Main Quest 04 Complete.
Reward - Goblin Warrior (D), [Traps] Menu, Pitfall (D).
Viv looked to the side only to see the same interface he had ignored when he started naming the goblins. The quest was actually completed as soon as he named Artorius, but Viv had a sense of dramatism in his soul, he couldn’t interrupt a ceremony he was leading.
“Most dungeons get destroyed before they finish completing their first floor, so having made it this far, you’ve done better than most. Now, it’s time to put everything you’ve learned to practice and build most of the first floor. To help with protecting your core, you’ve been given traps. Simply excavate the area of the trap that’s outlined and the trap will be created. Best of luck in creating a proper dungeon.”
Quest Received
Main Quest 05
Before a guardian can be created, there needs to be a proper floor to manifest the mana needed to sustain such a creature. Expanding the surrounding space and having more creatures will both strengthen the guardian and the dungeon.
Clear out a 25x25 total metre area. Summon 20 total creatures. Create 3 traps.
Progress - 2/25, 5/20, 0/3.
Reward - +10 m/day, +100 Mana, Withering Touch (tier 1), Goblin Warchief (D).
“More waiting. Great. No wonder dungeons die so fast when it takes months to properly set up any measure of defence.”
The only consolation was that the first floor was going to be completed soon. There was also the mention of a dungeon gaining intelligence at that stage, though surely he was smarter than any dungeon could ever be.
[Expansion] [Creatures] [Spells] [Traps] [Buildings] [Title Forge]
Mana - 71
Mana Regeneration - 8 / day
He could finish completely expanding right now, but that would be a waste of his time. Since creatures he summoned gave him more mana, and since he was under no real threat, he decided to postpone expansions and traps.
[Creatures]
Goblin (D) 5 MP
Hellfire Goblin (D) 40 MP
Goblin Warrior (D) 15 MP
First, Viv cleared out another room for the sudden influx of creatures. Then, fourteen new goblins came pouring out of the room, just as dumb and inexperienced as his original five were then. He was interested in how a second Hellfire Goblin would compare to Lyn, but he could do so after he completed his quest.
“Each of you, grab three goblins. Zagon, since there’s not twenty yet, you’ll have your third one tomorrow. Teach them some basics, tomorrow your groups will fight as you command them. The best one will receive some pointers from me.”
It didn’t matter in the long term - eventually, some of them would be killed and their memories would disappear, but for now, it was entertaining. The five named goblins eagerly took their squads and started “teaching” them. The process involved lots of rocks and bruises.
The next day, they all gathered in the small room. Viv had to expand it since the goblins wouldn’t shut up about how they wanted to see the fights. The tournament had no semblance of fairness, Viv paired up whichever teams he wanted to see fight it out, sometimes even making the same team fight twice in a row.
To the surprise of no one, Lyn’s squad was the strongest. Lyn was the goblin who won the most in regular sparring, even before he became a hellfire goblin. His goblins tossed sand and went for the crotch, using the dirtiest tactics imaginable.
The second strongest was actually Zagon’s squad. Now that he didn’t have to fight himself, he efficiently directed the goblins while also copying Lyn’s tactics. The next three in order were Blade, Tamiel and Artorius.
Artorius, as it turned out, was a horrible leader. The group spent most of their time training, and by the time they needed to fight, they were too exhausted to do so. Not to mention, his tactics consisted of “run straight at and beat them up”, and “simply get up if you’re injured”.
Like this, some time passed. Viv continued to teach Lyn magic, focusing on controlling his flame. His only regret was that the goblins didn’t have any weapons yet - they could only fight with fists, nails and teeth.
Of course, it was meant to happen at some point. Peaceful days could only last for so long before something interrupted them. The first sign was the goblins perking up, looking at the entrance of the cave. Viv couldn’t detect anything past that, but the goblins were different, even if they also couldn’t leave the cave.
What Viv took notice of was a bleeding rabbit fleeing into the cave. This time, instead of just bleeding like the last one, it had an arrow sticking through it. It was a miracle that it was even alive, not to mention moving.
“Dalia, the damn rabbits here are too healthy. What are they snacking on?” Into his view stepped a man in his forties.
