A Dungeon’s Survival

Connie

After getting things in the garden set up for the new experiments I wanted Rose to run, I returned my attention to other things. Improving the growing conditions of our magical plants was good and all, but at the end of the day, the only things that stood to benefit from me doing so were Archie's alchemy and the delvers who came looking to turn a profit, not that that was to say doing so was a waste of time or resources by any means. In fact, after my loyal alchemist's hard work had bought us peace with the Adventurers Guild during the last raid, I saw more reason now than ever to invest in his work. Still, it alone could only get us so far, and there were other things that demanded my attention, such as determining how to direct the future growth of our Dungeon as a whole.

The thing about Dungeons was that there were countless ways to develop them. A core could specialize in monsters, traps, deadly environments, any number of other things, or even some combination of multiple. With Dungeons, creativity and ingenuity were the only limits, but in spite of that, at least as far as I was concerned, no matter how a core built their Dungeon, the result would largely be the same. By nature, Dungeons were specialized for defending against invaders.

That fact wasn't some profound revelation. It was simple necessity. A Dungeon that couldn't defend itself would quickly wind up with its core shattered and cease to be a Dungeon at all. The problem was, I could no longer accept such a limitation.

If I wanted to involve myself with events taking place outside of my walls, being able to defend myself and nothing more wouldn't cut it. For that reason, I needed more than my existence as a Dungeon allowed of me. Fortunately, I'd been working on surpassing those limits for quite some time now.

I may have been a Dungeon Core now, but I wasn't just a Dungeon Core. I was also a Summoned Hero with a class, something that no other Dungeon could have. That came with access to familiars, and going even farther, I'd figured out how to abuse my anomalous nature to unbind monsters from myself, giving me access to large numbers of intelligent beings. All of those were different paths to power, and all of them came with their own strengths and weaknesses.

My familiars were weaker than my Dungeon monsters, but they also come with less restrictions than them. If my normal monsters were my shield and those I'd awakened were my sword, my familiars were my hands. They could interact with the world at large for me where my other monsters could not. They could perform espionage, take on specialized roles, and cover for the gaps in my workforce I struggled to fill otherwise. They were versatile. They were not, however, a force to be reckoned with.

As for the unbound monsters I create, their main draw was that they could pad my numbers. I couldn't use them as ordinary defenders, not with the risk of getting intelligent, sapient beings killed for good, but they were still warm bodies, and I had no hard limits on how many I could summon. So long as I kept them content and maintained their loyalty, they could form the basis of a workforce.

Those were three incredibly different roads to power. They could each do things the others could not and worked together to form a far stronger foundation than what was normally possible for a Dungeon. More than that, though, everything else I'd been working towards built off of that foundation rather than independently.

Be it the farming of magical plants, alchemy, or any of the other crafts we hadn't developed as thoroughly yet, production served both to empower our forces and supplement our costs. Likewise, Stein, my Mimicry Ghoul, had been specifically created for the purpose of developing combat-related skills and passing them on to the others. Even Pee, one of the first monsters I'd awakened, had taken up the study of magic, and while she'd yet to have a breakthrough, if she could successfully learn spells through external means, we'd have yet another way to grow in additive power that could enhance all of our forces.

Our strengths were cumulative, and that, in itself, was a strength. A soldier could be powerful on their own, but a well-trained soldier armed with weapons, armor, consumables, and magic was something else entirely. Our Dungeon was built on diversifying our efforts and the synergy between the different parts of the whole. We might not have had a way to send an army across the kingdom yet, but barring that, there was little we couldn't do with at least some degree of proficiency. I only needed to maximize those advantages.

At level twenty-five, I was going to be given an important choice that could either open up new doors for me or let me further specialize into a path I'd already begun progressing down. If a way to muster an army and send them out into the world was what I needed, I could have it, but to do so, it would require me to divert resources away from what I already had, and that was the crux of the matter. I wasn't fully decided yet, but if that was a possibility I wanted to keep on the table, I needed to make sure the rest of my Dungeon could survive the rerouting of resources, and to do that, I needed to optimize and trim the fat. That was the real reason I'd been experimenting so much with mana crystals, not for the sake of improving our gardens but to assess their true value.

To that end, as I re-entered my experiments chamber, I willed my magic to coalesce into a monster. It was the second-newest one that I'd unlocked, and it was time to figure out what to do with it. Before me, taking shape, was a large being of stone. It was a Crystal Muncher.

[Crystal Muncher

Level: 1

Cost: 80 DP

Health: 80 (110)

Stamina: 80 (110)

Mana: 160 (220)

Stats: FORT 16 (22), VIT 8 (16), STR 16 (23), END 16 (22), SOUL 16 (22), MIND 4 (10), WILL 16 (23), COM 16 (22), DEX 4 (10), AGI 4 (10)

Skills: None

Abilities: Mana Sense, Elemental Shift, Mana Roar

Description: A large crystalline beast that stalks the Great Caverns. It feasts on mana crystals, incorporating them into its body and using them to augment its magic. Despite being blind, these solitary monsters are extremely territorial, using their Mana Sense to attack anything that moves.]

