“What’s an adventure? If the people going into dungeons are called adventurers aren’t they already having adventures?

I could feel Lilly growing more excited through the mind link as she answered.

“Of course not. Essentially all they’re doing in dungeons these days is risking their lives for better gear, gold and the chance to grow stronger so they can get even better gear and even more gold. Whatever adventure they think they’re having is all in their minds. Like ‘This place is cursed and we must cleanse it to protect the kingdoms citizens.’ even though the dungeon they’re exploring wouldn’t even notice if they reached the 50th floor or just stayed on the first and nothing would happen if they had never showed up in the first place.”

“Why should that matter? They’re still growing stronger and getting gold, right?”

“Ah, you coreling. No adventurer ever becomes an adventurer just to get wealthy. All of them join the adventurers’ guild hoping that one day they will go on an epic quest to save the world from unspeakable evil. Of course, there are people that only wish for power and do unspeakable evils in order to get it but those are far fewer and in no way would they help you grow. There’s simply not enough of them. No. Young would-be heroes waiting for a chance to fight for justice and glory is a far larger part of the adventuring population. Give them an epic adventure and adventurers will flock to you. What say you young coreling? Do you wish to indulge an old woman and work together to make your dungeon a place where heroes fight to save the world?”

“Uhm. Why do you think I can help you with creating such a place? Aren't I just like all the other Dungeon Cores?”

“You are but a god is watching over you. At least for now. If we don’t take advantage of that it would be a pity. Besides, this will be your first time building a dungeon. Let’s make it special and if it doesn’t work, you’ll have the rest of time to do what every other dungeon does. You aren’t really missing out on anything.”

“Fine, I need your help to figure out all this anyway so what did you have in mind. How do we create a place where people can have an adventure?”

I sensed Lillys spirit rise when I agreed to work with her.

“Marvelous! I can’t believe I will finally get to test out if my ideas will work. Now the most important thing to create a good adventure is a good story. If your story is ‘Kill this dangerous thing or little Allan in the village will have nightmares’ aren’t going to attract anyone to you.”

“But what if people really like Allan?”

“Pfft! Adventurers rarely cares that much for children. Many of them keep adventuring just so they never have to deal with kids. No, what we need is a gripping tale of life and death. Loss and sacrifice. Of heroes standing up to impossible odds and prevailing to save the innocent to leave behind a tale of the heroic adventurers that saved the world. That will make them love you and even if people leave, they will spread the story we’ve created for them around the world. Luring people in to experience you thereby ensuring you’ll always have visitors. But first things first. We need you to build your first floor, at least the basic structure.

“So how do I do that Lilly?”

Call up your ‘Construction’ menu and start adding the hallways and rooms of course. Try to form the hallways to be at least 2,5 meters wide and 2,5 meters tall. Just to ensure people can move around without too much trouble. You can vary the sizes a little bit to not make them all the same but keep it in that size-range. The rooms should be more varied in size. Make about four of them big rooms with seven or 8 smaller. Make sure the rooms have at least 3 hallways connected to them until the end. So that adventurers always have to choose what way to go. No one likes a long tunnel at the start of an adventure. Much too boring.”

“Are you sure I can do that? I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed just listening to you describe all of that. Besides, don't I have to open my menu before opening the construction section?”

“Not if you already know what section you want to open. Each section has a different name and the system is smart enough to undearstand what you mean and don't worry. You’ll do fine. You might not feel it now but building your dungeon comes naturally to all of your kind.”

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I wonder if Lilly is right about that. I certainly don’t feel like it. Nevertheless, I call upon ‘Construction’ menu in order to start expanding my dungeon, and fail at it I’m sure.

“Construction Menu”

Construction Menu: Build Hallway Build Room Build Path to lower floor Build Floor accessories Add Enviromental aspects to floor

It worked. Nice to know I can do that, even if it only saves a little bit of time. Let’s try doing what Lilly wanted first. I have an idea on what I want to do based on the advice Lilly gave me. When I fail I’m sure she can help. I select the Build Hallway option and a new blue screen pops up to replace the old one.

Please set the dimensions of your new hallway: Length: Height: Wide:

I set the size of hallway to 20 meters in lenght, 2,5 meters in height and 2,4 meter wide.

Please select construction material of hallway: Common stone Granite

I select the stone option here. No need to be fancy and I remember reading earlier that granite would be more expensive to build with.

Based on dimensions given to the system and material used the calculated cost of construction is 40 mana. Confirm/Abort

“Lilly, I only have 90 mana and this hallway is 40 mana to build. I won’t have enough to build everything you want, not even close.”

“Don’t worry about it. It won’t build instantly so you’ll get some mana back while we wait and when the hallway is done your capacity to hold mana will increase by 10 so you’ll have 100 maximum mana when it's done.”

“So if a hallway adds 10 mana why is my max mana 90 now?”

“As a new core you have a base mana of 30, your Core room currently gives you 50 more and the path to the entrance counts as a hallway so that’s another 10. For the sake of avoiding more questions. A room gives you 25 mana and you can’t make them too small in order to try and cheat your way to having a highest maximum. Also, since we’re currently on floor one your build cost is only 30% of what it would normally be. The same hallway on floor 2 would be 40%, floor 3 50%, floor 4 65%, floor 5 would be 80% and finally when you reach the sixth floor you pay full price since by then the system no longer thinks you need help to survive. Now place your hallway in one of the back corners of your room and confirm it. Oh, and your hallway don’t have to be in a straight line. You can curve it or corner it however you want.”

I do what she tells me to and confirm the 40 mana cost. I don't try to curve or corner the hallways though. I prefer to see if it works first.

Next a map of what I assume is my floor shows up, it seems to be an overview from the top with my entrance and my Core room is at the top of the map with a path leading to what the map tells me is the entrance. There’s a lot of room below my Core room to place my hallways and rooms. I place my new hallway in the bottom right corner of my Core room and confirm.

The room begins to vibrate a little as I feel energy flowing out of me. It takes about a minute until it stops. I check my status to see that I now have only 50 mana left. I look back with my normal vision and see that the place where I placed the hallway have already started to expand. I’m fascinated by the process of the hallway forming as it doesn’t seem to require me to do anything.

“Youngling, wake up!”

I pull my attention away from the building hallway and see that Lilly seems to be tapping my Core for attention.

“What is it? I wanted to watch the hallway form.”

“You still have mana left little one. Build the other hallway on the opposite side. When you’ve done that you can relax and watch it build.”

“Promise?”

“I promise, now hurry up. The sooner you build it the sooner we can really get started.”

I copy what I did earlier and place the hallway in the other corner of my room. Yet again I feel the energy flow out of me and when it ends, I’m feeling very tired. I check and see that I only have 14 mana left, so if I have a low mana pool I get tired. Got it.

I return my focus to the first hallway and by now it has reached over halfway of what I planned. I feel pride as the hallways simply melts further into the mountain forming a straight and clean hallway of stone. This is me. I’m growing and it feels good. I hope I never lose this feeling. It’s so nice.

When the hallway stops growing, I turn to focus on the other hallway that still have a small way to go until it’s done when an uneasy feeling struck me. There’s something I’m missing... what was it? I try to remember what it was when I finally remember.

“Hey Lilly, shouldn’t I summon some creatures to guard my core? You’ve distracted me with your talking and making me start building my floor that I forgot I’m totally defenseless. What if someone or something comes and kills me?”