The next room was finished with little fanfare, before I filled it with content I used the switch function to move my core room further back. For now I wanted to focus on setting up a few new rooms. My Trigger Fish died off without any water to sustain him, the death gave me a burst of mana, not as much as what Archie used to make it but enough that I had an idea of how to get more mana. Looking through the schema's I had I settled on a lady Millipede to go with my existing male Millipede. I was surprised by the cost that I managed to rack up in the process. I don't remember reanimating the first one costing this much. I also moved the Redwood tree in here to give the loving couple some shade, not that they needed shade, dungeon after all. As a precaution I erected a simple door made out of lime stone in front of my core, notches carved into the doorway where I put my crude hinge, followed up by a puzzle piece lime stone door on a ball of lime stone. It opened, it closed, but it didn't wall off my core thereby cutting me off from the dungeon. I still had the egg I needed to make arrangements for. My scorpion attempted to crack it open, unfortunately for the Scorpion, he was successful. From the crack a slimy clawed arm reached out and grabbed hold of the Scorpion by its tail which was then pulled inside and struggled briefly before a loud crunch sound echoed out. The Scorpion slowly disappeared as the creature inside of the egg ate it and then patched the hole with healing magic. Well that was educational. Priority one: hatch the egg as soon as possible.
[Monster Egg: An egg belonging to an unknown species of monster, hatch it to Metamorphosize into a higher ranked organism.]
Which was promising, but there was an issue.
[Estimated time until hatching: 15 years]
Which was not good.
[Create an incubator or acquire a nurse to accelerate the monster's development.]
Better news. I went back to my first room, I'd create monsters to keep the centipede population in check later, for now I focused on creating an incubator, or rather a nest. I produced branches and logs of red wood and piled them in the middle of the room in a bowl shape, as I was about to put the egg in the nest a loud noise echoed from the void of my front door. A massive log smashed against the bottom of my step and bounced across the floor of my dungeon slamming to a stop in one of my walls. A massive winged creature landed inside of the dungeon a few moments later and my eyes nearly bugged out of my head.
[D-Rank Monster Griffin-A monster combining together traits from a lion and a hawk. Called the King of the skies, most monsters give a wide berth to packs of griffins and even armies can have a hard time if they gather together in sufficient numbers. They prefer to nest in unstable cliffs to discourage predators away from their nests]
A D-Rank monster, in my humble little abode. How cute. What's it doing here? The answer: sleeping apparently. She found my nest and she liked it, curled up in it and went to sleep. I looked over at the smashed up log that she had brought in. So she spotted my little hole from the air and she thought 'jeez what a nice place to make a nest, I think I'll move in here now.' Great. What do I do with my egg then? I tried to pick it up and move it away from me only it wouldn't go. My 'mana hands' from before weren't working now. I see now, this squatter over here counts as an intruder, so I can't do anything. Even to remove her. Was this even a girl? Was she going to attract a mate and do... griffin porn in here? Ew. I looked through my menu for options, and I gaped in shock.
[Mana 12/150] [Mana 15/150] [Mana 18/150]
It's not like she's hurting anything while she's here right? And she will have to leave eventually to get food right? None of you guys hurt her while she's here, I'm looking at you Archie! Until she left to get more food or nesting material or something I went to the Dungeon Chat Room so that I could see if I could drag some answers out of the other members of the Chat Group.
[Dungeon Keeper: Greetings]
[Graves: Yo Keeper!]
[Jewel: Greetings]
[Dungeon Keeper: Where's Lithilas?]
[Graves: You can't expect the old man to hang around the chat room all day. He's got over one hundred floors, an entire city and a battle to manage]
[Dungeon Keeper: Battle?]
[Jewel: He's been in a row with another dungeon for a few years now]
[Dungeon Keeper: Right]
[Dungeon Keeper: Graves the Skull you gave me earlier is doing better than I could've ever dreamed]
[Graves: Glad you like it]
[Graves: Does this mean you're ready to buy a real undead and do some damage with it yet?]
