Once his mana had recovered somewhat, James regained consciousness and was able to glance around the room. The crystal gave off a faint blue glow, casting some light into the small, dark and damp room.
The small box from before he passed out was still there as well.
[Companion gained: dungeon fairy]
He could actually feel an entity in his room. He turned his dungeon eyes towards the entity in his dungeon, and his jaw would have dropped to the ground if he still had his human body.
Right there, leaning against the wall, was a small creature. It had a humanoid shape and was dressed in a light purple robe, tiny white wings sprouting from its back. Its face was rather smooth, with large, round eyes. The ears were a little longer and slightly pointed, compared to a human, and long, white hair flowed from the top of its head. His eyes wandered up and down the fairy’s body, realizing it was most likely a male.
The fairy moved his hand to his mouth and coughed a bit, and looked at the crystal indifferently, before speaking up. “Oh great, a perverted dungeon. You know I can feel your eyes roaming up and down my body, right? Just my luck. You’ll probably be more busy with ogling adventurers entering your dungeon to stop them from stealing your core and taking me hostage.” The fairy let out a deep sigh and held his head. “Might as well just give up now, but no, I have a duty to do, so I’ll try and make sure your attention stays on defeating them.” He clapped his hands together and jumped up on his feet. “My name is Clint, I’m a dungeon fairy, here to give you advice. What’s your name?” The fairy looked at roughly where James his presence was, waiting expectantly.
James honestly wasn’t sure how he had to respond. He hadn’t really tried to talk before. And that dungeon fairy was really weird. ‘Shouldn’t they be enthusiastic?’
As he spent several long moments pondering the situation, Clint got a little impatient and spoke up again. “It seems I got saddled up with a dungeon core that doesn’t know the basics or doesn’t want to talk. Both are really bad, you know? Might as well roll around on my back and let the adventurers end us already. Right. If it’s the former, you should feel a bond between us. You can talk through it.”
A little put off by the slightly depressed tone by the fairy, and how he viewed everything so pessimistic, James needed a minute to collect himself before he started to feel around within himself, trying to see if something was different than before. It didn’t take all too long before he found a sort of tendril connecting his mind to that of Clint, and tried to talk through it. “Can you hear me?”
Clint nodded his head up and down slowly. “Yes, I can hear you. You can talk, that’s good.”
“Oh.. Ok, that’s good. My name is James… So you’re a... uh... Dungeon fairy?”, he replied with an unsure voice, still not quite comfortable with everything that just happened. At least he had a way to get knowledge now, so that was a good thing.
“Why yes, I’m a dungeon fairy. Congratulations on figuring that one out. I’m sure the little system box you received earlier didn’t give that away.” Clint let out a heavy sigh and hung back a bit, sliding down the wall again to rest on his bum. “Considering you actually asked it, I’m going to assume you don’t know how to appraise someone. That’s going to bode well for us, a dungeon without common sense. Anyway, just focus on me, analyze me, and will up a status screen, not your own but mine. Try to think about how you want to appraise me.”
James held his tongue and didn’t rebuke the statements of the fairy. After all, he didn’t really have the common sense of a dungeon core, in fact, he didn’t have any common sense at all for this world. He focused on the small body of the slumped down fairy, and tried to will up a status screen. He could feel his mana heading towards the fairy and seemingly push against him for a moment, yet nothing really happened. He was quickly getting a little irritated, and took charge, helping the mana flow to Clint. Finally, a status screen popped up, yet quite different than that of his own.
[Name: Clint]
[Race: Dungeon Fairy]
[Level: 2]
[Title: Cynical Bastard]
The status screen of his dungeon fairy didn’t give a lot of information, but it was a pleasant sight nonetheless. It meant he could possible analyze people and monsters that came into his dungeon. As before, he managed to gain a skill from the action
[New Active Skill Unlocked: Appraisal]
As he brought up his status screen, the skill was at a meager level one, yet still a good gain. Looking at the description, it informed him that he could use it to appraise any entity that was within reach.
He turned his gaze back to Clint and spoke to him cheerfully, happy that he managed to gain another skill that could be of use. “Thanks, Clint. I actually got a skill thanks to that. I’m sure that’ll be useful, no? I managed to get Mana Gathering, Mana Manipulation and Expansion as active skills earlier.”
The fairy looked up momentarily at where James his presence was, a hint of surprise in his eyes at the mention of the last three skills before it quickly faded and was replaced by his usual disinterested gaze. “Nice. You managed to get one of the most basic skills in this whole world. It’s a nice addition that you got those other active skills, means you at least have some skill. But your apparent lack of common abilities, common sense, in addition to your pervertedness, are going to be the end of us, I’m sure.” The fairy let out another deep sigh. “Regardless, as your dungeon fairy, it’s my duty to stay with you and offer any advice. So, with that out of the way, let’s go check out your entrance.”
