Chapter 3
The end of the stairs was going to exit into a cavern quite high up. So, I once again started by shifting the earth into the walls making them stronger and sturdier. The same style of walls as the first level, soft then strong.
After a few hours of work, I had the cavern shape dug out. From the bottom step of the stairs that entered this cavern the ceiling went up another 10m. However, the stairs entered the cavern at the top and so the cavern extended down a long way, 100m in fact.
Over 200m in diameter, this circular section of the mountain was more rounded than up top. The ground was perfectly flat as I planned to change it a lot before the floor was done.
At the moment, I was attempting to modify the ceiling. To make it look more natural, as if a real cave had developed such extensive life.
I don’t know if you have ever tried sculpting the ceiling, but let me tell you, it was much harder than it seemed.
Sentient peoples seem to subconsciously look for patterns, and so, when trying to make anything look natural, there will always be patterns that sneak into the randomness and break the illusion.
Though nature isn’t random, as processes end up shaping everything there is, I find it almost impossible to replicate. This is because there are weak points in the rocks, wind patterns and atmospheric dust that wears away at those points and many more tiny things that shape the world, copying everything is just infeasible, especially on the scale I’m working on.
Struggling to emulate the end result is even harder than it seems and soon I give up, hopefully it is good enough.
After struggling with this for so long, my mind aches enough that I stop for a few moments.
Once the ceiling was complete, with its not random randomness, I continued with the floor, since the cavern was 100m further down I had plenty of space to work with.
As before, I created a dirt layer, though it was deeper this time around, deep enough to support big trees and lots of vegetation. I figured that 10 m of topsoil, slowly getting denser the farther down it went, would be good enough to support the trees. I was right as it turned out.
A small babbling brook wound itself through the ground, cutting in wide meanders across the land like a snake, the stream had a few tributaries that fed it, creating a network of water that would allow the trees to grow properly.
These tributaries wound in and out of view, through the trees and under the roots – well it would do once I’d grown the trees.
The main branch of the stream started life from an undercutting in the wall, 10m into this wall I hid a small cavern with a golden treasure chest containing coins and gems.
In this cavern, a water source provided water to the stream and tributaries whilst at the other end of the brook the water was removed with a banishing enchantment.
Unlike the previous room, this one would have huge trees and unfortunately for me this took a lot more mana and time.
Encouraging their growth, until the trees started to brush the ceiling, took me a few days, but it was worth it.
They were a good few meters in diameter with dry cracked bark and thick branches that inter wove to form a tough layer of plant.
This time, there were proper paths, or at least there would be after I was done. Dotted around the new woodland I had the remnants of a few camps, what fate befell these fictional adventurers would remain a mystery to the future adventurers. Some were temporary shelters and fire pits with paths drawn in between whilst others were just a more comfortable spot to call a bed.
Some old tools and remnants of a hard life decorated these settlements and provided some unique character, the weathered look and camouflaged parts helped them blend in.
I made sure there was nothing of great value there, it was after all just aesthetics and not of great importance to the level.
But I was proud of my home and if I had to live here forever more, then I wanted to make it perfect.
But what challenge should this floor pose?
The floor was fairly similar to the woodlands and so I suppose the natural predators of the woodlands - but beefed up ones - would be appropriate for a dungeon.
If the ground was to be a dangerous hunting grounds, then the trees would be for the agile rogue, a sky path on the interwoven branches. Yes, that sounds good, multiple routes favouring different types of adventurers provide more depth and diversity to my dungeon.
From the stairs, the adventurers would step down into the canopy as a tree grew up to meet it underneath and the roots of the willow up above extended down until they wound seamlessly into the branches of the largest tree I had grown – a giant redwood (giant sequoia) – so far.
With a girth of 8m at the base it had plenty of space for a small spiral staircase inside to allow the adventurers to descend to the floor.
Along the way, several exits dropped the adventurers off onto various sky paths and these paths started off the sky route, it was a veritable maze with lots of pointless paths and dead ends to make it very annoying.
Though it was an annoying maze, more treasure could be found up here than down below. However, to get the prizes aerial transfers from one path to another could be taken if necessary and sometimes they were the only way to get to the secret places. Though I expected that might pose a challenge, I doubted they would be taken often.
Of course, you could see all the way to the floor a good 50m below, what was the point otherwise. I had had a good laugh thinking about some cowardly adventurer afraid of heights venturing in thinking, ‘it’ll be fine, I’m entering a cave, no heights in there’ only to be dragged along by his other colleagues.
