When I woke up, my heart was beating hard, and I had a cold sweat that had formed on me. Many of the dreams that I had before had been intense, but the fighting and the running was nonstop. I sat up and looked around the inside of the yurt as I brought my mind back to the now.

“I got to set my plans if I am going to get anything done.” I mumbled as I got up.

I didn’t have to make breakfast while living at the waterfall, as I could just head back into the dungeon. It meant that so long as I was okay only eating while here, I could be much more productive. So I headed in.

“Dave! Whatcha got on the stove for breakfast?” I asked as I came into the safe room.

“Eggs and bacon with coffee. Unless you want to wait and I can fix some of the things Blink likes?” Dave replied.

“Nope, I am fine with what you have.”

As I sat down at the bar, Dave slid a plate of food over to me along with a wooden mug of coffee. Then he moved over and picked up his glass to start cleaning. I was sure that glass was always clean, to begin with, but it was just the thing the safe room had him do.

Dave smiled and asked, “So what brings you in today?”

I answered around a bit of food, “I figured out how to move my quest from Ni’Bish forward some and so I am going to see if I can get moved forward more. I am also still trying to figure out what I can dedicate to the Sisters that will get me the Faith numbers that I need in order to get them to help me find my way out of this place.”

“Sounds like a busy day! When you get the chance take a look at the dungeon and see what all you can do with it. From what I have in my memories it has been a very long time since there was a dungeon master.”

I paused mid-drink. “Where do your memories come from?”

Dave sat the glass down and pondered for a moment, “I have the ones from this dungeon which are mine. Every interaction with the dungeon that you have had becomes something that I know every time you come in. I also have all the interactions from the dungeon that I was born from.”

“So you were born in another dungeon and came here?”

“Well no not really. I am the memories of all the other dungeons that came before me up the line to the first one. Ever so often in the past a dungeon master would come around and have a dungeon seed. This dungeon is the 8th seeding from the first.”

“So can you tell me about the other dungeon masters?”

“No that’s not something that they let pass on. Each one in the past made it so they wouldn’t pass on to the next level. All the memories that I have of them are just they were there but not who they were.”

“Any idea why they would do that?”

“No, I know they told me but that is one of the memories that is a blank. Its almost like they wanted to be forgotten.”

“Okay, well that’s a dead end then. How old is this dungeon?”

“The seed was cast out about six months ago.”

“So there’s another dungeon master that was around here just a little while ago?”

“No, it was odd the one that did the seeding never claimed the dungeon just went in and only did the seeding and left. My mother dungeon was 87 levels deep and there hadn’t been anyone who had made it all the was down in over a thousand years before this guy did. When they forced the seeding I know at least 40 levels were consumed to cause the seeding perhaps more.”

“So levels get turned into seeds?”

“Every level is able to be split into 2 seeds which can then be used to create a new dungeon. “

“What level does a dungeon need to be in order to seed?” I asked.

Dave smiled and said, “6, a dungeon is mature at 5 levels and so all levels after that can be seeded at any time.”

“Well, that might be good to know. I just don’t know if it matters to me or not right now.”

Dave smiled, “If you keep yourself in the memories of the dungeons then when you seed you start as the master of the new ones.”

I sat and drank my coffee for a bit, thinking. Depending on how quickly the dungeons grew enough to have a safe room, they might make a better way for me to move around. I wouldn’t have to have food with me if they were quick growing. Just drop a seed and jump into a dungeon that gave me some defenders, a bed, and a bar.

“How fast do seeds grow into dungeons that have safe rooms?”

Dave poured himself a glass of beer and stepped around the bar. “Well that depends on a lot of things. The amount of ambient mana in the area is a big one. If you plant it in a low mana area then the dungeon will grow very slowly. Talking like just a few feet per year. If you plant it on a ley-line, or mana fount than you could expect it to have a safe room in just a few hours. Now, if you put it in room either natural or constructed it could have the safe room in just minutes.”

“So because I moved the dungeon to the tunnel I already made it was easier for it to get back up and running?”

“Yes, and because this location has an unusually high mana concentration. I would guess that nearby is a mana fount or perhaps a confluence of two ley lines.”

