Moving just past my newest monster, uh, well I just realized it doesn’t have a name yet. Seeing as it’s a devil dog that seems to get stronger depending on who challenges it I’ll just name in Cerberus. Let’s hope there’s not a race called that too or I’ll be in for some confusion down the line.
Without me even needing to say what I wanted out loud the boss suddenly had the name ‘Cerberus’ over its head. Well that’s convenient. I wave to my dog and head on down to my second floor. The stairs down were dark and musky, I felt I had to take them down so I knew what adventurers would have to experience. So I need to make some torches and see if I can get some sort of air freshener or something, or I could just let it be and set the mood. I’ll wait until I get a good idea of my next floor before doing anything, oh and speaking of, I see some light up ahead.
Upon entering I noticed more tunnels, but these were akin to catacombs, small cramped areas with caskets and skeletons everywhere. The ground was clear for the most part and old torches lit the passageway. Further down the hall was a wall that appeared to be made entirely of dirt packed around dozens of skeletons, this wall came just before an opening. A room, not very large in any respect, unlabeled and unused. This will be fun.
‘Would you like to hear some of the options gained from your choice in theme?’ Meg asked.
Yes please, I would like to know what my options are here.
‘You have chosen underground catacombs as your second floor. Due to the theme you may now summon various undead as monsters and have access to new traps and rooms. Due to having new undead mana you may also bring back anyone who dies in your dungeon at a cost. Do not take this as a way to kill people without consequence, as anyone brought back will be part of the dungeon and therefore be bound to the dungeon until their final death. You have increase your limit of monsters permitted.’
That’s a lot to take in, we’ll I suppose having undead as the monsters down here makes sense, and increasing my- hold on did you say I had a limit on how many monsters I am able to have?
‘Yes, the first floor monster limit was three. I assumed you knew that as you never made more than the three.’
Excuse me I have four monsters on the first floor.
‘You have three monsters and a boss. Boss monsters are considered a unique entity and are not counted in the monster limit. You may also create guardians for certain rooms based on what the room is for.’
So basically I could have four more monsters on floor one if I wanted to?
‘Three more but it would be costly and take up more materials than would be wise.’
Making guardians uses materials?
‘Yes, say for the potions room, you would need one potion of nearly every quality barring legendary, godly, and @:$;@/@/.’
Uh Meg you okay there?
‘Perfectly, why?’
Never mind, I’m just gonna pretend that didn’t happen.
‘My point was that as a dungeon you would could do more good by improving your second floor than your first for now.”
Okay I’ll do that, let’s see what can I-
Suddenly I feel my conscious split into two. One stayed on the second floor and one went to the entrance. There I saw four figures walking in. They looked battered which I found odd, I sent my goblins to help. As I did so I felt myself creating a skeleton on floor two. Well felt isn’t really right, more like when I sent the goblins I accidentally made a monster at the same time. I can fully control myself on both levels but I can’t at the same time, it’s very unnerving. I can fully understand everything going on, on floor one while I think about what to do next on floor two, I just have to work on separating my actions so I don’t accidentally make more things.
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With some difficulty I focus on the new arrivals, it was Jordan and three women. Well aren’t we busy making a harem?
“It’s not that Alpha, this is my late friends family.” He coughed out.
Noted, but what happened? You don’t look good.
He was wearing a different outfit, one almost looking like what you would expect a new adventurer to wear. Leather armor, cloth, the sword I gave him which somehow split into a sword and shield, a tower shield at that, and he was bleeding from a few different wounds. The shield was peppered with small dents and the women all looked frazzled. They wore t shirts and jeans, all of them. The one that looked the oldest wore a black shirt that said ‘gamers don’t get old we level up’, the other two wore shirts of plain color, one pink one purple. I couldn’t tell which one was older but one had longer hair and the other kept it short, as if it was a pixie cut and it was growing out.
“The military happened.” He spat out.
Whoa no need to get mad at me, what do you mean the military?
“Long story short, the government does what it always does and tried to control me and anyone else that may get powers from you, so when I denied that and went to get Alice here,” he gestured at the woman with longer hair in pink. “To have you awaken her, they tried to take us into custody. Luckily they don’t live too far away so we ran here and I think the military are too scared to come in here knowing their guns don’t work against dungeon stuff that well.” He smirked.
