Before he started to construct his floor and spawn creatures, Ian needed to see the differences between his previous status menu and his current one. His contracted and summoned monsters as a human had their gender on their status menu unlike any of the sapient races. He wondered what differences a dungeon status menu would have.
Soul Name:
Ian Irwin
Dungeon Name:
N/A
Rank:
EX
Level:
1
Perks:
2
Floors:
0
Mana Generation /day:
1,000,000
Mana Pool:
3,000,000
DP Generation /day:
0/1
DP Pool:
0
Titles:
None
Biota:
Animals:
2
Plants:
2
Fungi:
1
Other:
0
Total:
5
Monsters:
Animals:
3
Plants:
1
Fungi:
0
Other:
3
Total:
7
Traps:
12
Treasures:
12
What was this bullshit. Tidon was a filthy liar. No floors his ass. “The concept of floors as you know it doesn’t exist, pfft,” Ian’s book core flapped open and closed not actually saying the words. Tidon could have just said floors are different than what you think, but they still exist. Ian had spent the last few days correcting himself for nothing. Ian continued to grumble and swear to himself for the next couple of minutes. The words he used in relation to Tidon and the other gods and goddesses would make most question why he hadn’t been struck down or at least heavily cursed. Most other would think, “Overreacting much?” After calming down Ian continued with his status analysis.
One million mana a day was quite slow. It was the same number as his regeneration every minute while he was human, so how could a dungeon whose entire purpose was to create things survive with that measly amount? Everything he had created while human had a set time limit to it. Spells would disappear after serving their purpose and even the most permanent of spells: enchantments could only be created to last a couple hundred years without the creator losing the ability to use mana for the rest of their life. He would have to examine how things and creatures were created, so he knew what he was working with.
Did the Perks category not count all of his additional perk perks? Snort. When he checked it only All Creatures and Creation were included. Would the other additive perks such as Mana Generation and DP Generation not count? Experiments for another day.
For some reason Ian didn’t have any DP generation, which was quite terrible in his opinion. After checking out the category, Ian sighed. Apparently his DP Generation was for spewing his mana out into the world, so not being open to the world meant no DP generation. Either there were other ways to get DP or dungeons got fucked in the ass for a year after they were born.
Ian checked to see how dungeons raised their level. Usually it was by killing another creature and gaining their mana as experience. Well, crafting classes and the like only gained experience from working their craft. He would have normally thought killing intruders gave dungeons experience prior to becoming a dungeon, but that would mean bringing mana from outside into his dungeon which was counterintuitive to the dungeon’s purpose.
Dungeon Level 1
0/200 Mana For Next Level
Two hundred mana? That was it? Ian immediately moved two hundred mana into his book core.
Dungeon Level 1
200/200 Mana, First Floor Needed
Damn, he should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. So far he needed mana and a completed floor to advance to the next level, hopefully the requirements didn’t include killing intruders because he couldn’t do that for another 397 days. ...He should really shut up about those kind of things unless they were brought up to him by the system, he would jinx himself.
The inclusion of how many types of creatures, traps, and treasures he could summon was interesting. Did all dungeons have this? If so, then making different types of all three was of paramount importance. However, the creature category was far more detailed compared to traps or treasures. Was this personal or did the Gods care more about different creatures? Ian hoped it was personal, so he wouldn’t have as much competition in discovering new creatures. Well, there was that auction Tidon talked about where dungeons got together, so Ian could ask then. Tidon said the auction and competitions were every year, so would Ian participate in them while separated from the world? He would find out eventually he guessed.
Since Ian had a rank as a dungeon rather than a class, he surmised that the system treated dungeons as monsters. As such he was not surprised at the absence of the class category, but Ian was surprised about the absence of any skills. Skills were the most important part of his strength as a human and not having them was odd. All other monsters Ian had come across had skills too, but not dungeons apparently. His Creation perk was similar to a skill but lacked a level and was simply too powerful. The EX Rank Mage trait should have given him all his magic skills but they weren’t present. The usage of mana was possible without skills but much harder. Since dungeons were required to use mana for their survival maybe the system deemed skills unnecessary for them? With a sigh Ian supposed he would simply have to go about his business as a dungeon for a while and learn why dungeons didn’t have skills along the way.
