I was consciously converting tainted mana into aether and aether into pure mana to fill up my mana reserves all the while watching over my creatures and planning my next floor when I felt a disturbance at the entrance of my dungeon. Looking over I saw a group of six human beings staring into the Cavern of my first floor in shock.

He he he…amazing right. Witness the greatness and beauty of my first floor. I told them. There was no reaction to my exclamation from them. They did not seem to hear me.

“What the… What the hell is that ??” I heard the short stout man from the group who was sporting a weird moustache exclaim. What do you mean by hell? Obviously it is a beautiful paradise that I have created here. I felt slightly insulted by the man's lack of vision.

“Do trees grow indoors?” a short human, seemingly a child questioned. Oh they don't? Will my plan of luring oblivious world realm organisms not work? Hmmmm. At the same time knowledge about the growth requirements of plants in general and their function popped into my head. Oh!! Oops. “Are those roots? Growing out of a sparkling Ceiling?” The moustache man exclaimed once more. Yeah those were an accident, I was not really planning on them growing all over my floor. Sorry. I answered to noone in particular.

“Well… Do you see those huge as fuck trees on those slopes above, Those might be some magical trees or even plant monsters. I think those trees might have turned the cavern underneath rich in Mana.” a gruff man with brown hair and a curved branch strung over his shoulder said. Those are just semi sentient trees and my contractors, and it was I who turned them thus, not the other way round. These human beings seem rather stupid. Don’t waste my time, just come in and die.However, same as before they kept ignoring me and discussing what my first floor might be. I did not know how stupid these beings could be, was it not obvious that only a genius dungeon like me could be this magnificent.

“Could this be a dungeon? I heard dungeons also contain different landscapes in them.” Finally the smallest and smartest human being from the group figured out what I was. But before I could rejoice I heard the branch man say. “Nah, I have been to a few dungeons myself in my younger days. Dungeons are always defensive in nature to protect their fragile core. They would never have such a wide entrance.” Oops I knew that entrance was going to be a problem. Damn it. Don’t preach to me what we can and can not do. I made it so purposefully. It was for the view. THE VIEW. ” Also, Dungeons evolve as they grow, and I have never heard of a dungeon which already had a whole forest landscape on its very first floor. Usually the first few floors are just tunnels with a few pit traps and a few critters as defence. Of course the older dungeons have more sophisticated initial floors, but not by much. Dungeons do not seem to like working on their first few floors. And anyways this could not be an older dungeon, as someone would have found it ages ago if a dungeon existed here.” At least I am sure now. I am a prodigy. Hah. Though why would other older dungeons not prefer prettier initial floors? Is it due to the loss of pure mana through the entrance? Hmmm. I tuned out those humans as I contemplated this issue.

I only came back to them, when I felt them cross the membrane at my entrance and enter into my domain. The branch man seemed to be the leader in this team and went first. He was followed by the moustache man and the pale woman. The smart child walked in the middle with the last child and woman following him. Finally, pick them off unaware and one by one if possible. I told my minions. My critters started to silently converge towards the group, who moved forward oblivious of them.

The humans were getting more and more spread out, as they avoided the obstacles on their way forward such as shrubs and bushes. I got lucky when the woman at the very back, unknowingly walked through a patch of purple sleepers I planted randomly. She kept walking for a few more steps, but then leant on the nearest tree before starting to collapse onto the ground. I told a Poison spider to kill her with the poison mana, to see how potent the mana really was. Following the bite of my spider, black veins started to spread out from the site of their contact as she was getting poisoned to death with none of her companions the wiser.

Another fifty or so steps allowed the remaining humans to finally close in to the banks of my brook. I told my wood variant fox to take out the next human. The creature upon my command willed the grass near the boy, to grow and intertwine into a rope which wrapped around his neck. The earth variant ermine took this opportunity and tried entangling the human's legs to climb up his torso. Their plan was a good one, though it did not work out as well as the previous time, the entangled boy was able to let out a muffled scream despite his suffocation alerting the only smart human in the group. Everybody, Attack!!! I shouted at my critters, when I realised that the element of surprise had been lost. My owls and trouts began frantically attacking the first three humans to keep them occupied while the fox and ermine tried their best to bring the child down. Even more of my creatures were on their way to attack the humans. The smart child turned around and started attacking the plant vines with a pointy metal stick. While the branch man managed to kill a few of my creatures including an Owl with his branch shooting other sticks.

Congratulations! You received blueprint: Human (Locked)

The poison mana finally did its work and the first woman was still lying where she fell, frothing at her mouth and black veins covering half of her body. I looked at the Experience and blueprint I received. She gave me 5XP, three more than the Lynx. However her blueprint was greyed out, I could still see how she was built up however I could not create another human. I can’t create them? What a stupid species. Is this one of the species blessed by a god? May that be the reason for the higher XP, to compensate for the lack of blueprint according to the law of equivalent exchange? Even as I was contemplating the reason for the change, her memories started filling up my Knowledge Repartoir. Just like the Lynx I could intentionally access all the memories if I tried, though they did not affect me in any way emotionally. They were just something that increased my KR and gave me more knowledge which I could access instinctively.

This is why I suddenly knew the name and information of all my intruders, as well as the name and uses of the tools they carried, such as the strung branch which was actually a bow and the pointy metal stick, which was called a dagger and was used to cut things. I was even more surprised to know that the branch man, I mean Gunther, was not the leader of this group. Instead it was the stout man by the name of Aldric. Why is that I wondered, since he seemed much less competent than Gunther.

