Within the dungeon…

  Redesigning, if I wanted to do it with any modicum of speed, would cost a lot of mana - more than I feel I have access to, with Mogala trapped within the dungeon and unable to hunt for me.

  The first step, then, would be to free her.

  I focused on the entrance to the dungeon, widening it in all directions. I made it 8 feet across and 12 feet tall. I scrapped the old door, and created a new one - a two piece door instead of one.

  I merged the first chamber with Mogala’s hidden one, to allow her to exit. She was able to just narrowly squeeze her way out of the dungeon.

  As I made these drastic changes, I could almost feel my core grow. Practice makes perfect I suppose.

  I erased the hidden chamber, filling it with stone, and began to expand the first. I created a 30 foot by 30 foot room, 20 feet tall.

  The grid of rooms, I fused together and shrunk slightly - creating an expansive 50 foot by 50 foot square room. I raised the ceiling to match. I had to move it backwards slightly by opening one end while closing the other to make room for the now larger first chamber though.

  I was now out of mana. I patiently waited, and thought about what I would do.

  I would have Mogala act as a spawner, creating spiders to populate the floor. According to what Scout saw, I had more than enough room to work in terms of digging further into the rock and even out to the sides.

  Some kind of labyrinth should work. Mogala could either wander it, or exist in a separate hidden chamber from which she sent her children. I could decide that later. As I waited, I did some small and slow, given the lack of mana, detailing of the walls and entrance.

  Scout and Mogala brought me more mana as I worked, but I wasn’t going to use it on the details of my dungeon. I could save that for once I have more mana to work with.

  I wanted to place puzzles within the dungeon, that I knew for sure. The question was, what kinds of puzzles would I place?

  If the first floor is to be an expanse of passageways, then perhaps something that both requires and rewards exploring it in its entirety. Maybe a series of statues across the labyrinth’s edges - each requiring to be activated in some way. I could even make that the only way into the next floor.

  Hmn. It isn’t a bad idea, actually.

  In the center of the new large second chamber, I raised a circular portion of stone from the floor. It was 5 feet across, and stood 3 feet higher than the floor.

  Around the raised stone platform, I marked where I would place the stairs to the next floor. Once the puzzle was completed, the floor around the circle would lower and retract, revealing a set of stairs spiraling downwards leading to the second floor.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Atop the circle, in three points I placed hemisphere indents, placed where the tips of a triangle inscribed within the stone would be. In the center of the stone, I placed a flame holding bowl, like I had done before but larger, to give some light to the room.

  The challenge of the first floor would be thus.

  Find the three keys within the labyrinth , and bring them back to this room. When the keys were placed within the stone, the stairs would open.

  I brought forth small stone spheres from rock I had previously carved away. I polished them and made sure they could fit within the indents. I placed an enchantment upon the door into the room. It wouldn’t open if someone tried to take the keys out of the dungeon.

  With the main room complete, and a steady stream of mana coming from Scout and Mogala, I set about building the labyrinth. I dug outwards from the door, placing a large door in each wall. These would open once everyone had entered this primary room.

  It felt like days that I spent building the labyrinth. I felt my proficiency increase as I worked, the task becoming ever faster. The passageways in the labyrinth were larger than the main doorway and other passages, each 12 feet across and 15 feet tall, to allow Mogala to move about more easily. She was a more stubby spider when she was just an animal - some kind of tarantula and not one of those kinds with ridiculously long legs, and I was thankful for that since it meant she could fit in these hallways with her current size.

  Once the labyrinth was complete, I created statues upon raised circular sections, in rooms of their own. Each one held one of the spherical keys in their hands, kelt down offering the key to whomever found the statue.

  Now it was time to figure out traps. I found a random hallway and focused on it. Into the walls, I created spears - nearly flush with the wall in fact - that, thanks to an enchantment, would extend rapidly shortly after a creature moved in front of them. I gave them a delay because instant death traps weren’t that fun, and I also gave them a cooldown period between activations. I made sure they didn’t trigger on my own creatures, and only on those who intruded.

  In a different hallway, I created a similar type of trap but in the floor instead of in the walls. I scattered these traps throughout the labyrinth.

  I also scattered some of the lesser life fruit throughout it, taking root within the walls. I spent some time decorating as well.

  It was time to enchant the keys. I enchanted them with a fairly complex magic. The keys were in a way, drawn to the statues. When that portion of the enchantment was triggered, the keys would begin to roll back towards the statues, and jump back into their rightful places. It would be triggered by the actual key function. After the keys had been used, and after everyone had left the dungeon - they would return to their rightful places. I also hollowed them out to make them a bit lighter, and made them much more difficult to break.

  As a final layer of difficulty, the keys would broadcast their location to creatures on the first floor - meaning that every spider there, Mogala included, would have a general sense of where the key bearer was.

  I envisioned the first floor playing out as such, a party of adventurers would brave the labyrinth, maybe avoiding spiders or maybe fighting them - and find the keys waiting. They would take them, either one at a time or all at once depending on if they split up, back to the main chamber, while fighting through enemies who were now actively able to locate them.

  Of course, as long as they didn’t try and leave with the keys - the entrance would open whenever they wanted to leave if they decided to give up early.

  I let out a satisfied sigh and examined my work. I didn’t know how long it had taken - but it must have been a while. The labyrinth was roughly 500 feet by 500 feet in size.

  As I stepped back into reality from the rush of my work, I looked back to my core, resting in the second chamber. It was much larger now, and I could see the mana being drawn to it.

  The increased mana income that came with size in addition to the mana from Scout and Mogala made this whole ordeal much easier.

  With that said, I called Mogala back to begin patrolling the corridors of the labyrinth.

  It was time to start on the second floor.