Chapter 54: Dungeon management
We headed home, Aeldrya grumbling every step of the way. By the time we finally arrived there, she looked utterly defeated. She was still terribly upset, mind you, but it seemed she had lost her will to fight for the time being. We ended up standing quietly at the entrance of the dungeon. She stared at it for a good while, pale as a corpse, before she finally managed to utter the following words:
“We better hide this thing well.”
“Don’t worry about it. Placing a wardrobe in front of it will do the trick.”
The actual entrance to the dungeon was a few steps underground, and the opening in her basement leading to it was not particularly large, so unless someone was specifically searching for it, the chances of someone stumbling into it were slim at best.
“I’m not so sure about that… “
“Whatever, let’s just have a look inside.”
Aeldrya had shown up before I got a proper chance to tinker with the dungeon itself, so I was very much looking forward to having a proper look at it to see how it had turned out.
“Fine, let’s do this…“ she conceded
The three of us stepped into the chamber I created earlier and headed directly for the entrance of the dungeon. Soon, we were greeted by the sight of the distinctive shiny bricks, and with huge excitement and anticipation we stepped inside the dungeon, and what we found inside was hugely… disappointing.
“Is this all?” Aeldrya asked.
There was literally nothing there. Absolute nothingness. From the entrance, a 10-meter-long corridor led us to nothing. A wall. A dead end.
“What the actual fuck… Dungeon!”
Dungeon:
Name: Nameless
Level: 1 | Upgrade points: 0/20000
Dungeon points: 5627
Abilities: Create entrance Create Monster Create room
_________________________
‘What’s the meaning of this? Nothing changed at all since I created it!’
I opened the dungeon management panel, then the dungeon map. It showed my position inside the dungeon, but besides the narrow corridor connected to the entrance, it was completely empty.
“It looks like I’m going to have to build it from scratch…”
“Well that’s just great. I’m in dire need of sleeping, so I’m gonna hit the sack. For the love of everything that’s holy, please no more wrecking my house, causing quakes, making loud noises, or doing anything that can disturb my sleep. Just… let me sleep in peace.”
Aeldrya sighed heavily as she started to plod towards her room.
“Hold on!”
I stopped her before she could leave
“Before you leave, could you lend me your mana?”
Her purple eyes, usually so bright, stared at me devoid of all life. Still, she placed her hand on me and transferred all her mana without complaints. I immediately converted it into dungeon points and for my efforts I achieved an outstanding… 16 points… How underwhelming.
“Was that all? That was a rather unimpressive amount of mana…”
She grabbed me, used all her remaining strength to throw me against the wall, and then left without speaking a word.
“Someone’s in a bad mood today… Well, whatever, let’s see if I can figure out how this works.”
With the dungeon map still opened, I selected the ‘Create Room’ option. I wanted to learn the ins and outs of each option before I made any final decisions.
‘Helpy, you’re up. Enlighten me. ‘
[Create Room (10+): Create a new room or alter an existing one. The cost increases with the area of the room.]
«Alright then, let’s start small. Let’s create a 15 square meter room. »
I selected the option, and the dungeon map lit. A red square appeared and started blinking. It acted as a sort of placeholder for the room, and I was able to freely move it around to change its placement. Even though I started out with a 15 square meter room, increasing the size, decreasing it, or even changing the shape of the room was straightforward, and I could do it at will. I tinkered with it for a bit, until I finally decided to place the room on one side of the corridor. When the pointer and the corridor connected, the former turned green. Simple enough.
‘It suddenly feels like I am playing one of those block-based building games. Well, let’s start from the beginning, shall we? Let’s create a grand reception hall for the dungeon. Will 50 square meters be enough?’
The square grew larger in size, and I placed it right in front of where I was standing. The wall in front of me started glowing and I realised that a progress bar had suddenly shown up in the map next to my new room. According to it, it would be ready in 8 hours.
‘What? Is this one of those old real time war games? The hell…’
Since there was nothing I could do about it, I started looking into the other options that were available on the panel.
[Create entrance (5000 + 5000): Create an entrance that connects one of the rooms in the dungeon with any place in the world. You must place an entrance inside the dungeon itself, another one outside, and then connect the both of them.]
I gave that a try, and a red rectangle-shaped figure appeared, its size about the same as the area I was in. I tried to place it all over the dungeon, but no dice, it never turned green. I guess there wasn’t enough space left in the dungeon for an entrance. Well, no big deal, not for the time being anyway.
‘Whatever, I will figure it out someday if I really need this..’
There was one last thing I wanted to know about.
[Upgrade points: Dungeon points can be converted into dungeon experience. Increasing the level of the dungeon unlocks new options and improves the dungeon efficiency. The exchange ratio is 1 to 1.]
‘Alright, that sounds interesting. Seems like increasing its level would be a good idea.‘
I had nothing better to do for the time being, so I decided to convert my leftover points into dungeon experience instead of just mindlessly accumulating them. After all, I did not know whether there was a limit to how many points I could stockpile.
Dungeon:
Name: Nameless
Level: 1 | Upgrade points: 5000/20000
Dungeon points: 143
Abilities: Create entrance Create Monster Create room
_________________________
‘So now I have this to worry about, on top of my own status…. Fortunately for me, they are independent from each other.‘
I noticed that the progress bar for the room was filling steadily, although at a very slow rate.
“Limy, it doesn’t seem like we can do much here for the upcoming 8 hours…”
I had made up my mind. It was time for me to do some levelling up so I could get my hands on some more mana that I could convert into dungeon points.
‘If I level up, I get more mana, and the more mana I have, the more dungeon points I can get.’
My level was still on the low side, and Limy’s wasn’t much better either.
‘Leveling up is such a nuisance though, even more so when several people need leveling. Now that I think about it, if two or more people are fighting the same monster, how is experience distributed? Is the one who lands the killing blow getting all of the experience?’
[Experience is distributed based on the contribution to the battle]
…Well, it was both pleasant and disappointing to know that. At the very least it meant one could level up as a party, but it left out the option of extorting someone high level to take care of leaving the monsters half dead and allowing you to deal the last blow. Surely that was a shame… I couldn't take advantage of Aeldrya.
“It’s settled then! Let’s go hunting, Limy!
“Understood, master.”
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone