With just a few beats of his powerful wings, the dragon had ascended into the sky above. He scanned the area for a decent snack before his flight but only found small monsters not worth his time to hunt and eat. A few more beats of his wings and the dragon was already miles away from the young dungeon an evil grin on his face 'the young are so easily manipulated, dangle a big carrot and they don't even notice the wolf that holds it'.

While it let out a thunderous cackle the dragon continued his flight.

Core looked at the small dust pile being absorbed by the dungeon for around half an hour. In that time the pile was reduced by half so instead of looking at the pile for another half hour Core decided to focus on something else for the time being. The two main questions he had were how quests work and the strange item left by the dragon inside of his pillar.

He focussed his sight on the pillar below himself trying to find the item inside. He noticed some kind of dark spot but didn´t pick up anything else. And maybe even that was because he knew the item was inside.

`Hey System, what can you tell me about the item?`

I have no information on the item left by Khorzanthalax.

That answer was to be expected. While System knew a lot she didn't know everything. Maybe she only had information about dungeon things and not about outside things.

"Hey System, what do you know about quests?"

Quests can be generated by almost any sentient being. A dungeon core is unable to generate a quest but can accept quests.

By performing the task listed as the objective the completing party will be entitled to the listed reward.

Creating his own quests would have been nice but then again what would he even offer as the reward and who'd accept a quest from a dungeon. Core's was also self-sufficient so what would even be the objective of his quest. Perhaps items for his Armory or new defender archetypes but he'd get those naturally over time as his dungeon absorbed more and more invaders.

essence has been absorbed. Cerberus archetype has been unlocked. Hellhound has been added as an option for .

If Core was able to sigh and had hands he´d put his head in his hands ´Why does everything always have to be locked´.

He opened up his Defenders screen and it now had another option labeled , he selected the option and saw the name of the hellhound as an available option. Selecting the hellhound showed no statistics or abilities and the outline of the defender was only in grey. It looked a lot like the shadow wolf but with no real information, he closed the window again.

Nothing of note happened for a while as Core waited for enough mana to build the newly unlocked Monster den. He blamed it on the dragon scaring everything away in a large radius around the dungeon in fear of being killed and eating but the very imposing creature. The day had also slipped into the night so perhaps tomorrow he´d see some life coming around to explore his dungeon again. And that´s when he felt an icy grip covering his core his life-force being sucked out and a cold burning sensation of mana flowing back into him. Each second a point of life was taken, followed by a second in which a point of mana was restored. While the process took 40 seconds to complete it had felt to Core it lasted that in minutes. Now he really regretted accepting the, somewhat forced, quest since he couldn't use his reward and this dreadful experience would happen every 24 hours.

The only upside of the sudden boost in mana was that he was now very close to the required mana for placing the Monster den. Which turned back into his internal debate of positioning. Right near the entrance would mean the defenders in the den would grow but not his normal defenders and positioning it at the end of the dungeon had the opposite effect that unless invaders made it to the end of the dungeon the den defenders would never gain experience and if they could kill his experienced defenders what hope would the low-level den monsters have.

In the end, he chose to place the den right near the entrance of the dungeon. If they got killed then the invaders still had an entire dungeon to pass would most likely be wounded and prove no match for his other defenders and his traps. Having resolved the placement issue he pulled up his Dungeon layout tool and started sculpting his newest dungeon addition.

It started with a straight tunnel past the already existing tunnel snake occupied. He'd block off the entrance with another caved in blockade so the snake could attack an invader in either tunnel. He'd do more work on the tunnel ones he had more mana to snake the tunnel and place one of his traps there as well. He wasn't happy his defenders would lose out on experience but if the trap didn't kill instantly the invaders would surely be weakened when facing his Monster den.

Placing the den within the tool gave Core a prompt.

Please select an archetype for this Monster den. Currently available options:

Undead.

Lizardmen.

So unlocking a complete archetype would add it to the list as a selectable option. The only archetype Core was close to unlocking was the Ratkin at 80% all the other types were at either 40% or 20% and his highly desired slime was only at 10%. With already having a dungeon full of undead defenders the most obvious choice was made to select the Lizardmen archetype for the Monster den because variation was king after all.

Lizardmen archetype selected. Passive effect detected.

Please choose a floor type for this Monster den:

Rock

Sand

Water

Water

After he quickly checked what the passive effect of the pudlings was again, Core selected the Water option.

With the medium water slowing movement speed by 10% and any water boosting his defender's movement speed by 15%, this option gave the best overall benefit to his defenders.

Currently available defender slots. Defender 1:

Defender 2:

Defender 3:

Core was very happy to have obtained three additional defenders for the Monster den. Combined with the undead defenders he already had that put him at seven total defenders.

He selected the first defender slot and a similar interface to the Dungeon defender tool came up but all the options were already filled in. Core opened up his normal toll to check why that happened and came to the conclusion that the prefilled options were the only options he had. He closed the tool back up and proceeded with the prefilled selection and was prompted by a menu he didn't see before when creating defenders.

Please select the defender's attribute focus. Focus 1:

Focus 2:

"Hey System, what's an attribute focus, and why am I asked to pick it now and not for the other defenders?"

