Whilst Greendew was several miles away in the town of Suttern, back at Fia’s dungeon the human-cum-arachne was hard at work. Delegating dozens of [Ettercaps] at once while they toiled away, mining out new rooms, was totally hard work. She didn’t have a [Leader] or [Commander]-like class, after all. Or maybe she did, she had an inkling the [Dungeon Master] class was more of a jack-of-all-trades class, with elements of combat, mage, summoner, crafter, and leader classes. She wondered if her class evolutions would make her specialize more, become even broader in scope, or let her choose between the two. But that was a tangent. Floor one had been finished rather quickly, only taking a couple of weeks, but most of that time was spent inefficiently. This time, Fia would work quicker.

She had started off by summoning a couple more ettercaps, raising her workforce from ten to twelve. Summoning one ettercap cost her about 900 mana before [Monster Core], but now with the skill scaling with her Spacetime affinity, summoning an ettercap costs her 720 mana. With both her and her dungeon core each having 779 mana, it meant she could summon two ettercaps at once. At her old mana regeneration rate of about half a point a minute, which is what it had been at level 11 when she last checked, it would take her 48 hours to refill her mana. Thankfully, mana regeneration seemed to scale with some stat because she noticed it was ticking up ever so slightly faster, taking around a minute and a half to gain a full point. Still it would take over a day to regenerate the mana, but if she summoned an ettercap or two every day, progress would be quicker and quicker each day… The problem with that being that she needed to keep a reserve in case of an attack. The real time saver would come once she got some new light sources from Greendew. Then, she’d be able to go down into the second floor herself and help the ettercaps mine with her [Manipulate Earth] cantrip. As it stood, she couldn't see a single thing down there, it was completely and totally pitch black. Ettercaps seemed to have a skill or perk that let them see in total darkness, but Fia’s [Lowlight Vision] wouldn’t cut it.

Another issue slowing down the speed of excavation was tools. Only one ettercap at a time could use the pickaxe, so most of the manpower was actually just spent on moving rocks out of the way, with only a single ettercap doing all of the mining. When she was able to see enough to help with her own magic, it sped things up exponentially. As things were, mining was going at a snail’s pace. Not to mention that the [Clockwork Spider Thieves] were strong enough to help move larger rocks out of the way, though they had trouble moving smaller rubble and gravel. This meant she had an overabundance of manpower for clearing, but almost no manpower on actually mining. She couldn’t even copy the pickaxe she currently had, it was higher quality than her loot room allowed.

There was also the steel hammer, which another ettercap had been using to help break up stone, but it wasn’t nearly as efficient as the pickaxe.

The one good thing about it is that they could work basically 24/10, not needing to sleep or eat. She had found out that they could sleep and eat, all of her monsters could, assuming a normal specimen would be biologically capable of it, but that it wasn’t necessary. The clockwork spiders obviously couldn’t.

The next day, Fia had decided on sending monsters out of the dungeon. She had only done it once, as a test, and had decided to keep her monsters in her dungeon for the time being. The [Sturdy Steel Axe] had always been in the back of her mind, though, and she decided that dedicating a couple of ettercaps to going out and chopping down a tree wouldn’t be a bad idea.

It also occurred to her that she could technically make her own torches, but a torch made of nothing but wood wouldn’t burn for very long at all. It would also release smoke, which would probably be dangerous on floor 2, so it was pointless. And her spider webs seemed to be very, very flammable, so creating a web-cloth wrap at the end of a torch wouldn’t increase the torch’s lifespan at all.

Notice! One of your monsters has left the dungeon territory! [Ettercap] is no longer being sustained off of dungeon core mana and will slowly begin losing cohesion.

She had given it orders to go a bit away from the dungeon and begin chopping down a tree. She had also told it that if it began taking damage, to come back to the dungeon. She had no idea how long it would last outside. Would it be minutes? Hours? Days? Would it last longer if it ate actual food, like any normal creature? If she had mana potions, would it be able to survive off of those?

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Whatever the case, she was starting to feel more comfortable by the day, and thus more open to experimentation. Sure, she was paranoid that some guild classers would swoop in to crush her core one day, and so she felt a need to be cautious. On another hand she was also personally more powerful than she had ever been in her old life, and most of her power wasn’t even from her personal strength, but from her monsters.

