I apologize for the delay. Work, University and other stuff just kept popping up and I was too tired to do serious writing. The good thing about it is that the chapter got a lot better through some inspiration than it would have been in the original draft. Also a good bit longer as well. So I hope you guys can enjoy yourself. Also just to let you guys know, I will need to focus on some exams that are coming this week so I will most likely be unable to post a chapter every day. I will see how good it works out. But work and study simply need to have the first place in priority!

Still there is no need to worry I won´t drop this story any time soon. If anything I got even more motivated to continue it!

----------------------------------------

To think I was trapped by my own self…

It has been a very interesting week. Important even on so many levels of development and realization. But let us start at the very beginning. I will most likely never forget the first day where the goblins practiced with the slings. Stones flew through the whole practice area. Everything but the targets was hit. It was especially fun to watch them hit each other by mistake and the the mages hurrying over to patch them up again or check for serious injuries. Once they were done with the slings they all gathered with Gobar and were instructed on the simple matters of mana manipulations. Of course it wasn't easy for the goblins to get this straight so it took a few days for the first ones to actually be able to do it. But more of that later. After 2 hours of such lectures they were to take care of all the other matters that needed to be taken care of such as tending the fields, cooking, crafting, etc. I myself had taken a leisure seating on some furrs in the goblin home. I was still focusing mostly on my mana pool extension but here and there i gave some orders to the goblins as well. I actually had a companion of surprising nature in doing so. Vierna had taken up her usual stoic sitting next to me. It seems after she had seen the fields her opinion about the importance of this cave to her race has been of a unsure kind. Most of the time she remained silent and simply watched the goblins go about their business. But sometimes I managed to involve her in some unimportant banter or get some hints of knowledge from her. Though at some point we came to a rather interesting topic.

“So why are you always wearing that mask ? ”(Me)

It had always made me curious since the first time meeting them. On my words Vierna actually started for a moment before she looked at me in a, as I presume, thoughtful manner. That mask made it really impossible to read her expressions. I had already assumed that she would just ignore my question.

“Because we need to outside and we do not like the change that came over us when we were exiled.”(Vierna)

Wait exiled?

Apparently I had looked at her in such a puzzled way that she sighed and began explaining.

“It is not really a secret. We Drow were just like the other elves in the past. But we were betrayed.”(Vierna)

I could actually hear the leather creaking as she balled her hand to a fist in anger. Which was the only thing that gave away her deep rage. Her voice and posture remained exactly the same calm manner as usual.

“Before we were just two tribes of the same race. But during the great war our tribe turned towards the elven god Elwraek for protection and guidance for he was our god of war. This displeased the others who were still believers of Elzeiros as their highest god. Through the blessing of Elwraek our tribe became strong in the arts of war and we were so focused on battling the enemies of our race that we did not see the blade pointed at our backs. As soon as it seemed there were no mighty enemy focused on our kind anymore they struck. All the elders of the high elven tribe, as they call themselves now,  came together and put a curse on our tribe. With the assistance of Elzeiros it would have been a curse strong enough to wipe us out. But our god did not leave us alone. He acted up against his brother in rage and so the curse was only partly successful.”(Vierna)

At this time she took off her mask and hood, stroking slowly over the blueish veins that spread all over her skin. I had previously thought that it was just because they were so pale.

Heck that cannot be, they are too thick to be there on her face.

I had not noticed this previously because I was too distracted by other things but now i realized it.

“So what exactly did the curse do then ?”(Me)

On my question the red eyes that were staring at me nearly seemed to catch fire with the intensity of hate that was within them.

“It struck like an illness. Many of our weaker people died on the spot or later on after a long time of suffering. We had no choice but to withdraw into the nearly abandoned dwarven ruins and try to survive there. The others did not expect us to survive at all and were too slow to follow up with a decisive strike to eliminate us right away they also had lost a significant amount of power so they could not finish us off after we took defensive positions. After we recovered we found that our bodies had changed and we could no longer wander under the sun. From then on we could only go outside covered like this and the time spent in eternal darkness did its own to change us until we became like this. We are only a shadow of what we once were and this is why we will never forgive the elves.  ”(Vierna)

Woah…. no wonder they want to kill them. Those guys seem to live long enough to have plenty people that suffered through that. Guess they are confronted with their hatred each time they look at each other like a constant reminder.

