Dungeon Core, Resistance.

by Zemez

Dungeon Core.

He had several things to do before he could think about hosting a proper dungeon. Firstly, traits, which had replaced his racial attribute bonuses. He mentally opened it up.

The traits told him a lot. First of all, that dungeons apparently got a Parasprite helper? Most likely, these little guys would tell the newly made dungeon core how to do stuff... His was apparently dead. This meant the system treated him as the dungeon core that was shattered. This thought was also supported by the Shattered but whole and the Useless Skills traits.

All of these were pretty straightforward... except for the first trait. He mentally frowned, He'd never seen, let alone heard of an S+ rank. This also brought several other questions, were dungeon cores normally like him? reincarnated through accidents? Or were they formed with incomplete souls? What was a Soul anyways? Most modern Thaumaturgy dismissed the notion of the soul existing... but here was proof.

In addition, the trait was pretty vague, apart from no maximum level on his monsters, he'd get to the excitement of that later, it gave him 6 upgrades per level? What were upgrades?

He closed the traits menu. He was partially upset at the ??? for his name. he was Xaviar, not-

|     Name changed to Xaviar.	|

…That was easy. He noticed he had 1 ATP, he didn't spend it yet, since he didn't exactly know what each of the attributes did. None of them were self-explanatory, except perhaps the mana upkeep. KPM though... that was a lot of energy.

Well, one thing he knew was that dungeons needed territory to spread, now how did he do this? His first few attempts at getting the system to trigger were unfruitful, no mention of territory, claim, or any variation thereof worked. Eventually, he tried pushing mana through his core, or rather, proto-mana. This was more successful, while he got no extra notifications, he could... feel the area, temperature, humidity, light level, and even each individual microbe inside the hoof of space. Each like he had used the most precise instrument to measure it. He had no idea if this was another effect of his S+ rank trait or if all Cores felt their environment in this level of detail. With only ten mana being used up for a square hoof of space, he claimed the entire boss room.

|      Metal found. Impure Silver, absorb?	|

With a mental nudge he absorbed the remains of the boss. he checked his sheet, and his ATP hadn't gone up. The room was quite spacious, being a circular room with a diameter of thirty hooves. Many of the skeletons of the griffons were absorbed in the same matter. disintegrating into nothing, or what appeared to be nothing to him. Their armor was made out of bronze, which he also absorbed. It was only after he cleared out the room that he noticed that his ATP had gone up to 2.

'So absorbing things increases my attribute points...' He thought to himself. While his Proto-mana regened, he decided to explore the rest of his sheet. The first ability he checked out was monster creation I.

|    Must have an element to create monsters	|

'Element?' as soon as he thought that, hundreds of thousands of options came into his head. So quickly he couldn't process them all.

'STOP!' With that, the options stopped flooding his mind. The option it had stopped on caused Xaviar to pause.

|	KNOWLEDGE.	|

...Was this an element? He thought it meant like fire, water, perhaps going down the table of elements? But knowledge? He encountered a familiar feeling, doubt. The same feeling he remembered when he accepted the scholarship, when he was forced to join the Griffonstone Army, and even when he decided to go down this gorge...

'Nothing ventured, Nothing gained.' Were his thoughts as he accepted knowledge as his element. He thought perhaps knowledge would rush into his head, filling him with a veritable library. Only nothing happened, he felt no different. With nothing left, he opened monster creation I.

Selecting the create new monster option brought forth another screen where he was supposed to design a creature. He gave up after a few hours, which he now kept track of by keeping a close watch on his mana. He needed to know and design each individual aspect of the creature. It wasn't as simple as just putting an eagle's head on a pony's body. He needed to know where the veins were supposed to connect, the magical circuits needed to be designed, etc. Perhaps later, he would be able to create truly amazing things, but right now? Right now he had none of the knowledge or skills necessary to create new life. Selecting the other option, a different screen popped up.

He felt that he could select any one of them except for Lesser Librarian and place them anywhere inside of what he began calling his domain, which was the boss room he had claimed. He selected the Animated Tome.

| Select level |

He chose a nice level 10 for his first creation and spawned it in the middle of the room. Suddenly it was there, floating about two hooves off the ground, flapping its pages and cover in some facsimile of a bird. After observing it for a little bit, a pop-up showed up, surprising him.

