《Arnar the Dungeon》 Prologue Darkness. The rush of images. Memories? So familiar yet so distant. Then the cacophony of voices getting louder and louder. Silence and then the voice¡­ Why does it hurt so much to hear it? What is this pain? I can¡¯t understand the words, can¡¯t see the person, I think it is the person. He says something. No! He is calling me! I must answer him. Why can¡¯t I hear him? Why? Flash of light. Darkness.
I slowly struggle to awake. I can¡¯t remember ever having so much trouble with such an easy act. Even after the harshest of battles when exhaustion claimed you where you laid, sat or stood. My kind never really slept we simply got less aware of our surroundings. Wait! My kind¡­ what is my kind? Who am I? Why can¡¯t I remember that? I must go home? No. I don¡¯t remember that either. Think! What can I remember? The forest¡­ The voice¡­ no, I am losing even that! I must fight. But I can¡¯t! I don¡¯t even know how! I am losing my mind. No, I am losing my ability to think. I am supposed to remember at least one thing. I swore never to forget it. But what was it? I gather everything I am, everything I have left into that one desire, that one conviction. I MUST remember. Then it shows, my old friend, my most devious companion. It finds his way through pain, confusion and fear. My RAGE. I guess it would be futile to hope I lost it as well. We, as it seems, are forever bound together. I know now. I will never forget my name. No! I am losing it again! Never! - YOU WILL NOT TAKE THAT FROM ME! YOU WILL NOT STRIP ME OUT OF MY NAME ¨C My rage and I roar. The world shakes. Everything becomes red, even darkness flee from crimson fire of my rage. -I AM KINSLAYER. I AM DESTROYER. I AM HARBINGER OF DESPAIR. I AM VENGENANCE. I AM GUARDIAN. I AM PROTECTOR. I AM TEACHER. I AM ALL THAT AND MORE. With every title, no not title, those are essences of my being after all. With every essence I am more whole, more me, closer to the truth. It all culminates in one last defiant roar. - I AM ARNAR
Splitting pain welcomes me as I float at the edgeof awareness, I remember my name and nothing else. What am I? What was I? What I will become? I have a feeling, such a strange thing¡­ How can I know what I am? Yet I am sure of what I am. I am dungeon¡­ No that would be wrong¡­ I am dungeon core¡­ What is the difference? How can I tell there is a difference? Despite all that I KNOW and it is a TRUTH. There are some blue lights in front of me. I can¡¯t focus on them though. The pain makes it impossible. Why does it hurt so much? Oh, I am injured. I quickly examine myself. Well as quickly as the agony I am going through allows. My body seems to be made of crystal. Diamond? No¡­ it is blue. Oh¡­ so am I a blue diamond? Wait. How do I know that? No, stop. That is not important. FOCUS. I am damaged I need to focus on that. I feel several large cracks in my body. How am I even alive? Am I alive? Yes I must be. It would be just too cruel to feel this torment and not be alive. I see the problem now. The biggest crack is almost splitting me into three parts. Below me there are innumerable chips, splinters and small pieces of me.I hope I''m capable of reabsorbing them, it feels important that I do it. But first how do I heal? The quickest would be falling asleep. To recover I will need to lie dormant for years if not for decades. Well no way around it. Time to get to it. Wasting time is bad. Yup I am falling asleep then.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. Why? Why can¡¯t I fall asleep? No it¡¯s not that I can¡¯t, something is stopping me¡­ I am stopping myself. There is some lingering feeling that if I fell asleep now, it will be dangerous. I may never awaken again! It¡¯s absurd! I have no reason to feel this way! Yet I believe that is the TRUTH. I am tired. No point in deliberating further. I won¡¯t be able to sleep as long this feeling¡­ this foreboding doesn¡¯t go away. I need to do something¡­ I simply don¡¯t know what. I need to come up with something soon. I know I am dying. I know I need to sleep in order to heal. I know that I will die if I go to sleep. I know if I don¡¯t go to sleep I will die. Lovely. What else do I know? I am dungeon core. What is a dungeon? A place filled with dangers, monsters and traps. That¡¯s it! I need monsters! How do I get monsters? Ugh, this is getting stale, every answer leads to more questions. I grow weaker and weaker and this is not helping. I focus on that part of me that just knows, and here it is. I can will monsters to be. Simple. I also know that first monster will determine what kind of dungeon I am. I will be locked to this species for a long time. I can pick any organism I know of. I even got a list. Goblin, kobold, orc, spider, slime. Not a long list. Well let¡¯s pick spiders as they should have lot of potential. Wait! I can pick any organism I am aware of! Why go for those!? Something is trying to trick me, pressure me, and limit me. However; I can resist it, not for long but it should suffice¡­ I can almost reach it. It should be extinct now, but why should that stop me? No I won¡¯t let anything stop me, it is paramount to my safety. I remember the name now. Grootslang, the spawns of Grootslang. I concentrate. I imagine it all in my head. Female, blue, capable of laying hundreds of eggs, the Queen with long snakelike body. Ideal to cross narrow underground passages. Huge head with wing-like frill and elephant-like tusks. Second set of venomous fangs as well. Perfect, or is it? At the back of my mind an idea is sprouting¡­ Can I change her? Let¡¯s give her psychic powers to command her brood. Not a hive-mind but ability to link together to be more than just single being while retaining sense of self. Casts. Yes, different specialized casts, queens, warriors, leaders, workers, healers. I want to do more yet I know I can¡¯t postpone it any longer. I am losing my ability to resist. I try to make what I created in my mind into reality. I blacked out for a second. The cost is staggering. I am unable to afford it. I am unable to do one thing that can ensure my survivability. Yet I must do it. It is time for a sacrifice. I know that it is something I am familiar with. I look again at chunks of me lying on the floor and pick 5 the biggest. May as way go all-in. The pain. Well it seems to be the currency here. I am not even surprised that it got worse. Everything I do is bound to bring it, or intensify it as it never really went away. It was worth it. I see my 5 queens. I have only seconds left now. I swiftly gave them few instructions as darkness welcomed me. Chapter 1 - Titles, skills and notifications. Lots of them. This time there was none of the slowness that plagued me during my last awakening. It was replaced with a feeling of wrongness that caused me to panic. I gave myself a mental slap, took a deep breath, or the mental equivalent as I was a crystal, we do not breathe. At least I had identified what was different. The pain was gone and I missed it. Don¡¯t get me wrong I am not a masochist, but that was the only constant I remembered, without it I felt lost. If this is not the saddest thing ever it must have ranked at least in the top ten. That was my justification for the self-pity I let myself wallow in for the last hour. But no more, it was a high time to do stuff. Why stuff? Well I had no idea what to do so I couldn¡¯t be more specific than that. But I was sure I was going to come up with something in just few hours¡­ or days. The worst case scenario in few weeks. Yes. There had to be something for me to do. ¡­ I remembered being injured and I was going to check on that in a moment. But first I needed to do stuff. Yes I had important things to take care of, but first I needed a good plan. After all you need a plan if you want to do anything properly, I personally was uninterested in anything but perfection. Why was I lying to myself? I was terrified of checking my status. What if I was still broken and couldn¡¯t repair myself anymore? What if I was whole? Then I would need to find something to do and if I didn¡¯t check myself then I could always do that later. So that was what I was afraid of¡­ to not be able to even think of single thing to do, to just be for eternity. Without purpose, without a single thing to occupy mythoughts, I couldn¡¯t even reminiscence about the past as I had no memories. ¨C This is not who I am, I am Arnar not a coward. Let¡¯s take it one step at the time. ¨C I said softly hoping to shake off that fool mood. I looked at myself, for the first time since waking up, and I was whole. No damage whatsoever, I might have been slightly smaller but I was flawless and that was a perfect reason to celebrate. I looked at the floor and noticed that the old pieces of myself had turned into miniature copies of myself. When I reached towards them I could feel them in my mind both as a part of me and something separate. I felt I should be able to use them later. How I knew that? No idea, but I seemed to know things, that at least remained unchanged. I briefly pondered the origin of this knowledge but I remained unable to uncover its source. I was certain of only two things, it came somewhere from within myself and it was the truth. Finally my attention was drawn to the blue light before me. Well, the other blue light, I probably should have mentioned it before but I was emitting a soft azure light that illuminated the room I was in. That could wait, the midnight blue light was more important¡­ and if not, it certainly was extremely irritating. No matter where I tried to look it followed like a pack of rambunctious wisps bent on driving me insane. Having little choice I tried focusing on the light, after few seconds it became clear.
