***Anther’s POV***

Anther was humming to himself. The weather was nice with a mild wind and gentle sunlight, and so he was humming.

The gentle breeze caused some small blue blossoms to dance, which helped Anther to spot them. Kneeling down, he pressed his lightly tanned fingers down into soft forest soil and plucked the plant up by its roots. He shook the small thing a few times to knock the dirt off, then dropped it into the loose hemp sack that he wore on his back.

Anther stopped humming, then, because he’d seen a pheasant. Mother had been asking for a pheasant, and there would be no pheasant pie for the Yadh festival without it. Mother was in charge of the pies.

Anther’s bow was unstrung to keep the string from getting stretched out; he had to put it together before he had any hope of shooting down the pheasant. Fortunately, his fingers were well-practiced, and the bow was strung with deft ease. The boy quietly nocked an arrow to the string, relaxed his shoulders, and pulled back on the drawstring. With a pleasant twang, the arrow flew and struck the fair bird just below its heart. Presumably, it died instantly from the shock. Anther trotted over to retrieve it from the bushes. He removed the arrow from the creature’s small body and let the blood drain out a bit. Shaking it off, Anther wrapped the bird in some leaves, tied it with a string, and dropped it into his sack.

What else had mother asked for? Didn’t she say something about a silver horned rabbit? Anther thought he might possibly find one if he went up the mountain a bit, so he unwound his bowstring and started to move his feet. There were various things in the forest that felt a bit nasty, but he just enjoyed the breeze and carefully sensed the world around him. Whenever he felt mana that seemed… unfriendly, he simply went around it. Wasn’t it simple?

After a time, Anther thought he saw something silver dash into the bushes. Blinking twice, he took up his bow and easily wound the string around it, then he lifted his head to look for anymore flashes of silver. There was nothing, so he continued up the mountain, keeping his bow strung this time.

There, out of the corner of his eye, something flashed. Anther turned to look at it, and already it had shot forward by several bush lengths. He pulled an arrow back, aimed ahead of the creature, and fired. The arrow struck in the dirt as the creature instinctively sped up.

“Ah!” Anther saw his potential pie escaping and ran after it, nocking an arrow while pumping his feet. He shot again, then once more, missing both times. The rabbit started to weave between various things for defense. Anther was starting to feel tired from running uphill, and he didn’t trust his arms to be steady for much longer, so he stopped his feet and made one last good shot.

The arrow disappeared beyond the bushes, making Anther hold his breath briefly. He heard the arrow land, followed by a high-pitched squeal, and raised his arms in success, “Yes!”

Anther unstrung his bow, then trotted up the slope, searching in the bushes for glitters of silver. He found his prize and lifted it by the ears. It was a pretty little bunny with silver fur and a short horn on its forehead. The boy let himself fantasize for a moment about trading the fur for a nice new bow, or maybe an elegant dagger, but his bedding needed replacing, and there were various other things around the house that had broken down over time. Those things needed replacing first, and technically this was his mother’s rabbit to do what she wanted with. Anther had simply… obtained it for her.

The boy was about to pull his arrow free and let some of the blood drain, already plotting a course back home where he could stop by to retrieve all of his arrows, however, something made his hands stall. His eyes felt hot and his ears itched. His skin all over felt somewhat confused about what the current temperature was. His heart started to beat just a little bit faster, making his cheeks flush.

Something is putting off… a lot… of mana, he realized.

There was an order to things, so Anther quickly freed his arrow and drained the silver horned rabbit’s blood. He wrapped it properly in a little bundle of leaves and tied it with a string, dropping it into his sack. With that done… he turned his eyes up the slope, toward the thing that was up there. It wasn’t a bad thing, Anther thought, but it was a lot of something. It wasn’t wrong to want to see it, right?

The boy rubbed his ears so they wouldn’t itch as much; he would be embarrassed if they started twitching on their own. Then he started to climb further up the side of the mountain. He thought he might spot a sleeping beast of some kind, or perhaps an artifact that somebody left behind. Instead, there was an opening in the side of the mountain which he had never noticed before.

He had come here before, hadn’t he? Had there always been a cave here? Feeling curious, Anther climbed up a bit to look inside. There was a well-carved tunnel with clearly defined dimensions, but the path was blocked shortly upon entering.

What is… this door?

***Archimedes’ POV***

Archimedes was full; he was complete. He had slept for less than ten hours, and mana was happily oozing out of his body. One-hundred and one mana, one-hundred and two mana, it felt so good compared to the previous aching emptiness.

There was theoretically no limit to how much mana he could hold at one time, but it would be difficult for him to keep all of it within his core. In his current state, he could reliably contain a hundred mana, and the excess would be spread throughout the rest of his body, the rest of the dungeon, until he needed it. Archimedes watched with some pleasure as the extra ambient mana caused his plants to grow more enthusiastically. The glow moss and white fungus spread especially well, and had nearly tripled the area they covered.