So he could see his creatures' status? Checking his mana, he was a hundred short, now down to 90 from 190. The book fluttered about the room, moving randomly and only changing direction when it hit a wall or the edge of his domain. When he began to look through his other abilities, the sight of a rat head poking into the room stopped him. It sniffed the air before looking at his flying book. Soon, another surprise popped up.

H-He could see the status of other creatures!? He was stunned by this revelation. While he couldn't see everything, such as their skills, what he could see was already enough! And it informed him his animated tome was toast. He could do nothing as the rat swatted it out of the air with a leap and began to tear pages out until it stopped moving. he was slightly surprised when the rat leveled up, now being level 18. It reinforced a lot about what he already knew, and told him even animals could benefit from dungeons. It sniffed around for a few seconds before bounding out of the room.

It seemed he needed ways to stop the monsters from attacking his monsters while he made them. With only a max of 500 mana, and gaining 50/hour, it'd take him ten hours just to make five of those tomes. So with that, he looked at Material Creation I. This one wasn't very complicated, although he could only use it within his domain. He started with stone, which only required that he think of a material he'd encountered before using it. It was one unit of Proto-magic per cubic hoof. When he had finally blocked up the entrance for only five Proto-mana, he made a pile of dirt for 3 units... This told him that his material creation relied upon the MC of the material.

with that done, he waited. When his mana reached over 100 he tried to create a griffon so that he could at least have a size advantage over the Rat.

Insufficient resources.

Or not. the screen told him nothing about what he needed. Did the Griffon cost more mana? was he missing some resource on a screen he didn't know how to access? Instead he made an Animated Quill.

A much better offensive monster. along with it's higher attack due to it's higher strength. it had Ink I, which gave it a 10% chance to give the creature Ink poisoning. which decreases Strength and Dexterity by 2 temporarily. Along with Sharp Point I, which gives attacks made with it's point +5 damage.

He spent almost twenty hours making ten of these, he wanted to make more, but when he tried to make the 11th, he got a notification.

|   Insufficient upkeep and at monster limit	|

He checked his status, and his Mana Upkeep was at 1/1 KPM, which meant that each of his creatures was giving him .1 upkeep. Along with the Monster limit. That meant that he could only have 10 monsters due to his monster stat. He then decided to increase his upkeep and monster stats by 1 with his two ATP. When he checked his status he was once more pleasantly surprised.

Increasing his upkeep apparently also increases his Mana, which seemed to in turn increase his health. While he could use his newfound stats to make another quill, he waited, while he waited, he began to hear scuffling along his stone wall. six hours in, the shuffling began turning to crumbling stone. And he could still only wait, positioning his quills above the entrance, ready to pierce downwards.

And two hours later, right before he had maximum mana, a hole the size of a rat was made. And into the room poured three Infested rats, each similar to the one that had entered earlier. They sniffed the air before letting out a squealing sound as the quills launched themselves at them, stabbing them.

|	Ink poisoning triggered 3x. Critical hit 1x	| 

'HA!' He couldn't help but shout out mentally. Only for his excitement to die down as two of his quills were unable to extricate themselves in time to be broken in half by the rats. With another Quill barrage, the first Infected rat went down, it fell atop a quill, and two more in addition went down with the rat's efforts.

With only four Quills left out of ten, Xaviar was panicking. He didn't have enough mana for what he wanted to do, and both rats were still at half health. Even if he had all four of them attack a singular rat, it wouldn't be enough to bring it down. he began creating a new monster.

|    Normal monsters are unable to be created while	|
|	living creatures are within your Domain.	|

'Talon Clippings!' He cursed as another quill went down. with three left he began trying anything. Trap creation I, which he had ignored after looking at it because the cheapest of the traps required almost all of his mana before he increased it, was also unable to be used while creatures were within his dungeon. Material creation was possible, but he had no possible ways of weaponizing that currently.

Eventually, he tried creating a non-normal monster. Dungeons had bosses, monsters that were stronger than normal, and had special interactions. He had only fought a couple during his army stint, but each one usually required a full team of 5 C ranks to beat. He tried creating an Animated Tome while thinking about it being a boss.

When the system didn't stop him, he pumped it full of knowledges, Theoretical Thaumaturgy IV, Practical thaumaturgy II, Language III, and Runecarving I. He tried at first to make it level 20, but when that didn't work due to insufficient resources, he made it 15, and then finally 10 when 15 was still too much. In the center of the room, a bright light expanded, drawing the Rat's attention. Giving the quills an opportunity to get some distance.

