Rumors and news about what is happening in the south for now don’t reach the On Taram and Naomi. The caravan was on the return trip to the oasis when a cultist infight started. The caravan won't return for two months, and after that, they will need to travel again for one month to bring that news to the oasis.

  Naomi needed two whole months to gather enough mana for the next floor. During that time, she wasn't sitting idly. The Grand Forge Master asked her extensively about building techniques from the eleventh floor. They spent long hours discussing whether they could implement it. For now, they concluded that without a proper foundry, they can’t even try it.

  “Oh well. I will put a request for building one, and the second one for someone who can run it.” She shrugged.

  “We can copy the foundry from the eleventh floor. It will make some things easier. And I will help with finding the foundry master willing to risk coming here.” The Grand Forge Master promised.

  “Right. It's risky to throw away everything for the unknown. Still, let’s try it. At worst, you will train someone.” Naomi smiled at him.

  “I can indeed teach a lot about metal, but smelting is not my speciality, and there are many secrets involved in that trade.” He warned her.

  “We need just a smart person willing to push his limits, and give him a free hand. And most of his work will be resmelting metal anyway, so we don’t need a dwarven grand master, knowing how to create enchanted steel.” Naomi was optimistic.

  The rest of the waiting time she spent making sketches for the twelfth floor and improving golem orcs. She started with the easy part, the exterior look. She went through her available patterns of armor and found a few that imitated the anatomy of a warrior. For a few days, she hammered the arms and legs of plate armor to create imitations of muscles, but also scars and disfigurations common among the orcs. After painting it black, she got an impressive, but also ugly and menacing sculpture.

  The rest of her waiting time, Naomi spent studying and experimenting with magical arrays and enchantments. She needs to figure out how to make the golem walk on normal legs, not the crab-like substitutes she initially used. Also, the array controlling the movements of the golem orcs needed to be improved. Their reaction time should be much faster, and ideally they should show some cooperation among themself. Nothing serious for now, but deeper floors belong to experienced adventurers, and they expect challenges that could push their levels.

  Regrettably, when she got enough mana to start her work on the next floor, she wasn’t able to make much progress. The golems will have only a few small improvements, and still not typical legs.

  “Hello Lisusa, how is it going?” Naomi asked the tavern keeper after sitting next to the counter, across from her.

  “Peacefully recently. However, people are getting nervous. For the last three months, nothing happened.” Lisusa pointed at the betting board on the wall.

  “Ha, ha. I deserve that.” Naomi laughed. “But for the next two weeks or so, nothing will happen. I finished preparations and have enough mana to build a new floor.”

  “Oh. Then I will need to pause betting until you finish the floor, Dungeon Mistress.” Lisusa nodded. “Or maybe, you, Dungeon Mistress, are planning something special there?”

  “I don’t think so. I have an idea to expand the floor much more to accommodate even more people. Golems are improved, but it’s mostly their exterior look. They should be better at fighting, but can't say how much.” Naomi wondered.

  “I think I will add a bet for this floor. I have a feeling that something will happen there anyway.” Lisusa answered.

  “You are mean.” Naomi showed her tongue and laughed.

  Later that day, Naomi began working on the twelfth floor. Her idea to accommodate even more people on her floor was simple. While she could push her magic to the limit and build a floor two or maybe even three times larger than her fifth floor, she didn’t like it. It was against her engineering instincts, and she was afraid that she would need all that magic for the rest of her dungeon's inner workings, like defending herself against invasion. Her mana regeneration was decent, thanks to her way of building floors, so she prefers things to stay that way. Instead, she decided to build vertically. It will be an improvement of her idea of a desert city from the eleventh floor.

