《Diary of a displaced soul.》


 Day one

    I awoke. Not with any supernatural clarity nor cat-like reflexes, no, I likened my awakening to working through a nights worth of steel reserve and exactly zero food or water. Being accustomed to it didn''t help, my mind forcing every sensation away from conscious thought as I deliberately tried to go back to sleep, hoping to avoid the worst of this hangover.


    Sadly it didn''t work. So, with reluctance, I tried to go through my memories and recall just what in the heck happened the night before that would have caused this. I wasn''t planning on celebrating anything, I think, nor mourning anyone and I hadn''t partied since I started trucking. I froze then as it hit me.


    ''I died.'' whispered across my mind as the memory came back with vicious clarity.


    The car that hit me, the doctors fighting a losing battle to keep me alive, the terrible sensation of pain slowly ebbing to nothingness. Then a spark of rage. A terrible anger filled me at the sheer unfairness in the face of inevitability, the lack of control and the inability to set my own course. I could not stand by and let my life fizzle away.


    With a fury I clung to life, even as the world faded and the pain passed to numbing non-existence. I grasped at my life with all my might, with every part of my soul I fought the coming dark. I could feel something, almost like sorrow, nagging just out of reach but I ignored it, clinging to the feeling of life as it was the only thing I could still sense. My nails bit in, my muscles ached with the force I was putting on it as my body and mind strained against it.


    I must have lost.


    I was hyperventilating now, taking short hard breaths as I held my eyes completely shut. I''m not sure how long I stayed like that, rocking back and forth on the floor until my panic abated and a worrying curiosity hit me. I couldn''t feel the air rushing past my lips. My hands should be gripping tight enough to draw blood but I didn''t even feel them until my mind tried to check on the rest of my body. I couldn''t feel pain, though I still felt oddly numb, and I couldn''t hear anything. I had to know.


    Slowly, praying not to see fire or utter void, I cracked my eyes open and a sudden rush of sensory input forced my lids back together, cutting that input off. I hadn''t grasped much but I could check the void off my short list of places not to be. This time, focusing on just one eye, I slowly opened it and gazed into the brightly lit area my soul had wound up landing.


    The circular room I was in was solid stone, perhaps the size of a small living room with enough room for a couch, chair and television and I could probably reach up and brush my fingers against the ceiling. And in the very center on a stone pedestal was a basketball sized green orb. Light poured out of that orb in a slow array that filled the room with a vibrant green color, showing the odd uniformity of the walls that made the whole place seem ominously artificial.


    Despite my worrying surroundings I just had to know, my eye slowly creeping down to gaze at my hands and finding nothing. No skin, no flesh, no bones. Not even a ghostly aura or anything to indicate what I was feeling was a body at all. For all i could tell i was a set of floating eyes, but i could still feel in a way. My hands met, or they felt like they did, and fingers interlocked in a strangely numb sensation but one that was as real to my mind as the stone walls around me appeared. Along with that green orb.


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    I gazed at that orb, pondering on my situation. For all that I could tell I was a ghost or spirit and this was my punishment or reward. "Nothing to it then." I could feel myself moving closer, taking steps that made no noise in the room. "Green means go right?" I almost felt like I was shaking, my earlier panic attack having only faded enough to focus on what survival I could. My hand reached out and my fingers gently brushed against the smooth surface, arm stretched out as if it would sprout teeth and bite the ghost appendage. A strange sensation passed through my ''body'' like shivers up my spine, the earlier sluggishness receding and replaced with a cool and calm feeling as if I was fresh and ready after a shower. And then a little window appeared.


    I was familiar with things like this in vr where a window would appear in game but this maddening blue square was hardly an image on a screen inches from my eyes. It hovered in front of me at arms length, rounded edges and trimmed with a bronze color that looked like wire holding the image up. And, on the blue square, was immaculate hand writing done in cursive that completely went against the artificial nature of the window.


    "John. Due to the nature of your death and subsequent refusal to give up on life i have been forced to make other arrangements. While not common it isn''t entirely uncommon for people to refuse to move on, clinging to life for some reason or another such as waiting for a lover or wanting to watch over their children. The solution to those is simple, time. Time for them to accept that others have moved on and will live well despite their deaths, or simply waiting long enough to meet them. You however proved to be of another sort, clinging to life to defy death alone. That provided me with some difficulty in guiding you on your way as no end would be accepted by your soul, so I have chosen to guide you to a beginning instead. Here you will find a new life to live and, truly, I hope you will be fulfilled by it so that, when the time comes again, we may meet and I can guide you on and enjoy the stories you tell me to pass the time. I wish you luck my dear friend and offer you this small bit of advice, grit your teeth for this will be utterly strange." ~Guide


    Utterly strange was utterly underselling it. I was beginning to wonder what kind of boat man being my soul had been snatched by when I realized that the last part may not have meant the situation, rather something else was happening. I couldn''t take my fingers from the orb. I glanced past the screen, which chose that moment to fade away, and saw the orb glowing a little brighter. The slight pattern of light was moving faster, changing and shifting as something happened to it.


    I tried to pull away from it, even putting my foot up on the pedestal and hauling on my hand enough that any real fingers would have pulled away from their sockets. I was beginning to panic again and cast about, hoping to find something that i had missed that might help me free myself, all the while the light grew brighter and patterns began showing through, projected on the walls as they spun in a dizzying dance. I stopped my panicking, for the most part, and fixed my gaze on the orb then took the guide''s advice. I grit my teeth and pressed in, my full palm pushing against the orb.


    The strange feeling came back though multiplied tenfold, my muscles spasmed and it felt as if an army of ants crawled over every inch of me. I fought the feelings down and pressed my mind to focus on the one thing i''d focused on before my death. I could still feel that spark of life deep in my aching chest, I could remember the sensation of clinging to it so I clung again as the feeling of an ache slowly intensified until I was sure it was the sensation of a heart attack. Then I felt a beat. Like one I had once had it ripped through me, slamming into my chest like a sledgehammer. Then again, and again. A drumming heartbeat that was thundering away like a steam train as the intense lights and sensations peaked and started to fade.


    It took some time for me to relax and let the tension flow out of my mind, finding myself breathing again and still missing the sensation of air in my lungs. But, as I came down from that insane surge, I felt something gently beating in my chest as I slowly realized my heart was pumping away again. This wasn''t a sensation I thought I could fake, like my breathing, and I realized, looking at the orb, that each pulse was matched in the orb by a gentle brightening and dimming of its inner light. I had come back to life, or my spirit occupied some new body and the sensations I felt were tied to this strange green ball.


    Then another curious screen appeared in front of me, with its simple blue background and white text.


    Unknown Dungeon Level:1


    Classification: unknown.


    Forces: 0.


    Resources: 0


    I puzzled over the screen for a moment then groaned, having seen this in fiction more than a few times. "I''m a dungeon core?"

 Ch2. Floor 1, Monsters, moss and madness.

    It took me some time to think over the small text window, breathing deeply and forcing myself to ignore the pointlessness of that action, mulling over what exactly I was and what I needed to do. As it stood there wasn¡¯t really much that I could do other than accept my current situation and move on, or sit pointlessly catatonic until whatever sustained the core guttered out.


    There really was only one option as I hadn''t fought so hard to let go of life so easily. So I set my jaw, ¡®grabbed¡¯ the window and pulled it in close enough to look over. Then thought harder as nothing new was happening. It still reads Dungeon level one, unknown classification, zero forces, zero resources. I thought about it for a second then wondered if my guide had set me up with a body that was empty for a reason. Then another thought came to me, that this is probably some magical world and magic usually operated off of intent or incantations. At least in some books.


    With that thought in mind I turned away from the window, raised up my ¡®arm¡¯ and spoke ¡®forces¡¯ in my mind, thinking hard about various monsters such as dragons, demons, wolves and slimes. Nothing happened. I tried a few other things such as army, monsters, system, a few monster names then a less than friendly comment about the system''s fellatio capabilities. With a frown I turned back to my previous window and almost choked on my own building anger as a new line of text had appeared while I was shouting magic words at a wall.


    Forces available for direct spawning:


    Slimes:4


    I almost reached out to ¡®click¡¯ on the window then thought better of it. Most monster systems had some sort of cost associated with them, mana, resources, or some form of sustenance outside of my control. If I just dropped four slimes in my room I might end up with four dead slimes, or starving myself for mana or whatever I was running on. I looked at the text then tried something different, pointing at it and saying ¡®identify¡¯. I watched as, slowly, the window did nothing to change, sending another surge of anger into my core. I huffed and took a minute to breathe and let the anger out. Slow progress was still progress.


    While calming down I pointed at various things and tried another number of commands that accomplished nothing, other than striking them from my mental list, until I hit on some luck. Staring at the screen, I thought ¡®man I wish I had some more information¡¯ and a new screen appeared popping off to the right of my original one.


    Direct spawning:


    An action taken by the dungeon to facilitate rapid force spawning or relocation.


    Well, that was decidedly little information but the action finally gained me a new word of power, two in one day. I quit my silly reflections and focused, forcing my intent on the word ¡®Slimes¡¯ and said the magic word.


    Slimes:


    An industrious low level creature used by dungeons for a variety of tasks, including but not limited to, fighting, resource collection, and cleaning.


    My hands shot up, fists clenched, as I celebrated my little victory over this dungeon system. I quickly turned to start getting more info, first pointing at the rocks surrounding me.


    Stone:


    A hard substance usually found below dirt.


    I stared at the wildly unhelpful window for a short time. It had told me just about everything I knew about rocks, save for the color. I tried again pointing at the rock below me and got the same response, then again for the rock above me. More than a little disappointed, I turned and gestured at my orb and must have pointed at the stone pedestal as something new popped up not regarding my orb.


    More information cannot be given about unanalyzed materials.


    That brought me back around, i¡¯d need to get ahold of the stone somehow and have it analyzed before I could understand what it was. It made perfect sense that I wouldn''t know anything more than the basics. Which led me to wondering just how I was supposed to analyze the stone. I wasn¡¯t a redshirt and I sure as hell didn¡¯t bring a tricorder with me on my adventure through the afterlife. Then I thought about my slimes. While the information about them was a bit more expansive it might have been because they were technically in an inventory of sorts and i¡¯d scan them with my core? Or, probably, my body had the information as a part of it and the system recognizes that inherent available information. Or the guide was giving me a freebie, whatever the case. While it didn¡¯t explicitly say they could analyze things, its description makes it sound like a support creature.


    So, with a little worry about dropping into the negative on mana or whatever, I pointed to a part of my little room and spoke ¡®Spawn one slime.¡¯ It took a moment before a small green dot appeared then rapidly expanded into a gelatinous orb about the same size as my own, basketball if I had my measurement right. Then it plonked down on the floor. I waited, watching the little green mess go from somewhat pancake shaped into a half orb half puddle look, and nothing happened. No loss of mana incurred, no drop from 0 resources into the negative, it just sat there jiggling slightly.


    Well, with nothing happening I marked mana depletion from my worries, then i pointed at the Slime. ¡®Commands.¡¯ I spoke in a commanding tone, the slime going somewhat more rigid as if coming to attention. No window popped up so I tested out a small assumption. ¡®Analyze the rock over there.¡¯ The slime jiggled somewhat then started to move that direction, which i¡¯d call south for now.


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    It was with no small amount of excitement that I watched my slime moving along, excitement which quickly petered out as I realized that slimes moved at a glacial pace. Such was its pace that I wondered if the system had been joking when it said it used slimes for fighting. I ¡®moved¡¯ over to it and knelt, making up busy work as I wondered what exactly the speed was, guessing eventually that it moved a foot every thirty or so seconds.


    So, with bated breath, I watched my little hero steam along until it was pressing up against the stone, then I perked up as it only marginally slowed as it sank into the stone, burning out a neat hole in the stone before slowly backing out and standing still once more. I had expected it to keep going but apparently that was as far as it needed to go, little pebbles quickly dissolving inside the green blob. I then turned my attention to the wall and tried my luck again.


    Basalt:


    A common form of volcanic rock.


    Alright, that was more information than I knew an hour ago. Still a damned small amount of information but it works well enough anyways. It does mean i might be in or near some ancient volcano which was an exciting enough prospect, that could be cool later down the line, it definitely wasn¡¯t a thought process brought on by coping over the mixed bag of information available to me.


    I then turned and checked screen one, which had vanished with my force spawning screen and others i¡¯d brought up. I was a bit annoyed that they might be on a timer, or connected to my attention but I guessed it was better to not have a bunch of them cluttering up my room. ¡®Dungeon info.¡¯ I spoke, trying out a simple command.


    Unknown Dungeon Level:1


    Classification: unknown.


    Forces: 1.


    Resources: 1


    I could feel a grin, or I couldn''t. I''d eventually give up on my old body but now wasn¡¯t the time. I had made forces and resources, though using the plural form of those words wasn¡¯t true. It seemed, for now, that one resource was one slime sized chunk of whatever I got a hold of and stashed away, and I realized my slime must automatically put the stuff it eats away. I then got curious, as i¡¯d probably want stuff in a slightly smaller amount down the road. I pointed at resources and tried my luck.


    Resources available for use:


    1.0 units of stone.


    0 units of biomatter:


    0 units of metallics.


    0 units of gasses.


    This list went on, describing in simple terms that I was pretty much dungeon bankrupt. A bit concerning but nothing was negative and i might be able to make more things though i was pretty sure i could make more now if i figured them out. I tracked back to my forces screen, seeing I now had three slimes available for spawning, and pointed at the word spawning.


    Spawning:


    An ability of the dungeon allowing it to spawn in various forces, traps and nodes along with rewards and other specialized materials and objects, depending on the dungeon''s classification.


    Alright, i could probably spawn more things, i just needed to up my level, or maybe it was behind some wall i wasn¡¯t aware of. I reached out and spoke ¡®nodes¡¯.


    Nodes available for spawning:


    Glow moss: 2 per cycle.


    Then a quick check on info.


    Glow moss:


    A cave moss found mostly in dungeons, effective for use in healing and lighting. Produces oxygen over time.


    Alright, it was just a regular old herbalism node. I¡¯d have hordes of herbalists running through my dungeon in no time. My attempt to get excited over, potentially, glowing moss wasn¡¯t too successful.  Still I pointed up at the ceiling, to better spread any given light, and tried spawning the moss. A green dot appeared and, like my slime, it slowly expanded as a green mass though it took a more solid shape. Soon a circular patch, about a foot across in either direction, of glowing moss was securely fixed to my ceiling. It had a rather similar look to moss from home, so far as I could tell, though any glowing was hidden by the general brightness of my orb.


    I then checked my resource page again and cycled through to gasses, wondering if the moss production would slip right into my storage or if i¡¯d have to worry about air turning my room into a makeshift explosive. It took a couple minutes but the counter ticked up by one. With that slight worry out of the way I checked my node screen and saw a timer had started up next to my moss counter, signaling thirty minutes. I took that to mean it¡¯d be thirty minutes before i had a spare to throw down so i turned my attention to my lone slime.


    I needed levels and my little jello guy might provide some way to get them. I wasn¡¯t thinking about harming it, I didn''t think killing my own creatures would do anything good for me, but I might be able to gain levels by growing. So, with that hope I spawned in the next slime, then tried two to see if there was any difference in multi spawning. I didn¡¯t notice anything but they were small and there were only two of them. I grinned as I looked at my assembled slimes, sitting around idly.


    ¡®Gentlemen¡¯ I took the commanding tone in my mind, taking the chance to alleviate my boredom. The slimes responded wonderfully by jiggling into an almost rigid attention. ¡®As the great warrior Leonardo once said, we need to go deeper.¡¯ I gestured at the hole, having spawned my new slimes closer in a fit of almost intelligence on my part. ¡®You.¡¯ My gesture changed to my original slime, standing nearest to the hole. ¡®You shall be named Bob, it will be your duty to keep these jiggly weirdos in line.¡¯ The slime in question, Bob, almost seemed to go even more rigid. ¡®This hole shall be as tall as the room we are in now and be as wide as.¡¯ I paused to consider that my slimes may lack any good means to measure. So I used them as the tool. ¡®It shall be wide enough to fit all four of you in it just touching either wall and yourself. It shall also go downwards at a degree that you can manage to ascend and descend safely.¡¯ I didn¡¯t know if they could go vertical or not so I resolved to watch them for this portion as i¡¯d probably want the angle to be fairly gradual. ¡®And you shall go until the light of my orb is no longer visible to you, Bob shall notify me when the project is complete.¡¯ And with a mock salute I sent them on their way, merrily dissolving my wall and making me worry slightly for the stability of my room.

 Ch3 Floor 2. Moving day.

    It felt like hours as I watched the slimes going about their work, the four gelatinous globes doing their level best to accomplish my goals in a timely manner, making me think they rather appreciated my little commander play. In the meantime, when I wasn''t watching rocks melt, I was playing with my moss, which is sadly not a euphemism for anything. I planted little circles here and there, eventually getting a close look at the stuff for a lack of anything better to do.


    Though I lacked any corporeal body, save for the glowing rock, I could numbly feel the stuff my mind interacted with. My fingers found the moss to be somewhat spongy and soft, I also think it is damp but the sensations I could pick up were muted. Sadly the glow in the room didn¡¯t increase, my orb putting out enough light that whatever glow this stuff generated it wouldn¡¯t beat it out.


    It was while inspecting my original patch Nob approached me, or I believed it was bob. He jiggled at my orb, I think, and I moved down to inspect the new expansion. It was pretty much as ordered, a tunnel punched straight into the rock that looked like someone with a cookie cutter took a sample. The grooves in the rock were obviously made by the slimes moving in formation, leaving long lines in the stone where rock pointed out like a blunt blade for the length of the tunnel, which came to, what i guessed would be, around fifty feel long, angling down gradually enough that it might have been some fifteen feet below the floor of the first room.


    I looked around and nodded. ¡®This is going to take much longer than I anticipated.¡¯ I heaved a sigh and moved back up, looking down at my digging crew. ¡®Alright, good job boys, it¡¯s fantastic but it¡¯s only a start. For now I want you to keep digging but do your best to level off. I don¡¯t want that floor to go any higher or lower since it might interfere with any other levels I might make later on. For now I want a similar sized tunnel going directly south, that¡¯s the direction you guys dug already.¡¯ They wobbled an affirmation and raced off again to get back to work. After a few minutes I felt they were out of the way enough to get on with my tasks.


    First I turned to my orb and pondered it for a few minutes, wondering if there was a way I could just shift it down to my new level. After a few minutes I moved in and set my hands on the orb, feeling an odd tingling sensation at the contact, sending a shiver through my mind, before I pulled up on it sending my world into a vertigo induced mess.


    I quickly dropped the orb the bare inch I''d lifted it, the short drop sending a spike of pain through my mind and giving me a headache to add onto the spinning sensation as my stomach did flips and I resolved to ¡®sit¡¯ down and let the world slow down. With that done after a few minutes, along with the headache, I resolved to never move my orb at any pace other than geriatric snail. At that thought I moved down into the tunnel to collect one of the slimes from my work crew, escorting it back up the ramp to my orb. ¡®Alright, your new name is Ben.¡¯ The slime seemed to ooze in delight at its new designation. ¡®And with your new name comes new responsibilities.¡¯ I pointed at the orb. ¡®You need to, very gently, move that down to the next level without damaging it.¡¯ And for the first time since I arrived, I felt a form of communication with this creature.


    A sense of apprehension and confusion filtered weakly into my mind. I was a little stunned at the sudden foreign emotions but I overcame the feeling. I might have been feeling it earlier, perhaps even inspiring the commanding tone I took with them, but it would have been entirely subtle. If I felt this now, even slightly, then that must have meant the emotions coursing through its gelatine mind were about as powerful as it could have. So that worried me as the slime may know something that I don''t.


    ¡®Alright, I hear you. You wait right there while I take a look at this. If I can¡¯t get this thing moved then it¡¯s going to be up to you.¡¯ I turned my attention back to the orb and sighed, holding my hands out to try a new slew of words that might affect my surroundings. ¡®Move.¡¯


    Dungeon core selected, designate new position.


    I stared at the new text window then blinked. ¡®Alright Ben, you head back down and get back to work, I think i¡¯ve got it working now.¡¯ The slime started to move, following me slowly as I walked down the tunnel and selected the small patch of open ground that had been made so far. I was overcome with a new sense of vertigo though this passed much quicker than before, my vision clearing quickly and showing the pedestal had moved down to the second floor and appeared undamaged.


    I shook my head, not understanding the cause for the vertigo but accepted it as a thing that dungeons just had to deal with, possibly a system born defect to keep dungeons from just teleporting around when in danger.


    ¡®Dungeon info.¡¯


    Unknown Dungeon Level:2


    Classification: unknown.


    Forces: 4.


    Resources: 1000.


    I looked into the resources tab and found that most of the resources available were from stone mined, and were quickly ticking up as the slimes continued chewing out the main tunnel. ¡®New level, new resources?¡¯ I quickly checked the walls and found it was more Basalt. While a little disappointing it wasn¡¯t unexpected, I was now only level two so I couldn''t hope for too much. ¡®Forces available¡¯. I was finding that the windows were popping up easier, taking less focus to summon.


    Forces available for direct spawning: 0.


    I scratched my chin and thought for a few moments, considering the text. I couldn¡¯t spawn anything directly so maybe the four slimes were just a primer for new dungeons to get started, like an ant and her first brood. I tried a different approach. ¡®Indirect forces available.¡¯


    Spawners available:


    Slime pool: 2


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    Cave hopper:1


    Cave spider clutch:1


    I felt a grin steal across my face as I read the last line, spiders. I hated the little bastards with a passion and normally couldn¡¯t stand them, which made them sound perfect for dungeon activities Though i contained my excitement and directed my focus on spawners.


    Spawners:


    A point where forces can be spawned from at the cost of materials dependent on the type of force being spawned.


    It was pretty much what I thought it would be so I checked the spider spawner first.


    Cave spider clutch:


    A spawner for the cave spider allowing, depending on its setting, one cave spider to be deployed per five minutes to a maximum of five, or more depending on the volume of the spawner location. Regenerates upon destruction or removal.


    Alright, so that cleared some stuff up about spawners and made it pretty clear that my four slimes were indeed a sort of primer, otherwise I''d probably be out of luck if I needed to collect resources manually, however I might go about that. I then focused on cave spiders.


    Cave spider:


    A normally small to medium sized creature found in caves. Fulfilling multiple roles Cave spiders are fast creatures that can attack suddenly, injecting venom into unsuspecting victims, and fleeing to let the victim succumb to a paralyzing venom that allows eating or egg implantation. This creature is also capable of mining at an accelerated rate compared to slimes but lacks any ability to capture resources.


    I read carefully over the text then shivered slightly. Egg implantation and live feeding were not terribly enjoyable sentences to read. Should any adventurers be captured by my spiders, i might just have to avoid watching whatever fate may come to them. I then turned my attention to my other insectile spawner.


    Cave hopper:


    A tiny creature found mostly in dungeons. These creatures eat ores and, through taking nutrition from the stone, process those ores into very small nuggets of pure metals. Ineffective in combat alone, a swarm would prove devastating due to the tremendous bite force of their mandibles.


    I was becoming slightly annoyed by the variety, and quality, information the system was giving me but it was more than enough to figure things out. My cave spiders were my quick warriors, my slimes the slow ambush boys, or more likely marginally less static traps, and my cave hoppers would be my horde group. I could see an effective enough defense idea forming but it would be on the backburner for now. Though, with the cave hoppers description, I was sure I had a new node so I turned my focus.


    Nodes available for spawning:


    Glowmoss: 3 per cycle.


    Glowshroom: 2 per cycle.


    General mineral: 2 per cycle.


    Okay, I was getting a new herbalism node and a form of mineral, the names leaving something to be desired. Time to check them.


    Glowshroom:


    A gently glowing mushroom that is edible and has some poison relieving qualities.


    General mineral:


    An ore that, once mined and processed, produces a lightweight metal that resists corrosion but lacks durability.


    I thought about them for a few minutes, deciding to head back up to try my new mushroom and ore in a less confined space. The mushroom made enough sense, i had venomous spiders so something that might counteract them would just be fair, this was only a two floor dungeon it shouldn¡¯t be difficult for newer adventurers to survive. The general mineral was a bit more rough in my mind. It sounded vaguely like aluminum but I knew aluminum was very much a difficult to process ore, and add to that the odd name which made it seem like an easy to process, and widely available, ore.


    I passed Ben shortly before I arrived, the poor guy moving at his best speed. A quick look around showed that the glow moss, while less bright than my orb, lit the room in a low blue light that was almost pleasant. I figured I''d start around the edges and work my way back, pointing out a new spot for my mushrooms. A small green dot appeared, something I was attributing to my core spawning things now that I''d seen it often enough, and a cluster of varying sized mushrooms grew out along from that point in the same circular spawn style as the moss. It also seemed to give off the same blue glow. It didn¡¯t seem to be doing much, and I wasn''t sure why I thought it might, so I moved onto the general mineral node.


    I moved to the center of the room and tried to spawn it but felt an odd blocking sensation as a window popped up.


    Notice:


    Selected node too high level for current floor.


    I was a bit curious as to why this node was too high level and my mushrooms weren¡¯t but I shrugged it off, thinking I''d have to do some level requirement searching later on. It was a bit concerning to be restricted so quickly though. I moved on to try a slime spawning pool since I could probably put one on both floors.


    Notice:


    Lacking material -biomatter- in sufficient quantities.


    That managed to draw a sigh out of me and I moved over to holler at Ben before he moved any further along. ¡®Come back up Ben, I''ve got a new job for you.¡¯ With that taken care of I figured I had an hour to kill before Ben would be on the first floor. So I found a spot to sit back and plan some things. My first floor was still really lacking anything at all, and I attributed that to rushing. I hadn¡¯t been thinking about things and just trying to move quickly and gain more power, for some goal I hadn''t thought of yet, so time to at least make some short term plans.


    Floor one would probably work best as a very basic gathering spot, maybe some training or something for whoever delved into my dungeon. My second floor probably wouldn¡¯t be much tougher but the first floor could be baby''s first steps, a couple slimes to weed out the truly inept and unteachable and maybe some traps. I leaned over from where I ¡®sat¡¯ and started to draw on the cave floor, planning out a map of floor one. Then I had to pause and look at the marks I''d just made in the stone as easily as if etching in sand.


    I shook my head and stood up, striding over to my mushroom patch, kneeling down and plucking a mushroom from the patch as easily as one could imagine, the cap disappearing into a green dot that vanished a heartbeat later. A quick check of my resources showed I hadn¡¯t gained any biomatter, but I figured that was more of a quantity issue. I stood and reached up, starting to pull down some of my glowmoss, taking out neat strips and rolling it up like turf. It had been growing, slowly, but I didn''t want the nodes to start from zero so I only trimmed about half of what I had planted. Once done, with the moss vanishing as well, a quick check showed I had ten biomatter. It didn¡¯t seem like much but it hadn¡¯t even been a day, the fact I had so much stone was merely because my slimes ate it up like crazy and they¡¯d been at it non stop. I could risk going to the surface to try my hand at gathering trees and such but I wasn''t sure my slimes could survive a journey out of my dungeon, or if it was a smart move without much in the way to defend me. So, I sat back down and did the only thing I could do. Waited. Waited and planned.

 Ch4. Art is subjective, grammar less so.

    I gazed at the shaft before me, solid and unwavering and wondered. ¡®Stalagmite or stalactite?¡¯ It was a question for the ages and the info screen was about as useful as page twenty on a google search, just calling my creation stone. I had begun my adventure in artwork as soon as I figured out I could use the stone in my inventory like clay that could eject from my palms. I was rather fond of my, and I chose to stick to a name at this point, stalactite, rising up from the floor to waist height and having variations in its structure that almost seemed natural. I was no artist, stick figures usually my best interpretation, but making a pointy rock with some ridges carried little need for skill.


    In the meantime Ben had been gathering moss and fungus in as slow a manner as ever, giving the moss more plenty of time to recover and expand even further, along with the occasional spawning of a patch here and there. That left me with nearly two hundred biomatter and some new information. My little slimes were far more efficient when gathering materials. The easiest way to test was to carve out about as much stone as a slime would occupy, my earlier tests having shown that would produce one stone with a slime gathering it. It had taken stopping my slimes as they worked to conduct the test but it was good to know. It¡¯s probably why one of their descriptions is for cleaning, they can get more use out of scraps.


    Finally the biomatter count ticked over fifty and I tried spawning it again, having tried at each tenth point.


    Select spawn point:


    Spawn point must be over 2 square meters to allow room for spawner.


    I smiled at the new window and turned away from my confusing pointed rock. While digging with slimes was more efficient in terms of collection I had chosen to do more than sit around and make pointy rocks, having manually dug out three rooms, each leading away from the main room. They had gone out in each  cardinal direction, with the stairs still marked as south for me, and were all fair sized. I moved over to one, east, and measured it out as best as I could without any visible feet, and figured it was about fifteen feet in either direction, which gave me pause as I tried to remember how many feet went into a meter, guessing four to be safe. Then, with a wave of my hand I selected the center of the room and felt a bit of vertigo as my vision changed, superimposing the image of a pool over the area I had selected, outlined in blue.


    Please confirm spawner location.


    It was a little odd having an overlay like a game but I shrugged it off as it was damned helpful. I tried pointing at it and dragging the image and, to my joy, the image moved and let me drag it closer to the wall. It suddenly flashed red as it started to press into the wall, making me shake my head at the situation, and back up allowing me to spawn it in, though I made a quick mark at around half its length, thinking I could make a crude yardstick later.


    When I ¡®placed¡¯ the spawning pool the stone bubbled and began to sink downwards into a bowl roughly shaped like a bean. Green slime suddenly started to pour out of the bowls walls, filling it to nearly a finger depth below the edge of the bowl. When the pool stopped moving, and filling, I was left with a knee deep pond not quite taking up the entire area the interface claimed. Now would be the time for some testing.


    I quickly ran through a few ¡®power words¡¯ until ¡®select¡¯ while pointing at it brought up a new window.


    Slime spawner:


    Spawns available:


    Slime: 10 Biomatter


    Alright, I knew slimes would cost biomatter but they were proving to be as cheap as they were useful. But now I had a bit of curiosity, were my humble green goo boys the only gelatin critters I could have jiggling around the place? I turned my focus to my spawner and tried info.


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    Slime spawner:


    A pool where slimes may intermingle and occasionally spawn more of their kind.


    That didn¡¯t answer my question but it did raise a new one. Maybe I could have Bob and Ben chill in the spawning pool and make more slimes over time. Or it was just flavor text and I was overthinking things, still I could test it out later. For now I turned my focus back onto my still small first floor. It had taken a fair amount of time to collect fifty biomatter and Ben couldn¡¯t collect it any faster, nor could i help as i¡¯d waste most of it. I heaved a sigh and started putting down my glowing nodes, shrooms and moss.