Every living thing and non-living construct Archimedes created was connected to him in a complex and beautiful web of ether and mana. If he wanted to, he could feel each cell in his plants split and grow larger, but there were other things he would rather focus on.

Archimedes felt his mana accumulation increase again to thirteen per hour. It was decidedly an improvement over the original ten. He immediately used thirty mana to create another Wolfbat, and in the five minutes it took him to make it, he had processed one more unit of mana from the ether. A third Wolfbat was sculpted to life to join the other two, and Archimedes briefly pondered what to do with his remaining 44 mana. There were so many basic essentials that had to be crafted at the beginning. Any random beast that wandered inside could set him back hours of hard work. It could be nice to have free mana enter his hall for consumption, but it was also dangerous. How many centuries had it been since Archimedes had truly faced danger--baring the latest incident? He was unused to it and uncomfortable with it. He also was already familiar with the creation process for just about any random creature that could stroll inside. It was very tempting to just seal himself off and develop slowly in safety.

A dungeon could not seal its entrance. It was not simply a punishable action; it was purely impossible. It would be like asking a human to willingly grow cells to block its airway. Even if, for some reason, they were willing to, they genuinely couldn’t control such a thing.

But it was possible to place a barrier, so long as that barrier could be removed. Archimedes could kill two adventurers with one monster, figuratively speaking, if he put a challenge at the entrance to his dungeon. He could simultaneously protect himself and announce to the world what sort of dungeon he was, hopefully tempting the intellectually able to come and test themselves.

The first thing Archimedes needed was a heavy stone door. A quick calculation told him that something one meter wide, two meters tall, and ten centimeters thick would cost twenty mana to construct. He would need two of them to sufficiently block people out. There was no problem at all with making them now. His remaining four mana was enough to attach hinges and hang the doors properly to the walls, about one meter in from the opening in the mountainside.

That left no mana to do anything with. At least those doors should deter wild animals from entering. The mechanisms to keep humans out would have to wait for another hour or two. In that time Archimedes focused on processing the passively drifting ether into gushing, pooling mana, trying to ignore his emotions which were trying to start a storm again. Archimedes briefly wondered if, since ether was the stuff of life, those emotions were the living parts of him and if his logical, mana-fueled faculties were something lesser, something dead.

He shooed those damaging thoughts away by watching his Wolfbats playfight, feeling some more pleasant emotions take root. If he was going to be emotional either way, he would rather it not be so painful.

When he had gathered 15 mana, he started to add details to the doors. He carved a two centimeter deep hole spanning half a meter in height and a meter in width, centered between the two doors and about one and a half meters above the ground. That space was divided evenly into two rows and six columns, where twelve two centimeter thick tiles were placed. Archimedes carved the word “Closed” neatly across those tiles. He then resculpted a few things so that the tiles would not be able to be removed. Short and flat latches on the backs of the tiles were fitted into thin hollow tracks within the door. The tracks were all connected, such that if a single tile were removed, all the rest could be slid around and rearranged.

In fact, that was the point. This first door was going to be a sliding puzzle. Archimedes made four more symmetrically-arranged, tile-sized spaces where the tiles could be moved, hoping it would make the nature of the puzzle less obvious than if there were only one. Those tiny changes used up five whole mana, simply because of the precision they required.

Archimedes shuffled the tiles around in a pattern that he hoped would be difficult to replicate, such that none of the letter fragments from “Closed” were in the center, then he neatly carved the word “Open” across all the tiles. From there, he drilled a small hole through the door behind each individual tile, and partway through the tiles themselves. He arranged them as best he could so that only this specific ordering would line up all the holes. After moving the tiles back to their original positions, Archimedes added decorative carvings to disguise the correct lettering. He decorated the extra slots as well, so they would look more like an architectural choice than part of a puzzle.

Next, Archimedes crafted tiny copper springs to fit into each of the holes in the tiles, and short stone rods to be pushed by them. There was a lip at the backs of the rods so that they wouldn’t simply pop out. The rods forced the springs back as long as they were pressed against the stone door. When a tile was put into the correct place, the spring forced the rod through the hole in the door, and the tile became fixed in place.

Archimedes quickly realized that this was a problem and had to rearrange things a few times to make sure it was possible to get all the tiles into the correct spots without accidentally blocking off an empty spot. There were only three possible solutions to the puzzle by the time he had made a version that actually was solvable. By then he had squandered eleven mana. Since he’d been working steadily for ten minutes, he only had one mana remaining, and so he was forced to wait around awhile before continuing.

For the next step, Archimedes required a wide and thick stone bar. He fixed it in place with a simple stone bracket. The stone bar was long enough to touch the wall on one side, and span the puzzle on the other side of the door. Since the doors opened inward, they couldn’t be opened while the stone bar was in the way.

