Chapter 2: Dungeons, Doors, and Dread

The string of expletives that came out of Red's mouth would have made the dwarves of Igdolin blush, though he didn't have nearly half of their curse words in his repertoire at the moment. He waved his hands frantically through the cloud of flies, trying to swat them despite his incorporeal nature. He was trying his best to destroy the foul little things, but had no success between his gusts of inconsequential effort and the crawdads attempting to pinch the fast-moving insects. The five crawdads were sitting on top of the pillow, using their weight to make sure no flies could wriggle under the fabric.

Though the mud bugs were keeping the flies from advancing, they were slowly but surely getting worn down. A point of health was being removed from them whenever multiple flies landed on their carapace. Red was about to curse the heavens again when suddenly a chain of lightning sang through the air. The electricity killed half of the swarm in an instant. The second jolt finished off the rest of them. He gave a sigh of relief as he turned to see the source of the dynamic energy.

Floating in the air was a single sphere of blue light, glowing and casting shadows about the modest room. As Red stared at it, the shine abated and made it possible for him to see the silhouette of a small woman. His face pulled closer, to where his nose almost met the torso of the figure. In front of his eyes was a small humanoid, though to say she looked human was a bit of a misnomer. Her skin was a bright azure, with tiny freckles that were a deeper shade covering her face and shoulders. Cotton candy pink locks danced down from her head into a flow of hair reaching to the small of her back. Her modesty was secured by blackberry leaves sewn together with pond-reed fibers. Her wings danced behind her, the glittering darner wings seeming to be covered in flakes of stardust.

Red wasn't able to see her lower half due to the inappropriate movement of his head that it would require. He was snapped out of his observation as the beautiful little fairy leaned forward and gave him a gentle kiss upon the tip of his crystalline nose. "Well, aren't you just the cutest little fairy in the swamp?" he asked with a chuckle as he looked at her, reaching one of his hands up and giving her a pet on the head with a single finger. She gave a fussy look as her hair was disturbed by the finger but gave Red a smile.

"Well? Are you able to speak?" he asked with a smile as he looked at her, having to keep his head within range of her bubble of magic in order to see her. She looked at him, tapping her chin slightly in thought as her eyes turned upward. She gave a happy nod to him, confirming that she could, in fact, speak if she chose to do so. "Well... will you?" he asked with a bit of confusion, getting a mischievous grin from the fairy as she shrugged her shoulders.

"Right... a real comedian. Well, you're very pretty, and you're blue in coloration." he muttered, making sure not to finish the sentence on the color of her skin. He didn't feel his creatures deserved haphazard names like he had given himself. "You're also dangerous if used the right way... so in honor of the blue lotus, I'll name you Lotus!" he said happily to her, the fairy beaming with a wide smile and her hands on her cheeks. A bluish blush was across her features before she paused.

The bright glow from her form flickered out as gold dust began to trail off of her. Before Red could make a comment about pixie dust, she was enveloped in golden light. After the light faded, she floated before Red, smiling in a new lotus flower dress that she swished from side to side. She gave a clap of her hands as a name appeared above her head in white letters: Lotus.

Red pulled his head back and rubbed his chin, considering her for a moment. "Alright, not sure what that was about, but it seems like your new name changed something about you," he said with a small chuckle as he realized what the cause had been. He wondered if the system was following his understanding of video games, and that named monsters usually had more powers than the regular variety.

As if reading his confusion, the small fairy sent out a cloud of poison, then followed it with another of her shocks of lightning, killing a few flies that had filtered in since the swarm had died. "Yep, names are important here, good to know. Alright, Lotus, you will be my protector. Don't let anything touch my core," he said firmly as he looked at her, seeing the silhouette of the small fairy salute. Though... she seemed a bit bigger as well after the change, that might have been Red's imagination.

He turned his attention towards his pool of mana, his eyes bugging out of his head as he saw that he had nearly double what he had when he started the day. "The fly swarm was that much!?" he asked in shock as he looked at one of the fried flies, ignoring Lotus as she floated over and sat in the center of his pillow. "How much magic is in one of these things?" he muttered as he looked at the carcass, a small window appearing to answer his question.