“Cool! You did just drop a few terms I am not sure about, what’s a mana fount and what are ley lines? I have guesses but I want to know.”

“Well since they both directly deal with the growth of the dungeon I can go into that with with.” Dave smiled and then kept going. “Mana founts or springs as some people call them are places where mana comes up from deep in the ground. Ley lines are like mana rivers or streams. They are the flowing of mana around the world. Where they meet can be both amazing and crazy at the same time. That much moving mana can let a dungeon grow quickly but also bring in a random factor of what just naturally shows up.”

“So would the lower mana concentrations be places that are further away from the ley lines?”

“Most of the time yes, however, there are things that might suck up the mana and stop the flow. A dungeon could alter the flow of mana and so could some great magical works. There are ways to draw mana away from an area. That happened to my fifth seed. No one had beat it fully in a hundred years. They even talked about what the mages were going to do about it. Turned out that they did a great work that dropped the ambient mana from a normal level down to very low.”

“You were seeded after that?”

“Yup, the master came did something that returned the flow and then seeded the dungeon. I don’t know what all he did as I can’t remember that but I remember that the flow got fixed. The dungeon lost around 70 levels in the hundred years that it was in the very low location.”

“So would a tent work for the dungeon to let it build quicker?”

“Unlikely, the walls need to be thick enough to help hold mana in and cloth just doesn’t do that.”

“Any idea how close this dungeon is to level 5?”

“Nope you need to go and check on that yourself.”

“Well my plans might have just taken a change of course for the day. I am going to go to the dungeon heart and take a look.”

I headed out of the safe room and back to the dungeon master quarters. It was nice that it had started the build when I left, but it wasn’t something that I felt I would use often. The yurt provided rest bonuses that weren’t found in the dungeon master quarters. So I wasn’t moving in while here.

I mused as I walked up to the dungeon heart, “I might could find the bonuses some place in this this set of drop downs.”

I opened up the interface and almost felt overwhelmed. There were at least twenty tabs that ran across the top of the screen. Down the left were dozens of options, each that also looked like they had sub-options. The whole thing looked like someone had built an excel workbook with multiple pages and then grouped rows. When I opened up the rows, there were anointed buttons for actions.

It wasn’t Excel, but it felt that way with rows and columns. I also thought that it meant I was seeing a user interface, and someplace in the background would be where the real work of the options happened.

I clicked on the very first option that I had. The tab was labeled “READ.” The grouping that I was looking at was labeled “Purpose.” The one directly under was “Operations,” then “Training,” and lastly, “Reproduction.”

The tabs across the top were grayed out like I couldn’t click on them as of yet. When I tried to, nothing happened. I went to skip Purpose as Dave and the old men had already told me; however, once again, nothing could happen. I clicked on Purpose, and a new button showed up. “Learn”

When I clicked on learn my world turned upside down. Light from the dungeon heart flew out and hit my head and started to flash. I was screaming as the pain that flowed into my head felt like the burning of my brain.

Images of worlds plunged into darkness. Orcs and monsters which I had never seen before crawled across the dark worlds, marching into portals that would take them to others. Some of the planets fractured, sending huge chunks of them off into space, where they traveled to other worlds. Those fragments crashed down onto a new planet, and the orcs that had magically been held in place marched forth.

What seemed like hours passed, watching one world after another being ripped apart. Then there was a planet that was able to rebuff the orcs. From it, several people traveled to another planet and saved it. Soon there were hundreds of thousands going from one world to the next.

Planets where the orcs were, they would fight and try to win. Some would win, and others they would lose. In places where there were no orcs, they sealed to protect those inside. This world was one that was sealed. The High Heavens sealed the lower heavens, and nothing could pass come in that didn’t already have a connection. Once beings on the planet got strong enough, they left to join the war.

This went on for years playing in my mind. Then a chunk of an orc planet crashed into the seal. A few rocks made it through the magic and, with them, access for the Dark Ones. So the caretakers of the world drew forth from those in other realms. Champions who would grow faster to help fight the orcs. They built dungeons to help train those brought through to this realm.

* * *