Kazue was really looking forward to experimenting with how to rebuild her first floor with the aid of a more knowledgeable source than her book minion had been, and listened carefully as Mordecai expined his ideas. Under his guidance, she reshaped her entrance, pulling the stone in a bit while encing pnt growth, to disguise the entrance. While not having visitors slowed their growth, they also ime to build and p, she worked on the initial cavern to turn it into a proper reception room ary point to the rest of the dungeon, signifitly widening ahening it as she raised the ceiling and smoothed all the surfaces to an almost polished texture, and removed the water spring she had created for her rabbits. That spring was what had helped lead Moriko here in the first pce. Oher side of the entryway, she created tables with signs saying ‘You are invited, but not required, to leave gifts from the outside world. Most especially, books aic materials that I learn from are appreciated.’

  Now the hard part, creating two paths and f a choice. Growing a sed path wasn't terribly difficult, so long as she kept the starting path intact. Creating the forced choice was where it got plicated. Acc to Mordecai, there were ways to apply geases and blessings/curses to enforce choices made, but they didn’t have the power to create those yet, so were left to more physical means.

  And the bsted man wouldn’t give her the plete design, only the cept and the pieces. Fine. Well, the sliding meisms and the worked stone seemed like a simple pce to start, and in short order, each of the exiting doors had a sliding stone door. Though she found she could only make one of them shut at a time. Hmm. Well, design i seemed to matter, and she wasn’t do, so she tinued on.

  , it was time to round out the back of the room into a semi-circle, which moved the entryways to face the ter of the circle and spaced them 120° away from each other along the arc. Then she created a der of heavy worked stohat matched the inner curve of her cavern wall, and added a third door at 120° from the other two, with its own sliding door. This created a separate foyer for the dungeon proper, while still leaving plenty of spa the entran. Hmm, it almost felt right, but she couldn’t close both inner doors at the same time yet, and the outer door didn’t want to close at all. He had said it could work, and she tweaked it a bit here and there, but she couldn’t quite get it to work. Finally, she gave up and opened her avatar’s eyes to look at him. “What am I missing?”

  “Well, delvers have to be able tress. So you need a puzzle in po matter how easy, to close and open doors before you start closing them as a default. Also, there is a rick I show you o's doo make it look cooler and add another yer of security. Oh, before you decide the nature of your puzzle or trols, we should decide on a maximum party size. There are ways to create that as a Dungeon Rule, but again that’s expensive. Instead, we create that as a dition to the puzzle. Most of the meisms we want to be physical, it’s cheaper and harder to bypass with low-level magic, but ditional triggers be woven into the puzzle with little cost. So, most groups of explorers are four to five, and occasionally six. I’m thinking robably afford to be a touch generous and allow seven. Are you okay with that?” he asked. While he was talking, Kazue realized that he’d been pying with her hair and teasing her ears this whole time.

  “Hey, it’s not fair that you focus on your avatar and the dungeon at the same time!” The awful man just smirked at her, and the kitsuiently reminded herself that someday she’d have enough practice to do that too. “Hmmp. Well, anyway, yeah, I guess seven is okay, if you think you ha if it es to that. I... I don’t think I’d be much good in a fight.”

  “It’s okay, you don't have to be right now, and we work on that ter if you want. So, go ahead a up your physical iion, and decide if you want something straightforward or a set of clues they have to figure out first. A simple choice will make it easier to implement some things, a puzzle will gain us more energy from the effort they exert. Both be useful in the long term, so it’s up to you.”

  She drew her tail in front of herself absentmindedly and nibbled oip in thought, until she realized what she was doing and dropped it hastily. Kazue also preteo not hear a small ugh from her husband. He was going to be a good husband and good husbands eased their wives like that. Right. To work. So she started with something simple; she raised a pedestal in the ter of the circle, and put three buttons on it. Only oton could be pushed at a time, and pushing a different one down would cause a door to close before the one associated with the button would open. And there, now both inner ones could be closed because someone could just press the right button to open one of them.

  Now Mordecai handed her a pattern of mana to add to the room, and Kazue exami for a moment, pig out what he was doing. It sensed hoeople were in the room and locked the button positions to keep the outer door open if there were eight or more people. It also required there to be at least one person in the chamber for any button to be depressed and excluded things like familiars and eidolons from being in the t of 'people'. There were also a couple of ditionals for if someone did something like depress two buttons or otherwise cheat, but those led to a ‘do nothing' state. She figured they could probably ge that st bit ter when they had a proper third option, so she attached the pattern to the pedestal and room, and poured mana into it. It was fun watg all the shapes and weaves of magic take life and interlock with the physical parts of the room, until everything was bleogether as a seamless whole.

  But she wasn’t done quite yet. The kitsune had decided on easy clues. She created two sets of ‘footprints’ leading away from the pedestal and towards each door. The set leading to the left were bunny prints. Then, to match the friendliness of the prints, she created some reliefs on the wall, one each of her and Mordecai with weling smiles, gesturing to invite people in with a slight bow. The other set of prints were dragon footprints, and this pair of reliefs had the two of them looking stern and forbidding.

