There was a tidal wave of animals, all of them similar to the animals on Earth but all of them were alien. Some looked like squirrels, others badgers, some looked like sparrows, some looked like wolves—though these lacked the six legs of the undead monsters. They all had fantasy or outlandish features such as antlers and horns when or where they shouldn’t, odd patterns, or strange colors like blue or cyan.

  Like he expected, the birds were the fastest as they flew over the jam of animals and into the dungeon. They were among the first to be injured or killed. The flood of animals followed quickly. As he watched, floating above them, he came to an interesting discovery.

  Many of the smaller animals were being trampled by the bigger ones. Within each of the animals’ eyes was a glimmer of madness, a strange wrath that drove them to venture into his dungeon. They didn’t coordinate or act with a strategy, they were simply driven by instinct and manipulated emotion.

  He wasn’t sure if the undead monsters had this mania, their eyes were too dead and inanimate. From the lore that he remembered, this was the anger of the gods. Or maybe this was the result of a divine decree or command. Dungeon Realm wasn’t known for its lore.

  He watched them rush into his dungeon and instantly get lost. Many of them seemed to have a very vague idea of where the dungeon core is or the path to it, but that didn’t stop a large portion of the animal army from going down the wrong paths and falling into spike traps.

  The animals reacted to the deaths of their ‘allies’ and grew more hesitant to danger unlike the undead wolves. Many of them went back and tried to find a path forward but there wasn’t one. This caused an unexpected stalemate and halted their progression even if only for a little bit.

  This would have been a good time for him to find good animals, but he didn’t know how to access any of the animal’s stats. He floated to the dungeon fairy to ask.

  “Dungeon Fairy, how do I summon the screen for status from animals and enemies and…such?” Jacob asked, trying to articulate what he wanted.

  “Use the ability phrase [Status: Target] to view the status of a target. You can also use [Status: Mass] to view the status of all potential targets within an area,” replied the dungeon fairy as it hovered above the ground and stared into the distance.

  Jacob had no idea how he could view all the status of many targets at once, but if it was possible it would be very beneficial. He floated to the largest group of animals, and used [Status: Mass].

  The world froze. Every animal in the room with him stopped moving and became absolutely still statues as screens appeared above their heads. The world had been paused like a game; he didn’t even think it was possible for him to do it.

  He wandered around and found that everything had been paused, even the dungeon fairy was unresponsive when he tried to ask it something. Not all animals had status above their heads, only the ones near where he used the ability phrase.

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  He looked through all the status screens of the different animals, trying to find ones that he would want to keep. There were two types of animals that he needed at the beginning of any dungeon, defenders and utilities. With the burns on his spirit from the dungeon core, he prioritized defender monsters over utilities.

  No matter the type of monster he needed, a starting animal needed to be omnivorous as food would be unstable. He didn’t need a defending species either, all he needed was a singular guardian to act as the final boss and protect the dungeon core. He kept searching before he found one that he liked.

  It looked like a bear, though instead of purely brown fur there were patterns of green and sky blue. It had the characteristic [Reinforced Skeleton] that increased its strength and defense. The best part of all was that the animal was only at level 6, which meant that it wouldn’t cost him too much to tame.

  He took advantage of the paused state of the world to continue to examine the status screens of the other animals in the dungeon. He was worried that summoning more status screens would cause the dungeon to unpause, but that didn’t happen. He didn’t find a better animal than the bear, either they were too strong, not strong enough, too old, or already injured.

  Once he was done, now he had to deal with the mechanics of capturing animals. The dungeon fairy had the power to move things; for example, it could take a corpse from one dungeon level to another to feed in case of a famine or such.

  However, there are flaws to the mechanic. Moving an animal that was hostile to his dungeon had a chance to fail and get the dungeon fairy injured. During the capture, the dungeon fairy was also vulnerable to the other animals that could attack it and thwart the capture.

  He also needed to unpause the world. He couldn’t ask the dungeon fairy for advice as it was frozen. Or maybe he could, but he didn’t know how. However, he learned enough ability phrases to guess what to do. He said “[Unpause]” and the world resumed.

  He marked the bear he wanted, and then he marked a spot in the air where he wanted the dungeon fairy to fire from. The dungeon fairy slowly floated to the spot before it started to charge up its attack. It lost its invisibility and all the animals were drawn to it, but it was in the air and there were few flightworthy birds left.

  The dungeon fairy finished with its charging and launched its magic. The magic moved towards the bear and struck it, causing it to be damaged in an aura of magical lightning. This attack created a frenzy. Many of the animals were focused on the dungeon fairy, but the frenzy spread to the animals beyond that room.

  Those animals’ mania flared and caused them to lose their fear of the spikes and to rush forward. Many died and many were used as platforms to reach the other sides of the pits. It took some time, but a number of animals were able to reach the cliff that he had made before being stopped.

  Back in the room with the bear, the dungeon fairy kept attacking it until the health bar above its head was less than half. Many animals lost interest, but the bear and a few others remained resolute. He marked the other animals to be killed and waited painfully for the dungeon fairy to kill them all.

  Only when the bear was alone was it safe for him to capture it.