16: Dungeon Not Found

Tracker Nine: Congrats Dungeon 404! I can’t find you! This makes you the winner of this year’s Don’t Track Me contest! Your reward is attached. PS: How?! I’ve never failed to track someone down before! Normally the winner is just whomever I take the longest time to find!

Huh, I haven’t really been paying a lot of attention to chat. Didn’t realize there was a contest. The reward was just a high grade stone. Nice, but not special.

Lucky Cat: I heard from Emerald Fairy, that you might be able to help me. I have some valuable items I’d like to get more of.

Oh, a business deal? Sounds like an opportunity for profit and more unlocks!

An alert?

“Where’s your master?” Some goblin is asking the gate guard?

“I don’t have a master.” - cowgirl guard

“That’s impossible! You’re clearly the creation of a dungeon! Don’t you hear them?”

“I don’t have a master, and I don’t hear one.” 

“Strange.” The goblin mutters to himself and walks away. “I thought for sure there was a dungeon here.”

Is it not normal that I can’t talk to my minions? 

As a result of trading with Lucky Cat, I’ve unlocked some amazing things. Like: Starmetal Golems. Absurdly expensive, but still: Totally awesome. I want one.

So I started playing around with the creature customizer for it. Wow, so many special features are unlocked… I can’t make use of this right now, but holy cow! I’m totally building something absurd. If I ever need to go to war, this will be the answer. It won’t fit inside the cave.

After more examination of what I could do with the starmetal golem, I made more trades with Lucky Cat, and now… I feel like I’m playing a video game with tons of module options. I think I might be busy with this for a while. I have a lot of different ideas, and there’s a save feature for designs, so I can just save them to use later.

17: Dungeon found

Tracker Nine: Hey, can you tell me where you are? Please? Pretty please? I really want to know. I’ve searched everywhere! I even found Stellar Fairy out among the stars!

Eventually, Tracker Nine convinced me to summon him. I did at least make him pay for the cost, with extra to make up for the annoyance.

“No network access? How’s that possible? We got here through the network!”

We? What’s that mean? It’s just him. Though he’s wearing a rather nice robe, and seems to have something attached to the back of his neck. It looks like a large gemstone held in a gold fixture. I’m not sure how the gold stays attached to his neck though.

“Now, where is? Oh! I see! You didn’t find an artifact, you are one! I wonder who made you. Oh, found a network? Great! … it’s clearly the wrong one though.” It’s like there’s someone else here he’s talking to in addition to me. Too bad I can’t talk, and he’s offline in the message app.

Then a strange man in black leather armor shows up. “Ah! Dungeon 404! Finally found you! Wait… you aren’t connected, he is? You aren’t supposed to be here!”

“Who are you? Why are you looking for Dungeon 404?”

“Why, I’m the god of dungeons! Normally, I’m in charge of the creation and placement of all dungeons in this world, but for some reason, while I was in the middle of making 404, they disappeared! I couldn’t find 404 anywhere! Now who are you?”

“I’m Tracker Nine! Dungeon 404 summoned me here. I wanted to find out where they were. Why is the dungeon network the only one I can access? Where’s the cultivation net?”

“Cultivation? There’s no cultivation here! This is strictly a fantasy world! I better fix this mess… what? Access denied? I’m the dungeon god! How can I be denied access to a dungeon? … otherworld access privileges required? System locked by the reincarnation god? What the heck?!”

“Well, this is clearly not the upper realm, and it doesn’t feel like a lower realm. Unless there’s more than one upper realm.” Tracker Nine is muttering quietly to himself.

“I’m gonna have to file a complaint! Without proper Dungeon net access, I can’t invite you to the yearly dungeon meetings, and can’t get you involved in the dungeon wars or contests either. How are you supposed to grow and learn like this? Cultivators don’t know anything about dungeon building!” The dungeon god just keeps ranting about how bad this is. Meh, I’m not sure I’d want to participate in dungeon wars. I like peace. I like my city sim. 

Both continued for a while, but I stopped paying attention, and went back to work on my city sim. Making sure there’s enough facilities for everyone, including farm land and such is a bit awkward. Especially since we’re in a forest. I need a way to grow food in a forest without needing to clear trees, or I need a way to build farms in the cave. Space underground doesn’t seem to be a problem since the slimes can keep digging out more space. Oh, right! I can probably get sunstones or something from Lucky Cat!

Eventually, the two weirdos left. 

18: Taking care of things

At one point, I got curious and tried summoning a succubus. I immediately began to regret it as she started rubbing herself on me. I’m a stone. I’m not sexually aroused by any of this. Stop trying to fuck me!

I unsummoned her. I don’t get points back for that. Where did she come from anyway? And where did she go? At least she didn’t have a cotton eye, and wasn’t named Joe. Though now I’m wondering if all succubi act like that.

… a second attempt leads to the conclusion that clearly enough of them do that I don’t want to try summoning more… actually, I got the impression that my second attempt just summoned the same one again. Exact same appearance and behavior. The cowgirls all look a little different. Admittedly, I can’t tell the slimes apart, and I can’t see the fairies well enough to know if there are differences between them.

