Chapter 5

The decision to split his points evenly across the elemental trap rooms made choosing mobs for the next three rooms a lot easier. Forty just happened to be an easy point value to hit with his available mobs. Especially since basic mobs, other than small beasts, cost numbers which added up to 40. And, since Ryan was going with new mob types for his floors, the math was simple.

For his air room Ryan utilized a group of four medium-sized birds he had found. They were classified as eagles and had wingspans that almost seemed as large as some adventurers. Ryan had been hesitant about summoning them; until this point, he had never summoned a mob that was meant to fly, and he didn’t think bones would prove conducive to flying. He was at least partially correct.

When the eagle bones were first summoned, the mobs flopped about on the floor less than gracefully, letting out the weirdest clacking sounds. However, after a few moments of flapping their massive skeletal wing structures, they began to fly.

According to Erin, the dark mana animating them also had the ability to give them flight if it was natural for them to fly in the first place. Which made a little sense to Ryan, considering he had also seen what dark mana could do with bones in general. Steve shot out bone spikes laced with dark mana, and Ryan had watched Blake detach his skeletal hand and send it flying to protect his teammates.

So obviously magic would find a way to make the impossible possible. Which was fine and dandy for Ryan, since he now had four deadly flying eagles in a room that would seal off all air within. Good luck, adventurers.

His water room also proved rather easy to plan out. Ryan broke his initial rules for himself by adding in a few of his old mobs, but that was because he was quite limited when it came to aquatic bones. As in, he had yet to actually find anything that was purely aquatic. Though who knew what he would find as he continued to spread his influence? To deal with the current lack of watery mobs, Ryan filled some of the water pit traps with sneks. Sneks seemed surprisingly capable of swimming around in water.

The main water room had a total of four pit traps scattered across the floor. Ryan placed 5 sneks in each of the pit traps for a total of 20 points. He then summoned his other new medium mob, his badger, and put two of them in the room. The badgers alone weren’t that threatening, but he was hoping they would be enough of a distraction to taunt adventurers into the traps. The creatures’ sharp claws also seemed well suited for the later water rooms, which had ice-covered floors.

With those three rooms planned, Ryan moved on to his earth room. It should have been the easiest. However, this room turned out to be quite the challenge. Mainly because, even though his traps largely consisted of stalactites and pitfalls, he was utilizing poison as a trap option too. Poison and zombies just went together. So instead of opting for skeletal mobs in the first room of his final elemental section, Ryan decided on zombie mobs. Which wasn’t terrible – other than the fact the zombie he wanted to use cost him 25 mob points. Meaning he couldn’t have two of them, because that would break his self-imposed 40-point limit. Ugh.

“Decisions, decisions…”

Switching to a skeletal version for the mob would make each cost 20 points. That would easily solve his problem. But then he wouldn’t have a zombie in the room. And he really, really wanted a zombie bear in this room.

His final decision ended up being a zombie bear, for 25 points, along with three snakies. He planned to eventually make them all infested to take advantage of their poisonous attributes, but for now, just zombified versions would have to do.

Ryan had to admit he was extremely happy with his first Gold-level summon. Up until that point, all of the creatures he’d been summoning were technically Silver-level mobs, since only medium-sized beasts were available to him at Silver. But the bear was classified as a large beast, which meant it was a Gold-level mob. Looking at its massive rotting form, Ryan could see why.

The bear was covered in patches of thick, dark brown fur, with rotted sections revealing various wounds and decaying flesh. It was a zombie, after all. A really big zombie, considering it was nearly five foot in height while standing on all fours. Its length was closer to ten feet, making it roughly the size of Buttercup. Weight-wise, it had to be close to 800 pounds of death. That thing was going to be a literal beast for adventurers to fight. Ryan loved it.

The other reason Ryan loved his new creation was because its very size and mass meant it was the first thing adventurers would focus on when they entered the room. The zombie bear’s nightmarish visage ensured adventurers would be focused on fighting it, meaning they would leave themselves open to falling in Ryan’s traps, or being attacked by his good ol’ snakies. It was the perfect combination for the room, and he was extremely proud of it.

