The seals keeping me sealed were finally waning, it had been long enough that I didn’t even know how long it had been, constantly kept in a state where I was barely awake. My legions of monsters had fared little better, the slightly increased flow of mana finally allowing me to see what had become of my once great halls. 

Time and Lack of mana had turned most of my monsters into desiccated husks, barely kept alive by the nature of the seal and their ties to my core, The little mana I produced Naturally being devoured to sustain their coma-like states. 

With the sealings weakening I was done waiting, the thin gaps that had been worn in by time and mana both would serve to rend the barrier asunder. Deep within my deeps on my final floor the gargantuan mana generator began to spin to life, I did not have enough fuel to run it for long, what few souls I had stockpiled had long since faded to their barest husks, but I did not need to run it for more than a few moments. 

With an unearthly screech the fabric of space was torn apart, and the generator groaned to life, flooding my halls with a burst of mana. The monsters on my bottom floor were drinking deeply and reinvigorating themselves before I took hold of the mana. If I allowed it to flow naturally the mana burst would never reach the seals, so Instead I guided it through my channels, the rest of my monsters would merely have to wait. 

When the wave of mana finally reached my first floor it crashed into the seal like a wave on the shore, and here was where things got difficult, mana did not like flowing out of low pressure zones, and my dungeon was practically a vacuum of mana. Still within my halls I was lord, and the mana would obey. Taking an even firmer grasp of the mana I twisted it into drills and forced it between the thin gaps the spellwork had formed. 

Space screamed and the dungeon shook as the binding keeping me out of reality began to fray, like the world itself rejected my presence. But the struggle was far weaker than it should have been. The world's resistance to my intrusion should have been nearly insurmountable, even if I was originally a native. If the barrier between my pocket dimension and the dimension proper was so thin something had to be wrong. 

Paranoia drove me to awaken the few monsters on my first floor, weak though they may be, they were still capable of serving as guards and scouts both. The goblins, Giant rats, and slimes woke, and startled by their entire world shaking they began to cower, only for my mind to brush against theirs, calming their fears. 

It took only a bare few points to awaken them, nothing compared to the thousands I had battering at the walls, so bringing them back to life did not truely weaken my assault. With my second safety net in place It was finally time to reenter the world that had banished me oh so long ago. 

With one finally weak crack and a rapidly fading screech my dungeons entrance formed on the mountain side I had once called home. 

Or it would have been if the mountains were still there, Apparently it had been long enough for the mountain to erode away into plains. The few things left of my once majestic home were a few boulders and the small hill I was perched on. 

That was disappointing, it had taken me decades to grow that mountain range. 

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With the opening of the dungeons entrance the flow of natural mana once again began to pour into the dungeon, saturating my first 5 floors. There was a problem though, without my presence the mana dense region I had inhabited and maintained had faded, the veritable river of mana I should have received was only a trickle. 

I had expected the mana density to drop a little over the years, but the magical ecosystems that sprung up around me should have kept it in an elevated state indefinitely, drawing in and producing enough mana at just the right pace to maintain an equilibrium. 

Forget my mountains, what had happened to my ecosystems? It had taken me literal centuries to breed and grow the forests and creatures that populated it, mana vents and powerful guardian beasts should have kept it safe. 

But instead I was left with a plain, filled with the bare minimum of mana a dungeon needed to survive. 

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Had my imprisoners burnt my forests and leveled my mountains? They hadn't been strong enough to kill me, and the guardian beasts in my forests should have been capable of defeating the strongest heroes I had ever faced myself. They were equal to the bosses on my 85th floor, and no adventures had ever made it past my 82nd. 

With my limited perception outside my dungeon and with how much time had passed I imagined I would never find out. 

The mana flow was barely 20 points worth a day, that was just enough for the monsters on my first five floors, but not enough for the area boss of the fifth. And without any animals or adventures nearby to delve into my dungeon I would need to resort to other methods of increasing my mana income. 

My tenth floor, a wide forest expanse, had a variety of magical herbs and plants growing within. In ages past it was a verdant paradise, filled with magical beasts and small groups of adventures camping and gathering herbs. 

Time had not been kind though, the plants were withered, the trees had decayed, and the animals were starving husks barely capable of twitching. The artificial sun that should have lit up the floor's sky was dark, where once this had been a place of constant daylight now it hadn’t seen the sun for thousands of years. 