The man was dishevelled and dirty, his clothes smeared with mud and torn in several places. Next to him stood a younger woman, just as unkempt as the man. Their clothes were strange - not typical Livian clothes that he was used to. Instead, they were more colourful, having several symbols stitched onto them.
“I’m telling you, it’s gotta be magic grass, how about we take some back to the village. Wait, what the hell?” Her eyes traced the rabbit, now lying dead next to Blade’s feet.
“Goblins! Run!” She shouted, dropping her bow in sheer panic. Both of them turned around, though the older man was calmer, managing to hold on to his bow
“Get them. Don’t let them leave the cave.” Viv’s orders echoed through the minds of every goblin in the cave.
Immediately, the goblins stopped what they were doing. Like a pack of hyenas, they started sprinting full speed towards the two intruders. Lyn, however, was a step ahead of them. His entire hand was set ablaze. Pointing at the woman, a ball of violet flame streaked through the air, momentarily blinding the goblins.
The next moment, the woman lit up like a candle. The blast sent her flying into the wall, burning through her clothes and through her skin, melting it completely. She collapsed on the floor, dead.
Title Gained - [Murderer’s Bloodlust]
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Every human killed will increase dungeon creatures’ bloodlust towards living beings.
“Don’t kill the other one. Capture him alive.” Although they didn’t get far into the cave, their reactions were slow. As they were turning to flee, the goblins were already chasing them.
Lyn’s body glowed with a soft, red light as he suddenly sped up. Viv could clearly see his blood boiling underneath his skin as he burned away more of his life, and for a few moments, he turned into lightning.
The man was a few steps away from the exit. As the light shone on his face, he was tackled to the ground by Lyn. The next moment, Artorius, Blade and others joined in creating a big dog-pile of goblins, pinning the human to the ground.
“Let me go! Don’t kill me, please. I’ve got a family waiting for me back home, they’ll starve without me. Please, please.” The man’s muffled crying was all that was heard in the cave for a minute.
“Take everything from them and block the entrance. Break his legs if he tries to escape.” Viv didn’t know if the equipment would disappear if it was left on the woman’s body, so it was better to be safe than sorry.
Setting everything looted in a corner of the cave, Viv counted the following items - two bows, two quivers with sixty arrows, two knives, waterskins, beef jerky, clothes and bits of rope.
The goblins were like little kids who had received gifts for their birthdays. Every arrow was thoroughly sniffed, bent, and licked. There wasn’t a single goblin who didn’t get cut in some way, shape or form.
“Lyn, go over to him. Just do some magic symbols on the wall, pretend like you’re casting magic,” although he could ask questions directly, an intelligent dungeon core was much scarier than a goblin.
“Please, you’ve already killed my daughter. God, I’ve suffered enough, I beg, grant me a miracle.” The man was resorting to faith as his final hope, but the gods were heartless.
Lyn walked over to the cave wall and started burning his mana, charring the wall in the process. Moments later, he stepped back and something was written on the wall.
“What’s your name?”
In theory, it was a good plan. It was unfortunate that the man didn’t understand Livian. Fortunately, Viv was well studied. After trying out four different languages, there was a reaction from the man.
“My name is Brian, who are you?” He replied in Brevusian.
Brevus - a place he didn’t think about much. It had a decent human population, though it was more known for its elves and half-men. It provided Livia with weapons and magic tools. Of course, it was still a target for destruction after Livia fell. On one hand, his enemies wouldn’t easily recognize him here, on the other hand, he was far away from his own country.
Asking a few more precise questions, he found out he was in a remote forest with a couple of villages. The nearest city he could recognize was hundreds of kilometres away, though Viv only bothered to remember the biggest ones. It made his task of contacting anyone even more difficult.
“What date is it? What’s happening outside of Brevus?”
“The last time merchants from big cities came around, they told us it was 579 AD. That was when winter came rolling around. It’s now summer. They told us it was peaceful - the prices of food were dropping down.”
“Listen, human. My name is Lyn, I am the goblin that owns this dungeon. I am feeling merciful today. Take your life and spread the word of Lyn the powerful!” The writing on the wall was crooked and deep, similar to a deranged rant of a psychopath.
Lyn laughed on cue, burning his flame brighter. “Thank you, Lyn the merciful, the strongest goblin in all the lands!” As soon as the goblins stepped away from the entrance, the man ran. Viv would bet his dungeon on the fact that the man had never run as fast as he was running now.
