The basic structure of my second floor was done but I still felt there were some adjustments that could be made. On my first floor all the rooms were pretty much of a ‘normal’ height. While my Fae were a lot smaller compared to other races, the rooms I had designed gave them some room to fly around in. They never had enough room to avoid a melee if any intruder were close to them. They would always be in reach of the adventurers. Something that was quite frankly poor planning on my part.

My Fae could fly, the adventurers I suspected, could not, apart from magic of course. So, with that in mind I spent a few days adjusting the height of my rooms. I had burrowed down 10 meters and it would be a shame not to utilize it. If a group didn’t have a way to deal damage at range my Fae could simply fly high enough and use their own ranged attacks without having to dodge attacks. I made the height different between the rooms. Some I extended as far as I could up to eight meters while others, I only raised to four meters. I didn’t have complete freedom in deciding what rooms would get what height since I had made the ground of different altitudes throughout this floor.

Next, I decided to start placing the rocks on the ground that I had thought up before. I was busy scattering the rocks around when I got a pleasant notification.

Upgrade point gained for surviving in the wild for 29 days.

No longer was I without points, however, it did seem like the time between points were steadily increasing. The only other way I had gained points aside from waiting were when that herd had invaded me and had given me enough ‘life essence’. Something I still didn’t quite understand. My status never showed any ‘Life essence’ and there was nothing in the menu that explained what it was or how much was needed to gain more points.

There were certainly many flaws with this system in my opinion. I would have much rather have some numbers to look at so I could predict what I needed to do points for example. How many days until my next point of upgrade rewarded for surviving, how much life essence needed for the next point. Even some way to know if there were a difference in the amount received from different creatures that were killed in my dungeon. Sadly, all of that were mere wishful thinking on my part.

With my mood encouraged from my new point of upgrade I got back to scattering rocks. I even thought up a brilliant idea of making the rocks different sizes. Yes, until now, all the rocks I scattered around on my second floor were made uniform in size and shape. In my defense, I didn’t really want to design hundreds of rocks to all be unique. I might be able to create life and create vast networks of hallways and rooms inside a mountain with only my mana but I was still limited.

I wasn’t sure how but there were some things I could just decide to be random and some things that couldn’t be created random. My Fae all were a little bit different from each other when summoned unless I focused on creating identical Fae in every aspect. Something I only tried once by the way, far too confusing. Even their name ended up the same. I made sure to place each of them in different groups. Others were uniform in how they were summoned. The doors on the first floor were identical as long as the place they were positioned had the same dimensions. There were some slight differences based on size but the weak wooden doors never looked different enough for me.

No, if I wanted different sized rocks, I had to craft each one to be different or the system would just summon the same sized rocks forever until I crafted a new different looking rock. Then I’d be stuck summoning rocks that looked like that one forever.

Why Fae were different from rocks or even the doors were a mystery. I briefly considered if it was the fact that they were a combat creature. I summoned two fire elementals to see if they were different from each other as a test. I’m really good at telling the difference between two objects, if I focus. Sadly, my theory turned out to not be true since the elementals were identical. I looked really, really hard but couldn’t tell them apart. A bit disappointed I sent one of my new elementals to the spiral staircase. For lighting it up if nothing else since the cold hadn’t reached down here yet. The other I sent to my not-yet-occupied-by-a-boss boss room. I just did it so that I would have one of each kind of elementals in there.

That isn’t to say only my Fae are different from each other. The plants I have spread each look different enough. The ones with more than one color shaped leaves all have different patterns and even those that are uniform is color differ in size.

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Getting back to the topic of rocks, before I had decided to not care and just be time-efficient but after I got my upgrade point, I realized there really was no point in saving time for me. I needed upgrade points to grow and for that I had to wait. Wait and wait and wait. There were still a lot of things to do before my new floor was ready but if I completed everything as fast as I could I might end up with nothing at all to do. There’s only so much I can disconnect from my dungeon to relax without growing frustratingly bored.

With that in mind I decided to spend a few days shaping rocks.

After a day re-shaping the rocks already scattered, I started making new rocks. After another day I was really getting into it. I surprisingly even enjoyed the process. I was just about to put the finishing touches on a rock shaped like Buttercup when another notification interrupted me.

Upgrade point gained for surviving in the wild for 1 month.

I was a bit confused about why it said '1 month’ instead of 31 days like my age until I looked at my status and saw that it too said I was now 1 month old. When I first was born my age was measured in hours, after that it was days and now it changed to this month measurement. All very confusing to me. Why not pick one way of counting my age and stick to it?

Still, I now had two upgrade points but my rock still needed my attention. I might be giving my rock-shaping a bit more importance than deserved and my point gathering less but I had worked on this rock for an hour after the idea had struck me that I could shape the rocks however I wanted and it as so close to being done.

I kept on adjusting some small things here and there, never quite getting the feeling of my rock as being acceptable. I even called in Buttercup so I could compare her to the rock I hadn’t yet made to make sure it would end up perfect. I sent her away after making sure I hadn’t forgot anything I resumed the minor tweaks.

Another system notification popped up and I quickly accepted and made it go away so I could resume my work. I really wish there was a way to not make the system distract me while I was busy with something so important. I had just about gotten it to where I found it good enough when a voice interrupted me.

“Busy with your first artwork?”

I’m quite shocked to hear Lilly standing next to me. How did she get in here? Wasn’t I supposed to be notified about resuming the mind-link when she was still outside?

“How did you manage to get in here? I never got a notification.”

“Oh dear... how long have you been focused on that statue you’re designing? I’m all for you getting a hobby but you need to at least not forget about the reason you’re here. You still have so many things to do. There’s plenty of time later to pursue an interest in the arts.”

“Hobby? Arts? What are you talking about? I’ll let you know that I am working on my dungeon. I’m scattering rocks around on my second floor so that adventurers can’t go wherever they like. I’m just busy shaping the rocks so they don’t all look the same.”

“I saw some of them when I flew here. Tell me dear pebble, how long have you worked on that particular rock?”

“Not that long. It’s almost finished so I don’t see why you should care.”

I could see Lilly struggling between frustration and amusement. I’ve gotten very good at reading the emotions of my Fae and Lilly is just an old version of them.

“Why did you have to get infatuated with your first summon? I mean, I heard it was common for new cores to do so but I never had to help a new one before. Tell you what. I won’t lecture you about once again using an upgrade point without consulting me and you won’t resume your little art hobby while there’s still work to do?”

I had been worried about Lilly lecturing me about the elementals I summoned so I accepted her proposal. Besides, I was working on improving my dungeon. That’s not a ‘hobby’ or ‘art’. That’s legitimate Dungeon Core work. Maybe I had focused a bit too much on it since I didn’t notice Lilly. I might put my special rock aside until after I’m done with the rest of my floor. It never seemed quite good enough so I didn’t know how much longer I would have to work on it.

“So, tell me little pebble. Why did you decide to summon ‘Elementals’?”

“My Fae needed some way to warm up. You never told me they would grow weaker when they got cold, or even that what happened outside affected my dungeon. I didn’t know how to make them warm but I found a solution all on my own. Now my Fae don’t have to grow weak as long as I have a fire elemental near them.”

“You were never in any danger since the cold hasn’t reached this floor and so what if a few of your summons died? You have the option to re-summon them.”

I don’t know why but Lilly really made me angry with the way she didn’t seem to care about my Fae.