Protecting the dungeon

On the other side, a small room made of rocks with a chair made of wood and a round blue ball made of what seemed like glass laying on a haystack in a corner of the room was all there was in it.

Jin approached the blue ball and a voice behind him interrupted him. "This is a dungeon core. The dungeon can remind alive as long as the dungeon core is not destroyed. In other words it is our life-line"

"Huh? What do you mean our life-line?" Jin turned around only to see that the girl was sat on the chair made of wood and that the portal was going to close. "Wait.. where are the other guys that went with you on the other side of the portal?"

The horned girl laughed bitterly answering Jin. "They were the spirits, of an item that I found. I have no way to call them again or to even open a portal. And to answer your previous question, the dungeon core represent the live of the owner of the dungeon. I am the dungeon owner and we have the right to have another being protect the dungeon with us. However, normally, the dungeons owners take a strong monster to help them protect the dungeon as the boss monster to protect the core. But, I wasn't able to find a monster that was willing to be contracted to me, that being the reason why I went to your world to find someone and that someone being you. In other words, our lives are connected. As such, if the dungeon core gets destroyed, we will definitely die."

"Are there a lot of other dungeons and how is your dungeon protected?"

"There are indeed a lot of dungeons in this world, however they are scattered all around the continent. To protect a dungeon, the owner must put traps and monsters to protect the last room where the core is placed in. There are different items, monsters and traps that the dungeon core can make in exchange of GP which can be gotten from a few different situation."

"To get GP you need people to be inside your dungeon, and the number you get depends on the strenght of the person. You can also get GP by absorbing the corpse of a dead in your dungeon. The corpse is not forced to be human it can be from another race of beings, animals or even monsters from the outside world. However you can't get GP from the monsters you have summoned youself."

The girl rapidly explained everything to Jin before showing him a map of the current dungeon that would show in real time the monsters of the dungeon as a green dot and the other beings which are ennemies as a red dot. The dungeon map was very small, in short, from the entrance, there was no monsters or traps. There was just a single corridor starting from the entrance to the core room.

Seeing this, the first thing that Jin wondered was how she survived up until now having a dungeon this weak.

The girl interrupted Jin's train of tought with a question that would decide her future. "Would you like to make a contract with me to become like me a dungeon master and work with me in the future?" She said everything really fast while playing with her hair and looking at Jin with hope filling her eyes.

"Yeah, why not? I'll work with you to make this dungeon the strongest one on the continent. But… what is your name anyway?" Jin had an awkard laught as he hadn't even tought of asking her name before."

"My name is Iris, what about you?"

"Nice to meet you Iris my name is Jin. Let's work well together in the future."

They looked at each other in the eyes before finally turning their heads shyly and Jin directly went to the dungeon core to look at the GP they possessed and what they could do to improve the dungeon. Jin had asked what GP meant and she had answered that they were the godess point the godess being the godess of chaos that had created the dungeons as a trial to humanity.

He touched the dungeon core and immediately, three words appeared in front of him. These words were : Traps, monsters, items. He touched the word traps and saw that there were at least a few dozens different traps that could be placed in a dungeon however, their prices were high and it was not a good idea to put them right now in the dungeon as monsters woukd be more usefull.

He changed of column and went for the monsters instead and saw that the prices were different depending on the kind and strenght of the monster. While looking threw the monsters list, he immediately started to think which kind of monsters would be the most useful in this dungeon and how he should develop the dungeon.

Seeing the different kinds of monsters, he decided to get more information before starting to make the dungeon as it would only waste is already limited GP if he were to randomly make the dungeon. He didn't even bother to open the item section as they would be useless for him without a plan.

He looked at Iris who was looking at the map of the dungeon in order to know if an intruder entered the dungeon since she didn't have any monsters in order to protect the dungeon core. "Hey Iris? How is the land around the dungeon? Also, what kind of people are around and what do they use as weapons?"

"Eum? For the land, the dungeon entrance is in a cave behind a waterfall and there is a small road making it possible for two or three person to walk next to each other to enter the dungeon. Apart from this, the dungeon is in a forest and there are mostly only animals and monsters in the area. The monsters are mostly undead since I heard from the people hunting that there was a great war here in the distant past. For the people around I know there is a little city with a few thousands people living there and they often come to hunt not too far from the dungeon. As for their weapons, they are mostly using arrows and bows made of wood. Sometime, there is someone having a dagger or a short sword made of metal but it would seem that ores and metals are really rare in this side of the continent."

"Oh? So undead are most common monster in this forest and metal is really rare so in other words they don't have ores to make metal? Perfect, that's just perfect!"

Jin immediately went to the dungeon core and opened the menu before using GP to make tunnels in the first floor of the dungeon. Once it was done, he immediately went in the item section and bought coal and copper ore and put them in the walls of the dungeon. Afterwards he made the entire floor and ceiling indestructible to make it impossible for people to change floor without going though the stairs when he would had another floor to the dungeon.

Just buying the ores, making the ceiling and floor indestructible and making the dungeon bigger costed him 9000 GP. Since he only had 20000 GP at the beginning, he had almost used half of it however, it was important for his plan. Afterwards, he unlocked the will-o-wisp monster which only costed 500 GP to unlock since it wasn't a monster that could fight.

Once he unlocked the will-o-wisp, he immediately started to buy them in a large amount. Since they could only be used to make light, they were really cheap and for 1 GP, he could summon 4. He used 500 GP and summoned 2000 will-o-wisp to start making light in the first floor of the dungeon. They didn't need to be fed since they were able to sustain themselves with the life force of little insects that lived in the dungeon.

Not only was the will-o-wisp able to make light, but it also cleaned up the dungeon of the insects living in it as such, there was no problem at all. With the 10000 GP left, he went to a corner far from the entrance and opened a second floor, making the stairs. Making the second floor costed a total of 1000 GP and he immediately made tunnels just like the previous floor.

Once the tunnels were done, he made the walls, floor and ceiling indestructible just like the previous floor except that he added the walls in this floor. He immediately unlocked the skeletons. They were the most basic of the undead monsters and they didn't cost a lot. He immediately bought 50 of them and placed them in strategic location of the dungeon however it costed him a total of 1000 GP for 20 GP each.

Since the dungeon only had two floors for the time being, the core room was as far as possible from the stairs leading to the second floor. Since they didn't have enough GP to summon a boss monster for the moment, Jin decided that with Iris they would fight the people to protect the core if necessary.

Now that everything was done in the dungeon, it was time to start his plan. He bought the coal and copper with the mesely few Gp that he possessed and prepared to take his leave with the two pieces of rock.