Before I can start with the next rooms and corridors, I need to be sure of what I even want to populate my dungeon with.

Granted, I already have my snow leopards and my yetis but they are currently more like my last line of defence against intruders. Especially the yetis. They are powerhouses that regular people and even lower ranked adventurers can't stand against.

This raises the issue though that anyone who enters my dungeon dies to them unless they are of a sufficient rank.

Which leads me to my next problem.

I need other minions and monsters.

I was granted a variety of animal species but out of all of them, only the forest wolf should have any chance of surviving in the cold and icy environment that the first floor of my dungeon currently is made of.

With a mental command, I order my yetis to go out of my dungeon to bring me any animal or beast they can find and kill. As an afterthought, I also command them to be safe and not to take any risks. Who knows what's out there in this magic-filled world. There are most likely plenty of things that stand above yetis on the food chain, even in these remote and desolate mountains.

With that taken care of, for now, I can keep going with expanding my dungeon. Every bit of mining and expanding that I do will get me the mana that I need to create traps and creatures to defend myself with.

Since I'm already committed to having an ice-themed first floor, my next set of corridors and rooms will be somewhat similar to the ones I already created.

I extend the corridor that I previously started, making it 20 metres long, 2 metres wide and 2.5m high.

Lazy, I know. But repurposing a working design has been done throughout all of human history.

So why should I do any different?

Before I can get to the next part of what I want to create, I'm distracted by the return of my yeti's.

One of them is carrying the bloody carcass of some sort of white fox while the other is carrying the carcass of what seems to be some kind of snow hare. When they are a couple of metres in, they just unceremoniously drop the carcasses on the floor with some wet thuds. Internally sighing about how casually these yeti's handle the carcasses, I will the dungeon to absorb them along with any blood and gore that fell on my floor.

New animal species detected.

Due to the fact that they didn't die in your dungeon, they are as of yet not fully able to add them to your species list.

Detected animal and progress:

Arctic fox: 1/3

Arctic hare: 1/2

That's interesting. Seems like, if I want instant unlocks, I will need to make sure that stuff actually dies inside of my dungeon. Otherwise, I just will need more already dead specimens.

With a mentally conveyed thanks, I ask them to go out again to gather more stuff for me. But just to make sure they know what to look for, I give them some examples to look for and what to certainly bring back if they can find it.

If they can find any, I would like them to bring back some eggs if they can find any bird nests and get to them safely.

Other arctic hares and foxes would be wonderful as well so I can actually get them as a species.

If by some stroke of luck, or skill, they manage to get some sort of bird they also should bring it back here.

If none of these can be found in a reasonable timeframe, they should bring back whatever they can find.

As an afterthought, I make sure to tell them to try to capture alive what they can and to only kill it when they are back here in my dungeon.

Just imagining all the things that might be out there and that I can get makes my proverbial mouth water.

Shaking that distracting though away, I speed my consciousness back to where I left off.

Suffice to say, I have come up with a plan. One that will kinda fit the theme I'm going with so far.

It will involve A LOT of digging and will give me a massive amount of mana.

For starters, I'm going to excavate a room that is considerably larger then what I've done before. Massive even.

The first part of the room will be cylindrical with a diameter of 50 metres and a height of 10 metres. Above this will come a ceiling in the shape of a dome. Because of this design, the highest point of the ceiling will be 35 metres high.

From the sides or this room will lead away five corridors. Four of them will connect to dead-end rooms and the last one will lead further into the dungeon and eventually to the boss room. This last corridor will be closed off with a door and this door will be locked. It's my intention to make it so that anyone that comes into my dungeon will have to go to the dead end rooms and get a key in each of them. The door would only unlock with four of those keys and to get those keys, I'm thinking of giving the adventurers (or intruders) a task in each of the rooms. Either by making them solve puzzles or by making them kill stuff in a certain amount of time or in a certain way. I might even go full hack and slash on them and make up silly challenges where they need to kill things while it is in mid-air. Maybe even make this a bit harder by making it so that the things they need to kill are ground animals that normally don't leave the ground.

With the one corridor leading up to the massive room and five leading away from it, it will look like a snowflake if one could see it from above. A crude snowflake most likely but a snowflake nonetheless.

When or if they manage to open the door, I'm thinking of creating two sets of corridors again that eventually meet each other again but this time the room they will meet in will be the boss room. And after the boss room, I'll create a room for my core where I'll stay for a while until I can get started on a new floor.

Just the excavation of the big room takes six days of non-stop digging. In fact, I didn't even stop to look at the things my yetis brought back. Whenever a notification would pop up, I would just tell it to give me the information later when I'm done with my excavation project.

From the sides of the big room, I dig out five more of my generic corridors and put at each end the same round and 10 metres wide room as the one I made earlier. Out of the round room that is the furthest away from where one enters the big room, I make two corridors lead away. I make each corridor connect to a square room that is 8 metres wide and 5 metres high. More corridors lead away from them but this time from another side of the square room so that the two corridors leading to and from each room form a 90° angle.

At the end of these new corridors, I create two new square rooms and have another corridor lead out each of these as well but this time the corridors leading in and out of them are opposite to each other.

Another set of rooms at the end of the created corridors and another set of new corridors that form a 90° angle with the previous corridor but this time in such a way that they vaguely lead back to the middle.

One slight change though compared to my previous corridors. instead of being 20 metres long, these two are only 19 metres.

I make these two slightly shorter corridors come together in a slightly bigger square room, one that is 12 metres wide and 10 metres high. This shall be my boss room and from this room only one corridor shall head further in, leading to my core room.

For simplicities sake, I make it so that my new core room is the same as the slightly smaller square rooms.

With everything excavated as planned, I make sure to claim it all before moving my core over to my new core room.

A quick look at my character screen leaves me flabbergasted and wide-eyed so to speak.

Name:

Aaron Lightblade

Level:

1

Location:

Dragon mountains

Dungeon companion:

WIKI, the endless tome

Mana:

1 088 106 mana

Mana collection:

0,0050 mana per second

Mana needed for next level:

100 000 mana

Integrity of the core:

100%

Chosen dungeon monsters:

Animals

special achievements:

*First dungeon with an artificial core

Titles:

Inventor

Learned skills:

Mana senses

Numbers of floors:

1 floor

Inhabitants:

5

Number of agents:

1 (Mary-Ann of Ralomar)

Over a million mana! That's ten times more than I need to increase my level.

I definitely will need to level up again. Who knows what kind of awesome goodies I can get. Spoiler: floor map