perception, I could quite happily see down through the layers if I spent a little extra mana. And speaking of mana, that was almost certainly what they were aligned to, given that I had an "extreme affinity for creatures of magic".
A little experimental prodding revealed I could get a deeper sense of what the sparks actually were than just strength/nature/affinity if I reached out to 'touch' them; I sifted through a couple of slimes, a Kobold Shaman, something I was calling a dazzlebird for its ability to stun people with a flash of its plumage, and a few other odds and ends without any particularly great abilities that got a bit in the way, before finally (completely accidentally, I must admit) reaching more or less the most valuable prize I could have stumbled on, even if I might have passed it over for being a verdant green rather than arcane blue.
Having actually touched it, though, I immediately knew I'd hit a jackpot, and so, coiling my 'grip' about the spark, I pulled back and up and out -
- and the mana drain hit me like a punch in the gut. I couldn't do anything, I couldn't breathe, I was getting barely a trickle of relief, I needed more -
- and a veritable torrent of mana came pouring in as what little I'd regenerated dipped again and my Territory exploded outward, like ribs expanding and stretching to their limit, consuming stone and moss and grass and vine as it went, reducing them to their constituent mana for a far more substantial boost.
For a few moments, I just sat there dumbly, greedily gulping down all the magic I could; once my reserves stabilised, I took stock, wincing internally at the way I now sat at the centre of the almost hemispherical pair of bites that had been taken out of the mountainside and the rocky floor around me, as I glimmered prettily azure in the dawn light for any passerby to see.
Best not do that again without some more preparation. Apparently there were reasons most Dungeons didn't start summoning real monsters for a Floor or two. Also, I was glad to have learned that Dungeon Comprehension had blind spots when it wasn't going to cause me real, serious trouble - it could tell me I had enough mana to make the summon, just barely, but it said nothing about how horrible significant mana drain felt.
Note to self: my shiny new instincts pertained only to purely Dungeon-based things. They were quite incapable of telling me anything about how those things might reflect on me as a conscious, feeling existence.
Still, I thought to myself as a sleek, iridescent bird, feathers rippling with colours like the top of an oil slick, landed on my Core and gave me a couple of curious pecks, there are upsides.
Double-checking the expected mana cost this time, I ate away some more of the stone already within my Territory, forming rough-hewn steps up to my Core, and then, because I was a perfectionist bastard, spent just a little of it back to add some aesthetic moss to the cracks I'd put here and there.
Once I was sure I had enough power, and was satisfied with the look of my new dais, I double-checked the bird was still there, smiled inwardly, and managed, even through the drain that left me gasping for metaphorical air, to keep smiling. It helped I had good cause; while I recovered, slender fingers gently curled around shimmering feathers, picking up the bird as it nuzzled blissfully into the grasp.
Then my new Dryad broke its neck.
She smiled at me in return as the body dissipated into mana, happy to have been able to be of use to me immediately after her summoning; the expression broadened as I pushed gratitude and approval back down the bond. Useful thing, knowing the mind of my monsters.
After glancing around, verifying a lack of enemies, she dipped into a curtsy, slightly lifting the hem of the leafy miniskirt she wore.
I briefly regretted my lack of a conventional body.
"Master. How may I... serve you?"
...I deeply regretted my lack of a conventional body. And she knew it too, from the sly look she gave me.
Dryads, I supposed at the time, were incorrigible flirts. It made sense to me, with the stories of them as spirits of nature, of freedom and of life and the propagation thereof. I'd find out they were far more than merely flirts in time, when... ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself again.
Electing to simply move on without acknowledging it, since that would almost certainly just make things worse, I pulled my thoughts back into order.
Guard the entranceway. I need to restructure the cave as a priority; if you can provide me the patterns of any more animals that pass by, do so, but don't endanger yourself or leave me undefended. On the offchance intelligent creatures show up, don't initiate hostilities - greet them politely, inform them that you would prefer they not disturb me while I am building up the first Floor, and bar but don't completely block off the door if they try to enter - but defend yourself freely if attacked.