After that we sat for a little while in silence. That was until Gob arrived.

Hmm I had already wondered where he had gone. He was a lot more clingy before.

The poisonous goblin approached slowly before he kneeled down.

“Gob wishes to ask Lord for a favor”(Gob)

I tilted my head slightly in surprise as I had not expected such a thing to happen with the little zealot. Speaking of which since when was he all about such behavior? Someone must have taught him oh well.

”Raise your head Gob. What do you need? ”(Me)

By now I was rather curious about what he would want. But then again he had earned some reward.

“Gob wishes for the masked woman to train Gob. Gob wishes to be stronger! The masked ones are strong. So Gob wishes to train with her”(Gob)

Somewhere along his speech he had raised his head and switched his look between me and Vierna. There was a burning kind of passion in his eyes and something about it unsettled me

“What for do you wish to become strong for ?”(Me)

“To be of use to the Lord ! It is Gob's purpose !”(Gob)

....

I turned towards Vierna at this point and told her what Gob wanted.

“Think you could help out him and maybe some other Goblins?”(Me)

Vierna regarded the still kneeling goblin for a while before she nodded.

“I will do so. With your fields this place will become an important place for my people soon enough. The better you can defend yourself the less we need to worry. Though the things i can teach will be limited with the language so we will see how much use it is. ”(Vierna)

“Many thanks. ”(Me)

After telling Gob the result and waving of his extremely excited thanks I paced towards my crystal cave. I gave the goblins at the entrance a firm order that no one was to disturb me unless it was a matter of life and death for the dungeon itself.

To think I was trapped by my own self…

My thoughts were slow right now as I realized something vital. I reached the cave and placed myself in front of my crystal body. There was a rough reflection of myself on the glowing crystal structure and I stood there for a while in absolute silence.

…

“Hahahahaha! I am an Idiot! Hahahahah!”(Me)

I suddenly could not hold onto myself any longer and burst out laughing over and over while i looked at the goblin me in the reflection and the crystal body of mine behind it.

“I was numb all this time since I got here. I didn't play it like a game but I also didn't take it as seriously as real life. ”(Me)

I had realized it after seeing Gob back there. Ever since coming here I had done everything half assed. I had not pushed forward like I would do usually in a game. I also was so far detached from living because of it feeling unreal all the time. I didn't have a body at first and even then I hadn't felt alive all this time because I knew that was just a shell for myself.

“All beings a driven forward by their needs… living needs food, warmth and other things but as a dungeon I had lacked needs for myself.”(Me)

I have been without purpose. As a dungeon I survive on mana alone. I need no food. My body is a crystal that does not care about heat or cold. I need no shelter. I need nothing. So as being what is my purpose?

“ From magic to even the taking care of the goblins was half assed. A half assed game I played, they were just a distraction on the side to not think too much about my situation. ”(Me)

I kept on laughing and laughing until I fell to the floor and had to breath roughly.

Is this madness? Oh well who cares. I am no longer human. I have been pulled to another world, to another body that has no needs at all. In my previous life I had no significant power and lived a dull, common life. But now.... now it is different. I have power. So I shall not live to fulfill my needs. I shall live to fulfill my every want.

“With pride I shall rule!

With envy I shall covet!

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

With greed I shall take!

With gluttony I shall devour!

With wrath I shall strike!

With lust I shall screw!

With sloth I shall rest!”

(Me)

I yelled those things out and heard them hollering back at me from the cave's walls. I had been ignited from my half assed state into one of immense excitement. In my past life i had always been fascinated by the 7 deadly sins as they are called. But are they sins? or deadly? Not really. They are like medicine. You need to take as much of them as you need,  but also not too much or they will turn to poison. Rule them, do not be ruled by them. But only the fewest have the necessary power or resources to act on their desires. But now I could build up both. This unstable world was perfect for it and I would use that. That was my decision.