    I somewhat lost track of time as I worked to expand and enhance my dungeon, carving out more small rooms, planting more nodes and ordering my second floor slimes to start expanding the tunnel they dug. I had a rough idea of what I wanted for the second floor, thinking i¡¯d do some kind of noob metal cavern with some spiders mixed in for flavor. Otherwise I was keen to stick to my current plan, coating the corners and edges of the first floor rooms in moss to expand my biomatter production.


    By the time I finished the ninth room, having chosen to expand out each room before adding more between them, I had enough biomatter for three slimes, courtesy of Ben, and was moving back to the room I''d set the spawner in, when I had an idea. I am a dungeon, so, every rock and pebble was technically a part of me. I should be able to spawn from wherever my ¡®form¡¯ was as easily as twitching a finger. So, I began to focus and hoped I wouldn''t later need to traverse fifty floors just to keep my first floor topped up.


    Slime spawner:


    Spawns available:


    Slime: 10 Biomatter


    I could feel myself grinning, glad I figured that out early and sure I could apply this to my ¡®forces¡¯ if I focused correctly. Despite my findings I still moved over to the spawner, wanting to see it in action., spending the biomatter on my arrival.


    The biomatter was spent and a twenty second cooldown timer grayed out my slime choice, but the pool reacted immediately so I couldn''t marvel at the quick cooldown. The slime bubbled slowly then faster, making the entire pool look like it was boiling, until a portion slid up to the edge and smoothly slid away from the pool, leaving me with a freshly spawned slime. In truth it was a little anticlimactic.


    I gave the new slime some simple orders while I waited for the cooldown, mostly just making it move around then collect some moss. It didn¡¯t appear different from my first slimes in any way nor did it act any differently so my thoughts on random mutations petered out there, however I had something new to test with the spawning of my third slime, and I wasn''t left disappointed when two slimes moved into the pool.


    Slime spawner:


    Spawns available:


    Slime: 10 Biomatter .02% mutation rate


    Alright, I was a little disappointed. A point two mutation rate was a paltry reward for twenty biomass worth of slimes, but it was still neat to know. Hell, the more I thought about it the better it sounded, it only took ten biomatter to boost it by point oh one so it should only take a thousand to increase it by one percent, and a quick scratching at the floor made me reasonably sure my math was right. While that might sound like a significant cost, it hadn¡¯t taken long for my slimes to accumulate a thousand stone. Once I got a proper farming area set up, and enough farming slimes to run it, I''d be raking in biomatter. It was still a disappointment though to have wasted two of my slimes so quickly.


    The farm idea did get me thinking though. I couldn¡¯t just keep expanding my top floor and hope whatever adventurers found me would leave me enough moss to keep up my production. I would need a secret farm, one I could make conveniently sized for my slimes but entirely useless to anything larger than my own orb. I quickly ran through a couple ideas before landing on one I liked, something like a silo system. I¡¯d have my slimes dig neat holes straight down with enough space between each tube for moss to spread through, then i¡¯d just have to let my slimes run through tubes one after another. It was a rough idea, and i¡¯d have to work on timing to get things optimal, but I liked it.

 Ch5. Creepy Crawlies and Fantastic Feces.

    I awoke for the first time in what felt like days, having ¡®sat down¡¯ and ¡®closed my eyes¡¯ to think of my moss farm design and execution. I hadn¡¯t even realized i was tired, simply feeling no exhaustion nor fatigue. But it seems that, despite my new body needing no sleep, my mind still craved the stabilizing rest sleep would provide. Luckily i didn¡¯t need a bed otherwise i was sure the stone floor would have done little for my back.


    Making a note to figure out some sort of coffee moss in the future, I set out to check up on my slimes. I¡¯d collected nearly two hundred biomatter in the short time I slept so I instantly started to pump out new slimes, before stopping at one and realizing I had enough to set up new stuff on the second floor. I practically skipped down the slope and had to stagger to a stop as I beheld what had been done in my absence.


    My slimes had been hard at work carving out my second floor and hadn¡¯t slowed when I checked out. I was standing at the entrance to a cavern nearly the size of a football stadium, rows of stone shaped like waves as my slimes dutifully moved back and forth along the floor that was nearly complete, requiring only smoothing now. It was now that I realized more time had passed than I thought, my metric of resource collection having been a bad choice. I must not have given my new slime any orders to keep collecting moss, something I rectified with both of my newest slimes.


    I gazed out at my large floor and smiled, knowing i¡¯d have plenty of room for new projects now. I quickly stopped my working slimes and sent them off to start a tunnel to a new floor, content with what I had for now, then I moved around the floor, smoothing the stone by hand until I was content with how it looked.


    My second priority was setting up a second slime spawner, which I decided to set over by the new ramp area. While it might seem like a waste to set a second one up, the slimes just moved too slow to make dedicated mining slimes move from the first floor area so I just accepted the cost, setting it up and turning to start planting moss nodes on the ceiling and mushroom nodes on the edges. Then, with my nodes spent for the time being, I started planting my new general mineral nodes in the center area of the room. I was thinking I''d raise the center up like a hill but I could make it look nice later, I am a young dungeon so function comes before form.


    Finally I moved to set up one of my insect spawners. While the idea of cave spiders was appealing, my slimes already provided enough mining potential for me and I''d soon have enough biomatter for a new spawner, assuming a second floor spawner cost twice as much as a first floor spawner. So, picking a spot off to the east of the cavern, I picked my cave hopper spawner and set it up, finding it did cost 100 biomatter.


    The cave floor started to lift up slightly, making a small dome with a small entrance a little wider around than a two litre bottle, the stone taking on a rougher texture and darkening slightly. With the spawner built I selected it.


    Cave hopper spawner


    Spawns available:


    Cave hopper: 20 Biomatter


    Finding that the cave hopper was only 20 biomatter wasn¡¯t too surprising, they were just a utility spawn so they shouldn¡¯t be that expensive. I reached out with my mind and watched, a little grossed out, as a creature wiggled itself free of the hole in the stone. It was somewhat unremarkable, simply looking like a dull gray grasshopper scaled up to the size of a cat. The only notable difference I could see was the mouth, resembling something closer to a scorpion. It had two pointed pincer-like things close to the mouth, with two other mouth parts that looked suitable for crunching.


    As unsettling as I found bugs, especially ones big enough to take fingers off, I still needed to test it. A quick order to cross the cavern was energetically followed, the powerful back legs proving to be exceptional at launching the hopper at breakneck speeds. While it was supposed to be a swarm attacker, I could imagine getting hit with one cat sized bug at speed wouldn¡¯t be a fun time. The hopper also proved to be good at crawling, easily picking its way up the cavern wall, if at a more sedate walking pace. Finally I got around to setting the hopper to do its job, having it approach and start to process the minerals.


    The two general mineral nodes had started out as fist sized rock chunks, slightly pointed and discolored. Now they had grown slightly and I was sure I could make out the metal in the ore, taking on a bismuth like quality in how its formations showed. The hopper approached at its walking speed and leaned in to take a bite, its pointed pincers clashing down on the rock with explosive strength, sending little chunks clattering all around it. It certainly was a messy eater but that could be forgiven so long as I set up a slime or two to keep things in order. I held off on ordering up a new slime though, as I wanted the hopper to get the lions share, sure that the slime would only get ore while the hopper would process it somewhat. So i sat back and watched the hopper work, occasionally spawning a new glow node around the cavern, or mineral node around the first two.


    It didn¡¯t take too long for the hopper to start ¡®processing¡¯ ore, the little machine eating as fast as its mouth could work, making me suddenly thirsty. I suffered through my thirst as the first processed materials appeared, or were shit out, leaving small square lumps of a dull gray metal in a trail behind the bug. The hopper was proving to be a tremendously poor eater, wasting almost two thirds of the nodes it was chewing through, so I decided to spawn in two more, just to have them follow hopper one around and clean up after him. I was already thinking of some sort of conveyor system, an after effect of too many hours spent in resource management games, as I knew having a slime follow them around would inevitably end with more ore than metal, even with the two cleaners.


    At that thought I spawned one in and, instead of waiting for it to meander over, I tried something I''d almost forgotten about. I could spawn my forces in but I could also, supposedly, move them, according to the information I got. So, a quick ¡®store¡¯ command proved to work, storing it in my direct spawning pool. It was a simple matter to drop it right at the start of the metal trail, and giving him the order to follow the trio around at a short distance. Luckily for me the hoppers were moving slowly, stopping to chew on ore before hopping to another point to continue their meal, not outstripping the slime.


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    With metal production creeping right along I pushed myself to keep spawning nodes as quick as they would come, their timers on a continuous burn, lighting up the cavern more and more. My mind wandered slightly as I kept my work up, wondering if I''d eventually get a stone node, as i¡¯d eventually slow my expansion stage down and I might burn through my reserves. Though metal might be the gimmick of this world, or just my flavor of dungeon in particular.


    With a little time to spare between node spawns I moved back up to the first floor and put my scant collection of metal to work, kneeling by the first slime spawner and trying my hand at manipulating it. I made a thin strip between the marks I had made and started to work on it, carefully making smaller and smaller marks to indicate centimeters, and a botched attempt at millimeters that proved my control wasn¡¯t fine enough. Finally I stepped back and looked at my creation, the worlds least accurate meter stick. I decided to use info on it, both to see if i had created some new item and to take a look at the information metal would provide, getting a pleasant shock.


    Crude measurement device:


    Made with all the finesse of a shivering caveman, able to measure small objects.


    Simple measurements discovered.


    Simple measurement ability granted, no cooldown.


    Simple measurement:


    The ability to accurately measure small objects and short distances:


    Limited to one centimeter up to 100 meters.


    The sudden influx of new windows was a little startling but it certainly had, mostly, good news. I was a bit annoyed that the system felt the need to be snarky about my measuring stick, however I quickly got over it as I tried out my new ability and discovered just how poor of a job I had done. I only had to apply my focus to an object and a red line, with marks for centimeters and meters, would slide across the wall from wherever I had started my measurement from. It reminded me of laser levels carpenters might use when working. While the new ability was neat I still had other things i wanted to know so, after figuring out how to scrap my stick, I moved back down to the second floor and tried my luck on one of the gray lumps on the ground.


    General Metal


    A lightweight metal that resists corrosion but lacks durability.


    That was about what I got from the ore description, if a slight change in title. So, nothing groundbreaking but I didn''t know just how durable the metal was, or how corrosion resistant as my slime seemed to dissolve it just as easily as stone or moss. However it could lead to some neat ideas for construction.


    I moved away a bit, still shooting out the occasional node as I tried my hand at some metal crafting, my first idea being a metal walkway. I was thinking of putting ore nodes on the ceiling so the idea of a walkway was a simple one, a nice way for adventurers to collect from every point in my cavern, and offer a different level of danger. The metal walkways would be just wide enough for two burly men to walk past each other but that would leave little room for maneuvering, locking down dexterous adventurers and making them rely on brute force or a stout defense.


    I started with a metal sheet then slowly started to adjust it, adding thickness as more and more metal became available to me. The first iteration was just plain sheet metal held up by a box frame that I thought I could use for the steps, but just looking at it made it seem flimsy and dangerous, a slipping nightmare if one had to traverse it when covered in blood or other fluids. So I adjusted it, trying a few techniques until I landed on separating the metal into strips, then lining those up in the frame and merging them together. While it didn¡¯t add anything in the way of materials it allowed for more strength, especially as I added a few perpendicular bars to keep them all from shifting when weight or force is applied to them. As for the frame it was a simple box shape, a bit wasteful on materials but I wanted to be confident it wouldn¡¯t come apart. The finishing touch was serrations on the bars, giving them a toothy appearance and more than enough grip. I was sure it was a bit dangerous but a dungeon wasn¡¯t a safe place.


    Now came the hard part, moving the step. Currently it was just a plank of metal laying on the ground completely uselessly, and I wasn''t sure how to move it. I could take it into my inventory but I was sure that would just scrap it, so I tried a few commands until I hit on one. ¡®Adjust.¡¯


    Mark building location.


    That was a new window but helpful. I moved out and, just like the spawner, I had an outline of where I could put my step. So I sauntered over to the first floor ramp and set it on the ground beside it, still unable to intersect with the walls.


    Simple construction discovered.


    Granted ability to save and recreate simple structures.


    I felt a wide grin coming on as I read those words. I had hoped this would be the case, after getting my measuring ability, but I didn''t want to jinx myself so I fought against thinking about it and cursing myself. Though it did make me wonder why I hadn''t gotten some kind of natural building ability from my stalactite. Surely I''d done enough to at least get some decorations going. I ran through what I''d done for the step, building it out and moving it seemed to be all it took so, after planting a couple more nodes, I moved up to move my stalactite. No dice.So that left one more thing, I lacked some fundamental knowledge about them to create them, something simple as i knew they were formed by minerals and such dripping from the ceiling to the ground. Then it hit me, something from grade school came back. Stalactites went on the ceiling because they have a C in their name and stalagmites went on the ground because they have a G in their name.


    Simple cave decorations discovered.


    Grants the ability to adjust the look of your dungeon to a more natural state.


    I cursed. Something so boneheadedly simple had kept me from discovering a way to make new skills pop up out of nowhere, something a fourth grader might correct me on. I ignored my stalagmite and headed back down to the second floor, too frustrated with myself to attempt to beautify my interior. I pulled up a new sheet of metal and started to inscribe marks on it, planning out my idea for a farm with newfound laser precision, hoping i¡¯d be able to just point a slime at this ¡®blueprint¡¯ and have them make what i want. It would be a long time coming but i hoped it would be worth it.

 Ch6. Farming, spiders, and fresh air

    Farming was truly proving to be a difficult proposition. So far i¡¯d gone through three test tubes worth of farms, and each had proven to be inefficient or simply too unstable in its construction, forcing me to remake the floor more than a few times. Finally though, I felt I was on the right track. I had measured out my slimes move speed while collecting in a tube, which proved to be marginally slower than the one meter per minute move speed i¡¯d measured out, a rough hourglass and calendar providing me new abilities, namely a clock and a calendar, proving the slimes maximum speed, sadly the calendar only provided me a basic count of how long i¡¯d existed in this world, ten days.


    The moss tubes were the work of painfully boring hours, each tube connected by nearly thirty small tunnels that had moss growing in them. As the slime would make its way up or down one tube the moss would start to spread into the farmed tube and grow again. Each tube went sixty meters down, allowing for a slime to fully harvest it in an hour, more or less, and I had thirty tubes so far, figuring it takes five days for each tube to fully regrow itself. I would need around a hundred and twenty tubes to be at maximum efficiency.


    I heaved a sigh as I re-checked my math. Unless I got a more efficient bio gatherer then i¡¯d have to set up huge farms just to keep my slime at max work efficiency. It wasn¡¯t the end of the world, just one slime was doing the work of nearly four or five others, and that¡¯s assuming the others were constantly gathering, which they weren''t. I¡¯d spaced my nodes apart, giving them plenty of room to grow which meant my slimes had to move from spot to spot to keep collecting things.


    The best thing to come out of farming so far was a new ability, secret room, which gave me camouflage options for doorways I made. All it took was a few stalagmites covering a hole in the wall I carved out, not wanting to give adventurers free access to my personal farming areas. So I had a new place to test things without making it overly obvious that I was a sentient being, something I wasn''t sure this world would take kindly to, or was even expected at all. I had also figured out I could move my orb into a secret room but I was sure some adventurer would swing by with a mystical doodad that would lead them right to me, so I would keep bringing my orb lower, just with some bonus concealment.


    However, while doing my work, I had amassed nearly four hundred biomatter, leaving me with room to expand my spawning ability. I was a little excited, spending hours, or maybe a day or two, working on one thing had left me painfully bored and even something as gross as spiders had an appeal. So, after moving out of my little hidden den near the first floor ramp, i headed over to the west side of the cavern to set up my spawner, noticing along the way that my general mineral nodes had become a near forest of stalagmites, near enough to two meters as i could barely see over most of them. I knew my group of hoppers was still working hard, I had even added another two groups to boost my metal production.


    The spider spawner took two hundred biomatter, staggering me as it was twice the cost of even the cave hoppers but the idea of having an combat mob with utilities was still appealing enough to go through with the cost. After selecting the spot, and paying the biomatter, a white silken substance started to bubble up from the stone, slowly winding around itself until it resembled strands winding around a stone or rock, going through this process five times until i was left with five large silk sacks that looked like dog sized spider eggs. Remembering these things were supposed to reproduce through injection sent a shiver up my spine, even as i used info on it.


    Spider spawner:


    Spawns available:


    Cave spider: 100 Biomatter.


    I almost cursed at the outrageous cost, nearly half of my remaining biomatter but resolved to spawn one anyways. I spent the biomatter and stepped back, hands on my metaphorical hips. An egg started wriggling, the surface writhing as something tried to tear its way free of the sack. The egg popped out of place, rolling across the stone floor, and another started to take its place, as the writhing intensified before a leg like an oversized ice pick punctured the surface. The spider emerged slowly, tearing more of its silken covering away until it was half emerged, simply stepping up and away on unsteady legs.


    The spider was nearly the height of my waist, growing slightly as it turned and gorged itself on what remained of its egg, leaving it just touching a meter tall in its normal standing state. The body was spiked, dark gray spikes adorning its, nearly black, abdomen, all making it difficult to make out in the low light of the cavern. Its thorax, sporting two more forward facing spikes, was dwarfed by the abdomen and had two indents in it that were the resting place of its front legs, which i think are named pedipalps, holding them in waiting like a praying mantis and the reason was clear, the ends of either of them were sharp spikes. Finally, and most unsettling beyond the sheer size of the spider, was its chelicerae, a fun word that hid evil. The chelicerae were long, coming out nearly a hands length from the mouth parts, and had two gleaming fangs like curved daggers that looked sharp enough to puncture tank armor. I was honestly starting to feel bad for my future adventurers.


    I started up the usual rounds of tests for the spider as I had my other creatures, a simple walk, turn, then dash which proved it walked at a sedate pace that might be best described as a casual stroll. Its running pace proved to also be somewhat lacking, perhaps at the higher end of an average human jogging speed which, after some measuring, racing, and painfully slow math, I figured to be around seven kilometers an hour. It had some ability to hop a short distance, about five meters, but the windup was obvious and I didn''t think they would be able to hold that wound up position for long. Their best trait, for combat, proved to be a web they could produce, which proved to be very sticky and consisted of strands that would cling and get caught on anything they were dragged across meaning they wouldn¡¯t necessarily have to run down anyone that came to challenge my second floor.


    The final, and currently most useful, trait the spider had was a very nice tunneling ability. It would approach whatever place i ordered it to and begin slamming those pick like legs forward in an explosion of strength, sheering into the stone and crumbling it with relative ease allowing one spider the ability to tunnel nearly as fast as four of my humble slimes, the drawback being the spider couldn¡¯t collect or dispose of the stone it mined. I had started to think the spider was a worse miner by far but an idea struck me and I ordered my spider to dig a tunnel at a slight incline, years of space engineer forming a simple plan. All it took was digging a small ¡®pool¡¯ below the entrance to the spider tunnel and chunks of rocks would come rolling right down into it, where a quickly spawned and relocated slime could passively chew through all the spider could throw at it. I knew some stone would accumulate and, if I didn''t want the place to look like a roblox dungeon, I''d have to add curves eventually but this offered me a simple way to expand my interior and give me more room to put naturally growing glow flora.


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    With the idea of quicker expansion in my head I spawned a second spider and had him move down to the third floor tunnel. I had made this floor deeper, nearly three times the length of the last ramp while maintaining its gradual drop. The telltale ridges of slime mining were left everywhere despite their best efforts to make it look fairly clean. Bob and his crew were hard at work expanding the landing area when I arrived with the new guy, giving him a few orders. First, I had him web together his back two legs with a long flat almost blanket looking web giving it an ability to scoop stone along as it went, which proved to be less effective than I hoped until one of the slimes got caught in it. Then I likened it to a ramscoop instead of a broom as, I decided she¡¯d be Broomhilda, dragged the helpless slime along in her war against stone.


    I was considering moving my orb down to the third floor when a nagging sensation started itching at the back of my mind, an itch I couldn''t identify what exactly my new body was telling me. I sat down and closed my eyes but sleep wouldn¡¯t come to me, i couldn¡¯t eat so hunger wasn¡¯t my problem. I tried physically scratching my orb but, beyond a bout of vertigo, achieved nothing, until i was fed up and tried using information on the itch.


    Warning, structural integrity of floor one failing.


    Cause: Grace period ending, new dungeon emergence imminent.


    Please select emergence point. 9:37:42


    Ah, I''m about to emerge. Well, that¡¯s not terribly good, and my attempt to remain calm isn¡¯t working too well. I hadn¡¯t done much more than farm and make farming bugs, my only two supposed fighters being tied up in mining work and I lacked the funds to make any more. I could maybe swing a third in ten hours but I didn''t want to bet on winning any fight they would come across. I took a moment to compose myself, wondering if it was residual panic from my first death cropping up or if it was some innate dungeon fear of outside forces. Whatever the cause, freaking out wouldn¡¯t help me now.


    So, with some determination, I moved up to the first floor and started to create more rooms, something I could do much quicker than my slimes or spiders if I put my back into it and ignored node cooldowns. Within an hour I had expanded my nine rooms into 28, including my starting room. It was trivial to set up new walls in the doorways that I had made to move more quickly, turning my grid into one long tunnel that eventually leads to the second floor ramp. Finally I was left with one last option that I''d never explored before, traps. I had wanted to look at them earlier but I knew I would be tempted to spawn them in and use my creatures to confirm the efficacy which would just be a drain on my resources. So, staring at the first doorway I opened up that tab and took a look at what I had in stock. Using info on each one so i wouldn¡¯t place something that would be useless in the confined first floor.


    Traps available for spawning.


    Spike trap: cost 10 stone.


    A single stalactite primed to fall on invaders that walk below it. Can be improved with the addition of a slime.


    Pit trap: cost 10 stone.


    A simple pitfall, approximately 5 meters deep,  meant to capture invaders, can become deadly with the addition of placed spikes or slimes.


    Spike blanket: cost 50 stone.


    An improved spike trap adding additional stalactites to affect an area below it. Can be improved with slimes.


    Creeping horror. Cost 50 biomatter. 3 Available for spawning.


    An almost imobile creature that can be placed at the bottom of a pit trap to improve capturability. Implants caught creatures to facilitate breeding.


    Three nodes, three different spawns and four traps? This was throwing off my feng shui, or voodoo or whatever you call it but I''d deal with it. I had three traps, all of which could be improved by slimes and a trap based creature that apparently took a page out of the cave spider book of horrors. I ignored my revulsion and started to plant my traps, simple pitfalls as spike traps would not gain any real speed in the tight rooms of the first floor. I had plenty of stone to throw around so I did, planting a single pitfall in front of each doorway, only dropping a slime into the first one as the others were mostly for slowing people down. It was hardly deadly but I wanted the fantasy equivalent of ¡®no trespassing¡¯ to be plain and clear. I simply wasn¡¯t ready for adventurers, I was only two floors deep and my nodes were barely at a level of sustainability. I needed to play for time and this was the best way I could do it.


    The pit traps proved worth the cost, digging themselves out in seconds and being covered by a thin layer of stone that seemed to conceal things pretty well. A quick test proved that the stone would hold some weight but, I suspected, only enough to let someone get their other foot off the ground. I reconsidered my not being too deadly and added some short general mineral spikes to the bottom of the rest of the pits, looking like a mix of nails rather than man killing things, my desire being to injure people and make them reconsider running my dungeon.


    Next I decided to focus hard on my second floor, planting the occasional pit trap and spike blanket, using my nodes of general mineral to try to camouflage them rather than having random groupings of spikes here and there on the ceiling. It was a bit of a slow process but, thankfully, the cooldown seemed more designed to keep a dungeon from accidentally placing overlapping traps or creatures. For my third floor ramp I heavily trapped it, not using any general mineral to hide the spikes and simply letting the trapped section act like another warning sign. Finally I decided to move my orb.


    It wasn¡¯t an easy decision, I had hidden it well in my testing chamber and I knew it would take mining through a meter of stone to get to it, but I''d rather not risk someone coming in and being able to sense it then just making off without much trouble, my orb in hand. At least on the third floor they¡¯d have the mining crew to contend with, and whatever else I could relocate in a hurry. So i cleared out a new area, a hole fifty meters into the stone behind my ramp, and relocated my orb, suffering through the vertigo once again, before completely sealing my orb in, save for a pinhole i left in my placed stone in case there was some inherent need to keep my core exposed to some degree.


    At last there was little else to do, I could check my new spawners and traps but I didn''t have the biomatter to dump into a new spawn and a couple new spike variants wouldn¡¯t do much more than what I had done already. I moved up to the first floor and wound my way through the rooms until I was standing at the room I''d chosen to be my entrance. A bare six hours had passed but i wouldn¡¯t play out the clock, i was as ready as i could be and three more hours wouldn¡¯t improve much else. I reached out and pointed at the wall, selecting it as the point for my dungeon entrance, the stone crumbling and a whistling noise that grew louder as the stone deteriorated further and further. Finally,  with a rush of wind and a great roaring noise, the crumbling stones exploded outwards, taking with it a slime that had been weeding nearby, and I stared up the entrance ramp at an impossibility.


    There, hanging in a sky filled with more stars than I had ever seen in my life, bound to earth, was a beautiful orb of green and blue. A planet hung in the sky, reflecting beautiful colors as I walked up my ramp to stare around the entrance to my dungeon. Shrouded by darkness there was practically nothing, no trees, no vegetation, no wind to send the coarse dust billowing away. I was trapped on a moon.

 Ch7. Here’s where I’d take my deep breath, if there was one to take.

    I stared up at that blue and green orb, standing at the border of my dungeon, and couldn¡¯t formulate a thought for all the emotions passing through me. I ignored a new itch in the back of my mind, simply staring up as shadow slowly hid the planet from my view, watching as the rotation brought islands into view, a swirling mass of clouds disappearing to the planets north as, what was plainly not earth, gently continued on its path.


    It took me a long time to get my thoughts in order and bring myself back around from the shock, finally getting a thought through my head as emotions overtook me. ¡®That rat bastard!¡¯ was the first thought and emotion. ¡®I spend half of eternity clinging to a spark of life in the void between life and death and he sends me to live out a second life in the void of space? What kind of twisted joke is this? Banishing me just for giggles, to watch me slowly go insane from loneliness?¡¯ I couldn¡¯t see a single light in the dark half of the planet showing whatever lived down there wasn¡¯t advanced enough to come up here and go rooting through my dungeon. I stood there at the precipice screaming my silent rage into the void, cursing the planet, the moon, and the twisted guide that couldn¡¯t be assed to stick me somewhere livable. I¡¯d have to wait for who knows how many thousands or millions of years, praying for something on that planet to develop enough brains to wonder what life on the moon might be like.


    I stood there, taking in air that didn¡¯t exist for lungs I didn''t have as my rage filled mind tried to stay fueled. I couldn¡¯t let despair take me, i wouldn¡¯t let despair take me. I¡¯d spent who knows how long clinging to a spark without any hope of coming back, I¡¯d not let this bring me down. With that i turned back towards my interior and finally focused on the itch digging into the back of my mind.


    Dungeon forces have been defeated.


    Core exposed.


    ¡®Defeated my ass.¡¯ I spat at the screen as I stomped further in, then had the mind to turn and stomp back to the entrance. I knew what had beaten them, the spiders and hoppers would probably have asphyxiated due to the lack of oxygen, as all I held just slipped off into space, and the slimes would have boiled or froze as the temperature and pressure difference hit them. . So, I stood before my entrance again and tried to seal it up before I felt an odd blocking sensation.


    A dungeon cannot seal its entrance.


    Well, that left a few questions, first and foremost, how in the hell was I supposed to make a functional dungeon with nothing in it. I could carve caves and plant traps but what kind of dungeon didn¡¯t have minions? I cursed and thought it over for a minute before coming at it from a new angle. I started to use up my general mineral stores, having plenty of the metal to fill the room, I decided to make a crude door. It was nearly as thick as my forearm was long, then I decided to round it up to thirty centimeters just to have a nice even number. The door was on hinges that, unsurprisingly, broke the first time I moved the door into position. It took some fenagaling but I managed to get the hinges thick enough to hold the doors weight and, after a quick prayer to whoever the guids enemy was, I pushed the door shut, the dull metal gliding into position without a sound.


    So I now had a door but I was a bit suspicious that I hadn''t unlocked any new building options like air lock or airtight door. So I''d have to experiment. Instead of trying to seal off my dungeon and keep it air tight I moved to my experiment room and tried my hand at sealing that shut entirely, which managed to work. I was worried about how porous the stone might be but I didn''t have much to work with and would just have to pray the wall could hold an atmosphere¡¯s worth of pressure. I took stock of my experimental tube farm, noticing that the glow moss had practically desiccated, dry plants crumbling into dust at the slightest touch, or they could have been frozen but the difference was practically a moot point. The nodes were all as dead as doornails so i¡¯d have to start from scratch, or so I thought. I¡¯d only barely noticed the center of the node expanding slightly so I moved in to check it out, dusting the dead moss away from the point and exposing vibrant green growth. The growth quickly started to fade and die but I knew what was happening, my nodes were trying to start growing again. I moved quickly to help my nodes take advantage of their growth, knowing my moss could produce oxygen, when I was stopped by the new items on my nodes list.


    Nodes available for spawning:


    Glowmoss: 4 per cycle.


    Glowshroom: 3 per cycle.


    General mineral: 3 per cycle.


    Creeping Crone: 2 per cycle.


    An almost translucent white vine found in caves that resembles thin hair. Produces oxygen.


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    Copper ore: 2 per cycle.


    A green stone that, when refined, produces copper.


    While I felt a little underwhelmed by my third floor unlocks, the aluminum-like substance seeming to be a higher tier metal, I welcomed the chance to have another oxygen producing plant. So, without much hesitation, I spent my nodes wherever they could fit, watching my new vine appear on a wall, thin extra vines fluttering down like hair in a wind, before quickly drying out and crumpling to the ground. In a moment of half genius I planted my copper nodes as well, thinking I might be able to make a crushable gasket for my door, though I wasn''t sure if that would work at all. If all else fails I''d figure out a way to solder my door to its frame and leave as small of a gap as possible. I might not be able to get my dungeon perfectly air tight but I could certainly try my hand at out producing the waste.


    So I spent more than a few hours working to add as many nodes as the space could take, hoping I''d eventually hit the point where I made enough pressure for my nodes to grow out properly and fill the room. I also considered that I wouldn''t be able to make the room over-pressure itself, as I hadn''t seen any problems caused by over-pressure before. Or I thought I hadn''t, I was no doctor and I didn''t think slimes and spiders would be overly bothered by an extra atmosphere or two. However I had to err on the side of pessimism here. I also sat down, letting my node spawn cooldown expire, and started to craft a small safe, a square of metal with about a cubic foot of space for an interior. This would be my test for a different type of gasket, assuming the copper failed or just wasn¡¯t as good as I could hope. I sat, looking at the door to the ¡®safe¡¯ and focused on one thought. ¡®Cork gasket¡¯. I knew full well, due to my occupation and working on older cars, that cork was used for more than just bottling up wine and whiskey so i did my best to remember just how it acted in my hands when i was holding cork, holding that image in my mind i tried to connect it to my biomatter store, which was painfully low at 34 biomatter, too many spiders not enough farming.


