A Dungeon’s Survival

Cameron

[Your Bloodthorn Vines (Level 5) were slain! 840 experience gained.]

I stared at the burning room in annoyance. That was going to cost me extra to fix. I just hoped it would work out to be less than what I was going to get back from reabsorbing the Bloodthorn Vines. Since I'd increased their level through pooled experience instead of with DP and mana, I knew I'd get more back from reabsorbing them than I had spent to create the monster, but with the group looting its flower, the part of it that was the plant creature's effective body, I wasn't sure how the math would end up working out on it. The charred vines weren't likely to help either.

A couple gold? Is that a lot? I asked my fairy when I heard the rogue estimate the crystal's value.

“To get from a Dungeon as new as you are, yes.”

Huh.

I had made it as an incentive for fighting the boss monster I'd created, but I wasn't sure how much it would actually be worth until now. Out of everything in my Dungeon, awakened monsters notwithstanding, those Bloodthorn Vines were easily the most profitable when killed, especially when I had my Summoned Hero title equipped like I did now, so in order to ensure people fought it, I hadn't skimped on the reward. In fact, the mana crystal was easily more costly to create than the monster itself.

As for the actual boss, though, I was satisfied with its performance. It had proven to be more than worth its cost in terms of both experience and power. Its death had netted me more than half of what the rest of my Dungeon did, and its performance had reassured me that it would continue to function in its new role. In a worst case scenario, I could use its room to make a stand against invaders without needing to let them get any closer to my core. It was even possible to send my awakened monsters down there to recreate the conditions of my last defense against that group of second tiers, so overall, I was satisfied.

That was good since I had been forced to cut down on the rolling boulder traps in the shaft in order to afford the changes I made to it. Sure, raising it to level five and giving it the Longer Vines bonus had been free, and making indentations in four of its vines to insert seeded mana crystals into wasn't too expensive, but I couldn't say the same for giving it both Necrotic Venom and Velocity Transference. That bloated its worth, but it also required two of the boulders' DP values to afford. Still, even with all of that, I doubted it would have been worth as much experience as it was without one of the achievements its creation had earned me.

[Achievement: Symbiotic

Description: Two of your monsters have formed a symbiotic relationship.

Reward: Both monster species and their evolutions have gained the Symbiotic Power ability!]

[Ability: Symbiotic Power

Description: You share power with entities in a symbiotic relationship with you.

Effect: Entities in a symbiotic relationship with you benefit from +10% of your stats, and you benefit from +10% of theirs. This effect does not stack with itself.]

The achievement had caught me off guard, but I couldn't complain about its potential. With it, the four Crystal Puffers were more than just glorified weapons for it to wield. They also increased the stats of the Bloodthorn Vines slightly. That was great, but the second achievement the boss's creation had yielded had left me concerned and unsure of how to proceed. Technically, it wasn't the creation of the boss that had led to me getting it in itself. Instead, it had been a result of something I didn't know how to feel about: errors.

[Error, reference null. Commencing manual search for target species “Crystal Puffer”.]

[Species found. Applying achievement.]

I assumed it was thanks to whatever that was that my Crystal Puffers also got the ability since the ones that formed the symbiotic relationship weren't under my control. That was fine, good even, but the errors hadn't stopped there.

[Error, the monster was unable to gain the Symbiotic Power ability. Entity “Crystal Puffer” is being processed by “Monster_Handling” and is not compatible with “Revolutionary_Handling” achievements.]

[Error, solution not found.]

Those errors had seemed innocuous. Maybe they were a little concerning, but overall, they didn't seem like anything worth dwelling on. The System had apparently disagreed because it immediately responded by giving me the most ominous achievement possible.

[Achievement: Bugged

Description: You have run into 5 unresolved errors. You are quite the problematic individual, aren't you? Use the granted ability to contact me so that I can take a look at what exactly has gone wrong and push out an update to fix it. Yours truly, Illiana the Bastion of Light.

Reward: You have gained the Contact Administrator ability!]

I hadn't told Fabian about getting that one. On top of having some interesting implications, it felt like the kind of thing that could upturn the beliefs that the people of this world held. I didn't know how to feel about that, and the ability it brought with it made my uncertainty far worse. If the achievement's description was slightly ominous, the ability's was a straight up threat.

[Ability: Contact Administrator

Description: If you are reading this, rejoice! You have been deemed worth our time. Do not abuse this power. Understand that it can be taken away just as easily as it was bestowed upon you. So can your life.

