Congratulations, you have constructed your first minion with your own power. Because you understand the fundamental structure of your minions now your summoning skill has gained a level.

Wooden Puppet:

A puppet made of wood.

This puppet is crude but its movement and strength are well balanced and similar to a common human. They are the ones that most easy look like humans as they are only human sized and possess all the shapes and forms and hands that are easy to hide.

Their more complex hands allow them to hold weapons within and fight more efficiently and make very good workers.

Depending on the skill set each of this kind of puppet obtains, it can evolve differently once it has gathered enough mana.

When first built they require commands to function, but after teaching them or giving them orders they will do that task until destroyed. Puppets carefully taught will eventually develop a skill for the action and will perform the skill automatically when placed in a dungeon with proper tools for it to use.

This is the only kind of common puppet that can learn crafting skills.

As I woke up I saw this prompt telling me about the automatic level up for my summoning skill.

Then I felt a small pang of pain in my head as information about wooden puppets flooded my head. I learned about their capabilities like them having 25 across the stats board except for mental stats that are 0 due to the lack of a soul or simple programmed mind like the guardian.

After getting up, I fixed myself and headed out after recalling the guardian and closing the magic hole.

I soon arrived at the inn the girls were at, and found them eating breakfast.

The men were staring at them and when I walked over and sat with them I could feel the glares of jealousy.

“So, sleep well last night?” I asked looking more toward Charlotte than Misaki.

“It was a new experience for sure, I am a bit sore since I'm not accustomed to such a bed, but I slept through it at least,” Charlotte said.

“Cross-san, did you put a dungeon up last night?” Misaki asked.

“I did, are you curious about it?” I asked, and she nodded.

“See if anything is inside?” she said.

I nodded and was about to pull the book out when a waitress came over. I asked for a basic breakfast and after she left I pulled out the book and saw inside.

“There are quite a number of rats, this place must have a problem with them. Let’s see, a small group of wild cats even made a little nest at one dead end. The herbs and all that don’t seem to be totally eaten… oh I see they continuously produce seeds after reaching adult sized in under three hours so when they are eaten the dungeon automatically replaces them,” I kept saying.

“Any wolves?” Charlotte asked.

“Hmm, there seems to be… common wolves with a gray wolf leader. Seems they were attracted to the dungeon for the mana and food inside. Seems the dungeon isn’t enough for gray wolves or even beyond yet,” I said.

“Can you add a second floor after the first? The deeper a dungeon the more mana it can gather at a faster pace,” Charlotte said.

“No need, we just need to go inside and kill them all and that mana will be used to attract bigger prey,” Misaki said between bites of her eggs.

“That is true, I still doubt the leader wolf will like any common room or corridor as his home,” Charlotte said.

“True, we need to go and gather enough mana to form a low grade exp crystal so I can upgrade a room into a boss room both for when I place a boss for the dungeon and as a trap for others,” I said.

“Let’s eat first,” Misaki said and took another bite.

“You're going to get fat eating so muc... OUCH!” I shouted.

“Blockhead!” Misaki shouted pissed off.

“Ace, that isn’t something you say to a girl,” Charlotte said.

“Geez, it was just a warning from someone that was a NEET on earth and was fat until I went on extreme diet and fitness training,” I said rubbing my bruised knee and calling out a slow heal light spell near my leg to heal it up.

“Hmpf!” Misaki pouted taking an angry bite.

They ate in silence and soon my food arrived. After I ate it, I led the girls to the dungeon.

“So are you entering?” Charlotte asked.

“Not now, I will look around deeper in the forest, closer to the river and put another dungeon down so that I can try my luck in more dangerous areas,” I told her.

“Come on, let’s leave this idiot blockhead,” Misaki said glaring at me as she stepped into the magic hole and vanished.

Charlotte waved and walked in.

I looked at my book and set them as allies so that the traps wouldn’t activate with them around.

The total number of enemies marked on the map when the two girls entered appeared next to the map.

Allies:

2 Humans

Invaders:

3 Gray Wolves = 25 mana

22 Wolves = 15 mana

12 Wild cats 10 mana

3 Wild cat kittens = 1 mana

142 Rats = 5 mana

After a bit of math, I found that all the animals together in mana equalled to 1,238.

It was super far from the 20k I needed to make an exp crystal. Now that I thought about it, didn’t my class have a huge restriction as long as I couldn’t have prey dying in my dungeon. I couldn’t earn exp from simply killing them, but only through the dungeons.

That was quite a large drawback for me, but I could say that this is a good incentive for me to become an adventurer.

I summoned the guardian and pulled out my runic sword.

“Hmm, what runes should I add to it. It’s still rather early so using it as a torch isn’t useful especially in the woods. Let’s see…” I muttered and open my rune index.

All the while, I kept walking while leaving the guardian on guard.

