“I’m sorry, alright?!” Naea shouted, distraught. I rolled my eyes and gave her the most withering look I could manage. She groaned in response. “There probably wasn’t anything good anyway…”
I ignored her excuses, content that my anger would stop this situation from arising again. It was partly my fault for getting caught up in my progression and forgetting to deal with the minutia. “Seriously though. Not looting the boss?” Naea’s pained exasperation behind me cheered me up.
The smell of the boss scorepion had been too intoxicating for Naea to think straight, something I hadn’t considered. I’d forgive her soon, but the thought of what I may have missed as a reward kept me from letting her off the hook. It could have given you an Aspect, even…
I took a deep breath. Having just conformed with the greed of a dragon, letting go of this frustration was challenging. Despite our injuries, to alleviate the damage to my heart, we were hunting. The pair of us still carried some cuts and bruises from the scorepion. As such I was hesitant to punch deeper into the desert, and we returned to the parkland. I was hoping a ridiculously named amphibian would show up. I checked Naea’s character page to distract myself.
Name - “Naea” Race - Dungeon Fairy Level - 18
Grade - F
Skills - Invisibility, Mana Control
Patron: Grant Kaeron (Level 29)
Naea had been level 10 before the fight, and received eight levels for the clean up afterwards. Due to her nature as a monster, her attributes didn’t work like mine. She had no control over how her attributes were assigned as she grew while levelling. It was strange to think of her as a monster, which the System did. Naea was my only company, she was more of a person to me than anyone outside the invisible barrier keeping the outside world out.
Her grade of F was interesting. Monsters could evolve, but exactly how wasn’t knowledge given to the newly integrated and so, Naea didn’t have much information on the subject. She was sure she would evolve into something supremely powerful, apparently.
After a few hours of random wandering and cold shoulders, both the silence and the sights were wearing thin. The sun was falling in the sky, less than an hour of sunlight to go. I grabbed Naea suddenly, causing her to yell. Holding her like a doll, I quickly gave her a pat on the top of her head and released her. “Let’s find somewhere to rest,” I said, extending an olive branch.
Naea glared and fixed her hair. “Right,” she agreed. “What about that building by where I met ye?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said, too quickly, “not there.” Naea gave me some side eye but didn’t ask. I’d rather sleep in the dirt again than spend any time in the sanitised scene of a massacre. “There should be a few more buildings depending on how the layout here works.”
While I could make some educated guesses about the geography of the place, I was working with outdated knowledge. The delineation between park and desert didn’t make a lick of sense from a physics perspective, so the best bet was to explore. So far, I had been working in a mostly straight line, exploring only a small chunk of the dungeon. Even the last few hours had been within the general vicinity of the café.
Time to branch out. “We’ve only got a little daylight left. Let’s see what we can find if we hurry.” Naea gave me a wide smile. We had been slowly walking until now, but she was a creature of speed at heart. She shot off like a bullet and I gave chase. After the fight with the scorepions, I had nearly thirty attribute points to place. Five had gone to speed, bringing the attribute in line with Fortitude at 20.
Still wasn’t nearly enough to keep up with Naea. Her translucent wings glittered in the growing twilight. She was a shooting star brought close, dancing through branches and leaves with unadulterated joy. The way she moved through the forest was mesmerising, and I had to force myself not to watch. After running into one tree, I wasn’t going to do it again.
For the first time, I saw the dungeon wall. A clear line of dead ground two metres wide ran for miles in either direction. I didn’t bother to test whether I could leave, which felt like pushing my luck. It didn’t take long before I was certain the System had just grabbed the general idea of a British park and stretched it out in a circle around the desert area. Until I saw it, I wouldn’t be sure, but there was probably at least one more ring surrounded by the sands.
“Starting to think we’re not going to find a hotel, you know?” I called to Naea, still somewhere ahead of me. I had been hoping to find a nature reserve which existed in the park I remembered, but I wasn’t in that park. Clive’s likely only existed because I had been inside at the time.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
“Doesn’t seem likely, no…” Naea agreed. She returned to my shoulder, putting her elbow on top of my head and leaning on her hand. “What’s the plan then, boss?”
“Got a stupid idea that should work for now, but it’ll be loud.” Making noise wasn’t ideal but so what? I had beaten a dungeon boss and anything which decided to investigate the noise did so at its peril, not mine. I led Naea towards the dungeon’s edge. The place we stopped was clear but there were some trees nearby which would serve my purpose. My muscles tingled in excitement as I approached the first tree.
I was disappointed not to find another amphibian today but there were other ways to test my strength. The thought was ridiculous but so was the power housed within my body. There were easier ways to go about getting lumber, but I wasn’t looking for easy. I was looking for strain.
I didn’t even activate my new skill yet. I wanted to know my baseline, and the thin tree in front of me was my first benchmark. I wrapped my arms around the trunk and planted my feet to either side. Naea watched from behind with barely muted amusement. Then I began to pull.
My muscles tightened into steel cords and began to shake. For a breathless, unknown amount of time, there was no movement. My feet sank into the ground as I strained but the tree didn’t move. With a shout, I slipped and the force threw me backwards. I gasped on the floor for a moment, ignoring Naea’s howl of laughter and regained my grip.