I was still going through the new memories, when Gunther stabbed the child, Wilbur, to death. New memories and 2XP flowed into me. They were less than half of what I got from the woman Susan. Why is it so low this time? Do only the first kills of each species give higher benefits? I should experiment by killing a few more.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I saw my creatures hesitating at the bottom of the hill, they were aware of the large number of purple sleepers at the top of the hill, and also knew that they did not differentiate between friend and foe. Don't let them get away and recover. Go kill them all. I ordered my creatures. My Wind Owl finally lazily made its way to the group from the other end of the room, where it had made its nest, and joined his kind in the attack. Yess, go kill their leader and then the others. I told it, to which I received an unimpressed glance from my creature, although it did adhere to my command.

The Wind Owl started to shoot blades of wind. It took it a few tries for it to get its aim right, leaving a few scars all over the hill. Finally one of the blades got the leader in his neck, just before he got under the cover of the trees.

I carefully checked the KR and XP I received. I had got the same amount of XP but more KR from the leader than I got from Susan. So the anomaly of Wilbur was due to some other reason. Maybe due to his low level and knowledge of him being a child? My Owl started a big fight with Gunther, with both of them shooting projectiles at each other. While they were busy with each other, my Blood sucking vines got hold of the injured woman, Sarah. They wrapped her up and then got into her body through her orifices and open-wound in her stomach and started sucking her blood. Some of the vines also helped the wind owl in its fight with Gunther, finally bringing down the dangerous man. The last Human child also lost consciousness at this time from the smell released by the Purple sleepers.

After a few minutes I received the system message of the death of both Gunther and Sarah. At the same time I felt stronger. Both of them gave me 6XP, more than their leader. However, although Gunther gave me almost as much KR as Aldric, Sarah’s KR was unusually low, more than a child but much less than Susan. Weird. The higher Experience can be explained by Gunther having more experience than the others and Sarah being pregnant, so being basically two people. But why did Sarah have such a low KR, was she stupid?

Hmmm?. While I was wondering about this new anomaly I came across some new knowledge in Gunther’s memories. According to his memories, hunters left pregnant as well as young and juvenile animals off to conserve the animal population and hunt them when they are grown up. Thinking about the pitiful amount I received from Wilbur I felt that this was a smart practice. Though it feels stupid not to hunt pregnant females, I got the most XP from Sarah. But maybe I could release this boy Aleric into the wild, so that he can come back to me once he grows up and give me more XP than I would receive if I killed him right now. Yes I will do it like that.

I told my creatures not to kill the boy, and told my blood sucking vines to take him out of the influence area of the purple sleepers. The vines rolled him away and pushed him down the hill away from the purple sleepers. The boy rolled down the hill and ended up with half of his body submerged in the brook. Whether from the pain or the water the child woke up, coughing out the water he inhaled. After looking around he seemed to realise where he was and panic and fear crossed his face. He stumbled up with a wince and then started running towards the entrance. After around seven minutes of fast paced running he mode it out of my domain, I saw him running off into the distance. Come back once you grow up. I shouted after him.

With the boy gone I started cleaning up after him. I was curious about the different objects carried around by the humans, and started converting them into mana to see whether I could get any new information out of them. I decided to convert all their objects and two of their bodies, the leader and one of the women into mana, and leave the rest of the corpses for my critters as reward for their good performance. I wanted to convert two humans to see whether I could bypass the blueprint issue by absorbing them directly.

Once I started absorbing the different objects carried by the humans, I got things such as gold, jewels, cloth, dye, bow and arrow, dagger etc. Though one of them from their leader gave me a surprise.

Congratulations! You received a recipe for minor Health potion.

Was this not the liquid Gunther fed Sarah to keep her alive. I remember he had to kill the child Wilbur because he had only one of these. Interesting.This Aldric is full of surprises. Being pleasantly surprised and lucky that I could get the recipe of one of them, I went on to absorb the bodies of Aldric and Sarah.

Congratulations! Having absorbed the Bonder and Bondee of a Master - Servant Bond. You now have a new ability: Bond.

Bond

(Available Bonds: 1)

The ability Bond allows you to enter into irreversible master servant relationships with an organism of any level. Entering into a Bond causes permanent impairment of mental faculties for Bondee. The number of Bonds a Bonder can hold depends on the Level of the Bonder.

Initial Bonds can only be initiated voluntarily by Bondee. Upon successful formation of a bond, all further offspring of Bondee will be automatically initiated into bond upon birth, unless intentionally rejected by Bonder.

Bonds can be transferred by Bonder to their offspring.

Well that explained Sarah’s low KR values I guess. I should probably also check my Status.

Status Screen

Name :

(Unnamed)

Age :

24 days

Class:

Void Creature

Species:

Dungeon Core

Level :

F

Experience :

2/100

INT (Intelligence):

F

DEF (Defence):

G

KR (Knowledge Repartoir):

97/100

STBC (Stability of Core):

6.67%

Mana Pool:

100/2000

Essence:

600/1000

A/M Conversion:

2.5 M/sec.

Essence Regen.:

0.25 E/sec.

Abilities: Creation and Design, Spawn and Control Monsters, Trap Generation, Resource Management, Environmental Manipulation, Bonds

Extra Ability: Mutation and Evolution, Artistic Conception (Passive), Disease and Healing, Guidance (Dungeon Creature)

Titles: Contractor