Making light was harder than I'd assumed. I knew people had used fire to create light for thousands of years, but I couldn't figure out how. Part of the problem was that I couldn't make an initial fire, but another part was moving it to the areas I wanted lit. After all, I didn't want to just have a bonfire in the middle of each room, but I also knew that torches don't actually work like they do in the movies. To keep a stick burning when it's apart from any other fuel or heat source? Not easy.

Ok. One step at a time. First to make fire, then to get it placed where I wanted it. I thought of all the ways I'd learned to make a fire, back when I was a boy scout. Battery and steel wool? No battery. Magnifying glass? Possible, although I needed the sun for that, so I'd have to get to the surface first. Flint and steel? No steel. The only metals I currently had found were iron and silver. I knew steel was made from iron, but I didn't know how. Which left rubbing two sticks together super fast. I'd never actually managed that one, though I had seen someone succeed, so I knew it could work. I thought about how I'd seen them do it.

They had taken a bow and twisted the string around a straight stick. Then they'd sandwiched the stick between two blocks of wood and started moving the bow back and forth. As the bow had moved, it made the stick spin. The friction from that spinning then made the top and bottom places where the stick met the wood blocks extremely hot. It had taken him quite a few tries, but he'd eventually gotten it hot enough that some small shredded tree bark had started smoking and a few embers had formed. At that point it was just a matter of supplying oxygen and fuel at the right rates.

Now I had to copy them. I had the disadvantage of not having a body, although I had the advantage of being a dungeon core with all of the unique abilities which that conferred. I looked at my mobs. None of them had opposable thumbs. I figured the best option would be Night, since he was the biggest. I looked at my boss room. I hadn't yet remade Night, although I'd regained most of the essence needed to create him while thinking about making fire. I realized I'd been thinking "him" and "he" when thinking about Night instead of "it". I thought for a second, then gave a mental shrug. Not like it mattered much either way, and I was pretty sure my mobs didn't have genders. I summoned a new copy of Night. Then I looked at the leftover mobs. There was a badger and an assortment of snakes and mice. "Ari, how do I get rid of these extra mobs now that I don't need them any more?" She had flown back to my core room once the display of my new boss was over, and now she was looking at the sprout again.

Ari shrugged. "Kill them somehow. Have them fight each other or make a new boss to get rid of them. They weren't all that expensive."

I felt a bit bad for just killing them. Still, they weren't really alive. If you don't want to die, walk out of the room. All of them started walking out! At first I thought they had actually made the choice to live before I realized how I'd worded my command. Ari had said mobs didn't feel anything or want anything at all, and I'd said to leave if they didn't want to die. Stop. They all froze. Walk again if you want to live. None of them moved. They really were just very lifelike robots. I told them to fight the new boss, and within a few seconds there was only one mob left in the room. I'd noticed that once the mobs died their remains soon faded away, which helped my dungeon stay nice and clean. Forming the curved stick of wood and the straight stick and two blocks was easy. I even made a stand so the top block would stay on the stick, since Night didn't have an extra hand to hold it on like the person I saw do this before had done. Now the problem was string and kindling. For kindling I realized I could just make slivers of wood appear right where I needed them while the fire was growing.

Then I realized I would also need to supply the new fire with oxygen. Before I would do that by blowing. But now … I wonder if … I used "absorb matter" and tried to absorb the air. There wasn't really a light show like when I absorbed something solid, but I gained the patterns for a number of different gasses. One of them was oxygen.

Now I just needed a string. I looked at my options. I noticed the feelers from the flaming bloomer plant. That was pretty string-like, but pretty weak. I thought about how I could strengthen it. At first I was going to braid 3 of them together like they did to make a rope, but then I thought of something! I could infuse essence into rock to make it stronger, why not into this? I created a feeler hooked on the two ends of the curved stick and twisted around the straight one. I infused the long, string-like feeler with essence. The essence seemed almost to resist, like it didn't want to go in. I pushed a bit harder, and some essence flowed into my string. I told Night to grab the "bow" I'd created softly in his mouth and to move it slowly back and forth. It held! Infusing the string with essence had definitely strengthened it.

I had Night slowly start moving faster. And faster. And faster! Soon he was whipping his head from side to side. I could see the bottom of the stick grinding at the block. First I could tell it was getting hot. Then it drilled a little ways down into the block of wood and suddenly the heat was being trapped. It built up quickly, and soon the wood started to smoke. I had Night continue for a few more seconds before I absorbed the stick and created a bunch of tiny wood shavings in the hole it had drilled. I watched as they started to smolder. I added some oxygen. An ember! With the super fine kindling and an unlimited supply of pure oxygen, the ember quickly grew into a flame. Soon I had a roaring fire going in the boss room. "Ari! I did it! I made a fire!"