[Dungeon Keeper: The little bugger's turned the pile of fossils that I've been sitting on for a while into a bunch of new schema's]
[Jewel: Anything interesting?]
[Dungeon Keeper: Tree, Dragonfly, Scorpion, Millipede, Rock Spitting Fish and a Egg]
[Jewel: Dragon Fly? I never heard of one of those before. What is it?]
I looked over at the Dragon fly which ever since the arrival of the Griffin had taken to cowering in my core room.
[Dungeon Keeper: A large insect that looks a little like a big flying jewel]
[Jewel: Is it pretty?]
[Dungeon Keeper: You'd know more than me]
[Dungeon Keeper: I've been meaning to ask but what's with your names?]
[Graves: Dungeon Cores tend to name themselves after the first thing that they've absorbed. Technically speaking my full name is "Consecrated Mass Grave" and Jewel is "Concubine's Bejeweled Mirror" but those are a bit of a mouthful]
[Dungeon Keeper: Where'd Lithilas come from?]
[Graves: The old man's a step above any of us. He's got an entire city built around him, built largely out of the materials that people have hauled out of him, if they need anything they drop it down there and he mass produces it]
[Jewel: You may not know this because you don't get too many visitors but when Living creatures enter a dungeon they start filling it with their mana]
I looked back over to the griffin. Still there.
[Mana 51/150]
Archie, you start reanimating any fossil that you can find. I'm not letting this opportunity go to waste! The hand picked up the skull, moved it onto the stump where an arm should be, and crawled over to the nearest wall to begin examining it for fossils.
[Dungeon Keeper: I want to upgrade my Skull for finding fossils. What do I need?]
[Graves: It sounds like you need to create a undead core for your Skull. For that you need metal and a few jewels, since you're aiming for Earth magic you'd need a Brown Diamond, and at least five regular diamonds, not a necessity but the extra Mana capacity will increase it's usefulness down the line]
[Dungeon Keeper: Should I presume from "Concubines Bejeweled Mirror" that you're the go to source of materials Jewel?]
[Jewel: Naturally]
[Jewel: Now show me something that you have that's worth trading with so that we can do business]
[Dungeon Keeper: I haven't had time to make up some Marble yet, should I show you the Dragonfly's I mentioned earlier?]
[Graves: Oi Oi! Don't let this scheming mirror trick you Keeper! You send your bugs over their on a raid, she kills them, takes their schema and says that they're not up to code for her]
[Graves: Deal with this honest Graves before you deal with her!]
[Jewel: Look at who's calling the kettle black!]
[Dungeon Keeper: You can get me the materials that I need to upgrade my undead?]
[Graves: Naturally!]
[Graves: Thanks to the Consecrated land I was born on I was born naturally spawning Blessed Silver, and thanks to the trading I've been doing with this scam artist I have a whole rainbow of Gemstones you can choose from]
[Dungeon Keeper: Isn't holy power bad for the undead?]
[Graves: There's plenty of undead with Holy power. The E-Ranked Mourning Wraiths and Grim are prime examples of undead who aren't bothered in the least little bit by holy. And if you can integrate that into your monster it won't be weak to holy at all]
[Dungeon Keeper: I have over 200 pounds of Limestone in my inventory right now. Is that enough?]
[Graves: Fufufu! More than enough! As a bonus this Graves will even assemble a undead core for your monster!]
We completed the trade, the limestone in my inventory disappeared and was replaced by a Holy Earth Undead Core.
[Dungeon Keeper: Thanks for the trade]
[Jewel: If you're interested in a two for one deal you should consider joining in on a raid with Lithilas in the near future]
[Dungeon Keeper: A raid?]
[Dungeon Keeper: If some one a hundred floors deep isn't doing anything to stop that dungeon that has been harassing Lithilas then what will me and my newb arse be able to do?]
