It felt like a heavy weight had been lifted off my Core. It felt nice, finally being able to focus on just building my Dungeon again after spending such a long time unable to do anything other than wait for my Quest to be completed. Everything but the excavation and construction seemed to fall away. It reminded me of the time right after first awakening and gaining access to the System. A simpler time when all that mattered was the expansion and construction of the right now. There was a different kind of satisfaction from planning and telling a proper story, of the two I even preferred it, but it was still nice to go back to how it used to be for a while.

  Somewhat distractingly though it was also reminiscent of the time before I came into being, which was unquestionably strange. I didn’t have any memories of ever existing in a world other than this one, but there was still definitely something about this situation that reminded me of that void.

  One would have expected this to be extremely disconcerting, especially considering that I also found myself looking at myself, almost from an outside perspective. But it wasn’t. Quite the opposite actually. In a way, it was comforting watching myself work. A pure fulfillment of purpose, of who and what I was. I was Veos, I was a Dungeon Core, and I was finally expanding again.

  And not only that; I was starting something new. A second story, connected to the first only through themes and a final antagonist, rather than something more specific that needed to be understood to progress. Which meant that unlike on my previous Floors, I could make almost whatever I wanted. I’d had the idea a while ago for something completely different than the underground and gloomy caverns of the aberrant vampire storyline. Something vibrant and colorful and, most importantly, above ground. Or at least something that seemed to be above ground. I couldn’t actually build it there, or even above the Floors I had already made. But with the new skills I’d acquired since completing my Quest, I could certainly fake it.

  It was time to start making the Faewood, and begin to tell the Story of the elves.

  Creating an elven forest underground might seem like a difficult endeavor, as their forests don’t typically grow there, but the first step was to just make a large cave. Which was what I was doing now. The complicated part with the plants and the manufactured sunlight would come later. Now, I moved my mana as if on autopilot, a passenger in my own body transfixed watching myself work. I dismantled everything in my way, whether rock, metal, or mushroom, and continuously pushed my mana outwards in all directions, expanding from where Core had descended down to. I spread my awareness far, many times further than I’d ever done before, on any of my previous Floors.

  Up until now I'd found it annoying that floorspace was calculated from the volume the Challengers could realistically make use of, rather than from the actual volume of the Floor. But that was when I was making an underground castle dungeon meant to feel cramped and claustrophobic. Now that I was making a large open cavern it felt like a gift from the system to me personally. I still couldn’t make the ceiling arbitrarily high up, but that was because the bottom of the fifth was in the way. I wasn’t sure if it was due to my new management skills or not, but even when I pushed the ceiling all the way back up to where the prison Floor ended, it still barely affected the area I could cover at all.

  That had been a surprise to discover. I kept expecting to hit the proverbial wall where the System would stop me from making the Floor larger, but as I claimed more and more I began to wonder if it would ever come.

  It did, eventually, but by that point I’d excavated a truly enormous cavern. The ceiling was still only the forty meters up to the fifth, but I had almost 4 square kilometers of floor area. That was dozens of times larger than the total floorspace of all five of my previous Floors combined. There was simply no comparison between how much more freedom I had with my Quest compared to before. I hadn’t even realized how severely restricted I had been before, and now that the weights had suddenly been taken off I was shocked at how light the world was.

  It wasn’t completely weightless, since there still was a limit, but even still I was elated at the improvements. Maybe there was a chance that I’d be completely free to design any Story I wanted at some point, if I got to a high enough level. If I hadn’t already been innately motivated to expand and grow, that prospect would have made sure expansion was a core focus for the foreseeable future.

  Once I was finally finished carving out the cavern I got to work on the next big task. Shaping the ground. Unlike many of my previous Floors, this was meant to emulate the outside world, and while I couldn’t see a whole lot beyond my borders I could sense enough to know that it wasn’t ever really completely flat anywhere. So I made some hills, carved some valleys, and made some paths. This took a while. Creating and manipulating stone and soil was a lot more mana intensive than simply claiming and disintegrating the rock.