Ari cocked her head. "What?"

"Come to Night's room. I'll show you!"

I quickly made a copy of my apparatus as she flew down the tunnel. Once she arrived, I excitedly explained how it worked.

As she understood what it was for, she burst out laughing. "All of that, just to make a fire?"

I was confused. I thought I'd done pretty well! "Well, yeah!"

Ari chuckled a little more. "I have to admit, I don't know of any other non-fire dungeon that's figured out how to produce fire using just those abilities. But Alex, you can literally control essence, which is basically pure energy."

I didn't see what she meant. "So?"

Ari smiled. "So fire is basically pure energy as well! If you send some essence to create a fire, it will do so!"

If I'd been able to, I'd have been staring at Ari in shock, and if I'd had a mouth it probably would've been hanging open. I sent a bit of essence to the second apparatus I'd made, instructing it to burn it. The dot of essence arrived … and the whole thing lit on fire.

Probably sensing how disappointed I was, Ari tried to console me. "Still, creating pure fire with essence is a lot more expensive than creating materials, so if you can make this work it'll save you a good bit of essence in the long run."

I was a bit happier to find that my messing around was actually useful, so I set myself to figuring out how to make a lamp. Turns out it was pretty easy. I had glass, so I just made a glass lamp shape directly on the wall. It was basically a ball with a tube in the top and bottom connecting it to the wall. Then I made a tunnel where the bottom of the lamp went into the wall. I made a long tunnel because Ari had explained that many of my dungeon abilities would have problems when adventurers were near. I then started a stream of oxygen and wood dust flowing out of the tunnel into the lamp. I made a matching tunnel at the top of the lamp, and started absorbing air from that area at the same speed as I made it at the bottom. Soon I had a swift stream of air and wood dust blowing through the lamp. I then added just a bit of fire. With pure oxygen and lots of fine fuel, it again lit easily. I had to adjust the speed of the airflow a few times, but eventually I got it.

Ari stared. She'd been watching the whole time I'd made it. "Wow! I didn't think you would get something that fast! This will definitely be more essence efficient than the classic torches, and frankly, I think adventurers will like the break from the norm."

I thought about it for a second. "Actually, I'll probably still use torches for the initial rooms. These lamps wouldn't fit the themes very well. And the boss room has the chandelier, which I don't really want to try to make work like these lamps, that just sounds like a pain. So it'll probably just be the hall leading to the boss room that'll have these."

Ari shrugged. "Not a big deal. As I said, most dungeons just use torches, so it's not like you'll be spending more than normal. And a small flame like a torch can last for quite a while on a single unit of essence."

All good things. Now I could get some light in my dungeon. "What should I do now, Ari?"

Ari started listing things off on her fingers. "Mobs, check. Boss, check. Lights, check. Next thing's probably assigning loot to the mobs. Remember how I told you that you can add extra essence to a mob to be turned into loot for the adventurers when it dies? Assigning loot drops to mobs makes it far easier on you than having to remember what mobs drop what loot. And then the added essence is just included in the cost of the mob when you create it. What loot options do you have available?"

I wasn't even sure how to check. "Uhhh, how do I see that?"

"If you examine one of your mobs you'll see its menu, and there'll be an option to assign loot."

I examined one of the snakes.

Leafy serpent (flaming bloomer)(G3)

HP: 30/30

STR: 2

CON: 3

DEX: 10

Assign loot

Lots of good information there. Ari had explained the stats to me before. STR was strength, and indicated how strong a mob or adventurer was. CON was constitution, and indicated how much HP or life a mob had, as well as how hard it was to damage. DEX was dexterity, which was related to speed and agility. Those were the most common stats to see in a mob, according to Ari. She'd also told me that the average for a human was ten in all three, so my snake was about even with a human in terms of dexterity, but far weaker and lots easier to kill. Which all made sense. I selected Assign loot.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

There was a pretty big list. But once I sorted out all of the Bland loot there weren't many left. I didn't have a ton of options.

Loot options:

Bland loot

Resurrection token

Iron ingot

Silver ingot

Low quality uncut diamond

I knew I needed to assign the resurrection tokens to the mice in the first room, but then my options for the following rooms were not great. "OK, so I have an iron ingot, a silver ingot, and a, quote 'low quality uncut diamond' as my three options." It helped that I only needed to absorb a tiny amount of something to gain the pattern, there had only been one tiny vein of silver, but now I could make whole bars of the stuff.

