Chapter 8

Once Pan had released all of his minions from his direct command, and they returned to their home cave, he had to decide how to handle the aftermath of the battle, and many things required his attention. He had relocated his gem to a much more natural location at the back of what he now considered his main cave, and started pouring through the mass of unopened alerts.

He had many minor ones, notifying him of mana gains from the deaths of beings inside his dungeon, but a few messages stood out. From the death of the mage, he had gained the ability to imbue his monsters with dark magic. The imbuement seemed to allow him to give his monsters an affinity for dark magic, allowing them to instinctively use dark magic, and if they evolved to be more intelligent, intentionally use it.

Now that he was released from his binding, he had access to the dungeon store. After browsing through it for a bit, he discovered it was mainly just a way for dungeons to acquire new monsters, but since he could make his own that was hardly necessary. What intrigued him was the basic plants and animals, since he could change them to fit his dungeon in any way he wanted once he had them, and they were very cheap. There was also a dungeon skill store, but only one skill caught his attention. Corporeal Form.

It allowed the dungeon master to create a body to inhabit. He did not realize how badly he had wanted to have a mobile body again until he saw the skill. It was expensive, in dungeon points and mana, and he couldn’t leave his dungeon, but it was a goal to reach for. But he did not have the points for it, or the required level. He would need to reach level twenty-five before he could even contemplate buying it, and that was a long way off. It would be a long term goal for him, but he was excited nonetheless.

Pan had an abundance of mana to use, and he wanted to use it, before he had to take care of other, more delicate matters. He called the Queen and the now gigantic centipede over to him, there were names to bestow, and these two had set themselves apart. He may give the assassin spider that poisoned the mage a name later, but for now, he decided not to.

Deciding that as the first true monster in the dungeon, as well as the one who had killed the mage, the queen should get the honor of the first name. Pan just needed a name to fit her. With the force of his will, he activated his skill, and gave her a name. She would be Elaria, named after an ancient warrior queen of the Sprachian tribes from the great eastern plains.

When he named her, he felt a massive amount of mana pour into her. Fifteen hundred mana just to name his queen. It was a small price to pay, however, as he immediately felt that he could remold her into something new. Instead of evolving down a predetermined path as the skill described, he felt that he could decide on the changes that would make her unique.

He began to modify her once more. The main weakness of the ants was their size. Originally they had been the largest thing in his dungeon, and were deadly to anything they faced. But now, after the battle, he realized how useless they would be against any human sized enemies. He didn’t want to push it too far, since a colony of enormous ants would be colossal, and space was limited, but he still needed her to be a threat to any attackers.

He made her seven feet long, and three feet tall at her maximum. She would be much larger than any ants she birthed, which would only be three feet long, and maybe a foot tall. Her muscles and exoskeleton were strengthened accordingly, and like he had done with the centipedes he incorporated metal into her armor. Pan also decided to give her an affinity for dark magic, and used the rest of the mana he had put into her evolution strengthening her magical abilities.

She would be able to use dark magic defensively, with some support spells, as well as one offensive one. They were all innate abilities that she would use instinctively. She could hide herself or her children in a cloak of shadows, and shield them from magic. She could cast minor buffs on herself or any member of her colony, as well as attack with a bolt of dark magic. He found that by limiting her ability to only be able to affect her or her subjects, he could increase the power and number of the innate spells he gifted her.

While she was strong, and very deadly to any attackers, her true strength was in her abilities to buff her army to help defend herself. Anybody attacking her would have a harder time the closer they got to her during the fight, and would hopefully decide to leave her alone. In Pan’s eyes, her main purpose was to create and support an army of ants, not to fight in battle herself. He had only sent her to attack the mage because he knew that he needed to throw all of his cards on the table to maximize his chance to be victorious.

However, she definitely lived up to her name, and would have no trouble killing any intruders who dared to attack her. She was definitely a tier 2 monster, and could probably give C rank adventurers a real fight. The only real thing separating C rank adventurers from D, E, and F ranks was the fact that they needed to reach level fifteen and accomplish the right missions to qualify for an advancement trial. They were much more experienced and had their main skills at a higher level. A C rank needed to be at least a journeyman in the skill they contributed to the guild, whether it was magic, healing, swordsmanship, or smithing. Pan wasn’t expecting any C rank smiths to enter his dungeon, but most adventurers guilds employed people from a wide range of professions.

While he mulled over thoughts of adventurer guilds and how to deal with them, he turned to his next monster. The centipede, now a massive six feet long, stood ready to receive his name. He had been the strongest monster before the new queen was named, and was the leader of the vanguard during the attack. Pan had the perfect name for the massive beast. He would be Behemoth, and he would guard Pan's heart.

