"Wonderful." Holly claps her hands together and hovers in the air near my gem. "Now that we have formally recognized our bond we can get to work."

Work? Bond? I thought we were giving names?

"Names are important, Pit. Dungeons and their Fairies have a special bond, my job is to provide you with the collected knowledge of Dungeon Fairykind so that you can be the best Dungeon you can be. In exchange the Bond prevents you from harming me, and allows me to make a small personal space for myself here in your domain. It's a sacred trust passed down from generation to generation, since the first Dungeon Fairy bonded to a dungeon centuries ago." Holly adjusts her face thing again, making it difficult to focus on her lecture on the history of dungeon fairies. "Pit? Are you still listening?"

No, I was looking at the thing on your face.

"These are my spectacles. I have poor eyesight and they help me see." She sighs. "I suppose history lessons can wait for another time. Let us cover the basics of Dungeoneering instead." Holly flutters up to the ceiling of my hollow and taps on the hard packed sand. "Could you please expand this room a bit? Go slowly and I'll tell you when you've got the size right."

I oblige her, expanding the room while keeping my central pillar in place to support myself. For good measure I square off the floor, ceiling and walls like the outside room I found. I feel like she's going a bit far as the room gets a bit empty for my taste but eventually she tells me to stop. I put a thin layer of the pretty reddish sandstone and Holly gasps.

"You've already figured out matter transmutation! Well done, Pit." She smiles at me and I feel a warm glow in my center at her praise. "Now this room is about how tall you want to make your corridors once we start constructing the dungeon proper. For reference this is roughly seven feet high, which is a few hands taller than a human. This will be a comfortable height for most of the sentient races, as most of them won't be willing to go crawling through tunnels full of monsters they can't stand up in."

That's nice, will humans be coming to visit me?

"In a manner of speaking. Humans and demi-humans in general are your most common food source." Holly summons another of her blue panels. On it I see a silhouette of a person, an animal, and a flower. "Every living thing contains mana which it absorbs from its' environment. Plants contain very little but you can take their mana freely as they don't have the protection of the gods. Animals have much higher mana concentration than plants, but have souls as well, so the gods won't allow you to just take their mana. However, any that die in your domain will be absorbed."

I tried to squish Mr. Rat with rocks before but I couldn't move anything close to him. That's why I made a big rock that was far away and dropped it.

"That was good thinking, and we'll come back around to what that was when we finish with the basics." The panel changes, showing a series of rings around the silhouettes. "Humans and demi-humans have a mana concentration many times greater than animals, and they can increase that concentration through training to make themselves stronger. That's why they are such a good food source. The problem you had with the rat is a gift from the gods to protect them from dungeons."

"The protection of the gods radiates from creatures with souls based on the strength of that soul. Animal souls are weak, so things like insects won't be able to hold off your control, but rats and other small creatures might block you for a few feet in any direction. A human or demi-human soul is very strong. You won't be able to change anything in your dungeon on a floor with one of those in it. The gods won't intervene if a human stumbles into their death fairly, but they won't stand for cheating by dungeons."

So how am I supposed to eat humans if I can't move when they come in? I'm not sure if I really want to be eating humans now that I think about it more. Sure I get really hungry and the energy from Mr. Rat mostly burned off increasing my size again, but I felt really bad for that, and humans are apparently even more alive than rats are.

"In order to kill intruding humans and absorb their mana you have to set up traps and monsters ahead of time, and you need to make sure the humans find out you are here and show them treasures they can get by coming inside. Humans are naturally greedy and stupid, so lots of them will come in hoping to take your treasures and get themselves killed. You absorb their mana and expand your dungeon, which will attract even more humans." Holly's screen changes to show my tunnel with its' vertical shaft and falling rock. "What you made before was a very basic trap, you were only hunting a rat so you were able to trigger it yourself from outside the range of his protection, for humans you'll need to make a trigger of some kind to do it automatically. I'll show you how to set up a tripwire later, but for now I need you to concentrate on all the creatures you have the pattern for so we can make your first monsters."

Pattern? I try to think about the living things I've met and to my surprise a blue box appears in my vision.

Unlocked Archetypes Available Units Insect Dire Worm: Class G monster with rapid breeding and evolution. Capable of burrowing and sensing movement through vibrations in the soil. Blind and deaf otherwise. Animal Dire Rat: Class G monster with quick breeding and moderate evolution. Posesses sharp teeth and a good sense of smell. Capable of fighting in groups. Undead

Bone Rat: Class G+ monster. Unable to breed, evolution strictly defined. Able to perceive life force and fight in groups.

