Ding!

[Would you like to open the Golden Chest: (Yes/No)]

Adder nodded his head. "Yes."

Ding!

[You have gained the highest-ranked snake cluster.] 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

[You have gained 2 beginner forest terrain maps (complete).]

[You have gained a unique poison forest terrain map (complete).]

[You are given three packs of prey monsters.]

"What!" Adder stared at the reward with wide eyes.

He tapped on the highest-ranked snake cluster as more details popped up.

[Highest-rank cluster:

-> You have gained 10 groups of different types of normal snakes.

-> Each group has 10 individual snakes.]

He took a deep breath. Ten groups. It was double what he started with in his last life. ’With this many, I could start with island development, right?’

He already started to think about different ways he could develop them.

The next reward also doubled. It was better now; he would not have to spend more money on dungeon development.

As for the unique poison forest terrain map, it had to wait. It would be useless to use it for normal snakes.

The last reward was nothing special. Still, it would help him save money on food.

The little snake started dancing before him, flying up and down. "Wow, congratulations, Master! You got so many snakes."

Adder closed all the panels and looked at the empty dungeon. ’No time to waste.’

He said to the little snake, "Xarik, open the shop."

The little spirit blinked at him. "Master, you really know about the special shop."

Lost in its own world, the spirit nodded its head as if understanding something. "Ah, Master, you learned it from them."

He just raised his eyes but did not correct the little guy.

The spirit seemed relieved now as it flew on top of his shoulder. "Here, Master."

The next moment, a red shop panel popped before him.

Ding!

<Shop>

[Buy]

[Sell]

Two simple options popped up on the screen. After some thought, he tapped on sell and selected the rare poison forest terrain.

The little spirit frantically screamed at him. "Nooo, Master! What are you doing?"

Adder waved his hand. "Don’t worry. I am just checking the price."

[Do you want to sell the complete terrain map for 5 gold?]

He clicked his tongue and dismissed the sell option. It would be diabolical to sell a complete map for only 5 gold, much less a rare terrain map.

It was barely 20 percent of the full price.

This selling option was still useless. He shook his head and tapped on the buy option.

<Buy>

[Prey Monster]

[Predator Monster]

[Traps]

[Terrain]

With just 10 silver, he started to look through small prey first.

His finger danced through all the available options in the shop. The biggest challenge about the dungeon was to create a self-sustaining environment. It needed to have a stable food chain for future snake monsters to thrive.

It was a super complicated process that he struggled with the most in the past.

In the past, it took him a long time and a lot of money to realize that the dungeon was more of a fortress. A fortress that had snake monsters as its soldiers.

It was not a place to build and develop species. That was the work of the Void Village.

The dungeon was only going to have the strongest creatures, and the environment had to be flexible enough to sustain a big swing in snake populations.

As for the Void Village, the time difference made it more like the normal villages present inside a kingdom.

The villages were all sorts of snakes that would live and go through their lives.

As a dungeon master, his entire task was to develop a Void Village in a way that promoted growth and then take out the fully developed power snakes to defend his dungeon.

The optimal design for him would be to have a Void Village produce sufficient power monsters such that after every dungeon defense, he could replace the dead monsters with new ones.

With that clarity in mind, he started buying.

[You bought 5x ’Slime’]

[You bought 5x ’White Rabbits’]

[You bought 5x ’Toothless Rats’]

He focused on creatures with high reproduction capability that could thrive within the forest terrain.

He planned for both the first and second floors to have similar terrain.

After monsters, he focused on traps.

...

<Traps>

[You bought pit mechanisms]

[You bought arrow shoot mechanisms]

...

[All the traps are added to your inventory.]

He looked at the last silver and decided to save it for now. These traps should be sufficient for the start.

The little spirit chimed from the side. "Master, you forgot to buy any predators."

Adder shook his head. "Don’t worry about them."

For the dungeon, he wanted to develop it as a progressive reproduction ground for prey monsters. More like a food stock for future snakes.

Now, with all the components with him, he calmly said, "Activate the control panel."

Another screen popped before him.

This time, there were a lot of options listed there. Also, a 3D diagram of the entire dungeon showed up next to it.

Everything was blank in the dungeon for now.

He turned to the spirit. "Xarik, help me create the details of the dungeon’s first floor."

The spirit reminded him, "Master, before you start, let me tell you. You can only take monsters from the Void Village to the dungeon, not vice versa."

"Yup, I know it all," Adder nodded, as this was the biggest thing that stumped him many times in his past life.

Focusing back on the map, he said, "Come on, let’s start."

The spirit nodded back at him. "Okay, Master," and it flew through the floor.

Not long after, he saw the spirit on the 3D diagram on the first floor.

He looked at his inventory, and then his finger slashed across the panel.

Ding!

[Inputting the ’Forest’ Terrain on the 1st floor.]

[Loading the data.]

[Processing...]

[Finished.]

In the 3D diagram, what originally looked like a blank back hall changed to a green landscape filled with small trees, bushes, and grass.

Even the ceiling of the floor transformed into a bright sky, with an artificial sun lighting the entire floor.

Golden sunlight peeked through a layer of clouds and fell on the green leaves all over the forest.

The little spirit already started bouncing between the trees. He reminded the little guy, "Hey, focus on the work."

The name itself labeled his dungeon as the snake-type monster dungeon, the same as what he got to control within the trial.

All dungeons had specialties that promoted the growth of certain kinds of monsters.

For his dungeon, it was snake-type monsters.

At level one, his dungeon was only two floors deep with a total monster capacity of 3000 slots.

It wasn’t much. From experience, he knew a decent group of players could easily kill these monsters in a couple of hours.

The last one was dungeon funds. He was a bit surprised at the amount. After his performance, he did expect a bit more, but it did not look like this was his reward.

Adder closed the dungeon status and turned to the Void Village status.

At this, the little spirit Xarik chimed from the side. "Master, Void Village is a nursery for our dungeon."

He nodded to the little guy and focused on the time difference.

This Void Village was linked to one of the core mechanics of Zenaris Online. The mechanics of one life for non-player characters.

In this second reality, there was no common concept of revival for NPCs, and this included monsters.

Once you killed a monster, it would forever be dead.

Instead, Zenaris Online had space cracks all over the game world.

Each of these space cracks was connected to different planes where time flowed much faster than in the game world.

These spaces were the natural habitat of all creatures.

Now these space cracks expanded and closed at certain intervals, allowing one-way entry for all sorts of different creatures to enter the game world through them.

In his past life, players used to call this the influx invasion. It was just that these invaders were constrained to a certain area around the space crack.

This basically created an equilibrium hunting zone. On one side, the invading monsters would rush out in cycles to expand the influence of the space crack.

While species from the game world would get to hunt them and gain resources from them.

This uniqueness was one of the biggest reasons many called it a second reality, not a game.

Not only that, in the past, some people went as far as to create gene-tracing equipment using different forms of magic.

He did not know the workings behind it, but had seen the paper on unique gene prints that shocked many.

Heck, one group even managed to successfully recreate the genome of one of the non-magic monsters in the real world.

All this, with the game’s hidden creator who never came out, made this second reality something else.

The little spirit pulled him out of his thoughts. "Master, do you want to check the Void space?"

Adder shook his head and then looked back at the spirit. "Before that, don’t you have anything else for me?"

The little spirit tilted at him and then looked down. "Oh, sorry, Master. Here."