The king’s power could vaguely feel the demise of the recent attack on the dungeon. It could vaguely feel the future and knew that the next wave would also fail. He didn’t have any stronger soldiers to send.

  There were stronger creatures within these ancient forests, but his time dormant had weakened him and made these independent powers rebellious. They refused to answer his call and venture into those fiendish kingdoms.

  The king roared and tried to pull itself from the ground. So much of its memories were foggy. It was too tiring to think about them though.

  It just wanted to go back to sleep. But the ancient oath refused to let him. Those old memories were pulled from the mire of its mind. The tragedies, the battles, the fallen; it was starting to remember all of them.

  The forgotten, personal hatred started to boil within him. It was starting to truly wake up.

  Jacob looked at the amount of soul points he gained and felt a rush of dopamine. He had gained over 175 soul points and almost had 200 soul points in his bank account. This was nothing to the amount of soul points that were gained in the middle to late game, but at the moment this was the most soul points he had at one time since he came here.

  Jacob started resetting the boulder trap and repairing the damage done to the dungeon. The many craters needed to be filled and there was a lot of organic mess that needed to be fed to the fungus. The dungeon fairy was working hard, trying its hardest to wrap around the boulder to transport it back to the end of the tunnel.

  With this much, he could now invest in the monsters he needed. The five waves would bring the first true boss monster, the monster king. Since he had opened up within or close to a forest—all of the animals he had fought so far belong in a forest—then the king would probably reflect that. He couldn’t help but wonder what this behemoth would look like.

  The three parts of his army that he needed to worry about were the bear, deer, and ants. The bear would serve the role of tank, the deer would be the healer and support, while the ants would be the cannon fodder and numbers. Out of all of them, the ants were the ones that he needed to prioritize.

  The ant queen he had created still wasn’t fully grown yet and didn’t have any noteworthy abilities to be helpful. At this stage it was just a very large ant, enough to terrorize his mother or sister back home but nowhere near deadly enough to fight monsters or adventurers. It needed a stronger exoskeleton, pincers, and it needed its reproductive system to be programmed.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The bear and the deer only needed to improve their mana systems to become better. The bear needed a mana core and mana recovery characteristic, while the deer only needed a mana core. With these attributes, he could then start leveling them up during the fourth wave…

  Leveling up was interesting in this game. Rather than gaining new, better abilities as they level up, monster characteristics scale as they level. So, in theory, a monster at a high enough level would regenerate mana faster with [Minor Mana Recovery] than a much lower monster with normal [Mana Recovery].

  However, there is a reason why that rarely is the case. The law of diminishing returns was in effect, meaning that inferior characteristics made it harder for creatures and organisms to level up. Without magic, an animal would struggle to reach level 10, with only one mana characteristic the deer would struggle to reach level 20.

  This wasn’t a mistake. After all, how awful would it be to be fighting level 50 monsters on only the first layer of the dungeon while you are only level 7. These cheaper and inferior attributes allow for him to control the level of his creatures per level, at least to a certain extent.

  Leveling up wasn’t as important as it was in RPG’s, meaning that he could use much weaker monsters if he had a smart-enough strategy. However, the monster king was a very powerful boss, and levels were very important if he wanted his bear and deer to survive.

  Jacob found the ant and gave it the characteristics [Strong Exoskeleton], [Razor Pincers], and [Fast Growth] for over 80 soul points. He then gave the bear [Minor Mana Recovery] and [Lesser Mana Core] and gave the deer [Lesser Mana Core] for slightly under 120 soul points, leaving him with only 4 left.

  He left the animals to transform while he started planning ahead. The ant’s reproduction was critical, but also expensive. While he did have the ovaries developed, they were left inert to save on money. Having a creature that could reproduce made all modifications to it much more expensive. Just giving the ant, with no magic, the power to reproduce would cost him around 90 soul points alone. If that ant didn’t have strong characteristics, the price would drop to around 40, though adding characteristics would be much more expensive.

  Now that he was broke again, he could only wait until the next wave. The good news though was that he now had a few chambers full of Scarlet Teeth, and with the characteristic [Fast Growth] and the blessing from the deer, it wouldn’t take him long to raise a decently large force of ants.

  They alone wouldn’t be able to do much against the king-level monster, but with the bear and the deer he hoped that it would be enough. He would also need to prepare traps and obstacles to distract and occupy it as he doubted that he had any traps that could actually harm it.

  There were plenty of things to do and plenty of time to do it as he checked his quest. He began planning and creating the outlines for the dungeon to prepare for the fifth wave. While there was a giant tunnel in the way, the space around it can be prepared for in advance.

  He kept himself occupied as the fourth wave drew closer.