The fox's stare has left a mark on me and ever since that moment I can’t shake the feeling of being watched, and when I check it is always one of my foxes whos looking in my direction. From time to time it's the male fox, he’s gotten into the habit of looking in my direction every time he's not sure what he should do, always looking away before I can answer him.

More often than not though, it's the female fox that gazes in my direction. Sometimes for no apparent reason at all. She’ll just lie down somewhere and look at me while slowly moving her tail from side to side. Eventually, I felt I had to ask her “What do you want?”

Her lack of response didn’t disturb me and I kept talking to her whenever she would look. Talking to her about everything and nothing at the same time. I didn't care if she understood or not, because once the dem was broken I couldn’t stop the flood of words. “I never knew I missed having someone I can direct my thoughts at.”

I tried doing the same with the male but it just wasn’t the same. I still did it from time to time, mostly commenting on his actions or praising him after successful hunts. With the female it was different, with the female I felt like I can say whatever popped into my mind and she wouldn’t judge. We had our own special connection and I felt it grow stronger the more I talked to her.

I was so engrossed in sharing my thoughts with her that I didn’t even notice that my mana pool was full for some time. If she didn’t need to go to sleep again I doubt I would've noticed it at and would just keep on blabbering.

Congratulations!

You have reached level ten.

Next level up at 25,000 mana

[Item Creation] awarded.

+25 dungeon points.

Excited I rush to see what the skill does and find out what I can create. Apparently, a small knife is all I have access to right now. However, when I check the dungeon shop what I find is a huge selection of items I can buy and a whole new set of skills I can purchase.

The twenty-five points I got with the level up are spent on a medium strength health potion, “Whatever medium is, it’ll have to do as the strong potion costs a hundred points.”

I spend another twenty-five on a mana potion and use a hundred more to buy a perk. The perk is called {Chemical Substances} and allows [Item Creation] to choose from various substances found naturally on earth.

One of those things is water, a substance I’ve been waiting to add for some time now to my dungeon. So without further ado, I create a ball of water from thin air and let it fall to the ground.

It splashes and starts to pull, slowly being absorbed into the earth. It costs almost nothing, an amount enough to fill an Olympic pull for only ten points of mana. The only limit being that I can’t create the water too fast or it just evaporates immediately.

“Still better than nothing,” I shrug and get to work.

The first thing I need is a reservoir of water. This I create around the safe room. A large underground lake to hold the water. Compacting the earth at the bottom of it as much as I can so that it holds the water instead of absorbing it, leaving only a small opening. An opening that lets some of the water escape into a path I created in advance on the second floor. The path starts by the entrance to the floor and makes its way to the opposite side, where an exit will be located. Next to the exit will be the boss monster that blocks the way forward and the flow of water will help navigate the forest.

To give a place for the water to go instead of collecting by the exit I create another reservoir, twice as large as the first one which I decide to eventually turn into a third floor.

“I rather not waste dungeon points on aquatic animals though…”

One or two fish is one thing but making a whole water ecosystem is going to be too pricey. Maybe I can take the snake or salamander and change them into something aquatic but that can wait. First I need to finish what I started. I have enough projects as it is.

I pick a nice spot and start creating water inside the empty reservoir on the second floor. It takes some concentration but by the time the reservoir is full and water starts to flow into the stream it’s almost second nature to me. A steady rush of water is appearing out of nothing and slowly filling the reservoir from the bottom. The pace is a bit slow to my liking and I try to add another source of water, which works fine so I try to add another. I manage somehow but for the first time since I became a dungeon, I feel a limit to my concentration. When I try to create a fourth source of water it fails, the mana not forming into water properly. Anything else I try to do doesn’t work either, “I can’t even create the simplest earthworm.”

Still, three sources give me a nice strong stream flowing through the second floor. Eventually, fish will swim in it so I cover the bottom and banks with moss, grass and flowers and finish for now.

The stream reaches the rapids and begins to fall down in a small waterfall, filling up a shallow pull of water underneath before continuing its steady flow towards the floor's exit.

For now, the exit is just a hole in the far wall through which the water enters and falls down to the empty third floor. “I think I know what the boss monster of the second floor will be.” I check the dungeon shop and sure enough, the thing I’m looking for is there. Close to the Fungi section but not part of it, the organism I intend to base my creation on costs a measly one dungeon point for the whole family of mycetozoa.

But before I create the strongest monster in my current dungeon I still have a few items I need to try. The healing potion is simply too useful not to experiment with.

“A photographer?”

“Yep, a [Photographer]!” he grabs his phone and opens the camera app. He then holds the phone in front of me with one hand and lets me look at the screen while he takes a photo.

“Did you see that?” his hand grabs me by the arm and he beams at me, “That’s so effing amazing!”

“Yeah, just cuz I don’t have one doesn’t mean I don’t know what a smartphone is.”

“No, my hand. Look how stable it is,” he says and lifts his phone in front of my face again. He’s standing with an extended arm, using only his thumb and ring finger to hold his phone, he swipes the camera into video mode using the pointing finger of the same hand.

Before the recording even starts I can already notice what he wants to show me. His hand is motionless, not even the smallest tremor passes through them even though it is held in an uncomfortable position.

“[Stable Hands],” he explains as I look at the school's corridors through his phone screen, “Woken up by the voice announcing my new class and skill I rushed to test it, and guess how good it is?”

“How should I know?” I hit his hand away so we can continue on our way to class.

