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There was nothing particularly special about my dungeon. It possessed only five floors to the boss room, making it what I considered the typical size for a starting dungeon. It spawned in an area where there was another dungeon within a day’s travel. That dungeon was surrounded by a town, and right in front of it was a large bazaar which brought countless women there every year. Any heroine could stock up on supplies, challenge the dungeon, and put their life on the line to obtain treasures. When they left, they could sell their gains on the way out before returning home with a profit.
This dungeon had no cities and no temples. It was in the middle of the forest with nothing of interest nearby. There weren’t even any deer trails to attract hunters thanks to a local den of wolves. It was an unremarkable place in every way. This dungeon was mine. Perhaps, it was more accurate to say this dungeon was me. About six months ago, I had woken up to find that I had become the core of a dungeon.
I remembered my previous life. I was a forty-year-old obese man living in my parent’s basement. I spent all day drinking Mountain Dew and playing video games. When I wasn’t watching hentai, I was romancing girls in eroge. Take whatever you imagined when you heard the word Otaku, and that was me and more. I jerked off enough to drown a whale. I had no friends and would spend my time online trolling idiots.
The one thing I prided myself on was that I knew exactly who I was. I had no delusions I was some grander person, or that I could be better. I knew I’d never have the girl, or get to see a real woman enact the fantasies in my mind in front of me. It was better to live in a virtual world. Reality sucked. That’s why I enjoyed fantasy so much.
That stagnant lifestyle finally got the better of me, and I died. It started when my arm began to hurt, and then my chest. I stopped being able to breathe. I died there in my chair, my fingers covered in Cheetos, and my pants covered in dried jizz, hentai playing on my monitor screen. My life was over prematurely. It was probably a happy day for my parents, who had given up on moving me out a decade prior. I had been living off of them for years with no signs of leaving, but that was the life I chose.
The next thing I knew, I was in the dark, looking down at my dungeon in an isometric game view. It consisted of only an entrance and a single hallway. I could bring up organized lists filled with rooms, traps, monsters, and more to build, but I could also float around my dungeon like a ghost. I even found my perception could enter monsters. This perception could also leave my dungeon, but only a few dozen meters outside the entrance before things grew fuzzy. It was enough to see my entrance was two pillars and a cave entrance within the clearing inside a forest.
I had nothing better to do, so I used the points I had to build a basic five-level dungeon. The dungeon core system worked with dungeon points. It was all fairly standard. I had a dungeon store from which I could select rooms, traps, and monsters to propagate my dungeon. These were all purchased with dungeon points. My points went up, but very slowly. The cheapest thing on my menu was 100 points, and I only earned about one point an hour.
Thankfully, they started me out with 10,000 points to create a starter dungeon. I used the strategies I learned from gaming to create the best dungeon I could with the points I had. It ended up being five stories deep, costing 1000 points for each additional story. I felt it was worth it though, and I spent the remaining 6,000 points creating four long hallways propagated by traps, monsters, and a final boss room on the fifth floor.
I was pretty proud of what I did. Given how slowly points grew, I considered their gain almost negligible. My only saving grace would be when visitors finally arrived. Thankfully, after a few weeks, I saw a group of armored people approach the cave entrance to my dungeon. Regretfully, they never did more than look inside before turning to leave.
I also noticed that all of them appeared to be women, which I thought was a bit strange. These women wore clothing that didn’t reflect the modern day. There armor and weapons looked like they came straight out of a fantasy setting. I had already gone through my menus, and even though the majority of things were blotted out on account of being too expensive, the things I could afford included goblins, armor, and magic traps, which told me what kind of world I lived in.
Still, for the few moments that those people were in the range of my dungeon, my dungeon points increased by almost a day’s amount. I realized that my points went up with lifeforce. Only by having people enter my dungeon and stay there long-term would I earn points to build more. That’s why I eagerly awaited for my first guest to enter. Yet, everything changed the day she arrived.
