The epic battle between the vermin and my creatures continued while I stared at the door that slowly opened. Abandon the fight! Move my core back to its hiding spot! Man I need to find a better place for that. Oh and I need 3 mice to go distract whatever is opening that door! Don’t attack unless it does though, I only want it scared away!

Quickly a lot of things happen, the spiders throw one last line of webbing at the vermin and the mice, yes plural start to move my core. My core that is no longer the size of a small gem and closer now to a grape. When did that happen? Is it because of the mana? Or the upgrades? No matter, with my core safe again, we’ll safer I guess, I focus on what opened the door.

As soon as I started to look toward the door I heard a very loud scream. “Monsters!” And I saw a small figure dart back up the few steps it had taken down and closed the door, my mice only 5 steps below it squeaking loudly. Good boys! Great job keeping us safe! I didn’t get a good look but I swear it almost looked like an elf.

• • • • •

“There’s monster in the basement!” Screamed the little half elven girl running up to the oldest boy. “I saw it! There’s monsters!”

“Calm down” the boy said, he put his hands on her shoulders to calm her down, “ just tell me what happened” he tried to keep any worry out of his face. They barely had enough to get by as is, there’s no way they can deal with monsters now, much less hire someone to do it for them, adventurers we’re expensive most of the time.

“I heard a lot of noise coming from the basement so I thought I’d take a peek to see what was going on.” The little girl said with her head downcast, “ I swear I was only going to look and leave right away Tommy!”

The boy, Tommy, sighed “it’s ok this time, you know the basement can be dangerous but I suppose it’s good we know what’s going on down there. Now what happened exactly?”

“I saw some mice and spiders in a circle fighting a bunch of bug monsters! I saw something small and shiny in the middle but that’s all I saw before some mice…. They, they tried to eat me Tommy!” The girl started to cry.

Tommy gave the girl a gentle hug, “there, there. If it’s only that much maybe I can handle it with a little help. But you’ll have to stay upstairs for this okay Tiara?” Tommy pulled back and gave her a serious look.

“O-okay Tommy” tiara sniffled.

“Good, now we have to go get Sara and James” Tommy turned around heading toward a closet holding their worn practice swords and a shoddy shield James had made a few months back.

“It’s about time we get a chance to get some experience”

• • • • •

Ok so good new and bad news. Good news is that with all the new mama from the battle I can upgrade the mice again, and I get, an option? Rats or magic mice. Ok I don’t think that’s how that works, nice don’t just turn into rats, and what does it mean by magic mice? Can the do magic then? Would they be like enchanted with some sort of magic? I don’t like the sound of messing with any type of magic so soon so I guess we’ll go rats, keep it physical for now.

As I make my decision the mouse house changes to a rat den and the hole gets chewed wider by the newest little soldier of mine, ‘Rat- unassigned’

So I have to assign every new guy? Monster? I’ll just go with denizen. Pun intended. Well in my experience rats in RPGs anyway tend to get really big, and I don’t like big spiders, bigger usually means less venom. So the rat will be a ‘Rat guardian’.

Not long after I set the new denizen designation another rat crawls out, sigh this is going to take up a lot of my time. I focus on the new rat but it just scuttles off. Huh.

That must mean the first rat is special, I look at my guardian and he’s already looking a bit bigger. I’ll have to keep an eye on him.

My next focus is the spiders, maybe I’ll get a special spider bro to keep around, but before I can do much the door to the basement open again. And this time it’s not the little elf girl, but three older kids that can best be described as a human, a cat girl, and a lizard boy.

The girl I can only tell since she’s the only one wearing a top, the two boys only have some rags that pass as shorts. They all have some wooden swords and the lizard boy has what appears to be a very shoddy shield made from some wood held together by some rope. It’s not even solid but seems like it should at least act like some sort of protection.

They slowly make their way down the steps and I can’t help but wonder why they’re coming down. Where’s the adults? Are they here to get my core? Or just cull some monsters? Is experience a thing in this world?

Just asking myself questions won’t get me anywhere so I send a rat and two spiders to give them a little greeting, telling them not to hurt the kids too bad if they can help it, they’re just kids after all.

The trio notice the rat first and lizard boy jumps in front “get back!” He shouts.

“Be careful James,” says the human boy, “we need experience but we can’t afford any potions”

So the lizard is James. I make a mental note and tell the rat and spiders to give them a fight but not hurt them. I know it’s a bit weird but I guess I am a dungeon and kids shouldn’t be coming in Willy nilly like I’m a playground.

“I’ll weaken a spider for you Sara” says the human.

“I think I can handle a single spider Tommy” says the cat girl- Sara I suppose.

Tommy laughs “I suppose you can, ok then, James you keep the rat busy while we take out the spiders. Beat it if you can but if not we’ll help once we’re done” not bad kid.

James just grunts in response and suddenly shield tackles my rat, well not so much as tackle as charges forward. My rat jumped at him and James flung his arm out sending the rat flying away.

Sara meanwhile seems to be very dexterous and the spider can’t so much as land on her before being squished by her boot. “Didn’t even need the sword” she taunts toward Tommy.

Tommy finished his own battle with the other spider by squishing it mid air by smacking it with the sword like it was a baseball bat. “Yeah, yeah, just help James.”

With all three of them helping the poor rat didn’t stand a chance, so I ordered him to retreat. The kids all started laughing and cheering, “level one! I got it! I got a level!” Tommy yelled. The other kids revealed they also got a level and they seemed content and retreated back upstairs.

I was happy for them, but more so for the massive amount of mana I felt come in from the battle. And a new option popped up. Expand up?