Clint promptly stood up and headed into the hallway, inspecting the mixed dirt and rock walls. As he headed further into the hallway, his eyes narrowed as he noticed the hallway becoming narrower and narrower with each step he took. Eventually, even the small fairy felt his head touch against the ceiling of the hallway. James could hear a small groan escape the fairy’s mouth as Clint knelt down and started crawling forward, moving through the twisting passageway and reaching the surface. Looking outside at the night sky for several minutes, appearing deep in thought, the fairy crawled backward until he could stand up again, and started heading back to the room hosting James his body.
Meanwhile, James his mind started to wander to less pleasant thoughts. Seeing the fairy walk about gave him a longing. He missed his old body. The ability to really touch something. To feel the soil beneath his feet. To feel the morning sunlight caress his face while hearing the birds chirp outside. He knew it had been at least a day since his summoning to this world, and he had neither felt the need to eat, sleep or drink. He didn’t have a body. He couldn’t wrap himself up in blankets and get comfortable.
As he felt his dark thoughts take control, he shook himself out of it. ‘No, I can’t give in’, he thought, ‘There has to be a way to get out of this mess. Snap out of it, James, you can do it!’ He imagined receiving a firm slap in the face and moved his presence back to the core room, the fairy waiting for him, a stern look on his face.
“I see you had the good idea to make a twisting, small tunnel that only allows small animals, probably to hide your dungeon from adventurers and larger, more dangerous enemies. Good job, James! However, as most adventurers have the ability to sense mana, and the mana present in the air and ground being far more dense around dungeons, they’ll know right away where your dungeon is located. So first, you’ll make them dig out the entrance, making it large enough for them to get through. This will, most likely, piss off the adventurers or make them annoyed, increasing the probability of our impending doom. Besides, you actually need to allow adventurers inside of your dungeon. Adventurers give off more mana than a regular person, which allows you to grow quicker. If you make it worth their while, they’ll most likely leave your core room alone.”
James his mind reeled back from the verbal abuse he once again received from Clint, yet he was right. This once again proved that he needed more knowledge to even simply survive in this world. He didn’t have to be so rude about it, though. James made up his mind to follow Clint’s advice and learn as much as he could from the little dungeon fairy. ‘I wonder if a hyperactive fairy would have been better or even more annoying’, he thought to himself.
“Alright, I’ll fix the hallway. I’ll make it bigger from the point I started to make it more narrow. What else?” Even though James replied affirmatively to Clint, his voice a dead give-away that he was annoyed. ‘The title really, really suits him well.’
Clint shrugged a little and gave a slight nod. “Let’s first go over a few other things that you can do, namely monster summoning. You should have this skill, like any other dungeon, together with Create and Assimilation. Now, if you look at monster summoning, you’ll notice that you’re able to summon several monsters. These monsters are the basic monster that every dungeon has access to at the start of their dungeon career. Let me know when you’ve finished examining them.” Clint promptly lied down on the ground, bending his legs a little bit at the knees, one draped over the other. He moved his hands behind his head to prop it up a bit and keep it off the hard ground.
James stared at the relaxing fairy for a moment. What he had said made sense, and pretty much aligned with what he had thought himself. He opened up his status screen and went down the list to the Summon Monster skill, and brought up the detailed version.
[Summon Monster]
[Goblin: 80 mana]
[Kobold: 80 mana]
[Imp: 80 mana]
[Skeleton: 80 mana]
[Slime: 50 mana]
Hmm, so he could summon five monsters. He could immediately summon two of any of the first three, or a total of three slimes. If he summoned four, he would most likely black out again, something he’d prefer not to happen again. It would be possible to summon two slimes and any of the first two as well, which would give him the most for his mana. First, though, he should probably inspect each monster. Focusing on each monster, he quickly received a box with a description.
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[Goblin: A slim, green and small creature. It has long, pointy ears with big yellow eyes. Though weak in nature, groups of them can prove to be dangerous. A goblin is known to use a long dagger.]
[Kobold: Kobolds are grey-skinned creatures. Somewhat larger than a goblin, they are hunched over a bit and tend to use a crude club to try and bash in some heads.]
[Imp: Imps are hellish creatures. Their skin tone is a deep red. Their small body hosts wings which they use to fly at a slow pace. Their combat ability is limited to throwing small balls of fire and playing petty tricks on adventurers.]
[Skeleton: A typical human skeleton. Their eyes have a slight white shine to them. The skeleton doesn’t have any weapons, but in turn is able to easily use anything he finds. While the skeleton is stronger than his fellow starter monsters, he’s quickly defeated.]
[Slime: The slime is nothing more than some goo that sticks together and slowly moves around the dungeon. Its only combat ability is slowing down an adventurer. Can, however, take up several properties to strengthen it.]
