Corey looked over his list of potential temporary avatars.
—The ratman runt, the first on the list, was freaky. It had whiskers, a ratlike face, a long tail, sharp claws on its hands, and fur all over its lanky three and a half foot tall humanoid body.
[Ratman Runt: Level 0. The weakest of the Ratmen, this Ratman cannot use magic or weapons besides its own claws or tail, and has the following stats: Strength: 2; Stamina: 1; Agility: 1; Luck: 0; Intelligence: 0; Spirit: 0; Vitality: 10; Mana: 0; Defense: 5; Mana Cost: 20; MCU Cost: 20.]
That wasn’t going to work. The second option was just as bad.
The mantisman was a green buglike humanoid with a freaky buglike head, including a set of mandibles. It seemed to have a hard carapace covering a more or less human shaped body and dangerous looking hands and feet. The hands and feet each had five digits, but each was tipped with a wicked scythlike claw, resembling a cross between a praying mantis and some freaky alien with long sharp fingers.
[Mantisman Runt: Level 0. The weakest of the Mantismen, this creature cannot use magic or weapons besides its own claws, and has the following stats: Strength: 1; Stamina: 1; Agility: 2; Luck: 0; Intelligence: 0; Spirit: 0; Vitality: 10; Mana: 0; Defense: 8; Mana Cost: 20; MCU required: 20.]
“Seriously?” Corey asked. “These are disgusting. Are the ratman, mantisman, and antman even real game monsters?”
“It’s not my fault you don’t have more specimens.” Daniela responded with a pouty expression. “I am already doing you a favor letting you combine your human form with your creatures. It wasn’t the traditional absorption method, so I had to get special permission from Chief.”
Corey tried to close his eyes in frustration, then became more frustrated because he didn’t even have eyes. These monsters could barely be called humanoid, and the antman was nothing like the comic book hero. It was one of the grossest of them all, with an ants body, the torso of a human where the ant’s head should be, and an ant’s head on top of the human torso. It looked like a horrible ant version of an ant based centaur.
Why couldn’t this be a dragon dungeon. In most games, dragons were supposed to be able to take human forms, and being able to turn into a dragon would have been awesome.
“No,” Corey said. “I’m not going to be a mantisman, ratman, or other freaky monster. I read an article on why the game designers don’t let people play monster races in this game, and they said they worried about the mental wellbeing of anyone spending too much time in a monster’s body.”
Daniela looked up and to the side again, which Corey was suspecting was her tell for when she was communicating with the main game AI, or rulebook, or something. She finally responded, “Unfortunately if you want to make a level zero creature to use as a temporary avatar, these are the best I can offer until you capture more specimens, or level up to dungeon level one.”
“What about a dragon?” Corey asked. “How do I catch one of those? They can take human form, right?”
“Unfortunately," Daniela replied, "the weakest level dragon within the game is a Dragon Whelp, and they not only lack the ability to take human form, but are also a minimum level of 25. You would need one of the level 40 or higher dragon variants.”
At Corey’s protest, she added, “It will only be temporary. Once you reach level one, you will be able to summon your normal avatar.”
“Why not let me play a generic level zero human?” Corey asked.
“Because the human blueprint already exists and has a minimum level of one. I can’t reduce the minimum level of an existing game creature, which is why I created you some new ones. New creations are only possible when combining attributes from different creatures.”
“Gotta play as a freaky monster…” Corey huffed.
He had a choice to make, but he didn’t think he wanted to play any of them for long. He wondered how exactly he would capture a new specimen, but just then a beetle wandered into the cave and one of his rats pounced on it, crushing it between its jaws. The rat let the beetle fall to the ground and it dissolved.
[Level 0 Beetle has been slain: 0.02 Mana and 0.1 Experience Gained.]
[Would you like to absorb Beetle to Gain its Blueprint?]
[Yes] or [No]
Corey selected yes.
[New Monster Blueprint Discovered: Beetle.]
Corey focused on the final prompt to see the stats of the beetle. It was terrible. It cost the same as a mantis, but did less damage and had higher defense. Closing the prompt revealed another.
