The first thing I confirmed after the sentinel settled into its alcove was that being a dungeon is—surprisingly—busy. There's no lounging or drifting the way some people imagine. Everything demands attention: humidity levels, mineral distributions, beetle migrations, the temperature of fungus beds, the viscosity of decomposition fluids.
A cave is a body, and bodies constantly complain.
But now that my core had stabilized and the sentinel actually walked without tripping over itself, I finally had the luxury of doing something rare: taking stock.
The cavern was still primitive. A hole with ambitions. It had a sentinel, a feeding pit, a spiral floor under construction, a few pockets of mutated wildlife, and the basic skeleton of an underground ecosystem. But it lacked depth. Character. A dungeon needs personality the way a kingdom needs architecture. Mine was the equivalent of four planks nailed together by a drunk carpenter.
So I planned.
First, reinforce walls: make them denser, smoother where needed, jagged where appropriate.
Second, expand floors: a second level was in progress, but a dungeon should not be a single hallway with scenery.
Third, diversify life: relying on one sentinel is how dungeons get eaten.
Fourth, test my humanoid vessel against the outside world.
Fifth, prepare for the inevitable arrival of explorers.
Somewhere above ground, a scholar probably already felt the mana pulse I created when I breathed for the first time. Scholars love patterns; early-warning systems disguised as spirituality.
They would come.
Humans always do.
Curiosity is their favorite method of dying.
I turned my attention back to the cavern walls. Mana flowed through them in lazy lines, pooling in certain corners like water in the wrong kind of gutter. I shifted the stone, smoothing pathways so the mana distribution would stop looking like a toddler spilled paint. More uniform mana flow meant healthier monsters, stronger constructs, faster growth.
As I worked, I felt something pleasant: the cavern learning.
Not thinking—just learning the way plants learn sunlight.
When I thickened one wall, the stone thickened itself further down the corridor on its own, following the logic I established.
Good.
It was picking up my habits.
The sentinel patrolled reliably, claws tapping against the stone floor in a rhythm I already found comforting. A good metronome for death. The mole-lizard had begun burrowing small tunnels along the walls, which was convenient—ventilation networks I didn't have to dig myself. The blind rodent population was up by one. Reproduction. Acceptable.
It was time to take the next step.
I extended my awareness to the humanoid vessel resting in the corner. Flexible moss-flesh. Thin bones. Hollow eyes. Crude imitation of life.
It stood when I called it.
It wasn't graceful.
But neither is a newborn.
For now, it would do.
Time to see the world I'd been reborn into.