The only thing that seemed to carry over besides the concept of leveling up was the Title category. The lack of titles made Ian a little forlorn. Iad admitted he had started to be flippant towards his titles while human, since it took him pages to scroll past all of them, but not having any was depressing. Could he get the same titles as a dungeon that he earned as a human? Did dungeons have their own separate titles they could earn compared to the sapient races? More and more questions continued to pop up that he didn’t have answers to. Hopefully the knowledge he had spent MOST OF HIS LIFE learning was useful when building floors and creating creatures because so far it had only been marginally helpful. If Ian still had a human body, he would be holding his face in his hands.
With his status out of the way, Ian brought up the generation window for treasures. He wanted to start with inanimate objects first.
Treasure List
Wood Arming Sword: 25 mana
Wood Claymore: 30 mana
Wood Composite Bow: 25 mana
Stone Coin: 5 mana
Wood Halberd: 30 mana
Wood Javelin: 20 mana
Wood Knuckles: 15 mana
Wood Mace: 25 mana
G- Attributeless Mana Stone: 10 mana
Rock: 5 mana
Wood Throwing Knife: 15 mana
Wood Tomahawk: 20 mana
…Cheap. They all ranged from 5 mana to 30 mana. Ian had thought 1,000,000 mana was low for a dungeon, but based on the mana prices so far he was wrong. With a smirk Ian couldn’t wait to spend all his mana on his creatures and create new variants that no one had ever seen before. He’d try the mana stones first since they were the non-living thing he knew the best.
As Ian focused on the window selection he felt a miniscule amount of mana zoom out of him into a vortex centered close to the ground. Ian’s attention was completely on the vortex such that even though he could see the rest of the room his brain, or whatever worked as his brain, payed it no attention. What he noticed was the ten mana taken from him served as the core of vortex, but a mana that was not his formed the crystalline structure. Ian followed the flow of foreign mana backwards to find the source. However every direction he went simply led to the walls of his dungeon. Without the ability to observe outside his dungeon, Ian couldn’t determine the source. However, considering the purpose of dungeons Ian hypothesized that the universe of the Greater God was the source.
While a hypothesis for Ian, most dungeons had agreed after a lot of questioning and empirical evidence that the Greater God’s universe was in fact the source of the unknown mana. After Knowledge published a paper on the subject any dungeons that said, “But it’s only a theory.” were quietly sat down and explained the difference between a hypothesis and a theory by her. Let’s just say that no one ever said that sentence again.
The vortex of mana stopped after what was only a couple of seconds and in its place sat a mana stone. Interested in seeing if there were any differences between this mana stone and the mana stones Ian was familiar with, there weren’t any, the mana stones Ian was familiar with also came from dungeons, his vision zoomed in on the small mana stone. What Ian didn’t expect was how far he could zoom in. Eventually the stone reached a size that would have dwarfed the mountain Ian’s entrance stood below, at least in perception. Unlike when looking at the mountain Ian noticed the stone consisted of a series of very small holes. As he zoomed in farther the holes became bigger, and Ian noticed the entire stone was made of a lattice structure of multiple layers except for the center. The center was empty except for the ten mana he used to create the stone. That mana was attempting to escape the stone in all directions at once. It seemed unable to do so with the method it employed however.
This new knowledge struck Ian like a thunderbolt. Magic tools had the greatest mana efficiency when absorbing the mana from a single direction. The tools that tried to make multiple paths for mana to flow from a single mana stone had poor efficiency or didn’t work at all. With force spread out in multiple directions the mana didn’t have the strength to break the surrounding lattice and leak out of the crystal. Only when the force was focused on a single direction could the mana inside escape. No wonder mana stones contained cracks after use.
