Alistair looked at the prompt and for the first time in a long time didn’t just hit the Yes button. It wasn’t that he was greedy and wanted more stuff, like whatever there was in all this stuff lying around. The real reason why, was that he was feeling hesitant and afraid. Almost every step he took forward, it felt like the Gods or Goddesses punished him for that progress. The mere fact that she was offering him spells on healing and defense was incredible as they would help his fighting ability. Still something felt off, for a person that felt like she was being sold into slavery, why would she offer him this quest? Why now?

Slowly, Alistair moved his hand away from the quest prompt. He looked at Herma for a moment before he spoke. “Why? You don’t want to be a slave again, and you almost killed me thinking that I was going to do that to you. So why give me this quest? Why help me at all?”

Herma smiled at him, “Ah so now you choose to be cautious? Seems to me like you are learning Demon, granted very slowly. Fine, let’s go over some of the drawbacks. First off, if you accept the quest you are starting down a path that will eventually raid the largest township on this branch of the road. That means you could end up owning multiple mana monsters, loot, spells, and so on. However, you will upset a major power for an alliance that you have no idea about. That’s assuming you stay hidden long enough before they find you. See as a pocket dimension becomes more powerful, it influences the pathway that leads to the road. As soon as your pathway gets large enough to handle a wagon, they will likely investigate you. At that point, you have to look so tough that the thought of raid scares them. Additionally, after raiding them you will have amassed a great amount of wealth without proper support for it. So even if you win, the amount of resources that come into your pocket dimension may stretch it beyond its ability to support.” Herma stopped for a moment, looking at Alistair and seeing a blank stare. “No, don’t get it?”

Herma put down the knife and folded her hands into her lap. Thinking for a moment she decided to give him an example, “Well it’s pretty simple, think of a pile of stones. Each stone isn’t very heavy and can be moved easily, but load all of it on a man’s back and it will crush him all the same. The same type of thing can happen to a dungeon. For this I think we should take a trip out to the fountain.” As Alistair stood up, the prompt minimized into to a small blue cube that floated in front of him. As they moved Alistair was glad that Herma was giving him this information, as it was sorely needed. They got to the fountain and Alistair looked down at it seeing nothing had really changed besides the fact that the small pools of water grown to be no bigger than his fist.

Herma looked at him and spoke, “The fountain represents your dungeons mana. Ah, it seems like this we know.” As Alistair rolled his eyes at her. “Ok… well then in order for the fountain to grow it can do so in several different ways. First, the Demon can focus the mana in the fountain and make the fountain grow deeper. This effectively adds a new level to your dungeon. I saw it once, the entire fountain had to be full and Hardune placed his hands into the fountain and made a movement like he was pushing a person away. Once done, the fountain went into the ground another few inches, but had absorbed almost all its mana in doing so. Next, as you can see on the bottom of the poll are colored tiles that form a mosaic. This occurs when the Mana monsters in the dungeons refine the natural mana channels in the mind and make them as efficient as possible. From what I have heard most demons do not bother with this as the effects are rarely noticeable. When in reality, this can help with the dungeon research and provide specific mana for new Mana Monsters to appear. Lastly you can expand the border or add statues to the fountain. I know it sounds silly and out of three its sounds like I am a little girl playing house… Well I am not. By adding or refining the stone work you create a better ground for overflow of mana.”

“It’s all important because when you successfully raid one dungeon, your mana fountain will over flow with power. Having a statue or rune statuette helps by containing the overflow. Example would be a statue that sprays its water into a mist. By adding a statue like that you can disperse useless mana back into your pocket dimension without harm. As for the stone foundation it will help to contain mana leaks from your pocket dimension which can contribute to creating a wild mana monster. Lastly the deeper your fountain the more mana you can have. This all helps in dealing with a large mana influx from the raid. If you don’t have those three things than you would be ringing for every Adventurer in the world to come and challenge you. Trust me on that point, even those who are not sensitive to mana would feel a gentle pull to come and attack you.”

Herma got up and started walking down the street. She pointed at several building that appeared to have a stone base but then started to become mud with a sod roof. “When the dungeon was functional, these houses were stone with stucco walls and held several people. As you expand, a house can eventually cause lost souls to come to your town. The better quality the house the more powerful the soul. Hardune, didn’t care too much about how strong they were, as he just believed in growing his own monsters. So he had his workers start creating basic houses. Slowly over the years souls would appear in the village, and Hardune would have me or someone else battle them. If we succeeded then by default they were added to the village. If we failed, then the great and powerful Hardune would fight them.” Herma snorted at the joke. Finally she stopped at the edge of the town and pointed out to the edge. Unlike Alistair’s settlement, Herma’s pocket dimension ended in the blue mist, not in a forest.

“As you can see, Hardune sent workers to expand the dungeon’s area of influence by cutting back the forest. You will need to do the same before a raid. This increases how big each floor can expand to. Some dungeons have researched ways to expand beyond these natural borders. However, they usually end up getting killed. So why do you have to build all this and more? If mana overflows from your fountain because of all the loot you bring back. The Forest will reappear and eat up your land that you carved back. If you don’t have basic structures to house the people you capture during the raid, they will devolve.” Herma looked around at the plains for a moment then spoke.