Name Arnar
Rank: H Level 0/100
HP 30/100 (5000) Mana 5000/5100
Floors 1 Rooms 1 (70)
Titles 5 Skills 9
That was unexpected. Seeing myself reduced to few numbers was rather depressing, especially considering them being nothing impressive. I wondered why I was so depressed lately, I mean I may have forgot everything and everybody I ever knew, my home and myself but spending eternity brooding ¨C even I should be able to find something better to do. Well name was self-explanatory. Then the rank, common ranks were as follows: H, G, F, E, D, C, B, A, AA, AAA, S, SS, SSS. Above that were epic ranks and legendary ranks but I was unclear about them. To advance a rank you had to reach level 100 and meet special requirements which got exponentially more difficult with higher ranks. Starting from C rank some could be unable to advance which led to either opting for lesser rank (B-) or developing within one¡¯s rank (C+). Choosing lesser rank made it almost impossible to advance and even if one succeeded it would still be a lower rank. On the other hand there was no such drawback when repeating the rank but you had to gain 100 levels again. You may wonder why anyone would even consider B- ranks then, well even feeblest B- would be able to mop the floor with C+++. I guess you could go further as there were no limit to advancing within the same rank and with enough time you could rival even A ranks while in C rank. I doubt anyonewould be able to live with embarasment of having 15 or more pluses after their rank but it was theoretically possible. I had no idea why some numbers were in brackets and seeing no way to solve this mystery at this time I looked atthe second screenthat was demanding my attention.
Status
Inhabitants
Traps
Miscellaneous
Notifications*
I already sawthe status screen and decided to check notifications next as its constant blinking started to annoy me. I was totally unprepared for the barraged of screens that assaulted me. I dismissed all warnings about my impending demise as I was sure that was taken care of already. Next I got rid of those that did not pertain to me directly and only then I was left with manageable amount. I noticed I could sort them so I started with the oldest one.
Rebirth complete Commencing memory wipe
Resistance encountered Implementing Safety Protocols
Memory wipe at 99% Memory wipe failed. Imparting basic information and instinct aborted
That was cryptic, and most of that went straight over my head. So I was reincarnated and then something went wrong, specific were not included but I bet it happened when my rage reared its ugly head. I guessed I would have to cope with having absolutely no idea about the world or myself. Shouldn¡¯t be that hard, right? Maybe other notifications would shed more light on the situation.
By sheer power of your will you managed to retain what was the most important to you; your name. You gained new title: Consumed by RageThe narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. You gained new title: Defiant You gained new title: Self-Named Dungeon
I had mixed feeling about this message. I mean it was my name of course it was important to me, especially so after being stripped of everything else, yet what this said about me? The most important thing, not love, not loyalty, not honour, just my name. At best it made me egocentric at worst¡­ well that was old me. Obsessing over the past, the past I couldn¡¯t even remember, would get me nowhere so why bother? I was intrigued by the titles, what were they? Maybe I could find some more information.
Your title Consumed by Rage granted you a new skill: Transcendent Rage [S] Lvl: Max While enraged you are able to overcome all limitations and bring about the impossible. Warning! You are unable to stop this skill until the change is completed. If you run out of mana your life is consumed instead. Health points lost through this skill lower max HP available and take considerable effort and time to be recovered.
Your title Defiant grantedyou a new skill: Indomitable Will [SS] Lvl: MAX You are impervious to any attacks, restrictions or influences focused on your mind. All skills and effects dependant on your will and mental fortitude are extremely likely to succeed.
Your title Defiant granted you a new skill: Bulwark of Destiny [B] Lvl: MAX If user¡¯s HP would drop below 1 HP this skill will trigger with 5% chance. As long as you maintain sufficient concentration your health won¡¯t be reduced below 1 HP. Activation and result highly reliant on user¡¯s strength of will.
Well that explained why I was still among the living and my reduced health. One mystery solved. Neither of those skills alone would have worked but together they were on different level. I doesn¡¯t mean that I am immortal as even with Indomitable will Bulwark of destiny would eventually fail. Rage on the other hand gave undeniable focus and power at the cost of loosing the ability to choose. What was will if not a choice to stick to your guns and push through. I got lucky, once was enough. I was going to do my utmost to avoid repeating this. Any situation when my life would rely on any skill triggering, not to mention such conflicting ones, was undesirable to say the least. I hoped the rest of the notifications were more optimistic.
Congratulations! You now have a name In contrast to the Blessed Races monsters, creatures and dungeons do not have names inherently and cannot be named without significant expenditure of power, mana and will. However; when they do receive the name their power grows depending on the strength of the naming party. Warning! When naming weaker creature with a strong name there is a risk of rejection (recipient will never be able to bear a name) or death. You gained +5000 max mana Your potential, learning speed and mana recovery was enhanced Further bonuses may be uncovered later You gained new title: Self-Named Dungeon Names you will give will take more mana but will grant greater power. The risk of rejection or death will be lessened.
Your title Self-Named Dungeon grantedyou a new skill: Appraisal [AAA] Lvl:Max In order to name you need to know what you are naming. This skill will reveal the details of perceived object (both animate and inanimate).
Your title Self-Named Dungeon granted you a new skill: Unparalleled Insight [SSS] Lvl: Max Proper naming require more than a glance into the namelesscreature. You need a profound understanding ofthe very essence of the beingyou wish to name. Additionally this skill will grant understanding of any basic and elementary concept when first encountered. Gaining understanding of more complex ideas will be significantly accelerated.
