Chapter 8
by
AinBaum
The sun has fully set, will it rise again?
Apparently yes.
Or at least there is sunlight shining into the cave when you wake up. After a bit of stretching, cleaning and general refreshing with the spring you finally do what you decided not to do yet yesterday. You take the claimant crystal out of your inventory and use it.
Claimant Crystal Used
Imporne_lone-Bandit_Cave_17.2_Location_1
Claim land?
A pop-up! You certainly didn't expect that, oh nooo, not at all. Eager to see what will happen you tap the green yes button underneath. And wouldn't you know it, another one,
Land Claimed By
Error: Unnamed_Creature
Process Paused
followed suit by
Please Name Character
oh, great, you have to choose a name, just which one? When you still lived in your village (it was so much time and so many deaths ago you barely remember) you had a name, but why not take the chance to fashion yourself a new one? One that, of course, somehow incorporates fire. All the names you can think of sound to flat to you and simply don't ring a certain tone. But after a few minutes your thoughts wander back to that distant village, once it was visited by an old and blind woman, but although her sight had left her she could still see, "beyond" as it had been put. When your parents brought you before her as a child she called you something strange Istalriorúm, years later you learnt what it meant from a scholar who passed through the village, Flameserpent in an ancient and magical language. The more you think about that name the more it seems to correspond to you, plus it has a nice mystical touch to it, especially when considering the story behind it, and so, eventually you speak your new name to the pop-up.
Land Claimed by Istalriorúm
Claim type:
Bandit Lair
Resources detected:
15x rough stone
Natural Features Detected:
Water Spring
Items detected:
sleeping mat
Add resources to stockpile?
As you finalise the claiming process a few changes happen to your cave, the mat, a few small rocks lying around and the water spring vanish, are added to the stockpile, if you understood the pop-up correctly. You try to find it in your inventory, and while the sleeping mat does appear there the other things are unaccounted for. Eventually you open your character sheet, even if you don't find them there, which is likely, you can at least see if there are any changes now, like a certain name...
Level 5 Istalriorúm
Human, Micro-Boss, Bandit, Explicit
Experience to level up – 250
Attributes:
Strength 22 Dexterity 22 Endurance 23
Charisma 22 Manipulation 22 Appearance 22
Perception 22 Intelligence 22 Wisdom 22
Skills:
One handed 10
Special weponry 11
Throwing 20
Alchemy 20
Accessoire crafting 15
Feats:
Friend of fire II - You take 65% less damage from fire-type sources.
Arsonist - Your chances to set others on fire are increased by 50%, fire set by you also spreads well and lasts long.
Flame-wielder II - Your love for fighting with fire has led to your fire-type attacks causing 20% more damage
Is friendly fire on? - You only take 50% fire damage from your own attacks.
Criminal - As a criminal you always have access to the standard underground structures of a region.
Plunderer - You receive more loot from defeated enemies (only works with equipment and items in the inventory).
Your money or your life - Intimidation is more powerful when you use your bandit subclass.
*Invite – You can invite other creatures to take up residence in your lair as your minions. Doing so successfully grants you experience. Having sleeping quarters, food and water already available will increase your chances of a successful invite.
*Micro-Boss – When you are defeated in battle, lose accumulated progress to your next level rather than all gained experience. Spend Fame on unique bonuses to your lair, your minions and yourself
Yes, yes your name is there, but, this. Is. Big. "Micro-Boss", you get to keep your level on ****, that is amazing! If you had known that sooner you would have used the crystal yesterday, who cares that you're tired when something likes this is offered, big oof, you're lucky you really weren't attacked last night, losing out on this would have been terrible! Anyway, that other feat talked about fame, and you can see a new tab in your character screen, one labelled fame, one you select now,
Fame: 47
Recent activity:
Fought another faction +27 (Expanded)
Defeated enemy minions x12! +12
Defeated an enemy leader! +5
Eradicated an enemy group! +10
Sent a signal! +5
defeated a hero + 1 (Expanded)
you defeated a level 2 hero! +2
Brutal kill! +1
You didn't have a name! - 1
You didn't have a lair! - 1
A hero named you their nemesis! +10
Shamed a Hero! + 4 (Expanded)
Respawned Naked! + 3
Respawned Covered in Cum! + 3
You didn't have a name! - 1
You didn't have a lair! - 1
Learned of another faction! +1
And a bit beneath this luckily collapsible rundown of past events are options to spend your new fame,
Bandit Liegelord 0/10 (Unique Dungeon/Class Ability): 10 Fame
Burning Liegelord 0/10 (Unique Dungeon/Class Ability): 10 Fame
???
