By the time he filled the last ore bin it was early evening, and the wolves wanted to go out to train in the forest. The intent was clear in their minds without words.

He had no problem with them going outside if they wanted, but the way he had things pulled apart right now, they would have to pass right through his core room to get to the newly repaired entrance door.

It was a tense moment for him, but the wolves didn't give his core a glance or slow their trot until they were at the entrance. He half expected them to scratch at the door, but they just waited. He realized he hadn't named them, so he did that before he opened the door.

The paladin he named Lassie, because why not? The squire was more of a Rin Tin Tin. The wolves didn't seem bothered or even interested in the names or the process. Having a name might not help much outside of the dungeon, but then maybe it would. He wasn't clear on how respawning worked. He made a mental note to test that out with a named golem at some point.

As the wolves left, he closed the door and was about to begin repairing the spike snares. He hesitated.

Was there any point in keeping the snares? They hadn't worked as a barrier, and using them as intended was just too gruesome.

He remembered seeing moving walls in the list of traps. Maybe he could make more of a labyrinth with changing paths? Ten rooms still seemed like far too few for anything really challenging.

He opened the menu and noticed a new top-level theme he had never seen before, "Moonglow." Why hadn't he seen it when he looked after the achievement first appeared?

Moonglow 20:30

The light of the Moon has revealed new possibilities. Apply any of the following room themes while the Moon is shining. Options available may change depending on the phase of the Moon.

1. Twilight Cavern (100 stone, 10 mana)

2. Secluded Hollow (10 stone, 100 mana)

3. Lunar Forge (10 stone, 10 mana)

The "Lunar Forge" sounded interesting. He reset room six and converted it. Rather than an empty cube, the room became a larger, roughly circular cave, offset slightly to the east to support its larger size. It still connected to rooms five and seven by short tunnels. The cave was already furnished with things he couldn't quite make out by touch, so he sent golem number six to have a look.

The center of the room was taken up by a domed, stone firebox with a chimney next to a large anvil. To the side was a similar but taller domed firebox. Various workbenches with vices, grindstones and other tools lined the cave walls.

The chimneys exited the room through a skylight, and the room was lit by the glow of the fires and a half Moon and stars that showed through the skylight. Looking at the hole in the ceiling, it looked like the top of the cavern was only about a foot thick. It seemed impossible from the brief glimpse of the slope he had seen outside. He had been busy fighting wolves, but he definitely would have noticed if there had been a flat place. He would have to take a trip outside and have another look to be sure, but it was only the skylight's second biggest mystery. The biggest mystery was the Moon itself.

There was no doubt that this was the very same moon he had always known. How could that be? It did help explain the twenty-four hour day and how he had found recognizable cows and cats and wolves, even if they didn't behave the same as the ones in his world.

This world might work differently than the one he knew, but it was also the same world somehow. He wasn't sure how that helped him. He still didn't even know what continent he was on, and he wasn't enough of a stargazer to figure it out looking at the sky, assuming that was actually the sky.

He looked around and found a long rod on one of the workbenches. He picked it up and used it to prod the skylight. It stopped as if hitting a window, but when he scraped the rod across it, the sound was like scraping the rod against stone. Not a window, an illusion, or magic of some sort. The chimneys were dumping smoke into the sky somewhere. Or were they? The Moon was pretty conveniently centered too, now that he looked more closely. He doubted it was actually in that position outside.

One more mystery to solve, but it would have to be later. He put the rod down and looked at the rest of the room.

The menu told him that the central firebox was a "Forge." It didn't have any description or options, just a message, "You lack the required materials."

The other firebox was a "Smelter." It did have options.

Smelter

1. Refine Tempered Stone (10 stone, 1 mana)

2. Refine Mana Glass (1 stone, 10 mana)

He had no idea what Tempered Stone might be, but he had at least seen Mana Glass mentioned before. He changed focus and worked with Bossy and the Kittens to generate a few more actions, which he then turned into enough mana to top off his supply.

He selected 2.

Mana Glass created.

Achievement: Learning The Craft

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

You have crafted your first item! You've earned 1 gold as a reward.

Gold? He would have to look at that later.

A rectangle of clear green glass appeared on a shelf at the front of the smelter. He was hesitant to touch it since it might still be hot, although it seemed like the fire was just for show. He wasn't worried about burning his huge stone finger, but he thought the glass might still be soft.

He prodded it gently. A new menu appeared.

Store item? (Y/N)

This worked differently than digging stone then. He said yes and the slab of glass disappeared. He switched his focus to Sluice who was still in the store room.

Just as he expected, the slab of glass was now neatly stored in the repository.

