A Dungeon’s Survival

Cameron

Together with Vie and Pee, we put the arena and its glistening crystals behind us. There was only one exit, and it led to my core room. I had left it as dark as I could for safety reasons since I didn't need adventurers being able to see if they made it so far. That would hopefully inconvenience them if it came down to it. Even to me, the shift from light to complete darkness was a strange juxtaposition, and I could see in the dark.

The only light that filtered into that space was from the connected rooms. The arena wasn't the only lit up area attached to it. With the construction I had performed after the raid, the heart of my Dungeon had also become a hub area of sorts for my monsters and me. In addition to the arena, it connected to Archie's laboratory and the room I had dug out for Adraugon's hoard.

Vie and Pee gracefully slithered their way through the mud and around all of the stalagmites that filled the room while my field of vision just sort of passed through them. We were as unbothered by the defensive terrain I had constructed as we were by the darkness, and we soon reached the other side. From there, we passed through the entrance to Adraugon's hoard.

I had made sure to place him between my core room and the rest of the Dungeon. That way, if people showed up, the buff he got from protecting his hoard would activate, and he could fight them off. That also meant we had to pass through his room to get to the rest of the Dungeon, something he always made sure to comment on.

“Stupid lifespring stone, treating hoard like trail.”

If I could have rolled my eyes at the miniature dragon who hadn't even so much as moved or opened his eyes at our presence, I would have. Instead, I just gave him a response.

Hi, Adraugon.

“Humph.”

Vie and Pee gave him dirty looks, but I ignored it. They didn't seem to get along particularly well, but thankfully, nothing had come of it. I had asked my scaly, little girls not to provoke him and to leave him alone for the most part. They agreed, but I could tell they weren't happy about it.

There was tension there. I was sure their conflicting personalities played a significant role in it, but I couldn't help but to think there was more to it than that. Jealousy maybe? He was the highest leveled monster in the Dungeon and second only to them in terms of raw stats and abilities. There was also the fact that he had played the largest role in defending against the bandit raid while they had been dead.

I could foresee it being a problem at some point, but I didn't even know how to properly interact with the little terror. I wasn't qualified to help them to, even if it was my responsibility, so I left that matter alone. I hoped nothing bad would come of it. In a worst case scenario, I wasn't sure who would win in a fight.

On paper, Vie and Pee had the advantage. To start with, they had higher skill levels than he did. Laziness had its downsides, something that his stat screen proved. They were also stronger in most other ways, but there was more to a fight than stats alone, and Adraugon hadn't stagnated on that front any more than they had. Due to the pact we had made when he awakened, I had to dump a handful of DP into him every time I gained a level, and I had gained a few recently. DP also went farther for him than it did for other monsters in a different but similar way to how it worked for Vie and Pee.

Thanks to the odd achievement that awakened him, I could effectively upgrade him for half price. Despite that and the natural cheapness of his species to maintain, he was still a higher cost on my resources than my two-headed snake. It was only by a point, but that was still impressive in its own right.

He was strong, and as much as he annoyed me at times, I did consider that to be a good thing. His power was the Dungeon's power after all, and him being strong meant that those I cared about, him begrudgingly included, were less likely to die in raids against us. I wouldn't admit it to him out of fear of it going to his head, but I did care about the little guy. He was one of only a few people I had in my life, and I had reason to believe he was growing as an individual, if only slightly.

If nothing else, he was getting smarter and realizing there was more to life than being fast. He hadn't even demanded that I only increase his agility stat after the raid. He did insist that I increase it a lot, but he also asked for other stat boosts. Back when he first awakened, that would have been unthinkable for him.

That alone made me wish I could have been happy with how his upgrades went after that, but I was left somewhat dissatisfied. The first round of modifications had gone great. He even got a new achievement in the process thanks to his agility reaching one hundred points after modifiers. It was a subtle but nice bonus.

[Achievement: Triple Digits

Description: One of your monsters has reached 100 points in a single stat.

Reward: The monster species and its evolutions have gained +1 to that stat!]

It was the second round of upgrades that bugged me. It wasn't even because of some overt problem. Instead, it stemmed from the part of me that obsessed over optimizing.

His stats had come so close to the threshold needed for his percentage bonuses to give him extra points that it pained me to look at his status sheet. If it was just one or two stats being near the numbers they needed to reach to get those bonuses, it wouldn't have been too bad, but not only were his WILL and DEX left only two points off, his STR was one point away. It was almost bad enough to tempt me to spend more on him, but that was not a precedent I could afford to set.

Even without those few extra points, though, he was terrifying. His upgrades were even starting to near the limits of what I could manage for the time being. As it stood, according to Fabian, each distinct upgrade I made to a monster could only be so potent. I could make it stronger after we both reached level twenty-five, but even then, there were limits.

He wasn't at that threshold yet, and the only changes I made to him that were nearing that point still had a little wiggle room, but that didn't change the fact that he was the only monster I had that was even nearing those limits. I had to start thinking about what I would do when he did reach them. However, that was a problem for future me.

Hey, Adraugon, I thought to him as I ripped my mind away from his stats, I was going to go show Vie and Pee the progress I've been making. Want to come?

I could feel instant apprehension from the scaly pair, but it was only confusion that emanated from the flying lizard.

“Prey here?”

No, just my experiments.

