Young Writers Society

Day 11

Today was quite the surprise. I woke up to an alert and some new text. In front of me Ash, who I had gotten used to waking up staring at me was glowing and I had a massive amount of text overlaying my vision. 

So I of course read it.

“Hobgoblin Ash, [minion class] has evolved into a variant hobgoblin after receiving the blessing of the god of archers [Zarif]. Following this change, restrictions on awareness can be removed by owner. Owner will still hold priority control on all of this minions actions.”

“Do you wish to remove awareness restrictions?”

[[YES]][[No]]

So apparently the goblins I have been spawning had their ‘awareness’ restricted. While they seemed to have a personality, preferences and understand me. This might explain why they can’t really talk to me I thought.

Or at least I hopped. So I happily pushed [[YES]].

Because I had been staring at the glowing Ash for a while without thinking about it, when she started glowing even brighter I was blinded a bit. But after closing my eyes and rubbing them a few times I discovered a new Ash, the only thing clearly her was the low level equipment I had previously given her and the grey skin all of my minions and myself seemed to have. Sporting a far more attractive face, and a more feminine curve I had to rub my eyes a few more times, because the image confused me.

After I got over the sudden change I found myself more fascinated by her collar bone and arms which seemed to be sporting runes of some sort. While I never really paid much attention to it, I had similar marks on my arms. I wonder if they are a brand used for the blessing I have and now she has. After a few minutes of my observations over her changes, I noticed she was shaking.

In the past when I had observed my minions they seemed to hardly notice it. Perhaps because they were not smart enough, or because my control over them was too absolute. However that was before I had given her back more of her ‘awareness’. As soon as I realized I might be embarrassing her she said.

“H-hello, master Zeno.” Her first words, and while she seemed to struggle with them, I felt like the struggle was more because of how intensely I was staring at her.

But I couldn’t help myself.

This creature was my first companion, and while mute and coated in the ugly features of a goblin. The strong and loyal creature had left an imprint on my mind. So any change that happened to her became all the more important to me.

“You can speak?” I finally said. Obviously she could, but I wanted to hear more. Finally someone I could talk to.

“Yes.” She nodded, it seemed like she was struggling under my gaze. Curious about what else changed I looked into my screen, noticing a menu option to look at Ash’s stats. While I wouldn’t have cared before, the idea of looking at them without asking her bothered me now. She seemed more alive, the moment I stopped staring at her, even in that new form she stood the same way, and her eyes drifted around my room in the same way. But more alive.

“I seem able to look into your ‘stats’.” I said after a few seconds of awkward silence.

“Yes.” She muttered out.

“I would rather ask your permission however before I do.”

She seemed to smile nervously. “You are the master, you are free to do as you wish.”

“But do you want me to?” I asked.

She seemed confused. Which I suppose makes sense, I had never given her much freedom in her choices before. Just like you give a pet only a small amount of freedom. But now it just felt wrong to invade her space without asking. I waited a whole minute before she finally nodded her head.

Name: Ash

Gender: Female

Level: 6

Race: Hobgoblin Variant [Minion class]

Titles: None earned at this time

Skills:

[Cleave lvl 6/20]

[Blessing of the Archer lvl 1/20 rank up possible]

[Rapid Fire lvl 2/10 rank up possible]

[Skill Shot lvl 1/20]

[Minion of the Child 1/20 rank up possible]

Status points:

HP: 120

MP: 10

Strength: 7

Dexterity: 10 (+1) = 11

Endurance: 4

Intelligence: 7 (+1) = 8

Charisma: 6

Magic: 1

Agility: 9 (+1) = 10

Luck: 1

From what I could tell, [Blessing of the Archer] boosted Agility and Dexterity, and [Minion of the Child] boosted intelligence. Like my skill [Skill Copy] no description was given, but given the name it had some relation to me.

Meaning something out there considered me ‘the child’. I suppose I am a child, but for it to be a special skill implies something more is going on.

While I was thinking about this, I read the alert about several adventurers. As there were only 3 level 4 adventurers, I was not all that concerned. However I was curious about Ash’s new advantages, and if she could control her new body all that well. I directed Brook and Harley to hide and let the adventurers through. After they did what I asked and I saw that the adventurers were heading to my room I refocused on Ash. Leaning back in my throne I looked at her and smiled.

“Since you have a new body, I figured it’s time to train a bit more.”

