With enough space in my new home, I now should start thinking about decorating it. I remember my early days, after I was just born. I didn't think at all and just placed everything I could, running out of mana within the first day and then I had to wait for like a week before I had enough mana again to place other monsters and animals. I had started off with the more expensive monsters and animals, without taking anything into account. Let's first see my basic status overview.

Name ?????? Race Dungeon Heart Level 0 Experience 0% Status Small Cave Mana 20/1000 Mana regeneration Not stabilized

It's a good thing my skill mastery is still there, it used to cost me 200 mana per room, well, if it wasn't there, I wouldn't have been able to add seven rooms. In my excitement I forgot to check my skills first, it's been so long since I had something to work with. This little fault did prove efficiently that my skills are still in effect though, so at least I gained something out of it.

It's somehow funny that I almost made the same mistake as when I just started, this time I 'only' almost exhausted my mana. Well 20 is enough to work with for now and my mana regeneration should stabilize soon. The backlash on full mana consumption is too heavy, it's a mistake you normally only make once.

It takes a huge toll on your body and you can only start using mana once you've stabilized, for which you need your whole mana pool filled. Let's open the summoning menu for now, I'll check out my skill list later.

Animals Mana Cost Monsters Mana Cost 100 snails 1 Slime 20 99 ants +1 queen ant 1 Goblin 50 100 spiders 1 Small Golem (mud) 75 100 worms 1 100 grasshoppers 1 Expand List Expand List Extra Options Option Description Mana cost Giant Animal only, bigger version, especially effective for insects Base cost for one animal times ten Nest Settle place for allocated animal Base cost purchase times ten Breeding place Upgrade from nest, species automatically breed if possible Base cost purchase times ten, needs nest Spawn Automatic spawn, no breeding necessary, can only create selected spawn Base cost purchase times ten, needs breeding place

With 20 points of mana, I can place a whole bunch of small fry animals, but no monsters. I need them anyway, so it's just as good as any other option. The only thing is, which animals do I want? I do want a [nest], so I can upgrade it to a [breeding place] later. It's not necessary for animals, but for monsters it definitely is. It is still helpful for animals as well, you'll be sure that there is a constant supply of newborn and if your animals evolve due to all the mana into a monster, it's quite handy to have them a nest already.

I can't take any predatory animals right now, and with my lack of even dungeon moss, I think I'll have to go with the worms. A nest for worms would be 10 mana and I'll get 800 worms, 100 for each room, with the nest placed in the first room.

Warning, you've less than 1% mana left Mana regen has been stabilized. Your current regen is 0.5 per hour

Oh, that warning I've never seen before, probably because the first time I just spend it all in one go and afterwards I made sure to never go under 10%. My mana regen is... low, as expected. Luckily, that's only my passive mana regen from my surroundings. Having animals, even though they are just worms, should increase my mana absorption a little. Not that I can count on it to make a huge difference right away, after all standard insects give me about 1 mana per million insects per hour.

It's one of the titbits of information I've found out in my years of travelling. Even though I could've bought millions of insects straight away and wait for my mana to regen, I was too excited and it was also of more importance to create rooms.

Each and every room means more safety, after all a Dungeon Heart like me is worth a lot of money to humans. Also both monsters and humans want to create contracts of labour with Dungeon Hearts.

Now, I'm not against those contracts, but I want to be the boss. In my early stages I'm still quite vulnerable and it's easy to overpower me, making those that create a contract with me now a Dungeon Master. Later on, once I get more powerful, I'll make them a Dungeon Lord.

The difference is that a Master gains control over the Heart and a Heart has control over the Lord. As you can see, it's really important to be on top of the chain if you want to survive. Luckily, animals aren't able to form contracts. Monsters now it from instinct and also know how to gain more out of it than humans.

I'm really glad I left my previous dungeon and posed myself as a valuable artefact, otherwise I would've never learned the differences. It's was a really tough decision, after all I had to leave my self build home behind, but it was definitely worth it. There's a lot of things you can only learn if you travel.

I must admit, I didn't really travel, I was more dragged around, but at least I got to see something of the world. I was always curious to the outside, why things, as I used to call them, seemed to be interested in my home, or why summoning costs mana or many other things.

Back to my created rooms, I've 8 rooms in total, a [nest] in the first one, and 800 worms in total digging around in all of them.. Next thing two things I want is first upgrading my [nest] to a [breeding place] and second, getting a partner to talk to, my very own Dungeon Lord.

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A/N: I put this on the bottom, instead of at the top because of the possible spoiler. Are there any great suggestions/request for a Dungeon Lord? You can make it as big as you want, no limits, I'll need my time to work towards it anyway, so I'll have something to aim for.