Slicing down directly from where her gemstone sat seemed like a pretty bad idea to Avery, since regardless of the fact that her ‘hardness’ statistic was a probably decent fifteen it was still a ball of obsidian. It did tend to be difficult to scratch, but the material was brittle. When you broke off a piece of the glass, it left a sharp jagged edge, and if you were to drop one it would explode into jagged fragments that would shoot off to impale anyone standing nearby. Instead, she angles a rectangle, large enough to allow the gemstone through easily, down at a twenty-two degree angle, one mana at a time. She only got a little over half a meter deep per roll, but since she only really needed to get five or so down to be on a second floor, while leaving a sizable bed of stone between each, which hopefully would be enough for the build menu to keep the ceiling from collapsing when she dug out everything below them.

It cost nine mana, plus three for time spent slowly rolling down the shallow slopes, stopping, and rolling down the other direction, but down in the darkness her core was safe. Belatedly, Avery realizes that her body was all the way up on the top floor, and she needed line of effect to cast the spell on it.

“Nooooooo.”

Now she needed to get her body down here. Actually, come to think of it, she could just cut a tiny channel up from where she was up to where her body was laying. As long as an unobstructed path existed, it shouldn't matter that there was a slightly larger distance between them. From what she remembered, the spell would have a range of thirty-six meters, after which there would be nothing tethering her to that radius, other than the hour time limit. As long as she got back on the hole before the duration expired, she wouldn't.

One potential crisis, followed by an immediate realization that it was not actually a crisis. So far, the second floor was going well. There wasn't endless room for expansion into the direction Avery's core was sitting, so to keep everything symmetrical there was a bit of a limit in that respect. To continue the thought she was having about the first floor, she would have a few branching paths with a hidden way down. In order to make it a bit more secure, eventually she'd figure out how to make keys and doors, with one big, obvious door after the pit room with slots for four keys, which would be in the ending rooms of each of her branching paths. Then, in every room, puzzles. Finally, the last room, after opening the final door, would be completely empty other than a sign saying that the area was still under construction. That would be both practical and hilarious.

If they managed to find the hidden passage to the second floor, the same trick wouldn't work twice. For the next giant door, the keys would be required. Seven of them. Three paths would split off from the central location, under the pit room, and would also lead to key puzzles, but the door would require all those three and the four from the first floor. Either they would have found the passage immediately and gotten stymied by the lack of keys, or they would have spent the time to solve the first floor’s puzzles in the first place.

There was basically no way someone would be able to get down to where Avery was now on the first try. That was more of a long term idea though, but having an eventual idea to work with would prevent the layout from becoming a giant chaotic mess during her frantic room building. The more rooms, the more regeneration, but that still left a huge collection of empty chambers. If nothing else, that was aesthetically displeasing. Shaking off her inaction, Avery shelves the concept of decoration for the moment. She had three repeatable, consistent mana regeneration sources, and they all required rooms.

Meter high hole in the side of the pit, one mana. Room that hole drops into, twenty mana. Another mana for another meter pulled from the hole to actually connect the two, one more mana, and notifications.

For generating a Hidden Secret, you gain a bonus of 5 mana regeneration! For starting your second floor, you gain a one-time bonus of 10 mana regeneration!

Looked like she wasn't going to have to make the entire floor plan she envisioned to get to a non-critical level. Still going to though, the fact that a negative forty-two could pop up at any moment still left her in danger. Next, four corridors, one in each cardinal direction, branching off the central chamber, and a room for each of them. Thirty for each set, there went a hundred and twenty, but she was nowhere near done. Each created room would turn to the right, then left, left again, and then forward four rooms before turning left one final time and go for five rooms. Altogether, one thousand four hundred and sixty five mana, gone in one spending session.

Tutorial 3

That wasn't too hard, right? Now that you have a stead influx of mana, wait until you have a full ten and build a corridor using the 'Build' menu.