[New Temporary Dungeon Avatar Blueprint Discovered: Beetleboy.]
Corey dismissed it, not wanting to see the abomination take form. “Shouldn’t it be beetleman?” he asked.
“I thought this had a better ring to it,” Daniela responded.
“So I guess thats how I get more blueprints,” Corey said. “But why did I get both mana and the blueprint that time?”
“The mana was collected from it dying. When you kill a living creature that invades your dungeon, you gain its mana as it dies. You even gain a little mana while it’s alive inside your dungeon. Think of it as your dungeon sucking up its discarded life essence.”
“So the mana was for killing it?” Corey asked.
“Yep,” she said. “You would have gotten even more mana if you’d passed on the blueprint.”
With a disembodied sigh Corey said, “Guess it’s time then,” and he selected ratman from the list.
Corey had thought that the ratman would be the best choice since he already had a bunch of rats, but nothing happened aside from a new prompt.
[Insufficient Mana and Free MCU’s.]
He looked more closely at the ratman and realized his mistake. He needed 20 free MCU’s to summon one, and it also took 20 mana, but his mana had only regenerated to 9/25.
“Can I un-summon my monsters? I’ve maxed my MCU’s already.”
“Yes,” she replied, “you even get the expended mana back.”
Corey hesitated. He really didn’t want to be a ratman. Maybe being a disembodied core wasn’t so bad. Plus, the ratman runt was pretty pathetic. It might not be much better than commanding 50 rats. He could probably level pretty quickly anyway. “I think for now I’ll just control the rats,” Corey said.
“That’s fine,” she said. “I only added the avatar menu option to make it easier for you to grasp, but you can take personal control of any of your units you have already created. The avatar menu was just to help you get your mind around using one as an avatar. Just think of taking control of one of them, and you will find yourself piloting it as if it were your avatar.”
“I don’t want to be inside a rat,” Corey replied. “A ratman would be bad enough, and I don’t really want that either. I meant that I’m just going to command them like earlier.”
“That’s fine too,” Daniela said. “Just do it like before and focus on the rats you want to do something, and then simply command them.”
Corey sent one of them outside the dungeon to explore. He wanted to see if there was something else he could lure into his dungeon. As soon as it left his dungeon though, he felt the loss of his connection to it and it wandered off out of sight.
“Yeah,” Daniela said, “you need to take active control of one, or give it more specific commands before it leaves. Both have their disadvantages.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, controlling one directly will allow you to see whatever it sees, and to maintain control outside of your dungeon’s area, but you will lose any sense of what is happening here in the dungeon while outside of it. It will work the same way if you leave the dungeon with your old avatar once you get it back.”
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“And the other problem?” Corey asked.
“With specific enough directions, they will try to do the best they can to follow them, but will follow them exactly. For example, the rat you sent off to scout will probably wander around looking at stuff until something eats it. It won’t report back to you, or fight back against an attacker, because you didn’t give it any commands to do so before it left.”
“I didn’t have time to give it any more commands.” He protested.
“That,” she said happily, “is what a directive is for.”
“Go on,” Corey prodded.
“Let’s try this,” Daniela said. “There, now focus on one of the rats and think directives.”
Corey did, and a window opened up.
[Please select the Directive type you would like to add to.]
[Current Broad Unit Directives: None.]
[Current Unit Specific Directives: None.]
It was a bit different than the usual yes or no selections, but each option could clearly be selected. He selected broad unit directives, and started laying out his generic directives.
He added directives for them to fight for their own survival when they could either injure or defeat the enemy, to retreat if the enemy was just a little too powerful, or, thanks to Daniela’s prompting, he added a directive that if already inside the dungeon, they would fight to the death anyway, no matter how pointless it was.
Before he could get past the combat directives though, he got a prompt notifying him that he was now at 24.5/25 monster control units. He guessed that his rat scout had died, which was a good thing since it was worthless to him. However, he still had to finish his directives for the rats to bring back useful things before he could send any more out.
Once he had done so, he told 14 of his rats to spread out from the cave, being careful not to lay down any tracks while hunting for useful things or critters they could kill. He wasn’t sure what they would find, but was excited to see what they brought back.