Another fifteen hundred mana, and he began to modify Behemoth. He made him enormous. Fifteen feet long, he dwarfed any bear Pan had ever heard of. He made him taller, almost five feet at the peak. He was now a hill of metallic carapace, sloping up from the ground, and running back down to the head. His legs sprawled out to his sides, supporting him, and hidden under a skirt of armor. His head was a giant shield, mirroring his rear, and he would be nearly impenetrable from the front. Many legs combined until he had only ten on each side, which were incredibly strong and fast.

The legs had a much harder and thicker armor facing the outside, and the joints were hidden under the skirt of his carapace. Pan used the metal in the rocks to further reinforce his armor, and despite the weight of it, Behemoth could still move quite easily. Pan poured mana into the ferrous armor, making it lighter and much stronger. A large ridge ran along his back, and armor three inches thick flowed out from the central spine, and had enough flexibility to not shatter under blows from a warhammer. He incorporated a lattice of incredibly thin, strong, spider web like strands into the armor, like layers of cloth. They would provide resistance to being split, like the other centipede had been by the skeleton captain's axe.

Offensively, he enlarged the jaws, and strengthened the muscles. The mandibles could probably bite through low-level armors, and decently dent steel plate armor. Pan also modified the joints of the front two legs to allow him to rear up and strike with them. They were sharp and heavy, and could probably pierce anything the jaws couldn't crush.

Nearly all of the mana expended during the naming process had gone into the armor, and it was incredible. Pan had used the last of the mana to give Behemoth the berserker ability. It wasn’t as strong as the queen's magic, but it would give him a boost to strength and speed the last five percent of his health, if he ever even got that low. Pan could definitely not use Behemoth anywhere on the first floor. Behemoth was too strong, that was for sure.

When he was done, Pan was very pleased with his new tier 2 monsters. They were much stronger than regular tier 2 because they were named and unique. He called Elaria’s new species dark dungeon ants. Behemoth was no longer a centipede, and his armor was no longer anywhere close to stone, so Pan decided to call him a steel decapede. It was his monster after all, and was descended from centipedes.

Now Pan had to decide how to handle some less savory business. What would he do with the remaining captives from Mala village?. During the initial confusion of his attack, a few skeletons had cut down most of the captives, who Pan was sure were going to be sacrificed to his dungeon anyway, but there were three still living and locked in the room. One was the curiously strong teenager, and the other two were grown men. Pan had no way to communicate with them, and he was debating if he should kill them. Part of him wanted to, but he also knew that if they reported a new dungeon, he would get an influx of adventurers looking to get rich. Guilds paid a lot of money to receive information on new dungeons, hoping to claim them and their resources for themselves, and the rush of people would undoubtedly fertilize his dungeon. Pan was intrigued when he noticed the people arguing vehemently, and he hoped he wouldn’t even have to act to set his plans in motion after listening in.

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Peter leaned against the back wall of the room as he listened to the two grown men argue. Steven, who had always been a shady character, was yelling at Adam, a small meek son of a shepherd. Steven had been looting the bodies of the villagers the skeletons had killed, and Adam, being a kind and gentle man, had tried to stop him. 

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The other two had no idea what was going on, but Peter did. They were in a dungeon. A real dungeon. A guild would pay twenty gold for information on a new dungeons location, and some guilds would pay more.

Peter had a suspicion that Steven might know, but he wasn’t sure, the desperate hurry Steven was in to escape and leave the other two behind made him wary. His suspicions were confirmed when Steven pulled a knife from his boot and threatened Adam. Adam’s eyes grew wide and he staggered back, trying to calm the enraged man, but Steven’s gaze hardened, and he seemed to have made his choice.

Peter lunged forward in shock when he saw the blade, but was too slow. Steven darted in, and sunk the gleaming length of steel into Adam's chest. With a sick, sucking sound, he pulled the blade back out as Adam gasped and coughed, spraying blood across Steven's face. The wound on his chest bubbled when Adam tried to exhale, and he collapsed in a heap on the ground. Steven turned on Peter, and smiled a wicked grin.

“I can’t be splitting the reward for a dungeon, now can I boy?” The advancing man asked Peter with a greedy grin on his face.

“Back the fuck off,” shouted Peter as he raised his hands.

“HA! Not likely, now that that old bastard isn’t here to protec-”

His words cut off as Peter threw a fireball spell into the murderer's face, leavening him rolling around on the floor screaming. Peter ran past him over to Adam’s body, but just as he had suspected, the young man had died almost immediately. Peter had never been close to Adam, but he had a friendly acquaintanceship with the man, and liked him well enough. He was pulled from his shock when he heard Steven give one last whimper before expiring on the floor. Yanked from his stupor, he mentally pulled himself back together, as his grandpa had taught him to do, and set about escaping the room.

