The ancient king of the Aseth forest meditated for a long time, drawing in mana and power from the world and woods. After it had collected enough power, it unleashed it.

  The small grove it had been hibernating was destroyed in an explosion that rocked and shook the entire forest. The blast freed it from the ground and allowed for it to walk again.

  There wasn’t as much mana as there once was, though perhaps it had simply lost most of his ability to draw it in. It wasn’t anywhere near the peak of its power; it would have taken years to recover even half of its old strength. That didn’t matter though.

  The old king started to walk a slow and steady march towards the dungeon. The trees shivered near it despite there being no wind. The ancient beast king caused the entire forest to stand still, and commanded the few strong animals that remained under its influence to join it.

  It was going to destroy the dungeon, even if the dungeon killed it.

  Jacob looked at the over two hundred soul points that he had gained and felt that this wasn’t enough. While the boulder trap had worked, it only worked barely. There was a lot of luck on his side that allowed him to defeat this wave.

  The generals from the wave were intelligent but not cognizant, the king monster though would be. The only way that his boulder trap could have worked was if its power was strong enough to overpower a king-level monster that was expecting it. While it did take multiple of the stronger magical beasts to stop it, that didn’t change the fact that it was stopped.

  It might still have some value in delaying and distracting, but was that worth the massive tunnel leading close to the dungeon core? Jacob didn’t think so. He had checked the boulder and noticed that it had started to fracture from the magic of the previous wave. The king-level monster, as a sentient creature, had many more spells, both in variety and power, than a normal magic beast. It was a coin toss whether it had a spell that could destroy the boulder, much less stop it.

  He recalled from the game as many details as he could. The good news was that this next wave wouldn’t have several dozen magic beasts and monsters that he had to track, at most there would be eight or nine. The horrible news was that each and every one of those creatures would be strong. Combined with the king’s leadership, it wasn’t going to be anywhere near an easy fight.

  The best solution he had were the ants. Even at the highest level of mana regeneration, it still took some time for mana to be recovered. If he used cannon fodder to soak up spells from the king, eventually its mana reserves would dwindle. It wasn’t the small spells he was worried about, rather it was the big spells that had him scared.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The bear and the deer had both leveled up, being above level ten and fifteen respectively. There wasn’t really much he could do to them with the still measly soul points he had gained and the little time he had left.

  He focused on the ant that needed to become a queen. He had been trying to come up with a good strategy to maximize the value of his soul points and ensure, to the best of his abilities, the safety of himself and the dungeon.

  The issue lied with the immense expense of creating a decent reproductive system. If he wanted the ant to give birth to ants with the same characteristics as itself, the cost would be around 350 to 400 soul points. If he wanted to have an army of ants without the characteristics for the defensive exoskeletons, dangerous pincers, or fast growth, then it would cost around 80 soul points.

  He did want the ants to have these crucial attributes though. More than that, he wanted the queen ant to have the characteristic [Offspring Control] so that he could manipulate the ants into an army. That by itself was expensive too though.

  He thought about it for a little bit and played with the interface, trying to find a solution before he found one.

  The most important characteristic was [Fast Growth] as that was the only way that he could get an army in time. He could save money by making it so that the characteristics [Razor Pincers] and [Sturdy Exoskeleton] will appear rarely in the ant’s descendents instead of its being guaranteed. That would save him enough money for [Offspring Control].

  He didn’t have the time to make any more decisions. He kept the growth cycle simple and didn’t create genders, opting for basic asexual reproduction. With [Fast Growth] being the only powerful characteristic that all of the ant’s offspring will have, he wouldn’t need to wait too long for the eggs to hatch.

  This was incredibly simple but he didn’t have much of a choice. Much like the sorry and stale state of his dungeon, he could only be practical and boring.

  The combination of modifications devoured all the money he had gained from the fourth wave. He watched as the ant convulsed, though this time there wasn’t a slow change like its pincers becoming more sharp. It seemed to be in pain to a certain amount, though it was hard for him to tell. When modifying the bear and deer it was like they were in some pain but they were asleep and didn’t seem to be aware of it.

  Once the ant had finished, it got up and went to a room with several beds of Scarlet Teeth in them. It started to lay eggs within close distance from the food. Each egg was large, slightly larger than a chicken egg. The ant struggled to make more than a dozen.

  Time passed both fast and slow, and the eggs hatched. Instead of larva, they skipped ahead to being normally shaped ants. This wasn’t good, losing stages of development were bad for them. However, since all of them were going to die to a king of magic beasts soon, it didn’t really matter.

  They started to eat the fungus that surrounded them, and the deer was there to make sure that they grew faster.