[ 462 mana converted to 462 experience. ]
Logan waited.
Nothing happened.
He sighed. Not enough?
Is there a way to check how close I am?
Hey, [Inspect]. Help a guy out?
[ Level 1->2: 46.2% ]
Ah. Neat. He hadn’t expected it to work.
Basic math indicated there was a thousand experience to level one. So five hundred and thirty-eight more mana. Half an hour of work. Better get to it.
He eyed the shovel. His muscles ached. Stop being a baby.
He returned to his manual labor. The tunnel was taking shape nicely; he could walk a few dozen steps in. With a shovel cutting through the material like loose dirt, he had made a lot of progress in a short time.
He considered the leveling system as he worked. A thousand mana to a level. Probably scales exponentially, like most video games. He had no intentions of treating this new life like a game, but there was wisdom he could draw. The world had been modeled around them for a reason. Maybe he would have insights the general populace wouldn’t.
If I ever find the ‘general populace’. He had a feeling it would be a while before he was out wandering around on the surface … if ever. As a Core Avatar, would he be stuck in these depths forever? Bound to the core in a literal sense? He hoped not. He wanted to see the world, once he got a chance.
Or maybe this was the world. Maybe the entirety of this planet lived underground, in branching dungeons. Who knew? The musings were entertaining, but also pointless. With how little information he had available, anything and everything was a possibility. Maybe Logan was alone down here, now and forever. Though that doesn’t make sense with my [Bind] ability.
So he could rule a few things out.
Half an hour later, he’d carved out more of the hallway, and fed enough stone into the core to finish his level up.
[ Level gained. 1->2 ]
[ Skill earned: [Empowered Strike] ]
[ Skill earned: [Seductive Look] ]
Seductive Look … of course. Logan wiped a hand down his face. That confirms that. His class was perverted, not that he’d held any real hope it wouldn’t be. It’s named incubus, for god’s sake.
He checked his status page.
[
Logan Tonekirk
Lv. 2 Incubus / Demon
====
Stats
====
STR: 9 (+3)
INT: 5 (+1)
AGI: 6 (+2)
MAG: 4 (+1)
====
Skills
====
[Interface: Core], [Inspect], [Empowered Strike], [Seductive Look]
[
Based on the distribution of how his stats had increased, it seemed he was a physical fighter. A strength-based one. Or maybe INT and MAG simply advanced slower? He’d have to wait and see. He didn’t even know what each stat did, yet.
Onto his skills.
[Empowered Strike]: Amplify the striking potency of user’s next attack.
Nothing groundbreaking there. At least his class included fighting skills—it wouldn’t entirely be based on sex.
Now, the less palatable one.
[Seductive Look]: Attempts to raise [Lust], a stackable, debilitating debuff on selected target.
A debuff. Useful, from a removed perspective. And not something Logan would feel immoral to use. As long as I use my skills to overcome someone, but not take advantage of them, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.
He paused, considering what his future looked like.
Would it be up to him to defend against invaders?
I wonder if there’s cute elf rangers running around, delving dungeons.
He shook his head to clear it.
How ridiculous would using this skill be, anyway? What, was he supposed to level a steamy look her way, and suddenly she’d be tripping over her feet? Blushing up a storm and not able to meet his eyes, and thus thoroughly lose the fight?
That would be … funny, he guessed. Ridiculous, too. Logan might not have major self esteem issues, but leveling a seductive look randomly, in the middle of the fight? It would feel way too stupid. He didn’t have that level of confidence.
Maybe he’d have to cultivate it. This did seem to be his life.
But again … maybe he was making too many assumptions.
He couldn’t help having his thoughts wander. All there was to do down here was dig, and think.
The level-up hadn’t been underwhelming, but it hadn’t blown his socks off. About what he’d expected.
So, all skills tested. What now?
… back to digging.
===
He tested a few iterations of shovels, but it turned out Earth had gotten it right—there weren’t many improvements to make. He widened the head, but otherwise left the tool the same.
The addition that did improve efficiency was a wooden wheelbarrow. It took some fumbling around with [Construct] and his memories of what a wheelbarrow looked like to get it right. He’d thought he’d had a good idea of what a wheelbarrow was, until he’d gone and tried to make one.
Kind of like trying to draw something. He’d taken an art credit in high school, and his teacher, on the first day, and made everyone try to draw a bike. Almost everyone had gotten it horrifically—and comically—incorrect. Memory was pretty terrible, as a universal rule, had been the lesson. It took active effort to remember something clearly. His wheelbarrow attempts turned out as well as his bike attempts.
But he got it functional, eventually. They weren’t that complicated. Getting the wheel to work was the hardest part.
With how long the tunnel had grown, carrying back every scoop was highly inefficient. The wheelbarrow speeded things up massively.
He was headed toward one of the pricks of light he’d seen in [Ephemeral Form]. He might as well be working toward as many goals as possible.
