Duke had been steadily allocating his characteristic points over the course of his interactions with everyone. By doing so slowly, he had avoided the massive changes that cause such pain and suffering. This had boosted his base Psyche to 20,000 which with all his multipliers came to 224,000. The ultimate result of his stat gains saw him with a Mana pool of over one billion Mana. All of which he was pouring into the Dungeon Core he was forming. This core was Tiering up rapidly and he was growing increasingly concerned as to whether the core or his Ability could handle what he was attempting.

  The Dungeon Core shuddered in his hands, trembling at the power being poured into it. Pulses of multicolored Mana burst from the core, its structure unable to grow fast enough to contain the Mana being poured into it. The shuddering increased as the now Tier Seven core started to fracture. With a clamp-down of his will, Duke kept the core together, repairing the fractures as he went. The shuddering increased and Duke realized that even with all his will focused on it, the core was not going to survive.

  With a thought, Duke TELEPORTED the overloaded core into space, outside the orbits of Teldin’s moons. Seconds later, the overloaded core shattered, releasing hundreds of millions of Mana in a burst that briefly lit up the sky like yet another sun. As the flash faded, Duke reviewed what went wrong. It did not take him long to see that he had exceeded the scope of his Ability. He checked and saw that his DUNGEON CORE CREATION Ability had increased to Adept 149 but was still short of making it to Master.

  Do I just make a bunch more dungeons until I can get the Ability up to Master and go from there? I don’t think I can make the crafting dungeon I am looking for at less than that rank. Yeah, I guess that’s plan B.

  Duke activated COSMIC NAVIGATION and chose a barren system roughly ten light years away. It took a slight boost to get there with a TELEPORT as it was about ten times his base range but easily within his capabilities. Once there, he scanned each of the rocky planets for any signs of subterranean voids or passages.

  The planets orbited a blue supergiant star at a considerable distance. Even still, the radiation bombarding the surface of the planets rendered them inhospitable. Duke could feel his ARMOR SKIN working with his REGENERATION to combat the solar wind ripping through the solar system. He quickly found an area on the nearest planet that was likely the remains of a long-dormant volcano. Lava tubes formed countless eons ago made for perfect entryways into the depths of the planet.

  Stepping out of the solar wind was a relief. It was not a case that Duke couldn’t take it, it was a constant irritation to his skin, making him feel as if his skin was covered in poison ivy and constantly itching. He was glad to be out of it. He followed passages downward and found a network of collapsed caves and openings. One more focused DUNGEON SENSE burst showed him where there were there were several caverns unconnected to the tunnels. Those were his destination.

  “OK, you get a dungeon. You get a dungeon. And you get a dungeon.” He chuckled to himself as he quickly created all manner of dungeon types and planted them within the caverns. For the most part, he did not wait for the dungeons to fully form before planting the next one. His goal was grinding the Ability and planting as many as he could manage in a short window.

  While he planted dungeons, he activated his DUNGEON AURA to get a real feel for how it worked. In short, it was odd. For the most part it simply existed around him, and he knew he could interact with it like the substance and space of a dungeon. But it also felt wild and untamed. He hoped that in time and with sufficient rank, he could control the aura completely. But right now, it was wild and fluctuated around him. The aura expanded and contracted at its own whim. One moment it was tight to his body, barely a handsbreadth away from his skin. The next, it was filling the entire cavern.

  The aura fluctuations were enough to occasionally drain a developing dungeon core or to fill one up more rapidly or to a greater degree than Duke had planned. Still, he pressed on, rapidly creating and planting dungeon cores of all types and Tiers. He did not push any of the Tiers above six since he could sense an inherent instability if he tried to push them higher so quickly. He wound up filling what he guessed to be hundreds of caverns deep under the surface of the planet. He figured that he must have planted at least 10,000 in this one planet. It took him most of the day, but it did accomplish his goal as DUNGEON CORE CREATION broke through to Master rank at last. There was no further delay. He returned to Teldin.

  With his new Master Rank, Duke set himself up outside of Cloudspire and began to carefully craft the new Dungeon Core. He took his time, layering his intent and guidance throughout the core rather than trying to brute force it as he had when he failed so spectacularly. His Mana flowed into the core, filling each Tier layer carefully and precisely.

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  The new mastery had shown him that rather than building the core as a single growing mass, building each Tier as a single layer upon the Dungeon Core’s foundation was far more stable and sustainable. It was a longer process, but made for a far stronger core structure. Each layer was interconnected but absorbed and used his Mana independently. It took him a full thirty minutes to complete, but when he was done, each layer had been suffused with his entire Mana pool. Including the foundational core, this Dungeon Core was filled with ten billion Mana.