The thought that had occurred to me when I stumbled across her pattern in the sea of lights... definitely had merit. Maybe I could make this work. With something as strong as a Dryad, I could probably afford to postpone the monsters for now...
I'll be turning the first Floor into a grove, growing magically augmented herbs and trees of various kinds - alchemical ingredients, magical foci, things like that - so I'll need you to oversee it, unless you've a particularly strong preference otherwise. Your backstory, for the purpose of anyone who asks, is that you grew from a seed of one of the rowan trees higher up the mountain that fell down here, and then happened upon a newborn Dungeon Core that you tricked into providing you with mana and territory by scaring it with horror stories about adventurers and then promising to protect it.
A moment's pause for consideration. I'll give you a few - let's call them shimmerbirds - to use as eyes and ears. Try not to get them caught out as Dungeon animals if you're using them outside, I don't know what the reaction to that would be and I'm not inclined to risk it.
The summoning was far less rough for those, less than a percent of the cost of a Dryad, though I staggered them one by one anyway. Letting the Dryad piggyback on their senses the way I could, and directly command them... wasn't something I could do for a normal monster, unless it was an inherent part of the design like an ant queen. So why had I been so certain I could?
... Ah. Yes, that made sense.
It took me a little while to regather my power. I had, by that point, tunnelled my way almost twenty meters further back into the mountain, the pedestal that supported my core moving with the excavation, and was rapidly enlarging the cave still further in the other two dimensions. The cost of each Territory expansion soon repaid itself as I consumed the stone that barred my way, drinking more and more deeply of the world's magic as my domain grew, and in short order it was pure profit I could reinvest into yet another expension.
Much to my interest, the returns were slowly diminishing; I doubted an ordinary Dungeon could feel it while still this small, of course, but my sensitivity to magic wasn't exactly normal. It would, at minute scale at first but rapidly ramping up, begin costing me more and more to expand my Territory, making it harder and harder to grow. It wasn't just dungeons who were affected, either - I could see the projection of my current growth rate almost without thinking about it, and even just in terms of accumulating mana internally, which was nothing to do with my nature as a Dungeon even if it did make it easier on me, the growth of my power would be far closer to logarithmic than linear or the holy grail of exponential increase. It was, I was near entirely certain, a general rule of this world that the greater your magical power, the more it resisted being added to; it was like trying to force two magnets of the same polarity to touch: if they were both small, you could, but the bigger one got the harder it became.
I'd be more concerned, but... that was what Floors were for. Magically speaking, they were distinct 'entities' under the control of the Dungeon, so each Floor could grow and expand independently of any other. It was a very neat way to end-run around the entire issue, and since Dungeons were absolutely inhuman in terms of magical power anyway, to say nothing of myself when I was made of crystallised magic...
My musings were interrupted by the awarness that I had accumulated the necessary store of power for what I wanted to do. Touched the bond I shared with the Dryad, spending a moment to simply feel it, I firmed the image of what I wanted to do in my mind.
As it turned out, "creatures of magic" are very much not the same thing as "arcane-type creatures". All Dungeon creatures are, to some extent, creatures of magic: they are sustained by the Dungeon's power, their bodies and minds reinforced by a constant flow of magic from the Floor they reside on. Every cell of their body is infused with mana to a greater or lesser degree. Which, incidentally, is why a Dungeon gets more and more dangerous the deeper it goes, because lower Floors benefit from the pressure already applied by higher ones, thus compressing their background magical field even further, making it denser and richer and causing impurities to precipitate out where they can be processed and removed. Or used to poison adventurers, if that's your thing.
Hence, I can summon any creature more cheaply than any Dungeon but those with a similarly extreme affinity in a specific field.
