Sand lichen needs heat and manashrooms need water. This little cave at the surface is plenty hot, but obviously I am not going to be getting any water from there. I need to go deeper if I want to keep some water in my dungeon. I seem to remember that a planet gets hotter the closer to the center you go, but that seems like it would take a lot of digging. I also have no way of being certain if I actually am on a planet, I mean this world has magic, dungeons, monsters, and blue menu screens for… Uhhh… Something’s sake. There was something I was supposed to say there but I can’t remember. A blank hole in my memories.
Just like everything else that isn’t a fucking hospital.
In any case this world could be flat, it could be some sort of giant ring-shaped superweapon like my sister always jabbered on about.
I didn’t even realize I had a sister a moment ago. She was… Unkind. She cared for me in her own way, telling me of games she played, stories she read, and places she went with our parents. She would talk for hours about things I would never have before the nurse told her to go.
She meant it as a kindness, keeping her crippled dying sister company.
I hated her deeply. Yet somehow I forgot.
I can’t rely on my memories.
This having been said, I don’t really have a better idea for what this world could be.
I do not enjoy remembering the hospital. Remembering nearly two decades of helplessness, but my sister did have a lot of interesting ideas.
Selecting Dig I can feel mana trickling away as the cave smoothes itself and expands, a square room ten meters across, and ten high. The entrance is a good four meters off the ground, and I smooth it into a rectangle two meters wide, and two meters high, exposing more of the sky. Smooth stone steps lead from the entrance down to the floor and end up taking up nearly half the room’s length. On either side of the last steps of the staircase are two large hexagonal braisers to be filled with fire and light the place. Extending the room forwards another ten meters I have a suitable entry hall for my dungeon. A second set of braisers marks the beginning of a second staircase identical to the first, only dug into the floor where I tunnel down and down to escape my memories…
WARNING: You are exceeding the (200) meter z value for -Floor 1- (-12, -212) additional construction will require the purchase of an additional floor for 500DP x 1
Purchase second floor?
Yes No
I select yes, and my DP drops rapidly down to 495 as I feel my awareness expand briefly- then stop after about a meter of rock. Digging down another twenty meters I think I’ve reached where I want my first real ‘floor’ to be.
Designate -Floor 1- as ‘Entrance Hall’ for 200MP? Entrance areas are safe zones that grant bonuses to the dungeon. Entrance area cannot contain traps or monsters and do not count towards floor number Yes No
Energy flows out of me as I select yes. The first floor warps and twists as I can feel something change without any visible difference.
Special Room Added: Entrance hall (Scale -Floor-)
A smooth limestone entrance hall to an unknown dungeon. Safe area.
Entrance Hall upgrades unlocked.
Okay, I will look at that in a bit. First I need to get some things sorted out.
For me to make a good garden I first need to have somewhere to put it. I’ve been working on that, but whatever I make also needs to make it hard for intruders to get to wherever I plan on building my actual garden later on. While I’m at it, I should probably make use of some of those traps, and move my core somewhere less obvious.
Preferably somewhere hard to reach as well.
Mana shears through stone as I start to excavate. The tan limestone is cut through in places by streaks of green, and mining away at these I am bombarded by a burst of Blue Boxes.
New Materials added: Copper: A basic ductile metal with numerous uses. A good conductor of heat and electricity as well as being useful in the construction of metal goods, and alloyed materials. Malachite: A shiny green ore of copper often found in Sedimentary stone. Pretty, and semi-valuable on its own. Chrysocolla: A bright green or blue semi-precious stone commonly found in veins of copper ore. Used in jewelry and mana storage devices.
The gemstone seems like the perfect thing to place mana-hungry lichen on once this room is done. The ore seems useful, so I will base the shape of this room on the deposit.
This would prove to be a terrible idea pretty much immediately.
The deposit as it turns out is not small, or even moderately sized- no. I have dug out a thirty meter space forty three meters in diameter. Except for the ceiling the entire half opposite and angled down from the stairs is pretty much a giant mass of ore waiting to be dug out. The stairs open onto a twenty two meter cliff with a sharp lip where I found an extrusion of the ore vein. Placing some stone down I make a platform so the stairs don’t just drop off.
