How was I going to avoid having to move my core more than once if creating the entire floor would take weeks? Simple. I was just going to not build any rooms until I had built enough hallways to reach the spot where my new ‘Core room’ will be located. After that I could always add more paths to fill out the floor.

I open up the map of the floor, just to see how much I have to work with. I’m not sure how much more room I have to work with but it’s significantly more. My current core room looks so small on the map. I want to make my second floor big enough so that invaders will have to spend a lot of time trying to find me. I design six hallways to spread out from here. Two hallways for each wall of my room not counting the side that my stairs enter from. I make one of the left hallways curve around so it ends up behind where the stairs are located and the other hallway, I design to make do some twists until it ends just further to the left on the map. To add some variety, I do make the hallway into a very gentle incline. Not too much but enough that the room I plan on building will be two meters higher than what I consider normal.

For the next two corridors that’s in the ‘middle’ I make them both stretch in a straight line more or less before they both take a sharp turn back towards my first room. The left corridor I end just after the sharp turn while I make the right corridor continue almost all the way back before making another sharp turn heading further into my future floor. I once again decide to add an incline to the second half of the corridor so that when I build a room at the end it too is two meters higher than normal.

Just these four hallways drained all my mana though so it’s back to waiting and trying to learn how to read. The hours pass quickly and I should once again have full mana. I check my status screen just to see what it is.

Name Unknown Age 9 days Race Dungeon Core Health 5 Health Mana 690 Mana Combat creatures Fae Creatures Tier 1: 84 Tier 2: 1 Size 2 Floors Fame Newborn dungeon that has started to grow. Undiscovered by any sentient race.

To think I’m already 9 days old. It does seem I’m a little bit older than I thought I would be. Not really sure where I lost that extra time but I suspect I may have rested a bit more than I really needed to do. The quiet is just so nice. I can’t really fault myself for enjoying it a bit more. I see both the fallen and normal Fae are simply called Fae in the status menu since despite the fact they’re now two races they used to be the same and I didn’t spend an upgrade point to get the ‘Fallen Fae’. My size has changed as I expected it to and there’s just a tiny change in my fame description. Still newborn but at least now I’m growing.

The heath and mana are what really catch my attention. I now have 5 health. I’m happy about that and my mana has grown to 690. Since I had 610 before and I try to figure out how my new room and four hallways have caused it to grow by 80 mana.

After some time, I realize that moving my core didn’t just give me more heatlh. It also gave me 15 more mana independent of the rooms and hallways. It’s not much but I’m happy to take it.

I go back to building the last two hallways on the right side of the room. I make one just a straight hallway aimed towards the top right side of the map before making a small turn down again. The other I aim towards the bottom right without any turns at all. I don’t make any change in elevation on these. Just two hallways that are different is enough for the start of the floor.

Now would be the normal time to start building rooms but I didn’t want to do that until I reached the spot where my core room would be. So instead I tried to decide what of my six hallways I should expand in order to make my core room at the end.

To me they all looked the same though. There was no way to pick a path that didn’t stand out. I spent some time agonizing over my decision before just picking the fourth hallway counting from the right. It was in the middle so no one should decide to go there first at least. Good enough for me.

Since I’m just going to make hallways for now, I decide to design a really long hallway that both goes back down and up randomly. I make it do a few turns but generally head towards the left side of the map. I confirm the decisions and I’m once again low on mana. As the hallway was forming, I suddenly realize something. I’m not even sure if I can interrupt an already finished hallway by placing a room. If I can’t then I just made a really long hallway for all my mana. Not that there is anything wrong with that but I had planned to make some rooms along that hallway.

I quickly decide to design a small room I don’t intend to build but just see where I can place and quickly position it in the middle of the hallway. Sadly, my fears are confirmed. I can’t do it. I can place the room where I decided to start extending the hallway but I can’t place it anywhere else along the hallway. I’m now stuck with just a really long hallway. I wish a certain fairy had told me about this before I started but I hadn’t really told her what I had planned either. Still, she’s supposed to be helping me and this is something I felt I should’ve known about before.

Grumbling I go back to the books but I’m not focused enough to learn anything. While trying and failing to read I get the occasional pop-up from the system about invasions but it’s only a few small animals my Fae quickly deal with. I’m in such a bad mood I don’t even bother reading them.

After all my mana is back, I return to my expansion. Wiser than before I now create a shorter hallway so that I can place room where I want to. I end it at three meters above my normal ground elevation. Then I make a hallway that ends up going down again. I’m now as far to the left of the map as I want to be, I turn my next hallway towards the bottom of the map. After confirming I’m once again left with not enough mana to continue but I do get an interesting message from the system.

Tin ore discovered. You can now place 'Tin ore deposit' in your dungeon.

When I first got transported here, I got a message about being able to place an ‘Iron ore deposit’ but I remember the message was a bit longer. Did the gods that made the system, according to Lilly, grow lazy and just shorten what it tells you after a while? Somehow, I find that idea upsetting but since my current mood is somewhat annoyed that I don’t have to think about it more. I try to get back to expanding only to realize I lack mana and the only thing to do is read those books Lilly left me.

A day later, I decided to spend some extra time resting to cheer me up, I got back to expanding. I made three more hallways that kept to the bottom edge of the map. To save some mana I decided I built enough with stone and finally switched to making them with dirt. I figured that would be enough for that path to my core and made a small room at the end of the last corridor that was by coincident behind the stairs and my current room, just further back. I had plenty of room to build a decoy room or two in the space I had between the two locations.

I once again got a message about moving my core and accepted it.

