I now had just over a quarter of my maximum mana left. I was also finally starting to get an idea of how much mana I was recovering. Interestingly enough it seemed like the cost of a goblin was equal to what I was thinking of as a unit of mana. Probably because it was the average strength tier one monster.

It looked like my intelligence of twenty five meant that I could hold a maximum of twenty five units of mana. Or equal to the amount of mana needed to create twenty five goblins. My wisdom of thirty five meant that I was recovering thirty five units of mana a day. So in the past eight hours I had recovered almost enough mana to create a dozen more goblins.

The important thing was that I had enough mana to purchase half a dozen more goblins. I went ahead and did it even though it cost me almost all my remaining mana. Expanding my dungeon further was more important than maintaining a mana reserve.

Without Chief Sharpstick it took me nearly half an hour to organize and get the goblins working again. Once they finally seemed to understand my orders I decided to look at my new notifications.

Congratulations on receiving a thousand positive ratings. 4 points awarded.

Congratulations one of your goblins has reached level 2.

Congratulations one of your goblins has reached level 2.

Congratulations you have reached level 2.

Congratulations one of your goblins has reached level 3.

Congratulations one of your goblins has reached level 3.

I had spent three points earlier but the four points I had just gained brought me up to forty two points. The two goblins guarding the dungeon entrance had gained a couple levels. More importantly it looked like killing those random animals had increased my level. I put the two attribute points into wisdom, increasing my mana regeneration slightly.

As for the talent point I had a harder time deciding. There were a couple new options that had been unlocked by my previous purchases. There was a new avatar talent that would let me increase the attributes of my avatar. There was also a new dungeon talent that would let me use mana to create teleportation pads in my dungeon. The last new option was tier two traps. Taking that talent would give me designs to make better and more elaborate traps.

Even after deciding not to pick any of the new options I hesitated. What I was split on was whether to get another monster type, increase monster attributes, increase monster evolution chance, or increase monster variation chance. A five percent boost to all my monsters could be very good. Especially if it increased the intelligence of my goblins. The evolution chance increase was still a risk but would probably pay off in the long run.

Despite that I finally settled on getting a second monster type. The deciding factor was that I needed something for my goblins to eat. My goblins couldn’t leave the dungeon. Eventually I was hoping that the number of them would outpace the amount of random animals that wandered into my dungeon. When that happened I didn’t want them starving, or worse eating each other.

I almost picked animal as my second choice but then realized that it would be a huge mistake. After all, what would the animals eat? It would just make my situation even worse. Instead I picked plants as my second monster. I opened up the monster tab and found some new options.

Select a monster to create

Male Goblin

Female Goblin

Strangle Vine

Spore Shroom

Additional monsters must be discovered before they can be created.

It was obvious what the strangle vines did. They would wrap themselves around anything that brushed against them. At the very least it would impede their movement. If it managed to get around their neck it could potentially kill an enemy.

The spore shrooms were a bit less obvious. If anything touched them they would shoot out a bunch of spores. These spores could inflict various debilitating effects including hallucinations, paralysis, fatigue, and so on. They probably weren’t deadly unless someone had an allergic reaction to them. But they would weaken enemies so that my goblins could finish them off.

When I tested the cost I found that the spore shrooms and strangle vines cost a tenth the price of a goblin. It seemed fair since they were both weaker and immobile.

I spent the rest of the day creating dozens of strangle vines and spore shrooms in the first room of the dungeon. I doubled the number of rock falls in the room. Of course I couldn’t put my plants on rock, they had to have dirt. Luckily with all the digging my goblins had been doing there was plenty of dirt in my inventory.

My focus on defense may not have made much sense because nobody had invaded my dungeon yet. However, I knew enough about the fantasy genre to know that adventurers would eventually find me. Hopefully, between the plants and rock falls, the first room of my dungeon would soften them up for my goblins.

Of course all those vines and spore shrooms stuck out like sore thumbs in the room. Fortunately I also had new choices that let me produce a huge variety of plants that weren’t monsters. They still required some mana but filling the entire room with small plants only cost as much as a single goblin. They also had the same ability to respawn the next day if destroyed.

In my mind the best part was that I could pick an area and a type of plant and fill it with random plants. If I had had this ability before the apocalypse I could have opened up a nursery and sold plants. With less than an hour worth of mana I could create enough plants to fill an entire yard.

During that time my goblins also managed to finish off the third room and start on the fourth. I happily moved my crystal further from the snoring goblins and closer to the sound of pickaxes. The sound of pickaxes striking rock was far preferable.

Around midnight my first batch of goblins finally woke up. I thanked the gods as the sound of them snoring stopped. Unfortunately my second batch of goblins was starting to look tired. I gave into the inevitable and started rotating the goblin groups. I had to create a few new pickaxes since a couple had broken.

Of course this was when I ran into the first problem of the day. When I sent two goblins to replace the two guarding the entrance to the dungeon one of them managed to brush against a strangle vine. The strangle vine was around waist height. Yet somehow the goblin ended up with it wrapped around his neck.

The other goblin frantically tried to save his friend. Of course the goblin being strangled was in a panic and managed to kick the goblin trying to save him. The second goblin fell over and managed to land face first on one of the spore shrooms. I grimaced as a puff of spores surrounded the goblin. I was starting to wonder just how much their terrible luck attribute affected my goblins.

I sent two more goblins to help. Before they arrived the goblin being strangled finally died. The other goblin had finally rolled off the shroom but seemed to barely be conscious. Hopefully it didn’t die. There was no mention of the spore shrooms being lethal. Then again I doubted anyone anticipated that someone would land face first on one.

I almost considered not having any goblins guarding the entrance. The problem was that right now it was my sole source of food for my goblins. I doubted that any animals were likely to make it past the first room for them to kill. If the animals died in the first room I’d still have to send the goblins to retrieve the bodies.

So after the two goblins dragged the drugged goblin back to the second room I sent them to replace the guards. I breathed a sigh of relief as they managed to get through the room without triggering any plants.

My joy was short lived as one of the guards coming back managed to step on a strangle vine. In the attempt to get unwound he managed to fall into another strangle vine which wrapped around one of his arms. I spawned a hatchet next to the other goblin.

Using the hatchet the second goblin was able to free the first goblin. Unfortunately he also managed to bury the hatchet in the first goblins arm when he missed the vine. Surprisingly, considering my goblins luck, it was just a flesh wound and it didn’t seem to have hit any arteries. I almost thought about killing the goblin anyway since it would take a few days for him to fully heal. It felt wrong though so I decided against it.

Both goblins managed to make it the rest of the way back to the second room without further incident. Although the injured goblin had apparently developed quite the grudge towards the other goblin. I couldn’t blame him though. It took real skill to miss by at least a foot when swinging a hatchet.

Out of twenty two goblins I now had four dead and two injured goblins. I was starting to wonder how goblins ever survived in the wild.