“Fuck, I really ended up in a shithole didn’t I?” Red sighed as he stood on the porch of his dungeon. In the few minutes since he had been outside, Red had discovered two things. The first was that the dungeon didn’t completely connect to the physical world. He was currently standing on the porch of a medium sized shack that only looked like an improved version of his starting abode. Red was thoroughly confused by this, considering that the interior of the shack was now completely stone, and there should have been a large portion of garden taking up the surrounding area. He supposed that it was one of the few things he shouldn’t question as a dungeon, since all it would do was confuse him more.

The second thing that he had learned was the fact that the area surrounding his shack was one of the most disgusting swamps that he had seen in his entire life. He acknowledged of course the fact that the swampiest thing he had ever seen was some flood territory in Louisiana, but it was still leaps and bounds better than the evil biome around him.

The trees were all twisted dead looking things, the bark more of an ashy silver than the stereotypical black deadwood that he had seen in movies. Around his property was a lawn of dense leech grass, the deep violet blades seeming to never grow past a few inches so that unwitting creatures would be willing to walk across it. Red would have to change this entire place just so that he could get people who weren’t half-or fully dead walking into his dungeon.

“Addison’s holy magic must have been the only thing protecting her from this stuff.” He muttered as he walked off of the porch of the shack and leaned down, touching the blades and finding that they passed through him like everything else. He turned around to look at the shack, finding that it looked more like a house these days. The outside looked like it had just a handful of rooms, which would have made it seem cozy if its surroundings weren’t so hellish.

“System, am I able to change around the entrance to my dungeon at all? What are my limits here?” He asked as he waited for the box to appear, it taking a second before it came up with a condensed bit of information. The long and short of it was that there were only two methods to change his outside. He could adjust the shack and everything directly connected to it, but that wouldn’t do anything to the biome around him. The second was a gamble, if he somehow managed to come across a naturally occurring spawner within his awareness, then he would be able to change it into a similar spawner that could affect the environment.

“System… did I gain any spawners from the awareness expansion?” He prayed, hoping that he would be able to start changing the world for the better. That was the real goal at the end of the day wasn’t it? Improving a world that he had failed so many times before. He waited with bated breath as the screen slowly began to materialize. It was almost as if the system was trying to build suspense for a big reveal.

Structures gained from Expansion

1 Common House Fly Spawner

“Wait… Those flies were being born from a naturally occurring spawner? How the hell do spawners occur in nature?” He asked with a frown as he looked at the box, the text not changing to any kind of response. He supposed that the system was only there to tell him about dungeon related things and how to do his job, not so that he could get all the information of everything whenever he asked for it. He had no choice but to float around until he could find the spawner that the flies were coming from. It only took about an hour before he came across the thing producing the flies. In the back of his mind he wished he had never found it.

In front of Red was a pulsing mass of rotting flesh that the flies squirmed out of, bypassing their larval stage to be born as full adults. He gagged, well aware the action was completely voluntary, his projection having neither a stomach or gag reflex to be triggered by the horrendous smell coming off of the corpse. From what Red could gather at a distance, the ‘spawner’ was originally some hoofed mammal that had the unfortunate fate to die in the area. The wetness of the meat and the bareness of the soil suggested it was not leech grass that did the creature in. The only real thing that told him the pulsing pile of flesh was once a wild ungulate was a hoof attached to a still twitching leg.

“I don’t understand what turned this poor thing into a fly spawner… and I am pretty sure that I don’t want to understand.” He said with a grimace as he looked it over before shaking off the disgust that he felt. He watched as flies came off of the corpse only to begin lazily floating over towards the area of the dungeon, suggesting that every fly he had encountered up to this point had come from this singular carcass. Which raised even more questions, since the amount of flies spawned should have turned the meat into nothing by this point.

“System. I would like to change this spawner to a similar spawner of a different type.” He said to the air, putting his hands behind his back as he waited for the screen to appear.

Outdoor Insect Spawner List

Honey bee

Common House Fly

Wasp

Ant

Spider

Centipede

Millipede

Termite

Demonic Aphids

Hellish Stag Beetle

Holy Aphids

Heavenly Hercules Beetle

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Feyflies

Weirding Worms

Note: (6) Additional options have been added due to the dungeon's current affinities.

“Aphids? Why the hell would there be aphids for both holy and unholy?” He muttered with a frown as he expanded the options and received a third option as a result.

Alignment Aphids

Any ladybug’s favorite snack

Aphids are a universal constant within the insect kingdom. An aphid’s base alignment is plants, but they can adapt to consume and kill anything.

Red frowned as he tried to understand the kind of world that would create such a horrid creature. The idea of angelic aphids swarming over Addison and drinking her dry like wingless mosquitoes was a horrid thought. He shook his head and quickly crossed out those options in his mind. He would only go for aphids if there was ever something that he desperately needed to kill very slowly. There was a deep hope in his heart that it would never come to that.

