Waking up, he quickly noticed the ceiling of the room. It was smooth and white, like marble. Looking around, the whole room was covered with the same material as the ceiling. There was nothing notable other than a floating blue orb in the middle of the room. The orb was releasing a faint golden glow as it hovered in place.
"Where am I?" Ein wondered.
He only remembers falling down the bottomless hole after getting shot by Andre's crossbow. His memory got cut off there and then.
"Am I in the afterlife?" Pinching his cheeks, he checked to see if he could feel pain. The slight stinging sensation from his cheeks was as clear as day, meaning this is neither a dream nor is he dead.
'How did I survive?', 'Why am I in an unknown room?', 'Why did my wounds vanish?' Such questions passed through his mind for a moment. Ein, however, only focused on one thing.
"Since I'm still alive, that means I can take revenge on those three traitors!" He said, gritting his teeth. Anger swells every time he remembers how he had just watched as the 100-man team was slowly killed off by the three. "Just you wait!"
Anger and guilt swirled around his mind. Anger at the three traitors who orchestrated such a massacre just for honor and fame, and guilt for the other members who got sacrificed for their vanity. 'If only I wasn't poisoned and my mind was working properly!' Ein thought, blaming himself.
After a few more minutes, Ein finally calmed down and decided to look around once more. The marble room was just a small cubic space of about 5 meters in dimension. There were neither windows nor doors anywhere, bringing up the question of how he was able to enter.
After finishing his investigation, Ein finally approached the floating orb in the middle of the room. It was quite a large blue ball with a glassy surface about a foot across. The faint golden light around the orb seems to come from inside it. Out of curiosity, he touched the orb.
[Confirming contact]
[Initializing ownership data]
[Welcome, dungeon master Ein]
A mechanical voice echoed in Ein's head. Surprised, he let go of the orb and fell back a few steps. However, the voice didn't vanish and continued to announce once more in a plain androgynous voice.
[Determining the number of dungeons under control... Current total amount is zero]
[Creating a random dungeon... Complete]
[Confirming the creation of the first dungeon of master Ein... Gifting 10,000 Dungeon Points (DP) as a newbie package]
[Determining the total number of defense units... Current total amount is zero]
[Using 2,000 DP to place a monster summoning circle (slime)]
[Confirming the completion of basic necessities of a dungeon]
[Connecting the Dungeon Master Room to the dungeon... Complete]
[Searching for available worlds to connect with... 1,562,289 worlds found... Randomizing...]
[Connecting the dungeon space to the world T14600082... Complete]
[Preparations complete... Opening the dungeon to the world]
After the chain of announcements finished ringing in his mind, a burst of light suddenly appeared in a corner of the room. Looking closely, there seemed to be a complex pattern drawn on the ground that released the light. Based on his knowledge of games and novels, he determined that it was probably a teleportation array. As the mysterious voice had said, it probably connects to a dungeon.
After calming himself down once more, Ein tried to analyze his current situation.
"If this mysterious voice is telling the truth, then I became a dungeon master?" Ein mumbled confusedly. A dungeon was nothing but a disaster for humans, and now he himself became what he hated the most.
Dungeon Master, commonly known as the dungeon's Last Boss. By killing the dungeon master, one could make the dungeon disappear from the world. In other words, from now on, he would be hunted down like vermin by the humans. Reaching this point, he felt chills crawl up his spine.
[Warning: A native of the world T14600082 has entered the dungeon]
Hearing this warning, Ein's heart skipped a beat.
"I have nothing but slimes protecting my dungeon!" he remembered.
Slimes are the weakest race of all the monsters. To Warriors like Ein, a slime would die just by stepping on it once. And now, such slime was the only line of defense he had against invaders.
"What should I do?! If a strong warrior enters, with my skills, I'll probably die in a minute!" Ein started panicking. While he was holding his head, the orb in the middle of the room released a strong glow.
[Invader detected: type goblin]
The mechanical voice echoed. Hearing this, Ein paused. Then he felt bewildered. He remembered the mysterious voice saying that the invader was a native of this world. But a goblin? When did a goblin become a native of Earth?
While he was drowning in confusion, a floating, transparent window appeared above the orb. It was like a video feed from a CCTV camera, showing the invader inside the dungeon. It was a small green monster, about the height of a human child of about 5 to 6 years old. It was holding a crude wooden club and waving it against the slimes that swarmed towards it.
The slime hit by the club melted like a punctured balloon before turning into particles of light.
[Death of a creature (slime) confirmed: +1 DP]
The goblin, seeing its first kill, raised its hands, cheering in celebration. It completely let its guard down. A slime that managed to sneak behind it quickly jumped and tackled the goblin.
The goblin, due to its small stature, fell face-first on the cave floor. It quickly tried to stand up, but two more slimes came up behind it and tackled the goblin. Soon, more and more slimes gathered, and the goblin never made it back up; it died that easily.
The scene was pretty brutal, thinking how a harmless-looking blob was capable of taking another creature's life. However, the situation was kill-or-be-killed.
[Death of a creature (goblin) confirmed: +5 DP]
Watching this scene, Ein was speechless. The slimes defeated a goblin? That was like a miracle! He quickly analyzed the battle and was surprised by what he found.
"The slimes knew how to strategize, attacked the goblin when it let its guard down and never gave it a chance to counterattack!" he exclaimed. Compared to normal slimes that moved based on instinct, the slimes in his dungeon seem to have the capability to think.
Dungeons usually have specialties. For example, the dungeon "Hades' Hold" specialized in demons and ghosts. Such monsters were immune to normal physical attacks, which required the clearing team to equip weapons blessed by the church to fight against them.
Others, like the "Vulcan's Cradle" dungeon, gave all its monsters a certain elemental advantage, like immunity to fire damage and additional fire damage added to attacks.
Ein then thought, "Is it that in my dungeon, all monsters have increased intelligence?"
However, there's too little of a sample to base this on, so he can't be sure. He only had slimes for now, after all. First, he should add more variety to his monster defenses.
"But how can I add new monsters?" he wondered.
As if in response to his voice, a transparent window appeared in front of him. There are a bunch of monsters listed there, from slimes to dragons. With just a glance, he determined that the only ones he could add for now are wolves and goblins since they are the cheapest ones next to the slime's summoning circle. Each of the two costs 5,000 DP to install.
He still had a little over 8,000 DP, so he quickly clicked on the wolf one. However, a warning quickly appeared then.
[Warning: Only one type of summoning circle can be placed in a room]
[Tip: Please expand the dungeon to add more monsters]
Seeing this, a new window popped up asking if he wanted to add a new floor to the dungeon. The addition of the floor would cost him 1,000 DP.
For the sake of his peace, he quickly clicked on "confirm" and upgraded his dungeon. The light of the teleportation array had blinked three times, probably adding the coordinates of the newly added room. Then, after the upgrade was done, Ein once again bought the wolves' summoning circle.
With this, he only had 2,006 DP left. Based on the battle earlier, Ein determined that deaths inside the dungeon can increase his DP, so he's not completely clueless on how to increase DP.
Ein quickly turned to the teleportation array. As a Warrior previously, he experienced a few teleportation traps, so traveling through a teleportation array shouldn't be that different.
Thinking so, he stepped into that array. His vision turned pure white for a moment as the array released a flood of light. When he regained his vision, he was extremely surprised.