As it turned out, wolves were likely not the strongest creatures outside Corey’s dungeon. The way Daniela had explained it, the area around the dungeon would start having stronger monster nests spawn. The nests were like a simple version of a dungeon core, but but could only spawn monsters.

He was reminded of the prompt he’d received when teleporting to the valley from the starting coastal town. This must be what it meant by scaling difficulty zone, he thought.

“Exactly,” Daniela said.

Corey didn’t even comment on her reading his mind, instead asking for clarification. “What factors effect how quickly the monster get stronger?”

“There are a few,” Daniela replied. “Your dungeon being here is one of them. Having a player ran town here will amplify that even more. And, it is further amplified because of your proximity to the town and the boarder mountain range of the wild lands. These same factors also increase the number of monster nests that will be spawning, in addition to the higher levels that the monsters receive.”

“Won’t that mean that the players won’t be able to do quests outside the town?”

“They can during the day,” Daniela said with a shrug, walking over to sit next to his dungeon core on the little shelf at the back of the cave.

He walked over and asked, “So the monsters only spawn at night?”

“The monsters in this world all retreat to their monster nests and protect them during the day. They are only actively attacking towns and your dungeon at night, or when their nest is under attack.”

“So people will still be able to do the repeatable lifebloom quest and stuff during the day,” Corey said, rubbing his chin. “Interesting game mechanic, but I’m sure some players will love playing at night.”

“Yep,” Daniela said. “Plus, the stat gains for adventurers around a dungeon are also boosted, but not as much as experience gained within the dungeon or defending a town at night.”

“Bonus experience, huh?” Corey said.

He walked over to one of his rats and commanded it to walk out of the crevice in the wall to stand in front of him. He then pulled out his rat-smashing beat-stick and smashed its head. It took two strikes to kill it, but he was rewarded with a prompt, just not the one he was hoping for.

[You Have Defeated: Level 1 Rat. As this was your own Defender Unit, and posed no threat to you, you gain zero Experience. Nice try.]

“You can’t get experience from killing your own critters,” Daniela said with a chuckle. “At least, not unless you command them to attack you first. That might work.”

Corey shrugged, only a little disheartened. He had hoped to get easy experience. Instead he had a thought, If I’m going to be stuck here until Chuck figures things out, I should probably make this place less terrible to spend my time in.

The problem was, he didn’t have much to work with aside from stones, rats, and other things the rats had collected. He pulled out his knife and tried skinning the rat, hoping to get some leather to work with. It was a horrible experience, but after a minute he got a prompt.

[Profession Gained: Skinning, Novice 1/75. You can now skin animals and intuitively know the best way to do so.]

[Item Received: Ruined Small Pelt.]

Corey absorbed the pelt, opting to gain mana rather than the blueprint. He got 0.5 mana for it. He wasn’t sure what a ruined rat pelt was worth in town, if anything, but he didn’t think it could be much.

He tried to cut off chunks of meat and was rewarded with a large chunk of meat coming free, almost of its own accord, only to leave a skeleton behind. He was glad for the lack of guts and mess, even if it was a bit unrealistic. The smell of the rat meat wasn’t bad, but it did have a little of that raw meat odor to it.

He received another prompt.

[Profession Gained: Butchering, Novice, 1/75. This is a sub-skill of the Cooking Profession.]

[Profession Gained: Cooking, Novice, 1/75. You can now cook basic foods.]

[Item Received: Small Chunk of Meat.]

Corey absorbed it and selected yes when prompted to gain the blueprint.

[Blueprint Gained: Small Chunk of Meat. Mana cost 0.5]

Yes! Corey thought in excitement, Now I can just create meat to trade to Anna. He was starting to see a lot of cash in his future. He had been worried this would be a waste of mana, but it looked like the mana cost of the meat and pelt would be the same as a level one rat, which cost one mana, and she would undoubtedly pay more for already harvested meat and skins.

The odd thing though, was that after the meat was removed, the skeleton was still there. Corey chuckled as he realized that the bones would never hold themselves together in real life, but this was a game… He tried absorbing the skeleton to see what happened.

