He used his bird to lure the larger animals to the spike trap. He didn’t think that his spike trap could severely hurt the deer-like creature, but the medium-sized creatures were a different story. He used the bird to lure them to the spike pit and distracted them from the danger. The deer’s size caused it to only slip one foot into the trap, hardly injuring it though giving it a bit of a limp.

The medium creatures were different. They fell in and critically injured themselves though Alex wasn’t sure if the wounds were close to fatal. However, the other animals clinging to life were forced deeper into the clawing spikes and many died faster. The moments were tense as he was forced to wait for their souls to be pulled into his dungeon core before, finally, he had enough points to start doing something.

He was in a total crisis at the moment with the animals he had left, but a quick question from his dungeon fairy confirmed that there was a larger force outside. He had no clue why they didn’t attack at once but it didn’t matter, if another thing came in and attacked it was over.

“Dungeon fairy, take control of some of these dominated animals while I create defenses!” Alex shouted.

“I don’t think I can do that…”

“Just do it!”

Bigger animals were his biggest problem, being able to jump or avoid his traps without much difficulty. The tight spaces of the cave were somewhat restrictive but that advantage was useless without traps or enthralled predators or spells. He used his soul points to create a large cliff, molding to stone to create a large enough drop to hopefully cause broken legs and bones.

That addition cost him a lot and he took back control from his dungeon fairy. It managed to keep most of the dungeon’s creatures alive but its command was difficult and chaotic, like slurred speech through an unstable call. He tried to retake control of the situation but he lost more animals.

All of the enemy birds were injured enough to make flight difficult. His only still-flying bird was distracting the deer but was running on shock and adrenaline. All of his animals would require a long rest at best or the expensive healing spell at worst. He would need to gain new creatures from the next wave.

Turning back to the ongoing fights he kept his bird trying to get the deer-thing killed on the spike trap while he used the rest of his forces and the least amount of spells possible to kill the rest. The deer was big but it was insane and eventually it tripped up enough to get injured and a bad limp. He used the few animals remaining to bite its neck and arteries.

Just as the final blow was made, the next wave attacked. This time, the mania that was supposed to happen took a few seconds longer to appear but that didn’t make the animals smarter. The majority of the force seemed to be saved for this wave but that was the mysterious entity's fatal mistake.

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A few of the animals were smart enough to stop at the cliff he made but the ones that managed to not jump off were pushed off by their allies. Many of the big, medium, and small animals fell and got hurt. The larger sizes created larger impacts with the majority of creatures getting up being the smaller ones that his spike trap was designed to kill. The rest had, at best, a limp - many were incapacitated from the fall.

With almost all of the larger animals having broken or fractured legs or remaining at the top of the cliff and out of his hair, he focused on mining soul points. Small omnivores like rats were among the most important creatures for a dungeon to have. Artificial ecosystems were a lot more efficient with them, scavenging corpses and carcasses while not being picky. Outside of the more basic herbivores, they were the most important pillar.

What he needed though were soldiers and small rodents weren’t useful. The creatures that looked like wolves and badgers were the best option. Wolves, if he remembered correctly, were omnivores and he assumed that these creatures were similar. Besides, the walls of the dungeon literally had pockets of meat that should be taken advantage of.

The rest of the fight was him using the few animals under his control to bait and lure as many as possible to their deaths. The soul points he harvested were used to dominate a number of carefully selected creatures. The larger animals were heavily injured and didn’t need as many castings of his domination spell to enthrall; many of them actually succumbed to only one casting due to their pain.

The issue he was dealing with was the cost of healing these animals. Healing wasn’t cheap. Brutally injuring an animal to make it easier to dominate and then healing the injuries after was slightly less expensive than trying to dominate a large, healthy animal. This strategy was hard to do though, there was a point where the injuries became so extensive it wasn’t worth the cost to heal.

He had to pick out the ones that were injured enough but not too much, and he didn’t have the eye for that. With most of this force neutralized though, he had more time to think and plan than he had expected. He thought that something would come up, that some deviation from the game would appear and destroy his dungeon.

Maybe he was a smart survivor, like the people from the movies. Alex felt himself smile a little bit at the thought of him being a survivor. He was just good at games, that was the only thing that he could think of. He spent the rest of his time harvesting soul points and gaining new minions for the dungeon until the final enemy was slain and the assault was thwarted.

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The ancient spirit of the forest felt long forgotten hatred boil up inside of it. The cyst, the tumor, something that was a prison yet not quite; that godless place was hard for him to peer through. It was like he was trying to see into a fog or cloud as the barrier of that heretical territory made any insight almost impossible.

It had tried testing out the defenses, sending in a team of different sizes and strengths in hope to take advantage of a weakness in the hatching, rebelling cave. It even sacrificed some of its power with the hopes that it could see or control the animals better while inside of the evil place. None of its plans worked.

There was something horrible about having power yet being unable to peer into a place weaker than it. It could feel that cave’s influence, even from so far away. It understood why the gods and powers of the world hated the evil place. What could it do to attack?

It might truly need to attack the cave itself.