Ari's eyes widened. "A diamond!?! What rarity is it?"

I hadn't yet figured out how to speak the rarities like Ari could. "It's uncommon."

Ari thought for a moment. "I bet if you were to make one, use absorb matter to clear away the stone connected to it, and make it nicely cut, it might even become Rare!"

I wasn't sure why she was so excited. "Ari, how uncommon is it for a dungeon to have an uncommon or rare item?"

She smiled. "Eventually? I don't think there's a dungeon that doesn't get some rarer items. Before ever emerging into the world? Now that's unusual. You probably won't be able to drop even the Uncommon version of the diamond for a while, as the humans could clean it up to get a Rare item."

I still wasn't super solid on the different rarities. "Ari, how likely is a new adventurer to have an uncommon item? And why is the diamond so much rarer than the others?" I knew a lot about diamonds due to my project on Earth, so I knew that small imperfect ones like this really weren't all that rare, at least on my home planet.

Ari nodded. "Good questions. For a new adventurer to have an Uncommon item is pretty unusual. Probably one in a hundred will have something, and about one in two or three of those will be something that's actually useful to them in your dungeon. As for a Rare item, you'd probably only see noble children with those, and they'll probably make it through your dungeon no problem." She smiled evilly. "Unless you have Night give them a bit of a harder fight." She went back to just explaining. "As the adventurers increase in tier, the rarer items become more common. High tier adventurers hardly even blink at Uncommon loot, and most eventually wind up with at least a couple of Super Rare items at their disposal. Even they, though, usually don't have any Epic items unless they are unusually powerful or lucky. Legendary items are usually held by a large city, and Unique items are treasures held by nations."

That was a very helpful explanation. And I could see how dropping this diamond too soon would fall into the category of "excessively rare loot" we'd talked about before.

Ari continued. "As for why the diamond is rarer, look at its info."

I examined the diamond's information available to me. Just like the mana tree, it had an effect! And just like the mana tree, the name wasn't very helpful. Poor essence well. Hmmm. I tried to get more info on that effect. What followed was a highly technical explanation that kind of flew over my head. Fortunately the last line was "So basically, it pulls essence towards it, increasing the essence density near it."

"So, it says it'll increase nearby essence density, just like you said I would. That sounds useful, but is it really good enough to make it that much rarer?"

Ari smiled. "Nope! That's useful, but not really all that impressive. There are simple enchantments people put on necklaces to do the same thing, hoping to gain the benefits of exposure to increased essence density. The biggest benefit to a diamond I didn't think you'd be able to see yet, as you haven't encountered any enchantments. Most enchantments either have a certain amount of energy stored in them by the enchanter, giving a limited number of uses or a limited lifespan of the object, or the user has to supply the energy, meaning they have less mana left for other things. However, if you anchor the enchantment in a diamond, it will slowly recharge the enchantment itself. Thus, a sword with a flame enchantment might be usable a total of 50 times, or require the user to supply the needed mana. If it has a diamond as part of the enchantment, however, it could ignite anywhere from once to dozens of times per day with no input from the user, depending on the quality and size of the diamond."

That sounded very useful. I didn't know much about enchantments, but if they could give you a flaming sword, I could see why people would like these diamonds so much more. So now it was time to assign loot to my mobs. Frankly, my usable loot was pretty pathetic. "Ari, how do I get some loot that's actually useful? I'm guessing silver is somewhat valuable, but I'd have to give out quite a bit of silver I'm guessing, and I want more variety than that in my loot drops."

Ari smiled. "First, to get more loot options you can either get a pattern by absorbing it, usually on the body of an adventurer you kill, or you can make it. But as for your statement, you'll actually probably start with just iron ingots."

That didn't make much sense. "What? Why? Those must be practically worthless! People can just mine their own!" I knew that iron wasn't very expensive back on Earth, and it seemed about as common in the stone I was absorbing here as I knew it was on Earth. Maybe slightly more common, in fact.

Ari smiled. "Actually, no. After all, the bars you drop will be pure iron. No impurities, no imperfections, no problems whatsoever. While there are a few blacksmiths and metalworkers willing to work with mined metals, most just accept the higher cost and work with dungeon loot. The items they create are better in almost every way because they can better control the composition of the final alloys and the metal is exactly the same every time. Also, dungeon loot is used to create coins, because then there can be an exact weight accepted as the value of one iron coin, or one silver coin."

Hmm. I knew high purity metals always cost more, so it made sense that the loot I dropped was worth more than the mined metals. Still, I didn't think iron would be that valuable, but I figured Ari would know better than I did. I still didn't want to have the loot the same every time though. "Ari, what options can I make so the loot isn't the same every time?"

