==========

  [Sigurd]

  Sigurd came to, dazed and confused. He groaned, pressing his hand to his head. He blinked twice before realising the hand was wet, in fact, more than just the hand was wet; he was soaking. What was going on? Where was he?

  In a flash, it all came back and he tried to scramble to his feet. He was in a dungeon, and a dangerous one at that. Memories of the wolves surfaced and the cat that knocked him into the stream followed soon after.

  He had been washed down stream and dumped off here, in this… swamp?

  Predictably, as Sigurd tried to get to his feet in a hurry, the floor moved, and he fell over, face first, in a puddle, swallowing a load of the dirty water. Coughing and spluttering, he rose to his feet, wiped the water and dirt from his eyes and brow, and drew his axe.

  Taking a few seconds, he observed his surroundings. Sigurd was standing in a steamy, smelly, stagnant swamp. The ground shifted dramatically as he moved, and as a result Sigurd sort of waddled around as he took a few steps forward.

  Damp was the prevailing smell. Though you wouldn’t normally describe damp as being a smell, it was the only description that Sigurd could think of that fit. Everything was wet, and the over-ripe smell pervaded the air almost as if it was thick enough to form clouds. The moisture in the air, - humidity he’d heard it called by the artificers – filled his lungs, cloying and with the heat of the swamp. The whole atmosphere was oppressive, and Sigurd felt it. It was much more like a dungeon usually felt. Though dungeons normally had that intimidating effect because of the density of the mana they exuded and the knowledge of the countless fallen adventurers in whose steps you traced. Sigurd certainly could not recall ever feeling that way due to the physical atmosphere alone.

  Though the atmosphere was stifling, what was really the most unsettling was the sonorous humming buzz from the thousands of insects that called this place home. A vociferous outcry, protesting at the intrusion.

  Sigurd swatted at a cloud of midges buzzing around his face as he looked further afield. Marshy trees grew off in the distance, their creeping vines and mangrove roots intertwining with each other, latticing boundaries on the water’s edge, a perfect hiding spot for all manner of creatures. He gave it a cautionary nod.

  Marching over to the edge of his wobbly little island, Sigurd peered into the water beyond. It had a crystal-clear surface layer that faded very quickly as the algal bloom and silt increased dramatically.

  He took a step off, yelping as his foot plunged far deeper than expected, the water which was up to mid-calf originally, flooded up to mid-chest making him gasp at its cold embrace as it engulfed him. As he stood, slowly sinking into the silt, he felt something.

  A fluttering brush against his calf and then a rush of water moving against him as whatever it was circled back for a big hit. Sigurd dodged, jumping out and back onto the safe, albeit wobbly, island.

  Staring into the depths, he saw a flash of green scales and a powerful tail flick before it disappeared into the murky depths. The brown-green water obscuring all traces. From the glimpse that Sigurd caught, he thought that the scales looked big, and it gave him the sense that this was a significantly more dangerous floor.

  Off behind some of the thick vegetation, a cacophony of noise echoed out; birds rapidly taking flight and honking and tweeting in fury. There was a loud snap and squawk followed by a large splash. Sigurd imagined that some unfortunate bird had lost its life. The branches rustled a few moments later as the birds that had alighted at the danger all landed in the trees, out of reach of whatever lurked bellow.

  Sigurd slapped at a biting bug that had decided to make him its next meal, squashing it against his arm and smearing its blood, blood that burned, on his hands and arm. Sigurd quickly bent down to wash it off and the pleasure of the cooling water removing its acidic remnants took him by surprise.

  There was an important decision to make right now. Press on and take some risks in the unknown, or retreat and get a significantly reduced price for giving information on an unmapped dungeon.

  The adventuring guilds paid out a substantial amount of money for info on new dungeons, but fully mapped ones even more so: though woe-betide anyone who sold incorrect information. You didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the guild.

  If the dungeon was mapped out initially, by its discoverer, then the guild paid a lot more as they wouldn’t have to send in a team of surveyors to help catalogue the dungeon.

  The surveyors – terrible name by the way – were groups of strong adventurers that often-explored new dungeons, mapped them and rated them for the guild. This was done so that newbies didn’t go too far or try a challenge that was far beyond them, only to die in unexceptional fashion. The guild wasn’t about protecting people from stupidity, but they didn’t want people to die based on incorrect knowledge.

  Taking stock, Sigurd realised that he was sporting a lot of cuts and bruises. Few serious ones though, which was good. He had an injury to a rib, cracked, fractured or just bruised he couldn’t say. Additionally, his shoulder had seized up and it was painful to move, Sigurd figured he must have landed on it. His weapons and armour were damaged slightly, and he was just very uncomfortable.

