My second life as a dungeon

It had been a week since we returned from the emergency quest and while I had enough points to make the next floor I wasn’t in a rush as I didn’t want to spend another week constructing a floor. In my past life I was never good at doing the same thing for months or even weeks on end, which had made it really hard to find a job or study for school, and it looked like becoming a dungeon hadn’t changed that.

Val had recovered her energy a few days ago and was also starting to get restless so I decided it was time to go exploring again, especially since the area that I can go to has expanded. With this in mind I woke up the next morning as usual but instead of doing my usual routine I went to check on Val. I used my dungeon senses to check that she was awake before knocking on her door.  

After half a minute Val opened the door while asking how I was. It had only been two weeks since we left on the emergency quest so Val hadn’t changed noticeably since then. It may be a fast process compared to the mundane version I had to go through but there would still be weeks or months without any changes. This didn’t mean that she wasn’t happy though as she was much happier now than the sad runaway I had found almost three months ago now.

Seeing her happy made me happy and for a second I forgot about my restlessness as I just stood there appreciating how her mood had improved so much. After being lost in my thoughts for a minute I suddenly realised she was staring at me, causing me to blush as I remembered why I was here. ‘Since I have expanded the area that I can travel to and I am not in a rush to get my sixth floor done I am going to go explore the area around my dungeon.’

I quickly said, trying to forget about what just happened as well as the small blush that was starting to appear on my cheeks. ‘I will probably be gone for less than a week so you don’t have to come but if you want to then I would really enjoy your company.’ I may not have known Val for long at this point but we had spent a lot of time together and we had connected really well so I had started to form a crush on her that I was struggling to hide.

Val had a slight smirk on her face, having a feeling she knew why I was acting weird, ‘I would love to come along, there is only so much reading someone can take before they start wanting to do more.’ she said after thinking about it for only a second ‘Don’t get me wrong I am happy that you are keeping me entertained with these books but I need to leave my room every now and then.

‘I am also always happy to have you around keeping me company, it gets quite lonely when you are off building your floors for days.’ Hearing that caused my blush to deepen slightly. It also made me feel bad because, after thinking about it, it was obvious that Val would get lonely when she had no one to talk to. I would have to rectify that the next time I worked on one of my projects.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, sometimes I forget about time and just get absorbed into my projects for days, or even weeks, at a time, I will try to be around more often.” I said honestly. Val had been forced to stay in her room alone with nothing to do by her parents and I didn’t want to replicate that experience. That gave me the idea that I should try to get Val to hang around the builders or farmers so that she could hopefully find someone to keep her company while I am unavailable.

‘I am happy that you want to come along, I also enjoy your company. The only issue left is that our old equipment isn’t really fit for us anymore but that is easy for me to fix.’ Once I had finished speaking Val started to say that we weren’t in dire need of new equipment but I was already sitting on the side of her bed concentrating on my task.

I didn’t have to concentrate so much while making any of our old gear as that was all beginner stuff and was easy to make. The stuff I was making now however was a couple of tiers up so it required more energy, luckily it would most likely last us until we got to around level 25 so it would be a while before I would need to replace it. Knowing this I put my all into the task.

The first thing I created was our weapons, for me I created a wooden longbow that was similar to my old one except that the old maple wood was replaced by a magical wood called fernum. It was a metallic grey slightly reminiscent of iron while being easier to bend, letting it withstand a higher bending force, perfect for a bow that needed to withstand a high draw weight.

The tree absorbed ambient mana throughout its life to harden its wood, this made it good for cities as it means that the mages have to use less mana without worrying about any monsters forming. Next I changed the string from a mundane string to silk woven by a magical spider that had imbued it with mana. This lets it have mana passed through it and into the arrows with minimal resistance.