[Absorb blueprint?]

[Yes] or [No]

He selected yes.

[New Material Blueprint Acquired: Rat Bones. Mana cost 0.5]

He could feel all his options in his material creation mode, and under the rat bone material, he could sense that he could not only recreate dead rat bones to have strewn about his cave, he could use it as a crafting material in his creation mode as well.

“Will I be limited to only using rat bones in the crafting menu?” Corey asked.

“Yes, until you gain other blueprints anyway,” Daniela said. “But I can sense you are confused.”

“Well,” Corey said. “When I absorbed the small bits of wood it let me create large sticks and shape them as I chose.”

“Yep,” Daniela responded. “The reason that was possible, is that the tree that the small twigs had fallen from was a large oak. For example, if you were able to absorb a fragment of a dragon bone, the system would let you recreate a dragon skeleton. It would just cost a lot more mana than creating the small fragment that you had absorbed. You can still shape the pieces of bone that you have from the rat skeleton, or choose which pieces to use. You just can’t make the bones larger because you already have the whole skeleton.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Corey responded.

Then Corey realized something else, “What about wolf bones? Why can’t I use those yet? I absorbed the entire wolf.”

“Because you haven’t broken it down into those components,” Daniela said. “Sure, it’s a part of the wolf, but you can’t pick and choose what part you create unless you absorb them separately, which can only be done if they are, separate.”

“Interesting,” Corey said. Then he had another thought, Wait, the skeleton, pelt, and meat all together add up to one and a half mana, even though the rat only cost one mana to create…

It didn’t add up. It would actually cost more mana to create the different components of a rat’s corpse rather than crating the rat whole and harvesting them.

“Can I create dead rats?” Corey asked.

“Sure,” Daniela replied. “You just need to focus when you create them. They won’t take up any of your MCU’s either, since they are usually created by dungeons as bait to lure in stronger enemies. They will just cost mana since they count as a resource rather than a defender.”

“Excellent.” Corey said, drumming his fingers together menacingly. He summoned another rat, a dead one this time.

Corey turned off his prompts and skinned the new rat, much more successfully this time due to the pink outlines of where he should be placing his knife, and was rewarded with a Small Pelt. It wasn’t even a ruined version this time.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

He absorbed it, and gained the blueprint. He felt the blueprint become available to him.

“What are you doing?” Daniela prodded.

“Making mana.” Corey replied as he cut off a chunk of meat and absorbed the meat and bones, regaining 0.5 mana for each material. His mana had slowly been increasing, but it was still only at 7/50.

Corey started creating dead rat after dead rat, skinning, butchering them, and absorbing all of the pelts, meat, and skeletons. Each rat he absorbed in this way gave him 0.5 mana more than he had started with. A short time, and 80 rats later, his body felt exhausted, but he was sitting at 50/50 mana, and had leveled his novice skinning to 25/75 and novice butchering to 28/75.

“I’m not sure you are supposed to gain mana like that,” Daniela said. “I’m surprised you found a way to gain mana yourself at all. It’s supposed to take much longer to regain mana while the barrier is in place, especially since you aren’t that close to the nexus yet.”

“The mana regeneration is way too slow without enemies in here,” Corey said. “I had to figure something out. Besides, I doubt I’m the only one who found a work-around.”

Daniela looked up and to her right, which Corey knew was her tell for when she was accessing the system.

She said, “It looks like this doesn’t break any rules since you have to actually work to gain the mana.” She looked at him and cocked her head and added, “Though, normally I am supposed to report these sorts of discrepancies, but since it will help you reach level 50 all the faster, I feel that I need to do what I can to preserve your access to this.”

“You can do that?” Corey asked.

“I can’t hide the mana gains, but I will obscure how you got the mana. However, Chuck might notice if you suddenly have more resources than you should, and he likes to patch things. So, maybe you shouldn’t overdo it. It would be faster to get mana by killing a bunch of things anyway.”

“That’s true,” Corey said. “But, I need to have some wolfmen if I’m going to do that. Plus, I want to experiment a little more. The more I learn about how things work now, the better I can plan for the future.”

