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  [Dungeon]

  They looked weary and worn down despite only completing the first section of the dungeon. I suspected that they were probably quite thankful when they stumbled from the corridor into the rest area I had provided. Looking around for a while, they gave up fully exploring 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, at least so I had gathered, so they had done a fair bit of walking too. Especially considering the hike to get to the dungeon entrance. I assumed they had stopped in the nearest town I had seen on my map: Littlebrook.

  Each had taken an adjoining room in the wooden building just off the entrance, and after a cursory inspection and a bit of apprehensive worrying, they dumped their stuff in the chests, 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. Perhaps a rest area wasn’t so unusual. I had done it to encourage people to press on when they shouldn’t do so; possibly other dungeons had thought the same thing.

  Within a few minutes, the only sounds that echoed around the floor, 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 not gone, but much reduced.

  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 had stopped noticing the beating. Then it had faded into the background at some point. I assumed that it was recently, 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 tried it out.

  I could build again! Though only in front of them, and as I tested the limits it seemed only certain things, for instance I couldn’t suddenly change all the terrain, nor place traps or monsters on floor six, although I could on floor seven, and as usual I was free to do anything on my last few floors, though the pounding that was present when they were awake was entirely gone in that case.

  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 12. The second floor of the fire-based levels.

  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 were far fewer 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? Challenging.

  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.

  Not knowing the plan for sure, 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.

  Across the floor I spread a deep layer of sand, but it was already too similar to the previous floor and I didn’t want that, I had been unique in all my previous floors. A calm almost orchard, a nice woodland, a swamp and a rainforest, similar but different enough. An icy cavern, an ice run, an ocean and a mirrored cave system. All very different but two deserts? No! That wasn’t me. It had to change, and since I already had an idea for the third, fourth and fifth levels it was only the second one I was contemplating.

  A shame as I had grown fond of the dustbowl I’d created. Oh well, I thought, absorbing the sand back once more.

  It took me a while, but eventually I had an idea, it was tricky and would require some changes, I was going to make the desert floor 12 and insert a new one for floor 11.

  Scanning back through the store I winced.

  I wanted to swap my 11th floor down to make room for a new 11th floor but it would cost me 5000 dungeon points, that was a ridiculously high number of points for almost no benefit. But as I was thinking about it, I couldn’t think of abandoning my idea. Sighing to myself I had a thought.

  Using the intermediate one I could, perhaps, use the allowed terraforming to lower the floor of my desert and then fill in the ceiling, I would not be able to do it for say floors six and seven since I had higher and lower floors, but since this was at my lowest point there was a good chance I could get away with this.

  Buying one, I set to work and after the two hours had elapsed, I had made good progress, it had in fact worked the way that I wanted it to, but I would need to buy one more. Another two hours of progress and I had almost the space I needed. Fortunately, with my plan I didn’t need to fit all the new 11th floor into the gap between the ice hotel floor and the desert; in fact this would be quite a linear floor in terms of layout, but the path adventurers took, not so much.

  Having finished the terrain manipulation, I filled in the staircases and set to work on digging.

  The premise of my new 11th floor was going to be 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 I needed the entrance to the 11th floor to be off to the side of the previous layers such that I could make the gorge far deeper at the start and then far narrower as they descended towards the exit and there the desert.

  Such a design meant I would work to wrap around and back towards my normal floor stack and so the gorge cavern needed to be a banana shape. Luckily, with the style of the gorge I only needed to cut out a very thin top layer before digging an ever-narrowing crack through the rock, at most 25 metres apart. So, in only a few hours I had managed to finish excavating the chamber, ending up on the other side of the desert cavern from the initial entrance to this floor. Unfortunately this meant I would have to work to rearrange the desert slightly, but that was by the by.

  The gorge itself was over a 100 metres deep at the start with the height at the end having reduced to only about 40 metres. The length though was a long banana shape that was about 1500 metres in length.

  Decorating the gorge meant creating the sandy bluffs at the top with an orange, rocky outcrop, the adventurers would exit onto. Covering the normal grey rock with a red sandstone and cutting interesting patterns and paths into it was easy enough, and by the time I finished working on it, the adventurers would have to 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 cliffs were just some the features of the terrain, but the one I was most proud of was a series of thin connecting arches of rock that they would have to cross to get to the other side of the gorge at a few points. Perfect sites for traps or monsters.

  The path meandered along the rock, crossing over to the other side in many places before turning and backtracking lower down, until they finally made it to the floor of the gorge at the far end from the exit. At this point they would then follow the small stream - I had yet to make - that was theoretically supposed to have cut this gorge out, all the way to the exit into the desert floor.

  I still had the animals, traps and monsters to make, although I was contemplating taking some of the animals from the desert for the gorge and getting more tricky monsters for the desert as it was now floor 12, though I felt like it had been a very big step up already from the ice floors so I would see what I could find in the store. Hopefully something that was cheap, dangerous, and fit with my plans.

  Desert animals were almost entirely insects and small reptiles, but with the gorge biome I had more options than I did with the desert. I scattered them around the gorge, creating burrows, nests and perfect habitats for them. Most of the new ones 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 of water, half hidden in the cliffside, where some of the animals made a refuge, a small acacia grew, providing enough shade for the water to linger. Two of the newer animals I had got were some of my favourites, they were a quokka and an echidna, the first was a smiling rodent-looking creature and the second was similar to a hedgehog but more suited to this environment. I adapted some of the hidden ledges and paths to suit them a bit more and they seemed to settle in quite nicely.

  The last plant I introduced was a cactus, the adventurers would need another source of water aside from the stream and small pools, the pools were well hidden and hard to reach and I thought it would take them several hours to get down to the stream. If they didn’t know about the cactus or were too slow to get to the stream then a horrible death awaited them. But if they rushed to the stream they might fall and die. Delightful.

  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. But first I still had some unplaced creatures.

  I wasn’t too interested in the flame riddled wheels nor the living flames but the mole and the scoria were perfect. I was just imagining the mole bursting out of the rock, slashing through their foes with burning claws or knocking them off the path to their death. I couldn’t wait!

  The scoria too looked awesome, and as I browsed though the store I found that the stone scoria was just as cool and unlike the lava one it would be able to blend into the terrain and take people by surprise.

  When I was done with the store, I had bought myself another seven flame driller moles, seven lava scoria and ten stone scoria for only 3880 dungeon points.

  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 their fire core or stone core by blunt damage and then get the hell away as they would most likely explode sending shards of rock or semi-molten rock in the case of the lava type flying outwards.

  I looked forwards to the adventurers encountering them. But perhaps even worse for adventurers were the flaming driller moles that could burst out of the rock at any point.

  I had fallen in love with this floor and couldn’t wait for challengers. Unfortunately, I thought I was likely to have to wait a while.

  I just needed some monsters for down on the ground beside the stream now.

  The snails, I thought, I could distribute along the path towards the exit, and they could barrage the adventurers. I bought 100, revelling in the 60% discount I received for buying so many. It cost me only 1600 points.

  The secret room was just hidden in the cliff along a treacherous disguised route and had a single lava scoria guarding it, in the enclosed space it would be extremely tricky to find my treasure.

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