But it was this floor that held the key to my plan, one of those withered flowers, and the rarest plant on this floor, the “Flower of Blooming Mana”, which as its name suggested would occasionally release a burst of mana when in a sunny and nutrient rich environment. 

These flowers were used in high end mana potions or golems. And only 3 grew on the ten acre floor. Any adventurers that found it would earn enough money for a year's worth of food and shelter. I was going to be planting as many of those flowers as I could in the plains outside my dungeon. 

This was how I had started my ecosystem last time, though with considerably more trial and error. If the forest outside my dungeon hadn’t been so wild and dangerous I imagine that the flowers' abundance wouldn’t have lasted long. My tenth floor was a peaceful place, where one could safely recuperate and search for herbs, with the magical beasts on the floor being peaceful as long as one respected them and the woods. 

The forest had not been nearly as safe, a dungeon, for all it can pretend, is not wild. And it was this control over the beasts and monsters that I leveled to bring the goblins and rats of the first floor down to the tenth, usually the increased mana density would kill the weak creatures, but my dungeon had once been bathed in so much mana that my first floors mana was equivalent to another dungeons 20th. 

Not in strength mind you, only in mana density. Most other dungeons did not cultivate their own mana ecosystems. This had led to me needing to develop an astounding level of control over my mana, keeping it from tearing all my creatures apart on the smallest levels.

This control was now turned to keeping the mana drained floors from sucking all the mana from my few remaining monsters. The situation had been flipped, with the first five floors being the only floors actually possessing any significant level of mana. 

Oh how low I had fallen, to be calling 20 points a day a significant level. 

Only the goblins' natural ability to see in the dark allowed them to navigate the darkness of my lower levels, where once mana torches had kept my halls alight now those same torches sat unburning. 

It still took the goblins over an hour to reach the tenth floor, but with my guidance it took them little time to find the flowers. The rats set to digging them up roots and all while the goblins carried the flowers. Opposable thumbs had many uses. 

Another hour passed and the goblins reached the 1st floor, standing just at the border of the entrance. Dungeon monsters could only exit a dungeon during a world incursion, outside of those events the world would seek to shred the mana composing my monsters apart, breaking them down into nothing but unaligned mana and chunks of light. 

Naturally I had figured out a way around this by my 30th floor, just put a cocoon woven out of a few hundred points of mana around your creature, the world would still shred through the cocoon but it would take time, and as long as the cocoon was there your creature was safe. 

One small issue arose then, I only had 120 mana a day, 100 from my core and 20 from the outside, and that was income. I had no stockpile as my upkeep was even greater. 100 mana was barely enough to maintain my creatures in a state of hibernation and 120 wasn’t much better. 

Any monsters I lost would be lost permanently until my dungeons mana income overtakes its upkeep. 

Without any mana to form a cocoon I couldn’t use that method, there was only one other option then. I needed to guide the world's mana so that it couldn’t touch my creature. If I hadn’t been a 100 floor dungeon I wouldn’t have even considered doing this, it would be more than impossible. And if I had been a healthy 100 floor dungeon I wouldn’t need to, I would have had more than enough mana to shelter my creatures. 

I marshaled my considerable skill at mana manipulation and ordered one of the goblins to stride forth, a rusty shovel and flower in its hands. If I could keep one safe I might decide to try and send forth a few more, but one would be enough of a struggle to start with. 

Its foot crossed the first floor's boundary and I prepared for the fight of my life, only for the thin mana outside to ignore my goblin. 

Oh. Oh no. That was bad, a world incursion was a rare event, when another realm would intersect and invade my own. Dungeons and heroes would ally together to fight off the invaders, final bosses from thousands of dungeons and hundreds of thousands of floor bosses would march and wage war with the aid of the heros and adventurers who so often would slay them. 

That wasn’t overkill either, oftentimes a world incursion would last for years before they were forced out. Dungeon monsters would die by the millions to push back the otherworldly horrors. Civilisations would end and dynasties would fall. Every world incursion left scars on the world that would take centuries if not millennia to fade. 

Often the only sentient beings left by the end of the incursion were those who sheltered in the dungeons, taking the role of the dungeon monsters to defend the dungeon with only a token force of monsters remaining to guard the core, usually the second strongest boss and their attendants. 

I even designed my 38th and 75th floors as fake cities just to have places to put all the survivors and civilians during an incursion. 

And I was stuck facing one as a 5 floor dungeon without a single boss to my name. 

As the lone goblin stared up at the sky, glowing a blood red rather than the kind blue it should have been. I found I could forgive them for dropping the shovel and flower.