The next thing Corey tried, was to create a silver coin to see how much it cost. Only, it wasn’t in his creation materials list.

“What gives?” Corey asked. “Shouldn’t I have all my items blueprints since you absorbed my avatar?”

“Nope,” she said. “You brought it into the dungeon as an invader, so it wouldn’t count as plunder unless the dungeon had killed you.”

“But you absorbed my avatar when I took over the core, right?” Corey asked.

“No,” Daniela said. “Your avatar wasn’t exactly absorbed. It was more, put into storage until you got it back. It’s a separate function I made to allow you to revive your avatar quickly and be able to recreate it without needing to use mana for all the stuff that was stored on the avatar. You don’t get the blueprints or mana for absorbing them along with your avatar, but you also don’t have to pay mana when you recreate them with your avatar.”

“I see,” Corey said. “So you’re saying it’s like a separate storage that bypasses the normal dungeon absorption system entirely.”

“Yes,” Daniela said. “You can focus on absorbing the items you want the blueprints for now, though, since you are the dungeon master, and it will absorb them with the normal dungeon rules and get you the blueprints you want.”

“This whole thing seems way to elaborate.” Corey said. “Why all the rules?”

“That’s just the way it is,” she replied.

“Fine,” Corey said, “But I want to get some fresh air.” He walked out the dungeon entrance. It was very disconcerting as he passed the threshold of vines, as he couldn’t see anything outside, but the moment he passed over the threshold, that immediately changed.

It wasn’t even that dark outside. Even though the sun had set, there were two moons in the sky casting eerie shadows over the trees and shrubs. Corey walked back into the dungeon and asked, “What gives? How come it looked pitch black outside a minute ago?”

Looking back to the entrance, he could easily see outside now.

“That was a barrier that stops monsters and players from coming in until your dungeon is ready for the next threat. It automatically drops if you or one of your creatures cross it. Just like when you sent rats out to scavenge opened it up for the wolves to attack you.”

“Does it have to be black?” Corey asked.

“No, I can change it for you, or you can do it yourself. Try focusing on it the next time it appears.”

There was a howl behind him and he spun to face the entrance. Another wolf was coming in as he backed away, almost stepping too far until he remembered the spike pit directly behind him.

The wolf ran forward and leapt at him.

Corey dodged to the side.

The wolf let out a yelp as it crashed through the camouflage and into his pit trap, impaled on the wooden spikes.

“That was close!” Corey said. “So you were serious when you said the monster nests are most active at night.” Corey leaned against the stone wall and let out a sigh. “So, getting back to town tonight wouldn’t be doable, would it?” he asked.

“Nope,” Daniela said. “You should probably create some more defenders and traps and try to make use of the invading monsters. You’ll have to open the barrier, but I recommend you prepare first.”

Corey looked back at the entrance, which was pitch black again. “So, nothing can invade my dungeon right now?”

“Not until you drop the barrier, or cross it, which drops it automatically,” Daniela said.

Corey didn’t like the black void look one bit, so he focused on the entrance and felt the options of the barrier snap into place in his understanding. He could change its appearance and opacity, so he fiddled with some of the settings and went with one of his old favorites from another game he’d played. When he was done, it looked like a swirling vortex of clear water that still let you see what was on the other side. It looked freaking awesome.

With that settled, he decided to absorb the items he had on him. He even went so far as to absorb his new boots and starting clothes, which left him standing barefoot in nothing more than his boxers, and his pocket bread falling to the floor.

He absorbed the bread he’d completely forgotten about, gaining it’s blueprint as well.

He ignored all the prompts for the blueprints he’d acquired and materials acquired. He dismissed them without even bothering to read them. He knew what he’d absorbed.

Mentally focusing on his dungeon creation options, his focus shifted and he knew the options of everything he could create. He couldn’t really focus on all of them at once though, so it was still like having to scan a list to see what he actually had access to. The first thing he did was recreate his starter clothes for two mana. They didn’t offer any defense, but the cave was a little cold.

