Alex didn’t hesitate to send his new weapon after the plant monster, but the thing was now close enough to strike his dungeon core with its vine tendrils. That horrible pain rocketed and torched his body as he screamed, but his mind remained clear through it. He took control of his modified deer, and readied its payload.

The deer creature opened its mouth, and a fountain of acid shot out and hit the wooden monster’s face with shocking accuracy. The wooden monster screamed in pain and so did the deer, the agony of its poorly implemented acid breath overpowering its charmed state and Alex’s dominion over it.

There were few of his small animals on the wooden monster, but the acid spray hit them too. Nothing in his dungeon had protection from acid, except for the pouch in the throat of the deer. He had gone overboard with the acidity too; the mouth of his deer had melted off, including the bones.

He had killed people, or what he assumed to be real people, but the horrendous damage he caused to the deer was seared into his mind. He casted [Thunder Shock] on the deer, it only took one casting to bring it peace.

He turned back to the wooden monster. Ironically, without the mania to dull its pain, it was unable to even try and attack the core. It writhed on the ground, both of its front, arm-like legs and the vine tendrils wrapped about the melting ooze that was once its face. He looked at the monster that had become hideous by his actions and felt nothing.

No, he felt antipathy. He wanted nothing more than to lose his intangibility and crush this monster with his own hands. The damage on his dungeon core was the most severe since his existence in this world, and he was forced to be tormented by his mistakes. Never again, never again.

The dungeon core, only for a moment, lit up in response to his anger. The walls of the dungeon shook for that moment, then it all stopped. For that split moment, the dungeon fairy lost its form and turned into a static and glitched blob of indiscernible holographic light. Then it returned to normal, and everything calmed down.

“Dungeon Lord, please calm down!” shouted his dungeon fairy, seemingly oblivious to what had happened.

Alex ignored him and took control of all the animals he had left. He used them to attack the horrible monster. He forced them to work through the pain from the remaining acid and attacked the fleshly made weak points. The wooden monster, once mighty, had fallen and was slowly broken apart and killed.

Alex didn’t feel anything for that. He checked his status screen to see the damage done.

Dungeon Status:

Core Level: 2 [Upgrade] (Insufficient Funds)

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Core Health: Wounded (Health 83%)

Mana Level: Null

Dungeon Health: Undeveloped

Aspect: Null

Number of Species: 8

Abilities: [Stone Terraform], [Create Dungeon Organism]

Spells: [Thunder Shock], [Dominate Creature], [Heal Organism]

His health was at eighty-three percent, and he no longer had the soul points to repair it. He looked around and saw the wreck that had become his dungeon. Many of his animals were severely injured and he didn’t have the points to heal them. Everything he had been trying to do was wrong.

The maze didn’t work like it did in the game or how he wanted, the soul points he was supposed to earn from achievements were nonexistent, and the attacks and waves from hostile forces were irregular at best. He could understand everything that was happening independently, but putting them together made his head want to crack.

He needed to stop thinking of anything like the game. This wasn’t close to the game. He needed a completely different mindset. He looked around at the mess his dungeon had returned to as the soul of the monster was drawn to and processed in the dungeon core.

After a while, his single digits of soul points reached over sixty, and he had to decide what to do now. The maze was stupid but it was the right kind of stupid, it was made to delay and distract dangerous adventurers and it did just that. It was better than a straight path; he was simply stupid for thinking that was more useful than that.

His ecosystem was in shambles and needed to be completely rebuilt. In the game, the strategy he chose was good, but now that he finally started to understand what he was up against, it was terrible. He simply didn’t have the soul points or predictability of hazards to use this strategy or anything like it. He was going to need to switch to a much slower and costly strategy, one that focused on fundamental stability.

He looked around at the animals he had. The larger animals simply weren’t worth it, there was enough to create a high quality enough ecosystem to use them, nor was there the currency to mutate them. Many of the medium sized animals were the same. The only things he truly needed were plants, fungi, insects, and small omnivorous animals.

This was the barest and most simple ecosystem possible, but that also meant it was the most resilient and simple. He remembered reading one time on the internet, ‘the best way to keep something from breaking was to have the least possible components to break.’ That was his philosophy now: build for resilience and security.

He controlled all of the animals that he deemed unnecessary and forced them to attack each other. This was a horrific, grueling fight but it was the only thing he could do. The soul points from them were minuscule, but that didn’t matter. He needed to clean up loose threads and distractions. Besides, every soul point counts.

After he was done, he counted the small animals he had. There were only three different species. He chose the one that would be best for his needs, the rat-like omnivores, and killed the rest. He had a few insects, those he didn’t kill. There was no benefit to killing the ones he didn’t care about. Even the insects that have the least benefit for him still provide some benefit. They’re easy to maintain and easy to ignore.

Even without his intervention, they will evolve and change. They can’t leave this dungeon, no animal that he has dominated and enthralled to the dungeon can leave except in exceptional circumstances. And those situations are only available at higher levels.

That was a problem though, he needed to get outside the dungeon. He thought and thought about it for a long time, then he turned his gaze to the insects that he deemed pointless.