…
Gardens are usually wide and open right? Maybe if I make it bigger it will help? If I do that I can make this my first area, then have something to keep people from progressing into the main garden. Particularly because for now I don’t have enough DP for a third floor. The question is- can I create water?
Fluid materials: None
Well shit. Can I buy water in the store?
Purchase material Water from Dungeon shop for 50DP? Yes No
I let out a soft sigh as I hit yes and lose more DP. I’m down to 245DP and I don’t even have monsters yet. Still, the underground is a lot cooler than I expected past the first few meters; I hope the sand lichen can survive well down here.
I have a strange feeling that still water is a bad thing, so I will need to keep it moving somehow. It takes some digging, a little filling in with sandstone and creating a staircase down to the floor for me to have my first real ‘rooms’. A massive chasm some fifty meters across, and twice as high. Stairs carve their way down one wall from the landing at the foot of the entry staircase before coming to a landing on a rocky outcrop of stone jutting out from the surrounding rock. A roofed pavilion stretches across the chasm as a bridge to the large open shelf of carved limestone set into the wall before a massive two meter tall door. This door will have to have some sort of puzzle or challenge to keep people from progressing further into my garden, but I don’t actually have any real ideas on how to do that beyond maybe sliding blocks?
The chasm itself will be the main reservoir of water for the rest of the dungeon as well as containing a second hidden entrance to my garden under the usual water level to irrigate the garden.
People will probably try to swim in, so I’ll need to place bars or something to keep them out.
A short ways below the bridge there is a large round hole in one side of the crevasse that burrows off, turning slightly to one side and sloping up to where I dig out a second room. The second cavern is sort of round, a good seventy meters across with the deepest part of the bowl like floor nearly forty meters deep. The entrance tunnel comes out just about at the lip of the bowl shape resting at the shore of the future lake. This is where I will have my first garden. The sides of the bowl, much like the sides of the chasm, and tunnel are scarred and pitted with shelves and divots making the whole thing look a lot more natural.
Perfect. Now I just need to figure out how to keep the water level in both reservoirs stable
Room Upgrade: Water source Lakebed 200DP
Generates water to ensure the lake is always close to the intended level at the cost of mana. Excess water from watershed will be converted back into mana to maintain set water levels. Ecology- Unlocks seasonal variance, and flooding option.
Perfect! I think about purchasing the upgrade and my DP drops to 45 as the bottom of the lakebed flattens and warps. Copper emerges from the ground like branches of a tree and wrap around themselves forming a half meter globe shaped cage, as a brilliant blue light forms within. Water begins dripping from the holes in the wire cage.
And it’s dripping...
There is almost a foot sized puddle now …
Is there any way to make this go faster?
Lakebed:
Mana evaporation rate: [fast], medium, long
Water source flow rate: [low], moderate, high, extreme
I mentally push the orb to high and everything goes nuts.
The orb sucks away mana in a massive burst as the space floods with water blasting from the globe in jets so powerful they almost reach the rim of the lake. Terrified, I can feel my consciousness begin to slip as energy is ripped away…
Then, all at once it fades down to a trickle, smaller even then the flow of mana I am gaining from my new rooms. Shaking my head mentally I can see the lake is full, the tunnel is filled with a thundering river blasting out in a arc from the chasm wall before plummeting to the churning water far below. The chasm is filled more than a dozen meters deep, the pounding water having carved a noticable divoit into the floor on one side where it struck the rock. Mist cascades from the waterfall, drenching the lower portions of the chasm. From the chasm, a stream of brilliant blue energy stretch from any bit of water back to the source in the lake, mana returning to flow again.
A mental command sets the orb to moderate flow again. Watching the dew disappear from the stone as quickly as it lands. I also set the evaporation to slow, and the number of ribbons of light drops tremendously.
The blast of water slows as the water level in the lake drops to just barely flow through the tunnel. The sides of the tunnel at their former water level are blasted smoothe now, probably a result of the tiny bits of sand and stone carried by the water from the lakebed crevices by the current. Dribbles of water flow and pool in crevices in the rock even as the sound of falling water fades to a dull roar echoing through the caverns.
It is perfect for my flora. On the dry stones near the shore of the lake I leave patches of sand lichen.
