“This thing you called blueberry bread is delicious indeed. I’d never thought that food could be so enjoyable,” remarked Lorelei as we ate at the umbrella table. She was munching on blueberry bread partially wrapped in plastic, not minding the smeared jam on her mouth. There was already a pile of food plastic on her side of the table.

In the Item Creation catalog — the food section in particular — there were a variety of choices. As we needed to conserve CP, I had been eating bread, cookies, and energy bars since they were the cheapest kind of food available that gave the most nutrition. But even that still netted us in the red — the reason was obvious. Just thinking about it made me let out a heavy sigh.

“Hey, since you're a Dungeon Core, you don't need to eat, right? Don't eat too mu— No, don’t eat at all if you could.”

“No way! At least let me enjoy this delicacy five times a day.” She raised all five fingers of her hand that were smeared with jam.

“But you’ll get fat eating that much...” This should probably scare her. Although I didn’t know whether Dungeon Cores could get fat or not.

“Fat? But I’m a Dungeon Core. Or do you want to be eaten instead?” Lorelei licked her lips; her poker face made her statement all the more impactful. Yikes… I’ll be turned into CP?!

“Anyhow, we better get ourselves a reliable source of income before anything else.”

In silent acquiescence, she nodded her head. “I shall refrain from eating too much then.”

Lorelei, after all, was an immortal being that recently discovered mortal enjoyment. She’d probably hold herself back later on. I hoped.

Back to the dungeon business, there was this one last catalog that I’d yet to check: “Dungeon Management.” Once I selected the catalog, it turned into a 3D projection of the dungeon.

“Wow… So there’s this kind of function.” Not staying in a catatonic surprise, I went ahead and manipulated the 3D projection. This was a really fascinating thing for me as a programmer student — an AR (augmented reality) technology being implemented in the Dungeon Menu. Hold on a sec, the status screen could be considered as an AR implementation as well, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, in this catalog, you could expand and reduce the dungeon’s size however you wished by adding rooms. More on the list, I could even add another floor by either going up or down. There wasn’t really any limitation except for imagination and the ridiculously high price tag.

“A room with a ten-by-ten size and three meters high cost about 300 CP. And that’s if the room was already there… If we need to remove the dirt and stone first, it’s double that amount…” When I calculated it based on geometry, the ratio was one to one to its volume.

There were also options to change the terrain type of the place to whatever I wanted, be it grassy plain, volcanic, deep sea, and whatnot; the type of background I could choose was only limited to natural places though. By the way, if I let it be a ravine cave as it was right now, it wouldn’t cost us anything.

“Dungeon expansion has always been expensive. But it is what I seek to achieve — making a humongous dungeon.” A trace of desire flashed on Lorelei’s amethyst-like eyes, expanding the dungeon must have been her lifetime goal; no wonder that she was sensitive to CP expenditure.

Looking at it again, this dungeon came into existence not so long ago. All the CP that she got came from the daily gain of the mana vein below, and there could only be so many CP which meant that what he had was what she had saved for years.

“Still… If we want to conserve CP, wouldn’t it be better if we have the room prepared beforehand?”

“And how exactly?” She stared me straight in the eyes.

That was the whole issue. How?

“Welp, no use thinking that. But this Dungeon Management catalog sure is neat. I can see the whole dungeon… but I can’t see the monsters outside, though.”

“You know, I can see every part of the dungeon — all walls and grounds are my eyes. Nothing can escape my watch inside this place.”

“You can?”

“Uh-huh.” She puffed out her chest in pride, despite the lack of movement in her facial expression.

Then, shouldn’t the Dungeon Menu have functions like that too? I was suspicious of some things and quickly rummaged in and out of the menu. To my surprise, right below the Dungeon Catalogs and above the Properties functions, there was one additional one — “Miscellaneous Functions.”

Hm… There must be something with this menu… Holding my chin, I explored the Miscellaneous Functions only to find that it merely had one function: Dungeon Map. How ironic that it had “functions” to its name.

And via the Dungeon Map, the screen transformed into the 2D map of the dungeon and its periphery. I could even use the cameras all over the dungeon to inspect the place in real-time and remotely. Neat.

“Wh-What?” Lorelei inspected the Dungeon Map with an incredulous look. “How come that there’s suddenly that? Are you capable of adding things, Vincent?”

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“Y-Yeah, something like that.” But now, what course of action should I take? I could increase the total monsters to make them dig for more rooms… No, we didn’t have the luxury to spend that much time… In addition, the current state of the dungeon couldn’t support many monsters — our CP reserve would run out to support the food expenses for them. In doing so, it would be nothing but counterintuitive.

Er… didn’t I forget something more important here? I pulled the straps of my backpack in deep thought.

“Um… You’ve been carrying that backpack for so long. Don’t you consider putting it down?”

My backpack…? That’s it!

In a rush, I held Lorelei’s shoulders. “Let’s make an army of golems!”

“What do you mean?” Although flat, her expression told me a thousand words. She was more likely than not dishing me out with “Does this fool even know how to make a golem?” sarcasm.

“Well, think about it, if we have an army of robots— I mean, golems to do our bidding. Not to mention digging, even making a city will be a walk in the park.” Since they wouldn’t need rest, they work two times… Actually, more like four times the efficiency of normal monsters. To top it all off, they wouldn’t need to eat, thus lifting us from the burden of feeding them. Three birds with one stone.

