After Gem gave Chesu a tour of the restructured island, as well as the dungeon rooms below it, he sent the wisp a picture of a multifaceted gem with a big smile on it. It was supposed to be warm, but paired with the he nervously thought at Chesu, it was anything but.

“You did good, kid.”

Chesu laughed a laugh that bordered on a dark chuckle. “Kid, when have you ever known me to lie to you like that?” But the wisp didn’t give him time to answer before continuing. “This is impressive. You took some inspiration from tidbits of information I only half told you. And then you figured out so much else just on your own. In particular, your idea for the Plantling tunnels is fabulous and I can see it being a real problem for adventurers to deal with.”

Gem formed a grinning gem image and sent that to the wisp.

“You said they were a Swarm Mob, right?” When Gem confirmed, Chesu nodded. “Yeah. Not only will they excel at it, they’ll enjoy it too. They look the type.”

The wisp laughed again. “Did you just flat out say ‘gasp’ because you couldn’t figure out how to make the sound otherwise?”

Gem made a noncommittal noise.

“Ah, kid, you kill me.” Chesu wiped a non-existent tear from his eyes and chuckled. “Right. So. Let’s keep going. Traps. Your idea for the doors is good. I think you should have a few other traps, and I can help you figure out which ones. But there’s two problems with how they are set up now: one, there’s no carrot, and two, fall damage like that won’t work.”

“It is a good tactic though. Especially if you jazz it up a little.”

Chesu walked Gem through the construction of one such trap room, just as an example. Gem chose one of the doors closer to the entrance, both to dissuade checking rooms immediately, and as a way to give groups the ability to just leave if one person died.

The wisp explained how fall damage worked—namely, if the adventurer fell to a depth that would cause death outside of Gem’s area of influence, the death wouldn’t count for experience. Thus, he had to create floors for adventures to hit, instead of just tossing them endlessly onto the planet’s surface.

Gem created a small room, shorter than the main room, but longer and deeper. It went down three y-levels, making it on-par with his Plantling tunnels. Instead of creating a stairway down the floor, however, Chesu instructed him to use the False Floors from his trap menu. Gem made sure the first few blocks were actual blocks to give the adventurers a false sense of security. Then he put the false floors all the way across the room, except for the very end. With Chesu’s help, he crafted a sort of dais where he could put a particularly shiny item to tempt the adventurer across.

“We’ll go into item creation before you open your doors, but let’s just keep it in mind that it has to be big enough for them to see all the way across the room. Adventurers’ eyesight isn’t as good as yours.”

Gem thought before quickly moving his attention to the second door.

While looking through his Traps menu for the false floors, Gem had noticed pressure plates and spike traps. Both were fairly innocuous alone, and even together. It was a simple trap that most adventurers would avoid instinctually.

But he had an idea to make it better.

Gem constructed this room further back, towards his boss room. It was the same general construction as the first, but instead of a false floor he just left the path open to the lower floor below. Along the bottom of the floor he strategically placed pressure plates.

In general, people would take the path of least resistance every time. They weren’t about making more work for themselves. But when that path was in a dangerous place, it was more likely that the adventurers would try for an alternative. Thus, Gem didn’t put his traps in a straight line down the center of the room. He set them about like a checkerboard, not necessarily hoping to catch every adventurer with every trap, but to instead throw a wide net and anticipate that one would hit at least one while down there.

When the pressure plates were all laid, Chesu showed Gem how to hook them up to the spike traps, which he inserted into the wall. There was a thin red line from plate to trap that Chesu promised was invisible, except to certain classes at higher levels. Traps became much less important after about Bronze One so Gem would want to rely on them less after his first floor.

Once he was finished hooking up all of his plates and spike traps, Gem fetched his secret ingredient.

It took multiple trips to get enough to fill the bottom floor with water. Gem made sure it came up about two block heights, which would be waist or chest high on most adventurers. Some of the shorter races would be inconvenienced since the water would be well over their head, but they would actually have an easier time of it, since they would be forced to swim and thus wouldn’t trigger the pressure plates.

Chesu was quick to point that out, but Gem waved it away.

The wisp stared at him. “How is it that you understand dungeon theory so well? The careful balance of death and reward? I usually have to stamp it on the inside of a Dungeon Core’s gem so they don’t forget it.”

Gem sent a hasty image of a shrugging gem that was so distorted the intent was almost lost. He sent an image of a grinning core to soften his words.

“Oof, kid.” Chesu winced and flinched back. “Alright. Point taken.”

Gem paused.

Chesu threw his head back in laughter. “Kid, if anyone can relate to that it’s me.” The laughter dried up quickly and he shook his head. “But, apology accepted, as long as you can forgive me for bunking off a bit myself.”

Gem sent an image of a crystal with a wide smile.