He didn’t really like the sound of a skeleton. It actually sent shivers through his mind. Just imagine a cold, heartless skeleton wandering around your room. Ewww. No, he didn’t want to go the necromancy path. The imp looked like fun, though. It appeared to be the only one with magical capabilities in his small arsenal of monsters. Slimes didn’t really sound promising, though the description did promise some improvement. Goblins and Kobolds had the default description and didn’t seem any special. ‘Well, best ask Clint’s opinion or he might go on a rant again.’
“Clint, I’ve looked over the monsters. I’m not really liking the skeleton. The kobold and goblin sound quite standard while the slime seems a little bit underwhelming. The imp sounds quite cool, though.”
“The imp sounds cool, he said. Next thing you know, we’re going to start a demonic dungeon and be assaulted by every adventurer in the whole wide world to destroy our corrupted core. Please just kill me already.” Clint groaned and rolled around before sitting upright. “At least you don’t want to pick the undead. The goody good believers will stay off your back that way. I suggest you go with kobolds, goblins and slimes. Besides, if you chose imp or the skeleton, you’d be locked out of the other choices. Choosing one of those would have made you either an undead or a demonic dungeon. Adventurers don’t really like those. In fact, they pretty much hate those. The smart choice would be to go for the goblin, kobold and slime.” The fairy let out a little yawn and move his little hands to his eyes to rub them a little. “Anyway, I’m getting quite tired. For now, simply make the hallway larger, make a few rooms and move your crystal to the very last room. You’ll figure it out, I hope. Oh, and you can send some out to gather stuff to assimilate, but be careful. Good night.” Without a second glance, the fairy turned around and laid down on the ground again, curling up into a ball to try and catch some sleep.
Left to his own devices, for now, James started filtering through the monologue Clint had just delivered. Skeletons and imps were out of the question, he really didn’t want to be hunted. Crusades weren’t really his thing. After searching his mind for a bit, he found the knowledge for the summon skill and promptly started to summon a goblin. Casting an eye on his status screen, he noticed his mana pool lowering until he had roughly 120 points left. The mana visibly flew out of his dungeon core, some even coming from the walls as it gathered in front of the crystal. Just like with the fairy, the goblin’s body began to form. An ugly, small and green creature emerged, wielding a long dagger that looked more like a sword for the goblin. The creature stared ahead of himself dumbly and even bashed his own head with the hilt of his weapon.
James felt a slight connection to the goblin, weaker than the connection he felt to Clint, but still there. He instinctively knew that the creature would do as he said. He mentally ordered the creature to move to the hallway, and was astonished that the creature did, in fact, turn around and slowly started trudging over the cold, dirty ground. Once it reached the hallway, it simply fell down on its bum and stared mindlessly ahead of itself again, even going as far as to let out a bored yawn.
He quickly summoned another goblin, and had them group up in front of the hallway before moving his presence further into the hallway. His mana slowly started to climb up again, being quite low from the summoning, and he started to absentmindedly gather more mana using his active skill Mana Gathering. Once he reached the narrow part of the hallway, he let the passive expansion skill do its work and directed its progress. The hallway started to become wide enough, with the height just reaching two meters, large enough for most humans, as far as he knew.
While he was expanding the hallway, each time his mana would be back to 150 points, he’d summon another goblin, dropping his mana back to a meager 70 points. It was a long and somewhat boring process, but eventually, he had dug out the entire hallway and now had a large opening which he could peer out of.
The night sky was beautiful to look at. It appeared his dungeon was located in a grassy mountain hill. With the hallway slightly tilted upwards, or downwards for adventurers coming inside, he figured he had quite some room to expand. The moon was high in the skyline, shining a brilliant white, with many stars shining in the darkness of the night. It was beautiful. Back at home, the lights that the buildings gave off overpowered the shining light of the stars, and you’d have to move to a rural area to get a sight like this.
Getting his mind back to the task, he moved back into his core room and started making it somewhat larger with an irregular shape, the corners becoming rounded a little. Looking at the group of goblins, he noticed he had already summoned a total of eight goblins. They just stood there idly, doing nothing. Figuring it couldn’t hurt to have them explore, he ordered three of them to go out, explore and bring anything they could find back to him. Things such as plants, herbs, anything that could be useful. The goblins appeared to give a slight nod, though that could be James mistaking the gesture for them simply jolting their head up out of their drowsy state.
The three goblins started heading through the hallway. James followed them and finally watched them head out of the dungeon. He could still feel a connection to them, but he wasn’t able to give them any orders.
Once they were far enough for him not to be able to see them anymore, James went back to his dungeon room and started making another hallway, digging it out slowly. Over the next few hours, he had managed to create two short hallways and two more rooms, similar to the first one and the entrance hallway.
