Andres stopped in front of the entrance to the dungeon. The hunters of the village stared with him at the new, faint imprints of paw marks and tracks leading to the dungeon. His knowledge of the monsters of these forests was lacking, but the pale expressions of the hunters told him everything he needed to know.

There were stories of monsters from the deeper parts of the forest being drawn into this dungeon. From what information he was able to glean, multiple monsters were drawn in this time. This was believed to be an increase as, in the past known incidents, only one monster entered at a time.

For him, this put his mission in an…interesting situation. He could just walk into the dungeon and start a preliminary exploration, something which the guild master would have wanted. The issue though was that he held no loyalty to the old toad of a bastard; he did not want to die just to line that man’s pockets.

However, he did need to do something to line his own pockets. He considered sending in others, even for just a moment, before dismissing it. The people he brought with him didn’t have the knowledge and experience with dungeons like he did. There was a good chance that they would only get themselves killed, which would make it impossible for the knowledge from the exploration to be passed on.

He sighed to himself. He needed to put some skin and balls into the game - the only person here that had the best chance of survival was himself. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to bring the rest of the party with him. It might be best to drag one of the village hunters too, they had a better understanding of this part of the world. Chances were, their experience and knowledge with the strange things in the forests would help the most in the dungeon.

At worst, they would become just another body. The issue was, well, everything. The village was very dependent on the city of Millpond for food after the strangeness of the dungeon scared away the animals they relied on. This was a very useful collar and leash, but the descendants of exiles were rabid creatures. They had pride, from where Andres didn’t know or understand.

Trying to coerce them to do anything would only cause more stubbornness. These were a relatively free people, and any change to that would only cause him grief. However, it wasn’t his job to care about them. They may be proud and stubborn, but they are starving. There wasn’t enough strength left to fight him.

He chose to return to the village one final time before investigating the dungeon. If his paranoia was pointless, then so what.

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Alex used the soul points to heal his dungeon core. He debated whether to upgrade the thing or feed it, but he decided to fulfill the tax and hold off on upgrading the dungeon. After all, the next level will only cause maintenance to become more expensive.

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Instead, it was time to use his surplus to start making new creatures for his dungeon. Some lore from Dungeon Heart that he remembered, though he hadn’t had the chance to validate, was that constructs, elementals, and other strange magical creatures all had cores to their power, much like the dungeon.

The blood rot had its weaknesses as he discovered with the tall ghoul he fought against. It was a bit of a picky eater, for example a lot of the wooden beast wasn’t eaten by it. There were also monsters with either strong resistance to it or flat out immunity. His next creation needed to provide value, target these sorts of monsters that the blood rot can’t, and keep the blood rot in check - all at the same time.

This all had to be based around hive insects, which the singular hive queen he had was becoming increasingly hard to manage. [Create Dungeon Creature] had the ability to reverse aging to a certain extent, but like all things in the dungeon it was getting expensive. Right now, he needed less things on his plate taking up attention and soul points.

While gruesome, the best way for a hive insect to hunt golems was to use them as a hive. Elementals, golems, and constructs generally weren’t made of food or anything edible, so there had to be a different reason for them to be hunted. In other words, similar to the blood rot, they had to become parasites.

He went to work designing these new creatures. Instead of eating the blood rot, like the rotten rats, the insects will instead use the stalks of the blood rot as a home. He remembered from a search rabbit hole that some species of mushrooms are actually parasitized and converted. In other words, a spore of a type of fungus invades and transforms the mushroom into a different type.

That would be what happens with them. All he needed to do was change the behavior of the rotten rats, something that shouldn’t cost too much, to defend against these insects and everything will be good. The insects will need to be able to defend themselves, especially if rotten rats evolve to attack them.

The insects couldn’t use the blood rot stalks as food, since this instinct will be pointless against other potential enemies. Rather, he wanted these insects to be a lot like carpenter ants, that seemed to be the best way forward.

Blood rot wasn’t a magical organism, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have magic. These insects will instead hijack a host and set up a farm that uses the host as a battery and power source. Whatever they grow from this will be in some way valuable.

It took him a lot longer than creating the blood rot or the rotten rats combined. This was a surprisingly complex organism, but a hive was a complex thing. The big problem was making the product of the hive valuable. He took an idea from honey bees and decided to make the stuff the hive created useful for building extensions and replacements for the hive as the host fails.

With that, he finished his creation and had to come up with a name. He decided ‘Shell Bugs’ would be the name.