I was working on my 4th dungeon room. As I had expanded my influence, I had gained more essence, and that had sped up my work by a good bit. Still, it had been a few weeks. Actually, it was almost time for the seed to hit completely full. I still hadn't been able to do anything with it, and Ari and I had guessed that maybe it would do something when the essence was completely filled.

As I was just finishing the room, I felt something strange. I felt a … pull towards one corner of the room. I felt like there was something a few hundred feet that way that I needed to reach. "Hey Ari?" She'd been playing with the mob I'd created.

"Yeah Alex?" She hovered in the middle of the boss room.

"I feel a weird … pull towards a direction. It happened as I was finishing my last room. Is this normal?"

Ari clapped her hands and fluttered a bit higher. I'd noticed that how high she flew was a good indicator of how excited and happy she was. When I told her good things she fluttered a bit higher, and when I told her problems she would slowly sink down a bit. I didn't think she was even aware of it, she just did it accidentally. Still, that meant this was a good thing. "Great! I was worried you'd finish your last room and not feel it. That is the surface pulling towards you. The surface will be about 300 feet in that direction, just about right for your entrance tunnel."

That gave me a question. "Isn't the surface probably going to be about 300 feet in a lot of directions then? Why does it have that one direction?"

Ari smiled. "While you are right, the direction you feel the pull in is going to have a good place for an entrance. For example, if you're in a swampy location, you wouldn't want to burrow up into a nasty pool of stagnant water, would you? The direction you feel pulled in would probably have you emerging on a small area of firm ground, and tunneling through solid ground to get there. Or if it's a mountain, you'll come out somewhere that doesn't create a landslide and that isn't a random hole in a cliff that's hard to get to."

That made sense. As I thought about it, there were a lot of less-than-optimal locations I could come out of the ground. In a lake or river, a pile of sand, an active volcano! I decided I would definitely make my entrance in the direction I felt pulled. As I realized that I was only 300 feet from revealing my dungeon to the world, I looked at the 4 rooms I had created.

Ari had told me that most dungeons began with 4 cubes for rooms and rectangle tubes as the tunnels connecting them, but I wanted something better. As a geology geek I had spent plenty of time in natural caves, so I decided to start like that. The first room the adventurers would see (the fourth one I'd made, the one I'd just finished) looked almost entirely like a natural cave. The one exception was that the floor was unusually even and easy to walk on. The first tunnel I'd wanted to make super narrow and natural seeming, but Ari had reminded me that I would have adventurers of all sizes that had to maneuver in my dungeon while wearing full plate mail, so I'd made the tunnel wider, but added some stalagmites and stalactites they would have to avoid. Just in case a truly massive adventurer came through, I made them hollow and from non-essence infused stone so they could be broken. But to keep all of the adventurers from doing so, I carved grooves on the inside to make them break into sharp shards that might injure someone.

The second room I made still looked mostly natural, but the floor was perfectly even and the stalagmites had all been cleared away, though there were still stalactites. The tunnel leading out of that room into the third room I'd made into a bit of a maze. Not a hard one, but there were a few splits and circular paths and a few dead ends. This path I made look somewhat natural, but far more rectangular, and I added chisel marks to the walls, as if someone had expanded a natural tunnel. The third room was similar, looking like someone had cleared out a natural cavern and chiseled away at the walls to make it more rectangular.

The final hallway to my boss room started sort of like the previous one, but quickly became better quality. This was one of the longer tunnels, and I made the quality improve as you went. By the end of the tunnel, the walls were polished white marble, and there were designs carved into the walls. I added alcoves where I placed statues or other things I thought would look interesting, like stacks of books made from stone. As a stone dungeon, I figured people would be distrustful of the statues, so I spent the time and essence to make the end of the hall and the statues and other decorations out of essence-reinforced stone. Hopefully if people attacked the statues it wouldn't damage them, I'd spent way too long building those things to have them get smashed by the first nervous adventurer to pass them.

In my boss room I went all out. The entire room was white marble like the hallway, and I carved it based on my memories of the Roman coliseum and other older buildings like those. It had arches and columns on the walls, and I'd created a chandelier on the roof using a bit of glass I'd found. As an added bonus, I'd made one of the links especially weak, so any attack that hit the chandelier would probably make it fall, hopefully hitting an adventurer. That did mean I'd have to remake it a lot, but I thought it was worth it.

