Evolution: A Warlock’s Rise To Power

Lucan spent several hours reading through all the menus under his dungeon master tab. First thing that he realized was, being a dungeon master was expensive. Even though he was given 10,000 DP to mess around with, after looking at all the options that didn't seem like much.

The first thing Lucan decided to do was change out the dungeon core. He was going to replace the single resource core with a pair of verses cores.

After finding the correct option in the dungeon Masters tab, he ejected the original core.

The glowing moss on the ceiling above, started to give off less light. In the center of the lake an object the size of a soccer ball started to float out of the water and hover in the air.

The entire dungeon went dark with only the resource core shining in the very center.

Lucan walked over to the edge of the water, he then aaked Adrestia to retrieve the core.

She flew from his shoulder grab the metallic core with her claws and flew back towards the edge of the lake and dropped it next to Lucan.

The warlock took the two versus cores from his bag set them in front of him and stored the resource core.

Through the dungeon master tab he was alerted that a new type of core was found enabled to be used in this dungeon.

Double checking that everything was right he selected the option to merge the new cores into the dungeon.

The two verses cores rose from the ground and flew to opposite sides of the cavern. Once in position, the two dungeon cores disappeared and fused themselves into the dungeon.

One was located on the northern edge of the dungeon while the other was positioned in the southern edge. Lucan was happy with where they were placed by the dungeon and decided not to spend DP to move them.

With the two new dungeon cores in place, the Moss hanging from the stalactites above started to Glow strongly again providing light to the dungeon.

Lucan looked at the terrain in the dungeon. Currently it wasn't fit for the type of game he wanted to host here. Searching through the dungeon master tab he found the place where he was able to alter the environment.

Lucan was prepared to spend up to 5000 DP, if he could keep it under that amount, he would be even happier.

He wanted to keep the water from the lake but he needed to set up lanes to travel from one core to the other, so that players could fight. He decided to raise the ground underneath the lake.

He spent a single dungeon point to test how it worked. He selected the location and applied the effect.

The ground slowly shook as the cave began to rumble. Lucan found better footing and managed to stabilize himself through the small earthquake.

When the cavern stopped shaking and finally settle down he took a look at what the effect is single dungeon point caused.

Near the edge of the water a piece of flat stone had been raised, having the width and length of a small table the piece of stone represented the first part of the path that would lead from one cord to the other.

To ensure that he didn't accidentally overspend Lucan decided to take it slow while altering the terrain.

When all was said and done 6 hours had passed. In the end he'd gone over budget for altering the terrain. Nearly 8,000 dungeon points had been used, leaving him with little over 2,000. Even though he spent more than he anticipated, it was worth it. It would be much harder to change the terrain after he started placing the towers. It was better to change everything now and lay a proper foundation.

Looking around the cavern, he was satisfied.

A core floated on the northern and southern edges of the cavern with three paths between them.

Although the lake was gone, and underground river remained.

The central path, the most direct route was a straight line from one core to the other.

The underground river ran from east to west and formed a shallow pool in the very center of the center lane.

The eastern path clung to the edge of the cavern and follow the wall. At the halfway point, there was a natural stone bridge that allowed the players to cross the rushing underground river. The stonebridge was just a walkway with no handrails or natural formations to keep people from falling in. If the players got rowdy they could push each other into the water.

The western path, like the eastern, follow the cavern wall. Like the central path, there is a pool of water around the halfway point. But instead of being an open area, there were hundreds of stalagmites reaching upwards, some over 10 ft tall.

Separating the three lanes, a forest of stalactites and stalagmites formed a maze-like area.

If you took the correct path through the maze you could travel from the Eastern, through the central, to the Western path without returning to the starting position where the three paths branched from one. The area in between the lanes was dark and dangerous, if someone wasn't paying attention it would be easy to get ambushed.

Lucan hadn't decided on what kind of creatures he wanted to use yet, but he knew he was going to put a few monsters into the forest of stalagmites. They would be set to only roam around inside the stalagmite area and not venture out into the lanes.

Looking around the cavern, Lucan nodded happily. Even though he'd gone over budget, he was still satisfied with what he created. The current setup would be perfect to host the dungeon he planned on creating.

The rules to operate this type of dungeon were already programmed into the cores. Lucan ended up making a few changes which actually earned him some dungeon points but it still wasn't enough to fully stock the dungeon.

After getting rid of the option to have a player control a giant avatar to defend the core, Lucan received another 1,000 dungeon points.

He felt this wasn't needed. Five people going on the attack was enough to make the game fun, they didn't need someone to defend permanently.

A thousand points may seem like a lot, but with everything combined h could only afford to put towers on the central lane. The eastern and western lanes would have to wait until he managed to get more dungeon points.

After running over budget with the terrain, Lucan expected this to happen and wasn't too worried.

He planned on getting some friends to play the game a few times, he wasn't sure how many dungeon points he would collect from a match, but as long as it was a few, he would be able to finish the dungeon in the near future.

Besides the monster he planned on placing in the stalagmite forest, he didn't need to pay for any other creatures. The soldiers that would help the players push were a part of the versus cores on either end of the cavern. They would be generated on their own and didn't require dungeon points to be spent.

Lucan made a few more changes to the rules of the game, but none of them resulted in him gaining dungeon points. The difference from now compared to when he played, the upgrades to the soldiers and the towers was uniform and out of control of the players. If one side's towers were upgraded, it would apply to others as well.

The upgrades to the tower, soldiers, and core shield were set to automatically happen once the team reached a certain level.

If one teams level was higher than the others, than their facilities and soldiers would be better.

Each team could gain levels from killing players, towers, or the monsters in the stalagmite forest.

Of course when the match started, the opposing sides would have there capabilities lowered to reflect their team level. Like the towers and soldiers, the players would get stronger as their level during the match rose.

He was able to save a good amount of dungeon points, because the creatures inside the stalagmite forest didn't need to drop anything when they died. The boadt to the teams level was what the players were reward for killing it.

Lucan still hadn't decided what kind of creatures to set lose in the stone forest. He didn't want them to be killed to easily, it should be a challenge if the players encountered one. At the same time, he was only going to put a few monsters. He wanted players to be able to get lucky and pass through the stone forest without meeting any enemies occasionally.

Lucan decide to call the Windy Willow group and have them get ready to be his play testers. He would decided on the monsters in the forest and then use a shadow tunnel to connect the dungeon to Shadowsweep. After that, he would pay them to play through the single lane version a few time to earn him enough dungeon points to finish his creation.

Lucan prayed that he could earn at least one hundred dungeon points from each match. Even though he knew he was unlikely to earn that much, he still held out hope.

As he was making the final choice for the monsters, Silent contacted him to let him know that she was in the area.

With a smile on his face, he couldn't wait to show off in front of his wife and hopefully earn some praise.