Sand Lichen is not much to look at, a dull rusty growth of thin mossy looking fuzz, it’s white fungal roots cling to the dry rock in an explosion of growth that makes the tan stone look like it’s rusting metal on fast forward.
Dungeon Lichen is a bit more interesting, flat cloverlike grey leaves cling to damp crevices in the rock of the chasm and tunnel, pale black threads spiral outwards like a net towards any tiny specks of mana-charged ore, and gemstone.
Thumb-sized points of blue light mark the caps of manashrooms on the lakebed, ceilings, and lower chasm, their own pale white roots creeping into the rock seeking denser mana. The pale blue light is not much, but it is the only light in the caverns aside from the glowing water orb itself and lends the pale limestone caverns an eerie feeling. The flora is not much, and it will do nothing to defend me aside from emitting a steady flow of mana, but it is strangely peaceful to look at.
Many of the mushrooms don’t seem to like being underwater, and quite a few die, their pieces floating about the gently swirling waters.
That’s about 400 MP down the drain if I am to guess. Only a few of the deeper ones hold on in places with little current in the water.
The lake, with tiny lights above, and a scarce few below... I feel drawn to it- the place in my dungeon with by far the most mana.
Move core to [Lake Room] for 50MP? Yes No
Yes.
The moment I think to confirm my choice the pillar and gemstone in the entranceway slides into the ground and shoots along the floor, down the stairs, down more stairs, across the wall of the chasm, along the ceiling of the tunnel, and forms a second pillar smack dab in the center of the domed ceiling, copper branches twisting out to grasp my core as I silently stop suspended twelve meters over the water, directly above the source of the lake’s water. The pale grey of my stone seems to gleam, and shine with hints of blue in its depths where it sits wrapped in rootlike growths of copper wire.
As the copper branches still the ribbons of mana in the room start to spiral into my core like a whirlpool.
This is going to hurt isn’t it…
A tidal wave of energy crashes through my body scattering any rational thought as every nerve in my body ignites in an unbelievably amazing sensation, my vision going white. Overflowing energy erupts from my core, blasting through the dungeon in waves before crashing into me setting me off again and again.
Slowly the waves lessen and subside as my brain starts working again.
I definitely have a body now because it feels like my limbs are made of jelly.
Now I know- mana buildup absorbed when really low on mana definitely does not cause pain. It feels amazing, but the intensity is to much for me to feel comfortable enjoying it. Plus there’s the apparent after effects: for the first time since I woke up in that small tan cave I actually feel worn out.
My incorporeal limbs feel like they are made of lead but I myself to roll over on the rough cobblestone shore, my body passing through some rocks and lichen as I do. The mushrooms on the ceiling are very pretty, like blue stars glowing amidst the shadowed tan sky.
I lie there on the shore for a bit staring at the false stars softly glowing above me. There is a blue box blinking in the corner of my vision like it’s tabbed out or something. Too worn out to bother swiping at it I just ask the box to open.
Dungeon Core moved to area of critical mana density!
Warning: Mana Overload! Initiating release of excess mana!
+1400XP you are now level five.
4000DP gained!
You have added flora to your dungeon, An ecosystem can now form!
+100XP
+100DP
Room: Lakebed has become the dungeon core room and unlocked new upgrades!
Skill: Mental form I unlocked at level five due to dungeon actions!
Yup. Tabbed out. I gained four levels and a shit ton of DP. A glance tells me my core is a lot larger than before having grown to the size of a football. The gem gleems a wonderful midnight blue swirled with shifting grey that makes me think of a cloudy night sky. I can feel the rest of the dungeon, the flora feeds on mana, and gently returns it purer, better than before. This is the start of my garden isn’t it?
So blue, what were those upgrades you keep mentioning? The ones for this room?
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Core room [Lake] Available upgrades: Core Room Upgrade: Oasis 1000DP
Unlocked by starting biome: Desert, highest water element concentration in region, Ecology
This core room is the only source of water in the desert for at least twenty kilometers. Life flourishes in this tiny patch of paradise.
Increases growth, and evolution of living organisms in ecosystems fed by this source.
Unlocks further upgrades Upgrade Water source to Elemental Mana Conduit 0DP
Unlocked by Core Room Upgrade
Current element: Water.
