I rubbed my eyes tiredly as I hustled toward the warehouse in the industrial district. The bag I had over my shoulder thumped into my back as I hurried, and the sound of something heavy and metal bouncing around rang out in time with the rhythm of my steps. I hoped it would be okay. As I approached, I quickly navigated my way through the maze of buildings until I arrived at the Q&A Jelly factory. Alder was already there, her foot tapping impatiently. She saw me as I turned the corner and shouted, “You’re late!”

“Sorry, sorry” I said as I hastened my pace. “I was up all night working on these plans. Ended up falling asleep as soon as I finished. Forgot to set my alarm.”

As I drew even with her, she turned and led me inside. I saw the rest of the party sitting around. Redmond looked up at me and grunted sourly. “About time you got here.” I frowned at his attitude but quickly wiped it off my face. I was in the wrong this time, so he had a right to be annoyed. Mostly I was still just annoyed at the crappy deal they’d given me. But that was business. It might have been unintentional too. “Sorry about that, I was up all night working on these plans.”

He snorted at that. “It’s a level 1 dungeon, how difficult can it be?” He looked like he wanted to keep haranguing me, but Quimby jumped in. “Well, that’s fine, that’s fine. You’re here now, so we can get started!”

I nodded. “I’m ready whenever you are. I’ve already memorized the layout.”

Alder looked around. “Any other questions or comments? No? Then let’s get started.” She looked to Quimby who nodded and took out the Level 1 Beast Core. He handed it to me and I took it, inspecting it. It felt surprisingly light considering its size. “Shall we?” Alder’s voice broke me out of my thoughts and I nodded, following her out into the space behind the factory.

I placed the Beast Core down on the ground. “Now we just need the Slime eyes and Carnivorous Dandelion seeds.”

Quimby pulled out a jar with 2 oddly gelatinous looking eyes and another with 10 seeds each the size of a fist. “These were actually pretty cheap all things considered.” He quipped. Redmond snorted. “Of course they were, Carnivorous Dandelions are a nuisance that serve no purpose aside from creating level 1 dungeons and Slime Eyes are absolutely disgusting tasting, the exact opposite of their jelly. Way too bitter.”

I nodded. It was pretty well known that they were considered waste products. Which is why I was so excited for my dungeon plan. Finally, I pulled out the item I had stol-- appropriated from my dorm room, a watermelon sized device. I looked at proudly. This had been the final piece of the puzzle and the reason I had stayed up all night. I couldn't think of a solution until I saw it sitting there. The others looked at it curiously. “What’s that?” Izzy asked.

“It’s a Thermacore. Modeled after dungeon cores, it absorbs mana from the surroundings, but it uses the mana to generate heat rather than monsters. The higher the setting, the more mana it absorbs. This is a residential heater, so it can’t power a furnace or anything, but it should be able to generate enough heat to fill a large room.”

Izzy still looked curious, but Alder cleared her throat impatiently before Izzy could ask another question about how it worked. “But why do you have it?”

“It’s important to my dungeon plans, so I took the liberty of getting it myself rather than asking you all to get it.” I hoped that if I pointed out I had assumed the expense myself she wouldn’t ask too many questions about it. Apparently it worked, because she just nodded. “Fine, go ahead.”

“Alright then, I’ll get started. Why don’t you all go ahead and step back a bit so I have room to work?” They nodded and moved back a few feet, but stayed fairly close. It wasn’t every day that people got the chance to witness a dungeon being made. Even Redmond seemed grudgingly interested in the process.

I took a deep breath and activated my Create A Dungeon skill with a thought.

My surroundings faded away and I found myself in a strange blue space. Everything seemed to glow oddly, and then settled into streams of characters I didn’t recognize flowing all over the place. The area around me was outlined in blue so I could see what my surroundings actually looked like. But I could see a grid pattern all over the place, where previously I couldn’t. The materials I had used to activate the skill had disappeared, but the Thermacore sat in front of me.

