I didn’t have to call them all up, I could've examined them in their natural habitats first but it suited my sensibilities to have my new tools arrayed before me. Two speckled sparrows whose nest was in the crack over the cave entrance, already with 3 eggs. From around the floor, walls, ceiling came twenty-three millipedes, 6 tunnel spiders, two carrying little bundles of eggs on their backs. From the shallow pool of water near the entrance came a muddy tunnel snake and 3 rather diminutive salamanders. Hmm, so these are my first monsters, we all have to start somewhere, right?

I sent them back to their activities and contemplated the sparrows. Scouts, dumb scouts but scouts nonetheless. I looked at their mind, too simplistic for my purposes. I decided my mana body was a waste of energy and quickly summoned a pedestal in the back of my new room to rest my crystal on. From there I began to spin mana around and into the sparrows. The instructions were simple for me, making mana mutants is the bread and butter of a dungeon. The two sparrows grew to the size of ravens, their beaks and talons sharpened, their feathers became glossier and as the mana hit their threshold tiny monster cores formed beside their hearts. The mana cores formed like rapid crystalline structures but as mana entered and exited, mana radiated throughout their blood, it was as if they had grown a second heart. My first monsters were birds… hmm wonderful.

My new birbs were instructed to gather small animals and bring them back to me. The need to grow my menagerie was ever so apparent.

While waiting I pushed my awareness into the stone and found my entrance was a good forty meters up a cliff! Yikes, the goat trail down was treacherous. Which… was good, at least for now. I was not nearly ready for adventurers and an easy entrance would put my core in more danger. Folding my awareness back onto my core was an easy task but if I had still been in possession of a stomach a very nauseating one. The facets were bewitching and I spent a few minutes memorizing every one while pondering how to best make my dungeon. My current denizens needed to get bigger, faster, and/or smarter. That's where most dungeons started. I wouldn’t set myself apart at this stage. Pouring most of my mana into the creatures would achieve this and as they developed in their niches I would make modifications that suited their new abilities. Hopefully there will be time…

The shrine in my first room was clean and at least routinely maintained by someone or something. So I could expect a guest sometime in the very near future. This thought filled me with panic.

I wasn’t ready, not enough monsters! Not enough rooms! No traps!

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“Calm down, Tara, calm down, you have magic, you can defend yourself.” I thought at my panicked mind.

“No, not enough, I was only an apprentice, I could barely cast a fireball! My strength lay in mana manipulation and even then I died because I couldn’t manipulate another person's mana. Worse, I died after being chained to a slave caravan for weeks as we were marched through the Euphoran Desert!”

As if possessed I began building two separate tunnels from opposite sides of the second room. They bent back towards the cliff face and when eight centimeters of stone was left they doubled back, leaving a good meter of solid stone in between the shrine room, and the first part of their tunnel. The switch back design was in all the most deadly dungeons and two paths were always better than one.

As I ate through the earth, new minerals and elements became known to me. These were noted and used to give my first room more variety. After a few minutes of digging I crossed an ore vein. Absorbing it gave me knowledge of copper. Delighted, I remade the statues, scales, and door facade out of the metal and burnished it to a dull shine. I realized my ability to transmogrify minerals grew with each one found. The tunnel's eight unavoidable switchbacks of deadly traps would be enough, right? On the second switchback I hollowed out a room and hid it with a false wall that only I could open. Inside the floor was large enough for two magic circles. Separating my focus I carved the circles of mana distillation and focusing into the floor. This would allow me to pull more mana from my environment and direct it into my core. With a whim, I made a new mana body around my core and walked it into the center of the focusing circle. Once it was placed, I lit the silver dust on fire and felt the mana flow into me. My core’s soft internal glow became a harsh light and my speed of thought, of action, and development sprang forward to match it.

A chest with a few copper coins and a bronze key appeared in a long chamber at the end of the left tunnel. A pool of murky muddy water next to it connected to the pool in my entry room. The rapidly growing population of salamanders and snakes swam through to their new room. A network of small tunnels developed beneath the stone of my first floor. Little entrances popped in dark corners and at various concealable spots. I then realized I didn’t need the secret door if my tunnels connected me to the rest of the dungeon and reinforced the wall. Along the halls I filled them with trip wires, spikes, hidden pitfalls, pendulum cleavers, and giant copper rotating saws that would leap from wall to wall at random intervals before sinking into the floor.. The mechanisms were easy to build, instinctive. I would save magic traps for the later floors. Along the walls of my new sanctum I drew glyphs of concealment, obfuscation, and filled them with a silver and lead mixture. This would hide me from prying eyes.

The dungeon core formerly known as Tara, would not be out done. My first floor was a proper death trap!

Now what should we use as a dungeon boss? Hmmm… A centipede? Yes, armored, fast, and those fangs, hmm venomous…. A maniacal giggle echoed in the halls of my mind as it grew to the size of a dog.