Lastly I added a small opalescent gem to the centre of the bow that would act as its mana crystal, allowing me to use the bow as a focus for my spells. It wasn’t particularly strong for a mana gem but it was good enough for what I needed and the next time I created a bow I would have access to far stronger mana gems than I could make at the moment.  I also replenished my arrows but I didn’t change them as there wasn’t much I could do with them yet.

With that done I moved onto Val’s new staff; her old staff had been crudely made out of oak with a tiny mana crystal attached to the top of it. It had worked as a magic staff at the time but I could do so much better now. This time I properly carved the staff out of a deep ocean blue wood that had grown surrounded by water so that aqua magic had an even easier time going through it.

I knew that Val could use all the base elements but I wasn’t strong enough to make a staff that would facilitate that. Instead I asked her which one she would prefer and she said water so that is the one I made her. The staff looked like a standard cane with a bit of metal surrounding the pommel. The pommel also had a mana crystal as big as Val’s hand embedded into it where she would hold it if she used it as an actual cane.

I could use these rare materials due to the system giving me access to level appropriate materials to create rewards to go in my chests. Usually this would be done automatically by my subconscious/ dungeon side but I was still able to deliberately use these materials to create equipment for myself. Unfortunately I didn’t get any DP out of it and it was actually quite expensive to do.

As I finished the staff I moved on to our armour. We both had similar needs in armour so I made two pretty identical sets, the only difference being that Val’s was bigger as she was much taller than me. The armour was a simple set of leather armour with additional metal around the chest and back for additional protection. With our new equipment made I looked over it happy with how I had progressed.

I then went back to my own room before getting changed into it as I was a bit shy about getting changed in front of Val. With the armour on I did a few stretches to get used to it, it wasn’t too heavy and I still had my full range of movement so I counted it as a success. I just hoped that it would be enough for any threats we encountered over the next week.

We couldn’t just pick up new equipment and expect to be able to use it instantly so we left the dungeon to go to a nearby clearing where we could practise in peace. Because my strength increased every time I levelled up it had become significantly easier to shoot my arrows so I wasn’t used to having to put all my power into pulling back the string. This meant that it used up more energy, making me tired after just an hour of practice, but the arrows flew a lot faster and had a lot more force behind them.

Once I was too tired to practise I sat down next to a tree and took a drink out of my flask to regain my energy while watching Val practise with her new staff. Val had started off small with a standard tiny bolt of fire but it was twice as big as they used to be. This caught her off guard and made her fall over due to the sphere impacting too close to her.

Luckily she didn’t set anything on fire and wasn’t hurt, although she was very cautious after that. She then spent the next hour slowly increasing how much mana she was comfortable putting into her spells. She was now creating boulders that I watched fly through the air before smashing into a tree and leaving a small crater. It was amazing to see how much stronger we both were with just using better equipment.

I watched her go crazy with giant spells of all four base elements before I had recovered enough energy to carry on practising. By now I felt pretty comfortable with my new bow so I quickly jumped up and started to properly test my full range of movement. I did this by going through simple manoeuvres like forward and backward rolls as well as seeing how fast I could run while wearing armour.

I didn’t have any way to figure out how fast I was going but it felt like I was going double the speed I could go when I was at my peak during my old life. It was nowhere near the fastest a human on earth could go but it still felt very good. I also did slightly more complicated stuff like jumping straight up, grabbing a branch that was double my height off the ground before rotating around it and perching on it.

I could say with pretty good authority that the new armour wasn’t hindering my movement and I was very satisfied with how much just a few levels improved what I could do. Val wasn’t really interested in testing her range of movement so she instead carried on with practising her spells. Even without going through the manoeuvres I could tell that the armour wasn’t hindering her movement either so I was happy.

We spent another hour practising before we were both happy so we picked up our backpacks with our rations, as well as a few other odds and ends, in it before setting off. As we left the dungeon I was giddy with anticipation, I had no idea what we would find but I had a feeling that it would be exciting. Every time I went exploring I was grateful to Shonu for giving me this opportunity.