He looked at the remaining options, nixing the feyflies since they seemed to be just little motes of light that had a short lifespan. They were meant to give an area an ethereal glow, but if he truly wanted them then it would be better inside of the dungeon rather than outside. Looking through the remaining three options, Red felt like the system was giving him a softball after the previous day he had experienced.

All three of the remaining unique options were of the [Terraform] tag, meaning that they could change a biome or location to a specific type. The Hellish Stag and the Weirding Worm would change an area into demonic or fey aligned biomes respectively. The real prize in this bug filled mystery bag was the Heavenly Hercules Beetle.

Dungeon Individual Sheet

Name: N/A

Type: Monster

Species: Heavenly Hercules Beetle

Tags: [Holy], [Terraform], [Bug], [Large], [Armored], [Flying]

Title: N/A

Age: N/A

P Skills: Consecrate, Purify, Cleanse

A Skills: Stag Rush, Big Pinch, Heal, Rip and Tear

Height: 2”

Weight: .25 lbs

Mood: N/A

Ascension XP: N/A

Level: N/A

Ascension: N/A

Description: Zero to hero! A Hercules beetle with a golden shell and white ivory colored facial carapace. The wings hidden under its golden shell are a distinct shade of blue meant to blend in with the daytime sky. This beetle wanders [Heaven] tagged locations and cleans away the mulch and rot of the world to help keep them pure. When introduced into an [Evil] tagged location, this beetle will slowly purify the area around it. A single beetle is capable of clearing away one three by three foot cube of land over the course of a single day.

Red was somewhat surprised to find his new sheet being used for a creature that he had not yet bought. It was about as descriptive as the usual creature sheets that had been suggested to him in the past, but at the same time gave far more data on what exactly he was about to select. There was no question to which of the three he would choose, the Hercules Beetle was the only thing that could restore the biome around them to a natural state.

He couldn’t help but note that his theory about the difference between creatures and monsters was correct. The beetle was considered a monster despite the fact that it was at the end of the day a non-threatening bug. The difference between it and the ordinary kind was its proficiency in holy magic. Which made Red believe that proficient was the working word there.

“So if a creature has a tag, like my holy crawdads, they can still be a creature. It’s only when they either embody or fully grasp the magic tag. Good to know, might be useful in the future.” The dungeon spoke to himself as he made a mental note about the information he had gathered. If there was one thing he knew about any system, was that there had to be flaws that could be exploited for personal gain. He was never one to figure out bugs before though, so for the time being he would focus more on actual bugs.

He selected the beetle to take the place of the flies and watched with great relief as the blob of meat began to turn into something else. It stopped undulating in horrid ways and the flies ceased their endless crawl from the former hive. The meat turned brown before losing its slimy sheen, the new material of the spawner absorbing any fluids around it. Sticks and leaves began to poke out of the pile as the rotting smell was replaced with the earthy scent of mulch. Steadily over the course of a few minutes, the spawner was no longer the remains of an animal, but instead a mulch pile with a few sickly white larvae squirming out of the sides of it. Red could only assume those were the infant form of the beetle, since he had never actually seen grubs so large before in his life.

Red was about to leave before he saw the top of the mound beginning to shift, the first of his new selected bugs emerging out into the world. It moved the bottom pincer towards its horn, before beginning to flap its wings. The beautiful azure wings took flight and landed on the ground next to Red’s feet. Already Red could see the ground began to lighten and change from the unusable tainted soil.

Warning! Food Chain Shift Detected!

You have introduced a new creature into a biome’s food chain. This creature is currently seen as the {Bottom} of the local pecking order. Be careful, as creatures could be attracted to new food sources and invade the dungeon.

“Of course. Because why would anything be that simple?” Red sighed as he looked at the spawner and lifted it up with his Build Menu. He carried the mulch pile over to the back of his shack, making it seem like the residents were mindful of their waste. The Hercules Beetle followed him on skittering legs, leaving a path of dark rich soil and individual bright green blades of grass as it did so. Red glanced at the beetle before giving a small chuckle as it checked on the status of its home after the move was complete.

“Sorry about that, Herc. I need you guys cleaning things closer to the shack first and foremost.” He said with a smile as he looked at the beetle. The beetle tilted its head up towards him before freezing in place. The light left its solid blue eyes as golden flecks of light began to dance around its body. “Son of a bitch! I really need to be better about this.” Red groaned, the name having just meant to be a one-off comment, not intentionally naming the beetle like a particular movie adaptation.

“Fuck it, you’re also chief janitor now.” Red rubbed his temples and closed his eyes as he spoke, trying to calm himself as the system persisted in trying to give an inorganic being an ulcer. His eyes opened wide and darted down when he heard a sharp crack, before shards of golden shell flew in every direction.