“It's time I shape up and take care of matters seriously. ”(Me)

I transferred myself over to the crystal again and begun to think over what i had done so far and what I should have done actually. The result was that I had found a lot of things i did not know and had not investigated so far.  

Hmmh I won't be able to expand the farms for now. With the manpower of goblins that I have so far they they would most likely collapse from exhaustion if they had to keep up the training, working and farming all at once. There are children and pregnant ones but they will need more time. For now they need more training facilities.

I went and made one of the remaining free blocks to the right of the bath into a new shooting range. There the shooters would be separated by thin walls so they do not hit each other. There was still a danger of the stones rebounding if they were thrown to the side on mistake but that was negligible in this situation. After that I also modified the block to the left of the baths and made it into an a primitive arena. There they would be able to practice better and the home area would not be as much disturbed. For the rest of the day then I went over the labyrinth part and refined it carefully. Making sure I did all that I could to  improve and make it to our advantage. I paid a lot of attention and extended the smaller tunnel network and made sure that the entrances lay deep in shadows and niches where one would not look normally. Especially if the ones walking through the labyrinth did not have night vision as the goblins had. I found so many errors I had previously made that I wanted to slap my past self. On this night I fell asleep with a deeply satisfied feeling inside.

Your goblin Gobar has evolved

Variant Arcane Hobgoblin (Earth)

Standard Hobgoblin and Variant were added to your

servants evolutions.

Hah! It finally happened. The old goblin evolved !

A more advanced evolution has been unlocked

Do you want to evolve your avatar?

Y/N

Warning you will not get any skill points of the lost levels.

Hmpf screw skill points. Why did they even bother with them for a avatar body? I guess there are also some things not thought through in god's work? Yes give me the evolution.

Evolution process for avatar begins

Avatar will have to remain in the tank for

3 days.

Hey! You should have told me about that beforehand. Oh well fuck it.

Right after the screen had announced its annoying message I went to find Gobar. I found the old guy outside his cave, apparently still inspecting his new body thoroughly with an amazed expression. Well It really was quite the change. His height was now somewhere between a Goblin and a Human adult. But that was the least eye catching change. His skin had taken on a more brownish tone. He also had become a good bit younger and looked now as if he was in his late 50s instead of late 80s. The most prominent change though was for sure the crystalline horn that had grown out of his forehead. It was about an index finger in length and a bit thicker with a slight curve upwards.

“You did it Gobar !”(Me)

I enthusiastically yelled at the Hobgoblin that was slowly touching the new horn and he was so startled by my sudden voice that he pulled away his hand and cut himself on the sharp tip in the process. With a loud yelp he stuck his cut finger into her mouth and looked around a bit disgruntled.

“You could really try not to scare this old man out of his wit… Lord”(Gobar)

“Well at least it is now unlikely that you will die of a heart attack ”(Me)

“Ineed! It really is a heavenly feeling to regain a portion of one´s body´s ability. To think this old goblin would still manage to evolve… It is all thanks to living under your rule now. ”(Gobar)

The old goblin seemed truly delighted and grateful to have managed to evolve. I exchange some more teasing and banter with the hyped goblin before I left. I went to inspect the other goblins, after all it seemed Gobar needed some time to adjust to his own new body and I knew what that was like. Upon inspection I saw that indeed some of the older generation goblins had evolved to hobgoblins as well. With this there was a lot of commotion amongst the goblins throughout the whole day. All those that did not manage yet to evolve were much more motivated to do all they could to do it as well. That brings us towards the second thing to happen today. The first time to harvest wheat had come! I was baffled by how quick it had been. But I already noticed that there would not be as much as I had hoped. The wild plant did not bear that many seeds. Still after the harvest and separating the seeds from the stalk, we had a good amount of them stashed away inside some of the grass woven bags that the goblinas produced. I had them put away one part and let them use the other for themselves. After replanting the fields I went to check up on the trees and saw that they had also grown pretty well but were not quite ready yet. I also spotted that Vierna was now actively training the goblins, which most of the time consisted of showing them certain motions or beating the crap out of them in a sparring fight where she showed them their openings with her hits. Especially Gob and Gobtar were really motivated to follow Verna´s training to the utmost.