Not all living beings in the world are created equally. Each living being has a disposition to one or two of the main attributes. Since you're creating the defender you get to choose its attribute focus.

Undead beings lose all individuality and as such have no disposition to a specific attribute.

"Hey System, can you tell me about the different attributes?"

Each living being has six main attributes. Classes benefit from different attributes but are not definitive to select a class. The main attributes are:

Strength, which determines attack damage and carry capacity.

Vitality, which determines health and resistance to status ailments.

Agility, which determines attack speed and accuracy.

Perception, which determines the ability to hit vital areas with an attack and detection chance.

Intelligence, which determines spell damage and mana.

Wisdom, which determines healing power and mana regeneration.

Core didn't have access to classes yet so he'd figure out the better combinations once he'd have those unlocked. Each pairing of two looked like the most logical options but a few of the options looked to be an interesting area to explore in the future. With no additional information about classes, Core looked back on the fight he had when his defenders had killed the last two pudlings. The big one had the class of fighter and used the shield and club to protect the smaller one. If it needed time to protect the small one it would need more health points so it could fight longer.

It didn't cast any spells so intellect and wisdom were discarded as options for the second focus. The second focus posed an interesting option. Higher strength for more damage, higher agility for quicker attacks, or higher perception to hit vital areas. Mulling it over for a minute longer, Core discarded perception as an option since only his spider had ever hit a vital area with its pinchers so that looked like a better option for piercing or slashing attacks and not blunt attacks. The pudling also had a harder time attacking with his two defenders attacking it constantly which made Core pick agility as the second focus. If the defender could attack quick and then go back to defending it would do more then having more damage and never having the option to attack.

Having select both attributes he ended up at the final part of creating the defender. His newly unlocked Armory feature presented itself. The first selection was weapons and that was divided into three sections, main-hand, off-hand, and two-handed. The club was listed under main-hand and off-hand, the shield was listed as off-hand, and the spear was listed both under main-hand and two-handed. With this first defender being modeled after the big pudling invader Core picked the club for main-hand and the shield for off-hand.

The second selection was armor and was divided into five sections, helmet, chest, legs, feet, and arms but all the option were greyed out so he had to skip the armor option.

The third and final selection was called accessory and was divided into four sections, ring left, ring right, necklace, and trinket. And the only option available was the green glowing orb under the trinket section. The orb's description said it was a light source so Core saw no use in spending mana on equipping the item.

And with the Armory part completed he got an overview of his selected defender and all the selected additional options and was asked to confirm his selection which he promptly did.

For his second defender, the entire process was repeated again but this time Core chose to pick perception as the main focus and strength as the secondary focus. This defender was equipped with the two-handed spear. The spear's damage type was piercing so Core planned for this defender to hit the vital areas of an invader and lacking to hit the vital part the added strength would at least increase the damage of the attacks.

With his two defenders forming a solid base Core decided to make an interesting choice for his third defender. Instead of picking the more physical options, he chose for wisdom as the main attribute focus and endurance as the secondary focus. From the Armory, he picked the one-handed spear and the shield. The prospect of healing was very enticing to Core. The defender might not know healing spells now but if Core got used to having a defender with high wisdom already in his rotation the information would only serve him better in the future. The hight endurance and shied were chosen to increase his defender's survivability for now.

Core looked over his selection one final time before he finalized his selection.

The entire room was excavated in a few moments, the previous material just vanishing into thin air as rainbow flakes. The sandy floor of the room was dropped an additional 20 inches and water slowly started filling in the vacated space. After a few minutes, the entire room had filled with crystal clear water and one by one the defender spawned into the center of the room. And with the spawning of his last defender Core was prompted with yet another strange and new notification.

The gift of Khorzanthalax has detected a faint and lost soul inside the dungeon.

The gift of Khorzanthalax has found a suitable host for the soul inside the dungeon.

Will you use the gift of Khorzanthalax to bind the lost soul to the suitable host?

The item left inside the pedestal seemed to have an additional power than to just simply convert life-force into mana. But what would happen if he bound a soul to one of his defenders? The prompt came right after his defenders spawned inside of the Monster den so it was most likely the soul would bind to one of the newly spawned pudlings.

The dragon seemed to have Core's best interest when he gave him the quest to take care fo his item and he even became a guest of the dungeon, further cementing himself as an ally. And with these reasons and a good dose of curiosity core accepted the request of the gift to bind the lost soul.

Cold tendril rose from the pedestal and tightly gripped around Core. The same cold feeling from the earlier drain spread through his being and life-force was being drained rapidly. As sudden as the tendrils appeared so did they vanish after draining 50 of his health points. A flow of cold and shimmering air left the pedestal and traveled through his tunnel. Arriving at the second bend in his tunnel near the spider the cold essence swirled around something hanging in the air there and enveloped it within the small cloud before traveling down the tunnel again. The cloud floated through his new tunnel into the Monster den going straight for the third defender. The defender stood their stoic and motionless and the swirling cloud moved around its body. A few moments later the little cloud centered around the area in front of the defender's chest.

With a force unsuspected of something without a solid form the cloud slammed into the defender knocking it a few feet back into the room where it landed in the water. The defender didn't move for a while after being knocked back and then with a jolt the defender sat back up and drew a long gasping breath.

Spoiler: Dungeon map