Chapter 5 - A new home

Day 6

Neo was a bit dizzy when they arrived at the rabbit burrow right on spot. The cave was separated in two rooms, each around 25 m². They were connected by a three meter long passageway. The rabbits were in the first room closer to the entrance.

He immediately started expending his dungeon over his new room and then absorbed everything they brought with them except the golems, his old body, the teleportation key, the remains of his formation, the map device and Luna. Half an hour later he was ready for the next step and tried to expand to the room with the rabbits, but it was not working. The presence of the rabbits was disrupting his efforts.

"Luna I can't expand to the next room. The rabbits are preventing me from it. I remember that you have a sword, could you fly over there and kill them?"

  "WHAT? Killing rabbits? Luna would never do something like that. Luna loves rabbits!"

"Great. Please think about it. With the rabbits in the burrow, no small animal will come here and we are not able to kill foxes and wolves. Isn't it better we kill the rabbits than some big bad wolf?"

  "Maybe, but Luna could never kill a rabbit!"

"Ok, let's put that on hold for now and lets expand in the other direction, we got 72 m² left for our first floor and the rabbit room is only 25 m². So we can create a long passage and a new 25 m² room. After that I need you to put my core there, it should be safer deeper in the dungeon."

  "Great let's start expanding."

When Neo tried to create a new passage he had a problem. He was only able to expand about 50 cm in the wall and it costs him a lot more mana than expanding in open space.

"Luna, how do I expand in my dungeon while there is dirt and stone in the way?"

  "That's easy, you just have to concentrate on expanding and absorbing the material at the same time."

"Ok, I'll try."

After knowing what to do, it was not much harder than expanding over open space. The first meter took him only three minutes, but he noticed that it costed him a lot more mana. This time he was spending 100 mana per m². For now he was still regeneration far faster than he could spend the mana, but later this would probably become a bottleneck in his expansion. That was for later he decided, for now he concentrated expanding more efficiently. While at it, he thought about a way to kill the rabbits without Luna's help and decided to create a simple spike trap and use some food from his tower as a lure.

After finishing the room he noticed that Luna was asleep again. This would be the perfect time to get rid of the rabbits without upsetting her. To create something he had to have a picture of it in his mind, this way he was able to bring it to reality if he had the materials for it and enough mana. He could not create the parts one by one and put them together later. For this he would need Luna's help, after all he had no hand and nowhere near enough mana for telekinesis magic. It would probably be the best not to wake her.

He imagined a steel spike on one side of a lever, on the other side a hinge, connected to the floor. A small support pole would be holding the spike in the air. The pole was connected to a string on witch end he put a carrot. When the rabbit moved the carrot, the spike would come down and kill it. After finishing his visualization he was able to create the trap for ten mana and a little bit of material. To be safe he created 20 traps, even though there were only seven rabbits. After this it was time for him to wait.

He didn't had to wait for long. It took only ten minutes for the first rabbit to scamper to his room. It immediately went to one of the traps and started scenting the carrot. Then it bit into the carrot, at the same time pulling away the support pole. The spike came down and missed.

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"Damn, I need a more elaborate trap."

He looked after the rabbit scampering away with its loot and started reabsorbing the traps. After a while he came up with a design, similar to a spring loaded mouse trap. Only bigger and instead of a bar it had a bent blade with barbed spikes. Again he set up 20 traps and started to wait for the next rabbit.

This time it took a little bit longer, but after an hour, the next rabbit came hopping into his room. It went straight for one of the carrots and bit into it. When the trap triggered and the blade came down, it cut the rabbit in half. Blood spattered through half of the room.

In a good mood for his first kill, Neo absorbed the rabbit carcass, it's blood and the trap while muttering to himself.

"Maybe I was a little bit excessive with the spring, but better safe than sorry."

While waiting for the next rabbit he checked his status to see how much life energy he got.

Life Energy: 1

So one rabbit gave one life energy. The seven rabbits, together with the plant life in the cave, should get him to the ten life energy he needed. He checked his blueprints and saw the rabbit between them.

Gray Rabbit

A small animal that feeds on plants. Grey rabbits are especially curious and often to stupid to understand dangers.

Rank: G0

Traits: prolific breeder (rank 1); curious (rank 2); stupid (rank 1)

Costs: 10 mana ; 1kg animal material

Not much information, but it was good to know that a G0 gave one life energy. While he was contemplating the traits, the next rabbit came scampering to his room. It seemed like the information was correct. Normally animals should be afraid of the smell of blood that was still lingering in the air. It directly went to one of the carrots and triggered the trap. This rabbit wasn't directly cleaved in two, it took a minute to die. After absorbing it and cleaning up, he wanted to create a rabbit on his own while waiting for the next one.

He needed a few minutes to figure out how to create an animal. It was a little bit different from creating plants, but he got a grip on it quickly. He felt the connection to his first dungeon dweller. While he was getting a feel for this bond, it went for a carrot and triggered one of the traps. Again the room was tainted in blood and gore.

"Damn they really are stupid."

He cleaned up again and created a new one. This time he commanded it to stay away from the traps. After a little bit of testing with his connection and a few commands he created a metal spike at the wall and ordered his rabbit to run into it head first. The rabbit impaled itself without hesitation. He continued his experiments after cleaning up again.

A few rabbits later, he came to the conclusion that he could not directly control his creatures, but that they would follow his every command. Additionally he could use some mana to kill it, which was pretty messy. When he put mana into it, the rabbit would explode after the amount reached a certain level. He was lucky, none of the rabbit chunks hit his little fairy. There would've been probably hell to pay if she'd seen the room with rabbit parts all over the place. He cleaned up immediately.

After absorbing a carcass, he got the animal material, he'd spent for the creature, back. He didn't get any life energy for killing his own creatures. After finishing his experiments he checked his stock of animal and plant material.

Animal material: 1412 kg

Plant material: 2680 kg

More than enough for the start. With his mana regeneration he could create one rabbit per second, enough for a small army.

Over the next two hours three more rabbits killed themselves in his traps. Of the last two, one stayed in its room and the other one was just sniffing at the carrots without trying to eat them. Remembering how he killed the plants in his tower and the experiments with his own creatures, he tried pushing mana into the rabbit to kill it.

He met a little bit of resistance at first, but then it just exploded, spreading its guts all over the room. A little bit disgusted he absorbed the remains. Not wanting to wait for the last rabbit, he decided to try something new. He created ten rabbits and commanded them to kill the last rabbit outside the dungeon and to bring over its carcass.

His little soldiers immediately went into a frenzy, ran over to the other room and attacked the last rabbit. He felt a little bit sorry for it, being bitten to death by ten rabbits for sure wasn't a nice way to go. In the end it took less than a minute it to die. Without any more interference from outside creatures, he was able to expand his dungeon again.

While his rabbits were biting into parts of the corpse and started pulling it in his direction, he concentrated on expanding his dungeon. Just when he was half way through the room, he noticed a black wolf killing one of his little soldier rabbits.