After reading through his newest skill and his quest information, Dylan heaved a sigh of relief before settling into his core for some mana recovery. Luckily, the skill he had gotten was an essential lifesaving skill. The only downside Dylan saw was the 1-day long cooldown and the fact that it never specified which attacks it could defend against, other than physical or elemental magical attacks. This would imply that there were other ways to damage Dylan’s core, though Dylan wasn’t exactly sure what they might be. In addition, Dylan realized that it didn’t specify the power of the damage he was receiving as well. This meant that the skill would be as powerful as the one who attacked Dylan essentially. If he looked at it in terms of his old world, Dylan could probably nullify the explosion from an atomic bomb and survive, or someone could throw a rock at him and waste the effects of the skill. Dylan hoped that the enemies who were coming for him wouldn’t take this possible skill into account, as he wasn’t even sure if they would know what skills a dungeon could have.

My mana regeneration isn’t all that horrible right now… I should be set to summon a Stone-Clawed Spider once every hour or so I think… Dylan reasoned as he watched his mana regeneration through [Status]. He found himself quite lucky that his maximum mana amount was the exact requirement to summon his Stone-Clawed Spiders, which would be his trump cards. Dylan was also looking to make more different types of traps, as he had filled the second half of the forest cave with improvised pitfall traps yet hadn’t made any new traps unfortunately. He didn’t know the techniques to make them, so he was willing to check out the evolution point shop to see if he could buy some new types of traps or a skill which would allow him to make traps. Dylan decided that checking it out wouldn’t hurt at all, so he opened the shop.

Opening the menu, he realized a few things; the first of which was that he only had access to the [Summons] and [Skills] selection, which meant that either trap knowledge was gained through a skill, it wasn’t a skill or buyable option, or he would unlock that section in the evolution point shop later. The second would be that buying new skills might be just as useful as setting up dozens of random traps which might end up unused. Lastly, he realized that his evolution points were pathetically few in number. Dylan decided to open up the [Skills] menu as a result after considering these options.

After choosing the option, a line of skill names appeared in front of Dylan. However, there were unfortunately not as many skills as he had hoped there to be available.

Buy [Skill]: Moving Core

Buy [Skill]: Defensive Core

Buy [Skill]: Magical Core

Buy [Skill]: Psychic Core

Buy [Skill]: Manifest Intent

Buy [Skill]: False Core

Buy [Skill]: Great Corruption

…

After scrolling through a few more skills, Dylan had arrived at the end of the list. Although he had been interested with quite a few things on the list of buyable skills, he could always go for those later. What he wanted right now was the skill [Trap Knowledge I], found at the bottom of the list. This was the skill he was looking for. Another skill he had found was the apparent upgrade of his new skill, called [Nullify Damage II]. Dylan wanted both of these skills, but he needed to check the prices of the skills first, as he only had 9 points

He chose [Trap Knowledge I] to start.

Would you like to buy [Trap Knowledge I]? This will cost you 1 evolution point

Y/N

Closing the menu, Dylan looked at the price of [Nullify Damage II] and figured out that it costed the exact same. Thus, after considering the value of the skills, he decided to buy [Nullify Damage II]. After all, traps may help prevent enemies from reaching Dylan but they might not produce results. [Nullify Damage II], however, was an obvious upgrade of his already valuable skill [Nullify Damage I]. Making this skill stronger could possibly save his life. Choosing the yes option to buy the skill, he received a warning message surprisingly.

Warning! You are about to buy or upgrade your first skill! The price has been lowered to 1 evolution point for this purchase only, would you like to proceed?

Y/N

Ohhhh so that’s how it works… Dylan realized. Since he was upgrading his first skill, the price was graciously lowered to 1 evolution point, and Dylan was willing to take up that offer.

Hell yeah! Proceed! Gimme that upgrade at a sweet discount!

Choosing the yes option, Dylan checked his status and found that his skill had upgraded whilst his evolution points had dropped to 8. He decided to still buy [Trap Knowledge I], which costed 3 evolution points. Begrudgingly, Dylan paid off the points to buy the skill before looking at his new skills in excitement. Sure, he was 4 points lesser, but the whole point of having them was to use them anyway, right? Dylan examined his new skills in excitement.

[Nullify Damage II](Upgraded): A skill which automatically nullifies all incoming damage towards the Dungeon’s core with no mana cost. This skill has two uses which nullify a single physical or elemental magic attack which would impact the Dungeon’s core each. Each use replenishes in 24 hours, and a maximum of two uses can be stored

[Trap Knowledge I](Passive)(New): Allows the Dungeon to gain more knowledge pertaining to the building of certain traps. Allows the creation of pitfall traps, pressure activated traps, and touch activated traps. Lowers the mana cost to build some types of traps.