Ian zoomed his vision back out and his book flapped open and closed in excitement. He could use this information to make far better magic tools for adventurers to find. Of course the tools would have to be on the deeper floors. This zoom ability was astounding! Now he could examine the internal structure of biota and monsters in the kind of detail he wasn’t able to before. His only worry was if this ability used mana.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Soul Name:
Ian Irwin
Dungeon Name:
N/A
Rank:
EX
Level:
1
Perks:
2
Floors:
0
Mana Generation /day:
1,000,000
Mana Pool:
7,999,790
DP Generation /day:
0/1
DP Pool:
0
Titles:
None
Biota:
Animals:
2
Plants:
2
Fungi:
1
Other:
0
Total:
5
Monsters:
Animals:
3
Plants:
1
Fungi:
0
Other:
3
Total:
7
Traps:
12
Treasures:
12
Hmm, he had 4,999,790 more mana than the last time he checked. Either using the ability gave him five million mana or it took him five days to zoom in, notice some things about the mana stone, and then zoom out. Ian knew he was bad at keeping track of time but this seemed worse than usual. It would have to be another thing he needed to test but Ian would need ample amounts of time to do so. He would need to refrain from zooming in anymore before then, but Ian wondered if he truly could.
Ian noticed a couple windows were waiting to appear before him, so he let them.
Achievement: First Treasure Created
+1,000 DP
Achievement: First G- Attributeless Mana Stone Created
+100 DP
Oh. …Wait. He didn’t have any DP when he checked his status a second ago! That was different than what he was used to. If he had to check the windows to received their reward, then that would take away from his concentration. …Or would it? One of the things he had gotten out of the Dungeon of Knowledge from its core was how easy it was for a dungeon to split their consciousness between their dungeon and their avatar. Besides without a respawn perk Ian would have to create everything on his own which would require splitting his mind throughout this entire dungeon. Ian cursed himself for still thinking like a human would and tried to split his mind.
It worked amazingly. He was reading his status on his book core, apparently he could will it to be there, while examining the mana stone, from a safe distance, thinking about what he would do in the future, and many other things. Pleased that splitting his mind only had the single negative repercussion of not being able to focus on one thing at a time, Ian returned his separate minds to one. Hey, he liked getting immersed into what he was doing and having background information come in from other minds wouldn’t allow that. Ian was satisfied with learning how young dungeons earned DP and how to split his mind.
Ian decided to create the rest of his treasures and see how similar they were to what he remembered. The arming sword was ninety centimeters long with a seventy five centimeter ‘blade’. It fit the image of the arming swords he used with their cruciform hilts. The main difference was the weight since this arming sword was made of wood. He didn’t know how he could do it but as soon as he formed the weapon all the dimensions including weight were known to him. All that was left was the status menu.
Wood Arming Sword
Main Material: Balsa Wood
Type: Sword
Effects: None
Durability: 5/5
Of course it was balsa. This thing will probably break in a swing or two. …Was he going to have to go through all the different types of wood when upgrading his treasures? That would not be fun.
The claymore had a length of 130 centimeters with a blade length of 110 centimeters. Like the arming sword it had a cruciform hilt, but its handle was made for two hands rather than one. No large difference in the status menu besides the durability being seven.
The composite bow was a little different than normal with the string being made out of twined together plant fibers while the main body was a composite of balsa wood and cuipo wood. The durability was actually lower than the arming sword at three.
At 1.6 meters long the halberd was the heaviest weapon he could create and surprisingly the stake at the end above the axe head looked a little dangerous. Well, as dangerous as balsa wood could look. Slightly higher durability at ten though.
Javelins, his longest weapons at two meters, would normally have been the most useful of his pointed weapons for adventurers if not for the fact that it was still made out of fucking balsa wood. It only had two durability too.
Wood knuckles, human knuckle size, and a wood mace, 80 centimeters long, would normally bring a reaction of ‘Smashing stuff with wood isn’t too bad’ but with balsa wood it was smash, break, and no damage. Sigh. Maybe the adventurers around here didn’t have the concept of wrapping their knuckles in material so they can punch harder. They might not even know about clubs with heavy heads used to bludgeon! If so, knuckles and maces could be ‘Here’s new weapon designs for you in a shitty form!’ Probably not. Luckily these had higher durabilities at ten.
