The dungeon focuses, excited to get started on creating its first proper defender. As soon as it has enough mana, it summons its very first flesh abomination in the office room. Mana swirls and coalesces for almost 30 seconds, the monster's form taking shape in glowing light before the glow suddenly dims, revealing the form of the beast it has created all on its own.

It is a brutal looking creature, bearing no skin and with a somewhat humanoid shape. Its exterior is coated in all muscles and bone, and its form is massive. Built kind of like a gorilla, it stands at least 7ft tall, the monster's torso and arms bulging with muscles, its chest sporting a protective casing of exposed and enlarged reinforced ribs, its bloody skull also exposed, though it doesn't really have a neck so it can't turn its head around much. The arms are similar, each barreled appendage wider than a man's waist, its hands similarly enlarged. It wont be doing much more than open palms and closed fists, but a hulking beast like this wont need to. Finally, the legs. They aren't nearly as impressive as its arms, but do get the job done. Strong enough to support its weight and move around, but not much more than that. Clearly, dexterity and agility aren't this monster's strong suits.

All-in-all, the core is rather satisfied with this specimen of an abomination. Although the head is an exposed weak point, with a comically undersized head and a slightly stronger human skull housing the brain, one strong bash to its cranium would probably do it in, however it would be incredibly shocked if anyone could manage that feat easily and without harm. It has quite a reach, height, and strength advantage over normal men, so it would take a monster of a human to best it in melee combat with no humans yet integrated into The System. Or someone could get lucky with a 'gun' it has a vague awareness of, but it's pretty sure arrows and bullets wont manage to do much to its creature, its vitals rather well protected.

Thinking about it, its also mostly sure this monster's strength is thanks to the theme it chose of Research Bunker too. No way would a similar specimen in a different theme be even on a comparable level. Although it was a bit more expensive than it was expecting too. Oh well, its theme is decided. No changing the past.

Returning its awareness to its monster, it watches in satisfaction as the creature looks around the room its found itself in. As it watches, it notices an option become available for its abomination.

'Turn room into arena?'

Huh... It was not expecting monster arenas so soon. Usually that's reserved for boss creatures, although this monster is intended to remain in this room so it can see why it's been given the option to create one so soon. Plus, it's a special dungeon so it's probably also a perk of that too just generally speeding things up for itself. Either way though, it'll take it.

Accepting the prompt, it watches its beast suddenly tilt its head before getting to 'work' by smashing the furniture to bits. The dungeon can't help but metaphorically wince at the smashing of so much mana and so many hours going down the drain. Also its nature of not having skin also causes its to splatter blood around the room, giving it a more grisly appearance, which is a nice bonus.

Leaving the abomination to its carnage, it instead focus on the door to the stairwell, knowing its has got to lock it somehow to prevent people just rushing around the lumbering but admittedly slow defender. Locking the door is easy enough, but it can't lock a door without a key, and what it should make the key is what makes it pause to think. It could do something like a keycard but that has the problem of it not really knowing how to make one. Sure it knows it involves magnetism but it doesn't know how to make it work. Plus a simple keycard is fragile. That wont do. It could do a simple key, but that's rather uninspired, plus it can be bypassed by just picking the lock. It'll do that if it can't think of anything else, but for now, plotting.

Let's see... There's hand or retina scanners but again it has no clue how to make a proper one, or how to even make the 'key' for that work right with either a severed hand or eye. Either way, that's out until The System gives it the needed information to make it work. Back to the drawing board.

Perhaps a simple life monitor will suffice? After all it's easy enough for a dungeon to monitor the lives of those inside of it, even more so of its own creations. It'll be simple enough to put up a facade of one on the door, although it'll probably be pretty expensive. Besides, it already has the ability to do so anyway, its just going to need to put a bit more effort into this to make it look good or at least look natural.

With that settled, its rather simple for it to link the stairway door's lock to its abomination's life. With that done, it can also feel an outline for how it should make the lock appear, and waits around to refill its mana fully before adhering to that outline, spending a hefty 15 mana overall on the lock.

With the basics done, it looks back in the office, now thoroughly ruined and filled with shattered debris and with a much calmer abomination standing proudly in the middle of the carnage. Its beasts' heavy fists have even left hairline fractures in the concrete in places, a clear feat to its sheer brute force. The edges of the room are filled with the smashed remnants of desks and computers in varying states of violent deconstruction, and the twisted remains of chairs scattered in as well. The core uses its abilities to gently nudge a somewhat cleared path to the two doors to allow challengers to actually gain access to the room. Finally, it clears a small spot in the far corner of the room from the entrance where it proceeds to create a set of a few steel lockers to house loot in. No good fight goes without reward when its over.

Setting the lockers as loot chests, it watches as the previously pristine metal quickly tarnishes, dents, and rips in a few spots in order to better blend in, alongside breaking the locks so the lockers cant actually lock, then the loot spawns in two of the still usable lockers. In one spawns a steak MRE pack and a spaghetti MRE pack, and in the other spawns a box of 9mm bullets and a box of 12 gauge birdshot slugs. An interesting spawn if nothing else, but its not sure how well that loot will be figured as in this world. At least The System gave it something to use as loot so mercifully it didn't need to think about that.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Done fully with the first floor now, it 'steps' back to admire its handiwork before finalizing the floor fully with it having met The Systems requirements for a finished floor.

'Floor finalized. Locking future expansions, Monster respawn and damage reversal set.'