Going down to the second level, only to be dropped off on the treetops, perhaps they’d fall through in sheer fright. Now that would be quite funny.
In terms of the actual path though, it was made of the bigger branches, often those with widths of a foot or less and the surrounding branches crossed over to interfere with their progress.
Some of the path sections were just an entangled bundle of vines forming a carpet that they had to traverse, it was certainly strong enough for any adventurer, but it was slippery, with holes and tangles that would pose a problem for all but the most fleet footed of individuals.
I expected a fair few would fall out of the trees only to splatter on the floor with a soft thump and a bellowing scream.
Once again, there would be no floor boss, I’d save that for later, it didn’t feel right to have them yet. After all, I had plenty of time to incorporate that in my dungeon. It would be very very large and increase in difficulty gradually so for now I didn’t feel it was necessary.
After finishing all the flora, it was time for the fauna. As I had planned earlier I thought that the natural predators for the woodland would be a good fit.
To have the predators though I needed a functioning ecosystem, it had to survive and thrive over time.
From the introductory book I had determined most dungeons were small and had an almost constant difficulty level and style, obviously it changed throughout the whole dungeon and it increased over time as well, but they most often didn’t progress through the ranks from level to level.
Being small meant they could manage all the creatures and floors actively. Whilst I wasn’t the first to do so, I was challenging this trend.
Working with ecosystems helped me manage the dungeon as I couldn’t afford to concentrate on all floors at all times, especially if adventurers were at different points and so they would need at least minimal monitoring.
Towards this end, I once again started by creating the bugs, beetles, insects and other bottom feeders that would eat the vegetation.
From there, I started on the birds. They were tougher and more dangerous than the small ones from the last floor, however when compared to the eagle they were basically harmless.
Though having said that, the eagle was more of a monitoring system unless challenged or commanded it wouldn’t do anything to adventurers.
An optional boss I supposed.
Unlike the eagle and the small birds from the first floor that were passive, these birds would try and interfere.
They had one move, which was a sudden barrelling strike to try and knock adventurers off the branches.
Unfortunately for me, most regular birds didn’t do this, and so, I had to create another monster race by drastically modifying them.
Getting them to blend in with the passive birds I would add next was the hardest part and, in the end, I was quite proud of my achievement, these stealth attacks would be quite effective, if a bit weak.
Apart from some black tipped feathers it was hard to tell the dangerous species to the regular ones, once the news got out the adventurers would have to watch the birds carefully, perhaps so much that they would miss the other danger.
The last predators of the trees were a couple of huge snakes. 10m long and 20cm wide they were coiled around the branches, hiding in plain sight. With a dark green skin and a diamond pattern they were perfectly blended in. They had large fangs, but no poison and they would constrict to kill their prey.
These snakes would be very dangerous and so I slowed them down significantly, no more lightning fast strikes.
With a bit more work I had finished the floor.
It was now the proud home of bugs, beetles, rodents, rabbits, foxes, wolves and big cats with a few smaller reptiles and the like along the water edge. A small family of otters were nested in the roots of a particularly large tree on the riverbank. The roots of said tree were cage like and could act as a path for adventurers to cross the stream.
Completely passive, and just for fun I had included the otters on a whim, they would feed on some smaller fishes, frogs and aquatic life that also played home in the stream.
Obviously, the main danger was the wolves and large cats. I had one large Wolfpack and a few solitary cats scattered towards the end of the level as they were more dangerous.
I held back on the modifications despite wanting to see how far I could go.
I only went so far as to increase their ability to climb and jump. I didn’t feel the need to go further as I thought this was a fairly dramatic step up in difficulty.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
On another whim, I placed a family of water elementals in the cavern at the start of the stream. They could defend themselves and they also helped keep the water crystal clear and clean, lessening the mana for the water and only increasing it in general by a small amount.
With that I felt that the floor was finished. I settled down for a few minutes to see the ecosystem come alive.
As the time passed me by a problem occurred to me fairly quickly. Unlike the first floor with very few predators and only small ones at that this floor had several large predators in the snakes, wolves and big cats. I suppose the foxes counted as well.
The cats and the wolves were meant to ignore each other primarily and so they couldn’t feed on each other. The largest food stock I had were the rodents which were not sufficient. The rodents should be for the foxes, birds and perhaps the snakes.
Spending some more dungeon points I unlocked the woodchuck (groundhog) and warthog for the forest.
