After I slept long enough that my hunger drove me to wake up I had enough mana to buy another
Speaking of skills I didn't know what any of mine actually did. Maybe since my [Dungeon Interface] leveled up it would show me it? Except of course not. When I tried to tap the skills for information it didn't do anything.
Since I had twenty-eight mana to use, sixteen from me and twelve from the core, that I didn't need to spend on that rune I wondered what I should do. I was feeling secure with my new spiky pit trap but felt I could use another one. No, wait, wouldn't the best thing be if they never even got close to the trap?
Before anything at all though I looked through the interface lists to find me some food and water. It felt wrong, like I shouldn't need these things as a dungeon creature, but what else was I going to do? Hunger didn't feel good.
Most likely thanks to the skill level there were a dozen items on the food list, mostly fruits and berries that sounded native to forests or swamps like the one my dungeon was in. Something stuck out though amongst the choices.
>Rosefur Fox Meat - 5 MP
- The meat of a Rosefur Fox that is native to the Rosestone Swamp.
I bought it half because I wanted to eat meat and because it was a way to show my victory over the fox. So things that the dungeon absorbs become things I can make with the dungeon's weird system. The chunk of meat was as big as both my claws and surprisingly bloodless and clean.
I most definitely didn't tear into it like an animal and savor its juicy tenderness that had the hint of justice or enjoy the wet tearing sounds that my claws made when ripping the meat apart into bite-size chunks. All of this not-eating had made me thirsty, yet there was no water option in the
Considering berries cost one mana to buy I tried to get something called a
And so I was feeling good, full and overall happy. A great start to my second day of being alive, or at least of being awake. I didn't count the times I slept and wondered what to do. Ah, the trap idea, of course.
I unblocked the door and went to the entrance room, carefully jumping over my spiky pit trap, and looking out at what I now knew was called the Rosestone Swamp. Who knew what horrible monsters lurked inside the swamp? I had a feeling that even if the dumb fox was mighty it was the lowest of the low in this place.
When I looked for a good spot to put my second trap, I couldn't decide on the wood block or arrow, I noticedthat you could see my pit trap from the entrance! That was not good, extremely not good. I spent five mana on another
Now that there were two doors for this corridor and when you opened the first one you could clearly see the pit trap I decided the block was a good choice. With the core in claw and it glowing with the light that waited for me to touch where I wanted to place it I ran into a problem.
I was too short to touch the ceiling. Even standing on the dungeon core I was just a little short with a jump. Fine then, dumb trap, I didn't want to use a wood block anyway. I instead put an arrow trap around the level where my head was on the side of the wall one step past the door. Perfect, now anything that walked past would get a sharp wooden arrow for their trouble!
"Kekeke," I laughed. With that I had used almost all my mana for the day and went back to the Core Room and sat near the pedestal staring at the core. Although it used a lot less mana to browse the interface now I couldn't afford to waste it in my boredom.
I used the core as a step to get on top of the pedestal, the bland wooden stand that rose out of the floor, and kicked my legs to pass the time. That was all I had: time. Since I needed a bit of mana every day for food and juice I was going to have a lot of time to myself. What should I do with it all?
I wanted more mana but didn't know how to get it. My mana rose with intelligence which rose from levels and skills, but it took mana to use skills. Maybe if I got better at using mana?
That energy in my gut was there but faint since I had used it all on the dungeon. When I tried to move it like I did in order to use the rune it complied, like breathing really thick air through a stuffy nose. It was still hard to do, just moving it from my gut to my claw and then back took a couple hours, but I did it over and over until I got tired and I went to sleep.
When I woke up I bought myself more meat and berries and put another
With the twenty mana I had left I made another
And that was all the mana from the last day and sleeping. It was boring staying in the core room all alone, even if I was practicing moving the tiny bit of leftover mana around in my body, so I went to the archway and gazed out at the swamp.
Every now and then I would see more dumb foxes running in the distance far from me and a huge shadow moved across the swamp with heavy thuds, thankfully so far away I didn't have to worry about it ever sneaking up on me, and I enjoyed the feeling of the light on my scales until it went away and darkness came. At night it felt more dangerous to sit in the open so I retreated back to the core room to sleep.
But sleeping on the hard wood was becoming annoying. I was a smart kobold and master of a dungeon, why was I sleeping on wood floors? I opened the interface on the dumb cube and went to the item list to find what I wanted. I had noticed it when I made the other door.
>Grass Nest - 2 MP
- A small bedding made of bundled grass.
>Twig Nest - 2 MP
- A small nest of intertwined twigs.
>Rosefur Nest - 15 MP
- A small bedding made of the furs from Rosefur Fox cubs.
