A Dungeon’s Survival

Cameron

[You have gained a level!]

The words looked strange in my vision. It wasn't an alert asking me if I wanted to level up. It didn't display my current experience, nor was it followed by any options I had to sort through. It was a plain and simple statement informing me of the facts, nothing more, nothing less. That was unlike any level up menu I had seen so far, and that was because I hadn't just leveled up as a Dungeon. Instead, I had gained my first level as a Heroic Summoner.

Good job Prism! I cheered as the slime finished off a Crystal Puffer.

It had been a long and tedious process to reach the threshold I needed to level up, and the more I took advantage of this method, the worse it would get. Each of the wild, grown monsters only gave whatever killed them a single point of experience. That meant a level one person or monster would need to kill one hundred of them just in order to reach level two. It was ridiculous, something that could apparently yield achievements but ridiculous all the same.

[Achievement: Pest Control

Description: 100 uncontrolled monsters have died within Dungeon.

Reward: You have gained 10,000 experience!]

Then, there was the fact that, as I got stronger, Prism's level cap rose, allowing the slime to increase in power alongside me. Once that happened, they would need experience for themselves before I could benefit from their overflow again, and since the required amount to reach each following level was exponentially more than the last, it wasn't going to take long for our needs to outweigh our means.

If I wanted to reach level five and get my second class ability, Prism would potentially need to kill nearly four and a half thousand of the things, and by the time we each reached level six, something that would take us killing eleven thousand in total, they were likely to stop awarding us with experience altogether. Add in the time delay of me actually having to grow the monsters, and I desperately needed to find a way to increase the efficiency of my makeshift farm. For the time being, though, it was what we had, and we were making use of it.

The fiery orange slime with light and dark swirls of color mixed in wiggled in delight as I praised them. Then, they slowly extracted themselves from the Crystal Puffer they were smothering with their burning goop. Prism's combination of abilities allowed them to embody various elements, but I had found that letting them eat fire mana crystals was the most efficient method for them to easily deal with the monster weeds. That's what was mostly contributing to their current form.

[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.]

There was a time consuming downside to using this method, though. Since I didn't want the slime getting needlessly blasted with various attacks from the Crystal Puffers, I was having them go against only the variant that came about from mixing light and shadow mana, the completely useless ones. The problem was that smothering them triggered Prism's other ability.

[Ability: Mana Digestion

Description: You directly absorb the mana from everything you consume.

Effect: As you consume things, the mana within them is directly absorbed by you. You can digest anything, but the time it takes to do so is dependent on the amount of mana within the thing in question and your (COM). The mana consumed goes directly to your mana pool.]

That caused the slime to absorb some of the plants' mana, diluting their own in the process. That weakened their attacks until it took forever for them to kill even a single puffer, and from the looks of it, they were nearing that point again.

Okay, it's time to purify yourself. Go ahead.

“Gurgle.”

The slime did as told and began using its Cleanse Mana ability.

[Ability: Cleanse Mana

Description: You cleanse your mana of all aspects.

Effect: You cleanse your mana, removing all aspects from it. This takes 1 minute. The process is accelerated by one second for every 10 point you have in (COM). This results in the loss of 20% of the mana. For every 50 points you have in (WILL), the percentage of mana lost is reduced by 1.]

The real downside of the ability was how long it took to use. On its own, it wasn't too bad, but once the time it took Prism to absorb a new mana crystal was factored in, it meant a significant amount of downtime. Changing their element mid-battle was going to be out of the question for quite a while. I did have hopes for them being able to do that eventually. That way, they could counter whatever they came up against, but that would be in the distant future if it ever came about, not now.

That didn't matter too much, though. Speed wasn't an urgent concern when all they were doing was farming Crystal Puffers. It did mean we would need to prepare the blob ahead of time if they were to fight anything else, but that was doable, and between their ability to take on varying elements and their Slime Body, I felt like they'd be able to hold their own against carefully curated enemies as they were. The simple sounding ability was pretty good after all.

[Ability: Slime Body

Description: Your body is made of mana-based slime.

Effect: Your slime is immune to cuts, and damage to it does not affect your health. You can regenerate it at a cost of 1 mana per pint at a rate equal to half of your (VIT) + (WILL) ounces per second. Your core is entirely susceptible to damage.]

Overall, the gift from the other Dungeon was proving to be an interesting creature, and I was deeply grateful for the little blob. Even if they couldn't communicate in the same way as my awakened monsters could, they were a welcome addition to my little family. For the time being, they were preoccupied, though, and I had matters of my own to attend to, so I shifted the my attention from my familiar to my own status screen, specifically, my stats.

