Avery suddenly came back into consciousness. Unlike waking up, there was no lingering tiredness, not any sort of transition between being conscious and not; it was closer to suddenly popping into existence. Stopping herself from thinking ‘Well that was odd’ again, Avery instead opens up her status menu to see how much she had lost by casting that spell again.

Dungeon Statistics Age 6 Weight 7573 Structure Points 253/253 Mana Points 1855/8350 Structure Regeneration 0 Mana Regeneration -109 Power 8 Intelligence 15 Finesse 12 Wisdom 8 Hardness 15 Charisma 6 Menu Options Build Spawn Demolish Map

Huh. She’d gotten mana back? Not much, and she’d lost three hours of productivity, but that was a good thing to know about. If her soul wasn’t in the dungeon core, it wouldn’t burn for mana, and her natural mana recovery would still be in effect. There seemed to be something else, but it was subtle, and Avery couldn’t put her finger on it.

Regardless, the mana regeneration was still the big issue she needed to resolve. Now that the blanket wasn’t hiding the entrance to her dungeon, Avery had no qualms about demolishing it for however few minutes of life it would provide her. Additionally, before she could think herself out of it, she spent the fifty mana to spawn a lesser slime in the pit one room deeper into her beginning labyrinth.

You have spawned (1) Lesser Slime For spawning your first creature, you have gained a one-time bonus of 1 mana regeneration! Your (Lesser Slime) provides you with (-1) mana regeneration as long as it remains within your walls. Mana Regeneration: -109 / 1

Nooooo. And it was trapped in the hole, so she wasn’t going to be able to… Wait maybe she could just demolish it.

Demolish not available on living or undead creatures.

Augh. Ok, well. Maybe she could design something to kill it, and then recover some of the mana from the remainders of the slime. People did that all the time, it couldn’t be too hard. Avery spent two mana to build a stalactite over the pit, then another one to demolish a thin segment of stone that connected the new outcropping to the ceiling. Immediately falling, the stone spear pierces into the soft gel body of the newly formed slime.

The death of a (Lesser Slime: 1) has provided you with 25 mana.

Oh, well that made more sense. The first slime hadn’t died in the territory of an ensouled dungeon core, and so the first half of the mana was lost. After demolishing the stalactite and the jelly at the bottom of the pit, Avery was back up to what she had originally, minus the one used on the separation and another lost to mana drain. So, if not removed from the grounds, the monsters would have a net zero cost, minus what they cost in upkeep. That would also explain why some dungeons shed their monsters out into the world, only to be filled with much more powerful creatures when the adventurers filed in to investigate the upsurge. Anyway, when she had built the stalactite there were a few more options in the construction menu now that Avery had demolished her blanket.

New Items Tapestry 10 Tripwire 5 Rope 5 Trap Trigger 25 Thread 1 Clothing 1-100 Blanket 10 Magical Robes 2400-120000

Decorating a room might provide a bonus of some sort, and the things she could do with the construction and spawn menus would be a net zero for mana if it wasn’t, so it was worth trying for a few minutes. That in mind, Avery started decorating the entrance.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Ham hadn’t found this place by researching or going through the church’s adventuring intelligence system for newly discovered dungeons. Rather, he had bullied some of the smaller children until they found a small, newly formed dungeon for him to pillage. The fact that he wasn’t killed by that first trap indicated he had intimidated them enough to not betray him at their first opportunity. That kind of giant blade sweeping across an entire corridor would be enough to kill even a group of normal people, but Ham was absolutely brimming with the power of undeath. Even if he hadn’t immediately sealed himself back together with the negative energy, that level of damage was such that he’d be able to heal naturally in less than a week. As it was, he was back to perfect health in six seconds.

So, he kept going forward. These traps didn’t reset on their own it looked like, so he could proceed with reckless abandon. Of course, the very next corridor had another trap. As he walked up to a two way intersection, one path to the left and one to the right, a crescent of metal fell on a pendulum, slicing up Ham’s back and splitting the skin on his back and head apart. This particular blade had done less damage than the previous one, but the slightly random nature of throwing raw energy at a problem until it goes away, combined with the injury being where Ham was unable to see, meant it took significantly longer for him to repair his flesh. Twelve seconds this time.

Deciding to leave this choice to chance, Ham flips a coin. Marked side left, unmarked right. The coin decreed that right was right, so Ham followed the path until it turned to the left, at which point there was another branch off to the left. Ahead, there was a chandelier of iron hanging above the hall, whereas the left immediately turned again to the left. The coin decreed straight, so Ham went on, following the path as it turned left twice more, until an actual room appeared on his right behind an archway.

Walking into the room, it was nothing but cold unworked stone lit by flickering candles, with broken glass from no discernable source scattered across the floor. Ham gingerly grasped the pick at his side. It was a standard heavy pick miners used for breaking stone apart, and would serve him well for breaking apart any traps that did reset themselves or killing monsters. If he were stronger, he might have been able to ignore the very walls of the dungeon, simply mining through the stone to find a straight path. That was work though. Ham was more willing to risk death wandering endless corridors filled with traps than swing a pick relentlessly at a wall.

Instead, he turns around, and finds the source of the broken glass. To the left of the archway was a stained glass mosaic, depicting an image Ham had alway assumed would come to pass; a cleric of darkness crushing Ham’s skull with a large flanged mace, erupting with a blue glow. Ham had always assumed that if he trusted the clerics and hierarchy of darkness, they would eventually betray and murder him. It’s what he would have done in their place, and here he had a prophecy telling him exactly what he had always believed.

His purpose reinforced once again, Ham continues to explore and loot the dungeon.