    Slowly the gasket started to form, looking entirely too much like styrofoam for my liking but I''d take anything that could hold air. The green material formed around the rim I had made for the door of the safe, applying like a putty rather than a wood, until I had a complete ring around the rim. Then I closed the door and tipped the safe onto its back with the door up, spending some stone to put weight on the door. I knew adding pressure inside could eventually blow open the door, rendering this test pointless, but I only needed this experiment to show whether I could make a simple biomatter gasket or if I''d have to fool around and make a sort of copper gasket, after spawning a new cave hopper.


    It took a little time for the cooldowns to expire, and I spent all but one cave moss on the surrounding room, accepting that there would be overlap but wanting the room to quickly pressurize. Then, with more than a little trepidation, I approached the safe. ¡®I¡¯m not a human, my head isn¡¯t real.¡¯ I repeated that mantra in my head, knowing I''d need to see inside the safe to place a node in it. I approached and wondered if this was a sort of phantom limb situation, feeling a part that didn¡¯t exist any more, would my mind allow it or would I be bouncing my head off the safe? I knew I could drop a node inside then shut the door but when I spawned a node it spawned with a good bit of extra material instead of slowly growing an inch at a time when it had been removed in its entirety. With my mind sufficiently occupied by inane thoughts I quickly pushed my head forward into the safe where darkness encompassed my senses.


    It certainly felt like I was just kneeling with my head in a box but I didn''t stop to question it, mostly fearing I''d be stuck with my head in a box until I scrapped the safe. I quickly planted the node, my vision filling with a soft blue glow, and retreated, sitting back and patiently watching the safe door. It didn¡¯t take too long before I determined I was doing something wrong, the simple fact being air wasn¡¯t visible. I could sit here for days and not realize every oxygen molecule was slipping right out of some crack or gap in my wall, but I was truly stuck. I didn¡¯t have enough general mineral left to coat my experiment room and if I scrapped my door I''d only get a fraction of it back. My only real hope was to sit back and hope something would start to show improvement, otherwise I''d be stuck digging by hand until I found a floor that held a more useful material, or I could spawn enough nodes that the leaks would be less of a critical problem and more of an annoyance.


    With that depressing thought in mind, also forcing me to remember i was trapped up here without any companionship until the life on the planet below evolved into something sentient, i forced myself to sit and wait, eventually closing my eyes and falling into sleep, or maybe it was a form of hibernation for overworked dungeons. Whatever it was, I awoke with a start, jumping up and finding myself in a similar state as I had been. My nodes hadn¡¯t grown and I was still stuck in a dark enclosed room, a strange sense of claustrophobia. I heaved a sigh, realizing I''d probably been out of it for hours and hadn¡¯t been placing my nodes down for that entire time.


    It was more than a little disheartening to find out how i¡¯d wasted so much time but i had to keep working, even if i wasn¡¯t getting any delvers any time soon it didn¡¯t mean i wanted to sit around and examine moon rocks for the next week while my dungeon re-compressed. So, I moved on to my little gasket experiment, kneeling down and pressing my face into it, only to end up surprised. It was a complete success, I couldn''t hear hissing on the inside and the glow moss was still alive. I could only guess that the larger patch of glow moss combined with the smaller space to make a perfect little room that filled quick enough to keep the moss alive. While the success did make me happy I moved quickly away to try a new experiment, an oxygen chamber.


    Perhaps i should name it something else but, the idea was to make a small chamber with a moss node and let it oxygenate, then put a pinhole in it to let it leak air naturally into the experiment room, hopefully finding the sweet spot between producing enough to keep it alive and not producing enough. With that in mind I put a pinhole in my safe, sticking my head back in to confirm the sound of a whistling leak. I also had the sense to start a timer to see how long the leak would take to kill my moss, if it managed to kill it.


    With that out of the way I moved on to make more oxygen chambers, digging into the wall to make more one square foot areas that would host a new node, using stone to act as a barrier. I wouldn¡¯t put a pinhole in them yet, planning to time them out and see how long it would take a single chamber to become viable. While I preferred the moss for these experiments, already knowing it would grow on every available surface, I added in the creeping crone to just make sure I knew the capability of everything I had to play.

 Ch8. Fresh air 2, electric boogaloo.

    It had taken hours, probably a couple days, of seeping air into my room and making , now dubbed, oxygen farms but I had finally done it. My experimental room was a somewhat leaky, atmosphere filled and livable space. Air whistled in from the pinhole vents that lead off deeper into the stone, dozens of glowmoss nodes filled the room with breathable air and I couldn''t be happier to have solved such a simple problem. A part of my mind was telling me to expand the pinholes, making room for slimes and effectively making new tube farms, but I knew the merit behind having redundant systems. If I ever had another breach I''d have at least one spot to come back and start again from, though I already had plans to expand this and make many more oxygen farms.


    For now I had a simple enough problem, one I had figured out I had a solution for. I could collect gasses into my inventory system, overcoming my inability to make an over pressurized system, simply taking in some air and letting my farms naturally fill the experimental chamber over time. The only problem was the painfully slow process that entailed. MY experimental room was certainly a good spot to start, every spare inch coated in some form of moss or vine, but it simply wasn¡¯t enough. I needed to grow this and get back to expanding my dungeon. It wasn¡¯t an idle thought of ¡®grow deeper and get more power¡¯, I was thinking I might get access to sentient or semi sentient forces at some point, allowing me a shortcut instead of waiting for someone to chance upon me in some few millennia.


    So, I started as I had so many days ago, by spawning in a slime. I was lucky, having the sense to put my second slime spawner in my experimental room, more laziness than sense actually. Whatever the reason i didn¡¯t have to risk wasting biomatter by trying to spawn one in vacuum and trying to juggle it into my inventory and spawn it in the room For now i simply spawned it and gave the guy orders to harvest biomatter at half speed, being more concerned about making oxygen than trying to get my creatures back up in number. For the second part of my plan i moved back out into the cavern and started planting my new oxygen farms like seeds, digging tubes into the walls, a bit smaller than a cubed foot but, by extending the tube and adding separating walls to the oxygen farm i could set up multiple farms in sequence, hopefully letting them feed each other with oxygen one at a time. That might also not be how things work but it worked with my experimental room and I was throwing this together on short notice. I¡¯d just have to remember to change things out if I figured out a better setup in the future.


    The trick, I found, to setting them up successfully, was giving them a primer shot of air , letting the farm bloom and hold out long enough for the moss to grow and fill the area before the vacuum killed it. So that¡¯s how things went, making one farm after another, practically honeycombing the walls of the cavern with my farms. It was the work of days, my humble experimental room not preparing me for the sheer volume the cavern, and other floors, would require. However, after a hundred farms, each holding ten oxygen chambers, I was beginning to wonder just how I wasn''t getting to a point of saturation, why my chamber was still a stubborn vacuum instead of a flush ecosystem. I finally settled on what might be the problem, not discounting the sheer size of my dungeon.


    My door was whistling, and that wasn¡¯t a euphemism for something. While I couldn''t hear it i could ¡®feel¡¯ air escaping past my fingers into the void of space, my attempts at stopping it simply not working as I had hoped. However, I knew my idea for a cork gasket worked, at least on a small scale. I hauled my door open, glad to find the metal hadn¡¯t cold welded itself, and applied the cork gasket to the ridge on the doorway. I made it thin, and then in layers, wanting to preserve what biomatter i had left, my one slime only producing slowly. Finally I had something I hoped would work, pulling the door shut against the seal and waiting.


    It took time for air pressure to begin building again, even with all of my farms, but it was building, and I was finding my seal wasn¡¯t as air tight as I had hoped, but I could think of one solution at least. I heaved myself against the big door, applying what pressure I could, hoping I would gain enough air pressure eventually to allow the door to self seal, crushing the cork and proofing itself against the vacuum. I was lucky, lucky or I knew just enough to make things work right. The air flow seemed to slow in the areas I could reach and feel and I hoped that would mean I was building actual pressure. Still though, I started to apply my nodes wherever I could see an open space, determined to do more than hold the door while my plants worked passively.


    Even as I held the door shut I was making a plan to improve it, making a pseudo airlock with this door opening like a normal one and a second door acting like a trap door, letting its own weight work to seal the air in. So, I passed the time by admonishing myself and swearing I''d take my time in the future, no matter my mood or emotional state. Time that turned out to be well spent, the whistling noise was growing louder and louder as the air pressure in my dungeon was growing stronger. I finally let off the door slowly, carefully listening for any further leaking caused by my lack of pressure, happy to find that the leaks didn¡¯t intensify. It was loud and it leaked more than a Harley but it seemed good enough for government work, which was sadly good enough for me.


    I moved quickly, going back down to the cavern and starting back up on my honeycomb of farms, suffering through the tedium just to ensure I wouldn''t start at square one again. And so I continued this way, decorating the cavern with the hanging crone vine and excessive moss, taking time to add patches of copper in as I got a new idea for a seal. While my idea for cork was obviously a good one, considering the vague livability of my dungeon, I remembered other forms of gaskets from home, one involving copper and, usually rubber, a soft inner gasket core. The copper would form against the metal encasing it, I think, and the inner gasket should add some expansive pressure which might better mold the copper to the surface it¡¯s supposed to be mated against. While it sounded good in theory I''d have to test it later when I got more room to play. However I was faced with a critical need for more biomatter, all resources really, and I''d need to start up my farms sooner rather than later.


    Despite not wanting to give up on my normal floors just yet, I returned to my experimental room and started to expand it, slotting in more oxygen farms but leaving them open to allow a slime through. And, instead of my previous design, I simply put nodes down on the roof of the tube and accepted that this method would be less efficient in the long run. The design this time was more akin to an old school radiator, long tubes going out for sixty meters before curving tightly back and returning to the entry point, the wall. On further inspection i decided to make the roof of the tubes into a ¡®V¡¯ shape that would keep some of the moss away from the slimes, allowing for a somewhat faster regrow period, the idea being the ¡®V¡¯ would stay full of moss and expand quicker than starting from just the node¡¯s center point.


    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    The experiment room quickly expanded, going from a single floor some twenty meters long and wide, to three floors twenty meters wide and nearly a hundred long. The tubes, simple in design, were set in like a honeycomb, a staggered placement allowing for the 26 cm tall holes to be stacked ten high, having expanded the ceiling some to better accommodate the new bio farms. The work had been a bit strange, with no slimes to do the work I had to glide through the stone while I dug it out by hand. While not unpleasant it was just another reminder that I wasn''t human anymore. Another mark for my inhumanity was the sheer number of farms I''d created. While my first farm had been a work of boredom and attempting to alleviate it and provide a bonus in the meantime, this was the work of a man with a mission. Three thousand eight hundred and forty tubes per side, and I counted the outward and inward sections as two different tubes. And that was per wall, meaning on three floors I had twenty three thousand and forty tubes, approximately. I had only done the math out of sheer curiosity, and even then it was a rough estimate based on the size of the tubes and the length and height of the wall. I hadn¡¯t even properly seeded them all, each only getting three nodes, one at the entrance and exit and one in the middle.


    It would take more than a little time for the farms to be fully operational, hopefully my little v shape idea would work, but I had been collecting enough material to start summoning more slimes. I had to go and look at an etching I had made on my wall detailing a slimes farming speed and efficiency, Which showed I should have a slime per hundred and twenty tubes, assuming max efficiency and growth rate, which my new farms were nowhere near yet. However it was a good starting point. For now I just moved back to the section of floor i¡¯d done my math on, dividing twenty three thousand by a hundred and twenty. I¡¯d need a hundred and ninety two slimes for my farm, approximately. I think it was an exact number but i say approximately anyways because it shouldn¡¯t take me minutes to do simple division and i couldn¡¯t be sure I''d done any of my math right. Why was a fantasy setting so enamored with math, why wasn¡¯t I slinging fireballs and bedding kobolds instead of playing with mathematical moss in space. Setting my lamentations aside, I got back to work, counting myself lucky that I''d only made the walls ten high and could count along the floor to mark sections off that would be under the control of each slime.


    It had already been the work of days but I was beginning to appreciate my experience as a truck driver, long hours of boredom usually followed by sleep before doing it again the day after. The only annoying thing was the lack of any noise, save for the slimes sliding their way across the stone floor to their assigned point, which was no substitute for Jerry Reed. I was beginning to hope i¡¯d get a slime mutation that would include some form of musical inclination. Though i wasn¡¯t entirely correct about a lack of noise, my door was whistling louder and louder every day and it was a point of pride that i had managed to keep out producing the waste air, however i didn¡¯t want to wait for my cheap gasket to fail completely and start dumping air  like a spiked ball. So I often made trips up to the door and fed it a sacrifice of biomatter around the edges, letting the material be pulled in and slowly torn up by the eroding force of wind. I was beginning to wonder just how much air it would take to give the moon an atmosphere, but I was bad enough at math when counting with my fingers, I couldn''t even begin to guess at the volume needed for terraforming.


    So I set out to start up hopper production as well, the farms providing me with a somewhat stunted income but enough to spring for three hoppers and a slime, setting them loose on the ore spikes, which had tripled in size since the last time I''d measured them. Now standing at a proud five and a half meters. I was beginning to wonder if I''d have to stretch my control and make them stop at some point, but I was pretty sure they had slowed down a good deal so they might have a natural inclination towards size anyways. So, I set about my normal routine, spawning slimes and occasionally hoppers, increasing my farming potential and packing the door to keep my air in. It had finally reached a level of normalcy, my metal production finally getting to a point I could happily start making my second door.


    I started off cautiously, adjusting my first floor to give me room to work things out, making the entry room deeper and filling in the second room, choosing to dig under it and making that room into the airlock. Then, in the third room, I started by making a small circular door. While the huge vault door seemed the best idea in the beginning, I hardly needed the entrance to be that size. A well made door should be able to take the weight just as well, and might leak a whole hell of a lot less. So I built a more modest frame, though I was more than generous with my metal application, coating the entire second and third room with a centimeter of general mineral. Tests I had done while waiting for slime and node spawns showed that I was right in my assumption that the general mineral was very much like aluminum. It was light weight and very malleable. So, I did the smart thing this time and began to level what I had made, bringing out my meter stick and using some vine and a stone.


    It wasn¡¯t the easiest way to level things, more for use in leveling walls, but the old school plumb bob did its job, letting me get a rough level on the surface of the frame and, more importantly, the portion the hatch would be resting on. The hatch was another matter. I did my best to make a portion of the floor level and smooth before making the hatch on it, a good five inches of general mineral, then I used the floor to sand down the hatch. Employing the teachings of Mr.Miyagi, I rotated the hatch in circles, clockwise for ten then counter for ten, until I had an almost polished surface on it, bringing it over and setting it in place. For my finishing touches I took the fitted hatch out and carefully put a groove in both the hatch and the frame, measuring it out so they would overlap eachother. This is where I made my new and experimental gasket. Getting my copper to come out in a tube was already hard but making it curve was testing my patience. Making me focus and restart after kinking things more than once. Eventually i had made the tube long enough to encircle the whole notch i¡¯d carved. Now forcing my biomatter cork material into it was a new level of pain, instantly blowing it out and forcing me to start from scratch. It took five tries before i got it right and layed it into the groove, mating the two ends together with solid copper, unsure how to keep the tube going and fill it while it was closed.


    Now came the time for the test, lowering the door down I added four notches to it, building up latches across from them that would allow me to clamp down the hatch and crush the seal into place. Which proved to not work as I was reminded the dungeon couldn¡¯t be sealed off. With that in mind I substituted a simple latch with a boulder, letting its weight crush the seal, oddly enough not triggering the alert even though I was sure it achieved much the same.


    Now came the final test, stepping out into the first room. I sat there and waited patiently, watching my moss die off as the sound started to lessen more and more, until i was eventually sitting in silence, not even coming back into the airlock provided any sound, the room was air tight and i could finally sit back and relax after battling for what felt like days. Simply sitting down felt like bliss.

 Ch9. These doors might be hinged but I certainly aint.

    As much as I enjoyed my little sit down I still had work to do. First I wanted to go and do more math, yay math. As much as I hated it, math makes the world go round and, despite being on a moon, I wanted a good base to build up from. The math i needed to do was a simple income analysis, somehow managing to cross dimensions and ending up as a fucking book keeper. Whatever the case I moved back down to my experiment room, deciding to re-dub it as the modular farm room as it really wasn¡¯t for experimenting any more.


    Alright, so to start with I need to re-examine what I know, a slimes move speed and a slimes collection rate. From there I could figure out just how much I was making and determine how much wiggle room I had to spend on new things. I moved to a relatively fresh wall, having left the entrance and far wall free from any farm tubes. I set up a single tube ten meters long and overpopulated it with moss nodes, simply wanting to get this test over without waiting some five days for a farm to fully form. I made sure to add the upper v notch and then moved on to make a short race track on the floor, marking it out with centimeters, then millimeters just to err on the side of caution. From there I spawned a slime and had it move along the track, timing it for a minute. Happy with the results I set up a new tube with marks on the v-notch, realizing a slime would likely move slower, even marginally, when harvesting.


    ¡®Point nine eight meters per minute.¡¯ It was about what I remembered and I took the time to make a metal book, scoring lines across the ¡®pages¡¯ before writing in the slimes information. For my second trick I had to stop all my slimes from collecting, patiently waiting a minute to ensure I didn''t have any lagging behind on their orders. From there I sent the slime down the ten meter tube, counting out each meter as it harvested, eventually coming to the conclusion that it harvested a half a unit of biomatter every time it moved its full body length. With that I divided the distance of a regular farm tube, sixty meters not counting the return tube, or the bend, and I came up with one hundred and fifteen biomatter per hour, give or take one or two biomatter. It really was a staggering amount, not surprising to me that the slime could harvest that quickly but that I hadn¡¯t experienced that kind of income so far. I had to put it up to not getting my original idea up and running before I spaced everything. Then all i had to do was multiply that by the number of slimes I would have when i was producing at max capacity.


    ¡®Twenty two thousand.¡¯ I had to be wrong. I went through my math again, sure I''d bungled something as simple as multiplication, but the number came back again. Even without accounting for the point four per slime per hour extra, I was going to make more biomatter than I could ever know what to do with. I could hardly wrap my head around the number. It was so insane to me, I¡¯d not found any limiters on my monster spawning, even for this early in my existence so how were dungeons supposed to be kept in check? Then I realized what was wrong and why I could break things so readily. I was sentient. And the small matter of me being on the moon, allowing me to expand unimpeded. But as a sentient dungeon, I could focus on something as trivial as income efficiency rather than just grinding out floors to expand my levels and monster brochure. What kind of living creature would focus on an income instead of pure survival?


    Well, with that bit of odd introspection out of the way I buckled down and focused on getting my farms up and running. It would be days yet, possibly weeks before they naturally filled and settled into maximum efficiency, and they¡¯d likely be slightly less efficient as my numbers were from a more efficient style of farm, but the sooner I got them running, even inefficiently, the sooner I could focus on grinding on my levels. While it might seem like an odd thing to do, why go lower with no threat of attack, I was hoping that I might be able to spawn in something approaching, or even within, sentience. Slimes were cool and spiders made neat webs, but I couldn¡¯t fathom spending eons alone. So, I''d put my faith in the system and pray for a miracle. For now, I set myself up with a couple tasks. The first, and most simple, was making more oxygen farms. I know it might sound strange with the sheer number I''d already made, but these weren¡¯t meant for making me biomatter. I was still worried about voiding all my progress a second time, so I would make damned sure I had enough farms to reset me to, at least, baseline instead of waiting days for everything to repressurize. Similar to that note I had set myself the glorious task of designing a door with latches.


    While my method of using a boulder to hold the door shut worked, it was not a terribly creative idea and it would mean I''d have to haul the boulder off  should I ever care to open the door, or any others I might make. With that in mind I moved to the ¡®airlock; and began my designing. I was going for something I had seen on a ship once, you¡¯d spin the handle and tabs would slide down into notches that would hold the door in place. I also wanted the mechanism to put pressure on the door for a good seal so I decided to make something of a hooked latch. It only took one look at the mess of metal scraps before me to realize that would be wildly complex for someone that had been impressed by making a stalagmite. I scraped the bits and sat down, thinking things over. It didn¡¯t need to be complex so I threw out the idea of a single mechanism opening the door. I could have several handles that could do that function just fine on their own but my problem was I''d need the handles to be two sided, so the dungeon system wouldn¡¯t think I was sealing myself off. I didn¡¯t know how a boulder on a big metal frame wasn¡¯t sealing myself off but I tried not to think about it, just in case the system was watching and undid all my work.


    It was slow and annoying work, creating sheets of metal to draw out blueprints, then scrapping them as one design or another didn¡¯t work. I kept coming back to a ship style door, with six latches to hold it in place. While I could simplify it I would just be leaving more points for my hand made gaskets to fail. So I stuck with the design, struggling to make the joints, then the latches, until I was half sure things were working correctly. The doors handle, a circular wheel nearly as large as the rectangular I''d made, had teeth on it, like a ratchet, that would engage with what I was calling the bar thing. The bar would move up and down, depending on which direction the wheel was turned, and was attached to three pivot points I''d formed into the door. The pivot points would turn when the bar moved up or down, putting pressure onto two more bars each, either pushing them out or pulling them in. Then, for my final trick, these bars were attached to a final pivot point each, holding the latch and dropping or raising it depending on which way the wheel spun. The latches were five centimeters out, from the pivot point, and , when I made a frame to test them, they could swing down and take the force of the hatch clamping shut. I was sincerely wishing i had steel instead of this aluminum like substance, thinking that this sort of hatch just wouldn¡¯t last long. But i had to work with the tools available.


    Then came the trickiest part, making the door two way, allowing it to open from either side. It had worried me greatly until I hit upon an idea, just make the door handle free moving. I could have a divot in the center that would keep the rod from just falling straight through and, hopefully, would hold air in well enough since it would have very little free room to get by. I quickly put my door together and tried it out, the door shutting firmly in place, then again with a copper gasket. I knew it wouldn¡¯t be the most effective thing but i¡¯d have time to test things and, with this, I could separate my floors and still allow my forces to move between them without worrying about a catastrophic loss of atmosphere.


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    The final test came with removing my first outer door. It had served me well for a stopgap measure but it was just scrap in the way now. I recycled it, then started to change my entrance point, adjusting it so the entrance dropped directly into the room, then coating the room in general metal to further ensure no air leaks. After some consideration I decided to make a ladder from the entrance to the floor before putting in my new hatch. The final touch was readjusting the oxygen farms I had installed in the entrance room, adding new pinholes to allow them to pressurize the room, after making sure the hatch was sealed tight. The real test was whether the hatch would blow open at pressure, as I''d installed it on the outside where the pressure would be on the latches rather than the frame. While it might seem like an oversight, I simply wanted to test the durability of my hatch, hand made out of the crudest materials available. I wanted to be sure it could take it before I relied on it going forward.


    With that out of the way I had one more thing to design, the thing that makes an airlock possible. I needed a way to vent the gas from the room, otherwise opening the door would be practically impossible, at least it would be if I had set it up to open inward. With that in mind I set out to design a ball valve, knowing it would likely be another leaky object in a long line of leaky objects. But, it was simple and I actually knew how they functioned well enough that I thought I could get one to work myself. The project was blessedly simple, making a tight fitting valve that could open or close when a wheel is spun. All I needed to do after that was add a second wheel to the opposite side and I had something I could use to depressurize the room.


    As working with my metal and construction abilities was getting easier the more I used it, making pipes was the work of a couple minutes, running pipes along the roof of the room to better distribute the pull of vacuum on the room, or I hoped that¡¯s what would happen. The final task would be putting the valve somewhere in reach of the outer door and punching a pipe up to the surface. I was a bit hesitant to do so as, while i had been working, the farms had filled to room with air and it had become somewhat pressurized, though i wasn¡¯t sure how pressurized it was. I bit the bullet though, digging a hole through the wall and starting up another roaring noise as the air was quickly pulled from the room. I installed the pipe, then adjusted the door, sure my hinges, and the door itself, would do their job. I assembled it to open inwards, just to make sure it wouldn¡¯t leak too much, and held it up as I turned the wheel and let the latches slide into place. As a bonus I added thick hinges, mostly so I wouldn''t have to hold the door in place and spin the wheel at the same time. On shutting the valve a new window opened up, the first in a while, and surprised me.


    Simple airlock discovered.


    Granted ability to save and construct simple airlocks.


    Advanced construction detected, granting skill upgrade.


    Advanced construction.


    Granted ability to save and construct advanced structures.


    Granted simple components.


    Simple components.


    A collection of simple components used in building or crafting.


    It was always a pleasant shock to get new toys, and this one seemed a better upgrade than any I had so far. While simple construction allowed me to save my buildings, or other constructed things, as templates, this new simple components thing seemed interesting. A quick look at its page showed a collection of different items i could use, hinges, slides, chains, and many other small items I''d otherwise have to build or design by hand. I did notice latches were in the mix, and looked a damned sight better than my kludged together solution. I¡¯d have to make a new door in the future, for now I would just use what I had on hand. So I moved the boulder covering my first stopgap door and installed one of my newly built ones, along with another valve. While I didn''t expect any visitors, I had a couple ideas for expanding to the surface and I wanted to have the option to quickly pressurize the airlock instead of waiting hours for its farms to get the job done.


    With my work done I moved along the first floor, planting ten oxygen farms per room, while it wouldn¡¯t fill quickly, the work of days rather than hours, every little bit helped. With that I came to the end of the first floor and installed another door, feeling that I might be a bit paranoid, I didn¡¯t install any valves just in case someone, me, left the valves open and accidentally vented the first floor again. From there I moved along and set up doors at the entrance and exit of my second and third floor ramps before settling down and deciding to check out my new spawns, having forgotten about them.


    Ramp bug Spawner.


    Cost: 500 Biomatter.


    Spawns available:


    Ramp bug juvenile.


    Ramp bug:


    A heavily armored creature that can grow up to 150 meters long, 30 high, and 30 wide. Named for its thickly armored head section.


    While not the most clever name, just reading the description made me understand why I''d be spawning juveniles instead of the fully grown specimens, I wasn''t even sure I could jam a full grown into the second floor. IT did provide some neat sounding defensive abilities, just jam its head into the tunnel and intruders, if I ever got any, wouldn¡¯t be getting by easily. They might also function somewhat well as a living valve, probably dying to lock in air but saving the stuff behind it. Sadly, other than possibly functioning as a living door, the description said nothing about being a utility creature. It was neat to finally have a fully combat focused creature but somewhat pointless. I¡¯d have to make one anyways, just for fun.


    So I now had copper, creeping crone vine, and a tank. A humble beginning to be sure but I was getting there. Another few floors and I might start getting something neat, though I was wondering about making a new sort of biome. I thought I might be able to get water from my plants, possibly, but I was thinking I''d have to do it the hard way through heat and evaporation. So I had a new plan, now that I was safe enough from the void, to make a new biome. If anything I hoped I could at least spawn a fish or two eventually, and possibly hops. I didn¡¯t yet know if anything could affect my orb but I''d try pouring beer on it before giving up alcohol forever.

 Ch10. Knock, knock.

    Things have been going swimmingly, or sadly not. I had been trying more than a few ways to generate heat, using friction mostly, and all had either proven to be too inefficient or produced too little in the way of temperature change. I had, however, gotten a temperature gauging skill, having tried testing the temperature of my experiments with the back of my hand. In the end I had no real way to force a temperature change in any meaningful way so I was unable to draw water out of my plants. My second option, however, was actually producing some results, though I now had a third floor experimental chamber, once again built behind the ramp to keep it hidden.


    For my experiment I was doing it the most old-fashioned way possible, putting a bunch of plants in a big pile and waiting for them to decompose, which would produce heat and release, hopefully, moisture. There did seem to be a distinct lack of bacteria that would enable my plant matter to break down, as nothing had happened in the days I''d been running the test. The only reason I say I''m getting results is because of a new method I was trying, juicing. I had made the room funnel shaped to begin with, thinking I might have a way to collect mulch as the plant matter degraded, but I had just made a second chamber under the funnel and poked holes in the roof. Then, with the application of a big rock, I squeezed the plants and produced a kind of slurry. It was green and didn¡¯t seem like regular water, so I was pretty sure I just squeezed a bunch of sap out of the plants, but it seemed like a step in the right direction.


    So, having concluded that the stuff I made wasn¡¯t quite water, I decided to bring one of my slimes down to the water chamber and dump him in the pond, a couple inches deep at this point. It only confirmed my suspicion when a new resource popped up, sap. So I had it stop and had a long think about what to do next. I could try to make more than dump it somewhere, let it naturally dry out and maybe make a pseudo ecosystem, but i only had vague ideas about how rain was made, and i thought i¡¯d need dry air to help the process along and i only had a few vague idea on how to make a ventilation system. I had also considered making electricity but I had no real idea on how that worked, something about spinning magnets around, magnets which I didn''t have. So that idea was shelved too. My last idea, having the slime collect biomatter from the sap, hopefully leaving the water, didn¡¯t work. I didn¡¯t think it was impossible but my slimes just didn¡¯t have that kind of control over their collection abilities.


    With that new experiment failed I decided to go back up and check out the others that had failed, possibly getting some new ideas. My personal favorite, and surely worst, was the slime powered piston engine. It took a slime that would move from one side to the other, pushing the pistons which would turn a crank. It was an outlandish idea to make a lathe like item that I would just jam against something to generate friction. The concept was solid but I just didn¡¯t have the materials I''d need to make it a reality, the step down gears simply being too brittle to stand up to any real torque. It was a disappointing, if not entertaining, temporary failure.


    My problem would come down to heat and I''d just have to live with that until I could solve it. In the meantime, when I was letting my experiments run their course, I helped design the third floor, a system of large rooms, about ten meters long by ten high and ten wide, each connected together by small airlocks. With ten such rooms i was content to call this floor done and had already descended to floor four, planning to move my orb sometime soon so I could reap the benefits and see what new spawns awaited me. I only wanted to spawn in my new ramp bug spawner first, mostly for curiosity but the utility of a mobile plug wasn¡¯t lost on me.


    I had chosen the center most room, each decorated by moss and mushrooms, along with the mostly hidden oxygen farms, and was about to place it down when a window opened up in my peripheral vision, an odd thing as most new alerts were always right in my teeth.


    Intruders:


    Unknown beings: 1


    Unknown being, class unknown, name unknown, race unknown.


    An unknown being is a living organism concealed in some way as to make discerning their abilities, race, or even sentience impossible.


    ¡®Excuse me?¡¯ I had to be going mad, that was it. I¡¯d been letting the stress of being alone, likely for thousands of years, take a back burner and now it had overboiled without me watching it. But, no matter what I did, I couldn''t will away the screen. I had to go confirm what was going on.