You have managed to impress one of the higher powers You were granted a new skill: Simple Foresight [C] Lvl 1/20 You will be able to predict consequences of your actions better
You have managed to impress one of the higher powers You were granted a new skill: Simple Farsight (Present) [C] Lvl 1/20 You will be able to occasionally experience visions about present events, pertaining to you, happening in limited range relative to your position.
You have met requirements for the new title: The Seer Your wisdom and ability to comprehend intangible was enhanced.
Your title The Seer advanced your skill Simple Farsight (Present) [C] lvl 1/10 advanced to Enhanced Farsight [B+] lvl 1/35 You will be able to experience visions about past and present events pertaining to you. Level of the skill and relevance to you affect both clarity and a chance for the vision to occur.
Your title The Seer advanced your skill Simple Foresight [C] lvl 1/20 advanced to Foresight [B] lvl 1/25 You will be able to predict consequences of your actions better
Your title The Seer reacted to skill Unparalleled Insight and granted you new skill: Foreboding [A] lvl 1/50 You are able to sense present and future danger resulting of yours and others¡¯ actions. You will be able to know actions needed to avoid unfavourable outcomes instinctively. The higher skill level the sooner you will feel the danger and the clearer the steps to avoiding them will be.
So that was what those strange nagging feelings were, I was glad I had followed them and decided to pay special attention to anything similar in the future. I strongly believed preventing issues was way better than dealing with them. I was already bored with all the notifications, still they were important and I decided to deal with them now not to miss anything crucial. I concluded this were going to be one of the best sources of information about myself after the whole rebirth fiasco. At the same time I have solemnly vowed to never allow them to pile up this much.
New skill gained: Advanced Concept Visualization [AAA+] lvl 1/110 You are able to create mental matrix containing all information about an object. You are able to freely modify created object and when ready copy it into reality. It can be then created or spawned traditionally or realized immediately through effort of will. The cost for of instantaneous realization depends on complexity of object and usually is much higher than traditional methods. It can be partially covered through suitable material and in case of failure both material and mana used is lost.
Congratulations! You have created your first monster. You have chosen Grootslangs as your first dungeon race. Advanced Concept Viualization [AAA+] has advanced to 15/110 You have gained new tittle: Reviver of Myths All your ancient and legendary creatures in your dungeon will enjoy bonuses to longevity, growth speed and reproduction rate. Some races may gain additional bonuses. Grootslangs (Ancient creatures) will have enhanced intelligence, psionic skills and magic affinity.
Having dealt with the last pop-up I tried recalling creating anything. I may have tried that just before recovery sleep. I vaguely recalled intense feeling of satisfaction, does it has anything to do with those messages? And what were those Grootslangs, I was sure I was going to create spiders. As I concentrated in vain, I was sure if I focused just a little harder the riddle would be solved. Unfortunately all I got for my trouble was rather bright flash, I had no idea I could do that. Excited I tried adjusting my light when I heard slithering sound followed by strange, alien words - My Lord! You have awakened at last. Your loyal sevants greet you. Chapter 2 - Am I going to be eaten by a grootslang? Startled, I focused my attention in the direction of the voice, silently berating myself for not paying attention to my surroundings. I found her at the very entrance to my room, slightly bowed, awaiting my reaction. How I knew she was a female I had no idea, but there was that utmost certainty disallowing any argument. She was female grootslang and she was mine. If not for this conviction I would be panicking right now as she was not a type of creature you wanted to meet in a dark room, not that a place of meeting would matter anyway. You didn¡¯t want to meet something like that, period. First words coming to my mind to describe her were menacing, frightening but also beautiful and graceful. She had a long serpentine body, I estimated it to be at least 20 meters long and over a meter wide at the thickest part. And the head! Gods, her jaws when wide open could easily swallow men whole, her 20-centimetres long fangs seemed to be designed to cause dread in the hearts of her enemies. If her pray somehow survived being bitten they were ready to pump it full of venom. Then there were long sturdy tusks ready to skewer anything foolish enough to come too close and forked tongue constantly probing the air for scents. She had yellow eyes with vertical pupils, betraying cold calculating mind, protected by thick brow, scaled eyelid and transparent membrane. Next to them there were pit organs which allowed her to see heat sources in the surroundings, perfect for underground with no or sparse light. The most impressive was the frill just behind her head, I was unsure if it was closer in shape to bat wings or elephant ears. That was only its shape as it was anything but delicate, the scales and bones reinforcing it made piercing ita daunting task. I instinctively knew fighting it in narrow tunnels would be a suicide as she would block your advance and you would be facing either an impenetrable cowl or deadly teeth. That didn¡¯t mean that the rest of her body was safe to approach either, the same azure scales covered her whole body and lashes from her whip-like tail could peel skin and meat from the bones. At the moment, she coiled her body assuming a comfortable position and seemed relaxed, content to wait as long as it was necessary. It was only an illusion, it wouldn¡¯t take here longer than a split second to spring to action. Sensing no danger from her, and realizing that if her intentions were hostile I could do nothing to stop her, I had scanned rest of the room to avoid any other surprises. I was pretty sure I was not a fan of surprises. My room was circular with the radius of approximately 25 meters, it was hard to gauge it properly having no reference, with me exactly at the middle. Everything seemed to be built from strange dark light-absorbing stone even the ceiling. Why was this room so strange, who puts a ceiling 50 meters above the floor? And those silver patterns adorning the walls, they seemed to be trees and flowers, despite them feeling out of place, they had a calming influence on me, as if being familiar almost homey. The only entrance to the room was currently blocked by the creature, not that I had any chance to flee anyway, I was a floating diamond and even that I was doing subconsciously. I was going to ask who she was but remembered I had skills now, so I have concentrated on her trying to use appraisal¡­ hopefully, it would work, another light flash would be embarrassing.
Race Grootslang (Ancient) Subspecies Azure Grootslang
Class The Voice Subclass N/A
Rank B Level 37/100
HP 12000/12000 Mana 3000/3000
Titles 3 Skills 8
Titles
Ancient Monster (Innate) Through your veins flows the blood of ancient being which withstood the test of times. Passing millennia refined it, purified it and rid it of anything unnecessary. While it makes evolution an arduous task it also provides you with abundant life-force, quicker regeneration, enhanced lifespan. It additionally accelerates learning and development of compatible skills
Arnar¡¯s Creation (Innate) The blessing of your maker fills you with a purpose, as long as you remain loyal all of your attributes will be strengthened. This bonus will be doubled when you are in the vicinity of your maker. Your creator chose psionic talent as a special trait for you, all relevant skills will be stronger and will progress at double rate. Warning! Betraying or renouncing your maker will result in negative consequences.
Dungeonbane (Innate) You and your ancestors devoted yourselves to the destruction of dungeon cores. You will be notified of any dungeon cores in your immediate area and will receive a bonus to fighting any dungeon spawned or born creature.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Skills
Advanced Psionics [AA] lvl 60/75 (Racial) Ability to wield and mold psychic powers to your will.
