Focusing on the source of the movement, I came face to face with the single the largest spider I’ve ever seen. Forget dinner plate sized. This monster was the size of the whole damn table. The head and thorax alone were at least the size of a large corgi. I am not ashamed to say that I froze up when I saw it. Thankfully, I’d shook myself out of it by the time the spider reached the base of the cave in. The spider didn’t just proceed up the pile. Instead paused at the base of the collapse and began tapping at the rubble. No idea why, but I’ll take the extra time.

I took a quick glance through “Dungeons for Dummies”, but that was entirely useless. Nothing jumped out at me as useful, and I didn’t have time for a more detailed search. I also tried attacking the spider directly by imagining it bursting into flames, throwing rocks at it, and even trying to collapse the ceiling onto it. All of that was impossible, as far as I could tell. I couldn’t affect anything near the spider. Trying to will so much as a worm into existence, let alone anything capable of fighting, also failed.

By this point, the spider reached the top of the rubble pile and started dragging itself through the hole at the top. Thank the gods I’d made the hole just large enough for something the size of the skeletons to squeeze through. The spider’s legs made it considerably wider than the hole, and it was having trouble contorting its body to fit. I had time. Not a lot, but hopefully enough. I paused when I thought of the skeletons, then looked over at the rewards from the achievement and two milestones.

I was back inside my Core Room in an instant. I’d used the word schema myself many times throughout the years to describe a magical blueprint. If it’s the same here, I might have a way out of this. All it took was a bit of focus on the first milestone reward for a new screen to pop up. This new screen was a very long list of what looked like everything under the sun and probably a lot that wasn’t. The vast majority of the list was greyed out.

I sent a mental command to hide everything I couldn’t get, and the list shortened dramatically. A second command shortened to just two items. Skeleton and Zombie. I selected Skeleton and the screen closed. As it did, something surged up around me and I felt it crack me open like an egg. Instead of me pouring out of whatever the hell just broke, however, knowledge poured in instead. Specifically, knowledge on how to create a skeleton. The information was overwhelming in its detail and complexity, but I didn’t have to understand any of it to use it.

I targeted the skeleton of the second miner and willed my essence into it, following the weird pattern the schema gave me. Everything was going exactly as my new knowledge said it would, right until the very end. The pattern suddenly warped away from what it should have been, and locked into place before I could attempt to correct it. For a moment I thought it failed, then the bones started moving. As did the rusty pick and helmet nearby. Bones scrapped and clattered against the floor and each other for several seconds as they re-arranged themselves. Finally, my brand new Skeleton stood up, pick in hand and helmet on head, and I found myself the proud owner of a second schema, A Skeleton Miner. The weird sensation returned, but only lasted for a moment.

I didn’t have time to ponder the differences between the Skeleton and the Skeleton Miner. The forelegs of the spider were now poking out my side of the tunnel and I sure as hell wasn’t about to let my advantage go to waste. A quick mental command and the Skeleton Miner was scrambling up the rubble pile and into position. Hopefully, it was out of the way enough to avoid the spider’s forelegs while still being close enough to get a good swing at its head.

The next several seconds felt very long. The only sounds were the spider’s chittering, stone scraping against chitin, and rock being shoved out of the way. I took a moment to check my essence. Maybe I had enough to summon a second skeleton?

Essence: 22 (+1/hour)

That would be a resounding no. It cost twenty-five essence for a single skeleton, and that was with the cost being reduced by using an existing skeleton as the base. I really doubted the spider was going to give me the three hours I needed to summon a second skeleton. One would have to be enough.

Slowly, more and more of the forelegs exited the tunnel. The massive jaws followed shortly after. Just as the spider leveraged its head past the threshold, I ordered the skeleton to strike. The pick descended rapidly towards the spider’s face. With a crack and a squelch, the rusty iron bit deep into the spider’s head. Unfortunately, the strike was not a killing blow.

The spider jerked back and flailed its forelegs around. The sudden movement tore the pick from the skeleton’s hands, one leg catching the skeleton on the shin, sending it tumbling down the rubble pile. There was a loud crack when it landed face first at the bottom.

The scraping sounds grew louder as the very much not dead yet spider put more effort into getting out of the tunnel. The skeleton stood back up, bottom jaw missing, and rushed the spider. I ordered it to scoop up the busted lantern as it ran past it.

Once gain in reach, the skeleton flailed the lantern at the spider. The spider responded by flailing a limb of its own. The limb not fending off the skeleton continued dragging the rest of the spider’s its bulk out of the tunnel.

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There was a crack of breaking chitin and the ping of thin metal snapping as the skeleton got in a solid hit on the flailing leg. A small geyser of red painted the area. The hit had also broken the lantern. Once again weaponless, the skeleton couldn’t fend off a strike from the other limb, flying off the rubble again.

The spider used the break in combat to continue its struggle to leave the tunnel, but was having a much harder time with only one functioning leg. The damaged limb looked to no longer have any strength left in it. Every time the spider tried to use it, more red liquid would spurt out.

Armed with another pickaxe, the skeleton rushed the spider a second time. The skeleton swung it’s the pickaxe with utter abandon. The spider struggled to fend off the renewed assault with its last available leg. Eventually, the untiring undead slammed the heavy iron head of the pick into the leg, crushing straight through and crippling it. A final strike at the spider’s head brought my first fight to an end.

