One of the wolves scratched at the door and sniffed around the edges. He could feel it as if the door was his skin. When the wolf decided to take an experimental bite, it HURT, so he decided it had to be one of the weird ones in armor.
He switched his focus to Big John in the new boss room at the back of the dungeon. He had floored the room with dungeon grass. Fluff was imitating Bossy and cropping at the grass. The other two kittens were sleeping.
The big room gave Bossy and the kittens space to move around, and he set the lighting to "daylight" which was pretty convincing although the ceiling was still as low as the other rooms. There wasn't a way to make it follow a day cycle. It was still late so he set it to "dimly lit." He would just have to remember to change the lighting every few hours.
He turned Big John to face Bossy. "What are those things and why do they even want in?"
Bossy's reply sounded thoughtful in his head. "I haven't seen them before, but I assume the two evolved wolves were created for some army or horde. Eventually, they must have become separated and joined a pack of natural wolves."
"I saw plenty of game outside. They were stalking a deer when I stepped out there." Stew braced himself as he felt teeth worry at the wood of the door with more determination. "Why does a wolf care about a walking statue and a hole in the ground?"
"Because you fed them." Bossy tossed her head in disgust. "Now they'll never leave."
"Fed them? I don't have any food to give them. I just fought them."
Both Bossy and Fluff looked at him now, each cocking their head at the same perplexed angle. "Even that fed them experience, but you really don't know any of these things? How is that possible?"
"I didn't exactly get a manual for all of this." He lifted Big John's hammer and pick in a wide shrug. "I just woke up as a glowing rock."
"Any magical entity," she nodded toward the sleeping kittens, then Big John, "has a core. You fed that pack leader and her pup two golem cores, plus experience toward their next level."
"Well, crap." Stew looked over his shoulder, down the hall toward the entrance. "So they want more."
"They smell us, and our cores." She snorted. "They smell you."
"So I'm a delicacy." The door was holding with no sign of weakening, but he suddenly felt completely exposed again. "Just how long do dungeons last around here if we're on the menu for everything?"
"New dungeons are rare. Some younger dungeons are tamed and under the protection of a country or power. Ancient dungeons are vast and powerful and offer so many useful resources and chances to gain experience that only the most greedy or foolhardy attack their cores."
"So that's why we do this."
"What do you mean?"
"The whole luring the unwary to their doom thing." He left Big John in the core room and jumped to another golem, turning it around and walking toward the entrance. "It seemed so grim, and I guess it is. I couldn't see why I would want to do those sorts of things." Now he could feel two sets of metal teeth tearing at the door and they were beginning to make progress, tearing him apart. "But since I've met the welcoming committee here…"
He reached the end of the hallway, with one section between him and the entrance room. He looked down at the ground and switched the theme to traps again.
He selected "simple pit trap." The floor looked the same except for an all too visible crack across the middle.
He tapped it with the golem's foot, keeping his weight on his back foot.
The floor fell open in two sections. It was three meters deep and had smooth sides.
"This might be a problem for the regular wolves, but this doesn't look very dangerous to the big ones." He looked across the open pit. "Even the regular wolves could likely jump out if they aren't caught off guard."
He moved one room deeper into the level and set a "simple spike snare." This one added a plate across the middle of the room, just as obvious as the crack in the floor for the spike trap. He didn't have anything to throw at it, so he walked the golem to it and stepped on it.
Hardened stone spikes sprung from the ceiling crushing the golem more than piercing it. It hurt terribly. The golem crumbled to pebbles, the same as the ones he had lost outside. The debris vanished, reabsorbed by the dungeon floor, leaving only a small crystal. He didn't feel too bad about it since he had never noticed even a glimmer of awareness in the golems.
He found he could reset the spikes, then created a new golem where the old one had been standing. With the new golem's eyes, he could see the crystal was a smoky gray. So these were valuable, and he could create them for the price of one mana. It gave him an idea.
Wolves weren't going to be interested in a pair of sandals or a few coins, but a core like this might make useful bait. He just wished he had better traps to bait with it.
Next he looked at his monster options.
Select a Monster Type 02:32
1. Golem (produces stone)
2. Slime (produces mucus)
3. Kitten (Very active!, requires a Cow Minion)
4. Skeleton (produces loot, requires a Cow Minion)
5. Giant Rat (produces meat, requires a Goblin Minion)
The skeleton seemed like a bad idea versus wolves. Although a running bundle of bones might make good bait. He started to ask Bossy what she thought, but saw she was asleep again.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He created a slime.
Slime - Level 1 02:40
Mana Cost - 1
Health 10/10
Agility 3
Strength 3
Constitution 5
Actions: 1/1
Action Recharge: 1 / day
Special attack: Digest
Assign Task (1 action):
1. Generate Mucus
2. Defend
3. Assimilate
A translucent green blob appeared on the floor.
"Hello?" He was hesitant to move his focus into the slime, with no idea what kinds of senses it might have.
The little slime burbled and raised a pseudopod straight up. A crude eye appeared. The eye immediately slid down the pseudopod to the ground and disappeared.
