After marking the bear and the destination, one of his prison cells, the dungeon fairy floated to it and started to melt. It became a pure white curtain, almost like milk made from luminous marble, and it began to cover the animal like a bubble. The bear thrashed and tried to rip the dungeon fairy off of it.

  The bear had been weakened though, and the dungeon fairy managed to fully wrap around it and restrain it. Then the bear in this bubble of light started to sink into the ground. It seemed to have fear in its eyes, though maybe that was just Jacob’s hallucination.

  He watched mesmerized as the bear was fully devoured by the ground. He summoned his map and watched the icon of the fairy traveling underground at a faster pace. He then said, “[Pause],” and the world froze. He quickly moved to the prison to watch the bear be delivered.

  “[Unpause].” Slowly, the white bubble with the bear emerged from the floor like a plant sprouting. Once the bear and bubble were fully out of the ground, the bubble unwrapped itself from the bear and transformed back into the dungeon fairy. The bear was stunned for a moment before it jolted back to life and roared, looking around for the dungeon fairy but unable to see it.

  The dungeon fairy was both invisible and intangible to attacks unless it was using one of its powers. When it was terraforming, attacking, or transporting; it allowed entities to not only see it but to also damage it. There were a few new scratches on the dungeon fairy adding to the fluffs of light on it.

  Jacob floated back to the cliff and the animals at its bottom. A few more animals were trampled due to the constant attempts to scale the cliff. He had found the only animal that he wanted; now was the time to clear this wave and gain the much needed soul points. He marked all the animals to be killed then he marked the top of the cliff for the dungeon fairy.

  Cleaning out the animals was tedious due to how slow the dungeon fairy was attacking. Beyond the room with the cliff, he had to position the fairy above spike pits or at the top of the taller rooms to safely shoot the invaders without putting itself in danger. In small rooms without a spike pit, he had to micromanage it to kite the animals into more advantageous rooms.

  After waiting and stress, he was finally done. He was sure that there were animals on spikes that were still alive, but they would die soon. Now that he had successfully fought off the massive wave of enemies, it was time for him to start improving and renovating his dungeon.

  There were a few animals that he had spared, though those wouldn’t be alive for long either. Those animals were brought to the prison as well. He needed sacrifices to start the fledgling ecosystem of this place.

  In Dungeon Realm, there were two different ways to create dungeon monsters. One was called Mutation, where he captured an animal, brainwashed it to be loyal or indifferent to the dungeon, and then modified it to better fit the dungeon’s needs. The other way was called Spawning, where he used an animal as a vessel to create wildly different organisms. The dungeon didn’t have the power to create life, only to change and enthrall it.

  For a food chain, basic sources of food like plants would be immensely expensive to create through mutations. Likewise, using spawning to slightly modify an animal would result in pointless death. The animals he captured were already injured to the point of requiring healing, a problem for mutation but a benefit for spawning.

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  The beginning of any food chains were producers, usually plants back on Earth but that wasn’t definite here. It wasn’t uncommon for challenges such as creating a food chain completely out of magic carnivores to exist and be a plausible, though hard, strategy.

  The best and basic starting producers were mushrooms or some form of fungus. Plants thrived best in soil while fungus such as lichens grew well on solid rocks. By feeding on the power of mana that flowed from the dungeon entrance, a basic fungal crop could feed his dungeon until he gained another floor.

  He had gained around 92 soul points from the first wave of enemies, enough to begin playing. He floated over to the dungeon fairy to ask it for advice; mutating and spawning were spells and he didn’t know how to cast them.

  “Dungeon Fairy, how do I cast spells?”

  “If you already have the spell in mind, then you just say its name like an ability phrase, Dungeon Lord. If you don’t know what spells you have access to, then you can say [Spell List] to find out.”

  Jacob returned to the prison and found the most injured animal he had captured. He extended his hand towards it and said, “[Spawn].”

  A new screen appeared in front of him just like from the game, this time it was sensitive to his touch. He started by selecting the type of organism he wanted to spawn (he picked fungus) and then he began selecting the characteristics and attributes that he wanted from it. There was color, shape, behavior, reproduction, and magical qualities to consider.

  The fungus he created was going to be called Scarlet Teeth, a red colored mold that grew teeth-like stalks and could grow on stone walls, though it preferred to grow on corpses. It could reproduce through poop like many seeds and lacked any magical qualities.

  This wasn’t a good species to keep after his dungeon was working, fungus tended to mutate quickly without something to keep it in check. However, it was incredibly vital and resilient, something that he desperately needed at the beginning.

  Jacob pressed yes and to anybody other than him, nothing happened. However, when he brought up the animal’s status, it gained a new characteristic: [Infected]. He didn’t stop there though, just having one instance didn’t work. Despite the injuries to the animal, there was a small chance that the immune system killed the fungus before it could reproduce.

  So he saved its DNA and used that to spawn another instance of it in a different corpse. While the chances of both corpses fighting off the infection wasn’t zero, the chances of that were so small it wasn’t worth worrying about. Besides, the animals were dying and once they were dead, the fungus would flourish unimpeded.