Thinking back on it, this conversation just felt wrong, but I suppose I can be excused given I am only a few days old... Anyway!

She frowned a bit, "I...I...I of course master." she seemed scared but all that did was make me laugh. My training must be horrifying to her, but I refuse to let up on it. If only because it’s the best way to amuse myself when no adventurers are around.

“Three, level 4 adventurers are coming. Normally we would work together to kill them, or if they are too weak I would kill them as soon as they enter by myself.” I glanced at the dungeon map, they were almost here. “But I want to see how well you can handle yourself now that you seem capable of speech. I don’t have much but I will do one thing within my power if you kill the three adventurers by yourself.”

Because I feared my minions getting too weak if the fighting was easy, I intentionally gave them the weakest equipment I had. While I am sure Ash is aware of it since I used her to gather dropped equipment I never thought that they minded. However now that she can talk, I figured she would want a stronger bow.

But as soon as I told her my offer there was a strange light in her eyes that actually gave me chills.

Thankfully I never found out what she was going to ask for. While she did kill two on her own, because she got careless the last surviving adventurer, a warrior was able to get close to her, stabbing and slashing at her while she was locked into a corner. Just before she would have died, I cast [Lesser Heal] and used the skill [Charge] to tackle the warrior into one of my corner traps, killing him instantly. As she was only a few levels above them as a lesser species, as well as an archer, the fact she killed two by herself was actually beyond my expectations.

While she seemed dejected about loosing I still praised her and gave her the best bow I had gotten so far. She seemed happy about it, but I feel like that isn’t what she wanted. I kind of don’t want to know what she wanted.

The rest of the day was spent killing adventurers, most of them killed the two recently spawned goblins, but they still both reached level 4, and Ash reached level 8. I didn’t level up any, but at level 12, I am not in any hurry.

With all the coins I gained, I finally reached a spawn rate of 100, not only 100, but 125. It was a very profitable day.

On a final note, I realize why my level speed surprises me. A portion of my mind says dungeon monsters level up slowly, enough that hundreds and thousands of adventurers could be killed without a single minion leveling up, but never explains why. Thanks to my new stock pile of minions I've come to realize that the more minions I have, the more the exp spreads. While any death in my dungeon gives me and everyone else experience. It's divided up. Most dungeons have hundreds of minions, so some group of even 50 low level adventurers who might reward only 11 exp, would end up split up to the hundreds of minions into such a thin number that they might only gain one point.

If I ever expand that will get annoying fast. 

Best keep the minion numbers thin for now I suppose.

Day 12

Today.

Today sucked.

Someone finally killed me today besides those siblings, Anna and Alex.

Given how all of the invading adventurers seemed like new adventurers I was not surprised to meet someone stronger eventually, but it still annoyed me just how much I lost today.

After spending some money upgrading the various traps around my dungeon I had the usual alert, but it was a bit beyond the usual invaders.

“Warning, Four Level 11 Adventurers approaching.”

Guessing that my dungeon had finally been tagged by someone skilled because of how I mostly killed any invaders I directed my two goblin minions to try to surprise them into the traps I had hidden around. However, as far more experienced adventurers, they easily side stepped the traps and in a few seconds had already killed the two goblins.

It occurs to me now that I can extend training sessions quite a lot now that I can heal wounds. Some might call it torture, but it’s important to train the fear of pain into creatures that can just revive, otherwise they’ll get careless.

Anyway, after the four adventurers got to me the fighting didn’t last long. An archer tried to fire off as many arrows as he could at my face while I was still on my throne. Abusing the skill [Charge] I shoved myself off my throne, avoiding the shots and then face planting because of the momentum of the skill. Perhaps that wasn’t my most elegant move, but it worked.

“That hobgoblin isn’t normal.” The Archer said.

I mentally sent the signal for Ash to distract their archer, his attacks are a bit too strong for me to avoid properly.

“I suppose that isn’t a complement, is it?” I asked, dusting myself off since they seemed to have stopped.

Rather then respond in kind, or even cracking a joke, the four man party, a warrior, an ice mage, a cleric, and an archer all attacked me at once. Thankfully as the warrior charged me Ash finally attacked, pinning three arrows in the archers side, and clipping the ice mage. Distracting them enough while running away that I could fight one on one against the warrior. I activated [Skill Copy] and [Charge] meeting him head on with [Flail]. Perhaps because of my own momentum from using [Charge] I ended up slipping past him, choosing to use my skill on his side. Which would have been a wonderful opening, but he seemed to have expected me, sweeping my legs out from under me and almost caving in my skull with his boot.