This time, I used my mana to bury my fingers in the wood, no more. The contest of strength was back on and I was determined. I slammed my feet into the ground and pulled. Calves, thighs, back, shoulders, arms, neck. I felt the strength in me extend from the soles of my feet to the top of my head and I yelled with exertion. Tiny imperceptible cracking turned into a groaning rip as I hauled the adolescent tree from the ground, roots and all. I quickly moved out of the way as it fell.
Gasping on the floor, smiling to myself, I heard a slow clap. Naea hovered in the air, one leg over the other knee in a sitting position as she mockingly congratulated me. “Well done there, yeh sure showed that piece o’ nature who the strongest is…”
“Oh, shut up, I’m doing something.”
“Losing your mind?”
“That happened days ago,” I replied. Naea snorted. “The rest of them will go a little faster.” I felt good, in the way that I expected athletes did after a workout. My body was limber and ready for more. Which was good, because I wanted to make myself a shelter. The idea of creating a home from scratch was strange, but after realising nothing was stopping me, the idea had become tantalising.
The next tree I faced was a similar size but I wasn’t going to hold back. For this one, I would use Infusion for the first time. I sent two bundles of draconic mana from my core to my arms. The two crystals hovered there, waiting until I needed to draw strength from them. Then, like before, I planted my feet and pulled. My muscles tightened, reaching the peak of my natural strength.
Then the magic kicked in. I was on my back before I knew it, spitting away falling dirt and rolling to avoid the newly falling tree. “Holy… that was like pulling a carrot from the ground!” I laughed happily and stuck my tongue out at Naea, who looked at me with wide eyes. The crystals of energy in my arms were hardly even spent. The moment I had begun drawing strength from my mana instead of my muscles, the roots hadn’t stood a chance. “Yep,” I agreed, “I’m amazing.”
In short order, I pulled another ten trees from the ground and arranged them near the dungeon wall. Four trees to a wall, three walls. As I wouldn’t be able to cut a door out of the wood easily, I was going pretty rustic for now. Naea helped once I explained myself to her, and the canopy of leaves had become our roof. We made a good team. I looked at the shoddy construction with pride and went “inside.”
The System surprised me yet again. “Does this thing ever shut up?” I asked, jokingly. Then I remember how I nearly died due to silencing my notifications. “Not that I mind at all, keep the information coming at all times I say.” Naea was becoming more convinced by the minute of my insanity but I waved her away and rolled my eyes.
Faction - Base Created
As the first person to create a structure within the dungeon, you may claim this location as the home base.
Would you like to upgrade the structure for 100 Gold Coins (Standard Mint)?
A faction page? That’s new. Also, finally somewhere to spend the golden coins burning a hole in my inventory.
Inventory
Gold Coins (Xaverion Minted) - 2758
Gold Coins (Standard Mint) - 9114
Yo Staff
Assorted Earth food and drinks
The System didn’t offer an exchange rate on the Xaverion minted coins, but that was fine. After the amphibian battles and a few scorepion massacres I had gained a few hundred coins myself, so I wasn’t even using the standard coins I received from Mrs Naebol yet. Not taking any chances, I got Naea and myself outside before I accepted the System’s offer.
With a whir of motion, the leaves and trees disappeared from view. I almost passed out as a cartoonish dust cloud appeared in their place, complete with the sounds of sawing and hammering. Naea looked at me, even more confused than I was. I shook my head and shrugged. “I hope this doesn’t take too-” Abruptly, the sounds stopped and the cloud of dust vanished as quickly as it arrived.
The three walls made of trees had become four walls made of finely carved wood. I was no carpenter, but the deep brown, almost red wood was wonderful. The ceiling of leaves had grown upwards, creating a green witch’s hat style roof. Two steps lead to the front door, which I hurried to open. All in all, I liked the design a lot.
“Welcome to Home Base,” I said grandly to Naea as I let her enter first. The inside was as lovely as outside. Pressing almost exactly to the boundary line of the dungeon, the building was mostly just a large room inside, but the space was perfect. A large, comfortable looking bed took up one corner, while a kitchenette stood ready on the other. There was even a working bathroom. I nearly cried with joy and told Naea to get comfortable.
I emerged an hour or so later, smelling fresh and feeling clean for the first time in days. For some reason, the fact that the System installed electricity and plumbing was stranger to me than creating a house out of some base materials and gold.
Naea was sleeping in an area seemingly made just for her. A shelf ran around the conical roof with platforms at intervals with a smaller bed, windows and places to lounge. “This place is perfect, Grant.” Her voice floated down from above but I couldn’t see her. I didn’t bother flicking on the bedside lamp, simply crashing into the bed.
It might not even have been comfortable. I wouldn’t know until the morning as I was asleep without even finding a pillow. I had defeated a dungeon boss, integrated my gains and new understandings, gained levels, a skill evolution and even managed to secure a home. Pride, contentment and exhaustion did their work and I didn’t open my eyes again until the morning.
When my front door was blasted open.