Finally, I was ready to take one of the most important steps as a dungeon, to create an entrance. An entrance wasn’t just a hole or a cave that connected the dungeon to the outside world, it was dungeon’s signature, its trademark, the first thing every visitor saw. No serious dungeon would skimp on creating a proper one.

And I was stalling. Such a simple thing yet I was anxious if the other core’s memory were true once created there was no going back. I would have to deal with the outside and I was terribly unprepared. I was nowhere near strong enough to survive any serious attempt on my life and I knew that all hinged on creating some sort of deal or understanding with nearby powers. The problem was, I had no idea what those powers were, or what they could possibly want. To postpone inevitable I decided to go over the last 7 weeks that led to this moment. I had started with differences between subtypes of my grootslangs.

Azure grootslangs were the strongest psionics which allowed their voices, who were a cross between leaders and priests, and shapers, who were advanced builders, to be the best among the collectives. I expected them to build using advanced telekinesis and was shocked when I saw them literally shaping the rock into the desired form. It turned out they had a lesser form of my ability – weak concept shaping (B). This discovery led me to some experimentation and eventually I managed to create a lesser version of 2 of my skills. Foreboding turned into “lesser sense danger (D)” giving the user chance to discover threats and hostile being in 30-meter radius, while “Enhanced farsight” became “simple farsight (E+)” and allowed eagle view of a single room or a small radius area centred no further than 10 metres from the caster.

What made both useful was no need for line of sight so locked doors, walls or corners weren’t an obstacle. Both were extremely simple but for scouts could mean the difference between life and death. Transferring them to the collective was a choir but gave me a skill “skill bestowal (D)”, I could give one skill up to D-rank to one being present in my dungeon every 3 hours.

It worked even better when I found out how the collectives pass their history and lore. As they have no hands they don’t use a written language, they do understand the concept but find it limiting and primitive, which shouldn’t be surprising considering they are a race with advanced psionic abilities. They found a way to store their memories in memory obelisk standing in the middle of each collective.

As this is rather impractical for mundane knowledge and everyday learning, they used the same technique to create memory stones. The best capacity had a diamond but they were limited to materials available in the vicinity so they settled for onyx. Areth revealed that a master was able to store entire skill inside such stone, much similar to skill books used by other races. It took me absorbing over one hundred such stones, thankfully most empty, to understand how to create them. At first, I had to create empty ones and fill them individually but after some practice, I learned how to create already filled ones. The best part was it cost me nothing but mana and I was able to produce several thousand every day. Shortly after every grootslang had both skills.

Golden grootslangs had weaker psionic power but a high affinity with light, which made them astounding healers and gardeners. The lack of sunlight and my inactivity made it impossible for them to grow pretty much anything but mushrooms and even that was challenging. They had made do with light crystals and glowing moss but the true revolution had come when golden grootslangs modified their light spells to nourish the mushrooms.

Of course, now I actively supplied ambient mana for the whole dungeon so any plant would grow much better than outside as long I maintained a high enough concentration of mana. I remembered Areth amusement when I asked if they ate those mushrooms. I admit the idea was stupid but at least I learned they used them to breed various monsters. There were huge but docile reptiles for food, small bug-like creatures for silk and some types of slime for magic components. Out of the whole lot, only the mushrooms showed potential for combat, limited as it might have been.

Silver grootslangs had an additional sonic attack, were smaller and the most versatile of all subspecies. They also had the best burrowers responsible for expanding the territory and drilling tunnels. Well, drilling would be the wrong word as they vibrated their bodies rapidly and moved through rock like through water. After their passage, nothing but rubble remained. Sadly, the burrowers weren't suited for combat as they were three times slower when burrowing and they made enough noise to warn the whole dungeon of their position.

Black and green grootslangs were similar as they were the strongest physically and were the best fighters. Black grootslangs had high affinity with darkness which made them better scouts, assassins and guards and green had an acid attack which made them deadly both at a range and up close. Surprisingly they were also the most skilled artist out of the collectives, especially their sculptors. They could spend years carefully letting small drops of acid burrow and flow through rock creating fascinating shapes. The sheer patience required spoke volumes about the race capable of dedicating years for something, although beautiful, lacking practical uses.

A rather loud cough reminded me that not all members of this noble race possessed this virtue. I briefly considered asking Areth how she as a serpent could cough but decided it was not worth The Look. In the past weeks, she mastered The Look and it was a weird mixture of respect, veneration and wonder how anyone could be this stupid. If her aim was for me to filter my questions then she certainly had accomplished that.

– "Yes, Areth?" – I asked.

– "Not to hurry you, sire but weren’t you going to create an entrance?"

– "Yes, Areth I was. I was just considering the past events. By the way didn’t I ask you to call me Arnar?"

– "Yes, sire, you did."

– "And you are going to ignore my request?"

– "It is not proper, sire." – The silence stretched for several minutes before she added – "If you wish so I will try."

– "Thank you Areth, it means a lot to me."

– "But only in private and when the occasion calls for it I will use all proper forms. Now create that damn entrance."

I decided to quit while I was ahead and promptly started. I could have done it as every other dungeon by slowly moulding rock to my will, yet concept visualisation allowed for much greater control and precision so I decided to use it almost exclusively despite the higher cost. I imagined a wide portal allowing up to 3 people entering at once guarded by a decorative column on each side. I settled on tree and floral ornamentations with the exception of tympanum over the entrance depicting a coiled grootslang with wings. When I was satisfied with the overall design I filled it with mana, the rock shimmered and the entrance was ready. All that was left was waiting for the first guests.