  Oh, but rewards, right. So, some background mural art to create some typical treasure stuff like s and gems on the right, and then on the left she sholeasant path with fruiting trees and different herbs. She created some vaguely ominous figures obscured by fog on the bat challeh, and three people gathered around a puzzle on the 'easy' path. Oh, let’s add a few books on a table too! And as a final touake sure it was clear that a choice was being made, Kazue sculpted Moriko tered betweewo sides, seated in a cssic meditative pose but with her hands held out and palms up, remi of a weighing scale. It wasn't a reprodu of the pose that Yamaraja, judge of the dead, was ofteed in, but it was close enough to ihe cept. There, that should let people pick easily. “Okay, what do you think?”

  Mordecai examined her art with approval. “I know dungeon magic makes it easier to create what you visualize, but I think you should have been an artist in your previous life, not a shrine maiden. Well, that fate is done. Now, I have a rick to show you that will add a bit of cost to the whole setup, but make it more resilient to both brute ford people trying to manipute it. You’ll want to move the frescoes forward, onto free-standing archways I think, and leave a gap. What you want to do then is create one more wall ihe other ring but with only one doorway. This wall however spins, and is attached to the buttons as well. bihis with the sliding doors, and most people will not be able to mess with the setup. Holy, most won’t, but it helps keep people from beied to try.”

  “Huh, okay, let me try that.” He hadn’t given her any new patterns, but she retty certain she had all the parts she here was some trial and error at first, but eventually, she got it and had solid free-standing walls lined up to show her artwork in front of each exit. She felt his approval, and they agreed that the front room was basically done now, though Kazue wao spend some time tweaking appearaer.

  Now let's see, the gentle left-hand path she routed into a gentle arc, creating a couple more rooms in the process. She’d fill these in ter with gardens, hedge mazes, progression puzzles, and such. The right-hand path was harder for her because she really didn’t like to think that way. However, once she started to work out a design that would be challenging and allow people to fight monsters, she felt some satisfa in the creative process. It wasn’t really plicated, though she was able to work in a few tricky parts where the paths looped ba themselves, bined with sliding walls to create some time-wasting dead ends. Wouldn’t be too very difficult for people to figure out the first time. But she also made stuff like sharp ers that opened up immediately into a room, and other features that could make things hard for an incautious group but could be turo the advantage of a cautious ohe st room though she left with a very straightforward design; Mordecai seemed to have a specifi for that one. She made sure to leave the ter area betweewo paths open as well, as he seemed to have an idea for that too.

  Then the room for the stairwell was the st toud the locatiohe two paths met. She desig as the transitioween the first and sed floors and created a mirrored copy of the sele 'puzzle' at the top of the wide stairwell, with a few ges.

  It only had two doors on this level, and instead of a pedestal and buttons it was keyed to spin to the opening of a path that had just been pleted, and to have a rest state where both entrances were sealed. The bottom of the stairway duplicated this exactly and alighe doorways in the same position, but it was keyed to make sure that any adventuring groups were sent on the same path-type they'd already been traveling on. But the paths out of the doors did not yet lead to a fleshed-out sed floor, and simply looped baerge into a corridor leading to their Private Chambers, which was also the end of the dungeon, for there always o be a way for delvers to reach the end.

  When Kazue pleted the stairway, she was already thinking about how she was going to be repeating the design as the transition for each floor. With that thought came the realization that the eairwell setup now came as a ‘set’ for her, and that the pleted design was slightly less mana-intehaing each piece had been. That could be useful.

  With the explorable yout pleted, Kazue turo a cept that Mordecai had nudged her way. ‘Inhabitant and Guest Housing: Warrens’ was what he had beled it, and just examining it helped make her aware of more cepts. She already knew her monster rabbits were inhabitants, but she could have designated guests too. And anything born rown naturally in the dungeon would default to being a guest. Guests weren’t obligated to do anything except being nonhostile to the dungeon itself in order to retain that designation, but were uo take kindly to people invading their homes. They also didn’t take up any capacity and were not bound by any other dungeon rules.

  She was certain there was more to it than that, but she saw the anti-cheat potential of the setup, plus she liked having proper homes for her bunnies. So she used his suggestion to start creating a set of tunnels eg all the rooms of the first floor, except for the entrand the stairwell; and then a set e rooms where she could create the right type of artificial light that would help pnts grow, so her inhabitant would have food to eat without having to manually create the food out of mana. As she was about to put streams in though, she felt Mordecai tug at her attention again and opened her avatar’s eyes to look at him quizzically.

  “Hey, I have an idea here, I think you picked up on part of it earlier. I want to take advantage of the fact that our inhabitants are going to generally do what we want, even when we aren’t giving specific orders. They show any ‘guest’ rabbits what to do too. So, if in the big warren rooms you create a little spring with a small pool to drink from, you create a stream to the other end. If you spread out the stream along the way until it became a thin yer of slow-moving water, it would make a good pce for them to take care of certain business. Of course, that wastewater needs somepce to go, so that ter area is where we create a garbage pit.” Mordecai was grinning somewhat evilly now. “Also, it will be the destination of some other way stations we create for our visitors to use along their routes. And it’s well known that certain types of moend to spawn in sewage areas. We eventually make this into a route to forworthy guests through. And trust me, there are people who deserve this and more, but you get to decide what qualifies. We work on that part ter.”

