Chapter 17

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[Dungeon]

They looked weary and worn down despite only completing the first section of the dungeon. They were probably quite thankful when they stumbled from the corridor into the rest area I had provided. They looked around for a while, before tumbling into bed, putting off the exploration for the morrow. It had been around ten hours of dungeon diving after all, and my dungeon - if not terribly difficult so far - was huge.

They had each taken an adjoining room in the wooden building just off the entrance, and after a cursory examination and a bit of apprehensive worrying, they dumped their stuff in the chests. They crawled onto the hard beds, unrolled a sleeping mat and laid down, ready to fall asleep. It didn’t take them very long.

I wasn’t sure I’d have been so happy to fall asleep in a dungeon that probably wants to kill me were I in their place, but each to their own.

Within a few minutes, the only sounds that echoed around the chamber, were that of nature and the gentle snoring of my new inhabitants. Peaceful.

Too peaceful in fact.

Something was different!

What was it?

There was no-one else in the dungeon. I’d know about it because of the pounding that drove me insane, wouldn’t I?

No, there was no-one else here.

So, what was it? I wondered for embarrassingly long.

Of course! I was such an idiot. I’d thought of it earlier.

The pounding that had stopped me thinking properly.

It was gone.

I must have grown used to it over the past several hours. As absorbed as I’d been in the adventurer’s journey, it was no wonder I hadn’t noticed when the beating had faded into the background only to disappear at some point.

I assumed it was when they went to sleep. It would make sense if that was it.

Did that mean I could build again? I wondered, hope bouncing around my heart.

I moved away from the adventurers and moulded the ground in seconds.

No horrific pounding. Yes!

I could build again.

Yay! I celebrated jubilantly.

Whilst they slept, tranquilly in uninterrupted peace, recuperating for the next day’s delve, it was time for me to build floor twelve. The second floor of the fire-based levels. The first one being the desert I had built a little while ago.

The dungeon was coming along nicely, and I had already built a good portion, but it wasn’t enough. I had so many plans to implement, and I was glad that the mountain could support such a huge cavern system.

The fire levels were tricky to design, after all there’s far less variations I could have for fire than anything else. For the forest I had all the different trees and climates, for the water I had islands, icebergs, streams, lakes, rivers and more. For fire though?

A desert was a desert and nothing more, no amount of time and effort, of scrupulous, detailed design would change that. So I couldn’t go with another desert straight away. What to do? I thought to myself.

I once again started by carving out a large chamber. That wasn’t new, it was an unenviable fact of my existence and I was beginning to loath it.

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Across the floor I spread a deep layer of sand, the white pearl grains of the marble and quartz to the ash like slate were first. From the yellow glistening sands fit for utopian paradise to the bland grey dirt, baked dry under the relentless heat, it was homogenous in its form.

It was a hostile place, and I had struggled for hours to coax life into this barren decrepit corpse, but it was too similar to the previous floor. I had an idea for the third fourth and fifth levels already. But the second one had to be different.

A shame as I had grown fond of the dustbowl. I’d created, oh well, I thought tearing it down.

It took me a while, but eventually I concluded that I was stumped.  it was an issue I would have to backburner for now. Since I was having trouble focusing on the issue with the other ideas rattling around and taking up all of my concentration. It was time to move on to another floor.

I sighed. It meant I would have to start carving out another chamber though. A task I’d gotten so good at, I no longer really had to concentrate to do it properly. I could section off a part of my mind to deal with that.

The more I thought of the stray thoughts that were such a distraction, the more comprehensive the image of what I wanted to create became. I’d gotten most of the way through carving out the thirteenth floor when it came to me.

It would be great, yes! oh so great. But, first I had some modifications to make. I swapped the fire levels around and set to work. The desert that used to be floor eleven and the cavern that I was working on became floor eleven.

The premise of my new eleventh floor was a desert gorge. They would exit from the ice hotel and descend down to the bluffs at the top of the gorge. It was a long staircase as there needed to be a larger separation between the layers to maintain the temperatures and prevent the congruence that would occur naturally. Ideally, I would have liked to have a vacuum barrier to prevent the heat transfer. However, I thought it prudent to avoid such a weak point when the whole mountain was resting on it. I would just have to spend the extra mana.

From the sandy bluffs of the orange, rocky outcrop, the adventurers would descend along a tricky path, having to abseil down significant distances or risk a dangerous jump onto unsuitable ground. Thin ledges over perilous drops and slippery slopes ending in sheer drops were just the features of the terrain. I still had the animals and traps to make.

As it turned out, desert animals were almost entirely insects and small reptiles. And whilst they were cool looking and well adapted to the conditions I was making they were also, not exactly the most terror inducing beasts to challenge the adventurers. Still, I scattered them around the gorge, creating burrows, nests and perfect habitats for them. Most of the insects required plant material to make their homes and so I introduced weather beaten shrubs here and there. Brown and stunted they stuck out of the cliffside, forlorn and abandoned. In solitary pools, half hidden in the cliffside, where the animals made a refuge a small acacia grew, providing enough shade for the water to linger until the night settled in and more water condensed out of the air.

It took me a while, but I managed to get a decent day and night cycle at ten hours apart. The moving sun in the sky cast the shadows in distorted lengths that changed the whole dynamic, sometimes concealing the way and at others revealing all the minute details that went into making a level.

The last plant I introduced was a cactus, the adventurers would need a source of water as the intense heat would strip them of it in minutes. If they didn’t know about the cactus or were too slow a horrible death awaited them.

With the mundane already instituted, it was time to move onto the magical marvels and man-made monsters that littered the store. They would cost me, but it would certainly be worth it if I could complete the levels.

When I was done with the store I had bought myself a species of giant salamander that grew by eating fire mana and a rock/lava monster called a Stone Scoria.

The giant salamander hid in the cracks within the cliffside and would jump out at anything that passed. They were far easier to face than the Scoria.

There were two types of Scoria that I had purchased. The Stone Scoria and the Lava Scoria. They were a golem type monster with a fire core. The Stone Scoria was far less dangerous as its fire core was much cooler and thus the rock was a far more viscous rock. It was slow and lumbering and though the wicked sharp spines of obsidian and pumice could inflict huge damage, they weren’t the threat the Lava Scoria were.

The Lava Scoria burnt much hotter and as a result they could move far more quickly and were far more dangerous as a result.

Scoria as a species consumed their prey by enveloping the remains with their rocky bodies and absorbing the gasses that evolved during the pyrolysis they induced. They used the mana and gasses to fuel their fire core which sustained them.

Since they were made of rock they were resistant to pain, mind, curse, hex and most meta magics as well as slashing or piercing damage. The only way to end them was to crack the fire core by blunt damage and then get the hell away as they would most likely explode sending shards of semi-molten rock flying outwards.

I looked forwards to the adventurers encountering them. Like the salamander they could ambush the adventurers, this time by blending into the background as rocks.

The secret room was just hidden in the cliff along a treacherous disguised route and had a few Scoria guarding it. It wasn’t hard to put it in in this case.

I looked back proudly at the level, yes it would do. It was a good first level and coming straight out of the ice hotel it would certainly be a shock to them.