Ari had paused while I examined my dungeon. I had noticed she could kind of tell when I was thinking about something else, and she would pause until I was finished thinking. I could also kind of tell when she was thinking about something, the mind-to-mind communication seemed to convey a dim feeling of activity when she was actively thinking about something. Now that I was done, she continued. "Before you emerge into the outside world, we'll want your dungeon to be totally ready. First thing first. Mobs. What mobs do you want in each room, except for your boss room, which we'll figure out later."

I thought about it. I wanted each room to test something different. I looked at the options I had available for golem shapes.

Humanoid

Mouse

Lizard

Badger

Snake

The only one of those I'd gotten while digging was the badger. I'd found a skeleton of an animal buried while I was digging, and apparently that was enough to get me the pattern for it. Ari had said I would need different amounts of info for different patterns, and usually simple patterns were easy to gain. "The first room is easy. I want it to be as easy as possible, so I'll go with a mouse." I looked at the materials I had available. I had gained a few more stone types, but those didn't suit my needs right now. I figured a plant or soil would be my best bet for this. "I'll probably go with basic soil for these mobs, it looks fairly easy to harm and not very strong. And I'll see if I can lower the amount of stone in the soil to make it even easier."

Ari nodded. "Good. For your first room, the easier the better. What about the second and third rooms?"

I looked at my second room. I decided that this room would test the brute strength of the adventurers testing my dungeon. The only mob I had that would match this was the badger. As for materials, first I tried granite, to match the walls. Unfortunately, that was a good bit more expensive than I could manage at this point. Next I decided to try something from the plant category. I wanted to use wood, but to make sure it would be nice and earth heavy I used roots. It was still a lot more expensive than the soil mobs, but it looked like what I would need. I had been planning on putting quite a few of them because they were not huge, but they took quite a bit of essence, so I decided to only put 4.

"My second room I want to test the adventurers' strength. I think I'm going to go with 4 of the badgers, made from root wood."

Ari nodded. "That sounds like it should be good, but make just one first to make sure it's what you want."

That seemed like very good advice. I made one mob, then told it to do some stuff. Run around the room. It started running around the room. Well, sort of. It wasn't very fast, and it wasn't very good at turning. The lizard had been way better, but to be fair, I wasn't going for speed with this mob. I made a large chunk of wood in the middle of the room. Attack that wood. The badger attacked the block of wood like it had been personally offended by the wood. The badger made large gouges in the block. I looked at the badger's claws expecting approximately equal damage due to attacking the wood, but they stayed sharp. As I looked closer, they actually reminded me of the essence-reinforced stone I had created, but less reinforced. They were taking some damage from attacking the wood, but stayed pretty sharp for a while. Stop. The badger froze, mid-swing. It was good to know they would obey a command to stop so quickly.

It looked like this was exactly what I wanted, so I made a few more. At this point I needed to wait and regain some essence, so I looked around my dungeon. Suddenly something caught my attention. "Hey Ari! I think the seed's about to finish filling up!"

She fluttered over to the tunnel to my core room. She'd been playing with the lizard again, but we were both excited to see what happened when it was completely full. Ari had taught me how to have my menu set an alert, and I'd had it inform me when it was about a minute before the seed would get the last bit filled. Ari flew in and sat on my core.

Bonded seed

Essence: 1999/2000

Ari and I both stared at the seed, waiting for that last moment. I suddenly saw a tiny dot of light move from my core towards the seed. I'd noticed that I could actually sort of see essence, especially when it was concentrated like this. It was how I could see that the badger's claws were reinforced by essence. I watched as the little dot of light moved to the seed.

Bonded mana sprout

Essence: 0/20000

I stared at the seed. Nothing happened. "Uh, the name changed and there's another bunch of essence it wants, but that's still it." Ari had told me the item would list its benefits in that window.

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Ari slumped a bit. "I don't understand. I've never heard of a dungeon seed becoming something useless, let alone just stealing essence." We both sat glumly staring at the useless seed. Suddenly a small crack formed at the top. Then a small crack at the bottom. It was doing something! Slowly the cracks widened. A small brown strand of something pushed its way out the bottom crack, before burrowing into the stone below. Then another strand, which borrowed a little bit to the side of the first one. Then a thin green strand poked out of the top. I suddenly realized what was happening! "Ari! I think it's a … plant!"

We both stared as the little green shoot grew taller, and as more of what I now saw were roots burrowed into the ground. Soon a single circular leaf unfolded from the shoot, and the incredibly quick growth slowed to a halt. I still wasn't sure what it did, but I was glad that at least it was something. I glanced at Ari. She was staring at the tiny sprout like it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever laid eyes on! "Hey Alex? What did the name change to?"

