Literature / A Dearth of Choice

Tell you what, just for that I’ll make this experience pain free for you, okay? Appreciate me later, transference now!

An unnamed protagonist is taken from Earth and reincarnated in another world as a dungeon core, with his memories muddled. Nonetheless, he sets out to grow peacefully and coexist with humans. Too bad about how he keeps stacking up bonuses to death magic and necromancy...

A Dearth of Choice is a story by Grim Tide, originally written for the 2022 Royal Road Writathon, and continued afterward.

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A Dearth of Choice contains examples of:

• Accidental Murder: When the dungeon's initial grace period expires, he gets a system message warning him that he needs to have an accessible entrance within 15 minutes, causing him to scramble for the surface, where he makes a large entrance hole — and moments later, someone falls down it and suffers a broken neck. The system is impressed.
  [Due to your excellent job in killing a human before you even have any traps or truly deadly minions prepared, you have been given a reward!]
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Katrina is very grateful to the dungeon for killing her sadistic and abusive fiancé, even though it was an accident, and offers her own life as a gift.
• Asian Fox Spirit: This is the result of repeatedly upgrading a ghost that took an interest in the dungeon's crop fields, while focusing on the idea of it becoming the farm's guardian. It takes on the appearance of a nine-tailed fox, and its species changes to "kami", gaining telekinesis and illusion magic. The dungeon decides to call it Inari.
• Bad Powers, Good People: The dungeon system apparently requires all of a dungeon's abilities to be capable of killing or helping to kill people, even though the dungeon really wants to avoid it, and indeed is the least murderous dungeon the locals have ever heard of. He actually manages to unlock new crafting options just by contemplating how they could theoretically be used as weapons. Fortunately, although everything has to have the potential for slaughter, the system doesn't seem to care what he actually does with it.
  In fact, I probably have to convince Box that I can use it to kill humans somehow… Cursed clothing? Being able to make clothes would make, in the future, my ability to disguise someone, or something, as being not of the Dungeon after all. Little Red Riding Hood would never need to know her relative was actually a zombie if we just covered up all the damage, after all…
  Well, that's a terrible example, but it gets the point across.
  [New Monster Type Added!]
• Big Fancy Sword: When Omen is created, his sword changes, ending up as tall as himself, dark with red highlights on one side and silver with a golden glow on the other.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Omen, the second-floor boss, is immune to several kinds of damage, and highly resistant to most other kinds. Unless the adventurers can find something that he's vulnerable to, it's a long slog to take him down. Fortunately, he's nothing special on offence; he has a Big Fancy Sword, but is only moderately capable with it.
• Deal with the Devil: Invoked by the system when it offers Katrina a contract of servitude, with the offer being specifically named for this trope. It doesn't even rely on fine print; it's quite open about the fact that she will irrevocably become the dungeon's slave. Even so, having met her, the dungeon is pretty sure she'll take it, just to escape her alternatives. (He doesn't think she necessarily should, but the offer is made without his input.)
  [Deal With The Devil]
  What would you be willing to do in exchange for safety and protection?
• Detrimental Determination: Having learned about the consequences of allowing dungeons to grow unchecked, Tam is unwilling to let it happen again, despite the dungeon repeatedly asking for a truce and peace. When his team announces their intention to place magical restraints on the Dungeon core, it stops matching its challenges to their skill level, and the first-floor boss slaughters them, sparing only the one who had doubts and tried to persuade the others to reconsider.
  Anya was tugging on his sleeve. "We should really listen, Tam!"
  But Tam, despite his otherwise friendly and optimistic demeanor, was stubborn to the bone.
• Dungeon-Based Economy: Dungeons produce both rare magical materials not obtainable anywhere else and mundane materials that have no right to exist in that particular environment (i.e. a dungeon at the North Pole could produce food and wood despite being surrounded by icy wasteland). As such, they are a colossal economic boon for the surrounding towns. The unnamed dungeon specifically invests a lot of his time and upgrades into producing magically enhanced food and other trade goods, to incentivize a peaceful relationship with the local village.