In the end, he had to burn through the door with magic. He was glad now, more than ever, that his grandpa had kept a few skillbooks from his adventuring days. The fire magic had been a skill he practiced in secret, as his grandfather had instructed. Fire magic wasn’t illegal, but it was nice to have a trump card up his sleeve for moments like this.

He explored the area, and looted the necromancer's body after he found it. The man had a veritable fortune on him, and he came away with almost fifty gold coins worth of assorted goods and coins. When he got to the rear of the temple, he found his grandfather's mana stone, which he promptly secreted away, as well as the smaller stone next to it. He would keep his grandfather’s stone, but the other one could fetch about five gold coins. Even if the larger stone was worth almost two platinum, it held great sentimental value to him, since it had belonged to his role model, and closest family member.

Before leaving, he gave the dead villagers a cremation, and recited a prayer for them, even Steven. When he left the temple, he turned towards his home Kingdom of Rivalt, and started planning the steps he would take to secure his future.

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Pan laughed to himself over the resolution of the argument. It couldn’t have gone any better. He got the mana from two humans, and one lived to report his location. He felt little for the dead men, and since he had not paid any attention to how the argument started, he assumed they had been trying to decide how to split the profits from the finder's reward and one got greedy. It’s what he would have expected if he were a human in the same situation.

He returned his focus on his named monsters, and released them to return to the caves. He was surprised to notice that Elaria was level twenty, as well as had acquired the title, Queen. It made her subjects more loyal and strengthened them in her presence. Behemoth had no title, but was now a level twenty-three. He felt much safer with them around, but it was definite overkill for the first floor of a dungeon.

He needed to plan out how he would grow his dungeon now that he was free. He needed floors, rooms, and loot. Adventures would be plentiful if he gave them good loot, but he needed to be able to recoup the mana cost. The death of a single human gave him hundreds of mana, and their presence in the dungeon increased the mana he could collect passively. Every time one died the mana grew almost imperceptibly denser, and he could collect more mana. He was able to collect almost three hundred mana a day now from all of his passive sources.

He needed to prepare for the eventual influx of people, and to do that he needed a proper dungeon. Pan figured the best place to start would be the old temple, however, someone might have a problem with a dungeon entrance being in an old church. He started by claiming the area around the building, and digging out the ground under the ruins, dragging the entire structure underground. Once it was there he filled the ground back in and started creating the entrance. It was a simple stone building, housing the staircase that led to his first floor.

The temple had been on the top of a plateau, and Pan was currently mostly inside of the large rock formation, with his natural cave extending from the bottom of the thirty-foot cliffs down into the earth. His total vertical height was almost sixty feet, since the temple catacombs were pretty much level with the ground at the base of the plateau. There was a large staircase reaching up into the temple at the top of the rocky cliffs.

Pan had claimed almost the entire plateau by this point, and it was a simple task to start rearranging things. He decided to stray from the old dungeon style of making rectangular rooms and hallways with traps and monsters. He would go with a more natural cave look. The caves would be relatively flat, as the ground would be covered in soil and plants. He didn’t want to have to summon too many monsters, and he hoped to produce a thriving ecosystem. He expanded his main cave immensely, now free from the fear of alerting a certain necromancer.

He used the mana he gained from creating the enormous cavern to expand his domain further and increase the size even more. This expansion petered out when he had created a cave almost an eighth of a mile long, and half as wide. It sloped downward, so as not to break the surface, and he strengthened the stone as much as he could, to avoid cave-ins as well as people from digging in.

This cavern would support the ecosystem that would feed monsters to the first floor. The mana density in the room would help the monsters breed and grow much faster, and the new size could support many more monsters. Next to the cavern, Pan placed the actual caves of his dungeon. He had created thirty smaller rooms, in a large network of tunnels that culminated in a large room where the boss would be.

There were many smaller tunnels connecting the large cave to the actual dungeon, to feed monsters into the caves. An adventurer could probably crawl through one of the smaller tunnels, but they would be very exposed to attack. Many of the tunnels connected through small foot high horizontal crevices in the rock. Pan covered them with plants, in an effort to hide them a little, but a fire mage would uncover them quickly. It didn’t matter, plants grew rapidly in the mana rich caves Pan had created, and with the light globes hanging from the ceiling, they were able to use the light to grow all day.

