Dungeon opening will be created in: T-32h 47m

For the last few hours, Crucible the dungeon core had been working on something very important.

‘Fly my pretties, fly!’

…For a given definition of important anyway.

‘Now dive, dive, dive!’ Crucible ordered in jubilation as she commanded a platoon of her loyal fire mountain beetle minions. The insects began to drop downwards as they slowed the buzzing of their wings. Yet the small line of fire red beetles stayed in formation.

‘Go up!’ she instructed, watching half-mesmerised by her little minion’s flight, as the beats of their tiny wings picked up again and they began to climb.

For the last few hours Crucible had been practicing commanding her little buggy battle squad, watching them climb walls and ceilings as well as fly on her orders.

Observing how her minions responded to her commands had been very educational for Crucible. The fact that she loved watching her little bugs flying about and generally being awesome was just a coincidence.

‘Now do three loops!’ Crucible ordered.

Well originally it had just been a coincidence, but after only a few minutes she’d become rather adept at commanding her minions. After that, Crucible just kept practicing because she found it fun, even though her improvements were now very marginal.

As her bugs were half way through their third loop, Crucible found her thoughts straying slightly. Now that her mind wasn’t so occupied with a thought of ‘Yay! Super cool bug minions!’ she found herself recalling how she got them in the first place.

‘The system said something about my little buggy getting, evolved. I didn’t really focus on it then, but… how did it happen?’ Luckily for Crucible the system chose this moment to chime in.

Evolution: A sudden transformation undergone by the ‘non-civilised’ races, it occurs due to a combination of stress caused by external influences and high mana density. The external influences help determine what transformation the creature will undergo, while the mana is used to fuel said transformation.

As a dungeon core you can infuse mana into creatures under your command. If they are under significant stress due to outside sources this will trigger an evolution. If a creature you control evolves, you gain the ability to summon more minions of the newly evolved creature’s type using [manifest monster].

‘Hmm… so can I do that again? Is it even possible to make my bugs more beautifully awesome-cool?’ The dungeon pondered this very important question as she commanded her little bugs to land in front of her core.

‘I mean, it’s not like any of my little guys are under stress… right?’ Before Crucible could consider taking that train of thought any further, the system intruded once again.

While not under stress in the traditional way, non-monsters under the command of a dungeon feel a sort of… instinctual needing, that can be tapped to trigger an evolution with enough mana. Please note however, that using that need to trigger an evolution turns the creature into a monster species.

‘So… I can make them evolve even more? Like, right now?’ Crucible called up her status menu and eyed her mana count.

‘Should I do it? 197 out of 500 mana… Yeah I’ll be fine!’ Crucible’s excitement and naivety quickly brushed aside any reservations she might have had.

‘Ok my little minion I hope you’re hungry, cause I got a whole lot of mana for you to eat!’ Crucible used a highly complex selection process to determine which bug to evolve (read: She picked the reddest) and began feeding it mana.

A soft flow surrounded the beetle as energy flowed into its form. The insect shuddered as it began to expand, its body growing larger and larger until it was more than three times the size of the dungeon core.

After a few tense seconds, Crucible felt that the bug couldn’t receive any more mana. Having finished her task Crucible viewed her handiwork, as information from the system began pouring in.

Fire mountain beetle has evolved into Giant fire mountain beetle.

Creature identified: Giant fire mountain beetle

Classification: monster insect

This much larger variant of its non-monster relative stands only slightly shorter than the height of the average dwarf. They are found in high mana density areas, often surrounded by many of its smaller kin. Legends say that the appearance of these creatures is a sure sign that a nearby volcano is close to eruption.

You can now create: Giant fire mountain beetle.

‘Still just as beautiful, now even more awesome!’ Crucible’s thoughts glowed warmly as she looked at her minion that was now much larger than her core.

‘I shall name thee, Mr Buggy!’ Crucible proclaimed with all the seriousness that her childish mental voice could muster.

Error: Dungeon core does not have the [Bestow name] ability. A name may still be given but it will not turn the receiver into a [Unique monster]. Are you sure you wish to continue?

‘Yes.’

This Giant fire mountain beetle is now named Mr Buggy!

‘Now, how much mana did it take to make Mr Buggy?…’

Mana: 97/500

‘100 Mana! Wow, evolution’s expensive.’ Crucible took a quick look at her [Manifest monster] ability.

‘Ok, so creating another Giant fire mountain beetle costs 50 mana, that’s… half the mana it took to evolve one! Note to self: evolution is REALLY expensive.’ Crucible dismissed her [Manifest monster] ability, whilst more big bugs would be fun she was still short on mana, so was wary of making too many.