Of course, arcane was the elemental alignment of raw magic, and I would have a stronger connection to an actual arcane-type monster like a Will-O'-Wisp rather than a nature-type like a Dryad. But the extra expenditure on both summoning and upkeep was certainly worth it; in essence, a Dryad is something like a natural Dungeon Core, forming at the nexus of magical flow for an area rich in plant life as a regulator and defender. The wood of a Dryad tree is powerfully magical, even a young Dryad like mine was at the time - and a Dryad is herself stronger and tougher than one might believe, invariably possessed of exceptional talent in spellcraft, and can cause surrounding plant life to blossom and flourish, or leap to her defence if she feels the need.
Had I been any normal Dungeon Core, I wouldn't have been able to summon any sort of Dryad, even one so weak, for months or years yet. Without the jungle that surrounded me, teeming with life and resonating almost perfectly with the nature of a Dryad, weeks or months would have passed before I was capable. As it was, I had been incredibly fortunate to stumble across the right pattern in the endless ocean of possibilities when the idea I could have a Dryad hadn't even occurred to me. Though admittedly, until I'd had the brainwave of disguising my Dungeon's exceptionally high background magic - even compared to my less conscious brothers - as the consequence of a Dryad's Heart-Tree being in the area and having formed a contract with my foolish newborn self, it probably wouldn't have crossed my mind to start out with something so powerful. And that brainwave was the result of me stumbling onto the pattern in the first place, so... well. I was lucky.
To capitalise on my good fortune, I had, in particular, selected a rowan as the tree to host my Dryad; even if it technically shouldn't grow in these climes, they were also called mountain ash, so I could probably get away with it having drifted down from higher up and accidentally fallen into a locus of the jungle's magic and lifeforce, so long as I planted some other rowan trees up there soon.
Associated strongly with protection, as well as inspiration, connection and expression, I felt rowan would be the most appropriate choice in both symbolic and practical terms. I had been proven right; even though I had yet to set up her tree as a node in my Dungeon's mana cycle, the effects of her presence were already noticeable. The moss on my steps was a deeper, richer green, thick grass was starting to creep in from the entrance, and bugs were setting up habitats in little cracks and crannies I'd left in the cave walls to give it a more natural feel. Moreover, there was a faint defensive aura already pervading my Territory. It wasn't strong, but it would exert a slight pressure against hostile intruders, slowing and weakening them just a hair. It would grow in time, as she herself grew in power and became more connected to my domain.
Of course, I was about to give her a pretty big jumpstart.
Dryad.
"Master?"
The mindset I had to get into in order to do this the way I wanted was... very odd. It was simultaneously a sort of controlled megalomania, an absolute certainty of my rule over my Territory and my right to have that rule, and an attitude of upright nobility, caring for one's subordinates as they cared for you in turn, and rewarding them for deserving acheivements.
Still, it wasn't so hard; I was an entitled sort by nature, I could admit that about myself, and on her part she had guarded me while I worked, her Heart-Tree shielded me by its very presence, and I could feel her devotion through the Dungeon/monster bond I had to her. She would quite happily die for me if it meant I would live - or even if I just asked her to.
It was... terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure. To hold that sort of absolute power over someone.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Well, being worthy of it wasn't about where I ended up in the end. It was how I got there that mattered - and I was going to start as I meant to go on.
I drew up my power. Focused. Held the image in my mind. Despaired momentarily over the archaic wording the spell required. Focused again.
By my magic and the Domain I hold, I Name thee Silvestre, and charge thee to uphold thine duty as Guardian of the First Floor.
It wasn't quite as bad as getting her pattern had been, but it was worse than summoning her. I felt like I'd been standing in a room that suddenly underwent explosive decompression, all the breath ripped from my chest and leaving me gasping, though thankfully only for a moment before magic began to flow back in.
Interestingly, a Guardian could be a Boss, but didn't have to be. 'Boss' was a mostly arbitrary designation, something that tied the magic governing Floor transitions and loot provision (among other functions) to a specific entity - or entities, if one designated Mini-Bosses or multiple Bosses or even Optional Bosses, who, uniquely, could be attached to lower Floors in order to raise their strength above the norm for the Floor they were stationed on, though part of the magic required an Optional Boss to be indicated as such reasonably clearly.
