“Humor is just another defense against the Universe” - Mel Brooks

  I’d been hoping Aven would stick around longer to answer questions, but as a dungeon, I guess I was going to have to learn some patience. Hopefully a few days really won’t be that big a wait, though I assumed it would be at least three days, given the quest timeline.

  Well, I’m hoping the Dungeon Fairy had noticed that I had a few easy ones left when he gave me that deadline. I think I can manage this. Let’s start by spawning a slime and a ground squirrel. As with the badger, the act of creation was a bit of a strain – not in terms of the mana cost, but just the total focus required.

  The slime was, fortunately, a simple creature, albeit one unlike anything I’d encountered before on a macroscopic scale. Somewhere between an amoeba and a slime mold, and a dull, grassy green, the slime was an amorphous thing, mostly low and flat, presumably to conceal itself in grasses, with a small, hard core (no, let’s call it a nucleus – I don’t want to compare it with my own crystalline self). I could tell that it would be a slow moving but predatory thing, most suited to devouring carrion and only the most helpless and oblivious of macroscopic creatures. It had an acidic attack that was surprisingly effective, but also easily avoided and counteracted with a quick rinse with regular water. It left a mucus trail as it moved, glistening in sunlight, nearly invisible otherwise, and quite slick. The slime I left, clinging to the ceiling, in the westernmost room leading to the cliff’s edge.

  The ground squirrel was both more familiar and more complex, and I received a certain insight into its behavioral patterns in the process of creating it. Social creatures, this one would need some company to function normally, and I spawned a solid half dozen of them. They were set to form a small colony of burrows surrounding the surface entrance. I figured they could take over for the ones I’d destroyed not that long ago. As in my own world, they had a set of different alarm calls – some for terrestrial predators and some for aerial ones. I thought they might work as a good early warning system for me. I also tasked them to bring a selection of seeds, nuts, and berries, first for expanding my array of blueprints, but also to provide them with food. I could, it turned out, support them purely on mana, but consuming an appropriate diet eliminated most of the passive costs of keeping them around. Some rough observations suggested that simply keeping the creatures around costs something close to 1% of their original summoning/creation cost daily, even without providing them with direct mana support.

  That wasn’t enough to complete the Create Three Creatures Quest, so I created an additional granite badger, and that did the trick. Apparently, “three different creatures” meant three different species of creature from the start date of the quest, not three individual creatures – something to keep in mind.

  [Quest Completed]: Create three different dungeon creatures; Reward: Choose one of the following: Shade Owl, Cave Lurker, or Armored Rabbit

  [New Quest]: Create two different Tier 2 Creatures; Reward: Tier 2 Creature and Material Blueprint

  As always, I’m a bit spoiled for choices. I just finished arguing for some flying creatures, and I’d assume the owl fits that bill. Still, a cave lurker sounds like it might help beef up the defenses of my core, and the armored rabbit would fit the grasslands outside. That said, I’d best stick to the plan.

  [Blueprint awarded: Shade Owl]

  As it turned out, creating a shade owl used up most of my available mana, using nearly three times as much as a granite badger or a grass slime. I was pleased with the result, though, as I could make this work in a variety of ways; the shade owl was a traditional predator in grasslands and, while active mostly at night, tended to roost in active ground squirrel burrows, making it effective not only in the skies, but even underground to some extent. They lived symbiotically with the ground squirrels, rarely eating them, but focusing on their predators and competitors unless necessary. Interestingly, this was my first creature with an inherently magical aspect, taking advantage of a shadow affinity to take prey by surprise and imbuing their talons with a piercing shadow extension that served to prevent escapes and ignore most natural armoring. It was also larger than one would expect, almost a meter from tail to top of head. As one would expect from the name, its plumage was largely shades of grey to black, aside from distinctive silver eyes and talons.

  Pondering my options, I decided that the other two quests I wanted to try to complete were one of my first “naturalist” quests, requiring the identification of three bird species, and the “diversify trap selection” quest. I figured some deepening of my defenses would help calm my dungeon instincts.

  While I could likely just watch birds in my territory using my ground squirrels or badgers, I decided to be a bit more proactive, creating some attractive elements surrounding my entrance. I’d added a small water feature – really just a shallow granite basin I’d filled with water; it wasn’t going to be self-sustaining at the moment, but that wasn’t really a concern.