    My being raced through the dungeon, passing through doors and burning past confused slimes and hoppers until I was standing in front of the outer airlock door. My whole being felt on edge and I could almost feel a thundering heartbeat in my chest. What madness had brought this insanity on. I shook myself out of my shock, and steeled myself. IT¡¯s probably some kind of bug, or some damned asteroid had impacted nearby and sent a chunk with bacteria into my entrance.


    The window disappeared and my heart lurched.


    ¡®Fuck it!¡¯ I forced myself  through the door and stumbled out into the same view as before. The stars were glittering, the planet shone above and there was nothing outside of my hatch.  Nothing. I felt a sense of disappointment wash over me as I realized what this meant. I must have been desperate for something, anything, to interact with in some way, little green men or otherwise. I was as alone as I had been from the start of this mad life in another dimension. I gazed up at the planet and let loose a silent scream, pure frustration working itself out before I gave up and cursed the planet and turned to get back to work, then stopped in my tracks. There, on the ground by my hatch, was a trail of boot prints.


    Fine moon dust filled the slight crater that formed my emergence point, the side of an enormous crater. I already knew I wouldn''t be able to climb up and look for the boot print maker but I still had to bounce off my boundary to bring that to the forefront of my mind. Someone had stopped by, took a gander at my hatch and left. No, they did more than that and all it took was a quick check inside and I confirmed they had tried to open the door. A door which was sealed in place by pressure. Had they been defeated by a simple hatch and given up? No, what kind of person, alien or otherwise, would land somewhere to check something out and give up at the door? They¡¯d probably gone to grab a cutter of some kind, which sent a wave of dread through me.


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    I worked quickly, unwilling to just turn it for my mystery intruder. I formed a pictograph on the hatch itself, showing a hand turning the valve to the side of the hatch first, then a picture of the wheel being turned on the bottom of the hatch. It was simple, which probably meant it was good, they¡¯d likely recognize an airlock if they were a space faring people, and i supposed the handle wasn¡¯t terribly easy to see as the metal was similarly colored to the stone and was a short distance from the hatch itself. I then made sure to make the opposite pictograph on the other side of the hatch, just to be sure they¡¯d at least seal the door before trying to open the second. I was grateful then that i had made a second valve for the airlock, to let the first floor air into the airlock rather than spending hours waiting for the air to fill. I quickly moved back outside, eager to see the being come back, and stopped in my tracks.


    It stood, probably shoulder height to me, and was staring at the door with a gun shaped object in its hand. It was clad in a space suit, less bulky than the eta suits of astronauts. a helmet, slightly elongated to the back, had a silver visor that was T shaped, though it stopped about where a nose might be for a human. The suit was apparently armored, or likely just had hard sections, on the chest, joints, shoulders, shins and boots, the hard sections painted a bright red and the soft sections a white.


    It was immobile, and I could easily guess why, staring at the hatch and its brand new pictograph. It stayed that way for a long time, just staring, before its helmet turned slightly, showing me why it hadn¡¯ seen the valve lever. I doubted the peripheral vision was any good in that helmet. It moved, slowly, constantly glancing back towards the hatch, until it knelt and turned the valve open, an explosion of air sending up a cloud of dust as I hadn''t lifted the pipe exit above the dirt level, dust getting into it from my work.


    The dust settled and the being was on its knee, its gun-like object in both hands practically confirming the thing as a weapon. It took a few minutes again before apparently composing itself and stepping up to the hatch, slowly examining the interior beyond before accepting whatever risk lay beyond the hatch. It descended, making me glad to have put a pair of ladders in, even as a decoration. It wasn¡¯t until it was on the ground that it seemed to realize there was another hatch, looking up and seeing the lever beside the first hatch it had to ascend and shut both the hatch and the valve.


    After its second descent it seemed to be waiting for something, and i was beginning to think it was going to wait for the air to naturally fill from the farms, a process that would take two and a half hours, something I had decided to time after setting up the valves and doors properly. The being didn¡¯t seem to want to wait that long, having spotted the second valve it moved to the other ladder, climbed and, much more slowly this time, opened the valve to pressurize the room.


    ¡°-Utterly ancient but robust design. I don¡¯t know what sort of creatures may have once inhabited the planet and moon but their legacy lasts through the structures they left behind. There may be some promising discoveries should someone decide to scrap and catalog this moon base.¡±


    The sound of another voice after so long was like water in a desert, I couldn''t believe how much tension drained from my core all at once. The smooth tone seemed to be un obstructed by the suit, or more likely it was some dungeon ability. Whatever the case, her voice was easily the most beautiful thing i¡¯d ever heard.


    It, no she, waited for the hissing to stop before opening the door and peeking up past the hatch.


    ¡°Simple stone room but the air reads as breathable. More than breathable really, i¡¯d expect these kinds of readings on the jade moon, not some hole in the ground. No signs of life but I don''t see any signs of the opposite. I¡¯ll proceed with all due caution.¡±


    Well, that eased some worries, I wasn''t just making a bomb by pumping pure oxygen into the air. It might be some natural dungeon thing, to keep the space viable for life. She pulled herself up and out of the hatch, shutting it behind her but I noticed she didn¡¯t lock it in place. It was a little annoying to see but I had to guess she was trying to stay safe. Who knows what critters might chase her and opening a door while running isn¡¯t easy or quick.


    Her first obstacle, however, was me. I had to move quickly before she got too far into the room as I''d completely forgotten about the traps I''d built when I was freaking out about the emergence. I thought quickly, no time for pictographs, simply reaching out and shoving the fragile stone, crumbling the trap and leaving a deep hole in the ground. That got her attention and she approached it slowly.


    ¡°No, not a sign of deterioration.¡± She was certainly talking about the hole in the ground. ¡°This is clearly a trap set to catch an intruder. Possibly a sign of this civilization''s demise? A trap set up for a force that never attacked this base? I can''t be sure and I''m not a xenoarchaeologist. I¡¯ll keep my eyes peeled though, the silver academy would probably pay better if I can locate some texts, or computing devices so they don¡¯t have to search for them.¡±


    She moved past the trap and, much more carefully, tested the floor ahead of her as she continued, finding that each of my rooms were similarly trapped. It was odd that she thought I was some lost civilization, an Atlantis of the cosmos I guess, but it made a sort of sense. Who¡¯d suspect some odd dungeon just chilling somewhere so random. She continued on through the rooms, not even remarking on any of my glow shrooms or moss, until she stopped at the hatch at the top of the first floor ramp.


    ¡°Displays of paranoia about containment breach, in line with a fairly young species, but the lack of metal so far in this structure is surprising. They put a lot of trust in stone this far up in the crust, one small impact and all this stone could crack and crumble leaving them buried.¡±


    She opened the hatch and slipped through, still leaving them unlatched, then moved onto the next floor where she stopped in her tracks, mostly caused by my dropping one of the stalactites down so she¡¯d be cautious of the spikes above her. Her helmet moved around the huge room, taking it in, before her gaze clearly locked onto one of the hopper teams collecting general metal and mineral along with the copper i¡¯d mixed in. She seemed to be taking her time before she spoke again, probably taking a form of journal or something.


    ¡°Revision to my first assumption for this place. This is no abandoned base, it¡¯s a natural born dungeon.¡± She then readied her weapon and took a step back. ¡°Will need to revise my plan and report back, a specialist is required for this. I¡¯m not nearly equipped enough to handle this kind of risk.¡±


    And, at those words, my hoppers turned as one, stared for a moment, and launched themselves at my intruder.

 Ch11 Whos there?

    She was quick, i¡¯ll give her that. Her weapon came up and, with a sizzling snap, fired a bolt of plasma that illuminated the cavernous room, brilliant blue light blinding the hoppers as they sailed through the air towards her. The damage on impact was spectacular, the thumb sized bolt plunging through the hoppers carapace and instantly detonated inside it, sending chunks of chitin and ichor in all directions, most smoldering.


    ¡®STOP!¡¯ I could see the hoppers flinch hard as my word and intent hit them, causing some to fall off course, though flinching did little to stop them while they were already airborne.


    She got off two more shots, apparently slam firing her weapon, taking out another two hoppers. It probably saved her life. The first impact was accompanied with the sound of her hardened chest piece crunching under the weight of the impact, surprising me as flecks of suit material scattered about like confetti. I was moving as the second hit, slamming into her hip and shattering the belt section that joined the torso and hip. She fired again at that moment, a wide shot that did nothing more than make a small crater in the stone.


    She was hit once more before I could intercept the insects, manifesting my will and feeling them slam into my ¡®form¡¯. She took the last hit to the head, her body already limp and slumping forward was snapped back as the helmet joined the other hardened sections, shattering under the weight of the attack. Her body slumped back, halfhearted steps carrying it nearly under one of the ceiling traps before it crumpled to the ground and stayed there, unmoving.


    It couldn¡¯t have been more quiet if I was in vacuum again. I stared at her limp form, holding my breath as I prayed she would breathe or something, anything, to confirm she wasn¡¯t dead. I then checked on the intruder window, taking it into my own hands, and almost wept as I saw the status hadn¡¯t changed. I still had an intruder, and I chose to believe corpses couldn¡¯t be intruders. Instincts kicked in and I moved to help her, finding I couldn''t interact with her.


    Warning: Interaction with intruders, denizens, or delvers must be done through a dungeons forces.


    Figures, though I just took that as another confirmation that she was alive. But now what the hell do I do with her? I couldn¡¯t just leave her there, she might be badly injured. Wait, that¡¯s probably the better plan, if i moved her now after that head injury she might die just as easily. Well, I did have another option. My slimes, the ones accompanying the, now confused, hoppers were sitting at the edge of the mineral field. I quickly summoned them, using the skill rather than a command, spawning them again right beside her.


    ¡®Consume the helmet, consume no biomatter. Do not damage the creature within.¡¯ The slimes radiated a feeling of surety as they moved towards her head and I marveled at the confident little jello boys, always surprised at the strong feelings I could feel from them when I gave them commands as a leader might. With the reminder of being a leader i turned back to look at my hoppers, and they must have sensed something from my emotions as they seemed to almost cower, looking more like guilty dogs than fierce dungeon monsters. Several lay dead, the ones that I''d intercepted and had hit the intruder.


    ¡®Good job in nullifying this intruder.¡¯ That seemed to catch their attention, stopping their looks of guilt anyways. ¡®I won''t lie. I¡¯m not happy with the injury to my first intruder but I had not ordered anyone to run from them, or keep them alive, so I wont be angry or punish any of you. But from now onwards there will be no more attacking intruders until I order it. You are all of you ordered to run, hide, do anything to avoid interaction with anything or anyone, foolish enough to find themselves here.¡¯ That seemed to perk them up, as far as I could tell anyways. I wondered if I''d have to issue that order multiple times but, in the meantime, I had the third, and last, slime clean up. While I wasn''t happy with the attack, I might have just got a new resource out of it, in the scattered suit fragments.


    Things took time from there, the order to not damage the suits wearer caused my slimes to move even slower than usual, gently working around the helmet in shallow layers rather than taking it all at once. I also constructed a slab bed, coating it in moss for comfort, so I could have her moved upwards and possibly get a look at any injuries. While I couldn''t interact with her, my spiders just might have enough precision to set up bandages, or possibly some kind of silk neck brace so I could be sure moving her wouldn¡¯t just kill her outright.


    The first sign that the slimes were done was a message window, alerting me that my unknown intruder had been identified, and it took me looking at her to believe my screen.


    Intruders:


    Elves: 1


    Elf intruder, class scout, name unknown, race elf.


    Status: Defeated.


    An elf is a long lived and somewhat delicate being.


    Scout:


    A scout is a base class known for quick movement and information acquisition, generally paired with sub classes that require long distance movement, information gathering, and patience.


    Base class:


    A base class is a class that forms the base for a beings skillset


    My head swam slightly from the influx of information, but, on looking at the pale face, elongated ears, and the window confirming it I was sure it was right. I was expecting something more akin to an Asgard, a little gray dude, not a space elf. I put my wonderment to the side for the moment though as the elf was clearly injured. Her face was streaked with blood on one side, and I could see fragments that must have come from her helmet shattering that pierced her face. I wasn¡¯t a doctor so i couldn¡¯t say anything for her eye, but i could have the shards dealt with.


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    I ordered my spiders forward and had them start laying sticky silk strands over her face, using them to soak up the excess blood and, when removed, to pull at the fragments still embedded in her face. It worked, for the most part. Many fragments still seemed just too deep, or too small, to pull up with sticky silk so I''d have to hope they weren¡¯t poisoning her. For now I had her head slowly wrapped in silk, hopefully stopping the bleeding, along with the rest of her body so the spider pair I''d brought over could ease her onto the bed of moss. I made them move slowly and it obviously strained them but the job got finished and I was left with a cocooned astronaut elf. One who would likely completely panic if she woke up like this.


    I had the spiders strap her to the bed and had a sudden intrusive thought that, even in my own mind, felt completely alien to me. ¡®Breed her.¡¯ I was a little more than stunned, what had come over me? Then I realized, it must have been the dungeon part of me, or maybe I was getting residual feelings from the spiders. Or maybe spending eons clinging to life bent my mind. Whatever the case, I pushed the thought aside, becoming concerned when I couldn''t completely banish the idea from my mind. I had a slime climb up and scoop some of the silk away from her, apparently, good eye and sat back to consider what next.


    As much as I''d like to interact with this elf, I didn''t really have the ability. Shouting earlier hadn¡¯t affected her in any way I could see, despite flinching my hoppers. I could understand her but that didn¡¯t mean I could speak or write her language, possibly understanding her through some dungeon ability or quirk of the system that governed this place dimension. And, my monsters lacked lips and vocal chords. They could hiss with the best and chitter pretty good but that wasn¡¯t terribly good for conversing with someone.


    With nothing now but time, and not desiring to strip her further to check other injuries, I checked my inventory, wondering if I had new material to play with. I was surprised to find ¡®treasure¡¯ as a new material. Apparently it was for intruders to find, and be distracted or weighed down by, so I now had a ¡®broken helmet¡¯. All it took to summon was a little intent, knocking my treasure counter down to zero but depositing a badly damaged helmet in my hands.


    The helmet seemed simple enough, and light if my senses were right, but a look inside showed how wrong i was. The visor was opaque, allowing no light through except for the cracked portion. The elongated portion must have contained a sensor suite, or a computer as it only held enough room, in two slots, for the elf to slip her ears into. Other than its odd shape and screen the helmet didn¡¯t bring anything to mind, just a dead hunk of material that was no longer as air tight as it once might have been. Though, a curious part of me led me to inspecting the point where the helmet would seal against the neck portion of the suit, still infatuated by sealing techniques. It was in my inspection that the elf woke up, and began to struggle.


    My spiders were suspiciously good at tying defenseless girls down as her panicked wriggling did little more than shift her head and waist side to side. It seemed the struggling girl was less injured than I feared, but her struggling couldn¡¯t be doing anything good so a simple command brought my spider around. Just hearing it moving, feet thumping into the ground, convinced her to stop her struggling, though her exposed eye moved wildly as it tried to locate the spider, growing as wide as a dinner plate when it stepped into view.


    The spider stared at her for a long time, an unnerving thing but something i had ordered so that the girl would at least think before she acted, which gave me time to think up a new way to communicate. While I couldn''t speak with her, I could communicate simple things, like with my door. I quickly made a slab of stone in front of the spider, making it take a confused step back, which made the elf flinch. I moved quickly and drew a simple pictogram, illustrating the hopper slamming into her head, then a second image that showed a bone broken in her neck. While it wasn¡¯t anything close to anatomically correct, looking more like a dog toy, I hoped it would convey the feeling of ¡®you¡¯re injured stop fucking moving.¡¯


    A quick command brought the spider forward again, using web to stick to the tablet and hoist it up in front of the girl. If anything, that made the situation worse. She froze and the expression on her face, that I could see, was abject fear. Not my initial hope but having her frozen in place was the overall goal anyways. I made a quick drawing on the back of the tablet and had the spider spin it around, an image of a person webbed down and a copy where that person hadn¡¯t moved but the webs were removed. I then gave her a few moments to consider it before commanding the spider to start removing the webs. While it felt a touch cruel I also had my second spider move over in front of the door leading out, a simple warning that she wouldn¡¯t have a chance to get away even if she fled.


    When the last strand came off her she started to move, though deliberately slowly, eye locked onto the spider. The spider hissed loudly, at my order, one of its pick-like arms slamming into the stone bed and piercing it deeply, possibly an over reaction on the spiders part but it worked and she stopped.


    ¡°M-medicine.¡± She spoke in a tremulous tone, having to clear her throat and, apparently, steel herself to speak more clearly. ¡°I have medicine on my belt, something that can heal me.¡± It looked like she was trying to mime wrapping a bandage around her arm, or something to that effect, so i had the spider back off, then made it back all the way to the door with the other, trying to bring the elfs tension down, and it seemed to work somewhat.


    The elf had to pry the silk from her suit, luckily not made overly strong or sticky, and pulled a section of metal from her belt. It must have been a small case or something as the elf hauled herself up into a sitting position and started to pull more and more spider silk off her suit. When she got to her face I could see a grimace in her eye, and a glance at the spiders as she must have realized they¡¯d bandaged her up on purpose. Fresh blood lazily flowed as she eased the silk off her face and she groaned as her other eye flickered. I must have been right in assuming it was injured.


    Cleaned up enough she opened the metal case and pulled a few instruments from it, the first looking like a tube of lipstick that she waved over her face, grimacing at whatever was on the screen. I moved around her, peering over her shoulder. The case was clearly part of the medical equipment she had, having a display on it, but it did me no good as I couldn''t read anything on it, all looking more akin to ancient bible texts than a modern day text, flowing and artistic. Whatever the moon runes said it apparently wasn¡¯t good as her expression grew more and more grim.


    With her examination apparently done she withdrew another item from her case and pressed it against her face then spoke in a low tone, words i couldn¡¯t understand. I guessed she was cursing as, when she moved the tube, she was bleeding from some new wound at each point, making me guess she was pulling helmet chunks out of her face. She had another two case items, one apparently for sealing up the cuts and another that only showed its use when she removed her suit, apparently ignoring her eye for now.


    I wont say i¡¯m a perfect man, far from it, so i did stay and watch as she bared herself to the cavern and its occupants. She had a lithe body, pale and very obviously bruised. While I did enjoy the show I wasn''t enjoying the dark purple bruises that accompanied the hit to her chest and hip. The final device made its job painfully clear as, with a sickening pop, she placed it over broken ribs and apparently pulled them into place, accompanied by a pained shout from the elf scout. Luckily she was sitting down, and had apparently only broken two ribs, her body swaying as the pain must have nearly put her out again.


    With her body repaired, somewhat at least, she focused on the spider, a flash of revulsion crossing her face, and spoke after clearly gathering her resolve.


    ¡°What would this noble, ancient, dungeon have of me?¡±

 Ch11.5 Nightmares and greed.

    This was supposed to be a simple deep ranging trip, a resource hunt for the miners to hit as the fleet ranged ever deeper into the galaxy. Something simple to get my wings and move along my citizenship progress. What had happened that led me into a dungeon of all things?


    I pushed all those things to the back of my mind, hauling my E.V.M.P.T.-12 up and thumbing the selector switch. I could tell the moment the creatures leapt, perhaps fifteen in all, that I''d never down them in time, too many of them for a simple multi purpose tool, but mother had paid good money for a good tutor and the muscle memory beat into my body took over, a reticle forming  in my visor showing where i was aiming.


    My weapon spoke, spouting blue flame as a plasma slug ripped through the air and detonated on the bug. My weapon moved, as smooth as a machine, and came to target a second bug, time passing so slowly as my heart hammered in my chest, the bug splattering as messily as the first, peppering me in smoldering chunks and green ichor. The third shot was much closer, sending a cone of viscera out and away from me before the impacts came.


    The bugs hit me, and hit hard, throwing me back with the weight of their impact and crushing the hardened crash plate that protected my chest. I could feel the rush of wind, and shocking pain, as the bug crushed my chest piece, my arms feeling like lead as i tried desperately to bring another down. The second hit was just as bad as the first, bowing my body as it shattered parts of my belt, empty compartments doing little to protect me from the bug that was splattering itself against me, the shock making me squeeze the trigger and send a last shot into the room missing anything useful. The last hit blinded me, the impact slamming my head back and showering my face in fragments from the clear-steel that made up my visor.


    The follow up hits didn¡¯t come though, the sounds of bugs skittering off in every direction almost made me feel like someone had come to save me, but I knew I was terribly alone here. I didn¡¯t have time to let my mind clear, no time to recover, and a spectacular dizziness as vertigo hit me and I felt myself collapsing to the ground. My hand reached for my missing weapon, confused mind trying to piece things together, but it was all fading.


    ¡®At Least i won''t feel them eating me.¡¯ Was the last and first thought I had as I swam back into consciousness. Consciousness was a strange thing, my mind swimming worse than any intoxication I''d ever felt, my mind screaming in pain from the impacts that must have rocked my brain. I was beginning to wonder if this is what a dwarven boxer felt like after a championship when everything connected again. I was in a dungeon, I was in danger. My eye snapped fully open, dull light filling my vision and I tried to sit up only to find I was being restrained.


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    ¡®No no no, this couldn¡¯t be happening.¡¯ I struggled, my body fighting harder than ever before, fighting my bonds. I knew what could happen in dungeons, i knew how many people had been made into breeders, or food, for dungeons to create more monsters. I fought as hard as my body could, feeling the pain of straining broken bones and bruised flesh. Until I heard the monster.


    This was it, I''d stumbled on the first natural dungeon in centuries and it would use me to spawn more of its creatures. I couldn¡¯t feel  the bonds loosening, I couldn''t feel my body wriggling free, I couldn''t escape, I could only look for the creature and hope it would give me some opportunity to get away or, more likely, encourage it to kill me. The creature was everything from my nightmares, a spiked body, fangs long enough to go through me, and every one of its horrific eyes looked as if they were glued to me. I couldn¡¯t move, until it did, flinching hard and weakly struggling again.


    Insect dungeon, just my luck. Most known ones had a particularly gruesome way of spawning new monsters. At Least i¡¯d only suffer one spawning. My panicked thoughts were interrupted by the spider stepping up again and hoisting a sign up to me, simple pictures that looked just like the ones left on the doors. Terror filled me then. A normal young dungeon would use me until I died, no matter how long or short the time, it had no mind for saving material for further use. Nor did a young dungeon have sentience.


    I understood the sign as it turned and the spider began removing sections of the silk from my body as thoughts slowly worked through my mind. Ancient dungeons were terrifying, even to people properly equipped for them. They had intelligence, used tactics, and could overcome most dangers presented to them. They were also always universally cruel. An ancient dungeon would develop an ego as its intelligence climbed, and would seek to enjoy things more and more, mainly the death or torture of those that delved into them. But they weren¡¯t impossible to deal with, maybe if i just play this right.


    The spider seemed to understand me when I spoke of medicine, just confirming even more that I was dealing with an intelligent dungeon. However the dungeon must have known it injured me and let me get on with treating it. I considered giving myself an overdose with pain meds but it might figure out my plan and stop me, so I just treated myself, confirming that my left eye was ruined as I treated myself.


    While treating myself I came to a conclusion. Ancient dungeons were smart but this one was natural born, and likely had been left alone for eons. Its ego might be easy enough to manipulate and it wouldn¡¯t want to kill off the first bit of entertainment that had fallen into its lap. If i did things right I might be able to win its trust and flee this place with my life intact. I wasn¡¯t an upper city noble, I was a prospector, a little rough work on my back wouldn¡¯t ruin me. I¡¯d just stroke its ego and fly right out of here. And that thought sent a shudder through my body as I pulled my suit off. The first natural dungeon since Eden, and I knew where it was. If I made it out of here alive I''d be rich enough to have a moon station built, manned, and operated for a century and a half.


    At that thought, and after making sure I wouldn''t be dropping dead anytime soon, I spoke and hoped the dungeon would want to keep me. ¡°What would this noble, Ancient, dungeon have of me?¡±

 Ch 12 Roommates and Boundaries.

    ¡®So now what?¡¯ I watched the small elf, shivering in place and plainly in pain.


    Well, she¡¯d probably be doing more to herself if she was in danger, or she¡¯d hit the wall of her medical kit and couldn¡¯t do more. As it was, I really couldn¡¯t help her any more and I couldn''t easily communicate with her. However, she¡¯d cleared up some of my earlier suspicions on dungeons with her words.


    Ancient dungeon.


    If I had to guess, she realized I was sentient and decided I was ancient, though I wasn''t sure what all that would entail. For now I''d just need to figure out how to go about this. I couldn¡¯t send her back to her ship, her suit a wreck and, even if I could seal it, she¡¯d almost certainly scoot off the second she could. And while I didn''t like the idea of a captive friend, it beat chatting up the spiders, and she could provide me with some more information than what I currently had.


    For now, she was still injured, and badly, so I moved away from her and opened up a hole to access my hidden farm, likely the most comfortable place to be, given the excess moss coating the ground. I sent a command to one of my spiders, ordering it to shepherd the elf into the room as I set about constructing some simple furniture, a large stone chair and a platform to act as a bed, all coated in moss to provide something more comfortable than stone. I figured I could use silk later, if I figured out how to weave things or ordered my spiders to do it.


    As the girl moved in, clutching her arms and casting constant looks at the spiders, she seemed to gape at my moss farm, the long tunnel with the occasional slime poking in and out of the many holes that lined the walls. I finished the furniture additions by adding in a desk then adding a short stack of general metal pages to the top, along with a sharpened stylus that might be able to mark the pages for a time. I considered trying paper but the effort seemed a bit pointless when I realized I couldn''t make any sort of writing tool.


    After making a stool for the desk I started to make marks on the first page, a rough comic showing stick figures sitting at desks as a teacher showed an alphabet, then the same picture converting the alphabet into a rough rendition of the elvish letters I''d seen on her medical readout. I had no real hopes of learning her language, it looked like the half mad scribbles of a toddler on a sugar binge, if a lot more elegant, but I was hoping the magic windows would fire up a patch for me.


    For now, I moved to the bed and made a new sign, a simple metal panel with a cartoonish bone that was wrapped in bandages. She would do me no good if whatever was holding her bones together came undone. So, I waited for a bit, then had the spider hiss at her to get her moving.


    Luckily she went to the bed first so I didn''t have to encourage her to it. I knew my moss had healing properties, though with my luck she¡¯d either have to eat it or do some alchemy stuff to get it to do anything. Hopefully some of the healing mojo seeped into her, or something like that, while she rested. Otherwise I''d have to wait a few days before I could let her do light duty at the desk.


    With all those dismally slow ideas in min i decided to be a little proactive in my hunt for knowledge, she didn¡¯t flap her arms to fly here, probably, so i decided to spawn in a slime to act as her guard, plopping the little wiggler down beside the new door. I made a new sign, annoyed that I''d coated everything in glowing plants, and made a picture of a pointy eared stick figure shouting at a circle, then below an oversized head in the action of turning.


    ¡®Hopefully she understands that.¡¯ I wasn¡¯t sure I would but I couldn''t do much more. I sent my spider guards, and everything else, back to work after giving my new slime his orders, ¡®shout¡¯ for me if she does anything other than stay on the bed and roll towards her, absorbing the moss, so she¡¯d get the idea that she¡¯s to stay put.


    I planned to make my move to the spaceship but I remembered I had a shiny new, ish, suit just sitting out in my cavern. Along with the better part of a tweens party worth of sparkling glitter that was the damaged armor. I looked over the battlefield and beheld the chunky green parts that were my hoppers mixed in with the armor fragments, at least the slimes could beat any earth vacuum in a contest for cleanliness. I quickly spawned ten more slimes, figuring I''d use them soon on my little ship project, then set them to cleaning the area.


    After respawning my fallen hoppers, and setting them to their tasks, I checked my inventory. Apparently the hopper chunks just counted as biomass, though I knew I had several different meat options, so I figured it was either dungeon shenanigans, or the fact that plasma puree didn¡¯t really count as meat any more. Whatever the case, I had my answer on the armor. It was just general mineral.


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    It took identifying some of the spare scraps my boys hadn¡¯t sucked up but it just confirmed my suspicions, as I hadn''t gotten any cool alloy in my inventory. I was surprised that the suits'' hardpoints were made of some of the weakest stuff I had access to but, after checking her suit, it made sense. The suit had a lattice of framework inside the hardpoints, barely a millimeter of actual plate with the frame making up the bulk of the area. I¡¯d seen enough car test footage to recognize a crush zone when I saw one so I guessed the hard points were cheap sacrificial zones to make sure big chunks of rock didn¡¯t kill her outright. It was either a really clever way of keeping light on weight, while not being too squishy, or she just had some cheaper gear. It was probably why she wasn¡¯t dead, the hit to her chest might well have completely caved her chest in.


    A look at the soft part of the suit did reveal something interesting.


    Unknown polymer weave.


    Interesting but annoying and pointless, i know what the fuck a weave is you shithead. Well, not entirely pointless, it was polymer and that probably meant it was a plastic of some sort? Even touching it I could feel it was stiff but yielding, probably a pain to deal with but tough enough to take a hit without being mangled, the crushed sections had just scuffed it. My only real guess was that this was more of a Kevlar layer, meant to keep you from poking holes in your suit if you brushed up against something. It could also be something akin to a muscle layer, adding strength to the wearer. But that thought was probably brought on by far too much Halo enjoyment in my youth.


    While my probing didn¡¯t find much out, the suit seemed to be good to go so i wouldn¡¯t disassemble it for bits, partly because i believed it would just store the whole thing like the helmet, and partly because it was a functional space suit and the only bit of modesty my elf currently had at hand. And as much as my sixteen year old self jumped with joy at the thought of a naked elf wandering my tunnels, I''d not be so cruel as to force that on her.


    So, I hauled it into my inventory and dumped it onto her desk, which made me cringe as the clattering noise made her jump from her prone position on the bed, no doubt a painful action. So I apologized, for what good that would do, and moved up to the entrance.


    Back out among the stars and dust I was faced with a curious conundrum, how to gain access to her ship. Firstly, I didn''t have a clue where the darn thing was, seeing as my vision was limited by my inability to climb to the edge of my entrance crater. Secondly, how was I meant to cross several hundred feet of inaccessible lunar surface if I even knew where the ship was. It was a question I wasn''t quite ready to answer, but I had a few ideas.


    First was spawning a slime and having it carve a few channels that might extend my reach. I wasn¡¯t sure if my slimes could endure a vacuum so it was time for some durability tests. I spawned a boy at my feet, dubbing him John, and watched as he instantly began roiling as if his interior was boiling. I tried to pull him back into my spawn inventory but I couldn''t, a window informing me I couldn''t affect forces currently being damaged or altered. And thus, Jonathan the brave perished in the noble pursuit of science.


    Mourning my loss I considered trying my other spawns but dismissed the idea. As much fun as it might be to watch helpless spawns explode, freeze, or otherwise perish, I did feel some loss for my forces. The little bastards trusted me like a kind of general, and I didn''t want to betray that trust, even for the little guys. As stupid as that might be in the future, they were mine, and if they fell it wouldn¡¯t be because I just tossed them out into space to see which might float the furthest or explode the most spectacularly.