Being the Guardian, on the other hand, was magically significant and a major qualitative change, because the Guardian of a Floor served as the focal point of its magic as the Dungeon Core was the focus of the entire Dungeon. A Core could be the Guardian of its own Floors, but it was inefficient, and forced a suboptimal split in attention besides.
Admittedly, the Guardian usually was the Boss, simply because the Guardian would be the strongest creature on the Floor unless the Core was doing something very weird, but it wasn't ironclad by any means. Personally, however, I didn't intend to have the First Floor be about fighting at all; rather, it would be Silvestre's Grove, a place where highly magical plants and smaller animals grew and lived, tended by the Dryad who regulated its magic. But of course, if an adventurer did want to fight... well, Silvestre was technically the co-primary node for my Dungeon's magic right now, since the first Floor was my only Floor - and rather than locking her out of any permissions, I had elevated her to something that could be considered equivalent to moderator status on an Earth forum, able to interact with certain basic functions that were usually solely the purview of the Dungeon Core itself. And I could build on that, keep her hooked right into the heart of things as I grew, letting her get stronger and stronger at a pace that would completely stun a natural-born Dryad.
Let me put it this way: a Dryad, amidst nature, is effectively the mistress of a Reality Marble that you can't escape. The plants, the trees, and the animals will all bend to her will. If she's a powerful one, even the earth and air and water in your surroundings will be trying to restrain, defeat or just outright kill you. So in short, the older and stronger they get, the worse it's going to go for you, and even a young Dryad is a tricky customer. If she wasn't so happy to follow my orders, I would be genuinely worried about my safety, to say nothing of my ability to actually kick her out - let alone defeat her.
Moreover, Silvestre was going to get very strong, very fast, so with any luck... well, I should be a lot safer than I had been expecting. I'd still want to start on creating monsters sooner rather than later, but... I could put it off a little, now.
Of course, she wouldn't be so strong that she could protect me from more or less anything for quite a while yet. Even in the present, however, the massive jolt of power that had flowed into her as I simultaneously Named her and set her as the first Floor's Guardian (one, again, not being compulsory for the other, but generally 'the done thing' as pushed forward by natural Dungeon instinct for reasons of effectiveness and efficiency; Naming is a power-intensive process, and one that enhances the recipient of the name in several ways) had made her far stronger, and thus enlarged her tree a rather significant amount.
The trunk was maybe thrice as thick, and the boughs now brushed the roof even after I had raised it another three metres, spreading out wide where they could no longer reach higher to cover the top of the cave in a thicket of leafy green. Shimmerbirds darted between the branches, twittering to each other; I could feel them as Dungeon monsters, but unless I directly interceded they would follow Silvestre's instructions, as I had assigned them to do when I made her Guardian of the First Floor and summoned them as First Floor monsters.
Almost as an afterthought, I reached out to the plants by the entrance, encouraging them to grow up and over into a woody archway framing the way inward. No need to make my unusual nature too obvious - quite the opposite, in fact, I wanted to conceal it as much as I possibly could - but at the same time I did want to get visitors. Being all alone with only fanatically loyal subjects for company would be... perhaps not ideal for my mental state.
I didn't really want to know if a Dungeon Cores could go stir-crazy, either.
Since following that line of thought any further would almost certainly be counterproductive, I instead busied myself with other affairs. Firstly, as a matter of priority, I snaked a tiny tendril of Territory up the outside of the mountain until it reached a height where rowan trees could comfortably survive, and - having picked up the pattern entirely for free, since one came part and parcel of the Dryad pattern if you didn't have any - planted a few normal ones here and there, accelerating their growth until many of them looked old enough to have been around a while, though I left a couple of saplings here and there too.
