1 Adrian

"What the hell happened to me?"

A man was laying in a fetal position on the floor as every part of his body was hurting. Slowly he tried to sit up, pushing himself off the floor. "I must have drank so much last night that I ended up in an alley", he quickly came to the most probable conclusion.

He struggled to open his eyes and saw vague blurry shapes in front of him, the rough exterior of a wall facing him. He looked around and saw some light coming from behind him, drifting through some low hanging vines. What appeared to be the entrance of whatever room he was in had been lightly illuminated because of this and his eyes slowly began to adjust to the dark.

"I'm in a cave?" he began to make sense of his surroundings and was thoroughly confused, he started to recall what had happened to him and how he got here. As he started to recall how he got here his migraine got increasingly worse before he started panting in exhaustion.

"I can't remember anything? My name..." he began to panic as the situation was unfolding in a very bad direction. Trying as hard as he could he slowly pried a word from the depths of his mind "Adrian...", he said with a smile, satisfied that he was able to remember his name.

He stopped thinking about his past as it felt like clouds began to obscure his memory again, even his desire to remember fading away. He stood up and walked towards the light at the entrance of the cave, wanting to try and find his way to some sort of civilization.

Walking towards the entrance he covered his eyes slightly as the sunlight started to blind him, before THUD. "What the fuck?!" Adrian tripped and fell flat on his face.

"Just my luck, first I forget everything, then I trip. Piece of shit author writing me to be so unlucky" he complained before he looked down at what had tripped him. It was a white semi-sphere that was embedded into the ground, there was a faint sheen that came off of it and it had a sort of air of mystery surrounding it.

Drawn to its beauty Adrian bent down to touch the semi-sphere, as his fingers touched it electricity flew through his hand and a surge of information began to flow into his mind. Images flashed through his mind along with new memories and knowledge began to flood him. It was such a vast amount of knowledge that it became too much for him to bear as he stumbled backward in shock.

Slowly sifting through the information he just received he began to unpack all of it. "I am a dungeon master?", he looked towards the semi-sphere, or more accurately the dungeon core. His life was connected to the dungeon core, interlinked in life and death, he was now given the duty to protect the dungeon core, for should it fall he will fall with it.

The reason there were no monsters was because Adrian had not summoned any. "List the dungeon stats in a format readable to me", he said to the dungeon core. A window popped up in his vision like a video game stats page that he was able to read.

Dungeon: No Name

Dungeon Level: Cave

Dungeon Points: 100 (+10)

Subordinates: 0

Each category was clickable and he could expand it to look more in depth into each subsection, he clicked on the Dungeon and a prompt came up to name the dungeon which he ignored because he did not even have any monsters yet.

The Dungeon level opened up into a window that looked like an exp bar and it was at 0%, with no indication as to how much exp he needed. From what he knew though the easiest way to gain dungeon exp was by killing intruders.

He opened the Dungeon Points (DP) tab and a large shop window opened up indicating all the monsters and items he could buy. There were weapons, food, tools, all monster categories to choose from and more. Some of the stuff was grayed out, due to his low Dungeon Level, but Adrian did not mind that. Naturally Adrian selected the dragon drop down so he could spawn a dragon, he didn't want to die of course.

Looking at the dragons Adrian began to sweat. The cheapest monster in the dragon subcategory was 10000, and that wasn't even a real dragon it was a dragonborn warrior! He looked at his measly 100 points and sighed. The +10 next to his points indicated how much he would earn passively per day, which could go up based on Dungeon Level and the amount of intruders in his dungeon.

He decided to leave the subordinates alone because he obviously didn't own any and he began to browse the DP shop looking for some monsters he could use to defend his turf. He sorted it to monsters within his price range and settled on three monsters to choose from: Goblin, Verdant Wolf, and Ratfolk.

The Goblin cost 50 DP each, and were known for being the beginner monster in most stories, so Adrian's eyes were drawn to them first.

The Verdant Wolves were 30 DP each, which meant they were slightly weaker than the Goblins. The shop stated they got a pack bonus, meaning the more Verdant Wolves there were, the stronger they became.

And Lastly there was the Ratfolk, it cost 100 DP and it was the only semi-human monster he could buy so naturally he was interested, even if he didn't expect much from its combat power.

"I can buy some of the better demi-humans later I suppose" Adrian said to himself before closing the window with the Ratfolk on it.

He debated over the three choices before finally deciding on the Verdant Wolves; he selected them before summoning three Verdant Wolves, losing 90 DP. A white light flashed in front of him before three green wolves appeared before him reaching up to his waist.

He smiled before he began to pet the wolves as they were just too cute! They barked happily and began to run around him barking happily.

He opened his DP shop again before paying 5 DP to move his dungeon core to the back of the cave he was in which was roughly 20 feet deeper, he didn't want his dungeon core so close to the exit after all.

He played with the verdant wolves for a bit longer before he ordered them "Guard the dungeon core, Do not let anyone come close to it." pointing towards the dungeon core that was on the floor. The three wolves nodded towards him before they walked over to the dungeon core and lay down next to it.

"Great" he nodded "Now, time to go see what's outside", he walked towards the exit and brushed aside the vines covering his vision.