Filled with anticipation, I activate the biological modification skill on a weak, unevolved mole; it does not disappoint as a vast deluge of information rushed into my mind. It felt like I was omniscient, knowing everything about the mole despite the wave of disorientation and nausea washing over me. There were no menus, no system to tell me what to do, I could make any change I wanted, provided the creature had the mana.

I started with something I had read about many times, a mana core. As I willed the mana in the mole to begin crystallising in the centre of the mole’s chest. As the mana pooled and swirled, I instinctively knew it was not enough. Without hesitation, I sent mana from myself into the beginnings of a crystal and placed every bit of attention on its formation as the mole began to twitch.

Before long, I had completed it, a perfect tetrahedron of condensed mana, most of which was mine, and could potentially be used to cast spells and a system message appeared.

Mana requirement reached, your war mole has evolved into a mage mole.

However, unexpectedly, the mole was unmoving as another system message giving me 3xp for the death of a mage mole.

Inspecting the fresh corpse, it didn’t take long to discover the cause: the core had ruptured a few internal organs as it grew. I decided to absorb the corpse to see how much mana I would gain from the core. 15, a little less than the 20 I invested but it was alright I guess.

2 days later, I have completed it, I had to completely reorganise the organs for the unevolved moles that were going to have cores, which in reality was just removing unnecessary organs such as one kidney, the spleen, the gallbladder, and a few ribs, followed by moving the remaining organs to create a cavity in the moles’ bodies. These moles were kept away from the fighting but would rejoin as soon as I got them casting spells.

In the meantime, the number of unevolved moles had reduced to the ones which were to become mages, numbering 20, and the number of warrior and sword moles had increased to about 500 warrior moles and 300 sword moles, most regular war moles having either died or evolved. While around 1600 moles could theoretically be supported, it would take a while to reach such population numbers as the birth rate was not much higher than the death rate.

Filling one mole after another with mana, each and every mole evolved to become a mage mole; of course, a few tragically died in the process due to a few minor mistakes so some mana was wasted. Filled with curiosity, I ordered the moles to showcase their powers and… it was disappointing. They had no spells in the traditional sense and could at most, send small amounts of mana out as weak

shockwaves. Perhaps they would need to train in order to be useful so I had the 8 evolution survivors practise and reproduce as I turned my attention elsewhere.

At level 5, I felt like I would be able to get another attribute which would be incredibly important in deciding on what to do in the future. To be honest, I don’t remember many of the attribute choices available as I had gotten a bit too excited over the one I got to look at the others, but since the ‘monster breeding’ attribute was only a basic attribute, I wonder how powerful the more advanced ones would be.

As I watched around 250 evolved moles die to earn enough mana for me to evolve, I wondered, why don’t I just repeat the design of this cavern and the offshooting chamber repeatedly to just farm an endless amount of mana. It would take a while, but I can definitely wait for another while.

Before long, I levelled up:

Your level is now 5 - 2 basic attributes unlocked

After seeing that message, I felt both underwhelmed and excited: getting 2 attributes was probably going to make me far stronger, but there were no additional things like I would have expected from a milestone like level 5 but perhaps I’m just being picky.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Slowly and methodically I look through the long list of attributes. There were many different types of attributes, some strengthened specific creature types, others strengthened elements while many, many more were completely unique and bizarre such as

Blood painting - create images and symbols out of blood which will be given an effect depending on what is displayed.

Breaking free of my reverie, I scroll through the long list and pick out a few synergies between the attributes and monster breeding:

Curse of undeath - all monsters resurrect to fight once more.

Strength in numbers - monsters receive a 0.5% increase up to 75% to stats for each monster of their species within 50 metres.

Hive mind - all monsters within a species can exchange thoughts and feelings, as well as combine brainpower to a limited degree with one another without being detected.

Body of Godstone - walls, floors and ceilings of the dungeon become Godstone, a near-indestructible material that not even mana can pass through. Can be turned on and off at will. WARNING - Path to core must be open when in use to prevent the Godstone cutting the core off from the dungeon and destroying the dungeon’s influence.

My shortlist for attributes is quite interesting and the ones I am leaning towards the most are surprisingly Body of Godstone and Hive mind. Body of Godstone, while having no synergies, is very strong as it eliminates one of my biggest concerns,

which is adventurers wanting to kill me just deciding to collapse the dungeon or easily opening a path to my core without entering the dungeon. While the near-indestructible part bothers me, if someone can break it, they could probably sweep through the dungeon to get to me easily enough.

My reasoning for hive mind over strength in numbers is that it seems more useful: any fights against adventurers in the dungeon will probably happen in one of the cramped, winding tunnels where it is hard to get enough monsters there for the stat boost of strength in numbers to be noticeable.

Hive mind, on the other hand, allows monsters to coordinate and combine their minds to be more intelligent without my supervision and help each other out in their fights against the adventurers.

Race: Dungeon core

Name: None

Titles: None

Level: 5 (1000 mana needed for next level)

Mana: 1/1000

Mana regeneration: 53 per day

Floors: 1/2

Attributes: monster breeding, hive mind, body of godstone

Skills: Expansion, absorption, Biological modification

Having decided on my attributes, I begin to expand my dungeon with moles focusing on creating copies of the cavern to increase the number of moles, and over the course of 3 weeks, create 5 identical new caverns.

Ochrium’s perspective:

Since the day of my birth, I have never been as fatigued and defeated as now, the past weeks of the dull, flamboyant royal academy have been spent in vain. The teachers drone on and on about how incredible it is that we can detect any dungeon over level 10 by looking at the change in mana currents or how the first dungeon accords stipulates that no true mage can legally directly attack a dungeon under their level, but every part of the curriculum is fundamental, general knowledge. Why don’t we do something practical or useful at school, like going to a dungeon and using the antiquated strategies we spend days learning against it.

As I ramble on in my mind, the day passes ordinarily until 6 minutes before the end of the school day, the worried-looking headteacher interrupts the lesson,” Mr Drakenberg, a very important letter has arrived for you”, with an emphasis on the ‘very’. After leaving and spending 4 hours or so cracking the code, the message reads:

Son,

I am currently very ill, you should return home in case another family hears of this and decides to dispatch my inheritor.

With regards, your Father

THANK GOD, soon I can be rid of this damn place and maybe even get a powerful core for my efforts…