Aurora

I leaned against the coffin while the demons worked. I had managed to summon another two of them. With three going, they were finally going at a decent pace. That said, they were far from reaching the outside world. Part of me was considering changing paths, but I was inherently stubborn. I didn’t like changing what I started.

‘Losa.’ I mentally called for my dungeon Imp.

He hopped to his feet and rushed over skidding to a stop in front of me with a perfect bow. “You called, master?”

‘I want to change the cave to something a bit more… more. How do I go about it?’ I asked looking at the bare walls of the cave my coffin was located in. It was fine during my panicked state but now that I’d been forced to calm down and having to cope with the fact that I’ll likely be stuck here for a few more days. I wanted to tidy it up.

“Ah yes! There are a few paths we can take.” He moved over to a wall and used his claw to draw on the stone. “First, we can import the materials, and by import I just mean find a way to get them in here, so that you can absorb them and thus create them. This is the usual operating standard for the dungeons in my memory. Next would be to summon a creature that is indued with the knowledge of crafting. Since there are many, many lines of crafting it ends up becoming quite expensive. Finally, if you yourself have the knowledge you can create it through the normal processes.” He scratched diagrams and percentages while talking so rapidly that I had trouble keeping up with him.

I looked the wall over and thought he had a point. If I summoned a demon for every type of crafting in the game it really would add up. Higher levels of crafting required more powerful minions to be able to work the materials. Still for now, this would be the path I would be forced to take. I was isolated from the world, quite literally currently. If I wanted to straighten up my dungeon than I was out of options. The only thing I knew how to do was paint after all.

I waited with Losa until my mana bar filled back up. To summon a creature that could craft, it needed hands and a certain level of dexterity. From what Losa explained, I could use either ghoul or demon, but his recommendation was demon since they would understand me a tad bit better.

I selected the generalized demon option then put in Stone-working as my requested skill. I had no control over the appearance of this monster, so I crossed my fingers that it wasn’t too ugly. Losa was handsome but the Frog Brutes were most definitely not. As the suffer filled the air and the magic circle dissipated, I found that I lost the lottery.

A heavily muscled four arm Brute even bigger than the Frogs appeared. His face looked like it had been smashed repeated with a hammer. His red skin was dark and solid looking almost like it was stone itself. A gravely voice reached me while I observed the creature. “Master.” A name appeared in my head unbiddened. Dersoa.

‘Welcome to the team,’ I sent and Losa relayed the message. He bowed his head. ‘I want you turn this into some a little more comfortable.’

“Many options…” the Dersoa said. He looked around for several long moments before he held out his hand to me. My menu blinked and I got several options to choose from. There was a traditional crypt setting, a room that reminded me of a church, and something that appeared to be a cross between a throne room and a gathering room. I went with the third option. Not because I had a big head. No, I went with it because there was a chair presented. One made of stone but still a chair. “Understood.”

Dersoa moved to the edge of the room and a sigil appeared in front of his hands. The walls started to turn to sand before it flowed over to where the other stone was being laid by the demons. I absorbed it absentmindly. I was really focused on the magic sigil he was using. I techinally had Earth magic. Perhaps, I could use it as well.

I studied the sigil as much could. When I was confident that I had it memorized, if I thought of it as a picture, I could memorize just about anything easily enough, I pointed at the wall. I thought of the sigil and it formed in front of me. Excitement filled my chest as I poured the weird energy I felt in my stomach into the sigil. The magic flared before a nearly beam like brown light flashed from my hand into the wall.

The next moment, sand started pouring into the room as I was pointing up at an angle. I absorbed it as quickly as I could, but soon found my legs submerged in sand. Another minute passed before the sand stopped flowing.

“Master?” Losa asked, skipping out of the way of the sand.

‘I’m not sure what happened exactly,’ I replied. The little imp made his way up the pile of sand and looked into the hole.

“You carved a good ten or twenty meters with that one spell.”

‘Is that normal?’ I asked concerned.

“No. You normally can only do about five meters at most.” I tired to think through what happened but came up with a blank. I showed Losa as much by giving him a halfhearted shrug. “It might be because you are an Elder Vampire. Sure, you might be level one, but you’re still over three hundred years old.”

I nodded since it sounded like a good enough reason to me. Pointing at the wall again, I recreated the sigil but this time I pictured the entire wall turning to sand rather than just a single spot. There was another surge of the energy, likely my mana, as the brown light flashed again. In the next moment a ten meter wide and three meter high section of the wall turned to sand instantly. This turned out to be a mistake as the hole was also about three meter deep.

With so much stone changing instantly to sand and without the stabilization magic of my dungeon absorption, the ceiling of the section became unstable. It collapsed sending rocks flying in every direction. One even hit my shoulder, completely twisting my left hand in an unhuman fashion. That was the extent to the harm to myself.

One of my frog demons weren’t so lucky. He was delivering his load and was caught in the avalanche. With a spray of yellow blood and guts, he was turned into a pancake under the tons of stone and soil. If my throat had been working, I might have yelped at the sight.

The thundering sound finally died down with only the one casualty. There was also a good chunk of part of my dungeon that was now a pile of stones. The dead demon was absorbed by some automatic magic that I had no control over. I felt something inside me get a little stronger.

Pulling up my status, my personal level had gone up by one. I hadn’t expected that I could kill my own monsters to gain experience. It was something to file away for the future. Other than some more mana, nothing else had changed.

“Are you alright, master!?” Losa asked hopping out from behind the coffin.

‘Fine. Come here though.’ I sent back, nodding to the lip of the coffin next to me. He hopped up and made his way over to my side. ‘Push my arm back to its proper place. It doesn’t hurt, but it does feel uncomfortable.’ Losa nodded and grabbed my wrist and shoulder. With a jerk, he twisted my arm back to its proper place. I tried to move it but found that it barely twitched. I sighed at the new bodily issue. I told him to order Dersoa to get back to work. I wouldn’t do anything else for the time being. I didn’t think my body could handle much more.

Everyone got back to work. Once Dersoa cleared enough room for the future room to fit, he stopped turning the walls to sand. I observed to make sure there wasn’t another collapse. It looked like as my dungeon minion, the dungeon automatically reinforced the wall when he was done working on it.

Placing his hand on the wall, he used a different Earth spell. I watched as the smooth stone started to shift and took the shape of a dark black brick. I asked him to bring me one so I could absorb it. [Demon Stone (Lesser) – Unique to the demon race. Fire resistant, Curse Resistant, Mortals suffer a 10% mental degradation while in the presence of the stone.] I wanted to whistle at the impressive stone.

I waved him off and let Dersoa get back to work. He could only do about ten bricks at a time before he had to rest to recover his mana. Losa explained that this close to the dungeon core, he would recover his mana in a matter of minutes. I nodded and continued to watch as the walls were slowly converted to the black stone and the entrance tunnel continued to expand.