Amara had spent over an hour browsing through the achievements available through the achievements screen. It went faster than she had thought, but the developers had organized the achievement section to easily go through.

The achievements screen was broken down into different tabs that had different research branches within them. Some of the tabs that she saw were General, Dungeon vs Adventurers, and Environment, just to name a few.

When Amara selected one of the tabs, a new screen would pop up, showing a range of different achievements. When she opened the General achievements branches, she saw that the achievement she had gained, the Beginners Lesson achievement, highlighted in a golden bronze colour. Amara assumed that the golden bronze colour represents the achievements that she had already achieved.

But, as she browsed through the different types of achievements, she noticed that many were greyed out or mostly hidden from view other than their name and specific Tier needed. But there were so many available that it kind of made Amara mentally stagger. The amount there was, meant that she would probably never run out of achievements to gain.

Amara decided that she would try to complete one achievement before her time ran out with the time remaining. She wanted to maximize that early experience and resource gain by completing some achievements before the adventurers came.

And she found an achievement that she thought could be done before the countdown finished. The achievement was Beautiful as a Butterfly’s Wing. This achievement was to create something on a dungeon floor that is beautiful, and Amara already knew what she wanted to do.

There was a section of the large river that cuts through the middle of the floor. And her idea was to create a bridge. But she did not know how to entirely do it until the dungeon creator popped up in her head. Amara knew that the dungeon creator could create shapes and buildings, so it should have what she needs to create this bridge.

Amara pulled up the dungeon creator and sifted through the different options that could be used. After a couple of minutes of scrolling through, she found an option that allowed you to design and create a bridge for just 400 resource coins, which Amara had.

She selected the bridge option and started designing. Instead of making the bridge out of wood, she decided to make it out of flowers and vines. Amara spent a while crafting that bridge, and boy did it turn out great. She crafted the bridge out of cocoa flowers and kudzu vine. The result was a delicate balance between vine and flowers that draped over the bridge and down to the river. It took about 45 minutes to an hour to build, but it was beautiful. And it was beautiful enough to achieve the beautiful as a butterfly’s wing achievement.

After she placed the bridge, the now-familiar lights and bells appeared, and a screen appeared in front of her.

Achievement Unlocked

Beautiful as a Butterfly’s Wing - Successfully create a beautiful fixture within your dungeon.

Reward: 2000 XP, 500 resource coins, 2 dungeon token

With her gaining the achievement that she wanted, Amara glanced at the countdown. She saw that she had about 3 hours and 30 minutes until it ended. But she wondered what would happen when that time ended.

“Hey Nyx, what will happen when the countdown ends?”

Nyx, who was sitting at her table again and reading a book, glanced back up at her and sighed. “Now you want my help? Whatever happens is when the countdown ends, players can enter the starting area. Once they entered the starting area, they would be able to find you, the only dungeon in the area. Once they do, you can sit back and watch how they react.”

“What can I do … hmmm,” Amara murmured under her breath as she thought of a way to make the environment of the dungeon floor a bit more interactive. She pulled up the dungeon creator and swiped through the options to find the one that she had seen before. Amara finally found it after a couple minutes of scrolling them, the water cycle option. This dungeon creator option allowed her to add a water system to the floor, like rain. It works by measuring the amount of humidity on the floor, and once it reaches a certain amount, rainfalls. It took 150 resource coins to add to her floor, but it was worth it. With the random rainstorms, it would make her floor more like a natural rainforest.

Bright, sparkly lights, and bells ringing appeared, startling Amara because she wasn’t expecting it. A screen appeared. Apparently, she earned an achievement unknowingly. Amara wasn’t expecting it, but any achievements she could gain would help her.

Achievement Unlocked

Dancing in the Rain - Successfully add a function onto a floor that would create rain.

Reward: 1,500 XP, 250 resource coins, 1 dungeon token

With the added resource coins, Amara wanted to finish up her floor to her best of her ability.

The first thing that Amara did was choose a large tree in the middle of her floor and insert some resource coins to make it grow huge. The tree grew and grew and grew, easily towering over the largest trees on her floor. It kind of was like the tree of life from that old Disney movie, a bug’s life.

The second thing that she wanted to do was insert a more diverse plant life on the floor. She used the dungeon creator and found the plant section. Within the section, she purchased a collection of plants that she was able to place on the floor. This cost 100 resource coins, so Amara still had enough if she wanted to do anything else. When she purchased the plant collection, said plants started to grow throughout her floor. It made her floor more authentic to Amara, which was how she wanted her floors and dungeon to be.

“Being in time gates suck.” Amara groaned to Nyx as she watched her resources get smaller and smaller. Her floor was what she wanted, but something was nagging at her. Something that was at the tip of her tongue, but she just couldn’t remember. “Hey Nyx, am I forgetting something?”

“Well, I guess you’re done for now.” Nyx closed her book and put down her tea as she said that. “Good job.” Then she points to the countdown, which showed five more minutes left.

Amara, who decided she was done, for now, looked at her status page one last time before the players arrived.

Anaphiel

Dungeon Core

Dungeon Type Nature

Rank 1 Tier 1

4,500 xp

100,000 xp to next Tier

Resource Coins: 580/1,000

Currency: 0 copper 0 silver 0 gold 0 platinum

Dungeon Tokens: 8

Everything seemed in order, so Amara turned her attention back to the count down and watched as each second passed away.

“Here we go.” Said Nyx as she made the table, book, and tea disappear.

The countdown went red as it hit the last three seconds.

3 Nyx was twitchy with excitement.

2 Amara’s mind was quickly racing through mental checks to make sure she got everything.

1 Amara could feel her non-existent heart race and the butterflies in her stomach.

Be Prepared, a Plague of Adventurers are Coming