- Mine: The workercats’ powerful claws can break through minerals and collect shinies for the Dungeon Heart.
Movement Speed: Slow
Cost: 50 shinies
Requirement: Dungeon Heart
Description: The dungeon’s peon unit, the workercat is useful for dungeon expansion and resource gathering. Easily startled, it would rather run away than fight, unless it comes to protecting the Dungeon Heart. It is short and stout in appearance, preferring to walk on two legs. Its hands are flexible with formidable claws and opposable thumbs.]
Arden ascended to get a higher vantage point. She looked down on the four squat creatures. Their whiskers twitched as they followed her movements.
“Hi, little ones,” Minette cooed.
The workercats waddled over to the Dungeon Heart. One of them started hopping up and down, its chubby arms flailing. Two of them bowed down to Minette. A fourth one started excessively grooming itself. It licked its thumbed paws and roughed them over its head, creating something of a hairstyle.
Purring sounds poured out of the group, turning the workercats into a choir singing rumbly, happy music.
[SYSTEM:
Your peons will be your resource gatherers. Direct them to collect the shinies and glowyrms that you’ll need for your construction projects. Who knows, your peons may get lucky and discover a rare material somewhere in your dungeon!
They can also assist with tunnel digging, room building, and trap creation. Please note that the latter requires a Trap Workshop.
You will start with 50 shinies and 0 glowyrms.]
“I could build a fifth workercat,” Minette said.
“Hold on, before you do that we should listen to more of the tutorial,” Arden said.
[SYSTEM:
It is wise to remember that all of your units have an Energy and Morale score. Think of their Energy as their fuel. Feeding them with a well-stocked farm will help keep their Energy up. Units with the hungry debuff perform worse.
Units with poor Morale are less likely to respond to commands. They may even lash out at other units. Recreation Centers will keep them entertained, motivated, and happy. Low Morale leads to debuffs that will adversely affect your units.
Every room you build comes with special properties that will help you in your dungeon keeping. Before you invest in a room, check to see how it will benefit your dungeon.]
“Nothing about that told me not to buy another workercat,” Minette pointed out.
“Sure, not directly, but you should think about your money. We have to think everything through carefully.”
[SYSTEM:
To start with, you can build a Research Center, a Farm, a Recreation Center, and a Monster Lounge.
Name: Research Center
Type: Room
Health: 750
Cost: 75 shinies
Requirements:
- n/a
Usage:
- Allows access to the research menu, which can be used to upgrade units and make other improvements for the dungeon.
Unlocks:
- The research menu.
- Can build the Trap Workshop.
Description: The Research Center provides means for dungeon advancement.
Name: Farm
Type: Room
Health: 500
Cost: 75 shinies
Requirements:
- n/a
Usage:
- An adequate food supply ensures units will have the Energy and will to fight.
- Removes Hungry debuff and other potential debuffs related to a poor Energy score.
Unlocks:
- Can build the Cattenery and the Spiny Lynx Dwelling.
Description: A food source for the various creatures that inhabit the dungeon. Hungry monsters do worse in combat.
Name: Recreation Center
Type: Room
Health: 750
Cost: 100 shinies
Requirements:
- n/a
Usage:
- Increases monsters’ overall Morale and happiness.
- Removes Bored debuff and other potential debuffs related to a poor Morale score.
Unlocks:
- n/a
Description: A place where the creatures can go to be entertained. Bored monsters do worse in combat.
Name: Monster Lounge
Type: Room
Health: 500
Cost: 75 shinies
Requirements:
- n/a
Usage:
- Regenerates monsters’ health points.
Unlocks:
- n/a
Description: A place where the creatures can go to be healed.]
Arden added up the numbers. “So, if we’re going to build all four of those rooms, we’re going to need 325 shinies total.”
“That’s a lot!”
“You say that, but you spent a lot more than that building your kingdom of farms and Recreation Centers.” Arden cringed, remembering the initial mess she’d walked into. There was no way she’d allow Minette to get that bad again.
[SYSTEM:
As a dungeon, you start with a few innate skills. Others can be researched at the Research Center.
Overview: Allows an omniscient viewing of your dungeon. You can move your viewpoint around freely. The Overview mode can be shared with a linked pixie.
Dungeon Keeping: Allows the usage of and access to the menus related to being and managing a dungeon.
Influence: Command a selected unit or group of units to do your bidding.
Psychic Link: A promissory bond with a pixie. Currently attached to Arden the Endless Terror, Dungeon Pixie.
Your pixie starts with a selection of skills, as well. Additional skills can be researched. Currently, your pixie has 200 mana points to use these spells with. If defeated in combat, the pixie will respawn in the Dungeon Heart room.
Disguise: Allows the pixie to mimic the appearance of something or someone for a limited time.
Cast Hallucination: The pixie can cast a false image of an object or one of the dungeon’s monsters.
Teleport to Room: The pixie can disappear and reappear in a dungeon room.
Psychic Link: A promissory bond with a dungeon. Currently attached to Minette Ashes Max Felixia, the Organic Feline Beast Dungeon.]