How could I ever deny the chance to sleep atop my enemies corpses? Since I recovered about twenty mana across the day and the core itself had reached its limit too I bought two of the nests and put them in the core room. They were just large enough for a kobold to sleep in comfortably and were a nice orange-red collection of small furs that were stuck together with some kind of paste that didn't smell at all.
Why two nests? Obviously because being alone was becoming boring. In the morning it was time to summon my first creature!
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I should've expected this. All the signs were there but I didn't pick up on them. I wanted my first minion to boss around, and that minion will be summoned, but I had something else to do before then.
>Kobold - 10 MP
- A small draconic being that enjoys digging and making traps.
>Rosefur Fox Cub - 5 MP
- A small fox cub that is born beautiful but can intimidate its enemies.
First off, that description of kobolds is entirely untrue. I feel like it's attacking my choices I'd made so far. Secondly, I took the core and went to the hallway. With a motion I summoned my first ever creature. White light grew into a fox around my size with sharp claws and wicked fangs.
It was a cub!? This was the same fox that invaded my dungeon days ago! My scales tingled as I imagined what an adult fox must be like. The fox appeared dizzy and unwell as it stumbled to its feet and struggled to look at me straight for longer than a moment.
I vaguely recall that my first memory was... odd. Was that how all dungeon creatures were?
"Fox, come here," I said and pointed a claw at a spot in the corridor. It stared blankly at me before doing as I said. Yes, good, that was perfect. I opened up its status on the core's interface to see how amazing these foxes really were.
>Name: N/A
>Class: N/A
>Race: Rosefur Fox
>Gender: Male
>HP: 15/15
>MP: 4/4
>STR: 3
>DEX: 4
>AGI: 4
>VIT: 4
>INT: 1
>WIS: 1
>CHA: 3
>LUK: 1
>Skills: [Intimidate Lv.1]
>Perks: [Rabbit Hunter]
What's with this incredibly strong body it gets born with? Of course it's a dumb fox, I nod at the status agreeing with me. Low intelligence and wisdom. Actually, all it had going for it was its physical stats. I was way smarter and something I didn't really pay attention to was how much luck I had. It started with one but I had twelve. That was probably why I was a dungeon master, it was pure luck.
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The cub yelped as I kicked it into the spiky pit trap.
"Kekeke, dumb fox. Show me how great my traps are," I taunted as it fell.
Sure enough the spikes at the bottom of the deep pit did their job. The cub tried to land on its feet but was skewered by three of the wooden spikes. It wiggled gruesomely while yelping in pain before finally going still and fading into nothing.
Worth every mana point. I did notice that the chips and splinters of the spikes repaired themselves moments later. If I went by how the arrow traps work then whenever the dungeon isn't in 'delve mode' it recovers and repairs itself. I went to the entrance room and summoned two more fox cubs. They were going to be the front guard for anything coming through. While they might not be smart they were still mean in a fight.
Next I held the core in my claws and summoned my first true minion. White light formed into a shape only slightly taller than me. It, he had mottled brown scales, a tail shorter than mine and straight horns where mine were curved. Overall he was ugly and looked way less smart than me so he was perfect. Just like the foxes it took several moments for him to come to attention and even then it felt like he wasn't all there.
"Hey, do you speak?" I asked. He blinked at me and looked around at the room before turning back to me.
"Speak," he said.
From his tone I could tell he truly was a perfect minion. The foxes sniffed and roamed around the entrance room and occasionally looked outside but were otherwise unimportant until something invaded. I snapped my claws to get his attention as his gaze kept drifting toward the archway.
"Do you need food? Water?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No, Master."
I grinned at the title but wondered why I was the one who needed food. Probably because being a dungeon master made me smarter and greater than a normal dungeon creature? Kekeke, that was fine with me. Maybe I shouldn't have spent so much mana on this minion's nest, but that was okay too. He was going to earn it.
Eventually. Now that I had summoned my minion and two distractions I wasn't sure what to do with them. If they didn't need food or attention to just meander about I didn't need to worry about them, right? I checked my minion's status and was shocked to find out that he had just two and ones! Even the dumb foxes got fours in some stats. He didn't even have a skill, only a perk called [Expert Reflexes].
Perks were a thing my mind told me were rare things that one earned by doing amazing things, getting them by leveling higher, or being born with one. Every creature was born with one, but I didn't know they would all be different. Each of the foxes had a perk that was about hunting even if the interface didn't give me details on them yet.
My own sounded awesome but was it really? This minion's perk was at least something I could guess at. That and none of them had a class. While I knew what a class was because of the weird knowledge that the dungeon granted me I didn't know how to gain one.
"Minion, fight me. I need you to get a class."
"'Kay, Master," he said slowly.
Without warning he ran and swiped at me with his claws. I stepped out of the way and gently ran my claws across his side. I wasn't going to actually hurt him because healing him would be too expensive, although I didn't expect my minion to understand that or do the same for me.
