Plants were necessary in Dungeon Heart, but this wasn’t Dungeon Heart. He had watched plenty of movies, read plenty of books, and played plenty of games. In many fantasy stories, caves like this dungeon didn’t have plants growing in them. They had glowing mushrooms.

In other words, he was going to scavenge his library of media for new ideas and strategies. The big thing he needed to solve was to create a type of mushroom that lived without light and without his dungeon’s non-existent mana system.

Mushrooms. Magical mushrooms. What did he have? He looked around, but he only had stone walls, rats in various states of injury, and the bodies of enemies piled up. Bodies…now that he thought of it, there were still some bodies entombed in stone from that one time, right?

Eh, he’ll deal with it later. He thought about it for a little bit, then he came up with an idea. He remembered this idea from a science fantasy game of crystal zombies. Bodies, or maybe blood, within a cave would start to grow strange, psychic crystals. These bodies would become encased in crystals and the crystals started to animate them.

While it may be possible for him to do, though it wasn’t in Dungeon Heart, creating such crystals wasn’t his objective. Nor was it to create zombies. However, this gave him an idea for his fungus.

Another problem he had been facing was the lack of anything valuable in the dungeon. There was no reason for adventurers to brave his dungeon without something to lure them in. The bait of choice could be anything, though magical minerals, metals, and treasure tend to be the best. Natural resources like animals, plants, and fungus worked too.

If he were to create a magical mushroom with properties of healing and fullness, usable to both himself and adventurers. If this mushroom or fungus was magical, truly magical, then it can supplement itself to a certain extent. Mana systems were important for many parts of the dungeon, but he was two levels off. Creating an artificial, small mana system could be beneficial.

There was a problem though. It wasn’t his wallet for once, a soul point count over fifty should be enough - at least to start. No, what bothered him was that, much like the poison customization, customizing the fungus was also vastly different in the details than the game. Only on the surface did it look the same or similar.

He checked with the rats and found that customizing animals seemed to be the same. There were templates like the poisons too. However, while there was a template that he was interested in, no matter where he looked, there was no skill tree, shop, or any way to gain new attributes. He expected all his powers to be more complex than the game, not a complete downgrade.

He spent far too long staring at the holographic screen, trying to make sense of what he was looking at. One of the prepared templates was a fungal disease, and as he investigated it he discovered that these templates had attributes, ones that he was familiar with. Yet, he couldn’t separately use these attributes in his own combinations.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Dungeon fairy!” He shouted, a headache blooming in his mind despite his specter state.

His dungeon fairy appeared in front of him and seemed to sense his distress.

“What is troubling you, Dungeon Lord?”

“Where are the attributes for creating a new dungeon organism? I am trying to use this mold to create a new type of fungus for this dungeon, but there are only templates for it. Where can I use attributes and create my own organisms? Something not from a template.”

“Hmm…you aren’t supposed to yet. You need to complete tasks in order to do this. Until then, I recommend you use the templates.”

Alex felt himself develop a spiritual aneurysm. “What do you mean?! What tasks? Why aren’t I supposed to? If I had gotten any support; soul points, rewards, anything; then I would use the templates. But I can’t. I am trying my best, work with me for FUCK’S SAKE!”

The dungeon fairy, like always, fell into thought or processing - he wasn’t sure yet - and it appeared to look around. Alex waited silently, frustration and fury brewing in his gut. It genuinely felt like his reincarnation or transmigration or transportation into this world was a mistake.

“There does seem to be a problem… Due to the extraneous circumstances, many beyond your or my control, I believe that a nonstandard strategy should be implemented. There was good reason not to do this, but there is no other solution.”

Congratulations!

Your achievements in creating dungeon organisms have unlocked more powerful and precise customization tools!

’Advanced Organism Customization’ Activated!

“I have updated your abilities. Please look over them,” said the dungeon fairy.

Alex felt relieved and checked the new functionality of [Create Dungeon Organism], but soon wished he hadn’t.

“What the…”

The simple UI and visuals were gone. What replaced it was something ripped straight out of a DOS prompt.

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Hasil struggled to keep his eyes open. The lack of food was really starting to get to him. He was an old man and didn’t need much, but even his appetite was starving. The small amount of food they got from the trading trip was nice but didn’t last.

He wouldn’t be this tired if it weren’t for that damned cave. The message from the wizard, demon, ghost, or whatever evil thing was in there had caused all of the elders to forgo sleep. Combined with his ignored hunger, he barely mustered the energy to not fall asleep at the table.

After so much debating, they came to an agreement on the interpretation of the message from the dungeon. The message was a rat carrying a bone and waving it at the entrance, then the rat showing its tall then its head.

Clearly, this was a threat or warning. ‘Only your bones shall remain, all flesh eaten from the bottom to the top.’ There were other possible interpretations - though the interpreted threats or warnings didn’t fit.

What kept the elders up was the request. Why make a threat except to gain or coerce something. The issue was that no requests or demands were made. Perhaps the bone meant the dungeon wanted bones, or food, or something. If that was the case, then what did a rat’s tail and head mean?

None of them had any idea.