  Overall, not great, but not too bad either.

  But, he had to admit he was in pretty shabby condition – and despite wanting to continue – he hadn’t got to middle age by being reckless and stupid. Retreating was a sound decision. If he had known the dungeon and wasn’t alone, it might have been another story, but that wasn’t the case here.

  Looking up, Sigurd saw the stream that had carried him down. It tipped over the cliff in a beautiful cascade of crystal-clear water that crashed down into the swamp. The waterfall that formed was a majestic but unnatural pale-blue and behind it, a dark shadow.

  Investigating further revealed a cave, and within, a short path led to a spiral staircase that wound its way up and up and then narrowed significantly. At the end, there was a lever. Pulling it opened up an exit and as soon as he passed through, it slammed closed.

  Looking around, Sigurd recognised the second floor, and if he wanted to leave he had to climb back up. He sighed. Sigurd was hoping for a shortcut to the surface, but it wasn’t to be.

  The trip back was uneventful, he felt more watched than at anytime in any other dungeon and Sigurd knew that if he had tried to loot anything the temporary protection for his retreat would be rescinded quite violently.

  Walking back to the entrance, he found no black fog to blind him, and Sigurd emerged into the fresh open air just as dusk was beginning to descend. Breathing deeply, he set about collecting all his stuff, changing, and packing for the hike back to town.

  Sigurd set off what was probably an hour later, ready to bring news to the village, though it would have to wait till the morrow. Right about now, a nice, relaxing bath was in order and a hearty dinner too. Sigurd sighed, relaxing at the thought. Yes, it was definitely in order.

  The journey passed quickly and as the day was nearing its close he could see the village in greater detail. The narrow, drystone wall, wooden houses with slate or straw roofs and plentiful fields revealed the signs of a village obscured in a haze of the setting sun. In a few windows, Sigurd spotted the flickering of a fire or the dull glow of a mage-light illuminating the house for the families as they began to settle down for the evening. Smoke rose from a couple of chimneys and silence reigned. Perfect.

  It took only a couple of minutes to reach home and a few more to settle down into a bath. For a long time, Sigurd contemplated going to sleep, but for that he got out of his bath and slid into bed, his stuff could wait for tomorrow. With a sigh, he pulled the covers up and closed his eyes as darkness flooded in.

  ==========

  [Dungeon]

  The horrid pounding abated fairly quickly – as soon as the short man left in fact. He had made it to the swamp, after getting ambushed, knocked out and swept down the stream. I laughed gently remembering that.

  Upon gaining consciousness, he decided to jump into the water, a mistake he quickly rectified. Baffling.

  Perhaps it spooked him, because soon after he looked around and decided to leave. A shame, I was looking forward to digesting him. On the other hand, I suspected that he would be coming back soon enough, perhaps with a bunch more friends for me.

  I watched him leave, instructing the creatures to leave him alone. Could I ambush him on the way back? YES

  Should I ambush him on the way back? YES, probably.

  Did I? NO

  It felt wrong to go after someone who was retreating. After all he had admitted defeat, that I was better than him, and it would be far more likely that people would dive deeper and see more of my magnificence if they knew getting back would be safe.

  After he exited the first floor, I polished off a few of the changes I had wanted to make while watching him. First, the stairs at the start. I smiled again imagining him tripping down them. Carving into the stone took so little mana now that I had perfected my art, that I barely noticed the small drain. Then the small cave for the snow leopards. I placed it at the opposite end to the cave for the water elementals, spreading my creatures over the whole level. It was about 15 metres high, with a few small ledges to allow the cats to jump up to get to it. Introducing them to it went well and they settled down together almost immediately.

  Perfect.

  Shifting around details, hiding others and just generally smoothing issues that had become apparent whilst he was working his way through my dungeon took me a while to implement. Things like moving the trees slightly, adding a few branches here and there and a few cosmetic changes to the levels such as deepening the greens on the leaves in level two. Mostly however it was balancing work.

  Once the changes were made, the next issue was my limited mana, it was really halting any work I wanted to do. It seemed that adventurers helped as they naturally exuded mana, or at least that man did. I could leech it away and if they died, I expected that I’d get all of it.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Perhaps I should have finished him off, I thought absently, but then I wouldn’t get an influx of adventurers. Hmm… what to do? What to do? Well it’s a bit late now, I suppose it doesn’t really matter anymore.

  Having fixed my dungeon as best I could, I began to work on the seventh floor.

  It would be a continuation of the ice theme from the previous floor. Even though the room was smaller I would need more ice for what I had planned.

