A Dungeon’s Survival

Connie

Huh?

My attention was ripped away from the conversation I was having with Archie by a pair of achievement notifications.

[Achievement gained: Naturally Meaningless!]

[Achievement gained: One Monster Army!]

“What is it, mistress?”

I just got a couple achievements, and one of them is the gambling one.

“Hmm, that's rather odd. Did Adraugon follow through with challenging the Lizard Men to poker in order to hasten the growth of his gambling skill, perhaps?”

No, I don't think so. He seemed to give up on that idea pretty quickly after Fabian told him that playing against mindless monsters would do next to nothing for it's growth. Then again, the last I saw, he actually left his hoard, so maybe? Hold on, I'm going to check what the other achievement was. Maybe that will clarify things.

[Achievement: One Monster Army

Description: You have earned 20 single-monster upgrades for the same monster.

Reward: The monster has gained +5% to all stats!]

Realization slowly dawned on me as I read the description. While I didn't bother learning all of their names, I was more than familiar with that line of achievements. I'd already unlocked the two earlier ones in the chain. They were both held by Vie and Pee, the pair who were also the only ones even remotely close to to having that many upgrades.

Oh, he's going to mad.

“I beg your pardon?”

Apparently, it's Vie and Pee that got it.

“Oh, that is rather unfortunate. With how much he desired it … I believe I would like to avoid seeing his reaction when he finds out.”

You and me both. Uh, let's just wait for either Vie and Pee to tell him themselves or for him to find out naturally.

“That sounds like a wonderful idea, mistress. So, are you going to go congratulate the pair?”

I will later. For now, it's more important that we get this going as soon as possible.

“A wise decision.”

As it stood, I had two significant problems. Technically, I had far more than that. There was the bear, Fabian had left us to fend for ourselves, and there was also the whole thing with the potential oncoming end of the world, but there was nothing I could do about any of those issues in the immediate, so for the time being, I wasn't going to bother worrying about them. As for the other two, they were more urgent and far more manageable; therefore, they were the priority.

First up was my lack of DP, and then, there was my lack of mana. There were some things I could do about my DP, but none of them would be fast, certainly not quick enough for me to implement in the scarce time I imagined I had before Adventurers returned to my Dungeon. That was unless they randomly decided to stop delving it for another month, of course, but now that I was in a position where that might actually be convenient for me, I wasn't holding my breath. Instead, it was the issue of my mana that I believed was worth spending my rare surplus of resources to attempt to fix.

As it stood, my problems in that regard stemmed from a few major mana sinks. There were my traps, and I'd already cut back on them to the point of hardly using any at all. Then, there were my monsters. As much mana as I could get back by reabsorbing them after their deaths, it was never enough to do more than briefly postpone the unending drain delvers brought with them. Lastly, there were the rewards I was offering adventurers. Those were what I had decided to focus on.

Technically, since I'd avoided that pact with the Fairy Council back when I'd first arrived, the same pact that the consequences of avoiding were now coming back to bite me, I was left with enough freedom to simply take the rewards away. Nothing was explicitly forcing me to keep them, and I had half a mind to strip my Dungeon clean of anything not absolutely essential, but in the end, I knew that would only invite further problems from the guild. I might have firmed my resolve to stop catering so much to the delvers, but I didn't think provoking them would be smart either. We'd see about how much I decided to offer them in the future when we got to that point, but for the time being, I had another solution.

The rewards I offered could mostly be categorized into two groups. There were the mana crystals; then, there were the alchemical plants. I couldn't do much about the crystals at the moment, but as for the magical plant life adventurers coveted for their value in alchemy, a new advancement in our available technology, courtesy of Archie, opened doors. We'd made use of his new concoction during the battle with the Berserker, but it wasn't until now that he'd actually produced enough of it for me to unlock it as a summonable item.

[Item: Floral Accelerant

Cost: 20 MP

Description: A magical concoction that accelerates plant growth.

