Chapter 12

"So why do you think that they only sent in 3 people?" I asked Daisy after making my way back to the throne. I made sure that the spiders all continued to do rotations to keep watch. I made sure that the poison spiders were in the caves this time, leaving only one surveillance spider in the first and bringing the other into the first room.

"Possibly due to the low level of the dungeon." Daisy's voice made sense. From what she had said earlier, even when we absorbed the goblin's dungeon we were just barely over the lowest level of the F-ranked dungeon. We must have seemed like little to no threat.

"Although, since the three won't make it back, they might send a larger force next time." I sighed. "This could get bothersome. I might need to increase my forces sooner than I was originally planning." I had enough crystals to have two more soldiers, and I had lost one. If we were to face more elves I needed to have things that are either fast, or better at long-range attacks. Sadly, the only spiders that were capable of any long-range attacks were the poison spiders. But we did get to see how effective the poison was on them. Maybe I should have the miners make more projectile weapons that explode like the spear did so that I could try poisoning them.

I decided to go along with this plan and summoned two more poison spiders. I had the miners make more javelins and had the poison spiders soak them. I also had the trap spiders work with the poison spiders and miners to make some traps that when triggered by tripping a med on the ground would pour a small bucket of poison from the ceiling onto anyone in the room. While it wouldn't work more than once, especially against elves, I hoped that it would at least take out one or two of them in the next round. We got all of the traps and weapons made within a few days and went back to waiting. Looking at the clock we still had 14 days remaining until the portal would work both ways.

Honestly, what was I going to even do once the portal went both ways? Would I even want to go to the other side? I'm a monster so it's not like I would be welcome. Plus this obviously isn't Earth since we never had elves as residents. Maybe it would be better to just stay and protect the dungeon until it was repelled away from this world.

So many choices, but not enough information on how to deal with it. Obviously, I was really curious about what the other world was like, but I didn't want to needlessly put myself or the other spiders in danger. Plus there is a change like with the other dungeon where if the dungeon gets repelled while I'm out I would die. The chance that something could go wrong outside of the dungeon is incredibly high.

"Hey Daisy, why is it that when a dungeon break occurs the monsters choose to leave the dungeon? I mean I get raiding another dungeon for the resources. But what can we get from going into the world?"

"When a dungeon break occurs, it gives dungeons the chance to gather material and resources from the world."

"Resources? Like armor and stuff?"

"That along with food and other supplies."

"Food, but we don't need to eat?"

"The spiders are different. The spiders of this dungeon are all connected to you and therefore feed off the energy that you have and that comes from the dungeon. Most other monsters do not have that connection with the dungeon master and therefore need food to survive. While dungeons do provide areas that give food similar to the goblin's forest area. It is possible to use up all of the resources as the dungeon increases its army before increasing its size."

"Hey doesn't that seem like a cheat for me?" I got no response from Daisy for that. "Fine, whatever. So in that case, what is the reason for me to go to the other planet?"

"Experience and increase in rank."

"Increase in rank?" I closed my eyes and images started to flash before me again. It was each of the subordinates that I had spawned thus far. Similar to a game there was a picture of them with their name, job, and rank. The first one was the first subordinate I spawned.

Name: Miner 1

Damn, I really suck at giving names.

Job: Miner

Self-explanatory

Rank: 2

"Okay, so what is this rank thing?"

"The ranks of each spider are in direct comparison to their experiences and the strength of the enemies they have killed or consumed."

"Consumed?"

"Once an enemy is killed their corpse holds onto some energy that they had when they were alive. Stronger opponents have more power in them. Once the corpse is consumed some of the energy is added to the energy of the one that eats it and can raise their rank."

"Oh, that makes sense. Did they rank up from eating the elves and goblins?" I used my mind to scroll down to the tanks and poison spiders. Each was a level 1 with only one tank being a level 2. "Hey, why are they so low? They killed a lot of monsters!"

"Killing opponents gives experience points versus directly consuming the power. Since none of them consumed the enemies then they did not rank up."

"So what happened to corpses then?" The screen in my mind scrolled up to the cleaner spider.

Name: Cleaner 1

I'm starting to hate myself.

Job: Cleaner

Rank: 9

"Rank 9! How the hell did that happen?"

"Since you never gave the order for anyone to eat the corpses, the cleaner spider did the job you gave them and consumed the corpses while cleaning." I sat there dumbfounded for a solid 5 minutes.

I finally came out of the daze when a spider entered the throne room.

"Hey, you! Get over here!" I yelled across the room. Cleaner Spider 1 jumped at my voice and came sprinting over. I reached down and picked her up, inspecting her closely. She was about the size of my head, with a large mouth and those broom-light front legs. Hmm, nothing seems to be any different.

"Hey, Daisy, what happens when they rank up?" Before I got an answer Cleaner 1 twitched in my hand thrashing around, one of her pointy back legs stabbed into my arm and sunk in about 2 inches. I yelled, flicking the spider out of my hand. She landed on her feet sending a wave of destine at me and scuttled away. "I don't think I need an answer." I covered my arm which was dripping blood.

"Along with an increased strength, some spiders have a chance to evolve into a different stronger species of spider once they reach a high enough rank."

"Thanks for letting me know. Oh, what rank am I?"

"Your rank matches the rank of the dungeon. Currently, you are the lowest level a dungeon master can have."

"Awesome," I said half-heartedly. "Would I get stronger from eating people too?"

"No. Since your energy stems from the dungeon itself, the only way to grow in strength is to increase the power of the dungeon."

"Well, that's a relief then!"