The fight, while relatively short in comparison to past dungeon situations, lasted much longer than it should due to the annoyingly quick reproduction of the leaf muncher slimes. While the leaf muncher slimes were small, they multiplied at an exponential rate after feeding on mana from plants or unrelated slimes. The very fighters Doc used also served as a food for the mass horde.
Anadine took the lead, forming four tentacles on her head as she led the charge. Using her body’s flexibility, the blue slime whirled around like a tornado, using each tentacle to smash leaf muncher slimes into the ground where they were promptly engulfed and eaten. Knowing no fatigue or pain, Anadine cut a path through the growing swarm. There was no elegance to be found in her attacks, only brutal destruction. However, her form was sloppy, and she took many counter attacks from the leaf munchers she missed in her blind spots. Anadine pushed through the attacks, however, unfeeling as she was. Still, her speed did begin to ever so slowly decrease, and her slimes around her took more attacks.
Rowen, on the other hand, preferred to fight from the backlines. Chanting spells learned under his former existence, the lich slime cast spells of fatigue and slow upon the horde, weakening them until they were easy prey for the mindless mass. Rowen threw these spells with his own tentacles—two in the front for debuff spells and four in the back for long range artillery. With his magic slime brethren, spells of fire, ice, earth, and wind decimated every leaf muncher slime that dared to fly over the mass. Rowen hadn’t mastered his new body yet, and some of his spells misfired into allied slimes by mistake. Worse still, magic casters worked best as a team, but Rowen was the only caster with intelligence. He was forced to split his attention between his attacks and controlling the attacks of every other mage slime. It was possible in his current form, but the tactic did nothing against individual defense, and mage slime after mage slime died from being defenseless.
Doc did what he normally did, placing himself into a single slime and using it to attack. Upon his slime being devoured, he caused it to explode, taking every leaf muncher slime with him in a goo of glory. He’d then move into the next slime and repeat the attack. Out of the three commanders, Doc’s heartless tactics were the most effective, as it not only killed more leaf munchers but also denied precious food needed to reproduce. His attention more open now due to his success, Doc cast his eye on his two boss slimes and the way they fought.
Not heartless enough, he thought. Their troops are expendable. I can make as many as needed. Their troops need to kill as many as possible without feeding the enemy. Sacrifice them as needed. Unimportant.
Doc shook the body of his newest incarnation in confusion. He hadn’t been able to keep the thoughts out of his head. It wasn’t like him. Too dead. But he wasn’t wrong, was he? It wasn’t as if his slimes had—
Attack. Kill the enemy. Too many, being pierced. Darkness.
Orders received. Spell cast, unable to defend. Darkness.
Explosion. Ripped apart. Left behind. Darkness.
The feeling was back. Doc shivered in pain as he felt the brief memories of each slime flow through him. It was painful. Worse, he wasn’t done, and the pain would continue, for all of them.
The battle continued for an hour before the tides changed. Once the leaf munchers had finished off the plants on their side of the battlefield, they began to wane as the ability to lay eggs decreased. Slowly but surely, the dungeon-controlled slimes pushed back into the horde and devoured, smashed, burned, froze, and whacked every leaf muncher. Doc used his dungeon powers to sense every enemy slime, directing a small mass to kill each one. Only when his powers revealed the floor was clear did he unsummon the mass horde.
Anadine and Rowen, slimes as they were, still felt the mental fatigue of battle and fell asleep once they returned to the heart room. Doc returned his consciousness to his crystal, also feeling spent. The cold sweat hadn’t faded away yet.
“That was close,” he groaned to Claire, who had been watching the battle via Doc’s crystal. “Can you imagine what would have happened if they got out?”
“Nothing,” Claire answered calmly, rubbing her chin. “From what I saw, they only propagated so quickly due to the presence of your mana in every plant and slime. They used it to reproduce. Otherwise, it would have taken them much longer.”
“Wait, so I fought all those things for nothing?” Doc asked, a little annoyed.