  This room was one that was going to be a pure physical challenge. It required a rectangular shape to be cut out of the mountain. When I was done, I had a room 50 metres wide and tall but 200 metres long. The floor was inclined down from close to the ceiling at one end, to near to the floor at the other end of the room, thus creating a 200 metre long ramp.

  I made the walls have an undulating wave like shape to them. They ran the length of the room and certainly didn’t appear to be natural, though for this room they didn’t have to appear natural. I wasn’t going for the cavern aesthetic here.

  Adventurers would complete the previous floor and walk out onto a two-metre-wide platform that spanned the width of the room. The floor of the platform was sloped gently down to the beginning of the ramp and so if they weren’t careful, they could slide right into the ramp with no time to prepare.

  From there the remaining 198 metres was a downhill slope coated in ice that they would have to navigate, with traps, walls, stop-off platforms where there were treasure chests containing loot; the amount depending on how hard to get to they were. Some of the prizes had monsters suitable for defending them and others were just free. But they wouldn’t know which was which, so it wasn’t really free. I hoped they would get surprised or cocky and Bam! Dead! Time would tell, but for sure I couldn’t give them everything free.

  As before, I created several walls up the stone ramp to contain the water. Filling it up took me several hours of conjuring the water, and freezing it took just as much time and mana. By the time I had frozen all the ice, removed the walls, and got the atmosphere cold enough to support my plans, I had burned through half of my mana.

  Taking in the glistening white ramp was a beautiful sight that made it all worth it. I marvelled at it for a few minutes before gliding over and using my force magic almost like a big spoon that I could wield to carve channels and ridges into the ramp. Resulting in, hopefully, a great many twisting paths that adventurers could choose to follow.

  I made sure there were places where the ramp just ended and I carved big holes in the ice and the stone ramp, filling the pit with spikes: adventurers choosing the wrong path, or not nimble enough to dodge them would fall into the pits, hopefully killing them. If they somehow survived, I carved small notches into the walls of my pit to allow them to climb out, but it would be a long and tricky climb.

  It took me days to carve what I needed, but once the slope was done, with its ridges, banked curves, berms and waves that would make painful jumps to land from, I moved onto some of the more unique elements.

  I filled the paths with obstacles such as weak ice walls that could be barrelled through and sharp ice spikes that stuck out of the walls at odd angles, hoping to catch the adventurers. Big globs of snow covered some parts of the paths, hiding the next turns.

  On a whim, I added tunnels that went down steeper and, like a huge waterslide, emerged again, hopefully flinging them through the air. For a particularly painful landing.

  Some of these tunnels would shoot adventurers probably about ten metres high only to land them in a snowbank. Or of course, a yeti pretending to be a snowbank, how could I not do that!

  Some even shot them out onto other paths or straight into walls for a tooth-shaking impact.

  Just an average ice slide you know.

  I spied two banked turns that veered towards each other and then away separated by only a small half metre thick wall of ice.

  I cut this intervening wall away so that transferring between the paths was possible and where the walls began again, I narrowed the division point into a deadly spike. Uncontrolled sliding into it would prove to be a very costly mistake.

  My next task was to polish the whole floor so that it was absolutely impossible to stand on and especially to stop on, I couldn’t have them just slowly shuffling around the slides.

  The point was, that adventurers would have to slide down on their backsides and use whatever they could to change direction and whatnot, a puzzle of physicality and memory.

  At various points through the ice slide, the slope levelled out into a platform. If my thinking was correct, it should be possible to slide to a stop before tumbling off the edge, especially with the big snow banks around the platform that would stop someone for sure. On these platforms I roughed up the ice to provide enough friction to be able to fight. As with the previous floor I figured some yeti would be a good challenge, making two per platform guarding a treasure chest. Unfortunately, I did not have enough points to buy any. Each yeti cost 160 points and I had only 75 left.

  I figured with six platforms, at two yeti apiece I would need 12, not counting the secret area for which I wanted four. I would need a total of 2560 points to buy what I needed. I had made good on discounts, perks and achievements to save my points so far, but it was getting untenable. I received my level multiplied by ten in dungeon points each time I levelled up. So, at my next level up to level 31 I would get 310 dungeon points. Taking that calculation into account, I would need to get to level 38 before I could buy what I needed, giving me 2835 dungeon points.

  Was that achievable? Could I really get eight levels just to populate this floor? I would be just two levels from my next perk.

  No, it wasn’t sustainable, there had to be something I was missing.

  I had got discounts in the store with the creatures that had wandered into my dungeon and lived within me for one month. Why was that? Was it some arbitrary rule that gave a permanent enhancement to using one type of creature?

