Well, that was nice I think just maybe I can get used to this new life if it keeps going like this. I got a new fairy friend in Umbra and now I can start building my dungeon. Nothing can fuck up my mood right now.

The dungeon known as Alaric has selected The Horde and the Savage path to start with. Pulling information on starting monsters, animals, plants, and fungi.

Starting Monster: Savage Goblin- a basic monster known for group tactics and guerrilla fighting. The Savage Goblin is an all-male species and are commonly hunted down due to their habit of abducting the females of other races to use as breeding stock. Despite only reaching the waist of the average human they have a vicious streak and will attempt to kill or subjugate anything weaker than them, however if an opponent is stronger, they will run away and leave their allies to die. Because of this Savage Goblins are not taken seriously which has led to the deaths of many adventures.

{Synergy Detected} Even though you have not accepted it you hold the blessing of Psychosis of The Shattered Mind as such you receive an upgrade to your starting monster.

Starting Monster: High Goblin- a variant of the Savage Goblin, the High Goblin is more intelligent and stronger than their savage cousins. They also naturally have females, who absolutely despise Savage Goblins and have been known to hunt them down and kill them for fun.

However Due to your decision of picking Havoc Matron of Devastation as the first Nether God, one High Gobin will spawn for every four Savage Goblins.

Animals: Dire Wolves, Wild Hogs, Giant Spiders, Squirrels, Rabbits, Hawks, Crows, Vultures, and Assorted Insects (may be mutated later)

Fungi: Assortment of mushrooms both poisonous and mundane.

Plants: Various trees and berry bushes.

Light Sources: Shine stone.

“Is this some kind of cruel sick joke that I’m too kind to understand?” I wondered after reading about my starting monsters. I know goblins tend to be starting monsters for dungeons but what they essentially gave me are rape goblins and super goblins that hate them enough to hunt them for fun. What's worse I can only summon the High Goblins by summoning the Savage Goblins, how the fuck does that make any meaningful sense in this situation? Maybe Umbra has some good advice on how best to use them.

“Hey Umbra, any ideas, cause I’m drawing a blank here? The High Goblins would be of more use, but I only get one for every four Savage Goblins that I summon. Which is kind of suspicious if you ask me.”

Umbra frowned then spoke up, “that's because it is a joke. The starting monsters are always weak. But by giving you High Goblins which are so much better in every possible way to their lesser savage cousins, it's a giant middle finger telling you there are some better monsters but the only way to use them is to make you use the shitty ones first. In all likelihood you will get the ability to summon High Goblins by themselves on lower floors, but they want you to learn how to use the others effectively first or maybe they just felt like watching you struggle. It’s hard to tell if The Nether Gods are trying to teach a lesson or just fucking with people at times, so just roll with it until you get better options.”

That is so fucking petty if you ask me! It's like they want to see me suffer or something. Then again what do I actually know about The Nether Gods, nothing except for what little information was given to me about Havoc, and that's that she loves war and fighting above everything else.

“Okay then aside from what I can't control and with the resources I have how do I start Umbra?”

“First you need to expand your domain, you already started by creating your dungeon. Now

I want you to feel out your area of control, you know just try and push out with your will until you can't anymore, that way we know where we can expand. Once you do that I will continue.”

Alright so I did just what Umbra told me and tried pushing out. Slowly I could begin to feel my area, my domain moved out from me. It felt weirder than I thought, kind of like sticking your hand in jello and trying to grab a handful of it. The more I grabbed the more slipped through. It took way too long to get a proper feel for this, but I came to grips with it and slowly brought more of this cave under my control. When I finished, I had claimed an area of about 5 kilometers around my core and uncovered a large flat stone circle with two huge arches. I asked Umbra about it, and she said it looked like the remains of a dimensional gate. I wondered if it was dangerous, but she said it looked like it took some damage from rocks falling on it so no chance of it opening up again.

That wasn't the only weird thing I discovered when claiming more territory. There were a lot of skeletons, about 20 meters away from the gate, and they were tied up in hooked chains. This looked like some creepy torture shit the way some of them were hanging and others were literally pulled into the walls and floor by the chains. I don’t know what happened here and I don’t think I want to know. Umbra agreed and recommended that I destroy the bodies but keep the weapons even if they are rusty, not having to summon gear for my more humanoid monsters is a plus. Bonus if my goblins can’t use the weapons, I can absorb them for the metal.

So, after who knows how long claiming and excavating now, I can decide what happens here. I had a plan in mind for my dungeons layout. With this huge field I would split it into two distinct zones around my core and spread the animals throughout with certain areas dominated by certain predatory species. I set hundreds of the little shine stones in the ceiling above the north section which simulated a nice sunny afternoon. For the south I used less to give it that creepy dusk atmosphere.