‘Besides, I can always make more later.’ Her thoughts practically oozed excitement. ‘Now, let me think of all the fun I can have with you Mr Buggy’.

Mr Buggy stood dutifully by and awaited the almost certainly very important orders it was going to receive from its mistress soon.

Dungeon opening will be created in: T-16h 53m

‘Faster! Faster!’ Crucible yelled as she flew through the air, her core griped firmly by the six legs of Mr Buggy.

At first she had treated Mr Buggy as if he was just another beetle minion, albeit a much larger one. She’s had him fly around, stand on the ceiling, she’d even had fun trying to see how many of the smaller beetles she could have clinging to Mr Buggy at the same time whilst he flew (Current record: 17 beetles).

Eventually however, Crucible began to wonder what it felt like to fly. Then she began to question if she would ever gain the ability to fly.

The end result of this was Crucible deciding that, since she lacked the ability to fly, Mr Buggy would simply have to carry her.

Since she was still inside the dungeon she could see and feel anywhere that was covered in her influence like normal. But the part of flying that she found fun was feeling the rush of air against her core, as well as the sudden changes in altitude that always brought Crucible a little burst of excitement when they happened.

Crucible gave a quiet thanks to the fact that Mr Buggy had kept his [Heat resistance] ability when he evolved. If he’d died she wouldn’t have been able to spend these last few hours flying around having such a good time!

‘Now left!’ She commanded and Mr Buggy obeyed. A quick turn stopped the two of them from crashing into a wall as Mr Buggy veered off.

‘Hmm we could use more space… Ah! Idea! Mr Buggy, put me down in the middle of the room again.’ With a gentleness that seemed unnatural for such a large beetle Mr Buggy flew down and placed his Mistress back in the middle of the room.

‘Now let’s see, make a new room or enlarge the current one?’ Crucible mentally debated this for a few moments before eventually settling on an answer. ‘New room it is!’

Crucible’s [Dungeon influence] had expanded more than enough for her to carve out another room with [Modify terrain]. Activating the ability she began to weave her mana against the stone wall, ordering it to recede from her domain.

After a few minutes she had finished creating the entrance way into the new room and had managed to carve out about half of it, before her work was abruptly halted by a-

*SCREECH!*

A large eight legged thing dropped out of the ceiling she’d just been excavating. It chittered in an irritated manner before turning its multiple eyes on her core.

‘What is that!?’ Crucible cried out, as her panic was cut short by the sound of a message from the system.

Creature identified: large burrowing spider

Classification: monster insect

This large dark green arachnid burrows itself into the earth and waits for its prey to move close, before launching an ambush. When nesting instead of hunting, these monsters tend to dig deeper so they are not disturbed.

WARNING: This creature has not been under your [Dungeon influence] long enough to give into your will. It will try to eat you, for you are delicious and taste like strawberries… Also due to the fact that monsters like this one are attracted to large quantities of mana, which you contain.

‘What do I do? What do I do!?” Crucible’s mental flailing seemed to even affect her bug army, as they all began to chitter agitatedly whilst the spider moved out of the under construction room and into the core room.

‘Wait a minute… I have an army! But how could they hurt such a big monster?’ Before Crucible could give into despair, she remembered the ticket to her salvation.

‘Mr Buggy, protect me!’ With the command given, Mr Buggy leapt at the intruder brandishing his pincers menacingly.

Surprised by the attack, the spider franticly jumped to the side. It managed to dodge the brunt of Mr Buggy’s charge but the glancing blow still sent the spider reeling from the impact.

For a moment the spider looked like it was about to fall over, but it barely managed to keep its balance long enough to put all of it legs back down.

Mr Buggy charged again but the spider was ready this time, with a single bound it leapt over the beetle and landed perfectly behind it. The spider turned quickly and bared it fangs before making another jump, this time however the spiders target was its opponent’s unprotected back.

‘Mr Buggy, behind you!’ Crucible’s warning came just in time, Mr Buggy spun around and angled his pincers upwards at the intruder. The spider couldn’t change its trajectory in the air, so it simply flailed helplessly before its body impacted Mr Buggy’s pincers with a sickening squelch.

Its body impaled and stuck on its enemy, the spider could do nothing as its life blood flowed from the wound like a disgusting river. Soon the spider’s struggle began to grow weaker and weaker, until its legs stopped moving and its body went still.