Hmmm, so I can already make pitfall traps, but pressure and touch activated traps sound pretty neat! And I know exactly where to put these! Dylan thought to himself as he activated the new skill. He began to booby-trap a large amount of the stone pillars and large trees within the first floor of his dungeon, making them touch activated traps. A touch from any living thing would cause the trees or stone pillars to crumple, hopefully crushing anyone underneath. Dylan would need to set up a [Dungeon Law] so that his own monsters wouldn’t trigger it later, but he had prepared all of his monsters already for battle. Only non-evolved insects were still under the effects of [Natural Order], and they weren’t heavy enough to set off any traps, so Dylan could let them fight and die to replenish his mana. Having hundreds of insects dying over the hours greatly influenced Dylan’s mana regeneration, as mana siphoning didn’t provide a huge amount of mana as his mana capacity increased.

After setting up the traps, Dylan absorbed the rest of the loot from his battle with the goblins, including the Goblin Shaman’s staff and Grotho’s weapon. Following the absorption, he learned how to make an [Ironwood Club], [Spirit Stone Staff], and [Spirit Stone]. The ironwood club had been Grotho’s weapon, so Dylan summoned another one to give back to him. The spirit stones and spirit stone staff were essentially the same, yet the spirit stone staff allowed easier carrying of the stones, as its design allowed three spirit stones to be held within its branches. After playing around with the menu a bit more, Dylan found the descriptions for the items he could summon or set as drops. He had a surprising amount including furs and pelts from the goblins, as well as some trinkets and weapons they had with them, if a debarked branch counted as a weapon…

Skipping past the debarked branches and furs, Dylan arrived at the spirit stones and the spirit stone staff, and decided to read up on them.

[Spirit Stone]: A rare crystal which gathers mana from the surroundings if a spirit is within it. Allows spirits to use magic while draining mana from the crystal or their surroundings without using the mana of their controller.

[Spirit Stone Staff]: A tree branch with gnarled knobs at the end specifically carved to contain three spirit stones within it. The branch itself doesn’t have any magical capabilities.

This seems pretty useful for the shamans… Dylan decided that before spawning more Stone-Clawed spiders, he would like to equip all of his shamans with a Spirit Stone Staff, but the damned things costed him just over 200 mana a piece, which was a ridiculous price compared to other items which he could summon for a few mana each. Luckily for them, they seemed quite useful, so over the course of a few hours, Dylan summoned six of the spirit stone staffs and equipped his goblin shamans with them, ordering them to summon spirits and get to work gathering mana to prepare for the battle. Following that, he observed his final defensive lines and arranged monsters while waiting for more mana regeneration…

One hour before the arrival of the enemies…

Dylan had gathered as large of an army as possible. Drawing all of the monsters even from the breeding caves, he had assembled an absolutely massive army for this round, especially since the number of non-evolved insects grew larger as time went on. He now had over 500 swarm ants, about 200 giant centipedes, about 150 leaping and heavy bombardier beetles, several dozen hard-shell centipedes, several dozen sickle-blade mantises, dozens of giant bats, and fewer numbers of the newly evolved monsters. In addition to the main fighting forces, there were a decent number of non-evolved wolves, boars and goblins which were ready for a fight. He had pulled all combat-able monsters and animals from the breeding caves for this battle, and had gathered them in the first and second halves of his forest cave. His trump cards which consisted of stone-clawed spiders, whistle wolves, and rage boars hung around the stone forest, but they didn’t number much. Dylan only had a dozen of each, which he had summoned to counter the higher ranked enemies. He had left some monsters of the lower ranks in the first half of the forest, but the majority of the forces were in the second half, as Dylan had reasoned that hitting the enemies after they made it through the river would be a reliable way to cut down their numbers.

I just have to whittle them down into nothing over the course of my whole dungeon… And pray to any god other than Gehennia that they don’t make it to my core… Dylan carefully observed his army. Despite the impressive retinue he had, he was still immensely worried, so much so that his monsters were also twitching and warily looking around from time to time, especially the more expressive goblins. Dylan had gathered the goblins to the stone hill which his core was nestled within, and they had tucked themselves deep into the network of small tunnels which peppered the hill. In the event that enemies made it into the stone hill, the goblins would fight as they retreated, and possibly escape with Dylan’s core. Kuraura and Grotho were both crouched down next to Dylan’s core, serving as his bodyguards.

As he looked at the two humanoids, Dylan ‘frowned’. He was afraid for his own life, but surprisingly he had grown on these two as well. Despite the fact that they always called him ‘lord’ instead of Dylan, they were the first beings which Dylan had talked to in this world, and they were a cut above the rest of their brethren. Dylan could also feel their burning loyalty towards him, and he definitely didn’t want them to die, as he had a sort of emotional connection with them. He also felt similarly towards the very first hard-shelled centipede and the first stone-clawed spider, though on a lesser scale. If there was any way Dylan could ensure that they would survive, he would try for it...

Wait a minute… Dylan realized something as he opened his status and looked at his skill list.

This is it. This is perfect hehehe… Let’s hope we all make it out of here alive.