“So, you’re telling me that you’re a Dungeon? And you can summon and control monsters? And we are under your control now?” The blond man known as Maynard asked. “I call bullshit! Show me right now! Summon a monster or all that crap!”

“M-Maynard…” The petite girl named Calphas lightly tapped his bare shoulder. “Th-this is a Dungeon…The mana is different here. Please trust him-ah!”

Calphas was shoved back as Maynard took a defensive stance, watching a magic circle form from the ground. The tan man known as Aron was also on the alert as a shape began to form. Up from the ground rose a goblin, however, this one had a different aura when compared to the goblins they had just been facing.

As it stood upright, its toned and hardened body caught their attention. An overwhelming might spread from its body as its glistening eyes stared into their souls, and a lone horn protruded from its forehead, piercing towards the ceiling. Donned in a wolf pelt loincloth and armed with a huge club, the goblin issued a below which echoed through the forest.

Maynard sniffed as he watched the goblin; he had no weapons, and there was no way he could fight. As the goblin stepped towards them, he suddenly heard the voice of the Dungeon grunting out in goblin language, causing the massive goblin to stop his approach, and suddenly, the Dungeon started talking to them again.

“You asked me to summon something so here you are! This is my guardian, Grotho! Unfortunately, he can’t talk to you guys until I give him the [Common Language] Skill but that won’t take long! In fact, I can probably do it within the hour ahahaha!”

“W-What?!” Maynard sputtered as he stared in disbelief at the goblin, who scratched his chin before grunting something out and treading away into the woods. Aron visibly relaxed and Calphas muttered something under her breath while Maynard just stared at them in disbelief. “I’m willing to believe that you’re a dungeon now, boy but I’ll be damned if you’re gonna say that I’m under your control!”

As Maynard turned and strode in the opposite direction of the goblin which Dylan had summoned, he was suddenly asked: “Hey, how did you three end up with those wolves? How does it work? Were you summoned with them?”

Hearing those words, Maynard froze in his tracks as a burning anger began to fill his gut. The anger seemed to seep into his very bones and prevented him from thinking clearly. The wolves which killed his family, the wolves which killed his friends, the wolves which hurt him so cruelly were still out there. He turned and glared in anger at the humanoid light which was the Dungeon’s projection.

“And why do you want to know? You say that you can control and summon many creatures as a Dungeon. Can you summon wolves?”

“Yeah, I can, but I had to kill them before I could summon them. And that’s why I’m asking why you guys were all torn up or even with them before they arrived.”

“…Did you get all of them…”

“I did not kill all of them and they were taken out of my Dungeon by a God. None of them surrendered to me as well, so none of the original wolves who were with you are here.”

“Hm. If they show up again, they’re mine.” With that, Maynard set out to explore the dungeon and find the entrance.

Dylan sighed as he secretly placed a [Dungeon Order] preventing the humans from leaving his Dungeon. They seemed to be quite the hassle, as the girl Calphas and the man Aron also started following Maynard. Eventually they would have to realize and accept that they were now a part of the Dungeon. He couldn’t have subordinates leaving just because they didn’t want to be there. Each and every organism which lived and died within his Dungeon was a valuable resource which could save his life or make him grow faster, so he needed to retain his hold on them, even for a moment. He would experiment with letting them out of the Dungeon after he built up further, as he realized one thing.

Humans provide a quite an amount of mana…huh?

A few days later…

After massive amounts of effort being put into level ups and expansion, Dylan had finally reached level 9, increasing his mana capacity to exactly 925. He had originally been scared to take the final orb, which was a quest listed by Gehennia, but had to take it anyway. It was a mission to control an area spanning over 1 mile, which meant that as soon as he woke up, he completed the mission and received another animal to summon as the reward; goliath tiger fish.

Apparently, most dungeons haven’t expanded past a mile by this stage? That’s pathetic right? Dylan perplexedly thought as he continued to scrape away at his walls, forming a tunnel downwards. I don’t understand why their expansion would be so slow though? Isn’t that not very good for them if they can’t expand so easily by the time they reach this level, or is it just that the quests are all random and non-progression based?

