After my talk with the Gods of this new world concluded, which just involved outlining a few of the key details and responsibilities of what they needed of me, I agreed to become their first and a rather unique dungeon core. My spiritual body slowly began to dissolve and condense into a much smaller crystalline form, and consciousness dimmed until I blacked out and my new form was complete.
When I began to wake, I took in my new surroundings with determination brewing inside of me. Unfortunately, it almost immediately blew out like a candle in the wind as I was stuck deep in the earth surrounded by nothing but soft mud and the occasional rock...more likely stones and not rocks. I couldn’t have been a very big crystal, so the ‘rocks’ around me couldn’t be that big either.
My perception of the world was to be as I expected, 360 degrees all around me in a sphere. All the dungeon core novels I had read in my previous life pointed to this being the case, but until I was here, I had no idea what exactly to expect. Thankful that all the reading I had done wasn’t completely useless to me in this situation. Hopefully that, along with my experience running tabletop games, would let me build the ideal dungeon to for both challengers of the civilised races and the different havens I was supposed to make for the various monster races.
‘Right’, I thought to myself, ‘first thing’s first. Status.’
Name: Pending Selection
Specices: Dungeon Core
Sub-Species: Monster Haven
Level: One
Core Rank: F-0%
Monster specialisation: N/A
Mana: 1000
Passive Mana Regeneration: 100 Per Day
Mob Patterns: Goblin, Lizard Folk, Gnoll, Kobold.
Upgrade List
As I began to give my status sheet a quick look over, a loud chime interrupted my train of thought.
You have been granted blessings by the Gods of this world.
Divine blessing of Magic. You are able to freely manipulate each of the elements and concepts of mana. You may imbue any mob, monster or core with a compatible element to either give them an affinity for that type of mana or to create a magical elemental variant of that species.
Divine blessing of Life and Death. You are able to manipulate mob and monster patterns, grant true life to your creations by granting them True Souls, and keep the personalities and souls of those in your service upon their deaths and re-create or re-summon them. The personalities of the mobs or monsters you summon or create will be saved upon their deaths and may be restored. Your creations will be more intelligent than other dungeon mobs. They will be fully sentient but cannot reach sapience without your assistance. Your creations can breed among themselves. Those that are born in this manner mature rapidly.
Divine blessing of the Earth, Sea and Sky. You are able to terraform any environment you so wish for both dungeon floors and the Havens you create. You will have free control of the environment in any dungeon floor and Haven you create. You will be able to set up a full working ecosystem within your dungeon floors and Havens.
Divine blessing of Innovation. You are able to create basic items; currency, clothing, gear etc without needing an example with basic materials without absorbing a pattern for them. You are able to study and recreate any items that are left in your influence. You are able to design and create new patterns for items and traps, once the design has been proven to be stable and will function as originally intended.
You have received a message from the God of Magic.
Good day to you. I hope the transition to a core was more pleasant than when we brought you to our realm. The blessings you have received are gifts from us to give you the best odds we can give you to perform the tasks we have given to you. The available monster patterns we gave you to start are the species that are the closest to becoming extinct at the F-Rank. Every time you rank up, we will grant you additional patterns of those that require the most extreme assistance from you.
I wish you the best of luck in this endeavour.
I just blinked rapidly at that, or at least I did the mental equivalent of that. My mind was just...totally blank as I read through everything that had just been dropped on me.
‘And all I had wanted to do was give my status sheet a quick check.’ I said ruefully to myself. With a small chuckle I started to think about my current situation and how to improve it.
As I had already noted, my surroundings weren’t much more than simple earth and stone. My sense of scale thankfully automatically corrected itself as I took everything around me in. My crystal itself was a bloodstone, coloured perfectly crimson to match the namesake of my new stone type. I was cut into an icosahedron, which gave me an internal chuckle. A guy who was a former tabletop game master turned dungeon core in the shape of a D20. I was roughly two feet across all dimensions. The recognition of my own size made me realise that some of those stones around me where a lot bigger than I had originally thought, some being small rocks and even a boulder behind me.
After I knew what was in my immediate vicinity, I started to go through what I should start doing. Everything I knew of dungeons was from the literature of my world, but I had no idea how much of that would translate into actual abilities and how to use them. My mind began racing with multiple ideas on how to begin. I forcefully stopped myself and tried to pull in a deep breath out of habit, despite not feeling the need to do so once. To my utter astonishment I felt something flowing into me.
