Katia prepares to create her dungeon's first floor by wiping away the nonsense left over from her first few quests. All it takes is a single thought and everything vanishes simultaneously; Katia finds it rather satisfying.

"Let me plan this out..."

The dungeon will only be five rooms long in its first iteration, but Katia plans to make more after unlocking new components for her dungeon. She plans to make a safe room, a combat room, a parkour room, a boss room, and a reward room.

Katia doesn't want to put her vulnerable core somewhere people can reach, thus she encases herself in stone and waits to see if there are any adverse effects; There are none.

"Well that seems a bit unfair, doesn't it?"

She's not sure why entombing herself goes unpunished, but she knows not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Katia moves on to building her first room: The safe room.

Limestone manifests to create a high ceilinged room with little floorspace. Katia places a bronze statue in the center of the room, and models it after her former body. With any luck maybe some delvers will assume its some kind of goddess or spirit, and worship her? Katia shakes her metaphorical head at the thought.

Katia moves onto making a corridor connecting the safe room to the combat room. The combat room is half as tall as the safe room, but twice as wide and long. The center of the room is taken up by a large limestone pillar, and Katia liberally populates the room with Dire Rats.

"It feels like somethings missing here..."

Some inspiration and careful use of the Dungeon Terrain skill provides Katia with several new objects for her dungeon. By using bronze and wood Katia is able to create doors, barrels, and treasure chests. She places doors where the rooms connect to corridors, and scatters barrels throughout the combat room.

A devious grin would be on Katia's face if she had one; She places multiple Dire Rats into the scattered barrels, and to throw delvers off she also places some Linen Bandages into a few of the barrels. She gives the hidden Dire Rats instructions to try their best to ambush delvers; The Dire Rats seem to understand, despite their lack of intelligence.

"Hopefully that room isn't too brutal, or too easy."

Katia's attention moves past the combat room to a corridor leading away; She manifests the parkour room, which is twice as tall as the combat room, and a lengthy rectangular shape rather than a square shape. Her ideas take shape quickly, and soon enough the room has a large pit of semi-squishy moss, and a wooden ladder attached to the entry side so you can climb back up.

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The actual parkour is composed of limestone pillars and a few platforms. There's a direct route across to the other side, however a slightly more difficult route leads to a platform with a visible treasure chest. Katia places heaps of Rat Jerky inside the chest, and looks at her parkour room with satisfaction.

"I'm curious how many of them will go for the chest. All of them, maybe?"

The boss room is next up, and this one is cube shaped. The room is just as tall and long as the parkour room, however the width matches the length for the boss room. Katia spawns a Rat King in the center of the room; She can tell he alone won't be enough.

The center of the room is lowered; Katia creates four sets of stairs connecting the center and edges of the room. Small tunnels just big enough for Dire Rats are carved into the stone, and a swarm of Dire Rats is hidden within these faux warrens. Katia gives them instructions to run out into battle when the Rat King makes a specific screeching sound; The Rat King is told to make that sound when he deems the fight a losing battle.

"Ok, now for the rewards. No one wants to delve a dungeon without rewards!"

Katia creates an exact replica of the safe room's dimensions, albeit with some changes to the room's contents. Instead of a statue there are two wooden chests on a shallow bronze platform, and the back wall is carved to look like an intricate door despite being solid stone. Katia fills the two chests with Linen Bandages and Rat Jerky as a sort of prize, but the loot feels lacking. She'll be sure to replace it when she unlocks something better.

"All that's left is to open the portal... Let's do this!"

Activating her Dungeon Portals skill for the first time, Katia starts to connect her dungeon to the outside world. Reality coalesces into a rectangular projection of purple light seemingly attached to the wall itself; Katia cannot see through the opaque portal, but she can sense the portal has connected her to the outside world.

Quest Complete: The First Floor

Skill 'Dungeon Effects' learned!

Katia curiously inspects her new skill; It will allow her to create anomalous effects such as infinite flames and illusory skies. Seeing these new options for lighting embarrasses Katia as she didn't even remember that her delvers would need light sources!

Bronze wall sconces containing burning wood torches are placed evenly throughout the dungeon along with a few bronze braziers. She's considering what else to change when a quest pop-up brings her back to reality.

Quest Added: Monstrous

Objective: Have your monster(s) kill a delver.

Reward: Rat Hide reward unlocked.

Quest Added: Generous

Objective: Have a delver take a reward out of the dungeon.

Reward: Pack Rat unlocked.

~

Kevin swings a baseball bat at an obscenely big rat. These things are everywhere; Dire Rats is what the system calls them.

He smashes the creatures skull with a sickening crunch of his wood bat. Kevin breathes heavily while stumbling his way into the basement; Dire Rat corpses litter the floor behind him

The basement is strangely free of Dire Rats. Kevin is about to turn around and leave the empty basement when a burst of purple light appears; The light coalesces into a rectangular panel which bathes the dingy basement in otherworldly light.

"Is that... a portal?!"