I took a moment to just be. I hadn’t really been alone since Lilly showed up so for most of my life she had been there. I was aware of the fairies occasionally coming back with new things for my dungeon but I ignored all of that to just enjoy not having someone else in my mind. After a while I decided to go through my construction menu to see what I could do. Without anyone around there really wasn’t much else to do.

I found several things I hadn’t noticed before. For example, I could now place traps. Lilly did mention those before. According to the description by the system they were mean to stop or delay intruders, even kill them but to get really lethal traps I would have to upgrade that ability. Right now, all I had were pitfalls and the ability to drop rocks from the ceiling of my hallways and rooms. I wonder what the more complex traps are like. Maybe deeper pitfalls and bigger rocks to drop?

I kept looking around and saw the door option. That was something I needed too apparently so I decided to build one between myself and the boss room. Just to see what it looked like and it was the closest spot I could place one. It’s something called a ‘Weak wooden door’ and it costs 30 mana. More expensive than a summoned fairy. The door forms from my mana quite fast. I focus my attention on it and can feel that I have the power to open and close it at will. That’s good. Otherwise my summons might not be able to leave or enter my Core room. Lilly did say they were good at stopping wildlife so this door must be stronger. My fairies certainly didn’t fill me with confidence when they didn’t even scratch my wall so I needed something better to defend myself.

Happy with my new door I summon 6 more and place them in different hallways. I could place them at any point in the hallways but never inside a room so I make two doors to block the path to my first big room that’s behind my old core room and two more where the two different paths converge after the two circular rooms. The last two I place in the middle of the long winding corridors that I built to reach the edges of my map. Now whoever comes to kill me will have to get by at least three different doors. I like to see them try that. I feel so much safer already.

I check my status and see that I have 300 mana left mana left. Plenty of things I can do with that. I decide to place some traps. Doors are a good defense but I doubt they’ll hurt anyone. At least I haven’t been able to make them talk to me so they can tell me if they can yet. Traps might offer up something more than just pure defense.

A pitfall trap is 51 mana and the option to drop rocks when something passed underneath was 60 mana. With 300 I can only make five of them total. I wisely decide not to spend all my mana on five of the falling rock ones. I remember the last time I blacked out due to using up all my mana. I decide on three pitfalls and two rock traps. I place the first pitfall right at start in the hallway when you just enter my dungeon. If that doesn’t stop whoever is intruding it should at least slow them down for fear of more traps. I then place a rockfall trap in the middle of the first room. Yes, just when they think it’s safe to advance, I’ll hit them with a different trap. I place two more traps behind my first two doors that lead to my first big room. Whoever is strong enough to get passed those when there was an unobstructed path is clearly trouble and needs to be dealt with and finally, I place the last rock trap in the hallway right before my ‘Boss room’. A last-ditch hope to stop my impending death.

I’m a bit surprised that I can’t spot the pitfall traps. I mean, I can sense they’re there. It’s part of my ‘body’ so of course I can but when I look without using normal dungeon senses the spot where its place looks like any other part of the floor. That’s amazing. All will fall into my pitfalls of death!

I now only have 26 mana left. I’m not sure how fast I regain mana so I decide to wait and see. I’ll wait for my status to change the hour part of how long I’ve lived and then see how much I gain until it changes again.

As I wait the only thing that happens is the notifications about my fairies continuing to gather things. I’ll admit it was a good idea of Lilly to make them do it. Once my experiment to see how much mana I gain in an hour is over I’ll summon some more fairies to help out. It should make them collect more things and having more things unlocked seems good. It’s not like I’m forced to summon everything they bring back after all.

There were a few surprising things collected that I might summon in the future. Something called ‘Red-tailed squirrel’ was brought back but I still needed to unlock the ability to summon wild animals before summoning them. Later I got a ‘Blue-spotted snake’ that also remained locked for now. So, some combat creatures weren’t given to me by the system but had to be gathered on my own. I wonder if there are any other sort of fairy my minions can get me to unlock different fairy summons since that was the only thing I had unlocked right now. Otherwise it seemed that my little gatherers were mostly collecting flowers. Lots and lots of flowers.

