"A slime." The flat, disapproving voice of Tutorial wasn't asking a question; it was making a statement. It was expressing undisguised indignation and disgust. Not to mention disapproval, like a helicopter mother that just found out what major her child picked for college. "Your dungeon boss is a slime."
"It's the obvious choice." From my pedestal, I watched the gelatinous monster ooze its way curiously through the boss room. Well, watched more in the metaphysical sense, since as a sentient shard of pure crystallised magic I didn't have any organs anymore. No eyes for seeing, no stems for conveying information, no brain for processing data into visual playback. I made the monkey paw wish to be reincarnated into "something that could laze around all day, didn't need food or sleep to survive, and had willing servants at my beck and call", and it came true in the most literal sense.
"With your dungeon currency, you could have summoned a higher level dungeon boss for a starting dungeon. A minotaur, or even a chimera." Tutorial rubbed its glabella tiredly -- or at least, I got that general vibe since, again, I couldn't actually see. "A slime is easily defeated by even low level adventurers, and without the boss monster guarding your body, you'll be vulnerable to destruction."
I tutted disapprovingly. "You're thinking too traditionally." The main problem was that dungeons only grew through blood, conflict, and I'm the type of person -- ah, I was the type of person that shied away from confrontation. So I didn't want to die, but I didn't want to end up wrapped up in a cycle of kill-or-be-killed with every chumbucket that passed through. What to do? Prioritise survival, make growth a secondary goal. Given my reincarnation wish, you should already be able to tell I'm not really an ambitious person after all. Besides, a high level dangerous dungeon seems like the sort of thing this world's 'adventurers' take seriously when it comes to destroying. Me? I'm just a harmless widdle dungeon. Let me live and I can train your adventurers, huuuh? How does that sound? Well, I still need some people to die, but just a few. As a treat.
"Higher level dungeon bosses have two shortcomings." I chuckle grandly.
"Higher level dungeon bosses have no shortcomings. That's why they're high level." Tutorial argued.
"First," I strategically ignored their interjection, "They cost more points to summon. Since you need to summon a dungeon boss before anything else, that means you lose a large chunk of your initial startup fee on overpaying an under-qualified CEO. I'm just not about that philosophy, comrade."
"A dependable dungeon boss should be the prior-"
"Secondly," I directly cut over the dry voice, "The higher levelled a monster is, the more ego they have. Since the dungeon boss is the only dungeon monster a dungeon core can directly contact, this is a problem."
"How is the sentience to understand the whims of the dungeon core a drawback?"
"Tut tut, once again, you're thinking too traditionally. Why play a game of telephone with a minotaur, trying to organise a dungeon, when you can just be the dungeon boss." I gazed hungrily at the slime, reaching out a tendril of consciousness toward it. Slimes, simply, had no ego whatsoever. They were lower even than insects. Without a traditional brain, they were relegated to basic biological imperatives. Devour and replicate, the stuff of bacteria. The difference between dungeon slimes and regular slimes also made it ideal for my master plan. Normal slimes had a magic core they used to intake magical energy from the world in order to maintain their form. But dungeon slimes were wired directly into the dungeon, and didn't need a core. This meant there was room. For me. I began to cackle madly as the slime obediently oozed over, slithering up the pedestal and gradually began to engulf me.
There was another common misconception about slimes to take advantage of. Most adventurers assumed that slime, uh, slime was inherently digestive. Not true! You fools! It's simply that they didn't have the higher brain capacity to separate the concept of "store" from "devour". But with me behind the wheel... well, you get the picture. Rather than becoming slime food, my beautiful glittering dungeon core body would become the "brain" of my dungeon boss.
Why this plan? Why, apart from the larger pool of leftover dungeon currency, pick a slime? Survival. You fool. You utter buffoon. I don't want to die. What, you think I'm going to put my continued existence in the hands of some super obvious dungeon boss monster guarding a super obvious pedestal where I'm shining with a super obvious "come destroy me and win the prize" light? What am I, a video game? Slimes though! Their superpower is how ambulatory they are! It's cat logic -- cats can fit through any opening their skull can pass through, right? In this case, my dungeon core is the cat skull, and the slime body is my cat body. So why stick around the boss room on a shitty pedestal when I can get the fuck out of dodge down a narrow hole whenever adventurers show up, huh?
