With my attention turned toward my entrance I command my goblins, attack. I watch as they close in on the soldiers and something crosses my mind, don’t kill them, just injure. I don’t want people coming too close to my orb, but I don’t want people to never come again. I don’t know exactly how this is going to work but I wouldn’t doubt I’ll need people for it at some point. I trust my goblins to follow my orders so as the sounds of yelling and gunfire sound I look at my mana and wonder what I can use it for, hold on, is my mama increasing?

The goblins tear at the soldiers, leaving gashes along their armor but not drawing any blood as of yet. The soldiers seem panicked as I can clearly see their bullets not even bouncing off the goblins but just stopping suddenly against their fur, as if they lost all momentum. Someone threw a grenade but even though it exploded right at the feed of one of my gobs the explosion died almost instantly, and the shards that hit my goblins stopped like the bullets. A sudden light flashed, stunning the goblins for just a moment and the soldiers clambered out of my cave, my dungeon.

The goblins busied themselves with gathering anything left over from the skirmish and bringing it to my orb, core? I think this is my core, yes, that feels right. ‘Used bullets assimilated, used grenade assimilated, torn fabric assimilated magazine assimilated’ magazine? Oh like to hold bullets okay, ‘the materials used to make each item is now available to use in the dungeon, you may now create brass mining node, you may now create copper mining node, you may now create zinc mining node, you may now create plastic gathering node, you may now create nylon gathering node, you may now create cotton gathering node, you may now create iron mining node, you may now create gunpowder gathering node, you may now create flint gathering node. All previous items may be used to create items for the dungeon or it’s inhabitants.’

Wow that’s a lot of things from so little. I suppose when it said I can materials used to make it, it meant almost literally, even breaking brass down to copper and zinc, but still allowing a brass node too? Well before I make anything like this I should expand a bit first. How do I do that? ‘Create tunnel costs mana, create room costs one gold for first floor’ oh well that’s simple enough let’s make a tunnel and a room then, oh I guess I need to buy another gold, ugh that’s takes so much mana. Okay I still have enough to make the tunnel so let’s do that, and make a room at the end of it.

The dirt moved as off some invisible force tunneled through it and just pushed it away, and not nearly as impressively the room simply popped into existence, even with the pop noise and everything, it made me chuckle a little. Alright so how much to move my core here? Oh wow, about as much as making that tunnel, hmm it puts me dangerously low but I seem to slowly be going up so I’ll just do it for now. I hit the buy option and my core just starts to float down the hall toward the newest room in our little dungeon.as soon as it reached the center it just stopped and hovered there.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Neat, now what can I do with you guys, turning to my goblins they seem proud of their accomplishment at protecting me from the soldiers, nice going guys. Now I know these guys are good for a defense for now but let’s see here, ‘upgrade goblin, slightly increases all stats of the goblin, do this enough times and it may become intelligent enough to speak to the humans’ interesting option I’ll definitely be doing that seeing as its only a slight mana cost, but what’s this? ‘Evolve goblin, as the goblin has little experience and nothing special in the dungeon there are no evolution options at this time’ I wonder what kind of cool evolutions I can get from them, they’re like that one special pocket monster I know about that can evolve into multiple things, I hope all my monsters are like that, I like the options. Just gotta remember not to go min max crazy, or maybe I need to? It seems like I’m on earth so if I remember right other people are going to try to min max to clear me. Hold on, how do I know I’m on earth? How do I know what earth is? All I remember is waking up here. Before this I was… I was…. It felt like a song that you remember but can’t for the life of you remember the lyrics or even the tune so you just have a feeling that you’re sure is right but somehow…

‘Master?’ It came out as chitters and growls. It was a goblin? The red eyed one, my first goblin. I need names to keep them straight in my head, I know there’s only two now but who knows how many I’ll have later? ‘Name?’ It asked sounding both nervous and excited. Yeah, name, I’m not very good at thinking up names on the spot, so since you have red eyes let’s do something with that. Red, red, burgundy? No too long and awkward for a name, maroon? No similar issues, let’s go away from color and to things that are red, fire, no doesn’t work as a name, Ruby? Yeah that could work, are you a boy or girl goblin? ‘Boy or girl?’ It seems confused.

I focus on it ‘goblin non-binary , giving the goblin a name will allow the goblin to slowly morph into a form fitting of the name.’ Okay how do you feel about the name Ruby? ‘Like a lot’ we’ll if you like it then it’s yours ‘goblin Ruby non-binary, female two percent’ huh so it needs to load its gender? Weird, but then again I’m a glowing ball in a dungeon so I can’t really say much. I look at my second goblin, blue eyes, how do you feel about the name Sapphire? ‘Like a lot’ we’ll these guys sure make things simple for me okay then, ‘goblin Sapphire non-binary, female two percent.’ So I have girl goblins, it’s hard to tell with them looking like that, maybe the names will make it easier to tell?

In the meantime I guess I’ll just wait for my mana to come back, I can’t do anything with no mana and no gold but to wait, so wait I shall.