I woke up from my nap and stretched. My headache was gone. I was kind of shocked at the end. Upset that the dream skipped how I ended up killing the ogre but was really shocked about the family turnaround.

“I still don’t understand why I am dreaming about that life. It is obvious that I am not that guy since he was older than this body in that dream.” I muttered as I started to move.

Then I knelt down and spent an hour in prayer. I tried everything I knew to be sincere in the prayer, but, in the end, I knew that it was a wasted hour. I needed to get my prayer level higher so that it worked as well as it did for dream me.

“Got to check my Faith and then see about building something for the goddesses. I need to get a move on. As much fun as this dungeon seemed like it could be I would rather get to Lannah and learn to read.”

Faith

Order: 62

Chaos: 62

Bards and Summer Beer: 17

Treants and Dryads: 3

Redacted: Redacted

“Okay so something changed up a bit. Not sure what I did that got a 12 point bump in a day but I am happy for it.”

I headed down to the safe room. I had things that I needed to design, and I wanted to see if I could cheat on the design. If so, then I was going to change the I did things and cut a lot of my time for making this place safe again.

One of the things that I saw in the operations overview of the dungeon was that anything could get absorbed by the dungeon. If it didn’t have it before, it could use that item as a copy to create more of that one item. In theory, that meant that I had an item copier. I just had to test out prices.

I stepped over to the dungeon heart and pulled out a blank level zero core, and triggered the absorption. The dungeon ate up the core in a blink. Then I checked the interface. Blank core was listed as an item that could be bought at level 100. Which meant that I wasn’t getting around that.

Then I pulled out one of my rune stones that I had carved Fire-Rain into. I triggered that I found that I could get it at a level 20 dungeon. Which meant that if I wanted, I could buy it. Then I fed in a rune stone that I hadn’t charged. Just did the etching for Fire-Rain. It showed up as a level 5 item.

“Well depending on the cost I might just have found the way to get around most of my time issues.”

I headed into the safe room and pulled up the interface from just inside. The charged-up level 20 Fire-Rune cost 15 gold the uncharged level 5 rune cost me 2 coppers. I smiled.

“Yes!” I yelled.

Dave called out from below, “What are you going on about now?”

I ran down the stairs and pulled open the interface. Then I paused. “Dave, do you even need to see the interface for the store if I just tell you what is there will you know?”

He smiled, “I know everything in the interface but I don’t remember it until asked. It makes giving advice a bit tricky. So what it you have?”

“I just figured out the best hack. I can load in uncharged items that I drew runes on and get them back for cheap. It means that I don’t have to spend time making my tree growth stakes or rune stones anymore. I just have to make one and load it into the dungeon and then when I want more buy them.”

Dave smiled, “Here I thought you had figured out what to make to get you all your faith.”

“Well I think I have something but I’m not sure if it will work.”

“Oh what is it?”

“Well I am hoping that I can get this dungeon up to level 6 seed it and then create a tree based dungeon.”

“What? How would that even work? Dungeons have to be in things to work.”

“My last set of stakes moved the tree branches around a bit to get better firing angles. So I was thinking if they could move around why not figure out how to tell them where to move. Then I could set it as a cluster core and get several trees moving around and have them create a tree house for me. Then I could place the dungeon core in there.”

Dave scrunched up his eye, “Why though?”

I laughed, “Well how about this, the Order likes things that take the wild and make them into something. So by taking and moving several trees into a building that should count. Chaos likes things that just are right. A dungeon tree house fits that. Plus if I can figure out how to do it as a set of carvings into linked trees then I might be able to have the dungeon spread toward the Dark Ones and the Sisters should like that a lot.”

“Okay so why so happy about buying from the dungeon?”

“Well if I can figure out how to make the pieces I need for this cheaply then I might can use this when going to find Lannah. It would give me a way to move faster if I could carry a few tree houses with me and just place them as I go. They are going to end up being battle platforms as well by the time I finish them. If I can figure out how to level them as well then I might could make a trail of dungeons all the way down there.”

Dave just smiled and shook his head. He wandered off to grab a glass and started cleaning it. Then he looked over at me. “Blink is in the level 3 Safe room. She might make it down here in a few hours depends on if she sleeps.”

“Nice!” I said as I headed over to a table to start work on my plan.

I ordered up a heavy club and started to work on craving up my ideas. I spent 4 days working out what I wanted the dumb thing to do. At first, the heavy club was going to just be a central stake and be the larger blueprint that the others looked at. I would have 5 tree growth stakes and 5 bush stakes, along with 6 vine stakes. The idea was that I would make a thicket with the whole mess. I would find the right place and stake everything out. Then, the stakes would cause everything to grow and link to the main stake.

