Martin had waited for this for gods knew how long. The fact that he hadn't made a single dungeon during his last session had bugged him more than he would let on. Though he wasn't the type to complain.

  Holding the skull of Orlek in one hand, he entered the dungeon creation tool, which he believed he was the only one to have access to. The game didn't prompt him for an upfront cost as it had before, which was one of the many small adjustments he had made to the system. It made no sense to pay for something up front and then just get free rein of the entire system, instead of looking at the final cost of the project.

  He started out by making a set of stone stairs leading down below the Tree of Life and Chaos, into the soil, which he used the dungeon creation mode to carve the soil. Whenever he met a root from the tree above, Martin used his Plant Domain to simply guide it away, giving the dungeon a rustic yet firm feeling.

  Martin started out by widening the area the stairs were in, making it a neat little landing spot where a party could gather or for a single player to set up a small camp. Then he started to carve a room to the west, and as he did, he contemplated the nature of the dungeon. It should have some sort of theme to it, and since he was placing Orlek's skull under the tree, it would make sense to ensure that this aligned with the rest of the theme.

  As Martin carved a new room with the tools that he had created, maybe he could have Orlek actually help with this. The ork was probably not happy about how easily he had been slain. Though, to be fair, Martin had expected more resistance from the god of strength.

  Even so, Martin was built for combat and was much more capable in a fight than both Jasper and Celeste. He considered that the only one that might actually be able to take him head-on was Riez, and that wasn't very likely to happen. Riez was a good kid after all.

  As Martin was contemplating what to do, he was suddenly pulled from his thoughts with a weird tugging sensation in his leg. It was fairly strange, and he thought that he wouldn't be able to get hurt while in the editor mode, only for his foot to sink through the ground, but not just the ground, the texture.

  "Mother F-" Martin was cut off as he was plunged into darkness, and hammered against the ground from every side all at once, he could see through the ground itself, spotting the streams of magma, water and mana that were being funnelled from the massive storage underneath the world toward the top level. Martin hammered against the underside of the world.

  "THIS SHOULDN'T EVEN BE POSSIBLE!" He complained as he had apparently stepped on something that had made him clip through the world.

  With a movement, he pushed his hand up from the underside of the ground and back into whatever glitch had made him slip through and tried to push through it again. With a gasp, he was thrown from the underside of the world back to the surface, and through the tunnel he had just dug. Martin praised whichever engineer had decided that VR should simulate pain, as that had been unpleasant enough.

  He stomped up the stairs to Jasper, who was sitting under the tree. He wasn't doing much, though he raised an eyebrow when he saw Martin up from the dungeon already.

  "I no clipped," The massive ork said in a firm voice.

  Jasper leaned forward a bit, his interest piqued. "What do you mean, you No clipped? The AI uses voxels the size of molecules. It should be impossible to clip through those."

  Martin sighed, sitting down on a fallen log and crushing it under his weight. "I know... but, here we are. I no clipped through the ground, not sure what to tell you."

  Jasper seemed to think about it for a second and then snapped his fingers. "I GOT IT! I think what happened is that you are using your building mode, which is neat, I will give you that, but you made those 'edit now pay later' changes, right? So you are actually just projecting an image of what your final result would look like, instead of actually making it, meaning that the edits are stored in temporary memory and not a permanent commit. This, in turn, forces the game to save your current state in a state that allows you to pass through matter that has been stored, so that you aren't stuck at the surface. I think you might have stepped on something that made to glitch out, but I don't think we should make a bug report on this... Honestly, it is not a system the player should ever engage with."

  Martin nodded along with the explanation. It seemed likely that those were the factors that led to the bug, though the reason for his slip into what should have been an impossible realm was still unknown.

  They discussed the potential cause back and forth a couple of times. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what, but they ended up determining that it was probably due to edge case shenanigans where Martin had crossed out of the local range of Jasper's pop-up sharing system. Whatever the case, Martin hadn't gotten any pop-ups about new skills, so there was definitely something there.

  They did some examination, and yet the obvious solution to the problem, which was to log out of the game and fix the buggy menu, was never really considered, mostly because both of them knew that whoever suggested it would be the one who had to log out, and then lose the bet they had made.

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  Instead, they found a temporary solution where Martin would disengage from the group system and then get added back to the group once he was done. With the initial problem out of the way, Martin turned to a secondary matter that Jasper might be able to help with as well.

  "Is there anything that you remember about Orlek that I can use for the dungeon?" Martin decided to ask as she slowly got up from his seated position.

  Jasper looked like he wanted to say something about Martin's inability to read the stuff that was sent out to the entire office. However, he clearly managed to keep the comments to himself. "You could go with a theme of 'The Kursakers', since they were Orlek's elite warriors. Make up some nonsense about the Tree of Life waking up the old elite warriors of A'kastin, but the Tree of Chaos making them hostile to any who enters Orlek's tomb."

