Level 1 Classless Slain - 1 Experience Gained
Level 1 Classless Slain - 1 Experience Gained
Level 1 Classless Slain - 1 Experience Gained
Level 2 Thief Slain - 2 Experience Gained
Level 1 Merchant Slain - 1 Experience Gained
Level 2 Guard Slain - 2 Experience gained.
...
Malcom felt notifications flooding before him in a deluge that wiped his ability to think about anything else, each new notification of a victim of his Picantch popping up like an obnoxious website ad. They demanded his attention, filling his vision with blue box after blue box, despite his attempts to mentally command them to close. It was like trying to bail a sinking ship with a teaspoon, a whole lot of effort to accomplish a negligible effect. In addition to the spamming messages about experience gain, there was an occasional flicker in the middle of the assault where Malcom thought he could make out the word 'Level' before it drowned back beneath the next surge of alerts. Strangely enough, alongside the tidal wave of notifications, there was a sensation of feeling drained. No, no. Drained wasn't the right word. Slowed. That was a better way to say it, like the feeling of getting home after a long day and being too lethargic to do anything around the house. His efforts to close the notifications actually slowed as the number increased, only starting to make a headway in removing them as the influx began to slow. Whatever system dungeons had, it fared poorly with so many kills, as if dungeons hadn't been designed for such a massacre on so grand a scale.
Even now that the notifications of experience gained were trickling in compared to the start, he didn't get a sense of energy returning to him. His mind felt slower, and a rising sense of absence was coursing through his core. He had grown used to the sense of energy that an absurd surplus of mana generation afforded him as a dungeon, and now with the many deaths of those who hated his minions- and by extension, his dungeon- the bonus he had been receiving to his production from their hatred was vanishing. Sure, those who were still alive had probably been driven to new and intense levels of hate for him... but it simply couldn't compete with the influx of keeping an entire town hostage, leeching off their hate. Malcom felt it manifesting as a supreme hunger, and his desire for the suffering of those before him warred against his desire to stop growing the absence of excess mana flowing through his core.
'Stop! You're hurting yourself by killing them all!' - 'But Amanda... they took her from me! They're hiding her.' - 'So find a way to get her back. Make them find her. Use them.' - 'That's it. I can use them. I can make them find her...' Malcom's fractured thoughts seemed as if he was playing both sides of a conversation in his head, one of which was his overwhelming, maddening hatred for all of those filth. The other being his intense desire, no, his need for Amanda in his life, to find her, to have her with him again. 'Stop.'
With a single word, the Picantch all halted their actions, be it pecking at barricades on windows, feasting upon the bodies strewn everywhere, and even those in flight found the nearest perch. The survivors stared out of cracks in windows at the somewhat diminished flock. They didn't breathe, they didn't shuffle in place, they perched like statues staring into the sky, as if waiting for the words of a God. The survivors all tensed, worried to feel relief. The unnatural state of these monsters didn't seem as if they were going to be leaving, and no one was going to venture out of whatever safe holes they had managed to find. An uneasy stillness of false peace settled across the town, silence reigning.
While those still breathing in the town held their vigil and tried to plan how to survive the situation, Malcom was busy shoving aside message after message, eventually managing to have a mostly clean view of his inner sanctum. Only a few messages refused to vanish until he had addressed them, all being notifications of his advancement in level.
Level 2 Achieved
Dungeon grade raised to Silver-tier.
Mana capacity raised to 1,000.
Summon adaptation is available.
Perk available.
Progress to level: 100/100
Level 3 Achieved
Dungeon grade raised to Gold-tier.
Mana capacity raised to 10,000.
New Summoning selection available.
Perk available. Please select previous perk to see new unlocks.
Progress to level: 1,000/1,000
Level 4 Achieved
Dungeon grade raised to Diamond-tier.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Mana capacity raised to 100,000.
Summoning adaptation is available. Please select new summon first to see adaptations.
Perk available. Please select previous perk to see new unlocks.
Progress to level: 5,689/10,000
As Malcom viewed the three notifications, he felt that began to explain the sense of emptiness and desperate, gnawing hunger coursing through his core. His mana capacity had increased to an exaggerated degree, multiple orders of magnitude... but he hadn't sensed any change in the generation of his mana capacity. It was like he was trying to fill a swimming pool by pumping water in through a straw. He felt empty and it wasn't pleasant. It buzzed the back of his mind as he tried to think about the information revealed to him through his level-up notifications. Everything seemed to be increasing by a factor of 10 for each level, from his mana capacity to how much experience was required to hit the next level. If he hadn't massacred so many people in an abnormal fashion, how long would it take for your average dungeon to have over five-thousand people wander into it and die? He must have skyrocketed ahead in stages.
Add in that there seemed to be material designations for each level, he assumed that the notifications he had seen about killing level 2 opponents meant they could be graded similarly. The Picantch could swarm opponents a higher grade than them, which he presumed to be bronze, but he hadn't seen a single notification of a level 3 dying. That could mean that they weren't able to bring down any level 3, or there simply hadn't been any present. Still, he needed to know exactly what happened. All Malcom was really aware of was that one of his summons had been killed again, and when he demanded the birds retaliate, there had been some kind of mass slaughter. He recalled one of the birds from the exterior flock, intending to try and interrogate it. Perhaps one of his level-up perks or an adaptation could help him bridge the gap in communications.
