Dungeon Core Online 9 Chapter 9

"Anything I should know before I start making mobs?" They were both staring at the Mob Generator, looking at the five images of his available mobs. Below them, the single d.i.c.ken strolled about, letting out the occasional cluck.

"As you already can tell, each mob costs a different amount of points to summon." James had already figured that much out. This was definitely one of Rue's less helpful statements.

"Mhmm, my d.i.c.kens cost 1 a mob, while my mad cows cost 5. I'm a.s.suming this is proportionate to their individual strengths?" The gamer in him told him that was the most logical step. It was like when he played real time strategy games, some of his units would cost more points than others, generally denoting they were a stronger unit. That didn't mean they were superior though. Oh no. He had seen many a tactic that involved creating a swarm of lost cost units to overwhelm opponents. An idea he was already playing with for his d.i.c.kens.

"You would be correct." Rue offered him a coy smile. "But please don't fill your dungeon with 100 d.i.c.kens." Alright, she was on to him. However, he was not planning on doing 100 d.i.c.kens. That would just be too many.

"I promise I won't create just d.i.c.kens." He eyed the other mobs, and realized something. He had no idea what his mobs were even capable of. All the screen told him was their names, and how much they cost.

"Am I able to pull up more information on my mobs? Maybe their basic stats, skills? You know, monster information?" If he was going to correctly populate his dungeon, he needed to know what these mobs did. That way he could better gauge the cost versus benefit of each mob.

Rue nodded at him, and motioned towards the picture of the d.i.c.ken. "Just focus on the mob you want to know more about, and it will pull up its information." That was all? Really? As a gamer, he should have figured that out. Was he becoming too reliant on Rue for information? Was he playing too much into the concept of being a dungeon core? James made a mental note to try to avoid making such noobish mistakes again.

"Alright, let's see what these d.i.c.kens can do." As he focused on the d.i.c.ken, a new screen appeared before him, showing a realistic d.i.c.ken, filled with information.

d.i.c.ken

Type: Demonic Farm Poultry

HP: 10

MP: 10

Atk: 1

Def: 1

Unique Trait

Birds of a Feather: d.i.c.kens gain +100% to all stats when in groups of 5 or more.

Flock together: If d.i.c.kens are repeatedly struck by nonlethal damage, the offender will pull the agro of all d.i.c.kens within a 10 x lvl yard radius.

James scanned over the information one more time, and found himself laughing. As much as he hated the fact the developers had made demonic farm a mob type, he was really starting to enjoy these mobs. Even the developers blatant jokes put in, made him chuckle. He could already imagine a swarm of enraged d.i.c.kens attacking an adventurer. Normally he would pay to see that happen, now, he got to make that happen.

"Hey Rue." James had been about to dismiss the d.i.c.kens screen, and move onto the sacrificial lambs, when he noticed a tab at the top of the d.i.c.kens info screen. It was simply labeled, Upgrades.

"Yes Glyax?" For once she didn't add any modifiers too his name. Was AI feeling alright?

"You mentioned I can upgrade my mobs, right?" He selected the tab as he spoke, pulling up an upgrade page. A basic skill sheet appeared before him, filled with greyed out options. Annoyingly, everything on the page seemed locked for now.

"Well aren't you inquisitive." Rue flew over to him, and leaned down, looking into his eye. He did his best to hold eye contact, but his teenage whims were making that hard. "However, try not to get ahead of yourself." She said the words slowly, playfully. He was pretty sure she even licked her lip as she finished speaking.

"I, uh-" She had done it again. Rue had broken his teenage mind.

"You can't even start upgrading your mobs till they are level two." She started laughing and pulled away from James, allowing the fog to leave his mind as his senses returned.

"My mobs level up?" His mind was still a bit cloudy, but the gamer within was screaming to him that no duh they could level up.

"Mhmm." She folded her hands behind her back, smiling sweetly at him. "Each time you rank up in your tier, your mobs will level up as well. When they do, you will receive a single upgrade point for each mob." That made sense, and was definitely something James was looking forward to. First though, he would need to gain 10,000xp by slaying adventurers. That still seemed like quite the feat.