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
[Jewel: The idea is to 'show off creatures you want to trade.' If you do manage to help Lithilas in some way then He'll owe you a favour, and other cores participating in the raid will see your Schema's and decide if they're something that you want to trade for or not]
I nodded my head in agreement to the logic. That would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do if I developed normally and had 20+ floors to call on like what Graves does, but at the moment my first floor isn't even under my control. I looked to the other room and watched as a section of the wall was rapidly coming down. I received notifications for Various plant species and the room was crawling with millipedes and dragon flies that were currently climbing all over each other trying to get away from the D-class aura of the Griffin. More importantly, although vastly weaker than the Griffin each of these critters are producing mana too, albeit in vastly smaller amounts.
[Mana 84/150]
[Mana 89/150]
Even with Archie burning through mana like crazy to reanimate fossils I'm still producing more mana than what he's spending. Even worst things like sea shells for shell fish just immediately die off again refunding a chunk of mana, if there was any consolation then all this crazy amount of reanimation was slowly chipping away at my next hallway, the terrified insects desperate scrambles were even tearing out more of the limestone albeit very slowly. Still there was a fishy smell building up in here that I needed to do something about. Hey guys, toss all the dead monsters into the nest, if the griffin eats them then she won't eat you. With that the door leading into my core room was pushed open and various fish and cephalopods were tossed into the next room over. The Griffin took notice of the fish smell and came over and ate them, using her beak to remove all the fleshy bits and eat them. Archie, when you run out of new fossils to reanimate in the core room, the millipede room and the nest I want you go back into the nest and reanimate everything that the griffin eats, and let me know when she leaves. The Archie hand duo nodded as they went to work. Hopefully this means that we can actually get some work done here even in spite of this squatter locking me out of the controls.
[Dungeon Keeper: Hey do either of you guys know what'll happen if the mana bar fills up to max?]
[Graves: Seriously? You never let it max out before?]
[Dungeon Keeper: Not that I can remember no. Why is it something good?]
[Jewel: The Ratio isn't a hard number. But if you let it fill beyond capacity then you'll start to have an unpleasant feeling that will only get worse if it fills up more]
[Graves: Luckily you'll also just end up pumping more mana into the leylines too so you don't have anything to worry about]
[Graves: Really if you're that full though you should probably just start digging tunnels again or making some more monsters]
I looked over to the Griffin, who after her meal was now sound asleep in her nest. I looked to Archie who had managed to dismantle an entire wall worth of fossils and was now looking for more to deal with. The Griffin wasn't going away any time soon, and Archie would be spending mana like crazy according to my instructions. Right now was the perfect time to go out on the raid.
[Dungeon Keeper: How does the Raid work anyway? I've never done one before]
[Jewel: Go to the raid section of the dungeon chat screen and check to see if there are any raids in progress or dungeons available to raid. You should be able to piggy back on Lithilas's raid if he gives you permission to join]
[Available Dungeons: Lithilas Dungeon City, Consecrated Mass Grave, Concubine's Bejeweled Mirror]
[Raid in Progress: Lithilas Dungeon City vs Conquerete]
[Dungeon Keeper: Who's Conquerete? I don't see him listed in Available dungeons anywhere]
[Jewel: Conquerete is one of the three so-called mobile dungeons alongside "Flying Tower Babel" that floats around the world on a flying island and "Pirate Fleet Leviathan" which sails around the world]
[Dungeon Keeper: Mobile Dungeons. That's a thing we can do? Just pack up the entire dungeon and move around anywhere we please?]
[Graves: Not quite no. They have to follow a track in the form of leylines]
[Graves: Leylines are the veins of the world, we dungeons are the arteries that keep it pumping. We can no more divorce ourselves from that power then a human can yank their own heart out and expect either to survive]
[Jewel: Leviathan is a bully, but he's on the other side of the world right now, or at least he should be]
[Jewel: Babel is more like a merchant, conducting trade between the dungeons across the world, he can fly over obstacles unimpeded so we usually just let him do his thing. It's Conquerete that we have to worry about]
[Graves: He turned his entire dungeon into a giant golem and has been wandering around the continent smashing apart anything that gets in his way or raiding it for resources. Lithilas's city was built in the middle of his path]
So naturally the two are in conflict. Really the big brute would probably fight anyone who was in his path. I looked to the side where the majority of my creatures had gathered out of fear for the griffin, dragon flies, scorpions, Millipedes, not exactly a all star line up that I've got going on here is it.