“No,” Claire answered quickly. “Think for a second about what I said at the start of the battle. What would have happened if they had reached the heart room? They feed off mana, so if they reached your crystal...”
“That would have been bad,” Doc finished for her. “Well, great. I created a new slime that I can’t control and is liable to eat me out of house and home—literally. What a day.” The dungeon spirit couldn’t help but feel a little depressed. After all, he had had to expend most of the mana he had acquired over the last few days to finish off the enemy, the definition of wasting time and effort.
“That might not be the case, Doc. I see a lot of potential for this new slime,” Claire grinned knowingly. “This situation occurred because you were unfamiliar with a monster that possesses its own desires and needs. I think once you understand it, it will be a great start to your natural dungeon.”
“How so?” Doc asked.
“First, you’d regulate its breeding cycle and feeding schedule,” Claire listed. “After that, limit its areas to only parts of the dungeon forest. I think once you remove the slime’s inhibition on territorial instinct, you’ll find your own monsters will limit the number of munchers, especially the plant and flower slimes. They’ll really put a beating on anything that tries to eat their plant groves. Once you get that, we can work on adding a predator.”
“Will it really be that simple?” Doc couldn’t help but ask.
“No, but isn’t that the whole point?” Claire giggled. “This is all about discovery and creation! It’s a hot mess of mistakes, lessons, findings, and new paths. I can’t wait to get started!”
Chapter 7
Their conversation over, Claire left the heart room to inspect the dungeon battle aftermath and regrow the slain plant life on the second floor. Doc was left behind to ponder in his heart room, his mind dwelling on the battle and everything else. The only sounds in the room were of sleep coming from his drowsing dungeon bosses. He wasn’t sure where to begin with his thoughts.
How long had it been since he truly had time to think to himself? Ever since he had bonded with Claire, it had been one new thing after another, whether learning how to run the dungeon or tricks to staying alive when facing enemy forces. An entire year filled with action, adventure, and so much death.
Doc could remember when he first began, the aversion he’d had toward the killing. Funny, the idea seemed so foreign to him now. He’d gotten used to it: the deaths of adventurers, the death of his slimes, the death of his bosses. His mind was numb to it.
And yet, everything he did, it was to prevent his own death. His desperate actions, his daily actions, he did this all to survive. But, did he fear death?
To Doc, the answer had changed. It was different now. Somehow, the fear of the unknown had less and less effect on him. Doc knew what would happen when he died; he’d return to nothingness. A dungeon came into being from nothingness and would return to it upon death. Why was there a need to fear this? It wouldn’t be a painful process, after all. Dungeons were incapable of feeling pain.
Except... Doc’s spirit shivered at the memory of the cold, clammy feeling. It was the first real thing he’d ever felt. All his emotions, his fears, his desires—that had been sourced from what used to be at the center of his existence. With it gone, they all went away. Not quickly or at once, but slowly, carefully, disappearing from his existence. The artificial feelings were being replaced by Doc’s own. A genuine fear for existence had taken root.
As he’d been birthed with a human soul at his core, Doc’s character had been shaped around humanity. How
ever, it hadn’t taken properly, and his character lay undeveloped. He’d no need to grow with an already solid core which provided a baseline for everything. Humanity—it could do anything and provide reasons for everything. All the humans, they lived on a line of good and evil between two mirrors that reflected selfish and selfless behavior all within the pull of order and chaos. Any action he did was justified by this principle. Murder was now self-defense, greed was self-reliance, and torture was tedious, but acceptable.
Doc was now free of this trap, this box, this worldly one-sided view. He was finally held accountable by his very self. Yet it was everything he knew, so how could he fully escape it? He wasn’t the only one trapped after all here in the dungeon. He couldn’t help but examine each of his slumbering bosses.