  Ick. Well, it’s not like she didn’t know there were really bad people in the world. And as a dungeon, well, she might get lots of just simply adventurous people, but she could find herself pying hostess to some real scum too. So it made seo be prepared. But she was happy to leave most of that plotting to someone else. So, let’s see... yeah, the small springs didn’t take muergy to produce; bined with her artificial light, pnts should be able to grow in the warrens. So she spread the streams out like he suggested, and guided the output to what was basically a big pit. Hmm, but if this was going to be a third route eventually, she o make it able to reach her final room somehow. So it couldn’t be too far away. And one giant pit wouldn’t quite work. Theched onto an idea, ahe cept baordecai, who sent it back with a slight tweak and his approval.

  Kazue had thought about making the pit into a series of spiraling paths, so that the lowest one could be at the same level as the core. Mordecai didn’t ge that, he just added a cept that was going to affect the rest of the dungeon: They were going to circle that tral spiral, which would also ehem to easily run new wastewater els as needed. Also, he showed her a small ge to make in the wastewater paths: how to make small ‘u’ shapes in the vertical ses to keep the st from ing back up. Eww. There were some drawbacks to being a dungeon, but she had to admit that ohing she liked was that her avatar didn’t have to deal with certain ‘facts of life’ anymore. Teically her inhabitants could also subsist on just mana, but they'd be more fortable eating the way their instincts and habits told them to do. And the food had to go somewhere. It was also healthier for the duo have indepe life produg traana instead of spending mana to support the inhabitants.

  When her set of mud pits reached the sed floor, she felt a slight ge in something and realized they ted as sed-floor rooms. Huh, that was useful. Well, that felt mostly done, but there was something else nagging at her, and she found Mordecai’s attention focused o room of the right-hand side, that he’d had her leave pin. Inside was one of her blunt-horned rabbits. Oh, that was the ohat she had fed a lot of the mana overflow to. He had always been a bit of a ky bunny, but he was a lot bigger and his bck fur looked darker than ever. He also looked like he was waiting for something.

  “Okay Kazue, I’m going to show you a trick. Uniqueness be as important as power, and it’s not always easy to design your own uniqueness. This guy ate a lot of energy that was influenced by the presence of two shadow-reted deities, and he was already kind of big, so that’s set him up for something I think could be fun. Rather than try to create a floor boss from scratch, we feed our friend here some mana-backed cepts that could be associated with him, designate him as the floor boss, and see what happens.”

  She thought about it for a moment, and, well, it’s not like she had any other ideas for a boss. “Sure, we do that. Um, what cepts were you thinking of?” Oh, that made her dizzy. Most of them were familiar, but ‘gravity’ as a space-shaping force hurt her head. Well, her core probably. And there was something being hi, but it seemed to be out of reach for now. She ig, and focused on the pn, pushing the cepts of density, mass, weight, gravity, stiess, adhesion, absorption, darkness, hunger, dev, and ing at her bunny, using magic to attach properties to those cepts. She watched as her bunny grew bigger and rounder, and slowly he turned so pletely bck that he seemed to draw light in toward him. There was a slight snappiion as he finished drawing in as much mana as he could, and she topped him off with the title ‘floor boss’. The ge was startling.

  The room suddenly ged its shape into a smooth sphere, with the corridor ing in at the horizontal circumference, and the one leading out being a few meters higher. Sitting at the bottom of the room was her bck bunny, now almost 2 meters tall. And long. And wide. It would be hard enough to avoid him if one just wao go around, given the shape of the room, but there was something else too. Kazue could feel the way everything in the room ‘wao go towards the rabbit, as if it was twisting everything in its dire. The bck ball of fluff wiggled his nose, and hopped. He didn’t go very far, but he nded with a loud thud, making the whole room vibrate briefly.

  “Oh, I like him.” Mordecai whispered into her ear. “Good job. Looks like the room itself ts as a hazard or trap, and he’d be way too powerful for this level if he had any offensive abilities beyond a simple headbutt. I think the real challenge is to get around him without losing too much stuff. Mmm, I vote for a species name we call him a void rabbit. But a boss should have a proper name, what do you think?”

  It took Kazue a moment to respond, rec from the sudden shiver as his voice created a tickle that ran down her spine. “Um, I ah... oh, how about Zushi? It’s kind of got a round sound to it, but it’s cute like him too. And yeah, void rabbit sounds cool.” Oh goddess she was tired now though, and pulled her attention mostly back to her avatar. “Are we done for now?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Feels like Moriko is on her way bayway. You did good. And figuring out how to make stuff helped yrowth. It wasn’t just your personal skill I was training, it strengthens you as a duo figure out things. But a guiding hand speed up the process a bit. Anyway, let’s just wait here for a bit until Moriko returns.”

  Kazue nodded weary agreement and curled up more in his p. She didly fall asleep, sleep wasn’t really a thing for her anymore, but her mind drifted happily as her energy and focus recovered.

  Zagaroth