Surrounding two dried-up moles, blood moss sprouted and corpse flowers proliferated. Feasting on the vile vegetation, countless worms wriggled and split into more and more, only to be rewarded for their efforts by feeding the pups and their mothers. Compacted and sturdy, the tunnel walls were far too tight and little room was left. As a remedy to this, I ordered all moles to expand this area at the end of the tunnel into a large chamber that would be quite important in the future.
Hehe, it would be very important.
My moles weren’t sad in the slightest at the death of their father or mate, even after seeing his corpse. Perhaps they were too young to understand or perhaps this is the nature of war moles. An unfeeling and uncaring army would be excellent after all, but other than this, war moles don’t really seem all that different to their less warlike counterparts.
Before the second batch of pups were born, I decided to flood one of the sows with mana to see if it made any difference to the children. In addition, I wanted to see if I could control where the mana goes to try to control the direction of their growth; while an all around powerful mole would be strong, teams of specialised moles would be far stronger if some could be mages for example while others take up the role of an assassin or warrior.
As I push a trickle of mana into the mole, I try to push it into her tail. There is likely no benefit to the mole for this but it will be easy to see in both the mother and the children if my experiments work. Soon, I see her tail twitch and begin to grow, slowly becoming longer and fatter, completely irregularly as some parts were thicker or thinner, with one segment even beginning to form spikes. I tried to move the mana to be evenly spread throughout the tail in an attempt to correct the horrifying conversion. The tail continued to grow but regularly this time until before I knew it, I ran out of mana and a bewildered creature with a tail the thickness of half her body and twice as long. It placed an enormous strain on my consciousness to do this however and I had the equivalent of a headache for a crystal
Mana requirement reached, your war mole has evolved into unnamed. Please select a name.
Interesting, so after feeding enough mana to a creature, they evolve. But why is the evolved creature unnamed? Perhaps it is a completely unseen creature from the system’s perspective. As for the name, this is a very hard decision. While a part of me wants to give me an ostentatious name like dragon-tailed war mole, a more reasonable and less deluded part wants to give it a name like Experiment failure No.1 or something like that but what if the tail was actually somehow useful, like for example if it became able to sense tiny vibrations in the dirt or can be used like a whip, then it would be awful to end up populating the floor with monsters called Experiment failure.
To solve this issue, I order the newly evolved mole? to show me what it can do. Startled, the mole looked around confoundedly before wiggling around her tail. As it is useless, I went with ‘Push mana into brain next time for magic’ which would be quite interesting to see how any other dungeons would react if they accidentally created one as well. Perhaps they would decide to pursue the idea of forcing mana into mole brains to unlock mana and end up coating their dungeon in a layer of red. Or maybe an adventurer with an inspect skill would do the same if they saw it. Unlikely but worth a try.
10 and a half hours after my little bit of fun, A new litter of 15 moles were produced, 6 of which had horrifyingly long tails while the previous pups had all grown up. This shows that both the gestation and maturation time are about 12 hours which is ridiculously fast. As the food supply of worms will likely not be able to feed everyone so either the food supply is expanded or the number of mouths are reduced. Without a thought for morality, I order the other moles to murder the evolved versions and for the evolved versions to show no resistance.
Ex-Mole's POV:
I feel warm and happy. My adorable little pups are all safe and wrapped up in my long tail. At first I didn’t know why the great creator made my tail so long but now I do. It was to wrap the little ones up and make them nice and warm. A very wise decision, I must say. Soon, though, I heard a confusing order from The Lord. No, I must have misheard him! Then I looked at my sleeping pups and saw them all chitter and squeak agitatedly.
Stolen novel; please report.
Dungeon's POV:
Watching the long-tailed moles be torn apart by the others gave me a strange feeling. It was not guilt, but pity. She did not care when the others’ maws were rending her flesh from bones, but the moment another crushed her child to death, a violent resistance rose from her as she battled 4 others simultaneously with a rage so hot it almost melted my icy heart. I suppose war moles can feel emotion.
Anyway, the corpses were piled up around the other dead moles so that new vegetation could grow. While the moles were being killed and I received 15 mana, 3 for the mother mole and 2 for each pup, I watched the mana from the moles flow into the ones feasting on them, and soon I was shocked. Even though the mana was sent throughout the entire body, it was distributed slightly differently for different moles almost at random, showing that perhaps different individuals would get different evolutions. Excited at this prospect, a brilliant and brutal idea fruited within my mind.
Ordering every male mole to be murdered by the females, I gain 24 mana, bringing me to a nice and even 40 which I use to create 4 male moles and divide all of the 18 females between them, preventing any inbreeding in the foreseeable future. The males were then collected in the middle of the chamber to grow the putrid foliage more while every mole was ordered to expand the chamber outwards.
Within just a week, the chamber had become a vast cavern, about 1km² as about 2500 moles now lived there forming 16 clans. In the centre, a number of bumps covered by a red moss and bright flowers with thorny black stalks and petals of a variety of colour, as they periodically shrivelled and then seemingly regrow for no decipherable reason. 16 short tunnels exited the area and then opened up into smaller rooms where a number of moles nested with others bringing them fat, juicy worms from the shared cavern.
Now earning 40 mana per day, I decided to increase that number drastically. I gave commands, and the happy lives of the moles stopped altogether. Soon a wave of moles came surging to the centre of the cavern as the different clans began to wage war on one another.
Teeth tearing at hide, claws cutting through tendons, the war moles were embroiled in a conflict on a scale they could not comprehend. But soon, the now diminished ranks of moles parted and retreated to their different homes to nurse their wounds. Covered in flesh, the ground was painted red as plants covered them shortly.
Floor 1 has been assigned a name and effects:
The Mole Murder Pit:
Gestation and maturation time halves for moles on this floor.
Each mole has 25% higher stats.
If at least 100 moles do not die every 24 hours:
All previous effects are cancelled.
Each mole has 50% lower stats.
Your war mole has evolved into a warrior mole
Your war mole has evolved into a warrior mole
Your war mole has evolved into a sword mole
…
Your level is now 3 - Biological Modification unlocked - New floor available
Your level is now 4 - 250 dungeon coins obtained
Wow, that’s a lot of messages. Over 60 of my moles have evolved into either a warrior mole or a sword mole, with warrior moles being far more common, and most others are quite close to evolving. In addition, that new floor type will be a massive boon in the future, it’s absolutely insane for what I want and finally, my new levels. I levelled up right when I hit my mana cap so no mana was wasted. The new floor isn’t very useful right now but I guess it’s nice to have, same with the dungeon coins. Biological modification, however, that sounds like a lot of fun.
Anyway, now that many moles have evolved, I reorganised the clans into the sword clan, the warrior clan, and the unevolved clan with both evolved clans taking up 3 of the smaller rooms and the unevolved occupying the rest. Soon though, there would be no unevolved moles left.
Race: Dungeon core
Name: None
Titles: None
Level: 4 (750 mana needed for next level)
Mana: 63/750
Mana regeneration: 40 per day
Floors: 1/2
Attributes: monster breeding
Skills: Expansion, absorption, Biological modification