Then I began to throw all my magic into expanding the cavern that housed the Grove; keeping Silvestre's Heart-Tree at the centre, and myself at the back, I rapidly doubled its size, then doubled it again, and again, and again, before finally beginning to slow down as I approached the four hundred metre mark, the roof near twenty high. At that point, diminishing returns were starting to kick in, and Territory was costing more and more to expand - I would need to harvest denser, purer mana - from deaths would be the easiest way by far - to expand further with any great speed.
And I did need to expand further. My Territory served another function beyond creating a region over which I had magical and conceptual ownership - it was also an extension of my magical reserves, a way for me to store more power as I grew. My Dungeon Core could hold a lot, even compared to other Cores, and I had a strong sense I could 'cast from hit points' in an emergency, since the crystal itself was formed from magic, but nothing had infinite capacity for heat or electric charge, and magic was no different.
In order to accumulate enough mana to start a second Floor, I needed to expand my domain another hundred metres or so, which thankfully was already a huge improvement over the two kilometres-ish most Dungeons need, especially since Territory is generally far more efficient storage than the regulation- and processing-optimised Core. Half of that I could finish in the next twenty-four hours, but the next twenty-five metres would take me a little under two days, then another ten metres would eat about the same again, and so on and so forth.
Maybe it was a sign of my altered cognition that I didn't really want to wait a fortnight or so to start my next Floor. Most Dungeons sought to wring every drop of magic out of the adventurers that entered, after all, and the bigger they were the longer adventurers would stay. Still, I had decades as a human against days as a Dungeon, and with the temper I'd had as a child I had plenty of practice controlling unwanted instincts. Plus, logically speaking it wasn't a good idea to spread my attention over two Floors when my first was still pretty much completely barebones.
So I turned my attention to setting up the Grove proper.
Alright, Silvestre, you can stop guarding the door. If we get any visitors act as if you're the one in charge here; I won't involve myself directly in most cases. Familiarise yourself with the magic of the Dungeon, you'll need to be able to work with it on at least a basic level; I'm going to start working on populating the Grove.
"Of course, Master."
Her body just sort of... phased into the grass beneath her feet, before she stepped out of her Heart-Tree's trunk - large enough now that three grown men couldn't link hands around it - and looked around at the occasionally mossy but otherwise more or less barren stone. Were it not for the fact that Dungeon monsters could live entirely on mana, had she needed her roots for any purpose other than holding the tree up, she would likely have been in rather a lot of trouble.
Speaking of which, enhancing plants was first on my to-do list. Then maybe I'd see about some of the insects that had taken up residence; several of them were starting to show up in my magical awareness, having consumed enough of the moss that grew in my cavern to start absorbing the magical energy contained within it.
As I had a rowan tree pattern already, I decided to start with larger flora, since I could set them up properly spaced and then fill in the shrubbery, grasses, flowers and herbs beneath them afterwards. Lighting wouldn't be an issue, since Dungeon plants mainly lived on mana, even if not to the same degree as monsters could - another benefit of growing them, and the reason all Dungeons had some moss at the very least, was that they absorbed the impurities in the background magic and even had a slight refining effect, making it a little denser. Still, making sure that the paths through the Grove were designed appropriately would be a pain if I had to move all the little plants around, so I could mark things out in stone and dirt first, then add trees for the rough shape, and finish up with the smaller things.
Raising small cliffs and ridges, I turned the rough floor into a set of miniature rolling hills and chasms, funnelling adventurers through a maze of half-defined routes that they could, if brave enough, eschew. Around the edges, I made jagged cliffs that would nip and shear at fingers that tried to climb them, earmarked for the better results among my magical plant experiments in future; for the moment, I spent a fairly significant chunk of mana sifting through the sea of lights to find a magically-powered water source, and rearranged a few paths so that I could have a small creek winding its way through the cavern, hiding deceptively deep hollows here and there where I'd conceal water-aspected plants, and disappearing through a concealed gap beneath the wide, shallow pool in which it seemingly terminated.
