Imprisoned

This is basically a rewrite of I Woke Up As a Dungeon, Now What? by Aku-Dono, which is a great and amazing fic. I have my own ideas that I want to write, so I'm doing them. Go check out that other fic, it's much better written than mine :D

Chapter 1.1 -

The last thing I could remember was being shot by Contessa, in the back of my head.

My first thought was that I couldn't feel any bugs.

My second thought was that maybe there was an afterlife, and the fact that I seemed to be a little sphere of mist was some solid evidence. But I'd never believed in a god, or an afterlife, and I wasn't going to start now. Even though now might be a great time to start.

I told myself to shut the fuck up, and drifted around my surroundings. It seemed to be a square room made of hard packed dirt, with a hallway off to the side. The room had some wooden supports, but they looked more decorative than practical. To me the most interesting part was a blue white flame burning out of an shallow bronze dish, with runes marked on the pedestal it stood on. It didn't look like any language I knew of, but the meaning of the runes popped into my mind. "The dungeon of Taylor." I continued checking out my surroundings, but that seemed to be most of it.

I definitely couldn't feel any bugs within my range, and it was unlikely that there were no bugs within half a mile, so I probably had lost my power. Great.

There was a single sputtering torch, but I could see daylight from down the hall. I instinctively tried to walk towards the hall, moving non-existent limbs. To my surprise it did actually move me, even though I was floating up near the ceiling, or at least that's where I thought I was. "I'm going to keep an open mind, and not just assume I know everything," I told myself. I paused as a thought occurred to me. I tried speaking, to no effect. "Shit, I hope I'm not some parahuman ghost now. Hate those things." I almost managed to laugh in my head.

I slowly floated down into the hallway which turned out to be about 30 yards long, and now I could see that the light was coming from a marble staircase, leading up the surface.

There didn't seem to be anything stopping me from just leaving, so I floated to the surface only to halt at the sight of a dry desert stretching out as far as I could see. If I just panicked and left, I'd never find my way back. And I was a little creeped out by the fact that I was apparently in a dungeon with my name. I really hoped I was in a coma, hallucinating, but I wasn't going to sit back and do nothing.

I floated back inside and up to the blue flame. I felt a strange draw towards it, so I gave in and brushed up against it. I was half expecting to be burned instantly, but instead I was sucked into the flame. For a second all I could see was white, and then suddenly I could see everything inside the room, the hallway, and the staircase. I had some sort of HUD, listing options and other things. I was already suspicious that I was in some sort of game, but the HUD with a prominent blinking notification for a tutorial really proved it. I'd never been into them that much, but I had liked them. Maybe this would be fun.

Then I realized the difference between my current situation and a normal game. I had no way of knowing if I actually was in a game, or this was just real life with some bullshit tinkertech, and if I actually had to survive. So I had to treat it like it was real life.

Maybe it would be more fun than preparing for Scion's betrayal.

I'd read the tutorial, which hadn't taken long since it contained didly/squat information. More than a little annoying, but I was used to being dropped into the deep end.

All it told me was that I was a dungeon, my goal was to expand, and if my flame ever went out, I'd die. It also told me that there were people who'd come into my dungeon, and kill my minions, and take my loot. It gave me a short warning about letting them take too much, but I was wondering why I'd let them take any at all.

I found a tab for the settings, which I wanted to mess with. The settings included changing the color of my flame, which I didn't mess with, and customizing my HUD. The customization options consisted of one check box. "Immersion". It was checked off, so I checked it. Immediately all the menus and boxes went away, but I could feel them still inside my head. That was when I realized that the HUD didn't give me jack shit either, so I was basically boned if any adventurers found me.

I had a strange feeling of a pool of energy, and if I focused on it, I could find out how full it was exactly. It was at 10/10. I could tell that every day I'd get another 5 energy, and that I'd get more each day as I expanded.

Building a hallway cost 2 energy, building a room cost 5 energy, though bigger ones cost more. The hallways could be any size at all, as long as an average sized human being could theoretically fit, and the hall wasn't super tall or wide.

There were other things I could place down in rooms, and only rooms.

I wanted to protect myself, so I created a hallway about 50 feet long, but in a curvy pattern with no direct line of sight. Thank Scion I didn't have to build stuff on a simple grid. I could totally cheese these mechanics.
As the dirt on the wall I had willed the hallway to be on started to disappear, I suddenly knew that if I had a minion that could dig, the cost would decrease by half, rounded up. I cancelled the creation of the hallway, and the dirt started filling back in.

I had 2 minions I could spawn currently. A large rodent like a capybara, or a large ant.
I knew they could both dig equally well, but I knew which one I'd choose. They both cost 1 energy to spawn, and each one decreased the daily amount of energy I gained. I could spend 1 energy on an ant, 1 energy on a hallway, and then 3 energy on the room. That would leave me with the 5 energy required to move my flame to a different location.

I spawned an ant, and to my surprise, I could actually control it like I had been able to control normal ants. But I could also tell that it was semi intelligent, like a pet. I quickly released control on it, and then requeued the building of the hallway. It started removing the dirt with its claws, and then dumping it outside. It was slow, but the same speed as doing it with just energy. I soon got bored enough that I took control of the ant, and optimized its movement and efficiency. I hadn't really thought about how long it would take to excavate 50 feet of tunnel, but it was soon going to be morning, and I didn't want to waste any energy if I could. I spawned a second ant and formed a relay with it, speeding up the digging considerably. At the halfway point, I could feel the cost of the hallway drain out of my energy pool, leaving me at 7 energy, with 3 energy per day. I could tell this whole process was going to be a grind. As the sun rose above the horizon I felt my energy pool fill with 4 more units of energy, since I'd gotten past the halfway point of the second room, so I was now at 8 energy. I decided to see what exactly I was allowed to do, and how much I could cheese and cheat. You aren't trying hard enough if you don't do both, after all.

After some experimentation, I realized that I could make hallways with the floor just below the ceiling, which would allow people to get through, but it would be awkward, and they would be easy to ambush. I wish I'd done that with my first hallway, but I knew I'd be moving my fire deeping as I expanded.

When the second room finished, I moved the pedestal with my fire into the other room, costing 5 energy. I was down to 2 energy now, so I could make two more hallways, or I could make something else. I'd unlocked traps upon completing the second room, and I could buy a pit trap for 2 energy.

I queued up one on the floor of the hallway, just after a fairly sharp bend, but I could tell that there would still be a ledge that a person could easily walk past.

So I cheesed it. I made the shortest possible tallest and widest hallway I could, on one side.
I let my ants build that, and I could see that I'd just made the ledge on the side of the path disappear, as it was now the entrance to a hallway that reached the bottom of the pit trap, that was an amazing 2 feet long. Cheese strategy number one completed.
I would've done it on the other side, but I couldn't. I guess that would be too much to ask for, but I had some ideas about how to deal with that. But I still had to wait for the next morning.

I spent the next few hours teaching my ants how to fight better. I hoped they'd still remember how to fight once I released control. They seemed intelligent enough, like a smart dog.

I set them to fight each other without dealing actual injury, and I was pleasantly surprised when they used the moves I'd taught them, just not that well. I guess I had something to fill my spare hours with, training my pet ants. Maybe even when I was busy, since I seem to have kept my ability to multitask.