  No, I thought to myself. Probably not. The system seems to work on maths and logic. I got an increase in my health the same as my level, I got an increase in my dungeon points at ten times my level. Mana, well I still hadn’t worked out how it determined the requirements for each new level yet, but I would get it eventually.

  So why did these creatures get a discount?

  Well, I suppose, what were dungeon points? A tricky question to be fair, and something I wouldn’t crack today, but when I used them, I felt it in my soul, a similar feeling to what I felt in the system use. I remembered the pain of trying to follow that feeling to its source. It had damaged me significantly. So perhaps they were related to the soul: whatever intangible thing that made me, me?

  Either way, probably irrelevant.

  I used them to buy things, things which I didn’t have, like a physical object, a creature or knowledge. Knowledge. I felt, when using them, the knowledge filter into my mind. Dungeon points didn’t just conjure an object from some external source they gave me the knowledge, the familiarity to use whatever I had just bought. So, when I bought creatures from the store, it just shoved the basic template knowledge into my head, I used my mana and bam, creature forms and the pre-attuned core exists and the dungeon creature exists. Then, I just filled the template with mana and the creature could be respawned if it had died.

  Simple and easy.

  With the ones that wandered in, I had had to take care of them, keep them living, observe them. I knew them and cared for them far more than the generic store-bought ones. They were unique. That was what set them apart. After attuning, though, they felt the same, I knew they were mine. But I also knew them far more. I knew that one of the original wolves was more dominant, bigger, with a few scars. Whilst one of the others was more timid. I knew they bled red, I knew the depth of their fur, I knew…

  So much!

  I knew so much more about them.

  So, if I could find out more about the yeti, I would be more familiar and then the knowledge required by the system would be less. Hopefully, with less knowledge required, the price would drop as the system was doing less work.

  Work requires energy, and so the system charged for its input. I knew that. I had found ways around using the system before. I had found shortcuts, even just stealing the wolves and cats from the surface had been a shortcut.

  So therefore, if I could make the system do less work for me the price should hopefully go down.

  Maybe.

  It was worth investigating.

  But if it required a month of observation, there would be no way I could do it for every one of my creatures. Perhaps only for the expensive ones I needed to use lots of, like the yeti.

  Still, that only gave me a slight reduction in price. Maybe dropping from 2560 required for my yeti to What?

  Like, maybe 1500? 1250? Still requiring four or five levels. Something which was still not sustainable. It was a start but there must be another way forward. I figured I was doing better than most dungeons with my Bonus perk options. Surely, they wouldn’t be there unless a dungeon did something outside of normal? Right?

  So how did the other dungeons do it?

  Smaller rooms maybe? The guide I had bought seemed to suggest that was normal. Less monsters, more traps, because you didn’t need to buy traps if you could figure it out on your own.

  Adventurers? Everything always came down to adventurers. Everything!

  It was the main difference between me and others, I thought. I had had only one adventurer, I was just beginning my journey.

  I NEED ADVENTURERS! Now I was doubly glad I had let the short man go.

  Still, there was nothing for it right now but to continue on. I set one part of my mind to observing the yeti on the previous floor and continued working on the current one. I still had the secret area to do after all.

  On the opposite wall to the entrance, at the top, I dropped down a stone frame, a 10 by 10 by 5 metre cage. Filling in the floor and with the stone back wall, I had an open faced room that could be seen from the start. Filling up the wasted space in the floor, I placed five chests filled with good loot. There would be space to add some traps or monsters later, when I had the dungeon points. I knew already that one of the traps would be dropping the adventurers back into the sloping floor, on a path that led to spike pits.

  This room would be this level’s hidden secret, though it wouldn’t be secret exactly, but how you got there would be. Additionally, I placed a sign that read:

  “Congratulations adventurer for making it to the ice run’s hidden secret. Here is your prize. Did you find the other levels’ hidden secrets I wonder?” Just another clue, I wanted them to search for the secrets. Then I could change them around and make interesting traps.

  Mentally I began laughing, evilly I assure you, there’s no other kind of laugh that’s appropriate with the thoughts filtering through my mind.

  With the room complete, I knew I just needed to figure out a way for an adventurer to get up there.

  It occurred to me, after some pondering, that I had a perfectly good system with the tunnels. If I could alter one to get enough speed up that the adventurers would fly high enough to land on the platform.

  It needed to be a very hard route that they would need to go down without slowing at all, otherwise it would be too easy. Oh, and I could change the entry point after one team managed to find it, that way it could be a challenge that would have people searching out the routes and thus hopefully making more mistakes. A game within a game, though delving within my dungeon certainly wouldn’t be a ‘game’.

  And with that I was done. Floor finished.