Casting their senses through the dungeon Unbound and Elvinia watched as the badly damaged skeleton stumbled drunkenly through the first room. It moved out of the entrance room and into the tunnel. It strode over the first pitfall trap with no difficulty, the light bones and tattered armor too light for the stone to shatter beneath.

It entered the second room and Unbound ordered all creatures within to attack it. The sole wildcat leaped at the skeleton and two large hunting spiders dropped from their place upon the ceiling. The skeleton slashed out with its sword and it bit deeply into the leaping wildcat’s neck. The wildcat fell limp and the sword was pushed through the body of a spider. The other spider clung to the skeleton's back and tried to pierce the skeleton with its limbs. The legs found no purchase in the armor and glanced off the bones. The skeleton slammed its back against the cave wall, squishing the spider in between, killing it.

The intruding undead had no trouble walking through the rest of the dungeon. All the defenders, spiders, and wildcats, who attacked the skeleton died to a sword swing. Unbound called them off by the fourth room, trying to save mana. The core spirit and fairy hoped that traps or the elemental would be able to kill the skeleton.

As it walked through the tunnel to the core room the skeletal foot caught a tripwire, copper spikes shot out the walls, thrusting through the armor and breaking two ribs and the remaining arm bone. The sword and arm clattered to the floor and Unbound pounced to quickly absorb it. It added to the pattern, he already knew.

The spikes retreated and the skeleton clattered onto the pressure plate, rocks rained from the ceiling crushing the boney form. After the dust settles the trap reset allowing Unbound to absorb the crushed bones and armor. Two new patterns appeared under the tab of known dungeon defenders.

Defender’s patterns:

Small predators: MAX

Weak Elemental: MAX

Crumbling Skeleton: 1

Waiting a while after the new skeleton revealed no new invaders came through the entrance portal and Unbound and Elvinia relaxed and focused more on pushing their defender's power-up.

A few hours after the first battle the winning bat had kept up the winning streak and finally changed enough to register as a new species after the 34th battle. The fur had all fallen out and was replaced by tine scales that spread across entirely, the wings had grown much bigger and more robust to help lift the bats much heavier body. The claws on the bat’s wings had lengthened and the bat’s teeth protruded.

“Well then,” Elvinia said. “All that’s left is to name it and the system will file it as a bat variant.”

“Dragon bat? Lizard bat? Armored bat?” Unbound asked the void fairy.

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“Go with the third one the other two fit as well. Add a lightly before armored and it should sound right.” She responded. The core mentally assigned the bat species that name and felt it click as the new pattern joined the knowledge he had.

After gaining a new defender of a bat subtype they moved on to one of their more dangerous creatures, they moved to the hunting spiders and repeated what happened with the bats. Unlike the bats, they spawned on the floor and leaped at each other. The spiders slashed spear-like forelegs against hardened chitin. Fangs scrabbled at gaps between armor plates until one spider jumped backward, fangs embedded in its opponent’s flesh.

The unlucky spider shrieked as the chitin plate came free, losing the unprotected flesh to fall to the floor. The dying spider struggled for a moment before going still, twitching occasionally. The winner had deep scrapes in its chitin and one forelimb broken off at the tip.

“The good thing is, eventually you should get an achievement.” The fairy talked about the newest starting fight. “That achievement gives you the skill to direct the evolutions more.” That brought up the dungeon's interest, who ordered the competing spiders to fight without concern for their own injuries.

A couple of fights later another evolution occurred and a new pattern; Tearing Spider appeared. They then moved through the next two viable options, wildcat, and rat. Those prompted the natural evolution of a rat. A dire rat.

“Rats often fight when there is enough of them,” Elvinia explained. “However, a dungeon speeds it up massively, where here it took forty fights out of the dungeon it could take hundreds of winning battles, they also don’t have the advantage of healing the winner.” That cleared up why he could not name the rat evolution. The cat changed to become a newly named springing cat. He placed the variant species amongst their less evolved brethren in the main dungeon and ordered them to reproduce in the badly carved dens in the walls.

“A den recognized by the system increases healing, reproduction, and a chance for stronger offspring.” Said Elvinia. “Unfortunately, I don’t know how they are formed so we will have to buy it from the shop eventually.”

After the slightly stronger defenses were placed, they moved to the second strongest mob, the crumbling skeleton. Unbound first tested a spawned undead against a lightly armored bat, moving past his own revulsion for the dead creature in his need for protection. The now unarmed skeleton struggled more against the stronger bat before eventually pinning the meter-tall creature and tearing off its wings and stomach. Unbound then pit it against another time and again, watching as the crumbling skeleton's arms became bulkier and clawed to tear better against flesh and blood. Upon its eighth win, it had not struggled at all against the bat, but no evolution came.

He then made it fight against a stronger creature, the Tearing Spider. The forelimbs of the spider curled into barbed hooks that caused massive pain to rip out of flesh. The fangs pointed into the maw of the larger set head. The spider featured a larger head for stronger biting strength and a longer abdomen that sported three pairs of limbs, designed to fix the spider in place so any prey would have to break the arachnid's strong grip to escape.

The entire creature was designed to hold prey in place before slowly stripping away flesh with cruelly hooked limbs. However, against the skeleton with rigid bone and lack of flesh what would happen?

They struggled, mana-powered bone pulled against reinforced chitin and blood hydraulics. They wrestled for hours and minutes before Unbound was going to call it off and face the skeleton against another of its kind Elvinia gasped.

“Look, look.” She exclaimed. As the core spirit focused harder he saw the spider’s limbs slowly sawing through the skeleton’s joints as they watched with bated breath something else happened. Like when the skeleton invaded his instincts tore his attention elsewhere in the dungeon, an armored boot clanged against the stone floor.

Achievement Gained: Adventures Beacon