[Dungeon Keeper: We should coordinate what we want to send over to Lithilas. I'll stick to some of the fossils that I've been getting schemas for, like Jewel said this'll be my chance to show off the merchandise, plus I want to focus on scouting, give me an idea on what to do with the heavy hitters]
When I get heavy hitters. Maybe there's a dinosaur hidden inside of all this limestone I can wake up.
[Graves: I of course will deploy my Death Paladins to fight Conquerete providing the close quarters and defensive units, they'll be supported by my Third Floor's Boss Death Priest who is equally capable of healing magic and necromancy]
[Jewel: Then I shall deploy my Bejeweled Scorpions who will dazzle the enemy with their beautiful magic attacks and support your warriors with their magic, and I shall also send my fifth floor boss the Djinn Bard for extra support]
That didn't leave much room for me to do anything. Not that I can do anything
[Dungeon Keeper: What about my dungeon? Will going on the raid leave it vulnerable or something?]
[Graves: You can designate a monster to look after the place while you're gone]
Archie you're in charge while I'm gone. Don't let anything eat or get near the core, as soon as the Griffin leaves upgrade yourself with the undead core and start speed excavating to find fossils of some powerful monsters. Archie and the hand nodded in Acknowledgement.
[Would you Like to Join the Raid in process? Yes/No]
[Yes]
[Please select monsters to join you on the raid]
[20 Dragon Flies]
Unlike some people I could think of I didn't have super powerful warriors or absurdly powerful bosses to help me raid the enemy.
[Please Designate command monster in your absence]
[Designated Monster in charge: Archie the Animated Skull]
[Transportation in 3. 2. 1]
Space around me stretched as if everything was being pulled into a black hole, I found myself thrown into a tunnel of light with my Dragon Flies where it felt like we travelled for several moments. Finally we were spat out on the other side. I resisted the urge to hurl as I got used to my surroundings, everything was huge, the hallways of this dungeon looked like they were easily big enough to allow a giant to pass through them. Everything was huge, including I soon realised my dragon flies, and I was one of them. Ah. That would explain it. Together me and my airborne squadron took to the air, and then we got to witness as the entire hallway that we were inside of shifted backwards, before rapidly going forwards. As I recalled this entire place was supposed to be part of one big huge golem, and that would mean that I just arrived at the arm then? Counting my good fortune I focused on flying through the arm cavity. It was then that my advertisement campaign reached our first obstacle, a spider's web. And the spiders responsible for spinning and maintaining them were on the other side of the webbing.
I Guess if I was a mobile upright dungeon I'd want to make sure that all my monsters could stick to walls too, either that or float. I didn't bring my Will-o-wisp along otherwise I'd be able to just attack the web with fire and burn it out. The fact that I've only got Dragon Flies to work with though has not escaped my attention. Nor had the fact that the enemy was not content to wait patiently for me to attack, the enemy monsters had begun spitting webs at me, and though their's was only a fraction of my forces their attacks were much wider than mine. So I spread my forces out, a few being webbed in the process as we dodged and weaved before finally arriving at the web itself, and the spiders who spun it. I thrust my stinger at the spiders, and missed getting the tail lodged in the webs in the process. Several other dragon flies followed my lead and also got ourselves lodged on the web. We soon became too heavy and the sound of snapping indicated the web giving way as gravity took over, we swung over and slammed into a nearby wall knocking off the spiders who went with us. Just as planned!