The hour finally passed and I checked my mana again. I started the hour with 31 mana and I now have 92 mana. After thinking about it I regained exactly 1/10 of my total mana capacity. That ‘Mana regeneration’ option from the upgrade option only gave me 5 extra per hour so that’s the same amount as just two rooms. I feel a bit better about not selecting that upgrade now. There were so many other things more useful. I still picked the most useless one, aside from my sweet, adorable, Buttercup of course. But in the future, I’ll know more about my options as select them wisely.

Since I can only afford to summon 3 more fairies now I do so. All three fairies look male and Buttercup was a female so I don’t even bother checking their names and instead just order them to join the other six and help out with the gathering. I decide to use a few points of my remaining mana to spread some cave moss near the entrance. It doesn’t help me with defending or attacking invaders but at least it’s something other than just stone. My whole floor is stone so even I’m a bit bored of looking at it and I’ve only been here for a day.

Nothing much happened after that. I just waited a few hours, summoned some fairies to send them away, spread some flowers and moss around my dungeon to give it some variety and then just kept on waiting. I really started to appreciate what Lilly done for me earlier by suppling me with so much mana. Having even less mana regeneration then I currently have would mean I would have to wait even longer between doing things. I might actually listen to her if she comes back.

After about two days I no longer got any notifications about unknown items being brought back by the fairies so I decided to call them all back to my core room. I made sure to open all the closed doors so they could come to my core room so I could talk to them. I could’ve not bothered making them come all the way back to my core room for me to do that but I wanted to see how Buttercup was doing and I figured it would be unfair to the others if I only called her. They might not have an excellent name but they all worked hard for me so I can’t call them failures I suppose.

It didn’t take long before more and more fairies flew into my room. More than I had thought I summoned but I wasn’t really keeping track. When they were all here, I counted them all. I had managed to summon 84 fairies in two day while also decorating my dungeon. All of them gave of a light glow and together it made the room quite bright. Aside from a few glowing flowers I still hadn’t found a way to light up my dungeon. There was so many fairies trying to get close enough to see me on the ground that to make it easier for those in the back and stop them trying to shove each other for a better by creating a small rock pedestal directly under me. As it formed, I got a bit dizzy. It seems movement is not something I’m all that good at. The fairies stopped moving as they gazed at me with worship in their tiny eyes.

“Settle down, settle down. I called you all here to offer my congratulations to you all for your hard work on gathering things we might need in the future. I know it must have been hard to leave our home but if you look around the dungeon, I think we can all agree that it was well worth it.”

They all cheered at that. I had caught a few snippets of conversation between them and it seemed they really liked when I had spread dirt and planted flowers in random places all over the dungeon. Flowers couldn’t grow on stone so I had to experiment for an hour or two before I figured out the needed to be placed in dirt. The flowers offered no protection but some did give off a little light and others seemed to smell nice and if it made my fairies happier, I figured it would only motivate them to fight harder to defend our home if we got intruders.

“Since you’ve all worked very hard and we can’t gain anything else outside I want you all to spread throughout the dungeon. You never know what can happen I want to at least start to prepare for when adventurers will arrive. I’m counting on all of you to defend me.”

More cheering and a few of them shouted ‘Death to all intruders!’.

“For now, I don’t plan to make more of your kind and will instead focus on giving you all weapons and armor, starting with those born first and working my way back all the way to the last-born fairy. Don’t worry. I promise to give them to all of you but one dagger and one armor costs a lot of mana so I can only hand them out to a few at a time. Buttercup, come forward.”

I sensed Buttercup make her way to me. When she arrived she looked nervously at me. Then I gathered the mana I needed and summoned the dagger and armor. Below the pedestal Buttercup reached down to pick them up. She even had a tear in her eye. I could sense her pride and joy in being the first one that had been given something from me.

Just as I was about to congratulate her, I sensed vibrations from outside my dungeon. The ground was shaking. I tried to sense what was happening but I had a very limited range I could do so outside of my actual dungeon. The shaking became bigger and bigger until I finally saw the cause. A huge wave of animals was running as a herd down from the mountain. I panicked and quickly shut all the doors in my dungeon.

The fairies didn’t know why I hadn’t said anything for a while but without an order they were reluctant to leave so they were all inside my core room when the doors closed trapping them with me. Then I got a message from the system that made me scared for the first time in my life.

Intruders detected inside your dungeon. Please defend yourself.