Alistair stayed hunch over on his hand and knees for hours, fixing each tile, stone and mortar of the fountain. When he was done, he was short 30 experience points from leveling, had a sore back and knees from bending, and his pants were damp from mana puddles. Resting his hands on his back he circled the fountain one last time checking for any missing pieces or broken bits. The fountain itself was slowly filling with mana. Small holes in the mosaic allowed the water to bubble up, so instead of small puddles the size of his fist, they were several feet in diameter and slowly growing. Clapping his hands together Alistair decided it was finally the time to say it. “Herma, I think I am done with fixing the fountain!” Just as he completed his sentence a prompt came up.
Alistair thought for a moment about it, if he did start over he now would have an established multi-level dungeon, Herma would be able to couch him, and he would have more advanced fountain to work with. Of course, he didn’t like the idea of taking over a dungeon from someone else. It seemed like it was lazy and perhaps stupid to assume that he couldn’t correct his mistakes or that Hardune had created a better dungeon then himself. He was tempted to press Yes, but in the end he pressed No because he wanted to see what Callum, Herma, and himself could build. Immediately after another prompt came up.
Alistair pondered this prompt for a while. He was very tempted to choose Adsorb. After all, Herma said that he had been the first person to appear in forty years. Of course that also meant he had two entrances to his Dungeon he had to be careful about. Still it wasn’t like they were on different roads or he was opening a portal to a distant kingdom. Alistair made excuses and reasons to choose either raiding or adsorb, until he couldn’t take it anymore. He hit Adsorb, not because it was the best decision, but because he wanted to. The pocket dimension began to shake uncontrollably, throwing Alistair onto the ground and Herma coming out of her hut screaming about what was going on and what did he do. Finally the shaking stopped and Alistair stood back up to be greeted by a prompt that showed him an Adsorption Status Screen.
Before Alistair had a chance to dismiss the prompt, Herma came up to him and punched him in the face. “You IDIOT! Couldn’t just let things be! Had to be a big man! I want everything, and why should I wait?!”
Alistair lifted himself off the ground into the sitting position. Looking at Herma, he spoke with a bit of blood coming out of his nose, “What? I have to defeat your dungeon anyway. So I thought I might as well bring in your town and the plains into my pocket dimension.”
Herma looked down at him, her stare was like looking into the sun itself. Alistair even felt the heat of the stare on his skin. “You now have to make a level 81 dungeon to absorb everything. Hardune took 83 years to do the same feat, growing his dungeon nice and slowly. He had 82 different types and sizes of creatures to populate the dungeon, and over 40 different traps.” Running her hands through her hair, Herma began to pace. “Maybe, we can focus on key growth factors and save 40 or 50 floors. Well what are you sitting around for we have work to do!” Herma headed back into her hut, and Alistair got back up to read the prompt and wondered how the dungeon had 7 active Mana Monsters. There weren’t 7 people around here, then he thought back to his own dungeon and realized that the Fire wisps were the bright lights inside the wood huts, the tiny fire salamanders were dirt clouds, and even his boss looked no bigger than a pixie. He would need to ask Callum about how much additional mana he was going to be receiving every day and start to prepare for it. Alistair dismissed the prompt and finally the one prompt he was hoping for came up. This one was in a golden trim.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Alistair was still quite angry at Herma, and without Callum around to help him, Alistair’s arrogance decided to come to the forefront of his mind. He was sure he knew what he was doing, he had spent a lifetime as a warrior and knew best on how to distribute his own attributes and skill points. The only difference now was that he had spells but he really couldn’t use them in combat, so he didn’t really need to think about spending more on Wisdom or Intelligence. Though supposedly there was some kind of relationship between them and how many skill points he got per level, he focused on what he knew and carried on with choosing. He decided to go with the old combat set up. Three into Constitution, Two into Strength, and One into Dexterity, with a spare One to go where ever he wanted; which he decided to put into Luck, after all he had been having a run of bad luck lately.
