Restore triggered traps: 25 mana (5 mana/basic trap) Yes/No Restore destroyed doors: 90 mana (15 mana/Weak wooden door) Yes/No Restore plants destroyed by invaders: 114 mana (1 mana/plant) Yes/No Congratulations. You've survived for 3 days in the wild. 1 'Upgrade' point awarded. You have collected enough essence from living things killed in your dungeon to unlock 1 'Upgrade' point.

Several of your Tier 1 'Young Fairy' combat creatures have gained enough combat experience to evolve.

Evolution locked until you gain the ability to summon Tier 2 Fairies.

To think my flowers would be the thing to cost me the most mana. I guess I planted quite a few and the beasts seemed to enjoy eating them. Replacing the doors, I decide to hold off on that for now. They were useless and I’m better off using my mana arming my fairies. The traps I decide to instantly restore. It’s cheap and compared to the doors they actually helped a little. Very little, but still.

I’m really happy that I gain not just one upgrade point but two. Lilly should come back soon so I decide to hold off on using the upgrade points for now. Not because Lilly told me not to use them, I just wanted her to be here when I pick upgrades on my own before she has a chance to tell me what to do. It’s petty but I can just imagine how livid she’ll be by me picking the ‘wrong’ upgrades. I need to be less trusting of her since I don’t know if she tricked me by telling me doors were good or just ignorant.

The last box I read is the one that’s the most intriguing. I think that since it’s locked until I unlock Tier 2 it must mean my fairies will grow stronger once they do evolve. I really want to see how a creature evolves. I even begin to wonder if I will evolve too or if I’ll just stay a tiny glowing rock the rest of my life. Maybe if I evolve Lilly won’t call me ‘little pebble’ anymore?

Everywhere in my dungeon I sense my fairies celebrating killing the invaders. I decide to wait a bit to let them celebrate a little more before I call them back. We were interrupted by the invasion so I never did get to finish what I meant tell them.

Even without me ordering them they all decide to return after a few more cheers and compliments at certain fairies for their part in the defense. When all of them has come back to my now again very cramped core room I start talking.

“I’m very proud of all of you. Together you managed to kill off those that would seek to destroy our home. To me you are all heroes. You fought hard and each of you did your very best. In fact, you did so well in the fight and taking care of each other that not one fairy died today. I can’t really give you something as a reward as I lack the mana but I promise to restore all the flowers when I do have enough.”

That brings a cheer from my audience. They really like the flowers.

“I’ll also work hard summoning weapons and armor for all of you. So that in the future when your mana runs dry, you’ll still be able to defend yourself and each other.”

Another cheer. As loud as when I promised them to restore the flowers. A bit odd that they would be just as glad with the flowers as they would with weapons and armor. Maybe I should plant a few more flowers? They really seem to like them.

“The last thing I can do for all of you that risk your life to defend our home is a promise. In the future we might not be so lucky as to avoid some of you dying in our defense. However, I have the ability to revive anyone killed for a slightly higher mana cost then a new summon. I promise you right here that I will use that so that you can fight with the knowledge that so long as our home still stands you will always be a part of this family. Even death will not be the end of your story! Let us work together to ensure that many years from now each of you can return here to my core room and celebrate our home and our life.”

I was met with silence after I finished the speech. I grew a bit nervous. I thought what I said was something good. I even promised to waste more mana reviving them instead of just making a new fairy. They should’ve liked that. What did I do wrong? One of the fairies near the pedestal started speaking with a low voice after the silence had settled. I suspect they can all hear her despite the fact she didn’t speak very loudly.

“Really master? You would do that for us?”

I take a closer look at her. She’s one of the oldest fairies I have. I think I had dubbed her ‘failure number three’ but I could see now that her name was Fiona. I think that was one of the first names Lilly told me. I wonder if the rest of the five ‘failures’ had names from the beginning of Lilly’s listing of names. That would either make the naming not random or maybe it was that those names were the ones I had actually payed enough attention to actually being able to remember even now. I tried to spread a feeling of reassurance to my fairies as I responded.

“Of course, child. I love each and every one of you.” A little lie there. I only loved one of them. The rest I now merely respected the rest but they didn’t need to know that. “The power I have should be used to keep us all safe. It’s a small price to pay so that I can see all your smiling faces in the future. I can’t stand losing even a single one of you.”

That seems to have reassure them as they started praising me and cheering even more then when they beat the invasion. I guess even summoned creatures feared death a little. That’s the only reason I could think of to cause this reaction. Some of them cried but I only sensed joy from them so it must be a good thing even though I sensed that tears meant sadness in most cases.

“Settle down, settle down. I’m only doing what I should as your creator. Now, I think this event proved that me keeping you here isn’t a good way to defend our home. Go and spread out in the dungeon. That way our home will be better defended against intruders and I can focus on making our home more secure.”

They all let out a final cheer before slowly leaving my room. I didn’t give them any orders on how many should go where. It will be more interesting to see what they decide to do on their own. I can always give some orders later if I find that what they decide is terrible. I might respect them but I’m not sure I can trust them without supervision. This will be a good first test.

Whatever the ‘Life essence’ I gained from the aurochs was it didn’t help me with my mana so there wasn’t much I could do at the moment so I decided to just rest and stop monitoring my dungeon for a while. After two hours I’ll have enough mana to restore all the flowers so with that in mind I rested.

Two hours later I could hear my fairies cheer as I restored the flowers. Before going back to rest again I checked how everyone had decided to split up to guard me.

Most of the fairies were in the rooms while a few had decided to guard certain hallways. The two rooms with the most fairies were in my old core room that was now the first room invaders could enter and the first big room that was ‘protected’ by the doors I hadn’t restored yet. Eight of them was there while two groups. A group of three and one of four fairies was in my old core room on opposite sides near each hallway. The other rooms had a mix of three to six fairies guarding them. I did however notice that none of them were guarding my boss room. A bit odd since it was the largest and the last room before reaching me. I considered calling one of my fairies over to ask why but I decided against it. It didn’t really matter that much.

I summoned a few more piles of dirt and then summoned some more random flowers before going back to rest. I decided to wait ten hours before doing anything else this time. That would restore all my mana so that I didn’t have to call in the fairies one by one and could instead equip several of them at the same time. The armor set me back 20 mana while the dagger is 15. That means after I have all my mana, I’m able to summon armor for the twelve that currently only have a knife and still have enough to summon both a knife and armor for ten more fairies. If I only focus on doing only this, I can have them all geared in about 45 hours.

With that decided there wasn’t much else to do. I summoned the gear for my fairies, called them in to let them collect it and then went back to rest. That was my life for the next two days. When the last fairy to get the dagger and armor I still had about 120 mana left, I may have spent some extra time resting then I had planned on towards the end. So, with a final sigh I decided to finally restore the doors for 90 mana. It was the last thing to remind me of the attack and I didn’t really want to have a visual reminder of that part of my life anymore.

While I was still considering what to do next, I sensed some movement near my entrance and I quickly recognized that it was Lilly. A box popped up to confirm it.

Lilly, the one previously sent to help you, have requested to restore the mind-link. Accept? Yes/No