Intruder Sheet

Name: N/A

Species: Common House Fly

Mana: ¼

Age: Unknown

Sex: Female

Size: Miniscule

Special: Swarm

Description: A common house fly that hatched within an evil swamp. The errant mana in the place of birth has made this fly stronger and more mana rich.

"Evil swamp… alright so I suppose I have that to look forward to. Gonna have to rework the whole damn place when I get outside." He grumbled with a sigh, not particularly excited about his starting biome. That at least explained why his room was so sparse. This was either a minor outpost, a hermit's hut, or even a witch's home before it had become him. "Hopefully there are ways to change biomes, because I don't want people to be exhausted by the time they delve into me." He muttered as he looked around, wondering what to spend his mana on. 

He looked up at the ceiling, wondering if there was any way that he could close up the holes. At the very least that would reduce the rate at which flies could come in. They could still find their way through the stove's chimney or under the door, but not nearly in such high numbers. He continued to look at the ceiling before a box suddenly materialized.

Upgrade Worn Roof? 

Cost: 10 mana or 5 mana 3 wood

"Oh! So I can view information and upgrades by just focusing on things. Also, apparently, I can substitute materials for build costs. I don't exactly have any loose timber in this place, even though that's all it is. I might as well burn through some of this mana in making me safer," he said as he flicked the upgrade button. He watched as swirling wisps of energy floated up and coalesced in the holes of the ceiling. They didn't magically form plugs or tree knots, but instead, the wood grew to absorb the wisps. It seemed that the upgrades would follow the most logical conservation of mass.

The wood slowly mended and closed back up, leaving the only light in the room as the wood stove and the window. Red would encourage Lotus to light it if the abject absence of wood had not already been made apparent. Though as he looked at the stove, another upgrade window appeared. He was starting to like the system now that it was more logical. When he was a newly incarnated core, it was far less intuitive. He would need to talk about the programmers needing to install a tutorial for the next time he saw the Reaper. He gave a small chuckle at his own joke as he read the upgrade.

Wood Stove Upgrade: Upgrade stove to have an endless flame installed. Flame will deplete one mana per day unless a raw fire mana source is discovered.

Cost: 15 Mana

"Discovered? So there must be skill trees... I have electric and poison magic now, but I don't know if Lotus counts as a raw source. Maybe it means mana crystals? I thought I was the mana crystal." he muttered as he accepted the price of the upgrade. With the flies still trickling in and being killed, he didn't have to worry about the daily regenerative value.

A set of logs appeared in the oven, catching fire and beginning to heat up the entire shack. Though it felt like Red could adjust the internal temperature of the shack as he pleased. That, of course, was confusing now that Red remembered thermodynamics. It seemed that everything related to science took a back seat to magic when it was at play. The room became a comfortable seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit (23.8°C), and Red smiled brightly as he felt like things were coming along. He spent a bit more on fixing his door to be sturdier and locked before he dumped some more on another fairy and five crawdads. Adventurers could say what they will about his dungeon, but there would be one thing he'd never be: unprepared.

That was what he believed, at least, though it was easy to say that before someone slams on your door begging for help. He had assumed the smokestack from the chimney would attract people, but he had never expected a guest so soon. He focused and unlocked the door, the mechanism clicking as he allowed the person in. He had figured something out during his previous lives. The system prevented a dungeon from completely isolating itself, but a lock was just a puzzle for thieves. That also meant the dungeon itself could solve the puzzle whenever it chose to do so. Red believed that a whole crawdad's worth of mana was reasonable for the small mechanism.

A little girl rushed into the shack and quickly slammed the door behind her, turning the deadbolt and panting as she pushed her back to the door and slid down. "Thank you… I've been running for so long." She panted with her eyes closed, unable to focus on anything but oxygen. Red squatted down to look at her. The crawdads were lining the bed, facing towards the little girl in mock of a cavalry charge. Red held up his hand behind himself, making sure that neither the crawdads nor Lotus and her newborn sister, would cause any damage to the girl. 