He checked his stats to see how that showed in his inventory and there it was "mana glass (1/100)." He also now saw an entry for "Gold (1/1)."

He almost missed the much bigger change.

Unnamed Core 21:05

Levels: 1

Minions: 1

Monsters: 11

Mana: 0/11

Actions Remaining: 0

Action Recovery: 1 / day

1. Generate Mana

2. Create A Room (10 Stone)

3. Create A Monster (1 Mana)

4. Customization

5. Inventory

So that's how I grow my mana pool.

It was a slow process, but he now had a way to deal with that too. He explained what was going on to Bossy and set Johnny 5 to automating the milk loop with Bossy and the kittens for more actions.

In the forge room, he started out driving the golem himself to create and store the glass until the mana cap reached twenty. Once he had that headroom he handed the glass making off to the golem.

He thought about naming the golem Smith, but that seemed a little dry so he called him "Smittee." It took Smittee two actions to first make the glass, then store the glass in the repository. Fortunately, Smittee was able to understand a two step process.

Once Johnny and the gang crossed twelve hundred actions, he switched Johnny to generating mana and let Bossy and the Kittens get some much needed sleep. He started out with a wait step in Johnny's instructions, so he wouldn't get too far ahead of Smittee, but they kept getting out of sync.

He moved Johnny into the forge room and told him to make ten mana every time glass appeared on the smelter tray. That worked much better.

The process went as smoothly as the digging once he worked out the kinks. Not counting generating the actions in the first place, each sheet of mana glass cost about five seconds, so they were finished in less than ten minutes and he had capacity for 100 mana. He had just enough actions leftover to make twenty-four mana. He was itching to fill that capacity full or even make another repository, but he didn't want to wake Bossy and the kittens or the wolves who had returned and joined them while he and the golems were busy. Even Sluice had wandered back to their pit and dozed off.

He had plenty to keep him busy while they slept. He used some of the mana and stone to convert the entrance into a "Twilight Cavern" just to see what that looked like. He had been pretty sloppy, just arbitrarily repurposing rooms for the forge and store room, he had a plan for the cavern if it was anything like what he expected.

He was surprised to see the cavern was much bigger than the original entrance hall. He realized he had been creating rooms all wrong from the beginning. He thought he had to dig out the room then finish it. The menu even called it "finish" but that was just his lack of experience with magic it seemed. The cavern was much bigger than any space he had carved out.

From now on, it seemed like he just had to make a "room" then set it to what he wanted without digging the whole thing out, although that did seem to work too for making standard rooms larger, as it had with the boss room.

The cavern was vast and complicated. It came pre-furnished with a natural looking entrance through a narrow passage made by a tall, thin crack in the rock wall. Hundreds of long stalactites and stalagmites made the chamber seem ancient, and a huge rock rose from the middle of the uneven floor almost reaching the ceiling at its highest point. The ceiling varied from thirty meters at that point down to just half a meter at its lowest point along the western edge of the cavern.

From the finish options in the menu, it seemed like all of these features were customizable. His favorite feature was an option to add hidden passages. He couldn't make the entrance a hidden passage, unfortunately, but he used one to connect the cavern to room two. His golem couldn't see any indication of the passage even when he turned the ambient light to its brightest.

He could feel that one of the stones set low along the wall triggered the passage to open or close when pressed. Mages or thieves or whatever they had around here might be able to see it better than the golem, and it was likely experienced delvers would figure it out even if they couldn't detect it some other way, but it was much better than a wooden door with a window.

He started to turn the light completely out then noticed something new. Moonglow had added a "Natural Light" lighting option to all of his rooms. He moved his focus and set the boss room to that lighting and immediately saw with Big John's eyes that the ceiling of the room vanished to be replaced with a sky full of stars and the half Moon. The Moon was lower in the sky now.

He switched back to Smittee and checked the skylight. As he suspected, the Moon hadn't moved at all there.

He named the golem in the cavern, "Bashful" and walked him through the crack in the wall to take a peek outside.

The moon outside matched the position and appearance of the moon in the boss room, but not the forge. The forge skylight really was just a cheap decoration like the fake fires.

Bossy had told him more than once that his System wasn't like any she had seen. He had put it up to being from another world at first, but now he was starting to think it had more to do with being a "gray core." How many other gray cores were out there? Did they not last long, so no one had ever heard of them? Or was he the first?

Who would know? Were there scholars out there that studied dungeons, books or whole libraries about them somewhere? Maybe the dungeons themselves knew something, assuming they were aware, like him. Was there any way to reach them? Was that even a good idea?

He knew so little about this world, and since he had been in it, he had been too busy to stop and find out more. That was going to change. He looked in on his sleeping residents.

It would have to be tomorrow.