Chapter 2:

After hearing Lucy say that I glance at my first monsters for a moment. My wolf have grey fur and yellow eyes while my Larva was white. "So what do I do?"

"Max, dungeons can send their consciousness around their dungeon. When they are in their core room they can sense what is happening in the dungeon. When they send it to a room they can see what's happening in that room more clearly."

I try feeling my body, I grasp it and can feel my body and sense everything around it. I can see it clearly. I tell Lucy " I grasped the method, now what do I do?"

"Send your mana to where you want your room and invoke your skill. You just have to imagine what your room looks like and it will be created. When your imagining the room your skill will invoke by itself. Afterwards you can shape your room to your will and destroy it at will as well. " Lucy then points at a wall of my core room and says " Try making a room there. Remember the bigger the room and the more fancy it is, the more mana it takes. Make 4 rooms that are 200 square meters  big, each. That is the most your can make with the amount of mana you have as of now."

I try imagining a room  that is 200 square meters big. Sending my mana there I here ding sound.

You have invoked the skill Create/Shape/Destroy Dungeon

You have used 2500 mana

Something is leaving my body which I'm assuming is my mana. This feeling is weird but I will get used to it with time, I feel drained from creating the room.

"Good job you created the room, check your work out before going to the other rooms." Lucy claps.

I send my consciousness my room. I see a room which is square shaped and is 200 square meters big. The height of the room is 10 meters tall and has torches on the walls to light up the room. The walls are made up of granite. Thinking this was a good job for the first room I created I do the same process until I notice something.

"Lucy I think we are in a huge mountain. I noticed this when I looked around for my last room to be built. Is this good."

Surprised and happy, Lucy exclaims " This is extremely good, this way we don't have to search for a place to create the entrance. We already have one. Hunting for essence can be easier if we are in the wilderness if the creatures enter the dungeon!"

Excited and happy, I get rejuvenated by this good news and I start working even harder now. All my rooms were the same and were made up of granite, which I'm guessing is the basic mineral of the mountain.

"I'm finished building the rooms Lucy, how do I recover my mana?"

She explains to me " Normally you can just rest and let your mana recover by itself, but most dungeons just absorb the mana from the air. This will also increase your mana reserves if you keep doing this as training. Absorbing mana will let you recover your mana faster."

Wanting to increase my mana reserves and recover my mana faster, I try absorbing the mana from the air. I think of a invisible energy in the air which is being pulled towards me and entering me. Concentrating on this thought helped me a lot and let me absorb mana from the air. A thought flashes, I remember some of the novels I read where the protagonist filters the mana of its impurities to get more pure mana. Imagining a sieve where the invisible energy in the air goes through before reaching me, I feel a qualitative difference where the energy fells more pure, powerful and comfortable. Hearing a gasp, I open my eyes and look at Lucy. "What's wrong Lucy?"

"Why is the mana your absorbing so pure?"

I answer with the tone that made it sound like she's stupid " I imagined a sieve where the invisible energy in the air which is mana goes through before reaching me."

Feeling offended she replies with an angry tone " This never happened before, no one ever attempted that before. I have to note this done. You're lucky, this means your mana reserve will increase faster and recover faster while being at a higher quality. This will give you a major advantage over other dungeons."

Recovering my mana for a little while, I adjust my rooms a little making holes on the walls which connect to a wolf den where the wolves will come out of. I also create a area in my core room for the larva's to evolve safely. Placing my finishing touches I hear Lucy saying  " Ok, let's add some traps now. What traps do you have?"

Feeling a little embarrassed I say " I only have the pitfall trap."

Her face shows a little surprise before reverting back normal, I hear a low murmur " That's weird dungeon's normally have 2 traps while most get some with their monsters. Since it's him I'm not that surprised. I got more surprised today then any day in my life, I'm probably going to lose my sense of surprise at this rate."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Create pitfall traps in your 4 rooms and cover them with rock that will break under the weight of humans or more."

I do as she says and imagine a huge hole in a room with a thin sheeting of rock that will break on the weight of a human. A blue box pops up under the familiar ding sound.

You have invoked Create Traps Level 1

You have used 100 mana

Lucy goes towards the trap and goes into corporeal form and steps on it. She falls into the trap, after a moment she comes out of the trap in incorporeal form and says " That is a decent sized pitfall trap, create the rest."

I do as she says and after I finish, I hear the ding sound. Feeling confused about the ding sound, I look at the blue box.

You have upgrade from Apprentice Dungeon to Novice Dungeon

Mana reserves been upgrade from 10100 to 20100 and health has been upgrade from 1000 to 2000

For having only one trap you have been awarded with the Boulder Trap and the Pitfall (Spike) Trap

Boulder TrapA boulder will be released into the room and follow a set path crushing anything in front of it

Pitfall (Spike) TrapPretty much the same as the Pitfall Trap but has spikes at the bottom

A feeling of extreme joy invades me and I yell "Lucy I upgrade from a apprentice dungeon to a novice dungeon and my mana went from 10100 to 20100 while my health went from 1000 to 2000! I also gained two new traps, the pitfall spike trap and the boulder trap."

Her expression changes into one of joy and says " Good now upgrade your pitfall traps to the spikes addition and add the boulder traps."

Imagining spikes at the bottom of the pitfall trap they suddenly appear. I do this for every room before creating a long narrow path going to different rooms. This is where the boulder trap will take place, I imagine the trap and gets created. Whoever steps on a trap block will unleash the boulder into the narrow path. Something then pops up in my mind and I ask Lucy " What are the dungeon ranks?"

" Now is a good enough time to tell you. The ranks apprentice and novice is when dungeons are first building their dungeons to be ready for it to be invaded. At this rank they don't create their entrances. When they reach the H rank, that is when they open up their dungeons for the outside world and also when the Spectrals leave. The ranks are the following : Apprentice, Novice, H, G, F, E, D, C, B, A, AA, AAA, S, SS, SSS, X, XX, XXX then finally God ranked where even gods will die inside the dungeon. No dungeons have reached god rank and the highest ranked dungeon of all time reached the XXX rank and is still alive."

This made excitement bubble inside me, there are many ranks ahead which means I can get extremely strong. "Lucy, I have a present for you." I say. I wanted to thank Lucy for all the help she gave me so I made her a room. I show her the room and she looked happy. "Thank so much Max!" she exclaims as she hugs me, or well the dungeon core. Realizing what she did, she walks away while blushing. Seeing this I asked something "Is it possible for me get a humanoid body?"

"Oh, I'm sorry I forgot about that. Yes it's possible. Right now you can send your consciousness into a monster of your dungeon and control it. This means when you get a humanoid monster you can control it." Lucy says in a apologetic tone.

The possibility of having a body excites me and I try sending my consciousness into a wolf. It was exactly like she said, I can control it. I start running circles around Lucy and I howl in joy. I return back to my dungeon core form and tell her " This means I can train and help defend the dungeon. I can also sleep, eat and do other stuff like hanging out with you. I can't wait till I get a ......." A noise that is seriously getting annoying sounded in my head.

Your larvae has evolved

My face change into that of a surprised one and Lucy asked me "What happened?"

To be continued.

Author: This is my second story, first being Breaking Chains. Leave tips, comments and reviews. What it evolved to will come next chapter.