“Good help is hard to find”

-Anonymous

“The dungeon's old and doesn't care,

It drops spiders in your hair.

The dungeon's web offers bait,

You'll hunt for gold, but find your fate.”

-Children's Rhyme

I wish I could trade in Exsan for a dungeon fairy, because my current companion was clearly defective. I even looked into the AP menu to see if it was even possible to buy some kind of companion.

It wasn’t

I looked for help menus or other information of any kind, but there was nothing. Nothing, that is, with the exception of Exsan. And Exsan’s problem was that while he understood what I said, he still failed to understand the implicit questions he was supposed to be answering. Let alone the implicit information that he should be providing in advance.

While Exsan’s language lessons were going fine, at least in improving his diction, they completely failed to provide a grasp of what was actually desired when questioned.

In some ways, it was like I was talking to a computer. Exsan would do exactly what I asked of him and only that. I had never fully realized how imprecise English was, but I was getting a forced appreciation of that now. I was learning as I tried to specify exactly what information I wanted Exsan to provide without having to spell it out every time. It turned out that precisely defining the concept of relevant information was staggeringly difficult. I just had to hope that he would somehow learn from repetition, but for now I had to constantly define what information I needed.

My exasperation with Exsan was nothing new, but this particular instance was more acute than most. Exsan had finally completed extending his aura and almost had a complete tunnel to outside. Upon reaching this point, a prompt had immediately appeared.

Outside connection is about to complete, would you like to make this a dungeon entrance? Available dungeon entrances 2/2.

Yes. No.

I had, of course, immediately selected yes, only to see this:

Dungeon does not meet requirements. Dungeon core must be accessible to entrants.

The message had not bothered to define what accessible meant. And Exsan was no help, though a quick query confirmed that yes, he had been aware that the core would need to be moved first. And he hadn’t bothered to let me know.

I knew I should just be expecting things like this, but it was still obnoxious. It also made sense that this was required though. How could a dungeon ever be in danger if no one was capable of getting to the core somehow?

I had, however, decided to treat that requirement literally. If the system wanted it accessible, then fine, it would be accessible, but only in the strictest definition of the word! And I decided to make decoys, so many decoys. I had a title that would make finding me exceptionally difficult. However, even my decoy cores were going to be nigh impossible to get to.

In the end I created twenty different decoys. Each of them was an obsidian black, just like the original dungeon core. They were a perfect geometrical shape, a diamond with the bottom side elongated. I didn’t actually know what a normal dungeon core looked like, but this was a decent guess.

To my surprise, when I made the first one it began to float in the air as soon as it was made. Apparently, either my title accounted for this or decoys were another of those things that dungeons commonly made and that I was simply clueless about. Only one of the fake cores was visible. It was behind a twenty foot think wall of ultra dense, but perfectly transparent, crystal. It was at the end of where I had made the dungeon extend so far. I would move it as necessary.

The route needed to get to it was not hidden. It was patently obvious; it was also a complete death trap. The route was filled with spinning blades of razor sharp reinforced obsidian, and they all spun at different rates. Theoretically all the blades could line up to allow a person to get through under the perfect conditions, but given the number of blades I would have been surprised if it aligned even once in a year. Probably not even once a decade.

All the other routes were hidden behind this one, and were even more deadly. They involved boiling water, pools of geothermal acids, any and all the various traps I had come up with so far, including new firearm traps using metal. There were also pleasant trips through monster infested areas that were under no restrictions. These areas also had no loot of any kind.

Getting to the real core involved diving to the bottom of a half mile deep underwater cave system. The underwater area branched all over the place and was filled with underwater monsters. After that was a climb through a mile high vertical tunnel that was perfectly smooth and loaded with my deadliest traps. The air in the shaft fluctuated wildly between stillness and blowing violently downwards. Each time the air stilled something different blew out with the next wind.

This varied from aerosolized acid, to powdered crystal, and other nasty substances. The temperature also varied randomly between boiling and freezing. Should anyone manage that, there was even more nastiness. After that I used the puzzle settings to create combination passwords with one hundred numbers long, five of them.

And all the protections I offered would not work anywhere past the end of the official dungeon. I did not want to kill anyone, but I was not an idiot… usually. Anyone trying to gain access to my core could not possibly mean me well. I was going to assume they were trying to kill me, and if they died in the process I was calling it self-defense.

To my amusement when I tried connecting the entrance again it actually worked. Honestly, I thought the system would make me tone it way down.

As I accepted, a thrum of power vibrated down the strings of my aura and down the long miles connecting to the entrance. The surge of energy unfurled into my aura. Then a few moments later the entire length of the tunnel became dungeon to a diameter of fifty feet.

I swore.

Exsan was the worst dungeon companion ever. I stopped for a moment as a thought struck me. Technically, I was the dungeon companion… nope, nope, madness lay that direction.

Regardless, I now needed to customize the entire tunnel. That way it would match the intricacies of the dungeon’s other decorations. My anti-theft options didn’t work in my basic aura, so I had just left the tunnel blank.

