As David was waiting for nighttime to continue working on his star chart, he decided to spruce up his walls as well. Different murals went up all around the dungeon, carefully carved by grain - sized bites. Rivers and lakes, grasses and trees, bunnies and rabbits, David made murals of everything he knew.

 

When he grew bored just making the same objects, the abstract came to entertain him. The stars on the ceiling were now more spaced out, with lines, circles, and numbers surrounding each one. Rooms were changed from boxes, to more circular with a domed roof for more areas, and if during nights he only observed, during the day he only carved.

 

Rooms moved, new ones appeared, all in an attempt to mimic the stars. Ten rooms became twenty, then thirty. Many passages, even more doors. Some rooms were long and empty, some had walls filled with calculations, all had stars.

 

David was so focused that the sudden notification nearly sent him into panic.

 

Achievement reached!

1. You come into My dungeon.

Receive your first intruder.

Aura Interference Resistance is now visible.

 

---

 

At first, Eldun wanted to play it safe and stay the night outside, but something in the air made him feel energized, restless, to the point of being bored at the prospect of waiting. He chided himself, as what kind of hunter doesn’t know how to wait, but gave in to his curiosity nonetheless.

 

He pushed at the stone with his hands, but it didn’t budge. Feeling ridiculous for being such a child, he put his shoulder on the stone, and pushed. Thankfully for him, the stone was smooth enough to hopefully not tear his coat.

 

As the stone moved slightly, pivoting to the right, Eldun shifted and pushed on the left side, making the job much easier. As the door continued to open, he began to feel warm air slowly leaking out from behind the door. Thinking about spending a night warm near a hot spring, he redoubled his effort.

 

As soon as what he now realized was a door opened wide enough for him and his pack to squeeze through, he did so.

 

In front of him was a stone corridor, and as tempted as he was to go forward, he turned around to push the entrance closed. As he did, he noticed two rough stone hinges on the door, confirming his suspicion about this being an old mage’s hideout. After all, if the mage was still here, he most likely wouldn’t have even been able to enter.

 

The mystery of rabbits still perplexed him, but it wouldn’t be the first time a magician left something behind that activated years, if not decades later.

 

As Eldun was closing the door, he felt watched. His years as a hunter were the only thing that stopped him from twitching or looking around, but he did stop pushing the door. Glancing at the remaining gap, Eldun quickly evaluated that he could no longer run, and so he disguised his sudden stop by shifting his position to push better.

 

No longer concerned with the lack of handle, he pushed the door all the way closed, and busied himself with using the small amount of light coming from the rabbit hole to make a torch. He praised himself for keeping a jar of tar under his clothes, the uncomfortable feeling being better than needing to unfreeze it on a fire.

 

Slathering some cloth with said tar, he wrapped it around a stick from his pack and used a flint and a piece of scrap iron to light it.

 

In front of him was another door, this time slightly ajar and with a handle half his height. As he expected the door, he noticed the hinges stained red, and as he lowered his face covering, he noticed a coppery scent.

Fully resigned to his fate, he tried opening the door with one hand, not wanting to put down his torch, and surprisingly succeeded.

 

With a quick glance at the hinges, Eldun slightly calmed down.

 

As he fully opened the door, even pushing it at the end until the handle entered the carefully carved groove in the wall, he entered the first room. The first thing Eldun noticed was the trees and grass. Recognizing them as the same trees and grass as that of the forest below, he had one question answered as countless others appeared in his mind.

 

As he continued looking around, he decided to take off the now hot winter leathers. He finished stuffing his leathers into the pack, and signed in relief, but as he did that, he looked up. The ceiling, lit by the torch, was filled with runes. Countless runes, too complex for him to understand, with lines, dots, and unknown symbols.

 

As he stared in awe, half crouched over his pack, he looked slightly too far up, and began falling back. As Eldun flailed, he knocked over the torch he stuck into the ground. He quickly got up and picked up the torch, but it was too late, as the grass already caught fire.

 

Trying not to panic thinking of what the magician would do to him, he quickly carried away his pack and turned around to put out the grass, and saw as it simply… vanished.

 

---

 

Observing his first intruder closing the door, David realized the impossibility of them opening it up again, or pulling any of his doors open for that matter, David quickly added a handle onto all the doors in his dungeon. Except the last one, of course. Thankfully, the corridor was just long enough for the interference to just make any changes difficult instead of impossible.

 

As all of the shards were focused on the human doing something with black goop, a stick, and some long white-ish material, one grumbled as he added blood to the doors throughout the dungeon, just to be a good host.

 

When he came back, the intruder was using a flint and something else to make sparks, and caused the stick to light up. It seemed hot, and raised the [Fresh Air] upkeep by a bit, but it was easily manageable.

 

As the human inspected the next door, they seemed concerned about the hinges, but David couldn't figure out why. Quickly running through the differences in the first doors, he can only conclude that it is the blood that is causing the problem. He considers removing the blood, when the human opens the door with ease, looks at the hinges and somewhat relaxes.

 

David feels quite a bit of pride at the look on the human’s face as they enter the first room, which is promptly followed by horror as the human begins skinning himself.

 

‘No, wait. That’s clothes, they are probably hot, so they are taking them off.’

 

Happy with getting more of his memories back, David almost laughs at the human falling over. What he doesn’t laugh at, is his grass dying because of the light stick.

 

The intruder picks up the stick, but now the grass is glowing. And dying. As soon as they go a little ways away, he promptly absorbs the patch of grass that is glowing, getting some goop that fell from the stick as well.

 

New Material Unlocked!

Fire Tar (G)

Derivative, Complex

A highly viscous liquid. Highly flammable.

 

Achievement reached!

2. How many states can you count?

Unlock your first non-stable state of matter.

Effects unlocked.

 

New Effect Unlocked!

Flame (G)

Fast Acting, Transformative, Exothermic

Let the world burn.