Alistair stood there looking at the Magma Elemental, and for some reason it felt like the Mana Monster was trying to taunt him. Sure the monster was just watching him move back and forth on the ledge, but knowing that Alistair had caused a Wild Mana Monster to be born made him feel as if the Elemental was his personal enemy. Callum appeared in a flash of light and the ball of fire began to speak. “My lord, it was amazing I just received a flood of information about Spell Construction! I feel like I am going to burst with all this knowledge. It feels… Ummmmm My Lord is everything ok?”

Alistair turned to Callum and merely pointed to the Elemental. “What is it doing, Callum?”

Callum took a moment to stare at the monster before answering. He simply bobbed up and down once, before starting, “Well my best analysis is that it is cycling magma through its being, capturing defined fire mana and growing stronger. When I first captured the mana monsters matrix, I started to absorb facts about the monster and what would be needed for its evolution. A Magma Elemental comes from the God Plane of Fire, and guards the borders against the Goddess Plane of Earth. Its best environment is a place that had defined threads of Fire and Earth mana that can be absorbed into its matrix. Its most logical instinct is to absorb those types of Mana Threads till it can grow into a boss Elemental. Once done it will began to breed and send out additional minions under its control. Now, using my new found knowledge, the Summoning Circle has a higher chance of catching defined mana threads in the environment then the Elemental. If we don’t do anything, I would say that in about a month the Elemental will be able to assume its boss form and began to breed new Elementals. If we can defeat the Fire Wisp, then we can be in direct competition for mana resources against the Elemental. That will give us another month or two before it evolves. Assuming we can get the beetle and salamander, I feel confident that we can give ourselves another four months or about half a year before the Elemental evolves.”

Alistair stayed quiet for a moment thinking over the plan. Everything that he and Callum discussed in the pocket dimension showed sound reasoning and hadn’t change even with the Elemental making its home in front of Alistair. First, Alistair called up his Soul Page to look at the new spell but noticed a few other things as well.

Soul PageExp till Next Level:100/1000SkillsSkill Name:Mana Monster SummoningSkill Level:0, 20%SpellsSpell Name:Summoning Circle CreationSpell Mastery:0, 20%Spell Name:Summon Spell CompanionSpell Mastery:0, 50%Spell Name:+1 DamageSpell Mastery:0Spell Cost:10 manaSpell Description:You have learned your first Spell! As a Dungeon Demon the only spells you can learn are those on enchanted items. +1 Damage is a common enchantment that is given to weapons. The enchantment strengthens the weapon using ambient mana. First, it increases Damage output by 1.5X, the same as if the weapon had been forged using better materials for damaging edge/part. Due to the damage enhancement being magical, the spell gives the weapon a 50% change of damaging purely mana creatures. Lastly the weapon has an increase durability as the enchantments mana is used to take damage prior to the physical material being damaged. As a demon your claws will receive the bonus of casting the spell. If you wish to make this spell permanent, place it on a weapon and give it to mana monsters loot table in which it has a 33% or greater drop rate. Otherwise the spell will last ten minutes.

It seemed that not only had Alistair received the 100 Experience Points and new spell, but had increased his skill levels in Mana Monster Summoning and his two other spells. Thinking over his new spell, he spoke to Callum. “Alright lad, looks like we might have a spell that can damage the Fire Wisp. The plus one damage spell will increase the damage on my claws and give me a 50% of actually damaging it. Why don’t you tell me what to expect when we summon this thing.”

Callum bobbed again and spoke, “Hmmmmmm, yes, the spell should work. The fire wisp’s only defense and offense is it’s fire aura. Even though you have fire resistance, you have yet to fully develop into a Fire Mephit, so expect some pain. The fire wisp usually needs a large area for it to dodge. This is mainly due to its pulse or blink ability requiring several feet to work. My guess is that, sense the circle will shrink you both slightly, that the wisp will not be given it enough room to dodge. So my thoughts are get close to the wisp and start swiping your claws across it. What are your thoughts?”

Alistair began to jump up and down and stretch out his arms and legs. Even though Callum had basically stated that this was a simple win, Alistair was refusing to take the chance of failure. “Alright Callum, I agree with you. It doesn’t seem like a super strong creature and with the spell active, I should have a chance of killing it. So let me cast the spell and then I will look at you, nodding at that point, to give me the prompt to summon the Fire Wisp.” Callum simply bobbed up and down in response and went over to north circle outside of the main one. Alistair stopped jumping around for a moment and let his heart beat calm down.