For now, I built a blank cover of stone over the entrance. After that I divided up the tunnel into hundreds of individual safe zones. That way I could use a single blueprint for each section and replicate it out. I used my various minds in harmony and created a quick infinity knot pattern for the walls with a few dozen colors of stone winding over and under each other. I designed it so each section would match up to each other, so the pattern would continue the entire tunnel. That way I only needed to design a knot for the beginning and I could mirror it for the opposite end.

I used thirty feet of the available fifty foot width, and made the floor out of basic roughened stone to provide a good grip. The entire path was at a slight incline, so that would be important. I provided lights for the entire tunnel. It wiped out a portion of the mana crystals I had retrieved and put into storage.

I had actually lost a surprising amount of the mana crystals I dropped fighting Exsan. There was a deep lake with a large crevasse and strong current. I had yet to reach the bottom of it. It wasn’t really a problem though. I had instructed my menu to make more and the mana density had been more than sufficient to make them.

Soon the dungeon was almost ready to be opened, though I dithered for a bit about what design would be appropriate for the main entrance. I was tired, and even before the latest delay, it had been a bit exhausting.

A few days prior I had realized I was an idiot. It was simply undeniable.

I had been messing with the runic arrays off and on ever since I gained access to the lexicon. I hadn’t had much success. Actually, that was understating the issue. Every emblem I tried to make exploded in a twisted mess of metal and stone when I tried to activate it.

Based on how violent some of the damage to the surroundings was, I realized I must have been incredibly close to death when I messed with the emblems Tam had made.

This, however, was not the reason I felt like an idiot. Not properly understanding a new language was perfectly normal. No, that was due to completely forgetting that I had placed the enchanted gate from the sewers into my storage and then promptly forgot about it. Admittedly I had done that in the heat of the moment, but even so.

I had been looking at the work of Tam and trying to figure out how to create emblems from that. I might as well have been looking at Michelangelo's David and trying to use that to figure out how to carve stone. That was a great end point, sure, but when you first picked up a chisel you needed something a little simpler. Or, as I had realized by looking at the gate, something with more characters; that was actually much rougher.

Apparently, emblems usually had safeguards to prevent the messy business of them exploding. Tam’s creations were too streamlined. If there were safeguards or extra tolerances they were hidden in the subtext of the runic language design. Tam was an absolute master of the craft. His work fit together so perfectly that adding anything would detract from its function.

The gate, on the other hand, was messy. Beautifully, gloriously, messy. It had all the background runes that were needed when one could not create something flawlessly. It had overt runes for handling mana storage, tolerances for damage and wear, as well as some very basic runes to take mana from the area to provide power for the emblem. It also had a single main function, which was simply to be incredibly strong. Exactly who or what someone wanted to keep out I couldn’t say, but I hoped it didn’t cause any issues removing it.

If this had been all I would have felt a bit dim, but I would have accepted it.

No, I finally decided to wonder what else had been left in my storage and forgotten. The answer turned out to be more complicated than I thought possible.

The first thing I found was simple. It was the dagger that had been embedded into the back of the man from the sewer. I digested it and between the metal and the handle I had patterns for iron, steel, another type of bronze, plus some type of leather and horn. Sadly not enough to get sufficient DNA from. Not to mention I had a pattern for a throwing dagger.

After that I had stone. So much stone. Masses and masses and mountains of stone. All of the stone that I dissolved with my manipulate earth ability had not in fact dissolved. It had all gone into my storage. The shear amount of material was mind boggling. Of course, I had cleared out giant spaces for the dungeon and all of that material was now in my storage. And if there was some way to organize my storage I had yet to see it. It was nice if I could remember what I wanted and pull it out, but that didn’t help when there was a great deal more I didn’t remember.

Between the spaces I cleared and the tunnels Exsan had been constantly working on, I was guessing I had somewhere between a half-mile to a mile of cubic stone, dirt, sand, and the occasional bit of snow. Honestly I was impressed with the sheer scope of my storage ability. However, I had no idea when it would fill up.

So I had started a rather boring and enormous project. I took an area of stone that had no water filtering through them and then compressed them as much as possible. Then I would pull out a section of stone from my storage, check it with appraise, and then take and label a small sample with whatever it said it was. Then the rest got compressed into the stone areas that had been freed up. Sure, I could and did, split my mind to get it done faster, but that just meant I experienced the same boring task multiple way simultaneously.

I did find lots of precious stones. Actually tons of them of all different types. I wouldn’t know even half the names for the semi-precious stones without appraise providing that information. I found salt too, though it actually showed a lower relative value compared to what I expected. The cultures around here either had some way to extract it, had some kind of mine for it, or just had a better trade network than I would have expected.

Appraise had been useful in designing the dungeon. It gave very minimal information on living things, but it at least provided the level for me.

So now I was tired… without actually being capable of being tired. Maybe I should look into my soul to find out more about that.

That would come later. For now it was time to open up the dungeon. I had looked closely at the enormous blank slab that was waiting to become an entry way. I considered repeating the phoenix theme, but I had already used that another place too… I was sure I could come up with something new. These doors would probably be kept open all the time.

Well if that was the case… I shouldn’t focus on the doors at all. I eliminated doors from my plans. I created a model inspired from the Greeks.

Yes… a touch here, a touch there. It was ready.

It was time to begin.