???
???
...
Since you didn't really have a choice you invested the ten fame for Burning Liegelord,
Burning Liegelord 1/10 (Unique Dungeon/Class Ability): 20 Fame
Rumors have started to sway the local monster population to your banner. Each day, there is a small chance that local creatures will spontaneously convert to your side and ask to join you(Non-cumultative). This chance is increased for fire-themed creatures. Increases the odds of positive Diplomatic checks with other monster tribes (Non-cumultative). This chance is increased for fire-themed tribes. You may also receive gifts from monsters seeking to stave off your wrath or gain your favor.
Not only does this sound amazing but it also unlocked some new options, including Earth Elemental (worker) for 25 fame, which gives you an idea, if the cave is your dungeon, can you build here now? You close the fame menu and experimentally think "open build menu". A pop-up! You can build your own dungeon! Although you are told that you need to designate an entrance first, when you try to designate the very cave you stand in as one you are pushed out by an irresistable power and end up facing its entrance shielded by a window prompting you to decide which kind you want, hoping you can change it later if you want you decide to go for a rather inconspicuous cave design for now, hoping that it will also be cheaper, or maybe even require no work as it literraly uses the already existing cave. Your hope is not met, at least not completely, upon choosing the option the cave entrance is replaced with a visually impenetrable gray surface and a progress floating before it. An experimental tap against the wall sends you a message,
Non-applicable skill, -80%. No Tools, -50%. Total build speed: 7%
After a good dozen more hits the progress bar fills, the gray ceases and a new cave is revealed, the old one was roughly circular, but this one is more of a rectangle, and about as big as two of the old caves behind oneanother. More importantly however, you can finally truly design your dungeon. But what do you want? You don't really know what players do, but you do know that they like attacking dungeons, and hasn't one even made you their nemesis? In other words: defense will be important, but until you're more powerful the best defenses might be stealth and deception, so you hatch the plan to build two dungeons, a smaller one to throw of atackers, and a hidden bigger one. With this decision made you begin to design the first dungeon, at the entrance halls end you add corridors to the left and right, the right one quickly leading to a small roughly circular room, the left one leads to a bigger cave than even the entrance of oblong shape, here the floor is not one relatively even level but instead forms small terraces on the right side, leading to two areas of progressively higher elevation. After looking at the design as you feel a slight pang of dissatisfaction you angle the right room to no longer form a 90 degree angle to the entrance hall but rather one of maybe around 45. WIth all these add-ons you keep the cave look, noting it costs only extremely few ressources, however that's not stopping you from going for your actual dungeon know, you set the far end of the entrance chamber to be a "hidden door (Rock)", and add a hallway behind it, this one in a new style and optic however since you take the cave-designs warnings about limitations of utility, design and more options seriously, at least for your main dungeon. Anyways, behind the secret door you select the stone-wall design and build a, a few meters long corridor that leads to a circular (this time not roughly but actually) room of about eight meters in diameter. There you add five doorways, one left, one right, one in front and one each in between. The door in front leads to a (for now) quite deserted corridor that only leads to a generously sized chamber on the right hand side that you will use as your personal living quarters. The left door will lead to the area you intend to use for your minions, a corridor, on it's left side you put one large square room that will serve as your minions living quarters (you make sure to leave a generous distance to the fake dungeon so there will be no noises coming through), one the right side you put a rectangular room which runs parallel to the corridor and will be used as an eating area, for now it will be about twice the size of the mostly intended for sleeping living area. On the right door from the big circular room you put yet another corridor, this one intended for crafting purposes (you want to put that alchemy skill to use), on the left side you put two, uhm, medium?-sized square rooms that take up all the space there and a rectangular one at the end of the corridor that is as big as the two squares combined plus the corridors width and has a ninety degree angle to it. All that only leaves the two doors inbetween the others, here you install spiral staircases that lead to a higher level, they are connected by a relatively small recatangular room there, which on one side has a wide corridor leading in the direction of the dungeons entrance, while the corridor is above the hidden corridor behind the the door it is about three times as wide, once it reaches the entrance hall it becomes as wide as it, you intend to make this part of your dungeon a guard post eventually. With all that done you finally take a step back and admire your design. It takes you about a minute or two to finally notice the stockpile tab, opening it you finally learn where those stones and of course your water spring went. Reminded of it you decide to incorporate the spring into your design, it's added at the far end of the corridor that also leads to your personal chamber, you also slightly uptilt the hidden dungeons corridors that lead deeper into the mountain and add a shallow canal for the water to flow in, hoping to create your own artificial river or creek, it will flow directly towards the dungeons entrance/exit, passing underneath the hidden door where you spend several minutes to make it look like there is simlpy a natural river springing from the wall and not a "canal" coming out from under a secret door.