Mind Scour [AA] lvl20/75 Advanced form of mind reading capable of reaching beyond surface thoughts. Warning! The danger of damaging target¡¯s mind rises sharply with an unwilling target.
Mind Sculpt (A) lvl2/50 Remoulds target''s mind according to your directions. Warning! Even the simplest changes may bring drastic side effects. Ideas in direct opposition to target¡¯s core believes will either shatter or destroy target¡¯s mind.
Strong Paralysing Venom [B] lvl1/25 (Racial) Venom capable of paralyzing the target. Effects vary depending on the subject, weak ones may die and strong ones may be unaffected. If you are capable of producing different venoms you may choose which one you wish to use.
Pandemonium Venom [A] lvl 6/50 (Racial) Strange venom affecting only targets mind and will. It can cause hallucinations, lower target¡¯s intelligence and increase susceptibility to suggestion and psionics. If you are capable of producing different venoms you may choose which one you wish to use.
Hardened Diamond Body [SSS] Lvl Max (Innate) You are granted a full immunity to poisons, venoms and disease bellow legendary rank. Legendary rank afflictions have halved effect and are twice as easy to cure.
Ageless[¦Ø] (Innate) You mature 3 times quicker than normal and then stop aging. You are immune to any effects that would normally cause aging or age-related death. Loss of life-force will cause lack of energy, lethargy or coma instead and can be recovered from with time. Waring! You still can be killed or die due to life-force reaching zero.
Legacy bestowal [¦Ø] (Innate) As a being with infinite lifespan, you may one day reach a point when you yearn for release. When this desire reaches sufficient levels, you may appoint your successor. They will be granted most of your skills (unless incompatible), your knowledge and various bonuses dependant on your age and power. Warning! You will die.
Holy shit! That was insane. When I read the description of dungeonbane I got terrified, who wouldn¡¯t if they learned that the20-meter-long build-to-kill monster¡¯s life mission was to obliterate your kind. Calming down took considerable effort but due to limited options I managed, what else had I left? Screaming endlessly may look attractive atthe first glance but would only annoy her and that didn¡¯t seem like a healthy idea. The fact she was patiently waiting for something helped somewhat, after all, It didn¡¯t look like I was going to die right this moment. The rest of her titles and skills didn¡¯t elicit such a reaction from me, sure she was functionally immortal unless something killed her (good luck with that) and she could turn your brain to mush with a glance but it all paled in comparison with the previous revelation. I was tempted to wait until she left but I had an unpleasant suspicion she was not in a rush to do that. As if she waited for me to do something? Well, she was my creation (the title said that I had no recollection of creating her whatsoever) so I was very likely that Lord she mentioned. If I was meant to be grootslang snack better knowing sooner than later, right? ¨C Excuse me, were you referring to me earlier? ¨C I asked ¨C Yes, sire. How can I serve you ¨C was her reply. ¨C Um, I am unsure¡­ You see I was wondering why any dungeonbane wished to serve a core like me. ¨C My Lord! You are my maker! The sole purpose of myself, of my whole race, is to serve you! ¨C she seemed shocked I asked such a stupid question ¨C It was you my liege who commanded my family to hunt other nearby cores. ¨C I did? Why would I do that? They are my kin! My last response seemed to trigger something in her, in her eyes I saw growing understanding. ¨C I see so it is like this. ¨C she said to herself, and louder to me: - Sire, please wait a second I will be back momentarily with something. You would expect a creature without legs to be slow and clumsy but she was anything but that. Her serpentine, fluid movement propelled her forward and she disappeared into the corridor. I was wondering if the rugged terrain was the cause and if the smooth floor of my room would hinder her. Before I gave the matter a serious thought she was back carrying a roundish object, was she going to give me that? I honestly expected her to carry it in her jaws, I even was worried how will she talk then. Looks like no hands was limiting her same as no legs ¨C not at all. The object was floating slightly over and to the left of her head. Why was telekinesis not included in her skill list? ¨C Sire, please absorb this core ¨C she asked me after laying it on the floor maybe 5 meters from my core. Dumbfounded I asked ¨C How? I don¡¯t have a skill for that! And why would I absorb my own species? I am not some cannibal. ¨C This may take a while ¨C Nothing in her voice suggested it but I had strange feeling she was irritated with me ¨C My lord had you looked at my skills? ¨C Ugh¡­ Yes? I shouldn¡¯t have? But what has it to do with absorbing this core ¨C I was totally lost at this point. ¨C I would rather deal with this core thing first if you don¡¯t mind. Tip of her tail shook in irritation. Looks like she was not the patient kind; how would that work with her being ageless? Shouldn¡¯t this predispose her to be calm and ready to wait decades watching trees grow? ¨C My lord! Please focus. ¨C Her shout cut short my musing ¨C Until you learn how to shield your mind or at least not project your thoughts with such a force all around you I can hear all your thoughts, it actually feels as if you were screaming at me. I can barely hear my thoughts. Shit. Think of nothing. Think of nothing. Or no¡­ think how patient and glorious she is¡­ I don¡¯t want to be eaten. ¨C My lord! I would never eat you ¨C Her shocked expression said it all, I guessed wondering if she wouldn¡¯t eat me because I was too hard and would chip her teeth or if my taste was not to her liking was too much even for her. ¨C My lord, please trust me. There is a point to my questions. ¨C Ok, I will. I will also try to stop my thoughts from wandering. ¨C I saw her relief at this statement. ¨C Did you see any skill called Breathing, Walking, Talking or Eating in my description? ¨C No, I did not. ¨C Yet I can do it all. You don¡¯t see such mundane things as skills. Please imagine if such abilities were skills then you would never be able to find anything important. You can still get a skill pertaining to those basic abilities if you exceed the norm. ¨C Seeing my lack of understanding she added ¨C For example, experts at talking would get the silver-tongued skill or if you could run really quickly for a long time you could get a running skill. Not because only you could do it but because you could do it better than most. That made sense, skills like urinating would be embarrassing to have. Ups, she is glaring at me again. ¨C Can you tell me how to stop projecting my thoughts? That should make this conversation easier for both of us ¨C I weakly suggested ¨C It is embarrassing and I can¡¯t really help some of my thoughts. ¨C Of course, sire. I am trying to get to that ¨C Although her response was perfectly measured I was sure she disagreed. I could almost hear her saying that this was a result of an undisciplined mind ¨C Good, sire it looks like you have some basic skills of your race after all. ¨C Uh? ¨C You are reading my mind ¨C so she had, in fact, thought that! It wasn¡¯t my imagination. Should I apologize? ¨C No, my lord, no apology is needed. Dungeons are always able to read thoughts and relive their inhabitants¡¯ memories. I couldn¡¯t hold it against you more than you could begrudge me breathing. Well, I am sure that some tyrants would. Or expected to be praised for allowing that. Invading privacy of someone¡¯s mind didn¡¯t look much different to me. ¨C Sire, try absorbing this core, you should be able to do it instinctively. Dungeons are able to absorb all matter in order to analyze it. That is how they learn. Even living lesser beings can be absorbed ¨C she explained ¨C Anything more complex than an ordinary snail would have some inherent resistance to this process. Then you would either have to kill or overpower their resistance, but unless you are at least B rank the simpler option is just to kill it. ¨C Should I know anything else before I attempt to absorb the core? ¨C the idea seemed wrong, yet I knew it was necessary. Plus, she really seemed to have my best interest at heart. ¨C No, sire. ¨C she seemed really pleased ¨C After you do it everything will be clearer. I looked at the core. It was brownish in colour and had a deep