“I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.”

Michel de Montaigne

“Every act of creation begins with an act of destruction”

Pablo Picasso

I had been forced to be patient due to circumstances, but the sudden acquisition of the tools to create a functional dungeon the more than welcome. Up to this point, everything I had made was done from scratch or manually copying patterns myself. I had been delaying creating the actual dungeon areas because I would need to made everything from scratch. And, honestly, while I could have designed basic mechanical traps I would have needed to reset them all manually each and every time. I had been reasonably certain that I would get a better way to deal with things. Fortunately, I was right.

Before getting lost in my own creations, I did a quick check on how Exsan was progressing. The tunnels extended far away from the main area of the dungeon. Only a tiny portion of the dungeon had expanded to cover them so far. It had expanded a decent amount the last few days, I was guessing about a hundred feet a day. I tried again to stretch out my senses and feel what Exsan had described. There was still nothing at first, but after a time I could feel something. There was a resonance that constantly echoed through me. The ripples of mana across me would make a pattern and then I could feel that pattern brushing against the edges of my aura. It felt like me, just delayed, like an instrument playing a note behind. It was very faint, but now that I knew what I was looking for I could feel two different sources. Each was in the direction that Exsan was building toward.

One was closer than the other. I didn’t know exactly how I could tell that. It was reflecting just a bit faster than the other, maybe. The tunnels had grown to a considerable distance. Exsan had the advantage of extending just in a straight line each way. Each was at least five miles long now. The tunnels still felt a considerable distance from the closest echo. I had time, so it was best to get started.

I sectioned off a small part of the sewers and recreated the full pattern of the water that I had obtained there. I saw that it was registered as an environment in my new menu and smiled. I reconnected the part I worked on. I designated the rest of the sewers I had created as the same environment and they started to change.

This was the first time I had done this, so I took a minute to watch. The water was already present since I had arranged for that when I made the fountains. The water gradually became cloudier with filth. Not so pleasant for me, but perfect for what would soon be living here.

I had various patterns for living creatures, so I started to fill a large area of the sewers up with life. I started with the filter feeders, since a number of things probably nibbled on them. Then the tiny jellyfish, and other small fish. The walls were soon covered with a layer of moss and various fungus. Insects soon followed, including lots of cockroaches. I created a fairly large area like this until I felt it was ready to support more. I added the few larger fish specimens I had seen. Then on the ledges I added mice-bugs and rat-bugs. Just a few dozen of each, at opposite ends of the large environment. Hopefully they wouldn’t all kill each other.

The mice-bugs scurried around and looked for places to hide. I looked at the walls I had made. Right, those were way too smooth for these things. The old sewer had been made of brick. Well, I could do that; I had gotten plenty of samples. I started by making dozens of individual bricks. These bricks were whole and in good condition. Then I picked a few of them and used my new dungeon abilities from the menu and had them degrade on the outside based on a percentage. The bricks roughened in various areas.

I had some copies of both newer and older bricks from the sewers. This should actually let me do this even better. I created a full section of brick wall. I designated the different parts as bricks and mortar in the schematic. Then I differentiated between the different colors of bricks. The newer ones had a very small chance of degradation, and as they got darker and older the percentage increased. Then I used the schematic and told it to randomly replace the bricks. Then I added a smaller percentage of degradation at random around the bricks, again following the areas around newer and old. Honestly much of the system functions responded to my thoughts, which made it very simple.

I was fairly certain that the mice would be making burrows by chewing on the mortar and bricks. So I made the wall three layers of bricks deep. The first layer would slowly repair itself. The second even slower, and the third would only repair if areas that were too large formed. This should let the mice-bugs and the rat-bugs form nice little burrows. Hell, lots of insects would probably use crevices and things too.

Hmm, I should add some of those in. I added a few natural stress cracks to the pattern that would lead to tiny hollows. That would allow for diverse life to form. Now that I was ready I told it to replace all the walls in the sewers. Once I had some monsters this place should actually be a fun environment. Hmm, should I add some lights?

I decided to add some to a portion. I designated one section of it near the dungeon entrance as the beginner area. I wasn’t sure I would actually use the sewers, but the mana from the creatures living there could only help. I added lots of lights to the beginner area. Then as the sewers got farther away I started to make them intermittent. Where the lights should be were jagged areas that looked broken off. Then the lights got scarcer and scarcer. I used the same function I was using before to make the “damaged” lights all look different. Eventually the sewers contained only darkness, with a single light rarely making an appearance.

Now that I had the sewer made, I was going to see if I could hatch the eggs I had made. Actually I needed somewhere that I could do general work on hatching eggs and growing seeds.