“Cuz I’ll tell ya, that's how,” he jokes and pockets his phone. “I went online and read about camera settings and apparently most photographers rarely shoot at less than one-sixtieth of a second as the subject will usually move and cause the photo to blur. Slower than that and you also risk introducing handshake to the photo.” We walk by rows of lockers, going slowly as children were still entering the building and classes haven’t started yet so the halls were packed.

“To combat that, photographers use a tripod or in-camera stabilizers. Especially when shooting landscapes. These allow shooting at slower shutter speeds but thanks to the skill I don’t need that. I checked on my dad’s Canon. I’m better than any tripod. I still can’t move properly while using the skill but after some practice yesterday and on the way to school there’s already a huge improvement. Videos I shoot while moving look almost like I’m gently gliding, it’s…”

Ben doesn’t get to finish the sentence as a cloud of dust and dirt covers us both. We close our eyes and start coughing, and through the cough, I can hear a familiar voice laughing.

“Out of the way, pussy,” Tim steps around the corner and shoulders me into the locker. In his hand is a dustpan and one of his lackeys is holding a dirty broom.

My hands jump for the inhaler, searching for it in my pockets to the amusement of my tormentors. Triggering my asthma attacks is an activity they derive much pleasure from and their sneers make me angry. Anger that focuses me, reminding me that I don’t need the inhaler anymore, and more importantly, it reminds me of what I’ve accomplished yesterday. How I have passed the first floor of the dungeon. Sure, I might not have my trusty baseball bat with me but I doubt Tim is faster than the monsters that jumped at me from the shadows.

By the time the dust has settled and I can keep my eyes open and breathe properly Tim and his lackeys are gone. Walking leisurely down the corridor, laughing and bullying others on their way.

Ben seems unfazed by their actions. He is rarely a direct target, mostly just suffering secondary damage from being next to me. So while he goes back to ranting about the possibilities of his new skills, I can’t help but add fuel to my anger.

An anger that was always there, kept on a small fire as I lacked any means to change my fate. But no longer. No longer am I the helplessly weak boy Tim could push around however and whenever he liked. When he shouldered me just now, I felt it. I’m stronger. It wasn’t by much but I managed to resist his push, hitting the locker hurt less than usual. Whether because it's from all the physical exercise I’ve done these past weeks or from becoming a level three [Fighter] remains to be seen.

One thing is certain though, I will get stronger, “And I will make him stop,” I whisper through clenched teeth.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Want to do the first floor again today?”

“Hell no!” he looks at me like I’m crazy, “No way in hell am I fighting those jumping things again without help.”

“Come on, we don’t need them. I leveled up yesterday and we know what to expect so it’ll be easier.”

“No man, we promised Mr.Locklear we will wait until he heals and go together. Just wait a few more days.”

“We won’t enter the second floor. Just run the first one and leave,” I put an arm over him and hold him closer, “I want to level and I’m sure that stabilized video footage of the place will do wonders to your following.”

“People do seem to like photos of the place…”

The medium healing potion is better than I expected. When I tried it on one of my animals it healed any damage that wasn’t deadly, the deepest cuts closed in a matter of minutes. It even managed to regrow a cut tail of the monster I tried it on.

“Only problem is that it isn’t exactly cheap...”

At two hundred and fifty mana a vial, it wasn’t too bad, especially when one vial could be used three or four times before it was empty, but it’s wasn’t something I could waste willy-nilly yet. So I create another vile for one last experiment.

This time instead of letting my test subject drink it directly I first pour it into a small area of compacted earth created in advance. The red liquid glows in its puddle even in the fake sunlight of the second floor. When I refill the vial with water and pour it into the same puddle the glow diminishes slightly but still glows mesmerizingly. The diluted potion is consumed by a hare I had an Arrowhead cut deeply. Another hare is cut the same way but doesn’t drink anything, this one will be used as a control group.

I make them sit next to each other and wait to see what happens.

Over the next few minutes, the wound of the hare that drank the diluted potion closes up completely. When I have him move around it seems like there is is no residual damage. It took twice as long to heal than when the potion was consumed properly but it healed nonetheless.

“Interesting,” I smile.

The way the potion is glowing makes me think of a place that will work great with it, so I create pockets of empty space in the ceiling of the first floor and fill it with diluted potion. A small tunnel connects the pockets of red water to the area over the firsts floor cliff.

The tunnels are small enough to squeeze only a drop of water at a time and a steady rain of red glowing water starts. Each drop hitting the various flowers growing from the walls and splattering like red glitter into the air.

Eventually, the rain will create puddles of the liquid on the various shelves and mushrooms growing on the wall, adding its red color to the light show together with the bioluminescent mushrooms and flowers.

After having traveled down the wall of flora and fungi the drops stop on top of the trampoline mushroom underneath. Joining together into spots and lines that sparkle red as they slide to the edges and fall down under the mushroom and are absorbed into the earth. From underneath the mushroom I create paths for the glowing water to flow through and add itself into the larger reservoir of water that feeds the second floors stream.

Several pockets of diluted Mana potion add drops of bright blue to the falling rain. Together they will allow the ecosystem to become ever so slightly magical. Both in appearance and on the inside. The water will have an added effect of allowing my animals and monsters to heal faster together with the chance that the Mana potion will also change them in some way, “Hopefully for the better.”

For now, I keep the potion severely diluted as I can’t afford the mana to keep creating new ones, yet as my ecosystems grows I’ll be able to make it more and more concentrated. “Until pure potions will run down my floors in streams. And oceans of magical water will form,” I fantasize as I watch the raindrops fall slowly, “Can’t wait for that day to come.”