    With that in mind, and also testing idea number two, I made a small gravestone for John, partly to play for time and come up with more ideas. I inscribed his name onto the, roughly, two foot tall slab and hauled it over to the edge of my ¡®leash¡¯ lifting it up and plunging it into the soft dusty terrain.


    Danger:


    Extending a dungeon''s authority into the open will likely draw attention to you, and some nearby sentients may consider your actions as hostile.


    I grinned at the message, pretty much telling me now what I needed to do. I dismissed the window and pressed the stone a bit more firmly into the ground before taking some more tentative steps out of the entrance. What I saw was breathtaking. I was standing about halfway up an enormous crater on the moon, my entrance jutting out into a soft slope that moved down towards an almost black crater, the color fading as the walls of the crater climbed higher.


    I stared out at the crater walls and floor for a small while, just taking in the view, noticing boulders that dotted the crater and how uneven it all was, several spots seemed to be flat while others looked sheer. However, in my gazing, I didn''t see anything resembling a ship, until I looked up. There, some thirty meters from my entrance, was a ship right out of a sixties comic. A conical design with three winglets at the back, perhaps the size of a city bus, and at the front was clearly a bridge area as darkened glass gleamed in the sunlight.


    It made sense that it was so close, my elf hadn¡¯t vanished for too long when I was building up my courage, but seeing it so close felt fantastic. For now, instead of making anything too permanent, I started to make a cobble path, stamping smooth round stones into the dust to keep extending my reach. I finally had an easy goal in front of me, and a tangible one at that. IT felt great.

 CH. 13 Space, some how too little and too much.

    I sighed as I finally stood before the elven ship, finding my estimate had been about right. It was roughly forty feet long and had a roughly pear shaped design, being wider at the front and narrower towards the end. Paired with a dull orange paint job and countless scuffs, dents, and scratches. It had more in common with a piece of old construction equipment than anything I had thought it¡¯d be like, having assumed it would be as flowy and elegant as the elven script I had caught sight of earlier. Comparing the ship to the armor I had seen earlier I was beginning to get the picture of who the elf was, some sort of scout for her people sent to map out possible resource and colonization zones. And likely a poor one at that.


    I did a few laps around the ship, building up my territory around it by making a rough cobble path, noting little else other than a differently painted section at the front that may have been an addition, possibly some sensor gear if my assumptions about the girl were right. Finally, sure my path was good and having my fill of enjoying my first spaceship view, I approached it.


    It took some more looking around to find a hatch, though I was sure I could go straight through it, as I wanted to go straight to the living area rather than wander blindly through a bunch of unlit mechanical spaces. Finding it at the top, I dropped into a small space that must have been an air lock. I could see a port that might fit the weapon she¡¯d brought, and a second beside it that was also empty. The space was barely enough for me to ¡®stand¡¯ and turn around so I decided it was bare bones and slipped through a doorway that finally led to the living space.


    I gazed around for a moment, taking it all in, before sighing. ¡°This is about the most depressing shit I''ve ever seen.¡± The space was painfully small. There was enough room for a bed, what appeared to be a cooking space and counter, then the area that appeared to be the bridge. A single seat, a slim bed, and enough space to cook a simple meal with, perhaps, six feet of walking space between it all. Above the bed was, what i assumed, the space her suit had been stored. The only thing in the rough interior, all a drab grey color, that made it seem homely was a single plant that had small green buds and sparse leaves. It was almost as bad as Charlie brown''s Christmas tree.


    I frowned in disappointment, having hoped for something a little more high tech than a trucker style sleeper. Hell, even I had the chance to get out and get some fresh air, stretch my legs, or even be home every couple weeks. I couldn¡¯t imagine having to live in this thing for who knows how many weeks or months at a time. I looked back and sighed as I saw, through the door, a shower head. At least the poor thing could keep clean, hopefully there was a toilet in there somewhere.


    With a final shrug I set out to do what I had planned, loot the ship. Shockingly there was an  abundance of nothing in the little sleeper area. Clothes, all of a bright orange color save for the undergarments and, assumedly, sleep wear. There were a bunch of plastic tubes in the kitchen area cupboards, reminding me of string cheese packs, that I assumed would be rations of some sort. With no utensils or cookware I had to assume that she¡¯d forgone more perishable options so she could pack in as many calories as possible to extend her stay in space. I noticed a tap under one of the thin counters and assumed that she had some kind of water tank on board, something I''d have to look into.


    With no apparent gadgets anywhere, or anything else to catch my interest, I moved to the bridge area that seemed to hold nothing at all. No secret compartment, no pistol under the dash, just a flat screen readout that was in a semicircle around the command chair. A long look at the screen showed more of the elegant writing flowing along the screen in segments, possibly readouts showing a million different things that I couldn''t hope to understand. Though, I did believe I wouldn''t have a ship detonating over my entrance any time soon, or nothing beeping or approximating any countdown that I could make out.


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    With the sleeper inspection done I tried out my last option and started using information on everything, though nothing good came from what I was provided. Just steel, general mineral, polymer, something called clear steel, and fabric. Nothing piqued my interest until I tried it on the plant, or more accurately, the dirt it was potted in as I only got ¡®plant back from it.


    Soil


    Organic matter necessary for supporting complex plant life.


    This was something I could dearly use. If it was anything like dirt from home then it would have micro organisms that would be necessary to break down the bio matter i had been stockpiling. Even if the pantry on the ship was depressing as all hell, I could possibly grow an abundance of the plant the girl had inadvertently brought me. The little buds might be some sort of fruit I could use and, god willing, there just might be natural yeast on it. It might be a long shot but this little plant might just be my best shot at getting a beer.


    Carefully I reached down and took a small scoop out of the pot to store in my inventory, almost laughing as I got a new storage indicator showing the small soil sample I''d collected. Next I put my hands on the pot, not daring to try and lift it and risk accidentally absorbing the pot, soil and half the plant if it just seeped through my fingers like the soil. ¡°If this works i swear, i¡¯ll build a whole damn temple just for this one little plant.¡± I closed my eyes and willed the entire thing into my storage space. Feeling the texture of the pot leaving my fingers I risked a glimpse, then smiled. The whole thing had been stored just like the helmet and armor.


    Satisfied, I turned my attention to the cabinets, deciding I ought to claim some of the food so my elf wouldn¡¯t starve, or try to subsist off of moss and vines, or bug meat. I took about half of her inventory, having identified them as rations, then did the same for her stock of clothes, figuring her suit must chafe like hell as she hadn¡¯t been wearing anything under it. With my plundering done I started my adventure through her ship''s mechanical spaces, finding exactly the same thing whenever I tried to get information on anything. It seemed I wouldn''t be able to just see a part and get information on how to make or use them, only getting steel or other metals as I looked.


    Disappointed that I wouldn''t be able to get any blueprints, or new materials from the ship just by looking, I followed the tap to a very small water tank. I had to guess that she could harvest water from asteroids, or her recycling system just had to be that efficient. Whatever the case, I managed to get about twenty five gallons out of what appeared to be a hundred gallon tank, the inefficiency bugging me to the point I almost dropped a slime in there. I held off though, both not wanting to entirely drain the tank and not wanting the ship to think a slime was some kind of contaminant and flush the whole damn thing into space.


    With my disappointment, and annoyance, only climbing, I almost went right back to my dungeon before having to stop myself. The girl had managed to find me by seeing a manhole sized door half hidden in a crater. If that was enough to bring attention to a scout then a ship on the surface might as well have been a towering inferno in the dark. I had to do something to cover it up, and even better hide my entrance. Or did i?


    Not long ago i was stuck imagining living hundreds or thousands of years in isolation, so why was i so worried about another visit? In truth i¡¯d like more people to visit, more people to interact with and keep me from going insane, so why did i have a nagging desire to hide myself away. I contemplated this for a few minutes before i came up with a decent sounding reason. I was too small.


    One girl with inadequate tools managed to beat three of my monsters after blundering right into them. She had no idea that a threat awaited her and was relaxed, expecting centuries old traps left by a dead  race, and it took a horde of my hoppers to ensure her defeat or death. Just what would a properly armed and armored group of soldiers manage to accomplish, would my spiders even scratch the paint on their armor.


    I frowned to myself as I got to work, building up stones around the ship. I hated to admit it but a core might be a valuable item, even if only to a collector. Or it could be a power source, or any of a million other things that would end with me biting it for the second time in my existence. I¡¯d need to gather information from the girl and solidify my position before I was found. I¡¯d need to go deeper, gather more defenders, and make the cost of gathering my core, or destroying it, such a high price to pay that even the mad, or desperate wouldn¡¯t attempt it.


    Leaving behind a ship covered by a hill of rubble, a dome built around it first to protect it from being crushed, I had some goals. I¡¯d have to put together a solid plan and I''d have to leverage the resources I''d built up to drive my expansion. I left the ship behind more determined than ever.

 CH 14 Slimy, yet satisfying.

    I stood in the entryway to my experiment room, made a farm, then remade into an elf dorm. The glow of the moss illuminated the girl on her slab making the scene somewhat morbid, a girl naked and bandaged, seeming like what a mortician might walk in on, if not for the rise and fall of the girls chest indicating her continued life. It was a nice enough view, short silver hair framing a sharp featured face. Smooth skin marred here and there by the thin scars one might accumulate over a rougher life.


    I had to pull my gaze away from her, wondering if it was just dungeon instincts drawing my eyes to her or if it was just natural desire. I dumped some of her clothes on the desk I made for her, noticing most appeared to be jumpsuits of some variety. It appeared she chose only utilitarian clothes rather than wasting space on something that might be more showy, or comfortable. Next to those I set down some of the rations and called it enough. I was sure I''d need to offer her some water at some point but, hopefully, I''d find a way to make water naturally before she needed to use all I had taken.


    Finally I set about my real work, going deeper into the room and creating a sheet of general mineral to write out my plans. First I''d start by trying to upgrade my slimes. It would be simple in theory, just dump a boatload of biomatter into a spawner then send the slimes back in to increase my chances for a slime mutation. I was beginning to think I didn¡¯t have the full picture and there might be a way to naturally mutate them, but that would likely take a long time, or require some sort of natural mix of conditions that were unknown to me. Whatever the case, I had the production to go about it in an artificial way so I''d abuse that as much as I could.


    I started making marks on my sheet of metal, deciding to draw out a blueprint of a new room, something dedicated to simply sacrificing slimes in order to accelerate the mutations. I knew it was an odd direction to go now that I was thinking about defense but I was thinking that I might get something good out of it. Faster slimes to make more efficient farms, more efficient slimes that could get more mileage out of the materials they harvested, bigger slimes allowing for larger, and possibly faster farms or mining. Maybe even slimes that could convert materials, or harvest material in a more targeted way, possibly making a slime that could strain water from the sap substance I''d managed to make. All of them could give me more defensive options, either directly or indirectly.


    I worked through several designs before I thought to do some testing, after all something like this would require a lot of oversight, requiring me to sit by a spawner and make everything happen. I also had the twenty second timer to contend with. I had two spawners to play with, the first floor spawner having been destroyed by the emergence and my secret room spawner having only taken a thought to re-activate. Even now I was pretty sure I could go up and start up the first spawner but I didn''t really need it right now and it would interfere with my plans.


    My first test involved moving to the secret spawner and looking at it for a few moments. I knew I could bring up an interface to show me the costs and cooldown but I tried a new approach. ¡°Automate.¡± I spoke and pointed at it, smiling as I got what I had hoped for.


    Automation.


    Automation is available to keep a consistent number of spawns on the desired floors.


    Requires direction for each floor and slime spawned.


    I thought for a moment at the direction part, assuming it didn¡¯t mean I needed to point the spawner in a specific direction. I spawned a slime and waited for it to form before having it slide a couple feet from the spawner. ¡°You shall be Robert. I have orders for you.¡± The slime responded in the usual fashion, jiggling and giving a vague feeling of attention. ¡°You shall give each newly spawned slime orders from me. Can you do this?¡± One more I felt something from the slime, confidence, and maybe affirmation. Good, that would probably satisfy the direction requirements. Now I have to think about the design of my new room. I didn¡¯t really need two spawners but using two would double the number of slimes I needed to achieve higher mutation rates. Right now it would take a thousand biomatter to reach one percent, with each slime providing ten that would mean a hundred slimes per point. I sighed as I used my blueprint page to do math that I was sure was simpler than I was making it in my head. It would take ten thousand slimes to achieve a hundred percent mutation rate. I scratched my head, sure that wasn¡¯t right.


    I looked at my math, willing my numbers to change and be less, but it simply wouldn¡¯t happen no matter how many times i re-did my calculations. I probably wouldn¡¯t need ten thousand, even achieving a ten percent chance might mean I could potentially get a new slime variety for each ten I spawn. And rechecking my spawn window made me pretty sure just spawning one new slime would give me a new option in the spawn menu. I only hoped spawning a new mutation wouldn¡¯t consume my mutation points and make me start from scratch.


    Finally came the last bit of math I hoped I''d have to do for a while, calculating spawn costs versus my biomatter gathering rate. Ten biomatter every twenty seconds compared to, an eventual, twenty thousand an hour seemed like a drop in the bucket but I''d rather be sure. One spawner would set me back eighteen hundred every hour, spawning some hundred and eighty slimes per hour, with two spawners costing me three thousand six hundred every hour and spawning three hundred and sixty slimes. Despite my hatred of math, I did just a little more to see how long I might have to wait for ten thousand slimes, now realizing just how achievable that was with my farm.


    Just over a day. Some twenty seven hours, more or less, and I could be spitting out a new slime with every spawn. It was a little ridiculous to me, and I now realized just why the girl was terrified of me. An ancient dungeon must be able to shed monsters like a dog shedding fleas. Granted slimes were by far my least dangerous monster, but even a hundred of the girls wouldn¡¯t be able to stem the kind of flood I could release if I so chose to keep an ocean of them around.


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    I was less dangerous if i considered my other spawners costs and cooldowns The hoppers having a minute cooldown and the spiders a five minute cooldown and a hundred biomatter cost, and finally my ramp bug costing five hundred biomatter with an, as of yet, unknown cooldown timer.


    I could certainly offer considerable resistance if someone popped up again but I couldn''t be sure of defeating a determined aggressor. The girls gun had certainly splattered my hoppers with ease and I doubted my spiders would offer much more resistance to the plasma spitting weapon. I couldn¡¯t even be sure my ramp bug would be tough enough to take any shot from the thing, probably only offering itself as something an opponent would have to cut their way through to continue on. A slowing tactic to be sure, but little else.


    With that thought out of the way I pulled Robert into my spawn inventory and moved to the farms third floor. I didn¡¯t really need a dedicated room for what would be a two day job, I just needed a place to put it out of sight of the girl so she wouldn¡¯t see it and freak out at the sight, or assume I''d lost my mind. I set the spawners up, glad I didn''t encounter any kind of blockage for having too many spawners in one area, or on one floor, guessing whatever governed dungeon mechanics knew they¡¯d like to consolidate their spawners so they could direct the spawns from a centralized area.


    I dropped Robert at one and gave him his orders. ¡°Direct all slimes spawned from this pool to enter the other pool and be assimilated.¡± He confidently jiggled his affirmation and sat waiting beside the pool while I spawned a slime from the other pool to make another commander. I didn¡¯t give this one a name but gave him similar orders and received a similar response. Finally I started up my spawning. Luckily it was simple, though the spawners wouldn¡¯t let me just set them to indefinite. I had to set an actual number to reach, even seeing how many slimes I had on this floor, though it seemed to count the secret room as a floor of its own. I currently had ninety slimes working, meaning I was at about half capacity for my farm, bringing me down to about ten thousand biomatter an hour, probably less than that since my farms weren¡¯t completely efficient and hadn¡¯t yet fully grown to their normal production level. Even at half efficiency I''d be flush for this job so I wasn''t worried, I''d just keep an eye on my income and stop things if I started to lose more than I made.


    With that settled I had other things to do but I stopped myself. I had just gone off without planning anything, simply taking step one and running with it without anything else to fall back on if it didn¡¯t work. What would I do if it was a flop, or wouldn¡¯t give me any results for a week or more. I couldn¡¯t just hyper focus on one task without a fallback plan, or without testing the waters of other things I could do.


    I moved back up to the first floor of the secret room and started on a new sheet of metal, scrapping the other blueprint sheet. ¡°Alright, let¡¯s get some things out of the way, what should be my priority?¡± I thought for a while before marking the new sheet. ¡°Need to go deeper, get some new levels and materials. The new slime production can be directed to mining after I get my mutations rolling out, or I can give up on the mutations after a while if each new variation resets the counter.¡± I thought for a bit before adding. ¡°New floor design, i don¡¯t need to make them pretty and can flush them out later, just get the new nodes and spawns then keep it moving, maybe leave behind a bunch of slimes on each floor to make tunnels so i don¡¯t have to start things from scratch on each floor when I decide to decorate things.¡± With another thought I finished off the sheet. ¡°No more ramps, takes too long and is sort of pointless, I''m a moon dungeon, might as well go for something less natural looking and more artificial. Di a tunnel some twenty meters long then make it drop some fifty or hundred meters, maybe add in spiral stairs if I''m feeling fancy. Aught to make airlocking each floor easier.¡±


    I felt good about part one, let¡¯s add another idea and another sheet. ¡°Need more miners. Slimes are good but slow, spiders are good but can¡¯t clean up after themselves. I can go with the tried and tested method broomhilda provided, a spider dragging a slime, but that might not be fast enough. For the downward segments slimes ought to be more than enough but I can''t really improve anything from the spiders. Maybe they can be mutated as well. Plan to test mutation abilities with my spawns. Otherwise, just spawn a bunch of spiders for the main segments and let them go to town, keep a fleet of slimes in reserve to clean up after them so they don¡¯t get slowed down trying to keep things nice and tidy. I¡¯ll just have to eat the time loss when spiders have to mine out thinner tunnels for the exits.¡± I thought about it for a second. ¡°Could make the main sections wide and long enough that the entrance doesn¡¯t need to be tunneled away from them, just drop from the end of one section to the start of another. This could also add a chance to hide exits so it slows down any attacking party.¡±


    With that thought out I added a new sheet and wrote ¡®water¡¯ at the top of it. ¡°Gonna have to keep the elf alive. She¡¯s going to be the closest thing I have to google out here for the threats I could be facing so keeping her alive is paramount.¡± The other things will simply take time, mining and spawning, leaving me little to do, so maybe i run some experiments myself. I could also try to figure out some ways to improve her life here. A happy elf might be much more inclined to teach me than an unhappy one. I could try to make bedding for her, or I could just go and steal her ships mattress. Maybe silken clothes could be a good idea, but that was more of a pipe dream. I was no seamster and I wouldn''t even know where to start. I was pretty sure I could make a silk hammock, which would probably beat a mossy slab. Food would be a good option, if I ever figured out a way to make fire, or heat. That was also assuming i¡¯d get a node, or creature, that was edible and delicious. The thought of food also reminded me of a less happy part of biology, what goes in must come out. I¡¯d need to make a place where she could relieve herself, and shower. The first would be simple enough, a small throne and an unlucky slime would deal with that, with moss as an acceptable enough tp stand in. The shower would have to wait until water was less of an issue.


    I stepped back and looked over my plans. So far I had expansion covered, with the new floor designs and plans ready to go. I had spawns covered, with slimes hopefully spitting some useful boys out in the next day or two. I had food and water for the elf covered, with plans to endear her to me, hopefully. It was looking good for now. I¡¯d have to find a way to better farm my metals but, without any kind of automation, the best I could think of was some kind of funnel system that would feed hoppers directly with slimes right behind them to gather up the processed ores. For now they¡¯d just have to free graze and have slimes trail behind them. I added ¡®mutate hoppers!¡¯ to my sheet to better emphasize them.


    With all that written down I could only think of one more thing, unless I''d forgotten something. Figure out a better communication method. I couldn¡¯t stay limited to pictograms, it was simply too slow and cumbersome to stay my method of communication but I was drawing a blank on how to get something better. Tesla arcs might be able to make something like a synthetic voice, but i lacked electricity, and no clue on how to make a tesla arc, or even if that was the right term for what i was thinking of. Maybe some kind of organ or piano-like thing, but I landed back at the same problem, lack of knowledge. I wouldn¡¯t even know how to make the sounds come out like words. Morse code might work, but i didn¡¯t understand her alphabet, or Morse code.


    I sighed, plenty frustrated at my utter lack of progress with my ability to communicate with the elf. I¡¯d simply have to hope I could teach her the English alphabet or get some kind of spawn with vocal cords. The latter seemed likely enough, who wouldn¡¯t love some kind of monster that can pretend to be another delver to lull you into a false sense of security before attacking. With having to pin my needs on hopes, I left to enact some of my plans, or at least start them up and plan more. I needed a break, maybe something would give me an idea to work with while I did something constructive.

 Ch 15 Bluer prints and employment opportunities.

    I stood on my third floor and frowned. All that I had really accomplished here was about a thirty by thirty meter room, along with the water and heat experiment secret rooms. Big enough to turn into a house, but I really couldn¡¯t say it was a floor at this point. I had a plan when I made my first and second floor.


    The first floor was simple and linear, simply meant to be an introduction to delvers and a filter for idiots who thought I would be nothing more than a toy box to loot. Simple pit falls, meager loot, and slimes to add in a hint of danger. It would take someone completely inept to fail that very weak roadblock.


    The second floor was more substance than challenge, basically a ¡®you did it¡¯ for the first time explorers and a place for the poor bastards to get simple material that they might be able to sell or craft for better gear. It would be a challenge for solo miners to get anything, due to my hoppers and occasional spider, or a trove of material for parties simply intent on harvesting what I had to offer and getting out quickly. At Least it was until I realized just how deadly a gang of hoppers could be to someone in armor. If the girl had wandered down there with naught but a pick and some clothes she¡¯d be dead.


    Or were they really that deadly? They had a hell of a lot of energy once they were moving, and they could get moving in a hurry, but they were pretty simple to avoid once airborne. They jumped from a good distance away and didn''t re-orient themselves too quickly. Someone light on their feet, and expecting an attack could probably dodge easily enough, or even launch a counter attack as they sailed past them. Even in her armor, the girl would likely have been able to get well away from them if she¡¯d been expecting trouble. I¡¯d have to set a handful of solo hoppers on the first floor later, to act as a warning for future delvers.


    So, the first floor was my introduction, the second was my baby loot room, what would my third be? I could incorporate my ramp bugs somewhat, but how? I set out a new sheet and started marking it, first outlining the box that was currently the only room and then thinking for a few moments. I could make it floor two again, basically a mineral farm. It might have been dungeon instincts, or just a human desire to improve and adapt but I didn''t like the idea of just copying floor ideas, it just seemed lazy.


    ¡°Spiders, gotta incorporate them somehow.¡± I started scoring the page I''d made, dragging a long curving line that moved up and away from the room, a simple crescent design. ¡°Ramp bugs to block off tunnels maybe?¡± I stopped my score then moved back half way down the line and made a smaller room. ¡°They¡¯re juveniles, not adults, they could be some ten meters wide rather than the thirty in their description, or perhaps five. I drew out the room and marked it as twenty by twenty, then grinned.¡± I¡¯ll make the spiders web up a bunch of rubble so it looks like a collapsed section of tunnel. It would look out of place here, where all my tunnels were smooth stone, then fill it with spiders and a ramp bug. If delvers were foolish enough to explore down the full length of the tunnel without checking the rubble then they¡¯d risk having a horde descend on them when they made it to the end room. With a ramp bug leading the spiders they¡¯d have a frontal tank to take a couple hits for them, hopefully, then fall on the delvers like a hammer.


    I looked up to the top of my line and smiled. ¡°Just need to make an anvil.¡± I marked out the room, setting it as a fifty by fifty meter space. I¡¯d fill it with copper and general mineral. It seemed like a poor reward for the danger, but I imagined the second floor, being safer, would be constantly depleted thus creating a need to go ever deeper. I¡¯d even put a handful of hoppers in the room without slimes so whoever managed to get there, and survive, would be able to carry out something that was likely significantly more valuable than just ore. Hoppers didn¡¯t refine ore very well, but even rougher quality stuff meant they¡¯d be carrying out more than they could in raw ore.


    I wrote beside the room, three hoppers, five spiders, and two ramp bugs, if I could fit them. I really needed to spawn in a ramp bug just so I could measure them out and figure out if they¡¯d fit into my plan. Then I wrote beside the trap room, three spiders, one ramp bug. I didn¡¯t want the trap to be murderous, just deadly without preparation. If the weapon the girl brought was the norm for poorer delvers then a group of five should be able to handle it if they didn¡¯t panic, even three might be able to fight their way past the falling trap without too much trouble if they caught on before they moved to fight the loot room monsters. I even thought about setting up a pitfall, but that just didn¡¯t fit with my idea of the floor. This floor was for combat and planning, not just blundering into things.


    With my ideas set I finished the tunnel markings by adding a second line, then widened the exit of the tunnel so delvers could see more of the room as they approached. I didn¡¯t want an ambush for the room, just a straight up fight, so they should be able to see the danger as they approached.


    For a final touch I added circles to the rooms. I¡¯d need a way to replenish defeated monsters that was better than just sending them down halls that would possibly be occupied by others looting or scooting. I¡¯d make a secret floor above this one, just big enough for monsters to traverse and repopulate the floor. I was now glad that I''d decided to make my floors further apart, fitting secret monster floors to each floor would be a pain in the ass if I ever decided to expand any of my earlier floors.


    It was also making sense now that I got a new spawner for each of my monsters whenever I moved down a level. I might not use the old monsters on each floor but I could certainly use the new spawners on old floors if I kept expanding them, and it would be impossible to populate old floors with just a single spawner.


    With the first branch out of the way I moved to make eight other branches from the main room, smiling to myself as the spider-like blueprint took form. Eight loot rooms, eight traps, more material to collect than could be found on the second floor, and it looked good. When delvers mapped the place out they¡¯d realize just how clever it looked, considering the abundance of spiders for the floor. I might be tooting my own horn but a little pride wouldn¡¯t hurt me if I put it into my own work.


    For a final touch I just needed to add one more room, a head for my spider level. I made it simple, a circle about thirty meters across and thirty high with a short tunnel to connect it to the main room. I thought about it for a moment then marked it for twenty spiders and a dozen hoppers, making eight small divots to mark points I''d add copper or general mineral. I also added in ten slimes for flavor and to clear some of the material the hoppers would mine. A final, wider, divot marked the exit point of the floor. It was close to the entrance, but that didn¡¯t bother me. Delvers capable of beating my new ¡®boss¡¯ room would be intent on reaching much deeper and just adding to the travel time would be a pointless waste of time for them, and a pointless waste of monsters on my part. The best I would do for them was make a tough fight that might degrade their combat effectiveness, or injure them, if they were careless in this room.


    I looked at my map and frowned slightly before adding ¡®make the spiders web up the boss room heavily.¡¯ It was a boss room, it was meant to be a deadly challenge. I¡¯d use the webs to obscure vision, create sticky obstacles, and give the spiders a height advantage so they could attack from above and from the sides. It seemed like a good enough idea, so long as no one was packing a flame thrower. If I ever got skeletons as a decorative addition, I''d definitely add in some webbed up sacks full of bones, just for a bit of flavor.


    With my final touch done I nodded and set down the sheet. I¡¯d have to add in moss nodes and mushrooms for lighting, maybe some vines just to break up the ever present visage of stones, but it all looked good for a first draft. Now all I needed was a boat load of slimes and spiders to start mining away to get things done. Just as I considered things ready to get underway a new window popped up in front of me.


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    Dungeon blueprints discovered.


    Granted ability to create dungeon blueprints.


    Granted ability to add nodes to blueprints.


    Granted ability to create monster spawn points in blueprints.


    Granted ability to create rooms in blueprints.


    Theme detected


    Granting ability to add themes to blueprints.


    Boss room detected.


    Granting the ability to designate boss spawn.


    Granting ability to designate lesser boss spawns.


    My eyes scanned over the window that hovered in front of me and I was a bit confused. I¡¯d already made floors with themes, and I''d already made blueprints, so why hadn¡¯t I discovered this before. The bosses I understood, I hadn''t made any boss rooms before. My first and second floors felt like they had a theme going on. A few moments of contemplation and I thought I understood. This was meant to be a spider floor. It had other monsters, sure, but it all hinged on spiders, from the fighters to the design, the bulk of it was built around the eight legged horrors. It was also the only floor that I had really thought out the design of, the other two mostly being heat of the moment constructions that just fell into a neat little niche. It was a little annoying but I hadn''t started out with a dungeon mindset, and now that I was going around doing actual dungeon things I''d likely get actual dungeon abilities.


    With that bit of introspection out of the way I started going through and getting information on my new toys. The dungeon blueprint was both simple and complex. Just thinking of designing a blueprint opened up a three dimensional map with a ten by ten meter room on it and another thought added a twenty meter long tunnel on it. I could arch the roof, shrink the room and tunnel, make the tunnel into a cylinder that might be hell to traverse. It was a neat little building tool that could let me get really intricate in my designs rather than just scratching out a two dimensional map. The node spawns came just as easily, and even offered a neat little feature. I could see just how efficiently they¡¯d grow. My moss nodes showed little time lapses, letting me see how long they¡¯d take to grow and fill a space, my time keeping ability popping up and timing how long a node might take to fill a space. It even showed the growth rate of my metal nodes, letting me see how long it would take them to grow to ¡®full¡¯ size where the growth would stall and slow down.


    Moving on I pulled up my second floor blueprint, just to test out the theme option, and was met with disappointment. Spider was my only option. It seemed I''d have to find, or design, new themes on my own. Though it did seem that I could adjust just how ¡®themed¡¯ things could get. From a scattering of cobwebs to webs so dense someone would need a machete to have any hopes of advancing through it. With nothing to do, yet, for the second floor I closed it and focused back on my third floor window.


    My last test was a quick one. I set down a spider spawn point and was met with a bit of resistance. ¡®No path¡¯ appeared and I wondered about that for a moment. The simple answer was that there were no spawners on my blueprint. I tried out a couple things, finding I could add a spawner, but that wasn¡¯t exactly what I wanted. Finally I tried to add an entrance to this blueprint and was met with a new image. My already constructed floor three hovered in front of me and I found that I could add my new floor both below and above it by several means, tunneling straight down, tunneling at an angle, or making a convoluted tunnel that loops up and around the floor it led from. It was a simple enough ability, and I was glad to find out that I could pull up old, constructed floors as well as design new ones. All that to say, once ¡®connected¡¯ I saw a little dotted line that led from the nearest, or only, spawner available.


    My new ability was a fantastic addition, making sure my next floors would be a cake walk to design. With a final thought I removed my nodes from the blueprint and tried to will the construct, just a square and a tube, to be built in front of me, smiling as the form filled out and made a representation of my new ¡®floor¡¯ in stone right in front of me. It might be pointless to make a miniature, but I didn¡¯t think my monsters would be able to see what I saw so I''d need something for them to compare to if i was to leave them to build things on their own.


