The dungeon fairy was able to unseal the dungeon in time before the deer fully suffocated. However, the deer’s lungs were too stunned to take a breath. Before it died, he casted [Minor Heal] on the poor thing and rejuvenated it enough to begin breathing again. He used the dungeon fairy to quickly transport it outside the cell for better air.

  Like before with the bear, he could now read a more accurate version of the deer’s status, though there wasn’t much to see.

  The deer was a steal-of-a-deal, with the only flaw of it being that it was a herbivore. He was tempted to mutate it into being an omnivore, but he didn’t have enough left in his savings to justify that. Besides, being a herbivore didn’t mean that it couldn’t eat meat or fungus, just that it was unhealthy to eat them as a staple.

  Of course it wasn’t perfect. While [Minor Mana Regeneration] was a boon, there were several other characteristics that separate the strong monsters from the weak. It didn’t matter how fast mana could regenerate if you consume faster than you can replace it.

  To become a true magic beast, the creature needed to have both a mana storage and a mana recovery ability as well as the capability to cast at least one spell. The deer had only two parts of this and that was the reason why it was a part of the second wave. His bear had only one, which was the reason why he didn’t use it to fight at the start.

  From the third wave onwards he would be dealing with these sorts of monsters. That is why he had been so focused on creating an army instead of relying on his dungeon’s static defenses. In the end, in a fight between the hard stone of his dungeon and those beasts, the invaders will win.

  Now that he had the deer under his control, he also had access to its many spells. As it only had [Minor Plant Magic], it would only have a few weak spells. The characteristics, even after assimilation or enthrallment, were only the very general parts of an animal. Two different creatures could have [Minor Plant Magic] in their status and not share a single spell.

  He wasn’t sure the mechanics by which magic worked normally, for the people or animals in the world above. He assumed that they had universities or colleges that teach it, or that maybe the ability to use or channel magic was a skill that could be taught or learned. Perhaps everything is innate or some other system.

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  In Dungeon Realm, a dungeon’s monsters and creatures had defined powers. The only way for an organism to gain magic or a new ability they didn’t have previously was through mutation. The good news was that gaining a new spell was much cheaper than gaining a new type of magic.

  The spells that the deer had were called [Verdant Field], [Bloom], and [Vine Whip]. [Verdant Field] was a spell that created the zone of healing back during the second wave. The [Vine Whip] was self explanatory, but the spell called [Bloom] was the most odd.

  [Bloom] was a spell that fostered and improved the growth of plants around it. This was the spell the deer used to create oxygen when it was suffocating, though that didn’t seem to be the purpose of the spell. The spell was the most basic manifestation of plant magic, to the point where almost everything that had plant magic had some variation of this spell.

  While Jacob needed something with healing power, plant magic had much more versatility and utility. In later layers of the dungeon, having something that improved plants and, by extension, fungus was valuable.

  [Verdant Field] wasn’t going to be useful to him for the time being, the same applied to [Bloom]. To save money, he was going to need to sacrifice these two spells to gain the two spells that he really needed.

  He opened up the spell creation screen to create spells that he needed. Replacing [Verdant Field] was a spell he was going to call [Healing Aura] and [Bloom] was going to be replaced with [Forest Blessing]. [Healing Aura] was a spell that was similar to what it replaced, except instead of promoting plant growth and health it focused solely on healing.

  [Forest Blessing] was his solution to his ant problem. This spell gave a temporary blessing to a target that improved them in many aspects, from health and mana regeneration to growth. With this spell targeting the ant during down-time, the ant should be able to grow before the fourth wave.

  The modification of these two spells cost 32 soul points, which reduced his soul points to 15. He waited for the deer to recover enough mana to use its [Healing Aura] spell to help it recover from his extreme conscription technique. It ran out of mana quickly, forcing him to micromanage its recovery.

  With the deer finally taken care of, he returned to the matter of water. The dungeon fairy had created a couple of watering holes for the animals, a few even had thin puddles. When it came to water, there was a double-edged sword.

  In order for water to be summoned from the rock, it required power. That power could come from either the dungeon fairy or his bank account, neither of which were good solutions. The dungeon fairy didn’t need to be chained to the watering hole, but it did need to take valuable time to act as a pump.

  There wasn’t a solution for this right now, not until he finished creating his ant species. He sighed to himself. At the start, there was always nothing more than busy work.

  The king of the Aseth forest was forced to awaken after a millennia of slumber. It could feel that the heavens above were angry and he shared their wrath. Through its power it had started to coerce and manipulate the creatures of this forest to attack the enemy-from-the-ground.

  The enemy was weak, yet the attacks the king sent failed. It didn’t have the power to peer into the depths. The dungeon’s presence scared the creatures as much as the gods, and he struggled to restrain them and led them back.

  It gathered a much stronger force this time to attack that forbidden place. If this one failed, then he might need to act himself.

  It groaned as it struggled to unbury itself. It wanted nothing more than to fall back to sleep and dream of ages long past.