[http://i.imgur.com/vtEbkif.png]
Meanwhile, the three goblins had been exploring the nearby surroundings and had started collecting as much as they could. They had found several plants and carefully took them out of the ground by grabbing them at the base and ripping them out.
They made several trips back to the dungeon entrance and placed their findings there, creating a mess of plants, rocks, twigs and a bird, which quickly flew out of the dungeon again once the goblins were out of sight.
Once James was finished and happy with the additional rooms, the four goblins in his room push the hovering crystal towards the last room, while the last one carried the deeply asleep fairy to the last room as well, gently placing him in one of the corners of the room.
Apparently, summoned monsters do get tired and require rest. After bringing in the last batch of stuff they found around the dungeon entrance, the goblins collapsed on the ground, alerting James. He quickly moved towards the entrance and looked at a huge pile of collected items. Moving his attention to the exhausted goblins, he had the others drag them back to the last room, letting them rest there.
As he looked over at the pile, gathered by the goblins, he used his assimilation skill. Mana slowly enveloped each item and the pile started to disintegrate, knowledge flooding into him. He wasn’t all too sure about what he could do with it, but he figured he’d ask Clint for his advice later.
It was several hours later that Clint finally awoke. ‘He must have been exhausted’, James thought. While Clint was asleep and the dungeon rooms had been expanded, James had summoned several more goblins, to a total of twelve. The goblins varied slightly in skin tone. Some had small patches of dark green hair, while others were completely bald. Some had longer ears than others. They all seemed equally dumb, though. Not really wanting to be confronted with their rather ugly faces, James had moved them to the first two rooms, each containing six goblins.
Clint slowly got to his feet and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, lazily looking around the room. “Seems like you did what I asked you to. Good job.” He stretched out a bit, and, for the first time, fluttered his wings and started to fly around the room and through the hallway to the second room. He calmly observed the goblins before flying to the first room, noticing the same amount of goblins there. He flew further and headed towards the entrance, noticing it was now large enough for a human to pass through. He landed and turned around, slowly walking all the way back to the core room. “Well, you managed to create a few rooms with several goblins. They should be able to stop the beginning rank of adventurers.” He looked up momentarily, a thought entering his head. “Right, James, do you want me to explain about adventurers?”
Always eager for more information, James swiftly responded. “Yes, that’d be great, thanks.”
“Right. So. The beginning rank of an adventurer is F rank. Through quests, missions and various tasks and tests, they can go all the way up to rank A. That means F, D, C, B and finally A. However, there are two ranks above A, namely S and S+. These are only achieved when someone has displayed an immense amount of power. Per rank, there are four more … divisions. Low tier, mid tier, high tier and top tier. A top tier is at the verge of ranking up, while a low tier is at the very start of his or her current rank. Easy, right?”
James mentally noted down the information that Clint just provided him on how adventurers were ranked. “And how do we proceed from here?”, James asked the fairy.
“Well, I’m going to assume you managed to assimilate some stuff. Try and create something. A plant perhaps.”, Clint swiftly responded.
James nodded and started to gather the knowledge involving the Create skill. It was a weird experience. He felt like he could create and shape objects based on his mind. The more complex the object he made, the more mana the creation process would take. He could make things from scratch if he wanted to. Or he could alter objects that he already knew, through, for example, assimilation. He could easily create a dirt or rock wall and felt like it wouldn’t take too much mana points. Trying to think up the stuff he could create thanks to his assimilation skill, he received a small list and started to scroll through it. His eyes fell on one object, probably because of what Clint said earlier.
Using the knowledge from the Create and Assimilation skill, his mana started to collect near one of the walls of the room. Slowly, a small stem started to sprout from the ground, several leaves forming and hanging down just a little. At the top of the stem, a small, green flower started to sprout, with tiny, blue-glowing petals around the middle.
Clint observed from close by and went closer to the plant, inspecting it. “Appears to be a healing herb, James. Don’t know the name, to be honest. Adventurers will probably find these good. Because the mana in a dungeon is denser, plants and such are of much higher quality than outside, so now that you have something worthwhile, they might be somewhat less inclined to destroy you. Anyway, let’s go plant a few around the various rooms.”
Together, James and Clint started growing the healing herbs around the dungeon. Eventually, two healing herbs started to grow in the very first room, with several more in the second room. Throughout the process, James could feel his knowledge on creating items grow and felt it was more easy to form the plants and infuse mana into them. As he finished growing the plant, he was glad to see it shone brighter than the previous ones.
The increased density of mana around the dungeon hadn’t gone unnoticed, however. A figure slowly crept closer, moving stealthily through bushes as it gazed at the dungeon, a growl emanating from its mouth, revealing a set of sharp teeth.