As Azotreh took control of the prime avatar back, Nicholas returned to the nexus. They had a group of over a hundred guests, and only one tiny room to fit them in. He needed a solution and fast.
The night's spoils included 2,200 DX from the new nodes, but that wasn't nearly enough. They needed more than twelve thousand DX total to gain the new threshold in their dungeon faction and the perk that would come with it.
They were still around seven thousand short. Even the increasing number of ants created by the five queens wasn't enough to completely overcome this problem. They'd managed to dig about 30 centimeters into the wall with a space large enough for a person to comfortably walk into, though Nicholas didn't really care about people.
He wanted one thing right now, and that was to make some proper rooms. They'd had a full dungeon without any darn rooms for this long!
His frustration was his own, though, as Fuzem seemed utterly disinterested in the idea of rooms, and Errazorrus was keeping himself in his soul cave.
But no matter how good the ants were, they weren't designed for massive construction projects like this. Not in their current numbers. Especially since Nicholas had examined some with their new Mutation Specialization and discovered that making ants of kinds other than the worker he'd been using would benefit others.
If he couldn't rely on the ants to dig his tunnels and continued to be stumped on how Errazorrus had cut this hole into the side of the wall, he'd just have to try something else.
Nicholas opened their inventory and looked through it. He was tempted to go after the pile of stuff on the floor, but wasn't willing to sacrifice whatever was contained in those books just for nodes. Would paper even be a node?
That made him consider whether he could get a node for leather, which, as he thought about it, he probably couldn't. How would a monster that dissolves into smoke when killed even produce a hide?
Instead, he focused back on the inventory. He pulled a few of the mushrooms out from their side-tab, and a couple of the weirder variants as well.
Of course, there was the normal nightshade mushroom, which grew from a stalk with a flat top. But there had also been a couple of ones that seemed to glow red or blue, with one also glowing white. They were strange, and analysis only told him that they were some variant.
But he tossed them in just the same, the giant eye of the nexus sinking into shadow to reveal the rows of needle-like teeth. It wasn't nearly as creepy after the ants kept it almost constantly in that state.
[You have gained a new node through unconventional methods! +100DX]
[You have discovered a common variant species! +50DX, Perk: Inferior Mutation Specialization I has been strengthened to Inferior Mutation Specialization II]
[You have discovered a common variant species! +50DX, Perk: Inferior Mutation Specialization II has been strengthened to Inferior Mutation Specialization III]
[You have discovered a common variant species! +50DX, Perk: Inferior Mutation Specialization III has been strengthened to Inferior Mutation Specialization IV]
While the DX was underwhelming, the sudden gains to their mutation specialization was more than worth it. It also proved that perks could be advanced like anything else, either through luck or hard work. At least, that's what Nicholas hoped.
Even so, the underwhelming DX made what he wanted to get done that much harder. How was he supposed to get the new perk if he didn't have the DX he needed to advance to their next threshold?
The ants were good, but not good enough. Even if he had no empathy for the rabbit-kin, he'd still like to make homes for them. He felt Fuzem's eye roll from the other room and sighed. He wanted to retort, but didn't know how.
So he returned to the things he could do. He saw a couple of other promising items, a pair of berries. One red, one blue. They had about 30 of the red berries and 40 of the blue berries. So he pulled them out and flicked one of each into the open maw of the dungeon nexus.
[You have gained a new node through unconventional methods! +100DX]
[You have gained a new node through unconventional methods! +100DX]
[You have inflicted Atu Berry Poisoning on your Dungeon Nexus. Your Dungeon Nexus has moved the affliction onto your Orc Champion]
The poison wasn't strong, and Nicholas barely felt any pain as it entered his system, though oddly, the poison seemed evenly distributed throughout his body. It wasn't centralized around his stomach.
He sat back down to meditate. While the state of meditation was good for mana manipulating, the skill also described that it heightened natural resource regeneration.
[Your Poison Resistance has increased to 0.02%]
[You have gained Atu Berry Poison Resistance (0.01%)]
Only once the very slight ache spreading through his… veins? He didn't know if monsters had blood to bleed, but the body he was inhabiting definitely hurt in specific lines, so he decided to call them veins anyway. Once that ache had finally passed, he stood up to continue progress. He hoped to at least start. Atu deserved a home, at the very least.
So he began to look through his other stuff. He first threw one of the hexagonal coins Errazorrus had gotten from the humans into the maw, but the new message wasn't one he expected.
[You have gained a new treasure source! Specific rooms can naturally generate Tin-Rank Alchemic Coins, and Treasure Chests can contain them]
[You have unlocked a new feature! Your champions will now drop treasure chests when killed. Your regular monsters will now drop one tin-rank alchemic coin when slain]
Treasure chests? That seemed like yet another thing he had to worry about now. Neither Fuzem nor Errazorrus chipped in with some color commentary. Fuzem didn't even roll the eyes of that salamander she liked so much.