  She sat comfortably on the cushions, closed her eyes, and started pushing mana with her imagination. On the vast stretch of desert, there were countless tents of various sizes. They have houses, workers, workshops, taverns, and everything else people need. They surrounded four building sites, also covered with canvas stretched overhead. People there, however, weren't building walls. Instead, they were digging shafts. Each was twenty meters wide and five hundred meters apart from the other. The walls were secured with metal plates smelted on site. Metal was coming from a nearby dungeon full of golems like her. Ice mages were freezing walls to ensure safety for diggers and to give time to the smiths to secure the walls with metal plates. A set of buckets connected with chains was moving constantly up and down to remove sand. When they reached a depth of ten meters, they stopped and began building horizontal tunnels, four on each wall. Even before they connected with tunnels from other shafts, they were widened to accommodate workshops and create living space for workers. When work on horizontal tunnels was in full swing, work in shafts resumed. Again, they went ten meters down, and again after that, they started digging horizontally. At a depth of forty meters, the first rocks were dug out. Ten meters more and they reach solid bedrock. The city grew in the meantime. People were building additional tunnels, creating vast spaces by removing walls between them. Even ceilings in some places were removed. On the surface was a similar situation. New shafts for the fresh air were placed. Proper buildings were also built. They have long staircases to reach the first floor of the underground city. Finally, a ceiling was built over the four main shafts and covered with sand. At the bottom of the underground city, channels were carved into the rock, where water seeping from behind the iron walls collected.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He keeps his eyes closed for a while, waiting for the imagined society to leave its mark on the underground city. Naomi wanted her floor to look realistic, not just the result of a high-quality render. When she felt it was enough, she opened her eyes. She was sitting now on a balcony on the top floor of the underground town. From her place, she saw a deep alley reaching the bottom, a maze of bridges and balconies. There were even two elevators visible from her place. The buildings were painted bright colors, and shining manastones were everywhere. This made the city look as if it were the middle of the night rather than underground.

  “It’s still not finished.” She muttered, wandering through the empty city. Then her eye was caught by a plant relief. “Right, plants and even animals.” Naomi immediately opened her catalog to find something fitting. She populated the water with fish. She considered mice, but poor creatures wouldn’t have a place to hide. The whole city was built from metal. Only floors were clad in wooden planks to soften steps. Naomi resigned from looking for other animals and concentrated on plants. At first, she found fungus, but they didn’t fit. They need moisture, and iron doesn’t like it. Warm, dry air from outside was directed through wind-catching towers on the surface to dry underground air. Then she found a section of magical plants. After browsing through a dozen or so species, she finally found what she was looking for. The vine that can grow in dark places, and some of its leaves shine delicately with magical light. Naomi began to improve it. She amplified the magical bioluminescence to make all the leaves glow. According to notes in the scroll, the small berries it produced weren’t poisonous, but because they were sour, only animals ate them. She changed that. Now the berries were sweet and pleasant to eat. Inspired by the description of birds eating them, she immediately found two species that would like living in an underground environment. Vines grow over the walls, hiding dark metal walls under soft blue light, and birds immediately fly around to find the best spot in the branches to make a nest.

  “That brings memories.” The Smith appeared.

  “Yes, my dear.” Goddes Iliana answered. She was standing in front of him, fugged by his muscular arm. “Thank you, Dungeon Mistress.” She added.”

  “You're welcome. This is a bit of a coincidence, though. I just followed my instincts like always.”

  “Yes, you are. But you still managed to recreate something from the past.”

  “From the past?”

  “This town looks like the first dwarven cities built by me and my husband. They were built from stone rather than metal and under the mountains, but overall, it looks the same.”

  “You said recreate. That means they are no longer there?”

  “Not exactly. First Forge is one of them. Regretfully, time doesn’t spare it. It’s still beautiful, and both of our followers work to preserve what is left.”

  “The rest of the towns, however, are lost.” The goddess sighed sadly.

  “Well, there is one still relatively intact. But all roads are blocked and forgotten.” The Smith said.

  Naomi took a break from work so they could roam freely around the city and reminisce about old times. There was only one thing to do for her anyway, to finish this floor. A few hours wouldn’t change anything.

  The next day, at the time for supper, Naomi entered the tavern on the fifth floor. She ordered a big bowl of soup, some meat and bread, and sat on the first available spot among the adventurers. Because she was visibly tired, they kept eating without talking to her, despite being curious about the new floor.

  “You look tired, Dungeon Mistress,” Lisusa observed when she brought Naomi’s order.

  “Tired but happy. I did a good deed. Accidentally, but it still counts.” Naomi smiled. “Thank you for the food.”

  “You're welcome. So the twelfth floor is ready. Yes?”

  “Yes. It’s finished. There is plenty of room for adventurers to smash golems nonstop.”

  “Orc golems?” One adventurer asked hopefully.

  “Orc golems,” Naomi confirmed. “I made them extra ugly for you all.”

  “For the Dungeon Mistress!” Another one shouted, and the rest of the crowd joined.

  “So, everything goes as planned, Dungeon Mistress? Just big floor full of ugly golems?” Lisusa asked when the cheers died down.

  “Actually, no. I accidentally made something crazy there. I can’t tell you what happened there, but I guess this bet is resolved.”

  “Ha Ha ha! I can’t wait for the news then.” Lisusa laughed, and adventurers started counting their money. Most bet against Naomi. Not because they don’t like her, on the contrary. They know that whenever the Dungeon Mistress tries something new, things could end quite interestingly. And she promised improvements.