Regardless of the matter, Dylan was set to working on his second floor. In the stone forest he was currently operating, digging a large tunnel inch by inch slowly down. Since he didn’t know the criteria to actually get a second floor, Dylan decided to dig down until he received a prompt from the voice of the world. Through his [Dungeon Sense] skill, he knew that Maynard, Calphas and Aron were inside one of his breeding caves fighting and training against monsters. Other than their initial confusion, they seemed to take their situation surprisingly well, with only Maynard and Calphas breaking down over the past few days. Dylan was sure they’ll come around completely eventually.

Dylan was startled by a prompt from the voice of the world suddenly, indicating that he had successfully hit the distance required for his dungeon to have a second floor. He had dug nearly 100 feet in about a 45-degree angle before he had hit this point, so naturally it came as a surprise that the next floor would be unlocked only when he dug so deep.

Any explanation? No? Alright then… Dylan resigned himself to further digging out the floor. In his defense, the progress on this floor had become significantly slower than when he had made his first floor due to the fact that he was busy summoning more monsters, collecting new species, and evolving new monsters. So far, Dylan had collected squirrels and birds such as sparrows, along with common insect types which he hadn’t collected before. Lizards and small mammals such as shrews, mice, hares and even an unlucky mole had fallen prey to his monsters and joined the dungeon. The goblins had been sent out to scout the land and bring back new types of animals, namely fish from a nearby river, as Dylan sought variety for his river. Luckily for Dylan, the goblins possessed significantly better memory, and so Dylan was able to glean more out of the surrounding forest using [Dungeon Watching].

The goblins had also been tasked with bringing in plants, and thus Dylan was now able to produce new plants such as Tuberent (a fleshy, root-like plant) and Mana stalks (long thin stalked plants which stored mana). Newly evolved species of plants were also scattered around the forest, namely the common grasses and moss which had absorbed the blood of many fallen monsters. These evolved plants were incapable of harming other organisms, but served the purpose of absorbing more mana to allow Dylan’s herbivorous and omnivorous monsters and animals to evolve faster.

The last prominent change was that the river had also been improved, having larger schools of fish and designated areas for whirlpools to appear. Floating plants and algae brought more personality to the river while reeds crowded the edges of the river. Occasionally, the large boulders which could be partially be seen through the murkier water could be seen shifting, revealing that they were actually stone-eating hermit crabs. The pace of the river had also been slowed down to a lazy drawl to allow the fish and plants to survive, and a large stone bridge went through the center of it, allowing ease of travel for both his monsters and other humans who may possibly arrive.

His reasoning as to why humans may arrive was due to the fact that all of the humans under his control had made it explicitly obvious that wolves had attacked their villages before they were knocked unconscious and brought to Dylan’s dungeon. Common sense would dictate that a trail of burning and destroyed villages may lead directly to Dylan’s Dungeon, and even if it didn’t, the discovery of his dungeon was something that would happen eventually.

The reason why he made the bridge in fact was to encourage people to go deeper into his dungeon, which would at the very least mean that visiting adventurers or monster hunters would be forced to stay even a moment longer in his dungeon.

More people within his dungeon meant more mana. Compared to any monsters which had entered Dylan’s dungeon before, they hadn’t produced nearly as much mana for Dylan as Maynard, Calphas and Aron did. It was ridiculous to the extent that the three humans within his dungeon produced more mana over time than all of his monsters and organisms combined; if every monster gave him a drop of mana every hour, the mana output of three humans was comparable to a slow trickle. As for why this happens, Dylan hadn’t received an explanation from Gehennia, Clikchia, or the Voice of the World, so perhaps he’d find out eventually, but apparently humans were good news for a Dungeon.

How much would I get if I killed them? And what’s with the sudden information blackout..? Dylan was curious to know. Since the amount they passively produced was already so much more compared to monsters, would they provide more mana upon death?

And suddenly, as Dylan was pondering this fact, a group of intruders made their way up the mountain in the Bleak Forest, following the footprints and trail of destruction left by the wolves.