He underestimated the wolves.
As soon as he stepped into the grass, the wolves broke cover. They stalked, stiff-legged into the glade, snarling. There were seven of them and the two wolves in the lead looked different from the rest. Instead of hair, their coats seemed to be made of interlocking metal scales. The armor extended down to their metal claws, up to their necks, and over their heads to form smooth helmets. He couldn't tell if the metal was part of their bodies or something they wore, but it didn't hinder their movement.
"Have you ever seen anything like this?" He thought back to Bossy.
No one answered.
"Bossy?" He didn't dare turn his back.
He was just about to step backward into the dungeon when the wolves charged. The two golems on defense raised their fists like boxers and widened their stance. He tried to imitate them then realized he was being foolish and set his golem to defense, letting it take over. He concentrated on switching back to the core to make more golems.
Nothing happened.
Then the wolves leapt and everything was a blur as the golems punched and tossed wolves rhythmically. They were effective at first, but the wolves kept coming, snapping and clawing and grabbing at the stone defender's arms. The golems were too predictable and too slow.
The two iron wolves, as he thought of them, both grabbed the right arm of the golem on the right and pulled it over. It thrashed on the ground, struggling to get up as the other wolves mobbed it to keep it down.
The golem on the left stepped forward to attack them, abandoning its post. Which is when the iron wolves circled and grabbed his own golem's arm, nearly repeating their success before he took control again and crouched, laying an uppercut into the side of the topmost wolf's head, the female. Her eyes only inches from his own glowed faintly amber as she reared back to dodge the punch.
He didn't have time to think about it as three wolves leaped onto his back and overbalanced him, toppling him to the ground. The dungeon was now completely exposed behind him. As he fell, he tried to roll to his feet, but the golem's body was awkward and stiff. He ended up on his side looking back at the doorway.
The last golem standing moved to try to cover the doorway and that was when he noticed it didn't have the thread of mana he had seen earlier connecting it back to the core. Neither did he.
Beside him, the first golem shattered into pebbles.
He should have paid more attention to Bossy. She had said something about "his domain" and he was beginning to realize what that meant. Out here, beyond the door, he couldn't heal or headhop or do anything that required his focus to be in the dungeon.
He started crawling, ignoring the two wolves worrying at the back of his neck. He could feel them doing damage. Maybe their teeth are metal too? He thought. It was his first dungeon battle and he was about to lose the whole thing to a big helping of canned canine.
Just then the third golem stepped forward and landed a solid blow on one of the wolves. He was about to shout at it to go back and guard the door, assuming he could shout when he saw that the door was filled with a face out of a nightmare.
Wicked curved horns, and a steaming breath that flickered with pale fire. Bossy's eyes were like headlights. Or full moons.
"You should be ashamed of yourselves!" She bellowed. The sound had weight and force and bowled all of the wolves back. Some yelped. The others leaped to their feet snarling.
Stew kept crawling, reaching a finger toward the threshold. As his finger crossed the invisible barrier, he suddenly felt the core's connection again.
He moved his focus back to the core and created another golem. He could see Bossy from behind, still blocking the door and guarding the prone golem with its hand-stretched over the threshold.
Outside, the wolves were regrouping. They seemed diminished, slinking rather than stalking. They were turned sideways as if ready to run.
"What was that?"
"Apparently, that was [scold]," Bossy said. "It's an interesting attack. It seems to have reduced all of their stats by half and blocked any health regeneration."
One of the kittens, Boo, peaked around the door frame at the wolves and hissed, raising his hackles and waving a claw.
"You tell them, little warrior," Bossy said, then added over her shoulder, "Let's talk about doors."
Stew recalled the two golems outside and had them stand just inside the threshold, blocking the doorway. He pulled up his core stats, remembering something about customization. A new menu appeared. "Level Customization."
There were only a few options, "Dungeon Entrance" and "Other" with no more detail when he selected them.
He selected "Dungeon Entrance." The ghostly outline of a door appeared and seemed to follow his attention. It became brighter at the doorway and snapped into place. He concentrated, confirming the location. A very solid-looking wood door with metal bands appeared, blocking the entrance and casting the room into darkness except for a few rays of light that came through an arch-shaped barred window set high in the door.
"Can't I just build a room there with no external doorway and close us in?" He knew somehow, deep down that there was no way it could be that easy.
"Don't. You can't block the flow of mana, it would blast through anything that blocked it completely, and if you did somehow manage to build something sturdy enough to survive the pressure, you and all of your mana-dependent minions and monsters would suffer, me included." She thought for a moment. "Well, that's how it works with other dungeons. Even with your strange system, I wouldn't risk it."
The room had been tight quarters before, but now it was cramped. He was afraid one of the golems would step on his core. He turned the new one around, pointed it at the back wall and selected "Dig."
He expected the golem to magically manifest a shovel or something, but instead, it just started slamming its fists into the wall. It looked painful, but the golem didn't seem to mind. He switched his focus to the golem and didn't feel anything but a satisfying thud as each fist slammed into the wall. The golem didn't seem to feel pain or grow tired and he couldn't find any hint that it had a mind or feelings. It was like a big stone machine. It was cathartic pounding solid rock like a boxing movie montage. He wondered if the golem could jump rope. After a while the sensation started to get old, so he switched back to his core.
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Watching the golem still made him feel sorry for it, working away without any tools. The off-white wall and the steady work reminded him of one long summer spent hanging drywall to build a fairy circle of cardboard McMansions. He got screwed out of his last paycheck when the builder went bankrupt. The whole project rotted empty until it burned down. Watching all that work go to waste still bothered him. Work should have a purpose. It should mean something.
