The Dangerously Cute Dungeon [A Dungeon Core LitRPG]

1.67 Willow Tree Island

The next day, Violet was pleasantly surprised to see her kodama had brought something new. She now had bearberries as both a new [Base Resource] and a new [Item]. From the item's description, it seemed a bearberry was a forageable plant that appeared around late fall through winter time and was similar to a cranberry in use. It was supposed to be ground cover like creeping charlie was, but more bushy in appearance with red bearberries growing on the plant.

Violet wasn't sure she'd ever be able to use a plant so unfamiliar to her, but she'd still happily accept the dungeon points from it. After adding the additional 36 DP, she now had 199 DP total. As Violet wasn't ready to research anything yet, she just planned to save them up, for now. However, 10 MP of her daily 13 MP could easily be used to add some more water to her pond. With only 5 MP left to go, Violet happily went to sleep.

Of course, this caused her to miss the start of the upcoming battle. Another four zombies and two skeletons had entered the dungeon and were stumbling their way through the place. Eventually, the zombies broke through one of the doors in the wildflower meadow room, which led to the rest swarming together as they made their way further into the dungeon. Only a single skeleton, which had gotten caught up in a battle with the slime in the wildflower meadow room, was left behind.

As there was only one direction to go, the zombies and skeletons, eventually, made their way into the floodplains meadow room. This had taken a while since the zombies were still slow when it came to breaking down the large stone doors, but it still happened in only a matter of minutes thanks to four of the zombies working together.

As the dungeon was actively in danger, the slimes, which usually stayed hidden as part of the capture-the-slime challenge, did their best to fend off the intruders. The second skeleton was easily held back by two of the slimes while the other three went after the zombies. The slimes didn't have higher brain function, so they couldn't coordinate their attacks. As such, while one slime could have easily taken care of the skeleton, given enough time, two ended up preoccupied with the same skeleton.

The river and rabbit holes alongside the other three slimes slowed the four zombies down considerably. It was difficult for such a mindless zombie to navigate even a river that didn't have running water. Even the rabbit holes caused their feet to get stuck while the slimes repeatedly knocked them over. One such incident even led to one of the zombies dying as it knocked its head off of the wooden fencing meant to corral the slimes. With one of their companions taken out, it took the zombies much longer to get through the next door.

While adventurers might have gotten confused about which way to go next, the [Monsters] had no issues with figuring out the correct path. They were instinctively drawn towards the dungeon core and would go whichever direction was the most direct route to the dungeon core. As such, the zombies went to the garden meadow next where there weren't actually any [Monsters] of [Critters] capable of being a real threat.

The frogs could attempt to trip the zombies, but they were really too small and would just end up squashed. Meanwhile, the bees ended up sacrificing a few lives attempting to sting the zombies, but ended up giving up when their attacks proved futile. Instead, they ended up swarming angrily as they attempted to look menacing, but this didn't exactly do much against the undead.

Before too long, the three zombies had finally made it to the hedge flower maze. While both doors would have, normally, locked the zombies in, they had destroyed one of the doors in the process of trying to enter the room. Similarly, the zombies fought against the hedge flower maze walls as they tried to force their way through the maze. While they may have instinctually known the most direct route to the dungeon core room, this didn't apply to something that wasn't an actual dungeon wall. Hedge Flowers were difficult, but not impossible to destroy or climb over, so that's what the zombies attempted to do.