What he needed were soul points. In order to get them, he needed to wait for animals to get down here, hopefully fast. He wasn’t sure if enthralling a creature and integrating it into his dungeon would increase the frequency of attacks; this was only a superstition from the game. He and others always felt that the difficulty spiked after claiming their first animals.

He brought up his status screen and stared at the new spell he got, [Dominate Creature]. This spell was quite cheap, costing only one soul point for use, but that came at the cost of it being ineffective. Only smaller or dumber creatures had a good chance of becoming enthralled with only one casting, stronger, bigger, and smarter animals needed frequent casting to whittle down their resolve.

There was another new addition, an ability called [Create Dungeon Organism]. At a higher dungeon core level this ability grants him the power to create new animals and monsters to inhabit his dungeon but at this level he could only create a simple grass to prevent his captured animals from starving. It was necessary, eventually, but he didn’t need it right now.

Alex waited and waited, and eventually an animal finally attacked his dungeon. It looked like a rat and before it could kill itself on the spike trap, he casted [Dominate Creature] on it. The psychological spell overpowered its mania and caused it to writhe on the ground as control over its mind was slowly conquered. He waited some more but his luck was bad, a single spell wasn’t enough to do it. He had two soul points left, so he casted it again.

With the second casting, the bastard of a rat became his dungeon's first resident. Now, he had only a single soul point left. If another large attack happened, he was dead for sure. He didn’t even have enough to create a bridge over his spike pit for the rat to take shelter deeper in his dungeon.

The domination spell completely overwrote a creature’s instincts and knowledge. There was little use to dominating a sapient creature, they would be regressed to a more animalistic and far less intelligent state. For a certain duration, a newly dominated creature was charmed and under the control of the dungeon lord as it was reprogrammed.

Analyze New Species?

Alex ordered the rat to start eating some of the flesh from the previous wave and he was forced to wait again. Above it was a text box asking for an analysis, a mechanic from the game that gave him information about the new creature. This would cost soul points though, something that he didn’t have to spare.

He waited some more for another creature to appear, this time was an animal that looked similar to a badger. He was under no delusion that a single casting of his domination spell could subdue a big creature like that but it wasn’t a good gamble. The badger rushed towards his conquered rat in its mania but his connection with the small animal was more useful than he expected.

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The badger was fast but the rat was nimble, and with the help of his dungeon fairy he was able to just barely trick the badger into jumping into the spike pit. The animal joined the mess and started a long, slow death; a death so slow in no small part by the carcasses of the spike traps past victims providing slight protection from the spikes.

With the badger killed, he was able to gain three soul points - one more than he was expecting. He used two of them to create a small passage around the spike trap for his rat to cross safely to help guard his dungeon core. He used one of his final two soul points to create a single sprout of his dungeon first flora.

He didn’t have the level to create a custom plant but, like in the game, there was a single pre-existing template for a basic dungeon vegetation, creatively called ‘dungeon grass.’ It was terrible in terms of nutrition, growth, or reproduction, but it was hardy and could be planted anywhere, even in solid rock.

With that, he waited again. Eventually, another small animal appeared, the same species as the rat. He forced his rat to run away and lead the attacking small animal deeper into the dungeon, before aiming and casting his domination spell on the new rat. He forced his dungeon minion to attack the rat and prayed that this time his spell would work.

Under the blows of his rat, the attacking rat failed to ward off the psychological attack as its attention was repeatedly forced away by the new injuries. If he hadn’t kept attacking the rat would have had the mental strength to defeat his spell but the combination of mania and the attacks managed to weaken it enough to become enthralled.

Alex breathed a sigh of relief as the rat finally succumbed to his control. He ignored the many different crises his dungeon was under and appreciated that he managed to achieve something. He didn’t know if the two rats he had were a breeding pair but that didn’t matter, until the charm period was over he had another line of defense.

“Dungeon fairy, do you know how much longer until the next major wave comes?” Alex asked to the air around him. The dungeon fairy emerged from wherever it was and froze for a moment, buffering as it tried its best to answer him.

“I don’t know for sure but the best guess I have is a couple to three days. I can feel the fluctuations of mana to a certain degree, meaning that I would know when an attack is about to happen. That is it, the enemy doesn’t send me any notifications about their plans of attack.”

The relatively monotone voice of the dungeon fairy made it hard for Alex to tell if he was being sarcastic or just brutally honest. Either way, he didn’t get the information he wanted. He further inquired what monsters or creatures would attack but those were only educated guesses.

He was going to have to improvise a lot more than he would like.

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Stor felt unusually on edge as he took the wild and feral animal to the village elders. They were the wisest people this far away from the heartland of the kingdom. They were usually very vocal about every little annoyance, from the kids to how hard it has become for them to eat. When he showed them the animal, they didn’t utter any words.

There were words shared in their crossed gazes, and each moment that they held their tongue made him feel dread. He told himself that this wasn’t anything odd, that they were just curious or eccentric as all elderly were. This wasn’t a bad omen, this was just a weird thing that sometimes happened, like a storm it will pass.

He waited a long time for any words to be spoken.