From there, beyond the reach of adventurers, it flowed down into an even wider and far deeper pond I'd hollowed out in the thirty-metre-thick, Territory-claimed wall I'd left unexcavated to one side of the cavern for exactly this purpose. My intention was, once I had the Grove working, to use it for breeding magical fish in, which I could then release into the creek proper. In order to maintain the right water level, a hole some way up the wall let the overflow through to babble out a few metres from the entrace to the Grove, from where it flowed away to join the massive river that thundered around the left side of my mountain and off into the distance.
Once the course of the creek was charted, I went on a spending spree; temporarily halting my Territory's growth, I bought every type of tree I could remember the occult significances of. It was a fair list, but I knew what I wanted to do with them all.
Cedar firstly, for cleansing and healing, and cherry to signify awakening and rebirth. They would work well with rowan's protection, or with elder, for transition and renewal, and the cycle of life and death.
Oak I especially wanted, a particularly prominent symbol of power and fortitude which went well with alder, for endurance and passion. Blackthorn, for discipline, and fir to provide clarity, would go a way to ensuring those strengths were channelled in the right direction; power and passion undirected can do more harm than good.
Hazel was strongly associated with divination and hidden wisdom, while maple was more practical magic and balance. To bridge between them I would add bonsai (harmony, and balance again), which also complemented vine, for introspection, depth and relaxation.
Redwood, eternity and ancient wisdom, could be contrasted against apple, for youth, happiness, beauty, and magic, or against yew, which symbolised transition or change, and the passage of time.
Finally, willow, for the heart and for dreams, would go well with juniper, a journey, and ash - sacrifice, and sensitivity or awareness. Fir, again, would help direct them, but in this case blackthorn would do more harm than good.
A little belatedly, feeling somewhat embarrassed, I stretched a filament of Territory out beyond the entrance once more (piece by piece, wincing at the mana cost in comparison to what it had been before and feeling rather thankful I'd planted the rowans up on the mountain early enough it hadn't been too onerous) and consumed a little sample of jungle earth, learning how to make it for myself so that I had something to plant my Grove in other than bare rock.
One by one, having taken the time to recover my energy and resurface the cavern - embarrassing myself all over again at the sudden drop in upkeep for Silvestre once I got her Heart-Tree settled in nutritious soil, though thankfully she couldn't tell it had just been an oversight rather than a prioritisation I'd made deliberately - I set out my trees, accelerating their growth with a steady trickle of magic. Oak and alder, fir and blackthorn, cedar and elder and rowan all linked together formed the backbone of the Grove, radiating out in lazy, carefully irregular swirls from the great rowan Heart-Tree at the centre, setting as firmly as I could the foundations that would help Silvestre circulate and regulate the Dungeon's power.
Then, once I was satisfied things were working as intended - and I had registered a distinct uptick in the strength of the background magic, the aura of protection it carried, and the growth of the moss and grasses scattered around the place - I went along the banks of the creek with the occasional ash and fir to complement and enhance, but have minimal impact on the magic of, the far more numerous willow and juniper with which I lined the water's edge.
Little copses of apple clustered around the bases of uncomfortably undergrown redwoods (I'd have to raise the roof of the cavern as much as I could; I didn't really want to go much further outward horizontally anyway, since that would require more planting, so it worked out well), with yew insulating or perhaps connecting between them. I'd felt compelled to add vine for some reason, and in short order I found it stringing itself between the branches of every tree in the Grove, linking them all in a great living web. The density of the connections, however, was interestingly uneven - elder and willow to the apple/redwood copses, in particular, were more tightly bound than most others.
Finally, maple was studded throughout the whole cavern, to mark the magic that had been used to build it, while densely packed hazel and the occasional willow built a wall around my dungeon core. These, too, the vine web reached out to. I sprinkled exactly three copses of maple, hazel and bonsai around the edges, each at the end of one of the most winding, hard-to-follow paths, each of them one of the routes I would be obfuscating most heavily as I populated the Grove. The way the vine took to those had to be seen to be believed; you could have walked quite happily from tree to tree they were so dense.