    I quickly demolished the construct and tried to will the blueprint away when I was met with a window stating ¡®you will remember this¡¯. Ominous as it sounded, I figured it was just saying i¡¯d save the floor design and be able to bring it back up. I tried my hand at ¡®deleting¡¯ it and was met with another window. ¡®You will forget this¡¯. Simple enough, I waved my hand and the blueprint vanished. Without much to forget it didn¡¯t feel like I''d lost anything but i wondered just how much I''d be able to remember or forget should i save something large and complex, or delete it.


    Finally, for the blueprint, I pulled the ability back up and focused on the third floor. I had designed my idea already and tried to will the design off the sheet and into my blueprint, but it failed. I¡¯d have to go over it again by hand. It was a touch annoying, but it was fine. Working through my ability, and with a design already in front of me, it would be plenty easy enough. I even had the chance to make the ¡®legs¡¯ of my design angle down slightly, just another obstacle for an escaping party that wouldn¡¯t be too malicious.


    Slightly annoyed at having to rework things, but glad enough that I could add nodes and ¡®spawn¡¯ points for my monsters, I finished and set about checking my other new toys. Or I almost did before I stopped myself. I¡¯d almost lost track of what I was doing again, I needed to stay focused, play later, and get the ball rolling now.


    With a sigh, I moved back to my elf room and started summoning slimes. I figured four for each leg, and another four for the head, but I decided to add an extra for each ¡®party¡¯. My slimes could give, and follow, simple commands so it would probably be a good idea to set up a couple commanders to make sure everyone followed the script and made the floor the way i wanted it designed.


    Some time later, and with forty six slimes, the last meant to be a foreman of sorts, I moved over to my spider spawner. Nine would be enough for my crew, but I decided to round it out to ten. The spiders were significantly faster than slimes so I might just make my foreman ride one of the spiders so he could jet around and make sure everything was proceeding as planned. I made sure to keep an eye on my biomatter count as I spawned the spiders, a thousand bio matter not yet being a drop in the bucket, but managed to stay over five thousand. My farms were currently outproducing my slime mutation experiment, but only by, about, a hundred per hour. Comfortable enough for spare spawns, but not enough to spawn in hordes of workers continuously.


    Back at the third floor, with all my monsters in my summon space i pulled up my blueprint and made a construct of it, deciding to make it nearly three meters across. The construct had pillars holding up each part, looking like it was printed out, but that wouldn¡¯t be much of a problem. Finally I summoned a slime, my ¡®foreman¡¯, and thought for a moment.


    ¡°Your name will be.¡± Another moment of thought. ¡°Foreman.¡± A less than original name, but i couldn¡¯t keep calling slimes Bob and Robert. ¡°Your job will be to direct others to mine out and shape this floor until it resembles this.¡± I gestured to the statue beside me and felt the attention of the slime drift for a moment. ¡°This is a small version of what I have planned. If I give you measurements, will you be able to accomplish your task?¡±


    The slime seemed to stare at the statue for a long time and I was beginning to think it wouldn¡¯t be able to accomplish its task. ¡°Here.¡± I knelt and started to make marks on the floor. ¡°This is a meter.¡± I used my own measuring ability to mark out a meter line, then scored centimeter increments beside it. I then pulled the original blueprint over next to it. ¡°A meter is a form of measuring distance, how far one object might be from another, or how large one object, or room, might be.¡± I was beginning to feel some recognition from Foreman. ¡°Now, the trickiest part of this floor is probably going to be the declining halls that lead to the outer rooms. The simplest way to make a slope correctly is to measure out a meter and then measure how far down you¡¯re supposed to go. Even on a smaller statue like this one you can get the same slope on a larger project. Once the angle is down, all you have to do is follow along without dipping or rising.


    I did some quick math, ironically slowly, and measured out the angle for the slime and built a new construct that was a simple ramp. I moved the construct to the entrance of the room, out of the way, so my new foreman could slide along it and get the feeling of the correct slope my halls would need. The slime, once confused by the math involved, was picking things up now that it had a physical object to take its measurements from. The slime seemed to re-focus on me and I felt confidence radiating off of it and took that to mean that it was ready. So, I began to summon slimes.


    I decided to use just slimes for now, thinking I wouldn''t want a bunch of spiders cluttering things up and getting in each others way. I¡¯d let the slimes start on the tunnels and ¡®head¡¯ and drop the spiders in once the slimes had made some progress. I made sure to drop the slimes in packs of five, near where the tunnels would be made. With the groups finally summoned I gave everyone their orders. The foreman would make sure everyone stayed on target, staying within the bounds of my blueprint to a close enough degree. And the fifth slime in each group would follow the foremans orders, trying to keep to the lines as he told them to. I was pretty sure I''d eventually get monsters better suited to carrying out tasks like these, managing my other utility monsters and keeping clean lines and accurate work. As it stood, I just needed it to be good enough, and Foreman seemed to be up to the task.


    With a wave and a shout of ¡®Begin!¡¯ My slimes moved with a purpose, sliding slowly towards, then into the stone as they set about their tasks. I was proud of them and watched their slow work for a moment before letting my mind wander to the other tasks I''d set for myself. ¡°Elf comfort and needs.¡± I spoke to myself. I couldn¡¯t begin hopper experimentation until my slime experiment was done and I couldn''t work out a good metal farming method until I could work in more efficient hoppers or a basic automation system.

 Ch 16 Home Improvement Episode.

    I found the girl still on her moss bed, right where I left her. I couldn¡¯t help but have my sight drawn to her every time I passed, but this time my eyes picked up on more than just her naked form. The bruises that had formed over her injuries were shrinking. While that was to be expected, it seemed to me that the bruises were shrinking faster than normal. I almost cursed my lack of foresight, as now I wouldn''t have very reliable data on how much better healing was in a room full of plants that had healing properties that apparently could heal by touch or proximity.


    I was beginning to wonder if she¡¯d slipped into a coma, but my perception of time had become very skewed, without the sun, sleep, or even eating marking the passage of time. I had to pull up my calendar to see that only a day had passed by. Spending a couple days passed out might not be so bad, hopefully, and might not be a sign of a coma. I¡¯d have to use a slime or spider to shake her awake though, if she kept on sleeping. No food for some days might be fine but I didn''t know how well hydrated she would have been and I had no medical gear to try and rig up a saline bag, let alone the knowledge to craft something like that. With a frown, and a last glance at her prone form, I moved to the wall at the head of her bed and started my work.


    I almost started to carve into the wall by hand, thinking to wing it and see what I could make, but I managed to stop myself and use my new blueprint tool. The damn thing was just proving to be more and more useful. I quickly pulled up the farm and started off by adding a single room, then thought about it for a moment. I could certainly just build a bathroom and call it a day but part of my plan was to endear the elf to me. A toilet would be nice but a suite, after living in that small ship, might be a better surprise for her.


    I scrapped the single room and started out with a longer room, making it 20 meters long and 5 meters wide, going for something akin to a single wide trailer, at least in its dimensions. It still seemed small, but it would be a good starting point for me. I saved the simple template then began my work, keeping the window open to the side of my vision.


    I decided to go with an airlock style front door, a big bulkhead to offer a feeling of safety. I¡¯d have to figure a way out to lock it, something likely being in the list of components I''d been given the blueprints to. I made the doorway about seven feet high, a little overkill for the little elf but I figured a big door might feel a bit safer for most people. I didn¡¯t stop to make the door itself, instead moving on and slowly working to carve out the stone by hand. It might have been less efficient than slime mining but it was a hell of a lot faster, stone disappearing quickly as I worked further in.


    Then, something interesting happened. I began to see a hazy blue light as my hand reached into the stone, making me yank my hand back, though as soon as I had moved the light vanished. My first thought was that I''d run into some kind of plutonium or other radioactive material but that thought was quickly ignored as I eased my hand closer to where I had been digging. The blue light slowly started up again and began intensifying as I pushed further. I finally came to a conclusion as my hand pressed nearly a foot into the stone and the light suddenly changed to red. I¡¯d found the boundary to my rooms design. Yet another handy part of my new utility tool had been found. I thought the tool was simply for design and mockups but now it showed I could easily find the boundary while working, at least if I did the work.


    From there my new addition progressed nicely, following along the walls to make the entry area then chasing down the length of one wall so I could take stone in long sweeps, soon finding myself in a long empty room, twenty by five like i had planned, with the roof pushed up to fifteen as well, just to leave room for piping or electrical lines to be put in whenever i discovered cooler things in the future. For now it was just a drab empty space with more akin to a warehouse than a home.


    For a later part I summoned a spider and ordered it to start making webs in long lines at the back of the room as I started to work on the layout, figuring I could collect the web for furniture, or something like it, later. For now I started at the entrance. The door went straight out into the farm so opening it would reveal the entirety of the house. An open concept, I think is what it would be called, wasn¡¯t too bad of an idea, as I had no idea how elves preferred their homes or design principles, but it wouldn¡¯t offer much of a feeling of safety or privacy. For now I marked out a mudroom, making it three meters long. Long lines indicated where i¡¯d add stone and x¡¯s indicated a door location, offset from the entrance so even having both open wouldn¡¯t allow easy sight right into the house area. To add to the room I marked out a space for a shower and toilet. To be honest i was enamored with mudrooms, having one as a child had been useful for cleaning up after many adventures outside, both for my clothes and body. I could only assume a scout would end up gathering a good deal of dust and dirt on their equipment while delving into a dungeon and would appreciate a place to get their dirty armor and boots off before they tracked a mess into their house. Not to mention the mess they could acquire from killing monsters, so a place to hose themselves, and their gear, off was likely to be appreciated.


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    As an afterthought I marked two squares for a washer and dryer, currently more a dream, and considered the space good and done. The thought of sticky monster bits had me looking towards my spider when I received a new notification. It was a simple upgrade to my blueprint skill that allowed me to add in walls to my room designs, also allowing me to adjust how tough the walls were meant to be, assumedly for traps or secret rooms. It was a nifty addition but I had another thing I needed to see too.


    I approached the spider and sighed. It was doing exactly what it was meant to, laying out strands of web in long lines just as ordered. But I could see small droplets on the surface of the web. ¡°Stop.¡± I spoke to the spider, a little disappointed in myself. ¡°These wont work at all. These are meant to be used to create comfortable sitting surfaces, not trap the people that sit on them. Can you keep from adding that glue stuff to them?¡±


    The spider looked confused for a moment before it started again and the sticky glue substance was gone. I was glad that silk could be made without having to wash the strands first, though I should have been aware of that considering the elfs bandages hadn¡¯t clung too much to her, but another problem was apparent with the silk. It was nearly thick as a thumb, looking more like bone white strands of steel cable rather than the fine hair like stuff I''d often get stuck on when I was human. Despite its appearance though a quick touch proved it was a somewhat yielding material, even my dulled senses brought a soft touch to my fingertips. The stuff might not be pillow top mattress quality, but I was willing to bet that a net style bed made from the stuff would be much better than the thin mattress in the elven ship.


    A final test, absorbing the silk, proved effective. It didn¡¯t deposit as biomatter but as ¡®sticky silk¡¯ that was apparently ¡®low grade.¡¯ I didn¡¯t need any extra information to know what low grade was, apparently my spiders just weren¡¯t high quality enough to make the good stuff, or their enormous size actively worked against them in silk production. The information also gave me hope that they would be able to be mutated, possibly producing an offshoot that would produce much finer silk.


    Without need of sticky silk in the house I collected it all to get it out of the way. I marked out a living room, grinning as I marked an area for a ¡®fire¡¯ place, intending to put moss there to illuminate it. I also marked out three areas that would make up stone chairs, padded with silk or made into silk net seats, I wasn¡¯t sure which would do better at this point.


    To better conserve the remaining space, I decided to make the kitchen and dining area pair with the living area, granted I couldn''t do much of a kitchen. Simply lining the left wall with a countertop area was all I could plan for now, though as an afterthought I added in a sink space. I could easily make piping, after my practice with airlocks, and had confidence that I could supply running water throughout all the rooms that would need it, but I got another idea right out of the flintstones. I scored in a smaller area, meant for under the sink, where I''d station a slime in a shallow basin, allowing it to absorb gray water and food scraps.


    With that done the dining area was simple. A square marked where I''d place a stone table and four smaller squares marked stone chair positions. I was beginning to wonder if i could use my biomatter to craft wood, or a wood like substance, but those experiments could wait for now, i had a bedroom to build.


    The last four meters were saved for the bedroom, making me think I''d saved plenty of space for the job. With marks set, and silk absorbed, the space seemed large enough to make anyone happy, let alone someone who spent weeks or months in a small box. I moved to where I decided to place the bed, in the center of the room with the head against the far back wall, and started to mark out the space for it. I decided something king sized would be great, a nice expansive bed with plenty of room to get comfortable on.


    It ended up fairly big, near seven feet long and six wide. It was a much bigger bed space than I''d ever managed to get for myself as a human and I thought I''d be utterly pleased with something like this. Hell, I had half a mind to try it out once I was done. I hadn¡¯t had one of my sleeping sessions in what felt like a long time so i was probably due one. I also decided to add on what would be two night stands and a wardrobe. It all seemed a bit spartan, but it ought to end up being a comfortable enough place for her until he got new materials or construction methods. As it stood, if she wanted artwork or decorations then she¡¯d have to supply them herself.


    With a last inspection of the whole house area I was pleased with the results and started creating blocks of stone. While I could certainly create solid stone walls, I wanted to try a brick and mortar appearance for the interior walls, something to break up the appearance a touch. If I didn''t like the walls, then I''d simply smooth them over and fill them completely in. With a roll of my shoulders I set about the task of building and furnishing the new place for my elven prisoner.

 Ch 17 Stickman art is much better when animated.

    She awoke to dull pain and cool air. Not a state she was unfamiliar with, but the surroundings were far less so. From her one good eye she could see glowing moss coating the ceiling above her uncomfortable bed. She tried turning her head, happy to feel only a slight ache rather than any sharp pains that might indicate serious injuries. She once again watched the obvious farm, slimes occasionally sliding into and out of holes in the walls, a painful reminder of the sentient, and old, dungeon.


    She tried to pull up memories of her studies, now seeming so long ago, about dungeons. She¡¯d gotten her class early, as most of the poorest families did, which allowed her to have a direction early in life. She couldn¡¯t wait for something more powerful, or more directed and scout was a good choice, according to her mother. It would leave her with wider options than other simple classes as well as give her abilities to keep well away from danger, for all the good that had done her. While she had done plenty of studying, actual experience in her class was lacking and gave her very few options in any kind of fight.


    As far as she could remember, from her scout classes, dungeons had a wide variety of different ranks, designations, threat levels, along with a number of sub classes and ranks. The jade moon, her home, was classified as ancient. From what she remembered it was a moderate threat level and ranged from indifferent up to somewhat hostile. She¡¯d need a dungeon inspector to actually get a good read on this dungeon, a subclass of scout, but even now she knew this dungeon wouldn¡¯t be classified as hostile or murderous. It might just have been the time spent alone on the moon, but the dungeon seemed closer to curious, possibly even friendly, as it would have taken some effort to keep its monsters from just killing her.


    She turned her head again, looking now towards the entrance and her heart sank at the sight that greeted her. Clothes. Not just random dungeon loot, it was her own clothing piled on the desk near the door. She had hoped it would be na?ve and just assumed she¡¯d popped up out of nowhere, or walked from some more habitable part of the moon, but it clearly knew she couldn¡¯t be native. That cut off a few escape plans, or possibly all of them if the dungeon had captured her ship. She was stuck here now.


    She laid her head back and sighed. She wouldn¡¯t give up. Right now she was in a shallow part of the dungeon, just the second level, and when a search and recovery vessel was dispatched, she¡¯d be saved fairly quickly, assuming a team came and not just another solo operative. For now she¡¯d just focus on keeping the dungeons curiosity in her, or providing some use to it, so she wouldn¡¯t be used for resources, or just killed for entertainment.


    After some time she decided she¡¯d been cursing her luck long enough and made to sit up. She felt surprisingly alright, after having been given the second worst beating of her life, and wondered at her body. Her bruises had receded somewhat, rather than deepening, and, after some gentle prodding, discovered her ribs were in a better state. They certainly felt broken but seemed further along the road to mending than they had been when she¡¯d used her med pack to fix them in place. She¡¯d either been out of it far longer than she¡¯d expected, or something about the room was helping her along.


    She looked down at the moss, thinking for a moment, before realizing she was in a room surrounded by healing reagents. They must have been very low grade, but the fact that there was so much of the stuff surprised her. Most dungeons wouldn¡¯t focus so much in one place, not near the surface, but it made enough sense. This was one of the dungeons farms, of course the farmed material would eventually expand to encompass the whole of the room. It was odd, to her, that the dungeon would choose moss as its farmed material of choice, with it only expanding some inches away from a surface, but she¡¯d not bring that up and risk gaining the dungeons annoyance.


    Finally, confident she wouldn¡¯t collapse, she eased off the mossy bed and onto her feet, regretting her decision but needing to move all the same, the pain in her hip would just have to be endured. Her first reason for needing to move was the overpowering urge to relieve herself, something she intended to do away from her bed, until a slight sizzling noise started up.


    She turned to see what manner of creature she was sharing a room with and noticed now a slime had been at the door, and was now making its way towards her. It wasn¡¯t all too threatening, not in that she could beat it with her bare hands, but because, even injured, she could outpace it easily. The dungeon had to know that, right? Looking past the slime, making sure a spider wouldn¡¯t be right behind it, she noticed the gray panel beside the door. It was another of the dungeons drawings and it seemed clear enough to her. ¡°Shout at the slime and get your attention huh?¡± With her options being to go deeper into a slime infested farm, jump the slime and go into the hopper infested cavern, or to shout and get the dungeons attention. She made her choice and tried shouting at the slime.


    ¡°I¡¯m not running, I just need to find a bathroom!¡± She didn¡¯t think a bathroom would be an option but she just shouted the first thing that came to mind and hoped it would work. Seconds later it seemed that it did the trick as the slime stopped its march towards her, then started sliding back to where it had been standing guard. Now she knew she had the dungeons attention, as unsettling as the thought was.


    ¡°Uh.¡± She blanked for a moment. ¡°I need to-¡± She paused as she considered her words. Would the dungeon even know about bodily functions? Sure, some monsters would ¡®defecate¡¯ in a way, but that was always as a form of resource refining or trap production, even weapons. No monsters really needed to process waste as nothing they ate was wasted.


    A sharp crack brought her out of her thoughts and she turned to face the sound, noticing a door that had been directly ahead of where her head was when she woke up. With her ruined eye she hadn¡¯t seen it in her peripheral vision, nor would she have likely seen it with the slime occupying her attention. A rock had fallen onto the metal construction, reminding her of the airlocks she¡¯d had to traverse to get into the dungeon.


    She moved towards the door, after a quick glance around to make sure she hadn¡¯t missed anything else. The door opened with some effort, the door might have looked better than the first she¡¯d seen, but it was still built like a bulkhead and heavy enough to make it a small struggle to move aside. Inside was a stone room containing what appeared to be two large basins, or tubs, a walled off portion of the room that had a general metal shower head, and accompanying knobs, then finally an overly large toilet with strips of moss that had been placed beside the toilet seat. It took her looking around once more to notice a second door, smaller than the first and built like a regular door rather than an airlock.


    The light above her head, coming from the dimly glowing moss, made it easy enough to see things, though she realized she¡¯d missed a water spout and knobs that jutted out just above one of the large stone tubs. Curious as she was, her need to relieve herself had gone from demand to a threat. She managed to haul the big door shut, childish as that made her feel, and quickly moved to the toilet to make use of it. The dark cavern in the toilet seat seemed a little ominous but it was quickly ignored.


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    With her business done she moved to the tub to see if the faucet there would serve to wash her hands, though regretted the attempt as a softly glowing liquid sprayed forth, making her yank her hands back in shock. For now, she¡¯d settle with scrubbing her hands on the somewhat damp moss rather than risking mysterious dungeon liquids.


    While shutting off the mystery fluid she was startled by a somewhat loud creaking coming from her left. She had to crane her head around to see the other door had opened, leading into another dimly lit room. With nothing else to do, she followed what had to be the dungeons invitation and walked over and into the room, beholding something that might be comfortable to a dwarven family.


    Stone furniture filled the room, along with a long length of countertops. The counters were closed off with general mineral doors and it appeared that some of the furniture had been padded with white pillows, or fashioned into an odd netted style. It was clearly meant to be a living space, if oddly laid out. She even noticed a mock fireplace that had glowing mushrooms coming out of it, fenced in by general metal bars.


    She was only growing more and more confused with the situation when a final door decided to creak open at the far end of the room, prompting her to move on to the last room. There she found an obvious bedroom. The bed was enormous, reminding her of the time she¡¯d had to buy furnishings for her little craft. The net bedding looked odd, but touching the soft silk made it feel inviting. The side tables became an afterthought as she noticed that a pair of silken lines lead up to the ceiling where the glowing moss had been inset and was covered with a grate. It took a second of staring but she finally recognized that the grate was meant to adjust at a pull of the lines, either opening or closing.


    It was all feeling a little too surreal. Just days ago she¡¯d been slowly moving from planet to planet in the system, using her ship to map out the asteroids and find dense pockets of materials that the jade moon either didn¡¯t produce or were produced so deeply that hunting the stars for the material was the less challenging option. Now she was standing in a room that almost matched her childhood apartment in size and meant only for sleeping and changing clothes. All built by a dungeon that had captured her and nursed her back to health.


    She moved to leave the room, her own churning thoughts making her dizzy, and limped for one of the chairs. She managed to sit in one of the net chairs. Finding it comfortable only added to the deluge of thoughts spinning in her head.


    How had she come to be here? Her and her mother had saved every bare credit available. Long hours as a runner worked until she had only enough strength to drag herself home. All to save up the money to buy an old survey ship that she could use to work a safe, if demanding, job. Now she was here being given more than her mother had ever owned, by a dungeon. Treated as a guest rather than an intruder. What madness had her lifes path suddenly come upon.


    In her silent delirium she hadn¡¯t noticed the barely audible scratching as stone disappeared in front of her. While the dungeon certainly wasn¡¯t the best with noticing someones moods or troubles, he could certainly recognize someone losing the plot so, with another dropped stone, and resounding crack, he brought her back into focus.


    There on the floor in front of her was a line of images. It lacked the grace of true artwork but the images were getting the point across. The first was her blundering into the hoppers, googly eyed critters bouncing off a stick figure with pointed ears. Then it appeared that the image was sent into a brain, which was impossible to parse. It appeared the dungeon recognized her confusion as more scratching took place. Slowly it drew out a new image, this appearing to be a sheet with foreign writing on it. It was inelegant and stiff, like someone was just chiseling harsh lines into stone and lacking the beauty naturally imparted to the ancient texts of any peoples she knew of. An arrow was drawn to the sheet, then another indicating it was going into the brain. This too, astonishingly, confused her so a new image started to take shape.


    Now she was looking at an image of a stick figure elf with glasses standing before smaller stick figures. It was pointing to a screen, or so she believed, with random swooping lines on the screen. A line appeared above the image and a hastily drawn elf with a gun was drawn with an arrow pointing at the glasses elf, then from that elf to the brain. It took a second before she realized something. ¡°The one with the gun is meant to be me?¡± A moment later a mark appeared, two lines touching at their points with one line shorter than the other. It wasn¡¯t a full crossing out so it might be an affirmative so she tried an obviously wrong answer. ¡°And this one is meant to be a butcher?¡± It took a much longer time before a cross mark appeared. ¡°Alright, so half a cross for yes, a full one for no.¡± She nodded to herself for finally figuring something out.


    Before she could be reprimanded in some way for giving a wrong answer on purpose, she quickly gave what she thought was the correct answer. ¡°I assume that elf is supposed to be a teacher?¡± A quick half mark confirmed her thoughts, which only added a new one. ¡°If you have creatures capable of teaching others, why do you resort to this method?¡± Then she quickly added. ¡°I do not mean to insult you, great dungeon, I only wish to know why this is your preferred method.¡± It took some time before three lines were marked beside her elf. An arrow pointed from her to the second and she understood it meant she was on the second level of the dungeon. Then, beside the floor below it, a very rough skull and crossed bones was drawn. ¡°Oh.¡± This, to hers and all other races, was a very obvious warning. Death or danger awaits you ahead.


    ¡°I understand and thank you for your consideration.¡± She hadn¡¯t even made it past the door to the second level, the third must have been a nightmare if the dungeon wouldn¡¯t even risk sending her down there. ¡°I understand this bit though.¡± She decided to move on without bringing up lower levels. ¡°You want me to teach you.¡± She pointed at the image she¡¯d been shown. ¡°The first is of my encounter with your monsters. From my interaction you learned something from me and you wish that to continue?¡± Two affirmative marks made her nod, though that prospect seemed a bit of a grim fate if she had to continue doing battle with monsters. Still, she moved on to the other images before she voiced her concerns.


    The second image was of a circle depositing something into the elfs hands, then an arrow going from that deposit to a layout of the rooms she¡¯d just explored. This was easy enough to understand. She¡¯d provided something for the dungeon so it was providing something to her. It even comforted her somewhat as transactional type dungeons were one of the few types well understood. Well enough that even her early scout training gave good information on them, simple style dungeons that preferred a transactional relationship with their delvers. Even slights against them didn¡¯t often raise their ire. ¡°I gave you something you valued and now you¡¯re offering this place as a payment for that?¡± A half mark followed and she smiled, all but confirming this as a transactional type of dungeon.


    The next image was, again, simple to parse. It was of an elf comparing flowing lines to those of the harder chiseled lines while a circle dumped solid bars on her desk. ¡°You want me to learn this writing style or language?¡± A half mark followed by a full. So half right. She only had to puzzle over it for a moment before an arrow was drawn from the flowing lines to the circle. ¡°You want to learn the common elven script?¡± A half mark confirmed it and she nodded. ¡°It is an elegant way of writing. Should you learn it I''m sure many delvers would appreciate it and be better drawn in by your dungeon. It would also do better than just images for communication.¡± Then a lightbulb went off in her head. ¡°You wish to better communicate with me?¡± A large half mark appeared and she understood now. She would be paid not just to teach elven writing, but possibly about elves. Their culture, weapons, numbers.


    ¡°I would be thrilled to teach you.¡± She spoke slowly as she thought out her response. ¡°But there are far better people for such a task. Scholar classes, monks, wise men, wizards. I¡¯m just a simple scout with little to offer.¡± It took a long time for the dungeon to respond, so long she was beginning to wonder if it was summoning forces to punish her for an offense she hadn¡¯t meant to offer. She was about to open her mouth before the dungeon began drawing again, this time further from her. She had to stand to see the drawing but, by the time she was moving a line had already passed her. She made it to the first part of the image and saw it was once again a simple drawing of her, an elf with a gun. Then, following the line, she came upon the other image. A moon resting on the same line. The moon had lines moving past it, which she took to mean motion as she noticed a small triangle under the line. She was then reminded of one of her earlier classes, general history class covering other races and their ancient teachings. One part, from the lost human teachings, had stuck with her all this time.


    ¡°Give me a place to stand, and a long enough lever, and I will move the world.¡±


    A shiver ran through her at that moment as she wondered how the mad teachings of that long missing race had managed to appear so far from their home.

 Ch 18 The steampunk arc begins.

    I was finally done conversing with the elf, no longer needing to tediously think up and draw out little pictures to get my point across. It was a long and frustrating experience that ultimately ended with me feeding and watering her before she returned to resting. It was a little frustrating to see her return to her slab in the farm, but I understood that it was helping her heal and she wasn¡¯t exactly in the right mind frame, or physical state, to be doing much more than sitting still. I¡¯d have to make something for her to do so she could occupy her mind while in bed. But, with her returning to rest I had something else on my mind that had been interrupted just as it had appeared. A slime mutation.


    I was just moving to check it out when I had felt one of my monsters trying to get my attention, an odd sensation but one I was now glad I understood. Now I knew what it would feel like when a monster wanted to get a hold of me. Those thoughts cleared as I entered the area I''d set up for my slime experiments, only to be met with disappointment. The only slimes in sight were the two I''d set to order spawning slimes into each others pools and a pair of slimes making their way steadily towards their opposing pools. The damned fool commander of the pool my mutant had spawned from must have sent the new jelly boy to be recycled.


    I was about a half step away from picking up one of the slimes and chucking it in to be recycled as well when a thought occurred to me and I summoned up my information on the slime spawning pools.


    Slime spawner.


    Spawns available:


    Slime 10 biomatter. 5.3% mutation rate.


    Ember slime 50 biomatter. .01% mutation rate.


    Ember slime.


    A slime that has taken on aspects of the fire element, ember being the lowest designation of the fire elemental line of slimes.


    This was awesome. I¡¯d managed a mutation and it was damned useful, at least for now. I¡¯d be able to use a slime like that to provide heat and possibly produce water. I almost wanted to shout for my success but I noticed something else as well. The mutation rate was only at five percent meaning it had dropped, though I didn''t think it had dropped completely to zero as I hadn''t been conversing with the elf for all that long. There might have been a milestone requirement for getting the slime, or I''d just hit the lottery and it knocked me back some. So I wouldn''t be able to achieve a new slime with every spawn. Another sad thing to notice was that mutations didn¡¯t go off of biomatter input but rather spawn input. Each lost monster would only scratch the surface of the mutation pool, and even then I wasn''t guaranteed something I''d need or want at that moment.


    All that said, I had a new spawn available and a new way to exploit resources I''d like to gain. I made the pools stop their automation and ordered my two commander slimes to not give any more orders, I''d set up a system later so they could flush out my farms. Then I finally set my eyes on one of the pools and made my very first, or second, ember slime.


    The pool roiled for a few moments, turning a slightly red color, before spitting out one of my new ember slimes. It was honestly a touch underwhelming. I¡¯d expected fire, or sparks, maybe something fantastically magical, instead I got a red slime that seemed to be boiling slowly. It was neat in its own way but disappointing to see when I''d let my imagination get ahead of me. Perhaps I should have listened when the information I got described it as the lowest of the fire slimes.


    Disappointed or not, this little slime just made my hopes for water into a reality, though I did decide to do some quick tests with it as I summoned another nine, assuming one wouldn¡¯t be adequate for what I wanted. A quick measurement proved the slime was of similar size to its green brothers. A speed test did surprise me, showing the ember slime could move fairly quickly, for a slime, maxing out at one meter a second. The last test, resource mining, showed disappointing results as the slime harvested at half the efficiency of the regular slimes.


    All together the slime was a faster monster that likely had more combat utility over crafting or harvesting ability. It was a lucky find for a young dungeon in need of more flexible monsters as I had the spiders for pursuit and general combat, the hoppers for swarming or acting as glass cannons and the ramp bugs for tanks. The ember slime seemed to fit the role of Combat utility, adding a new form of damage while being able to better keep pace with my mainline fighters, the spiders. But now I''d use them for something likely unintended, assuming they had the heat for it.


