Chapter 1
It was dark, just like his usual prison. Otherwise, it’s all different.
What he saw was not his usual cold stone brick walls and iron bars, rather it was stone and dirt, natural cave.
At first, he failed to see the door, which only showing the darkness of night and letting in the chilling wind. But after some time, his eyes began to adapt and see the shape. It’s not unlike an entrance to a cave. Then he felt it.
His body felt numb. Or rather, the lack of body in sight makes him feel numb.
He could neither feel it, nor can he see it. Anywhere he turn his vision onto, he saw nothing resembling a body, especially his body.
Sure, he could ‘move’, but all it does is moving his immediate vision, as if he did not exist, just an observer inside a cave.
Then, like a joke, he saw it.
A blue box flying in the air, suspended by nothing and followed his vision in the same place, as if it was placed right in front of his eyes. Except he have none.
As his mind tried to comprehend it, he began to read the text written on the box.
Dungeon NameUnnamedTypeHive MindRankFLevel1Minion(s)0Soul Point(s)1000Mass Point(s)1000Magic Point(s)1000
At first, he does not understand anything in the information box, but then it hit him.
The knowledge of what he is. The knowledge of what he had become.
***
His head hurt like never before. Sure, Aeson have felt many kind of pain, including getting hit by a moving carriage driven by four horses, but it was nothing compared to this.
This time, his consciousness just stopped, almost destroying his soul in the process. Of course, he did not know. All he knew was that his head felt so heavy that he want to puke, but then the knowledge of the fact that he have no head hit him.
It repeated many times, but every time there will be new information inserted to his very soul.
***
The whole process took only a few seconds, but to Aeson it felt like decades, or even centuries. Then, as his new instinct kicks in, he began to use his newfound ability to look for what he need.
At first, he gather up his thought and began the first process.
Now he know of what he has become.
I am a mind, he thought. I am a hive mind. I am everywhere, yet at the same time I am nowhere. I need minions to continue existing.
As a hive-type dungeon, he knows that he only had one chance to choose his minions that will serve him until his second demise.
CreatureSoul CostMass CostMollusk1005Arthropod20050Fish30080Reptile400150Avian50070Mammal600700Demonic750460
There are only seven categories he could choose from, but he still could not decide it quickly. He was sure he would never chose mollusk, and he don’t particularly like mammal. He would not chose fish either. Because, as far as he knew, seas are far away from his current location, which is inside a mountain. Rivers and lakes are too restrictive, after all.
Avian? That is a no-go, since there are only some kind of flying monsters, and mostly they are hard to find. Even air superiority means nothing if your ground force is basically nonexistence. Except if he could get his hands on a phoenix, then it would be another matter entirely.
So his only choices are the arthropod, demons, and the reptiles. They sounds promising, and reptiles have dragons. They could even become reptile beast men that will worship him.
Demons have their advantage, too. From his new basic knowledge, he understand that everything beside demonic race could not use magic in their first few spawn. And unlike others, demonic races will have the advantage early on.
But the arthropods… he can’t be sure. Their chitin armored bodies would be very sturdy if he could develop them, and they could be grown into monstrosities in large numbers. Their downside is the fact that they could not use magic.
In the end, he chose his minions to be the arthropod class.
He despise magicians anyway.
***
Hive-type dungeon, unlike many other dungeon ranging from Cave-type, Skyland-type, to the legendary Void-type dungeon, have no restriction on how to expand itself, from using its own magic power to alter the terrain to using its own minions to carve and mold the earth. The latter is only possible for Fortress-type and Hive-type. And in minion making, a Hive-type dungeon can basically make them out of rocks.
And unlike any other type of dungeon which usually have more than one phylum of creatures, or in case of Cave-type and Skyland-type which have at least three kingdoms with their own artificial ecosystems, Hive-type dungeon only have one, and it cannot be changed.
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Like its many counterparts, Hive-type dungeon can feed its minions from the collections of ambient magic force harvested from their designed area. The only difference is that Hive-type must have them feed in crystal form, because they could not absorb it in its raw form.