Closing his eyes, Alistair focused on the spell that he just learnt. Slowly the fog of his mind cleared and an imaginary image of the weaver’s hut showed a new tapestry of sword and axe in the middle. The arcane script around the tapestry slowly started making sense to him. The script was made in the universal language of runes, and each word wasn’t just a sound but a movement associated with it. It was strange that his mind could understand the language when earlier it just looked like scribbles to him, but the realization came that the Runes were meant to be read when one was channeling mana. He slowly got into position for the first word. Lacing his fingers and shoving his left hoof forward allowed him to speak. The next position came and then the next. Alistair finally understood why the runic language was used to teach Spells. One, it required mana to be able to read it. Two, the image that the rune carve into Alistair mind included hooves. It was just as likely that if he was human the image would be of feet. Somehow, mana and runes acted in concert with one another to transmit the information to individuals trying to learn new spells.

Unlike the other two spells Alistair had casted, he could feel the one he just learned was different. Apparently, reading the language and making the poses were two different things. He felt that small movements were just not quite perfection, and as such one of the aspects of the spell was subtlety being altered. As the mana left his body to fill in the spell matrix, Alistair felt his claws began to harden in magical density. However, he also felt how thin the spell matrix was in places. Realizing that not all magic was instinct and that he would have to practice his new spell. He examined the enchantment in his mind. It seemed that the spell had succeeded but instead of a relative fast mana recovering and decent damage absorption both were weaker then what the spell should have been. As such Alistair was fine facing the Fire Wisp, but anything else he needed to think about recasting the spell.

Alistair opened his eyes and checked his claws, and the only difference he could see was blue points of light seemed to glitter within them. Alistair nodded at Callum and a prompt came up asking him if he wanted to summon a Fire Wisp. Pressing Yes, Alistair felt the drain of mana coming from his body and saw a golden light seem to burst forth from the inlayed Summoning Circle. Alistair felt the world grow bigger as he shrunk by an inch. The Fire Wisp appeared approximately three inches from him in the Summoning Circle.

Just as the blue summoning mana faded, Alistair took a step forward and swung with all his might. His claws passed through the wisp like nothing was there, and Alistair began to feel heat upon his skin. It was like being in the desert at noon, as the sun beat down on you and the sand began to build up huge amounts of heat. Quickly, Alistair slashed again with his left hand, putting wild strength in it. Alistair stumbled once again as his claws went through nothing, and a seed of doubt began to cross his mind. What if the spell had been altered lowering his chances of successful attack? The heat blasted him and he could feel the skin of his flesh began to steam as his natural fire resistance was overloaded. With no other choice to be made Alistair swung again, he swiped at where his neck would have been on the creature carrying through to the hip. His doubt quickly dissipated, as he slowly felt his claws dig into something. The feeling was like dragging his hand through superheated water. Perhaps it was his bad luck that he didn’t connect the first three times, but his next two swings also did damage to the Fire Wisp. The wisp seemed to be weak and almost on deaths door, trails of claw marks appeared through its body as harsh orange energy against the pale red light it usually emitted. His next swipe missed, but the follow up strike did enough damage that the Fire Wisp exploded in blue mana. At first the blue mana began circling around and around till finally it soaked into Alistair’s body, and Event prompt came up.

Event!You have captured your first Mana Monster!Today you have started the long task of building your dungeon. With the capture of a Fire Wisp your spell Mana Monster Summoning Spell has been altered to show all the monsters you are able to summon. In addition, the first time battling a Mana Monster you will receive Experience Points. The Experience Points from a Fire Wisp is 1. Talk with your Spell Companion on setting the loot table for the monster prior to summoning. Advancement of your spell mastery has increased by 10%. In order to evolve your creature you must reach Spell Mastery Level 2.

Alistair took a moment to review the prompt and then dismiss it. He was a bit tired and could feel the heat coming off of his skin like a harsh sun burn. Yet he smiled at his success, the fire wisp was his. True it wasn’t a tough fight but then again he was going to wait and recast his plus one damage spell before proceeding to fight the Fire Salamander. Looking over at Callum the fire ball was bobbing up and down wildly. Yelling in joy every time the ball seemed to hop up. “Callum?” Alistair said without getting any noticeable result from the ball. “CALLUM!” The ball stopped bobbing and seemed to have quieted itself down. “I know it’s exciting that you have your first Mana Monster to play with, but I need your help now. I received a prompt about setting the creature’s loot table before summoning. Why do I need to do that?”