Ouch that looks really painful. Good thing I am not going to be a melee fighter, fuck that !

But the new evolution had actually slammed my head against another issue I had not explored yet.

So being in a dungeon actually makes evolving easier. But how does that work exactly ?

I begun to make some little experiments. It was obvious that it had to do with my dungeon mana. But how it exactly worked I had no idea.

Hmmm do they just absorb it ? Maybe that's the point.

I took myself to one of the free blocks next to the insect homes and made a small cave to experiment on it. I spawned a new insect and took a closer look to it.

It said that those things I spawn have no soul but they develop it over time?

I begun an intense observation of the purely instinctively acting insect. After a while i tried to feel the mana around it and focused on it for a long time until i actually managed to notice that indeed the insect absorbed a miniscule amount of the surrounding mana. It wasn't even noticeable unless i focused all of my attention on it as i had never done before.

Speaking of which… I see in a different way as a Dungeon Lord. Why should I not be able to see mana as well? So far novels have given some good hints, why not try it out.

Once I had that idea i tried messing around with the mana, make it more dense and look for differences. It went on and on until I finally was rewarded.  

A new feature was unlocked for you and your avatar

Mana Sight

You can now switch to a vision that makes mana visible.

Hah ! I knew it. But now back to the experimentation.

I tried it out right away of course, but was blinded at first. It was simply overwhelming because it was similar to suddenly see everything in thermal view. There were a ton of flowing colors everywhere. It was dizzying but i pulled through. After some experiments i saw that it was a lot easier to manipulate mana once you properly saw it. So far my dungeon mana was a simply light bluish color. I guessed that this was the neutral mana color. After some tries it really got a lot easier to manipulate mana now that I could see it. After I took a look at the insect i saw that it seemed somehow hollow. There was only a small amount of a very strange color inside of it towards which the outside mana flowed in very small bits and pieces. Almost like sand dribbling down an hourglass. So I tried to push in a little more and got a … disturbing reaction.

*Sizzle*

...

*Splat*

Eww! Thats kinda gross.

It seemed that the insect wasn't able to tolerate a larger amount of the dungeons mana. It first started to cook and then exploded. Pretty distasteful sight to behold. So i guess it's the same as putting too much current on a electric cable, it just burns through. After some more, rather dissatisfying experimentation I went back to other things. I guessed that I just did not have enough control yet over my mana to make such delicate operations. As for how it worked, from what i understood the bodies naturally absorbed mana of the higher purity in very little doses until it could adapt to it better.  Days passed and the goblins were kept pretty busy. First the pineberries were ready to be harvested as well, though it turned out they were a bit bothersome. Those bushes bore a really strange berry. It had an outer hull that was hard and had sharp thorns. You first had to open that layer and then there were a few smaller berries inside it with. The goblins had quite a hard time with the harvest and processing of those things. The following day it was the trees turn to be taken. There I was finally surprised in a very pleasant way. The Naka tree´s fruit actually resembled an apple and had a really sour taste. But they had only a single, big seed like a peach. I already knew I would dislike them. On the other hand the Serdana tree had a really peculiar fruit. It was a soft, purple fruit the size of a fist. The outer skin was easily broken and when that happened the purple jelly inside flowed out. The jelly was filled with seeds but it was heavenly sweet. For a sweet tooth guy like me it was heaven and hell at the same time. For one I knew there was something sweet and for the other there was still a day left until i could eat them. Even the ever so stoic Vierna had a delightful expression on her face when she saw those fruits and took part in the feast that happened among the goblins. Apparently we wouldn't be able to preserve those for too long though, as the skin burst open by itself after some time and would spoil if not eaten within a few days.

