The hustle and bustle of expansion rings out throughout my halls. Mannequins move back and forth moving furniture and decorating the space while sprites flit through the air laughing and playing pranks, thankfully mostly on each other.

My adorable new mimics are lazily lounging around the third room in my domain, but I cannot fault them, their shape is less than ideal for manual labor. Neither is my animated clothing, so they stay out of the way of their wooden brethren and keep themselves busy in other ways.

The excitement in the air is palpable and all of my monsters work hard to make the dungeon ready for the first real performance. So am I, in fact. As fast as I can I remove the old stonework covering my walls, floor and ceiling, and replace it with a layer of beautiful marble. I am careful to imitate the carvings and decorations as best I can, only occasionally adding a personal twist to some of them.

While that process is a gradual thing, my monsters are turning materials I provided them into decorations and furnishings. One of the newly summoned mannequins gleefully assists Sebastian in sanding down and improving my rough approximations of inanimate wooden mannequins, for my actual monsters to hide amongst in case of an intruder, but also as decoration and for the function they exist for: displaying clothing.

One of the new additions to team “Animated Clothing” curiously turned out to be a set of pants and jacket with some added gloves, which allows them to do some fine labor. In this case, he has taken to weaving, cutting and sewing with fanatic glee and is turning a huge pile of differently colored spider silk into various clothing items.

Thankfully I can control the color of things I create with my new power, we would have had no way to change the coloration otherwise. Most of the animated clothing is dull and gray though, so in order for them to “fit in” and also be able to hide in plain sight like their siblings, we make sure to produce a significant amount of plain looking clothing as well.

The clothing items and mannequins are just barely done being set up in my third room as I finish the ceiling there and turn my full attention to the final room I have acquired and the hallways connecting it to the large costume shop room and the one that leads behind the stage from it.

I was somewhat surprised to stumble upon this connection when choosing to expand off to the side from the foyer, yet in hindsight it should be obvious that there are hallways that would connect to the “backstage” area. And that there would be such an area.

So the side room has been turned into a costume shop, with some useful items for it salvaged from its previous existence, like some mirrors and jewelry, and room number four is actually separated into many smaller dressing rooms that each connect to the central hallway, together forming a “room” according to my system. The structures for this already existed and were surprisingly intact, most of the changes that are required are exchanging any cloth and wood items that rotted and touching up on the stonework like I have done everywhere else.

I also saw fit to give one of the rooms a stone sign on the door that reads “Juliette”.

When these rooms are done, the last thing that needs to be done for opening night is to rehearse. All the other areas I have claimed are renovated, all the costumes are in place, the props are done, and the script is written. I am as ready as can be, I even figured out how Room Themes work and applied them, but their effect remains to be seen when we actually get visitors.

I pull up my status while taking a small break to let my energy refill in order to reconfirm what it says.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

The monster roster has bloated significantly, but I have the option of condensing it by filters, which I will likely do in the future. Additionally, the Room List has been added.

Status

Name: The Playwright

Level: 12

Creature Type: Dungeon Core

Affinities:

Inherent: Dual(Transmutation/Illusion)

Acquired: Evocation (Lesser)

Rooms: 4/4

Monster Capacity: 63/83

Unlocked Templates:

Animated Mannequin

Animated Clothing

Sprite

Mimic

Monster Roster:

Juliette, Animated Mannequin, Animated Actor Level 10

Siegfried, Animated Mannequin, Animated Bulwark Level 10

Sebastian, Animated Mannequin, Animated Attendant Level 9

Alouette, Animated Clothing, Animated Dance Partner Level 4

Athea, Animated Mannequin, Rogue Level 5

Porthos, Animated Mannequin, Berserker Level 4

-, Mimic

-, Mimic

-, Mimic

-, Sprite

-, Sprite

-, Sprite

-, Sprite

-, Sprite

-, Sprite

-, Sprite

-, Animated Mannequin

-, Animated Mannequin

-, Animated Mannequin

-, Animated Mannequin

-, Animated Mannequin

-, Animated Mannequin

-, Animated Mannequin

-, Animated Mannequin

-, Animated Clothing

-, Animated Clothing

-, Animated Clothing

-, Animated Clothing

-, Animated Clothing

-, Animated Clothing

Room List:

Stage Hall (Grand)

Foyer (Crowded)

Costume Shop (Shifting)

Dressing Rooms (Swapping)

I also made some plans for dealing with less cooperative audiences, should it come to it, but I hope they prove unnecessary. With my quick break done, I must return to work. Everything is shaping up nicely. Just a few finishing touches, and we will be ready.