Startled, I gave a short and slightly panicked exhale, expelling whatever I had just taken in along with a small extra amount. As I did, my sphere of perception increased in all directions by a few inches. It wasn’t much, but it also didn’t feel like I had done that much to get this small gain either. Confused at what just happened, I took a quick look at my status sheet again. My mana had gone down by 20 points. Putting two and two together, I was able to determine that what I had ‘inhaled’ was mana from the surrounding area, and when I ‘exhaled’ it took all that and more. It seemed that the mana that I released from my core went into my surroundings and added to my sphere of perception, or I supposed my influence.
Elated at my discovery, I started to pull in the mana in my surroundings and pushing out the mana in my core in equal measure. I had no idea what would happen if I ran out and I had no desire to test that that any time soon.
Time lost all meaning as my influence began to expand. At times I would push out more mana when I could feel that I was close to something, such as the iron vein that I came across somewhere below me. It wasn’t until I could see a beam of light piercing my influence that I stopped my expansion efforts. My mind became inundated with all the area I know controlled. ‘I must have really lost track of time to have 500 feet of influence in every direction.’
Information blossomed in my mind of everything that my mana touched; the different types of stone and rock, the few mineral deposits and ore veins, the composition of the soil and even the odd natural gemstone or three. Admittedly none of it made too much sense to me, I was hardly a geologist before I died. Thankfully I could still make use of all the material and recreate it, even if I didn’t truly understand everything beyond knowing what it was and made up of.
With so much area to work with, I started planning out the first floor of my dungeon. With four different monsters to work with, I wanted to give each of them a place without one outshining the other. If I made a simple first floor, several rooms with basic hallways connecting them together I could have each room with a different type of monster, but that felt truly uninspired. If I was to be the first dungeon on this world, and a unique one at that, then I wanted to leave my mark on all those who would visit my depths.
I started to carve out the first room to act as an entry way to the rest of my dungeon. A small square room of 20-foot dimensions and standing 12 foot tall. No monsters would be present in this first room, but it would lead to different areas inhabited by my four monster species. I then carved out five doors, two on each side of the room placed 8 feet away from each other. The fifth door was carved directly into the middle of the back wall. The plan was to carve out four different wings, one for each of my monsters. Since it was only the first floor they wouldn’t be overly long, just five rooms each with a mini boss at the end of the wing. The fifth door would hold the boss chamber, and to gain entry would require the delvers to complete the four wings in a single delve. The boss would be a squad composed of mini boss level monsters of each race. How I would do that, I would leave until I had a chance to look over the patterns for each.
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I started to carve out the bones of each wing. The first door on the left-hand wall would lead to the goblins wing. I made a hallway 6 foot long and 3 foot wide, just enough for someone to walk through comfortably. I followed that with a 40-foot square room to be populated and decorated at a future date. I then simply recreated this setup another four times. First floor and all, no need to be overly complicated. I then decided to just repeat this process for the wings for the kobolds, gnolls and lizard Folk. The final boss chamber I made into a 60-foot square room to give the extra space for what I had hoped would lead to better fights.
After I had the bones of my first floor set up, I figured it was time to move on to populating it. So, I went to pull up the pattern for the goblins...and my heart was broken at the sight. goblins in literature on my world were never the most handsome creatures, nor the most imposing either. I had expected a pattern of a creature that would stand about three and a half to four feet tall, with green skin, long pointed ears, clawed fingers and toes with wiry muscles. What I saw instead was a hunched back creature, barely two feet tall covered in boils and disfigured lumps of muscle and meat. Their skin was stretched thin over brittle bones and withered muscles.
I could not believe what I was seeing. As I delved further into the pattern, I was able to find the reasons for such deformities. It was due to inbreeding. The number of goblins must have been terribly low for several years since for these deformities to become the norm of the race.
I immediately began to remedy this poor state. I reversed the issues caused from the inbreeding, bringing the pattern back to its original state. Then I began the improvements. Nothing too drastic, I wasn’t trying to turn them into new creatures, just make them better versions of what they already were. I removed the hunch in their spine and increased their standard height to four foot tall. I strengthened their skeletal structure to match those of humans, added extra muscle mass and then condensed them for improved power and endurance without making them overly bulky. Their skin tones were made into a more pleasing forest green from the rather unfortunate puke-like green, both to make them more appealing and for better camouflage in forested areas. The claws on their fingers and toes reinforced to make them into viable natural weapons. Eyes were given catlike lenses in the back so that they could see in low light environments and coloured a beautiful gold. Ears shortened to reduce the unnecessary flopping but not enough to reduce the sharp sense. Teeth were sharpened and turned fang like for both weapons and give them better ways to devour the meat their carnivorous diets demanded. Digestive systems reinforced so that they would be able to eat any meat, other than what is completely rotting, without dying in the process and gaining a decent amount of protein from it.