“Hold your horses there for a moment. You don’t even know how to make golems, do you? So how do you go about making golems?” The dam finally broke.

“Well, no idea.” I shrugged.

According to what information I had on hand, I could either make a golem myself or create it through the dungeon. However, a single one like the “clay golem,” the cheapest of its kind, cost about 75 CP when I checked it on the menu, and that was after the discount from its 100 CP original price.

“But we won’t know until we try. Besides, I still have one trump card up my sleeve.”

“Enough beating around the bush. Just tell me.” Lorelei looked pissed from the tone of her speaking… Wait, she’s learning to use proverbs.

“Actions speak louder than words alone. Have the goblin and kobold dig the clay mud at the entrance of the dungeon and bring it here.”

“Mm, okay.”

It was an incredible coincidence that all things inside the dungeon linked together to make this idea. The dungeon was damp, filled with wet mud at the entrance, and the place was small and couldn’t accommodate a lot of monsters, forcing me to think out of the box.

Likewise, the monster list inside the Dungeon Menu gave me an idea to make a golem. I just couldn't imagine myself thinking about this without it otherwise.

Fifteen minutes later, a pile of mud about fifty centimeters high was sent to the Artificial Realm. It appeared that Lorelei could send items to and from the Artificial Realm easy peasy.

“Say, if you’re capable of moving things…”

As though knowing what I was about to say, she shook her head. “Nuh-uh. It's not possible to move objects from walls, especially the ones that were made out of harder material like dirt and stone, unfortunately…”

“Shucks. Oh, well. There’s no such thing as free money… Now then…”

Rolling up my hoodie’s sleeves, my hands began kneading the clay; I personally was all but inexperienced in doing this except in my past school projects, so I wouldn’t be going for something big at the outset. Still, I underestimated the difficulty; making something bigger than fifty centimeters was harder than expected.

The shape of the golem I was aiming to make resembled a small mannequin. It had a dome head and a cylinder-like body. Four limbs similar in shape to its body were attached to its sides and below, functioning as arms and legs while not forgetting the small details for its fingers — three each.

“As for the finishing touch…” I opened the menu and purchased the cheapest monster core I could find which had a price tag of 5 CP.

Quite fascinatingly, the monster core materialized like the monsters did, as particles converged together, but there was no circle below since it was materializing on mid-air. The food I purchased earlier also had this kind of process of materializing. How strange.

When it was completely formed, I examined it closely. It was the size of a marble and had a similar appearance to an amber gemstone but had distinctive dark yellow lines that crept all over like some kind of blood vessel.

“Wah!” For once, I saw that something flickered on those lines and almost made me throw it away.

“Fufu.” Lorelei giggled “A monster core to a monster is essentially a heart to a human. It goes without saying that it’s fundamentally alive.”

“Ugh. You should have told me earlier.” This thing made me curious, so I inspected it with [Developer Interface].

Monster core (tiny)

A core of a monster — the source of energy that gave them power. Alive yet not alive, volatile to mana.

“Well, you didn’t ask.” She shrugged. This girl…

Not bothering to argue, I inserted the monster core right into the golem’s head.

“Eureka!”

“My, the appearance may look crude. But what can I say?”

“Oh, shut it. As long as it works, it works. Anyways, can you control the golem?”

“Not by any means,” she replied. “While I can feel the connection to the core inside, it is no different than being stuck.” Welp, the golem wouldn’t just move with only this, would it?

Time to use my card, the ability that I had neglected since becoming a Dungeon Master — [Programming].

“If my suspicion is right…” I grinned, taking out my laptop and turning it on. Luckily, it was working fine.

I spent hours making the golem, adding set after set of conditions, functions, loops, and even algorithms into the golem through my [Programming]. And whenever I got weirdly tired, I rested myself upon an artificially made bed in the Artificial Realm. [Programming] was so simple and versatile that it was several orders of magnitudes easier to use compared to several other programming languages that I’d learned — complete with its own libraries. Plus, using it felt as natural as breathing for me.

To crown it all, with the addition of my laptop packed with my years of coding, I could take references here and there. There was no fear of running out of batteries as the Artificial Realm could actually supply electricity. Yup, genuine electricity, though Lorelei said it sapped her mana reserve.

From this alone, I realized that this Vocation of mine held an incredible potential; things that I would want to explore as a programmer. If only I wasn’t held back by time, I would have kept continuing with my experimentation.

“It actually works!”

In front of me, the clay golem (small) moved back and forth, here and there, obeying every single of my commands. Comparing it to a robot, instead of a servo motor moving its joins, a set of conditions did that in its place. Its body was made of clay instead of plastic and aluminum. Its movements were controlled by a monster core instead of a CPU which also doubled as a battery. In fact, most of the conditions were placed inside the monster core, so even if the body got destroyed, as long as the core remained, it could revive.

The movements might be unbearably rigid and sluggish even when I had given some space between the limbs. However, additional improvements would be hard without changing the whole structure of the golem itself. The golem, as it was right now, was no different than a toy.

A toy as it is, if I bring it back to my world, it’ll definitely cause quite an uproar, I thought, feeling thrilled about what I’d accomplished.