A Dungeon’s Survival

Connie

Over the course of the months I'd spent as a Dungeon Core, my monsters had experienced varying degrees of success in battle. At times, they'd faced impossible odds and come out on top, and at others, they'd crumpled like paper in the wake of the enemies bearing down on us. There were more variables that contributed to those results than I could reasonably consider while looking back on things, but there were also key takeaways that I didn't plan on ignoring.

Vie and Pee, for example, weren't exactly suited for prolonged brawling. Despite that, they'd been forced to fill that role for as long as they'd been around due to the need and my not having any better candidates. Sure, I'd often tried to buy them openings through the use of others monsters, my boss Bloodthorn Vines being the most successful of which, to varying degrees of success. In the end, however, the brunt of our enemies focus always seemed to end up landing on them. Considering the fact that they couldn't take a hit, that was less than ideal.

Likewise, the last battle with the scouting party put into perspective how much Adraugon relied on external factors in combat. The room below my shaft had proven simultaneously too open yet too confined for him. As contradictory as that might have sounded, it made sense when I thought about it.

He was an opportunist who thrived on chaos, used hit-and-run tactics, and relied on mobility more than anything, but he also suffered from the same weakness as my two-headed snake. He was incredibly fragile, his only saving grace being his Unnatural Survival ability which let him take one hit per day that he otherwise shouldn't have been able to. That made the greedy little dragon a deadly ambush predator, but it also meant I needed to be more mindful of the situations I sent him into.

If a room was too confined, it made things like exploding arrows and other magics that detonated upon impact with walls and other surfaces more of a threat to him. He needed space to make the most of his mobility, and without it, he couldn't properly evade. He hadn't even been able to retreat in that last fight due to the risk of an an explosive arrow landing next to one of the tunnels he would've needed to escape through. It was an odd problem given how open the room had been, but it was a problem nonetheless.

That was where his other need came in. It was clear that having plenty of airspace was a must for him, but more than anything, what he'd lacked in that fight had been ways to break his opponents' lines of sight. Had he been able to do that, he could've reset his positioning and mounted additional ambushes on them, completely turning the pacing of the battle to his favor.

That made his need for proper terrain a major concern to keep in mind. Obstacles and more complicated terrain worked to his benefit and not his detriment in that regard, at least so long as an area wasn't oversaturated with them. As were many things, it was a balancing act, and in this case, the perfect middle ground took the form of large, cluttered environments.

Archie, on the other hand, was the polar opposite of his more combat-oriented counterparts. At his core, he wasn't a fighter, but with his new ability to control other Trentis to fight in his stead, he was versatile. That meant he could cover for the others' weaknesses in a pinch, but he required different conditions from them to be effective.

Since the last incident with the adventurers, he'd done some testing with his Mycokinesis and Puppeteer abilities. He still had a lot more experimenting to do in order to find out what worked best for him, but from what he'd learned so far, he could either control a single, powerful Trenti or a handful of weaker ones. Based on which he went with, his preference for terrain differed slightly, but generally, he seemed to benefit most from enclosed spaces that lacked the necessary room required to dodge his attacks.

Those were the strengths and weaknesses of my most reliable guardians, and while there was some overlap, attempting to combine their needs into something cohesive was a tall order. Still, with enough effort, I felt as though it was doable, which led to why I was considering all of that in the first place. It was all for my new room.

Ever since Fabian and the other fairy had left, I'd thrown myself into designing my new room with increased fervor. Of course, I'd taken a bit of time to ensure that not even a spore of the fairy circle from my core room remained first, but after that, I'd been working practically nonstop on my Dungeon's latest expansion. It was, as per usual, my way of dealing with the imminent problems I had no immediate solutions for, by distracting myself, and as far as I was concerned, my tenuous relationship with the Fairy Council was just that.

My entire last interaction with them had left me feeling conflicted and apprehensive. I'd clearly broken off ties with them, and given how they'd treated me so far, I was resolute in my decision to do so. That wasn't the issue. Instead, what bothered me were the reasons the red-haired fairy had given to justify the rules they enforced in their contract. They'd made a certain degree of sense to me.

Assuming he'd been telling me the truth, I could somewhat understand the importance of the pact I'd refused to agree to. It wasn't as though all of my suspicions about it had been cleared, but with the extra information I now had, I could at least appreciate its compact nature. For that reason, bound to it or not, I didn't plan on outright going against it if I could at all help it.