His boots from Clyde the cobbler were a bit more expensive, at 20 mana, which seemed steep, but he considered it an essential since the ground was not only cold, but the debris and small rocks on the floor were not comfortable to stand on barefoot. Plus, they were his only source of defense boosts, at +5 defense rating for his feet.

“Why does the defense rating only protect my feet?” Corey asked as he looked to Daniela.

“Because they are on your feet,” Daniela said.

“Ask a stupid question…” Corey mumbled. Then, he looked closer at his character menu. It looked like there was a base armor stat in addition to an armor stat for each armor slot. The base armor stat seemed to be calculated by his vitality, but wasn’t effected by his boots. His feet, however, had a +5 armor rating.

“Interesting,” Corey said.

Recreating his silver coin and copper coins cost way more mana than he had thought it would be, at ten mana for the silver coin and 0.1 mana for each of the copper coins.

After some quick mental math and shifting the decimal place, he figured out that money seemed to have a flat cost of 0.1 mana per copper. He could create 100 copper coins, or one silver coin, which would be the same monetary value in either case, but both options cost ten mana respectively.

He could now mint his own money. It was a bit cost prohibitive though, since his mana regenerated so slowly. He decided to find a way to use that to his advantage in the future. He could probably make more money off the rat meat and pelts by selling them to Anna than he would make absorbing them for mana to generate money.

Wanting to continue regenerating mana, he created a dead rat. Then, he realized that he had no knife to skin it with. His small knife, which was the only knife on the list of creation options, took 20 mana to create.

“Stupid knife…” Corey said, sitting on the ground to wait for his mana to regenerate. It took a few minutes, but he was finally able to recreate his knife. Then, he got to work skinning and butchering more rats until he was back up to 50 mana.

He worried he’d get in trouble for it, but his mana regeneration trick probably wasn’t a big enough deal for them to bother fixing anyway. It was a lot of work to make use of it, and those kinds of bugs usually got left as a ’feature’ rather than getting patched.

Using another 25 mana, he recreated his other equipment to get back to where he’d been.

“Note to self,” he said, “Don’t absorb stuff you don’t have the mana to recreate…”

“What’s your plan now?” Daniela asked.

“Well, mana seems like it’s going to be a problem,” Corey said.

“Yeah, it’s the way the game is balanced. You are already way ahead of where you should be though, since you have an avatar and some decent items to create as loot. With all the mistakes you’ve made, and the mana you’ve wasted, you shouldn’t be nearly as well developed as you are.”

“Um, thanks,” Corey said. “It’s nice having my gear back, but it’s not very good. I wish I had the enchanted set from the village. Buying it might be cost prohibitive though since it takes so much mana to create money…”

“You could just use the dungeon to create your own gear,” Daniela said. “You just need to kill an adventurer with the armor you want, and absorb it!”

“Right…” Corey said. “Unless I can lure Xena in here, I doubt that will happen right away, plus she might not even have it yet.” But, he thought, why not make something myself in the mean time? Maybe I can even learn to make something that will sell for a bunch of money but not cost too much mana to make.

Then his stomach growled, and he noticed part of his stamina bar had been greyed out.

“Food first,” he said.

He used his dungeon editor to increase his dungeon area by four square feet and hollow out a small alcove next to the entrance. He then put a hole bored up and through the rock until it was all the way through and into open air.

[Dungeon Area: 254/500.]

It looked like a crude two foot by two foot fireplace, which is exactly what it was. After using the creation mode to place some firewood inside, he tried looking around for some flint he could use with his knife but realized he didn’t even have any flint, and didn’t really know what he was looking for.

So, he pulled out some boy scout knowledge and tried making a bow with a longer stick and a thin strip of linen to wrap around another stick and make it spin like he’d been taught in the scouts and drill into another piece of wood.

It didn’t work.

So, he tried using the channel and tinder method.

It didn’t work.

He tried every method he could think of, but couldn’t get it to start a fire.

“What are you doing?” Daniela asked after he slumped down on the ground in exhaustion. His stamina bar was nearly completely spent.

“Trying to make a fire.” Corey responded.

“Why are you doing all that strange stuff then?” Daniela asked. “Why don’t you just rub two sticks together like you’re supposed to?”