‘That… was scary.’ If Crucible could breathe she would have let out a sigh of relief. Instead she simply ordered Mr Buggy to remove the corpse from his pincers. He complied with absolute obedience.

When the corpse was removed however, it began to emit a strange light. After a few moments the body started to flake and dissolve into nothingness.

You can now create: Large burrowing spider.

‘I won’t be doing that anytime soon.’ Crucible dismissed the message with a simple thought. That spider had come way to close to eating her for Crucible to feel comfortable having another around. Instead she looked over at Mr Buggy, who’s pincers were still covered in spider blood.

‘Thanks for saving me Mr Buggy, you were awesome.’ Mr Buggy chirped happily at his mistresses’ congratulations, he even did a little dance which caused Crucible to laugh at how ridiculous it looked.

With the danger passed and her minion making a fool out of himself, Crucible got back to carving out the rest of her new dungeon room. There was still a lot of digging to do and she didn’t want to leave the job half-finished.

A few hours later.

Dungeon opening will be created in: T-08h 02m

Crucible let herself relax as she watched her new minions crawl around her dungeon.

Yup, she’d found more creatures to serve her goal to be the best Crucible ever.

Creature identified: Schevsufler worm

Classification: non-monster worm

This small worm is named after an old dwarven word meaning ‘stone-life’. These creatures spend most of their life in a state of magical hibernation where their bodies turn into stone. They can only be awakened by an intense amount of fire based mana, which they absorb until there’s none left and proceed to hibernate again.

Apparently these worm-things had been attracted to her dungeon by her magma. Because of this they had stayed in her [Dungeon influence] long enough to fall under her command.

Since then she had ordered them to surface and watched the worms wriggle about in the dirt. She’d found it kinda fun to watch, until she thought of something that absolutely horrified her.

Her new minions couldn’t fly.

Immediately upon realising this, she resolved that her new servants would not be kept ground bound. They would learn the joys of flight just as she had!

Thus she had commanded some of her beetle’s to pick her new worm minions up and fly them around.

It, was, awesome.

Or at least she thought it was, the worms couldn’t exactly voice their disagreements if they had any.

Dungeon opening will be created in: T-08h 00m

The message that popped up automatically every hour once again announced its presence. Crucible dismissed the message as her thoughts began to wander.

She began to wonder if she was ready for the outside world. She didn’t really know anything about it yet and was hoping that both her ‘not-self’ feelings and the system would tell her more about this ‘Dungeon opening’ once the countdown had finished.

Still she quashed her doubts with ruthless optimism. Her mana regeneration had increased to 10 points per hour now, so she was regaining her power faster than she ever had before. That combined with her awesome minions made her confident that nothing out there could hurt her.

‘Besides,’ she thought happily, ‘it’s not like anything out there could be scarier than that big spider thing.’

A few hours later, just outside the dungeon

Miller Brooke had been having a terrible week.

Miller was a human, an adventurer specifically, who had once worked for the local guild in the forest-town of Ulifer, where he’d been born and raised.

Ulifer had been a joint settlement founded by both elves and humans about a hundred years ago. That was long before his time though, he’d grown up in moderate comfort, with dreams of wining fame and fortune as an adventurer planted in his head by his parents.

As soon as he’d been old enough he’d enlisted in combat training. After a few years the local guild leader had recognised his talents and had him inducted into the guild as a seed class adventurer. The rank at the very bottom of the adventuring totem pole.

With blood, sweat and tears he’d worked his way up until he’d managed to reach the next rank, a sapling class adventurer. Better, but still nowhere near what he’d dreamed of.

It was that train of thought which eventually got Miller thrown out of the guild. It had started when he’d watched a group of branch class adventurers, the rank just above him, mosey into town with their packs laden with loot.

He just couldn’t help himself, he grabbed some of their gold coins whilst their backs were turned, just enough to afford that new steel sword he’d been wanting to get.

But he didn’t stop.

Eventually the guild caught on to the thefts and confronted him, rather than be arrested, he’d made a break for it. So now he was on the road with nothing but the adventuring gear on his back and weary thoughts in his head.

‘Now I just need to find a big fat pile of gold in the middle of nowhere, so I can get enough cash to set up shop in a new town.’ Miller grumbled to himself as he scaled over the blackened earth. ‘But what’s the chances of that happening?

A rumbling sound interrupted his melancholy. He stopped and watched in surprise, as the dark and tainted stone of the mountain parted unnaturally and seemed to form into an opening about the size of a cottage doorway.