I made a large room. The ceiling was significantly lower than the entry room, but it was similar in size. I sectioned off one area and redirected a gentle stream of water until I had a number of pools. Each one had fine stone mesh separating them. I designated it as sewers and put the fish eggs into the water. Other eggs that were for insects were put into areas of damp moss that were sectioned off from each other with more mesh. I was hoping that the environmental designation would help automatically change things to make them hatch.

I decided to use the new spherical lights I could make and sectioned off another part of the room. I put down several feet of soil and separated the soil from the rest of the room with stone dividers. I added all the various seeds I had stored and planted them each about an inch below the ground. I gave each of them a lot of space. I was not certain that I had planted them at the right depth, but I could change that if they failed to sprout or had a hard time reaching the surface. If I could get the seeds to sprout it should be easy enough for me to use some of the growing plant to get its pattern. Even if I just gained enough information to make another seed I would be happy because then I could try again.

I created another area that was identical, but this time I recreated what seeds I did have the patterns for. Among these were seeds I had never seen before. I had managed to get a couple of patterns from the wood in the sewers and one from the table Tam had displayed the various objects on. One was a shiny brown and about the size of a man’s thumb. Another produced seeds that looked like a tiny ball. The last was a papery seed that looked like it would catch the wind. Other seeds that had been reconstructed from decaying mater joined them. I had even found a small cave on the side of the mountain with some dead plants in it. I was able to use that to make a seed as well. I could have created a full plant for some of these, but I wanted to see how they grew. Hopefully that would let me pick the right areas for them. Now that I could make bright lights I might be able to get my forest after all.

For now, traps were going to be my mainstay. Only a few simple traps were actually available, but it was not like I would find recreating the options I good buy particularly difficult. I started by creating the pitfall trap (primitive), that the system offered me as a start. The cover was heavily cracked stone with gaps in it. Honestly this shouldn’t fool anyone. Hmm, I suppose a newbie adventurer could fall in if they were distracted by something else. I made a few quick variations of the top, each one getting harder to spot. The last version was indistinguishable from ordinary floor. It was only a few millimeters thick. It shouldn’t break from tapping on it with a stick, but if someone put their full weight on it they would break it. As I made it I made sure that any cracks, differences in texture, decor, etc… would match up.

I was glad the interface was so customizable. Though honestly, it didn’t suggest any of these options. I had an enormous advantage both because I could think, and I had seen and read about so many traps. I supposed that was a benefit from so much media. I could borrow from everyone else’s visions of what was possible. I named the various options I made and added them into the menu.

The spike trap was available for purchase too, but I ignored it and just started by making an open pit and adding spikes of hardened stone at the bottom. I made variations on the spikes too. Some were needle thin and highly fragile. They would break off if someone landed on them and likely shatter. I made longer spikes of hard stone that would create gaping wounds as a person fell on them. Then I made spikes that had a coating of breakable material over a solid core. I continued with more options. I made spikes, both sturdy and breakable variations, that had barbs. I considered those to be particularly nasty. As was my spike trap that was wider at the bottom and had razor sharp blades facing inwards at the top. They would make getting out, even with a rope, a nasty endeavor. I actually went back and made a pitfall variation of that same design. No spikes at the bottom, but a razor sharp lip. Then I made more types that also had spikes pointing down and inward. Then I made designs where they were fragile, or razor edged, or both.

By the time I was done with this I noticed a small light flashing for attention.

You have acquired a new title:

Innovator I (Dungeon)

You have successfully created structures using your own knowledge instead of purchasing them from the shop. Continue to innovate and make your dungeon even more useful, beautiful, and lethal.

+When you make a design that is similar enough to a purchasable option you will be given that purchase for free

+25 AP

True to its word, the system had already given me a ton of variations on the pitfall and spike traps. It had made them much more modular, so I could select a pitfall trap, then select the type of covering, then add spikes, how to change the walls, etc… Since I had shown I understood the ability to make things more lethal and hide them it offered the ability to randomize that difficulty within certain parameters. A few new minor things I hadn’t thought of where among the new design choices, but they were all logical extensions, or features I had jumped over to made more dangerous traps. All of the options I had created so far were covered in the module design, so I stored them away. There was no indication that the menu had any kind of storage limit, so it couldn’t hurt.

I decided to start making entirely different types of structures. I started with a pressure plate. It was easy enough to make with a stone tile that was held up with a fragile bit of stone attaching it to the stone tiles next to it. It would break under a tiny bit of pressure and then settle onto a lip of stone the tiniest bit beneath it. In the process of settling into place it would align to set off the trap. I made some variations that would fall farther and that would stick up from the surrounding area more. That way I had the more obvious and more difficult to detect options. Then I designed a floor where every single stone was at different heights and they would all break when a person stepped on them. This would be the advanced option.