  While I worked I felt a faint tugging on my attention, but I was so engrossed in what I was doing I dismissed it as not that important and put it out of my mind.

  I decided to focus on the area around the stairs first to get the look and feel of the Floor right, before expanding to cover the rest of the area, as I had never made an outside-seeming environment before, and there was something unfamiliar and slightly discomforting about doing so that I wanted to get to the bottom of as fast as possible.

  The area I focused on was only about four hundred square meters, smaller even than the first Floor, but it would be enough to function as an experiment. I made a winding path from the entrance between three small hills and through the trees, before arriving at a pond which I’d made as the first point of interest in the Faewood. As an open space, this Floor couldn’t really have rooms as such, so I decided to go with locations that stood out from the environment instead. These would serve as the places where interesting encounters could happen and the Story could be found. Once it was done I took a mental step back and examined the whole area. I frowned. This wasn’t working. I didn’t like it at all. And I didn't really know why.

  This sort of uncertainty was something I’d never really felt before. I’d always either had a goal I could picture in my mind, or back when I first started out I hadn’t really put any restrictions on what was appropriate for a Floor. The closest I could think of was the second Floor, with the need to make the descent not be just a hole into leading downwards, as well as the size not feeling right. The difference was that back then I’d instantly felt what was wrong, as well as how to fix it. The descent shouldn’t be a shaft heading straight down? Turn it into stairs. The size of the Floor wasn’t quite right? Tweak the amount of creatures to make it more appropriate.

  Whenever I’d run into a problem, I’d often think of a solution, even when I didn’t consciously know why it was bothering me. Often with my instincts chiming in as if answering my unspoken questions.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  This was different. Something about the layout definitely wasn’t right, but my instincts were unusually quiet as to what, and why.

  It was more than just a little frustrating, if I was being honest. Here I was, finally able to expand again, and I was stumped by the very first hurdle. What was it that felt so wrong? I’d turned the ground into the more chaotic and uneven mess I could see existed outside, and even covered it in grass. I’d added trees of varying heights and shapes. I even made an artificial light to simulate the sun and hung it in the ceiling up above, and yet something about the scene still felt way too artificial. Too much like it was imitating a forest, rather than being one.

  I had a vague sense of what a forest was supposed to be, both from my instincts and from the little of it I could see through my entrance, but that clearly wasn’t enough. And given that forests were typically found above ground whereas dungeons were not, my instincts weren’t as complete as they had been for caverns. There was still something there, as unlike artificial constructions like the mausoleum or the castle that I felt could look like anything, a forest naturally occurred in specific types of ways and not others. But all it told me was that what I’d made didn’t fall into one of those correct ways, which wasn’t enough to even give me a direction to go in to try and improve things.

  …This sucked.

  The only thing I could think to do was ask someone to help. Morrígan had memories from beyond this place, surely she could tell me what a forest was supposed to look like.

  …And thinking about it, I could also sense that she was trying to get my attention. No, that isn’t quite right… She was… pacing back and forth muttering to herself while intermittently all but mentally shouting at me?

  I mentally frowned; that wasn’t like her. Sure she’d changed a bit since first being summoned, but even still she didn’t usually pace about like this. Something serious must have happened to make her so frazzled.

  I hastily did a quick scan of the whole dungeon to see what might be going on, but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. There hadn’t even been any new Challengers, which now that I noticed it was another thing that was strange. I’d lost track of time, but had definitely been excavating for several hours, if not closer to a full day. There should have been a new Challenge by now. I didn’t even want to think I could have been so zoned in that I could have missed a full Challenge of all things. That would be a terrifying prospect, if true.

  …No, a quick message to Stalker quelled that fear, thankfully. Though it didn't answer the question regarding the lack of Challengers. The ones from the Order had been the only party today, and there was never only a single Challenge per day anymore. There hadn’t been for a while. So something had definitely happened, and it stood to reason it would be the same thing that was making Morrígan act all skittish.

