The forest spirit struggled to stay awake. Out of the many things in the world, it wasn’t greatly powerful. All its life it had been the ruler of this forest and the many wild things within it. It was ancient, the last of a long gone era. Despite its modest strength, it was beloved by the world and the heavens.

A great threat had appeared and the pain and fury of the world was waking it up. The many years it had spent asleep weren’t something he could overcome in a day. It would take time for him to shed his lethargy and stale flesh and to recover his power. Until then, he would arrange and guide attacks to protect this forest.

----------------------------------------

Life was now hell for Alex. He had been preparing for an attack every moment of the entire day, for what he assumed to be days. The further he went from the dungeon core the less he was there; at the entrance he didn’t see anything but a fog or mist that acted almost like a membrane that separated his dungeon from the overworld.

Stray animals had attacked his dungeon, most of them were used to recover a small amount of soul points which he spent on enthralling the rest. He was utterly destitute and depression weighed on him like a lead whale as his great and terrible army was composed of small forest animals from a princess movie.

He genuinely didn’t know how he could survive the next onslaught. The soul points he needed were supposed to be awarded to him but there was nothing. His dungeon fairy seemed to become distraught whenever he brought it up, so he stopped, but that didn’t change the goliath danger he needed to overcome.

There was an idea from Earth that he remembered; that the poor and impoverished had to spend more money on essentials then those with more money. For his dungeon, it was the same. Even a small amount of twenty-five soul points would allow him to make his dungeon much safer and efficient, allowing him to save more.

The only thing he could do was amass a small force of animals, the cheapest and most adaptable defense possible. None of them were strong, none of them had magic abilities; however, he had them under direct control for the time being and that was the best weapon he had.

He used them to clean up the carcasses stuck in his spike trap, freeing important space in his only constructed defense. He didn’t need to fight birds anymore, he had enthralled a few and it should be easy to distract any frenzied animal away from total focus on destroying his dungeon core. In the game, enough minions in one space caused any flying enemies to start attacking them, which is a strategy he desperately needed.

Bigger animals were a concern. His spike trap was made for small creatures, if something like a deer or a bear came in, he couldn't do much. Whatever the case, he would have to improvise a way out. He had spent a large portion of his idle time coming up with new strategies to take advantage of the complexities of reality, like when he caused a cave-in.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

However, there are only so many tricks he can pull out of his ass. He didn’t think that the berserking animals could learn from past mistakes - he didn’t think it was possible for them to strategize in the first place, much less while driven mad. However, this wouldn’t be the first major deviation from the game.

“Dungeon Lord, animals are collecting and surrounding the entrance of the dungeon,” announced his dungeon fairy. The dread he had been feeling for the forever he had been preparing boiled up as his mind began to run at the speed of sound. Hundreds of different possibilities, both good and bad, danced in his head as he tried to focus.

“Hey, dungeon fairy, why are animals gathering right now instead of just attacking. The animals that had attacked the past few days didn’t seem to gather or wait, they just attacked. Why is that?”

“The hatred of dungeons by the gods and forces of this world causes any animal near a dungeon to become feral and try to destroy the dungeon. However, the influence of a powerful entity can overcome this divine mania and force the creatures to wait. Their power seems too weak to infiltrate the dungeon’s territory, so they can’t command the creatures from outside. This entity is compensating by forcing animals to wait and build up.”

Alex didn’t like this answer because it meant that a force from this strange world noticed him and was trying to get him killed. Maybe he won’t die if his dungeon core is destroyed but he was far too cowardly to try and find out. Being unknown and ignored was the best defense, now that he had confirmation that an actual thing was taking action against him he felt much more on edge.

He was forced to wait as the army gathered beyond the fog wall, unable to see just how screwed he was. He looked back at his cave and the utter mess it was. He hoped that the first animals sent through were small, so that he actually could have a chance to fight them off. Better yet, just one large animal would be great.

His wishes weren’t met. A few large animals, one that looked like a deer and two that looked sort of like wolves, breached into his dungeon with a large amount of small animals. When they entered, they seemed clear-minded but after a few moments in his dungeon they became feral. The large animals were the second fastest, only being beaten by the birds.

It was the birds that he needed to deal with. He commanded one of his birds, the fast one he had, to draw their aggression away from his dungeon core. His bird drawed them towards a group of rats that were waiting to attack and break their wings. His other birds used their acrobatic and dexterous abilities to distract the larger animals, leaving most of the smaller animals to attack.

A couple of his rodents waited at the end of his spike trap. He hoped that they would distract from the one, small path around his spike trap he used for his enthralled creatures and lure the animals into their deaths. It mostly worked, the spike trap was large enough to prevent jumping over it and his dominated creatures drew most of them into jumping into the spikes.

A few found the other path and a few managed to jump on the other bodies of the animals dying on the spikes to cross. Alex grit his metaphysical teeth as he was forced to micromanage several groups of animals to prevent any of them from dying too much.

He used his distractions to lead the small animals to the rodents he was using to defeat birds while he led the bigger animals towards the spike trap. He prayed that the animals dying from his spikes would die quickly so that he could finally get enough soul points to do something.