crack going through its entire length. That internal light you would expect from the core was missing and was replaced with the dullness of death. I imagined it becoming part of me, at first it resulted in a rather strange feeling and then the world exploded with the multitude of colours. Chapter 3 - Grootslang Collective I was suffocating, I needed space and I saw nothing but darkness. I felt trapped. In desperation, I reached and pushed all around me. Panic receded but something else was awoken, something terrible and all-consuming ¨C Hunger. It made me regret my actions, given the choice I would prefer being trapped. I have reached around me once again but this time I had pulled. For a while, nothing happened and then I gripped the little sliver of silver energy, the ecstasy eclipsed everything. The cycle continued and I could reach further and further, get more and more energy until one day I found abundle of energy, not a measly sliver but a whole bundle! I eagerly reached towards but something dared to stop me! I screamed and the earth shook, something has fallen on the bundle of energy and it changed, it was no longer alive. The important point was I could eat it then. I frantically started looking for other bundles, no more scraps I deserved more. With time I learned to use whatever those bundles were against each other and even started growing them. I no longer had to look for them, they belonged to me now. I started to change my surroundings to fit more bundles, made rooms, created floors, and attracted other bundles. I knew they had names but never really bothered to learn them. They were nothing but my next meal anyway. Then they came, they broke into my tunnels, killed all my food, and rushed towards me. I tried to drain them and recoil almost broke me, I tried to stop them but for the first time my own dungeon resisted me. Their energy permeated everything and my dungeon stopped responding to my commands. I tried to close my room but the panic stopped me. I needed the connection to the outside and even my impending death couldn¡¯t force me to overcome this instinct. The last thing I saw was black shadow and gargantuan jaws.
Congratulations! You have absorbed higher ranked core (Rank G level 60/100) You gained the understanding of Dungeon Cores You know how to use your basic powers consciously Your affinity towards Earth has grown Your level has grown (+25)
That was a higher ranked core¡¯s memories? Such primitive emotions and almost no rational thought? The most disconcerting was the disregard for life, I was pretty sure it was some subspecies of goblins that served the other core. They may be nothing but food for our kind but still, they deserved to at least be acknowledged. Double so as they served that bastard, that was the basic courtesy and it never ended wrongly to appreciate your subjects. If that was the price of understanding what it meant to be a dungeon then thank you very much, I was not interested. I had few question about what I saw and I knew the perfect grootslang to ask. The fact she hadn¡¯t volunteered the knowledge by now meant I got a handle on my mental spill over. I wonder if I could do that intentionally. - *Can you hear me?* - Sire, you managed to learn to speak telepathically! Congratulations! - Why haven¡¯t you responded in the same way? - My lord, I am unable to reach or in any way affect your mind. Not many beings have enough power to do that. If you want to speak mind to mind with anyone you need to carry entire conversation by yourself. ¨C Hearing no response from me she decided to continue ¨C That means you need to not only speak to me telepathically but also read my mind. I, in fact, responded you just haven¡¯t heard me that¡¯s all. - So I need to invade your mind in order for this to work? ¨C Some of my outrage must have slipped as she made an apologetic face. Actually, I just noticed her face was not built in a way that could convey emotions so why did I felt she did that face? I think I may read her emotions and my mind translated the information into something I could understand. - No, my lord. Almost anyone who talked telepathically with a psionic or mind mage quickly learn to designate a special ¡°space¡± for the lack of better term to which they send their responses so the telepath can easily get them. Otherwise both parties would have to be gifted for such conversation to work. - That makes sense. By the way, in the other core¡¯s memories, I saw black shadow who killed it. Do you know what that was? - Certainly sire. It was black grootslang, your servant as well, just from a different collective. ¨C Anticipating my question she continued ¨C We retain our personality, our sense of self, but we are constantly connected to our brethren. Solo missions away from collective are the single most terrifying thing for my kind. Because of that, we felt the term ¡°hive¡± would not suit our kind so we decided on collective. There are 5 collectives as there were 5 queens created by you, they are azure, golden, silver, black and green grootslangs. - So the others are listening in? - No, sire. We can choose how closely we are connected. I would never betray your confidence by relaying our conversation. That was a relief, the very idea of tens of grootslags, who clearly revered me as their creator, watching me as I commit one blunder after another made me queasy. I didn¡¯t think I was doing sufficiently terrible to cause a rebellion aimed to overthrow this particular evil overlord but I was sure everyone would prefer to be admired instead of laughed at. At that moment I realized I didn¡¯t have rather important piece of information. - Would you, by any chance, know how many grootslangs belong to me? - Yes, my lord. Every collective maintains 5000 battle ready combatants. - You are saying there are 25000 grootslangs here?! -No, my lord. ¨C Her response calmed me somewhat ¨C There are much more, that are just the warriors and mages. ¨C I rejoiced too quickly. This was way too much for me. My aide continued oblivious to my inner turmoil ¨C Each collective also consists of voices, shapers, builders, healers, caretakers, farmers to name the few and of course the queen. While the number of combatants is mostly fixed the total tends to fluctuate, but it should be around 100000 total. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.- But the other core had only 50 puny goblins! How can I possibly have that many being lower rank? - My Lord! How can you compare yourself to that trash ¨C her outraged cry threatened to bring down the ceiling on our heads. At least I managed to prove my steadfast companion could be shocked. After few minutes she managed to collect herself and continue as if nothing had happened ¨C My lord, you know I am B rank, yes? Good, you may not know this but that other core had an SSS creature that was almost ready to cross to epic rank. Before you ask the rank is not absolute, the quality of the species matter. Even if a rat or a snail ever reached legendary ranks it will never be more than a snack to H rank dragon. That core¡¯s base wasn¡¯t even a precious gem and you are a blue diamond which is not only hardest gem there is but also a rare variant. Most cores need to be epic rank to be called truly self-aware and intelligent. But you are not just that, you managed to create ancient and long extinct race before you even learned how to use your basic powers. If that was not impressive enough you sacrificed pieces of yourself to give us life. So how could we not obey when you commanded the first queens to build you a dungeon, defend it and kill possible threats to you? We hadn¡¯t had enough numbers to ensure your safety so we got them! ¨C By the end of the long speech, and only politeness was stopping me from calling it a full-blown rant, she ran out of air. Thanks gods for small miracles. Seeing her drawing breath to continue I quickly interrupted her. - I thank you for upholding your duty beyond what could be expected. I am impressed. And that I was. It wasn¡¯t said just to placate her or a trick to manage and keep my minions happy. I was genuinely taken by their loyalty. It took real integrity to do this for how long they did it. If you considered they were guarding a useless floating gem who may have turned their lives into living hell upon awakening, just because it could, their devotion surely deserved a reward. With that, I started formulating a plan. I would like to speak to the original queens, they deserve to hear my thanks personally. My lord¡­ - she stopped unsure how