He had a lot of time to think as he watched the golem pound away. Chips and dust fell around its feet then vanished, absorbed. His store of stone increased steadily. There wasn't room to put the other two golems to work on the back wall, and he didn't want to expand sidewise. That would just increase his exposure to the outside.
After exactly one hour of work, the golem had pounded out a rough room, five meters by five meters, larger than the core room. The golem lowered its arms and stood perfectly still.
Room Customization Unlocked - You may now choose a purpose for each room and choose different fit and finish options.
Customization options for your new room:
1. Theme
2. Surface and Environment
3. Fixtures
4. Furnishings
He flipped through the menu looking at all of the new options. There were themes for a treasure room, trap room, puzzle room, conservatory, storage, utility, a level entrance, and level exit. He selected "utility" and found that there were sub sections for "corridor straight" and "corridor curved". He chose "corridor straight" just to see what happened. There was a confirmation, then the title of the room changed to "dungeon corridor."
He looked at "Surface and Environment" and saw there were a few options for lighting, floors, walls, and ceilings. He chose "well-lit" and selected plain stone just to keep things simple. The room changed, becoming smooth and perfectly square. He selected fixtures and found an option for only a door and wall torch. He wondered if this was because of the theme. He tried to go back and change the theme to trap room but found he couldn't change it until he went back to Surface and Environment and switched it back to default which was a new option.
When he changed the theme to "Trap Room," the fixture options changed and he found he now had "simple pit trap", "simple spike snare", and "moving wall (1)" each with a cost of 1 mana. For Furnishings, he found two carpets, a table, and chairs, a "loot chest (small)", and "random treasure (loose)" with no cost for any of the items.
He selected "random treasure, loose." A scatter of dull coins appeared on the floor along with a pair of shoes and a folded robe. He had the golem pick them up and saw that they were "iron coins," the robe, and shoes identified as "closed shoes (common)" and "traveler's robe (common)". On a hunch, he selected one of the carpets and had the golem pick that up too.
He switched back to "loose treasure." As he suspected the treasure reset with a worn tunic, sandals and a "tiger's eye" semiprecious stone instead of the robe and coins.
I have an infinite junk machine! He tried the small chest and found it contained a tin cup, a wooden plate, and a rusted iron hammer. Not exactly treasure, but he had the golem put everything else in the chest and keep the hammer.
One practice swing with the hammer against a bare place on the wall confirmed that it was junk too. It shattered into pieces which vanished when they hit the floor without adding anything to his inventory.
He switched the chamber back to a bare corridor segment, played with the lighting options and floor, changing it from stone to "dungeon grass" then back again, and called it good.
He had the lead golem dig another four rooms straight back, setting each to "Dungeon Corridor" then sent the other two golems back to make some rooms off to the side.
At Bossy's suggestion, he checked the room customization options for the core room and saw that there was a "Move Core" option. He tried it and found he could swap the core room with any other room. He tucked himself away in one of the side rooms and dug out a larger room with a dungeon grass floor for Bossy and the kittens.
He worked with Bossy and the kittens to generate all of the actions and mana they could. The mana cap still made things awkward. They eventually grew tired and napped, which surprised him. He hadn't expected dungeon monsters to need sleep.
The golems didn't seem to need to rest, so he and the golems worked through the night until he had a good start on a layout for the first level. He broke-up the straight corridor and instead tried to make more of a maze with one, larger boss room at the very end, just before a small core room. He couldn't make it very complicated though. There seemed to be an upper limit on the number of finished rooms, although the size of each room didn't seem to make any difference, even though larger rooms required digging multiple raw rooms.
Unnamed Dungeon First Level 01:08
Theme: Dungeon Entrance
Rooms: 10/10
Everything seemed to come with limits. It seemed like he could keep digging if he wanted, but the stone would be wasted, since he could only keep ten. Creating the level changed his stats, but not by much, replacing the total room count with a level count.
Unnamed Core 01:12
Levels: 1
Minions: 1
Monsters: 6
Mana: 10/10
Actions Remaining: 253
Action Recovery: 1 / day
Stone: 10/10
1. Generate Mana
2. Create A Room (10 Stone)
3. Create A Monster (1 Mana)
4. Customization
The golem with which he first started digging earned an upgrade on completing the last room.
Your Monster Has Leveled Up!
Specialization Unlocked
Apply "Mining" specialization?
1. Yes
2. Maybe Later
That sounded interesting. "1"
Mining Golem: Level 2
Mana Cost - 1 / day
Health 12/12
Agility 2
Strength 6
Constitution 4
Actions: 1/2
Action Recharge: 2 / day
Special attack: Bash
Assign Task (1 action):
1. Dig
2. Defend
3. Delegate Action
Name Minion? (Y/N)
"Y"
"Big John"
The golem changed, stone hands flowing into new shapes. The right arm became a pickaxe, the left a hammer.
Big John
Mining Golem: Level 2
Mana Cost - 1 / day
Health 13/13
Agility 2
Strength 7
Constitution 5
Actions: 0/2
Action Recharge: 2 / day
Special ability: Prospect (20 Mana)
Assign Task (1 action):
1. Dig
2. Defend
3. Delegate Action
"Prospect" sounded interesting, but he didn't have a way to spend 20 mana at once, and there were, literally, wolves at the door. He had the beginnings of his very first dungeon level, but it was just a bunch of empty, default rooms. Time to add some flair.
And some traps and monsters.