New Sentient Being Detected: Addison Cloudwatch von Zinglemeyer!

A box appeared, but Red quickly brushed it away. He had no time to deal with system notifications when there was a scared child in his dungeon. When she finally opened her eyes and brushed the silvery hair away from her face, the girl gasped in shock. For a moment, Red believed she could actually see his crystalline form and all the creepiness that it undoubtedly held. However, following her line of sight, he realized that she was looking at the two fairy commanders at the head of the crawdad army.

"They aren't going to hurt you. Are you alright?" Red asked with a frown as he looked over at her. He blinked when he saw one of his pop-ups appear in front of her. He leaned forward and glanced at the words, realizing that they were what he had just said.

"I-I'm okay... Are you the fairies?" she asked in a very hushed tone, her hands gently petting a long lock of silvery hair. She was nervous and scared, no doubt worrying that his fairies were the kind from fairy tales that stole children.

"Those two are fairies, but they listen to me. I'm the dungeon you're currently in," Red commented, though he rolled his eyes as he could almost feel the fairies sticking their tongues out at him. They were young, and he hoped that they would listen to him a bit better with age.

He could see the girl stiffen more than when she had entered the house. It was clear she understood what it meant to be in a dungeon. "Don't worry, I'm a young and nice dungeon. I've only got the one room, and you seem far too strong to handle my bugs," he commented with a smile, and the girl seemed to give a small smile at the compliment. However, as Red was about to say more using his speech-to-text magic, a sudden thud came at the door.

"What were you running from?" he asked firmly, the text appearing bolded in the box. The girl was shaking, tears pricking at the edges of her beautiful violet eyes as fear returned to her. "The-the-the caravan was attacked by undead. It's been chasing me for hou-hou-hours!" she sobbed as tears began to stream down her face, clearly overwhelmed by both exhaustion and the relentless pursuit.

Red frowned upon hearing that, knowing that he didn't have anything holy enough to put a quick end to undead. He had his infinitely burning fireplace, electric and poisonous lotus, as well as whatever abilities the new fae possessed. He also had to consider that undead were unintelligent, meaning that the system would regard them as intruders. If they somehow managed to touch his core, it would be the fastest death of all.

However, even as he thought about that, he couldn't help but let out a soft sigh. The girl was cowering, her face red and tears streaming down her scratched-up cheeks. He couldn't just cast her out with no care in the world, especially not after she had fought so hard to survive this ordeal. Some minor kinship bloomed in his chest as he thought about how difficult it must have been for her. Though he shook off those thoughts as he looked back at his forces.

"Kid, hide under my bed. I'll deal with the monster." the font of the box that appeared was bold and rigid, reflecting the malice he felt towards the creature that made Addison cry. She sniffled and gasped as she crawled her way under the ratty old mattress.

He noticed a notification stating that a guest, the word quickly changing from sentient being in the notification, had discovered his hidden mushroom patch. One problem at a time, though, as he heard the creature on the other side of the door banging and clawing at the improved wood. He figured that the creature was too dumb to try the doorknob; otherwise, it would already be jiggling the handle under the lock. This thing was an unrelenting killing machine and it was not going to stop just because of a door in its way. It would either wear down the door until there was nothing left or wait until Addison died of natural causes.

"Lotus, take your sister and float above the door. Crawdads, assemble on either side of the door," Red said firmly as a plan began to formulate in his head. If he was going to have to fight this thing, then he would treat it as an invasion. He would scramble the military and the air force, giving himself full room supremacy against this invading army. He waited as his forces assembled, turning to look at the door as a splinter came across one of the boards.

He examined the door closely, analyzing its parts and contemplating what he could do with it using his limited pool of mana. The magic from Addison being in his dungeon was slowly ticking up his energy, but that wouldn't be more than a few points with the girl doing nothing but cowering. He let out a sigh of relief as a notification popped up, offering just what he had been hoping for. He looked over at the little girl, smiling as he gave her one message before the battle began. "Don't worry... I'll try my best to protect you," the box said, and Red focused on his own notification box.

Put iron hinges in storage? 

Cost: 1 mana per hinge