Mana conduits gather mana and can store it for later use. Conduits can be used to siphon mana to the core without requiring the core to remain on the lowest level of the dungeon. Elemental mana conduits with sufficient mana stored may over time generate magical anomalies. Mana-enriched water 0DP
Unlocked due to extreme concentration of local mana
WARNING: Enriched water may siphon off local mana!
The waters are filled by life-giving mana promoting healing, and regeneration. Mana rich water is a common ingredient in potions.
Mineral-enriched water (copper) 200DP
Unlocked due to copper ore content of surrounding rock
WARNING: Contact with Mineral rich water increases damage from lightning attacks!
This water is full of minerals from the surrounding rock. Grants slight regenerative properties and promotes growth of living organisms that make use of these minerals.
Nice. All of these look really useful and this should make things grow much faster. I seem to remember that springs attract tons of creatures from all over and hopefully this will get me some monsters soon. It’s a lot of DP but it’s fine. I will just need to be more careful after this.
Blue? Purchase all please.
My DP drops by seventeen hundred down to 2945 points as the room around me shifts again- the glowing orb at the bottom of the pool sinks and flattens becoming a half-meter oval mirror framed with copper at the bottom of the pool as the water itself seems to sparkle and gleam in the low light of the manashrooms. I can feel mana flow further through the dungeon almost stealing away my own before it floods back greater then before and I start to regain some feeling in my limbs. Good, I spent far too much time in my last life unable to move on my own.
New Entrance Upgrades unlocked!
Two entrance upgrades have been locked!
Now that’s just annoying.
Upgrades unlock further upgrades so it’s easy to try and buy them all up isn’t it?
Worse, as I slowly recover from the mana… Incident… I realize I just spent a ridiculous amount of DP- something that is going to get harder and harder to acquire since I only seem to get any when I level up. With my mind still foggy from the event I didn’t even stop to consider if it was a good idea to waste such a valuable resource. Post-incident fog fading from my mind I start to realize that I still only have two actual rooms, and a door that connects to nothing. Anyone with wings, or someone skilled at climbing could just hop on over to the tunnel leading to my core room.
Somehow I doubt my core can be inaccessible since that would be too easy, so I will need to make a path around if I want to fix this. Considering everything so far there is no way things could be that easy right Blue?
WARNING: Dungeon core must have accessible path from the dungeon entrance!
Thanks Blue.
Likewise, my rooms don’t actually have anything in the way of dangers to keep out intruders unless you count smooth wet stonework and lack of railings as a threat.
Maybe if adventurers wore shoes made of soap.
I need to make it so people can’t just enter my core room, but water can still flow out through the tunnel and fill the reservoir. A grate made of thick copper bars should prevent access, maybe able to open out so people can go right back to the entrance of the dungeon? Yah that seems like a good idea.
I push myself up off the cobblestone and stretch as I float off through the lake room wall over to the large open platform with its massive smooth stone doors across from the entrance. The doors are just carvings in a wall right now, they don’t even have hinges. A test is needed, then rooms leading down, to a sort of mini-dungeon leading to my real garden, and through that my core. First I think, the door needs to lead to a large grand hall, fifty meters long, twenty wide, and thirty high. A grand hall to dwarf my entrance way where I can have secondary paths leading off into ‘ruins’ and eventually to my garden. Multiple paths will allow me to have long looping sections to confuse and entrap intruders, as well as giving my creations places to hide.
Pushing forwards I am forced to remove the door entirely as stone is cored away and disappears. I can probably add a new one later.
Eight enormous pillars hold the vaulted ceiling far above. Massive columns of hexagonal rock carved and worn carefully to give the place an ancient, ruined majesty. A smaller pillar holding a stone brasier to light the room lies dark and unlit before each column.
The walls are chipped and cracked in places while the tiled floor is scarred adding to the overall effect making the room seem as though it has lain buried here for millennia. The cracking, and wearing spreads with a thought, creeping out the empty doorway changing the courtyard outside it, then the bridge. Cracks, wear, and divots make their way up the stairs into the entrance of my dungeon as I turn to the doorway of the great hall and construct an enormous copper door it’s great hinges opening inwards so the door may be barred until intruders solve the puzzle. As the aging effect finishes I feel a wave of exhaustion roll over me- no I need to finish this door!
