Now that I had finished organizing my minions it was time to take a look at my level up. The two attribute points quickly went into wisdom, increasing my mana regen slightly. As for the talent point I quickly selected a third monster type. As for the monster I selected animals, which allowed me to have an entire food chain in my dungeon. I was slightly disappointed when I looked at the new monsters I could summon.

Select a monster to create

Male Goblin

Female Goblin

Strangle Vine

Spore Shroom

Male Fox

Female Fox

Additional monsters must be discovered before they can be created.

I was hoping for something that was a bit more powerful than a fox. Perhaps a wolf or at least a coyote. Once I summoned one I felt a little better. They were quick and a little bit bigger than I had expected. Kind of like a medium sized dog. They were even intelligent enough to understand basic commands. Which made them almost as smart as my goblins.

When I started creating them I quickly realized they were significantly cheaper than goblins. It looked like around five of them were equal to a goblin. Since they were so cheap I went ahead and created a dozen foxes.

I was more excited when I opened up the tab that let me create plants before. I now had the option to create various rodents and small animals. Since they were food sources my first choice was rabbits.

Around that time the goblins finally finished the fourth room. I moved my crystal into the room as the goblins started working on the fifth room. I also covered the floor of the room in grass equivalent plants. Then I filled it with dozens of rabbits. The rabbits ended up costing about the same as all the plants but that was fine with me.

My dungeon was finally starting to take shape. The starting room was filled with traps, dangerous plants, and I had two goblin guards stationed there. The second room was where my goblins had made their home. They had a fire, some primitive tools, and the start of some primitive huts. The third room was filled with a variety of plants and my foxes. Finally the fourth room looked like a rabbit filled meadow with my crystal in the center.

I ordered the goblins to leave the foxes and rabbits inside the dungeon alone for now. Hopefully before I needed to use them for food they would be able to start breeding. The foxes obeyed my orders to stay in the safe half of the third room.

That got me thinking. If I could command the foxes to obey my orders why couldn’t I command the various plant monsters in my dungeon? A few experiments later and I was kicking myself. The plants weren’t intelligent enough to obey specific orders. But it seemed like I could change their instincts so that they didn’t attack other dungeon monsters.

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If I had realized it earlier I could have avoided a couple goblin deaths. More importantly I could have avoided a lot of stress every time the goblin guards switched. Now that I knew I went ahead and filled both sides of what I thought of as the garden room with vines and shrooms.

Almost half the day passed without any huge events. My goblins managed to dig out two more rooms bringing me up to six total. Although the last two were empty and I’d have to spend some mana to fill them. I was just glad that it put me two rooms further away from where the goblins slept.

Suddenly both of the goblins at the front of my dungeon died again. I shifted my focus and found out that this time it wasn’t humans killing them, instead it was a grizzly bear. It was bleeding from a few wounds but apparently not enough to deter it from eating my goblins.

I was tempted to charge it with the rest of my goblins. I hesitated though since the bear was huge compared to my goblins. I had no idea how many of them would die fighting it.

Instead I waited to see what the bear would do. It finished off eating the two goblins and then moved into the cave. I grimaced as it tore through any strangle vines that tried to grab it. Its thick fur and size protected it from being strangled. At the same time its strength prevented the strangle vines from immobilizing it.

It did step on a couple of the spore shrooms though. After a few seconds I could notice an effect. Unfortunately it seemed that the spores were similar to alcohol when it came to body weight. The size of the bear minimized the effects.

By the time it got to the second room I was ready for it though. I had created enough spears and armor for all my goblins. Even my foxes were grouped up next to the goblins.

Over a dozen goblins charged the bear with spears in hand. The bear seemed a bit groggy but managed to swipe one goblin that got too close. It then opened its maw and bit down on one of my goblins, killing it almost instantly. Unfortunately the spears seemed like mere pinpricks to the bear.

I had held back a couple goblins in case the bear was too tough. Quickly I dropped one of the rifles from my inventory next to one of the goblins. The goblin raised the gun and managed to pull the trigger. Of course I wasn’t that surprised when it missed. Although I was slightly surprised when the bullet ripped through the head of one of my other goblins. I probably shouldn’t have been.

The goblin apparently didn’t realize it could reload the gun because a moment later it was charging the bear swinging the gun like a club. I should have known that giving goblins guns was a terrible idea.

The bear just wouldn’t die. But between the mushrooms and loss of blood it was slowing down. Enough that my goblins were mostly able to dodge its bites. The bear still managed to get a few swipes in before it bled out. By the end, four of my goblins had been badly clawed. The goblin shaman was already chanting and smearing herbs on their wounds. Now I had six injured goblins and fourteen dead goblins. Leaving me with only ten healthy goblins.

The goblins celebrated and started to use axes to butcher the bear. Pretty soon they had a fire going and plenty of extra meat. There was no way they would be able to eat the entire bear. I moved most of it into my inventory so it wouldn’t rot. I also put the gun and ammo back in my inventory. Maybe I’d find a use for it later.

Suddenly my attention was drawn to the entrance of my cave. Seven men had just stepped out of the forest. I even recognized one as Doug. Although he now had one arm in a sling and his shoulder was heavily bandaged.

Of the seven men three of them had uniforms. One looked like some type of park ranger. The other two looked like a sheriff and one of his deputies. Those three and Doug were all armed with pistols. The last three men were wearing hunting gear like Doug and his friends had been. Two of them were armed with bolt action rifles but one was carrying a semi-automatic rifle.

I considered myself slightly lucky that my two guard goblins had already been killed by the bear. Otherwise they would have probably been killed anyway.