I didn’t pass out this time. I just wish I had. Turns out the transportation was even more painful while I was conscious. I can’t imagine how painful it would be to die if it was much more painful than this. It took me some time to gather my thoughts but I managed. I opened up a map of my second floor to look at what I had done so far.

The shape of my hallways kind of looked like a big, almost closed, circle with some lines spreading out from the top of the not quite closer circle. Granted the hallways had so many twists and turns not even the squiggly lines in the books I read would be brave to make a sound related to it. At least I had room to fill in more things according to the map. My circle only covered a quarter of the map, the bottom left side to be more specific.

I decided to go back to the start of my second floor. I didn’t have that much mana left and I wanted to make sure my boss room was bigger here than what it was on the first floor. I now have three hallways that angle into the big circle of hallways I had already constructed. I needed to decide if I wanted one of them to escape the confined space left for them to expand in by sneaking a hallway between the entrance to the second floor and the core room. Finally, I decide not to. I can always branch off the other two hallways that are outside the ‘circle’ to create a truly confusing floor.

I decide that the first path on the left should just lead to a room with no other hallways. Let the fools that decide to pick this path quickly realize the second floor is nothing like the first. I make it irregular shaped so that they will still need to clear out the Fae I planned to place there just to see that it’s a dead end.

Well that was easy. One hallway complete and the main hallway halfway done. Just four more to go. But for now, more rest. Even with an ever-increasing mana capacity I’m still forced to constantly wait for my mana to return. If I didn’t enjoy expanding as much as I did, I would surely grow bored. I decided to not try and read anything for a while. I had already almost finished two books aside from the one that thought me the letters, meaning I’m practically fluent in reading the symbols, I only have to repeat the words in the books a few times before knowing what they mean, some I even know without repeating. So, I decided to call in Illona, my floor boss, so she could learn to read while I simply stopped paying attention to enjoy my blissful rest.

In the following days not much happened. A few groups of what I would call middle-sized animals entered my dungeon but was quickly dispatched by my Fae. I made sure to rotate the groups in the first room after the entrance to let my other Fae get the chance to get some combat experience. A few other Fae joined Illona in learning to read while I kept busy with my second floor.

After resting I had created a big room next to my core room I intended to use as the place where my boss would defend me. I made it out of dirt, of course, since that would let me make the room bigger and to change things up, I designed the room with a huge pit in the middle of the room and filled it with water.

Since my Fae fly, I really should work to include things that would let them move more easily around compared to the potential invaders. I had read about the different races of this world, at least the ones considered civilized, in one of the books and even found pictures of them. I found one or two of the races could fly without the help of magic and that such magic was restricted to just a very small part of the other races. Meaning creating obstacles on the ground was a good way to let my Fae gain an advantage. Something to keep in mind after I had finished creating the layout of my floor. A few big rocks in the rooms might make the fight to defend me easier without much effort on my part.

The next thing I built was the other rooms along the path towards my core. I managed to fit five on them in. Not as many as I wanted but it would have to be enough. After that I created a few hallways and rooms that just ended up in dead-end hallways or through a series of rooms that either just took the invaders forward or back a single room along the main path after fighting their way through it all. I couldn’t really do more until I created things outside the ‘circle’ along the other paths. I wanted one or two chances to make people get lost in the wider network of hallways and rooms even if they picked the correct path at the start.

After that I went back and filled in the other paths inside the ‘circle’. In the end I managed to fit in eight rooms, four of which was just dead-ends and some hallways to connect it all together. I even managed to find room to place three dead-end hallways. In one of the hallways I even utilized my ability to make slopes so that it was almost filled with water. I decided I would find some way to place a reward in the room on the other side. On later floors if I ever decide to use the same setup again maybe I’ll place a deadly trap in the room instead. I could imagine people seeing the same water-filled hallway after this first one and thinking they found another treasure only to end up dead.

When I was 11 days old, I got another upgrade point for staying alive. I had gotten three points for staying alive so far. At one day, three days and the one I just got. I had to wait two days for my second and eight days for my third. I hoped it was just random and I had gotten unlucky since I really wanted more of those points. Lilly might’ve said it was pointless to get a lot of upgrades before growing but having points feels so much better compared to not having it. More points are simply even better.

I had finally finished half of my initial paths and had one more half done. It had taken me until I was 13 days old. All that was left were the two paths meant to lead into the rest of the floor. But since I had already made so much room down here, I decided to move some of my normal Fae down and replace them with the Tier 1 ‘Fallen Young Fae’. After I had moved about half of my old Fae and replaced them with fresh summons, I got back to expanding.

I finished expanding in the bottom right of the map with a few more really long hallways, I decided long hallways were fine after all, and some big rooms. After that I started to fill up the top right of the map in a way that made it possible to reach with both of my two ‘outer’ paths I got a message that really made me upset.

2nd Floor has reached the maximum allowed size for increased mana regeneration.

What? I have so much more space to expand into I haven’t even touched over a third of the map yet!

Needless to say, I stopped expanding. Leaving my plans for my floor half-finished. I might have spent a day or two cursing the system for teasing me with the promise of so much expansion on to pull it away from me. Eventually though, I noticed that the system hadn’t said I couldn’t expand any more. Just that it wouldn’t help mana regeneration. I checked my mana and saw it was up to 1500. Then I tried to make a hallway based on my previous plan. I was overjoyed when the mana drained and the hallway started to form. This meant I could still expand. I just couldn’t increase my mana.

Three days later, when I had just turned 24 days old, I had finally finished my second floor. I had 38 rooms here and 49 hallways. I considered placing one more dead-end hallway somewhere but decided against it. I still had to fill up everything I had just made. Plenty of things to do.

Before I get started however, a group of my Fae came into my core room. I could tell they wanted to tell me something.