I was a step ahead of him every attack and landed rakes that would have disabled or killed him several times. My stats were slightly higher, that was true, yet it wasn't as simple as that as to why he couldn't touch me. Every time he attacked I just knew that with my speed I could step out of the way and place my claw just so and it would land.
We continued for over an hour until he was so exhausted he couldn't stand up and I was breathing hard. It still didn't look like he gained a class. What was I missing? There wasn't anything in the
>Summon Creatures
>Creature Options
Why did it suddenly change? I had no guesses but didn't question it.
>Give Classes
>Give Skills
Oh, here it is! I opened the lists to read them and clacked my fangs. There were very, very few options and all of them required me to use spirits. I only had two and knew to gain more I had to have things die inside my dungeon. The option to give my minion [Claw Techniques] and [Tough Scales] was there but cost a spirit each. It was interesting but also stupidly expensive.
>Hunter - 10 MP / 1 Spirit
>Trapper - 10 MP / 1 Spirit
>Sentry - 10 MP / 1 Spirit
>Digger - 10 MP / 1 Spirit
All these classes failed to live up to my own and sounded incredibly dull. Perfect for minions and dumb animals then, but to actually use limited resource on them? I could summon two more foxes instead of giving one a class. It seemed so useless. For my new minion though a [Trapper] or [Digger] sounded useful if they helped me with the dungeon.
"Hey, minion. What class do you want to be?"
"Class?" He blinked. "Maybe—"
I didn't care what he wanted. In the next moment I tapped him in the chest with a glowing claw. It faded into him and I could see the way it clicked in his head and his eyes appeared sharper, his stance more steady. Although he still looked incredibly dumb.
"[Trapper], Master?"
"Kekeke, yes. Why, did you want to be a [Digger] instead? Too bad, I need more traps to be safe from the foxes."
He stared doubtfully at me. "Don't question me! Now, did you get any useful skills?"
I could always check his status if I wanted but to be honest I was enjoying talking to another kobold. So far it was the second best decision I'd made today. The first was obviously testing my spiky pit.
"It was [Simple Trap] and [Light Step]," he said.
I waited for him to explain further and he shrugged. "And? What traps can you make? Do they appear with mana or do you need stuff to make them?"
"Ah." He touched the floor and tight string appeared as it connected to two tiny raised lumps of floor. "Mana."
I ran a claw along the string to inspect it. The spell had raised the floor just a little bit and created the string through it, no wider than I was tall. It was at a good height to get stuck on a foot and when I tested it myself it was strong enough to trip me up, although it broke when I did so. It faded away after it was used. So it was good for when I was invaded but not for preparing like the dungeon's traps were?
The lumps of raised floor didn't disappear though so we waited for maybe ten minutes before they too vanished. "A good spell. You sure you don't need food?"
My minion nodded. "Yes, Master. No food, only need magic in dungeon."
"Then rest for now, we fight again after."
While we rested I went over the morning and felt a grin creeping up. Although it had cost me a spirit point I now had another kobold with a class, and a tripwire was a good simple trap if he could put it next to a pitfall or a sneakier trap. Even in a fight it was good since it was quickly cast.
I glanced dubiously at my minion. Probably not in battle though.
We fought again and this time I had to take him more seriously. A class and a couple skills made a world of difference. While he now could understand we weren't trying to kill each other, my [Claw Techniques] put me above him when it came to landing swipes but now I could barely land a hit on him. While he was still clumsy using his claws he could react far faster than I expected. Good, I needed skilled minions. We had foxes for being slaughtered while us kobolds took down the enemies.
After several hours of fighting and resting I landed a good counterattack on him and knocked him down for the last fight. My stamina and body were a lot better than his as well so he tired out sooner than I did. I sat down and began resting.
"Enough, that was good. We rest until we sleep." I didn't think training would pay off so quickly! Kekeke, my minion had no hope to beat me now. Hmm, that won't do. I can't let him be weak now that I'd given him a class. I'd have to show him how to use his claws and fight with him more so he could also get this skill.
I sat up and waved at him. "Get up, minion. Follow me." I was about to lead him back to the Core Room but I paused to spend some of the mana to summon four more foxes. Yes, what a good group of beasts to take down any invader.
My minion locked the doors as we passed through them and went to the Core Room. I set the core on its pedestal and pointed at the second fur nest. "That was is yours to sleep in. Be grateful."
He nodded and curled up in the nest almost immediately.
There was still hours left before I bothered to sleep so I bought my dinner from the dungeon and began to practice with the mana inside me once again. I didn't know what I would get from doing so but I knew it was something, and something was always better than nothing.
Right before the day was over and I was about to go to sleep the chorus of voices spoke to me again. Wasn't I amazing?