Selecting the first level-up message, the Picantch popped up into a new message, with three options for adaptation. Advancement, mutation, or hybridization. Advancement was listed as being an all-around improvement to the creature's grade, raising the summons to a higher tier of their current state. Mutation was listed as being able to select an abnormal change to the creature, such as implanting a new ability. Hybridization was the option to combine the creature with another creature to provide an alternate variant to summon. All of which indicated that he would retain access to his standard Picantch, which was something he appreciated. He wanted eyes in the sky, and he had a feeling that any of his choices would grow more mana-intensive to produce. Was there anything that he wished his birds could do at this moment? While being capable of talking to him would be nice, it felt like a waste to use the mutation option to allow them to speak. It was possible that advancing them could also result in what he wanted, as smarter, stronger, and faster birds might develop the ability to speak to him as well. Still, the strongest choice in his eyes was hybridization.
The selection prompted him to provide a species to hybridize with the Picantch. Malcom initially tried human, as that seemed to be the one with the most potential usefulness, but the screen merely displayed 'Error - Prohibited dungeon species.' and sent him back to the selection screen. The other fantasy races that came to mind were also similarly prohibited, as he tried elves, dwarves, and orcs. 'Really? Not even orcs? Aren't they supposed to be one of those tribal, hostile, monstrous races?' He hadn't even really wanted orcs, considering they had the stereotype of being dumb brutes, but he wanted the birds crossed with something at least humanoid that might be capable of speech. Goblins would have been another race known for being tribal and savage that might be acceptable by the judgement standards of the dungeon's systems, but he didn't like the idea of the titchy gremlins.
While pondering, he was struck with a thought that he felt like kicking himself for not considering before: why wasn't he trying anything outside of the normal fantasy tropes? Just how much could his otherworldly nature influence this system? It was accepting inputs from him, so if he had knowledge of it, was it an acceptable choice? Malcom tried to put in something wildly different, seeing if it would accept 'Fighter Jet' as an input. 'Error - Selection is not a species. Please select a species.' Alright, so that was a bust. No rocket-powered, gun-toting super-birds that easily. 'Think, Malcom, think. Species. We can make the machines work, think about a mechanical species.' He briefly cursed that he hadn't ever had much interest in science fiction, or else he would probably be able to pick out some mechanical species a lot easier. 'That's it! Why am I struggling so hard to create a new species? Just input what I want!' With newfound confidence, he turned back to the input. 'Mechanical'. He simply wanted a race of artificial, living constructs, and the system should interpret it as so. That has to work, right?
The notification didn't vanish, but it also didn't send him an error message for his selection this time. Instead, it showed him an image of the proposed result, slowly spinning to display itself as a three-dimensional image. The mechanical life retained the black coloring of the Picantch, seemingly sized at about human standards, if a bit on the short side. It was displayed as five-feet tall, its face a humanoid visage with a pronounced, downward-curving beak. It almost resembled a plague doctor's mask, made from gleaming black-hued metal. The eyes were silvered rings of lenses, looking as if they could spin and intertwine or slide aside as needed to adjust the zoom of the vision. Slim bodied, with standard arms and legs that ended in talon-bearing grasping appendages of four talons each. On the feet, they were three forward facing, and one rear facing. On the hands, they bore a configuration of three clawed primary digits and a thumb. The entire figure was clad in- or perhaps simply made of, actually- overlapping plates that were shaped like feathers. They were offset and overlain in a similar fashion as scaled armor might be. Not only did it suit his requirements for a more humanoid option, it also looked... rather exceptionally intimidating. He rather liked it.
Selection confirmed: secondary species set as Mechanical.
New summon established. Please select hybridization name.
Oh, he got to name this one? That's a pleasant change of pace. He was creating an all-new species, after all. Still, Picantch was a mouthful that he wasn't really wanting to add to his new creation, and he felt a need to contribute something related to the 'artificial creation' part of the species to reference the mechanical nature of his creation. Eventually, he settled on 'Crowforged', as the Picantch had always made him think of giant, aggressively-carnivorous crows. His new creation, the Crowforged, came in at a whopping 50 mana each, but that might just be the cost of creating something bigger. Or maybe it was the technology at play? Regardless, 50 mana a piece was a pittance if he could start finding ways to have an influx of mana that would make a dent in his available mana storage.
One thing that really caught his eye though, was that it was another factor of ten for this creature level-up as well. Did everything in this damned system run on factors of ten? It was going to get frustrating very, very quickly if that was the case. This system didn't seem to encourage high levels, or at least them being commonplace. It also meant that he felt he needed to be very deliberate with his choices of things like perks or any other rewards going forward. While he had received a significant windfall, it was likely that further changes were going to be growing increasingly less frequent to a dramatic degree.