Effect: When this substance comes into contact with plant matter, it infuses it with life mana. This leads to a rapid acceleration in growth.]

Honestly, I wasn't entirely confident it would work. We had already tested it out on Crystal Puffers, and it had done wonders for them, but there were reasons why they could theoretically be more receptive to the stuff than normal, magical plants. Their entire existence revolved around absorbing and releasing mana after all, and that wasn't even to mention the fact that they were monsters. Either way, though, I was hopeful, and we'd soon see if the idea was viable.

Sadly, there was more to this plan than just sprinkling a potion I made from mana onto seeds and hoping for the best. First of all, while we did have the flowers and other foliage we wanted to grow, we didn't have seeds. Secondly, Archie had better things to do with his time than harvesting plants that weren't even for his own use and brewing a continuous stream Floral Accelerant. Me creating the stuff wasn't a viable option in the long term either. That would defeat the entire purpose of not spending mana to create the plants in the first place.

Then, there was the matter of how to actually go about tending to the plants. Besides that, we also needed a method to move them out of the garden area and into position across the Dungeon without being seen. All of this needed to be worked out in a way that was efficient and didn't require my constant attention.

I had already come up with ideas on how to tackle most of these problems, but I wasn't sure how well they'd work. I also didn't have time to infinitely workshop this plan before attempting to implement it. That meant we were going to have to figure it out as we went.

First of all were the dirt beds. I set them up in the room Prism and I'd previously been using to farm experience. It was already a room dedicated to farming, even if it was a different type of farming, so it seemed like the natural choice. I decided that I'd link it up to Archie's lab later, and then, I moved on. As for the solution to manpower, I called for the Lizard Men.

At my command, a small and slender Lizard Man joined us in the farming room. The other three crafters followed closely behind with all of her supplies in hand. All four of them were the ones I'd created in order to lay the groundwork for self-sufficiency and creating production lines, but out of all of them, it was only one that had quickly risen above the rest and distinguished herself: the herbalist.

A large part of that likely had to do with the surplus of magical plants I had for her to work with and my significant lack of proper tools for the others. Regardless of why she had reached the heights she had so far aside, however, one fact remained true. She, at level four in her Herbalism skill, was the perfect candidate to entrust this task to.

Now, was it smart to entrust a monster with limited intelligence, no sentience, and no real self-awareness to speak of with so much? Almost certainly not, but that didn't change the fact that this was the best solution I had at the moment. Previously, I'd considered creating a new, permanent monster to help handle the farming of the Crystal Puffers, but at that time, I wrote that off as a luxury I couldn't afford.

What differed now was that I was repurposing a monster I already had, one that I'd previously ruled out for the simple fact that I needed the Lizard Men developing their skills, of which farming was not one. Gardening did, however, have enough of an overlap with herbalism that, with my growing need to invest in it, I could justify having the herbalist pick it up on the side. What was slightly harder to justify overwhelming the Lizard Man with was alchemy, but once again, I decided it needed to be done.

Welcome to your new workplace! I directed my thoughts toward the reptilian humanoid; then, turning my attention toward Archie, I continued, And, here's your new apprentice!

Archie did not have the time to dedicate himself in full to all of the new tasks that needed doing, so with a background in Herbalism, I was gifting the most well-suited pair of hands to him as an apprentice, someone who could handle collecting his ingredients for him and brewing the potions that it wasn't worth his time to mass-produce. On top of that, I was also going to need her to handle all things agricultural in the Dungeon from this point on. I had my doubts about her being able to handle all of it, but I also figured we could see how she did and go from there, and it was for all of that that I also believed she deserved a name.

Of course, giving her one came with all of the anxiety and worries that came with naming a monster that wasn't guaranteed to survive in the long run. The fact of the matter was she wasn't awakened. Maybe it was true that she wasn't on the front lines or expected to fight, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to face danger in the coming days. Tending to plant monsters that weren't under my control was a dangerous task, and as Archie had proved, alchemy, if anything went wrong, could be an undeniably deadly craft.