“Good job Alaric, we have plenty of space to build and place those damn goblins. Plus, the visual from the stones is a nice added touch. It should turn out okay, I think. Oh, before you start, I need to tell you about the floor limits for monsters.”

“Really I get stuck with goblins and now there's a limit to how many I can have. THIS SUCKS!”

Understandably I was pissed that there were even more things to slow me down, but I calmed down after Umbra smacked me and started explaining.

“Relax, ya big drama queen. It’s not as bad as it seems. The limit is there to ensure you have the space to fit them. Do you really think you could fit thousands of goblins on a floor this size?

I huffed but had to admit Umbra had a point, it didn't mean I had to like it though.

“So then let's continue.” She flew out onto the floor and looked around at the area we had to work with. She breathed and finally said, “The limit for monsters on the first floor is 100 that's not counting any mini bosses and actual boss monsters that you have. So, it can be a lot more, luckily for us we have another way to get around this hard rule and that's special summons which your High Goblins count as. Since you can have 100 Savage Goblins you get 25 High goblins from the summon effect.”

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“Thanks for the heads up! It’s not as many as I would like but it's a start at least”

“Good”, Umbra said, wringing her hands together like a supervillain. “Now let's decorate this place and start summoning monsters to inhabit it then you can make a path to the surface.”

“Yes ma’am.” Now I can get behind this. With a force of will I turned the southern point of this floor into a murky quagmire, with a few strips of dry land curving through it and grew dozens of different varieties of mushrooms half of which had an incredibly potent poison, and Weeping Willows, then I added the giant spiders which proceeded to take over the part of the quagmire that sprung up around a massive Weeping Willow. It didn’t take long for them to turn that whole section white with webs. I feel sorry for anyone who runs into those spiders. Plus, with the low lighting in this area it would challenge anyone who wandered into it. A beautiful swamp of perpetual dusk.

The next section, the northern part, turned into a vast forest with towering trees and leaves littering the floor, loads of light filtered down touching the bases of the trees and leaves. It looked soothing. Like one of those greeting cards back on Earth that they sold in National Parks. I primarily put the Dire Wolves here. Still can’t believe that even with all the light up in the northern part of my dungeon those wolves were able to disappear into the forest like they did, it's not even that densely packed with trees. Oh well I’m sure anyone going through there will learn or my wolves will be eating well. With them situated I started filling in the rest of the animals that I had and made sure to put space between those hogs, even then they still somehow managed to congregate together down in the quagmire. The ones that didn’t, competed with the wolves for space in the forest. All in all, the floor looked amazing: a swamp to the south of my core and a forest to the north. I used some rocks and boulders from the fallen gate’s remains as material to make a small fort around my core, when I got a boss, this would be their home.

Now the moment of truth, time to make some goblins. I focused on a patch of grass at the edge of the forest and was immediately horrified by what came out of this summon. It was 91.44 cm (about the length of a baseball bat) tall, “Wait the entry said it came up to a man's waist. This is too short to reach.” Now I’m really getting pissed that the description lied again. “Look at it again boss.” Umbra replied after my outburst, so I did. Oh, it's hunched over I guess that makes sense. So, besides the slight deceptive nature of their height the Savage Goblin I summoned hard greasy green skin the color of rotten cabbage, a bulbous hooked nose, bald head, really pointy ears, a mouth that would put a meth addict to shame, a pot belly, skinny stick like arms and legs that had four toes and fingers each and was dressed in only a ratty brown loincloth.

“How the fucking hell is that thing supposed to provide me any type of protection! I mean the dumb fucker is trying to eat a rock! Please let the High Goblins be better than this disappointment before me.” I quickly summoned three more of those sad little fuckers by the first then summoned the High Goblin closer to me. I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. Standing at around 137.16 cm the High Goblin was a huge improvement this one had short grey hair, skin the color of lush grass, flat stomach, piercing red eyes that shone with intelligence, where the Savage Goblins had stick arms and legs his were lightly toned with muscle, his nose was hooked but not to the extent that the Savage Goblins were, and he had a mouth full of pointy yellow-white teeth.

He examined his surroundings before he cast his gaze on me and knelt on the ground, he spoke with a smooth bass voice and said “My Lord Core please, point me towards your enemies and I will personally ensure they won’t live to regret the decisions that brought them here.” Now this is what I’m talking about. I was already happy that he wasn’t trying to eat a rock but hearing him talk and express his desire to serve and kill for me, well the eagerness with which he spoke of killing is a bit unnerving but hey I’m a dungeon now. If the other High Goblins are like this, I know I won’t have any problems. Let's get 'em out here, I quickly summoned out all the remaining Savage Goblins, taking time to make sure they were nowhere near my core, and gently placing all the High Goblins around my makeshift fort.