“Damnit, if only I had the compress rune. I bet it would take a huge amount of mana, but then I could compress something like lightning into a physical blade form. Energy compressed will turn to matter and vice versa, but damn it,” I cursed.

Since I could do nothing about it, I took my pen and wrote ‘Lightning Sword Harden’ on the blade. The runes engraved themselves and vanished before appearing on the hilt as they were stored.

I found that adding harden to energy elements like fire and lightning caused the normally loosely flowing energy to properly form the shape written out. Also it helped that the spell was continuous, and the longer it was active the stronger the blade became, because in this case, the spell produced lightning and being hardened into the shape the lightning gathered slowly making the blade stronger.

I activated the spell to have it charge, normally it stopped using mana after 300 mana was sucked up.

A thin bolt of lightning extended and slowly branched out like veins before they got thicker and branched out themselves.

As it hit 300, a glowing white blade the length of a regular sword was in my hand.

“This will have to do for now,” I muttered and look around again.

“How far did we walk into the forest?” I asked.

“About 2.4 kilometers while Master was deciding on your runes, Master,” the guardian answered behind me.

“Tell me, are there any unique herbs or flowers around here?” I asked.

A pulse of green spread through the guardian and hit the ground with a pulse.

A moment later he looked around.

“Within 50 meters, there is not,” he replied.

“Can you feel what kind of wildlife is around here?” I asked.

“Yes Master. Forest rabbits, hares, wolves, and gray wolves are abundant. This servant had picked up traces of small springs with small two legged beings, but the distance keeps this servant from seeing their true form,” he said.

“Then we are getting close the Devian River which means I will probably even attract goblins into my dungeon now. Let’s place a dungeon here,” I said and put my hand on the ground.

The foliage in front of me slowly moved and grew a bit more lush forming almost a tunnel like entrance. This was probably an effect to disguise the magic hole for a dungeon entrance.

Soon the magic hole opened and I looked at the first page and found the dungeon was nearly empty with the girls fighting the last three monsters, the gray wolves.

At that moment, a dot vanished as a wolf died, then another, and then the last. At that moment on the side a notice appeared, it read, ‘Dungeon Clear!’

At once, all the pending deaths were absorbed and the mana was fully calculated.

“Let us return to the first dungeon and pick up the girls for now,” I said.

“This servant has noticed Master’s agility is less than this servant, if Master desires, Master can get on this servant’s back, and this servant can transport Master to Master’s objective,” he said.

I thought for a moment about it and nodded.

He held his left hand out and I used it as a stepping stone and got onto his shoulder.

As I sat down as comfortable as possible, I looked down at him.

“Alright, take me to the first dungeon I laid down in the forest,” I said.

“As you wish Master,” it replied.

When I noticed a glow from the runes on his body I felt a foreboding premonition, and instantly grabbed onto his head on some areas that were open.

He bent forward and instantly accelerated causing the wind to cut past me.

“FUCK! THIS BASTARD IS USING ‘ACCELERATE!’ FUCK WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THIS!” I cursed, but I knew why. It took too much mana to constantly reset runes. In retrospect I really needed to learn armor smithing and engraving so that I could permanently put runes on my armor and use them better.

***

“This was much easier than I expected,” I said.

“Shinigumi-san… how is this easy,” Charlotte said with sweat covering her face.

“What is there to not be easy, after all you reached level 4 and your stats are boosted beyond your level already,” I told her.

“Come on, I have no true fighting experience yet you rush into a pack of rats then wildcats one after another! Think of other’s stamina!” Charlotte complained.

“Get used to it, dungeon diving is five times easier since we don’t have to deal with the traps. Not to mention, who knew that we would be imprinted with the map of the dungeon and where every enemy is when Cross-san isn’t here,” I said showing some awe.

“Dungeons are mysterious, we used to know a lot more before the demon lord appeared and dungeons were more open. All of them were beat by the demon lord and turned. They had his demon seal engraved on them and now attack us constantly. Only one elder dungeon resists in our nation, and only because he sealed himself off from the world,” Charlotte said.

“Really? There is still an untainted dungeon? He must be super powerful now after so long isolated,” I exclaimed, and she nodded.

“Originally, he was in the base of a mountain within the Fang Mountains. His dungeon was at the center within the largest mountain known as the Dragon Fang. But that changed about 400 years ago when the entire mountain began to morph and turned into a massive closed off castle. The walls were made out of black mithril mixed with Adamantine that is magically infused. It was said that when this happened the demon lord himself came personally to conquer it, but he couldn’t even break the outer walls, which goes to show the strength. Not only that but before he had two large statues that looked like Ace’s puppet but after the change they went from around three meters to over 10 becoming giant sized and their estimated level should be no more than 500. This wasn’t isolated though, after this happened the two other elder dungeons that the demon lord had conquered were made to do the same and upgrade themselves into fortresses of immense power. The monsters inside are of unknown strength, but no one still knows how strong he has become,” Charlotte explained.

