Lewd Dungeon, Chapter 372

Chapter 372 – Nursery

After dinner, Lucia and Catalina went with me to visit the ‘nicer’ side of the Breeding Halls, what I called the Nurseries. After all, most monsters aren’t just born being instantly effective. Other than slimes, and other very simple creatures like that, monsters tend to need a bit of time to grow into their powers, and get their System to unlock. So, the Nurseries were a place where I kept creatures that were promising enough to hold on to, but were not yet ready to take their place in the dungeon proper.

Most of the denizens here were beasts or plant creatures of some kind. Slimes were generally ready to go out into the dungeon as soon as they were spawned. Goblins, Vurlocks, and Lizardfolk took longer, but I had areas for them to be raised with their people, so that the little monsters could grow up with some actual training and skills, rather than just being feral beasts.

The plant creatures were interesting. Most were copies of the original plant creature, but one in ten would have some unique traits, based on the other half of that pairing. Unfortunately, there was no controlling just what traits the resulting creature would have. So, you could have the offspring of a Lewd Assassin Vine that caught a Rogue have increased stealth abilities, which wasn’t terribly bad, or the spawn of a Seeder Bush that got the abilities of a Scribe, which was useless.

Sometimes, though, the effect would be powerful. One of my recent successes came from a Mind Sorceress who got captured by a Seeder Bush. The resulting creature was a Seeder Bush that had rudimentary Illusion and Enchantment magic, allowing it to do things like putting out an aura that made people ignore what it was doing, as if everything was normal, or turning itself (and the unfortunate soul it caught) invisible. The System called it an Illusory Seeder Bush.

That was too powerful for the lower levels of my dungeon, unfortunately. I didn’t want to make the normal mode unfair, after all. However, the Illusory Seeder Bush could survive in underground habitats. With that in mind, I’d tossed a couple into the ‘No Man’s Land’ floor, as an additional hazard for groups to deal with while navigating the underground caverns. And some ‘domesticated’ ones could be put in different areas of the raid floors, as ‘art installations’ that doubled as security measures.

Of course, the plant creatures were nice, but the true prize of the Breeding Halls was the beast creatures that I managed to create. [Biologist] and [Monster Breeder] meant that I had a lot of very interesting results from crossing different monsters with each other, or the adventurers who needed a bit of rescuing from the dungeon. The four that showed the most promise, of the ’normal’ creatures crossbred with adventurers, were the wild boar, Florida panther, horses, and wolves. Sure, I hadn’t exactly recreated ‘beastmen’ or ‘shifters’ with these experiments, and I still had hope for something like that, further down the line. Perhaps with a few generations of breeding?

The Boarbarian was the result of crossing sapients with wild boars. They no longer counted as beasts, under the System, but Magical Creatures, which was fitting, since they were aware enough to have a class and profession. The overwhelming majority were Barbarians with the Survivor profession, but I’d found a couple who had Rogue or Ranger as the class, or Hunter as their profession. They could communicate through a rough language of grunts and squeals, but lacked anything like vocal cords or telepathy for more precise speech. Their use of tools was more refined than a normal pig’s, though, so there was some hope for them.

The Illusory Stalker was the result of a Florida panther crossbreeding with an elven Illusionist. I only had four of them, since the success rate was so low, but their power was very impressive. While not as intelligent as the Boarbarian, the Illusory Stalker had a full compliment of stealth skills enhanced with an instinctive mastery of illusion magic. It didn’t have a class, but did have a version of the ‘sneak attack’ ability most Rogue-type classes had.

The Slaughterhoof was actually not something I got from a crossbreed with an adventurer, but rather crossing one of the horses with a ghoul from the Ranger’s Mansion floor. Not quite undead, but definitely having some undead traits, the carnivorous Slaughterhoof didn’t need the Lewd Creature template to be a menace to young adventurers. Any living thing it came across was meat to it, which meant that anything it came across was either food, or something to fuck. And they were always game for either, or both.

And then, there were the Darkwolves. Like the Boarbarians, they were Magical Creatures, but their intelligence was human level. Their classes and professions varied, but all of them had telepathy that allowed them to talk mind to mind, and could create tentacles of shadow that were actually nimble enough to be capable of tool use, despite the fact that they were strong enough to bind a creature of their level. I actually intended them to be the main fighters, once floors beyond the city of Khav-Srokzas opened up. I expected their pack hunting ability to give people a solid run for their money.

But we weren’t here to see the results of the Breeding Hall experiments, even though I could tell that Catalina was getting very curious as she [Appraise]d the different creatures as we walked by their habitats. By the time we passed the Darkwolves, she finally spoke up about it, “My Lord, where did you find those creatures? I haven’t heard about them before, and I would like to think that I’ve got access to the latest information on land-dwelling monsters on Earth.”

“Oh, you probably know as much as I do about the naturally-emerging monsters and ‘augmented’ creatures on Earth, yes. However, you should count yourself lucky. You’re the first people who aren’t bound to my dungeon to see any of those creatures. As for where I found them? I didn’t find them, I bred them. After all, when adventurers get a bit foolish, and are forced to spend time in the Breeding Halls, I’m not just punishing them, you know.”

