“The subsequent floors will formulate themselves at this point,” she said. “I’ve got nothing to do right now. Would you like to mess around with the floors that are done?”
Apparently, the floor-making work would proceed on its own, as long as Ramiris had remaining magic strength.
“All right, how about we set up Veldora’s room first?”
The domain of Veldora would be on the bottommost floor. I wanted to get it all set up for him, if only so I could kick him out of my place pronto. For now, that floor was still an empty space—no walls, no hallways, no stairs; just a door in the middle of nothing.
“Wow. Literally starting from zero, huh?”
“This is my room, Rimuru? Because it reminds me of my time being sealed away…”
Veldora wasn’t a fan. I saw his point. I’d feel kind of bad for him like this.
“Not to worry, Master!” Ramiris smiled at Veldora. “I can add stairs and other things easily enough, just by thinking about it.”
“All right,” I said, “how about we all use Thought Communication to figure out what we want this place to look like?”
We connected our minds together, and I showed them what I was currently picturing.
“Oooh! Yes, yes! Quite fine, Rimuru! I knew you were better than that. I suppose I am in good hands after all!”
“Sounds like Veldora’s all for it. Think you can make it into this?”
“You got it! This much isn’t a problem.”
Ramiris wasn’t kidding. In another instant, the space transformed. We were quickly surrounded by walls of thick stone, forming a large chamber with several smaller rooms coming out from it. The main chamber was a square three hundred feet or so on each side, impassive and looking every bit like a boss room. She did it up exactly like I pictured it in my mind.
“Whoa! This is perfect…”
“That it is, Ramiris. I am eminently satisfied!”
“Hee-hee! Glad you like it! Yes, I really am that good, y’know!”
Ramiris didn’t get compliments often enough, I guess, because she looked beside herself with joy. I really was impressed, though. If you tried to physically construct this, it’d take decades, not even years—and she was done in an instant. Plus, since this whole space was under her jurisdiction, she could customize it pretty freely. Astounding. I really started to see her in a new light.
But I couldn’t marvel at her forever.
This chamber was meant to be the reception area for any adventurer who made it here. But it wasn’t just that. In reality, it was a space large enough for Veldora to return to his original form. He needed to be able to fully relax and get comfortable in this space, or we’d never get anywhere. Of course, looking at him lately, he was chill enough in pretty much any physical form, I felt… If anything, being human made it easier to play games and read manga. He liked that form enough to use it to hang out uninvited in my home, after all. Maybe we’d need to build a human-Veldora room, too.
In the chamber was two doors, a large one that connected to the upper floors and another that connected to his private chambers. Ramiris did such a good job crafting my vision, it was literally just as I thought it’d be.
“Hoh? This is my room?”
Letting the curious Veldora look around a little, I took out a set of furniture from my Stomach. Deftly, I laid down a carpet woven by our town’s goblinas, placing a handmade desk and chair set on top of it. There was also a sofa in case he wanted to lie down, as well as a bed that I wasn’t sure would be used very much. The place looked comfy enough to me, and I even copied some manga I knew Veldora would like and filed it all into a bookshelf on the wall. The main chamber was dark and foreboding; this one was a cheerful little studio perfect for young, urban singles.
“Oh, how nice!” chirped Ramiris, looking a bit envious. “I’d like some furniture like this, too, y’know.”
I promised I’d bring her some next time I stopped by. I wasn’t sure what to do about sizing it for her, but judging from how Ramiris was already spread out on the sofa and reading manga, I guess I didn’t need to worry… And whoa, there’s Veldora sprawled in bed and doing the same thing. Guess I made him happy. If anyone saw him in here, the solemn majesty of the main chamber would totally go to waste. I really hoped no adventurers would see him like this, as unlikely as that’d be.
Well, no need to go overboard. We spent the afternoon getting Veldora’s room in order before wrapping up the day.
One week later—the pace had dropped a bit toward the end—the labyrinth was complete down to the hundredth floor. The interior, as I directed, was made out of blocks whose structure could be altered freely, allowing us to switch the paths around once every few days. This way, even if anyone memorized the way down, they’d have to start all over next time. I’m talking truly demonic difficulty here. Selling maps would be sacrilege, I thought. I wanted this to be a true gauntlet, and this way, it’d be a new quest every time—always fresh, retaining its difficulty, never getting boring.
As a kind of fail-safe, I did provide “save points” every tenth floor. It turns out that Spatial Motion was possible in Ramiris’s labyrinths, under certain conditions. This wasn’t affected by the local magicules, amazingly. It made it possible to do things like transport food in and out—super-useful—and it also worked on people, letting them freely travel back to these preset locations. In other words, save points, through and
