Chapter 7 -Expansion

Day 6

For his to hallway to the next floor, Neo decided to go for a 20 degree slope that went further down in a semicircle. After expanding for 50 m², he decided he was deep enough. He thought about his options for a moment and came to the conclusion that the 550 m², he had left, were not enough for two real levels. He needed 50 m² for the next slope, and at least 25 m² for the dungeon room. His only creature with fighting capabilities was the wolf, unless he wanted to repeat his rabbit wave tactic.

Thinking about Luna he immediately dropped that thought. This meant he only had the wolves. Wolves hunted in a pack, so they needed space to surround their prey. Only spending 200 m² on this floor would get him nowhere. He decided to go for a 100 m² room for the entry. Then a small 50 m² for a small room with a pond to relax and for the finish a 250 m² sized room with enough space for a small wolf pack. Together with the slope to level three and the new dungeon core room, that left him with 75 m² for later use. When he was halfway finished with the slope to the third floor, Neo noticed a change in the ground. It was no longer dirt, sand and gravel but rather real stone what looked like granite. Thinking about his knowledge in geology, this should be good. If he remembered right, granite was an igneous rock which had a higher chance to contain useful metal ores than most other types of stone. When he tried to continue to expand his dungeon, he found no noticeable difference in the required energy between absorbing dirt or stone.

After a few hours work he was finished and moved his core to his new core room, together with Luna, the golems and his old body. Then the golems were ordered to go back for the rest of the stuff he didn't absorb. Luna wanted to bring all of the 78 rabbits with her to the new core room, but he was able to convince her to keep most of them on the first two levels. He didn't tell her that he wanted to use some of them as bait for predators near the dungeon entry. With the last 75 m² he decided to create a room next to the entrance were he would put some wolves as a strike team to kill dungeon intruders. He decided to leave the rest of the dungeon empty for now. His high mana regeneration would allow him to create some wolves long before somebody was able to reach the second level. After creating the strike team, he opened his status again and was met with a surprise.

Name: Neo

Species: Dungeon core

Affinity: None

Rank: F-1

Level: 3

Structural Integrity: 1/1

Mana: 522/522 (178)

Floor area: 700/700 m²

Max dungeon extension from core: 77 m

Mana Regeneration: 600 /h *50000% = 83.33 /s

Life Energy: 1

Life Energy generation: 1.58/d

His rank went up, but it was probably just showing the rank of his strongest creature. The surprise was the life energy generation. He concentrated on it trying to get more information like he did with his mana regeneration.

78 grey rabbits -> 0.78 LE/d

5 big bad wolfs -> 0.8 LE/d

This was very good news. It seemed like he could get life energy without killing creatures. This information was a game changer. With his high mana regeneration, it meant that it was not really necessary for him to kill as much adventurers as possible to level. Maybe it would better to help them improve rank, so that they spend as much time in the dungeon as possible. He decided to ask Luna for information.

"Luna it seems like I can gather life energy just by keeping living animals in the dungeon. Can you tell me more about it?"

"Of course, you get life energy from everything that is living in the dungeon. All living things radiate live energy. But it is very slow, it's much faster just to kill intruders."

"When I look at the values, the rabbits are giving me one hundredth of their life energy every day, the wolfs a little bit less. If every rank increase means an increase in life energy by the factor ten, would this mean, a living E0 would give me almost as much life energy every day as I would get by killing a G0."

"Yes, like I said it's very slow and boring."

"Great, so if I could convince an immortal to live in our dungeon it would be like killing an SS rank every day. Wait, then why don't I get live energy from my old body?"

"It has to show a basic amount of activity to radiate life energy. Your old body is shut down, it would be the same as if it was in hibernation."

"Ok, I can understand that, but what is with the golems? They are on the B rank, shouldn't I get life energy from them?"

"No, constructs are special, they don't contain life energy. The same goes for most undead I think."

"Too bad, if we could just somehow activate my old body, we could expand the dungeon in a rapid pace."

"No, you idiot that would be a catastrophy. A small core like yours cannot handle massive amounts of life energy! You would just melt or explode. You should never gather more than ten times of the life energy you need for your next level. To be safe you should not go over five times, even if you could get good skills earlier this way!"

"Ok I get it, but what do you mean with skills. The only skill I can get right now is the level up."

"After you reach level ten you can get access to more and more useful skills. It's always difficult to balance pros and cons between leveling up and getting skills."

"Good I will keep that in mind. For now, I will create some wolfves to increase life energy creation."

"Don't you dare to put them into the core room! Luna will kill every wolf she sees!"

"Ok, no wolfs on the third level. After that I will start exploring how to create the cutest rabbit there is!"

With this said, he just created fifteen more wolves. He didn't really care about them, he just wanted to increase his life energy creation, so he put them into his guard room. Later, a short look at his new status information brought him a good mood.

Name: Neo

Species: Dungeon core

Affinity: None

Rank: F-1

Level: 3

Structural Integrity: 1/1

Mana: 222/222 (478)

Floor area: 700/700 m²

Max dungeon extension from core: 77 m

Mana Regeneration: 600 /h *50000% = 83.33 /s

Life Energy: 1

Life Energy generation: 3.98/d

He closed his status window and decided to have a look into the creature generation. Instead of directly creating a new creature from his blueprints, he tried to first visualize a grey rabbit and then he tried making changes, like he did with his traps.

Soon he found out that he had only very little influence over the stats of the rabbit. He could make it a little bigger, but he could not change it to a 10 meter tall rabbit monster with a carbon fiber reinforced skin and big horns, at least for now. Maybe some training would give him more options, hell if there were no limits on creature modification, he wouldn't need to attract new creatures to get their blueprint. He could just start from a simple rabbit and create monstrosities that would be able to hunt dragons for food.

After dreaming a little bit about the limitless possibilities that might be available later, he went away from the larger modifications that could influence the stats of the creature to more cosmetic changes. There were much less restrictions here and after some tweaking he went for a rabbit with a longer and more fluffy fur, shorter arms and legs with bigger paws, larger ears and a slightly bigger head with larger eyes. Content with his design for now, he created it and had a look at its stats.

Gray Rabbit Prototype MK2

Created from a normal grey rabbit, this version is larger, more powerful and less stupid

Rank: G1

Traits: prolific breeder (rank 1); curious (rank 2); mana altered (rank 1)

Costs: 20 mana ; 2kg animal material

It surprised him that his new creation was no longer especially stupid. Maybe the larger head and brain were taking care of that. He did not know what the new mana altered trait meant, but it was not important right now. He commanded his new rabbit to hop to Luna and wake her up.

"Oh, so cute. What's his name?"

Thinking about it for a moment, Neo answered with the first name for a rabbit that came to his mind.

"Mr. Floppy"

"That's a weird name, but I like it. Mr. Floppy you will be Luna's mighty battle mount. Luna will train you and together we will fight mighty foes."

"Do you like him?"

But he didn't get an answer. He just saw the little fairy playing with the rabbit and ignoring him. He watched them for a while, before he decided to become productive again.