Oh, boy, here goes. He moved his focus into the slime and found it wasn't that different from being in the core. He could feel and taste both the stone and the air very precisely. He concentrated on seeing and felt another eye form. By concentrating still more he was able to keep it from dissolving and keep it still. Like the kittens and unlike the golem, he felt the presence of a personality in the little slime, eager and curious. Did it want something? He couldn't quite put it in words, but he assumed it had something to do with the [Assimilate] action.
He switched back to the golem and thought about his options. Assuming each monster cost 1 mana for daily maintenance, he could only keep a few. The kittens were free, but fierce though they thought they were, they were useless in a fight.
He could use them as bait, but the thought made him shudder, so he pushed it aside. Even the slime felt too cute to be cannon fodder.
The wolves had taken a break outside, but they started on the door again with extra ferocity. It wasn't going to last forever.
He moved the golems and the slime out of the way and set to work.
The entrance couldn't be customized, so he put a pit in the second room. It would give him a chance to learn just how cunning the wolves actually were. He decorated the room with a round rug and some loose treasure which turned out to be a straw hat, a pair of cloth work gloves and a woven basket full of berries. He set the lighting to none, to better hide the crack in the floor.
For the next room, a puzzle room required 30 mana. A conservatory was an outrageous 100, so those were out. He was curious about treasure and storage rooms, but those didn't seem like a priority right now. He was going to have to make do with traps and monsters. He brought the slime to the middle of the room and tried out the "assimilate" option.
The slime blurped and spread out as if it was melting. It kept spreading until it completely vanished.
"Well that was dissapoi–"
Your Monster Has Evolved!
Stone Slime
Stone Affinity Unlocked
"Oh. What does that mean?"
He focused on the slime and suddenly he was a floor.
It felt strange, but oddly relaxed. He could still feel the slime, but it felt more substantial and sedentary now. He found it had fewer options, and different stats, but it was still level 1.
Stone Slime - Level 1 03:20
Mana Cost - 1
Health 10/10
Agility 1
Strength 3
Constitution 15
Actions: 1/1
Action Recharge: 1 / day
Special attack: Digest
Assign Task (1 action):
1. Generate Mucus
"Mucus. Fine. Let's do that. 1"
The floor began to glisten.
Stew stepped forward in the golem and immediately slipped and fell. No matter how he scrambled he could not even get to his knees until he managed to slide to the edge and get a hand on the dry stone in the next room.
He still struggled to get to his feet and was dripping with goo, but if the golem could smile he would have been grinning wide. This could work.
He decided the surprise would be wasted this close to the entrance though, so he asked the slime to move to room five. It gathered itself into a puddle the same color as the floor and oozed slowly away.
With a new plan, he left the second room empty. A little false confidence might be useful later.
He worked through the rest of the early morning hours, combining everything he had learned into traps in rooms two through seven. Room one was the entrance, room nine was Bossy's room and ten was the core room.
In room eight, a wide room. He readied Big John and seven more golems, all he could support with the mana cap. He noticed something interesting. Once the big golem dried out from the mucus dip, Big John's agility had gained a point. He wasn't sure if it was from experience scrambling to find his feet or some effect of the mucus, but the latter seemed more likely.
On a hunch, he sent the other seven golems for a dip in the mucus. Their increased agility confirmed his guess that the mucus had some positive buff for the golems that affected agility. Would it wear off? Would it give the wolves the same buff? That might be a problem.
Back in room five, an extra long room, he turned the entire floor into a pit trap and put spike snares in rooms four and six. He opened the pit and asked the stone slime to spread itself over the pit instead of the trap floor. He wasn't sure if it could do it but it seemed able to extend itself just far enough, covering the floor of the pit and the sides in glistening mucus.
He decided to name the slime "Sluice." He brightened the lighting in the room and gave Sluice the golem's core. The slime placed it in the very center of the pit in plain sight.
Leaving the pit doors open, Stew practiced controlling the spike snares. There didn't seem to be a way to remove the pressure plate altogether, but he found, if he concentrated, he could have a golem step on the plate and still keep the snare from triggering.
Stew walked the golem back to room eight. He was feeling pretty clever until he did one last check over everything and realized there really wasn't much to his first "level."
He prodded Bossy's with his attention and felt her wake.
"And what have you been up to?"
"Just trying to make some preparations for our visitors." He described his traps and ideas, and the more he described them, the less confident he felt. Ten rooms were no maze. There was barely anything to the traps and he had a few golems to fight, that was it. "I've never done this before."
"I think." Bossy paused as if deciding how much truth he was ready to hear. "I think it would hardly even slow a first-level adventurer."
We're doomed. "Should I start over?"
"No. This level doesn't need to slow an adventurer, right now, it needs to stop a pack of wolves." He felt her stand and nudge the kittens awake. "One does not learn anything if one does not take risks."
He felt his way around the level one more time and decided to add spike traps in rooms six and seven, they were small rooms that formed a corner before the entrance to room eight. He had had some vague idea of blocking the line of sight to the squad of waiting golems, but now it seemed like a better idea to fill every available space with spikes. There wasn't time to do much else.
The wolves were almost through the door.