The other difference is that Hive-type dungeon could have complete control over its minions, unlike its other counterparts, except if it chose to put overseer for them and only give directions and let its minion do the rest.
Fortress-type, for instance, usually have undead as its minions, can only control as much as a few hundred of its minions before they have to be put under the charges of the higher rank undead, so they could function normally.
Cave-type and Skyland-type usually use their ability to create many type of ecosystem to maintain their minions’ growth, and could not personally direct their actions and put their most loyal servants in charge.
There is little known of the Void-type.
***
After he chose his minion’s category, he began to form a body.
The body is that of an insect queen, which act as a jack of all trades from spreading biomass to collect the ambient magic force, and for breeding his first batch of underlings.
In his mind, there are four kind of breed he could choose from.
The first is Collector, a fly-like creature that could kill and collect bodies from another arthropod to be dissected and analyzed on the spot, then send the information to the overseer or the central hive mind.
The second is Drone, which looks like termites, only as big as a rat. They will dig and bring back the broken down rocks to the nearest Queen to be processed into paste, which will be used to create or evolve a unit further with some souls.
The third is Overseer, which will command its designated units to do its tasks without efficiently and will alert the hive mind if any kind of danger is coming. It will also help defend its designated units using its spider-like feature. It is as big as a house cat.
The last is Stinger, a scorpion one and a half meter tall and almost two meters long, with unusually long tail three meters in length.
He choose to breed his first thirty collectors. He then breed four overseers. The last is to breed twenty drones.
It leaves him with a little bit more than a half of his initial Soul Points, but almost depleted his Mass Points, and his Magic Points less than half. But then again, he can’t be sure about what would happen if he chose the other, far more expensive minion categories. Especially mammal and demons, since they tend to take long in pregnancy, and need far more than rocks and magic to sustain themselves.
While waiting for his minions to hatch, he began to spread his magic collector biomass little by little using only a little Mass Point, since it is thin and widespread. According to his new knowledge, he could not risk overlapping them for fear that the ambient magic will be collected faster than it could be replenished.
It took him a little over ten minutes to completely cover the cavern floor with it.
Then for his first batch of minions consisting of over fifty four insect-like monsters hatch after the sun rises. He could not figure out how long it takes, but it should not be over four hours.
Two of the overseer he assigned fifteen collectors each, and he command them to begin exploring the outside world in different direction. His mind is spiritually connected to them, so unless they are completely wiped out, there is no way he could lose them.
The other two he assigned to ten drones each, to dig and expand the cave he is in. He instructed them to leave some part alone to act as pillars to support the cave just in case.
After a long day, because of the twenty drones are working almost nonstop, by nightfall, his cave has become a circular dome shaped chamber with even and smooth flooring and dome shaped ceiling, with the tallest being four meters from the ground. The chamber itself was expanded from ten into fifteen meters in diameter. Their gate is just a rock slab that could be moved by six drones.
In a short amount of time, his first task is complete, which consist of making a large parlor. He can command the drones to evolve to queens and powerhouses. And his Mass Points have reached over thirty thousand units, with more rocks and other minerals still being diluted in the acidic chamber inside his first queen’s body. He does not know how it works, but since it works, he doesn’t want to make a fuss about it.
Just like any other creature, his minions still need to sleep and rest. He began to order them to go back, especially his collectors since they have hunted down some insects that can be found in the woods.
He was eager to collect their sample and began his customized minions.
***
Author's Note :
Yeah, i know, the MC is suddenly full of knowledge he should not have. Seriously, i don't know how to make it more interesting. But the progressive type is just too hard to imagine. For example, just imagine the fact that you know that you should be dead, but instead you are sealed inside a cave of unknown origin, have no body (literally), then suddenly some kind of flying blue box appear in front of you and it wont go away.
And, since i am neither a biologist nor an achemist, i have no idea what i'm talking about. It's purely bullshit.