“It’s our Psychic Link that lets me see these SYSTEM messages with you,” Arden explained.
[SYSTEM:
You will also start with a Warp Gate next to the Dungeon Heart. The Warp Gate is the starting point for anyone who enters the dungeon. It is imperative that you pick up the Warp Gate and place it elsewhere as soon as possible.
It is a heavy object that takes time to unroot. It’s still fully functional while being carried, so be careful when transporting it. Units carrying the Warp Gate are especially vulnerable to attacks and, unless the Warp Gate has the relevant upgrades, its weight will cause most units to have a very slow movement speed.]
“Eugh,” Minette made a sound akin to cringing. “We should probably get to that first, huh?”
“It’ll make us one peon down. Right now, people aren’t rushing to get to this dungeon, so we have a bit of time. There’s something I’d like to secure first.”
[SYSTEM:
Now that you have had a sampling of the things that you can do, I’ll allow your pixie to take over from here. He or she is equipped to assist you with anything you need. Don’t forget, young dungeon, your success rests on your partnership. A healthy partnership will pay dividends.
Good luck on your journey.]
With that, their connection to the Great Goddess of SYSTEM messages ceased. Everything that happened next depended on their cooperation. It was time for them to build the Trash Tier Dungeon into…well, the Not Trash Tier Dungeon.
Arden soared over the four-cat colony of workercats. Flying in wide circles was her version of pacing around. It helped her think.
“Okay, so what we need to secure first is the shiny
deposit. We have to get the peons working before their hunger or boredom sets in,” she said. “Do you remember where the nearest shiny deposit is?”
“Actually, to tell you the truth, I don’t.”
Arden swiped her hand through her hair to keep from combusting. “Okay, that’s fine. We’ll have two workercats work on that far wall and the other two will tackle the opposite side.”
“But we haven’t even named the little guys yet,” Minette whined. “They can’t do anything without names. They’ll be in existential crisis mode. Who am I? What am I here for? You know, questions like that. They need names!”
Cooperation in the form of letting Minette pick out their names was probably warranted, but Arden didn’t want to give her room to slack off. They had to stick to their current objective. The longer they went without shinies, the less productive the workercats could become.
“We’ll do that later. One thing at a time,” Arden said.
The promise of “later” seemed to pacify Minette. “Alright!”
Too bad for her that there was a good chance that “later” might not arrive.
Chapter 4
Arden had to admit that the workercats’ work flow fascinated her. Sharing in Minette’s Overview skill gave her a bird’s eye, no ceiling (they appeared invisible for viewing purposes) view of the dungeon. From her tippy top viewpoint, she watched the workercats scrape and pull dirt away with their clawed hands.
Their tunnels instantly became well-structured corridors. Those corridors functioned as the veins, so to speak, of the dungeon. It was through Minette’s power that the workercats’ digging was structurally enhanced. All parts of the dirt hallway they created were sound without any threat of collapse.
It wasn’t necessary for the peons to do a top to bottom dig-through, they simply had to interact with the wall in front of them. Having two peons per branch sped up the workload. As soon as one of the groups found the shiny deposit, Arden planned on splitting one peon from its coupling to grab the Warp Gate.
“Can I ask you a question?” Minette asked.
“You already have, but you may ask another one, sure.”
“Why did you steal that guy’s daggers?”
“Technically, I traded him a teleportation scroll for them. He’s lucky I didn’t stick around to kill him,” Arden said. “Eventually, we’re going to need some loot that’s better than what our monsters will naturally drop. Legs, eyes, skin, what-have-you–those things are good and all, but they’re not as much of a prize as weaponry.”
“I never liked the idea of rewarding people for killing us.”
“We get the same from them. It’s the way things work. The incentives are helpful and they can draw people here. We kill people, we upgrade, and we kill some more people.” Arden relished the thought. Nothing beat watching the life force splutter out of an enemy.
Sadly, they’d have to wait on the killing.
“But I don’t want any of us to die,” Minette said.
“There’s a simple solution to that. Kill them before they kill you,” Arden said. “You’re getting too hung up on this death thing. Death’s part of being a dungeon. We’re going to amass armies. Our soldiers will die. It’s inevitable.”
“There’s no other way?”
“You can’t think of death as something to fear. Sometimes it has to happen for us to win. And it’s just like I said earlier. Their bodies may physically die, but they turn into glitter dust, which returns to you. What’s death when that’s the case?”
“I don’t know.”
“A transition. A homecoming,” Arden settled on saying. “It’s them reuniting with you. It’s not something for you to be afraid of. It can hurt and you can mourn over it, but ultimately you can’t shy away from it. Life and death in a dungeon are intertwined.”
“I guess I should get used to the idea of it.”
“If you get shaken up about it, remember this conversation. Death is as normal as life. They’re born for this. Anyway, about those daggers,” Arden attempted to change the subject. “I also took them so we could learn from them. At my last dungeon, we studied weapons and learned to make our own for loot or personal equipment.”