Of course, the four ‘success stories’ weren’t the only creatures in different habitats. There were plenty of others that, for one reason or another, just weren’t useful for the current version of my dungeon, even though they weren’t failures. The two most notable of the ‘not-failures’ were the Hypnotic Voreboa (an oversized serpent that mind controlled its victims to pleasure themselves while it swallowed them whole, allowing them to be digested in its aphrodisiac-laced stomach juices) and the Gobbit (a cross between goblin and rabbit that was extremely prolific, but also had the unfortunate side-effect of having the same ‘curse’ as wild goblins). If a Gobbit bred with another creature, that creature became a Gobbit over the course of a week, like what happened when goblins bred with other creatures outside dungeons. When a goblin was bound to a dungeon, they lost that curse, but even though the Gobbits were bound, the curse remained.

While the Hypnotic Voreboa was dangerous, I’d put a few in different menageries in the raid zone, allowing them to serve as a suitable ‘trap’, just like the Illusory Seeder Bush. However, the Gobbits were trouble. If they got loose, then they would spread like a plague, and I wasn’t going to have that. Their enclosure had multiple barriers and even a Dungeon Law in effect, to ensure that they could only be removed by me.

I had considered destroying them, like the failed experiments that looked like eldritch abominations, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. After all, some day I might need a biological terror weapon to unleash on my enemies. I didn’t see that as a very likely outcome, granted, but it was the same idea as nuclear weapon stockpiles, or the caches of chemical and biological weapons that different nations definitely didn’t keep around, ‘just in case’. It was better to have the option, and never actually use it, than to need something and not have it. Plus, they had some use, in the Nursery.

I explained all this to Catalina who had a mildly horrified expression on her face by the time I was through. “Uh, my Lord, that kind of creature would almost certainly cause your dungeon to be declared Rogue. People would definitely hunt you down and try to destroy the source of such a plague.”

“Yes, which is why I haven’t released them, and keep them firmly locked in that barrier, with a Dungeon Law to teleport them to the sun if they escape the enclosures. Those creatures are weapons, pure and simple. Weapons I hope never to need. However, if there ever comes a time where it looks like someone may make a serious go at ending me, then I will use any and all weapons I have access to. But, yes, this is more of a ‘scorched earth’ weapon than anything else.”

“Daddy, Mommy, look, hellpuppies!”

Lucia, it seemed, did not care about catastrophic biological plagues. Fair enough, that was not something I expected most children to understand. However, what she did care about was the next enclosure, which had several hellhound puppies. The litter of four were a couple months old, now, and freshly weaned from their human mother, which meant that she’d been returned to her team in Swamptown with the fifth member of the litter. A ‘parting gift’ from me.

The young hellhounds were ripping into their meal, a pair of Gobbits that I’d released into their enclosure earlier. Between the Hellhounds, Darkwolves, Slaughterhooves, Hypnotic Voreboas, and other carnivorous creatures I was raising in the Nursery, having a self-replenishing supply of meat helped to reduce the mana costs to the point where, despite all the barriers, I was running a net positive on the Nursery when it came to mana costs.

Lucia did not care that the hellhound puppies were ripping a sapient creature apart. Well, most Gobbits were only barely sapient, at best. Same with most goblins, unless they were dungeon creatures, or had something else about them that made them special. Either way, they weren’t moving, so it just looked like meat, and the animal handler in LA clearly had exposed her to how carnivores ate. No, she was happily pressed against the fence, watching the demonic hounds eat.

Catalina whispered to me, “What about the curse you mentioned?”

“As with most magic craziness, it only comes into effect if there’s actual sex, with the proper tools going in the proper places. So, even if a Voreboa swallows one of the Gobbits whole, and they continue enjoying themselves the entire time they’re digested, no worry. But if some necrophiliac nutjob decides to ride a dead Gobbit? They’re going to get more than they expected.”

“Ah. Wait, what about all those goblins up in Boca Raton? I would have heard about it if they were changing people like that. Miguel wouldn’t have kept that from people, since there are goblins all over.”

“The goblins in Boca count as dungeon creatures, since they are spawned by the broken dungeon, there. As for why you haven’t heard about it from other places? Most times when ‘wild goblins’ capture someone, they either are never seen again, they’re recovered before they can be violated, or the standard spells to cleanse unwanted pregnancies and purge diseases takes care of things. And with how people have leveled in the last few years, and how they’ve been hunting threats? There are fewer places where the wild goblins will be able to easily grab someone who would be found before they changed, but were surrounded by people who were still too low-level to remove the affliction.”

A small hand grabbed my wrist, and tugged, with another pulling on Catalina. I looked down to see a very insistent Godtouched Greater Succubus, who was trying to drag us to the enclosure. “Daddy, Mommy, stop talking about boring stuff! HELLPUPPIES!”

“Well,” I chuckled. “I guess we should help Lucia pick which of the litter she wants.”