Trash Mountain Dungeon

After about three hours of internal arguments, I had settled on choosing the clockworkers. It's not that the other two weren’t interesting or useful and in the future, I may even test them out but for now, we would go with the clockworkers.

Creating a node for them was fairly easy, similar to the rooms all I had to do was point and command, with a white cube appearing at the top of the room, supposedly invisible to anyone but the dungeon. From that node, four small robots came made from an assortment of different parts and pieces, each reaching about four feet with one hand being like those claw machine arms and the other having a short blade attached to it. Their bodies were blocky, with grinding gears and what I assume is the source of energy within it churning away, occasionally spewing steam out of two exhausts at the side, strangely right where the butt would be.

Attention

Room Feature- Simple Assembly line, has been unlocked.

Simple Assembly Line

A room feature that utilizes clockworkers to produce mana by converting raw aether energy into a small variety of objects and rarely skill crystals with a less than one percent chance of a class crystal appearing.

Produced parts may be used by mechanical constructs and traps, additionally, they may also be taken as loot by challengers.

Capable of assimilating pre-existing materials, however, these will not grant mana.

Mana Production: +3 per hour

Mana Storage: + 10

Objects Produced:

Assorted simple parts: 90%

Mechanical Skill Crystal: 9.4%

Mechanical Class Crystal: 0.6%

Creation cost: 60 mana

Certainly more useful I’d say, more production and mana were always going to be good, and the parts could be useful in case I need to make more mechanical monsters. But what’s catching me is the crystal part, what exactly are they for?

Classes and Skills

Classes and skills allow individuals to exceed their standard biological and magical limits, granting a variety of bonuses based on how they develop their class.

Classes are regularly acquired through dungeons and are seen as the most reliable choice, and many dungeons are the only reason why certain classes exist to begin with.

Communities often form around dungeons to make use of this fact and regularly use dungeon-created items for trade and internal use.

Dungeon-provided classes and skills are based on the theme of the dungeon.

This dungeon's produced classes and skills are based on constructs with applicable magic and knowledge.

So, more stuff to attract people to me then, I think I'm getting the idea more, it’s in my best interest to not just have a slew of defenders but also a lure to gather people around my dungeon who want me to thrive while also feeding me growth, interesting.

Looking at the time of arrival I still had just under seven hours before I was attacked, and looking back to the room option, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try, it wasn’t strictly a defensive one but it was something I guess, all I needed to do was wait for… three hours before I had the mana to make it.

And wait I did, watching my storage go up by six points every hour, which on all honestly was probably not the best thing to do, I probably could give one of the other monster options a try or make another node for more clock workers but the prospect of making this building was too enticing at the moment. After about three hours I finally had enough to make the room, only, I didn’t put it right at the entrance, but instead in the room just after it, where after confirming its placement it began to build itself up, from the floor metal began to form as though it was being 3d printed straight into the room, quickly creating two assembly line machines, with the conveyer belt looping onto the other, a series of hammer looking devices hanging over the belt at various points. Once it was done though it didn’t do anything, at least until another pop-up showed.

Attention

Structure [Simple Assembly Line] is now complete.

Assign existing mechanical constructs to begin production or create new ones for the room.

If a node of an appropriate monster is placed, then the structure will work as if there is the necessary number and type of monster inside.

Existing nodes can be moved.

With only four hours left, I don’t think I have the time to save up for another clockworker node, so I’ll just move the existing one back. Once that happened I noticed an immediate change in the room, it was silent and empty after being completed, but once the node was placed and the clockworkers waddled on over the room began to get active, and the hiss of magical machinery began to push out hot metal ingots out of one line with the hammer devices being operated by the constructs, each of them hammering it into different shapes. At the first hammer station, it was flattened, into a large circle, at the next station the metal was cut into the shape of a large cogwheel, at the third one it was refined by the hammers, somehow, and at the final station it was dunked into a large vat I didn’t notice earlier of what I assume is oil.

As they worked I could both feel and see the difference it was making already, my production had jumped back up to 9 mana per hour and my storage had gone up to 110 from 100, assuming any other rooms I built had similar improvements then I could see how I would get bigger and maintain more monsters. Speaking of monsters, I think it would be good to get the critters ready, I have them so I might as well use them. Spawning a small horde of each one, they each began to go their separate ways, the rats were starting to make small burrows using the slowly growing piles of parts that were being unceremoniously dumped around the room, teams of the creatures were even working together to pile up mounds and adjusting them so that they could fit through them. The other two were somewhat put out though, the roaches had found nowhere to go really, all they did was try and fit through the cracks in the walls and flooring to get to the trash just outside while the stonelings just kind of hung out, some of the bigger stonelings were even piling up the smaller ones into strange and funny shapes.

But as the clock ticked by, I grew more anxious over the battle to come, worrying over what might happen and if I made the right choices, and as that went on the clock struck zero, well, the timer did.

Warning

A large number of [mana-crazed] entities have arrived at your location.

