A Dungeon’s Survival

Cameron

Your verdict?

“She's far more capable than she has any right being, but,” Fabian paused to collect himself before finishing, “she's not the person who killed my last core.”

That's good. Um, can I ask what made you think she might be in the first place and what suddenly brought that on, though? It kind of came out of nowhere.

He took a deep breath, and a short time passed before he answered. I didn't rush him. I just patiently awaited his response.

“Well, I didn't get the best look at the invader, but I did see that they had four arms. There aren't many mortal races with that many. There's a certain type of giant like that, but they aren't native to this continent. Aside from them, the only ones with that many arms are insectinoids, and they seldom leave the Great Caverns, so seeing anyone like that is a rare sight to begin with.

“Then, there was the way they moved: with perfect control and brutal efficiency, no wasted motions to be seen. The way she scaled that shaft reminded me of them. The resemblance was unsettling, and I think I just got in my own head about it. That wasn't a feat most mortals at the first tier could accomplish, and I started overthinking things. That's all. I'm sorry for the false alarm.”

Don't be, I told him, and I got a surge of confusion in response.

It's better to be overly cautious than dead. Even if it turned out to be nothing this time around, I'd rather be warned about a possible threat than to have it come out of nowhere. Also, I took a moment to gather the nerve to say what I needed to, if you ever want to talk about it, what happened with your last core, I mean, I'm here for you, okay?

“Thank you,” he said as he nodded, “I don't think I'm ready for that just yet, but I'll keep it in mind.”

He gave me a smile, and after going back and forth on it for a few moments, I decided it would be for the best to leave him alone with his thoughts for the time being. With that being the case, I turned my attention back to the goings-on in my Dungeon. Vie and Pee were still pursuing the adventurers on their way out. It was not a pretty sight, but to their credit, the group had somehow managed to keep them at bay as they hightailed it out of there so far. Then, there was Adraugon. He was holed up in one of my small tunnels, licking his wounds in the literal sense.

You good? I decided to check on him.

“Fine. I will hunt the bug another time.”

Okay. You do you.

Luckily, he seemed to be better off than I expected him to be. After losing, I had assumed he would be in a foul mood, but for whatever reason, as indecipherable as the mess of emotions I could feel rolling off of him were to me, they didn't seem overtly bad. I decided not to linger on that and just took the good fortune that was given to me. If he had been upset, I didn't think I'd have been able to effectively comfort or reassure him like I could the others. If he was fine, that was for the best.

Moving on, I took a step back to consider what had gone wrong at the end there. My vertical shaft had kept four out of five people out, but if it couldn't even prevent a first-tier rogue from making her way straight to my core, what use would it be against actual threats? I needed to reassess my defenses.

The first thing I did was rectify the issue I had with the rolling boulder traps. They had not worked as I intended them to. That wasn't a difficult adjustment to make, though. I just removed them from the walls of the shaft, and stuck them in the ceiling instead. That removed any holes a person could hide in while also fixing the timing on them. After I was done with that, I added the slipperiest variety of moss I had access to to the walls of the shaft in order to further Flur-proof it. From there, I was left with only one adjustment to consider in regards to the obstacle.

The boulders blocking the exit had been an unforeseen consequence that I wasn't sure I liked. I didn't think it was a good idea to trap people who wanted me dead in the heart of my Dungeon, so the idea of carving out a hole underneath for rocks to land in was tempting, but in the end, I decided to keep the unintended feature intact. That was because it had shown itself to have the potential to split groups up, and I had no qualms with using whatever tricks I could to gain an advantage against people who made it so far into my Dungeon. I couldn't afford to show them mercy.

After that, I needed to resummon my monsters and replenish my incentives for delvers. I prioritized the monsters, but with the abundance of mana crystals and magical flora the latter task required me to create, I found myself unable to do everything all at once. Even with my Bane of Armies title boosting my regeneration rate, it was going to take me a while to regain enough mana to finish the task. That also meant I was left without the resources I needed to get any work done for the time being.

Ugh, is this what being a normal Dungeon feels like?

It had been so long since I had last gotten a group of normal adventurers delving my Dungeon that I had become used to not needing to spend mana on regular upkeep. I had been spoiled in that regard. Suddenly, as I was left without the resources I needed to do anything for the first time in a while, I looked around for something to occupy my attention with. Then, I paused.