That was the first iteration, and it would have been what I kept with if I didn’t have the dungeon that could replicate things for me. The second iteration, which was the one that I fed into the dungeon, was all just on a single heavy club. The difference was I paid for a magnifying glass on a stand along with a set of chisels and gouges. I was able to get all the blueprints on, along with the instructions for all the other stakes. I still had room to add a total of 20 sockets.

This meant that this one item would take twenty cores to control, but unlike the other one that was tied to the different plants, this one wasn’t. If I had enough bushes to have only three in range, then it would only use three, and the other two cores would go for vines. If it needed more than 5 trees because they were too small, no problem. It had that figured out lots of vines; each core could do up to five.

I had gone kind of manic with building this thing. It took me 10 days in the safe room to get it built. With the four for the first iteration, I had been at it for two weeks. I was tired, but I was done.

It was going to be great, but I was also worried that it might slow my speed of travel down, needing so many cores. So as I was carving, I would take breaks as soon as I could to dump all my mana into The necklace of cores. I was banking it for a rainy day. Before I left the river, I was going to do the same with stone, and I was going to bleed myself while still in a safe place. It might not take much blood, but every drop I gave it was a prick of the knife that I had to do.

When I was worried when I dropped it down for the dungeon to absorb. I knew it wasn’t going to break it, but I was worried that it was going to price me out of it. There was no mana in it, but that didn’t mean that it wouldn’t take the detailed work into account and bump the charge.

For all I knew, the dungeon had been watching me and knew what I was planning and didn’t want to be seeded so young and would start to work against me pricing my idea too high to use. I didn’t think the thing could think, but Dave sure could, and he was part of it, so I truly wasn’t sure anymore about it.

When the dungeon finished on it, I pulled up the interface and started to look for my Thicket growth stake. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I started to panic and spin, looking through everything I could think of.

Then I yelled, “Dave! You got to help me find the Thicket growth stake?”

“The what?”

“The thing that I had been carving! I gave it to the dungeon but I can’t find it in the store. I know it has to be the first of it’s kind but I don’t know where in here it is.”

“You mean the Dungeon Master’s carved Heavy Club?”

“Is that what it is listed under?”

“Yup seems like you spent enough time on carving it that it got labeled after you. Also it is listed as slip resistant. So it is listed as uncommon.”

I pulled it up to see that it was now a level 12 uncommon item for 1 gold and 4 silver. Which meant that it was time to sell off things that I no longer needed or wanted at this point. Such things as my stone hammers that I had cored until I got around to using wands. I wasn’t going to get rid of my world’s first items, no matter how little I might use the dust collector. I would, however, get rid of a couple of the cored waterskins so that I could get enough money to buy several of the Dungeon Master’s carved Heavy Clubs…

I had enough gold with me that I could just buy the first one, so I did and then started to change everything. I was just about done charging it when Blink showed up. She walked into the bottom floor safe room like a king. The swagger that she had was truly something else. However, the grin said it all. She beat all four levels on her own as a lizard girl.

She was wearing her assassin’s outfit with both crossbows on her hips. Over her shoulder, she was carrying an all-black cloth bag that was bulging. When she saw me, she came running over.

She yelled out to me. “Daddy! I beats all 6 floors bys myself! I didn’t evens know theres were 6 floors!”

“Six floors? I thought we only had 4?”

I looked over at Dave with a question on my face.

Dave smiled, “We went from 4 to 6 right before you started working on your project. I thought you knew.”

“It must have been when I gave it a blank core to absorb. Thing got listed at level 100 so I couldn’t even see how much it was worth.”

“So tell me about level 4-6. Anything worth checking out?”

“Well for me they were kind of easy I would just stealth up and shoot the shaman orcs in the head. Bolts in the eyes kind of end fights. Then since they are expecting someone bigger I could just go into stealth again and reload. For the most part I would just drop one at a time. With the smaller guys I got better taking them in groups but not near as good in my natural form.”

“Did you level much?”

“Yup I am a level 10 Shadow Assassin.”

“Assassin? That is what you went with?”

“Well you always think of me that way so I figured why not. It seemed to fit.”

“So what is with the Shadow part?”

Blink smiled with her tiny tooth smile, “Ohs that was easys and goods! Its is a rares class of assassins where yous make 100 kills froms the shadows before levels 10. I makes all my kills froms there and thes darkness of thes dungeon counts as shadows!”

“Sounds like things went good for you, want to come watch what I have been making?”

“Sounds goods Daddy!”

* * *