Chapter 1

Slowly, the world faded into being in front of him. Looking around, Arcius quickly realised he was disembodied, possessing no form to speak of. As he looked, he noticed he was underwater, and was directly above the point he’d picked for his Dungeon. Looking down at the rocky floor beneath him, he realised he could see a ghost image of a room beneath the ground. This must be my Dungeon Core Room, he thought.

The Dungeon Core Room is the first room in a Dungeon, although it is not the first room an intruder would enter, that is for sure. It is the heart of a Dungeon, to destroy it is to turn a Dungeon into a mere cave system, ending its existence. Naturally, once he made more rooms for his Dungeon, he will be able to move the Core into another room, turning that into the Dungeon Core Room, and when he creates life in his Dungeon, he will be able to add a Boss monster to it, to protect the Core. Some refer to the room at that point as the Final Boss Room.

Speaking, or rather thinking, of the Core, there it was. It seemed to have taken the form of a smooth, spherical, ruby-like gem, and was being held up on a simple pedestal, more of an octagonal pillar with an indent for the Core at the top. The room itself was about 5x5x5 (width, length, height) metres in size, and there seemed to be no opening yet to allow entrance to the room, and this the Dungeon as a whole.

Before trying to do anything, Arcius concentrated, and activated the easiest magic available to a Dungeon: ‘Status’

Dungeon God:

Arcius

Dungeon Name:

Mana Capacity:

400/400

Mana Regen:

60/year

Faith Capacity:

0/0

Faith Regen:

0/year

Number of Entrances:

0

Number of Rooms:

1

Number of Floors:

1

Number of Species:

1

Dominant Species:

Prokaryotic Cell

Number of Bosses:

0

Interesting. There were some differences here from the information he’d gathered. About a century before he died, he’d made a deal with a relatively old Dungeon, exchanging a copy of his research into life and how it formed for a copy of the Dungeon’s memories on how to be a Dungeon. The memories he had showed a slightly different status screen to the one available.

For starters, Dungeon God had replaced Dungeon Master, although that might make sense. After all, Dungeon Master was meant to show who owned the Dungeon, but here, the only ones who could own this Dungeon were Dungeon Gods. Another difference was Faith. That simply wasn’t present in the Dungeons he’d researched, although that also makes sense. Those Dungeons were natural born Dungeons, not Dungeon Gods. And Dungeon Gods go on to either become Racial Gods, or Gods of other aspects of reality. Faith, therefore, was probably unavailable to them as they simply weren’t ‘divine’, as it were.

The rest of his status screen was pretty much as he expected, so he closed it, and moved on. The first thing he needed to do was make an entrance. There was nothing around that could threaten him, and unless he connected his Dungeon to the world outside, the amount of Mana Capacity he’d gain from his number of rooms would be significantly reduced.

Swiftly manipulating his Mana, Arcius quickly carved a short tunnel, leading to a circular hole in the rocky surface. That was his current entrance. Simple, but quite cheap, and nothing fancier would be needed anytime soon as there was simply nothing around to be impressed by it. Well, there were the other Gods, but they were all on the other side of the world, and besides, is the appearance of a small cave really all that important right now?

Having finished, Arcius checked his status again:

Dungeon God:

Arcius

Dungeon Name:

Mana Capacity:

380/500

Mana Regen:

75/year

Faith Capacity:

0/0

Faith Regen:

0/year

Number of Entrances:

1

Number of Rooms:

1

Number of Floors:

1

Number of Species:

1

Dominant Species:

Prokaryotic Cell

Number of Bosses:

0

A fairly decent improvement. It seems the Mana Regen is at around 15% of the total capacitance per year, so it would only take around six-and-a-half years or so to fully recover his Mana from 0, and creating a simple entrance only used 20. He noted, as expected, that the amount of Mana he currently had did not go up in proportion to the increase in total capacitance, but again, that was anticipated.

There wasn’t much point in going over his available Abilities and Upgrades right now, so instead, Arcius decided to experiment. He knew a lot about being a Dungeon, but he could only apply that as theory rather than fact in his specific circumstances, so first he needed to know the facts.

He started by creating another room, identical to the Core Room, and connected that to his first room, placing it just behind it. He then looked at his status again.

Dungeon God:

Arcius

Dungeon Name:

Mana Capacity:

350/550

Mana Regen:

82.5/year

Faith Capacity:

0/0

Faith Regen:

0/year

Number of Entrances:

1

Number of Rooms:

2

Number of Floors:

1

Number of Species:

1

Dominant Species:

Prokaryotic Cell

Number of Bosses:

0

Interesting. It seems that a simple room only costs around 30 Mana to make, and increases the Capacity by 50. That means that every entrance must also increase the Capacity by 50, as it rose by 100 when he first connected the Dungeon to the outside. However, was this linked only to the number of rooms? Or was it to do with the size? He decided to experiment further.

He created another room, this one linked behind his second room, and made it twice as wide as the other rooms, making it 10x5x5. Looking at his Capacity, he noted it rose by 100, while his amount dropped to 290. So a room that was bigger increased the cost and reward by the same factor. Next he split the room into two, creating a wall between them, and then checked his status again.

