There were no catches that day, or the day before. Stor didn’t get an answer from the village elders - not one that he believed. He had lived with those old rags his entire life, it wasn’t hard to tell when they were concerned or lying.
Things were getting worse too. Food was becoming harder to find. This far away from the heart of the kingdom, crops and large farms were rare. There were many terrible creatures living in these old and wild forests, large farms were too fragile and expensive to manage when a large monster could destroy all of it in a day. That was what his folks told him.
Hunting was critical for their survival, especially as winter started to approach. Now, the forests were empty. The lack of animals has allowed for some mushrooms, herbs, fruits, nuts, and vegetables to be gathered in greater quantities without as much fear of predators but it wouldn’t be enough. Those plant foods didn’t store very well, the few that could read said that there were ways of preserving them but those methods had become forgotten.
They needed meat, they needed to hunt, but the animals were all gone. The forests were silent like a grave and many said the place was cursed. Stor didn’t know what to believe anymore, it was like a calamity was about to happen and no one knew what to do.
He spent much of his new found idleness praying. He wasn’t alone in these prayers.
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Alex felt he was on top of the world. The past few days had been complete hell for him as he was forced to scrape together what useful bits of his crappy dungeon together to survive. Now, he managed to actually make progress. He was still completely broke with thirty-four soul points, but he now had a lot of animals of different sizes and uses.
The ecosystem of his dungeon wasn’t going to be made in a day and what he needed were breeding pairs of animals. In the game he needed to analyze a species before he could find out their genders. Thanks to this being reality, all he needed was a close inspection to find out for himself. At least, that’s what he hoped; reproduction in this world could be completely alien.
Dungeon grass was as good as he expected, it was starting to flower and spread, carving the solid stone and turning it into more usable soil. It was slow to grow and, as a food source, barely kept his herbivores and omnivores alive. Thankfully, herbivores were able to eat meat to a certain degree.
Things to do, things to do. What he needed to prioritize is setting up the basic layout and traps for his dungeon. He didn’t want to have an aneurysm again trying to multitask and puppet a bunch of animals in a way that he, as a dungeon lord, shouldn’t do. The costs of these tactics, of frequently terraforming the cave to adapt to attacks and assaults, was far too much.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He didn’t have enough soul points to fully transform his dungeon, but there was enough to make things more secure. What he needed to do was deal with the cliff he made. It was good but not as good as he wanted. What he needed was a way to gain more animals while killing off any invaders, and that was difficult to do.
If he had more dungeon lord abilities, he could create hidden doors and other mechanisms and put them in a maze. He had no idea if the animals that had been attacking him had a path or a way to find his dungeon core, there had only been one way forward. If they didn’t then this maze would allow him to filter out animals that he wanted.
Adventurers were another problem. In the game the first few adventurers were weak but there was no guarantee that was the case here. If a wizard or a knight attacked him he was done for. He forced his mind to run in circles, trying to come up with a strategy to deal with this possible threat, but he got nothing.
He didn’t have the soul points to do anything. He could only do the best he could at the moment. What he needed to do was move the cliff and make it bigger. He fiddled with menus and holographic screens for a bit before he discovered the needed functionality. There was a way to move tunnels and structures without destroying the original and rebuilding it in the right place, saving precious soul points.
He moved his cliff deeper into the dungeon and made it taller and more deadly. Most of his animals were kept on the dungeon’s side of the cliff, away from danger and as bodyguards for the dungeon core. Just in case, he left the worn spike trap, one of the first creations he made as a dungeon lord, in between the dungeon core and the cliff.
In between the dungeon core and the entrance to his dungeon was a tricky place. He didn’t have much soul points left for anything big, and the only things he could make would keep animals and attackers away. He hated danger but he needed souls and organisms.
He decided to stop his spend-happy spurge and start saving soul points again. The future was unknown so it was best for him to be patient and careful with what he did. However, he did spend a few soul points to start unearthing the bodies that had started rotting with the stone walls of his dungeon. In the game, there were characters with true sight, being able to see through walls and barriers. He chuckled a bit to himself as he imagined what it would be like for them to see corpses of entombed animals in solid stone.
What did he need to do now? He needed to start building up rooms and floors between the dungeon core and the entrance. A single cliff wouldn’t do anything against an adventurer with a rope. In the game, animals and adventurers attacked the dungeon. Here, animals were driven mad by gods to kill this place.
What about people? Would they be driven mad with the presence of this place? He assumed that they would attack this place, but why? He didn’t ask that question from a lack of ideas but because he had too many. There were too many different possibilities of what could happen, of why people would want to destroy the dungeon.
Would the strategies from the game be useful here, or would he have to improvise with that too?