  “Oh, hell yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!” Duke held the core up to the sky and announced, “Look at this thing! It’s perfect. Can you see it, Overmind? I finally see the perfection in a well-crafted Dungeon Core.”

  “It certainly took you long enough.”

  Duke turned to see the Overmind floating in the air behind him. Before he could speak, the Overmind continued, “You have been a blunt instrument up until now. Sure, you have had moments of brilliance, and you have created a number of dungeons of quality. The Forge was one that was particularly well designed because it was built with a purpose in mind. This latest dungeon was the first where you thought beyond the simple methods of creation. You created not just a Dungeon Core, but a world in and of itself. That, my faithful, is the true power of your Class and your future.”

  “Way to make me feel proud and shitty all at the same time.”

  “Do not feel shame for your past creations. They will grow and mature on their own paths. Some may even grow to rival even Sam and the Lake Front Dungeon in time. It’s not likely, but it is possible. The vast majority of my dungeons are like the feral ones you have created. They are more spread out for sure, but the groupings you have created will make for an interesting experiment.”

  Intrigued, Duke leaned into the discussion, “Experiment? What do you mean by that?”

  “With the dungeons so crowded together, there will come a time when they will all be sending out creatures to either plant new cores or to explore their surroundings. These creatures will inevitably run into each other. We may see them cooperate and possibly dig new areas to plant cores, or we may see them compete and fight each other over what little space remains. We could wind up with a fight for survival between them all with a single or a few victors who would have then become tremendously powerful – strong enough and aggressive enough to be replanted on the worlds of my enemies!”

  “Dungeons of mass destruction? Is that what you are going for?”

  “That’s just one possibility in many. Go ahead and plant your dungeon. I want to see what this looks like fully realized.”

  “You don’t already know?”

  “Don’t ruin my fun. Just plant the dungeon already.”

  Duke smirked as he stepped forward and planted the dungeon. He was standing a bit away from the main road from Cloudspire to the Lake Front Inn. The road had been a project that Duke Madrigal had focused on to give a secondary path to Havenreach if they didn’t want to or couldn’t use the Portal network. Duke had approved of the project instantly and was happy to see that it had been carried out so quickly. He secretly wondered if that was a factor of his AURA of PROSPERITY. He figured that he would have to investigate how that was affecting things now that his Psyche had taken another astronomical leap.

  As the dungeon formed, he stood back with the Overmind hovering over his left shoulder. It felt a bit weird but Duke was starting to get used to it. It was easier to ignore the floating core over his shoulder once the outer face of the dungeon started to form. The ground under his feet shook as the entryway pushed itself outward, carving a road all the way to the one he now stood upon. The new road was paved with white and grey paving stones and wide enough for half a dozen wagons to drive side-by-side and still have enough room to keep them comfortably apart.

  This new road led to a grand workshop entrance that stood nearly twenty meters tall, able to accommodate most any cargo that would pass through the workshop’s doors. The doors themselves were made of thick wood, banded with what looked like brass fittings. The grand double-doors each had a smaller wicket door to allow for up to a single standard wagon to enter.

  Beyond the doors, the workshop itself was immense, easily a hundred meters wide. It was painted in vibrant colors. The doors were a bright turquoise while all the windows were trimmed in a golden-yellow trim thar gleamed in the sunlight. The walls themselves were mostly done in shades of red while still showing the woodgrain of the walls. Above the doors was a massive wrought iron sign that depicted an anvil with a hammer descending while gripped firmly in a man’s fist. Traced in golden filagree were the words, “Celestial Foundry of Teldin”

  Duke turned to look at the Overmind who slid sideways to not be resting on Duke’s nose. He asked with a smile, “Now does that scream, ‘Crafters of doom and destruction’ to you?”

  “Well, actually, no. No it doesn’t. It looks like an enormous grandmother’s house.”

  “Perfect. Then I got it about right. I want it to be outwardly as innocuous as possible. I would have made it smaller but we will need the large opening to move things in and out and I didn’t want the proportions of the building to match the doors.”

  “Then I suppose you accomplished your mission, but I don’t understand why.”

  “I want this to be an easy to find place for anyone who is supposed to be here. Anyone not supposed to be here will take one look at this place, laugh, and move on.”

  “Duke, you are a one-of-a-kind.”

  “I'll take that as a compliment. Now, let’s go check this place out.”