  The ground squirrels quickly supplied me with useful plant blueprints, and the list suggested the area had been used for agriculture at some point, though not recently.

  Blueprints Acquired: Wild Blackberry, Almond, Apple, Curly Dock, Amaranth, Ryegrass

  I’d used the blackberries to create a concealing bramble in front of my entrance and used some mana flows to force them to fruit. That combination seemed likely to bring in some birds, and I was not disappointed.

  I had no way to kill and assimilate them (or any true desire, really), but as I’d guessed, using my identify skill was enough to register them for the naturalist quest. Identifying three species had only taken me 15 minutes or so of dedicated attention. I'm not sure how big the local list of species would end up being, but it seemed like the first couple levels of that quest series should be simple.

  Species Identified: Sky Island Thrush, Gray-faced Thrasher, Silver Sparrow

  [Quest Completed: Spot A Bird; Reward: Choose one of the following blueprints: Sky Island Thrush, Gray-faced Thrasher, Silver Sparrow]

  Not sure that it made much difference in this case, so I simply grabbed the largest of the three.

  Blueprint Acquired: Sky Island Thrush

  [Quest Reset: Spot A Bird] – Identify 5 species of bird new to you; Reward: 2 Flying Species Blueprints

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  So basically, I can just keep doing this quest, but the number of species required expands as do the rewards. Well, that should keep me busy once I get some free time.

  Figuring that I could come back to that one if I needed to, I switched my attention to developing new traps. Now I had played enough games, back in the day, to be aware of a broad range of possibilities, but I thought I’d try a simple variation on the original trap, to see if that would be enough to count. I set up a simple trapdoor pitfall in the first western room, leaving out the chert blades this time around, but making the fall itself a solid 3-meter drop to an uneven floor of scattered granitic cobbles. The trapdoor was good for securing the trap, in instances where I didn’t want to be hostile; I’d designed a simple “manual” latch, not having access to a fancier pressure switch yet. The fall wouldn’t likely be fatal to most humanoids, but it should have a pretty good chance of breaking ankles and limiting mobility. The walls curved inward and were polished smooth, making it at least a challenge to climb back out.

  Blueprint Acquired: Anklebreaker trap

  Well, that seemed to work. For a second blueprint, I figured I’d go up, instead of down, constructing a truly basic deadfall trap, given how well my ad hoc version had worked on the ground squirrels. From one of the deeper parts of the first floor, I went up, creating a vertical shaft upwards for two meters above the ceiling of my eastern room. Shaping the stone near the surface into a rounded granitic boulder massing over 600 kg (about .75 m in diameter), connected to the sides of the shaft by narrow extrusions I’d need to “manually” remove until I could establish a solid trigger. Reconsidering, I supported it from below with a relatively thin stalagmite; that made it too obvious though. I added a small forest of stalactites and stalagmites, obstructing the path for anything larger than a badger for a stretch of several meters, leaving a narrower path, blocked solely by the supporting stalagmite. I assumed anyone not paying much attention would simply try to batter the stalagmite out of the way, setting off the trap. This one was pretty nasty, so I left the extrusions in the shaft in place until I needed it active. Of course, anyone with the most basic knowledge of geology would have some doubts about this, as stalagmites aren’t normally made of granite!

  Blueprint Acquired: Poorly Disguised Deadfall Trap

  Thanks for the judgement, system! Not really trying to kill my more intelligent visitors. Worst case scenario, I can trigger it myself, if need be.

  One more, huh. Well, maybe I can have some fun with it... Starting from the tunnel leading to the room on the edge of the sky island, I extended a steep, narrow, chute-like 4-meter tunnel dropping at a 70-degree angle through polished granite to the cliff edge. I gave this one a latched trapdoor as well, but then I figured I’d involve some of my creatures to make this a bit more insidious. Over the next day, I spawned in an additional half dozen slimes and set them to laying down a layer of mucus along the inside of the shaft. I also set a dedicated roosting area for the shade owl above the entrance of the room, figuring it could swoop down and strike intruders from behind, pushing them towards the trapdoor. Assuming it all worked to plan, I was hoping for a comical result of intruders shooting out a slime-greased tunnel into sudden flight. The end result for that one was going to be either fatal or simply embarrassing, depending on how the victim dealt with long drops...

