Renovations, troops, and the surrounding area

I made a full circuit of the ruined castle, though fortress would likely be more accurate given the size. Eh fuck it, I could call it whatever I damn well pleased. The walls would need to be removed entirely, along with what remained of the keep. With enough practice and time, I could likely use magic to make a new keep and walls, though depending on where I had wound up would determine how much effort I would need to put into surface defenses. Though this did raise another question, could I move my dungeon to new locations? I frowned in thought as if I could indeed move it then the defenses, I make up here would be useless, but would give me quick access to a garrison of troops at a moment's notice. I made a mental note to either experiment with this at a later date or track down the Ancient Dungeon Core to see what she could teach me.

Satisfied for the moment I turned back towards the entrance to my dungeon and focused my mind on the imps within before speaking.

"Assemble before me." I spoke aloud, feeling my will directing the words down to the imps who all began moving through the passages to the exit. It took thirty minutes for all of them to assemble, with most coming in small groups as they formed a half circle in front of me. Glancing over them I could quickly see that while they looked similar in a basic sense, they were all unique in some way. One has longer horns, while another stood a bit taller, and another had a more pink skin tone than red like the rest. In total there were 50 imps standing before me, and as I focused on my dungeon I began to theorize about the numbers. My dungeon was about 5000 square feet, which meant I got one imp for every 100 square feet, and if my dungeon could continue to grow in size I could in theory at least build up a sizeable army of imps, after all every good army needs pawns to be sacrificed and who better than pawns that I could readily and easily create more of. Though a few questions surfaced in my mind; how strong were my imps right now, how long would it take to make more powerful imps spawn inside my dungeon, was there any change between the numbers of standard imps to the number of elites, and how long would it take for me to level up my dungeon? Out of all of these though the first was the easiest to answer as I pointed to one of the imps standing in the front.

"Show me how you fight and what you are capable of." I said as I moved back a step to give it room to work. The imp seemed to understand my order as it swung its claws rapidly at an imaginary enemy in front of it, its movements not exactly fluid but it would likely be a threat to some unwary adventurer. Next it created a fireball in its hand and sent it flying at a piece of broken stone where it exploded in a fiery blast. Finally, it lifted a large chunk of stone to show that it did possess a decent amount of strength, as I estimated that the stone likely weighted around 300 pounds. Satisfied with this I nodded for it to stop as it stepped back with its fellows as I looked them over once more before speaking again.

"I want twenty of you to start clearing the stones and vegetation around the area. If we are going to rebuild this fort, we need to clear away the debris first. The rest of you are to begin scouting the surrounding area. I want to know what is in these trees, how close are the nearest settlements and if there are any major threats that we need to be wary of." I paused as the imps traded looks with each other and the one that had given the demonstration pointed towards me and tilted its head in confusion "You're worried about leaving me unprotected?" the imps all nodded and I had to smile at this "I intend to use an ability to create a personal guard to protect me. I will not be unprotected."

This satisfied the imps as they began dividing up with the 30 that I had scouting were soon heading out into the forest, pairing off as they spread out in an expanding circle around the fortress. As the remaining imps began burning away foliage and moving stones blocks out of the way I returned to the dungeon and made my way back to the boss room where I looked at it and frowned a bit. There was nowhere for me to properly rest other than the chair I had awoken in, and I was not going to be sleeping in a chair like some poor, overworked college student. Frowning I focused a bit on the dungeon and could feel it shifting a bit to accommodate what I wanted. One of the offshoot rooms had disappeared and now behind my chair was a door that would lead to my own personal quarters, though I soon realized the drawback for this once I walked in. The room was completely empty. I blinked at this and tried to make furniture appear and found nothing would happen, even when I walked out of the room and tried it that way. It would seem that I could alter the shape but to make things inside of my dungeon I was going to need the supplies on hand in order to do that, though how much of those supplies I would need would have to be determined later. Putting these thoughts aside for later I sat in my chair in the boss room and decided that I was going to start making my Emmenations.

Making them wasn't difficult as I just had to focus on what I wanted as I could feel my magic working to create them. As I intended for this one to be a trial run of how much power it would take to make these things, I kept the size about equal to my own, though making the arms larger to give it more combat effectiveness as well seeing as how I didn't have any weapons to give them at this time. I also kept the first one as a pure Light based element, to see if that had any difference when I made the next ones. Once finished I looked over my creation. It matched my height perfectly, with the arms being two hands wide along with the fists, its legs were also increased in size to give it increased stability and avoid a potential weakness that an enemy could exploit. The Light element was very evident as it was a pale white color that gave off its own light for a couple of feet, and it was completely androgenous along with having no real face besides its eyes. It was a simple creation in the end, and I knew that it would serve me well in the battles that lay ahead. With the first one done I started another one, this time adding in Fire to the mix to see the changes it would make. The toll on my mana was the same as the first one and this one now glowed with a red light instead, so I began making more of them with the Water one having a blue light, the Wind one giving off a green light, and the Earth one giving off a Brown light. Once the five were finished I focused on myself for a moment to see if I could determine how much magic I had used, cursing the fact that I was limited to only a single cheat as the HUD one would have really come in handy right about now. Focusing my mind, I could feel what was like a lake inside of myself, and that the lake had been drained quite a bit. From what I could sense I had used about 33% of my total mana to make these five Emmenations, so while I would likely have my mana regenerate naturally over time I also knew now that I was limited to about 15 of these a day if I had no intention of doing battle with anyone.

I decided to make five more, one of each element that I had made before, feeling that having ten of these on hand would make a good start and leave me with a decent amount of magic available if I needed to fight something today. With my ten new guards standing around my chamber I considered having these ten go out and test their own skills or do some manual labor themselves when one of the imps entered the dungeon and began heading towards the boss room. It entered and made motions with its arms that it wanted me to follow it. Frowning as I did, I made a note to see about teaching these things a better way of communication as playing charades with them to learn any useful information was likely going to wind up with me wanting to punt one of the minions across the fort. Entering the courtyard, I saw the imps had been busy in the three hours I had been gone, with all of the ivy having been burned away and the remains of the stone walls having been moved to form an impromptu barrier that enemies would have to climb over if they were going to try and attack the dungeon. There wasn't a great deal more that could be done without having the tools necessary to clear away the trees surrounding us, but if the fact that the imps had all returned was any indication, they had found something. Moving over to them they had moved back and the taller one was drawing out a crude map of the area. It wasn't the most artistic map, but it served the purpose as it showed we were in a large forest but a short distance to the west was some sort of community that they had marked and from the grins on their faces it was likely that it was a small enough target that we could attack it and easily overpower the residents.

"Lead the way." I nodded to the taller one as I motioned for all the imps to follow us, bringing the full 50. I intended to see this place myself, determine if they were a threat to me, and if they weren't I was going to use them to further my own goals. I still needed a great deal more information to make meaningful strides towards completely conquering these lands and defeating all of the major powers that inhabited Ruyanei. Plus, I would be lying if I didn't want to see how the woman of this world looked. Licking my lips I walked through the trees, feeling a hunger awakening in me that had long been dormant.