“Oh yeah, I’ve something to inform you. Listen, the slimes we keep inside the dungeon have been multiplying continuously and filling one of the small rooms in the hallway to its full capacity. What should we do with them?”

“Really? Let me check.” I opened the room they were kept through the Dungeon Map only to see something that appeared to be a pool of slime that looked no different than viscous green water filling up two-thirds of the space. “This amount is insane!”

There could be easily over one thousand slimes here… If someone, by any chance, were to open the room from outside, the slimes would burst out like an avalanche and kill him or her; I shuddered at the thought of dying from being drowned by countless slimes. I guessed that the original one split into two, then to four, then to eight, until the number reached what it was now.

“Well, the goblins and kobolds have also been procreating among themselves, so we can expect their numbers to go up soon. What’s more, we just ran out of dead rats.”

Why is she so obsessed with feeding them rats…? But still, with this number, we gotta think of a way to cope with their surging numbers, I thought.

“Hmm, then, how ‘bout feeding them with slimes?” Slimes had been a pest even in the outside world, so the best way to keep their numbers in check was to have a natural predator.

I’d once accepted a quest to kill slimes; I knew for a fact that they were abundant in places without dangerous beasts, but less so in places like the Great Elion Forest. Those days… Uh, it was only about a week ago, was it?

“But slimes contain acid, no?”

“Sure, but who said that they can’t be eaten? They aren’t acid slimes, so the amount of acid isn’t much, to begin with, and I don’t think monsters have such a weak stomach like humans.”

“Another reason why humans are so weak, huh.” She shrugged in contempt.

“Guh! You don’t have to say that.” Lorelei’s stereotypes about humans had been almost always negative.

Also, it turned out that they weren’t the only ones whose population was increasing. The rats were, too. The ecosystem worked perfectly in my opinion since rats should be able to eat slimes which would then be eaten by larger monsters, and so on and so forth.

“I guess that means we can focus on the second floor for now.”

“Uh-huh.”

Right now, we still had 7,850 CP left, which was more than enough to get the project going. The two things we needed to wrap up the second floor were more traps and monsters. Lorelei had dug up tons of pitfalls with the golems as per my instruction, but this alone wouldn’t be enough.

Consequently, I added more premade traps that were popular in dungeons to fill in the gap: flying arrows, swinging blades, dropping guillotine, and also several other common dungeon theme traps. But even this was still far from what I had envisioned.

“Feels like we haven’t utilized everything available to us… I want something more unique, the likes of which have never been seen before.” It was on the tip of my tongue…

“I don’t quite get what you want, but we have yet to decide what kind of monster we want on the second floor.”

“That’s it!” To think that I have ignored this… “Why don’t we have monsters that work alongside traps?”

Lorelei tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s see…” I skimmed the Monster Creation category and settled on a specific category of slime — elemental slime. “Look here, with this we can devise many kinds of unique traps.”

“Are you up to some more crook ideas?”

“Please call them clever, thank you. But these slimes can perform elemental attacks similar to magic. Anemo slime, geo slime, pyro slime, hydro slime, cryo slime, electro slime, and more, there are many options.” Just the thought of what I could accomplish with them excited me; electrocuting a group of ignorant adventurers when they step into a puddle of water, or even freezing them, all sounded fun.

“I see.” Lorelei didn’t seem as eager as me, but she patiently heard all of it.

“A shame that we need to spawn them normally. If only there was some kind of spawner or something…”

“Spawners? There’s something similar to that, you know. See here.” While sticking close to me, Lorelei showed me a sub-category in the Monster Creation category.

Originator. That was what it was called on the menu. It had three types depending on the size: small, medium, and large. The cheapest of its kind — [(Small) Originator (100 CP)] — could only spawn monsters that were below the 100 CP price tag. And to activate it, you needed to first set the monster you wanted to spawn before paying one hundred times the corresponding monster’s summoning price — though it appeared that by changing the previous spawning monster, you wouldn’t get a refund. Talk about realistic.

Compared to ordinary slimes, elemental slimes were about twice as expensive, which meant 20 CP. Thus by calculating the total expenditure, it would be 2,100 CP for each elemental slime originator (including the cost for the originator).

“I think I want to get two originators for kobold and goblin, one each. What do you think, Lorelei?” Getting Lorelei’s opinion would help in weighing the whole thing.

Slimes were, at the end of the day, among the fastest monsters at multiplying, so it would be counter-intuitive to purchase an originator for them. Apart from that, the discount that came from humanoid monsters also applied to originators. With this reasoning, I could say that the advantages were clear enough.

“It’s fine, isn’t it? Since they are humanoid monsters, they could assist in the dungeon’s construction, and even if they die, their monster cores can be used to make more golems.” Lorelei looked at me with a face that told “It was such a no-brainer question.”

“Never know that you could come up with a logical reasoning.”

“Hey! What do you take me for?” She crossed her arms.

“A dungeon core who’s never full.”

“Well, that itself isn’t wrong,” she admitted, closing her eyes. “Even now, I’m thinking of eating cake, pizza, or…” Eh, she’s not going to eat me, right?

Speaking about food, I’d barely eaten anything since coming back to the dungeon, so my stomach was pretty empty…

“Let’s eat first, Lorelei.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to say that.” She showed a rare smile at me.