Her old life. That’s what she thought of it, huh? Thinking back, in these past couple of weeks since becoming a dungeon master, had she even thought of her parents once? Her siblings? They were probably alive, though it’d been a few years since she had last seen a single family member.

Years ago, she had bought a really shitty Awakening Stone, hoping to gain some decent class to help her family. Anything. She didn’t give a fuck if it would make her a [Woodcutter] or a [Mage]. She’d work for someone or become an adventurer, and help her parents pay for their farm.

Then she had become a [Bandit]. They say that Awakening Stones give you the class best suited to your soul, but she had always hated the class. It had caused her to run away from home, live as an outcast, and never make any real friends. She hadn’t even been a bandit before becoming a [Bandit]. It had always felt wrong and unfair, a cruel twist of Fate.

Her [Dungeon Master] class felt… Better. Maybe that wasn’t the exact feeling. Closer. Like she was closer to what she was supposed to be. Maybe [Bandit] was just a stepping stone on her path. Or maybe her old life wasn’t who she even was anymore, and it was just a mistake of the System. She didn’t know how the System worked, or the will of the gods. She didn’t even know the name of the God of Fate, though she knew there was a church for that god, one of the biggest ones.

She had been a farmer’s daughter, though she had never done any of the hard work. She had four older brothers and one younger brother who helped out her father. Her mother was a weaver, but she had never been particularly interested in baskets. Maybe she had been spoiled, as the only daughter in her family, but they had never made her do any real work. She can’t help but wonder if that had played a part in setting her on her life’s path, and if they had treated her differently, would she still be back on that farm?

Honestly… She felt detached from it. Her old family didn’t feel like her family anymore. Was it because she wasn’t human? Because she was Fated? Had distance and time weakened bonds of love? Or was it because she had never expected to see them again, unable and unwilling to face them with her old class?

Would she ever see her old homeland, the so-called “desert tribes” by these northerners, the place she knew as home? She’s not even sure if she could find her way back there, anyways, if she had the ability. The desert tribes had no kingdoms, no roads, and though there were some static farming communities like the one she grew up in, they had no names. Her people were called the Firetouched Humans, at least in the West Firnian Language, and she had been told that her people were given that name by the Desert Elves they lived alongside with, hundreds of years ago, on account of having dark skin, vivid red hair, and red eyes. In the desert elve’s language, they called her a “Nifey Shival.”

It had been awkward, moving north to Abeatia, the southernmost of the northern kingdoms. Though they shared a language thanks to the System, the culture was very different. Here, there were hierarchies based on jobs and classes. Here, instead of nomadic lifestyles and small communities, there were villages, towns, cities, kingdoms, all with their own names. She had grown up near the westernmost border of the tribes, near what she now knows as the kingdom of Stanpan. Her father had told her that kingdoms were becoming more common in parts of the desert, though they still lived in the tribelands, and the reason he had started a farm was to sell to the nearby kingdom. Just because that had been close by didn’t change the culture shock when she had seen it for herself.

She had grown up used to traveling families of beastkin and desert elves, coming to her farmhouse looking for temporary shelter from the sandstorms, but never really living in a large community.

She sighed, cutting off her own line of thought. The reality was that she hardly remembered much about her old homeland, and most of what she knew was actually learned during her time in Abeatia. Her family hadn’t taught her much about it, just like they hadn’t taught her much about anything. Desert tribes didn’t care about geography and culture as much as the border-obsessed kingdoms. Well, the humans didn’t. The elves called the area Shival. If she ever regained freedom to leave her dungeon and agency to explore the world, maybe she’d go back one day, but it was useless thinking about it now.

Besides, the introspective had proven one thing; she didn’t truly care all that much about her family anymore. Maybe it was callous, but all she really felt was some mild curiosity. They weren’t really her family anymore anyways. They had been family to Fia Rush the unawakened commoner, not Fia Rush the [Bandit], and not Fia Rush the [Dungeon Master] arachne.

Finally, a System notification snapped her out of the train of thought entirely.

Warning! An intruder has entered your dungeon territory!

Greendew was back. Hopefully with all the stuff she had asked for. Things would certainly speed up if so.