    Pulling the slimes into my spawn inventory I moved down to my water test chamber, still full of sap despite using some to test how water tight my elfs taps would be. I hadn¡¯t meant to leave the sap there, it was an oversight on my part, but now I''d have something to clean the glowing liquid out, if this proved successful. I spawned one slime in and quickly ordered it not to absorb the sap, leaving it to float in the murky green liquid.


    To my slight surprise, nothing happened, the slime bubbled away while the liquid around it remained calm. I had thought I''d gained a temperature measuring ability, but wasn¡¯t sure. I cursed at myself and made a mental note to write down my abilities somewhere where I could go back and remind myself of the mundane or overspecialized things I''d acquired. Whatever the case I was unable to, currently take a measurement of the pool''s temperature, and was too impatient to wait for results.


    ¡°Slime, can you intensify your heat? I want to see just how hot you can get.¡± I thought for a moment as I felt the confirmation from the slime. ¡°Without hurting yourself, I don''t want to waste you pointlessly.¡± Another confirming feeling came as the slow boiling slime started to roil slightly. It was impressive to see it bubbling and churning as the little slime gave all it had to turn up the heat. I even felt a little pride in my small dungeon creature, along with happiness, as I started to notice a slight haze of steam start building. This I could work with.


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    Another thought hit me as I watched the slime work, and I decided to voice it. ¡°Can you do this indefinitely, or will you start to get tired and need a rest?¡± Another feeling, or several at once. Confidence felt the most powerful, then maybe duty or pride, but a feeling of doubt was hidden under all of that. I knew I''d be wasting water but I had biomass to burn so I started to time the slime. ¡°Go until you feel that you cannot any more, you¡¯ve already made me proud and there¡¯s no need to feel shame if you cannot continue at that pace.¡± I swore I saw the roiling intensify slightly as I felt another note of confidence and confirmation from the slime.


    The time rolled by and the room started filling slightly with steam but I could see the slime gradually slowing down, growing weaker and weaker until I ordered it to stop. It was bubbling only a little more than normally when I gave the order and it slowed significantly after that, only barely bubbling now. It seemed it took my order from earlier to heart and meant to exhaust itself completely before throwing in the towel. I had no idea what an exhausted slime would look like but the little ember seemed to be floating in the sap now rather than standing in it. I almost imagined it turning into a barely coherent pool if it fell to that level. ¡°Good job buddy, rest up and let me know when you¡¯re good to go again.¡± Tired affirmation was the response I felt, tinged with pride.


    Two minutes of hard boiling seemed to be the limit for the little burner, an admirable effort from one of the least of my creatures. I couldn¡¯t imagine pushing myself to the utter max in my old body for even half that long so I was pleased enough, even if the number seemed low. The slime did have the sheer mass of the pool to contend with as well so I didn''t expect it to boil the entire thing down. Now was time for more tests though. I¡¯d been hasty with my first test, one hot slime dumped in a stone cold pond would do little to heat it, so I''d have to start with something a touch more standardized.


    I moved to the floor above, filled with my other friction tests, and started to construct barrels. I had no idea what a good testing amount would be so I''d have to just go by the units I was given. Even though I''d tried to measure by gallons in the ship, it was an approximation judging by the size of the ship''s tank, reminding me of rv¡¯s I''d once worked on. However the closest to standard size I had was one slime worth in size, which measured out to one unit. If that same measurement applied to liquids I figured that would just have to do for me.


    In one barrel I dumped a single unit of sap, glad I had absorbed some earlier for the tests, then I added five into the next, ten to the third, twenty to the fourth, and finally, after enlarging the barrel enough to contain more, I added fifty. This seemed, to me, a good test pool for how long it would take a single slime to heat a liquid to steaming or boiling, so I''d know how many to add to a pool in order to make water. Then, starting five new timers, I set a slime in each barrel and started to wait. I wanted to rush off and start making the room I''d need to harvest the water but I couldn''t think of a good way to have the slimes report to me. I could plonk a slime down and have it call out to me as i worked if it saw steam rising from the barrel and i¡¯d pause the timer at each, but it wouldn¡¯t be able to tell me if the sap was boiling, and i didn¡¯t want to rest them on the edge of the barrel for fear of having them fall in and get boiled as well, or just spoil the test for adding in a new temperature variance.


    So, I sat and waited, until I remembered my blueprint ability. I could make the room simple, resembling a solar water collector survivalists used, a mushroom shape with the sap sitting in the ¡®stem¡¯ where the head would act to collect condensation, which would roll down and collect in a ring around the stem. However this idea seemed slow and inefficient. The stone would only be able to collect so much at a time, likely dripping back down in the boiling pool if condensation built up too quickly. I saved the idea as a backup, something simple that would work if a more elaborate plan didn¡¯t.


    It had been three minutes when I noticed the first barrel steaming slightly and I marked it in the stone of the barrel, though the water hadn¡¯t started to boil just yet, proving the slimes could generate heat at an idle.


    My next idea started with the collection system. While I wanted to keep it simple I knew staying too simple would lead to serious inefficiencies, so I started with the reliable tube system of my farms. This time I stacked them close and at a forty five degree angle downwards. I thought about it for a minute and went with a wheel design, a ten high stack of tubes surrounding a central pillar that would allow the steam to rise up into the tubes. The tubes would increase the surface area, allowing for more heat dissipation and giving more room for condensation to collect. This time though I made a y junction on the column, the short side leading off to the boiling chamber and the other leading straight down to a collection chamber.


    The plan seemed dead simple, steam goes up at an angle, condenses on the stone, then drips straight down. There shouldn¡¯t be any risk of cross contamination and it could be scaled up, either by increasing the size of the boiling chamber or by increasing the height and number of the tubes. All I would need now is an extra room for pressing more sap, not directly over the boiling chamber, as it would give an extra avenue of steam escape, but possibly off to the side. I could add pipes that ran from the sap collection chamber straight into the boiling chamber as well to speed that process along. I added an s-bend to the pipe so steam wouldn¡¯t easily escape back up the pipe. Though that did add another concern for me.


    I made new marks on the barrels, noting that the first had started to boil at seven minutes and the second had just started releasing steam. Steam was the problem. This would be a completely closed system and steam was well known for being a serious pressure problem. I had no way to test pressure tolerances on the stone room, nor any way to release excess pressure once it began to build up. All I''d currently made was a pressure bomb, and one of likely exceptional size. While setting off explosions would be a fantastic way to pass the time, and likely a spectacular view, it wouldn¡¯t really help me in my resource collection mission. So now I had to find a way to release pressure without just piping the excess to the surface and occasionally venting the room.


    I figured I could somewhat compensate for pressure irregularities, my moss didn¡¯t produce pressure until the doors blew off, so I had some kind of regulating abilities that made my dungeon livable. But it didn¡¯t mean I could just eat the pressure difference when I was actively making it worse. I could try having a slime absorb the atmosphere, and wondered for a moment if I''d start collecting units of steam, but decided that would be a last effort in my tests. Technically i wouldn¡¯t be over pressuring the room too much, steam would be condensing into water and I''d have a slime collecting that water as it fell, so I''d have a net negative in pressure. But I was bad enough at math not to try depending on that idea. Another idea was to make an emergency seal, just a plate of general metal connecting the room to floor three. If the pressure became too much it would blow the seal, rather than detonate the moon, and flood floor three with steam. Not an ideal solution but probably a safer bet than nothing.


    I sighed and started up new marks. forty minutes of thinking had achieved very little in terms of a safe way to harvest the water. I didn¡¯t even have a safe way to stop the boiling process, save for making some ramps that slimes could be ordered to climb if the seal broke open. I was just making doodles now, having decided to make the boiling room into another farm. It copied the top collection layer, having long tubes that I''d fill with moss and see if it could grow under water and give my new slimes something to do other than just sit and soak.


    Finally, after sitting and mentally marking off ideas that I thought would fail, I just decided to go with the seal and bank on the third floor being able to take the heat, should my water farm fail. I had half convinced myself it would be fine, it was a large enough space and it wouldn¡¯t entirely fill with steam. I made marks as the last barrel had started to boil and read each off. Seven minutes to boil for one unit, forty for five, a hundred and twenty for ten and each of the successive barrels had failed to boil, though twenty had started to steam up at the third hour. I¡¯d spent five hours planning and had a fairly good design and solid testing data. Now I''d just have to put it into practice.

 Ch 19 Eyes, meet Stomach.

    I was thinking about the elf as I worked, slowly digging out the chambers and pipes that should make my dreams of water a reality. While I had made some progress in communication with her some things would be very difficult to do. For one thing, learning a language was very difficult without hearing that language, or understanding the context of things. I could have her try to teach me the written elven language, as I understood her just fine, but that would tie me down beside her for who knows how many hours in a given day. While that could be fine, I was expecting the cavalry to show up eventually and I''d need to prepare more levels in the meantime to act as a defense for my core. So I''d need a way to better optimize my time spent working with her and working on myself.


    While the room took form I thought of a couple ways to learn that communication, or teach her, and my mind landed on flash cards. I could make small sheets of general metal and draw a picture on it with the name of the object under it in English. I¡¯d also leave a line for her to inscribe the elven word for the things I drew. It was an easy option that would get me the basics. After that would come sentence structuring and other rules that elven writing might entail, knowing English''s odd characteristics I was worried about what an ancient ruleset for such a language would require.


    I would also have to write out an alphabet, if i hadn¡¯t already, being sure to include upper and lowercase letters. Maybe some punctuation. I wondered if I''d be able to get her to speak English if I included things like pronunciation or emphasis in written words. I sighed, working on the oversized shafts that would connect the chambers, having decided that more room would counteract extra pressure buildup. A big annoyance with the water collector was the sheer size. It should have been built on the fourth or fifth floor where I''d be digging deeper, giving me much more room to work horizontally. I paused as I thought of height differences, remembering some old nursery rhyme about a fox. Maybe short children''s stories would be a good direction to go, something nice and easy to understand the context of the words.


    I paused my digging to scratch some things out on the walls. ¡°The little baby fox jumped over its brother.¡± I drew out a very rough picture of a baby fox, notably smaller than the others hoping over another as a big fox looked on. I looked at the bad drawing and sighed, I should have worked at artwork if I was intending to go into children''s story books. I scraped away the image and tried another. ¡°The small slime jumped over its brother.¡± Once again a small slime jumping a slightly bigger slime as a much larger one watched them. I decided to give them simple eyes to help with seeing the direction they looked and the direction they traveled. If I remember right, the story about the fox was one about a fox that dearly wanted to jump higher than the moon. It might have also gotten stuck there and become sad because none of its family was there to see its achievement, or something like that. It would be a good book as it would have many repeating and simple words while also showing different emotions that could easily be seen and understood.


    I tried another, grinning as I wrote out ¡®the slime and the hopper.¡¯ Another simple tale that would convey easy to understand emotions and words. Things like joy, pride, foolishness, maybe camaraderie and respect. This seemed like a good idea so I filed it away for later, after I was done with my building. I just hoped I wouldn''t have to make any arrows pointing from words to objects. That thought made me decide to add a couple pages to the end of my books just for pictures of the objects and the word that would describe it. Things like slime, moon, and rock would be simple enough. Siblings would be harder.


    With the thought of a new, simple, task I went back to my work with good energy, bulling through stone quickly and making sure I didn''t recklessly press beyond the boundary of my blueprint, only having to stop when I made the tunnel that would act as my emergency pressure release.


    I had chosen to make my water room in front of the head of the ¡®spider¡¯ that my third floor was planned to be, from there the emergency release point would connect to the room that would house the exit. I¡¯d have to make a fully general metal room, so no one would see a metal plate and poke through it in search of hidden goodies. It would risk killing everything in the boss room if it ever blew open but that risk seemed better than risking a full explosion of the whole water generator. I¡¯d just have to eat the loss for now. I had also thought of coating the entire water generator in general metal, possibly giving it more structural stability, but I didn''t have nearly enough stored to coat it. I bumped general metal farm higher on my priority list. Even if a farm would be inefficient it should provide much more than a couple groups munching on the second floor. Maybe some sort of trough system, have spiders break up the ore nodes so the ore would slide down a ramp and land in a trough that I''d have hoppers stationed in front of. From there a short ramp to allow slimes to go back and forth, collecting the processed ore without picking up a bunch or unprocessed ore. I nodded as I finished building the seal. Both the farm idea and the water generator should work.


    I moved back into the generator, settling in the middle of the sap collection area. I¡¯d spawned moss nodes as I built the submerged tubes, hopefully they¡¯d function under the sap and give my slimes a job to do. While they couldn¡¯t separate water from sap, an earlier test proved they could harvest moss without collecting the sap as well. With that i had one last thing to do before adding my ember slimes. My test proved that a single slime could make twenty units of sap simmer, even if it took hours to accomplish, so I''d need to find the volume of the room before throwing some of the boys into it. This was something I found hopeless. I was always a bad student at math and barely dragged myself through basic algebra, most of which I''d long forgotten. For now I could try adding in forty units of sap at a time, until I reached the max level I''d set for the boiling chamber. While that could work, even if it took much longer, I wasn''t sure I had the supply I''d need to fill the chamber.


    I cursed into the dark and moved to sit down and scratch on the stone. As much as I hated it, I''d need to at least give the math a try. ¡°Let¡¯s see, each tube is fifty meters long.¡± I didn¡¯t count the v-notch I put in the tubes for my moss nodes. ¡°And each slime is.¡± I sighed, having to summon a slime to measure it. ¡°So, twenty four centimeters in width. So it¡¯s fifty meters divided by twenty four centimeters.¡± I scratched out the numbers, deciding to multiply fifty by a hundred to get a centimeter measurement instead.


    ¡°Two hundred and eight plus a third, that¡¯s how many units of sap should be in each tube.¡± The tubes were stacked ten high, matching the above water condensation area. That didn¡¯t include the notches in the tubes, which would likely account for a good deal extra sap. I was now glad I had decided smaller would be better and made the chamber five meters across. Even so, I counted six hundred and fifty individual tubes. A bit of slow math later and I discovered I''d need over a hundred thousand units of sap, just to fill the tubes alone, that didn¡¯t account for the chamber they were connected to. If that was right I''d need three and a half thousand slimes just to make this farm work for me. Something had to be wrong here, I had to check my math again.


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    I wasn''t wrong, with six hundred and fifty tubes I''d need an outlandish amount of sap just to fill it all up. Even if I just filled up the bottom ten tubes I''d need thirteen and a half thousand units. I¡¯d only gotten a couple hundred from my moss squishing rock. But, I''d also need far fewer slimes to keep that amount of sap simmering, a quick check showed three hundred and thirty eight. Still a lot of slimes.


    My earlier optimism dashed into dejected annoyance, I tried to come up with a solution. I could build much smaller single slime farms, maybe just make a load of stills that would feed me a trickle of water rather than a rain shower but I didn''t know how well my idea would scale down. For now I could try out a single tube and see how well it worked, maybe eventually building up into a larger scale. Each of the tubes had been slanted upward, I had thought the tubes might have a chance to boil, thus making steam get trapped and decreasing my efficiency, so each could technically be filled individually and be left to cook.


    I frowned as I looked around me. I could also start up my slime experiment again and see if I could gain a water slime. If a fire slime made heat then a water slime might drip, thus cutting off this entire operation. It was very annoying to think I''d made something that could be rendered completely pointless but I had to sit back and accept it. It wasn¡¯t like it wouldn¡¯t have a point, i still needed water, and a water slime wasn¡¯t guaranteed, and I''d basically built a giant boiler. If I wanted to, I could likely figure out a way to pipe heat around my dungeon, or steam. The idea even reignited my earlier idea of a piston engine, though I still liked the idea of slimes powering things.


    Still thinking of uses for my overkill water generator I started to dump sap down one of the bottom holes. I¡¯d use it and at least see if the concept was a good one. I was puzzled that my moss made green sap for a moment, at least until the tube was full, when I started spawning slimes, six dropping down in front of me and waiting until I ordered them to patrol the tube. They¡¯d have to deal with bumping into each other for now but I didn''t have any other ideas. They¡¯d just slide up and down the slope in some Sisyphus-like task that might generate me some water.


    Then I thought of Sisyphus, the fellow that had to roll a boulder up a hill each day before it crashed down and he¡¯d have to do it again. It gave me an idea. While I wouldn''t be able to constantly fill up my squish chamber with moss, simply taking too much time and delivering too little for results to consume so much of my attention, I could have some monsters do something similar.


    I knelt down and scratched out a quick design. I¡¯d need to make new pipes and a new chamber but it Shouldn¡¯t overly affect the generator, or floor three. I¡¯d just add in some pipes from the new moss squishing design right into the old one. I cursed slightly, opening my blueprint instead of scratching on the floor. I¡¯d make it like old school grinders. A big wheel with a spindle through it, enough length off to either side so my spiders could get a decent hold on it. The spiders lacked fingers but they could use their pick arms to cradle the spindle and push the mill stone upwards. I had started the design at a forty five degree angle but that would likely be overkill, and way too heavy for my spiders to push along. So I dropped the angle down to a fifteen degree angle. If it was too little for my millstone to roll down with moss in the way then I''d just have to have spiders push it along. I mocked up a simple concept and frowned at it. As it was, it looked like the stone could get jammed easily, the tolerances were too tight, short stone walls meant to act as guides giving it around a millimeter of clearance on either side.


    I didn¡¯t want to overly separate the guides, risking the stone toppling over and giving my spiders a harder time. So I carved out channels in the guide walls, making them into half circles so moss sap, or crushed moss, could get pushed out of the way and allow the mill stone to pass a little more easily. I gave the millstone a higher clearance to the ceiling, figuring it could go over whatever wouldn¡¯t squish down or away, but added another set of retaining walls to either side. Another touch was making ridges down the length of the slope, long fingers that might act like gutters for sap, or just act as areas where moss could survive and regrow much more quickly. Seeing the ridges also made me rough up the stone on the trails that the spiders would walk along, hoping for better grip.


    Getting the new construction to line up, without interfering with the old construction or planned third floor rooms was a little annoying. I had to put it past the condensation area, then had to extend it further as I thought of a last necessity. Crushing the moss would inevitably lead to pulp which would cling to the stone and start to slowly accumulate. Now I needed a room that would separate the pulp so I wouldn''t end up with annoying blockages in the future. I could forgo the pulp elimination room for now but it would be a headache to add it in the future when everything was already set up. I was already having to build this because I lacked the foresight to do math before I started building my water generator. I wouldn¡¯t happily make the same mistake so soon after my last blunder.


    I had to sit and plot for now. I didn¡¯t have any mesh designs so that would be out for now, unless I wanted to try and make a million needle thin holes in a general metal sheet. I was also trying to avoid having metal in the design for fear of accidentally making poisonous water. I could also try incorporating my vine nodes.. In a dense enough bunch they could act as a natural filter that I could have a slime chew on after each millstone drop.


    I sighed as I thought of the drop. If i just had the stone drop without any kind of slow down area I''d just be building a battering ram. It seemed like a simple enough fix, add a flat section to the room and extend it out so the stone could roll to a stop with the moss acting as a buffer to help slow it down. I decided to add a flat section to the top of the ramp so I could have the spiders pause the mill should anything go wrong, or if I just needed to repair or adjust things.


    I sat back, trying to think of all the things this would need and what I had checked off that list. I had the stone, the ramp, places for the moss to grow back from, room for spiders to push the stone. Considering that I doubled the space so four spiders could push at once. I might need to have them make harnesses so four could push and four could pull, but that would require testing first. I¡¯d only build the ramp partially so I could test things. I had a stopping section on both ends, one to act as a buffer and another purely for stopping the mill.


    So I just needed a pipe and a filter. I was thinking I''d have to risk my low quality copper being good enough not to leach metals into the whole generator. The boiling process ought to leave anything unwanted behind as sludge, or so I thought. I was beginning to wish I had been a plumber in my previous life as I finished my design by adding a small chamber at the end of the ramp. I¡¯d add in a copper ramp that would have a ton of little holes. The size of it should allow for most of the sap to get through, even if a bunch of the holes got quickly clogged. Four slimes were enough to span the length of the new ramp so they could consume the pulp before the mill was reset. With that I added a funnel to a slime sized pipe that would go down to the generator''s sap collection room, deciding to drop in from the top of the room.


    All together this method would be a slow process but it should offer me a constant source of sap. I wasn¡¯t confident that it could keep up with a fully active generator but it might be able to keep the bottom one or two layers of tubes of the generator going. All I needed to do was get everything going, test some things then build it all out. I almost started on it until I felt one of my slimes alerting me. Only one of my slimes had orders like that so I sighed as I went to go and deal with the elf. I did have plans for her so this shouldn¡¯t be much of a setback.

 Ch 20 If a cog goes missing, do the gears keep turning?

    Etharious gazed down at his terminal, cup in hand, as he worked through the day''s reports. He was the commander for the scouts that traveled directly forward, a mid level position in the scout core. He had overall command of the directional sector he was assigned, overseeing hundreds of scouts, mapping their movements and ensuring no two scouts overlapped as they combed systems for ores and materials. In other words, he directed the tip of the spear that was their eternal flight.


    He wasn¡¯t perfect in his duties, but few would be with the sheer density of scouts and the complexity of the maps he had to make for each one. Some would make deep dives into unexplored space, enduring a couple weeks without work and pay so they could find themselves in an open sector that could be explored for months without a need to stop. Others would have to cover the closer systems being able to get to them, and thus get to work, sooner. This however came with the trade off of having shorter runs and confusing paths that had to be strictly adhered to.


    It was a complex job but he¡¯d made sure to train his subordinates well, often hand guiding them through the process he¡¯d spent two centuries mastering. However, as a flashing notice started on his screen, prompting him to set his tea down, he was reminded of the least enjoyable part of his duties.


    A missed check in was not often a thing to worry about, often times early check ins were more troublesome as it could mean forcing a scout to re-scan a system just to keep them on schedule, a thing they wouldn¡¯t be paid for so were loath to do, or forcing a re-mapping of their paths so they wouldn¡¯t inconvenience other scouts. Not every system was built equally so some would be little more than stars, while some would be enormous, having dozens of world size bodies that would need to be scanned, not to mention thousands of asteroids. So, late check-ins were often expected and scheduled for. If a scout needed an extra day to check on things in a system then so be it.


    But to be three days late for a check in started to raise alarms. The first would be expected, the second would raise some hairs but not be too worrisome, but a third would force a reaction, something no scout would risk as there could be severe penalties for causing a rescue force to be alerted and dispatched. So, knowing that, he pulled up the elfs file and started to read into it, hoping to find an explanation for this missed check in before he had to sound the alarm.


    ¡°One Miss Yalena. Forty three years old, first deep run, no notable mishaps during her training runs.¡± He scanned over the notes, seeing she went to the public scouting schools and self trained for space flight along with self trained eva suit maintenance and use. She was a dedicated and hard worker from the slums, dragging her family out of poverty through sheer will. He then checked on her ship, including equipment and provisions.


    ¡°That thing is older than I am.¡± He frowned as he noted the salvage title that had been upgraded to operational status, having gone through a refit at some point in the last forty years to outfit it with a slip space bubble generator and driver, navigational hardware, and a sensor suite. It had apparently been used by another scout who sold it for the capital needed to buy another, more comfortable, vessel. It was originally a Seed shuttle. A sturdy little craft built to shuttle people from ships or stations, capable of atmospheric landings. Tough, reliable, and simple to repair, along with being cheap, most flight schools would have a number of them on hand for training flights as, even at full acceleration, you¡¯d more likely kill everyone aboard than cripple the little vessel.


    Without the modifications for ftl and deep flight necessities, such as a water recycler, the ship wouldn¡¯t be much of a concern. As it stood, Yalena might just be floating out at her last jump with a busted drive, unable to communicate with her drive offline. He looked up the ship''s complement and her location prior to lost contact. She¡¯d made it to her destination, a system with a suspected ¡®super planet¡¯ that should be habitable, if requiring a powered suit to move on. She should have a weeks worth of oxygen, due to a manual recycler and heating element, aboard but he doubted a Seed ship would lose power so quickly so he didn¡¯t worry that she would die from lack of oxygen or freezing to death. She also had the option to land on the planet for heat and air, with her suit capable of scrubbing the worst the planet had to offer.


    He moved his hands and started looking through the maps, trying to pinpoint her exact location. It wasn¡¯t too hard to find, deep exploration missions weren¡¯t nearly as tangled as the short range missions. She¡¯d made it two jumps off her deep launch. He traced along other jump routes of other deep ranging missions until he found the closest scout.


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    Bringing up a message screen he started to type up the rescue mission. ¡°Poor girl.¡± He found the correct form and started to write it out. ¡°Compensating us is going to get expensive, I pray it was something well out of your control.¡± Her insurance should cover the lion''s share of the cost, but she¡¯d still be out thousands of credits and have a broken, or lost, ship.


    ¡®Felts,¡¯ he wrote ¡®scout in need of rescue, coordinates to follow. Mission is to commence immediately, pay already routed to your account. Any delay will be considered a violation of your contract and will result in the termination of said contract.¡¯ He thought about anything else that needed to be said, already having attached the coordinates to the end of the message along with an image of the ship and the frequencies it should be transmitting on. Ftl messages were difficult to send and had to be kept minimal to ensure the small slipspace bubble wouldn¡¯t be expanded overly much. Most deep range messages were little more than confirmation of arrival and departure, with the scouts leaving behind probes that prospectors would collect on arriving in the system. Anything more complex was impossible for small ships using minimal drives.


    He decided to add in ¡®suspect drive disabled¡¯, so Felts would scout the system for an adrift craft first before doing deeper scans on the surfaces of the planets and moons in the system. It should be a quick enough mission, the little craft was bright orange and had the sensor profile of a dwarven battle station. Unless it had been utterly annihilated then it should be found quickly enough, even on the surface of a planet. He marked the message to be sent but decided to dive into Felts profile beforehand, just to be sure he wasn¡¯t giving an important mission to a layabout.


    Felts had an acceptable record. Fifty years working for the scouting core, with only a few altercations per return to station, something hardly of note as any spacer gone for so long every mission was bound to be ¡®energetic¡¯ upon return. His record for scouting was clean enough, not as thorough as Etharious would like but hovering just between standard and sub standard. He¡¯d apparently been better in his earlier decades but had trended downwards, making Etharious put a note in his file recommending Felts for a long vacation to bring his productivity back up. His ship was something to note though, an old ¡®Mist¡¯ freighter. A small ship for a freighter, they were better used for smuggling or transporting high value low volume cargo. A good choice for a scout, in his mind, as the small cargo bay could easily be repurposed for multiple things, a powerful sensor suite, food reconstructor, and quarters were what came to mind, though other things could be useful as well.


    It seemed to him that Felts should do a good job, though he did mark Felts¡¯s ship for inspection when they came in. He was already planning to send Felts on a vacation, might as well see what was under the hood of his ship, giving him a chance to offer some advice from a more senior scout on his vessel''s loadout.


    Message prepped to send he had other duties to attend to for the lost scout. First to contact the insurer and make sure she wouldn¡¯t be overly nailed when she came back in. It wasn¡¯t technically his duty but he had made himself a reputation as a thoughtful commander, more flexible than most and caring for those subordinates under his command. It wasn¡¯t a reputation made for climbing the ranks but it did keep his people productive, and out of most trouble, so he maintained it.


    He checked over the insurance contract and found it fairly agreeable, a surprise to him as Yalena was a young scout. He¡¯d expected something much more predatory for the girl''s first insurer, simply grabbing the cheapest option so she could get out and make money as quickly as possible. She¡¯d have a pretty bad debt when she came back but nothing she¡¯d fail to climb out of. Especially with a ship replacement policy, she¡¯d likely be better off for it.


    Having his curiosity itched he decided to dive deeper into Yalenas records, combing through them to better understand her. She didn¡¯t get high marks in studies, but that was more the educator''s fault. Few who endured free education would come out as extraordinary students. But she¡¯d also acquired some tutors as well, paid for by her mother. While those didn¡¯t provide any measurable education they did show a girl who¡¯d plotted her path early and stuck to it diligently. Even her ship was becoming more of a surprise.


    The shuttle had been owned by a dedicated short range scout, and heavily modified by him. Inspections reported a good sensor suite, fantastic water recycling, and little else. The ship was built with little comfort in mind only offering maximum profits. It also had been maintained by a ship yard rather than the pilot, another surprise. It wasn¡¯t a cheap thing to have done but the short range pilot had made it work rather well. His down time was minimal allowing him to make the most out of his shorter time away from the station.


    That raised an odd alarm bell in Etharious¡¯s mind. A ship this well maintained, even if it was old and somewhat less fit for the job, should not have broken down so early in the girls career. A quick check of the drive manufacturer and he was sure of it. Something would have had to go badly wrong to put this ship out of action. Putting aside pilot error, something he didn¡¯t expect out of someone so obviously devoted to her education, he had to plan for the worst. Before he composed another letter he made one last addition to The message to felts, deciding to remove all punctuation and spacing in the words, even though it made the elegant text into a horrible parody, so the data chunk would be as small, and fast, as possible. ¡®Exercise caution, no pre-existing conditions found.¡¯


    Sending the emergency communication to felts he turned to his final duty here, with a heavy heart, this time sending a message to the scouts High commander. He couldn¡¯t take this duty from him, nor did he want to. He wrote out a small message including his findings on Yalena and her ship, and recommended he be prepared to write a black letter to her mother. It was the worst part of the job for any of them, but he wouldn¡¯t allow this to be shirked. He was part of the scout core, and the scouts always took care of each other. No one else could.

 Ch 21 Can a situation have gravity off planet?

    Sixty three hours later, aboard the ¡®Long Winded¡¯.


    Felts sat at the control center of his ship, reading through the sensor reports of the previous day. He¡¯d been unlucky so far on his mission, finding only basic ores with only trace amounts of exotic, profitable, materials interspersed throughout the crusts of the dead worlds he¡¯d been searching. It wasn¡¯t all bad, he had months yet to search around for more profitable systems and fill the small cargo space he¡¯d reserved for a self appointed bonus.


    It wasn¡¯t against the rules for scouts to do a little mining here and there, but it was a little looked down on as mining could easily distract a scout from their normal duties and ruin their schedule. He¡¯d managed to strike a fine balance between sloppy scouting and self enrichment, so long as he did his job well enough he wouldn¡¯t be getting any nagging from the higher ups. And he¡¯d be able to put more and more away to buy a better vessel, perhaps something big enough for a dedicated small craft that would allow him to mine while he scanned the system.


    That was the dream for most scouts, a big ship, a small crew, and high profit margins, unless you were determined to go into command, which would require far too much effort for him. Learning each scouting position, going to a command school, decades or centuries of experience, all to land somewhere squarely mediocre doing an unforgiving job that would eat every spare minute of your day and ask for more.


    No, command was for the high born, not for a low class elf like himself. He¡¯d content himself with an achievable goal, like gaining a large ship and renting it out so he could sit at home just letting funds flow back to him. He¡¯d never be a fleet master like some, leasing out ships to desperate pilots, but having a ship or two was plenty within reason.


