The air was tense and strained. There were few animals left - many managed to avoid or overcome the frenzy from heaven and flee into their burrows or out of the area. Only the land around the newly born dungeon was left vacant as any animal that got near it would be enthralled to attack the dungeon and die.

A far distance away from the dungeon’s opening, an ancient being stirred. Memories of eras long forgotten were relived in its dreams as the will of the world pulled it from its slumber. It was an ancient spirit born from nature at a time when the world itself was wild. It answered the call for extermination and execution.

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Alex waited a long time to gain the soul points of the dead creatures. Souls of different sizes and qualities gave differing amounts of soul points when harvested, a key mechanic from the game that seemed no different from this reality. As the second wave was made up of much larger creatures, he was able to gain a good amount of currency, though not as much as he needed.

Creating a good dungeon in Dungeon Heart wasn’t the same as building a factory or a city in other games. A dungeon was a collection of systems with the ultimate goal to lure lifeforms into the depths and harvest their souls. An important part of this was the ecosystems of the floors and room.

Dungeon cores were upgraded with soul points, gaining enough will allow him to make the dungeon core more durable and improve his dungeon. With this growth comes a cost: the infamous soul tax mechanic. More than repair or upgrading a dungeon core, dungeon cores required a certain amount of soul points within a time frame as food or fuel to keep itself running - and upgrading the dungeon core increases the amount of food it needs.

At the moment, the dungeon core was very cheap to maintain but that came at the cost of his dungeon lord abilities and the size of his dungeon. If he were to house and raise entire ecosystems of animals and plants then harvest their souls when they die, that would be enough to keep his dungeon running at the lower levels.

Ecosystems were among the most important things in any dungeon; they provided natural resources to hunt, hazards and dangers to kill adventurers, and when built correctly they could keep his dungeon running without intervention. The only problem was that the spell needed to enthrall animals into his dungeon wasn’t available at his dungeon core’s level.

Any animal within his dungeon would turn rabid and try to attack. The only way to domesticate these animals for his dungeon was that spell and that spell created a lot of problems. Souls of domesticated animals and plants gave much fewer soul points then the untamed animals of the overworld. Ultimately, in order to grow, progress, and survive; he was going to have to shoot himself in the foot.

He looked around and grimaced at the mess. There were many bits of flesh and food sticking out of the stone from the cave-in, but they weren’t enough to last long. There were many more corpses entombed in the stone that he should unearth but he didn’t have the capital to do that. There were no other paths forward, no matter where he looked. He had no choice but to upgrade his dungeon core.

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First, he healed it from its damage. Using soul points he couldn’t afford to lose, the large missing chunk of the pink crystal slowly glowed as the damage disappeared. Next, he needed to come up with a way to safeguard the animals he captures. Animals claimed by the dungeon would be attacked by the normal animals of the overworld, so he needed to get them over his trap.

He also needed to start creating traps for the next wave of animals, or worse, explorers. The animals weren’t intelligent in their mania, something he was able to exploit. Humans, or the human equivalents, weren’t generally so stupid. He felt like his mind was about to explode, so he decided to put it off the traps for the moment.

Dungeon Status:

Core Level: 1 (Hidden) [Upgrade]

Core Health: Full Health

Mana Level: Null

Dungeon Health: Null

Aspect: Null

Number of Species: 0

Abilities: [Stone Terraform]

Spells: [Thunder Shock]

Alex brought up the status screen of his dungeon and discovered that it was the same as Dungeon Heart. His core level was at one, though there was a tag labeled ‘hidden’ next to it that he was unfamiliar with. The only other unusual thing was that the core health said ‘Full Health’ instead of numbers; as he thought about it, switching out from meaningless numbers was probably best.

The mana level, dungeon health, or abilities didn’t matter to him at the moment, he focused on the ‘upgrade’ button next to core level and clicked it. The floating screen changed and showed him the cost of the upgrade and he felt cheated.

Do You Want To Upgrade Your Dungeon Core?

Cost - 75 Soul Points

The most similar mode or difficulty from the game that this reality mimicked was hard mode, but even in hard mode the first upgrade of the dungeon core only costed 50 soul points. He had just enough soul points to upgrade the core, but almost none left to do anything. However, was there a better path forward?

No, there wasn’t. Even with the upgrade, the period for him to feed the dungeon core was generous enough. He could survive with low soul points as long as nothing too big happened.

He accepted the price and chose to upgrade. Like that, the stockpile of soul points he had been saving disappeared. The pink crystal started to glow violently as its structure melted and changed. The dungeon seemed to rattle as the effects caused Alex to try and hide in a stone wall, out of sight from the blinding light.

After the core was successfully upgraded, Alex ventured out to see what had changed and discovered that nothing seemed to change. The color was a much deeper red and the surface seemed smoother, but that was it. He was hoping for something a bit more, in the game there were fireworks to celebrate the upgrade.

Alex closed his eyes, used his mind to navigate to the status screen, and prepared himself to see how bad of a situation he was in.