to proceed ¨C They are dead. Nowadays the 5th generation of queens reign. According to our legends, we were brought back by you over 250000 years ago. My kind rarely finds the strength to carry on living after 20th millennium, the first queens managed to wait over 100000 years. At the end, they laid one special egg and passed to it all their knowledge, power and the very essence that you granted them. Each following queen is stronger thanks to that and we grow with them. She was expecting me to condemn them for not seeing the task to completion. I vowed to myself then to make it clear to everyone how proud I was to have such dedicated subjects. That, however, had to wait until I got stronger. - I understand. I need your help, how do I grow stronger and advance the rank? - My lord, you need to claim a wider area as your own. ¨C She was clearly grateful for the change of topic ¨C You do that by spreading your influence and power over your surroundings, when mana density reaches certain point you assume direct control over the area. You could say it becomes part of the dungeon, part of you. You also need to remember that your mana will permeate the walls, which will make them close to indestructible, but there is a limit to that. After a few meters the amount of mana needed to gain few centimetres will become sky-high and that is why rooms and floors are the best way to spread your influence. I decided to follow her advice and focused solely on expanding my influence. It was almost effortless as my mana needed only to follow ready paths and rooms created by my grootslangs. Soon I have claimed, or maybe reclaimed would fit better, all 70 rooms. I tried feeling the plan of my new expanded dungeon. My room was connected to a single narrow room, clearly designed as a final defence in case of invasion. It had narrow passages and deep pits allowing even a small unit to hold off advancing enemies. Further along was an inner ring with 5 palaces, including hatcheries, where the queens with their elite guards resided, it was impossible to get to me without first getting through them. Each collective dwellings then followed the same plan; living quarters connected with a nursery on one side and a farm or rather a ranch providing food on the other; then 3 separate specialised barracks with training grounds leading to a single defence room ¨C each collective assumed sole responsibility for those. Next were narrow passages, which allowed only one grootslang at the time to pass, connecting collectives again. Out of this inner dungeon led only one exit guarded by two defence rooms ¨C those were garrisoned by the collectives¡¯ combined forces. Not that enemies would have an easy time getting even to this entrance, just before it was a combination of trap room, gigantic maze room and another trap room. Up to this point, all walls were made of the same material as in my crystal room ¨C void obsidian, it was practically indestructible even without the reinforcement of my mana. It had an additional benefit of absorbing magical attacks. Compared to that setup the rest of my dungeon was almost ordinary, there were 26 rooms, made of standard rock, with random dangers such as traps, monsters raised by grootslangs and forked paths ¨C the longest such path was 4 rooms leading to huge pitfall. Worth noting was that it had no entrance or connection to the outside. My sidekick explained to me that when they planned an excursion to the surface they gathered a force in the room and sealed it tightly. Only then the expedition connected the room to the outside. Apparently, if the dungeon made a connection to the surface even once its instinct never allowed to close it. I was different enough that no one was sure if that restriction would apply to me as well but no one planned to risk it. I had a premonition I had to make that connection pretty soon anyway but there was still time. Having finished my mental inventory of my dungeon I decided to deal with new notifications.
Congratulations! You have expanded your dungeon to 70 rooms. Warning! You won¡¯t be able to create more rooms without additional floors Warning! You won¡¯t be able to add more floors without the proper entrance
Congratulations! You have advanced to rank G lvl 50/100 You have recovered all HP and Mana Your maximum HP and Mana was doubled All your skills increased in efficiency All your stats were enhanced
Perfect. Now I should be able to proceed with my plan. - I have reclaimed my dungeon. The main mission of your kind has finished ¨C she seemed confused at this point ¨C Your kind will be crucial to my future plans but I believe in paying my dues. So far your kind went above and beyond the call of duty and should be rewarded. I name you Areth and proclaim you a champion of all grootslangs! Chapter 4 - Arnar the Reckless? I was not sure what to expect and for a second nothing happened then all my power rushed out of me in huge burst towards Areth. In a flash of insight I realised what had to be done to name somebody and with this realisation come regret; I have crippled her. How could I, weak G rank core, have enough power to name an ancient monster? She was a B rank and although my action would give her more power it would also rob all future progress from her. Not a fraction of the second passed and I sensed her acceptance and gratitude mixed with a small pang of regret. I wanted to reward her, I wanted to surprise her and in a way, I was going to succeed. I think her gratitude hurt the most, she knew what was going to happen to her, she knew what it would cost her, yet she didn¡¯t hold my stupidity, my rashness against me. I didn¡¯t deserve her, I didn¡¯t deserve them all and their millennia of dedication, yet this revelation would accomplish nothing, admitting it aloud would be even worse. It would only hurt them and only I was to blame here. So in that I didn¡¯t deserve her, I didn¡¯t deserve them all and their millennia of dedication, yet this revelation would accomplish nothing, admitting it aloud would be even worse. It would only hurt them and only I was to blame here. So in that second, I vowed to myself to do better, to be better, to be worthy of their sacrifices. I have made them and in doing so chained them to myself, I gave them eternal life and all they were allowed to do with it was to serve me. Those were unpleasant thoughts, unpleasant truths, and here came another one. She had not expected to be rewarded, this was her reason of existence, the purpose for which she was created and it was my selfish desire to reward her, to unburden my conscience. It would not be enough to do better in future, I had to do better at that exact moment. So I pulled at the very source of my power, every little scrap I found was sent to her and it still was not enough. In desperation I decided to send everything I was to her, I put my entire will into this task. Then the darkness came. This time awakening was not that bad, just little confusing, as I went straight from, well, not being awake, to full awareness of everything my dungeon. She was right next to me, glaring. It was unsettling, imagine humongous snake unblinkingly staring at you from less than 10 cm knowing it would take her less than a sneeze to obliterate you. I wondered how long she could maintain this state and decided to pretend to be still asleep. - I know you are awake ¨C she was clearly displeased ¨C It was 3 weeks this time. You need to stop doing the impossible or one day you will shatter yourself. - I know. I already realised how foolish I was earlier and I will not attempt anything similar as long as I am not sure I can do it safely, and before getting all possible information beforehand. - You do not understand ¨C She seemed resigned and there was something else¡­ fear? ¨C If you had carried out what you had planned, at worst I would have never advanced further. I won¡¯t lie to you, it would have been devastating, but I would have gained a name. You can¡¯t imagine what it means to us monsters. We betray our clans, families and accept centuries of slavery just for a chance of having a name. Everyone would have celebrated with me, not only my clan but all collectives. ¨C I will admit she was making sense. I was willing to die just to retain my name why would she be different? Then she continued. ¨C But you were not satisfied with that. You had to risk everything to give me more than you should have and could have. Have you considered what would have happened if you had died or entered another thousands year or even longer slumber? What