Peter could not have been more wrong, he had likely only been asleep for about an hour when the proximity alarm he had set went off. He switched his view to the entrance and immediately found the culprit. A young girl, maybe 14 or 15 was moving forward slowly mouth agape. She looked like a Scottish barbarian. Red hair, fair complexion with freckles and was covered with animal pelts.
She peered inside but stopped at the edge for a solid minute. Finally perhaps as her eyes adjusted, she finally caught sight of the nearest pumpkin vine. He had made sure one was close enough and eye-catching enough to ensure that people entered. Since its contents would be quickly gathered, the following harvesters would have to go further in. Peter just needed it to start. She cautiously crept in, ripping off one of the bowling ball sized pumpkins. All the while her eyes cautiously scanned the cavern for danger. Then she quickly back peddled and retreated until he lost sight of her.
Checking his life essence counter, Peter frowned. I guess 30 seconds doesn’t amount to much. He had to look past the decimal to the thousands place. Someone like her would have to be in his dungeon for at least half an hour to garner him a single point. Well he guessed he was fortunate that they had at least found the dungeon. Now the girl should go spread the word with a pumpkin as proof.
That was unless the girl wanted to monopolize it all to herself. If she did there was no telling when someone else would come across it. Whatever, Peter was still tired so he decided to go back to sleep.
Several hours later his proximity alarm once again went off. Peter hurriedly flicked on the front view. He felt bad for briefly doubting the little “brave” redhead. It looked like she had brought the whole village. Nearly 200 red and brown haired humans, probably everyone who was not too elderly or too sick, even kids and babies were in attendance. A large party of about 40 men with spears, knives and archery equipment approached. Women and children excitedly gawked. Trying his best, he could not hear their conversations, but it was clear that he had an overall positive reception.
It was the most exciting and potentially lucrative thing to ever happen in this region of the world. The armed men proceeded cautiously. Peter doubted they would try to destroy the core, but if they did it might be a pretty close fight. Forty plus wilderness men might be able to take on 8 D tiers. It was not likely, since they would likely take extremely heavy losses in the attempt, but Peter continued to watch them cautiously.
They proceeded through the interconnected caverns quite quickly. It took maybe 10 to 15 minutes to clear it all. The spawned goats and boars were hunted to extinction. It was okay, Peter still had the originals tucked away so he could make new spawners in the future.
Seemingly not content with the hunt and having cleared the first floor they proceeded down the ramp onto the second. Porcupine stepped out approaching them and they backpedaled for several steps. They were not necessarily incapable of dealing with the D tier, with their numbers, but even they certainly recognized it as something to be wary of. They retreated and the leaders held a brief conversation. They unilaterally decided not to proceed further. With that they retreated back to the entrance and informed their families. Then like a landrush the whole village proceeded inside. A few men took up guarding sections, but the villagers started harvesting in mass.
Well they certainly get right to the point, Peter thought, shaking his head. Goes to show you that wilderness people are no nonsense. Still he should not have to worry about any of them trying to end his existence. Seemingly, they had readily accepted his dungeon as a boon to their village.
Eventually, Peter lost interest in the villagers. He started to thoroughly read the manual over and over again. By the next congregation, he would have it basically all memorized. There was not much else to do, read his manual and plan. He had no way to interact with the villagers, to them he would always be an intangible existence. When he wanted to walk around or stretch his legs, he did so in his battle dungeon
Like that the days started to pass, Peter was slowly starting to realize what kind of existence he was going to live. Options would continue to open up as his capabilities increased, but for now he was anchored to the area. Peter, often absent mindedly, drifted back to his old life. It was still plenty fresh, but honestly what he missed the most was the hustle and bustle. The distractions. What he would not give for access to the internet, some games, or a television… or even a book.
If Peter had not harbored the fantasy of obtaining some humanoid type cards to create his own romantic interests… ahmmmm… sentient female units, he would have at least done so to have someone for conversation. He had the clockwork cards, but right now all of his essence was going to expand his dungeon. Plus would someone like clockwork really be such good company. It might drive him mad before anything else. Regardless, he would have to wait. This first year, while essence and his options were still pretty limited, should be the worst.
The next 220 had gone toward making a goat spawner for his second level to keep the carnivore types of his D tier’s fed. Each successive spawner of the same type would only come with a higher cost. It was not bad for the F tier, but it would be far less palatable for the higher tiers, although C tier would be the highest unit he could build a spawner for.
Then starting on C tier he would have the option of building maelstroms which would be a greater money sink, but also far more cost effective in the long run. Peter could not try it since the blue horned crab had died in battle, and as of yet he had not summoned another C tier, but just from what was in the rule book, it was clear that the maelstroms would be the most cost effective army building method in the long run although it seemed the older cores actually did not use them all that often.
When units hit C tier you could both build one offs or a maelstrom off of a living unit. The one offs were single purchase similar units two tiers below the original it was made off of. This was actually the method most dungeons used more often, since the cost was what you would normally pay for that unit. One offs for a C tier unit would be E tier, and they would only cost 10 essence. There was no limit on how many of these one offs could be made. The one downside like anything else was that once the original unit died, you could no longer purchase new one offs.