A geometric pattern of hexagons etches itself into each door, framed by smooth copper as six copper bars, each thicker then my hand slide from the walls behind the door barring it. Enormous gears of my only metal, enchanted to withstand the strain of their use link up below to a single enormous gear that will be turned by completing the puzzle. On the inside of the room, there is a massive circle with a small pedestal, and four spokes on either side to allow the door to be opened and shut from within.
The puzzle itself is simple in concept but mechanically quite complex. Attempting to make a puzzle that is too difficult, or unsolvable seems as though it would be considered blocking the path to my core, so I have gone with a simple one
On each side of the door is a raised copper plate. Pressing one will retract three bars while it is pressed but they will very quickly slide back into place when they are not. It takes a significant amount of weight to push them down, around fifty kilos worth? It’s not exact since I am testing it with limestone blocks. I think I got the amount to be about as heavy as a person?
In any case it will require weighing both switches down, at which point the doors will open. When the concealed plate surrounding the arc of the doors is stepped on the doors will slam shut and car again until it is opened from the inside, or the switches are pressed and released again.
Admittedly the slamming doors is just me being a bit of a bitch and trying to scare people, plus it’s dark in that room since there isn’t any light, and the opening mechanism on each side is in the corners… Eh I’m sure it won’t be a problem.
I’m not actually sure how I know what gears are, but I seem to be quite familiar with them.
At the very least it should startle some people and get them to leave.
If someone decides they don’t dare split the party to open the door, well that’s their problem.
Loners, or groups of two will just have to figure out some way around it.
New trap added: Puzzle door. 500MP x current puzzle doors
New trap added: Weight Sensor.
Cool. Now I just need to make this actually lead somewhere.
An identical copper door marks the opposite end of the hall, similarly barred. This one requires the placement of two copper slabs that will be in other parts of the first floor.
Four smaller unlocked copper doors that simply close on their own after a short while are placed across from one another, two to a side on either wall of the hallway.
On the left wall if one were entering the great hall, one side contains a short hallway to some stairs leading down to a ten meter square storage room. The hall is much like the doors - only three meters tall, and two wide. Worn, and unadorned except for small brasiers set into the walls every five meters. The brasiers are unlit and empty of course.
The only thing that room has going for it is the trap- there is a pressure plate the same stone as the floor about half a meter long and as wide as the room’s doors, just inside. Stepping on it closes the doors very quickly, but a person could just jump over it once they know it’s there. The lure to this trap I actually had to buy from the store. Barrels and bins made of copper stuff the room.
Naturally I don’t actually have anything to put -in- these containers, but that’s not visible from the door anyway.
I actually feel kinda bad about that, so I fill one barrel with water laced with lots of copper and seal it shut with it’s lid, and place some desert lichen in the corners of the room.
New room Templates added: Ruined storeroom, Simple ruin hallway New Objects added: Sealable copper barrel, stackable copper bins New trap added: Slamming door, Pressure plate
Wait so my previous pressure sensors didn’t count?
New Dungeon Template added: -Strange Desert Ruins-
Set template as standard for non-cavern portions of the dungeon?
All newly created structures will automatically use the -Strange Desert Ruins- aesthetic for no mana cost.
Yes No
Hell yes!
Just for that I am placing some blocks of copper in one precariously stacked bin for some lucky adventurer to find.
Thank you Blue.
Now I don’t have to go through an ruin-ify everything when I make it. Clearing out walls containing ore and replacing them with plain limestone leads to exhaustion.
It also uses a fair bit of mana.
Though I do really need to get something besides copper, and limestone if I want to build things. That can come later though.
I am tired, my dungeon is incomplete still, and my only trap is pathetic but at least I don’t have to deal with perfect-fucking-hospital-floors anymore. I have only copper and limestone to build with, but at least it isn’t steel, rubber, marble, and concrete. The current structure reminds me of a tomb- dark, ancient, and dead. An elaborate mausoleum for some long dead ruler of great wealth. A little bit on the nose considering I am a dead girl, but it works. The storage room off one side like that is odd, but the trap makes it seem intentional. Even so, I feel like I need to do something else. Beyond the door a large room takes shape, similar to a central courtyard or a city square. This will be the heart of the tomb.