    Just as he was spending imaginary credits on future dreams he was interrupted. A message from scout command blinked onto his display, wiping away the disappointing survey and filling it with a full message. Accidentally getting an affirmative, or negative, message wasn¡¯t unheard of, shooting messages through slipspace wasn¡¯t always accurate with so many scouts and messages, so the command message didn¡¯t bother him. He was already sitting up, ready to send a ¡®confirm command¡¯ message back, so the poor sap waiting for his message might be able to move some time in the next week, when he noticed the size of the command message.


    Any deep range scout could tell you what a message contained just by reading the size of the data, as each message was usually kept minimal, each bit of data enlarging the bubble and slowing the speed of transmission. A message this size was clearly more than a yes or no response.


    Curious, and still figuring he wasn¡¯t meant to be the recipient, he opened it and sighed as he read his name at the start of the message. His run just died in its infancy, barely being a couple weeks out. He was already thinking some relative had passed and he¡¯d be expected to return and spend a week or two grieving but the next words put a pause on that. It was annoying to make out the sloppy structure, taking time to parse as someone had to be saving energy by cutting down on grammar. ¡°Scout in need of rescue?¡± He sat up straighter, his earlier thoughts vanishing as he took to reading the message with more seriousness. Despite the time it took to make out, he read the message with all the seriousness it deserved.


    He punched in the coordinates as soon as he finished the message, then started to bring his ship about to make for the outer reaches of the system. He could start his jump there but the bubble would need to be enlarged this deep in the star''s gravity well. A day spent burning now would save him another three in slip space.


    He initialized a ship wide systems check, watching the reports come in and noting them down. His survey gear had been hiccupping recently and he marked it for repair while in slipspace, the report showing a destabilization in the energy input. He¡¯d been running the survey equipment hard and had probably damaged the fuse array again. He¡¯d kept telling himself he''d upgrade the survey gear, and fuse array, but other things always cropped up and the small array had always been reliable, even if it ate fuses like candy. Fuses were cheap enough and the gear was good, if lacking in reach and power. Now that it presented an actual problem he would dedicate some of his savings to putting a proper system in rather than using his last ship''s survey gear.


    He could feel the ship as it started its maneuver, turning and burning for an escape vector. His inertial dampeners were in effect but the Long Winded was a lean ship, built for stealth and escape over passenger comfort. It was something he enjoyed about the ship as she was quick for her size, built to outpace pirates or customs. Not that he¡¯d ever needed her to do that, but being able to get around a system in a hurry helped him with his small mining operations. She even had defensive lasers dotting the hull, multi directional beam weapons designed to intercept missiles or torpedoes. He¡¯d considered selling them but found they worked well enough as drills without adding much weight.


    All systems cleared, and the maneuvering burn mostly finished, he stood up and slowly made his way out of the command center. ¡°Use caution.¡± He thought as he made his way into the crew quarters. They had mentioned a suspected drive failure then added use caution. That probably meant they suspected something other than pilot error or a manufacturing defect. He had to guess that it meant something in the system could be a threat.


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    He hauled out the spare e.v.a. Suit from the ¡®guest¡¯ quarters and started to lug it towards the airlock in the cargo compartment. ¡°Gotta be some kind of stellar hazard, something they didn¡¯t pick up in their observations of the system.¡± He grunted as he hefted the suit across the deck. The cargo bay might not have been big but even a short distance dragging the suit was a difficult task. Finally he set the suit beside the inner door of the airlock and began using magnetic mounts to secure the suit in place. If he dropped out of slipspace and had to maneuver hard he didn¡¯t want the suit bouncing around the bay and ruining the crush layer.


    Standing back and giving the suit a solid kick he was sure it wouldn¡¯t shift any time soon. The suit had a small med pack on it so he wouldn¡¯t need to bring anything else, and if the elf needing rescue needed more than the small med pack could provide then they wouldn¡¯t likely be able to get in the suit anyways. He¡¯d have to think up another solution on the spot. Hopefully the ships battery held out long enough for him to arrive so he could query the elf on their status, possibly prepping more supplies before he made an attempt at rescue.


    He mentally ran down a check list of everything he¡¯d need for this. He had the spare suit, in case theirs was damaged, he had the med pack, his systems would be good to go on arrival, and he¡¯d be prepared for a rough flight if he had to do some maneuvering. His final check was to go over possible threats on arrival. Least likely was a hostile presence. Pirates wouldn¡¯t venture so far out, and few would bother scouts as there wouldn¡¯t be any profit in it. Let alone most scouts had plenty of evasion skills and would be difficult to pin down and destroy, let alone capture. Even if there were pirates, scout ships had excellent sensors so it would be hard to imagine a pirate getting the jump on any of them. Let alone getting the jump on them and disabling, or destroying, them before they could enter slip space or fire off a distress message.


    Hostile natives were out for practically all the same reasons, and more. Natives capable of in-system flight would simply be too far behind in technology to out pace or out maneuver a scout ship. Hell, even blind drunk he couldn¡¯t imagine losing a race against a low tech species. Beyond that, there hadn¡¯t been an addition to the higher races in centuries, this scout would have to have god like luck to stumble onto one while on a deep range mission.


    That left a hostile environment. As he¡¯d thought earlier, long range observers were just that, observers. No one had the tech to do deep range scans at faster than light speeds so all they had was what they could observe, usually making educated guesses on what a system might contain based on observed rotational anomalies and images. Most guesses were pretty accurate, as if they said a system had gas giants you¡¯d likely find gas giants, same for planets or empty systems. The inaccuracies mostly came in the form of number, size, or density of planets, or other bodies, in the system. So jumping into a dangerous system wasn¡¯t unheard of.


    The most likely explanation, in his mind, was that the elf had jumped in a little too close and found themselves in a younger system, a place with more debris floating about that would make navigation impossible. Probably jumped right into a field of debris that slammed the ship like railgun darts before they could get out of there. So he had to hope they¡¯d had the time to burn out of danger and settle somewhere on the outskirts of the system where he could find them. Otherwise he¡¯d be scanning for ship confetti in a newborn system full of interfering debris. He hoped that wouldn¡¯t be the case but he wouldn¡¯t bet on hope.


    His mind made up he moved to the command center and adjusted his jump coordinates, shifting the exit point to one further from the system. He should come out in line with the other elfs travel path so he¡¯d just have to burn towards the star and possibly find the elfs exit point. If everything went well he¡¯d find a half broken ship in high orbit just outside of the Oort cloud. If they went poorly he¡¯d find a cloud of refined metals that he could mark as the missing ship. Then all he¡¯d have to do is transmit a ¡®failed¡¯ message to indicate the elf as unrecoverable or dead.


    He¡¯d had to send that message before, he¡¯d been scouting long enough to have been called up for rescue ops, three times to be exact. The second time had been an unfortunate maintenance error in that elfs drive system. The bubble it produced was unstable and failed on exit. All he¡¯d found was a field of needle-like particles. It was an ever present fear for anyone using old ships, or suspect drives. To have the bubble fail and collapse, crushing down at faster than light speeds and pushing the contents out of pin sized holes at the front of the bubble as it slammed into real space.


    At his controls he had little to do, not caring to bring back up the survey reports, so he tried to recall the meeting before the deep range launch. It was more of a tradition than a necessity, pulling all the deep range pilots into a meeting to give them their orders. It did give everyone the chance to meet each other, but that didn¡¯t often prove useful. This time it might.


    He looked at the coordinates and thought about the elf that was assigned the systems ¡®forward¡¯ of him. It was a young elf, he thought her name started with a ¡®y¡¯ but wasn¡¯t sure. Recalling the meeting he tried to focus on what her ship was. Small, pear shaped. ¡°Oh.¡± Now he¡¯d remembered, it was an odd enough choice for any deep range pilot as its size would have been painfully cramped for such a long mission. It was an old seed shuttle, something he was familiar with as he¡¯d tormented his instructors by bouncing the one he was assigned off of every surface available, or that was how they told it.


    The seed shuttles were tough little things and damn hard to put down. Even the old rust bucket he¡¯d flown had taken the collisions he¡¯d had like it was used to it. As beaten up as that ship was he hadn¡¯t managed to cripple it. With that in mind he let a little hope creep into his mind. He¡¯d bet on a seed shuttle living through a battleship''s broadside, let alone a cloud of rocks.


    With a little more determination than before he leaned forward and started to slow charge his slip bubble generator, getting the drive ready to send a message. It would be small, barely more than a single bit. He didn¡¯t want to waste time charging the drive up for a proper confirmation, and didn¡¯t want the message to be slowed by bloat. Command wouldn¡¯t have time to doubt him. A single ping would be confirmation enough that he¡¯d received his orders and would be en-route.


    With that, all he could do was sit back and go back over his checks, nerves making him worried that something might go wrong with his ship before he could help. His ship didn¡¯t have a drive strong enough to pass on a rescue message and it could be days before command could get another message  to the next closest scout.


    He hadn¡¯t felt his nerves spike like this since the last rescue op he¡¯d done, the third. He¡¯d come into the system expecting the worst, just like the second time. He certainly hadn¡¯t expected to find a greenhorn who¡¯d managed to crash into an asteroid with a rented junker, though he was relieved. Hopefully this time would be the same and he¡¯d just find the elf with her ship ass end up on a moon because she hadn¡¯t accounted for gravity when she started her burn.

 Ch 22. A face only a mother could love, and Im glad to be the mother.

    I was standing on my fourth floor and smiling. Progress had been made on all fronts, everything was going swimmingly and I was in a fantastic mood.


    I¡¯d spent hours working by hand, something I now found almost therapeutic, and had finally managed most of my plans. The water generator was still a bust, I just didn¡¯t have the sap generation I''d need to get it fully operational. But I could maintain the first tube and that was a major plus. Sadly, a lot of the steam was wasted as it would condense throughout the boiling chamber and fall back into it, but I was still gaining a steady unit per hour of operation, give or take. I¡¯d be able to keep my elf alive.


    The water generator had also given me some new information on my moss. It grew while submerged, more than that it grew faster. I did some tests and estimated that it grew half again as fast while submerged in sap. That offered some new options for my farms. If I made a new generator with multiple sap harvesting ramps I''d be able to run farming tubes off of the output pipe and have higher output farms. Granted I probably wouldn¡¯t be able to make them overly long or they¡¯d just take too long to fill and might consume some of the sap that was used to speed their growth. It would be something I''d have to figure out later.


    Thinking of the elf I''d even made progress there. Sadly, she¡¯d dressed by the time I got to her but it was a small price to pay to keep her comfortable. She¡¯d taken to the provided children''s stories and flash cards with enthusiasm, though I figured she was just glad to be doing something other than watching moss grow and be eaten. She had taken to the English language very well, slowly piecing together words until she¡¯d managed to write out, and understand, some of them. I¡¯d even prompted her to share her name. Yalena.


    Her name sounded pretty old school to me, making me think of my grandparents, but it did feel good to know it. I¡¯d even spelled out her name for her, then again in cursive because she actually seemed offended to see it in such plain text. She became quite interested in English then, asking if I''d invented it as simple lettering at first and slowly improved its artistic qualities. Honestly I didn''t know how to respond to that, as I''d not been the one to invent it in any form. I wasn¡¯t even that good at cursive, but I did my best to fill out a cursive alphabet just to give her something else to practice and fill out her days. However, without an answer to her question I just left it unanswered.


    Something I didn''t expect to come out of our little education session was her asking if I''d named myself. It was not something I was ready to answer as I didn''t think John the dungeon would go over well. It seemed too simple and too human and I didn¡¯t want anyone getting any ideas of my origins, as resurrected or reincarnated held a lot of uncomfortable insinuations. I didn¡¯t want these people to think I was a second coming when I was just some truck driver jammed here to get over his own death. So I remade my simple three floor map, three lines with the third having the skull and cross bones. To that I added a thin line at the top and a small elf holding a gun in one hand and a chisel in the other. I¡¯d have Yalena name me.


    Her reaction to that was a bit odd. She¡¯d gotten a glazed look to her eyes and looked a bit lost for a while before she came back to herself and nodded. She didn¡¯t ask any more questions after that so I left her to it. She had a new objective, name me, and studying to do, so I wouldn''t bother her more. I also had work to get done and was itching to get to it.


    The sap mill went smoothly, which I attested to my simple design, and worked fairly well. The stone went down without building too much speed but the area I''d planned out for the slowing zone just wasn¡¯t enough. So I added an incline instead of a flat zone. The stone would roll down, building up speed and squishing a good bit of the moss then roll up to squish more, spending its momentum, before rolling back down and settling. It did take eight spiders to pull up, though not for a lack of strength. My spiders were surprisingly strong and could move the stone, they just lacked grip, so four more sharing the load allowed them to haul the stone up. The upward rolling had an added bonus of crushing what moss had been overrun and I considered it an overall success.


    My filter was also working well. It caught almost all the pulp that was generated, though I had to abandon the end chamber idea. I¡¯d had to make the filter run along the lower portion of my ramp and incline, setting it a few centimeters lower than the stone floor. The mill stone had enough room on either side so it wouldn¡¯t push in or bend my filter and I''d added a couple slime sized holes in the retention walls so the slimes could slide out and consume the pulp while the stone was hauled back to the top. A couple orders for the slimes to alert me if the filter started to sag, or failed to drain the sap meant I could let it operate independently. My water generator was happily hands free and generating enough sap to keep the operational boiler tube topped up and slowly start filling the other bottom tubes.


    My final addition to my dungeon was a metal farm. It was as simple as I had planned, though I had made an addition. At the top I added general mineral and copper ore in equal measures, placed on the ceiling so they grew downwards. The spiders were placed below it and it was all contained in a single long room. The final, new, addition was thick general metal grates that wouldn¡¯t allow anything wider than a thumb to get through. The spiders would first break off chunks of ore that would land on the grates then they would focus on the chunks, breaking them down until they could fall through the gaps and slide down to the trough I''d built just a few meters below. I¡¯d first thought to make the trough wider than necessary, so I could collect ore if I ever felt the need to, but that proved to be a mistake as the ore piled up well away from the hoppers and built up to the grates without allowing any processing. So I had to lower the entire room and lengthen the ramp so it would bunch up closer to my hoppers and give more space for the pile to rise before it clogged the grates.


    From there I had to make a couple additions. First was a line of slimes, leading up to the spider chamber, that would start wobbling if the pile reached a level I marked, alerting the spiders so they¡¯d stop breaking up ore and allow my hoppers to work through some of the build up. I¡¯d also added a retention wall, short enough that the hoppers could get their heads over it and get at the ore. It also helped avoid ore dropping down and bouncing over into the processed metal ramp. I also added pillars that the hoppers could slot between, looking like cattle at a feeding trough. All of it was built to keep the ore and hoppers in place so I''d end up with processed metals rather than a huge amount of ore.


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    The final part was the processed metal ramp. At first I''d envisioned a V shaped ramp that would funnel all the metal into a singular point and allow a single slime to collect it, however that proved a poor design as dust and small chunks of ore would make it past the hoppers and build up in the corners, slowing down and jamming the funnel. So I went with another flat and wide ramp that a couple slimes would patrol and collect from, needing more than one as a single slime just couldn¡¯t keep up with production and ore leakage.


    As it stood the farm was an effective processing plant that generated about two hundred units of metal per hour, one of copper and another of general metal, alongside an extra twenty units of mixed ore as it was hardly perfect. I also had the entire farm stop every fifth rotation, a rotation being the slimes alerting the spiders, so that slimes could come out and clear the entire farm of dust. I was surprised at the sheer amount of dust building up but with the spiders hammering away and the hoppers being wildly messy eaters, dust built up quickly and I didn''t want jams that I''d have to personally clear. So I took the hit to productivity and had everything cleaned up on a regular basis. I had to wonder if facilities in my old world had to deal with dust as regularly as I did.


    So. I had water, I had ore, I had metal, I had sap and I had a fourth level just starting. I was feeling great and planned to move my core down shortly, I just wanted to set up the spawns on the third floor and I''d be ready.


    I moved back up to my third floor, letting slimes and spiders continue their work to expand my fourth floor, and stood in the entrance chamber. My idea of a foreman and pack leader setup had worked pretty well. The ¡®legs¡¯ of my spider floor were a little uneven in their slight downward slope, some pitching down slightly more than others, but I felt that it added a touch of character to the level and would keep things from feeling too artificial. The moss had been placed, all nodes sitting on a rough hewn ceiling that added a bit of texture to the tunnels that would lead to the loot rooms. The loot rooms themselves were fairly well mined without much variation on how level the rooms were. And the ambush rooms worked well, my tests with the spiders making doorways that looked like collapsed tunnel entrances but had exposed silk strands. Anyone looking at it would notice the silk acting as a mortar and should immediately become suspicious of them.


    I decided to start above it, moving up to start digging out the monster spawning room and its accompanying tunnels. I had to move one of my slime pools, extending the pause I''d put on my slime mutation efforts, but I couldn''t just have my boys jiggling down the same ramp delvers would use. I¡¯d start up slime mutations again once I''d moved my orb down a level.


    I dug out enough room to add in the spawners, including my ramp bug spawner. It was an interesting spawner. My hoppers got a crack in the wall, my slimes got a pool, and my spiders got egg sacks. The ramp bug spawner required nearly five meters in all directions just to fit and looked like a collection of chitinous black cones. I almost wept for the poor thing that had to spit these out as they were spiky as all hell, a spiral of sharp spines trailing down the length of the egg and ending in a bird''s nest of upward facing spikes. I hoped, for the poor mothers sake, that the eggs came out nest end first. The eggs were also bunched together, a large egg at the center and more following in a spiral that ended with an egg about as large as my fist, the largest being nearly three feet high and about a foot and a half wide at the base.


    Curiosity burning at me I decided to spawn one and sat back to watch. The central egg shook, slowly at first then gaining energy until a crack split it down the middle, and out slithered something curious. It reminded me of a bee larva, pale and compact in its egg. It moved over the other spiked eggs with long, unsteady legs, until its wedged head reared up and it took its first breath. It wasted no time, starting to consume its egg as my spiders did, growing in size and deepening in color until it became alarmingly large. I started to widen the spawning chamber in a slight panic, not wanting my first ramp bug to crush itself in its attempt to spawn. My quick fix proved necessary as it grew to its full size, finally giving me a break from my frantic digging.


    It was an awesome sight to behold as I roamed around, taking it in. It stood at, and I measured to be sure, two point six meters in height, eight and a half feet, and one point seven meters in width. The darn thing was near as wide as a person was tall. And that was just at rest, I was sure it could stand a little taller, though I didn''t have the space to test it.


    The thing was fairly intimidating looking, the head was simple, a circular head that was wedge shaped with two rounded triangular chinks to allow its eyes to see past its own skull, though as it blinked plates came down to cover those exposed sections. Its build was like that of a thick ant, a big torso and wide neck holding up its hefty head, and triangular spikes running down its back in two rows. The thorax was nearly as wide as its head, sporting rings of conical spikes that seemed more for planting its body in place rather than for warding off predators. The legs however were much more vicious looking. The segments connecting the legs were thick, easily able to support the weight of its body, and connected to shins like hardened plates that looked more akin to knightly greaves, the outer portion of the plated leg coming up in a sharp triangle nearly a foot long. The feet of the ramp bug looked like plated boots, four wide ¡®toes¡¯ coming away from the ankle joint and being rounded. If it wasn¡¯t for the shin section ending in four wickedly sharp spikes, akin to a logger''s climbing spikes, I''d say it was the least deadly part of the bug. The six legs flexed as the bug adjusted itself, pressing into the ceiling and walls. A sudden influx of feeling from the bug had me stop gawking and get back to work, a strong sensation of confusion and fear coming from it. Apparently it was feeling claustrophobic.


    ¡°I apologize little one, I''ll clear the way quickly.¡± I grinned as I called it little one, then set quickly to digging a fitting tunnel to the first trap room. The feelings I was receiving from the bug relaxed, apparently calmed by my words. ¡°That¡¯s right buddy, I''m here, don¡¯t you worry.¡± I could only imagine the thoughts running through its mind, being spawned into a room barely big enough to contain it. I wouldn¡¯t wish that on anyone.


    I worked quickly, pushing myself to dig hard so I could get my poor bug into a more fitting room. I broke through quickly, then widened my tunnel so the ramp bug could move through it. Then it surprised me. The ramp bug, at my command, surged through the tunnel with a speed that was stunning for a creature of its size. It was faster than my spiders, creatures much smaller than it was. When it finally dropped into the room, with more grace than I was expecting, it stretched itself out, easily reaching eleven feet in height, nearly three and a half meters.


    At nearly fifteen meters long I might have to expand the trap rooms a little so they could maneuver. Or did I? The ramp bugs were meant to be the hammer of my trap. The trap room shouldn¡¯t be hard to defeat if it was discovered and dealt with. Limiting their movement would give delvers an advantage, a prize for discovering the trap and defeating it before it was sprung on them. It was a bit rough to make my spawns sitting ducks but I had to balance rewards and punishments. If they found the trap then they should win, simple as that.


    I took one last look at my ramp bug, the burgundy horror that it was, and smiled. I liked my new monster and would enjoy adding it into the dungeon as a mainstay. Speed and agility tests could wait for now, I needed to expand my spawning chamber and add in tunnels then have commanders set up so spawns could be readied and ordered into place. The work never ended and I couldn''t be happier for it.

 Ch 23. Less mystic cultivation.

    I had finally finished the third floor spawning chamber and connecting tunnels, happily watching as my commander slimes ordered each new spawn into position. The tunnels were a little more expanded than I had first planned for, widening them so my ramp bugs could comfortably make their way to the trap rooms, and connected loot rooms. I was looking at the layout and felt a little disappointed that I didn''t have the room to give the spawning chamber an artistic flare, as the overhead area reminded me of wasps that would capture tarantulas and use them as hosts for their eggs. It would have been a nice addition but I''d just have to stick to a more utilitarian design.


    For the drop down areas I''d also expanded small rooms so I could have spare monsters sit above the holes. Spiders and hoppers chittering away at delvers that beat the trap ought to keep them at bay, with the monsters above matching those below in force. Any delver foolish enough to make the attempt would have to climb up the hole and face down the monsters alone until their companions could join them. Even if they won the fight, a ramp bug would have spawned soon after the trap room was defeated and would easily block the way until more monsters were spawned, and others could be called up from other drop down rooms. The delvers would find themselves beset on both sides by monsters uninhibited by my commands and in terribly cramped conditions that would play well with my monsters abilities. I could already imagine a swarm of hoppers surging down the tunnels like a bullet to slam into the interlopers. To further compound the delver''s disadvantages I''d not placed any flora nodes in the tunnels so my monsters would be covered in complete darkness.


    It was a brutal design but the delvers needed to learn that, despite my fair appearance, I was a dungeon and ultimately would put them down like rats if they went poking around where they shouldn¡¯t. With the third level completed, nodes placed and monsters being spawned and moved into position I finally had time to move on to more interesting things. The fourth level had begun and I was excited to see its bounty.


    I moved down to the fourth level and quickly started to prepare it for the move. Stone was consumed and I moved past the drop tunnel, heading deeper below the third level in a downward angle. It was customary at this point to hide my core behind each level''s entrance and I didn''t feel a need to change things up. All I did was to dig a slime sized pipe about a hundred meters from the main chamber before digging out a space for my orb. I¡¯d consider adding space for defenders in the future but I wasn''t feeling the crunch at this moment. The third level should keep anyone distracted long enough for me to get my defenses in order should others start to show up.


    Everything ready, I selected the center of the room and initiated the move. The vertigo hit me and I had to endure it for a few seconds but it passed as quickly as last time and I was left standing in a room with my core gently illuminating the roughly hewn walls in a green glow.


    Seeing my new information tab was a good feeling, level four felt like a real accomplishment, but I was starting to feel an odd sensation. I felt tired. Or not quite tired in the sense that I was sleep deprived but maybe physically strained. It was like I''d worked for a good while and just felt drained. I still had energy but it was muted now by the new sensation and I couldn''t quite pin it down. It didn¡¯t feel like something sleep would fix, or that odd meditation I''d sometimes done. Maybe strain was just catching up with me, I''d already expanded more on my third level than I had on my first and second so it could be a physical limitation for dungeons to keep them from growing out of control. Or it could just be growing aches taking a strange form. For now I couldn''t do anything and didn¡¯t want to stop so I''d endure and see just how this new feeling would progress.


    For now, I had new monsters, now resources, and a new floor to clear and fill. So I moved back to the slowly expanding chamber and brought up my options, eager to have new toys to play with.


    Spawners available.


    Slime pool: 1


    Cave hopper:1


    Cave spider clutch:1


    Ramp bug: 1


    Core accumulator:1


    Golem core spawner:


    A golem core spawner spawns golem cores that accumulate material to form their bodies.


    Cores may also be placed within a suitable body.


    Cores may also accumulate to form larger golems.


    Now this was finally something closer to the fantasy I was looking for. Sure, my slimes, and the ember slimes, were something straight out of a video game but not entirely outside the realm of possibility, considering jellyfish. But a golem is just straight up magic rocks shifting around and breaking shit. And if the material accumulation worked how I hoped it did, I''d be able to make a lot of variations, some supremely tough or fast. This was completely amazing in my mind. The information on them was very bare bones but I figured that was because of their variability. Put a core on sand, you get a sand golem, magma and a magma golem, metal and a metal golem. I¡¯d have to learn more about them myself by exposing them to materials and forming them. I might also be able to get more information on them once I''ve actually spawned one.


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    I managed to push back my excitement, really having to keep myself from just popping one down and letting it spawn away, and moved on to my nodes.


    Nodes available for spawning:


    Glowmoss: 5 per cycle.


    Glowshroom: 4 per cycle.


    Creeping Crone: 3 per cycle.


    Stone Wheat: 2 per cycle.


    Stone wheat is a wheat like plant capable of growing, and thriving, on bare stone, commonly found on mountains. The berries are often considered as tough as the stone it''s grown on, and the bread made from it marginally less so. Produces oxygen.


    General mineral: 4 per cycle.


    Copper ore: 3 per cycle.


    Iron ore: 2 per cycle.


    Appears as an orange dusted stone that, when refined, produces raw iron.


    Interesting choices for my nodes as well. I finally had a food source for my elf, if apparently a bit tough, and iron. It was a good addition to my metals but I already knew I wouldn''t be making any steel any time soon but even cast iron would be good for some things. At least I could make something my elf could cook on. If I could refine it into something a bit more useful than just cast iron then I might even be able to make armor or weapons for my spawns. Chainmail would be a neat addition and could add to their toughness or appearance. Hell, just giving one a big metal club could make them pretty dangerous.


    Thinking about uses for my new nodes did give me an idea for floor four. I wanted to make more use out of my ramp bugs and I''d just gotten some things that might make their presence make sense. They were elephant sized, though certainly longer, and would fit right into the large floor I was planning to make. Throw in golems alongside them and you¡¯ve got a makeshift cow and herder. Add in the wheat and you¡¯ve got crops. So I could make the entire floor something of an underground farmland with golems and ramp bugs spaced around here and there. Throw in some iron nodes, more near the farm houses I was now planning, and a delver might just have something to explore and a reason to explore it. The only things I was missing were sunlight and a big river.


    I sat down and thought more. Big fields of wheat were a little silly and wouldn¡¯t work too well. The golems and bugs would be too stationary and easy to just bypass, or even lure away so others might mine, or reap, what they wanted. I had to sit back and think about it differently. Instead of houses I could do cave homes, big pockets in the chamber walls that could fit the rock boys and their pet bugs. I¡¯d break up the terrain then, make the floor uneven and hilly, so vision wouldn¡¯t be perfect and delvers would need to move slowly. To the hills I''d add my ore nodes, more terrain breakup, and place wheat in patches here and there so it would look more like a mountainside with sparse foliage.


    With that idea I could have the golems walk the ramp bugs around the floor to collect the wheat, maybe I could even get the ramp bugs to eat moss so it would look like they were being grazed. I was wondering now if i could make the entire floor out of wheat based golems, or if i¡¯d have to go with more solid materials. I really needed to test them out. I had imagined great hulking boulder boys but they could also end up as piles of pebbles.


    However the golems ended up i liked my idea for the floors design, it fit with my whole cave aesthetic so i wouldn¡¯t change it. I¡¯d just have to keep the farm idea in my pocket for now, a dungeon with a literal farm was a pretty funny idea in my mind so I had to try it. For now I sat back and thought about how to accomplish the look. I pulled up my blueprint and started to fool with it, deciding I''d have to lower the floor in areas rather than raise it and waste a bunch of effort building up stone hills. With the hills though I''d have good sized dips that I could fill. Water was the first thing that came to mind, but I just didn¡¯t have the production or any way to replace it. Thinking about it though, I could put down moss and cover the entire floor. If the golems were big enough then constantly patrolling would inevitably end with sap being made while they patrolled. A slow effort but I might end up with puddles and pools of sap that I could stick a few ember slimes into.


    The idea of ember slime pools was pretty good in my mind. It would make the entire floor humid and I''d have water dripping off the ceiling like rain, if sap accumulated enough. The floor would become slick as all hell with moss and water everywhere so delvers would have to be careful with their footing. The ramp bugs were quick monsters but their feet didn¡¯t have much surface area. A delver would only have to get out of the way of their charge and the bug would go skidding along with its ass end exposed, making things a more fair fight.


    I also had boss monsters to consider. I could make them now and this floor was just begging for a huge golem boss and his big ramp bug counterpart. I also needed to throw in a boss spider for the third floor but I''d been busy and it didn¡¯t seem like too much of a necessity for now. I¡¯d have to push that priority up further to test things out.


    Another problem I had was my plans. I¡¯d planned to slam floors out quickly and sitting here fiddling with an expansive and complex floor design would be the opposite of that. I¡¯d already botched that plan with floor three becoming as complex as it had, but I could justify that by saying it added a good layer of protection to my core. A boss room and eight tunnels to explore would keep attackers busy for a time but it had also kept me busy. I could excuse floor three but floor four was gearing up to be even bigger and more complex. I had to wonder why I hadn''t just stuck to my plan and made new levels like a mine craft miner hunting diamonds. I should have shot straight down with a floor here and there to keep adding levels to my count. However, even thinking that, produced a spike of anxiety in me that felt foreign. ¡®It won''t be safe.¡¯ Said a part of my mind that was more dungeon than John.


    I sighed and had to agree, to a point. I¡¯d continue with my hundred meter drops and big rooms but I''d have to at least plan to add some meat to the floors or I wouldn''t be able to relax. So, new idea in mind, I kept planning the complexities of the floor but decided I''d do another drop as soon as the floor had been dug out. I could leave foreman behind to do the simple things, like digging out the hills. All I''d have to do is stop by and add nodes and spawners every now and then until it was done. I had monsters and needed to use them more.


    With that in mind I moved up my dungeon, planning to spawn more slimes and spiders to bring them down to level four. It was a big floor and needed every hand available to get dug out quickly. I¡¯d expand my metal farm later to add iron, maybe stop by the elfs house and build a wheat garden. I don¡¯t know why but it felt like the more i built the more i needed to build. Not an unwelcome thing to someone who rarely slept, but annoying  in the thought that I could never finish the job.