Veronica sighed as she came back to life for what felt like the hundredth time that week, but was really only one time of a small handful. The familiar feeling of resurrection was one she had grown tired of. As the Dungeon Master, she was supposed to be on the top of the food chain in her own dungeon yet Bo, the bull Shifter, seemed determined to prove otherwise.

Every encounter with him played out similarly. He would charge into wherever she was and demand she fight with him. It didn't matter what she was doing or how little she wanted to participate, she would have to deal with him before she could move on with her life. Even the minor strength and agility increase she had been granted upon unlocking the second floor hasn't changed things enough to make a difference.

The first few times, she had been hopeful that things might be different. However, with each failure that resulted in her death, the futility of her efforts became painfully more clear. No matter what she did, Bo's brute strength, and rather sharp horns, always won out. He was relentless, and her repeated deaths were beginning to wear down her spirit.

Unlocking the second floor had brought a sense of hope for Veronica. She had hoped that being able to put more rooms between the dungeon core room and the entrance to the dungeon would mean that she could buy time, if not deter him entirely. However, it seemed that the promise of new challenges had only renewed his determination to conquer her dungeon.

She had even been working on improving the dungeon side so that it would be more difficult to reach the dungeon core room, not that his goal even was to destroy the dungeon core. Even with Seraphina no longer standing guard, Bo always left after he defeated her, entirely uninterested in destroying the dungeon core. Still, it would be bad decision-making on her part if she didn't add new defenses to deter any other intruders she might have to deal with.

As part of adding the brownies to her new cleaning room, she had spent 500 DP to unlock 100 MP spawners. That had resulted in her dungeon point total decreasing to 27,982 DP, not the 28,482 DP she had previously thought. She had been quite confused by the matter when she later pulled up her [Dungeon Status] menu. Why she hadn't just done so at the time instead of trying to keep track of the number the way one might when budgeting without a calculator, she wasn't sure. It wasn't even that hard to pull up.

Over the last week, she had added the spawners to every 'room' on the dungeon side of the second floor. While it was more difficult to upgrade the ones on the first floor due to the consistent traffic, she was also working on upgrading the spawners there as well. Her new goblins cost 30 MP each, so she could easily afford to place three of them in each of the [Monster] field rooms. Meanwhile, the brownies were 50 MP, which is why she only had two of them assigned to the cleaning closet.

Of course, most of the [Monster] fields could be skipped and the basic goblins were rather weak. Their intelligence seemed lacking and they had poor gear. They wore things like animal skin skirts and dresses while the weapons they wielded varied and were made from stone, bone, or wood. She highly doubted a wooden club was going to be able to damage any adventurer worth his salt, so she couldn't really expect them to do much to defend the dungeon. They'd just be fodder easily slain and likely barely worth the resources she had invested in them.

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They all looked exactly as she had expected from the stories in her world. Green skin, eyes strange shades of yellow and orange, slightly pointed ears, and shorter in stature than Humans. Really, they were more like an uglier, slightly less hairy version of the brownies she had unlocked. They also had strange names she could barely pronounce and she was hardly going to bother with even trying to remember them. There were sixty-six of them just in the [Monster] fields alone, anyhow, so it would have just been a waste to try and remember all of their names anyway.

Since there was no reason to delay making a boss room, she went ahead and made one rather quickly. She used the water and land terraforming options to create a decorative pattern of water throughout the boss room. It was hardly necessary to make it look good, but she did actually have a reason to add extra water to the room. Although, it certainly seemed fitting to set the stage since it was still supposed to be an important space within the dungeon.

Would you like to research goblins using [Base Resources] water magic, undyed cotton cloth, undyed thread, blue dye, wood, and water magic crystal to create goblin evolution [Water Elementalist] for 250 DP?

Yes

No

Name:

Evolution Cost:

Info:

Water Elementalist Goblin

75 DP

Requires a goblin to evolve. Grants the water elementalist class and basic skills for the class. Dungeon entities are incapable of leveling up.

Veronica hadn't, initially, known what to expect when it came to evolving the goblins. However, she could always ask the system about potential evolutions and the system prompt would appear. She could then choose the [No] option and she wouldn't have to spend any resources to gain the information. In the end, she ended up deciding upon a water elementalist goblin since it seemed fitting for the swamp theme. A fire elementalist class had too much potential to go wrong and earth elementalists seemed to start with more defensive skills than offensive from what she had learned from asking adventurers at her tavern.

Many of her patrons weren't really familiar with who she was and she rarely bothered introducing herself before being asked. Even if someone could identify her, most people seemed more inclined to cooperate with her than to risk upsetting her. Admittedly, the dungeon traffic had decreased again due to how unstable her emotions had been lately. She didn't know if that would be a worry for long, though, as she was no longer feeling purely angry about her situation, but was starting to feel resigned to her fate. It didn't seem there would be an end to this anytime soon.

Regardless, after spending the 250 DP to unlock the quest, 75 DP to evolve a goblin for the boss [Monster], and 250 DP to set the room as the official boss room with the system, she was now down to 27,407 dungeon points. She'd soon have to spend more too since she still needed challenge rooms for the second floor. Even if she wasn't certain he'd fall for the bait, since he liked challenges so much, it seemed like it would be worth giving a go. Hopefully, with a bit of luck and planning she could come up with a good way to make it worth her while.