  Blueprint Acquired: Comical Slime Chute Trap

  I appreciate that the system gets my humor...

  [Quest Completed: Diversify Trap Selection; Reward: Choose one of the following: Cave Lurker, Giant Trapdoor Spider, Lesser Mimic]

  [Quest Completed: Complete 3 Quests in 3 Days; Reward: Choose one of the following: Lesser Cave Wyvern, Bronzed Hawk-Eagle, Giant Parasitic Wasp]

  I can tell that I’m rapidly becoming addicted to the sense of immediate gratification that comes from these rewards. Hopefully it’s not going to push me towards a full murderhobo status. Some tough calls here, though, and I kind of want them all.

  I felt that, given my current needs and more extended theme goals, I could pass on the bugs – frankly, the Giant Parasitic Wasp sounds horrifying when applied to sapients. The others were trickier. In the end, I decided that I couldn’t pass on a dungeon classic like a mimic, or the scouting potential of the Hawk-Eagle.

  Blueprint Acquired: Lesser Mimic

  Blueprint Acquired: Bronzed Hawk-Eagle

  [New Quest: Automate Trap – Determine two ways to trigger trap without direct intervention; Reward: Three standard trap trigger mechanisms]

  Huh, no new quest for the other one. I wonder if Aven has to give them in person? Or if there’s a limit on the number it can give? Or is there some other factor in play? Maybe it’s just busy at the moment.

  I wanted to immediately spawn in my new creatures, but I was going to need to wait a while for my mana to ramp back up. I’d mostly stopped keeping tabs on the exact numbers, but while my mana capacity had been creeping up (I’m assuming from use and practice as well as my ongoing slow expansion), it hadn’t gone up that much.

  By the time I’d hit the end of my second day blitzing quests, I’d managed to save just enough mana to create one each of the mimic and the hawk-eagle.

  The mimic was very nearly exactly what I’d expected, taking the form of a classic looking wooden chest with massive teeth, a prehensile tongue, and a minor affinity for dimensional magic that would let it swallow an average-sized humanoid despite being only about a meter long by 2/3 of a meter wide. I remained curious to see what a greater mimic would be capable of. I set it up near my dungeon core, figuring that would be where intruders would expect to find any loot. Hopefully, mimics are rare enough that greedy sorts wouldn’t think to check for them, though I had my doubts.

  The hawk-eagle was more exciting for me, and I spawned it in at the top of the only tree I currently possessed – an oak not far from my entrance. Almost a meter tall, not counting a tall, floppy crest and with a wingspan of 1.75 m, this was a big bird and, presumably giving it its name, covered with a uniform, warm, bronze-colored plumage. The hawk-eagle had a minor wind affinity, making it easier for it to fly and more maneuverable. I got the impression that its diet wasn’t particularly specialized, and it would eat anything small enough to take down.

  I set it to hunt, but also tasked it with scouting, specifically asking it to keep an eye out for intruders bigger than itself. I’d tried to get it to look for ruins as well, but it wasn’t clear on the concept and most ruins of any age would take a trained observer to spot. Adding it to my list of things to do, I figured I’d have to directly monitor it for any real hopes at that.

  [Quest Complete: Create 2 Different Tier 2 Creatures; Reward: Choose one of the following – Cave Lurker, Lesser Cave Wyvern, Lesser Banshee Bat; Hematite Blueprint]

  It hadn’t given me a choice on the material blueprint, but that was fine. I struggled for a bit between the wyvern and the bat, as I suspected from the name that the bat would have some form of sonic attack, but in the end, simply could not resist the allure of the draconic, even in this lesser form.

  Blueprint acquired: Lesser Cave Wyvern

  [Quest Reset: Create 5 different Tier 2 creatures; Reward: 2 Tier 2 Creature blueprints or 1 Tier 3 blueprint]

  I could tell that this quest line was about to slow down. I could feel that I was rapidly reaching capacity for creatures I could support, even with them feeding themselves. I suspected that I could maybe spawn in one more Tier 2 creature, but then I was going to need to either expand my mana capacity in some fashion or get rid of some of my existing creatures.

  The only other action of note was to spawn in a set of mana lights into each room, following a classic stoplight pattern of green, yellow, and red, as well as separate smaller lights in a basic white light format. Some experimentation showed significant ranges of brightness were possible, depending on the energy I expended, but for the time being I simply left them unpowered.