Now you finally close the building menu, the cost for the cave part is very low, those fiveteen stones you got from the original cave take care of those costs, at least if "one of the builders has the recycling feat" the actual dungeon though... surprisingly the stone costs are relatively low considering how much you want to build, you believe it is because you will get to use some of the stone the mountain constists of, but still, 112 stone is quite the amount when you will only have three left after the cave, and on top of that you have: 20 wood, 28 crude iron and 2 rope. You believe that you know where to get all those, but it will take time.
But that feat, you definitely don't have it, it sounds very useful for a builder though, in other words: you decide to spend 25 fame on an earth elemental. Since you already have the fame menu opened you decide to get the other liegelord option as well, just for good measure.
Bandit Liegelord 1/10 (Unique Dungeon/Class Ability): 20 Fame
Rumors have started to sway the local monster population to your banner. Each day, there is a small chance that local creatures will spontaneously convert to your side and ask to join you(Non-cumultative). This chance is increased for Bandit-themed creatures. Increases the odds of positive Diplomatic checks with other monster tribes (Non-cumultative). This chance is increased for Bandit-themed tribes. You may also receive gifts from monsters seeking to stave off your wrath or gain your favor.
As you close the menu a small rock falls from the ceiling, the following effect is hard to describe, it's like small portions of stone all around the cave had suddenly turned liquid and decided to flow towards the fallen rock. When the "liquefied-stone" meets the rock it turns back to normal stone while attaching itself to it. The whole process takes maybe two minutes, afterwards there is a slightly humanoid figure standing before you, it's entirely made from rough natural stone, about half as high as a man and doesn't seem to have elbows or knees, there is a dent in the arms and legs, but you doubt they can be angled, the "head" sits directly on top of the shoulders, no neck, the only discernible features are two holes that seem to be eyes and a not-very-deep rip underneath that is reminiscent of a mouth. "You're my new worker I take it?" you ask, the only answer is a grumbling sound but you decide to take it as a yes. "Oookay, do you have the recycler perk, or feat or whatever?", "Rumble rumble", "Great, I just hope I didn't waste my fame." You walk over to where the entrance to the bigger of the two caves of the deception-dungeon is to be and are met with a reflective gray surface on the wall, like the one on the entrance when you build it. "Listen", you say, "we have to build this", as you tap onto it,
Non-applicable skill, -80%. No Tools, -50%. Strength penalty, -90% Total build speed: 0.01%
Error: insufficient ressources, no progress made
"Fuck, well at least it's a way to see if you have that perk, you wor-" you were still giving the order to your elemental when it already started, apparently having picked up the same order you gave it when you started yourself. The elemental has formed it's rocklike fingers into a gnarly fist and the entire forearm rapidly shoots out of the arm, each time delivering a punch to the wall where the progress bar slowly fills, the only drawback is the considerable noise. Happy that your worker does seem to have the perk you join in on the building. However, you soon see that you barely make a difference to the speed of progress, you are absolutely no match for the builder. With the reassuring thought that your elemental makes good progress you decide to leave the cave to look for the other ressources you will need for the hidden-dungeon. "Worker, I'll go to collect more ressources, I want you to continue on the deception, but don't start on the hidden one yet, even if you can!" you shout to your companion, he acknowledges the command by stopping the hammering for a few seconds turning to you and nodding by tilting his entire torso slightly around his hips, the returns to working.
As you leave the cave you shout one last time towards your busy worker, "take care while I'm gone", and off you go.
Oh, wow, what an eventful morning, and all that before breakfast even.
Disable your Ad Blocker! Thanks :)
Dungeon Building For Beginners
Adventures of a First Time Boss
A LitRPG style story where you play as a monster who, thanks to a lucky break, gets the chance to build their own dungeon and become their own boss (Now public. Have fun)
Updated on Jun 10, 2026
by Lordofgoats
Created on Nov 28, 2019
by DosEsh
- 39,739 Likes
- 2,804,657 Views
- 2,518 Favorites
- 4,618 Bookmarks
- 1,005 Chapters
- 139 Chapters Deep
- All Comments
- Chapter Comments