You there! I want one of those spiders for the Dungeon! The rest of you work on cutting us free! One of my Dragon Flies went off to collect spider remains, with luck I'll get a schema for them, the others approached the webs and worked to start chewing us free. Then we started to fly up the tunnel. By the looks of things our approximate location was inside the Elbow, now to fly up the rest of the way. The other dungeons will be sending strong and powerful monsters, whereas I sent weak and insignificant monsters. While the enemy forces focused on the real threat I could focus on sneaking through the enemy ranks acquiring intelligence on the enemy forces. As I was thinking that I arrived at the shoulder and peaked my dragon flies out at the battle that was taking place in the chest cavity, and then I died.
I was promptly spat back out inside of my dungeon as I processed what was happening. I looked at whatever was happening inside of the chest cavity, and then I died without even being able to see what happened.
[Dungeon Keeper: What's happening? My team just got wiped!]
Silence. Graves, Jewel and Lithilas must have still been on the raid. Okay. If that's going to be how this is done.
[Mana 160/160]
The walls had gotten slightly farther away since I was here, if I had to guess I would say that all the fossils coming out of the walls were slowly expanding the size of the room and my mana limit. The squatter was still here though. I bet that if I at least had a monster like her I could at least join the fight! Alright if that's gonna be how this is! I once again gathered all the dragon flies under my command, the Wisp and several centipedes.
[Would you Like to Join the Raid in process? Yes/No]
[Yes]
[Please select monsters to join you on the raid]
[5 Dragon Flies, 1 Will-o-wisp, 10 Giant Millipedes]
Alright! Let's try this again Shall we!?
[Please Designate command monster in your absence]
[Designated Monster in charge: Archie The Animated Skull]
[Transportation in 3. 2. 1]
I was spat out in the same place as before, I was floating in the air this time and felt no limbs, so I was in the body of the Will-o-wisp then. My Dragon Flies and Millipedes were floating or sticking to the walls at either side of me, and the two spiders I had a run in with before were in the middle of dismantling the last Dragon Fly from the previous raid. I body blocked the attempts from the spiders to web up my insects again burning out their webs in the process while at the same time commanding my monsters to surround them. The Spiders attempts to web down my Centipedes was fruitless and they were both skewered on their mandibles.
[Would you like to have your kill transported back to your Dungeon? Yes/No]
[Yes]
The two Millipedes with the corpses of the spiders still skewered on their mandibles disappeared. Hmm? So to collect my kills I have to sacrifice one of my monsters for the raid team? I'll have to remember that. I took the Dragon flies and flew to the top of the shoulder again, I had to leave the Millipedes behind on account of their slowness. This time I only sent one Dragon Fly into the hole leading into the chest cavity, and watched as it popped into pink mist. Can't be helped. I flew back down to the Elbow again, what was here that those spiders were supposed to protect? I watched as the arm that I was in wound up for another attack, watched the silk elbow fold and stretch before releasing another punch. Kill my Dragon Flies will you? Weakling though I may be but this Weakling shall take at least one arm before he goes! I burnt through the silk of the elbow exposing machinery underneath. Here I was thinking that this world was pure fantasy, but here I saw something resembling a... I suddenly felt woozey. Cramping my imaginary face and glaring at the Cylinder like it owes me money I set about boiling the liquid inside until finally, at the moment the giant was preparing to pull back and punch again, the entire thing burst open and the contents inside crawled out. A giant sticky blob emerged from the busted piston and proceeded to wrap around the nearest Millipede. That round ball in the middle of the slime! Kill it! The Millipede struck out like a serpent and bit down on the core, it's armour plating slowly dissolving away but the slime died first, its nucleus snapped in two by the Millipede's crushing jaws causing the whole thing to collapse and splatter.
[Would you like to transport your kill back to your dungeon? Yes/No]
[Yes]
My wounded Millipede disappeared alongside the slime that had covered it's body. The Arm was hanging limply now, the absence of it's elbow slime meant that it could no longer swing it around as effectively as it use to. As I debated the merits of trying to take the shoulder I saw a massive creature sticking its nose to the shoulder path.
[Would you like to Retreat from the Raid? Yes/No]
[Yes]
I disappeared again before whatever instant kill abomination that has been stopping me getting the chance to attack again, my quota for excitement for the day reached.