Chapter 4_The Dungeon of Evolution

With an internal giggle and imaginary hand rubbing, Ian brought up his creature list.

Creature List

Biota:

Soris Web Spider Egg Sack → 1 mana

Zogon Serrated Centipede Egg → 1 mana

Green Cave Moss Spore → 1 mana

Green Cave Fern Spore → 1 mana

Phosphorescent Cave Mold Spore → 1 mana

Monsters:

Newborn Goblin [G-] → 10 mana

Newborn Oni [F] → 300 mana

Newborn Wyvern [E] → 3,000 mana

Moving Moss [G-] → 10 mana

Inferior Jelly (Lesser) [G-] → 10 mana

Inferior Slime (Lesser) [G-] → 10 mana

Inferior Water Elemental (Lesser) [G] → 30 mana

Ian started to think ‘All of them!’ but remembered he had created a hole in his core room just a little while ago and refrained. He didn’t want mold growing in his core room with no way to remove it. One at time then, starting with the jelly. The mana was pulled out of him and a much larger rush of outside mana formed the most basic of jellies. With a nostalgic squish the jelly appeared on the floor in front of his core.

Achievement: First Creature Created

+1000 DP

Achievement: First Inferior Jelly (Lesser) Created

+100 DP

‘Go away’ Ian thought using imaginary hands to swipe the windows away like they were bugs.

Ah, one of the twins of versatility. Truly representative of Ian’s goal for all monsters. He couldn’t resist himself and gave the jelly a detailed look. At only the size of a human fist newborn jellies of this rank were often accidently stepped on by adventurers. The jelly coating and the heart were both crystal clear however the heart was slightly more opaque to distinguish it from the jelly. Its body was squishy and solid which Ian liked a lot more than the liquidy and slimy slimes. Ian started to zoom in but the reasonable part of his brain nagged at him to stop wasting time. Hmph. Status!

Race:

Inferior Jelly (Lesser)

Rank:

G-

Attribute:

None

Development:

0/100

Titles:

None

Skills

Mana Perception

Absorption

Description

The most basic form of the jelly monster tree. It is born with the lowest levels of Mana Perception and Absorption the two skills that every jelly has. The acidity that jellies use to absorb is only present near the mana heart of this basic jelly thus touching it on the outside is not detrimental and indeed can be quite pleasing. They are mindless creatures that will suck up anything smaller than them in an attempt to grow larger. Luckily the most dangerous part of these monsters, their versatility, does not begin until they are D- rank. Be warned even though the jelly monster’s physical form may not change until D- rank the skills they can learn are various.

Common Item Drops

G- mana heart

Gelatin

Hohohohoho, what do we have here. The status menu was quite different compared to what Ian was used to. Attribute was new, he usually had to determine that by observing his monster’s mana. It seemed like Development had replaced a monster’s level and experience. Heehee, a new way to raise monsters. Wonderful. Titles and Skills were the same, but Description and Common Item Drops were new. While Ian looked forward to the possibilities of Description and Common Item Drops, he already knew all the information provided for the basic jelly. They would hopefully give him a good starting point for any future monsters he didn’t know about.

Before Ian moved onto the next creature, he tried placing the jelly in his Inventory.

Living creatures cannot be placed in the Inventory.

Well, he had expected as much. Moving on.

Next would be the spider. He needed to see if there was a way to hatch it without waiting, and he needed to see if the jelly, currently doing laps around his core, could eat it. The egg sack plopped onto the ground as Ian summoned it.

Achievement: First Soris Web Spider Egg Sack Created

+100 DP

Ian had hoped he would get a thousand DP for creating both a monster and a biotic creature, but since the earlier window had said ‘creature’ he wasn’t surprised by its absence.

The marathon jelly went up to the egg sack, sat down, and did nothing. “Eat the egg sack,” ordered Ian telepathically. The jelly rolled over the egg sack and sucked it inside itself. Ian continued to observe the jelly until the egg sack was completely dissolved. The things he created could be eaten by his other monsters even without the Ecosystem perk, good to know.

Ian created another egg sack and as the jelly started moving towards it, he ordered "Do not eat the egg sack, please. I’m working here."

Race:

Soris Web Spider Egg Sack

Attribute:

Nature

Development:

0/100

Description

The egg sack of a common spider of the Soris Kingdom. Usually contains hundreds of baby spiders, but the dungeon version of this only contains one. While this spider has venom to dissolve its captured prey, it has difficulty biting organisms larger than itself. The spider's usual prey is flying insects. This spider can be found anywhere in the Soris Kingdom as long as there is space for their webs but are most often found in towns, caves, and forests.