I could really use some worker bees for this. Digging was getting old, fast.
===
Hours later, his shovel impacted stone, then carried forward—he’d broken into a hollow space.
Lost in the haze of repetitive labor, Logan almost fell as he tried to steady himself with his shovel, as he did every scoop. He corrected himself, but it was a close thing. He yanked out the shovel and started working on clearing an entrance for himself.
I wonder what’s in here?
It had been glowing to his senses for a reason. Something valuable? He hoped so. Surely he wasn’t expected to just dig, and dig, and dig—forever. That would be horrible game design, he thought. That’d be how you get bad reviews, no matter how good the late game is.
Whatever was in here, though—dangerous? The idea made him pause.
Better safe than sorry. He stopped widening the hole, then stepped back and checked his mana.
[
Core of Eros
Mana: 2.6k/50k
Tier: 1
[
Plenty mana to do what he wanted. He couldn’t make armor, but he could at least form a weapon. The question is, what type? A sword was out; he could make it sharp with [Construct], but why not a mace, or a club, or a staff? Much better weapons for a novice. And Logan couldn’t pretend to be anything but a novice. He hadn’t been classically trained in swordsmanship in twenty-first century modern life.
A club will do. Not the most refined—or flashy—of weapons, but solid and practical. Idiot-proof. Logan had plenty of flaws, but he didn’t think arrogance was one; he would do what he needed to, not what made him look good.
Weapon propped up against the wall, he continued to dig.
He peered into darkness. This far from the core, there was almost no light. His eyes could make out the barest details—he must have some minor form of night vision—but visibility was still poor. He’d have to go in, and explore.
Risky.
Also no choice, unless he wanted to spend his life digging.
He picked up his club and stepped through the hole.
Git suggestion on bee helpers idea in chapter two infact
First type is lewd fortress digger termites/ants hybrid, main form is humanoid ants, second non humanoid form is normal form ants are depicted ass, this species are hybrid of multiple things to make work, a gorgeous race with elf and succubus blike charm, empress head honcho of species is 7~9 tall with perfect curves and beauty wearing black and gold armor like shell that looks what holy knight or royals families armor would look like terrifying ye seductive with no gaps in armor to be seem like made from all craftsman gods them selfs. Then under her is queen simlair to empress but more naughty mother type, and normal children of hive if you will are hardworking highly dedicated to their work yet naughty and playful delinquent, with cute short temper to them. This species lewd fortress digger hive, specializes in building massive domain expanding wide and deep as possible, adding sapient species tactics like traps and checkpoint with gates and etc. But also try make their fortress lewd at same time. Like tentacle pleasure traps, or something. But also when comes to digging these massive colony hives do skills and nature affinity they plow through ground like hot knife through butter and reforcing what's behind them with out slowly down. With production capabilities of termite colony, and their ability turn wood into food for them self, added with ability any member of colony can take up role of queen or empress if need removing killing queen weakness of most ant species. And as they are dungeon core exclusive specie's they have ability to manipulate dungeon terrain using their own mana pools, but slower at it then core or avatar could, but their sear quantity allows them out pase core and avatar even if they work to gether.
Next race is sister specie's of previous suggested specie's also hybrid, lewd wine wax spider wasp bee dungeon skyscraper city hives, un like sister specie's this species builds their hive high into sky ass possible only stop as when 10,000 feet. Then finds another location to build new hive for new queen. This species does have empress as they are more independent then their sister race. These hives build them selves above a dungeon entrance and live races like elf's, humans and dwarfs even demons and monsters if their peace too the hive. They are first line defense to dungeon as well have aura that calm down dungeons preventing dungeon breaks. They also amplify dungeons passive mana gain. Ewch hive is natural ground for all factions and races do to these traits they are both loved and hated to extreme levels and to most most both at same time. As factions loose their control over said dungeon entrances. And people who stay often get influenced by their lewd nature, over all their species are smaller in amount then their sister race they are individually more powerful, and Queen of these hives are equal power but are lower in authority when in another queens territory hives are built with wax and webs of magic verity wax takes up role of concrete, wood, metal and more, while webs takes role of what steel cables and electric wires, rubber pipes and what not, and mixtures of the two. These hives are also food production facilities with better quality then sister race can produce underground. A symbiotic relationship of two sisters races and Minor symbiote relationship of other races and factions.
Maybe even tow combines could work but thought two different races working to gether in harmony. Sounds interesting, ones underground are naughty hard working delinquent types and ones while ones above ground are naughty purer and carefree yet discipline when need to be. Complimentary to each others. And these two races can be made powerful or not so powerful quait easily. Just my thoughts.
Both races have humanoid form and beastly form first form is gorgeous with few equals, and beastly forms for different roles and duty's to preform, as beastly forms are better at doing most of them
Stick is the most versatile weapon and a club is nothing but a fat stick, good choice
depend ,its also why the spear is so great ,a long stick with a pointy end ,easy to use and very useful to protect yourself