It had been less than a day since I had freed myself, and already I had made a fair bit of progress, flowers were healthy, each producing a steady stream of 2 mana. Increasing my daily intake to 126 mana.

That was finally enough to wake up my first boss monster, and unlike the rest of the monsters on my early floors it was not made to fight fair. It was a boss, meant to serve as the general or champion of one of my armies when I needed to send them forth, or when there wasn’t an incursion as the champion of the first five floors.

The average dungeon bosses could fight through their parent dungeon down to their respective boss rooms. A fifth floor boss would be able to clear the dungeons' first 5 floors and a fiftieth floor boss would make it fifty floors down. And they would lead the monsters on the floors between themselves and the next bosses up. The fifth floor boss had the monsters from floors one through five while the tenth had the monsters from 6ix to ten.

That was the average dungeon, I was exceptional. My fifth floor boss was equal to any other dungeon's twenty fifth. In fact most adventurers who delved me never actually fought any of my bosses, unless they were seeking my core, the deeper floors, or trying to run a full clear.

This meant that with my first boss active I had some semblance of security, and the barest traces of my old power back.

The ancient golem that had stood silent in the center of its coliseum woke up, and began its old routine. Mindlessly pacing the halls while moving through basic forms with its shield and warhammer.

The ten foot titan of metal had been a monumental feat of magical engineering when it had first been built, and even though more efficient golems had been created even before I had been sealed away none had been able to compare to its sheer power.

It stood with the form of a man, not the most efficient or elegant, but considering it was designed to fight alongside such creatures it only made sense to make it more appealing. Its figure was more fit than the average adventurer, and the decorative pteruges it wore gave the statue a semblance of modesty. There wasn’t anything actually below the armored skirt but Humans seemed to prefer it having at least some clothing.

The rest of the fifth floor was a fairly simple maze that had the arena as its central location. The other monsters on this floor, Stone elementals that took the form of an avalanche of boulders chasing delvers throughout the floor, had already been awake, rumbling through the halls and shaking the dungeon all around themselves, and coating everything in a fine film of sand.

The only loot on this floor was three chests hidden on the edges of the maze, and the elementals would chase anyone out of the maze and into the arena before most people could find them.

Once in the arena they could either fight the boss or go past, onto the sixth floor. I didn’t really need my boss monsters to fight that often, most adventures had been content staying on my first thirty floors, and my bosses were strong enough that no one would actually delve if they were hostile.

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So they weren’t.

Now however my fifth floor was my final boss, and those safety features were not active, the golem would fight to kill, and the elementals would chase any invaders straight into its hammer.

With the floor up and running and its lethal traps reactivated I once again gazed outside my own walls, the life around my dungeon was getting steadily stronger, the goblins had more trouble cutting and harvesting the grass and the struggles of the still mundane creatures grew in ferocity.

All visible signs of an active and growing dungeon. New adventures would often spend weeks just fighting the wildlife outside of a dungeon as practice.

My modified rabbits already had 2 pregnancies, and if all went well there would be a few dozen more giant rabbits in just two short weeks. That would be no time at all for a dungeon, excepting the fact that it was an incursion.

I couldn’t get more mana bloom flowers until my tenth floor was active, and the rabbits would be what got me there. So I had to either wait two weeks before harvesting them for mana or try to find some other sources.

I would need 220 mana a day to keep my first ten floors online, meaning I needed to increase my upkeep by at least 94 mana. The short bursts of mana I got from mundane animals were usually used for repairing broken traps or creating tools for my goblins. But if I save up a hundred points I could artificially inflate my mana income for a day by slowly unleashing it into my dungeon. While also preventing it from being consumed by repairs or passive floor features.

That would allow the tenth floor to respawn the flowers, and my goblins would gather a few more.

My planning ground to a swift halt, I was a dungeon, I didn’t need to loot myself for flowers I could already grow! When the next batch of rabbits were dragged into my dungeon I took the 10 points of mana I gained with their death in a firm grip, and I sent it from my entrance and into the garden plot.

Those ten points of mana began to spin and compress, gaining more and more detail as thousands of different spells were woven throughout each fragment. I was exercising a dungeon's inherent magic, the ability to create life.

A full grown mana bloom flower took 20 mana to create, the bud I created was just that though, a small bud not yet flowering. I belatedly realized that even if I had activated my tenth floor I would have still needed 60 more mana to actually create the flowers that served as loot.

I was a creature of mana, a dungeon spirit. And with how little mana I was receiving I could barely even think. I only realized then that I had been planting highly valuable flowers right by the entrance to my dungeon, in the middle of the open with only a few low level goblins to guard them.

If something decently strong came by they would surely be stolen, and I would be back at square one. And my actions of actually bringing my first few floors online made little sense, the fifth and first were fine sure, one to guard me and the other to work and gather mana outside. But floors 2, 3, and 4? The monsters on those floors were too weak to be of any real use defending me and I hadn’t even been bringing them out of the dungeon to help build or gather. The monsters were just standing there guarding nothing.

I was falling prey to my basic instincts, and without enough mana to think clearly I couldn’t do anything about it. A flex of will put those floors back to sleep, only the few fixed mundane traps remaining active.

The mana freed up by that wasn’t allowed to go anywhere else, instead I marshaled it directly to my core and I felt some of the haze over my thoughts clear.

Just in time as well, as my goblin scouts could see a group of humanoids approaching in the distance, a goblins ' eyes were too poor at long distances to make out great details but I could already tell that the humanoids were armed.