“Master, why did you let him go?” Lyn asked, grabbing an arrow from the quiver.
“It was too boring before. Growing in peace is the safest option, but also the slowest and the most mind-numbing. Besides, I found out something interesting when we killed that woman.”
The woman’s corpse was no longer there. It had been absorbed by the dungeon during the questioning. In her place, he had an extra fifty mana at his disposal, plus another five from the rabbit. The more powerful humans died here, the faster he could advance and create stronger monsters.
As for the title he gained earlier - it was completely useless. Creatures had to obey his commands, and if he ever wanted to manipulate humans, it would be much harder with this title. Thus, he thought about something he had forgotten about.
[Title Forge]
Devouring Title -
Devoured Title -
Available Titles - Shadow of Former Glory, Spellweaver, Murderer’s Bloodlust.
In his mind, it appeared more than just an interface. He saw the teeth of a massive creature and a red light glowing inside of its throat. Like the predator it was, it was silently standing there, waiting patiently for its prey.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he fed the inferior title to his main one - he would one day regain his strength, and when he did, the world would pay.
The human incident was quickly forgotten by the majority of the goblins. Instead, there was a competition on who was getting the weapons. The goblins fought until it was decided that Artorius and Blade were the two strongest regular goblins, so the knives were given to them.
The matter with the bow was more complicated. First, Viv declared that any goblin who broke the bowstring would get executed. Next, they all took part in a competition. Viv disintegrated a target in the middle of the wall, and all the goblins were given a ten-minute explanation on how to use a bow.
Then, they were allowed to shoot. Most of them failed to even get the arrow launched, however, there were a few talented ones. No one hit the wall with any semblance of force, but some of them came close to it.
Unfortunately, none of them were the named five, so two unnamed goblins got to hold the bows. “If you manage to learn how to shoot a bow sometime soon, I’ll name the one that does.”
For goblins, the names were associated with power. Those that were named were clearly the leaders, they were more powerful than anyone else, so an opportunity to become more powerful was highly sought after. The two began to shoot arrow after arrow, practising for hours.
None of the arrows would be sharp by the time it came to fight, but it was fine. Even with bows, the two of them couldn’t match Lyn. The most he could hope for was that they would grant him a new type of creature to summon.
With the newfound mana, Viv got to work. First came the hallways. They were narrow enough for only one person to walk through, and they often curved to prevent line of sight. The first hallway leading to the second room was untrapped to give a false sense of security. The second one had a pitfall in the middle of it.
“This is... Probably lethal?” Viv mused to himself as he dug out the necessary hole.
It was a five-metre deep hole that, when focused on using the trap menu, transformed. It only consumed fifteen mana, and by doing so, sharp iron spikes appeared at the bottom of it. The top half of it was concealed by weak illusion magic, making it appear as if it was a regular cave floor.
The second pitfall was after exiting the trapped hallway, immediately after the hallway met the room. This would be enough to get rid of the dumbest of them. The second room was designed to be the deadliest, though not just because of the two traps.
The third one was in the middle of the place that was going to be the guardian room. It was a large, empty space that offered a lot of room for fighting. The idea was for the goblins following the guardian to simply throw them into the pit, or for one of the adventurers to step in while they were fighting.
The traps also made traversing through the rooms difficult for goblins, but they simply had to remember when to jump if they wanted to get through the rooms. In theory, it was simple. In practice, five goblins died on the first day. Whether it was due to not jumping far enough or simply forgetting the traps existed, the trap did its job and got rid of the stupid.
Another important thing he discovered during this process was that the pedestal his orb was placed on was rather light. It still took several goblins to move it, but he created a small hallway at the end of the dungeon to keep his orb from danger.
All in all, he was satisfied with the layout of the first floor. He made it bigger than he needed to, but his creative side took over once he started disintegrating the rock. The floor could use some warriors and hellfire goblins, but he didn’t have mana for such creatures.
During these couple of days, he was constantly monitoring the entrance for any intruders. Two goblins were designed to sit by the entrance and listen when they had time to rest. It was during the last day of expansion that they finally heard something.
After a few seconds of panic, shouts of “Humans! Humans!” were heard through the dungeon. Viv used the link with his named creatures to direct them to their positions - it was finally time to test out the dungeon.