Corridors Built: 56 / 1

Tutorial 4

Good job! You will continue getting that bonus until the tutorial concludes, to help speed up your early progression. Now, try and use the commands to build a room.

Rooms Built: 58 / 1

Tutorial 5

Perfect! Don't be fooled by the reward being the same regardless of the room's size. Rooms are much more versatile than corridors, and may allow for secret bonuses to be acquired with different dimensions. Now that you have the basics down, try making a trap!

Traps Built: 4 / 1

Tutorial 6

Now that's a dangerous trap. This next step might take a while, so practice what you've learned as you wait.

Traps Successfully Triggered: 2 / 1

Tutorial 7

Wonderful. If that trap did its job correctly, you should now have a new option: 'Spawn'. Any time a creature dies in your dungeon, you gain the option to create a generic version of it that supplements its basic needs with your mana. Try it now!

Creatures Spawned: 1 / 1

Tutorial 8

You've gotten the hang of managing your body fairly well now. As a final reward, once you dismiss this final tutorial, you'll get a ninety percent discount on any dungeon item you currently have unlocked. Choose carefully, sometimes quality is better than quantity, and you can have both!

Notifications Dismissed: 0 / 1

She'll deal with that later. In the room her core currently sits, Avery does the same thing she had done on the first floor, and uses the engraving function without a specific image in mind, depressing the wall, then input a simplified version of the second floor into the indentation, sealing it all behind a stone colored tapestry.

For creating a map of your second floor, you gain a one-time bonus of 5 mana regeneration! For generating a Hidden Secret, you gain a bonus of 5 mana regeneration!

Phew. Now that that was all done, Avery checks her status. She isn't even sure she wants to know how much is left, but however much it was she needed to get up to at least positive forty-two before the invader got back. It didn't exactly take very long to get from the valley to the canyon’s top, and less to get back, so she was working with a fairly strict time limit.

Dungeon Statistics Age 7 Weight 7573 Structure Points 253/253 Mana Points 311/8350 Structure Regeneration 0 Mana Regeneration 214 Power 8 Intelligence 15 Finesse 12 Wisdom 8 Hardness 15 Charisma 6 Menu Options Build Spawn Demolish Map

Quick math. Two hundred fourteen mana per hour, with a maximum of eight thousand three hundred fifty, meant that to get a full storage of mana with this regeneration rate would take about forty hours, or close to two days. Still better than constantly being in the negatives. Of course, she was always able to do more investing for a faster regen, and there was also the possibility of gaining some of those bonuses. If she weren't limited to only using cloth and stone, decorating would be much easier.

Now that she thought of it, since it was a net zero to do so anyway, there was no reason Avery couldn't demolish that box, then reconstruct it. She'd have access to wood, and with no downsides at all.

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

It took several minutes to rot the manacles and chains of the skeletons without damaging them, but it was worth it to have a supply of bones and potential minions. For a necromancer, throwing the body of one's victims into the room ahead of them is not only an intimidation tactic, but a viable combat strategy as well. A skeleton suddenly appearing in a flanking position was a setup for several classic adventuring strategies, most of which boiled down to 'surround them and stab a lot'.

Carrying these around at all times would be moderately annoying, however, so Ham simply infused the bones with a supply of his energy through a touch. When the time came, he would simply reach through to that energy and bring the skeletons to him through his magic. A source of minions acquired, though not that many to be honest, Ham continues onward in his exploration. Dead end.

Backtracking to the previous room, he flipped his coin to decide between the door and the portcullis. With the decision to go through the door made, he ages down the wooden obstruction, revealing a dark pit covered by iron bars and three more doors. Ham swears vengeance on the designer of this place, and resolves to bring a device to decide between more than two options the next time he goes out to hunt a dungeon.

To attempt to differentiate between the three, Ham tests each of the doors. If they were all locked, there was no way to tell anything from them, whereas if all but one were stuck, he could discount the locked one. Surprisingly, the second door on the right side of the room was unlocked, and swung open easily. Taking it as a good sign, Ham goes through that door and is sliced by a scythe trap.