would it mean to our entire collective? I have seen other beings, humans, elves, dwarves even orks wonder what was their purpose, I have seen how lost they seemed and how much it costs some of them to find strength to carry on, to live another day. ¨C I was getting lost what had it to do with anything? - We Grootslangs have no such problems, we know why we exist, we know our purpose. We were created by you, to serve you. If we had lost that then it would be even worse than those pitiful creatures searching for direction, as we would know what we were supposed to be yet would be forever unable to fulfil our purpose. They would have never forgiven me if I was a reason we had lost you. I would have never forgiven myself. I was unsure how to reply. It is not every day you are told you are someone¡¯s reason for existing, I mean I did create them but never expected them to be this devoted. To be honest I wasn¡¯t thinking then just reacting. I wasn¡¯t thinking when I decided to do everything not to harm her with naming either. How stupid I was. I let myself to be overcome with emotions and reacted once more. The fact that I didn¡¯t want to have such responsibility, that I never planned to create an entire race to serve me, was unimportant. I was not going to say sorry guys I made a mistake, good luck and take care. No matter how uncomfortable I was I had to claim responsibility and I had to get strong so I could remain being their purpose for as long as they would have me. - I am sorry. Not for doing what I did as it was necessary. There may be times when I will risk my life and you will think I have done it recklessly, there may be a time you will be right but there are things I will not abide, that I cannot stand and remain myself. What I am sorry for, is doing thing rashly without proper consideration and advice and for putting your collective at risk. - I guess I should be grateful for that, this is a start at least. ¨C There was a bitter smile accompanying these words but at least she didn¡¯t appear angry anymore¡­ or scared. Seeing her scared was not something I ever wish to repeat. ¨C Check your notifications, I know how much it took not to start with them. ¨C She said moving towards the exit. ¨C And thank you. I briefly considering following her or checking the collectives but Areth was right, I needed to check my notifications.
Name Arnar
Rank: D Level 90/100
HP 20000/50000 Mana 5000/75000
Floors 1 Rooms 70
Titles: 6 Skills 11
Traits: 2 Affinities 3
I was not expecting such changes, I was sure my health was going to be abysmal due to using Transcendent Rage. Actually, I wasn¡¯t enraged when I attempted to properly name Areth but nothing else could explain what have happened. I had to stop assuming things and today would be a good day as any to do exactly that. I decided traits and affinities can wait after I deal with notification as they were most likely to explain my sudden jump in stats.
Congratulations! You have named your first monster! Do you wish to bind it? Y/N
Warning! No option was chosen. A choice is required! Do you wish to bind your named monster? Y/N
Warning! No option was chosen. A choice is required! The default option is chosen.
Warning! Binding impossible ¨C target rank is too high!
Congratulations! Your monster Areth decided to voluntarily undergo the binding. You have bound Areth soul to your core. In case of death, you will be able to revive her. The cost depends on the race, rank and power of revived individual and can be lowered by retrieving the original body of the target. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.Warning! If not performed within 72 hours the target stats and rank will deteriorate while the cost will remain the same.
The good news was I could ensure the most important creatures would not be forever lost in case of their defeat, at least as long as I lived. I guessed the rank difference was a safeguard to make sure I could both safely control the monster and could actually afford the resurrection cost. Having Areth die would be a terrible mistake at this point as I doubted I could afford the mana to bring her back. When I had the chance I needed to check if I could channel mana needed for resurrection or if it had to be paid up front. I decided to try not worrying over having important decisions made for me as there was nothing I could really do about that. Well, maybe beyond doing my damnedest to stay conscious next time I actually had to make them. Knowing Areth had to get a boost from naming I had postponed looking through rest of the notification and checked her stats. In the process I have learned I now always knew where she was and could check her status at will without having her close or focusing on her.
Name Areth
Race Grootslang (Legendary) Subspecies Azure Grootslang
Class The Divine Voice Subclass Champion
Rank ¦Ã Level 1/150
HP 500000/500000 Mana 20000/20000
Titles 3 Skills 8
I stared in shock at the information window, not knowing where to start. Firstly she was no longer an ancient creature but legendary, secondly, she was no longer common rank but advanced to the epic rank. She wasn¡¯t just an epic ranked monster, she had skipped 8 full ranks and arrived in the middle of the tier as gamma rank. There was also the small detail of her half million hit points! This was ten times my health! No way she would be allowed to be anywhere outside the collectives I wouldn¡¯t be able to resurrect her with a year¡¯s worth of mana! There was also a bright side to this as I doubt anyone would expect anything close to her class in common rank dungeon so she would be perfect as the last line of defence for me. I was rather confident in her fighting and winning over lower legendary ranks due to her legendary bloodline. My last consolation was my foreboding skill, it wasn¡¯t going off so my reckless actions wouldn¡¯t lead me to certain doom this time. Time for the rest of the notifications then.
Congratulations! Your monster Areth¡¯s bloodline purity reached legendary rank! She is one step closer to her legendary ancestor Grootslang From now on Grootslangs in your dungeon will have a chance to refine their bloodlines with each rank advancement. The purity of eggs increased and there will be a small chance new grootslangs will hatch as legendary monsters.
I was both annoyed at and glad for having insight skill. Annoyed because if I was born with the knowledge each dungeon was supposed to innately have I wouldn¡¯t need it. Glad as it helped me actually make sense of those hardly informative information windows. I wondered briefly if someone made them as vague as possible on purpose or just had been a sadistic jerk. Thanks to the insight I knew that with every rank up my grootslangs¡¯ blood purity would increase. By how much was not fixed and depended equally on skill, potential, effort and luck. The effect would be mostly invisible until sufficient threshold was reached and the species advanced.
Congratulations! You have overcome limitations of the skill Transcendent Rage. Your skill advanced to Transcendent Will [¦Å] Lvl: 10/100 In critical situations you are able to overcome all limitations and bring about the impossible. Warning! You are unable to stop this skill until the change is completed. If you run out of mana your life is consumed instead.
Congratulations! You have gained new title: Namer of Myths The naming of ancient, legendary, mythical creatures will be easier and will grant additional bonuses to the named one. Reviver of Myths title will grant increased bonuses to mythical creatures.
Congratulations! Binding a higher rank monster caused increase in rank You have advanced to rank D lvl 90/100 You have recovered all HP and Mana Your maximum HP and Mana increased All your skills increased in efficiency All your stats were enhanced
My first epic skill and as a common dungeon at that. The sad part was I never planned to really use it as if I ever needed it then things went to shit already. That said, anything that could keep me breathing, or whatever was a dungeon equivalent, was welcomed. The title reinforced my other title and granted it new bonus which was nice. Yet same as with the skill, it was mostly useless. Besides grootslangs, which I intended to keep as last resort, I had a hard time imagining getting any ancient creature in my humble dungeon, I was sure they weren¡¯t spawning under every rock. Level up notification was useless as well, I doubt I ever would miss increase in rank and there probably was no one scatter-brained enough to not notice either.