  Martin thought about it, considering what would make sense to do. It took him far too long to realise that Jasper was getting annoyed by his lack of response, and the ork cleared his throat and nodded. "That seems like it has merit. Thank you."

  Jasper rolled his eyes, clearly not commenting further on Martin's lack of communication skills. "You know, it sounds like you are effectively making a tomb to celebrate Orlek. The guy is a meathead, but he is likely to actually listen to you if you offer him a temple. I know a bit of Necromancy, I could probably animate the head and allow it to talk again... Not sure how that would work with Orlek being a god and all that, but hey, only one way of finding out, right?"

  Martin considered protesting, but it might actually be the safest way to communicate with Orlek. A prayer to the god could have them appear as followers for the angry ork, which in turn would allow him to smite them.

  So Jasper performed his spell, multiple circles and layers of magic later, the god of magic released a surge of mana that would put the crystalised tree of pure energy behind them to shame.

  As the god of magic finished his spell, the entire world seemed to stutter. The things ground to a halt, and Martin cursed, even as his lips weren't moving. Nothing moved, everything was still. Jasper groaned, as he had experienced this once before, when the world had stuttered to a halt from creating magic itself. He was fearing the worst. They might have to restart things, and if that was the case, did they even have the time to get back into the game? They probably did.

  It felt like minutes had passed, but eventually time resumed, and the game continued. Martin gave Jasper a look, but didn't say anything. The look that Jasper sent in return told that they both had a fairly good idea of what had happened. They had tried to revive an entity that was technically still alive, despite possessing its remains, which had also been killed once before.

  "What is going on?! Who dares to disturb my- oh..." The voice of Orlek sounded a lot more hollow than what both Jasper and Martin were expecting. Then again, it was coming from the skull, which didn't really have a lower jaw. Jasper had clearly just reanimated the skull. Nothing had grown back or been restored.

  Jasper was the first to act, and he gave a grin. "Good fight, just now."

  Martin looked at his colleague with disbelief. It hadn't been a good fight. He had practically torn Orlek to shreds thanks to his Range Domain, and anything that the ork had done had been countered.

  Orlek's voice boomed with a laughter that Martin had not expected. "Yes, I have not had someone who would challenge my might for aeons. And I believe that I killed you once already."

  The god of dungeons looked at his lanky, spectacled friend. Martin understood that Jasper was just playing up Orlek's dogma. While Orlek might be angry that he had lost, he would only really be angry if he lost in what he assumed to be an unfair fight. Like the way that Celeste had tricked the ork last time around.

  "Yes, you did. Though we have more important matters that we should attend to. Our last fight left us with your skull. A skull of a mighty warrior that should be honoured. We believe that building a gauntlet for warriors to prove themselves worthy to worship your remains would be the best way to show our respect for a worthy foe." Jasper lied.

  The man was clearly playing up to Orlek's ego, making the god of orks believe that this dungeon was not only what was best for him but also what was best for any of his followers.

  The eyes in the skull glowed faintly with a soft green colour, and Martin couldn't really determine if this was due to the magic flowing through it or if it was Orlek's own consciousness that seemed to shine through.

  "Your noble intent serves you well, though foolish", Orlek answered, eyes shining with light. "I will aid you in this endeavour, though know that this will not spare you my blade once we meet again and once I reclaim it from that hound Ira."

  Martin nodded and picked up the skull before slowly walking down into the dungeon he had been creating. There were no more clipping issues as they worked. Orlek was quick to come up with ideas that would make sense from his point of view, including a forge where Martin put a minotaur, and multiple warriors from the Kursakers were placed all throughout the dungeon.

  Martin made sure to have multiple paths, allowing anyone who wanted to engage with the dungeon to decide how they wanted to approach the final boss. He also added a couple of bosses that were inspired by the plant theme of the tree, which, thanks to his Plant Domain, was something that he could easily do.

  They made sure to create a treasure room, where, to Orlek's protest, Martin planted a mimic.

  The last room had a small spring and waterfall, with multiple stones that would block visibility. A figure made to look like Kummon, orleks' second in command when he had been alive, was placed here, along with multiple hidden enemies.

  The skull was placed on a pedestal in the middle of a pool made from the water from the waterfall, before a quick walkthrough of the dungeon, where a couple of traps were placed around the area, was done by Martin.

  All in all, the God of Dungeons was happy with the layout.

  Apparently, so was Orlek, as the god decided that he would pay the Worship cost of the entire project, something that Martin was more than happy to allow.

  As such, he walked out of the newly created "Tomb of Orlek" to find that it was a new day, and Jasper had fallen asleep underneath the tree.