When his dungeon expanded to more floors, he would continue this pattern of having a large feeder cavern to provide monsters for the dungeon. As the monsters became too strong for the ones on previous floors, he would make a new cavern so no species would be over hunted. He was very pleased with his layout, even if it was very expensive. Making a large cavern cost him lots of mana, and his actual dungeon was much smaller than the actual volume he had claimed, but it saved him mana in the long run when he didn’t have to summon monsters each time one died.

He had spent five days, and thousands of mana to set up his first floor and cavern, but he was exceedingly happy with the results. The numbers of monsters had exploded, and the mana fueled the growth. With his greatly expanded domain and population, he was collecting almost two thousand mana each day. He originally had no idea how a dungeon survived by summoning each monster, since they were so expensive, but he had noticed that any monster he created was much more expensive than the default monsters. The cost to summon skeletons had also gone down slightly as he summoned more, by about ten mana each, and if that continued he could see how it would be economical for a dungeon to summon each defender.

Now that he was reasonably set up with a first floor, he put all of his mana into expanding his domain. He started claiming land below and around the plateau, and a week after the survivor had fled he had claimed the land within an eighth of a mile of his entrance at the top of the plateau, and extended forty feet below the ground. He had no rooms in the plateau itself, just the staircase down. His whole dungeon was below the forest floor around it. His cavern took up almost half of his volume, and the thirty rooms were all in front of his cavern, with the boss room being closest to it. It would be hard for an adventurer to get into his cavern, since that was where his heart was, and even if they managed to crawl through the claustrophobic tunnels, he had Behemoth guarding him. His current boss was a regular stone centipede, since Behemoth would be far too deadly and anger some adventurer guilds. He didn’t want them to consider him a danger and exterminate him.

Pan also had to create loot to keep adventurers coming back, and increase the chance to kill one. He found a skill in the dungeon store that allowed him to do just that, for a paltry one hundred and fifty dungeon points. It was called Drop Assignment, and it allowed him to set drop rates and items to different monsters. He decided to put the loot in a chest at the end of every room, and it would be an aggregate for everything killed in the room, just copper coins for now, since he didn't have any other items worth giving.

The monsters on his first floor were mostly dark ant workers from Elaria’s colony, with the only difference being the stone centipede serving as the boss. It would be a good challenge for anyone attempting the dungeon, without being overly deadly. When he was able to create a second floor, he would make it more difficult, in an attempt to attract stronger adventurers. Behemoth would be the boss for floor two once he created it. Before that project, he wanted to make floor one bigger, and turn the stone centipede into a mini boss that would separate the first half of floor one from the second more difficult half. But he was going to need new monsters for the second half, since the only tier one monsters he would consider using were dungeon ants, stone centipedes, and assassin spiders.

He tasked Elaria with sending workers out and capturing any animals they could find, before the area was swarming with adventurers. He didn’t want to have to buy any animals from the dungeon store yet, he had been a frugal man after all. He wanted to save those for more exotic flora and fauna later on down the road, and hopefully, he could capture some more common animals and make them into something more exotic in the meantime.

Over the following days, he received a quite a few new species, a few of which were promising candidates, but since he didn’t even have more caves yet it was a moot point. He would think on it for a bit longer, but for now, all of his mana was going towards extending his reach down. He found it was quite easy to expand laterally, although it did grow harder the further he got from his heart, but vertical expansion took quite a bit more mana. Getting a new floor would be an expensive endeavor, but he wanted the option to be open before any adventurers set up.

Ten days after the escapee had fled, he called for Elaria to stop the forays outside of the dungeon. He knew that someone should be coming to confirm the report of a new dungeon soon, and he didn’t want any monsters to be caught outside of the dungeon. That would look bad. He was as prepared as he could be, and he hoped the team sent to confirm his existence and rank him would come soon.

Sure enough, on the eleventh day, his flies reported a group heading towards his dungeon through the forest. They were obviously adventurers, and quite strong ones at that. Pan hoped they wouldn’t disrupt his dungeon too much during their initial clearing and examination of the dungeon.

Dungeon Menu

Level: 8

Type: Sentient Dungeon

Name: N/A

Titles: N/A

Mana: 192/5000  (+0)

Rooms: 31

Levels: 1

Animals: 100,000+

Plants: 100,000+

Monsters: 483

Skills: [Dungeon Menu], [Dungeon Manipulation], [Dungeon Absorption], [Dungeon Creation: Level 8], [Dungeon Expansion], [Dungeon Summon], [Targeted Evolution], [Monster Imbuement], [Dungeon Map], [Name Bestowal], [Drop Assignment]

Dungeon Points: 700

Achievements: Evolver, Legend Slayer, Boundless