^^ Reyna (Star Elf) ^^

The void was hotter than I expected, to be honest. Like a sauna, but one cranked up just a tad too high, not enough to burn you but enough to be deeply uncomfortable. There was also more light than I imagined, despite it being an apparent void, a sourceless and vague light all around us.

"This is your Small World. It has been wiped clean in preparation of your alterations. We are inside of it, currently." Yetan spoke behind me, the words seeming to almost wobble and shake before they reached me, due to the lack of a full atmosphere to carry sound.

"Can I see the outside? I plan on making the whole thing into a sphere. Also where is the moon of the planet I'll be orbiting? I'll have to fix my orbit if you want me to avoid messing with your 'special space rock'." My voice, oddly enough, did not alter like theirs did, but then I realized I was a Soul and my voice was likely simply being transferred to them as telepathy.

They sighed at my dig about their obsession with the moon, but we did appear outside a lumpy, misshapen rock, which seemed to already be orbiting the moon itself, alongside a couple dozen other similar-sized rocks.

"Mm... intriguing... my dungeon is only a fraction of a percentage of the size of the moon? Much smaller than I expected... but I can work with it." With a wave of my hand, an image appeared in front of me, of my plan for the dungeon. First and foremost, a stable source of energy collection needed to be secured, so the outermost of the hundred or so layers was a solid metal photovoltaic sphere, built to absorb sunlight to power its internal facilities; the only opening was at the 'front' of the sphere, a twenty-meter-wide circular hole pointed at the planet behind me, which I would build up to last, to ensure nothing got interfered with.

Next up was the shipyard, made up of the next spherical layer; considering the gravity of the entire ship would be focused inwards towards the core, each layer was its own Globe, with twenty meters of space between each layer in the Dungeon Floors. The maximum size of the dungeon (before it absorbed outside matter...) was written in the contract as 2.5 Kilometers in diameter, so with that I'd be spending 2.2 Kilometers in total on the Dungeon Floors, (with a two-meter thick floor between each,) with the Shipyard and the City taking up the rest of the 300 Meters left over. The shipyard would be a massive automated factory, taking up a full twenty of the twenty-five floors of space left over, that would transmute, smelt, craft, and enchant the magical crafts and satellites I'd be making to surround the planet I was orbiting. Capturing space debris, small asteroids, and any other such useful materials, I would slowly but surely craft an Armada of drones and drop-ships, as well as the structures necessary to colonize the Moon we were stuck in a very close orbit around.

"What exactly will you be doing with that factory? That seems... rather dangerous? What if someone completes your dungeon and gets access to it?"

I glanced at Yetan, smiling mischievously. "They wouldn't be able to make it work anyway? This factory only works when commanded from the Core Room, and by the Dungeon Master, which they will be working away from as they conquer the floors down into dungeon. Speaking of, I need to make the elevator, don't I?" A central column of the sphere hollowed itself out, directly above the glass hole in the exterior, and I made glass lenses that would open and close to let the elevator pass, maintaining several hundred layers of airlocks at all times. The elevator would work as a Maglev, an arrow-shaped capsule passing through the magnetic field of the shaft at absolutely wicked speeds that no one on the interior would be able to feel. "Can I make portals, by the way? Like traps in the dungeon that teleport things or connections that allow light through to trick people into falling through into a different space in the dungeon? I'm rather fond of tricks like that, so I hope I can."

Yetan nodded. "They're not very efficient, energy-wise, but very effective at challenging your Harvesters, so it balances out."

I nodded and added in a few stable Portals in the larger floors of the Dungeon, setting yet another piece I needed for my plans in place, as I made the Factory capable of manufacturing the Portals; the Factory had the outward purpose to repair and alter the layout of the dungeon, after all, so it obviously needed to be able to manufacture everything in the Dungeon, including the rewards, which I would decide on after the rest of the dungeon was finished.

The City, taking up four of the remaining five floors of space, was spread out to be essentially a massive collection of city blocks, interspersed with vertical forests, orchards, and vat-grown meats to replace cattle, so that every block was individually self-sufficient. With 16,000+ people to house, and many more who would likely stick around when they beat the dungeon, I had to make sure I'd never run out of food or electricity, so once I made sure the neighborhoods were set up and diversified a bit, I moved on to the last floor, beneath the factory but above the City.

This floor, this most important floor, was the core of my entire dungeon, as well as the home of my laboratory and all of my various methods of collecting and purifying energy. I was sure there were several different ones, so I made sure that there was room for lots of different stuff, (including a small series of nuclear reactors, once I finished the design,) the energy gathered passed through a tank wherein a person would be floating, to purify the energy before it reached the Core.

"That won't work; the energy needs to pass through a living sentient being for the type of purification you're aiming for, and that wouldn't count."

"So if the person in the tank is a living person, it would be fine?"

They nodded, examining the blueprints curiously as they spread out in front of them at a flick of their fingers. "How curious... you might just win your bet with Artun in your first cycle, if you can find enough material to finish this all... right now you only have enough material for the Factory and Core Floors."