When I saw her, I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was a complete beauty. She had green hair and piercing green eyes. I had seen others with different colored hair, so it must be the norm in this world. Such colored hair was natural for this world. She wore a full set of armor, and although it seemed a bit cheap and mismatched, her body wore it perfectly, accentuating her feminine form. It had been shaped for a woman.
I had already been in the world for three months, and it had been nearly a month since the last group had approached my entrance. I was getting a bit worried as she approached. I watched her as she walked to the front of my dungeon entrance and then kneeled. She appeared to be praying, holding some kind of beads in her hand. Even though her words were quiet, I could hear everything within the range of my dungeon, and so I heard her words perfectly.
“Great goddess, please grant me the strength to enter this dungeon. I must reach the bottom and take the crystal core. Since no one has claimed this dungeon yet, no one will mind if I destroy it. The core should be just enough to pay off my family’s debt. Please give me the strength and courage to see this to the end.”
She drew some kind of symbol in the air and then bowed before standing back up. By that time, I would have been frowning if I had a face. I might be a newbie, but I understood that my dungeon core was me. If my dungeon core left the room it was in, it was the same as cutting out my heart. I would die completely. At first, I thought this woman was a blessing, but it turned out she was a demon.
That was always the fine line between dungeons and people. Dungeons needed people to enter so they could extract their energy. People only entered dungeons because of what the dungeons could give them. It was dangerous, and some people could lose their lives in the dungeon. Meanwhile, it was dangerous for the dungeon too, because if someone sought to destroy its core, then the dungeon would be no more.
In the end, this was the result of my own mistake. I had forgotten to propagate my dungeon with any treasure. The option was there, but I had ignored it. That’s why the previous visitors hadn’t entered. They seemed to be able to tell that there was no treasure in my dungeon.
I had been so excited to build this thing, that I had put everything together before I realized I had no points left. Even the simplest treasure chest cost a thousand points, so I hadn’t bothered with it. That’s when a group arrived that was chattier than the previous group. Because of them, I overheard many things.
“Fuck… I’m so horny.” These words immediately caused me to look at the clearing in front of my dungeon entrance, where a group of four women in armor emerged from the forest, looking tired.
I was surprised both because I understood the language they were speaking, and also because of how vulgar she was being for a woman.
“You’re always horny.” One of the other girls laughed, stretching. “I’d prefer something to eat.”
“Like dick?” The first girl asked.
“Hah! If you can find one, I’ll even share it with you.” She responded, causing the other girls to laugh.
“I don’t care about dicks.” A short-haired girl spoke up. “I’d just like a man to keep me warm at night. I don’t even care about dick.”
“You might as well ask for a unicorn.” The woman who appeared to be in charge snorted.
“Did you hear they have a brothel in Brail? The dilboys there are supposed to be quite skilled.” The self-proclaimed horny girl spoke up.
“Well, you can afford all the dilboys you want when we finish sacking this dungeon.” The other girl laughed. “Are we going to go in?”
“No point.” The leader let out a long sigh, her expression dropping as she looked at some device in her hand. “There is no treasure in this dungeon.”
“Seriously? The last survey team said this dungeon had potential. We came out here for nothing? This place is an twelve hour ride from Brail and we get nothing? I thought you said new dungeons were easy money?” Another girl complained.
“They can be…”
“You…”
“Hey, who told this dungeon to be so stingy? Normally, a new dungeon has limited power. They want to attract visitors so they put out treasures, but that uses up their mana, so they lack the means to protect those treasures. You can usually get four or five treasures and only encounter a single goblin. This miser did the opposite. I detect five floors and multiple monsters, but no treasure.”
“Five floors on a dungeon this new? Who’d want to risk that?” Snorted one of the other girls.
“I won’t… let’s head back. I’ll report to the adventurer’s guild that this dungeon is a Class D, low-profit dungeon.” The leader declared. “At least they’ll give us a few coppers for the update.”
“Stupid dungeon!” One of the girls kicked one of the columns at my entrance. “Don’t be so greedy and maybe more girls would like you.”