The ecosystem seemed to balance out quite well after that and though I waited for a while it seemed to have reached a good equilibrium between predators and prey.
Next, I pondered the third floor. How should I get down?
Roots had been done already, plain stairs would be done from the surface to the first floor.
Hmm… I thought to myself.
Got it.
At the end of the stream I started digging down, down by about 20m into a little basin.
I had a waterfall that would carry adventurers down.
Now they just needed a way back up. A path up through the stone was needed and so I dug back up into one of the trees.
A timed entrance let them out of the trunk, but it wouldn’t allow anyone back down without completing the level first.
They would have five seconds to get out before the door closed on them again. Obviously, it couldn’t be opened from the outside, that would be foolish.
Checking quickly, I had a descent supply of mana left so I carried on working.
Like before, I created the chamber by pushing the stone into the walls strengthening it.
It was getting noticeably harder as the stone became harder and denser and it took more effort to get rid of it.
In fact, after clearing half of my new chamber I ended up unable to force more stone into the walls.
I still had a large block in the centre of my new room though, so, great!
At the moment I had a ring of 600m across with a 450m circle of stone in the centre. Sighing I started the arduous work of getting rid of the stone.
First, I applied mana to the weak points and converted it into energy which blasted apart the walls.
Then I started crushing the rubble into a finer powder, a dust. Then I started absorbing it, if it was loose, it was easier to absorb, and it saved me mana.
Like it was dissolving, the dust vanished from sight slowly and then it was inside me, filling me up with a pleasant feeling as a lovely meal does.
Where it went, I don’t know, but I still had access to it at the least.
A separate dimension I suspected, perhaps a self-contained pocket dimension tied magically to my core. Anyway, it was the least of my worries at the moment. It worked and that was all that was important.
When I was finished carving out the room I had completely run out of mana and I felt weak and drained, like I’d ran for my life.
So, I settled down to rest for a while, to recoup my mana and refresh my mind took far too long.
Little did I know I would rest for about two weeks. It was at this point I realised I had a problem and I called up my status window.
Menu
Name
???
Race
Dungeon
Titles
Renown
Undiscovered
Skills ^
11
Rating
2D
Level
45
Health
3,451/3,451
Mana
22,960/22,960 (22,960 mana for Lvl up
Knowledge
17,117
Dungeon Points
10,456
Status
OK
Attunement
E3
Rooms
129
Floors
3
Bosses
0
Monsters
308
Creatures
14,792
Creature types ^
141
Unique Items
1
Item Types ^
80
As I could plainly see, I had an imbalance. I was a rank 2D dungeon with lots of mana and capability, yet I had done nothing really.
I was trying to become this huge and expansive dungeon with numerous rooms, floors and huge caverns that just soaked up all my mana.
Without a way to gain mana I was never going to reach my goal, this upset me greatly because it seemed that spending a couple years drilling down through the mountain and expanding my vision had been for nothing, yes I had gained a few levels and I had a lot of mana to work through it was no where near enough to be going on with.
I had a big pool of mana, but it filled up really slowly, especially since I had sucked up a lot of the mana present in the mountain and I had to wait for it to seep back in though the ground.
I had travelled maybe 1/1000th the height of the mountain in terms of floors and used 40,000 mana but I had no way of recovering it quickly and to maintain the dungeon a lot of my mana was going to the floors I needed to maintain. Disaster!
This needed correcting and correcting soon. If the trend in how much mana expanding used continued, then the further underground I went and the larger my caverns were I would be spending millennia working away on this before I could grow to a truly great size.
Not to mention I would have no experience fighting when I finally emerged. Not good!
What should I do? I questioned myself for a while.
Whilst I had wanted to be complete enough to be safe I would have to open up to the surface soon.
I decided to finish of the first few floors before I opened up to the world. Just getting down five floors would be very difficult and whilst the first two were normal they were going to increase in difficulty more rapidly than I had originally intended as I wanted to be decently protected. Later on, I would have to separate them out a bit.
So, I set about working floor three was a swamp. The waterfall fell down and deposited adventurers in a mucky swamp a warm sticky marshland.
Wet was the prevailing experience of this floor. The water was a pleasant crystal clear in the basin however that quickly faded into an algae coloured green a short distance away.
A murky green that could hold significant dangers, they would never know.
Vegetation was even more prevalent here than the previous two floors. Several groups of adventurers could be here without anyone knowing as the thick vegetation would block out views and sounds remarkably well, in fact I expected that to be the case.
