It was disappointing but unsurprising that Adam rejected Rick’s plea to help his parents. He still wasn’t sure if he should absorb the Cores that Adam brought as a gift, but he couldn’t figure out what the man would have to gain by hurting him at this point.

“By the way, it shouldn’t matter which one you choose. Don’t absorb them all at once, but don’t save them for any reason either. This will give you a head start,” Adam explained.

With a mental “fuck it”, Rick began to absorb the one that looked like a topaz. “Here goes,” he mumbled.

Immediately, Rick felt a rush of growth and Alerts, signaling that he had hit Level 5 and filled up most of what he needed to reach Level 6. His critters and wolves seemed to recover as well. Billy, unfortunately, was still waiting for respawn while his timer idled at 0:00. Apparently, he couldn’t respawn while Adam was still within the domain.

A mix of emotions flooded Rick. It almost felt cannibalistic for him to “eat” the Core. Maybe it was. He could sense what kind of soul would have been compatible with the Core. It needed to be someone with an affinity toward light magic. Rick didn’t exactly know what that meant, but he did know that was what had been required.

Still, none of the Alerts or his revelations came close to what had physically happened to him after he absorbed it. An entirely new Dungeon Floor had erected itself within Rick’s domain. His senses spread over it and made him feel warm.

The floor looked similar to the basement level floor when he had first built it. However, he knew that this one would be more effective if he filled it with light affinity minions once he had access to the Dungeon Shop. Without thinking about it, he burned through some trash and made the floor a little bit larger, and had to stop himself before he got carried away.

Adam seemed to know something was going on while he stood there wearing an amused smile. “You know, when you’re happy, the air in here is wonderful. It smells like pine trees and the air itself is cool and refreshing. Before the integration, this place had a distinct smell. Like an abandoned deli or something.”

Rick ignored Adam for a moment. The floor had inserted itself between the bottom level and the shop floor, making Rick wonder what the building looked like from the outside. For now, the only thing he added to the floor was a door. Creating an access point to the new area brought up a System prompt.

Designate Floor Level

This allowed him to designate where the floor was located exactly. He found that he could shift the floors up or down on the holographic blueprint of his dungeon. It was empty at the moment, so he just kept it as the second floor for now. He popped the door open so Adam could look at it while he began checking his Alerts.

—ALERT—

* Level 5 Obtained

* +200 Energy

* +500 Challenge Points

* +1 Free Floor Boss

* +3 Free Minions

* +1 Auxiliary Room

* +1 Assigned Skill

* +10,000 System Credits for Dungeon Employee Stipend Fund

“Holy shit. That’s a lot,” Rick blurted out. He wondered if there was a spike in Level Up rewards for certain levels. It seemed like Level 2 and Level 5 had the most stuff. Maybe it was every three levels or perhaps there were just certain milestones he needed to reach.

Even with his sources of replenishing Energy, the cap increase was most welcome. The 500 Challenge Points had to be a bonus for reaching level 5, giving him over 700 CP.

While he was excited to explore the new Floor Boss and Minions, he wanted to inspect the awards he hadn’t seen before, starting with the Auxiliary Room.

Auxiliary Rooms (or “Aux Rooms”) offer functions outside of the Challenge floors. The function is at the Core’s discretion. The Dungeon Attendant has automatic access and may grant others access.

There were a lot of things Rick could think of to use the Aux Room for. He could build a training area for the Cartel or any would-be Challengers, an oasis for Penny, or even something like a casino so he and Jimmy could get rich in more ways than killing off Challengers.

But first, he needed to fulfill a promise. He would make Jimmy his penthouse. The only condition was that Penny and his parents would also have homes in the Aux room. There weren’t enough materials just yet, but Rick envisioned himself building the street he grew up on, and replicating his parent’s home.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

His consciousness within his domain was strong enough now to allocate the Aux Room to the top floor while he moved on to the other Alerts. It would be a while before he could grow it to the proper size. The original floor needed to be large enough for the Kaiju when it was born.

The next Alert he looked at was the Assigned Skill. Previously, he had a choice in skills, but the System didn’t give him an option here. It was simple, but Rick knew the importance of it once he read the description.