Ayla and Aisha, the worg twins and the first outside members to join his dungeon. They had been young pups when their mother brought them to Doc, using the last of her power to enter a covenant with Doc. She turned herself into pure mana for Doc to absorb, and he swore to watch over them. The symbol of this agreement was her skull, which to this day stood watch over the dungeon entrance as a cold, dead reminder of family sacrifice, though in retrospect, it was a virtue unenforced.
The Twins themselves had been aged prematurely by Doc’s magic, aging to adult worgs in a matter of minutes and swearing their unwavering loyalty to him in but a moment. Claire had been delighted and treated them as her adopted offspring. Doc was roped into the affair as their adoptive father, but even to his day he had misgivings.
The magic that changed them—it did nothing to improve their state of mind. Doc himself had vastly matured over the course of a year, even if his character remained weak and unstable, yet it seemed the two worgs never did. Their characters blended together in such a way that it was hard to refer to one without the other. He needed to grow their individuality, and perhaps this transformation of theirs was the opportunity he needed. They were never meant to be beings of his dungeon so dependent on him that he couldn’t even remember their names at time. Their human forms didn’t even have faces, which was perhaps a representation of their selves lost in shadow. Their existence was so shallow he would often forget their names.
Next was Anadine. A former Chosen princess of the kingdom Doc had once resided in. When disaster struck her within the dungeon, Doc had been charged by an outside divine presence to save her. In retrospect, his actions that day had violated a few of the restrictions placed on him as a dungeon, yet he had been able to do so in order to save her. The emotionally scarred princess had made an oath in her absent state and had ended up moving her status as Chosen from her goddess to Doc. For whatever reason, it worked, and the goddess had never contacted Doc again.
While he didn’t pretend to understand the exact magical way being a Chosen worked, the end result was that her death by the hands of a demon had catalyzed the beginning of the war that would destroy the country. The princess perished, but her soul was delivered to the deity she’d pledged herself to, in this case Doc. She was reborn as his warrior slime, though without any memory and very limited mental capacity. She’d only been slightly smarter than Doc’s other slimes. Anadine would only regain her intelligence after stealing and absorbing the dungeon heart fragments of an enemy dungeon, going on to regain her memory a few months later. That had been just a week ago.
Doc had watched Anadine’s growth as an individual and a warrior before regaining her memories. Her powers were great as a fighter, even if she was currently restricted by Doc’s own limitations. The combined flexibility of her body, warrior’s training, and tactical mind proved to be a deadly combo, but all this had been ruined by her past. Before gaining her memories, Anadine had been in the process of learning how to wield her abilities as a slime, learning the art of ambush and overwhelming opponents through unstoppable force. The addition of training and tactics, while improving her weapon wielding abilities to a higher level, also locked her fighting style to that of a human. She hadn’t been speaking it out loud, but Doc had felt her growing dissatisfaction with her slime body and its lack of human appendages.
Her attacks relied on muscle and bone that no longer existed. Slime had no weight on its own. This was why stronger slimes that relied on physical attack either grew larger or absorbed other materials into their body. However, slime was also the perfect medium for the transfer of force. Slime tentacles could be forced to contort well beyond any other material, creating an almost infinite amount of potential energy. In addition, slime had an intrinsic ability to absorb physical blows and redirect the force of the attack. Anadine never used these abilities, as she still believed she was human and humans had limits. She needed to learn that she was no longer limited by the physical means of a mere human.
Rowen was in a similar predicament. The boy had been brought into an undead dungeon hundreds of years ago in a state of magical hibernation. Even with this protection, it couldn’t stop the slow bleed of undead magic into the boy’s body. By the time Rowen was rescued by Doc after defeating the Artificial Undead Dungeon, his body had become half undead. It was impossible to stop the transformation.
Knowing that after being woken up, the magical contamination would quickly spread and kill him, Rowen had made the decision to bond with Doc after learning of his circumstances and Doc’s good nature. The agreement sapped the undead nature away from him, allowing Rowen to leave the dungeon and live the life of a boy for about half of a year. When his life was sacrificed to save another, his soul, too, was dragged into the dungeon and remade into Doc’s boss. Though, it had been a surprise for everyone when Rowen became an odd mix of undead and slime, the lich slime.
