I am not entirely certain what I am supposed to be doing. I have a garden of mushrooms, a hotspring, a sea of lava, and no idea why I am here or what I am supposed to be doing.

I can create traps, flora, treasure, and would be able to create creatures and probably plants too if any were capable of surviving down here. I can twist their forms and alter them with my new trait- though not without risk of failure so I'm not trying THAT if I can avoid it. What to do?

I reach out at the earth around me, I can feel the small obsidian pedistal beneath my small body. I swear my stone seems slightly larger then last I checked. The rock surface of the cavern holding my spring is warm and damp, my mushrooms slowly spreading spores and finding purchase throughout the cave. The spring itself is boiling, fed from water slowly dripping back down into the pool as it coalesces from the steam, the stones far below heating it back up and sending it on it's way again. The cave is lit dimly from a thousand sources, purple-black, dim blue-green, the water swirls with green, blue, purple, and red under the single massive white light of the Lantern like a star where it has centered itself exactly over the swirling mass of mana.

It's beautiful. The water pulses with motion from the currents of the spring, spores waft through the steam-soaked air. But it's missing something. There is life in my garden, motion. Yet ll the motion is from the steam and swirling waters of the spring, the mushrooms do not move on their own swaying on the currents like trees in a breeze. Nothing can move on it's own. I don't know how long I have been watching my garden, mushrooms have grown, filled the air with glowing dust and began to wither falling to the floor or into the spring as their children grown from the spores take their place.

I have started pushing outwards, pushing my aura further day by day. I can feel the hot rock around me, and it seems to get warmer as I go down, and deeper as I go up. So Up I will go.

On the side of the spring opposite the ramp to my crystal room I am making a tunnel. In a fit of whimsy, or just to confuse the crap out of any 'adventurers' who would somehow find me down here the entrance to the tunnel is a massive four-meter wide square opening surrounded by an unbroken meter-wide ring of shining obsidian. The doorway gleams in the light, and I carve it deeply with twisting looping lines resembling knots of some unknown vine twisting through the gleaming black stone.

The opening is also about a meter off the ground, with a massive grey-stone slab edged with obsidian carved with more knotwork reaching five meters to the edge of the spring at it's base. Not sure why I did that but it certainly looks cool. It seemed to cost a lot less mana using materials have already absorbed. In any case it looks excellent, but I don't want the mushrooms to grow on the carvings... I look closely at the spores, little packets of fungus-stuff floating in the air directly on top of the platform. Hmmm... I wonder... I push mana into the smooth dull grey stone, trying to make it stronger. Maybe some way to keep the fungus off it?

New Material

Ward Stone: A strange heavy incredibly durable form of stone rarely found in certain ruins, Undead and other creatures of black magic act as though they cannot sense those standing on ward stone, nor remember them. Thought to demark an area as protected or sacred in ancient times plants will never grow on it. Occasionally used in dungeons to create 'safe zones' though traps can still be placed.

20MP a square meter

Well that worked. Ward Stone. Sounds fancy and apparently Repells undead. Interesting I guess. I push mana into the obsidian bordering the platform unblemished, stronger-

New Material:

Ward Glass:A extreamly rare form of enchanted obsidian, Ward Glass shows many similar properties to Ward Stone but cannot be crossed by monsters up to a height equal to the longest side of the Glass forming the Barrier.

30MP a square meter

Yes! It worked! So from now on if the stone has a border, it is a safe-zone from harm, and if there isn't one I can put traps or monsters there to destroy my enemies! Assuming I eventually have any of those things!

...

Did I seriously just think that? Also won't this block any monsters I could eventually create from entering or exiting this room now? I mean the doorway is made of Ward Glass too.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

You know? I am going to call that type of doorway a 'Gateway' and it will always be some distance off the ground to mess with people. Also because it looks nice that way. Since none of the life in my dungeon can pass through I suppose I can use it to partition areas, or create a nifty cube out of them for a very fancy safe-zone. I would probably have to add a floor to that though. 

Now that the door is done I can start on the tunnel.

An invisible source carves its way through the black-grey stone, rocks vanishing into... Somewhere. The same place as where I got the obsidian, likely from carving out the spring room I think? Is that why it cost so little? The tunnel is easily a dozen meters wide, and three times that height, soaring up through the rock- a blue box pops up but I ignore it until it stops me from going further. There is a spot of stone with shining grey near the top.