Once I was done, the Grove was thickly forested, wandering paths snaking their way through vine-draped greenery, occasional bluffs or ridges or outcroppings anywhere from two or three to fifteen or sixteen metres high blocking the way and forcing detours. The sound, unfortunately, was a little thin; the creek was pleasant enough, and I had a fair population of insects by this point, but the only birds I had were the shimmerbirds Silvestre was controlling, and no small animals lived underfoot. Still, it could be fixed in time.
Eventually, I intended to go through the trees and rework them with my magic, bringing out their associations as full-fledged magical properties, but I wanted to focus on what I presumed would be more conventional alchemical ingredients first, things like herbs and grasses, berries and maybe saps. Besides, some level of that process would occur naturally as the trees grew and aged and drank in the magic around them. It could wait.
Humming to myself, snatches of songs from my old life, I slowly became more and more absorbed in my work, buying low-level plants and then teasing out possibilities with my magic, examining the mana bound into the structures of weak alchemical ingredients and then changing, testing and changing again as I learned which pieces of magic did what and why. It was fascinating.
Slowly, more and more plants began to flower in the Grove. Goldtip Clover, a beginners' anti-inflammatory, became Goldleaf Clover, a general soothing agent. Bloodflower, chewed for health by peasant villagers according to the rather meagre contextual description that came with its pattern, I developed into Scarletflower, which when chewed into mush and smeared on an open wound would act as a weak healing potion. Bellsilvers, my favourite creation, were tiny, delicate flowers that fell like a waterfall of silvery gemstones, and would both replenish stamina and weaken sicknesses and maledictions; I used them to garland Silvestre's Heart-Tree, and set a crown of them upon her head. As a rowan Dryad, she was very fond of them, and they were soon growing quite prolifically. I suspected they would become my Dungeon's signature product.
And as I lost myself in the work, I quite forgot to keep track of how long I'd been going for. Even the System didn't manage to distract me; its occasional popups served more to reassure me that I was on the right track than to remind me that time was passing. And of course Silvestre thought I had it all in hand.
By attentively tending to your plants, you have unlocked the [Gardener] Job!
By manipulating magic contained within physical forms, you have unlocked the [Enchanter] Job!
By experimenting with the properties and uses of consumable magical substances, you have unlocked the [Alchemist] Job!
By developing your own magical consumables, you have unlocked the [Alchemist] Skill [Cultivate Property]!
By utilising the properties of natural substances to develop remedies, you have unlocked the [Pharmacist] Job!
Pity, really.
I'd rather have liked to notice the approaching adventurers in time to make some actual preparations.
Bothynus Race Sophont Dungeon Core Subtype Flawless Arcanite Crystal Age 2 Months, 3 Weeks Gender Male Faith None Patron None Adventuring Jobs Job Level EXP Dungeon Master 2 23.40% Crafting Jobs Job Level EXP Alchemist 5 66.12% Enchanter 6 25.34% Gardener 6 34.98% Pharmacist 5 32.25% Racial Skills Skill Level EXP Dungeon Awareness 3 65.28% Dungeon Comprehension 3 15.35% Dungeon Magic 6 14.23% Dungeon Territory 9 96.53% Unique Skills Skill Level EXP Unbound Essence 1 MAX Dungeon Master Skills Skill Level EXP Dungeon Architect 1 0.00% Dungeon Commander 2 81.30% Dungeon Supporter 1 76.04% Alchemist Skills Distill 3 9.28% Cultivate Property 3 98.37% Evaluate Alchemical Properties 6 51.23% Enchanter Skills Imbue 6 48.93% Unravel 4 98.13% Gardener Skills Green Thumb 9 32.48% Pharmacist Skills Concoct 4 67.23% Evaluate Medicinal Properties 5 23.49%