Although they didn’t know me at all, those words still stung a bit. The girls turned to leave, and I was helpless to stop them. If they didn’t enter my dungeon, I couldn’t make them stay.
“Hey, leader, isn’t this dungeon only rank F?”
“I was originally going to take the treasure and then keep it secret as our little cash cow. Since this dungeon wasted my time, it can just die. Technically, a five-level dungeon can be considered rank D. I’m just smudging the assessment a bit. If the guild thinks this dungeon is high risk and unprofitable, they’ll mark it for demolition. Like that, the guild will send a C-class to wipe it out.”
“Hehe, that’s what you get for going against the F-rank party, Passion’s Summit!”
“You say that like lowest rank is something to be happy about, but we only have permission to challenge F-ranked dungeons. Only someone of a higher rank could defeat this dungeon. If we tried, there is no saying we’d succeed.”
“Who cares? This stupid dungeon is doomed anyway.”
That was the last thing said before they were outside of my range, but it left me cold. This was a brutal world. You had to have enough treasure to attract people while simultaneously having enough protection that they couldn’t easily get that treasure. Otherwise, any benefits you gained wouldn’t supersede the treasures you lost. If you grew too fast and weren’t profitable, then they just destroyed you. It was a frustrating system.
Worst of all, I had to meet those hateful adventurers. They planned to take all of my treasures and angry that I didn’t have any, she was going to lie to see me destroyed. I was furious, but there was nothing I could do. That’s why, using up as many points as I could, I got some treasures. My only hope was that whenever the C-class came, they realized the previous people had lied.
Yet, the C-class adventurer had come. She not only didn’t check my dungeon, but she immediately planned for my destruction. After making her prayer to whatever goddess she believed in, she walked into my dungeon with her sword drawn and determination in her eyes. I could only shiver at the thought that she would cut through all of my traps and monsters and slay me. I felt I had used my resources wisely based on my gaming experience, but my dungeon was ultimately untested. The monsters and traps were all of the lowest variety, and while I thought I had used them cleverly, I had no gauge from which to match things.
Worse of all, this was a C-class adventurer, and I was an F-class dungeon. I didn’t know how powerful a C-class was, but I could count the alphabet. I knew enough from games to know that I was outclassed.
“Ahhhhh!” Thud!
“Huh?” My eyes went back to the woman. “She fell?”
The very first trap in my dungeon, and she had fallen into it? The trap was the cheapest trap available. It was called a pitfall. As one could imagine, if you weren’t paying attention to where you were walking, you could fall into it. It didn’t even have any cover over the top. That was known as a hidden pitfall, and those were nearly four times as much. This was just a hole in the ground.
Thankfully, I could shape the hole however I wanted, although there were restrictions. First off, I could only stretch the hole three feet by three feet maximum. The standard hallway size was 4 feet, and while I could get a narrower hallway, they also cost more and I wasn’t sure if the pitfall rules changed in different environments. This meant that a standard pitfall was small enough that someone could jump across, and also there would be a foot of space someone could walk across as long as they were careful.
I had made an L-bend in the hallway, then put a pitfall against the wall. I only used two feet wide by three feet. If someone took the corner while hugging the wall, their next step around the corner would drop them into the pit. It was a twenty-foot drop, so while it could hurt you, it wasn’t deadly. If I knew this girl would fall into it, I wished I had put stakes at the bottom, but that was once again more expensive. There were more options beyond that, but they were too expensive to afford and were thus blocked out.
Either way, this unintuitive and rather simple trap had caused her to fall. I waited for a bit and then realized she wasn’t coming out of it. After twenty minutes, I cautiously summoned some of the goblins from the second floor and had them fish her out. It wasn’t until she was pulled out that I realized she was unconscious. She had fallen and hit her head. Even her helmet had flown off.
“Seriously?”
I stared at the unconscious woman, wondering what I was supposed to do. She wasn’t dead. She was just unconscious. Was this the C-class adventurer that I was supposed to fear?
Meanwhile, my points were increasing faster.
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