"Alright, so we will leave upgrading alone for now." James focused on sacrificial lambs, preparing to pull up their information. "So let's see what the rest of these mobs can do."

Sacrificial Lamb

Type: Demonic offering

HP: 10

MP: 15

Atk: 2

Def: 1

Unique Traits

Baa Baa Boom: Sacrificial lambs will explode upon death, or contact with adventures. The explosion causes 5 x lvl damage within 1 x lvl yard radius.

Blood for the Blood G.o.d: The blood from sacrificial lambs has a DoT effect of 1 x lvl damage every 5 seconds.

"I have kamikaze sheep?" James whispered to himself, shaking his head as he tried not to chuckle. Rue raised her eyebrow at his comment, but remained silent. With his antic.i.p.ation growing, James quickly scanned over his other mobs.

His Swiner's he found were bipedal pigs, that put off a stacking debuff called Swine flu. If adventurers stayed within the proximity of the aura for a minute, allowing the debuff to hit 10 stacks, the adventurers would contract swine flu. This was a sickness that decreased the effectiveness of healing food items for 10 minutes. Not overly fatal, but definitely unfortunate.

Scapegoats, amusingly enough, were a tank mob. They had the most hp of all the mobs at his disposal, with 50 hp points. On top of that, they had a defense of 5. Their unique ability gave them a taunt that could pull agro, if not resisted, forcing adventurers to focus their attacks on the scapegoats.

James found his Mad Cows to be the most dangerous when it came to pure damage. The 5 point mob had 40 hp, 6 attack, and 4 defense. They would target the first enemy they saw, and had a simple pierce ability on their horns. What made them dangerous though, was their unique ability, unimaginatively named Mad Cow. The ability caused the cow to become enraged and target any adventurer that was either bleeding, or wearing something that was red. When enraged, the mad cow's defense dropped by 20%, but his attack increased by 40%. He could only imagine how long it would take adventurers to figure out why they were being targeted by the mad cows. Especially because he knew a lot of gamers who loved coloring their gear in different shades of red.

After looking over all of his mobs, James had a pretty good idea of how he wanted to set up first floor. His 100 mob points limited him slightly, but he know those numbers would go up as he leveled up. What's more, from his understanding of genre, and gamers in general, he knew he couldn't overwhelm them early on, otherwise they would be less willing to actually dive into his dungeon. That fact scared James. He wanted to be as successful of a dungeon as possible.

So, while Rue sat by silently watching James he began ma.s.s summoning his mobs in his first floor. The first thing he did, was summon 19 more d.i.c.kens. That gave him a total of 20 d.i.c.kens, which would allow his mobs to be spread out, and still relatively easily activate their Birds of a Feather skill. Next, he summoned 10 sacrificial lambs for 20 points, and 8 swiners for 24 points. That left him with 36 mob points remaining for his top to mobs. He summoned 4 of each, the scapegoats costing a combined total of 16, and the mad cows costing him 20. When he was finished, he had 0 mob points remaining, and the beginnings of a demonic farmville milling about below him on his first floor.

"Are you done d.i.c.ken around?" Rue's humor filled voice pulled him from his admiration of his mobs, and back to his situation at hand. A glance at the timer showed him he had managed to waste over an hour and a half planning out his mobs and summoning all of them, leaving him with roughly 15 hours before adventurers began entering the game.

"Were you trying to be puny?" James responded, noting her smirk. He was in a good mood, even if time was ticking away. He definitely felt he was making good progress with his dungeon creation. If he was correct, all he had left to do was create a boss mob, and then wait for his resources to finish regenerating enough to let him fix up his floor a little more. He had plenty of time.

"Perhaps." Her smile widened as she glanced from James, to his mob creator tool. She glanced at his empty mob points, and with a wave of her hand, pulled up another screen. "Are you ready to create your boss mob?"

"Tell me what I need to do." If James had a mouth in the game, it would have spread in a wide grin.