Like the javelin, the throwing knife, 20 cm, and tomahawk, 60 cm long with a 10 cm cutting edge, were meant to be thrown so they were somewhat expendable. If they were expendable, then the adventurers may not snort in disgust at them nearly as often as they would the other wood weapons. While not sharp like their metal counterparts, they might be able to smash small animals. However, the ever present evil deity of not useful in battles wood: balsa stood in Ian’s way. The throwing knife durability was terrible like the javelin’s at two, but the tomahawk had a … respectable, Ian felt sick using that word in this situation, durability of five the same as the arming sword.
Maybe the rock he created would be useful. …As much as Ian wanted to say it wasn’t useful because it was just that, a rock: something that could be found nearly anywhere, it was probably a better bludgeoning weapon than the balsa wood mace.
His last item: the stone coin. No longer simply currency. The coin was made out of rough stone in a circular manner with another circle carved out of the center of the coin. Along the edge of the coin and the outer circle of the coin patterns consisting of upright and upside down triangles in sequence were etched. What would its status say.
Stone Coin
Main Material: Stone
Type: Currency
Effects: None
Durability: 50/50
Shit, nothing. Ian supposed he should have expected that when none of the other status menus gave him descriptions about themselves. At least he had an idea of what he was working with in regards to treasures. Besides the mana stone and stone coin his treasures could be considered junk or children’s toys. Well, if he was going to make a G- floor, then junk was all the adventurers would expect to get anyway. After creating all those treasures he now had 2,200 DP. He’d probably wait until his first floor was made to use it though. He was worried about needing DP to please Magical Beauty. Now what to do with the items laid around his core. Ian focused on the treasures surrounding him, thought ‘disappear,’ and they did so, but not in the way Ian imagined.
All treasures placed in Inventory.
Inventory? Was it similar to the spell Item Box or perhaps one of the higher spells like Dimension Creation? Ian wondered if it was a high level space magic that he simply never heard of. Ian called up the Inventory and another window appeared before his eyes.
Inventory
Wood Arming Sword x1
Wood Claymore x1
Wood Composite Bow x1
Wood Halberd x1
Wood Javelin x1
Wood Knuckles x1
Wood Mace x1
G- Attributeless Mana Stone x1
Rock x1
Stone Coin x1
Wood Throwing Knife x1
Wood Tomahawk x1
It looked like Inventory stored all his items and kept track of how many he had of each. Nice little pictures of each item also came attached to each section of the window. …Could he put other things in here besides his treasures? What about traps? Some traps didn’t have a physical form like the hole trap. Ian created the hole trap and tried to place it in the inventory. The inventory sucked in the hole trap and the floor of his core room was back to normal. Huh, Ian didn’t know of any space magic that did that. There were spells that used space magic to create separate dimensions that could be lived in for a while and in those dirt could be made and a hole dug, however storing a hole in what seemed similar to the Item Box spell wasn’t possible as far as he knew. He should study the Inventory later and see if he could create an equivalent spell on his own. Ian checked the two windows that appeared after creating the hole.
Achievement: First Trap Created
+1000 DP
Achievement: First 1 Meter Cubed Hole Created
+100 DP
At least he could check out his traps now without worrying about them cluttering up his core room. …He probably should have tried something that wasn’t a hole in the ground first. Something to remember when he got to his creatures.
Trap List
Wood Arrow: 20 mana
1 Meter String of Plant Fiber: 15 mana
Wood Door: 100 mana
1 Meter Cubed Hole: 50 mana
Wood Gear: 20 mana
1 Meter Diameter Plant Fiber Net: 50 mana
Wood Hook: 10 mana
Air Pressure: 500 mana
Wood Trap Door: 100 mana
Wood Button: 10 mana
1 Liter of Water: 25 mana
Wood Spike: 30 mana
It looked like traps cost more than treasures. The more important point was a lot of the traps were now quite specific about what they were rather than the generic options he had picked from during the tutorial. Ian wondered if that was due to his lacking trap studies or all trap selections originally came generalized. …If he hadn’t studied different types of weaponry, would those have been generalized? Just Wood Sword, Wood Dagger, and Wood Axe? His soul seemed to affect his choices more than he realized. He would have to keep that in mind for the future, but Ian wasn’t an expert on souls, even his own. Oh well, at least he had specifics about his traps now and created the remaining eleven while removing the hole from the inventory.
