My second life as a dungeon

As I watched the final diver fall I got a notification telling me that I had completed my second quest and that I could choose any of my monster patterns to evolve. I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to evolve yet so I decided to leave it for later. In the meantime I had something else that needed doing. I was going to get the mage from the party that I had just watched fall to teach me how to better lead my monster.

I spent the next hour planning our conversation while I waited for them to be revived. Once that hour was up I summoned the diver to the room that housed the dungeon core instantly starting the conversation. ‘You have fallen in my dungeon and so need to be given your punishment’ I started, trying to sound as commanding as I could as a 5 foot catgirl,

‘The rest of your party have received the standard punishment but I have decided against giving you the same punishment. I was watching your party and I saw how you tried to lead your party even with that paladin working against you, so I want you to teach me how to lead my monsters.’

‘W-what? I don’t understand’ The fallen mage stuttered clearly confused and a little afraid, ‘You want me to teach you how to lead your monsters? Aren’t you a dungeon? I thought that came naturally to you, why do you even want to learn how to be a leader?’

‘I meant what I said, I want you to teach me how to lead my monsters properly’ I said, a bit annoyed that I had to repeat myself ‘Yes, I am a dungeon, but that just means I know some things about monsters and how to make them. I know nothing about proper tactics other than from games I used to play and books I used to read.

‘I want to learn how to be a leader so that I can help even higher level parties grow stronger without relying on brute force and I know you can teach me. Any idiot can lead from the front but you lead from the back, you were always keeping an eye on your surroundings and you made sure that everyone in your party was positioned properly.

‘Of course I won’t force you to teach me if you really don’t want to but you will end up just getting the standard punishment which could end up being worse.  Look, I don’t expect you to teach me everything you know right now, in fact you have all the time in the world, as soon as I am happy that you have taught me everything you can then you will be free to go.’

‘Oh, ok’ He said, a bit warily but less confused. ‘I am still not sure how I am going to teach you but I will try.’

‘Thanks, that’s all I can ask.’ I said as I got up to leave ‘Your room is on the first floor just before the portal to the second floor, you can’t miss it. Since we are going to be spending a bit of time together we should at least know each other’s names, my name is Liz.’

‘My name is Clark’ he said as I shook his hand before I teleported to my room on the first floor to rest. It had been a bit stressful watching them go through my dungeon with the amount of times I wanted to go down there and slap that stupid paladin silly. He was exactly like those idiots that would ruin online games for me by doing stupid shit and then blaming everyone else for it without trying to see how they could do better.

Seeing him charge at the chest without any thought made me really want to put in some trapped chests in one of my future floors. Maybe I could make it so that when the chest was opened it would release a poison or a group of monsters would ambush the party. Another idea was to get a mimic pattern, either by evolving my slimes into one or by hiring a party to gather some mimic corpses that I could absorb, and then place them around my dungeon.

Or I could take a page out of a TTRPG I used to play and make some chests have cursed loot that would force the first person to come across it to use it at their own detriment. The curse wouldn’t be too harsh as I wasn’t a monster but it had to be bad enough to teach them to be a bit more cautious in the future.

Maybe a piece of clothing that swapped the wearers sex and can’t be removed except by a mage that had access to the second tier of light magic, I know how bad it is to be in a body that doesn’t match your gender so it might be pretty bad to experience, assuming they weren’t already trans. Or a healing potion that also makes the drinker hiccup for an hour.

Anyway, back to how the party did. A part of me was surprised by how badly they did since they had around 5 levels per person on the first party but they lost a party member to the slimes, even if that person had idiotically ran forwards. Another part of me wasn’t really that surprised, they were clearly not used to working together and sometimes no matter how over levelled you are you still need to be a competent team. It just goes to show that working well together can sometimes be more important than levels.

I was very happy with how my second floor went; sure the early encounters were blasted through but that was mostly because of Clark’s bullets one-hit-killing them. If they hadn’t had Clark then I reckon they would have had a much tougher time getting through it. I couldn’t think of anything that needed changing now that I had seen it be tested so, with nothing to do, I started to think about which of my patterns I wanted to evolve.

In the end it was a pretty easy decision, firstly the Cockatrice was already at such a high level that I couldn’t use them for much on my current floors and I didn’t know what the minimum level would increase to once they had evolved. Secondly the Magmin were plenty strong already so they didn’t need to evolve. Finally I hadn’t even used the kobolds yet so evolving them would be a gamble I didn’t want to take.

All that was left was the slime pattern, all the patterns were grouped together so I wouldn’t be able to get a specialised evolution but I didn’t need one. This was also a good decision as they were too weak to be effective for even the next level so evolving them would help them keep up. With my choice made a screen popped up in front of me.

It seemed like my guess was right, the natural evolution of the Slime was the Ooze. They were similar in many regards but the Ooze was even harder to kill, was slow moving and didn’t tend to have many elemental variants, instead preferring to use different poisons or acids. Happy with my choice I decided to look over their stats another time as I wanted to check on Val before going to sleep and waiting for something to happen.

The next morning I was awoken by a soft voice whispering in my ear ‘Morning cutie’ I immediately bolted up and looked around to see Shonu standing over me.