Actually, now that I think about it, I haven't taken much time to just relax and hang out with the others lately, have I?

There were also the new books to consider, but I felt like a celebration was in order for the hopefully successful reopening of my Dungeon, even if only a minor one. The scouting group's delve had gone a little iffy there in the end, but up until that point, I felt like went well enough. Also, something upbeat would hopefully make Fabian feel a bit better. I thought he could use that.

What could we do, though?

It wasn't like we had all that many forms of entertainment at our fingertips. We certainly didn't have video games or even normal games. Messing around with wooden blocks had been strangely comforting for a time, but the novelty of it had worn off fast. I wished we had something else we could do in our precious little downtime, but unless someone just so happened to bring a board game into my Dungeon or something, it seemed we were out of luck on that front.

Wait a second …

Unless we weren't. That had given me an idea. It wasn't a board game, but that alchemist had brought something unusual into my Dungeon that I might be able to work with: paper.

Hey, Archie, could you come help me out with something?

“Why certainly, mistress!”

At my call, the mushroom wizard came striding out of his lab and toward my core. That was two things I needed for my plan taken care of. Next, I needed to find a substitute for ink. It would have been much easier if I could create the stuff myself, but sadly, the adventurer hadn't brought enough for me to be able to replicate it yet.

Hold on, I told my alchemist.

Then, I sent an order to one of my Lizard Men crafters, the herbalist to be exact. Not long after, she came walking into my core room from the work hall. In her hands, she carried some things she had accidentally figured out how to make while trying to process my magical plants. In total, she brought with her two of the vials we used for potions. One was filled with a red fluid, and the other held a black one. It was primitive dye.

That's ink taken care of. Now, in order to cut the paper …

Another command later, a Shadow Viper was making its way to the room that previously housed my experimental Crystal Puffers. There, it retrieved two of Flur's lost daggers and made its way through the tunnels to us. I could have just had the herbalist bring some blades from the work hall, but despite everything the insectinoid's had been through, hers were much sharper than any that I could create. As soon as it arrived, we had everything we needed.

Okay, so Archie, herbalist, I need you to cut these papers into rectangles, all the same size. I need them to be about this big. Once you finish the first, you can use it as a reference.

I sent them a mental image as I explained the task to them. They did as instructed, and I absorbed the cut papers after. Then, I began summoning those instead. The next step was to color them precisely enough that each design would be counted as being the same by the System. Since I had them color one side of each paper a flat red, half of the task was fairly straightforward. What caused them to need to redo the same ones over and over again for hours on end were the fronts.

I sent them the designs I wanted them to draw, but without proper writing utensils and with no experience with writing or drawing, they struggled to consistently replicate even basic designs. In the end, I had to simplify them greatly, but as time went on, they got better and better. Eventually, they managed to do it.

It took the entire day for us to get through them all. We needed twenty perfect copies of each for me to be able to replicate them. It would have been easier to just make a single set and use it, but the dyes weren't great. They bled and smudged, so unless I could easily create replacements, our efforts would have been pointless. It was worth it in the end, though.

[You have absorbed 1 Crude King of Spades! Crude King of Spades has been unlocked as an item for you.]

[Crude King of Spades has been condensed into the Playing Cards category.]

With fifty-two homemade cards at the ready, it was time to introduce my new family to the world of entertainment. I called in the rest of the Lizard Men to help us play. Then, I began calling for the players themselves.

Hey, Fabe, come here. I've got something fun!

“Okay?”

Vie, Pee, come back to the core room, please.

“Very well.”

“Okay!”

Prism!

“Blurb?”

Come here please.

“Gurgle.”

Archie was already present, so that just left one potential player.

Hey, Adraugon, would you like to play a game with us?

I didn't know how inviting the volatile lizard would go, but I had been trying to get closer to the little menace, and I felt like I'd been making good progress on that. Besides, it just felt like the right thing to do.

“Why?”

Because it'll be fun?

“No, pointless.”

Also, I'm going to summon some coins for us to bet with. You could win some extra treasure for your hoard, I added in order to tempt him.

“Explain,” he demanded as his head shot up.

I had his full attention now. A brief explanation later, and we had our last player. With that, our underground gambling ring was formed.