Ari smiled. "The simplest is assigning probabilities to different loot drops. For example, you could give a 90% chance of iron and 10% chance of silver. I wouldn't give any chance of the diamond, that's just tempting fate."

Seemed like a good option to me. I looked at the various rooms. The first room was easy. I set a 100% drop rate for the resurrection token. When I did so, it asked me to set a resurrection point. I selected the area just before the mice room. For the second room I had 4 badgers. "Hey Ari, what would be a good amount of loot for a single run? I want to make sure I'm not being too stingy or too generous."

Ari nodded. "Both would be bad. A normal run if they don't get the boss would probably get them ten to fifteen iron ingots. A silver ingot is worth approximately 10 times as much as an iron. If they take down the boss, they should probably get another 5 or so on top of that. These are averages, you could go a bit above or below and be just fine."

I was surprised they were so low! I knew an adventuring crew usually had five people, so that meant they were each only getting two or three iron ingots! "They can really live on two or three iron ingots for the whole time until they get to dive again?" Ari had also explained that most adventurers had to wait a while between dives, anywhere from a day for unpopular or hard to reach dungeons to months or years for the most popular ones.

Ari laughed. "No, being an adventurer isn't very profitable at first. In fact, the biggest reward you'll be giving the new adventurers diving in you is the essence towards increasing their tier. The loot you drop is relatively small, but it sets the stage for more valuable loot later."

That made some sense, most things actually weren't very profitable right when you start. Still, that meant I could be a bit more generous than Ari's basemark. For the badgers I put a 80% chance of iron and a 20% chance of silver. Most groups would probably get a silver and three iron, about equal with all four iron. There was a small chance some group would get all four silver, but I supposed if they had that much good luck they'd earned it. That meant this room was averaging an equivalent of about 11.2 iron ingots.

Next up were the snakes. There were ten of them. I decided I wanted about the same loot from this room as the previous one. That meant a bit more than an iron ingot per snake. So I gave them a 10% chance of a silver ingot and a 20% chance of an iron ingot. The other 70% of the time they'd get nothing. This meant there wouldn't be too many ingots, usually about 3 in the room, but they'd average the same amount of loot as the previous room. I then had a fun idea. Partway down the side of the deepest pit trap I added a tiny ledge, and on that ledge I placed a silver bar. It was about five feet from the top of the hole, so someone would have to be dangling into the hole by their feet to get the bar. Ari had explained that adventurers are unusually strong and flexible, so I didn't think it was too much, and if it was I could always move it later.

For Night, I wanted something different than the iron and silver bars. I looked at him. The black stone he was formed from looked pretty cool. I looked at the hook on the end of his tail, and I started to get a few ideas. I made a block of the same stone he was formed from. I started absorbing chunks. Slowly the shape I wanted formed. Soon there was a tiny duplicate lizard, about six inches long, sitting in front of me. Then I made another block. I removed some more chunks, again slowly forming the shape I wanted. Having a model right next to it made this so much easier. Pretty soon I had the basic shape I wanted. I added some wood around the handle, and viola! A knife shaped like Night's tail tip. "Hey Ari. How much would these be worth?" They were both common rarity, so I hoped they would fit my needs somehow.

I made a copy of each in the core room so she could see them. She looked at them both. "Hmm. Well, the statue depends a lot on whether the adventurers like them. Occasionally adventurers have some loot item that it becomes a competition to get, then they're considered more valuable. For the knife, it's pretty sharp, but also looks pretty fragile, just like Night. My guess is hitting stuff with it would quickly ruin it, but if you could avoid hard items it would make a very good knife. I'd guess it's about equal to three or four iron ingots."

Good, that meant I could definitely have both of those drop from Night. I wanted to average about ten to fifteen iron ingots' value from Night on average. I also decided to put the statue as a 5% drop chance but in addition to whatever loot got dropped. I didn't want someone to get something useless for beating Night, so until I knew the statues were sought after I'd leave them an extra. I put the knife as a 75% chance of being dropped, a silver ingot as a 50% chance of being dropped, and a chance of between one and five iron ingots, each level having equal chances. This put it at about 11 iron ingots on average, plus the statue. I realized that putting the chances as separate like that meant that some groups might get only a single iron ingot, and some might get everything, but I figured that was up to fate.

I now had all of my mobs with their assigned loot. "Ari, loot's all assigned." I told her what I'd assigned to each mob. "Now what should I do?"

Ari nodded. "Good job with the loot. It's a bit generous, but that isn't a bad thing, within moderation. As for what to do now?" She smiled. "It's time to reveal yourself to the world."