“Do hobgoblins normally know how to use charge?” The warrior asked, noticing his team was being bombarded by Ash’s arrows. 

Using his distraction to my advantage, I tried an overhead [Cleave], but just as I did a massive ball of ice slammed into my sword, ripping it from my hands. While it sucked to loose my sword, I learned the skill [Ice Ball] in the process. So I decided to use my new spell on the warrior as he had his back turned but another [Ice Ball] slammed into me, knocking me off balance.

Perhaps through some previous plan I was suddenly filled with arrows. Most of my health stolen instantly. Ash seemed to get enraged at seeing this, but thanks to the team work of these four adventurers, they quickly slaughtered me after that. Ash somehow took down their cleric after I died, but they still won in the end.

“Invading adventurers won, 10% of your gold has been added to their stockpile.”

“You dropped, [Old iron Sword].”

After that I rather not write about it. Ash and I were killed by this same group over and over, while I did win occasionally, the vast majority of the time I was beaten. Even at a lower level then me, they were clearly more experienced and far more used to fighting together.

My only wins were because of Ash trying to single-handedly take on their cleric and archer and occasionally she killed one, which gave me enough room to start healing myself and her. I leveled up twice, reaching level 14 by the end of the day, and everyone else leveled up twice as well. Ash was now level 8. I also lost every coin in the dungeon by the end of the day, and half of the items adventurers had dropped.

On a positive I also learned the skill [Third Eye] which is a passive skill that allows me to see things in my blind spots. Which is what the Warrior was using to predict my attacks when I tried to slip around him.

As a refresher on me and Ash’s stats:

Name: Zeno

Gender: Male

Level: 12

Race: Hobgoblin Variant [Boss Class]

Titles: None earned at this time

Skills:

[Dungeon Administration lvl 1/20 rank up possible]

[Blessing of the Underworld lvl 10/20 rank up possible]

[Skill Copy lvl 13/20 rank up possible]

[Dungeon Override lvl 1/3 rank up possible]

[Flail lvl 10/20]

[Cleave lvl 12/20]

[Charge lvl 14/20]

[Lesser heal lvl 4/10 rank up possible]

[Dodge lvl 13/20 rank up possible]

[Double strike lvl 5/20 rank up possible]

[Bind lvl 7/10 rank up possible]

[Ice ball lvl 1/10 rank up possible]

[Third Eye lvl 2/20 rank up possible.]

Status points:

HP: 475

MP: 185

Strength: 21 (+10) = 31

Dexterity: 18

Endurance: 18 (+10) = 28

Intelligence: 20 (+35) = 55

Charisma: 10 (+35) = 45

Magic: 14

Agility: 18 (+13) = 31

Luck: 10 (+10)= 20

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Name: Ash

Gender: Female

Level: 8

Race: Hobgoblin Variant [Minion class]

Titles: None earned at this time

Skills:

[Cleave lvl 6/20]

[Blessing of the Archer lvl 2/20 rank up possible]

[Rapid Fire lvl 8/10 rank up possible]

[Skill Shot lvl 10/20]

[Minion of the Child 5/20 rank up possible]

Status points:

HP: 180

MP: 10

Strength: 9

Dexterity: 14 (+2) = 16

Endurance: 6

Intelligence: 9 (+5) = 14

Charisma: 6

Magic: 11

Agility: 13 (+2) = 15

Luck: 2

Our skills leveled up quite a bit.

I had to abuse every skill I had like crazy yet still lost most of the time. 

While I would normally be happy to have raised slow to rise skills so fast...

This was not a good day.

Day 13

Today no adventurers came. Sick of fighting as I was, I welcomed the break telling my minions to do what they want unless someone attacks and finally started reading the books Alex gave me before those siblings left. From these books I finally learned that the world I am on is called [Narull] after the greater goddess of the underworld, who is often depicted as both a war like monster, and a mother who protects the world. My blessing actually coming from someone important surprised me, but I left that information for later when I have something to use it on.

Instead I looked around in the books for something to explain [Skills] and [Dungeons].