I looked at the menu again. "It says it's my 'bonded mana sprout' and there's another batch of 20,000 essence to fill up again." I wasn't sure why she seemed so excited. While I was glad it was doing something, it still wasn't giving me any benefit.

Ari fluttered off of my core over to the small plant, tears forming in her eyes. "I don't believe it. After all these years. It's really happening."

Now I was definitely confused. It hadn't even been one year since I bonded the seed. "Ari, why is this plant so special?"

Ari took a deep breath. "OK, to explain why this is so important is going to need a history lesson. Long, long ago, before even any known dungeons were formed, there was a plant called a mana tree. They were actually the source of the dungeon seeds. Back then, most dungeons had multiple dungeon seeds, both bonded and absorbed. This was balanced, however, by the benefits the tree's fruits gave to the adventurers. The mana tree was one of the most beloved plants in the entire world, entire religions were devoted to keeping them alive and safe."

This gave me a question. "But I thought you said the dungeon seeds were rare!"

Ari nodded, still staring at the small shoot. "A long time ago, the adventurers and the dungeons went to war. No one knows who started it, but dungeons were attacking villages and adventurers were killing dungeons. When a dungeon with a bonded dungeon seed is killed, sometimes the bonded item stays as a usable item for adventurers. This is actually where most of the Unique items around now came from.

"Still, in this war the ones who suffered the most were the mana trees. Both sides saw the mana trees as a source of strength for their enemies. Dungeons sent powerful mobs to attack groves on the surface, and adventurers destroyed all of the dungeon seeds they got their hands on. This caused problems for the trees, however, as their actual seeds are practically indistinguishable from the dungeon seeds. No one knows why a mana tree seed is called a dungeon seed when examined, but the fact remains that it does.

Ari had settled at the bottom of the plant, sitting cross legged staring at the tiny sprig of green. She was almost as tall as it was, even sitting down. "Adventurers and dungeons alike tried to prevent the other from having access to a mana tree, and pretty soon all of the groves on the surface were destroyed. The adventurers, knowing the dungeons would eventually overcome them if they had sole access to the mana trees, made a final frontal assault, simultaneously attacking all known dungeons."

She paused for a second, before continuing sadly. "They succeeded. As part of the attack, a group of mages created a new spell. Some called them insane, others called them monsters. Either way, their spell was designed to destroy all mana trees. Everywhere. All dungeons were destroyed, and so were the mana trees. New dungeon cores showed up, but the only remaining seeds of the mana tree were scattered far and wide. For centuries the adventurers tried to find true mana tree seeds. However, for a mana tree seed to sprout outside of a dungeon takes years, centuries, or even millennia or longer if in a low essence environment. And the adventurers still distrusted the dungeons, immediately destroying them as soon as they emerged. Still, the religions that revered the trees searched far and wide, finding single seeds and bringing them back to their strongholds, where they were placed in high essence environments in hopes of someday finding a true seed.

"Eventually, without dungeons to fight in, the adventurers turned on one another, fighting for the powerful items dropped by the last dungeons. Throughout all of the conflicts, the religions trying to bring back the mana tree, who eventually joined together under the name 'seeds of hope', stayed completely neutral. Eventually the powerful adventurers all died out, leaving only the 'seeds of hope' who remembered the times before. Almost all remaining records from before the wars were kept safe by the 'seeds of hope' during the time of turmoil. The adventurers stopped killing the dungeons, and eventually new dungeons began to dot the earth.

"The new dungeons gave an opportunity to bring back the mana trees. Priests from the 'seeds of hope' would bring a dungeon seed to a new dungeon, offering to give it to the dungeon to bond, hoping it would grow into a mana tree. The dungeons of course accepted, as if it became something other than a tree it was theirs to keep. Time and time again, the priests brought a seed to a dungeon. And time and time again, it became a magical item. Many of the strongest dungeons today were around in those days and have dozens of bonded artifacts."

She stared at the tree for a few moments in silence. I was starting to see why this tree meant so much to her.

