Ham looked that the screens before him.
'Choose your starting location and Floor 1 environment:
As Ham considered his options he was shocked to see the screen flash gold.
'Choose your starting creature:
Again this flashed:
Finally choose your boon:
Again a flash of light as the screen changed:
Ham slowly stared as he processed what had just happened. Apparently the attention of the gods was not a good thing to have.
Far faster than he felt he should have his shock and fear faded. Instead a cold burning rage grew. At the genie, at the gods and at himself for ending up in this situation. He just wanted to be happy, was that too much to ask for? Apparently it was.
So now it seemed he was stuck in a war with the gods, who saw him as a threat. If they had left him alone he would have been happy to peacefully coexist, but now? Now it was personal.
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A new screen popped up:
Ham sighed as he tried to put things together. Here, gods existed. They had multiple dungeons under their control. This gave control out into the world. The world was apparently stable and so the gods agreed enough to make the rules of the world mostly consistent. And they did not like newcomers.
Slowly Ham became aware of his surroundings. He was in a very small room, with a single door that opened out onto a desolate salt plain. His view of the room was odd, it could best be described as looking from all points in the room at all points in the room, and out through the door, all at the same time. Equally, however, he could only focus on a limited part of that view, as if he had a single point of focus like when he had been a person.
He returned to thinking about the gods and the curses placed on him. As he did so the world outside seemed to show an overlay of the colours of the gods, completely blanketing the land, and even forcing their way into his dungeon.
So to take stock. He had a desert herbivore as his starting monster summons. He was in a desert area with extra monster incursions, which was then boosted further to 20 times the normal rate. Presumbly the invading monsters would include the monster options he had not been able to choose, all three having poisonous bites, and were adapted to the first environment he could make being desert wastelands.
So how could he solve this problem? First he checked his status. He had played games before, and that was always the first thing to do.
As Ham pondered his options he saw a large scorpion approaching. It was much larger than any seen on Earth, but he guessed that this was normal for a magical monster version. Realising he had nothing between him and it, he rapidly defined a new room:
Ham thought about what he knew of the invading monster and potential other monsters. Maybe the scorpion would fall for the pit traps, but maybe not. Each pit trap had to allow people passed, the dungeon core could not be "innaccessable" to sentients. But for now he was dealing with wild monsters, he could worry about people later. The normal pit trap could extend the width of the passageway since the sentients could jump a metre. The Double Width had a small ledge in the middle that he could not remove, and so could be crossed in two jumps.
But then Ham had a rather useful thought. The Addax was warm blooded. All the other monsters he knew of in the area were not.
The scorpion entered the room, and fell into the first spike pit. This was aimed at sentients, and so the scorpion did not die, just lost a leg, but could not climb back out before the temperature dropped. His Addax being large (over 100kg) and warm blooded had no trouble with the temperature change, it sat down to curl its legs in, and was otherwise unbothered. The scorpion didn't die instantly from the cold, but it did start taking cold damage, and slowed to near motionless.
Then the "sun" began to beat down. The Addax with its tan coat and large size did not heat up quickly, and could handle an internal temperature change of 6 degrees anyway. The hot time period didn't last long enough for this to become a problem. The scorpion had no such protection, being a shiny black carapace. It rapidly heated up with the room, allowing it to move faster, but rapidly reaching a point where it experienced heat damage and died.
The Addax just sat and chewed the grasses. As the room was completely empty of any decorative elements like soil, sand or grass Ham was not sure where the Addax found the mouthful of food, but regardless it chewed it.
Over the next hour more and more of the monsters arrived. Scorpion after Lizard after Snake entered the room. Both the Lizard and Snake were even more susceptable to both the cold and hot temperatures, rapidly dying.
None even reached the half way spike pit.
Ham used the Mana he received from the monsters to summon additional Addax, and even started upping them to higher level.
Soon enough Ham received a level up notification:
Ham waited for the gods to intervene.
What should he choose? Or have the God's stepped in?