He sent another ten rats out of the cave with instruction to use their tails to sweep away any trace of rat tracks leading to the cave, and to make false trails that would be easy to follow leading to other cracks in the rock farther to the north and south of the cliff.
Not ten minutes later, one of his rats came scurrying back into the cave with a pinecone in its mouth. It dropped the pinecone, which dissolved.
[New Blueprint: Pinecone, Mana Cost: 0.1.]
[Mana Gained: Pinecone, 0.1 Mana.]
[Experience Gained: Pinecone, 0.01.]
Corey said, “did that just give me 0.1 mana and the blueprint? And experience too?”
“Yes,” she replied, “The pinecone isn’t considered a living object, so unlike with the slain beetle earlier, this was not an invasion. Once your defenders defeat an enemy outside the dungeon and drag it back, or drop a scavenged item within the dungeon, it will automatically be absorbed and give mana and the blueprint, as well as an even smaller amount of experience.”
“So scavanging follows its own rules?” Corey asked.
“Yep,” Daniela replied. “It functions differently than excavation, alteration, and active absorption because the dungeon has not been invaded, and any of your defenders who die outside the dungeon are beyond your control and you will simply lose the mana used to create them if they do not return for you to absorb later. You also don’t gain experience for anything they kill while outside the dungeon, only a lesser amount if they drag it back. Think of it as a risk versus reward kind of thing.”
It made a sort of sense, greater rewards, but higher risk.
“But,” she added excitedly, “now you can create as many pinecones as you have mana for!”
The rats continued to bring things from the forest, including leaves, rocks, bark from a tree, as well as some small sticks. One of the rats even brought back a piece of string that was listed as linen cloth. They all gave a small amount of mana and experience. He supposed that scavenging for things was probably how the dungeon had gotten the experience that it had.
It’s a good thing the dungeon absorbed it all, he thought. Otherwise, there would be a massive pile of junk in here.
Corey had another thought, so he asked, “Can I recreate larger versions of the things I have in my database?” He tried to clarify, “I mean, since I have access to linen cloth now, could I make a large piece of cloth or rope out of it?”
“Oh, yes,” she said happily. “As long as it is a piece of a larger item, or it’s made of the same material, you get the whole blueprint. That pinecone and small stick you got earlier also gave you the blueprints for the entire tree they came from, so you could make large timbers or a stump if you wanted to.” Then, with a thought, she added, “Well, small boards, or one large board, for now anyway. You could probably create the whole tree over time, but the mana put into the blueprint is lost until you fill it completely and only then does it materialize.”
“Like filling a bucket with water one cup at a time…” Corey said.
“Exactly!” she said happily. “Now you’re getting it.”
Corey started thinking of all the traps he had seen in games he’d played in the past. Spike pits, pressure plate traps that shot poisoned darts out of holes in walls, tripwires with deadfalls, and other countless means to kill people going through a dungeon. He still didn’t have what he needed for most of them, but he thought he might be able to make a spiked pit trap.
“How do I make a trap?” He asked.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said.
It turned out to be pretty easy. He entered the dungeon builder menu, and then found the sub-menu for creating blueprints. He was starting to get used to the strange omniscient viewpoint he had within the dungeon, so when this menu was the same he didn’t mind.
He could see the trap he was creating from all angles, and excavated a pit into the stone floor, and fused the sharp sticks he envisioned, pointed side up, right into the bottom a few inches apart from one another.
The trap was only three feet deep at its lowest point, which was the limit of his dungeon area. But with all its spikes, it still looked extremely deadly.
Then, he used the linen. The thread had been part of a large cloth sheet. He created a large piece of it and stretched it over the pit, embedding the piece of fabric into the stone at the edges of the top of the pit.
He then created a bunch of dead leaves to cover it up. His final trap was pretty basic, but he liked it. He wasn’t sure the cloth would tear easily enough to catch smaller animals, so he put a bunch of holes in it, weakening its structure so that it barely held up the leaves and resembled more of a weak net than a tarp.
[New Trap Created: Basic Spiked Pit Trap. Damage: 10-100; Durability: 20; Trap detection required to spot: None. Mana Cost: 10.]
