The dungeon fairy started to charge up its next attack and the undead rushed towards it. It wasn’t able to finish its attack before the monster attacked him, the claws tearing through the fairy’s flesh. The attack caused the dungeon fairy’s magic to dissipate and the dungeon fairy to be launched back.

  The wolf jumped forward and raised its claws, striking the fairy again…and falling into the spike trap. Whether it was a part of the dungeon fairy’s AI or just a lucky coincidence, it was led to a part of the spike pit that didn’t have a body covering it. It had become incapacitated, but at great cost.

  The pain was no longer mind braking, fading to a maddening burn on his spirit. The dungeon core gained several gashes and heavy scratches from the monster. Arguably worse of all, the dungeon fairy was wounded, its cuts unraveling into something resembling clouds or cotton made of light. He can heal the dungeon core, but the fairy can only recover over time.

  He sighed in relief that the monster was finally defeated, though it wasn’t dead. All of the monsters were still ‘alive’ in their undead way, writhing as the spikes caused crippling damage to their bodies. He needed them dead, and quickly if he wanted to be sure of his and the dungeon’s safety.

  He said, “[Mark],” and marked all of the monsters to be killed. From a safe distance, the dungeon fairy slowly attacked and killed them one at a time with its attack. He watched as they all slowly died, refusing to turn his back until he was sure.

  Only when the dungeon fairy stopped attacking did he finally feel safe. There was no doubt in his mind that this wasn’t a dream, that it was reality, and it was a reality where he was in danger. He didn’t need to be a genius to identify that there was a connection between him and the dungeon core. He shuddered at the thought of what would happen to him if the dungeon core was destroyed.

  He needed to make sure what happened never repeated. With a sober and razor-focused mind, he looked over the embryonic state of his dungeon and started to review what he knew.

  Normally, there would already be an entrance to the surface in the situations where the underground animals weren’t undead. In scenarios where there were undead in the underground or no enemies, there was a chance that there wasn’t an entrance and he needed to create his own. With a quick look at his map he confirmed it.

  He needed to improve his strategy, and he needed to open up the dungeon soon. The dungeon core required soul points both to heal and to feed. He needed more soul points, and the only way to gain them at this early stage was through attacks from the Overworld.

  It wasn’t just about killing things; the dungeon core needed to be open to the surface to be able to gain as many soul points as possible. That was the reason why he didn’t block off the dungeon core with stone—any protection gained became bitter from the loss of important currency. He had only gained a few soul points from monsters because of this.

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  He needed to make this dungeon as good as possible before creating the entrance. He looked at his map and began to come up with a plan to take advantage of the shape of the caves and caverns that minimized the slow process of terraforming.

  He needed to focus on defenses, creating a complex and multi-layered fortress. However, he also needed to design this in a way that allowed for future plans beyond the first wave of attacks. Adventurers were the most important part of the game, and they were the ones that he would need to design around.

  That was for later, he needed to just survive the starting onslaught. He went to the spike room and examined the conditions of the spikes and dead wolf monsters. Many spikes were broken or damaged, especially the ones underneath the slain undead. They needed to be repaired, and the bodies disposed of.

  It was painful for him to be wasteful, normally corpses were a good source of food for the ecosystem or had other uses. Undead ones were often the exception, and in this case there was no point in keeping them. He went into [Mark] mode, and marked the room for repair and the corpses for disposal.

  The dungeon fairy appeared and caused the corpses to sink into the ground and disappear. Then it used its eldritch light to melt the broken pieces of rock spike into the ground and regrow all damaged spikes back to how they were.

  He started to create new outlines for the tunnels and caverns for his dungeon. Where he could, he made the layout confusing. A convoluted path helped spread out the animals across more spikes, and also helped him identify animals that he might want to tame.

  With the opening of the entrance, he needed to create defenses for flying enemies now. From his experience, spikes from the ceiling were the best way to deal with birds or bats as their wings were easy to injure. These stalactites needed to be long though, and that length would make them easy to break. Flying creatures were fast though and were often the first animals.

  Finally, Jacob created a cliff that the first onslaught would have to scale to get to the dungeon core. He hoped that the many spike pits would slow down or scare any animals that the Overworld gods sent, but if that wasn’t the case then they would be stopped here. With a sheer incline, only flying animals could get past it easily, and he had set up ceiling spikes at the top for them.

  He double and triple checked everything in the dungeon. It was ugly, painfully ugly. One of the best parts of the game was making a pretty death trap; he kept reminding himself to be patient. He waited as the dungeon fairy carved and molded the underground to his dungeon.

  Once all of the dungeon was finished, it was time to create the entrance to the surface. He thought about what type of entrance he wanted, but he decided to keep things simple for now. Instead of a spiral staircase or some other grand entrance, he chose to outline a simple sloped tunnel.

  The dungeon fairy started carving a tunnel upwards, and with each step upward the fairy seemed to fade. It dissolved into an eldritch light that kept creating the entrance. And then it broke into the surface, and sunlight flowed from the opening.

  Then a chorus of animal cries and screams announced the incoming attack.