I was in the middle of trying to combine two skills into one memory stone when I got a strange feeling of wrongness. A quick scan of my dungeon revealed four creatures at the entrance. It would take them some time to reach any vital parts of the dungeon so I decided to finish the experiment. Or would have if the core hadn’t exploded at that moment, at least after the first explosion I had learned to do it in an unused room instead of my core room. I knew they could store S class skills and one such skill needed tens if not hundreds of times more information than D rank skill so why did it reject the second skill? Having nothing else to do and not being eager for another failure I focused on the intruders.

Each of them was bipedal, stood erect and had two dexterous arms. Each was wearing rough and used clothes, the only armour I could see were quilted jackets. Their weapons were equally pathetic; one axe that seemed more suited to chopping wood than to battle, two short bows, which I assumed were good for hunting but a doubtful choice in the dungeon and a large dagger or if you were generous a really short sword. Watching them I recalled my conversation with Areth, she claimed that we didn’t need to worry about getting people to come. She couldn’t explain it but according to her some unseen force made sure, once the entrance was made, the dungeon was discovered. Considering how poorly they were equipped to deal with anything moderately hostile not to mention a proper dungeon it was hard not to believe there was something to that theory.

They were clearly discussing something and pointing in the direction of the next room, the problem was I had no idea what they said. For all I could tell, the argument was if they should proceed and it ended when the biggest and hairiest one yelled something and went ahead into my depths. That sealed their fate as I already decided to kill my first intruders, I simply understood too little of the world and unfortunately for them quickest way to rectify this was for them to die.

When they were in the middle of the second room I sent a signal to my two black grootslang assassins and they sprung up from underground. One mind freeze and 4 bites later the unpleasant business was concluded. The amount of mana I have gained was pitiful but I was expecting that from them being G-rank. They died because I needed a target for my Soul Inference skill. I targeted the leader, least he could do was to pay for having his party killed. I decided to focus on three aspects; what a dungeon was to them, what motivated them and the language they spoke. Narrowing the focus really helped as I shortly knew why they decided to risk this expedition and also learned the proper term for them would be adventurers.

When a new dungeon was discovered most guilds would pay good money for such information, according to their memories up to 10 gold. Such lucrative prize tempted them into losing their lives which was unsurprising considering the wealthiest of them earned 5 silvers a year and here they could get twenty times that in few days. I knew now that most new dungeons had only a few rooms, never really more than 5, and monsters rarely exceeded G rank. This coupled with the quality of species being low would allow them to easily sweep a standard dungeon, not that this was their intention, they simply wanted any proof of me being a dungeon in order to cash in the guild rewards.

There was quite a competition for claiming dungeons as there were seven factions particularly interested; the adventurers’ guild, the mages’ guild; the traders’ guild, the crafters’ guild, The church, the imperial guard and local nobles. The faction who first laid claim usually got to manage the dungeon and it was their responsibility to destroy it if it proved to be too dangerous. Apparently, the empire tamed the dungeons by carefully developing them and when they grow powerful enough they already were subconsciously reliant on their masters. Both sides got benefits from this as really few dungeons got destroyed and factions got a good source of materials, equipment and place to train weaker members. The biggest drawback for me was that those factions usually restricted their dungeons from growing past legendary rank. I needed to show both usefulness and find a way to assure them of not being a threat.

I have also accomplished my second aim and learned what would be a proper reward. This was actually more complicated than I assumed as in the Far Eastern Flatlands there were over seventy dungeons. I was quite fortunate as the area I was in, the Striped Beetle Expanse was poorer than average and mostly undeveloped. I was the third dungeon in one hundred kilometres radius from the biggest city Roseford, the capital of Roseford County. I was also the closest one, as far as my first adventurers knew it was less than a day so I assumed it would be around 20 kilometres.

This allowed me to be more flexible with the compensation but still if I gave out too little no one would risk their life. Giving out too much would be even worse as I would get hordes of overpowered adventurers eager for an easy gain. The most desired were things which would help adventurers survive with the focus on good equipment and skill books making everyone crazy with greed. Then there would be rare materials for potions or enchantments, surprisingly gold was rather low on the priority list especially with higher rank adventurers.

To my surprise almost all “tamed” dungeons had one mining level with no to little danger and easy first floor containing useful low-level plants. It actually made sense as according to that unlucky fellow most dungeons quite quickly got to 5 floors and devoting one floor to get people, who would under other circumstances never enter the dungeon, to absorb their mana passively wasn’t that bad idea. Plus it gave you brownie points with your guild, what not to like.

I failed with my third goal. I learned the spoken language but either his soul was too weak and gave out after giving up answers for previous questions or he had never actually had a good grasp on the language he was speaking. He also couldn’t write or read so no luck there either. The fact that my serpentine friends had no need for it made it harder as it was a wholly new concept for me. There was no sense in brooding over this as my gains this time were substantial and even the language thing was a partial success as I was now proficient in high serpentine and had a basic grasp on both Imperial and Eastern Flatlands dialect.

As an afterthought I absorbed their corpses and equipment, it gave me elementary knowledge of human anatomy and a reference point for low-quality armours and weapons. If I combined it with things, which came from past grootslangs’ raids, I absorbed those past weeks I should be able to make good quality loot which wasn’t too eye-popping. I needed to ask Areth how they got that overpowered stuff in the first place, but that had to wait. I had an area for beginners to plan and build!