As to be expected compared to a monster's status, a lot less to know. Most Biota didn’t level up or evolve, they simply aged. The sapient races were the exception to this with their classes, but in regards to their race they could not evolve either. However, Ian had run experiments with evolution involving pumping creatures full of mana. These experiments were all failures in regards to evolution, since none of the creatures, biota or monster, evolved. Each biotic subject did however shows signs of increased aggression, changes in mana attribute, and unusual behavior. Unusual behavior included attacking sapient races without regards to the consequences, attempted mana manipulation, and leaving their territory. These behaviors were all similar to usual monster behaviors. The monster subjects simply grew stronger, but did not evolve. He periodically checked his lab and various places in the wild where he performed the experiments, but none had evolved before his death. Ian had been confused. The biotic subjects all showed the signs, but why didn’t they evolve? A lot of monsters seemed like they were evolved versions of biota, but no observations of such an evolution had taken place or at least ever recorded. The most obvious difference was the lack of a mana heart in biotic organisms but creating that was impossible. Ian hoped his new nature as a dungeon allowed him to succeed where he had failed as a human, besides this little egg sack had Development just like his jelly monster.

A slow flow of mana controlled by Ian flowed into the egg sack. Ian’s earlier experiments had shown him that a fast mana flow would result in explosive consequences. His experiments had started after his continual observations of mana flow while he gained experience for himself and his tamed monsters. Compared to normal mana flow which formed rivers, twisted in odd ways, made sharp turns, and would disappear and reappear, the flow of experience from defeated foes, a craftsman’s tools, or a Quest window was like an arrow into an individual which then spread throughout their body. What Ian noticed was the strange similarities between the way experience restructured the body through stats and the way healing magic healed wounds. This led to Ian’s belief that mana could be substituted for experience, and Tidon had all but confirmed it with his speech about the gods and goddesses only being able to interact with the world through mana.

Ian felt he reached the mana capacity of the egg sack after losing 200 mana. He quickly checked it’s status menu to see if the Development changed.

Race:

Soris Web Spider Egg Sack

Attribute:

Nature

Development:

100/100

Description

Eureka! Now to wait for it to hatch….minutes went by and nothing happened. The system seemed to treat the aging of biota the same as the evolution of monsters with both having the Development category. From observing monsters in the wild, Ian had noted they seemed to take a day to evolve after reaching their max level. Either Ian had to wait a day, or maybe since the egg sack was a part of his dungeon the creatures he created were treated in a similar manner as tamed monsters were. If so, he had to allow the egg sack to hatch. Ian focused on the development window.

Please Choose Next Evolution:

Baby Soris Web Spider

Race:

Baby Soris Web Spider

Gender:

Female

Attribute:

Nature

Development:

0/100

Description

A baby spider common in the Soris Kingdom. Being in a dungeon this baby hatched by itself from an entire egg sack. While this spider has venom to dissolve its captured prey, it has difficulty biting organisms larger than itself. The baby is unable to bite any organisms and can only suck the liquified prey that its mother has captured. The spider's usual prey is flying insects. This spider can be found anywhere in the Soris Kingdom as long as there is space for their webs but are most often found in towns, caves, and forests.

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Let’s go! A crack formed in the webbing of the egg sack, and a tiny spider small enough to sit on top of a human pinky crawled out.

Achievement: First Biota Successfully Aged

+1000 DP

Achievement: First Baby Soris Web Spider Created

+100 DP

This time the aging of biota and the evolution of monsters were separated. Ian eyed his jelly which was back to doing laps around his core….later. Mana flowed into the baby spider and reached its capacity at 500 mana. With glee Ian focused on the development window.

Please Choose Next Evolution:

Soris Web Spider

Race:

Soris Web Spider

Gender:

Female

Attribute:

Nature

Development:

0/100

Description

A spider common in the Soris Kingdom. While this spider has venom to dissolve its captured prey, it has difficulty biting organisms larger than itself. The females of the species are much larger than the males at the size of a human fingertip while the males are about double the size of a baby spider. After copulation, the female spider will eat the male spider. The spider's usual prey is flying insects. This spider can be found anywhere in the Soris Kingdom as long as there is space for their webs but are most often found in towns, caves, and forests.