Effect: When you use this ability, you will be prompted to select a System Administrator. Select your benefactor and attach a message. They will get back to you at their earliest convenience, or they won't. We are busy and not to be bothered with trivial matters after all.]

There was too much there for me to unpack in only a single day. On one hand, I wanted answers, and the so-called administrators could probably give them to me, but with the tone of those messages, I wasn't sure contacting them would be smart. Technically, nothing the errors had done so far had been a problem for me. If anything, they were beneficial since I had gotten a class because of them. For all I knew, the admins wouldn't be happy about that and would take it away. The ability's description outright stated that they could or, at least, heavily implied it.

That was why I'd ignored it so far, but even as I tried to move on, it hadn't strayed far from my mind at any point. The wording just opened up too many possibilities. I had long dismissed the thought of everything I'd experienced in this world being a dream, and I knew that, even if it was, looking at it that way wouldn't help me, but what if it was something else?

Being summoned to another world as a hero didn't make much sense to me. After all, why would I be made a hero? That word far from described me, but what if everything wasn't as it seemed? What if this was some kind of simulation, potentially a secret government experiment or something? I was disabled, rarely left my house, and wouldn't be missed by many. I couldn't help but to wonder if that would have been enough to paint a target on my back for something like that. Also, if it was, that left me wondering as to other implications.

All of that hinged on a random scenario I had come up with being the case, though, and I didn't so much as have a way of knowing if it was more or less likely than the magical option, no way except for the new ability that was sitting in my status screen. It held the potential to get me answers. It was only a matter of whether or not getting them would be worth the risk.

If my hypothetical situation did turn out to be accurate, what then? Would whatever organization was holding me captive just be fine with me finding out? I couldn't imagine that being the case. If they had the potential to control how I perceived the world, what was to say they couldn't also alter my memories? But, if that was what was going on, why would they give me an ability to contact them? It didn't make sense.

Then, there was the possibility that I had actually been summoned to another world. If that was the case, I could only equate beings powerful enough to control and probably have created a world-governing game system with gods. Were those the kinds of beings that I actively wanted to contact? Would there be consequences for doing so? Would there be for not doing so? The achievement had specifically told me to contact them, so there was a distinct possibility they'd be mad if I didn't or if I waited too long. That was an unsettling thought.

The only silver lining I could think of was that, if they needed me to contact them in the first place, whoever these System Administrators were, they couldn't be all-powerful or, at the very least, not omniscient. That left me with a choice that I knew I couldn't wait too long to make. I was either going to have to contact them sometime soon or resolve myself to never do so. I wasn't sure which choice would be the right one, but I needed to decide soon.

That was a problem for later, though. I still had too many thoughts to sort through, and I had yet to find a good opportunity to probe Fabian for answers. For now, I had focus on getting my Dungeon to level fourteen. With the changes I'd made, I was now on track to reach that goal within a month, but that was still too far off for my liking. I'd had enough of wasting away while doing nothing in my last life. I wasn't going to be content to repeat that when the stakes were so much higher, so I moved on to my next plan of action.

As it stood, I felt as though I'd optimized my DP and mana usage to the best of my ability. That left me with only two options to increase my growth. The first was out of the question thanks to a clause in the contract I was supposed to be under with the Fairy Council which stated that I couldn't intentionally cause the deaths of over one third of my delvers unless my life was at risk, and I was certain I was far beyond that at this point already. I could technically do whatever I wanted since I wasn't actually under the effects of that contract, but something like that would be a dead giveaway to Fabian. It wasn't worth the risk. Also, the adventurers I'd started getting this time around actually seemed well behaved, so I would have felt bad about going out of my way to kill them.

That left me with one option. I had wanted to wait until I could get their level up a bit higher first, but with my mana constantly at capacity, that didn't seem feasible anymore. I had no choice but to trust Prism and Fabian as they were.

Hey, Fabe, I called out to my fairy as I pulled myself from my thoughts, could you start taking Prism out to hunt?

“I thought you wanted to wait on that?” he asked in confusion.

I did, and I still kind of do, but as things are, that would be a long way off, and even if it's not much, I think the extra experience from bringing monsters back here to kill would help. Do you think you could do it?

“Well, it was my idea. We'll have to take it slow, but yes. I should be able to manage it.”

Thanks, Fabe.

And so, a new operation to increase my strength began.