10)

In the floor. Mood. Jubilant.

[Quest for inventory completed. Reward 2 BP]

Which leaves me 1 BP short of forth level. This is why I finally get around to having my builder set up a guard post right below the fridge on the floor right above my core.

[ You have built your first guard post. Reward 1 BP ]

[ You are now Base rank 4]

[ You have unlocked a room. Barracks.]

[ You have been granted a new ability. Bait.]

Manual time. The Barracks let me heal my units over time if they are assigned to the room, with the healing rate being a multiple of my level. The bait ability lets me create a type of food with a strong smell to attract creatures.

After some thought, I decided to set up a barrack in the wall behind the fridge. Neatly hidden away and close to my core as a just in case. I might one day need to call on my walking wounded to defend me in a desperate situation.

[ You have built your first barrack. Reward 1 BP]

Bait, well that may help earn me some more BP.

Using up 1 unit of undesignated material, which once collected seems to go into a pool of general material and then I summon… a chunk of slimy off white cheese like stuff next to the guard post.

I can only hope that the smell is more appetizing than the look of it.

Only a few moments later two evil yellow eyes are peering under the fridge. Which is now within my two feet of reach.

[ A magical beast has entered your dungeon.]

What now? ...Buttercup is a magical beast. No way! This is bull… wait. Identify.

-Ping-

[ Buttercup. Rank 1 Grimalkin.]

...I’ve been feeding it dungeon creatures. I made a damned cat into a magical beast. Me. And it wants more.

Like say, a nice fat orange dungeon core.

…..(muffled screaming)…”No,no,no,no!”

I decided moping for a while is a pretty good plan. How the heck am I supposed to level up Iris now? Without feeding, and also leveling up the cat.

...Fewmets. A mouse had eaten at least one of my gatherers. Two magical beasts.

I can’t do much about the cat, at least not now. And it can’t get to me. But the mice… They have to die.

I start converting general material into copper and send gatherers down the pipe to the sewer for more material. It’s going to be a war tonight.

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The afternoon passes. The ants love the goo cheese but they don’t do anything for me in terms of BP. As I convert general material to copper, I create spiked plates hanging from spider silk string on the bottom of the fridge. I can only make them within my two feet of reach. But I can reabsorb the spider silk at will to drop them.

I build a new core room big enough to attach it to the support beams under the floor instead of having it hung below the floorboards. This leaves me with a gap above it so I can put the entrance in the top, then I flood it in clorox. If the mouse comes for me it’s going to have to swim in the stuff to get to me.

It turned out I can get four ants for each point of creatures I can summon. So I splurge on sixteen of them and set them up as sentries to keep an eye out for the mouse.

Buttercup makes several tries at getting under the fridge throughout the afternoon and is constantly on the prowl for more of my minions. “Stew in your failures fleabag! No more easy exps for you. I got a reputation to develop here.”

As night comes I have some walls set up under the fridge to guide intruders into one of the four kill zones I’ve set up. All baited with goo cheese.

The mouse I was expecting turned out to not be my first customer. Instead, my ants see the invaders coming from the walls on the far side of the bathroom. Low to the ground as they scuttle in on hundreds of legs.

Centipedes. I wasn’t expecting those creepy little things.

The first one makes its way in and stops at the bait. It pokes at it a few times, then digs in. “Death from above!” I absorb the spider silk and let the spike bottomed plate drop.

[You have killed a dungeon invader. 1 BP]

[Do you wish to add centipede to your summoning list.]

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

The plates aren't always enough to kill the centipedes outright. Which is why my guard post is filled with ten warrior roaches that rush over in pairs to finish them off.

Since they aren’t adventurers. But are within my reach. I am able to absorb the remains, as well as the plate. Then I reset the deadfalls.

Overnight I get five centipedes, a silverfish, an earwig, as well as more ants than I can count. Unfortunately, only the centipedes count and even then it’s only the first four.

[Congratulations you are now level 5]

[ You have gained an ability. Champion.]

[ You have gained a spell. See list.]

“Yes, and I got another centipede heading for the cold copper stomper. DFA!… What, no points?”

I check the manual. Apparently, at base level 5, centipedes are no longer a threat. They also take up 3 slots to summon.

Further checking shows that choosing a champion pushes a creature up a single rank until I get to copper rank. Since the centipedes are my highest current ranking creature, I summon one and select it as my champion.

The bug appears in a flash of blue light, salutes me as I select it, and glows red for a moment as it increases in size. It ends up nearly twice as large with disproportionately large mandibles and a slight orange glow to its eyes.

Sweet. My monster and I have matching weird glowy bits.

It rears up the front end of its body and lets out an angry hiss in defiance at the heavens. Or in this case the bottom of the fridge.

All right. That’s almost impressive. If I was two inches tall I would even consider it a threat.

As I start to decide which spell to choose. My scouts' report. Three mice are on their way in.

And their leader was leading the way right for my core.

Right. Now that’s a threat.