Prioritizing Priorities

Chapter 65

It took a great deal of willpower for me to be a good Dungeon Master and not wholesale abandon everything I was doing and construct my own Halloween Town. It didn't stop me fantasizing about it, however, even as I went about my work.

Finally, I finished my redesign on the stairs and kicked a text to the bone brigade to tell them about what I'd done. Raid League wasn't scheduled for another day yet, but I knew most of the skeletons would do a walk-through. As much out of curiosity as preparation for their matches.

I continued being a model of self-control even after Henry returned to his crypt. He'd finished with his smaller project and wanted to work on one too large for my couch.

For two days, I kept myself focused and on task. That I had added a large room where I was stockpiling building supplies to my chamber of machinations was not a breakdown in discipline. A fact I insisted to myself, even as I kept scribbling a town layout in the margins of basically everything.

On the third day, I finally did get my head properly back in the game. I still had the issue of a larger or more powerful force than I could handle showing up uninvited. Though I didn't know what would happen if I resorted to triggering a build alarm and exceeding the timer, I honestly didn't want to find out. Agony had impressed on me that it was to be avoided, and I believed him.

The best option I could think of that didn't involve a Rube Goldberg level of complexity was a second entrance. Of course, I assumed it still needed to be connected to the valley, but that left a lot of leeway for location.

Wanting to test my idea, I made a hallway that punched from the current back of the topmost layer clean through to the other side of the mountain. I also bought a couple surface tiles and cut a secondary entrance.

I closed the main entrance off and immediately got an obstruction alarm. I'd been expecting that but didn't feel like it was a waste of time. It was better to make sure before I spent a bunch of mana I might not have needed to. I unblocked the entrance and started buying surface tiles.

I didn't have enough mana to buy everything I needed all at once, but that was fine. I connected the area where I had my little lookout spot first. This time when I blocked the main entrance, I didn't get an alarm. The dungeon interior was still accessible from the valley.

Curious, I blocked the secondary entrance and got a build alarm. It seemed like my theory checked out. When I placed a seal on an interior area, it didn't trigger because it wasn't totally inaccessible, even if access was restricted.

An area like the Necropolis being separated didn't block the path to my core, which I felt was critical. On the other hand, blocking the secondary entrance cut off a dungeon section from the path to my core.

I did a bouncy series of swoops which constituted my happy dance. Changing which entrance could be used to access the dungeon wasn't a foolproof defense. If I was dealing with a powerful or sufficiently motivated force, it would at best be a delaying tactic.

Still, it was a pretty good one, since whoever I was looking to stop would have to climb a mountain to get to the other side or go around. Quite the fuck you to any possible invaders in numbers or at a strength I wasn't comfortable with.

Putting aside my elation at my new discovery, I became curious about what exactly was outside the second entrance. So I teleported over to survey the area. I was met with a view of dense forest. The trees were tall and oak-ish looking if you discounted the weird leaf shapes. Aside from that, the rocks were very stone-looking. Very forest, much trees, as it were.

My apparent lack of interest in botany in my previous life aside, I felt like I'd chosen the right side of the mountain to start on. If an elf walked out of the undergrowth in front of me, I wouldn't have been surprised. Mildly alarmed and running back into my dungeon for safety, but not surprised.

Despite that, the aesthetic didn't speak to me. It was too mundane despite looking magic as could be. It had a bland fairytale book for kids kind of vibe. Subjective aesthetics aside, I would have to figure out something and make it work for me.

The entrance, for example, could not remain as nothing but an oddly perfect tunnel mouth for long. Coming up with a new design to fit it wasn't an immediate priority, however.

First things first, I loaded the tunnel up with traps as a preventative measure. I had quite a few laying around from discarded designs for Chris's playroom, so thankfully, I didn't have to spend excessive mana. Every scrap of that would be devoted to expansion for the next couple of days.

Feeling more secure, I sent the hounds a text asking them to take turns guarding the second exit tunnel for a bit. I hadn't thought about it since I first planted my core, but it had been a while since I'd been outside my dungeon. I'd stopped exploring even the remaining sections of the original cave system that hadn't been included when my core initialized.

I knew on an intellectual level that it was an oversight. I should have been looking around, seeing if there were other points of interest down the mountain range. Even if there weren't, it would have been worthwhile to map it fully just for my own reference.

Despite all that, I felt a nervous thrill as I approached the boundary of my dungeon. From what I'd read about myself, there wasn't much that could hurt me. Only my core was vulnerable in a physical sense. I would be fine.

Repeating that little mantra in my head, I left the boundary. I started my forest inspection, tossing random bits of everything into my inventory to find out what everything was. Definitely an effective method of cataloging the local flora and a few slower-moving examples of fauna.

The longer I explored, the more uneasy I felt. As I had assumed I would be, I was fine, but now something else was nagging at me. My mind kept drifting back to my core and worrying about if it was safe. It was. I knew it was. I'd have been alerted if a raid were to occur, and I could easily open up the interface and take an anxious look at it.

Despite all the logic and checking up on it, I still felt my anxiety growing. Clearly, I'd been spending a bit too much time cooped up inside if this was how badly taking a walk affected me. I wondered if this was how parents felt the first time they left their kids with a sitter.

Finding nothing sufficiently interesting to keep me exploring, I decided to head back inside. I had things to do, and even if it was baseless, there wasn't a point in fighting the feeling without reason. It started to ease as I crossed back into my dungeon but didn't abate immediately.

Really, it had been a while since I paid any attention to the lowest layers of my dungeon. Particularly since I'd set aside the hounds area. I teleported down to my core room. It was currently guarded by a miniature version of my first lava dungeon's boss room. A literal game of 'the floor is lava' to keep out anyone with less than maxed out fire resistance.

This version wasn't as flawed as the original. I'd made sure there weren't any convenient sniping points and set up the area where my core was, so it had to be climbed to reach it. At the back of the room, stairs led to where my core rested at the center of a stone flower I'd carved as its pedestal.

Running my hand across the cold blue surface, I felt a calming, almost resonate feeling. A subtle humming that was answered by my being on some level. I'd thought it was pretty even before it activated, but now its glowing surface was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen with its semi-transparent layers of swirling blue.

I felt something like an instinct, a desire to wrap myself around it like I had when I first planted it in the mine that became my dungeon. The soothing feeling I felt as I touched it invited me with a faint memory of something I felt would be like sleep.

I shook the feeling off and pulled my hand back. I could technically do my work from anywhere, but it was a terrible idea. Seeing the layouts I created firsthand and tweaking them directly was far more effective than doing so remotely.

I could come back and take a nap once my layout was finalized. But, for now, I had too much work to do.