The Swamp Hags were hideous and disgusting witches with scarred faces. They wore no clothes, as their skin was like dried bark. Their dry hair seemed to look like dead wood. Perhaps this was the side effect of living in swamps their entire lives.
But, as a kind and caring boss, he would overlook such superficial things.
Who cares if she was ugly and whatnot?
What truly matters is their job performance and the Swamp Hags did a pretty damn well at their job.
As witches, they could control magic and had a field advantage living in a swamp like this.
Their first ability allowed them to shift shape using the mud and water of the swamp, allowing them to deceive foolish adventurers. This ability was pretty much useless. Players could see a red mark above enemies, allowing them to differentiate between friends and foes.
And NPCs, if they went into a weird dungeon like this, what are the chances they would be relieved if they saw another human in this dungeon?
Well they wouldn't, that's for sure.
They would automatically be suspicious of the person because it is either a monster in disguise or some strong human that has been able to survive in a dungeon but still hasn't been killed or left the dungeon, which would be weird.
Although this ability could be said to be useless for most part, it still wasn't as useless as it sound. The Swamp Hags could actually use this ability to disguise as a member of the NPCs' party if they had one or disguise as another monster so they could sneak attack them.
Swamp Hags as children of the swamp, could use the swamp as a shield and a sword. They could control mud to attack or defend themselves, control vines to entangle their enemies, and summon whirlpools to trap and tear apart their enemies.
A very overloaded kit for the early game.
Hence why, Hale accepted them with a smile on his face, treating them as star employees. As long as they did their job, he wouldn't mind their ugly appearances.
Isn't this trait the making of a good boss?
Hale placed the Swamp Hags in different locations, but the locations formed a triangle around the small island that everyone who entered the dungeon would start at.
The only question he had was, where was the poison?
How is he supposed to make a memorable impression if there wasn't poisons that could give the players nightmare?
Well it didn't seem that bad, now that he thought about it. The Swamp Alligators didn't have any poisonous abilities but he was sure that they traumatized the players who fell to them today.
Was this what they mean by poisonous?
Poisonous to the mind and not just the body?
Ignoring all the weird thoughts in his head, he now had something else he had to do. Buying stuff! As a person who has just earned their first paycheck, it would be a shame not to use it. What was the point of money if not to spend it?
Hale then spent the next hour looking through various things in the shop.
There was a lot of things that caught his attention but they were either too expensive or blocked by some weird condition that he hadn't met.
For example he wanted to buy Haphazardly Creations. Monsters that were gaseous entities, who could negate all physical attacks, while spreading their decay and instability.
They cost 300 Dungeon Points, the total amount that he had, but there was a weird condition, that blocked him from buying it.
[Reputation not met.]
[Unlock: 30 Reputation (good and bad)]
Reputation was something that existed in the game. It allowed players to gain fame and influence. NPCs who saw their reputation, would give them different treatments, if they had a good reputation they could get discounts on items or buy items that wouldn't be available with a lower reputation. It couldn't be said that a good reputation was all that matter though, some darker NPCs would shun those with a good reputation, as they actually preferred players with negative reputations. So reputation had its pros and cons.
But for Hale, it was a different situation. It didn't matter what reputation he had, it could be good and bad, but it would still count towards his reputation points.
He had now realized that, in the shop, there was a symbol for the reputation that he had. It was a mask, the left side was a sinister face, while the right side was a holy and angelic face. Next to the mask was the fat number of 0.
So he had a reputation of 0 currently.
Looking at the number, he almost wanted to curse. How the hell was he supposed to gain reputation? He wasn't a player anymore, so he couldn't perform quests that would allow him to gain reputation.
Not only that, he couldn't even leave the dungeon.
He already experimented many times, and the experiments have always ended up in failure.
He had once opened up a spatial crack inside the dungeon. As a Dungeon Core, there was a lot of things that he could do. Like creating cracks inside the dungeons that would allow for a person or monster to leave the dungeon.
The only draw back was that it seemed to cause him a lot of pain and drain him of a lot of energy.
So when he saw that the stupid alligator got sent back from the spatial crack and stared at him with a dumbfounded look, he almost felt like vomiting blood. He endured that mind-numbing pain and it turned out to be a failure.
He had already given up on experimenting, just accepting the fact that he couldn't leave or send his monsters out of the dungeon.
So here lies the question, how could he earn reputation points?
It should be possible, considering that most of the good stuff was locked behind it. He didn't believe the system would do this just to screw him over. The only thing that he could possibly do was wait until a lucky chance happened.
It was deeply frustrating, he preferred being proactive. Aimlessly waiting grated on his nerves, but there was no option but to endure it.
So he ignored all the items that were locked behind conditions, and looked for the ones that he could currently buy.
His eyes landed on three items that he liked.
[Swamp Slime]
[Totem of Unrest]
[Hut of Concoctions]
Unfortunately if he bought one, he couldn't buy the others. He was like a kid being given three candies but he could only choose one.
'How frustrating.'