Once the warning came and went, I could hear a rumble coming through the entrance, and through the snow and trees I could see hordes of different animals, most were running about frothing at the mouth, some were dropping off thankfully but the majority remained, trying to climb up to the entrance. As soon as the first bird shot inside though I could feel parts of myself tense up, and found that I couldn’t make anything or affect the dungeon while they were attacking.

The presence of challengers and invaders disrupts the core's ability to manipulate the dungeon, only control over existing structures, traps, and monsters is maintained.

Swell, I moved back to the clockworkers, having them get themselves ready for the first fight of their existence. When the first animal flew into the room the clockworkers sprung into action, the closest to the door reaching out and crushing the crazed creature and another stomping down on a growing horde of squirrels and rabbits. Thankfully the animals were more concerned with attacking my monsters than they were going through but that didn’t stop my worry, what worried me wasn’t the animals themselves but rather the state they were in as they filed into the dungeon. The smaller critters were all relatively in one piece, most just exhausted from whatever mad dash they made here, but some of the bigger animals had obviously encountered people of some sort.

In one case a deer rushed in with a side covered in arrows before getting its head stabbed, and in some other cases, I could see the remnants of actual traps still attached to some wolves before a mixture of their existing wounds and the beatings from my monsters put them down. I don’t know how close they are there were very likely people within ten or so hours of me, and I don’t know how to feel about that. Refocusing on the battle at hand though, it was going very well I would say, my monsters were obviously getting damaged but the horde of animals was beginning to wane faster than they could damage them, helped on by the fact that most of them were exhausted and half dead by the time they got here, and after some more time the fight came to a close, the final attacker being struck by one of the workers.

Congratulations

The core has survived its first invasion, +10 DP

Converting invaders into growth.

Before my next thoughts fully formed the piles of bodies began to crumble to dust before the dust itself was absorbed into the walls and floors, filling something deep in my chest that I hadn’t noticed before, like a hunger I didn't know was there.

Growth Level

20%

I’m not sure if that’s fast or not, only a couple hours here and I was already a fifth of the way to the next level, not sure if that’s good or bad, but I’ll take it as it is. After some time though I was able to get things back in shape, with everything nice and clean, but it was the next choice given by the system that had me thinking about what to do next.

Notice

The core may construct a proper dungeon entrance to regulate those who do and do not enter the dungeon, only one entrance may be constructed at this time, and the dungeon shall choose from a selection of different types of entrances based on theme.

This choice will influence the general design of the dungeon.

Can cause slight alterations to monsters.

Any loot will likewise be altered to be more hostile in design.

Hostile Architecture

Places a focus on unnatural angles and designs that focus on disturbing and disrupting all but those that inhabit the dungeon.

Use architecture to punish challengers and invaders.

Cooperative Architecture

Places a focus on creating appealing and aesthetic designs that do not impede challengers.

Attract challengers using appealing architecture.

Neutral Architecture

Places a focus on efficient designs that do not impede challengers nor appeal to them in any significant way.

Use efficient architecture to design structures.

That is a good point I suppose, but not necessarily the whole architecture choice it gave me rather the core point behind it was how would I want to deal with people. Even if those poor animals legged it across an entire mountain range, it was highly likely that there were people somewhere out there, and if I wanted to achieve my new goal I would need to decide how to, deal, with them.

Hostile architecture from what I remember and what is explained is just structural design meant to be unappealing to people and was used for a variety of places and things back home like the debated topic of anti-homelessness features or structures that are meant to impart some less than positive impressions and feelings about the thing a person was looking at. If I went down this path, I would probably not be very well-liked as a dungeon, the aggressive design might turn people away from exploring me and helping me grow. But it might also be the safer option, turtle up and kill any who get to me without mercy or consideration, a brutal and dangerous line of thought but it was my life versus theirs unfortunately.

On the other hand, though, cooperative architecture could lead to even more people coming to me, after all, people tend to choose better-looking things even if it's not any less dangerous than any other option. Going down this route could grow my dungeon significantly faster than if I just turtled up but I could also be exposing myself to people who don’t care about adventures or magically appearing swords and stuff, and instead are only here to take my core. I suppose that if I went down this route I could go with the system’s suggestion of building up a rapport with the people who find me, feed them to feed me, and all that, they get loot and magic stuff, and I get bigger and stronger every time someone comes in.

Finally, there is the neutral option, I’ve taken this option to be exactly that, the neutral option, the option that would make very little impact on my actual ability to lure or dissuade people from coming in, and while an efficient look was perhaps its own kind of aesthetic, most people would probably align better with the cooperative choice.

Looking over my mana right now, I was sitting at a total of 39 mana out of 110, it would take another day for me to refill to the max so no new monsters or rooms for now, my clockworkers could handle things for a while now, so all I could do right now is decide on where to steer my ship for the future.

Do I choose hostility, cooperation, or do I just go with straight efficiency?