As I settled into my new slime body, I immediately took charge. Now that I was physically inside the dungeon boss slime, I had even more direct control. Without any existing ego or will of its own, the slime put up no resistance to me going full mecha pilot and taking complete control of its systems. The only thing holding me back was practice -- I was still used to, you know, two legs and other traditional limb attachments, so gooing my way across the ground was a little new to me. But I would adjust. It was all just vestigial memory after all, no longer a human brain wired for a specific body layout. I was already sort of finding my rhythm. Oooh, this is so good, I'm so smart, just try and catch me you little adventurer bitches.
"Well, your cowardice is certainly a fountain of inspiration for creativity." Tutorial sighed, walking over and picking up my slippery new body in its claws, playing with me like playdough. Is this sexual harassment? Can I sue for compensation? "But a higher level dungeon boss is still necessary for other reasons than just guarding the core. The higher the class of your boss, the higher the class of the underlings beneath it. Monsters will not be willing to follow the orders of a slime, have you considered this?"
"Heh. Ye of little faith." If I was a scheming anime boy, I would adjust my glasses dramatically so the light reflected off the lenses, hiding the bloodthirsty cunning in my eyes at this moment. "I don't need higher level monsters. I only need one monster type, and they're ridiculously easy to exploit. Low currency cost, low maintenance, yet highly effective at clearing out adventurers."
Tutorial frowned. "There's no monster like that in my database."
"Goblins!" I became so excited my new body began to jiggle and liquidate as I failed to maintain form. Ah, whoops. Looks like I'd have to be a little more composed or risk turning into a puddle.
"Goblins are cannon fodder monsters!" Tutorial clicked one of its tongues in frustration.
"Only if you're dumb enough to send them to fight." I rolled my eyes. Like, spiritually I mean, conveyed a sort of exasperated eye-rolling energy if you will.
"Otherwise what, organise a bake sale?"
"Hehe, close." I crawled up Tutorial's arms, wrapping myself around its long serpentine neck like a dead fox. "Only imagine if all the cakes are filled with poison."
This was the secret. Goblins are actually fairly industrious once they get the basics down. Their long fingers aren't just for the creepy factor, they're actually great at delicate mechanical work. See, after viewing the menu of things that could be bought with dungeon currency, I noticed a really weird trend in the way things were organised and realised a very obvious exploit. The problem was that most dungeon cores, as far as I could tell, just kept taking things at face value. I assume because they're traditionally newborns, not reincarnated souls like me. They thought that higher cost = better. But sometimes things that are more expensive... are worse.
It's like this: if you open the dungeon menu and scroll all the way down to the list, they have the cheap but "ineffective" dungeon features buried there. These are two things: traps and enticements. You know how in a video game you'll be going through a dungeon and you'll come across a "safe room" that has a healing spring and a save point, and mechanically you're like sweet a rest spot but narratively you're like... is the guy who built this place stupid? Or obviously you'll find a chest with a super good weapon or trinket or even some healing potions. What's it doing there. Seriously. In dungeon terms, these are called enticements. Dungeons need blood to accrue dungeon currency, and you get a huge boost from digesting the dead bodies of adventurers, so dungeons are basically death pits, right? But actually, dungeons are kind of... harmless. Like, if you enter them, sure, you're likely to die, but dungeon monsters can't leave dungeons, so where's the threat? At most they just grow really big which can be a pain in the neck when it comes to infrastructure of expanding cities, but since dungeons like me spawn in the middle of nowhere, like, who cares really. Besides, if you don't enter dungeons, you can't feed them. If you don't feed them, they don't grow. So growth isn't even an issue really either.
So why do people go into dungeons?
Enticements. They put on the mask of righteousness and defeating evil, but really they just want the shiny phallic symbol sword. By the way, dungeon cores are called "magic stones" by adventurers. Certain high level monsters have magic stones in them, as well as previously stated surface slimes, and dungeon cores are seen as big fancy versions of the same thing. They have no idea dungeon cores are sentient, since we can't speak.
"But you're speaking to Tutorial?" You point out in confused query. Yeah. Obviously going by the name I gave it, Tutorial is a sort of quantum being created to interact with me and be my guide in setting up my dungeon, so obviously we need to talk.
I digress. Basically, traps and enticements are super cheap, so most dungeon cores put in the bare minimum amount. Surely traps should be more useful, right? Well, I asked the same thing, and Tutorial explained to me that all traps you buy are non-lethal, as it turns out. Dungeons can't directly kill intruders, or otherwise you could just collapse a tunnel or whatever while some people are inside and then rebuild it using a tiny fraction of the dungeon currency you earn from their dead bodies. Duh. Traps count as part of the dungeon. That's why you need monsters. Traps are great for low level dungeons with low level monsters, since while they can't kill adventurers, they can weaken them enough for the shit-ass beginner monsters to take them down. But they're considered training wheels.