"Still, the outcome the priests hoped for never occurred. All of the seeds they had found were bonded by dungeons, but not a single tree sprouted. Eventually there were no more seeds, and most of the members of the group decided they would instead become a group over keeping records and knowledge, to keep the past from repeating itself. They renamed themselves 'keepers of hope' and remain as the largest institution devoted to easily accessible knowledge available to all. To this day, though, there are some who hold out hope for the return of the mana tree, who roam far and wide searching for more seeds. While their search is no longer actively encouraged by the keepers, it is still seen as an honorable quest and many adventurers spend at least a little while searching for dungeon seeds, in the hopes of someday returning the mana tree to the earth."

I stared at the little sprout as Ari finished her story. "Wow." I said quietly. "I can see why you're so excited about this little sprout."

Ari smiled, the tears of joy in her eyes glistening like stars. "Yeah, and adventurers aren't the only ones who've been looking for the seeds. Dungeon fairies don't go out in the world much, but the search for a mana tree seed is the exception. We still have a few sporadic records about mana trees, and many a fairy has spent his or her whole life searching for seeds. My mother, in fact, made it her life's quest. I was going to encourage you to bond with the seed when you found it, but when you told me how good the absorption benefit was I didn't want to be selfish and make you gamble away such an incredible benefit." She smiled again at the tiny plant. "I'm glad you decided to bond with it, though."

I remembered something. "Is that why you were sad when I bonded it and thought it was an essence storage device?"

Ari nodded. "You noticed? I'd hoped I could maybe finish my Mom's dream, but then it looked like it was just another normal item." She looked at the sprout again. "It certainly wasn't."

I looked at the sprout with her in silence for a moment. While I was glad I could help in bringing this tree back from extinction, it was too bad being bonded to it didn't give me any benefit.

After looking at the new sprout for a moment longer, Ari spoke up again. "And this is probably the best thing you could've bonded for your dungeon too! Way better than an essence storage device."

"What? It doesn't give me any benefit. How does it help my dungeon?"

Ari smiled. "Being bonded to it doesn't give you any benefit yet. The tree itself, on the other hand … examine it!"

That's true, I had only looked at the bond, because that's where Ari had said I would see the benefits from the bond. As I tried to look closely at the sprout like I had before with the seed, I saw the now-familiar menu pop up.

Mana sprout

Effects:

Essence filter

Essence growth

That didn't help much. Hopefully I could see more info on the effects it had.

Essence filter:

The item with this effect will filter and purify all essence near it. Purified essence has a number of benefits. First, a dungeon using purified essence will discover that the essence does more than it would normally, decreasing essence costs for dungeon actions. Additionally, mobs in purified essence environments tend to have more powerful evolutions. For adventurers, purified essence has a lower chance of harming people unaccustomed to high essence environments and strengthens them further than unpurified essence.

That explanation gave me a number of questions, but I wanted to see the explanation of the other one first.

Essence growth:

The only known instances of this effect are found in mana trees or dungeon fairies. This effect means that the tree grows purely off of essence collected from the ambient environment (or provided by the bonded core, if applicable). Thus, they can grow in solid stone or nutrient-lacking soil with no problems, do not need water or sunlight, and can even survive without air.

That explanation made a lot more sense, and really didn't give me any questions. In fact, it answered one I had previously, as to whether dungeon fairies needed to eat. I had never seen Ari eat anything, and now I had the answer. I still had some questions from the first explanation, though. "Ari, this says essence can harm adventurers, but also says it will help them. Which is it?"

Ari smiled. "Both! It just depends how they encounter the increased essence density. I've mentioned before that the essence in a dungeon is more dense than outside the dungeon, and mentioned that one of the reasons adventurers like that is because rarer plants will grow in high density essence. Another reason is that as adventurers are in areas with higher essence density, their bodies start to become accustomed to it. This gives a number of benefits. It's not a super quick process, but the benefits start to add up.

"The problem comes if they go somewhere with much higher essence. For example, for a while high-tier adventurers would try to take lower-tier adventurers with them in powerful dungeons to help them quickly increase in strength, but the low-tier adventurers would just die. A body accustomed to high essence density environments is just fine in an area of low essence density, but the opposite is not true. A random person could survive walking into a F or E ranked dungeon, but anything higher than that would start to cause them problems, and anything C or higher would probably just kill them outright."

So it seemed like purified essence enhanced the benefits and reduced the problems with increased essence density. I wasn't sure how helpful that would be, but anything that made the adventurers fans of me was totally OK by me! "So now what?"

Ari thought for a moment. "Really, this doesn't change much. Just build your dungeon like normal, and be glad for the extra benefits from the tree!"

Made sense to me, and I'd regained some essence while talking with Ari. Time to get back to work!