Even so, Nicholas continued to look through stuff to see what he could throw in.
[You have gained…]
He threw in a collection of the faceted gemstones. One brown, one silver, one blue, one red, and one gray. Each granted a new node for their respective element's essence crystal, and each altered the natural rewards of a treasure chest to sometimes include quintessence.
At least the nodes were nice. He still didn't know what the difference between an essence crystal and a quintessence was, but assumed it was important. Maybe the rabbit-kin would teach him. There were apparently at least a dozen dedicated scholars moving in; they had to know something.
He also gained one after throwing in a piece of that one dead orc's armor, getting a node for something called Shadow Iron. It sounded edgy, but all the nodes they had picked up from eating the town were poison, darkness, or similarly flavored. Maybe it was just something about the region.
It was only scouring through their awfully cluttered inventory when Nicholas remembered the second sub-tab. The pet space, from when they succeeded in looting from that one kid's pet bag or whatever. Opening it, he found mostly a collection of circles within circles. The inner circle was always darker than the outer circle.
He had a guess as to what these were, and tapping one, that guess was confirmed. A small yellow ball of slime appeared on the floor, immediately letting off small tendrils. It was looking for food, and soon found one of the ants. But it… ignored the ant and continued to search.
It undulated across the floor a little as it actually moved away from the entrance to their side room and towards more ants, which it was very careful not to touch.
Nicholas stared at the eyeless lifeform and wondered how it knew to avoid the little ants. Or what it was avoiding to begin with. It was a curiosity that would have to be sated later.
For now, he reached down, grabbed at the mass, and lifted it. It was squishy, but it didn't have a core. It also held itself together very well in his hand; even when he let some of it flow between his fingers, it remained connected to the rest of it.
He hoped this would work, and with a muttered apology, he put the slime into the open mouth of the nexus.
The little thing was absorbed by darkness, unaware of its ultimate fate. It had no eye to see the shadow, and only the feeling of flesh to guide it. It did try to eat into the nexus, but piercing teeth suddenly emerged within its mouth and began to slide through the flesh to drag the slime deeper. It was macabre, to say the least. But having a massive beating heart on the wall of your home was macabre even in the best circumstances.
Nicholas returned to where he normally sat and waited for the notification.
[Uni- ERR: 2114917215]
[Undiscovered blueprint acquired!]
[You have gained a new previously undiscovered monster blueprint through unconventional means! +10,000 DP]
[You have gained a new previously undiscovered node through unconventional means! +12,000 DX]
[Your Dungeon Faction: Black Dragon has crossed the 9th threshold! +10C to Mana and Mana Regeneration, +10DP, ERR:b1739999]
[You have gained 1 Perk selection!]
There it was, the bonus of finding a new thing. The ten thousand DP was good, but not what Nicholas was most happy about. Obviously, that was the new perk.
He didn't waste a second. He opened the menu and scrolled to near the bottom. A couple of new perks had appeared, as they seemed to always do. Wood Node Specialization I? No thanks.
He selected Avatar Digging instead. Like all previous perk choices, he only had its description to assist in his initial experiments, no influx of knowledge from the system or what he hoped others got. The Infinite System did say it removed all limits and guardrails, which he hoped meant that in exchange for whatever it actually did, he had more freedom.
He focused on the wall the ants had been digging, and commanded the ants to move away.
With all his will, he focused. He suddenly felt that same cold consciousness appear in his mind and help channel the magic of the dungeon. A stream of blue light emerged from the core and began to push stone away from itself. Nicholas had rudimentary control over the process, but the cold consciousness assisted.
With that working, he moved the tunnel downward. He didn't know how much stone was between the dungeon and the outside, so he decided to increase that. There was always more stone down.
[You have gained Ability: Nightshade Gneiss Shaping (Innate)]
[You have gained Skill: Nightshade Gneiss Shaping (A-1)]
[By channeling the power of your dungeon through a champion, you have gained Perk: Champion Empowerment I]
Another perk unlocked through dumb luck. Even so, he stopped channeling the power of the dungeon for now and felt the cold consciousness move away. He instead activated Nightshade Gneiss Shaping to shape the rock. While he started with just a rectangle cut into the wall, he wanted something better. That wasn't possible for now, but he didn't mind. He knew he'd get better at it with time.
The worrying part was that a slight amount of shaping had also removed the orc's pinkie toe. He hadn't even noticed it until he tried to stand and tripped. The toe had simply dissolved.
He stared at the nexus, hoping that it would understand. It seemed to do so, and the toe regenerated almost instantly as the magic of the nexus was channeled directly into the champion. He didn't care how. He could finally start doing what he'd wanted to do since finding out about a dungeon's capabilities.
He had about a day before the rabbit-kin reached the dungeon. They had set up a rudimentary camp for the night. But the monsters didn't need sleep. Nicholas felt invigorated and began to roughly carve into the stone. Tonight was going to be busy.