They looked both healthier and much more dangerous than before. I then looked towards the more specific gender modifications. The females were given a much more robust reproductive system, able to bear more than one child at once with little to no complications for both mother and child. They also would be able to have children much more often. Goblins were rapid breeders, and I wasn’t going to detract from what they are. The males just got a minor boost to fertility that would only go into effect when the females went into heat.
I was about to summon a pair of them...before coming to the realisation that I had no bloody clue how to. A quick check of my status sheet did not hold any immediate answers, but a deeper dive into the mob pattern section brought up an answer.
In order to create a mob, you must focus your mana to a certain point to create a mob core. Once you have the mob core, visualise the pattern of the mob over the core and push the required mana into the pattern to bring it to life. This will vary depending on the selected pattern. To create an Elite variant layer two mob cores onto each other. This will make the selected pattern slightly stronger but add no additional benefits, move sets or abilities. To create a mini-boss variant layer three mob cores onto each other. This will make the selected pattern stronger and may add an additional ability based upon arena, elemental alignment or given equipment. To create a boss variant layer five mob cores on top of each other. This will make the selected pattern much stronger, grant new abilities or move sets and may produce new variants that may be recreated at a weaker level.
‘Well, that answered just about every question I could have had on mob creation.’ I chuckled to myself and spun up two mob cores. I then brought up the pattern for a male and female goblin onto each of the cores. It cost 25 mana each for the Goblins and 5 mana for the cores, which was much more economical than I was expecting and happy for it. In only a few more moments the two new and improved goblins took their first breathes. As they started to look around the first room in the wing my thoughts were interrupted by a high pitched *DING*
You have modified and improved upon a monster's pattern. Would you like to set this pattern as the new racial standard?
Of course I selected the yes prompt.
You have earned the title Father of Monsters.
You have modified, improved and set a new standard for a monster pattern in a way that will give them a greater chance of survival in this world.
You have been rewarded with 3000 EXP and 20% core improvement to your current rank.
You have levelled up to level 4.
Mobs may be created up to level 4.
You have been granted 3 upgrade points.
As I was reviewing the large number of notifications that bombarded my mind, the goblins were checking out the room they were in as well as each other. And it was at that moment, the same time as the male grew an erection and the female went into heat, I realised I had made a mistake.
‘Okay...I need to make clothes for my creations and figure out how to make them spawn with them already on.’ I crafted two basic pairs of leather trousers, and a chest wrap with some rabbit fur inlaid for the female. I left them nearby for them to put on once they...were finished with what they were doing.
I moved on to populating the rest of the goblin wing. Thankfully it was a simple affair to add the clothing to the goblin pattern as standard, so I wasn’t subjected to several nude goblins running around and screwing each other. I placed a total ten goblins in the first room, twelve in the second room, fourteen standard goblins with an elite goblin leading them, eighteen standard and two elite goblins in the fourth room, and in the final room I placed four elites with a mini-boss leading them. The elites were a slightly taller and a little more muscular but didn’t seem much more impressive so far. The mini boss on the other hand stood a further six inches taller, the muscles bulged slightly and the look in his eyes was much more focused and intense.
As the goblins were acclimatising to their, admittedly rather bland and bare environment, I started to work on their equipment. Couldn’t have them going to fight bare handed with tiny claws, right? Thanks to my Divine Blessing of Innovation, I had access to the basic weapon and armour patterns which I could reward as loot or arm with mobs with. I forwent the armour for the basic mobs but decided to make a variety of basic iron weapons; daggers, short swords, axes, spears, maces, buckler shield and short bows. I ordered the Goblins of the first two rooms to arm themselves however they wished. To the elites I gave them each a standard leather chest piece for armour. The one in the third room I gave an arming sword and a wooden heater shield, the two in the fourth room were given a pair of war single sided war axes and a recurve bow. The mini boss was outfitted in full leather armour, minus helm, and a two-handed warhammer. The four elites he was with were armed with a long spear, another recurve bow, a pair of daggers and an axe and shield combination.
The goblins were just finishing up arming and armouring themselves when we had our first visitors, and it took my complete surprise. In my desire to create my floor, I had forgotten that I had reached the surface via a cave and was open to the world.
My attention was immediately drawn to the commotion pouring into the antechamber. There was a party of fifty unkempt and ratty looking men with chipped and rusted weapons chasing down a mixed group of thirty or so beasts. A mixture of wolves, bears and panthers.
Time to see how my new and improved goblins took to combat.