  What is the matter? I sent her curiously.

  The noble vampire froze mid step, her feet staying off the ground for half a second longer than necessary as she seemed to mentally process my message. Her left eyebrow twitched and she spun where she stood to face the ground - the direction my Core was.

  “‘What’s the matter?’” She echoed incredulously. “You nearly knock me unconscious with that Edict of yours and you’re asking what’s the matter? Really?” Her voice gained a fevered pitch by the end, to the point where she was almost yelling. I’d never seen her this agitated before, not even when I’d told her that the memories in her head were in fact true and not figments conjured when I’d made her my Guardian.

  …Actually that wasn’t quite true, there was one time where she freaked out in a similar way to this. One that I actively tried not to think about, as every time I did it pulled my attention to the reality bending presence hidden at the bottom of my fifth Floor.

  I shivered mentally at the sensation, and forcefully pulled my focus away from the sphere and back towards Morrígan. On closer examination her reaction wasn’t quite the same. Back then she’d been angry, outright hateful even. Now she was more nervous than anything else. On edge, ready for… something. If anything, seeing that made me more uncomfortable than if she’d just been angry. Her anger had had a clear and obvious cause, but this… I had no clue what to do with this. The cause was obviously the Edict I’d just proclaimed; even the Voice had reacted to that one so there was definitely something about it worth reacting to, but knowing that didn’t really explain what about it was so strange.

  …Actually thinking about it, I’d planned on asking her about it anyway once I’d scratched the expansion itch. Since I’d already hit a wall with that, I might as well go ahead and ask right away.

  What happened? Was there something strange about the Edict? I sent cautiously.

  Morrígan’s eyebrow twitched for the second time in less than a minute, then she groaned and buried her head in her hands.

  “You don’t even know?” She said after a moment. “Three hells, of course it was an accident. Figures.” She rose and started stalking back and forth, muttering curses to herself about ‘impossibly naive dungeons that don’t know anything’ and ‘giving godlike magic to toddlers’ all the while. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what everything meant, but it definitely sounded insulting.

  Could you please just explain why it’s such a big deal? I sent. Aren’t Edicts something Dungeons make all the time? What was so different about this one?

  Morrígan stopped pacing and sighed. “Okay, first of all, Edicts aren’t as common as you think. I’ve only ever been there in person for three proclamations, if you include this one. Three, in over four hundred years. And that’s much more than most people ever see. Most Dungeons make a single one, if that. So you’re wrong about Edicts being something everyone just knows how they work.” She paused. “But you are right that this isn’t how I would have reacted to a typical Edict proclamation. There was something different about this one. I can’t tell you what, exactly, but it… affected me, in a way I’ve never felt before. It was like something opened a door to peer down towards my very soul… and poked it with a stick.” She shivered, then shook her head to refocus.

  “It wasn’t exactly pleasant.” She said. I sat in silence processing that for several seconds. That didn’t feel right. That didn’t feel like something that should happen. That felt like something had gone wrong.

  I’m sorry. I sent, but she waved it off.

  “I know you didn’t do this on purpose. And I’m feeling a lot better already.” She said.

  That’s probably why the Voice was so agitated… I sent, partially speaking to her and thinking out loud to myself, then paused to think back on the conversation. What specifically had he been upset about again? The Tier manipulation maybe? Or was it just the fact that I ‘shouldn’t have had access’ - whatever that meant - yet did it anyway?

  “Erhm…” Morrígan said cautiously. “What voice?”

  I blinked mentally. Ah, the Voice that did my System introduction came back. He had a similar reaction. Though he left without telling me much of anything except that he was confused… He did say someone would be in touch later though.

  Morrígan looked straight ahead with a dazed expression on her face as she processed what I said. “Surely it wasn’t… No, it probably was.” She muttered to herself, then shook herself and stood up straight.

  “Would you please explain everything that happened, in detail”, she asked, straining to keep her voice neutral. "I want to know exactly what you did, that made a Deva decide to come down and speak with you."