[Skills] are apparently a magic concentration of someones understanding of the world, giving them a supernatural edge as a reward for their persistence. Through dedication they can expand these [Skills] and even raise them into an even more powerful equivalent, but [Skills] can only raise them in real battle, so sadly they can’t be trained like one would normal talents. I suppose it would be weird if supernatural could be so easily trained. Ironic as that is to say since I can copy other peoples skills.

While I would be happy to explain [Dungeons], in general everything I read was hard to judge, often conflicting information was offered a few paragraphs from each other in the same books. The only thing I found that stayed consistent was that the [Dungeons] are all controlled via magic designed by the Lesser God of Dungeons [Snover], and powered by the Greater Goddess of the Underworld [Narull].

Tired from the information dump I decided to look around my dungeon map, and I noticed Ash was with Harley and Brook. Ash had been training them using my brand of harsh. Apparently she did it to cheer me up. Saying that she wanted to make sure they were all skilled enough to help me properly next time strong adventurers appeared.

I’m actually quite proud of her.

Day 14

I woke up to an alert.

“Bare minimum number of days [Dungeon Administration] is level locked has been reached. Following this you are now able to summon 1 mid level boss, and add an additional floor to your dungeon. You are now allowed to gain levels in this skill for the foreseeable future. Further details will be announced when they are unlocked.”

So apparently my [Dungeon Administration] skill had been ‘level locked’ because I was too new to the world.

“Additional structures are now possible.”

I decided to look at my options for a mid level boss monster.

-Red Bear

-Greater Hound

-Cursed Shadow

All animals according to the text at normal rank. All of them creatures that normally could kill several hobgoblins, so it’s actually quite a useful line up, but I wonder why I gained these options while in this form? I wonder if there is some way I can rank up like my minions.

Red bear was just as one imagined, a normal class monster, a massive red bear with a lot of attack power and not much else. Like the Orc body I decided against it. 

Greater Hound was a pack animal able to summon a back of lesser hounds and could buff allies. Another normal class.

However Cursed Shadow is the most intelligent, made a room impossible to see in except for those who had night vision, which me and all goblins had naturally, and is even capable of summoning lesser shadows once it gets high enough level according to the text, so I picked that. 

On screen I saw something that resembled a wolf with six red eyes, the room it was depicted in pitch black except for two torches hanging on the wall. Those torches clearly about to burn out. After picking the cursed shadow I shifted my boss room to the second level, putting the mid level boss into a far off corner of the now maze like first level of the dungeon, making it so the only way down, for most adventurers, is through him. I moved my two goblin minions into the Cursed Shadows room, to work with it.

Following that I started to run out of money, so I made a simple straight hallway leading directly to my throne room. I moved Ash’s spawn to my new room, and then looked at the ‘additional structures’ that the text mentioned. All of them were clearly out of my price range, but at least I have a goal rather then spending all my coins on making more coins.

After thinking it over a bit, I finally pushed [execute] the sound of stone and wood ripping apart entered my ear for a few seconds and then suddenly it was over and the dungeon had changed.

After looking over a few more things I talked with Ash about any new strategy’s I could organize for my new minion.

Quite a few adventurers showed up today, but thanks to the traps I hid in Cursed Shadows room, and clever directions on my part on how the goblins should sneak attack, nobody made it to my throne room. Because the new minion reminds me of a dog, I decided to name it Cerberus. I am not sure of where I got the name, but Cerberus liked it well enough.

By the end of the day I was level 15, Ash was level 9, Harley and Brook were level 5, and Cerberus was level 2.

I used all the coins I earned to boost the coin spawn rate to 203.

Day 15

After I woke up I quickly organized a hidden shortcut to the entrance of my dungeon using my extra coins, but otherwise left my coins alone. Like the day before, for the most part nobody made it to my room. Except for one party of level 10 adventurers, who even managed to kill me. But by the time I re-spawned I they still hadn’t beaten Ash. In fact she had killed all but the warrior who killed me, and was in the middle of strangling him to death when I woke up.

Again, I’m both proud of her, and scared of her to be honest.

For most of the day, I was training with Ash, wondering if the adventurers would ever slow down enough for me to properly train my new minion.

Also worth note is I discovered a function to decorate my throne room. I didn’t have money for much since I had just used it all to boost my coin spawn rate to 210, but since it was cheap and I kind of wondered what I looked like, I bought a body length mirror. 

To tired to check at the moment though, so I will worry about it tomorrow.

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