Yes, please! The tiny baby spider before him grew into a spider the size of his fingertip. It now had the telltale two white stripes from front to back on the top of its abdomen along with its white tipped legs and its signature brownish black body. The spider spun back and forth looking around the room the scurried off to a corner and started making its web. No special 1,000 DP achievement this time only the 100 DP prize for creating a new creature. Now, let’s make a monster.

Ian pumped mana into the spider, now a lot farther away. It didn’t seem to matter how far away it was from his core, the ease of inserting mana didn’t change. Hopefully he could evolve creatures throughout his dungeon otherwise he would have to call them down to his core room every time. As the 1000 mana left him, he excitedly opened the development menu but was met with dismay. Even though the development menu displayed 100/100, there were no evolutionary possibilities. Telling himself to buck up, Ian created more spiders, they were now added to his creature list reducing the mana cost to five each, and injected different attribute mana into them. Ian created and injected 19 new spiders with different attributes bringing the total to 20 spiders including the first attributeless spider. None of the spiders had any evolutionary possibilities, so Ian moved to targeted mana infusion.

Before he began any more experiments, Ian had the jelly clean up his core room which had too many webs and spiders for his liking. Ian created another twenty spiders and infused different attributes of mana into different body parts. The amount of mana Ian needed to target a specific body part increased ten fold, so he pumped 10,000 mana into each spider. No matter which body part he targeted, the abdomen, the fangs, the venom glands, the legs, the eyes, the silk glands, or even the hairs covering their bodies, no evolutions appeared. Ian tried infusing more mana into a separate body part for each spider and did it once again after the second infusion failed but each spider on the third infusion exploded. He had the jelly clean up the mess.

Was he wrong? Could biota not be turned into monsters? No, he still hadn’t tried everything. He still had Creation. The description said Ian could create anything from scratch but at an enormous mana cost. Normally one would think that this only entailed imagining what one wanted to create and then using mana to bring that image into being, which was how magic was cast. However, Ian wondered if he could create something to be a part of an already living organism. Creating a mana heart, permanent solidified mana, was deemed impossible at least with the mana capacities of living organisms. Ian, as a dungeon, had the source of all mana in the universe to help him create permanent items and beings from mana. Now the only question that remained was if he would receive any help while using his creation perk.

Ian focused the image of a G- mana heart and settled it inside of a new spider he had created. Nothing happened. Why? A G- rank mana heart was the smallest mana heart known….but biota didn’t even have a rank. Since they didn’t have rank were they considered even less than a G- rank monster? Hmmm. Ian formed the image of a mana heart with half the mana of a G- mana heart and attempted to form it inside of the spider. 100,005 mana was sucked out of him and infused into the spider and a window popped into view.

Would you like to update the Soris Web Spider’s basic structure?

YES/NO

Ian observed the window in front of him and moved it to the side but did not dismiss it. He needed to observe the spider before he answered that question. The spider was going about its business scuttling along the floor. Besides stopping when Ian placed the mana heart into it nothing had changed about its behavior. For a day Ian watched the spider move about the floor of the core room doing nothing else. It seemed to be a perfectly normal spider beyond the fact that it contained a mana heart. Ian brought the window back up and selected YES.

Achievement: First Basic Creature Structure Updated

+1000 DP

Pleased, Ian brought up the spider’s status.

Race:

Soris Web Spider

Gender:

Male

Attribute:

Nature

Development:

0/100

Description

Common Item Drops

Tiny Mana Heart

Hmm, its development was still at zero, a short sentence was added to the description, and it could now drop items. Since, its development was at zero it couldn’t evolve and was still not a monster, so just adding a mana heart didn’t make something a monster. However, now that it had a mana heart would Ian’s previous attempts now work? Only one way to find out. Ian sent 1,000 attributeless mana into the spider and checked its development window.

Please Choose Next Evolution:

Clear Web Spider [G-]

Ian’s book jumped up and nearly fell off his stand. Status. STATUS. STATUS!!!

Race:

Clear Web Spider

Rank:

G-

Gender:

Male

Attribute:

None

Development:

0/100

Titles:

Biotic Born

Skills

Silk Creation

Bite

Venom Creation

Stealth

Description

Biotic Born: A spider monster that evolved from a normal spider after living in dense mana for most of its life. Silk Creation, Venom Creation, Bite, and Stealth are skills that represent slightly better versions of the basic biological functions and skills of a spider. The Clear Web Spider is simply a more impressive normal spider with a see through body that makes it seem like the spider has no internal organs. This is a trick of the attributeless mana, the spider still has organs. At the size of a human hand, the female spider can capture larger prey than its normal brethren. The male spider is still smaller at the size of a fingertip but larger than its biotic brethren. Clear Web Spiders can now bite organisms larger than themselves with abandon. They make their homes in the same locations as normal spiders but only in areas of dense attributeless mana.