None of his rats had died yet, and he had already regenerated up to 15/25 mana with the bits and bobs they had been bringing in, along with his regeneration, so he figured he could just let his rats have a bit more time while he tested this out. He placed the trap.
It was pretty obvious. His choice of concealment with the leaves would have worked fine on the forest floor, but in the dungeon it stood out against the packed dirt and rock covering the floor elsewhere.
“How much mana would it take to put a bunch more dead leaves in the cave to make it blend in?” Corey asked.
Daniela pointed at the entrance. “It would take about three mana to create enough to reach the trap, but I would recommend that you continue beyond it.”
“Can you help me do that?”
“I simply need your authorization to use the mana,” she replied, eyes lighting up.
“Uh, Okay.” Corey said. “Just use five mana then, and continue it into the dungeon as far as you can and make it look like the wind blew them in.”
Leaves materialized across the cave. Corey smiled. It was perfect. The leaves would have been a pain to place himself, but if he had a digital assistant, why not use it?
“What else can you do?” Corey asked.
“I can preform any of the functions that you can, but I may not get things exactly as you want them if you aren’t descriptive enough. I also have authority to make changes to the interface to assist you. Are the leaves okay?”
“The leaves are perfect,” Corey said, and he immediately received a prompt.
[Blueprint Updated: Leaf Camouflaged Spiked Pit Trap; Damage: 10-20; Durability: 20; Trap detection level required to spot: Novice, level 10; Mana Cost: 15.]
Corey still couldn’t log out, but he found himself finally having fun. He figured he might as well play the dungeon until the game designers found a workaround to unlock the log out option. Presumably he was on the list, so it probably wouldn’t take long.
Besides, things were going good, and even if they did get him a log out option soon, he was enjoying this, and owning a dungeon would be pretty awesome. The prize money would also be good enough to convince his dad. I just need to earn it, he thought.
“Daniela,” Corey said. “I don’t have access to the game’s Wiki anymore, can you give me access?”
“Why do you need to access it?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be focused on improving the dungeon?”
So that was it, Corey realized. She had removed it on purpose because she thought it could be a distraction.
“Well,” Corey said, “I want to see if there has been any new information released for prizes for leveling a dungeon, or the best methods for leveling one up, and it would probably motivate me to work harder at leveling this thing. Besides that, I need to see how fast other people are leveling their dungeons so that I can try and stay ahead of them. There are other things that would be useful to be able to look up as well.”
“I can tell you the prizes if you’d like. Unfortunately, other player’s specific dungeon information is classified. You should focus on the matter at hand!” she said happily.
“Come on!” Corey said. He did want to know the specifics, but access to the Wiki could be super helpful to figure out what was going on. He didn’t trust Daniela not to censor things. “Can’t you just give me access to the Wiki? I need to know whats going on outside my dungeon to be able to guide it in a direction that will be competitive.”
“I can’t give you access to the Wiki, but I can show you where you are on the rankings and what the prizes are, as well as answer any other questions about what is going on outside the dungeon, as long as they are not classified.”
A couple prompts appeared. He opened the first one, which showed the rankings, but the names were all blank except for his own. He was currently in last place. He was relieved to see that nobody had gotten too far ahead of him. There were a couple players that were level three, and a few level two, and a bunch more at level one, but he was the only one still at zero. Looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me, he thought.
Closing the rankings window, he opened the second prompt showing the prize money for winning.
“Woah,” he said. Seeing that dungeon prizes were even better than those for being mayor and leveling up a town.
According to the prompt window’s information, the reward for reaching level ten first was 10,000 credits, level 20 was 25,000, level 30 was 50,000, 40 was 100,000, and finally, the reward for reaching level 50 first was 250,000 credits. Even better, the company would pay the taxes so that was actually the take home amounts.
There were even prizes for people who got second or third place in reaching level 50. They were much less, but second place still got 50,000, and third got 25,000. There was even a small prize for fourth through twentieth place reaching level 50, getting 10,000 each.
There sure is a lot of money put into the Dungeon Master challenge… Corey thought. Still, why do I feel like I’m falling into a well lain trap?