“Then, why should I come? No point.”

You don't have to. It was just an offer.

“Lifespring stone is making no sense.”

Despite his words, I didn't feel anger from him. Instead, it was a strange mix of emotions that he emanated. I couldn't quite read them, but I supposed it didn't matter. With a mental shrug, I, with Vie and Pee behind me, exited his hoard into the my Dungeon's second room. Vie and Pee felt relief as we did.

Previously, I had hidden the entrance to my core room behind the trees at the edges of the room. I had placed it there so that it wasn't a straight shot through my Dungeon to me, and no one would actually know how to get there. Since it had worked out during the raid, I hadn't seen the need to change that, so we emerged into the second room from there.

It was largely the same with only a few changes. I repositioned the rolling boulder traps in there to make them more useful. I also lit up the main pathway between the two spike pits with torches and the occasional mana stone. I had distributed the stones more heavily farther back in my Dungeon to reward those who made it deeper in. It was the way Dungeons operated, and it worked for me, but it did mean I had to find alternative lighting for the earlier rooms.

Luckily, I had absorbed enough torches from the last raid to be able to summon them now. Once paired with the fire environment I had also unlocked at that time, I could keep them burning indefinitely. It did cost a small amount of mana to do so, but since I had been keeping my new title that doubled my mana regeneration rate active to facilitate my experiments, I had hardly noticed the drain.

Aside from those things, the room remained functionally the same. The only other difference was that I had done away with the fake core room that previously connected to it. It had served its purpose, but it was no longer necessary.

After everything, I didn't feel comfortable with showing myself to anyone that walked through my cave's entrance anymore. I would be making no more public appearances. No matter what Fabian had to say about it, my core was staying nice and hidden. That meant the room I used to move to when the scouting group came by had outlived its usefulness.

In place of it, the second room now directly connected to the third. My disembodied vision slowly floated through the entrance, and a dismal sight came into view. It was my bog. I had expanded it a good distance in length but not in width. As it stood, it would be a long trudge through muddy water and small pockets of explosive gas to get to the new addition to my Dungeon. All the while, anyone coming through would be pestered by the newly modified monsters in the room.

I liked the design of the Shadow Vipers I had used during the raid, so I didn't change much about them when finalizing the design I would be using for them in the room. I had learned from the experience, though, and I did touch them up a bit. To better facilitate their hit-and-run tactics, I spent a couple of DP each on the four snakes in the room to infuse their muscles with as much mana as I could without upgrading them further. That provided a slight increase to their strength and agility.

The upgraded snakes would keep people on edge, and while they were worrying about ambushes from them, my other monsters could capitalize on their distraction. Those other monster included the Plated Gators, of course. There would only be two in the room, and they were significantly weaker than the ones Vie and Pee had just fought against, but I believed it to be enough to give anyone in there a real challenge.

Lastly, I had decided to add a pair of Trentis. They were upgraded with magic in mind, similarly to the Trenti that used to guard the fake core room. They weren't the same, though. I had created an entirely new set of modifications for them.

I had shrunk them down to make them more slippery, reshaped and recolored them to let them blend in with their surroundings better, and increased their stats to make them marginally less terrible at magic. With their new design, they were a far cry from the fodder I had running around in my first room, but that was intentional. The one in there was weak on purpose, or at least it had been before all of my achievements had given it halfway decent stats.

Either way, the bog was now a particularly dangerous area, and it was also my most expensive room. With all of the monsters I had in it, the cost to maintain it was one hundred forty DP. It was a challenge not for the careless and unprepared that had invaded my walls so often. It was a trial for actual adventurers.

But, with risk came reward. I had scattered magic crystals in the water and magical plants around the area for anyone brave enough to make the trek. I hoped that would be enough to offset the danger in the Adventurers Guild's eyes. I needed it to be. It was the best middle ground I could find. I had both danger and valuables. It was just a matter of setting the scales properly.

That was the path I had chosen and the decisions I had made, but at the moment, the room lacked any risk. I hadn't respawned the monsters since emptying it for Vie and Pee's fight. That left the room empty save for the occasional glint of a mana stone underwater, something that provided just enough light to the dark area to create an unsettling visual effect. We pressed on unfazed.

Soon, a new creation of mine came into sight. There, at the end of the bog, sat the only thing I had actually put effort into making look aesthetically pleasing beyond slapping mana stones around. Any attempt at beauty I made, however, was ruined by the surroundings, but at least I tried.

It was my rendition of temple ruins sunk into the bog. I had played around with the new stone types I had gained access to from the Great Caverns Passage perk to make a beautiful yet rundown marble structure rising from the mud. It was complete with broken pillars, detailed texturing, and even vines of the non-Bloodthorn variety. The small structure contained only an unlit staircase ominously going down into depths unseen.

According to Fabian, while not all Dungeons used floors to indicate jumps in difficulty or changes to themes and styles, it was a common tactic that the Adventurers Guild seemed to appreciate. I figured that, even if I didn't have anything particularly dangerous down there at the moment, it couldn't hurt to start on my second floor, and if I earned some brownie points with the guild at the same time, I couldn't complain.

Remember, I warned my companions as we came to a stop at the top of the dark staircase, while the stairs themselves are safe, don't go near anything unless I tell you you can, okay?

“Of course, our queen.”

“Got it!”