After we had a satisfying dinner, I purchased two [(Small) Originator (100 CP)]. The originators apparently had the shape of a cubical cage with a side length of about twenty centimeters. In the center was an inexplicable black vortex that, at a glance, looked like a miniature black hole. Strange.

“Now we just need to set the monster to spawn… One for goblin… One for kobold… Done.” By expending a total of 2,500 CP, the two originators began working as the miniature black hole replica started spinning and swallowing intangible air around it — mana.

“Where should we place them? I suppose we can place them hidden in the labyrinth or among the rooms on the first floor,” Lorelei suggested.

“No, the first floor is already cramped. To the second floor, you go!”

I transferred the two originators to two separate secluded locations on the second floor — one of which was a small room connected to the labyrinth that was just very recently excavated. Of course, they were placed hidden below the ground so no one would notice.

“Just curious, um, how long do we need for them to recoup our losses again?”

“Each of them spawns only like one monster per day, you see. So yeah, a hundred days it is.”

“Darn…” But this was a worthy long-term investment.

I didn’t intend to turn the golems into disposable monsters since they would be my main force in expanding and protecting the dungeon. Later on, if I were to make a settlement above ground, they would be able to become the peace-keeping force.

“Yeah, building a city…” I mused.

“Huh? You say something?”

“No, it’s nothing.” I motioned at her that it wasn’t important, not yet at least. “Still, goblins and kobolds alone are boring. Let’s summon more monsters.”

I continued browsing the category and stumbled across several unique and interesting monsters: living armors, mimics, and phantoms. They were all only weak E-rank monsters, but this just fit the theme of the place well and would increase the monster variety.

[(Iron) Living Armor (120 80 CP)]

A mannequin monster made of (metal) armor and carrying a (metal) weapon. It may not have a backbone, but its endurance is second to none among low-level monsters.

[Mimic (60 CP)] (Customizable)

A common monster within dungeons, hidden like a treasure chest, will pick off any unwary invaders. Its biting speed is so fast that once targeted, no one can easily escape. It comes in many shapes and varieties.

[Phantom (60 50 CP)]

A ghost monster that roams the dead land. Stronger than normal ghosts and can possess weak, frightened living beings as well as all sorts of objects.

It appeared that stronger monsters gave fewer discounts than their weaker counterparts. What was more, both living armors and phantoms weren’t total humanoid monsters, meaning they were only discounted because of their humanoid-like appearance.

Because I thought that one meter was a bit too cramped when setting up the traps, I increased the dungeon area on the second floor by another meter, so that was another 2,500 CP there. And thanks to the two new originators, we only had a little over 1,500 CP left. This was bad. More than a whole 6,000 CP was gone just like that (traps included).

In the end, after considering the pros and cons, I summoned ten living armors, five mimics, and five phantoms. I was sure that living armors would be the main force in guarding the second floor, but mimics were more useful in deceiving any potential invaders. As for phantoms, they would be useful for covert reconnaissance as well as for protecting me from the dark.

“Finally done… Whew.” I straightened my body and stretched out my fingers, crackling all my stiff joints.

Our current remaining CP was only 180. And I didn’t want to go on another session of hunting ever again… at least not in a short period of time. Checking on the time, it was just past midnight. The assessment would be concluded tomorrow morning until before noon, so there was time to spare. Yeah. Time to sleep.

“You sure work a lot.” Sitting across me was Lorelei drinking her tea as usual. “Here, drink up.” She passed me a cup of brownish tea.

My mouth watered at the enticing sight of the drink, gulping down saliva. The enticing smell, hot texture, and sour but sweet taste…

“Pfft! Wait! I forgot! Blergh! Cough! Cough…!” I tried to vomit up the liquid I had drunk with little success.

“Hehe.”

“What do you mean ‘hehe’?!”

“Owie?!”

I thumped Lorelei on the head for tricking me while I was off-guard, exhausted.

“Y-You brute. That hurts. You don’t have to hit me.”

“Anyway, I’m tired. I’m gonna sleep in my room.” Matters that could be taken care of later should be handled later.

“Hmph.” She blew out a breath in an exaggerated huff. Even though her face didn’t reveal it, I knew she wasn’t over with my previous action.

Ignoring her, I took off to my room and vaulted straight onto the bed. I wasn’t that tired, but I needed to preserve my strength for tomorrow.

“Good night…”

Lorelei’s voice was the last thing I heard when I was about to go into a deep sleep.

“So, you’re going out again?”

Standing outside the dungeon, Lorelei uttered a question while holding her oversize parasol.

“Uh-huh, I need to finish what I started.”

“I see.”

“Lorelei, I’ll leave her under your supervision.”

“Why should I do that?” She looked up, leaning the parasol on her shoulder.

“Well,” I took out my secret weapon and said, “this strawberry cake is waiting for your answer.”

“Hmph. Do I look like someone that can be swayed so easily with a piece of cake?”

“You do.”

“My, you’re absolutely right.” She snatched the strawberry cake wrapped in plastic from my hand and immediately munched on it.

“Alright then, I’ll be off. This time, it should only be for a day or two.”

“Be quick and return safely.” As usual, if I hadn’t known better, she looked no different than a mother seeing her child going on a journey.

I nodded, hopped on Blizzard, and went into the forest. Since time was tight, I asked Blizzard to take me halfway to the destination.