Meanwhile, between trading for things with Lucky Cat, and building up my city, I’m starting to feel like a Rogue Servitor or something. I’m totally building a super advanced paradise. I’ve got automated slime servants handling basic tasks like harvesting crops. As long as the crop doesn’t need to be re-seeded, it works great. 

It’s not all the way to full automation, but frankly, between the luxurious apartments and all the automated cleaning from slimes, the only actual work people need to do is preparing food, clothes, and entertainment. The raw supplies are basically provided free. I set up an automated system to provide supplies from the automated farms to every occupied apartment using slimes. If anyone attacks the slimes, they’ll be detected and apprehended by the cowgirls and placed in jail for a day. 

Yeah, I made jails. Thanks to all the watchers, it’s pretty much impossible for a culprit to hide. Though I did end up needing to summon more cowgirls to help with catching crooks. I just put them on patrol and retaliation settings and they seem to instinctively know they are now cops or some equivalent. At least, they seem to act like it. I didn’t actually set the jail time. I just made jails. They do most of the decision making on their own. No idea how this all works.

Heck, even medical care is all automated. It took a lot of resources and guess-work, but I managed to unlock a variety of magic water construction options for slimes. It was expensive, but there are now potion making devices in every house. That seems to be our primary export. Potions. Quite a few traders come and go now. I’ve had to expand the size of the gate and add more cowgirls to properly watch it. 

It’s a little weird. I’ve kept my core on the first floor, in a hidden location, while the city itself goes down when more space is needed. Feels like I’m not doing dungeon making right. However, I kinda find the idea amusing. Trying to reach the bottom means one is going the wrong way.

19: More defenses

While keeping myself hidden is great, I don’t really trust it that much, and now that I have tons of points and such, making a proper defense makes sense, right? So I built a boss room. It kinda horrifies me.

I built a maze of mirrors. Except they are nearly indestructible, and I placed small “golems” armed with lasers that look more like eight legged robots that stand about 1 foot wide and half a foot tall. The mirrors are specially designed to perfectly reflect the laser beams, so if the robots can see the target, they can shoot the target. The entrance to the room has what I consider an appropriately ominous door, and the robots are to shoot any unauthorized entrants.

Lasers and robots? Well, that cultivation setting I’m getting chatroom access to, is absurdly advanced. More advanced than the world I came from! They’ve got space ships and warp gates! 

I actually built a shortcut hidden in a wall that lets my own servants reach my room easily. It involves a stationary portal that will only turn on when allies approach it, and only when there are no intruders nearby. I’ve got some laser spider bots guarding my side of the portal too, along with a special metal iris I can close if I want to block the portal in case someone manages to force it open against my will. As an additional precaution, there’s a wall between the portal and I, so one must actually come through the portal fully to be able to attack me.

Next, I started building missile launch silos into the mountain around my cave entrance hidden behind illusions. They are technically golems, and I have to give them fire commands myself because they lack the ability to see much of anything, and can only fire at locations I tell them to fire at. Initial test results: Totally awesome. Reloading is expensive though. I have to spend points so the golems can build more ammo. Thankfully: I’m filthy rich. (Thank you Lucky Cat!)

20: Governance

An army did eventually show up, and I made more fairy scouts to help me scout them out.

“I am a messenger from Lord Apollo! I have a message for the leader here!”

“There is no leader. What do you want?”

“What do you mean there’s no leader? Who’s in charge?”

“No one is in charge. I guard the gate, there’s a few peacekeepers, and everyone is otherwise free to do as they like.”

“What? That… that makes no sense! How are disputes handled?”

“People figure it out.”

“... I’ll have to go report to my superiors.”

Looks like cowgirl guard handled that well. Though I do wonder if there should be some sort of government installed. Currently there’s none. No real way for people to solve disputes at all. No arbitration system, no courts, nothing. Just very basic crime prevention, but no contract enforcement. Hmmm…

After browsing the list of things I can make and creatures I can summon, I decide to consult Lucky Cat and they suggest installing a location with an artifact of truth. It forces those in range to speak truth and only truth. Though it can’t force people to answer, it can prevent them from saying things they don’t believe to be true. Not perfect, but pretty good.

Now the question is: Where do I put them? I don’t want to just make it impossible to lie in the city, that would likely lead to problems, and encourage everyone to practice deceitful truths. Like all those stories of fae who can’t tell lies, but still deceive everyone. No, I need to make it more like a public location where people know the lies cannot be told as a way to help them figure out the truth in a conflict.

First, I put one at the gate. Need to protect the guards from spies and lies.

Second, I put one in the jail. To aid in interrogations.

Then I made a new building and put some in there. The Truth artifacts are hidden, but I expect people will figure out the changes on their own pretty quickly. 

The new building is one large room with tables and chairs, with four smaller connected rooms with doors. The smaller rooms are soundproofed, and also have one table surrounded by chairs each. Then I attached a kitchen to the back of the big room, making the entire thing into a sort of restaurant, except it lacks staff. Hopefully people will figure it out. It’s the restaurant of truth.

… on second thought, I think I should summon and assign a few cowgirls there. Just to make sure the place has some staff.

This still doesn’t solve the issue of punishment, but at least it allows people to know what happened when investigating a case. I suppose there is a jail, so if people decide to punish someone, there is a way to do so. Just need to convince the jailers.