The creature was a large book the size of a pony. Written within its ever-turning pages seemed to be runes denoting some form of magical study Xaviar hadn't heard of.

|     Created a new study of magic, +1 SP, +5 Wealth.	|

He had no time to delve into that new discovery. The two Rats already began advancing on his new boss. Although they never got the chance to get close. Two of the remaining three quills, without his direction, began writing in the Encyclopedia. Soon, with a reddish glow, two streams of fire came out of the pages of the boss, incinerating both the quills and leaving nothing but ashes in the area the two Infected rats once were...

|	10/10 dungeon monsters killed, +1 level.	|

He quickly got notification whiplash. There was only so much information he could process before it all overwhelmed him. He ignored the revelation about his creating a new study of magic in his panicked state, and quickly focused on leveling. He hadn't gotten any ATP, SP, or ABP, but his level now showed 1(2). He tentatively opened it mentally.

...Woah. This was the most information he had gotten throughout the entire half a week he had been down here! He finally knew what upgrades were, and he was spoiled for choice with six points. He immediately took Expanded Mana I and Expanded Domain I. after picking it and seeing that he could immediately take a second rank for two points he did. He then took two Increased Attributes and put both of them into upkeep. He then Increased his runecarving to II before checking out his full status.

He only gained one level and already he was drastically stronger than he was a week ago. He had no other dungeons to compare himself to, but he doubted this was the norm. His S+ soul seemed to give him a lot of advantages.

Regardless, he had work to do. He already noticed earlier when the Infested Rat leveled up after killing his monster. He never knew exactly how it worked when he was in the army, but his monsters were actively made out of mana, they converted proto-mana he absorbed and sent through them into Mana, which when killed, released a burst of mana which creatures in the vicinity absorbed. This was the main way and the reason why Equestria had much higher levels than anywhere else that he knew of, that creatures leveled, through passive mana absorption.

He had no idea when he'd be forced to perform a Dungeon Tide, and he'd already wasted a week down here experimenting. No creature knew what caused them, so Xaviar needed to work off some assumptions he knew about magic. If proto-magic was the cause, and continually culling the dungeons seemed to work, then he just had to keep spending his Mana.

He'd expand throughout the old dungeon, dealing with the infested rats that get attracted by his monsters, before rising through the gorge he descended. if all went to plan, he'd be level 3, and he could start creating a proper dungeon to help his nation. With his plan in mind, he got to work creating more Animated Quills...

Author's Note:

A Hoof (hooves plural) is about equal to a foot. Made based on the average length a pony's hoof travels when they walk. Before the Unification of tribes, each tribe had its own measurement, this caused confusion which threatened to tear the ponies into a second feud, until Starswirld the bearded and Clover the clever decided to create a measurement based on something each of the tribes shared.

Each nation has its own measurement, but most with friendly relations to Equestria use hooves for convenience.

Comments

[WolfLover]

Going by the description is this in anyway inspired by the divine dungeon series?

[Davenfjeld]

Seems fun, loving the graphs! Gryphons are going to have quite the shock if a search party comes looking for our dear thaumaturgist friend...

[Zemez]

11328169
One of the first I read years ago. Only got up to about book three before it lost my interest. Most dungeon core books only keep me interested up to 3 before the notion of them directly teaming up with direct communication ruins it for me. Unless they team up in the first book.

11328193
The gorge is just outside Griffonstone. If they haven't sent one by now... Well, two chapters later might clear that up.

On this topic, hope everyone loves the simplistic system design and stats. Graphs are literally made in word then screenshotted and uploaded. I pretty much just edit over previous ones if they're for the same character, hence why Xaviar's mana is off when he's a griffon lol. Didn't catch it until I was done with Chapter 2.

[Black--Soul]

Being a dungeon is fun... I wonder if he had chicks or died a Virgin...

[Black--Soul]

I wonder if Xavier can create a chat room.
Add a Monster-Book and a Monster-Quill to Chat with adventuring Guests.
Example:
A small room enough to fit 6-7 Creatures in it to sit or stand.
The Book has written:" Welcome to the Chatroom, I am Xavier former Griffon and now Dungeon-Core.
This book is able to interact with me. It can be awful lonely outside creating decorations for my Dungeon- area and monsters for your training.
What would you like to talk about?"

[Nyerguds]

11328278
You should probably mark it as crossover then; that's what that tag is for.