Fia didn’t have to think long, immediately accepting the new skill she was offered.

  Reading through the description of [Core Relocation], it was the windfall Fia had been hoping for. It was a huge game-changer. She could now move her core into new rooms, further into her dungeon, rather than leaving it exposed near the entrance. Some of the drawbacks were obvious, namely that it could only be activated once a week, which means once every ten days. Three times a month, basically. Some were less obvious, like the fact that draining the core of all of its mana leaves her exposed to permanent death per the [Dungeon Master] Title’s rule of “If killed while in dungeon territory, your body will reform near Dungeon Core, if enough Dungeon Core Health and Mana are available.” The core also will still be fixed in place and immovable. However, startlingly, before she even got a chance to activate and test out the new skill, a new notification rang out in her mind, as she stared at the new windows that popped up in her vision.

  Fia had never before been offered a skill evolution, though she knew of their existence. Common and Uncommon skill evolutions were decently well-known, though just having two skills does not mean you will be offered the skill evolution. As far as she was aware, it’s up to random chance if you will be offered a skill evolution. Probably her [Reincarnated] Title at work. Before accepting the skill Fia used [Identify] on the skill name in the window, bringing up a new window.

  Fia almost immediately accepted the skill after reading through it, though some parts of it troubled her. Her Spacetime and Soul affinities are both higher than normal, but if they weren't, this new skill would be more expensive than the two skills it is consuming. It also was the first time she’d seen a skill with Primary and Secondary Effects. She assumed that this was to segregate costs, cooldowns, ect between the two effects. Otherwise summoning any monster would cost 100% of the core’s mana and have a 1 week cooldown. It was basically like having two skills packaged into one, with some added synergy specifically between the skills.

  The biggest thing that bothered her is the whole fated/freewilled-monsters-become-fated-monsters. She wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but the fact that it scaled with her Soul affinity bothered her. Did this mean that if she summoned a human, instead of it being a soulless monster akin to a simulacrum, it would instead have a human soul but be under some sort of Fated effects, forced to follow her orders? What would the skills, perks, and stats of the human look like? Normally when she summoned a monster, she assumed it got the “average” stats, skills, and perks for that race, but what would that look like for a human? Did her monsters have the ability to gain experience and grow? She didn’t think so, but maybe that was a result of being a monster, and being Fated would allow them to? She had no idea, but it worried her.

  Not to mention the moral dilemma. They would still have the monster classification, which meant that “the monster obeys all commands from the Dungeon Master to the best of its ability and cannot harm or attack the Dungeon Master” would still apply to them. It was basically similar to advanced forms of slavery using magical contracts, or [Geas] and similar spells, but worse because it wouldn’t be able to be broken or dispelled. Slavery was decently common in many kingdoms, with indentured servitude and penal labor being more common than chattel slavery, but of course there were all types. Fia herself had no real opinions on the matter, different kingdoms had different laws, but what were her opinions if she were to ‘own’ one? She didn’t know, she never thought about it. Of course, whether it would be considered slavery heavily depended on the minds these so-called “Fated Monsters” would have, and to what degree their Fated-ness would be. Would she mind a Vampire, Demon, or Goblin serving her less than a Human or Elf?

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Not to mention the fact that she didn’t know if they would be summoned as infants, to grow into adults like normal, or summoned in adult bodies. What would the state of their minds be? Like children? Like adults? Would they be summoned with pre-fabricated memories, or empty blank slates? She didn’t know, and she really wished she did. The skill bothered her a lot in that aspect.

  But if she didn’t like the Fated Monster aspect of it, she simply just didn’t have to summon them, right? The rest of the benefits were good and could be put to use, like monsters being able to move the core, and especially the core re-summoning dead monsters.

  After some deliberation and internal arguing, she decided to accept the skill. No going back now.

  Immediately as a test, she ordered one of the nearby [Web Weavers] to go into the loot room and teleport the core there. After a few minutes, the core disappeared from the cave, and after walking back to the loot room, it was floating inches above the ground. Maybe not the perfect place, but the test worked, and it was a hundred times better here than in the cave.

  While she had been thinking about all of this, her minions had managed to contain the fires, and she ordered them to start carrying the corpses of the fallen monsters to the [Spider Graveyard], but to leave the human corpses alone for now.

  The next order of business was to choose a new monster for [Spawn Monster]... Rather, to choose a new monster for [Monster Core]’s list of available monsters. She accepted the notification and took stock of her new list of potential candidates.

  Going over the new list, it hadn’t lost anything from the previous list, but had gained some new additions. She spent some time using [Identify] on the new additions. Some of them were powerful, such as the harpoon spider and night spider. Some of them were outside of her mana range, such as the inferno spider. Some of them were weird, like the rast. She didn’t just want something boring, a spider with more health and damage, though those would be nice. She also needed unique abilities, something different, to expand her repertoire of tools.

  Her top three choices were the skitterhaunt, which was technically a species of slime that possessed the dead carapaces/shells of other creatures, the toxic cave fisher, which was a slightly stronger variant of the cave fisher, a monster she already had her eye on, and the clockwork spider thief, surprisingly enough. The skitterhaunt was an obvious choice, it could pretend to be a dead corpse, surprising intruders when it wakes up and attacks them. It had a strong Acid affinity, able to spray acid and its slime body being generally made of acid, which would be useful. The toxic cave fisher would be able to produce sticky and poisonous filament very similar to spider webs. She’d have to be careful with that, as neither her nor the other monsters were immune to the poison, but it would definitely be demoralizing and dangerous to venture deep into her dungeon while poisoned before even fighting and killing any monsters. Cave fishers were on her last top three list, and this was an even better version. Skitterhaunts were, too, for that matter. Both were more powerful than her ettercaps, her currently strongest monster, so either one would be a great boon. Lastly, the clockwork spider thief was an interesting choice. They weren’t living things, instead being some sort of magical construct, like a metal golem, but not elementals or anything. She didn’t fully understand how constructs and golems worked, but from her understanding they were like metal undead but made from the Artifice school of magic, instead of Necromancy. Less frowned upon, but much harder to make. Her skill was basically a cheat, being able to summon them instead of craft them, and the clockwork spider thief not being a living thing had many perks, being immune to spells like [Hold Monster] and obvious stuff like poison. It also was capable of producing webs made of literal steel, which were razor sharp and would cut people. They were on par with the ettercaps in strength.

  In the end, she chose the [Clockwork Spider Thief].

  Lastly, she had one thing that was still in the back of her mind, bothering her. She got four kill notifications for the four human intruders, but the high-leveled elf gave no notification. It could mean a few things, but the obvious and simple answer was that he survived. He was, however, very unconscious, and probably bleeding to death. Maybe she could put him to good use.

  https://imgur.com/a/Y8q9mR9