Setting up trip wires was equally simple. Some would go off only if pulled. That pull was enough to let a piece of stone move and trigger the rest of the trap. Others were based around tension and would go off both when tripped on or cut. And some solidly anchored wires were added to the pitfall schematics. Falling into a pitfall after tripping over a wire could be even more dangerous. I also made two part traps. A trap that could be triggered by both the trip wire and the stone that you would step on on the other side. I also put trip wires at every possible angle and height, as well as vertical.

The ability to make moving parts was actually what made everything work. I set up thin rods that exerted only a small amount of force. When a hole drilled into stone aligned because a tile settled, or a piece of stone that was blocking it was moved when a trip wire was pulled, it would move forward and start the rest of the trap. The rest of the trap was moved by an increasingly powerful set of automated motions that were released when that thin rod caused a knife sharp edge to cut a string. The instant release of tension from that could be used to cut other strings with other blades, or release tension from other systems. This allowed the traps to be almost instant.

This allowed for dart, spear, and arrow traps. I could just have them fly due to releasing tension. I could also use the ability to make a material go in a single direction to make these same kinds of traps. Though the speed I could generate with just that was not all that high.

Since I could made moving parts and then have the dungeon reset, it was also easy to have traps go off automatically at set or irregular intervals. It was easy enough to do with moving bars or turning gears. I only really needed a single gear to be turning and it could power an entire basic mechanism. I found a better way to launch arrows and other things this way too. Put an arrow at the beginning of a long tube and then move a large stone behind it. As long as the stone had a way to get air behind it, and was fitted well enough to the area in front of it, it would act as a giant pneumatic tube that could launch a dart, arrow, or anything else. I could vary the speed by increasing the size of the stone moving the air and the length of the tube. I managed to get some very impressive velocities.

I actually was reminded of guns by this, so I started playing around with small dense bits of stone and rifling the tube that was acting as my barrel. Sadly the stone tended to shatter, so I started to sheath the stone in a thin bit of wood that left the tip exposed. This actually worked as the grooves made the wood and stone spin and then fly out. These… proved to be very strong. It was entirely possible to make a version that was more like a cannon being shot out too. I could get a stronger effect by compressing air though a series of stones collapsing a long tunnel. Or many tunnels meeting each other. Timing it so that the stones closed the tunnel in perfect synchronization would make the projectile shoot out at incredible speed.

I tried it with a small stone and it went a feet feet into the solid stone of the opposite wall after traveling a few hundred feet. Out of morbid curiosity I made a much larger version. The wood shattered under the stress and it turned and then destroyed the barrel. I made the wood layer thicker and denser and then tried again. It blew apart again, but it got farther through the barrel first. I looked at the shotgun like damage that came out when it blew up the wall as it emerged. That would actually make a great trap on its own. I made a version with wood surrounding pellets of hardened stone, in other words, a shotgun. I filed it away. Then I made the wood even harder and tried again. After a few more attempts, and some more blueprints for increasingly destructive fragments, I managed to launch my mortar.

It fit the far wall and I felt everything around it shake. The mortar left a giant crater in the opposite wall. It was about the same depth, three feet, but it was much wider, and deeper cracks had formed.

That… was quite a weapon. I didn’t know what abilities people would come with, but I imagined that this would be enough to kill most of them.

I continued and made other traps. Nothing else had the sheer lethality of my improvised firearms, but I didn’t really need that for the most part. Generally I was trying for incrementally more difficult. I even took the time to make a giant rolling boulder trap. I could pair that with a golden idol at some point. No one else in the world would find it amusing, but I would.

I made many more traps:

Traps with water, icy cold, boiling hot, or just normal. Traps of sculpted ice, which apparently counted for the purposes of earth manipulation. Another case where I wanted to bang my head into a wall, since pure water didn’t and I had to use the, fortunately, massive amounts of water already available to me unless I wanted to let the ice melt. It was easy to store some water and move it at least.

More traps with protruding blades. Traps with spinning blades. Powdered razor sharp crystal. I had found I could pressurize the air with fans for that as well. The fans were not so great at making the firearms though. I could use the fans or moving stones to create traps purely based around air pressure and wind. This actually unlocked the ability to make wind as part of my environmental options.

When I used the same fibers I used to make cloth and turned it into ultra fine powder I could get explosions. Actually, explosions were surprisingly easy to make with organic sources when powdered and ignited through friction. I could make them from simple sawdust or something strange like dried and powdered micro jellyfish.

By the time I was done I had created every type of trap that I could think of. There were still traps that were available for purchase. They had opened up as I created more and more types of traps. They had names like wind blade trap (basic), or hell tangle trap (basic), but any of the more mundane traps that I could guess from the description I had created. By the time I was done my title had improved to Innovator III (Dungeon) and I earned another 150 AP.