WARNING:

You have exceeded the (200) meter z value for -Floor 1- (-1700, -1500) by (14) meters additional construction will require the purchase of an additional floor. (200mp)

I think about the 'create new floor' ability and use it.

Okay, so that's two hundred mana gone, now to investigate this rock.

I begin to dig out the ore, Galena apparently and ore of lead and silver. It gives me a lot of those. I expand further along the vein, splitting off from the side and top of the cylindrical chamber and Moving outwards along the vein, finding a smaller vein of something new

Bismuthinite. Also interesting. I suppose it will go with the dark-grey, black, and glowing mushroom theme I have going in the Garden. I create slabs of rock, stairs about a meter above the edge of the next, spiraling upwards along the right side of the tunnel, stopping about twelve meters from the top is thirty steps, and the last step is directly across from the ore vein. The new floor starts here now I suppose. The bottom step is actually built into the floor at the foot of the portal, oh that won't do at all. I dig down, and down, and down, passing through empty rock until the blue box pops up again.

WARNING:

You have exceeded the (200) meter z value for -Floor 1- (-1700, -1500) by (0) meters additional construction will require the purchase of an additional floor. (300mp)

Oh well, I must be very close to lava now, the floor and walls heat the air to temperatures far greater then even the plumes of steam in my spring room. Out of curiosity I place three small bars of metal at the bottom. The Lead is a dark grey, Silver shines, or would if there was any light down here.

Bismuth... Bismuth is not like either of those. It forms a strange tiered shape along the sides of its bar, brilliant colors in square boxy spirals. It reminds me of the Wisp Treads swirling in their pool. I stare in awe for some time.

Eventually I stop- the crystals are starting to droop, I abruptly notice that the lead has become a glowing puddle. I take the metals back after that. On the plus side if it's hot enough to melt metal then it will make a perfect place to put some water for a spring.

Rock shatters as water explodes into steam, I spend nearly half of my mana filling the enormous chasm's bottom with water, steam wafts upwards bringing scalding heat, clouding the air of the chasm. The rock at the top is not very cool. Hmmm...

I dig upwards until I have gone an even forty meters from the start of floor 2, I begin to widen the area around the last step, a massive hexagonal room forty meters wide and forty meters tall with the circular chasm at it's center. The floor is flattened as best as I can, the chasm surrounded by a six-sided ring of solid obsidian etched with silver. I repeat the design on the ceiling exactly above the chasm, the center filled by an enormous circular sheet of silver only a few millimeters thick. The entire room is lit by six massive bundles of Wytches Lantern bound in silver cages hanging from the ceiling halfway between each side of the hexagon and the corresponding wall. The spiralling masses of glowing pale blue orbs in tangles of white flesh, shining silver, and black husk lend the room an erie dim feeling not helped by the wisps of steam rising from the pit at it's center.

Hmmm I wonder- If this gives access to my stone, and the Springs, even if a person would already have to pass through the steam-filled spiral death-chasm I think I need a way to shut it unless a person does.... Something...

Hmmm. A puzzle of some kind? Well there are six sides. Six triangular pillars rise from the inner corners of the hexagon surrounding the chasm, each one with a palm-sized triangular indent in the center. Perfect for what I have in mind. The mineral vein turned cavern takes up one side of six of the cavern, three paths each with two symbols so the paths will have to split. The cavern walls darken as they smooth becoming more regular as the gaping hole in one wall smoothes out becoming a four-meter doorway filled by a slab of obsidian, two identical doors emerge on the walls to form a triangle. Three passages to make, one of them heads off towards the lava, the other two away from it at separate angles.

Great silver chains, each link nearly two hands across and as thick as a grown man's fist bind the massive mirror to the ceiling on six sides. The mirror hangs now, edged with a ring of obsidian, bound to the silver by lead. There are tiny holes all along the sides for steam to escape once it is lowered over the chasm, only to be opened when all six symbols are brought and arranged properly. The entire assembly is flooded with my mana making it far stronger then any normal materials. The same is done to the walls of all my dungeon below this point, as well as the room itself. This act using up most of my remaining mana to do so.

Now to figure out what the symbols will be, what order they should be in, make the tunnels to hide them, and maybe figure out how to protect them.

I should probably try and figure out ‘traps’ for that, and how to lower the mirror, and how to make it rise when the keys are put in place... In the meantime I will leave manashrooms on the edges of this room to see what will grow from them.