Chapter 3

“Have I ever mentioned how much I hate this part?”

Ryan was fuming as he scrolled through his mobs, eying his new options but flinching at their costs. For some unknown, magical reason, dungeons were limited on how many mobs they could summon at a time, dependent solely upon their level. At Bronze 11, Ryan had had only 50 points. When he hit Bronze 1, he had been ecstatic to have 100 points. Now, at Gold 7, with 1200 points, he was frustrated. Twelve hundred points just wasn’t enough for what he wanted to do. Ugh.

“We both know that’s not true.” Erin was currently out in the dungeon, doing a cursory inspection of his third floor. So far, she had approved of Ryan’s decorations, especially the black and gold tapestries. He was really proud of them; they helped elevate his dungeon into something a little more sophisticated. “What you hate is not being able to summon everything you want right away.”

The fairy was absolutely right.

“Yeah, well, you hate that too.” Initially, Erin had hated his skeletal mobs. However, Ryan knew his own excitement was beginning to rub off on her, and even though she wouldn’t openly say the words, she actually did get just as excited about new mobs as he did. Well, just skeletal mobs. He was still banned from experimenting with any untested zombie mob modifications or adjustments around her.

It had been months since the incident, and Erin still wouldn’t let him live it down. No matter how many times he apologized, apparently accidentally blowing up a zombie and covering Erin in undead goo – the stink of which lasted for weeks – was just unforgivable and highly traumatic.

“I just want you to become the greatest dungeon there is, Ryan.” Erin was in the boss chamber, making her way towards the very end of the room. Because of her increased size, he could no longer allow just a small hole in the wall for her to fly in and out of their core room. Instead, there was now a secret trapdoor which led into a passage towards the core room. The only way to unlock the trapdoor was with the pendant around Erin’s neck. It held a minute crystalline key made of onyx, which when inserted into a nondescript hole in the back of the boss room, opened the door. Ryan was rather proud of his secret passage and made a silent note to add similar features later on in his dungeon.

“Well, I’m going to need a lot more mobs before I can become the best dungeon ever,” he grumbled, flipping again through his mental catalog of mobs. On the plus side, his bone collection had continued to grow along with his expansion. While he had been building his third floor and spreading his influence around, he’d found quite a few bones to pick up. He now had completed skeletons for humans, rats, squirrels, snakes, deer, wolves, foxes, a few varieties of birds, a bear, a badger, and two new incomplete skeletal sets, dire-wolf and elephant. The latter were both listed as huge animals, meaning even though he had skeletal pieces for them, he wouldn’t be able to summon them; as a Gold-tier dungeon, he was limited to large beasts and below.

And then there’s the skull. He had found one last object, but frustratingly, he had no idea what it belonged to. Part of the problem was he only had half of it. The other half… may have been blown up while he was excavating it. Of course, that wasn’t entirely Ryan’s fault. He had found the skull whilst spreading his influence – in other words, slowly increasing the area under his control in order to increase his passive mana regen rate and reap the benefits of the (albeit extremely low) experience he gained by expanding.

One thing Ryan had learned during his fight against Viktor was that mana was important. With larger reserves of mana, Ryan was able to create even more objects – stone, loot, etcetera – at will, and also reinforce them with more of his mana. A greater mana pool also helped when he needed to create large numbers of mobs, as they not only required mob points to animate, but also mana to create the bones and physical form.

Ryan had been experimenting to see just how far he could spread his influence. He had managed to reach the dungeon town, or at least, an area roughly half a mile away from it. Frustratingly, it seemed the large number of adventurers, along with the magical crystals and objects they had in town, prevented his influence from reaching any closer.

It was like a massive off-limits sphere existed, spreading out from the center of the dungeon town. Annoyed, he had sent his influence underneath the town, in order to see how far that sphere actually went. Interestingly, it went roughly the same distance underneath the town as it did outwards.

That would have been fine and dandy, and Ryan would have left the experiment at that, had something not caught his eye. A skull, captured in the rock that existed partially outside of the magical influence-blocking barrier. Ryan had never seen anything like it. The skull was massive, with what appeared to be a beak in place of a mouth. However, that was about as much as he could tell, because it really was locked quite tightly into that stone. And, because of the magical sphere of annoyance, he wasn’t able to grab the skull, or absorb it like he usually did when excavating. So he did what any logical bone-hoarding dungeon would do in that situation: he tried to blast it loose.

Turned out it was a lot easier said than done.

Ryan had focused his energies and directed his influence straight towards the rock holding the skull in place, imagining it blasting apart with enough force to create a gaping hole. Annoyingly, the moment his mana hit the area protected by the town’s sphere of influence, it stopped. Frustrated, Ryan summoned one of his skeletal mages to blast the skull free instead. The intention was to free the skull, and hopefully the entire skeleton, from the rock, causing the precious prize to drop down to the area that he could influence.

It had been a partial success. He had definitely freed the skull, blasting a good chunk of rock away in the process as well. However, the force had caused the skull to partially shatter, leaving him with a very damaged and frustratingly alien skull. Even when he absorbed it, he hadn’t been granted the knowledge he normally received with regards to what creature the skull belonged to. It seemed it was too damaged even for his dungeon magic to perceive. To make the situation even more annoying, Ryan could see more remnants of the skeleton lodged beyond his grasp. Whatever this skull belonged to, its body was up there too, and he couldn’t reach it.

That had been over a month ago, and it still upset him. However, there was no use crying over cracked bones; he still had plenty of options to work with. He just had to figure out how to best make use of his current mob points. As per the established dungeon etiquette – according to Erin – his first floor and second floor would remain as they had been when he ascended to Gold.

Which meant his first floor would continue to utilize 65 of his mob points, the second floor would cost him 385 points, and his roaming mobs another 110. This put his combined total of mob points being used in the dungeon at 560 mob points. Meaning of his grand total of 1200 mob points as a Gold 7 Dungeon, Ryan only had 640 points remaining. Honestly, that just didn’t feel like enough, especially for what he had in mind. Sadly, that was all part of being a dungeon core.

With that in mind, Ryan took one last deep breath and stopped scrolling through his options. He would just have to make do with the bare-bone minimum of mobs on this third floor for now.

Ugh.