The dungeon is absolutely giddy with excitement. This night was amazing for the dungeon! Two separate groups of delvers repulsed in short order, 10 deaths total, it feels practically ecstatic. Especially because these were proper armed delvers whose challenge could actually fuel its growth, giving it the addicting feeling of growing in strength. With that, it quickly turns its attention to its system notifications.
LEVEL UP!
Max floor count: +1
Max monster count: +2
Growing bigger is always a good thing for a dungeon, but before it goes about excavating further into the earth, there's one more thing it needs to check.
[Unnamed Rainbow Dungeon Core]
Level: 3
Floors: 2/3
Core attunement: Unknown
Dungeon Theme: Research Bunker
Mana: 21/40; Regen: 1/hour
Creatures: 2/4 (-50% Max Creature Count)
Special Creatures: 0/0
Boss Creatures: 0/0
Skills: Mana Generation (SPECIAL) (PASSIVE); Territory Manipulation; Domain Sight; Creation; Destruction; Absorption; Spatial Storage; Analysis
Titles: Herald of The System; Timekeeper; Bloody Scary
[Select Boon!]
[More mana] [New creature type] [Unlock special creatures]
Well, time to make another choice. More mana is never a bad decision but it's going to ponder more than just base impulse. Creatures, likewise, are always worthwhile to invest in, either unlocking new ones to fit niches, diversify enemies so delvers can't just find a weakness to exploit on a sole defender type, or a litany of reasons. Although so far its creatures have shown to be more than lethal enough for now, so perhaps it can hold off on specials just yet. Bit too small for wandering bosses.
Of course, while it thinks, it cleans up and gets ready for the next group to come, dissolving the corpse and absorbing the new pieces of equipment and weaponry to see how they're constructed in order to replicate them. The last group had a lot more sophisticated weapons and tech on them, but clearly weren't suited for its massive first floor boss. Pity for them but it needs to be stronger than newborn dungeons should be.
Either way, it figures getting a new creature to add to its repertoire could help. With that, it selects [New creature type] this time, resolving itself to stick with mana until level 5, when it knows it'll get something special then. It can't say why, but it just knows every 5 levels is going to be special for it.
New Creature Type Selected! Pick your monster:
Flesh Puppeteer
Ooze
Carnivorous Plant
Solid options which could work a myriad of ways. It'll need to think on which one it'll pick, lucky for it dungeons aren't expected to make decisions as soon as they come up, having 1 standard year at most before a choice is forced, so it's got time to think on its options. Good thing it isn't forced to make these choices blind either, that would be annoying, but the system doesn't want any living thing to be crippled because it had to make an uninformed choice. Of course it wont give options that are awful, but sometimes situations require one specific option to be picked.
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Flesh puppeteers are middle of the ground of it options it thinks. Those creatures need a body to steal after all, the delver parasites. Lucky for the dungeon dungeons aren't made of flesh so the things are quite fine in its eyes. Plus one could pilot multiple bodies, albeit those ones are stronger than it could probably field at this time.
Oozes. A staple of magical worlds everywhere. Slow, but with incredible versatility, flexibility, and the option for one to become many if it can grow and consume enough. Or just become one big ooze, that's certainly an option too.
Carnivorous plants could be good for a greenhouse-type of floor with a more open plan though. They don't tend to be very mobile though, with the one which can relocate needing to grow a lot first, but they can tear a man apart. Multiple mouths which can move independently on a single plant too can be done too instead of one big one. Kind of like a plant hydra except the heads don't really regenerate.
Either way, it's got time to think. First thing first, digging out the new floor. This one is going to be a bit more open than its first two floors. Just one big floor. Instead of stairs to and from this floor too, it's going to build an elevator from the second all the way to the fifth when it gets it. A single-use key to unlock the elevator on each floor allowing it to either move one floor deeper to the next one or go all the way back to the top, that that should work nicely.
Perhaps it should modify the previous floors to include this, but that's not really a worry of it. Besides, no one will be able to get under the elevator anyway so it doesn't really matter. The stairs shall stay. For now.
The excavation is mostly monotonous, the core spending days to dig, build, and reinforce. The core room remains as it is for now, the core planning to move it deeper when the floor is actually done. Lucky for it though it's long wait between building floors has allowed mana to suffuse the ground enough that the stone it's digging into is much more receptive to its will than before.
Not much excitement happens in it either as it works to expand. Just a team of much less combat-looking delvers came in a few hours after the previous survivors left who fled as soon as they saw the door to the first floor's arena. Odd, but it doesn't really care about the strangeness of action of those delvers. They clearly weren't coming to fight, and left before they could do much of anything aside from open a door, so no reward for them either.
The day after, it felt an itch on it's entrance. It took a moment to see what was happening. Seems like they were welding its entrance shut. Guess they don't want to delve. Fine. All the better for it even because it can finish the third floor without worry then just simply undo the welds when it's ready. After all, it gets some extra leeway with the system if it's entrance is close due to outside actions. The weld is going to itch until it clears that up, but it'll endure. Crystal's bane isn't a small itch.
The third floor progress is coming along nicely. It is slow going due to its still somewhat low mana limit and regen, but the excavations are coming along steadily. The room is going to be about 50% larger than the second floor in total, and the core is mostly finishing up with the digging after almost a month at it. The concrete and rebar, though, is going to take much longer though due to how expensive those materials are to make relative to plain stone, but they are much more resilient than normal dungeon stone so it's not like it's getting scammed on the cost or anything.
As for the more general room design, it knows what it'll do for whatever creature choice it makes to inhabit this floor. The part closest to the elevator will be a 'welcoming area' of sorts, identical on each of the floor variations it has planned. Just a few desks, some computers, lockers, and things like that. Maybe a bench or two. Certainly a partition though to mark it off from the rest of the floor. There's also going to be vents hanging from the ceiling over the entire floor, the slightly raised ceiling allowing hanging vents to be fit in without worry.
As for the floor itself, there's two similar ones and a more unique third option planned. An office space like on the first floor's arena, but much less smashed to bits for the flesh puppeteers. Some kind of office space, but with clear glass cylinders and various chemicals for the oozes, something to let them sample various acids and chemicals to replicate within themselves. Finally, a greenhouse would be perfect for the carnivorous plants, plenty of camouflage for them there.
No rush to pick though, first it'll need to actually finish reinforcing the floor before it can build the hazards themselves. Devise some new traps for it too perhaps as well. Can't go too crazy, these won't be able to summon critters or anything, but rigging something to collapse should be easy enough.
Decisions, decisions... probably one of the least fun things about life, it thinks: decision paralysis.
Creature Choice?