Dungeon God:

Arcius

Dungeon Name:

Mana Capacity:

270/650

Mana Regen:

97.5/year

Faith Capacity:

0/0

Faith Regen:

0/year

Number of Entrances:

1

Number of Rooms:

4

Number of Floors:

1

Number of Species:

1

Dominant Species:

Prokaryotic Cell

Number of Bosses:

0

That settled it, the number of rooms had nothing to do with determining his Mana Capacity, only the size of the rooms mattered. Thinking about it, Arcius decided to make certain all his rooms were multiples in size of the first room. He’d make rooms that weren’t cuboid, certainly, but their volume would still be a multiple of 125 m3, that way he could more easily control the amount of Mana Capacity he had.

For now, he decided to make more rooms with the Mana he had left, and, as there was little need for anything else, he made them the same size as the first room. At the end of it, he had nine more rooms. His status now looked like this:

Dungeon God:

Arcius

Dungeon Name:

Mana Capacity:

0/1100

Mana Regen:

165/year

Faith Capacity:

0/0

Faith Regen:

0/year

Number of Entrances:

1

Number of Rooms:

13

Number of Floors:

1

Number of Species:

1

Dominant Species:

Prokaryotic Cell

Number of Bosses:

0

Having finished these rooms, there wasn’t really much, if anything, he had left he could do now. Before leaving however, he decided to see what Abilities and Upgrades he had available. Abilities were, as the name suggested, different abilities and powers a Dungeon had available to use. They cost Mana to do so, although he suspected there were probably some Faith based ones for later down the line.

Upgrades, on the other hand, were things he could ‘purchase’ that could unlock new abilities among other things. Looking at his available abilities, there weren’t many options.

Ability

Description

Mana Cost

Increase Mana Concentration

This increases the Mana concentration in a specific room by forming Mana Gems. Increases Capacity by 50 per use. Does not affect Mana Regen

50/year for 3 years.

Control Creature

This allows you to control a creature within your Dungeon.

20.

Increase Mana Regen

This allows you to create Life Gems by sacrificing a sufficient amount of lifeforms within your Dungeon. Increases Mana Regen by 7.5 per use. Does not affect Mana Capacity

50/year for 3 years.

[Note: amount of creatures sacrificed depends on their complexity]

Not exactly a lot of options indeed. He would need to increase Mana concentration eventually, because increased Mana in an environment results in an increased rate of natural evolution. However, he wanted to hold off on that until he had more environments to make use of, which will have to wait until he had control over the magma beneath him, so he could create his island. He closed the Abilities screen, and opened the Upgrades screen:

Upgrade

Description

Mana Capacity Cost

Environments I

This allows you to create new environments in your rooms. At tier I, this is limited to simple changes, such as temperature, or the layout of the room.

500

New Species

This unlocks a new species for you to use. [Warning: all species acquired this way are pre-designed]

2000

[Note: Increases with every form of life present]

Upgrade Species

This allows you to upgrade an existing species to its next form. [Warning: only works on pre-designed species]

500+

[Note: exact cost depends on current level of life]

This screen was pretty much as anticipated. All upgrades cost Mana Capacity to buy, so you had to be certain of what you wanted when you make the purchase. It looked as though any attempt to try and rush a new lifeform through the system was a bust as well, as 2000 Capacity, was not exactly cheap. Plus it gets more expensive the more species you have, so you can’t just increase your Capacity to a few hundred thousand and then spam it either.

Right now, there wasn’t much point in getting anything, as it was better to use the Capacity he had to expand. Besides, for what he had planned, he was going to need a lot of mana. Arcius closed the Upgrades screen, and then concentrated on returning to his body. As expected, it didn’t take long for the world to start fading.

Back in his room, Arcius turned towards his bed. It seemed unlikely that Gods would need sleep, and, on top of that, he highly doubted that there was enough in the way of entertainment in the other rooms to keep anyone occupied for the many millennia they will no doubt spend outside of working on their Dungeons. Concentrating on it, he was rewarded with an options screen

How long do you wish to sleep for?

Sleep for ___ years.

Sleep until Mana is at max Capacity.

Sleep until ____ has been accomplished.

Cancel.

He was right. The bed existed to allow the owner to skip chunks of time, so that they didn’t have to consciously wait. Now, he had a choice. Explore, or sleep. Thinking for a moment, Arcius chose sleep. Chances are sometime around now the others would be wandering the halls, and although he didn’t hate other people per se, he was consciously aware of CoG’s rather public announcement of his ‘ingenuity’. He didn’t want to have to deal with the others with that fresh on their minds.

He chose to sleep until his Mana had regenerated. Admittedly, if he chose to sleep for only, say, one year at a time, he could more rapidly increase his Mana Capacity and Regen. However, he wanted to start future preparations, and to do that, he would need large amounts of Mana to use at short notice, rather than small amounts for small projects. He selected the option, and then lay down and closed his eyes.