Plague Rat: Class G+ monster. Unable to breed, evolution strictly defined. Possesses sharp teeth and natural poison. Enemies bitten have a chance to contract the Plague, debiliting all stats until cured and dealing damage over time.

Oh okay, I see it now. Looks like I can make scary big versions of worms and rats, and Undead. The Undead ones sure look strong! Looking at each entry on the table I get a feeling for what each one will look and fight like. The Dire Worm and Rat are both interesting but the undead are clearly a step above them. I wanna make undead!

"Wait Pit! Let me explain your choices first!" Holly's voice pulls me out of my monster making trance. "Undead are a very risky start for a dungeon, humans hate and fear the undead so if they find a dungeon with them in it they will almost always try to destroy it right away. Also, you need bodies to make undead and all you have now is half of a rat. Once you make a zombie or skeleton you can regenerate it will mana after it is destroyed, but without a supply of bodies you won't be able to make as many as you want. Most undead dungeons start off in crypts or graveyards where they have a lot of bodies to work with right away."

Oh... well maybe later then. Dire Rat seems better than Dire Worm. What does the Dire part mean?

"Dungeonborn creatures are made from and infused with your mana. As a result the very low-level creatures tend to hit their first evolution simply with the amount of mana you use to make them. Dire animals are just larger, more intelligent versions of the normal creature. While the rat you killed was, well, rat sized, a Dire rat would be about the size of a small dog. A newborn dungeon full of Dire rats is a very traditional choice. I've studied a great deal of dungeon history and theory, so I know some evolution paths we can take with them." Holly smirks and pushes up her spectacles. "Dire Rats can evolve into Ratlings, which stand on two legs and use tools, and even into Ratmen, a form of demi-human."

You sure are smart Holly!

"Mwa ha ha, but of course." Holly poses triumphantly, "I may be the last member of my family to get her dungeon bond, but that just means I had more time to study the lore! Now go ahead and make as many Dire rats as you can so we can get a feel for our available forces. Just focus on the pattern and a place in your dungeon, then feed it some mana."

I follow her instructions and make three.

"Um... good start, Pit. But feel free to keep going." Holly flies over to my crystal

That's all the mana I had. I say a bit defensively.

"Oh." She bites her lip and glances at the two Dire rats scampering around my room. "I suppose the mana density in this area is rather poor, you must have burned through a lot of your stockpile exanding the room. Each monster you make has a mana cost and an upkeep, the cost is how much mana you pour into the pattern to make the monster, while the upkeep is how much of your total mana capacity is lost while the monster exists. Once your mana regenerates a bit you should make a few more so we can see how many you can handle at once."

Won't it be hard to do stuff if all my mana is used by the rats?

"When you want to change your layout the first thing you do is absorb all your monsters to get your capacity and mana back. You focus on regenerating mana and making more rats while I go out looking for things to plant in here. Dungeons naturally encourage the growth of any vegetation planted in them and they will help generate and gather more ambient mana as well as serving as food for the rats, which reduces your upkeep and allows them to breed faster." She flies out of the room, through the narrow tunnel and outside of my domain. I get a vague feeling of the direction she went in but I can't sense her anymore once she crosses the threshold.

I decide to fix my exit hallway before anything else and make it into a second room the same size as my crystal chamber (clearing out the block and Mr. Rat's remains first) with a smaller opening between them. I leave the hole into the other room very small for now. I pull in the available mana as much as possible while I wait and manage to make another Dire Rat just before Holly gets home carrying a bundle of weeds and seed pods. She explains the uses of each plant and places them around the room for me to grow. Near my crystal she has me bury two seeds which she tells me will grow into date palms. With a bit of mana investment most basic plants can be made to evolve into stronger, magical versions. Whatever magical dates do they will probably be valuable to someone and make a good reward for adventurers. There aren't many helpful herbs in the area but some small succulent plants will make fodder for the rats, and the tough scratchy bushes will be useful for hiding in and springing out of. Since the plants feed off my mana they won't need sun to grow, and the ambient mana increase from having more living things around should cover the drain they put on my resources.

Waiting for more mana to gather is slow and boring, and the plants don't do anything interesting, so I spend the next few hours asking Holly questions about the world and the humans to pass the time. She is a good teacher and illustrates new things for me on her magic panel. We settle into a comfortable rhythm of lessons and construction with the slow mana growth until she gets tired and tells me she needs to sleep. I try to go dark again like before but can't seem to do it on purpose, so I just wait for Holly to wake up tomorrow.