Finally assembled before me the true defender of my dungeon, the High Goblins. 25 in all, of them only 3 females and if I’m being honest, they scared me more than the males. The female goblins were pretty much the same as their male counterparts you know except for the breast and longer hair, and more feminine faces. Oh, and one of them was shorter than the others, like she was as tall as one of the Savages. As the first of their kind did, they knelt before my core and proclaimed their loyalty and wish to gut my enemies.

“Amazing, I'm pleased to have all of you! As you know this is a dungeon and as its inhabitants your job is to kill invaders. I have an assortment of weapons for you all to choose from to begin. I apologize, but I don't currently possess any better clothing so you will have to make do with the loincloths and rag gowns for the time being.” They looked up at me with reverence and the first one of them I summoned approached and said “My Lord Core, we are unworthy of these gifts, you need not worry yourself about our clothing, it won’t take us long to harvest and create new ones from the swamp and forest! We will not fail you and will gladly take up the arms you have provided.” All the others nodded their heads at what he said. I wish I could name them, but I don’t think I can.

After thinking that. My vision clouded over which was weird and an intense cold came over me. That's when I heard her.

“Names should only be given to those you trust without a shadow of a doubt. They are powerful and can bring great happiness or extreme misery to all around them. Do you truly wish to name these creatures and accept the burdens that come with it?

That's a voice that would haunt my nightmares if I could sleep. It was cold, detached, and emotionless. It was as if she had never known warmth or love in her life, and it terrified me.

“Umbra, did you just hear that? Who the fu…?” *Whack* Umbra hit me before I could finish my sentence. When I looked over at her, she was shivering and had broken out in a cold sweat. Now I’m starting to get mad again. Who do they think they are scaring my Umbra like that? I was about to speak when Umbra whispered to me.

“P..Ple..ase don’t say any...thing other than yes and th..th..thank her for gr..gr..gr..granting you this time.”

I didn’t want to even acknowledge this voice but if saying yes would help Umbra calm down it was worth it. “Yes, I wish to name them, and I will accept the burden, and thank you for this time.”

“Very. Well.”

Congratulations young dungeon through sheer luck and probably a lot of pity you have been awarded the Skill (Named Rebirth) by Nether Goddess Ruin First of The Damned. I wonder if you somehow fuck this up. Due to Skill (Named Rebirth) additional Skill (By My Hand I Name Thee) added.

“I’m starting to see what Anarchy saw in you. Goodbye young core, we will speak again after you have dedicated a layer to me. Do not make me regret the gift I have given you.”

With that everything went back to normal, and my vision of my dungeon returned. I think my eyes would bulge out of my head if I had one. When I looked at Umbra she was breathing normally again and seemed so much better. I broke the tension first.

“So that was Ruin, she seems nice.” I tried to joke.

“Alaric please don’t joke about this if she wanted us dead, we would be. She is not known for her love of the living.”

“Why is she the Nether God of Death or something?”

“Yes”

I swallowed hard which should be impossible now. The Nether God of Death spoke to me and I almost cursed her out. I need to reevaluate my position in this world if they can just talk to me out of nowhere.

“So, let's get off this subject of why she cared and see what it was she gave me huh?”

“Please”

Alaric

Sex: N/A- Masculine

Race: Nether blessed Dungeon

Name of Power: Alaric all-powerful ruler

Abilities: Dungeon Creation, Fairy Soul Link, Nether blessed, Dungeon Control

This dungeon has been granted a name of power by another, as such they reap the rewards.

Name of Power: Alaric grants complete control over the land in which they rule and strengthens all who fight in their name, ensures commanders rise to serve.

Fairy Soul Link: a fairy has willingly bound their soul to yours as such as long as you live they cannot die and should their body perish a new one will be created at your location.

Dungeon Creation: allows the creation and expansion of a dungeon.

Dungeon Control: allows the user to control all functions of a dungeon including loot distribution and monster activity.

Nether Blessed: Blessed by all 7 Nether Gods.

By My Hand I Name Thee: Grants the dungeon the ability to name monsters and beasts. Limited to 7 per floor.

Named Rebirth: Those who are named by the dungeon may be brought back with their memories and skills intact. This skill will resurrect the named monster or beast after 12 hours have passed. Time is cut in half if their body is used to fuel the resurrection.

She gave me exactly the type of skill that I wanted the most. More than anything I wanted to be able to keep my stronger monsters. But only being able to name 7 means I have to choose who I can save forever and who I let die. I take it back Ruin is an asshole.

“Alright Umbra looks like I can name 7 more of my monsters. Who do you think deserves one?”

“Well for now you should wait. While you haven’t been paying attention to the timer for Rage Fueled Supremacy, I have, and it triggers in two hours. We should let it run its course for this month then name the victors.”

I can’t believe I forgot about that ability. Well, nothing to do but sit back and watch the carnage. I dismissed the High Goblins from around my core and waited for it to begin.