There, done. Before its sight it watches as weathering, aging, and other miscellaneous cosmetic details are applied the whole of its first floor, making everything seem like natural with its theme of abandonment and decay. Luckily it can still upgrade things, it just cant redesign or expand its entrance outside of its set path. Sure it's not a long first floor, but it is the first, so it's not meant to be a hike to get through. When The Systems' modifications are done, the place almost doesn't look the same despite nothing having had moved from where it was originally.

'Theme application done.'

With everything done, it admires how its entrance looks now, admiring the handiwork of its creator. It's as if the place aged decades in minutes, with cobwebs, faded paint, dust accumulation, and even a bloodied handprint or two all present in just the entrance room alone. The rest of the floor is more of the same, except with more bloody patches closer to the stairs one gets. Even the barricade it made in the hall has been improved, with sturdier metal furniture replace some of the more fragile wooden ones, and patches of rust acting like weak welds helping with holding everything together. Truly it's beginning to fit its theme proper.

it takes a moment more to admire its first floor before moving down to the second floor to continue building itself up. There, left with mostly bare rooms and a simple layout of an L-shaped hallway with some branching areas, the room holding its core at the end of the hall right next to a long-since collapsed staircase leading to further buried floors. First, more defenses.

First, it's time to create its second defender, another abomination. It builds up a new body, this one seeming much more lithe and lanky than its initial creation and yet costing the same. When the process is done, its new flesh abomination it quite the unique sight compared to its brethren. Standing almost 10ft tall upright and with arms long enough to leave its knuckles dragging along the floor, it has quite the reach. Yet, its only a fraction as strong and wide as the first, although still sporting more strength than the average human. It's also missing any skin it could possess. Instead, its much more nimble, flexible, and reactive, needing a fraction of the time to react to stimuli as compared to the brute on the upper floor.

Hit with a stroke of inspiration, it quickly builds up the ventilation system, expanding them wide enough that a skinny human could fit through them, the expanded ducts act as a perfect ambush and relocation method for its more fragile defender to use like an ambusher. These vents are also left untrapped.

Materializing some heavy furniture, it barricades the room on the inside of the hallway, blocking up both doors and keeping them from being opened from the hall itself, requiring one to use the vents if they want to access the room. Then, it materializes more furniture inside, making the place more into a security office. It also ups the strength of the doors so they can't just be broken down, making them out of heavy steel.

Next, putting a lock on its sanctum's door. This time, it goes with a remote lock, wiring it to a simple lever in the security office on the wall. The lock itself is some heavy steel rods in the doors that are spring loaded so when the door is closed they are forced down into divots in the floor, forcing the door to remain closed. When one activates the lever, the divots rise, pushing the rods out of the floor and allowing the door to open, albeit scrapping the rods on the floor causing plenty of noise. Still, its a strong lock so it doesn't need to worry about someone prying the door open with just sheer brute strength unless they match its abominations in might, which in that case it has bigger issues.

Now then, time to finish furnishing the floor. Firstly, it finishes up with the security office, adding some more loot lockers to it. This time there's only one holding loot, that being a loaded and operational M1 Garand rifle. Huh, maybe someone will want that but it thinks its a poor weapon due to its wooden body.

Onto the next biggest room right next to the entrance to the floor. This room it figures should be a break room. It gets to work with simple wooden furniture, cushions on the chairs, a potted plant in the corner, and a smashed and empty vending machine that doesn't work. Some solid progress if it does say so.

As it finishes the break room, it also realizes something its almost overlooked: security cameras! It's spent all that mana on monitors and it hasn't even put up the cameras to connect them to! Not that they'll be functional, but hey, dungeons needs a solid atmosphere if they want to truly stand out and attract delvers. No one wants to fight for their lives in a barren, empty hole in the ground after all. To properly set up the atmosphere, it needs every item to be clear in its purpose and to not miss obvious oversights like that.

Quickly it gets to work, putting a camera up in every room aside from the closets, and two in every hall. There, that'll do for placement. Luckily minor adjustments like that aren't forbidden by The System in finished floors.

With the cameras in place, it looks them over and makes sure they're in good spots just in case. They don't work because it doesn't know how to make them work, but it's sure that's fine for now. Time to move onto the other rooms. For the final unused large room on the second floor, it figures locker room of some kind will work, although this one won't be the loot spawning variety. Can't be making things too easy on the delvers now can it?

As it works on simply filling the room with narrow wooden benches and steel lockers in a variety of conditions, its newest abomination pokes its head out of a smashed vent grate on top of the wall furthest from the door. 'Good,' the core thinks to itself, 'it's exploring the vents. Hopefully it'll figure out the best ambush spots on its own, it's always nice when a core doesn't need to micromanage ones defenders it's sure. It can't really check that thought but it's sure it's accurate.

Next up, another utility closet in the only remaining room on the floor. This one is dedicated to ventilation though, and is larger than the one on the first floor. It's not entirely sure how to set it up fully, instead just building a furnace, an AC, and some ductwork to connect them to the already existing system. Altogether, it's a rudimentary attempt at an HVAC system. The AC doesn't work, but it thinks it did well on the furnace. That one works, at evident by a brief test run. Except it realizes it built the exhaust into the ventilation system itself. Oops... It's just gonna leave that off now. If someone turns that on then they can deal with the consequences of flooding the top two floors with toxic smoke. Hey, it's an accidental trap, there, justified.

Moving on, time to go over some more of the traps and furniture. This floor is almost complete and then after that it's just a waiting game for delvers. Might be awhile on that front though since it's pretty sure it's been several months since the creation of its dungeon and it hasn't seen a hint of delvers out at the entrance. Just wilderness and the occasional wild animal poking their head in before scampering off to wherever they want to.