The fletching of the wood arrow was made out of plant fiber while the head was balsa wood along with the shaft. He doubted it would fly very well if at all. It was a short arrow of only about 50 cm. He could make adventurers annoyed at triggering a trap but it certainly wouldn’t kill them. Ian did have a chuckle at the idea of an arrow hitting an adventurer in the head and them looking around holding their head in annoyance.
The string, hook, gear, and button all seemed to the parts of the traps that made them work. The fact that low level traps had to be made not simply placed caused Ian to sulk. He wasn’t an engineer dammit. The string consisted of very thin plant fibers wrapped around one another and looked like a soft breeze would snap it in half. The hook was balsa once again with the hook on one end while the other end contained a circular hole. With a hole in the center and squares on the outer rim it was definitely a gear. Not that Ian knew much about gears. A rectangular block of balsa wood was pretending to be a button, so Ian ignored it.
The door and trap door would be useful for separating rooms and with triggers, like the block of balsa wood, the doors could be opened to release monsters from the other side. Now did they have to have a trap associated with them or could he use them as simple doors? Hmm.
The hole seemed to be the precursor of the pitfall but useless. It might sting the knees a bit and intruders could climb right back up. Ian questioned how much he could change the floor layout if one of his traps was a simple hole in the ground. It felt like he could just create the hole on his own when making the floor. Sigh, problems for another day…well hopefully not that long.
The net would be useful. It wouldn’t cover their entire body but it could immobilize them for a while in the middle of a fight. Oh! He could do time delayed traps that dropped the net to immobilize then shoot an arrow a short while later at the net drop spot. Yeah, combos were the way he would have to go with the trap options he had.
If Ian could make the hole larger, the wood spikes would be good to place at the bottom. …Now that he thought about it how much interaction could he have between traps? With some of his traps being tools to connect traps he assumed a lot of interaction. Well, he would have to try when he built his floor. The spikes could be used on their own he supposed. Place them at the end of the hall and maybe some idiot speed demon would run into them. Well not a literal demon, even idiot demons were smarter than that.
While the water could be used to make people wet or have them slip, could he use the water for non trap related things? In fact could he us the arrows as treasures? More future experiments.
The final trap actually seemed dangerous: Air Pressure. When Ian created it, he was confused how they were related. After examining it the proper way to use it appeared in his head. It was a round ball with a long tube out of it. The material it was made of was unknown to Ian. The elasticity of the material allowed the round end to be squished and air expelled out the tube end. It was probably the Shoot trap when he picked it during the tutorial. The status menu said the material was called rubber. Hmmm. As long as enough air pressure was contained within the trap then even those balsa wood arrows could be dangerous if they hit an eye…and didn’t explode into tiny pieces upon being shot. Actually, that could be used as a trap too. Maybe Ian was hoping for too much from the small object, but since it was a material he didn’t know about, it should do some damage.
The oddest part of the traps status menus were unlike the treasures they didn’t have durability. After thinking about it for a while, Ian’s memories clicked together. Most adventurers and dungeon divers avoided traps all together and didn’t pay them much attention even if triggered beyond ‘Mark the map so we don’t step there again.’ or ‘AAAAAHHHHH HELP ME, PLEASE!!!’ However, he had run into a mage group that researched traps. They had said taking out any traps from the dungeon was impossible, even the traps that shot projectiles. If the projectile was lodged in an arm, it would disappear after leaving the dungeon similar to creatures. If it missed, then the projectile would disappear on the spot. However, dungeon creatures could be tamed and removed from the dungeon so the similarities ended there. Their hypothesis was that traps were considered a part of a dungeon and the projectile disappeared from the pieced arm because the trap was reset. Ian sighed as the mages hypothesis was probably correct. He would still experiment since it was still only a hypothesis, but it made sense to Ian. Some of his ‘Make the most of things’ plans went down the drain with that.
Ian sucked all his created traps into his inventory happy about having a total of 4,400 DP. Now it was on to the fun part of creation: biota and monsters.