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  [Marrok]

  A guttural screaming split the night once again, countless times it had come, and countless more times it would come. Until, at last the foetid creature would expire.

  Marrok hated humans… and elves… and dwarves… and beast-men and gnomes and pixies and giants and merfolk and every other creature under the sun, save his own goblins and the mighty orcs. He respected the orcs. But there was only one thing he hated more than the filthy humans. A stinking, lying, traitorous goblin.

  Goblins were proud folk, they had ethics and morals, and to betray one’s own, to betray the rightness of the goblins, to think of others before the goblins was a crime that Marrok hated beyond belief. It was so wrong, so very wrong and Marrok was proud to be punishing the traitor. Traitor to the goblins and traitor to the one God.

  With a joyous smile, Marrok picked up the poker, removing it from the goblin and pushing it back into the coals. With a spitting sizzle, the flesh that had burnt off and glued itself to the poker crackled as the searing hot flames licked up and around it. Cooking and charring the flesh. Marrok watched, impassionate, as the fat dripped into the fire, smoking and eventually combusting before disintegrating in the heat of the cleansing fire.

  Traitor wasn’t screaming any longer. At first, after the poker was removed, he kept screaming, the constant agony too much. Now though, he had got used to it, and only when the poker was applied, did he scream again. He had tried to brave it, but Marrok knew how to exact the most. One didn’t get to the position Marrok had achieved without tenacity in abundance.

  Marrok smiled as he pulled the poker from the fire, the cherry red glow lingering on the metal an indication it had reached the perfect temperature, any hotter - a yellow or white glow - and the poker would burn through the traitors nerves, less painful that way. With a savage grin and a growling stomach – courtesy of the burning meat smell - he laid the poker across the traitors’ belly, watching as it burnt its way deeper, until it exposed the guts again.

  Goblins were tough creatures, and though they didn’t heal like the orcs did, their tough flesh remained active and mobile even while carrying horrific, debilitating injuries. A broken leg, nothing, holes in the stomach, arrow-riddled bodies and the goblin would still charge forwards, seeking one final kill. One more to the tally before it expired.

  Marrok had a lot more torturing to go before the traitor expired, and he was looking forward to each and every scream that he could elicit before the goblin in front of him passed away.

  He licked his lips and set to work…

  ***6 hours later***

  Marrok shoved forwards, putting his whole body into the effort, driving with all the force he could muster.

  A snapping sizzling sound arose, as the red-hot poker was driven deep into the goblin body – now dead. The pops of the boiling liquids slowly got more spread out, slower, as the poker cooled.

  Once the flesh had cooled slightly, Marrok stood up tall and grabbed the flaps of skin that ringed the injuries and pulled, flaying the goblin in front of the crowd. Pulling down his tally and throwing it on the fire below, the sizzling euphoric to him.

  Once the tally was fully flayed, leaving no mark of honour for the traitor, Marrok spat on him one final time, before calling out to his friends…

  “Let us go forth my friends, let us abandon this decrepit dump and traitorous mound. This filthy traitor has broken our creed and he shall not be given his rights. His great tally shall be withheld and so too his passage to the one God. Here he shall moulder for all eternity, his soul decaying just like his bones. Let us go forth my brethren and spread terror. Our tally thirsts for more victims and we shall go and prove that the goblins of the Wier are the most feared in the land…”

  ==========

  [Dungeon]

  The grey wolves and the pythons adapted to their new homes easily enough, and soon the pack was happily running around the lands. I found it odd that they were so accepting of the limited space, after all, on the surface they had thousands of hectares of space, far more than my limited cavern, and yet they seemed to be exceedingly happy.

  Perhaps it was something to do with the dungeon magic. I didn’t know.

  Oh well, I thought. Questioning the system had proved fruitless so far, painfully so. And so, I put it behind me and continued my work.

  Through the weeks used to balance the ecosystem and perfect the level, more creatures had wandered in and the floor was now the proud home of bugs, beetles, rodents, rabbits, foxes, wolves, and a few smaller reptiles. Along the water’s edge, a small family of otters were nested in the roots of a particularly large tree that overhung the stream.

  The otters had made it to the floor as a result of my carving the floor below it. It turned out that a natural spring lay below me.

  It made sense, when I had first awoken and seen the mana of the world, I had wondered where the blue was running off to. My vision was limited then, and so I couldn’t tell it was the spring.

  When breaking down the rock, I had accidentally let in far too much water, and down from the surface swept a couple of otters.

  Unable to swim up the stream and back to the surface, they had lived in the cavern until I had helped to scoop them up. Now they lived in my second floor.

  Unfortunately, this meant I had had to buy an aquatic life pack, but the store only took thirty dungeon points for it and so I had sacrificed my precious points for it, certain I would find more use for the pack in the next floor.

  The natural spring was too useful to not include in the next floor after all. A free source of water was hard to ignore. Especially for one so conscious of my expenditures as myself.

  Part of the aquatic life pack was a small family of water elementals which I placed by the water source, in the hidden cave. Now both the first and second floor had a hidden section, the water elementals, and the magpie nest. Unfortunately, the water elementals were designated passive and did not count as monsters.