I smirked and glanced at the moon just a few dozen kilometers away. "I think I'll manage. Once I have a city made up, I'll look forward to you sending my people and their accommodations my way! Now let's get that cracking and work on my new body, alright?"

They nodded, snapping their fingers soundlessly and making the giant boulder in front of us shatter and melt and then begin to reshape itself into my exact blueprints, or at least the outer two layers and Elevator Shaft. It took less than a minute, and the result was glorious. Just a massive purple eyeball, with a white pupil in the center where the glass elevator shaft was centered. "Your body will be made when you bond with the Dungeon. I wish you luck, Dungeon Master Reyna."

"To you as well, Manager Yetan." I nodded and willed my floating soul down towards the dungeon, instantly finding myself in front of the Tank I'd made next to the Core. A formless blob of mass was floating in the tank, which I took to be the materials for my new body. "Huh... neat... I won't need those, though." I opened the screen that was blinking in the corner of my vision, and raised an eyebrow at the new notification.

Notification: Masterless Dungeon Detected!!!
Notification: Incorporeal Dungeon Master Detected!!!
Notification: Would you like to Bond to the Dungeon? (Y/N)

I clicked the Yes option without hesitation, and glanced up as the blob of material started moving, melting into a puddle inside the tank.

Notification: Would you like to craft your Physical Avatar? (Y/N)
Notification: Death of the Avatar will result in loss of Experience, but the Avatar will be recreated and ready for Possession the following Dawn.

I clicked Yes again, and began to craft my new body with an evil smile. I hadn't been told I had to make it a human, after all. Scrapping the basic human model it offered, I started from the very bottom of the building blocks, building a skeleton out of an alloy of Carbon and Iron: not quite steel, but more like ironwood; a helical pattern to the cells, when combined with the material itself, would mean they wouldn't require exterior compression to retain their shape in a vacuum. Considering I was building a City in Space, that seemed like a really good idea. Covering these bones would be muscles, similarly made of ironwood cabling, coiled around itself like the high-tension cables of suspension bridges. I wouldn't need organs, due to this lack of most biological functions, but I created a few just to make it more humanoid, starting with the Brain.

While a living tree, (basically what I was making,) didn't need a brain, per se, -as every cell would be part of, and also a complete version of, the brain,- it was still smart to have something in the cranium to create a 'weak point'. Also there wasn't a good reason to have a head if there wasn't a brain inside of it, so there was that. The brain in the skull was essentially a rootbulb, full of ordered connections and synapses just like a normal brain, just a lot denser and with a lot more connections. I connected this to the senses, which were less useful, again because this being would be designed to be capable of surviving in space, and therefore didn't really need a sense of smell or hearing, but I placed basic ones in there just to make it useful in a normal setting.

Once the brain was finished, I moved on to the lungs, which worked quite a bit differently from a humans. The sacks would hold air, circulating it and using the carbon dioxide to create proteins once the skin began to photosynthesize, but would otherwise create noise along vocal cords just like normal. Much like oxygen to muscles, I needed a delivery method of protein-rich water to areas for growth, so I reinstated the heart with a sigh, making it pump water to and from the lungs and the many parts of the body. This would work in lieu of roots, and when combined with the concept of trees that didn't need anything so long as they weren't growing, this body would survive in space based off of the latent radiation in space that would replace sunlight if I couldn't get any at any point.

A stomach wasn't necessary, nor was a reproductive system, but I didn't necessarily want to tinker with that too much, so I made sure there was room in the 'Genetic Code' of this body for it to mix with other humanoids and create hybrids, or to mix with another of the same kind, once there was more of me, to create an actual lineage. The stomach was just an alchemy cauldron, essentially, which broke everything down and mixed it with the water from the heart, storing any excess as fertilizer in the intestines until it was either needed or... ejected. As for the reproductive capabilities, considering the Skin and Flesh of this creation was a semi-non-newtonion, in that it would only temporarily  solidify under pressure or impact, there would be no issues of the skin being like Bark or anything like that, so I just left them like normal. Breasts, however, became an unneeded measure, biologically, so I had to wrestle with the decision for a few minutes, before eventually bullshitting a reason to myself that they should be kept around and used to store extremely nutrient-rich milk for nursing of newborns, like a normal Mammal, despite my new form being a Plant. A Dryad, to be honest, seemed the closest creature close enough to count.

To that end, I looked into what I could do to make them more like a real Dryad, such as blooming flowers growing from my hair to release spores with various effects, but in the end I trashed the idea, leaving the option open for mutations to develop, but not making it a standard feature. Regardless, eventually I managed to finish designing this creature and it's genetics, and now, the body looked exactly like mine had, except my dark skin had gained a little grey with the iron mixed in, my eyes had taken on an ultraviolet hue, and my hair was now a blank white that radiated light on command, and I added some aesthetic changes last-minute, like my old piercings and tattoos and such, before making my ears long and pointed, just to be an asshole. "Imagine that, Artun... it'll be an Elf who takes over your precious little Moon... and you'll have to help."