Having calmed down, Callum seemed to turn in his circle and another Prompt came up.

Loot Table for Fire WispTotal Required Summoning Mana2Current Loot Table0.1% Chance of dropping a Mana StoneAdditional Items10% Chance of dropping a Single Dungeon Copper CoinPress any additional items you would like to add to the loot table. Warning! Monster has less then a 1% Drop rate. Cannot be summoned without increasing loot table.

Callum came over to the prompt and began to speak. “The true nature of loot and why monsters have to drop it is only known by the General Help Aspect. However, I do know some important facts. When a Mana Monster dies a part of the Mana used to create it is placed into Experience Points, another part is given back to the environment, and the rest goes into making loot. Now with Wild Mana Monsters like the Elemental over there, if only some of the mana went into experience points and nothing else, the environment could create another Elemental in a short time. Anyway, the loot table acts as a stop gap from the world creating Mana Monsters constantly. By putting the mana into an object, it becomes stable for a time and the Mana Monsters have to find another birth place. Since, the Fire Wisp is such a low mana cost, it can’t even create a simple coin from the portion of mana that it gives up. So the environment absorbs the mana for a little while waiting to see if more Fire Wisps are killed. If more are, then eventually a coin drops. If none are, then the Summoning Circle gets the unused mana since the kill occurred in a dungeon. I would suggest highlighting the chance for a coin and then summoning five Fire Wisps, My Lord.”

Alistair looked over at Callum for a moment, it was almost as if the ‘My Lord’ bit was added on at the end for his sake. Eyeballing him, Alistair tapped the chance for a coin. The prompted changed slightly, asking if he wanted to set the coint to the creatures loot table and he pressed Yes. The prompt disappeared, but Alistair wasn’t complete sure about why he only needed to summon five of the Wisps. “Callum, something isn’t making sense. Why don’t I summon twenty of the wisps, hunt them down with my claws and gain experience? It may sound boring, but Adventurers grind creatures for experience all the time to increase their level.”

Callum shook and then spoke, “You’re forgetting that you are a Dungeon Demon. You only gain experience by capturing a Mana Monster. Once they are summoned and you kill them, the mana just gets absorbed back into the summoning circle. As far as summoning twenty of the Wisps… well technically you could. It would generate mana in the Summoning Circle faster, but the dungeon wouldn’t support it. See they can only go within 300 feet of the summoning circle, by creating a whole bunch of them, its like creating a whole bunch of rabbits in a field… ok no don’t get example. Alright, its like a whole bunch of Adventurers in one level of a dungeon. Now, all those Adventurers want loot and Experience Points, but there are only so many monsters. So after a while they get bored and start killing each other, until monsters start appearing again. Of course, since it takes some time for them to be summoned perhaps the adventures kill too many of themselves. So in the end, the dungeon produces more monsters that are being killed by the Adventurers…. My Lord are you ok?”

Alistair shook his head a bit, realizing that dungeon management was fairly complex. As an Adventurer all he ever needed to do was swing his sword and kill a monster. Now, it seemed his life would be taken up with Management tasks. Deciding not to argue with the spell aspect, mainly because he hadn’t really understood the point that Callum was trying to make. He cleared his mind and instinctively activated the spell Summon Mana Monster. As his hands and hooves moved on their own, until there came a critical point as to what monster he was going to summon. Moving his hands in the runes of Fire Wisp the creature began to take form in his summoning circle, growing larger and larger. He could hear Callum trying to talk, but the spell required his complete focus. As the small amount of mana leeched out of him, Alistair saw his first mana monster slowly rise from the summoning circle and its light fade in and out as it moved about the dungeon.

Callum floated up to Alistair’s right side and spoke, “Ahhhh, now that you have summoned the first Fire Wisp do you want me to operate the Summoning Circle for you and set the amount of Fire Wisps?”

Author’s note: Yeap…. Not a very interesting fight. I promise the Fire Salamander will be a bit more of a challenge. This was just to get things in the dungeon started.