They say death comes swiftly to some. I'll admit I wasn't really prepared for how swiftly until it happened to me. One minute I'm enjoying a nice walk in the park listening to an audio novel. The next minute I'm dead. I honestly don't even know what killed me it happened so fast. The next thing I knew I was floating in a sea of nothingness. Not the black void that most people think of but the complete absence of anything and everything. A silence so intense that even my own thoughts seem way too loud. I continue to float in this sea of nothingness for anywhere from one second to a googol years, I honestly couldn't say which, that's how complete the nothingness was.

  Eventually my vision started to return. Slow at first but eventually it became far better than what my vision ever was or could have been. Then my hearing slowly returned to me and suddenly I was aware that I was in a cave. I waited a while for my other senses to return but they never did. Guess I'm stuck with just the two. It kind of makes sense though thanks to my other discovery. It seems there is a bit of truth to those old dungeon core stories. I should know because I am one, a dungeon core that is. Really it should have been obvious by the fact that I can see despite the complete lack of any light source. I always used to fantasize about what I would do if this ever happened. Now that it has however I find myself at a loss as to how to actually do anything.

  I start mentally poking around until I feel what seems to be an options tab. Poking it directly brings up a bunch of options.

  Please select a template for the first floor (NOTE: first floor template is free)

  Mystical cave: a cave filled with glowing mushrooms and ancient ruins that invokes a sense of power and forbidden knowledge

  Forest: a natural forest the invokes a sense of the beauty and raw power of nature

  Abandoned mine: It's dark and it's damp and it practically screams 'get out'

  Lost town: the remains of a town lost to time invokes the feeling of eyes watching you.

  Desert: it's hot and it's dry and it dares everyone to try and cross it

  I sat there for a long time trying to decide which one to pick. The problem is that they all sounded great. I didn't know how big my first floor would be though. It would be embarrassing to choose something like the forest only for the floor to be a few meters cubed. Then again I doubt I would be given options that couldn't fit. In the end I chose the abandoned mine because I hoped that it would draw people looking for the scraps of whatever was being mined. After all the existence of a mine usually means there is, or at least was, something worth mining.

  As soon as I select it the area around me begins to slowly expand. I can feel my 'body', for lack of a better term, being pushed to one side and into a small alcove. When everything finally calms down I find myself at the far end of a very long and very deep mine shaft. As I'm looking at the sheer scale of what I have created a sudden rush of information about the new floor enters my mind.

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  First floor: Abandoned mine

  Actual size: 10m x 10m x 10m

  Spatially distorted size: 1 cubic km

  decorations: mine carts, mine tracks, rusted pick axes, rusted shovels, lanterns, decaying timber

  Spawners: none present

  Nodes: none present

  Boss: none selected

  Delver deaths thus far: 0

  Now It wouldn't be a very good dungeon without something to fight, which brings me to the spawners. Opening the spawner tab for the first floor brings another long info dump which basically boils down to the spawners being limited by floor number and floor template. Meaning that the forest would have had entirely different mobs than the abandoned mine. Likewise, if I had placed the abandoned mine later it would have had access to different spawners than it currently does. That said it is my first floor so I'm not expecting apocalypse level mobs. Looking through the options I do get there are a few nice ones. Unfortunately, it seems only the first spawner is free.

  Spawners

  Bat spawner: spawns bats

  Spider spawner: spawns spiders

  Snake spawner: spawns snakes

  Ant spawner: spawns ants

  Rat spawner: spawns rats

  They're all pretty self explanatory, which makes there descriptions rather pointless, but for now I decide to go with the snake spawner. Placing it in a corner near the middle of the floor I receive yet another info dump directly into my mind, this one thankfully not as intense as the last few have been. Basically, the information I get tells me that the spawner will spawn a mob every five minutes until the floor reaches a certain saturation level then it will try to maintain that level. I can confine the mobs to a certain radius or allow them to roam the entire floor. This in turn would naturally effect how fast the spawner achieves optimal mob saturation. The other spawner options now require something called dungeon points.

  With no other real choice I quickly move on to selecting a boss. Just like the spawners the boss options are limited by floor template and floor number.

  First floor boss

  Cave bear: a large bear who practically dares others to fight him

  Giant spider: The unquestioned queen of stealth and ambush despite her being the size of a small pony

  Giant scorpion: A master of poison, his armor like plates are nearly impenetrable, and that's if you can get past the tail and the claws.

  Dire rat: Fast and agile able to get in and out before most delvers even know what hit them.

  Giant centipede: fast when it wants to be but built like an armored train, it likes to coil around it's victim, it's true threat comes from the fact that once it has you there is no escape.

  All of these sound really tough but I think I'm going to go with the giant spider. As soon as I picked it the area in front of me began to warp and change slowly becoming a spider layer. Soon after a rather large spider appears in the center of the newly formed spider layer. To my surprise I can feel a faint spark of intelligence behind those eyes. To be honest I wanted a giant snake like an anaconda but that option didn't appear. I could have gone with the giant centipede since it is vaguely snake like if you ignore the legs and armor plates. I felt like the giant spider matched the theme pretty well though.

  Just then there is a slight rumble and my dungeon is suddenly open to the outside world. excited to finally get my first look at this new world I was reborn into I practically press my none existent face to the invisible barrier of my entrance. The sight that greets me causes me to stumble back. I know this place. This is the woods near the park where I died. I know this because I can see all to familiar buildings less than half a kilometer away, and from the looks of it it's still business as usual. by which I mean that it doesn't appear as if any time has passed and nothing seems to be in ruin.

  WHAT?