Heh. Small thinking.
As I said, the secret is in goblins. The problem is people see goblins as stupid beginner monsters... but does that even make sense? Goblins are pretty high level, they just have weak bodies. They have language, for one. Not just animal calls, but actual language that conveys semi-complex ideas. They don't just use and create basic tools, but even basic machinery like bows. They have concepts of clothing, which means concepts of modesty, which means concepts of self -- ego. They have complex hierarchies, they have shamans which suggest religious inclinations, which means they're capable of existential thought. Huh? Right? Aren't goblins actually pretty profound? But they're weak. They lack strength and they're easy to kill. They breed fast, so people say "the only dangerous thing about goblins is their numbers". They have a shorter life span than humans. Most consider twenty years to be ancient, y'know.
Sentient species with shorter lifespans and faster generation cycles have higher potential for progress though. Elves are culturally stagnant because the same old geezers are in charge for hundreds of years. Humans expand because they go through more generation cycles, each new generation creating new ideas, new concepts, new ambitions. Now take that concept, and apply it to goblins... each older generation passing down knowledge, each newer generation creating new knowledge. Too bad most dungeon cores just stupidly throw goblins onto swords, so as a species they're too busy focusing on procreating rather than progressing.
Okay, so that's a lot of exposition, but basically you can connect the dots, right? Traps are non-lethal -- when you buy them directly from the dungeon menu. But let's say you fill your dungeon wall to wall with traps, and then populate it with a modest amount of goblins. Dungeon monsters are all born with a genetic knowledge of the dungeon layout and the traps, but they're somewhat separated from the "dungeon core sentience". I can't convey thoughts and ideas to them the same way I can the dungeon boss. But they're gregarious and build their own societies, I don't need to be the one to guide them. Just let them look at the traps, and they'll get curious on their own. They can learn from them, and set up their own traps. They can improve the existing traps -- replace normal arrow traps with poison arrows, for example. Ah, I'll need to set aside some currency to grow poison plants too.
"Okay but how will you keep the goblins alive long enough for them to grow as a society?"
This is why reincarnators are superior! It's to my advantage that I'm still freshly reincarnated, which means I'm not thinking like a sentient magic rock with basically the same instincts as a bottom level slime -- devour and replicate. No, I still think like a human to some degree. Art of war, know your enemy and all that. And the problem with humans is their abilities are limited and they're inherently kind of lazy. Industry is born from the desire to not do things when we can make a machine do it for us. When was the last time you did some multiplication mentally when you have a calculator right there on your phone, huh?
So it's like this: if you enter a dungeon and you have to fight goblins and skeletons and whatever else, the answer is the same. Slash your sword, fling your spells, onward to victory. But traps aren't like that. If you trigger a big spike pit, you better hope you brought rope. If you step on a tile that causes a giant boulder to come rolling toward you and it blocks off the corridor, do you have the tools to break through? If a chamber floods and suddenly half the tunnels are now full of water, blocking out the route you had mapped out, are you prepared to find your way back and not get lost? Pick the right trap and even if adventurers survive it, it will end up changing the landscape and make it necessary for them have the right tools just to escape, let alone progress. Of course, since they won't die I won't be getting much currency in the beginning, but as long as they bleed, the blood becomes dungeon currency and it will be enough to cover the cost of resetting the traps and maintaining the status quo, with enough left over to rearrange the traps and keep them on their toes. I might get lucky and someone will drown from their own stupidity. The traps won't be enough to make them think "this dungeon is dangerous, it's better to get rid of it quickly", but enough to make them think, "this dungeon is annoying, let's leave it for now". But if I strategically place the enticements, the little rewards, it'll be sure to get them to come back, right?
By the time they've figure out enough of my tricks to make real progress, the goblins should have evolved. And by then, the traps will be nastier, and since the goblins will have made them, it will be considered "goblin murder" not "dungeon murder". Which means dungeon currency. And since the goblins will be learning to hunt through traps, they won't just stupidly throw themselves into fistfights with big armoured humans. I'll make some small tunnels that only they can fit in so they can employ guerrilla tactics and stay safe.
By the way, imagine the best part of this whole scheme. Say the adventurers do eventually overcome all these traps, arriving tired and exhausted and depleted of resources at my dungeon boss room. They stumble in, expecting to finding some big scary monster, and instead they find...
Fucking nothing. Nada. Zilch. Total zero. Because I'm in a slime hiding in a nook back on the first floor.
Hahahaha.