• Feed It with Fire: A semi-sapient wolf pack manages to break Timmy the Baby Bone Hydra apart, but they don't take the time to destroy the individual bones, so once they're defeated, he's soon back up and running — and he proceeds to add their bones to himself, giving him substantial stat boosts.
• Flying Weapon: The dungeon gets two options for animated swords, a Blessed Sword or a Cursed Sword, due to his twin life/death affinities. He uses a Cursed Sword in the usual fashion as a room guardian, but turns a Blessed Sword into an experimental boss combining both elements.
• Geo Effects: The dungeon makes use of various environmental effects to boost the danger level of his monsters, such as filling rooms with fog to reduce visibility and make ghostly ambushes easier, turning the floor to mud to limit mobility, or constructing claustrophobically narrow tunnels. The third floor is entirely swampy, to thwart foes who rely on raw power.
• The Gloves Come Off: As long as delvers use rule 2, Biyaban is merely fast, graceful, and cunning. Tam's party finds him challenging, but they win on the first try. Once they take rule 1, though, with no holds barred, he reveals that he's fully sapient, much faster than they realized, and can control sand, killing three of them with his paralytic claws in a matter of seconds.
• Happiness in Slavery: A normal and healthy person probably wouldn't choose to become a dungeon's property, but Katrina is neither. She considers it a much better prospect than her previous slavery, at least. The fact that the Dungeon can teleport her to it at will means that there's no way her abusive family can kidnap her back, and the fact that her growth is entirely dependent on its goodwill means that she's a useful investment, which is a big step up from being regularly beaten and nearly raped. In a way, she's trapped, but she's a good deal happier.
• I Shall Taunt You: Tam uses a Taunt skill to draw Biyaban's attention to himself instead of his more vulnerable teammates. It doesn't help; Biyaban kills both him and them, sparing only the one who didn't want the fight.
  Biyaban: My instincts already scream to me, crying out for me to slaughter you where you stand, human. You think I need more reason to kill you? So be it.
• Last Chance to Quit: Even after accepting Rule 1 (ie lethal force is allowed on both sides), Tam's party is still told to turn back, choose a different rule, and be welcome. Tam is too stubborn, though, fixated on the idea that dungeons must be controlled.
  Biyaban: I have fought you all many times. You are all far too weak to truly face me. I do not wish to include in my legend the slaughter of the undeserving, so turn back now please.
  [Beat]
  Well? Go on, little children. Come back when you are at least Gold-Tier, and we will have a true match. Then, you will be a worthy addition to my legend. I will carve your noble sacrifice into these walls, that all might remember your valiant fight. But this will not be that, and I have no desire for it. Go.
• Level Grinding: Dutch reflects at length on the fact that dungeons are essential for civilisation to survive in the long run, because they allow adventurers to level up and become strong enough to fend off mana-enhanced wild animals. Once he's confident that the dungeon is safe enough, he starts bringing local boys through it to get them trained up.
• Life Drain: One of the dungeon's few Life-aligned monsters is a Lifedrinker; not especially threatening by itself, but the more life energy it drains from its victims, the stronger it becomes.
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition: This is the theme of the second floor boss, created by forcing a wraith to wield a blessed sword and then upgrading them as a single unit. The resulting monster is known as "The Devouring Dark/The Consuming Light", with the sword taking on dual natures — black with red highlights on one side, silver with a golden glow in the other — and is immune to both necrotic and holy damage.
• Magically-Binding Contract: Dungeons can offer Rules that bind both themselves and the adventurers who come inside. The protagonist uses them to encourage cooperation, by offering a selection of Rules, rewarding those who promise not to harm the core, and punishing those who refuse to make that promise.
• Necromancer: Most of the dungeon's available monsters are undead. Skeletons, zombies, ghosts, ghouls, the works. He does have a smaller selection of life-oriented monsters, but they're primarily used in the training room; his serious defences, protecting his core, are all walking (or floating) dead.