Notification: Avatar Fails to meet Regulations!

"Override: I have an Employment Contract for the Dungeon Master Position that states I can make myself a new Corporeal Avatar, and it has no such Regulatory Limitations!"

Notification: Searching Contract History...
Notification: Found!!!
Notification: Contract with one Signee 'Reyna' details extrapolated!
Notification: Contacting Signee for Verification!

I tapped my metaphorical toes while waiting a few more minutes, before a screen appeared in front of me, showing a very bemused Yetan. "Dungeon Master Reyna... this is not a game."

"Hence why I'm not treating it like one, Manager."

They paused, considering my comment and reading the no-doubt detailed summary of my new form in front of them. "I suppose you're not, are you? Well, you don't have to try so hard; as a Dungeon Master, your lifespan is several dozen times as long as a normal human's lifespan, so you don't need to worry about longevity."

"I won't need to worry about longevity as a Moon Elf, either. That's what I'm calling them, instead of Dryads. I'm thinking of making them a species of Harvesters and Spacefarers, adventurers who travel to territories unknown and see things unseen. Regardless, your permission, while it would be appreciated, is not required, unless you'd like to break our contract on the first day, Manager Yetan."

The elf frowned severely, staring at me through the screen like they wanted to shake me around and see if it would fix something, for a full minute of tense silence, before finally sighing. "I suggest 'Ether' or 'Astral Elf', actually: Moon Elves already Exist."

"Mm, fair enough, I'll take Star Elf, then. Anything else?"

"No... I suppose not. Do as you please." The screen disappeared, and the notifications appeared once again.

Notification: Creation of New Species Accepted!
Notification: New Species Designated 'Star Elf'!
Notification: Star Elves will now be counted amongst the Natives of Earth/Planet-17!

The blob of material grew and then shrank, condensing itself and creating new materials until it had the right alloy for the Ironwood that would make up my new body, in the shape of a small Seed. This seed cracked open, growing in mere moments to a fully formed woman, taking on my decided aspects except for my piercings, which appeared afterwards from the fluid and gases of the tank and affixed themselves once the body was fully formed.

Notification: Creation of Dungeon Master Reyna's Avatar Completed!
Notification: Possess Avatar? (Y/N)

I clicked the yes option, then grinned as I was nearly instantly looking out of a new pair of eyes, and feeling the fluid of the tank around me, before a new screen appeared.

——————————————————————————
Name: Reyna
Kin: Star Elf
Class: Dungeon Master
Level: 1
Dungeon Floors: 0(2)/100
Monsters: 2
Harvesters: 0
—Stats—
Health: 100,000
Mana: 760
Strength: 50
Dexterity: 25
Constitution: 9999
Intelligence: 75
Wisdom: 50
——————————————————————————

'That Constitution score is... concerning? But... I suppose it makes sense that being functionally immortal brings a great deal of Constitution Stats with it.' I shrugged and climbed up out of the tank slowly, ensuring most of the slime coming off of my body stayed in the tank, to make as little of a mess as possible. Still, it was impossible to fully avoid a mess, and so I was set up for a surprise when a little shrub-creature appeared in a blur of movement and started mopping expediently. "Who are you?"

The mop stopped, looking up at me, and shook its leaves once, then went back to mopping before disappearing like a blast of wind through a steep canyon.

"Huh... okay. I guess that's one of the two monsters my screen says I have... what's the other one?"

——————————————————————————
—Monsters (2)—
1: Quickling
2: Maliades
——————————————————————————

"Huh... okay. Maliades were Apple Dryads, I think, so those are in the Cities Vertical Forests, I imagine... and the Quickling was the little shrub. Let's not waste any time, then; I need more materials, and I have a Moon to mine hollow." Sitting down at the 'computer' in front of the Core, I activated the screen, pulling up the view of the factory as if I'd used this screen a thousand times before, the knowledge of how to operate my dungeon pouring into me the longer I was near the Core.

——————————————————————————
—Trap Crafting(7851)—
54: Welding Drone Trap (150 Mana)
...
1256: Drilling Drone Trap (50 Mana)
...
2455: Alchemy Cauldron Trap (80 Mana)
...
5611: Airlock Trap (20 Mana)
...
7820: Portal Trap (300 Mana)
——————————————————————————

"There she is..." I grinned, beginning fabrication of each of the 'traps' I needed. This would nearly bankrupt me, but considering I'd be gathering the resources I needed for my dungeon to expand all the way to 100 Floors, there wasn't an issue at all, as far as I was concerned.

Construction of all five items took around an hour, during which time I went through the rest of the 'Traps', which were just things I made for the city or the dungeon floors I'd planned out, which the system was now demanding I pay Mana to get access to, irritatingly enough. Luckily I had enough for the startup, or I'd have been dead in the water until something actually hit my dungeon so I could collect it. Once the Drones were ready with their load, I sent them off towards the surface of the Moon directly behind the Dungeon, where no one on the planet below would be able to see, even with a proper observatory, to dig a simple hole. For now.