Smiling, I tapped the part of the diagram that represented the ground floor, and felt a kind of twisting of my perception as the diagram shimmered and disappeared to reveal a view of the actual room itself.

I began by examining the ground floor room by room. It had five large rooms: a generous, farmhouse-style kitchen showing signs of recent use, a plushly decorated parlor, a comfortable sitting room, and a formal dining room, as well as a vast hall filled with strange mechanisms. Each room was marked with another version transposed over the top. I selected this transposed version, and the rooms suddenly transformed into something very different. There were small caches, kind of like empty slots. A readout appeared next to the empty slot.

Well, now this was beginning to seem more like what I’d expected of a dungeon.

I hadn’t discussed traps with Kyrine yet, and it seemed like I couldn’t access them right now anyway. Besides, I was happy to focus on creatures for the moment. Once I got a handle on the use of the different creatures at my disposal, then I could move onto other aspects of dungeon management, like traps.

With a wave of my hand, I dismissed the notification for now and went on to examine the big hall filled with strange devices a little more closely. Dimensional magic was definitely at play here, I thought. The brightly lit, white-walled hall was almost the size of a small sports stadium.

Upon closer inspection, I realized that was perhaps not so far from the truth. The machines I’d seen earlier were almost like gymnasium equipment specifically suited for cultivators.

I examined them each in turn. At the front of the hall were strength training stations made up of both weight machines and free weights. There was a leg press that looked like it had been designed for cave-ogres, and a couple of the free weights looked like you’d need a crane to lift them. Round the sides were treadmills of various sizes, and at the back of the hall were three large metal caskets that almost looked like iron maidens or some other kind of medieval torture device. I couldn’t imagine what purpose they could serve, but I expected I would find out.

In the center of the hall was an enormous circular fighting ring with a diameter of at least 100 yards. Behind the fighting ring, neat rows of target dummies stood in ranks, and behind them was some kind of artificial waterfall, running with silvery, glittering liquid. I’d never seen a waterfall inside a gymnasium before, so I guessed there must be some cultivation purpose behind it.