Chapter 6

“So, what did you think?” Erin had finished looking over Ryan’s hard work, and was now sitting atop him, albeit silently. She hadn’t spoken to him since his mention of his bone collection.

“It’s a good start.”

Oh, that’s promising.

“But it is pretty basic.”

Ouch.

“Well, you didn’t really give me much to go on,” he grumbled.

Great plan, shift the blame back to the angry one. I really need to think about things before I say them.

Erin growled and hit him. Obviously, being a diamond, he didn’t feel it, but he got the message. She was mad. Really mad.

“Sorry, I tend to speak without thinking sometimes.” He sent his remorse through the bond.

“You ‘tend,’” she stressed the word, “to do a lot without thinking.”

Fair point. His mind was currently sneaking around the walls, seeing if he had missed any bones. Ryan found he could send his consciousness to multiple places at once, allowing him to multitask.

Oh look, another bone.

“Ryan.”

Oh no.

“Ryan, you’re searching for more bones, aren’t you?”

His emotions must have traveled through the bond while he was speaking with her. She’d felt his sudden excitement and figured him out.

“Um, will you be mad if I say yes?” he asked.

Ryan still hadn’t quite gotten used to being bonded with her. She seemed able to make guesses about what he was thinking based on what emotions she could sense him experiencing. It was rather unnerving.

Her anger came across the bond, and he prepared himself for another fit from her. However, the emotions slowly faded to sorrow.

“What am I supposed to do with you?”

“I’m really sorry, Erin.” He sent waves of his own sorrow through the bond. Ryan hated to hurt people, and he really had started to care for the fairy. “I’m just trying to become a dungeon you can be proud of.”

“I know, I know. I’m just a little biased. You chose practically the worst dungeon type you could. The only one worse would have been chaos.”

“You know, I don’t remember that being an option.” He really was curious about this chaos affinity now. “Did you hide it from me?”

Erin quickly shook her head. “That’s not it. I would never purposefully hide anything from you.”

Ryan wasn’t sure if that was true, but he was listening.

“Chaos is the direct opposite of celestial. Because you are paired with me, and I am a celestial fairy, chaos wasn’t an option. In the same way, a dungeon with a chaos fairy cannot choose celestial. ”

“If it makes you feel better, I wouldn’t have chosen chaos.”

Ryan didn’t know what Chaos was, since Erin hadn’t explained much on it, but something in his core told him he would have stayed away from it. He wasn’t evil.

“You know what, how about we get to building some mobs?”

Erin’s mention of mobs drew his full attention. She certainly knew how his mind worked.

“Awesome. What do I have to do?”

“As I mentioned before, darkness dungeons utilize skeletons and zombies as their basic monster types.”

He remembered that, hence his bone collection.

“All right, so how do I make them?” His mind was already swarming with ideas.

“Normally, darkness dungeons begin with making mobs from bones they have found through expansion.”

Ryan beamed. “Well, I have found a lot of bones so far.”

“Then try to reanimate one of those sets.”

Reanimate? “How?”

“Well, send your mana into the set of bones you’ve found, and it should naturally begin to bring the creature back to life.” She seemed to hate giving him these instructions.

“Can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Now who’s the slow one?

“Because I absorbed every set I found.” How else would he have a bone collection?

“Oh.” She paused. Ryan was curious what she was thinking about; her emotions were all over the place. “Hey, Ryan, I think I just solved our problem.”

“What problem, and does it get us to this whole ‘making mobs’ thing? I really want to make some.” He had been waiting a long time for this.

“I think I found out how I can accept you as a darkness dungeon.”

Oh, that was definitely more important than mob summoning.

“I’m listening.”

“So, part of the reason why darkness dungeons are destroyed by the church is because of how dangerous and evil they are.”

“Well, I can guess raising things from the dead is usually frowned upon.”

Erin nodded in agreement, continuing, “That’s part of it, Ryan. The other issue is how strong they can become in a short amount of time.”

“How?” Isn’t getting strong fast a good thing?

“Remember I mentioned you are limited to how many mobs you can have based on your level?”

“Yup! At Bronze Eleven I have fifty points. But I’m sooooo close to leveling.”

“Right, well, when a dungeon reanimates a skeleton or a fresh corpse that it has found and didn’t create, they don’t count against that value.”

Oh, that’s interesting.

“And those mobs can leave the dungeon.” She let that hang in the air, like it was a big deal. Ryan had no idea why, and his confusion must have gone through their bond.

“Normally, dungeon mobs can’t leave the dungeon,” Erin explained.

Well, then.

“So, having mobs that don’t cost anything and can leave the dungeon to roam the land presents a danger?” he said. “That makes sense.”

Ryan guessed masses of undead meandering about killing innocent people would cause quite a stir. Hell, he could almost sympathize with the church for fearing dungeons like that. Almost.

“But I’m not going to do that.” He felt Erin’s mood rise, though she looked at him with a confused face.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to raise people from the dead, and I don’t want to be destroyed before we get strong.” Ryan wasn’t evil, and the thought of bringing people back from the dead left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I knew you weren’t evil. This is why I think my solution will work for us.” Erin was glowing a little brighter, and her mood was infectious.

“You still haven’t told me this solution,” he reminded her. He was glad they could get this to work, glad she seemed in a good mood, but he was still confused what her solution was.

“Well, as long as you promise to never raise the dead or create mobs from fallen adventurers—”

“I promise.”

“—we can make our mobs completely from scratch using our own dungeon bones.”

She waved her hands in the air at the last part, a smile across her face. If Ryan had to guess, she had just come up with that name.

“Works for me. So, can we get to mob summoning now?”