Unsolvable puzzles and permanently locked doors were against the rules of a dungeon. These locked doors looked sturdy now, but as soon as someone entered his hall, they would open wide to fairly allow their passing. He would have wasted all that mana on something that was a decoration at best.

Archimedes waited for more mana to enter his supply, and then he went to put on the finishing touches. He drilled twelve small holes into the stone door bar so that they lined up with the holes in the doors, then he put little lipped rods into the new holes. The door bar would be fixed in place while the stone rods were stuck inside the doors. He put additional thin rods into the holes in doors to bridge what was left of the ten centimeter gap. When a tile was fitted into place, the tiny spring would force out the small rod, which would push the rod in the door, which would push the rod in the door bar. When all the tiles were in the correct place, the door bar would be able to slide freely. He just needed something to move it out of the way. This was accomplished by crafting a large copper spring and stretching it out, attaching one end to the door bar, and the other to a hole in the side of the wall.

Archimedes tested his puzzle with one of the patterns he knew would succeed. Every tile clicked satisfyingly when it was in the correct place, followed almost immediately by a click from the other side of the door, and the door bar gave a satisfying thud when it slid free. It was a good mechanical puzzle that even a single-floored dungeon could afford. He felt satisfied, until he realized that only one of the doors could swing freely open. The other was stuck because of the way the door bar was positioned.

Archimedes’ crystalline body bristled with prickly mana as waves of irritation swept over him. He forced himself to take a deep breath, figuratively speaking, and admired his Wolfbats, who were laying together in a fluffy nap pile. To Archimedes, who felt everything that transpired within his dungeon body, the mild emotions of his summoned monsters were a convenient tool for calming himself. He enjoyed wallowing in their connection for a moment longer before focusing back on the problematic door.

An additional mana point settled into his reserves, and his logical thinking had a bit more fuel to work with. Still, it took unforgivably long before he came up with a rather obvious solution. Archimedes fixed the back end of the large copper spring to a curved stone plate, then carved into the wall a track for that stone plate to follow. Now, when the door was opened, the door bar would be free to rotate with it. To keep that door from then just opening in and bypassing the entire puzzle, Archimedes fixed a second stone bracket to the other door, to hold the door bar in place.

As though it knew he was finished, the voice of the world made a brief announcement.

Congratulations! Dungeon core Archimedes has registered a new Puzzle! New Puzzle registered: Double-Door Sliding Puzzle (12 tiles, stone)

Well of course. It would be worrying if there was a puzzle identical to the one he'd just built in some other dungeon. Archimedes had seen announcements like this a few times in the past when he had gotten more creative with his traps.

In total, Archimedes spent five hours making that door. At least his mana accumulation had increased in the meantime. It now sat at a pathetic respectable 15 per hour. His creations were spreading well, and they had started to creep into his core room where the mana was thicker.

Archimedes felt the need for a sign at his entrance. People might find him, fail to solve his first puzzle, and start to spread rumors about it. At that time, it would be nice if he could use those people to advertise his intentions. So Archimedes made a simple stone sign to put just before the puzzle door. The door took up the entire passageway, leaving nowhere to mount it, so Archimedes ended up wasting more time and mana than he would like to admit in making the ceiling outside the door a bit higher. A bit of his less than thrilled mood seemed to have leaked into the message he engraved just above the puzzle door, but he decided that he liked it that way. The stone sign, or perhaps it was a plaque, read thusly, “Brutes and Fools Beware: This Dungeon Calls for a Sage”

Fufu, later he could set up a punishment for the people who tried to brute-force their way through his painstakingly crafted test of wit.

____________________

Costs:

Spoiler: Spoiler

Monsters (per 1)

Wolfbat: 30 / 5 min

Animals (per 1)

Earthworm: 3 / 15 sec | Dung Beetle: 8 / 25 sec | Moth 6 / 13 sec

Plants (per 1 or per 1 square meter as appropriate)

Glow Moss: 6 / 25 sec | Grass: 5 / 30 sec | Fern: 5 / 25 sec | Weeds: 7 / 13 sec

Fungi (per 1 or per 1 square meter as appropriate)

Mycelium: 4 / 15 sec | White Fungus: 6 / 18 sec

Materials (per 10cm x 1meter x 1meter / realtime)

Dirt: 5 | Stone: 10 | Water: 15

Constructs (per 1 / realtime)

Large Copper Spring: 8 | Sliding Puzzle Tile: 3 | Small Rock: 2 | Stone Door: 22 | Stone Door Bar: 4 | Stone Plaque: 4 | Tiny Copper Spring: 1

Puzzles (per 1 / instant)

Double-Door Sliding Puzzle (12 tiles, stone): 95