If I could breathe, I probably would have let out a breath that I’d only now realize I’d been holding. But since I can’t breathe, or sag dramatically into a chair, I did the next best thing. I ordered the skeleton to collapse to the ground instead. I wasn’t really expecting much, but that skeleton definitely over delivered when they broke apart into a pile of bones. That gave me an idea, and I had them reform as quickly as they could. It took a couple of seconds. Not super quick, but it could still probably catch a distracted or otherwise unaware party off guard I imagine. I left the skeleton alone after watching it break apart and reform a few times. Without an enemy, the skeleton, who I decide earned the name Pete, just stood around doing nothing.

The spider had disappeared shortly after it died, and I gained not one, but two new schema! One for the spider, a Cave Spider, and one for the material Spider Silk. I also gained five Essence. After a short debate, I used it to summon a second skeleton and christened them Not-Pete.

It was only after my core started moving that I realized was attached to the other intact skeleton. I really don’t think Dungeon Cores are supposed to move very much. Imagine being awake as someone was rummaging through your internal organs. Not that I knew what that felt like, but it’s probably close. I quickly dug a small alcove into the back wall and had Not-Pete place me inside. The weird sensations stopped after that.

Note to self: Do not move the core around. At least with monsters.

With two guardians and no immediate threat, I finally let myself relax and enter my “Thinking Mode”. Unfortunately, I didn’t have an office chair to spin around in so I had to make do with just spinning a narrowed field of view around. It wasn’t quite the same.

First up, I need to correct a grave oversight that the spider had reminded me of. Absorbing things. A near universal power that practically all dungeons had, and one of the more common methods dungeons used to learn how to make new things. At least in the stories. I really should have tried this sooner. Hell, maybe I could have gotten a skeleton sooner.

My spinning stopped long enough to focus on the remains of the lantern. Willing the lantern to be absorbed, it just disappeared. I’m not sure if it was because I’m getting used to doing stuff just by focusing on what I want or if it was always that easy, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. That same feeling of being split open and something getting poured in happened again, but it was much more subdued than the Skeleton and the Cave Spider had been. I could now make Iron Lanterns and had access to Iron as a material. I didn’t get any Essence from the items though. That probably only comes from creatures. I took a moment to clean up and was rewarded with Glass from the broken lantern, Iron Ore and Granite from the rubble pile, Bone from the trapped skeleton, and Wood from a collapsed support beam.

With that taken care of, I moved on to the spider attack. I don’t know if the spider was actually hostile or just curious, but it proved that the mine had monsters in it. That brought up questions about if there were only spiders, or if other creatures existed within the mine, and what their numbers were. Questions I had no way of getting an answer to.

And that brings me to defense. What I can only assume is the primary concern of any normal dungeon. Currently, I had two skeletons, one of them still being damaged. I could probably handle another spider, but if two or more spiders or one tougher creature showed up, I would be in trouble. There could be a way to fix that, though.

I eyed the Milestone and Achievement rewards, brought up the Schema list, and filtered it to only show what was currently available. Monsters were also filtered out, since I already had two types and nowhere near enough essence to justify a third. That left me with flora, traps, items, and materials. I removed flora from the list as well. Nothing grew within a mine and I feel that, if I’m gonna do plants underground, it has to be something special and I couldn’t do that yet.

The traps that were available were kind of boring. Simple spike traps, pit traps, a rolling boulder trap, rock fall, sticky web, a net trap, etc... Sure I could think of uses for all of them, but nothing really spoke to me. That could be from lack of a solid plan, though.

Alright. I need a plan. Half-assing this could bite me in the butt later.

I don’t know a lot about a lot of things right now. Especially about what “proper” dungeons in this world actually look like and how they function. But since Mr. Godly Pencil Pusher wanted me for my DM skills, he’s gonna get them. My dungeon was gonna be an adventure. If a proper dungeon layout alternating rooms and corridors, then my dungeon was gonna be an experience. Hell, I could make it a full campaign if I wanted, but that’s a long-term goal. Right now, I need something smaller to start off with.

I could make the first floor a one-shot. Undead or spider infected mines feel kind of generic, but they are simple. It probably wouldn’t be all that different from a normal dungeon, though. Alternatively, I could also do a small adventure across the first few floors. It’s more of a medium-term goal, but it gives me something realistic to work towards. What would it be about, though?

I mulled over the connection between the skeletons and spiders for a while, but wasn’t getting anywhere. I was about to just go back to the one-shot idea when Pete and Not-Pete enter my view, and I finally found the connection I needed.

Those two aren’t just any Skeletons. They’re Skeleton Miners. The skeletons of miners. The skeletons of miners in a mine filled with Cave Spiders. Just going by the name, I’m going to assume Cave Spiders live in caves. So maybe, while digging out the mine, the miners come across a cave filled with the things. A Cave Spider nest. That connects the spiders and the mine, but what about the undead part? Well, what happens when you mine? You dig deep. You might even dig too deep. When you dig too deep, you’re bound to run across something best left buried. What if, connected to the spider caves, there was something else? Something darker. Necromancer crypt? Dark artifact? I’ll have to think more about that. I’ll also need to figure out some magical shit to make it all work, but I should have some time to do that.

Plan decide on, I reopened the schema list and picked up the Sticky Web trap.

Dungeon Management System

Schema: Trap - Sticky Webs

A trap made from exceptionally sticky spider webs.

Requirements: Spider Silk or a Spider Monster

It was the only one that made sense for a spider infested mine. I held off using my last two schemas. I didn’t know what I would find in the rest of the mine and didn’t want to waste one on something I could’ve gotten for free.