Still, with how adamant the supposed head of the Fairy Council had been that those rules be enforced no matter what, I somehow doubted that would be my last interaction with them. Protection of the Fairy Queen did ease my concerns to a certain extent, but at the end of the day, it was only a single ability. I had no clue how much protection it actually offered me, especially against an organization that supposedly had the power to level countries. I knew I'd need to figure something else out in regards to that at some point, but for the time being, it felt like a distant trouble, so instead of dwelling on it, I instead immersed myself in the short-term. In this case, that meant bolstering my defenses, hence all of the contemplation about what kind of terrain would be most benefit my monsters.

So far, most of the work I'd done had been theoretical in nature. As much drive as I might've had to knock the project out in a single go, it wasn't the kind of thing I could complete in just one night. The main reason for that was the scale of what I had planned. Between the room's diameter and height, forget days, I was going to be lucky to finish digging the area out over the course of weeks, but if nothing else, I at least felt confident it would be worth it in the end.

In essence, the outline of the room was going to look like an elongated cylinder with the entrance sitting somewhere between its top and midpoint. I planned for it to be my most complex room yet, relying on all of its vertical space to accomplish multiple things at once, and the best part was, because of how Dungeons worked, I didn't even need to rely on the laws of physics to support my architecture. Dungeon-reinforced stone's durability was no joke, and I was going to take full advantage of that to create a deadly work of art.

The floor of the room, if you could even call it that, was going to resemble a bridge more than anything. It would span from the entrance to the opposing wall, and thanks to the size I was going with, there would be plenty of space for me to build structures on it, far more than any ordinary stone bridge could've supported. I also planned on using a lot of vegetation, and all of that would be sitting suspended above a massive drop.

I was going to have to do some testing to see the exact extent of what was possible without outright breaking my terrain under its own weight, but my hope was that I could create a battleground with plenty of cover and hidden areas while also turning the terrain itself into a weapon, much like I'd done in my bog. It would have enough clutter around to force close-quarter fights where needed, plenty of space above for a small army of hypothetical Trentis to rain down harmful potions on unsuspecting invaders, and the cover needed for ambushes to come from any angle at any moment. Meanwhile, the edges and the carefully hidden holes I planned to sprinkle across the area would be enough to discretely dispose of those who were too busy keeping an eye out for threats to watch their own steps.

My hope was that either the drop would kill them, or the spikes I'd eventually cover the ground below with would. If all else failed, though, I figured some slippery moss and slightly slanted walls would be enough to keep even the most climbing adept ursine stuck at the bottom for a time, and if a massive bear that could destroy my terrain were to somehow collapse the entire structure, I figured the time it would take me to repair the damages would be a small cost to pay for avoiding the alternative. Figuring out more ways to buy time during that fight was still a priority after all.

Then, there was the room's final purpose: experimentation. Much like how Archie was still trying to figure out how to make the most of his capabilities in a fight, I had other monsters and would unlock more in the future with the same need. Sure, some of those monsters had already found their purpose in my Dungeon, and others would be able to do the same easily enough, but without rigorous testing, overlooking possible use cases was always a risk. For that reason, I planned to take care to make the room as varied and versatile as possible. That way, I could get a better feel for what each species was capable of, and Stein could pass the knowledge gained from training in such an environment down to the rest of their kind.

All of that was what I hoped to gain from my new room, but it was also a distant goal. It was going to take ages to clear out that much stone, and so far, I'd only managed to carve out a wedge of rock the length I wanted the room to be. With that done, I'd started making markings and laying out the foundation for the room's overall layout. Everything else, from the tunnel systems I planned to install above the bridge to the massive drop below, were going to have to come later.

So far, I was thrilled with how it was coming together, even if I didn't have much to see for my efforts yet, and more importantly, my working on it had accomplished what I'd wanted it to. I'd managed to distract myself to the point that I'd forgotten all about those troublesome fairies. In fact, I might've immersed myself in my work too much.

“Master,” a voice hissed in my mind, “the troublesome group has returned.”

It was Loot, and there was only one party of adventurers she could've been referring to. It seemed the small break they'd afforded me wasn't fated to last.