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Maelstroms also created units two tiers below, but they were used far less frequently due to the prohibitive cost. Generally the cost would be from 500 to 1,000 times the cost of the one offs. The standard maelstrom would then summon two units a week indefinitely. Best case it would take over 4 years to pay of the maelstrom for the units summoned and twice that for the upper range. However, after that it was basically free units which Peter found really appealing.
The downsides is that you would have to feed and store the units as they accumulated. You also would be paying a large up front cost. The upside was that in the long run it was an exceedingly good option to build a like unit armies. Since essence collection was essentially limited for all dungeons Peter would need to come up with ways to multiply what he got through his use of it.
It only took 3 days before the other two nearby villagers started to visit. Using his avatar to survey and monitor things, Peter saw several handcarts set out for the region’s main town by the end of the first week with spare harvested produce. Word was quickly getting out, he needed to quickly develop and expand his dungeon to continue to draw in people and to eventually attract adventurers. He was getting harvesters almost daily, except for the day there had been a heavy rain, but his dungeon’s automatic essence draw was still running. Only a handful of men came in with the groups to offer protection in case there was a sudden danger, but it was mostly women and older kids by this point. They hunted the goats and boars, daily, probably ensuring that they had fresh meat every day, but the hunts did not last too long.
At the end of the first week, Peter had made a seventh cavern extension on top of the original 6. In addition there was one more boar and one more goat spawner. On day 8 he started focusing on expanding his second floor. He would continue adding onto the first floor later on. The second floor would hold much the same design as that of the first, just one allogamous mass of caverns connected loosely to one another. Except the caverns would not be as tall. Eight to ten feet would be plenty. No reason to make caverns with huge lofted ceilings like he had started the first floor with.
Peter continued to learn more. There was a limit on how much essence a single floor could collect. He had not reached that point yet, but he could not expand indefinitely with the sole goal of gathering more ambient essence. Unlocking new floors would be the hard limit. A dungeon could only have 200 floors in total, split in half between their battle and collection dungeons. However, until he got past year 10, Peter would only be able to build 10 floors on each side. Then until he made it past year 100 he would be limited to 50 on each side.
Then there was the cost of unlocking them. Unlocking the second floor was only 1,000 essence. Unlocking the third was 3,000, and it would only grow. Carving space out of the actual rock had also increased between his floors, although the difference between the first and second was practically negligible. Still it would take him another 2 weeks just to have a viable second floor. Even considering the fact that he would be bringing in almost twice the essence naturally by that point, it would still take another few weeks to unlock a third floor and the cost would only grow.
Besides, he would eventually have to consider building up his battle dungeon which would not do anything to help bring in resources, but was by far more important. There were 49 other rookie dungeon cores with a spare life same as him after all. Many of which would love to win another battle and get another big payday. He was tempted himself, and Emma and Fellette had even encouraged it should he be in a good position by the next congregation. Not that he could refuse if challenged, not unless he had the appropriate support card that would allow him to refuse a challenge. He didn’t…
Peter had wanted to wait until he was ready to use a support card before he opened the ten packs he had received. He had made it until the morning of his second full day. He had just had to know.
Peter started with 10 various support cards unlocked, including 2 rares, but he had only opened all common cards, one additional tripplification card and two of the lesser doublifications. Then he got 3 increased aspect cards, no wonder he had not had to explain how his design card increase aspect worked. The older cores already all knew. Then there were the 3 equipment cards which he could use to get an average quality C tier item. If he unlocked B tier prior to use he could get a average quality B tier item. Similarly he could use the triplifications or doublication whenever he wanted.
His last card had been a dungeon upgrade. It was the only card he had already used, and was the main reason that the second floor would only take 2 more weeks to complete versus 4. A free 2,500 essence that could be used for anything dungeon wise was pretty helpful at this point in time. It probably would not be very helpful in the future, but then the amount would likely go up when he unlocked B tier. Many of the support card’s output seemed bound by his current tier.
He saw how much of a boon winning the first battle was now. He would have likely gotten less if he was still D tier. The C tier alone cost 25,000 essence. B tier would cost 500,000 to unlock, so it was still far off. However based on what Emma and Fellette had said every single surviving rookie dungeon would have A tier unlocked within the next few years well before they became intermediate dungeons at year 10.
Year 10 he would be safe, but in year 11 the dungeons from 21 to 91 years of age would prey on the former rookie dungeons integrating into their number. Not only did he need to have A tier unlocked well before then, but he would need to have a strong enough force to ward off attackers. There were some stipulations to give new dungeons a chance. A dungeon that was more than twice the age of an opponent would receive reduced rewards. The further the difference the worse it would get. He should not have some 91 year old monster hitting him on year 11. That was unless he pissed the powers that be off.
The balance rule would keep a centurion or millennial from handing over too much with one trade, but even if they had the worst restriction at 2 to 1 an older dungeon could effectively double a weaker dungeon's resources. Peter was unsure if there was a limit on the amount of trades the balance rule would allow from one dungeon to another, but once again that could be circumnavigated with the help of a third party.
Clockwork had said it was incredibly fickle, so he needed to be careful how he proceeded. Making waves was not a question, if he wanted to get strong enough there was no getting around it. This whole ordeal was like balancing on a political tightrope, where one wrong step would lead to his inevitable demise, but the proverbial deck was already stacked against him from the beginning, so he did need to take daring chances.