“Maybe we can visit it sometime even if we don’t enter. I bet Cross-San will like it if he can examine the runes around the entrance and the puppets,” I said.

“Yeah, I bet he would. Since we cleared out the dungeon let's leave,” Charlotte said and we looked as the bodies vanished.

We left the dungeon relatively easily since we knew the layout. As we arrived at outside we heard a rumbling and soon the large guardian puppet came rushing out and stopped a few meters away blowing a gust of wind over us.

Ace was on top shaking while holding the head of the puppet.

As he slowly got down his legs were shaking.

“A-Ace, are you okay?” Charlotte asked.

“I-I'm fi… urg!” He suddenly turned, ran over to a bush and vomited behind it, away from our view.

As he slowly stood up after making sure to clean off the remaining spit and vomit, he sat back down at the base of another tree.

“What happened?” I asked him.

“Urg… guardian suggested he take me on his back since his agility is higher but I never expected him to activate the ‘Accelerate’ rune on his feet. You judge the result of that,” he said, closing his eyes and resting against the tree.

We both looked at each other and smiled wryly.

“I definitely need to make a mount puppet or minion. Maybe something more comfortable,” I heard him say and then I heard Charlotte giggling.

“It might end up the same way Ace,” she said.

“At least I will be safer since I would properly make him structured to have lots of places to hold on and by then I will have magic to keep the wind from blasting at my face,” he replied.

“Is it that bad?” I asked.

He opened his eyes and thought for a long while. “Have you ever felt or seen the winds of a tornado or a storm with a hurricane inside?” he asked.

After a bit of thinking I nodded, Japan did indeed have a few so I could remember.

“Think of being on the shoulders of your father running wildly through the woods under that amount of wind rushing at you,” he said.

A shiver ran down my spine but I hid that from my face. Looking at the stationary puppet, I couldn’t imagine such a body moving so fast but knowing it had 75 levels did help to give me a warning bell to not mess with it.

“Did you guys harvest any herbs inside the dungeon?” Ace asked.

“Yes, we took a large number from those available. Around 10 alluring fragrance while we got around 30 of each of the others,” she said.

“We can already earn back the money we wasted, let’s keep farming these for now but let’s only enter the dungeon once a day, this will allow the animals and monsters to gather in larger numbers than today. I set up the other dungeon so I will definitely need a room now. So let's return to town so I can rest a bit.” He said and we nodded agreeing. After a while he stood up and dismissed the puppet. We returned to town where he booked a room that was available, and he rested inside while we went to look around.

***

“Alright, since rats were the first things to appear in the dungeons it would be best to use the closer dungeon as a training ground for the common puppets. Come to think of it, I never checked out the stats of the guardian,” I said to myself and opened the book. After looking at the minion page settings, I found out that the next few pages showed me all the information of each type of puppet, but for specific information like skills there was an arrow that switched between each individual puppet.

Status:

Name:

Unnamed

Class:

Guardian Puppet, Dungeon Minion

Level:

75

Exp:

0/60000

Health:

2125

Mana:

1250

Strength:

425

Intelligence:

125

Agility:

200

Wisdom:

125

Endurance:

425

Vitality:

425

Skills

Natural Weapon Creation:

Level 1 Exp 900/1000

A being made of magical wood can control nature. Using a unique magic, the user of this skill can slowly raise trees he plants by spreading his roots and separating a branch to make a magical tree, he can shape it into his preferred shape and make a weapon.

Current skill will cause weapon to take 3 days until it has fully grown.

Planting Root:

Level 3 Exp 612/2000

By spreading one's roots into the ground, the user of this skill can absorb mana and other nutrients or energies to increase their normal rate of regeneration. This skill is restricted to beings of a plant-like nature.

Current Regeneration Increase: 7%.

Runic Magic:

Level 3 Exp 10/1500

A magical being who is servant of a dungeon maker can use runic magic using his master's knowledge of runes to cast spells. Strength of skills is dependent on skill level.

Rune magic consumption decreased by 3%.

Longsword Mastery

Level 4: Exp 574/2500

You are master with the longsword.

Increases damage with this weapon by 1%.

Longsword Arts

Level 2 Exp 940/1500

Arts that only masters of the longsword can learn.

Level 1: Wide Slash

Level 2: Crushing Fang

Status:

Name:

Unnamed

Class:

Common Wooden Puppet, Dungeon Minion

Level:

1

Exp:

0/100

Health:

250

Mana:

0

Strength:

25

Intelligence:

0

Agility:

25

Wisdom:

0

Endurance:

25

Vitality:

25

Skills

Natural Weapon Creation:

Level 1 Exp 0/1000

A being made of magical wood can control nature. Using a unique magic, the user of this skill can slowly raise trees he plants by spreading his roots and separating a branch to make a magical tree, he can shape it into his preferred shape and make a weapon.