Automatic Loot: Assign Registry items to minions and floor bosses. When a Challenger defeats a dungeon creature, the Challenger will be rewarded with one or more of the assigned items.

Of course, people needed to be incentivized to enter his dungeon. So far, Rick had mostly just been slaughtering anyone who came in. That’s probably why no Challengers had entered in a while.

He selected the skill and it brought up a list of Billy and all the wolves — bargles not included. The skill allowed him to assign up to 100 items to each of them. The items each had a percentage next to them whereas the more valuable items had a lower percentage than the junk items.

However, the more valuable items like diamonds, had a much higher percentage to drop from Billy than with the wolves. Rick thought he was hilarious as he started assigning high percentage junk that he’d gained from random things he absorbed from the trash piles.

Finn was now most likely to drop a sticker that said, “Live, Laugh, Love”. Stella was most likely to drop a roll of rough toilet paper, which actually might be pretty valuable after the integration. Billy and the Ceaseless wolves all had similar junk assigned to them, but any of them could also drop gems, weapons, or gold to a lucky Challenger.

Thankfully, the skill didn’t require any Energy on his part. The items were now in a sub-registry for each minion. Rick would tinker with it more in the future as well and moved on to the Dungeon Employee Stipend Fund.

The 10,000 System Credits dwarfed his Challenge Points, confirming to him that the Challenge Points were superior in value. Rick selected the Dungeon Employee Stipend fund and discovered an intricate menu. It reminded him of accounting software, making him groan. He did not want to deal with this.

One surprise was that Rick found Penny, alongside Jimmy, was the only other employee. Rick imagined giving Penny a stipend where she would spend her credits on treats and tennis balls.

Further inspection showed that he could add an admin, so he put Jimmy on there. They could go over payment and what to do if they hired any more employees. Maybe his parents could get a nice little paycheck too.

He quit fiddling with this new System accounting software before he got a headache and began to scroll through what he was most excited about — Floor Bosses and Minions.

The new floor needed a boss, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to fill it with minions quite yet. The first floor was crowded with just Billy and Stella before he expanded it, so for now, he would keep it to just the boss.

To narrow the list down, he searched only for candidates with light affinity. Immediately, the menu was populated with humanoid creatures with classes like clerics, zealots, and other religious sounding names.

“Hard pass,” Rick said. Dealing with some kind of fanatic would be a nightmare.

He filtered out humanoid creatures and looked for beasts with light affinity instead. The list was still seemingly endless. Rick could doom scroll through this for weeks if he let himself. Some of them even had the light affinity for different types of light such as ultraviolet and infrared.

Finally, he found something he thought would be a good candidate for the smaller space.

Level 5 Yellow Noctiluca - These mosquito-like creatures give a warm glow to attract prey into their webs. Their webs are translucent, made from their mucus.

“A proper Floor Boss. That woulda scared the shit out of me if I was still human,” Rick said.

Rick popped open the door one more time, hoping Adam would get the hint and get out of the new room so he could summon the Floor Boss. Thankfully, he did.

“Oh, well I’m curious what you chose. I won’t kill it,” Adam said.

With a mental shrug, Rick summoned the Yellow Noctiluca. What appeared to be a mosquito, about 5 feet tall and thin, materialized. Not that Rick was an expert on insect body language, but he thought he saw that same vacant look Billy had when he was first called upon.

The creature shivered and flew up to the ceiling which had the same faint glow as the other floor. However, in this room, the walls more closely resembled the topaz than Rick’s own Core.

The Yellow Noctiluca found purchase despite the smooth stone and began spitting what must be the mucus the description mentioned on the surface.

“Good choice on the beast, but you need to make it dark in here, Rick,” Adam said as he calmly left the room and came back into the shop area.

It was odd that a light affinity beast didn’t actually want light in its habitat, but it wouldn’t exactly glow very well in the current condition. Rick was looking in his registry for what to use on the surface to block the light out when the door opened to the shop.

Jimmy rushed in, cradling a bleeding and unconscious Kara.