The congregation ended and all the dungeon cores blinked away. Peter found himself on a hillside beneath the night sky. The congregation was near instantaneous as far as any of the cores could tell when compared to time on Terra. For some it was mid day or morning, for others including himself it was in the middle of the night. Peter was exhausted. The congregation had actually been relatively short compared to what future gatherings would be, but he felt mentally drained none the less.
Some strage phenomena kept cores awake and alert during the congregation was now gone, and the feeling hit him full force. He would love to bed down for the night, but there was work to be done. Besides what could be better for his potential future clients than for a dungeon to just be there first thing in the morning.
First, he needed intel. The interface had decided his dungeon’s position based on set parameters. He could not relocate to another place of his choice, but he could certainly see what he would be working with. It took a bit of doing, but he was able to turn into a wraith like existence and flutter up into the night sky. To have a look around.
Unfortunately, it was just darkness as far as the eye can see in all directions. It only took him a moment to shift to a sort of night vision. The darkness illuminated in various shades of black and green. It only took him seconds to locate a group of buildings, not more than a few miles away. There were over a hundred buildings, so Peter guessed the village population to be at or around a few hundred. He continued to look around, searching first in one direction and then another. He stopped when he judged that he had surveyed about a few days journey from where his dungeon’s entrance would be. He also visited several windows to see what he would be working with.
Finished, Peter returned to the hillside. According to his interface he had just under 4 hours until sunrise. He was tired, but he could push on. Then he could sleep while waiting for his dungeon to be discovered. Who knows how long that would take, since he was a good hour out from the closest village.
Peter thought through the information. All of the residents in this area were indeed humans, Peter was still not quite sure how he would feel preying off them, but… end of the day he guessed it was their choice to enter.
He had identified 14 villages within about two days' travel from his dungeon, each with a population of probably 500 or less. The closest village was less than an hour away, and there were two others that were just a bit further out although in different directions.
Then there was one town about a day's journey, but at best he would put its population at around 1,500. Based on the large marketplace, he could assume it was the trading hub for the region, and indeed there was a larger road leading South. All the other villages were small enough, where there did not even have established roads to them. Likely wagons going to and from them were so infrequent that wagon wheel ruts filled in, and underbrush overgrew the routes.
Other than that this was clearly a hill country with hills all around as far as he surveyed. Crop fields seemed to be few and far between. When there were some they were little more than household plots. This led Peter to believe that they hunted or trapped most of their food. This was definitely something that he could work with, and he quickly began to make plans.
He had referenced the manual while talking to Emma and Fellette as well as listening to their recommendations. He was not by a major city, unfortunately his dungeon would not be getting swarmed from the get go, by adventurers seeking riches, but there were advantages to his setting as well. He could not predict how people in a well off city would act, but a resource starved region like this should be much easier in some ways.
It did not happen often, but it did occasionally happen where a dungeon core was destroyed in the real world. It almost always occurred within the first year or two, when the dungeon was still too weak to protect themself. According to Emma it was usually politically or otherwise motivated. A dungeon was a source of wealth, so another faction or country might move to wipe out a new dungeon before it got settled in and became a problem. Then again Peter knew how stupid people could be. Who was to say that some delinquent or asshole did not destroy the core for shits and giggles.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
However, in his given setting he should be fine. Besides worse case, he did have a spare core, his dungeon would operate for a full day before he had to actually place it. Still he would rather not lose it to some random adventurers since it was a lifeline for surviving a dungeon battle.
The plan was simple. Offer resources and loot while increasing defenses sequentially with each successive floor. Peter would start things off really easy. He formed successive caverns all joined together. He carved them right into the hillside, leaving a large 10 foot tall 40 foot wide crevice opening. He wanted people to be able to get in and out quite easily. He also wanted it readily recognizable from a distance. Last thing he wanted was for it to go undiscovered.
In the future he would expand the caverns of the first floor all the way to the other side of the hill and have a second entrance to allow the villages on that side easier access, but right now he was essence limited.
Peter filled the caverns with plants, edible veggies and fruit. People coming to collect resources would bring in some life essence. The second floor and on would focus on attracting adventurers. A regular human would give off some life essence just by being there, but the real gains were from having adventurers fighting for their lives. Their deaths were even more profitable, the only reason why dungeons did not seek to kill as many as possible was that it would scare off other potential adventurers. It was something that needed to be managed. According to Emma and Fellette his various dungeon floors needed to be highly predictable especially at the beginning. No one would enter the blender dungeon with only a 20% survival chance. You had to lure them in deeper and prolong their stay.
As far as minions for the first floor, Peter looked at his options. They would have to be F tier, so as not to scare resource collectors away, but he did need to have them. People were actually more weary when there was no specific threat, then when the threat could be easily evaluated. Each 10 essence E tier card was the equivalent of five 2 essence F tiers, so the cost was not a big problem, but it would cost a lot to continually summon them. It was not worth the cost if he was only gathering essence equivalent to what they were bringing in. That and he could not guarantee what unit type his design cards would offer. There were likely tens of thousands of possible options.
Luckily there were two main methods to spam the same monster over and over, the spawners and maelstroms. For the weaker tiers, C tier and down there were unit spawners. As long as Peter had a living original unit he could build one of either type.
The spawners would spawn up to a set number over a specific period of time, and would stop once the amount of units living reached the summoning limit. In this case it would be 5 F tier units over the course of a day. F tier spawners were relatively cheap at only 200 essence a piece since all dungeons needed feeder monsters for the bigger ones to prey on. The second spawner built off of that same living unit would cost an extra 10% and so on.
Now Peter just needed to find the right units that would be desirable for hunters. It would not be too difficult since each time he got to look at three different options On his fourth try, he got a spotted goat. Not dangerous enough to be considered a threat, but they should be attractive as a meat source. His next pull gave him rats. Maybe he would use them as a food source further down, but they might be more of pests on the first floor with the edible vegitation. On the eight pull, he finally got the single tusked boar. Like a rhino it had one large tusk at the front of its face, but they were on the smaller side, not more than a hundred pounds.
Funds being limited and all, Peter just made 2 spawners, 1 for the goats and one for the boars. He set the spawners off to the side of the furthest cavern. It took 1,000 essence to unlock the second floor. It left him only a few hundred to dig out a mid-sized room for his core. Peter set all 8 of the remaining D tiers as guards for it, but he put the porcupine as the front defender that would be the first to challenge anything that came down the ramp like entrance to the second floor. Hopefully, they would get the point. The first floor was all that was open for now.
Maybe it was a moot point. Who knows it may take days or even weeks for his dungeon to be discovered. He did have a passive amount of ambient essence that would be collected based on his dungeon's size. Right now it was only 58 essence, but as he expanded it would get bigger. That being completed, Peter practically collapsed on the bed he summoned into existence inside of his core. How long had he been awake? The sky was just starting to turn orange when Peter shut everything off.