Common Item Drops

G- mana heart

Spider Fang

Inhale. IF YOU WOULD, SYSTEM!

The mana throughout the spider’s body changed into the needed material to make the spider larger. The legs elongated, the body expanded, the fangs grew longer, and the eyes grew larger. The brownish black body, white stripes, and white leg tips disappeared and the spider looked like a glass figurine of itself with a small clear crystal in its abdomen. After the mana was done reconfiguring the body, the remaining mana rushed into the clear crystal causing it to enlarge. As the last of the mana infused into the being of the spider, Ian stood his book up on his pedestal and started dancing.

Achievement: The First Dungeon to Actively Evolve a Biotic Creature into a Monster

+10,000 DP

Achievement: First Biotic Creature Evolved into a Monster

+1,000 DP

Achievement: First Clear Web Spider [G-] Created

+100 DP

While Ian was dancing, the new Clear Web Spider scuttled over to a corner and started spinning a web. This behavior was unlike the male spiders that Ian had summoned previously who avoided webs and females all together. The silk spun by the spider was the same as any normal spider and after it settled on its web it watched the strange book in the center of the room that it felt a comforting feeling from.

After a few minutes, Ian stopped his merry jig and laid his book back down onto the pedestal. Still full of elation, he created a G- rank mana heart in front of his pedestal to see if he could. The rush of a little over a hundred thousand mana did not come, instead a torrent of mana worth ten million rushed out of Ian and formed the mana heart.

Achievement: First G- Rank Attributeless Mana Heart Created

+100 DP

Ian’s book sagged on the pedestal slightly drooping off of one edge as the exhaustion of releasing most of his mana in one go affected his mental state. Why did he always do something stupid after a successful venture? Thankfully it wasn’t as bad as the time he expelled all of his mana after clearing his first S Rank dungeon. If he hadn’t known how to actively restore his mana from the environment back then or hadn't already left the dungeon, then he either wouldn’t have been able to use mana for over a hundred years or he would have been dead. After an hour, Ian felt good enough to continue with his activities.

He needed to think through how much mana everything used. Creating creatures was simple, it seemed to take as much mana as experience the creature gave upon being killed. It took a thousand mana to evolve a biotic animal into a monster, at least for infusing the animal with mana, however that was a special circumstance going from biota to monster. Targeted infusion took ten thousand mana for each area targeted, so the more areas he targeted the more mana for an evolution. It was also possible the amount of mana for targeted infusion was dependent upon the rank of monster or biota. His one example of creating something inside an animal resulted in a hundred thousand and five mana being used. The five mana was probably how much the mana heart contained. The hundred thousand possibly represented how much mana for a single created item attached to an already created being or thing. Free creation took ten million mana from him to create a ten mana mana heart, so initially it seemed to be a million mana times the mana cost of the item. Ian also hadn’t even tried modifying an organism rather than creating something completely new inside of it. While he had a general idea of how much things cost, more experimentation was needed.

Hmm, what was his mana at currently?

Soul Name:

Ian Irwin

Dungeon Name:

N/A

Rank:

Level:

Perks:

Floors:

Mana Generation /day:

1,000,000

Mana Pool:

276,723

DP Generation /day:

0/1

DP Pool:

19,000

Titles:

None

Biota:

Animals:

Plants:

Fungi:

Other:

Total:

Monsters:

Animals:

Plants:

Fungi:

Other:

Total:

Traps:

Treasures:

Oh, it seemed like even though he aged the Soris Web Spider the egg sack and baby versions still counted towards his status numbers. He supposed he could drop sacks full of baby spiders on adventurer’s heads or hide them in plants and fungi that were delicious to eat. The mana heart must have been considered a treasure as he now had thirteen rather than twelve. His mana was low, only Ian would consider that number low, but it was enough to create the rest of his creatures and maybe evolve a few monsters while waiting for another million mana to build his first floor. Ian had started to think that the uniformity of early floors in dungeons wasn’t ‘camouflage’ as Tidon put it but a severe lack of mana during the early stages of dungeon development.

Chapter 4

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