‘Huh, this could be my lucky day.’ Miller grinned as he moved to examine the opening.

‘If this is what I think it is, I might just be saved.’

At the exact same time…

‘What, is, that?’ Crucible asked the system, as the strange bipedal thing entered the doorway that had just been opened to the outside world.

That is an adventurer. A human to be specific.

‘Is it… here to eat me?’ The only experience Crucible had with threats so far was the spider that had tried to eat her. She really hoped this one wasn’t, that human thing was more than twice as tall as Mr Buggy!

Negative, adventurers do not eat mana like monsters do. However, they do tend to raid dungeons for a multitude of reasons, this one for example is almost certainly here to steal your core.

‘To steal… me?’

Most likely.

‘Then how do I stop him!?”

Dungeons tend to build traps and summon monsters to defend themselves.

Hearing this, Crucible attempted to invoke [Manifest monster].

Error: Dungeon core cannot activate abilities on a floor that is under assault by invaders.

‘Nononononono!’ Crucible silently screamed as her abilities failed her.

‘There’s no way my bugs can take that thing, it’d crush them to death! The only one who could even possibly hurt him is Mr Buggy, but there’s only one of him…’ As Crucible struggled to come up with a plan, she was hit by a sudden bout of clarity.

She had an idea.

‘Mr Buggy!’ She commanded urgently ‘Get on the roof!’

Mr Buggy complied.

Back with Miller Brooke

It was exactly what he thought it was.

‘Maybe the gods are finally smiling on me, why else would a new-born dungeon spawn, right in front of me?’ Miller grinned as he hefted his steel sword and entered the opening.

As an adventurer he’d learned a lot about dungeons during his training, he’d even visited a few, though he rarely went past their first floors. One of the things he'd learned about them was that they were filled with both loot and monsters, to tempt people like him into losing their lives within their halls.

Normally he wouldn’t even think of raiding a dungeon by himself, he wasn’t suicidal. But this dungeon had only just spawned, right in front of his eyes!

Research by adventurers and scholars over the years had proved that dungeons grew much stronger and gained both more monsters and loot as they aged. So a new-born dungeon would have no treasure and few monsters.

It was this fact that had Miller so excited to dive into the dungeon. Whilst he was almost positive there would be no gold to find, if he managed to get past all the monsters he could swipe the very heart of the dungeon itself.

However, he knew what he was doing was risky. Even if his plan succeeded, he would have to find someone to sell it to. Whilst there were a lot of people out there willing to pay very large amounts for such mysterious yet powerful gems, it was very much a black market.

Stealing a dungeon core was a capital offence, as doing so always destroyed the dungeon, so no one would be able to explore it in the future, something that most kingdoms saw as wasting a potential valuable resource.

‘Still I need that money now.’ Miller thought to himself as he entered the first room. ‘Beat dungeon first, worry about death by execution or by angry adventurers later.’

What struck him as strange as soon as he entered was that he couldn’t see any monsters. There were a few bugs in the room, some red beetles and grey worm-things he’d never seen before, but they certainly weren’t monsters.

‘So, the room must be full of traps then?’ He scanned the walls, floor and ceiling diligently, but he couldn’t see any outcroppings or grooves in the earth that would betray the presence of hidden pitfalls or spikes.

It was then that Miller’s search was stopped abruptly, when he looked through the opening into the next room and spotted the very heart of the dungeon itself, sitting right in the middle of the second room with nary a single defence to shield itself.

‘It’s… right there?’ Miller felt a dangerous mix of apprehension and greed as he eyed the bright red gem that was his goal. ‘Even new-born dungeons should have three or four rooms between the entrance and the core.’

Staying vigilant for any tricks or deceptions, Miller slowly walked towards the core room. As he did so he felt both the air around him and the floor bellow him begin to grow much warmer, dangerously warm even.

‘Well at least I know that it won’t kill me.’ Adventurers had long ago figured out that dungeons had certain things they couldn’t do. The restriction that Miller was currently thankful for was the one that stopped the dungeon’s air temperature from reaching or decreasing to levels that could badly harm the civilised races.

The exception to this was of course traps, like say dropping burning oil from the ceiling would be fine. But dungeon restrictions were strange that way, some scholars even claimed the rules were the work of the gods themselves.

Miller banished those thoughts from his head as he closed in on the gem. The dungeon core was right in front of him, an item that could bring him enough riches to let him live like a king for years if he chose to.

His mind trapped in his own ambition and his senses ensnared by his greed, he reached out to grab the dungeon core.