Current skill will cause weapon to take 3 days until it has fully grown.

Planting Root:

Level 1 Exp 0/1000

By spreading one's roots into the ground, the user of this skill can absorb mana and other nutrients or energies to increase their normal rate of regeneration. This skill is restricted to beings of a plant-like nature.

Current Regeneration Increase: 5%.

“So, wooden puppets have two skills that the guardian has. That is useful, the weapon creation could also be interesting since the weapons are grown naturally. If I set up a dirt room just for growing weapons, I can make them nature weapon craftsmen. The longsword of the guardian, even now, is sharp enough that it compares to a copper sword. He needs a bit more training, but it could become possible to make weapons in bulk. If I train them differently like having some move around on all fours I could possibly make beast type minion mounts,” I muttered.

I looked at the minion page and saw I had only one minion.

I opened a new dungeon layout page and made just a small dungeon of only corridors and placed him there. In the settings, I instructed him to make weapons and grow them.

I had my suspicions about how the book worked so after touching a spot and directing for him to plant roots and make the maximum number of weapons around him at different locations, I watched the dot. The order was to just plant and first then regularly move to a different location.

When the blue dot appeared, I just watched it. Soon green dots appeared which were categorized as a minion weapon. It numbered two and then he moved.

“I knew it, the dungeons aren’t just pictures but they are actually built and I can place minions to work inside them.”

I touched the guardian’s icon and put him inside the new layout after changing it to be bigger. Then, I put lots of crops.

I had both the puppets take care of all the vegetation while raising the weapons and training their natural weapon creation skill. All the weapons were made around the bundle of herbs and crops. At a few dead ends I summoned the guardian, and the wooden puppet showed him a diagram of how to make a field in the corridor then sent them back to make those in places that crops were to be planted.

You have manually modified a dungeon corridor into a new type.

Dirt corridor has been changed into field corridor and has taken up a new slot on your archive.

Straight Field Corridor

A simple field has been made within a straight dirt corridor section of the dungeon. Crop plants grow more vigorously and healthier without competing for nutrients and water.

Looking at the field, I called the puppets and changed the form so that there was a small packed path in the middle so that the crops weren’t stomped on and ordered the two to pass only within those but to not plant weapons there but pass there and help the crops grow. I also set the dungeon to automatically gather mature crops and replant them again within the fields.

I needed to make a large dirt room to make a garden that could be larger in size so I could do larger scale farming. Still, I needed a lot of puppets for that and the construction speed for them was really slow.

I set six dead ends with straight corridors to be made into fields and. Three for crops, two for herbs, and just as a test I set one just for weapon growing. You can already guess, but herbs cost a lot so two fields with herbs would very quickly cash in a boatload of money. I still needed to locate the extremely rare mana herb. Mana regeneration herbs used different herbs to cause the body to absorb more, but true mana herb contained abundant mana which made the instant regeneration.

“I am sure that it will be the slowest growing plant within the closed off dungeon where the puppets are currently farming. I can probably only set them in a dungeon that has already gathered substantial mana,” I muttered.

After seeing to the details and checking the quantity of crops and herbs I had, which wasn’t much because I had used most of them inside the other two dungeons, but they had a fast growth. Root crops left alone in a random corridor in an open dungeon grew to maturity in four hours, while it seemed that the speed was about one hour faster when the puppets were aiding them. Herbs took six hours to reach maturity but they give a substantial number of seeds in return, and they were sped up by two hours with the puppets.

After seeing that, I checked the other dungeons and looked at the tall grass that had sprouted nearby shoots. I took several and put them around the farm dungeon. I was amazed when the puppet passed by, it stopped and did the growing. Within the five minutes it was aiding it, they spread to one tenth of the corridor.

I was very amazed by it and thought why and came to the conclusion that common plants and bushes required less mana to grow and since that was common tall grass—a weed—they had a much easier time to grow.

I instantly moved the wooden puppet into the other dungeon and had it focus on spreading the grass on the corridors.

Against my expectation it didn’t make a grass corridor, but it turned into a variant dirt corridor with grass. The reason being, that if I removed the corridor, the grass and plants were ‘harvested’ and stored. I set a limit for the puppet to keep the tall grass away from the herbs gathering points but let it grow naturally in the corridors besides those mentioned.

“Well, it seems things are set up nicely. The puppet is set to return to the other dungeon if anything gets within the same corridor its inside and won’t return until the dungeon is cleared out. Now then, I need to resolve my problem as a mana regen potion drinker. So to the alchemist!” I said and got up. I left the inn in search of said alchemist.