A full forty meters square, held up by four massive pillars a ways from the corners of the room. Each hexagonal pillar almost two meters across. At the far end, on a raised dais I leave a massive stone coffin, less than a meter wide, and two meters long. I have no treasure to place within, no coins, or items.
But a tomb needs someone to lie within. I do not have the body, but copper twists and creeps to form the proper shape of bones within the coffin. Familiar bones, from a girl who should not have lived as long as she did. Chips in the ribs from falling down trying to stand, pores and hollows in the bone where it never fully formed. The bones fall out of place as soon as I make them, resting gently on the bottom of the coffin. There are shackles of copper holding the arm and leg bones together, liked by chain and held fast to the stone above her head, and between her legs by large copper bolts screwed into the stone.
Almost as though she was held captive alive as she slowly wasted away in an elaborate grave right? A dark joke that somehow makes me feel some closure. The old me is dead, buried in the coffin and her memories should stay behind.
My tomb must have a way to enter it, as well as treasure to fool people into leaving should they get this far. The storeroom hallway would only make sense if there was a room it had to go around, and the entire area is greatly lacking complexity. A second long hallway across from the storeroom, a bunk room of stone slab like beds each with a copper skeleton of a woman, each slightly different then the others. In one corner the metallic bones of a hand clutch a metal tablet etched with the image of a human heart with a tiny hole in one side going all the way through the metal.
Almost like the walls of the heart never formed right, and the heart’s owner was bedridden as a result.
Two side rooms, one clearly a chapel of some kind. Stone benches to either side of an aisle leading up to a pedestal with a hexagonal podium topped with copper and a raised slab for an alter.. The walls behind the altar are honeycombed with hexagonal holes each a few hands deep, perfect for scrolls. A copper door on one side leads to a second, smaller bedchamber with a single sleeping slab, a lone skeleton, and the other tablet. This tablet a bone, hollow and malformed. The image is honeycombed with divorts on both sides as though the bone never filled in right. There is a stone chest in the corner, it’s bottom is a weight sensor but I don’t actually have anything to put in it right now. When pressed and released the floor will slide away, as the bed and it’s skeleton slide into a special recess in the wall that is formed by retracting segments. There is a very deep hole below the floor, probably going to end up leading to the garden far below.
The last room is simple, a long room with a stone bench and table for eating. Copper plates, knives and forks wait for seventeen people, the same number as copper skeletons in the complex. In the far wall, in a small cubby there is an empty copper tablet that does not fit the doors.
In the room behind the doors, inside the coffin, below the skull of the girl there is a hidden place for it. For a tablet containing nothing at all.
The tablet rests on a small pressure sensor, just as the side walls, floor, and ceiling rest inside a massive cylinder attached to an enormous gear. Should the tablet be removed the door to the room will shut, and the entire room barring the entry door wall, and the wall with the cubby will start to rotate faster and faster. The room will stop rotating after it has spun twenty times, the power for rotation being produced by an enormous counterweight, and the very careful balancing of the gears holding the entire room up. Not sure how to reset the counterweight though.
New Room templates added:
Single ruin bedroom
Ruin Dorm room
Ruin Chapel
New trap added: Room trap rotating room. Cost scales with size, requires power
Hey Blue? Is there an upgrade to automatically reset the counterweight if the tablet is put back?
Upgrade chapel trap: Rotating room to reset automatically for 20DP? Putting the trigger item back will deactivate the trap. Yes No
Yup. Good way to spend 20DP.
The tablet will cause the wall behind my coffin to open, revealing a staircase down to a rough tunnel that leads back to my core room. The tunnel leading off is now made inaccessible by a enormous copper-etched stone slab over the opening, with a sluice for the water at the bottom. Attempts to enter that way would need to swim up the current of the waterfall through the water pressure. The slab itself is marked with copper-filled carvings of waves, with dots within. A image that kinda sort of looks like my lake. Eventually I am going to make the hidden tunnel lead somewhere else and have my core room accessible only from the garden, but for now I can focus on actually creating the garden first. Then maybe I can make my first floor suck less. Without any decent traps, treasure or monsters I can't really do much unless I get creative.
I can't help but feel proud of my creations, but it still is kinda pathetic. I am going to need to re-do this tomb once I have a better idea of how to do this dungeon thing.