I woke up slowly. I can feel the qi circulating throughout my body.

“Why did I pass out?” I ask him.

He responds, “When dungeon’s cores pass from one stage to the next there are huge changes compared to normal.”

“What do you mean stages?

” Oh yes I forgot, lower dimensions don’t know these. Your core has various stages it can go through. In dimensions like yours, the difference is too small to be noticed, but in higher dimensions, it is very noticeable.” He answers me.

I asked him, “Are there names for the stages? You keep talking about going up and down in dimensions what do you mean?”

He answers me, “The stage’s names are, Worm, Bird, Eagle, Lion, Mountain, Conquerer, and finally AscendantAnd no I won’t tell you the differences between the stages you have to find that out yourself. To answer your second question, when you reach the Ascendant stage you are able to travel to the dimension above yours and to any below yours.”

Having finished asking questions, for now, I tried to use my qi somehow but couldn’t.

“Inject it into the ground,” he tells me.

I do so. Suddenly I can feel the ground as if it were part of my own body. I keep doing this and the effect spreads out. After a few minutes, I start to feel faint and stop.

I ask him a question, “How will I get monsters?”

He responds, “For a few years you will just have the monsters attracted by your high manna area, but after you get big enough you will be able to make your own. I would suggest cultivating until yo reach the next stage so you can continually expand without stopping. Although the more land you have the faster you will be able to generate qi/ store more qi. It’s your choice on how to do it.”

**A FEW WEEKS LATER**

I wake up from breaking through to the Bird stage. As soon as I am awake enough, I start injecting qi into the ground. About 5 weeks after that I reach a mile in diameter. After this, my dungeon starts to slow down its expansion. at this point, I feel a small addition to my natural cultivation. I look at where the feeling is coming from and see that my first monster has wandered into my labyrinth.

I look over at where the monster is and see a little vine twisting its way into my labyrinth.

“Well, this is a little disappointing,” I say

“but yet it makes sense. You are still a tiny labyrinth.” He said appearing out of nowhere.

“How’d you just appear like that? I ask.

He answers, “I was monitoring you and teleported when I heard you talk.”

“How did you teleport?” I ask.

“All things will be learned in their time.” After saying that he disappears.

Whatever, Now what can I do with you? I look back over at the vine worm. I try injecting some of my qi into it. As I do that, it stars to grow longer and thicker. Cool, I think to my self. After a while, I go back to cultivating.

**5 MONTHS LATER**

I wake up from breaking into the Eagle stage. My diameter has reached 1.5 miles and has started to expand into the ground and sky instead of just a few feet off of the ground. This has slowed down my expansion rate even more. Several more vine worms and a new monster that looks like a flower but will bite your node and is covered with poisonous thorns. By this point, there is a noticeable difference in the level of qi in my labyrinth and outside of it, although the difference is still pretty small. Do to how large the Dark Forest is, it will probably be a long time until any humans stumbled upon my labyrinth. As I was a cultivator before I was used to long periods of doing nothing other than cultivating. Even with that, I am amazed that I’m not bored(I always want to spell it bord and almost misspelled it in my name.) out of my mind. Maybe as a dungeon you can’t get bored? No clue.