This was going to be an absolute masterpiece when Thomas was done with it. Or so he hoped.

The first step was simple. All he had to do was maximize the distance between the entrance and the core, a process that obviously involved ensuring that it wasn’t going to be as easy to access the museum as taking advantage of the broken skylight. So Thomas replaced it with meters-thick diamond, taking full advantage of the durability of dungeon construction to hold up the immense weight. The crystal was tough, far stronger than the handful of forms of armored glass he had access to, and the cost was hardly an issue for him.

To quote one of his favorite TV shows, they were merely “carbon molecules lined up in the most boring way”. Perfectly mundane materials in a simple pattern, with the only cost stemming from the mass of the material, rather than any innate magic or complexity.

And from there, things were just a matter of throwing up a few walls, preventing people from advancing into the courtyard directly, or turning left to the south stairs, instead sending them to the right. There, they’d have to complete an entire circuit around the courtyard until they truly reached the South Stairs, where they’d have to do yet another circuit, walking the same path they had before, just one story up.

The labyrinthian exhibits on the Western side, though, he left those as they were, funneling people through them for “Education” experience, as opposed to one gained by “Challenge”.

Except this time around, the circuit would not be complete, it’d only be a half circuit until they reached the middle of the northern second-floor corridor, where there were the staircases that wrapped around the central library, with a path running down either of the circular core room. Leaving the delvers in the former courtyard, which had been converted into an indoor area at some point, and would now become the boss room. He also raised diamond walls around the stairs to make sure that people on them couldn’t destroy his boss with ranged attacks.

And then, finally, if the delvers survived, they’d reach the access door to the library on the south side of the circular room.

Of course, Thomas also wound up shuffling that area around as well a little, ensuring that people wouldn’t have a clear shot at the core from the door.

That was when he proceeded to the second step. Populating his domain.

He decided to use an “inside out” approach to populating it, ensuring he’d have the available defenders needed to protect the core. If he hit his command limit before he reached the door, oh well, that was just more space he could freely decorate with no care for leaving the space viable as battlefields.

The real issue was that he didn’t have a spare champion, though. They didn’t count against his command limit and were more powerful than other creatures of their rank.

So he had to use a standard creature as a boss. Or rather, a combination of creatures, or so was the plan.

Thomas summoned a Guardian Bull, the massive undead bovine gaining multiple extra lives as he took advantage of the unique abilities of this kind of creature. It counted triple against his limit, and cost three times as much as normal, but it would also have to be taken down three times.

But merely having a tough creature was nowhere near enough.

So he added a Spiritus Machina on its back. Spiriti Machinae, actually.

Two sets of Mongolian armor, both possessed, with one breastplate inside the other while the arm and leg pieces were wielded independently. And a long as possible cavalry saber was wielded by yet another Spiritus in each hand.

Six Spiriti and a three-lived undead bull. Expensive, but it should be pretty badass.

Thomas also added multiple cat mummies to the area, just to start nipping at people’s ankles, or driving their fangs into unprotected necks when someone granted them an opening.

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So, that was almost twenty percent of his available command points spent just on his core room, but that was fine.

He continued his work in the room that led to the stairs, which was the one that had originally contained the mummies, and was now largely bare. Thomas sighed, and dove into the archives, finding a few exhibits with minimal historical importance he felt he could absorb and copy.

Sure, this room would no longer contain King Tut and other exhibits that were almost as grand, but at least it no longer looked horrifically bare.

Thomas had moved many of the “glass” cases from the center of the room towards the wall, though he put a very wide wall in front of the door so that people could see in, but not actually do anything other than scout.

By literally any standard other than “I’m a Dungeon, raw material is cheap”, fully encasing exhibits in solid diamond would be extravagant beyond belief, but Thomas was a Dungeon, and the idea of having that much valuable material lying around without anyone really knowing tickled him pink.

He also filled the area with several Crypt Guardians waiting in display cases with one open side, with the opening facing away from the door, greatly limiting the areas from where one could attack them from.

And the ceiling looked like someone had gone to a whole lot of trouble to toilet-paper it, being utterly covered in “bandages” that were actually made from some fireproof blankets that Thomas had found in the janitor’s closet. Why someone would use those over a fire extinguisher was beyond him, but he was just glad that he had access to them.

These would serve as the base for half a dozen cat mummies and not be quite as flammable as the rest of the room was.

Actually … Thomas sighed and returned his attention to the core room and added yet another Spiritus to the bull to animate the collection of sown-together fire blankets he’d draped over it. Now, the cloth would automatically intercept any fireballs or flamethrower streams that threatened to ignite the bandages.

From there, Thomas continued on to the east hallway on the first floor, which had once held a collection of Chinese Jade, as well as several extra exhibits from that same country. He didn’t have much that would fit in particularly well, so other than decorating it and adding in a couple of animated Chinese dresses, he left it alone.

The next room was the one above the museum’s main entrance, in which he just added a Guardian Bull. Not particularly powerful, but it should be one hell of a nasty surprise whenever someone reached the top of the stairs for the first time.

And on he went to play with the massive Egyptian, Greek, and Roman section, utterly stuffed with statues and reliefs made from marble and other stone, all of which Thomas had removed and was now putting back. But not by destroying and copying them, oh no, he’d come up with a trick while working on his new Dungeon.

He couldn’t, or rather, wouldn’t, absorb the sculptures themselves, but he could absorb a few material samples the size of grains of sand to get the materials down pat, and then get the pattern for the air around them. He limited himself to a thin layer of air, of course, to avoid a low-pressure zone that explosively refilled a split-second after he was done, but the process still worked.

And as a D-Ranked Dungeon, he could merge patterns now. The process wasn’t simple or easy when using it on creature patterns, unlike the automatic addition of new structures when creating champions, he had to individually adjust everything, even having to take into account stuff like actual, physical, rejection. But merging rock with the air structure, filling the empty portion with the specific stone needed, that was about as simple as this got.

Thomas even decided to create a very impressive replica of the Rosetta Stone from pink marble, with gold inlaid into the hieroglyphs. Utterly gorgeous, and very clearly not the original. Clear proof that he’d retrieved the original and that caution was not required when fighting around it.

Overall, he had a lot of fun with the Egyptian section, making obelisks made from obsidian so dark it seemed to suck in the light, a horus statue formed entirely from sapphire, just for the hell of it, and so on, though Thomas made sure to thoroughly anchor anything that looked valuable enough to steal.

Then, he took one look at it and added a whole bunch of extra decorations from the Greek section, just to fit in with the Marble Hoplites he added to this section.

Using strategically positioned display cases and statues, Thomas created a series of funnels and chokepoints, which would force the delvers to take several head-to-head confrontations against the deadly golem-like creatures.

Then, he turned the next area into an actual exhibit, describing some of the coolest objects he’d found in the museum.

Which already brought him to the final area, an immense library that ran almost the entire length of the museum’s eastern wall, also containing numerous stuffed animals, an empty alcove that used to hold a mummy, and a medieval set of plate armor. It was the last part that Thomas chose to replicate several times over while also adding vases and plates wherever they halfway fit, animating these defenses with Shattering Poltergeists and Spiriti Machinae.

Now he just needed someone to try and walk inside … oh, this would be fun.