‘Do you have to always wake me up like that’ I said, a little indignantly ‘You startled me.’

‘Oh now, don’t pout,’ Shonu giggled with her smooth, somehow motherly, voice, ‘it was just a joke. I hear congratulations are in order, I wasn’t sure you were going to manage to take down a party since you only had two weeks left to finish the quest. How have things been going these past six weeks?’

‘Hmm, I don’t find it very funny,’ I said, still pouting a little. ‘The past month has been interesting, I expanded the first floor like you told me to and I am quite happy with how it is now. Then I made the second floor using the knowledge I gained over that month; I am also happy with how that floor turned out.

‘I explored a bit outside of my dungeon and even went to the village that is nearby, they were very nice even though I am an outsider and I learnt a lot from their library. On my way back I found a runaway that I am not really sure what to do with. Oh, I also made one of the party members that fell my teacher so that I can use my monsters more efficiently.’

‘Oh? You found a lost soul?’ Shonu said curiously

‘Yeah, I found a human being chased by goblins just before they lost consciousness and brought her back here to treat her’ I started, I decided that maybe Shonu could help me with my predicament and I trusted her enough to know that she wouldn’t judge Val. Also I had no clue what to do. ‘She has been running away from her parents for the past year because they didn’t accept that she was trans and even threatened her life.

‘I want to keep her here but I can’t make the potion she was using to help her transition and I don’t really want to let her go because I am worried her parents might try to find her and hurt her. Obviously if she was adamant on leaving then I wouldn’t stop her, she isn’t my prisoner.’

‘That is certainly a horrible situation’ Shonu said, clearly upset ‘well luckily I have the solution to your issues, you two signing a pact together will solve everything. She will go under your protection until the pact is nullified and you will be able to do the same as the potions did. You don’t even have to actively do it, just signing the contract will make your subconscious send DP her way and make the changes she wishes, it should take about a year to complete.’

‘What? Really?’ I said while bouncing up and down, very happy that I had finally been given a solution to my issue. ‘That’s great news, I have to go tell her immediately.’

‘Hold on for a second’ Shonu said, calming me down ‘I need to give you your next quest. This time it will be to get to level ten, sure you need to build your dungeon but I also want to focus on yourself. Plus having a few adventures will help give you ideas for what to do on future floors. Getting to level ten will help with this.’ At this another screen appeared in front of me.

‘The terminology is a bit weird but essentially the reward means that you will be able to explore double the distance away from the dungeon and I know how much you hate being bored with nothing new to experience so being trapped in the dungeon for a month seems like a fitting punishment.’ Shonu explained, I had to agree that staying in the dungeon for so long would drive me insane.

‘The quest should be pretty easy anyway; it usually takes only a month for adventurers to reach level 10 once they hit level 5 so it shouldn’t be any trouble for you to do it in triple that time, especially with the extra experience you will get from anyone that you beat. Anyway I’ll leave you to give your friend the good news.’

At this Shonu gave me a small wave as she disappeared to wherever she went when she was helping to look after this world. I was almost level 3 already and I felt like it would be pretty easy to reach level 10 in six months so I accepted the quest before going to find Val to tell her that I had found a solution to her issues, assuming she wanted to go through with it.

I found her by the portal into the dungeon looking over the construction of the new branch of the adventurers guild. They had started a couple days ago after I signed the contract with Simmond. So far they had just laid the foundation for the building and were starting on the main building. I was amazed at how quickly they had set everything up.

‘Hey there’ I said, tapping Val’s shoulder to get her attention as I sat down next to her.

‘Oh hey.’ Val said, turning towards me ‘What’s up?’

‘I think I may have found a solution to one of your issues. Assuming you want my help.’ I said with a smile ‘I was told that if we form a pact with me then I will be able to protect you and help you transition, the only issue is that you will have to stay either close to me or in the dungeon for a year.’

‘Oh my gods’ Val said excitedly as she hugged me ‘that’s amazing, I don’t know how to thank you for everything you are doing for me.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said, ‘I know what it’s like to be in a similar position to what you are in now and I wouldn’t want anyone to go through that. It’s the least I could do.’

‘How do we form this pact?’ Val asked excitedly

‘I think I can just do it instinctively’ I said wishing that I had asked Shonu a bit more about it before she left. ‘I think you just need to hold my hands while I incant the spell and as long as you agree to the terms it will automatically form the contract.’ At this we held each other’s hands and I started to cast the spell, a minute later I had finished the spell and asked, ‘do you Val agree to be under my protection and let me help you with your transition.’

As Val said ‘I agree’ I felt like a fire lit in my body for a second before the feeling went away and I could instinctively tell where she was even with my eyes closed, as if she was part of my body.

‘The spell is finished’ I said as I opened my eyes. 'If a time comes that either of us get rid of the pact they can just say the words ‘nullify pact’ out loud while thinking of their intention.’

‘Thank you so much, I won’t ever want to break our promise’ Val said with tears in her eyes. With what I came out here to do finished I sat with Val for a while longer and just watched the construction of the guildhall unfold in front of us.