Speaking of sounds, this time the normal insect activity of the upper levels was several more times intense, an ever-present hum and buzz that would follow them around giving no reprieve.
Large, loud croaking frogs, the flittering wings of large insects and the scream of the grasshoppers.
The slight rustle of leaves in the wind despite it being underground provided a gentle background sound to the chirping of birds and the sounds of bugs. It’s the sounds of life, annoying life, but life nonetheless.
The constant sound of running water, the trickling, babbling water should mask the occasional splash of fish and predators, and freak out the adventurers regardless.
As before I had a complex food chain. At the bottom was the plants: reeds, algae, lily pads, floating soldiers, grasses, ferns, flowers, shrubs, mangroves and trees all suited for swampland were the basics.
Then we had the snails and crustaceans and small bugs, pond skaters and larvae.
Dragonflies and butterflies flew alongside bees, flies, wasps, and beetles to the flowering plants and greenery.
Small fish and larger fish swam in the waters moving all around the whole floor.
The deeper waters contained the dangerous predators, alongside the small shoals of piranha species – from red-bellied to black piranhas and many more - there were alligator gar and goliath tiger fish, although the latter two were a rare find.
The top predator though was a bask of Caiman that would hide in the marshes, completely disappearing from view.
I felt that this would be too dangerous off the bat and so I had them modified so that their eyes glinted all the time. Aware off this, they would spend a bit more time submerged.
The mud and silt layers were quite deep and that made movement much harder in the swamp.
I felt this was a much harder layer so again, there was no floor boss for them to engage. However, I did continue the secret room trend.
The eagle nest on floor one, the elemental home in the stream on floor two, it was continued here. In the largest of the swamp trees that grew to 30m and pressed up against the ceiling was a cut-out room invisible unless the tree was climbed. A giant snake lived here and there was another large treasure chest.
I remembered to quickly add some normal loot throughout the level and I went back and added it to the ground of floor two as well.
Then I implemented a system that randomised where loot occurred throughout the treasure chests. In floor one there were several chests but only in 30% of them there would be loot and that was randomised for each party that entered my dungeon each time.
Finishing off floors four and five took me another few months as I ran out of mana yet again.
I now felt I was ready to open up to the world. I had a spare 6000 mana that I used to fine-tune my dungeon a bit.
As I was doing a visual run through I noticed that the mana had a different density along the correct paths. More specifically along the correct route the mana was denser as it came out from my core, so I started instituting a ventilation system from my core.
Once the mana levels had equalised and I could no longer detect the correct paths I felt I was now truly ready.
Moving my vision up to the start of floor one I built some basic stairs before blasting open the entrance.
Menu
Name
???
Race
Dungeon
Titles
Renown
Undiscovered
Skills ^
11
Rating
3C
Level
45
Health
3,451/3,451
Mana
1,960/22,960 (22,960 mana for Lvl up
Knowledge
19,000
Dungeon Points
9,009
Status
OK
Attunement
E4+N3
Rooms
457
Floors
5
Bosses
1
Monsters
1,981
Creatures
39,783
Creature types ^
1,410
Unique Items
1
Item Types ^
212
~~Congratulations Dungeon you have breached the surface. Now in the true realms of a dungeon you will have to protect your core~~
Ha-Ha I thought already done before reading further
~~Since you have chosen to become a dangerous dungeon and wish to challenge the sentients your core will be moved to the last room of your last floor. Your core must be accessible at all times and any attempt to circumvent this will fail. Have fun~~
Looking around, I discovered I had been moved back up. Up to the end of my fifth floor.
“Son of a bitch!!!” I exclaimed before jerking in pain. Blinking in confusion it took me a while to realise I had spoken aloud. And very loudly at that.
I could see the distortion in the mana from my voice. I must have projected my voice into the mana and distorted it enough for it to produce sound in the real world.
Not that mana wasn’t in the real world it just wasn’t one of the main senses to races other than dungeons and dragons.
Another thing I noticed of course was all my creatures. They were everywhere little specks of light like the stars in the night sky.
Now that my core was much closer, I could see my active domain much clearer. I had greater awareness, greater control and just more of everything in this area now that my core was there.
I was half grateful and half distraught about being moved. On the one hand, now my time spent digging down really had gone to waste, but on the other hand I had greater control over my dungeon which would be a huge boon.
I quickly remodelled my entrance to be a bit more detailed before going off to sulk for a bit. Stupid sarcastic messages, pfft.