With those thoughts, the face of a simple, innocent Trenti that wanted nothing more than to carve wood came to mind: Archie, not Sir Archibald II but his predecessor, the Trenti I ended up getting attached to but couldn't keep safe. I absentmindedly split off a second perspective and took in the sight of the wooden-block house we'd made for Fabian back then, his masterpiece. Then, I forcefully dismissed that line of sight and suppressed all of the emotions that had started bubbling up from within me. Come what may, that didn't change the fact that she needed a name.

From this moment on, I proclaimed, you–my herbalist, burgeoning alchemist, and the one I place in charge of all things agricultural–you, shall be named Rose.

For someone in charge of growing, processing, and utilizing flowers among other things, I thought being named after a flower was perfect for her, and I believed Rose to be a beautiful name.

“Ha ha ha! Congratulations, my dear, new apprentice! Together, may we uncover the secrets of alchemy and bring prosperity to the Dungeon in the name of our mistress!” Archie cheered jubilantly.

The lizard girl, for her part, just slowly blinked a few times. It was as good of a response as any an unawakened monster could give, but it did cause a sinking feeling to form in my core. Was this really the person–er, monster since she wasn't sentient yet–that I was entrusting so much to?

Before I could question my decisions any farther, I moved on to the next area of concern. We still needed seeds. Luckily, that proved to be an easy problem to solve. While I couldn't modify my magical plants to any meaningful degree, I was still able to shape them somewhat. Utilizing that fact, I forcibly made some of the flowering plants bloom. A vial of Floral Accelerant later, we had our seeds.

The process didn't work for all of the plant varieties I had at my disposal, but the handful I'd gotten to work were more than enough of a start, and luckily, all but one of the ingredients needed to create more of the magical fertilizer were among them. As for the last one, a strange type of root I couldn't figure out how to force to produce seeds, I accepted I'd have to provide my loyal alchemist with a supply of those.

What followed that good fortune were hours of me wishing I had a head that I could slam against a wall. It felt like, no matter what we tried, we couldn't get the seeds to grow. We did get a new skill for Rose along with a new achievement, but more than anything, it just felt like the System was mocking us at that point.

[Achievement gained: Agricultural Endeavors!]

[Achievement: Agricultural Endeavors

Description: One of your monsters has learned an agricultural skill.

Reward: The monster has gained 1 level in the agricultural skill!]

Those two levels of Gardening did not help. At all. At one point, I was ready to write the entire thing off as a failed experiment. Without my Dungeon abilities, it felt like we were trying to grow specialty, rare plants in an underground environment with no sunlight, water of questionable quality, and random dirt, which is exactly what we were doing. It felt impossible. Who could've guessed?

I did, however, press on. There was no point in having spent all of the time and effort we had only to give up after a halfhearted attempt, so I systematically tried to alter each and every condition. It was a long, tedious, and downright expensive process.

I didn't have sunlight, and I had no way to bring sunlight down into the innermost depths of my cave, not without opening up a security risk to the surface above at least. What I did have, though, were mana crystals. I worked with what I had.

Prior to this, I'd considered the mana crystals I'd been making as a rewards for defeating my boss to be big. At a cost of one hundred sixty mana, they were, but the crystal I made for the farm eclipsed those. Containing nearly my entire mana pool, the light crystal bloated with five hundred points of mana shone down from the ceiling like a miniature sun the size of one of those exercise balls people in my old world used for yoga.

As for the soil that didn't seem to be growing anything, I, at some point after hours of trying to enrich it with monster corpses and plant matter, none of which I had any way to speed up the decomposition of, got annoyed and just started flooding it with mana. I hadn't fully recovered my pool of the resource at that point from making the improvised grow light, but what I had, I slamming into that dirt with a vengeance. Eventually, it began to glow faintly.