While human, Rowen had learned the ways of magic and had found he was especially talented in both dark and necromantic magic. Upon returning as a slime, he could still wield magic as if he were human, preferring to use magic circles and chanted word to use his spells. While Doc had used these techniques (stolen subtly from Rowen’s mind) to improve his mage slime’s casting, he had not found them useful beyond expanding their natural abilities. Human techniques relied on human bodies, and if Rowen continued down his current path, Doc was sure he would eventually come across a wall in his growth as a magic slime.
Human’s didn’t have monster cores to draw power from. Instead, they relied on the mana found in their soul to guide the environment’s mana into magic spells. Some people, like Rowen, were born with immense amounts of inner mana and were capable of wielding magical strength beyond their level because of it. That heaven-blessed trait did not follow Rowen into his new body, but instead Doc’s dungeon became the main source of mana.
All slimes were magical beings. The slime core was to the slime the same as Doc’s heart crystal was to the dungeon. One relied on the other to sustain itself. Magic slimes, like the mage slimes, stored the excess mana their core produced in their slime to be used for spells. If a magic slime used too much mana, they’d shrivel up and possibly die. Their limits were much lower than a human’s, who would only become extremely sick from mana depletion. And Rowen kept coming close to this limit unknowingly, as his body was unable to wield Doc’s power even in Doc’s weakened state. He needed to learn his limits properly, and also his advantages. The stronger the magic slime, the more mana they could store, and Rowen was technically a tier 7 magic-type slime fully capable of storing enough mana to last a month of constant spell casting.
Just as I have to evolve in this new land, maybe I can help my monsters with their growth as well, Doc thought to himself.
It had taken some soul searching, an ironic thing for a dungeon to do, to discover he had not wanted to have any other monsters in his dungeon besides slime. The discovery of the leaf muncher slime, while slightly devastating to the dungeon, seemed to prove that perhaps his way could work. Maybe animal slimes could exist as an ecosystem within his dungeon.
Were the furry slimes the first sign of this? he couldn’t help but wonder. The aforementioned slimes were evolved mimic slime
s that came into being after ingesting the hair of The Twins—no, Ayla and Aisha. While mildly disturbing to look at, they were the first slimes that could only survive by eating mana-rich food instead of Doc’s ambient mana, due to their fur blocking access to their cores. While the leaf muncher slime could also live off Doc’s mana, it seemed that its reproduction ability relied on the ingestion of other mana sources.
Doc though about this ability regarding the adventurers he used to face on a daily basis. While one leaf muncher slime was harmless enough, a swarm would certainly have been a terrifying foe for the humans and elves. He could also picture the slimes relying on any dead adventurer to multiply, perhaps even stealthily laying their eggs in unsuspecting adventurers to hatch later for a nasty surprise. There was a nice gory picture in Doc’s mind.
And the leaf muncher slime hadn’t caused the cold feeling when they died. Doc couldn’t help but wonder if the furry slimes would be the same way. Perhaps, maybe all the animal slimes would be safe to let die. Doc kept this hope hidden away. It would be his little secret for now.
“I have two types of animal slimes, but they can’t do it alone,” Doc said to himself. “A natural dungeon needs more parts, like Anadine said. What’s the next step then?”
“I’m glad you asked, Doc!” Claire said cheerfully, having just returned to the cave after using her magic to repair the collateral vegetation damage. “And since you asked, here is the first step!”
With a snap of her finger, the magical blue box once again condensed into being. Differently than before, however, the box only held a single option for Doc to read.
Spawn Nest
Tier 0 Ability
Ability to create a nest dedicated to a single monster. Monsters will spawn within the nest using minimal dungeon power and will remain constant, even during invasion. Destroyable.
Dungeon Wars Page 8