  When the time came to reveal myself, I would make sure these areas held the best loot of the floor. It just seemed cool that each floor held a mystery area, and perhaps if my dungeon were simply the best, the thieves would be more reluctant to kill me. Any advantage I could get…

  With the second floor complete, for now. I pondered the third floor. How should I get down?

  Roots had been used for the first to second floor stairs, and a tree to get down to the bottom of the second floor itself.

  Hmm… I thought to myself.

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  Got it.

  At the end of the stream I started digging down, about twenty-five metres into a little basin.

  I now had a waterfall that would lead people down, they just needed a way back up. A path up through the stone led into one of the trees. Where a timed entrance would let them out of the trunk. It wouldn’t allow anyone back down though.

  Quickly checking I had a decent supply of mana left, I carried on working.

  Like before, I created the cavern by carving out the stone and then banishing it, and when I was finished, I had completely run out of mana. This floor was nowhere near as tall as the previous one, but it was much wider, stretching over 500 metres across. I felt weak and drained, a state I hadn’t been in for weeks.

  I settled down to rest for a little while. Trying to recoup my mana and to browse the store. I had taken to doing so fairly frequently, and the store often gave me ideas for what I wanted to accomplish.

  Menu

  As I could plainly see, I was running out of mana, and soon, dungeon points.

  Without levelling up again, I would soon run out of both. Carving such massive caverns was mana intensive, and though I wasn’t giving up on it, I recognised that I was running out of room for growth. What I really wanted, was a small, isolated group to stumble in and die. They would provide a good influx of mana and more importantly, points.

  Having a large buffer of mana was good but levelling up just slashed straight through all the work I’d done gathering it. The only reason to level was to be able to do more at any one time and of course, the points that levelling gave.

  Without a way to gain mana as fast as deaths gave me, I was never going to reach my goal.

  I relaxed, looking up into the ceiling in frustration.

  What to do? What should I do? I thought, anger seeping into my thoughts. It wasn’t fair, I just wanted to be safe. To grow my dungeon in peace until I was ready. Then… then I would kill them, bleed them out and suck up their mana.

  With my mind back to normal, I set about working on my plan for floor three, a swamp. The waterfall fell down from floor two and dropped into a crystal-clear pool of water. The natural spring, keeping the water topped up.

  This wouldn’t do, I wanted a sticky marshland.

  By filling the water with the soil and gravel that I had in my materials, I was able to make a thick mud that coated the room in a thick layer.

  Mana had so many uses, and by exerting my will and a basic telekinetic wall I was able to squeeze enough water from patches of the mud to make dryer ground and pools of water.

  However, when I relaxed the two started to intermingle again.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake!! I thought angrily, sowing the aquatic grass seeds that I had purchased. Hopefully, the roots of the plants would be able to hold everything together.

  It took another week of work, and an overwhelming amount of mental control to make the fenland that I wanted.

  But I had succeeded, and the anger that had been leeching into my thoughts drained away as I stared out at my work.

  In the week that I had been working, another deer had died to my trees, and the mana burst and euphoria that came with snuffing its life out gave me the will and the way to complete the plant life.

  The water that fell was a pleasant clear blue, but this was soon tainted by the muddy green colour that filled the water of my swamp. A murky, thick, green that could hold significant dangers, they would never know what I had.

  The vegetation was even more abundant here than the previous two floors. I imagined many groups of people could be here without any of them knowing so. The thick vegetation would block out the views, and the sounds of all the insects and life I had planned was going to drown out any sound remarkably well.

  With so little mana left, any polishing and maintenance would have to wait for later. For now, I was focusing on the life that would fill my swamp.

  Whereas my previous floors had been filled with bugs and insects, the living creatures this time would be many orders of magnitude higher.

  I kept adding them in, until an ever-present hum and buzz filled the room, giving no reprieve.

  The endless flittering wings of large insects and the sharp buzz of bees and wasps were joined by the croaking of frogs and the harsh cries of birds.

  The constant gush of running water and the rustling of leaves were an ever-present sound that would hopefully hide the occasional splash of fish and predators.

  Reeds, algae, lily pads, floating soldiers, swamp grasses like sedge, ferns, flowers, shrubs, mangroves, and trees all suited for swampland were in the aquatic life pack and they gave hollows and shelter to all the small fish that swum through the interconnected pools and streams and feasted upon the water bugs.

  Swooping through the sky, birds divebombed into swarms of insects, scooping up hundreds of the creatures yet not making a dent in their populations. Flying back to feed their young, they made tricky prey for the snakes and lizards that climbed the trees.

  Yet despite all this wonderful life, there was no top tier predators yet, nothing dangerous, and I was for sure going to change that.

  The aquatic pack held a few monsters and I gave them a quick look over.

  Placing in all the animals took me a while, and my mana had regenerated enough that I no longer felt like I had a hole in my crystal. Though I still felt like something was lacking. The floor didn’t feel quite dangerous enough.

  Browsing the store took me a while but I found it soon.

  Perfect, just as death hungry as myself. I felt a sort of kinship with the beast, and the image in the store only further cemented that fact.

  I had to have this…

  I wanted… five? Yes, five would do me well. Three levels and I would be able to afford it.

  I had some work to do it seemed…