“Before I go on, I want you to realize that this long conversation we had was to cover one point from drawbacks of raiding. The dungeon that makes its job to raid, usually never prepares itself for the over flow. Then they spend time and resources trying to regain everything they lost, or they just go back out and raid again. At some point they never stop to realize that if they allowed themselves to spend time making their dungeon stronger, then they could keep and use more of the energy captured during a raid.” Herma looked at Alistair and on his face was a look of complete confusion.

Herma laughed at Alistair’s confused look. “I know most of this because I shared a roof with the General Help Spell Aspect. He was a nice man when Hardune kept him out, and when Hardune dismissed him, it was hard living in an empty house. However, trust my advice on this and prepare for the influx of mana instead of reacting to it. Now, if you aren’t convinced that the quest is helpful, then let me ask what do you think is the most powerful item being offered?”

Alistair thought about the four items being offered and spoke carefully, “My guess would be the spell of healing. The dungeon coin is valuable loot, but it will take a while before I even have a creature strong enough to assign it to. The defense spell will help defect attacks, but once I take damage I have to travel back and forth from my pocket dimension to heal myself. With a healing spell, hopefully I can just cast it on myself, or enchant an item and put it in a loot table to have it as a constant effect.”

Herma hid a small smile that came to her lips and then spoke, “Actually, it’s the Rune. A rune can be captured in a small statuette with a hexagon base. Why it has to have a hexagon base, I have no idea, but if given to a creature that creature can develop an ability that is associated with the rune. Once given, the creature cannot learn another ability from that rune, unless you bring two of the statues in front of the creature. It takes years for a fountain to research a rune, and then only the Demon can carve it. Depending on his skill, getting the carving right will take years as well. The rune of Ho, is the Rune of Life, and most creatures gain the ability to regenerate. There are other uses as well for the statuette, but your dungeon isn’t advance enough to utilize them. So what do you say?”

Alistair stood silent for a moment, there was so much information, and he realized that there was so much more he could have been doing in his dungeon that he almost felt sick. In fact, a small voice in him said he should just give up and start again. However, he had never given into that sick voice of self-defeat and maybe with Herma he could correct his mistakes. Alistair touched the blue cube to turn it back into his Quest prompt and pressed Yes. A golden light sparkled over Herma for a moment and she nodded at Alistair. For a time they walked in silence back to the broken fountain. When they got there Herma asked Alistair about his dungeon, loot, current spells and creatures. A look of shock came across her face as Alistair told her about all of it and the quest he received about Callum.

“Alistair, I don’t begrudge you wanting to keep Callum present. So I won’t tell you to dismiss him, but your dungeon isn’t even close to being ready for Adventurers, let alone me. Oh well, can’t be helped, I haven’t seen anyone around here for forty years so your still my best bet. So this is what you should do when you get back to your dungeon. Go ask Callum for an woodman’s axe, start clearing the foliage around your town. When you have enough wood, leaves and other material bring it back to the fountain and put it in. It will become mana, when the fountain is full, focus on creating loot items and placing them in your chest. The claws, teeth, daggers, and stones need to be made and dumped into the chest. Eventually when you kill your Elemental, you can have several of them create loot and clear the forest around the town. Now let’s teach you how to get some experience.”

“Unlike Adventurer’s you only get experience from a monster killing it once. Because a Dungeon Demon is tied to their dungeon they gain some of their experience from killing adventurers but the majority of it comes from how much mana is cycled through their dungeon. The general help aspect told me that Dungeon’s were meant to channel mana for the God and Goddesses planes to their worlds, and a Demon is rewarded by doing this job. So are you full of mana?” Herma asked.

Alistair shook his head, his mana regeneration was amazingly slow. Herma told Alistair to go ahead and step into the fountain and touch the few puddles till he felt full. As Alistair did so he wondered how this was going to help him at all. Looking up at Herma when he was done, she asked him to come over to him. “Ok, I am not sure how you are supposed to do this, but I want you to look at this missing tile and put a new one in.” Alistair cocked an eye brow in surprise at the thought of fixing a tile in her mosaic, but started looking at it anyway.

At first Alistair felt like he was just looking at a missing tile and that he had nothing to repair it. It was frustrating staring at nothing but the crumbling mortar around it. However, after five minutes, Alistair’s attention began to wander. He knew that the tile should have been green, as it was in line with a large swirl of green tiles. Additionally as he cleared out the mortar, he knew that swirl went deeper. Touching the tiles next to them, he felt life energy being blocked. Like a river having been dammed by debris. His mind saw how moving this little piece of mortar here and pressing gently to hold it in place produced a tingling in his fingers and the piece would stay. Staring at the mosaic, Alistair began to place his hand over the missing tile and felt the river of energy jump into his hand and bridge the gap. Slowly he pushed down on that energy, feeling amore tingling coming from his hand until a bright light flashed and he felt the energy go down the pathway like it was supposed to. Lifting up his hand Alistair saw that a green tile had replaced the missing one. Herma clapped and an event prompt came up.

Event!You have successfully used your Dungeon Construction Skill!Normally, a Dungeon Demon can only create or alter dungeons under his control. However, since you are the only Dungeon Demon in this destroyed Dungeon, you have been given temporary control over the broken summoning circle. 10 experience points have been given to you for fixing first tile. Fixing additional tiles will gain 1 experience point per tile.

Even though Herma continued to clap, Alistair knew that it was going to be a long day to get his first level. Following the green swirl he went to the next broken tile and began his work.