Still, to my ever-growing frustration, however, the seeds refused to grow. We dumped vial after vial of the magical fertilizer on them, but no matter how much we tried, the results remained the same. That was until we watered them anyway. Then, they sprouted but almost immediately died.

What was the next step? We tried alternatives. Normal environmental water didn't work, so I brought in a water Crystal Puffer and tried to use what it produced instead. The results were marginally better, but the plants still wouldn't grow.

As ridiculous as it sounded, we tried using potions other than the Floral Accelerant. They failed horribly, so we tried the using same Potion Bases that Archie used for alchemy next. Somehow, the results from that were worse than when we'd just dumped actual, random potions on the seeds. Then, when my patience was about to finally run out, we were met with the biggest success we'd gotten so far.

Apparently, the Light Magic Infused Water I'd constantly stolen from that apprentice alchemist and eventually unlocked did the trick. I still had things I wanted to do with the stuff, but I hadn't found the time or spare mana to start. Apparently, though, for farming, it had finally found a use. Seeing that, I irrigated the small field with the stuff.

All of that, the crystal, the soil, the water, and the fertilizer, somehow, while they did seem to accelerate the growth of the plants, they weren't enough to produce anything before the adventurers showed up for the day. We'd been at it for, by my best estimate, nearly twelve hours by that point, and all we had to show for it were sprouts. They were large sprouts, but they were still sprouts.

Luckily, thanks to a surprisingly small amount of groups raiding my Dungeon that day, I was left with enough mana to keep investing into the project. It may have taken a while, but eventually we saw results. We certainly wouldn't be producing the plants as fast as I may have liked, but so long as we prepared them a day in advance, it seemed we'd acquired a stable source of them. That only left us with one problem left to solve, and it wasn't the miniature, raging dragon that I unfortunately had to tell about Vie and Pee getting a certain achievement after he'd demanded to play poker. That did certainly cause a delay and was harder to resolve with than the actual problem, but that wasn't it.

No, the final issue with the implementation of our new resources was the method of delivery we were going to use. We needed something that could plant the rewards behind the adventurers who left without risking being seen, and it just so happened that I had a completely unutilized monster with the exact skill set I needed. Sixty of my seventy-five available DP later, I had a Shade Lurker.

I wanted to modify it with my last fifteen Dungeon Points in order to ensure its mana regeneration was capable of keeping up with its use of Phase. After running the numbers, however, I quickly realized that, thanks to the way the ability's cost scaled off of the monster's stats, the modifications I was considering only served to make the drain worse. It didn't matter if I increased its mana regeneration rate if the cost of its ability rose faster. It seemed my lack of discovered ways to increase a monster's COM through Monster Customization was coming back to bite me. Doubtlessly, I was going to need to look into workarounds to that when I got a chance.

In spite of that, I did go through with the upgrades. The result may have been less sustainable, but thanks to the increased size of the monster's mana pool, I figured it might at least be able to brute force its way through a day's work. Then, it could recharge over night before repeating the process the next day. It was a temporary solution, but it was the best I had.

In the end, even if I had used up the last of my workable DP, it had been worth it. My new methods seemed to produce the plants so much more efficiently, I even went so far as to add more to my Dungeon. Unlike my placements before, however, my goal in doing so wasn't to reward the adventurers. I made sure to place the new plants near the entrances to my second and third rooms. With luck, I figured it might just be enough to coax adventurers further in than they normally felt comfortable going, something I viewed as a much more effective use of rewards than what Fabian had wanted.

It ensured they gave me the benefit of maximizing the amount of experience they generated per run by fighting my more lucrative monsters, but it also kept them on edge, limiting the time they spent in my more expensive areas. With those two details combined, the average amount of experience I was gaining per point of mana spent improved significantly. Better yet, through those changes, I was up to over four hundred fifty workable mana per day. It wasn't an exorbitant amount, but it was a start, and now, all that was left for me to do was to lower my DP spending. If I could just manage that, I would be out of the red entirely, free to put my resources toward things that would actually expedite my growth.