With his Attributes decided, Alistair took a look at his skills and thought for a bit. He knew that purchasing a skill level, one had to pay the same cost as the new skill level. Now by fixing the fountain Dungeon Construction had gone up by 30%, but it was also his main way of getting experience points. The new skills looked impressive but how useful would they really be, Alistair asked himself. So he put three skill points into Dungeon Construction to take it up to level 2. Then he put one point into Mana Monster Summoning to have it go up to level 1, and bought the new skill Dungeon Vision, as he didn’t see any use in storing the unused skill point. Hitting the Yes button on his Soul Page and the Level prompt to confirm his choices, the world slowed down for a moment new knowledge flooded into Alistair’s head as he understood how to call a scying window into his pocket dimension and how get information to display on it. Additionally, with Dungeon Construction reaching level 2 the amount of mana that he could channel and alter in his dungeon increased. Ideas on how to construct better homes, roads, walls, and even a blacksmith shop came to him. He had a vague sense of what it would do in his dungeon, and apparently the blacksmith shop was needed to make traps. Finally, his new knowledge of Mana Monster Summoning came to him, and he realized that he could have tried to intimidate some of the F ranked monsters and there was a chance they would submit to him without a fight.
Alistair wiped the grin from his face as Herma came out carry items in a large sack. She was muttering to herself, and when she looked up at Alistair simply shook her head. “Alight, I have the quest items I promised you and some personal things for myself. Let’s go find the opening to your pocket dimension and have you start improving it. I am hoping to get you up to level five to face the Elemental.”
Alistair looked at Herma in confusion, “Wait, what are you doing? Personal items? Are you moving to my pocket dimension? How is that even possible?”
Herma pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment, “You really need to spend some points on Intelligence when you level. When you choose to absorb my dungeon, you claimed both Dungeons as your own. So even though my body is in the plains Ziggurat, my soul can travel to either place. Additionally, you opened a huge path from this dimension to the other to allow mana to flow to it. So all we have to do is go to the outside of town and look for a big opening in the mist and we can walk down that path to your town. Helping to build me place to live and several other improvements should drain all the incoming mana fast enough and level you at the same time. I was thinking with the right level coaching you could take on the elemental by level five.”
Alistair could feel blood warming up his face in anger. He wasn’t some kind of idiot that didn’t know what he was doing. He had leveled as a mortal plenty of times and new the in’s and out’s. “Herma, I think I can handle my leveling just fine, and don’t need any advice on the matter. After all, I was a level 80 Knight and Ranked SS with gear in my previous life and did quite fine. So you are more than welcome to come along, but I will be in charge of my leveling.”
Herma’s eyes tighten and the set in her jaw told Alistair that he was getting close to line in which they would start a physical fight. “Now listen here you pup of a demon!” Herma said as anger oozed out of her voice, “I am a Ranked A monster, and have obtained level 97. You may have been some high almighty Adventurer, but I currently can take on a group of ten, level 80 ranked A, Adventurers and kill them all. I have done it. Leveling as a monster or demon is vastly different then as an Adventurer. You think strength is going to carry you through Rank D fights? You have to get smarter, otherwise your perception won’t increase and you won’t see the spell coming at you, or the rogue behind you, or make the right choice and summon additional monsters for help. Dumb monsters do the same old thing and never change their attack patterns. Smart monsters, monsters that are attack monsters for other dungeons, they are widely independent and extremely dangerous. Tell you what, Mister Know-it-all, you can choose your attributes and skills for the first five levels without one word from me and if you kill your elemental worker, I will apologize for everything I said and did! Heck, I will even give you two new spells. But if you die against the elemental, then you owe me an apology and you get to listen to my advice till level ten! How about that?” By the end Herma was almost spitting every time a word came out of her mouth.
Alistair tighten his eyes, there was no way she was right about this. “You got yourself a deal! And when I win I will expect a formal written apology so that I can take it out and look at it whenever I want!”
Herma shook, “I expect the same!” For a moment they stood there shaking in anger ready to kill one another at perceived insults and hurts. Each one mad at the other, for the disrespect they had shown one another. Like a whisper in the wind, Callum’s voice could be heard carrying over the plains. Alistair choose to start following the sound of the voice until at the edge of town the three of them met up. It was a cold introduction as Alistair was still mad at Herma, and it didn’t help that Herma used a sickly sweet voice when talking to Callum. Poor Callum, had a great deal of questions for his Lord, but sadly from the look on his face he was not in the mood to talk. In silent agreement they headed back to Alistair’s pocket dimension through a huge straight forest path that had appeared out of the mist.
