So how should I handle this? Ideally, I would like not to lose my undead, or to be more accurate, I don’t want to die. If I win, the mana I gain should be more than enough to pay for replacements. Ah, no I am being an idiot… They will respawn, so aside from risk to me there isn’t any risk to losing units. At least none that I am aware of, I will keep an eye on any that die to make sure.

I sent the skeletons to the back of the room and had them crouch in the corners, and sent the spirits to the corners closer to the entrance. I am not sure how much control I will have over the battle, but I do know I have more control here than I would outside. Hopefully, they will obey my commands to let the bandits wander into the center of the room before pouncing on them.

Ah, here they are. I can see them better now that they are entering my dungeon, and I must admit that if they were any more stereotypical I might have died laughing. Well, if i had lungs to laugh with I would have. The women behind them, seemingly a mother and her two daughters, were haggard looking and fearful. Hopefully I could let them escape, I am not particularly interested in killing innocents, and frankly they don’t look appetizing.

“Huh, this cave looks a bit different than I remember.” One of them remarked, to which another laughed and said.

“With how much you drink I am surprised you remember your own name,” the whole group laughed at that. “I am just glad to be out of the rain!”

Well they are idiots, I thought. I mean, they actually had some warning that things had changed and they simply ignored it. Well it was too late now.

“What the-” A bandit exclaimed before an arrow slammed into his chest, then he swore and stumbled. I wonder how damage works in a world like this, if he was shot in the eye would he die immediately or would it just be considered health damage? I will explore that later though.

“Fuck, skeletons!” The bandit chief roared and pulled out his axe, only to be ambushed by the spirits from the back. The other bandits focused on the skeletons at the front, and the archer they protected.

“Where the hell did these things come from!”

“How the hell should I know? There hasn’t been a dungeon around here since they cleared and demolished that one in the forest miles away!”

“Fuck, this place became a dungeon!”

“Straighten up, if we can conquer it we will be rich!”

Unfortunately, none of you seem to be able to hurt my spirits. I thought as I watched the bandit leader succumb, he had lasted quite a while because the spirits were quite weak, but since he couldn't hurt them it didn’t matter. The skeletons had fared much worse, one skeleton was destroyed and the other was being finished off now. The archer had managed to kill two bandits, leaving a three on three fight.

“Fuck, does anyone have silver?”

“Aside from coins? No!”

“Shit, shit, shit! We need to run!”

You can try, in fact, please do. I don’t actually enjoy this.

Sadly, they were not capable of running and my spirits and skeleton finished them off. They then approached the captives, who were huddling fearfully against the wall. I hoped they would run, but apparently they were too afraid. A pity, I am not sure if I can control my minions that well… But I might as well give it a try.

They are screaming and huddling together as a spirit approaches them and its claws slice down- on the rope that binds them and then floats away. They stand their gaping for a moment and I wish I could hurry them out. The focus this is requiring of me is more than I expected.

Finally, they run and I can relax.

[10,000 XP received! Reached level 6! Mana raised to 80! New options available for purchase! Special unlocked from Dungeon actions!]

Interesting. Very interesting. I wonder how the experience is broken down?

[Bandit Killed in Dungeon! x5 1,600 XP each! Bandit Chief killed in Dungeon! 2,000 XP gained!]

So the system reacts to me? Even more interesting, and that person I had killed before seemed to be more valuable than any of these individuals. Well whatever, the real question is how I should spend this.

I guess I will wait for the skeletons to respawn and see what my various options are.

*Susan*

I followed my mother and my older sister and we ran. Thankfully, we were able to recover our wagon that the bandits had stolen, and we tried to put as much distance between the dungeon and us as possible. But that dungeon was nothing like what I had heard about.

“Mother…” I said tentatively, “the dungeon let us go…”

“Yes, it did Susan.” Mother responded, not looking away from the road, “the real question is why.”

Mother had adventured back in the day, and so had father… But then mother was cursed and they retired to our little village to raise my sister and I. If dad had not been ambushed- he was strong… But I can’t think of that, or I will start to cry.

“No, it doesn’t matter.” My mother shook her head, “we need to report this. An undead dungeon is a terrible danger, regardless of whether it let us go or not.”

Mother had told me that not all dungeons were equally dangerous. Some dungeons would be left alone for their drops and training value, others were not worth the effort and cost to wipe out, but some dungeons were too dangerous to let be.

Demon and undead dungeons were at the top of that list, and undead was the more terrifying of the two. Undead dungeons would spawn zombies and vampires who would spread their curses throughout the land. A single dungeon could wipe out an entire nation if left alone to grow!

I shivered at the thought, still, it feels ungrateful when the dungeon save me and my family.

*Dungeon Core*

So that is the penalty for death with my minions, those that die gain no experience from the battle, even from the bandits who died before they fell. I see, that is a fair cost I suppose.

In that case, I am just going to leave this alone for now. In the construction menu I noticed an interesting new feature, a ghost trap. The description was interesting, by sacrificing a spirit I would be able to assign skeletons to an area. When enemies entered the skeletons would form from bones and attack. The benefit to this was a change in how they respawned.

Instead of respawning based on an individual timer, they would respawn one at a time, but 60% faster. On the surface, it didn’t seem like it would be too useful, but I realized its potential.

Since it appears that I am going to have more visitors than I expected, I need to spend more time worrying about my own safety. So I will build a labyrinth, and I will trap the intersections with these so that every bad turn my visitors make will force them to fight at least one skeleton again.

To start with, I purchase the Tomb Entrance, which additionally gave a 10% bonus to respawn speed, a welcome surprise to be sure, and I also decided to perform a quick experiment.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not create a room that did not connect to the entrance, which was a pity, but expected. However, I was able to create two rooms on either side of the entrance and connect them to the hallway at the end. Then, much to my happiness, and as I suspected, I was able to change the walls between the rooms to bars.

I used some more mana to purchase another skeleton and a skeleton archer and attached all my skeletons to a ghost trap for this area, sacrificing one of my spirits to do so. The other spirit I decided to use for another experiment.

Skeletons are souless bones animated by magic, and spirits are weak souls that did not pass on. So I ordered the remaining spirit to possess one of the skeletons out of curiosity.

[Spectral Warrior unlocked!]

Interesting…

“My… Lord…”

The new spectral warrior bowed to me and spoke. Very interesting.