I expected a menu to appear detailing what I could do with the dungeon, but I didn’t see one. Instead I saw a message screen in front of me. “Welcome to the Dungeon Creator. Just think about what you want to do and if it’s within your abilities it’ll work. In here you are a god! Just kidding. Don’t you dare call yourself that or I’ll kill you. -Janus”

“Huh,” I thought to myself. “Who would have thought Janus had a sense of humor?” I dismissed the message. “So like this?” I muttered to myself and thought about the layout I’d imagined last night. The dungeon would be pretty simple. I started by creating the entrance, making it extremely large so that plenty of air could filter in. I set a small set of stairs into the steep slope that led deeper into the dungeon. Then I created a large underground chamber directly in front of it and filled it with a field of moss and Carnivorous Dandelions in the main chamber, but I left a distinct, wide path in the middle of the chamber leading to a hallway about 2 people wide. The good thing about Carnivorous Dandelions is that they couldn’t actually move. Oh they could grab people as they walked by, but they couldn’t leave the spot where they took root. This way, there was a clear path to the hallway that the Dandelions wouldn’t be able to get at. The hallway extended for a good quarter mile before opening into another chamber, this one taking up the majority of the space available to me, about half of 1 square mile.

I created a small pond at the back of the chamber, deep enough to keep the Slimes away, then made a small, hollowed out stalagmite rising from the pond. I marked the interior of it as the place where the Dungeon Core would be. It was important to keep the slimes away from it or they might actually try to consume it. They lacked intelligence and would eat anything with sufficient mana, even the Core. I set the Core to only activate when all the Slimes were killed, so that it wouldn’t waste its limited mana on respawning slimes as they died.

So far I was just operating based on what they had asked of me. But now that I had layed the foundation for the dungeon I began making some key changes. I created a tall, narrow pillar with a bowl shaped indentation at the top in the middle of the second chamber. It stretched nearly 30 feet straight up, keeping it well above where the slimes would be spawned. The next step was one I wasn’t sure would work, but Janus’ message gave me hope it would. I looked at the Thermacore in front of me and thought at it. I imagined it being placed at the top of the pillar in the circular indentation. It blinked out of existence in front of me and reappeared on top of the pillar. I let out a sigh of relief. It had worked. I shook my head in wonder. This was really crazy. I felt almost godlike in my ability to control my surroundings. Too bad it would only last until the skill ended and I created the dungeon.

I thought about it and set the Thermacore to its max setting and turned it on. Instantly the area that had been flashing blue this entire time suddenly drained of color, appearing translucent white. I realized that the blue must indicate the mana concentration in the area. I had planned for the area to be drained of mana, but it was all theory until now. It was nice to see an indication that it had actually worked. The Dungeon Core and the Thermacore were now the only two blue things in the chamber. The Thermacore seemed to be working correctly as it only took mana from the air and not from the Dungeon Core. As long as mana continued to flow into the dungeon with the outside air, the Thermacore would have power.

I wiped a bead of sweat that had formed on my forehead. I had been worried that the Thermacore would steal mana from the Dungeon Core in which case I’d have to abandon my plan.

I moved onto the next step, and populated as many Slimes as I could fit into the chamber. I looked at the Slimes and noticed that a strange circle surrounded them constantly fluctuating. I wasn’t sure what it was.

As I wondered that a window appeared in front of me. “Tip: When you create monsters that can move you will notice a circle appearing around them. This indicate their territory. They can move anywhere within that territory.”

That made sense. I hadn’t seen it when I created the Dandelions because they were stationary. The territory of the Slimes notably excluded a few areas. The circle bent inwards as it reached the pond. I assumed that meant the Slimes wouldn’t go there, which made sense as they couldn’t swim.

I noticed the top of the pillar I’d made was similarly untouched by the circle. Again, it made sense. Slimes can’t climb. The circle extended into the hallway that led to the first chamber, but stopped before actually reaching the chamber.

“It worked!” I pumped my fits in the air. When I started coming up with this dungeon plan, my biggest fear had been that the Slimes would flood the entire dungeon, but Alder’s information about slimes had been true. They really did avoid Carnivorous Dandelions. It had to be something with the smell. I smiled and looked at the rest of the dungeon, seeing if there was anything I had forgotten. I couldn’t think of anything else. Even though I was confident that I had remembered everything, I still hesitated. If I confirmed I was done the dungeon would form. At that point it would be too late to go back and change something.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to stop thinking of worst case scenarios. I had done everything I needed to do. No more hesitating. I thought to myself, “Confirm.” My vision coalesced into blinding blue light. Behind me I sensed the party members shifting as they threw hands up to shade their eyes from the intense light. The ground rumbled and I nearly lost my footing as the earth shifted to accommodate the changes I had made to it.

When the light faded, I slowly blinked my eyes, trying to clear the spots of light from my vision. I heard gasps from behind me as everyone else’s vision cleared too. A large cavern entrance appeared in front of me. The ground sloped downward from there leading deeper into the dungeon.

I felt a strong breeze kick up, blowing my hair back towards the dungeon, and felt a smile grow on my face as I turned to face the party.

“Well, would you like a tour?”