Huh, that's not what I was excepting, I thought myself as it took its form in.

It was big, quadrupedal, and a stony gray in color. Most distinctively, though, it lacked in crystals of any kind. That contradicted its description somewhat, but it was a new monster, so I didn't exactly have a frame of reference for it.

Either way, though, it was the new species I'd unlocked during the last raid, not that I'd gone out of my way to choose it. It had just been the only decent option for one of my level-up rewards. As for whether or not it was worth keeping, however, that was another matter entirely and the question at hand.

Just going off of its stats alone, this thing was strong, not game changing or anything, but it was still solidly powerful. That wasn't what caught my eye about it, though. I had plenty of powerful monsters. Instead, its potential lay in its abilities, but it did have one problem.

Now that I was looking at it, I couldn't deny that the truck-sized beast before me did vaguely resemble an overgrown lizard, if that lizard was made of stone that is. With that being said, the creature, at least to my knowledge, wasn't actually a reptile. It also was no plant, and of that, I was far more confident.

One of the design philosophies I'd gone into the creation of my Dungeon with in mind had been to maintain the element of surprise. To that end, I'd been pretending to be a plant and reptile Dungeon all this time. While I'd yet to benefit much from doing so, that did let me maintain the element of surprise when I brought out something that was neither of those things, and I wasn't ready just yet to cede that advantage just yet. That meant, even if I wanted to use this thing, I'd only be able to do so in a limited fashion. That, in itself, wasn't a problem, but it was telling of the larger issue at hand.

As things stood, I currently had four plant monsters, four reptiles, seven unrelated species, at least so long as I also counted those I was limited on, and three left to choose. Worse, out of the near half of my monsters that I needed to hide to keep up my farce, I didn't even use most of them. Dark Crows, Stonepeckers, this thing, and a bear cub, it was getting to be too much bloat with too little synergy. I needed to start cutting the fat, and I wanted to know if this would be a good place to start.

Just because I had access to Crystal Munchers didn't mean I needed to use them. In fact, one of my first thoughts upon unlocking the species had been to sacrifice my ability to summon them in order to extract one of their abilities. Mana Sense, for instance, seemed universally good, and being able to put it on anything I wanted was tempting, but once I went that route, there would be no turning back. That was why I wanted to test some things first, and now that I'd finished up my research on the new types of mana crystals I'd unlocked, this seemed like the perfect time.

First, I should test out Elemental Shift, I thought to myself.

It was the same ability my familiar, Prism, had, and other than the slime, I'd never seen a monster get access to it. For them, the ability changed the consistency of their goop to match the element they took on. It also changed the effect of their Cleanse Mana ability, which released all of their aspected magic in a single, large burst.

As for this thing, while it did have something similar, I wasn't sure it would work in the same way. That was the point of testing things out, after all. You could read up on a character's abilities all you wanted, but up until you actually selected them and played a few rounds, there was no way to get a feel for what they could actually do. Now, it was time to give this thing's abilities a spin.

Okay, eat, I ordered it as I directed the monster toward a pile of mana crystals that I'd created and brought up its ability to review once more.

[Ability: Elemental Shift

Description: Your form is influenced by the aspect of the mana you absorb.

Effect: Your form naturally shifts depending on the mana you have consumed. You may gain different effects based on the aspect of that mana.]

As the creature began to feast, nothing seemed to happen at first. There was no visible change to it, nor did anything else seem to take place. It seemed the process would take some time, so I began to wait. I didn't have to wait long, though. Soon, after a short pause, it happened. Slowly, on its back, a tiny crystal was emerging, the same color at the fiery red of its meal.

Huh, so that's how it works. Neat, I noted as I watched the process carefully.

It didn't take too long for what changes the being was undergoing to wrap up. When the process finished, it looked much the same as it had when it started, the only difference being the presence of the new crystal spike that adorned it. Something about that spike bothered me. It was smaller than it should've been and duller, too.

Unless there had been more going on inside of the creature's body than I could see, there had definitely been some degree of loss that had taken place. The thing had gorged itself, yet the mass of its new growth didn't match up with its meal. As for the color of it, while it had started out the same vibrant red of the fire crystals it had been eating, as it continued to grow, the color also began to mute. It was odd.

In spite of my more obvious observations, though, what I found myself wondering about most was a much more subtle detail. Rather than thinking about the crystal that had already formed, my mind was already on how this thing would react to eating different types of mana crystals. Depending on what happened when it did, I feared the results could be disastrous.

Over the course of my testing, back when I was still experimenting with my first set of mana crystals, I'd played around with the idea of fusing different elements together. In the end, I'd devised a way to stick them together, but that was the best I'd been able to do. Physically fusing them in any meaningful way had come with explosive consequences. Applying that knowledge here made me wary.