• Noob Cave: "The Orchard" was supposed to be easy mode for adventurers, with just a handful of skeletons and a single lifedrinker, surrounding a fruit-bearing tree. But after seeing that novices will struggle even against that, the dungeon goes further and constructs a room where they can choose to battle just one skeleton at a time, at their own pace.
• No OSHA Compliance: Lampshaded when the dungeon takes advantage of skeletons' resilient nature by cutting corners on construction (which, as a side benefit, will hinder invaders).
  They made a cramped staircase that an actual human probably would have absolutely hated, but luckily for me I had skelly boys instead, who cared not for trivial things such as 'workplace safety' or 'hazard pay'.
• Pacifist Run: At first, the best the dungeon can offer is the prospect of fighting only lesser monsters who will not seek to land mortal blows, in exchange for a binding promise not to harm the core. As he expands, however, he constructs extensive non-combat areas, which adventurers are free to visit, and they can even obtain rewards by helping the skeletal cooks and tailors and blacksmiths.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: When the dungeon first encounters Katrina, she's so downtrodden and depressed that she offers to let herself be killed by his monsters just so that her life will achieve something.
• Predator Turned Protector: When the dungeon is protecting Katrina from a pack of semi-intelligent wolves, it's a surreal experience for her to have zombies and skeletons and wraith-like beings simply step aside to allow her passage, and then, when there's nowhere to run, a cluster of rotting corpses closes ranks around her as a guard, before ripping the wolves apart.
• Reincarnate in Another World: In the prologue, the protagonist is apparently killed by some eldritch being, but it takes a liking to him and transfers him into a dungeon core. He retains most of his factual memories, but has lost his recollection of who he was.
• Sadist: Although the Gargaren family puts on a friendly facade to the public, Katrina knows that they're very different behind closed doors. Such as the time the patriarch pushed her down the stairs, "not out of anger, spite, or anything like that. No, he just felt like it. It brought him happiness."
• Spare a Messenger: The first time that the lethal force rule is exercised, the dungeon allows one of the adventurers — the one who had the most doubts and second thoughts — to live, so that people will know the dungeon tried to give multiple chances to back down.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: When the dungeon starts growing food crops, some of them turn out as normal high-quality plants, but others are corrupted by their high mana levels, becoming rotten, toxic, diseased, or cursed with even nastier effects like turning people directly into undead. The dungeon assigns one of his minions to identifying and removing the dangerous plants, hoping to provide the healthy ones to the nearby village.
• Throwing the Fight: Those who accept a magical binding to stop them from harming the dungeon core will find that the fights are tailored to their level of strength, crowds of zombies and skeletons will hold back and allow novices to fight only what they can handle, bosses will keep their full abilities hidden. Those who refuse the binding will discover what the dungeon can really do. Tam and his team are able to reach the core while bound, but when they return with the intent to restrain it, they're slaughtered by the first floor boss.
• Undead Abomination: The dungeon's first attempt at necromancy uses a collection of mismatched animal bones, which don't really fit together into a creature. But thanks to his accidental bonuses, something takes an interest and "blesses" the spell, making it try various combinations until it produces a Baby Bone Hydra that essentially just sticks all the bones together — including five heads and a tail several times longer than the body — and calls it good. It even has the ability to upgrade itself by incorporating new bones it finds. The Dungeon calls it Timmy.
• Undead Laborers: From miners to tailors to chefs, the dungeon uses skeletons for all sorts of jobs, and appreciates their work ethic and unconcern for safety.
• Zerg Rush: The second floor includes a room with no special tricks, just a very large army of basic undead. It takes Tam's party several tries to clear it, because there are enough sheer numbers to overwhelm them, and several times they have to rely on rule 2, with the attackers stopping when someone falls.

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