[Stats: FORT 0, VIT 0, STR 0 (1), END 0, SOUL 2 (5), MIND 1, WILL 2 (3), COM 1 (2), DEX 0 (2), AGI 0 (5), TBD 4]

Six of my ten stat points from leveling up had been automatically assigned. That left me with four. I could put them wherever I wanted, but that didn't make every option viable. As far as I was concerned, vitality, strength, dexterity, and agility were all useless to me. Fortitude and endurance weren't much better. That left soul, mind, willpower, and composure for me to consider.

SOUL, the stat that determined a person's mana capacity and the power of their magic, was the obvious choice. Due to the way my Bond Familiar ability worked, if I neglected it, my familiar's capacity to level up and that of any others I were to get down the line would suffer as a result. That alone was enough to tempt me to pour all of my points into the stat without a second thought, but I held back long enough to consider my other options too.

WILL represented an individual's capability to finely control magic and its effects. According to Fabian, it also played into the offensive potential of some obscure soul-based powers and a person's ability to defend against them, but I didn't know how relevant that fact was to me. Instead, what caused me to consider the option was the fact that it was the only other stat my class currently utilized.

It determined the range of the telepathic bond I shared with my familiars. It would be necessary to focus on it at least somewhat if I wanted to be able to communicate with them no matter where they were in my Dungeon and potentially outside of it. Unlike my other monsters, my familiars weren't strictly bound to my walls after all. They could technically leave, but since I wouldn't be able to communicate with them and since I couldn't protect them in the outside world, I hadn't experimented with that option just yet. Prism was far too weak and conspicuous to venture outside alone, so that capability would stay on the back burner for the time being.

That left MIND and COM, both of which my class already earned me a point in every time I leveled up. Both of their secondary effects were good, but neither was game changing. A higher mind stat did the equivalent of what willpower did for soul-based effects for mental ones, and composure was responsible for magic resistance. Both, while not crucial, were still nice things to have, but it was their primary effects that interested me.

Composure determined a person's mana regeneration rate. As a Dungeon, I didn't rely on this. Instead, I just regained all of mine over the course of twelve hours, six with my one title active. There was the potential for the stat to hasten my resource's recovery, but since a single point of Dungeon mana equaled ten normal mana, I didn't foresee the difference being noticeable no matter how high I got it.

In contrast, mind represented an interesting possibility. The stat governed one's mana efficiency, making less mana stretch farther. I had no clue if that extended to my Dungeon capabilities, but if it did, focusing on the stat could make a world of difference, or it could make a minuscule one. It might not even make one. It was a gamble, and as much as I had enjoyed poker night, I didn't particularly feel like gambling with the fates of those I cared about. I'd keep an eye out to see if there was any noticeable difference from the points I naturally got in it, but I wasn't about to sink my free ones into the stat.

With my options laid out before me, I was ready to decide how I would be spending my free points going forward. After considering what was most important to me, I decided that it was my familiars' ability to level up. Them being limited to half of my own level was too much of a handicap, and it would make the process of them getting more experience to help me level up difficult, if not impossible, after a certain point. For that reason, I dumped all four of my unassigned stats into SOUL. The extra points of mana I got from doing so didn't hurt either.

Those were my stats from reaching level two taken care of, but I also wanted to figure out what I was going to do with my unassigned ones going forward. That way, I wouldn't have to deliberate on it every time, and I'd have a better idea of what I was building toward. For that reason, I crunched a few numbers and came to an answer.

I would focus purely on increasing my soul stat until I reached level eight, earlier if I could get any more extra points from my Dragon Tamer bond with Adraugon. That would be enough to make it so that Prism could keep up with my own level, something I considered to be important since I couldn't modify them like I could with my other monsters. After that, I could decide to redirect a single point per level to my willpower or stick with dumping everything into SOUL. If I could get my hands on an extra fifty in the stat, I could offset the penalty of getting second familiar completely, so it was worth considering. Either way, it was a decision for later.

In the meantime, I really did need to figure out a better way of getting class experience. Unlike my own monsters, I couldn't just modify the Crystal Puffers we were killing. The Progenitor ability mine had currently did boost their stats by a single percent each, but that didn't even translate to an actual stat point in practice. If I splurged on a more expensive one to increase that bonus, it could make a difference given time, but I was already pressing up against the DP limit as it was. Just to summon a basic puffer without any modifications, I needed to temporarily remove one of the three rolling boulder traps from the shaft. Even if it was only temporarily, weakening my defenses much further didn't seem like a good idea.

That left one option. It was straightforward and should have been the most obvious one from the beginning, but I hadn't exactly been acting like a normal Dungeon. I did things my own way, and for that reason, the idea hadn't come as naturally to me as it should have. I needed to level them up, and to do that efficiently, I was left with an entirely different matter to consider.