“I don’t think my monsters will be needing those.”
“We’ll see how they develop once we get a Research Center.”
“Was your last dungeon mostly focused on researching?” Minette asked. “What kind of dungeon was it?”
Arden was glad Minette couldn’t see her finer details, thanks to the top-down viewpoint they shared. If she’d been able to, she would’ve seen Arden visibly shudder. Her fingers curled from the sudden spear of tension that lanced through her.
That horrid dungeon did more than dump shit (both literally and metaphorically) on her. Reliving her experiences there, even briefly, froze her mid-recoil.
It’s his wretched fault that I’m here. I should’ve stomped him to dust when I had the chance.
A notification “ding” snapped her out of her thoughts.
“The eastern workercats have discovered a room,” Arden announced. She discarded Minette’s inquiries and hoped she’d never bring it up again. “Looks like it has the deposits we need. Influence the workers to start mining. Have one of the western workercats join them, while the other one gets the Warp Gate.”
Every dungeon had secret nooks and crannies. They were a surprise even to the sentient dungeon itself. These carved-out spaces could include positive things like shinies and glowyrms, but they could also have enemy monsters. Said monsters were often times born from a parasite the dungeon didn’t realize it had.
While the dungeon built its empire, the parasites worked on something similar. They didn’t require the same level of need fulfillment. Morale didn’t matter them, not as much as bloodlust, anyway. They were generally unsophisticated in that sense–a bunch of razor-sharp worms that burrowed through, looking for things to eat and destroy.
Arden had never seen proof of it, but she heard that certain parasites were capable of intelligence. It was possible that, left alone for a long enough time, the parasites could develop into a mockery of a society. Arden couldn’t imagine them functioning as anything coherent, though. They’d need to evolve–and who would want to let them do that?
A green circle appeared beneath each workercat’s feet, a sign of Minette’s working Influence on them. The ones in the shiny deposit room soon got to work. They attacked the colorful minerals, their claws splintering chunks off of them. Once their hands were full, they set off on their trek back to the Dungeon Heart room.
Meanwhile, the other two workercats were already on their way.
“Aren’t they adorable, with the way they waddle and all? I could watch them all day!” Minette squealed.
And therein lay the problem the Trash Tier Dungeon had the first time around. She was too content watching her cats playing around instead of putting them to real work. It was a wonder that none of the adventurers that stumbled upon her dungeon hadn’t utterly crushed her.
Arden made a small noise, a pithy little acknowledgment of Minette’s silly statement.
Given the workercats’ movement speed, it took the cats of the eastern corridor 20 minutes to return to the base with their load of shinies. They tossed them at Minette, her orb absorbing them and converting them into usable resources.
[RESOURCES:
60 shinies / 0 glowyrms]
Arden frowned. Five minutes to harvest and 20 minutes to walk back yielded five shinies per workercat. Factor in the 20 minutes to go back and they were looking at a decent amount of waiting before they earned the necessary amount for their next purchase.
Resource gathering was a lengthy business.
“We should build a Recreation Center first,” Minette suggested, her chipper mood coming through in the bounciness of her tone. “The workercats are going to need a place to play once they’re done all this stuff.”
“A Recreation Center costs 100 shinies. We’d be better off
building a farm. It unlocks what I’m guessing are your combat units.” Suffice to say, she could only guess at what kind of creatures would come out of a Cattenery and a Spiny Lynx Dwelling, but she assumed that those were the units she was looking for.
“Okay, that’s fine with me. They’ll get to eat lots of yummy things. That’s gonna be exciting. Imagine them chewing things in their little mouths. It’s going to be adorable. The cuteness is going to kill me.”
“They’re only going to get one farm for now. They can share,” Arden said, hoping to curb Minette’s enthusiasm. If the dungeon got too overly excited, she was likely to go overboard again. Arden needed to avoid that as much as a fish needed to avoid a hook.
Soon after the eastern cats dropped off their first 10 shinies, the western cats arrived. One of them left to follow the eastern hallway to the shiny room. Eventually, the peons would have to find more shiny deposits. The deposits were a limited resource, their size determining the amount they’d yield. Until the peons got further with their mining, it was hard for Arden to guess how much the deposit would offer.
The fourth cat took on the arduous task of transporting the Warp Gate.
“Maybe he should bring it over to the east, so he can see more of his buddies as he works,” Minette said.
“It doesn’t matter if he sees his buddies or not. The western tunnel’s a better option so he won’t get in anybody’s way. We can have him create a room for it once he gets further down. It’ll be a temporary holding zone for the Gate. We’re going to have to build a maze around it.”
The Warp Gate looked like a revolving stone disk hovering above a golden platform. Hazy shimmers of energy spiraled around it.
The workercat jammed its claws into the dirt circling the rim. It worked to loosen the soil and sever its magical roots attached to the dungeon. Thankfully, this process wasn’t one that their enemies could initiate. Warp Gate movement was an action solely belonging to the dungeon.
The Trash Tier Dungeon Page 3
