As soon as I turned my attention to the core integrity, I was forced to abandon those plans momentarily. Because right then, another urgent alert popped up.
Alert
Your current dungeon theme is too underdeveloped. Your mine is too shallow and lacks the extensiveness to handle major raids. Also, in order to upgrade the dungeon status, you must first develop the current theme to its maximum potential.
'yeah, but how the fuck do I do that?' Like I had come to expect, the system responded to my question right away .
You are currently a level one, mine. You must reach level three in order to upgrade status and change into a new theme.
To do this, you must:
1 buy new territory.
2 expand your current structure into the new territories.
3 fully maximize the monster evolution lines. All the unlocked monsters must at least have one of them at the highest
evolution in their line
4 every theme must at least have a minor boss.
5 every theme must have one boss.
'Bullcrap' I swore after combing through the notification .
But that was fucking a lot.
So Currently, I was a level one mine. what I needed to do to get to a level two mine was Buy a new land and then expand into it...that and a shit ton of other things.
it wasn't unexpected either. Although it, it brought a little bit of stress on me.
I had seen how easy it was to traverse from corner to corner of my current structure.
All the humans I had interacted with had almost found me.
As for fully maximizing on monster evolution, they hadn't given me much choice here.
Yes, after developing the leech line from flesh to mana leech, several other monsters had been unlocked.
For instance, beneath the leech, there were the slime line, which I had not yet purchased. And beneath the slime, there were the cave bats.
Beyond that, everything else was still locked.
Now, from this available monster line, honestly, there was not one of them that appealed to me as being able to generate a minor boss, let alone a boss.
even if I maxed out on the evolution. The idea of having a slime boss was pathetic and didn't at all sound like something that could win me major battles.
Slimes weren't exactly something designed for one on one dueling. They were a sort of trap so to say
Their main function was to bid their time and ambush unobservant adventurers when they least expected it. Not direct confrontation.
Then again, I knew better than to judge by physical appearance.
Small things often ended up doing big things where mana was involved. Still, I didn't fancy my current options... Maybe future unlocks would improve that, else I would have to get creative.
This however presented a bigger problem. With all these demands, where was I getting all this energy stone to facilitate them?
Currently, after spending the 45 stones on evolving the leech line, I had a balance of only 75 stones.
And even though I had not checked the pricing of the current demands yet, I had a very sinking feeling that it wouldn't come close.
True enough, when the system brought up the matter of pricing, my guess was spot on.
To purchase just another acre of land, I would have to part away with 50 credits.
That would leave me with 25 credits.
And that wasn't even the problem. The problem came when it was time to expand.
To do a minor expansion which only covered a quarter of the acquired land, I would have to spend 40 stones.
The glaring problem was that at the moment, I only had 75 stones, only enough to acquire the land
But even if I had all the amount required to purchase and expand into the land, the new territory would be so expansive that my limited group of monsters wouldn't be able to fully guard or make use of all that area.
That would mean, on some level, the difficulty would be too easy for intruders. And that in turn meant my integrity and security would even be more worse than it already was.
I realized at this point, that I once again had another big decision to make.
I could either choose to purchase the land and be stuck there, or go for securing my position, which would require 60 credits to put concealment charms that would mask any sort of magical energy that emanated from me.
My final option was to max out on monster evolution for my current monsters
I honestly had no choice but to go for monster evolution.
The mine size was limited, but if I packed it with enough monsters of different levels, then there was still a chance that I would be able to suppress intruders before they advanced too deeply.
The first option of just buying the land and leaving it to lay there as I waited to get more points was suicidal.
Because what if I was captured before acquiring those energy stones ?, Because there was a good chance of that happening. If anyone higher than F arrived here, the odds would turn drastically against me.
So with that decided, I turned my attention back to the monsters.
I disregarded the rats...i didn't have enough energy to bring them into the mix yet.
I had evolved the leeches from flesh to mana. The next step would be evolving them to blood leech, which would rob intruders of both mana and blood at the same time.
But that did not sound appealing to me. The price for evolving them to venom leech, which would be able to poison adventurers, was a whopping 80 stones. The entirety of what I had at the moment and more.
And that was for just three venom leeches. Strangely though, my newly acquired strategic instincts favoured the idea of having a slime line
I had read too much story to know that. In the earlier parts of the stories and games, slimes weren't entirely helpless. Mainly because the early levels of intruders weren't very powerful or experienced.
Besides, just acquiring the first stage of the slime line cost just 35 stones.
I triggered the option to purchase the base slime.
[System notification] .
You have purchased the base slime.
Their main skill is ambush and work best when coordinated with the rest of dungeon resources .
'Yeah, I know'
Beneath that was the evolution line.
I had to smile seeing both the price and the description beneath there.
For another 40 stones, I could upgrade the them from base slime, to mutating slime.
Still, the main way of earning energy stones for me would be ambush and coordination with the rest of the monsters.
However the mutating slime had one very important ability that almost made them feel like a cheat.
Whenever they were pressured or stepped on, they would split and cover more surface
basically, raiders would help me build their downfall.
Beautiful, beautiful. Without much thinking, I also allowed that evolution. For the entire 75 stones.
And with that, all my stones were gone.
The result wasn't a lot, but for the limited territory, If I positioned these monsters well enough, then they might just serve me well enough.
Now all I had to do was wait, maybe the next batch of people to come here would leave me with even more energy stones than the last group.
That was to be seen.
Because on the other hand,there was another possibility. That the next group might just be the ones who would put an end to my existence. It all came down to the best strategist
With that having been taken care of, I turned my attention to the last point from the earlier notification.
monster training.