Excerpt from the Encyclopaedia Multiverca:

Daschaser:

A melding of dog and laser found only in the Compilation Dungeon. It is a dungeon’s best friend, and doesn’t even put tooth marks on the paper. The convenient local inventory makes sure no punctures are inflicted on whatever mail is delivered to the Dungeon entrance, and never was there a better guard … daschaser. All intruders will find their kneecaps burnt to a cinder by the inbuilt Mana laser these cute and shiny critters pack. There are even rumors of them helping lost children...

“Admin Cable, how did the coding go?”

Nova’s poker face had snapped back into place shortly after her sudden awakening. Currently she looked like a competent office assistant. Of course, the elf ears, dragon wings and dragon tail somewhat changed the image, but she still did her best.

“Not too shabby, Nova. We booted up with a lot fewer errors this time around, but the HUD is still questionable. That reminds me, I was going to ask you about that.”

“How can I help, Admin Cable?”

“Is growing crystal around the core possible? I had the thought that growing us into a sphere would solve a lot of the HUD problems.”

Nova’s face fell at that suggestion.

“Admin Cable, unless there is an evolution or other drastic event, the shape of the core won’t change. When you arrived was the biggest change. We went from an octahedron to a double-tetrahedron. We will have to find another way. Perhaps you could do something with the code?”

This news somewhat shocked Cable. He had hoped to make life easy for himself, but apparently reality had other ideas. If he did something with the code, it could well take a very long time. Cable was more into lasers than designing graphics drivers. Unless, perhaps, he could apply what he had learned about assembling multiple lasers into an image display. That could work.

“Well, there might be a way with purely code, but it would be tedious. The root of the problem is we don’t have a consistent viewing surface. Unfortunately, we can’t change it, so we have to work around it. So Nova, I’m going to try something that may or may not work, we shall see.”

Cable then proceeded to pull the data for the sizes and shapes of the view windows in the HUD. A few bits of jiggery pokery later, he had the working code for the HUD and was making alterations, stitching the frames together, changing the window locations, and in general re-arranging them.

After another couple of hours, he had re-arranged the windows. They no longer displayed at their physical locations, but rather at their angle of view relative to the centre of the core. Sure, there were still distortions at the edges of the frames, and they didn’t line up to make a neat sphere, but they were at least somewhat intelligible now. It would take time and effort to make a precision fix, but they could live with what they had for now. Perhaps Nova could work on that.

“Nova, could you please fix up the remainder of the HUD code? I can show you what does what, and it’s pretty straightforward from there, but to do a neat job will take a long time.”

Nova’s poker face brightened, and a smile as bright as the sun flashed across her exquisite features.

“It would be my pleasure, Admin Cable. I will make sure we have a perfect view of the outside world when it’s done!”

So, Nova took over managing the HUD code, and Cable moved on to the rest of the dungeon.

“Menu > Dungeon Management > Creatures”

Upon opening the Creatures menu, Cable was faced with a plethora of blank options. The window showed up as something similar to a 3D designer package, and listed options for various body parts and materials to use. The construction of their denizens was up to him and Nova, it seemed.

* Ding *

Congratulations, Compilation Dungeon. Due to your previous efforts, you are no longer bound by the traditional creature trees of other dungeons.

What you make and how you do it is up to you, but remember everything comes at a price.

Bonus effects of Compiler title:

Customized design:

Up to +100% creature parts costs.

-30% costs when realistically designed / improved on a working design.

Customized evolution:

Creatures may evolve on new paths.

Cable dismissed the notification with a quick thought. It seemed there was nothing he could use just yet.

“Menu > Inventory”

Inventory:

Pick up items / Drop items

Creature drop items

Available inventoried items

“Pick up items”

* Ding *

Picking up items in dungeon.

Results:

32 Crystal fragments

29 Small creature skeletons

3 Herbs

5 Iron ore

1 Silver

Cable glanced at the HUD. A few pieces of the iridescent crystals lying around the room the core resided in had disappeared, along with some red coloured rocks and some stray vegetation. An option appeared:

Would you like to refine Iron ore (x5) into steel?

Y/N

Choosing to refine, Cable returned to the Creatures section, and started designing.

His penchant for laser design worked in his favour. Within a few minutes, he had jury rigged a small mining laser onto the back of a skeletal iron frame, and soldered the more intricate parts with the silver. The end result looked like a dachshund, with a flat crystal lens where the neck should begin. A plant covered its back, and charged a mana battery in the crystal. The crystal then emitted a light beam sufficient to bore into the local rock face.

The dachshund only had a rudimentary intelligence, and was coded to mine the local mineral deposits for the inventory. It was better to start building an economy before building a war machine, right? Anyway, the mining laser could be re-purposed as a weapon should the need arise. No sausage dog would be easy meat in this dungeon. After spending a couple more hours tweaking the coding, Cable sat back.

Nova looked up from the console just before he hit the create button.

“Admin Cable, we have a problem. There are life forms moving in range of the HUD, and they don’t look all that friendly.”