The next few days had been rather productive. Through a bit of trial and error, I found out that, unsurprisingly, the clothlings required the most mana. The costed 50 mana a pop but also had a conditional requirement to that enough cloth and mana to make two had to be present in order to summon just one, so no extra clothlings for me. The second thing was that kelp cost about 7 mana to summon but could grow and reproduce on its own, same with the fish for about 15 mana each.

What the system hadn’t warned me about, was that water was not one of the things I could summon naturally. The only reason I could summon water at all was because getting certain combinations of monsters, creatures and flora allowed you to summon new things outside of the dungeon limits. And since I chose both a water based creature and flora, I could summon water at an increased expense.

And by increased, I mean outright robbery. At a 300% inflation rate, it was a hard time getting enough water in the tiny pond I built. But at least it was a pond now. It barely covered a stalk of kelp but three of them managed to fit inside, along with 10 nibblers. It was what I spent most of my mana on over about a week and it did show at least.

It was only made more tedious due to the rock slide in the way. While it was very effective at keeping everyone and everything out, it also meant I had no alternative way to get mana.

My little clothling was making some progress at least. But a very tiny hole, even for them, had been dug out through the loosest of the rocks. As it turned out, clothlings weren’t exactly made for digging. Their tactic ended up being moving any rock that they could out of the way with their floppy cloth hands.

Though slow, progress was made. And by now a small orange light was coming through on the other end. The clothling and I prepared ourselves mentally as they began to move the final rock.

Only for the rock itself to fall inward.

Startled, the clothling jumped backwards towards my core, and a bright orange slime oozed its way into my chamber.

“Defend!” I shouted at the clothling, which, to its credit, did try slapping the thing. The slime jiggled as the attack landed, but didn’t do much else. The clothling fared far worse, as when they removed their hand, it was on fire. Quite literally too, as the rags that made up its body were apparently quite flammable.

“Into the water!” I shouted. It was somewhat unnecessary, as they were already running there. It was at that moment I realized that my core was not behind the pool, meaning the slime now had a straight shot right at my core.

Thankfully, it chose to chase after my clothling instead. Maybe hoping for an easy meal or whatever. I don’t know what the brainless slime was thinking but it saved my behind.

My clothling jumped into the puddle, and to everyone’s surprise, the slime followed, taking a big jump straight into the puddle.

It proved to be a mistake as the bright orange evaporated in a cloud of steam, taking a third of my water and a solid chunk of one of my kelps with it. A grey melty rock was left behind, to which my nibblers swarmed it. It still tried to move as ten little mouths took bite after tiny bite, but soon it stopped moving entirely and disintegrated.

[Lesser fire slime absorbed! 2/68 points]

Reading over the name, my nonexistent eye began to twitch. Throughout my life, there was one thing I was absolutely sure about. Fire and I did not mix. Being from the great north, my heat tolerance was very low. I’d even start sweating in 20 degree heat. Dying in a fire also gave it no favors.

If the fire slime was any indication, the stuff outside my walls was hot, and I was not going to stand for that. I refuse to live somewhere hot regardless of my currently nulled temperature detection.

Besides, when compared to fire there were so many cooler things in winter! Snow angels, shleding, ice skating, hot chocolate, snowmen, yetis, auroras, penguins, frozen pine forests, colds steel, haunted mansions, snowflakes! The list was endless! You can keep all that fire and brimstone, I'll stick with ice and snow until the day I die! And by this point, even after!

A message popped up just after my cold confession ended.

[The ideals of your heart and the whims of your soul have unlocked a new attribute! Winter Lover has been added to your attributes!]

[Winter Lover: Born out of a true love for the cold season, ice skills now flourish but fire skills are left floundering. Attribute applies to dungeon inhabitants, both new and old. Invaders will have the same effect applied to a lesser extent.]

“Oh, that's cool!” It's nice to finally be recognized for an unhealthy obsession. I’m not sure what it does exactly at this time but I’ll be sure to keep my ears open while I move onto the next phase.

Looking over my dungeon room, it wasn’t exactly the most defensible of positions. So I called towards my soggy clothling and my fishes. We were going to do a little dungeon remodeling.