With his four entry rooms decided upon, Ryan returned to the fire room and began working on the second set of mobs.

The way he had designed his third floor was quite systematic. No matter which of the four elemental rooms adventurers chose to enter, the layout would be nearly identical. First, they would be greeted with a room containing both traps and mobs. A single doorway on the opposite side would be the only exit. The exit would lead into a hallway connecting to a second room. That room would have doors to the left and right of the adventurers, each leading to either a mob or trap room. Directly across from the entrance, hidden from sight, would be a third secret door that could lead to a treasure room. The treasure rooms had been Erin’s idea.

In essence, if Ryan were to make a map of his third floor, it would appear as if four large crosses made out of hallways and rooms surrounded the entry room which resided at the center of the third floor. The only exception to this layout was the fire room, which lay to the north of the entrance room. This section had the connection to Ryan’s boss room as well as a hidden door to a treasure room. All in all, aside from the entry room and boss room, Ryan’s third floor had a grand total of 20 rooms. Five fire rooms and a boss room to the north, 5 earth rooms to the west, 5 water rooms to the south, and 5 wind rooms to the east – with the single entrance room lying at the center.

Ryan had used 160 of his precious 580 points, and with his 100 set aside for skeletal fight club, he only had 320 points for the other rooms. However, Ryan didn’t plan on filling all of the rooms with mobs – not yet, at least. In fact, four of the rooms now served as additional trap rooms, while four more were designated as secret treasure rooms. The secret rooms would offer up some neat loot – if adventurers discovered them, of course. Ryan still had to figure out how to set that whole system up, which was next on the to-do list.

Treasure rooms and loot would come later, though. He still had four more rooms to fill with mobs, and a total of 320 points set aside to do it. That made Ryan’s life, at least mathematically, quite easy. He could use 80 points for each room and hit the usage right on the mark. Irritatingly, though, the mobs he wanted to use for these rooms – armored skeletal mobs – cost 25 points apiece, which added up to 75 for three, or 100 for four. Not a nice round 80.

“Hey, Erin. Want to help me out here?” He was done making the tough decisions; it was time to call in backup. Another opinion should be helpful, though it was sometimes hit or miss with his beloved Erin. He was still hoping she’d come up with decent name choices for his new mobs. Ryan was not going to call his zombie bear ‘zombie bear.’ That would just be stupid.

“Oh, time to name mobs?” She perked up, but he sent her a mental head shake.

“Not yet. I need help figuring out the last mobs to summon. Originally, I wanted each of these four rooms to have the same types of mobs.” Ryan quickly flashed to each of them: four identical rooms, all with a stone pillar in the middle, atop which sat a skeleton key. These were the key rooms, where adventurers would have to fight off tougher mobs in order to capture the key for their boss fight. There were actually eight pillar rooms, since the other four – the ones that just contained traps – had the option to hold skeleton keys as well. Ryan intended to change it up randomly; the adventurers were getting quite good at drawing maps of his dungeon, which he felt was cheating.

“How many points do you have left?”

“Can’t you just—” Ryan paused, realizing he hadn’t summoned his level triangle during this current mob-summoning process. He had gotten used to keeping mental track of his mob costs and available points. The fairy had no such way of keeping track. With a mental facepalm, he summoned his level triangle. On it, the number 420 shone.

“Four hundred and twenty points remaining? So, just put in one hundred points’ worth of mobs in each. That should be easy right?”

“Well, yes, especially since the armored skeletons cost twenty-five points each.” That would also let him cycle through what types of armored skeletons were summoned in each of the rooms, but alas, he loved making his life difficult, didn’t he?

“But I want to save a hundred or so points for skeletal—" He paused as Erin’s face lit up. “—er, you know what.”

The fairy shot him a glare. He had just stolen her chance to correct him.

“So, you have, what, three hundred and twenty points?” She held up her hands and started ticking off on her fingers, her mouth silently counting as she did. “Which means eighty points per room?”

Ryan sent her a mental nod, then turned back to the task at hand. After all, creating mobs, though stressful, was one of his favorite parts of being a dungeon core.