The Crystal Muncher before me had chowed down on a large pile of individual mana crystals, but it had only grown one of its own. It was possible having it eat another element would cause it to grow another crystal, but it was just as possible that the mass from them would be added to the one that had already started to grow. If that happened, well, it was a good thing I was testing this in an isolated location. Still, if it did end up bursting as the elements mixed, that would make this thing significantly less useful.

Oh well, I thought, we've come this far. Might as well test your other ability out before we risk detonating you. Go for it.

At my signal, the creature opened its mouth and unleashed a horrid roar that sounded somewhere between a rock slide and an explosion. From its jaws came an inferno that petered out after only a few feet. Honestly, it felt a little underwhelming. Seeing that, I brought up the ability's details in full. I needed to check something.

[Ability: Mana Roar

Description: You release your stored mana in the form of an devastating roar.

Effect: You release 20% of your stored mana through an explosive roar. The power of your roar decays by 5 mana per foot with the rate of decay doubling for every foot traveled. The rate of decay decreases by 1% for every 50 (WILL) you have. The effect of the magical component of this ability is dependent of the type of aspected mana present in your mana pool. The potency of the effect is dependent on how much mana is used.]

I may have just gotten my hopes up after seeing how powerful Stein's mimicked use of a Mandrake's Soul Shriek was since, on paper, that ability functioned in similar way, but I couldn't help but find myself disappointed. Instead of working like that, this ability seemed to function closer to how Prism's Cleanse Mana did. In other words, it wasn't bad, but it also wasn't anything to write home about.

Well, I guess that wasn't the main draw to you anyway, I made an excuse for it before expanding the range of my tests, Whatever, just eat some shadow crystals next, I guess.

It did, and I braced myself. Watching expectantly, I half expected a large boom. It didn't come. Instead, in a rather anticlimactic fashion, a new crystal formed on its back, plain and clear.

Wait, what?

My mind went blank as I took in the sight of its new growth. It contained no trace of the shadowy black of its meal. It was just plain, empty.

That doesn't seem right.

Immediately, I launched into more testing. First, I tried having it roar again. The results were the same as before, though slightly weaker. There was no trace of shadow anything.

That led me to believe it could only take on the aspects of the first type of mana it consumed. The way it grew another empty crystal when I fed it those of the electric variety supported that theory. The way it also continued to only grow empty crystals when I fed it more fire ones disproved it.

A good while and a large number of fiery roars later, I was ready write this thing off as a waste of time and extract its Mana Sense on the spot, but before I could I noticed it. Eventually, its other crystals were beginning to gain color, one black and one yellow. They were charging.

As it turned out, Crystal Munchers could incorporate mana crystals into their bodies, but they didn't seem to actually extract any of the mana from them. Rather than serving as batteries to the creatures, the crystals seemed to reflect the their mana pools themselves. That meant they were forced to rely entirely on their own natural mana regeneration.

I didn't know what to think about that. On one hand, it meant they could hold different mana types at once, but it also meant them taking on multiple would forever dilute their mana pools. More testing was needed.

Hours later, I'd discovered a few more interesting things about the monsters. For one, they couldn't control which crystals their mana refilled into. Neither could they pull from specific elements. Once they'd absorbed a crystal, it would forever be a part of them, until it was removed that is.

That was the second discovery I made. In a fit of annoyance, I'd tried breaking their crystals off. It had worked. Through physical force, their crystals could be removed, and once they were, they acted as regular mana crystals. That was a discovery that opened up more possibilities than I'd even considered when I'd tried it.

For ages, I'd been using mana crystals to grow Crystal Puffers. They cost me to make, and after only a few hosts, they depleted. Adventurers didn't want my leftovers since they were infected with puffer spores, and I had no use for them once they were empty, so up until now, I'd just been reabsorbing the stones once they ran dry for practically no gain. It was wasteful, but there had been no better alternative.

Crystal Munchers changed that. They could eat empty crystals, and in time, those crystals would refill. From there, I could break them off and reuse them. Even if there would still be a degree of unpreventable loss in the process, that was a massive improvement. So long as I worked out a recycling system, these things had the potential to help me cut back on some of my mana expenditures. That idea excited me and all but guaranteed I'd be keeping them around in the long run, but even so, there was one last thing I needed to test.

Coalescing my mana, I made to spawn another monster, this time a Crystal Puffer. Moments later, the weed came into being, but it didn't just form it in some random crystal. I grew it directly from one extruding from the Crystal Muncher. A quick glance at their status sheets later, and I knew it had worked. They were both benefiting from the weeds' Symbiotic Power.

Oh, I thought as I stared at my new creature in excitement, I am definitely keeping you.

I'd need to find fat to cut elsewhere. Crystals and all things related to them were now and an even more key resource for my Dungeon than they had been before. That would be something I was going to need to keep in mind as I made my remaining choices in regards to level up rewards. I'd needed to build all the synergies I could get.