That’s quite a lot, but you seem to have been shot a few times, looks like fairly small bullets though.
“Yeah, it took a fifty caliber machine gun to even dent the shield and put these holes in me,” he smiled thinking back on something, “looks like you made me bullet resistant. So thank you for that.”
Down on my second level I had made a few more skeletons and expanded the room. Looks to be a monster house for them. As much as I would like to focus on that I need to figure things out up here more.
Okay, so I can make it easier for you to get through but I don’t think you’ll get any rewards by me letting you through.
“That’s okay, I’ll help where necessary.” Jordan assured me.
The older woman spoke up, “I don’t know if you can hear us but don’t think we’re pushovers just because we’re not adventurers or military!” She had some fire in her eyes like she was ignoring what happened outside and diving into the whole dungeon adventure thing.
“Oh yeah, Alpha, this is Virginia,” he gestured to the older woman, she had shoulder length hair that was a dark brown and wore glasses, “this is Alice,” gesturing at the woman with long hair in the pink shirt, “and this is Alana.” Gesturing at the woman with short hair and purple shirt. “Virginia is the other two women’s mother.”
Tell them I say nice to meet them and good luck with the goblins, oh also when you make it to my boss go in one at a time, he’s got a cool function to change difficulty based on who goes in.
“Thanks for the heads up.” Jordan nodded. He looked at the other three and relayed what is going on and they headed toward the mud room. While they did that I recalled the goblins, no need for them to go now that it’s turned into a raid, I said to fight but try not to hurt them, they may be staying for a little while. I moved my core to the first room in the second floor and began to focus on that floor.
The room looked alright but it had piles of bones everywhere making the terrain tough for any challengers. There was two new tunnels heading off in either direction opposite of the stairs, obviously I wanted to make floor two a bit more detailed, but it was hard to design and help people at the same time. Now that I think about it I remember everything I did on this floor as if I was consciously doing it the whole time. Meg was telling me I have a six monster limit on this floor and I spent a good chunk of mana to make it so the skeletons reformed mere seconds after being scattered just to up the difficulty. They could die if you smashed their skulls but if you disassemble them they’ll just re make themselves now.
I create rooms at the end of each tunnel and am notified by Meg that I currently have three out of five rooms on the second floor. So my room limit is five, not much to work with to make anything complicated. In the room on the left I create a graveyard, a place for people to bury their dead, I can also create zombies in that room but I think I’ll leave it be. There is already one grave marker but the words on it are so faded even Omega can’t decipher them. The room itself had grown into a large field that spanned an entire acre and seems that I can upgrade it to make it even larger. Somehow there must be some sort of magic at play seeing as even though it is that large the outside of it didn’t increase at all, how odd.
The other room Meg showed me a few options for, but one in particular caught my eye. ‘The room of guilt’
‘The room of guilt will be transformed into a hallway or tunnel that seems to never end, once entered it is impossible to escape until the challenger faces their inner demons.’
Well that sounds like fun, so let’s go with that, suddenly I could no longer see what was in that room, the entrance was just a wall of dark mist, and the whole room no matter how I tried to view it blocked all of my senses of it.
I see that the group is almost done with the first room, changing focus I see that Jordan is waiting at the end of the room cheering on the three women, “come on! You’re almost done! Just over the beam and you’ll be Scott free!”
All three women had a decent amount of mud on them already, as if they each had tripped one or more times in the previous traps. Virginia was the first across, she managed to dodge most of the arrows but still got hit by one, “Jesus fuck that hurts!”
She yelled out in pain.
Not more than five seconds after she said that the log fell and knocked her into the mud. She got up spluttering wiping the mud out of her eyes. “That’s bull shit! I want a re-do!”
Jordan suppressed a smile and helped pull her out of the pit, next up was Alice, she made it to the part with the arrows fairly well but once it fired she dropped and hugged the beam she was supposed to walk on. Inching across it she managed to dodge the log by being too low to hit and got across. She seemed happy but her mom looked like she somehow cheated it.
All that was left was for Alana to make it across, she simply ran across the beam and outran the arrows, not that she outpaced them but that she passed where they would have hit her before they could fire, she dodged the log by diving for the end just barely missing the trap. Even Jordan looked impressed. Her sister clapped for her and her mom joined looking a mix of jealous and proud. The headed onto the next little trial in my dungeon and the first real danger for them, my goblin room.