Well guess we will at least need barrels. But this will be something for us to keep here. The Drow still haven't returned and they were travelling light so they surely wouldn't be able to go around carrying barrels.

Other than that there were another few births in those days. The goblins kept diligently increasing bit by bit and i was looking forward to have more manpower at my disposal. Finally, the next day my Avatar was ready as well again. This time when I emerged i took a look at myself as good as it was possible in my crystal body´s reflection. Not much had changed, my height was now finally more to my liking. It looked like it was a littler more than the other hobgoblins so far. The facial features were also a bit more human like though the ears were still a lot bigger and pointier. Of course the first thing i had to do was get myself a good meal of the sweet fruits and I gorged myself on them until I nearly passed out.

Mmmh now that this was taken care of. What shall I do.

Over the past days I had continued to ponder about how I should approach my magic training. I was not sure about the direction I wanted to take. From what Verina had told me there was a lot more magic schools then just basic elemental magic. There were also more elements but since she did not concern herself too much about it she had not studied those.

After a while I had come to a decision.

I will learn nature magic from gobar. It seems to be the least conflicting type of mana that we know about.

So i went to the old goblin and got him to teach me further. I simply had enough of sticking to just mana pool increasing. It turned out to be a good idea. As long as I did not refine my mana too much it would not get a elemental property yet and I could switch to another branch of magic without problems. So for now I was being introduced to the basics of how to construct a spell and how it was different from just manipulating mana. After that we returned to a regular day business. The trees and bushes were regularly growing their fruits out in a more or less 2 day rhythm and towards the the end of the week we had another wheat harvest. Hmmm did I forget something ? OH YES! I of course unlocked all the remaining blocks that i had not done so previously over the course of the week. The other was the insects. This week we finally had a few of them go through their first evolutions like the others and some of the old ones got new evolutions.

Armored Screecher

A evolved screecher, its exoskeleton is extremely durable and thick

Flare Butterfly

A butterfly that is know to be around place with a lot of fire mana.

It is known to use fire on its enemies.

Moondancer Butterfly

A beautiful butterfly that mainly feeds on Moon´s Love. The dust it can

emit are known to cause pleasant hallucinations.

Stone Scorpion

A dangerous insect that has adapted to fit in perfectly on a rocky surface.

It waits there until it´s prey is within reach before striking with

it´s strong shears and poisonous stinger.

Trap door Spider

It burrows small pits in which it hides and attacks once prey comes closer

Small hercules bug

A very strong bug with a single horn that it uses to ram and pierce

any attacker

We actually have the first magic using insect !

I took a closer look at the new evolutions. Most of them remained at the F rank still. The most interesting was probably the Flare Butterfly. It caused indeed some sparks to fall here and there and I saw one of them even slightly roast an attacking spider before flying away.

Hmm I definitely have to get those things stronger.

I observed them for a while longer before I switched my attention to the other evolutions. The armored screecher was pretty plain. Basically a armored and very large version of a centipede. That really lived up to it's name and screeched horrifyingly loud when it was attacked. As for the stone scorpion, even I had a moment of trouble to find one of them. Their camouflage was unbelievably good. As long as they did not move they were nearly indiscernible from normal stone with the naked eye. The Moondancer Butterfly meanwhile was very easy to find. Their wings were of a beautiful black and silver pattern that even reflected light, while the body itself was black as well. Whenever something came close to it it bat it´s wings and released a silvery dust cloud. Every other insect that came into that seemed to sway and loose its orientation completely while the butterfly simply left. Not very impressive but it did what it needed to. During this time we got a pretty impressive haul on skills again.

The following skills were unlocked up to the grades:

High Earth Magic

Middle Water Magic

Middle Fire Mana manipulation

Middle Sling Handling

High Climbing

High Detection

High Mana Manipulation

Low Fire Manipulation

Middle Farming

High Gardening

High Stone Processing

High Wood Processing

High Taming

High Weaving

High Pottery

At the end of the week there was the biggest event so far. A troop of Drow had come to the dungeon finally. Leading them was Gulagh together with a robed figure.