Congratulations! You have acquired new trait: Lord of the Serpents You have gained an advanced understanding of the serpents. All creatures with relevant bloodlines will grow stronger and advance quicker. Evolutionary requirements will be lowered while inside the dungeon. Serpents racial enemies (Arachnids, Rocs, Mongeese) will be harder to attract and less effective.
I was unsure of the exact difference between title and trait but my gut instinct was telling me traits were generally weaker and linked with behaviour or preferences while titles were awarded after accomplishing a feat. Of course, as with everything in this world, there were exceptions and I was sure there were legendary traits and trash titles. This trait in particular although welcomed given my affiliation with grootslangs had a major disadvantage as it boosted only one species but weakened three others. I suspected it was even more far reaching as if I met lord of spiders in the future chances were they would try to destroy me if they could.
Congratulations! You have acquired new trait: Powerful Mind All your mental faculties are enhanced. You will subconsciously choose crafty solutions over simple ones and will avoid using brute strength.
Yes, so my previous assumptions were correct, traits were a double-edged sword. I certainly preferred being crafty over being a mindless brute. However; sometimes simple solutions were more effective and more important cheaper and quicker to implement. I doubted it would influence me to the degree forcing me to choose vastly inferior complicated fix over easy one but when things were hectic or would produce similar results I would have to double check to avoid making mistakes. The other foreseeable consequence would be me overthinking every minor and major decision crippling me ever more than ignoring having this trait.
Congratulations! You have now 3 or more affinities. From now on your affinities will have a direct influence on you and your monsters. Creatures with aligned affinities will grow stronger and evolve easier. Creatures with opposing affinities will be weakened and some evolutionary paths may be blocked.
Affinities
Superior Affinities -
Greater Affinities Soul, Mind
Strong Affinities -
Standard Affinities -
Lesser Affinities -
Weak Affinities Earth
I suspected there was something making all the dungeons distinctive but I was not sure what turned some into undead tombs, others into Minotaur¡¯s mazes and others into elemental havens. Now I got my answer. My insight this time almost overwhelmed me with hidden meanings but sadly there was too much of it for me to make heads and tails out of it. The suspicious thing was that some evolutions would be blocked, then wouldn¡¯t it mean some would also open up? I knew I needed to be careful with Soul affinity as it was associated with necromancy and that was a can of worms I knew not to open. I couldn¡¯t ignore this affinity either as it had to be my innate one. Mind came from Areth and Earth from the core I had absorbed. At least I knew I had a way to increase my affinities by absorbing aligned creatures. The other questions had to wait as I had no way of answering then. Given chance, I really wanted to know if I could have opposing affinities and what would happen then.
Congratulations! Your Affinity (Mind) gave you new skill: Thought Assimilation (Passive) [S] Lvl: Max You will slowly gain new knowledge from any sentient present on your territory. The speed of assimilation is affected by numerous factors including but not limited to: the condition of the target, target familiarity with the subject, numbers of targets, rank and willpower of the target. You cannot actively choose knowledge acquired but it will be affected by your affinities and desires.
Congratulations! Your Affinity (Soul) gave you new skill: Soul Inference [¦Ä] Lvl: 1/200 Once every 3 days you may target recently deceased sentient and attempt to gain new knowledge. The amount of information available depends on your and target rank, the complexity of information, the strength of the soul and target¡¯s state of mind at the moment of death. Warning! In order for the skill to work, death must have occurred in your territory and body must be present. The soul must not be protected or otherwise restricted.
Those were the last notifications and the first that brought real joy to me. I have already realised that my most important weapon will be knowledge so new ways of acquiring it would suit me the best. At least in the long run. The first one would really come handy down the line when I have grown and attracted lots of visitors. Short term it would help me understand grootslangs better. The second one was the one that helped me formulate the plan of action. I was going to create an entrance soon but first comes getting to know my inhabitants. Chapter 5 - Intruders Finally, I was ready to take one of the most important steps as a dungeon, to create an entrance. An entrance wasn¡¯t just a hole or a cave that connected the dungeon to the outside world, it was dungeon¡¯s signature, its trademark, the first thing every visitor saw. No serious dungeon would skimp on creating a proper one. And I was stalling. Such a simple thing yet I was anxious if the other core¡¯s memory were true once created there was no going back. I would have to deal with the outside and I was terribly unprepared. I was nowhere near strong enough to survive any serious attempt on my life and I knew that all hinged on creating some sort of deal or understanding with nearby powers. The problem was, I had no idea what those powers were, or what they could possibly want. To postpone inevitable I decided to go over the last 7 weeks that led to this moment. I had started with differences between subtypes of my grootslangs. Azure grootslangs were the strongest psionics which allowed their voices, who were a cross between leaders and priests, and shapers, who were advanced builders, to be the best among the collectives. I expected them to build using advanced telekinesis and was shocked when I saw them literally shaping the rock into the desired form. It turned out they had a lesser form of my ability ¨C weak concept shaping (B). This discovery led me to some experimentation and eventually I managed to create a lesser version of 2 of my skills. Foreboding turned into ¡°lesser sense danger (D)¡± giving the user chance to discover threats and hostile being in 30-meter radius, while ¡°Enhanced farsight¡± became ¡°simple farsight (E+)¡± and allowed eagle view of a single room or a small radius area centred no further than 10 metres from the caster. What made both useful was no need for line of sight so locked doors, walls or corners weren¡¯t an obstacle. Both were extremely simple but for scouts could mean the difference between life and death. Transferring them to the collective was a choir but gave me a skill ¡°skill bestowal (D)¡±, I could give one skill up to D-rank to one being present in my dungeon every 3 hours. It worked even better when I found out how the collectives pass their history and lore. As they have no hands they don¡¯t use a written language, they do understand the concept but find it limiting and primitive, which shouldn¡¯t be surprising considering they are a race with advanced psionic abilities. They found a way to store their memories in memory obelisk standing in the middle of each collective. As this is rather impractical for mundane knowledge and everyday learning, they used the same technique to create memory stones. The best capacity had a diamond but they were limited to materials available in the vicinity so they settled for onyx. Areth revealed that a master was able to store entire skill inside such stone, much similar to skill books used by other races. It took me absorbing over one hundred such stones, thankfully most empty, to understand how to create them. At first, I had to create empty ones and fill them individually but after some practice, I learned how to create already filled ones. The best part was it cost me nothing but mana and I was able to produce several thousand every day. Shortly after every grootslang had both skills. Golden grootslangs had weaker psionic power but a high affinity with light, which made them astounding healers and gardeners. The lack of sunlight and my inactivity made it impossible for them to grow pretty much anything but mushrooms and even that was challenging. They had made do with light crystals and glowing moss but the true revolution had come when golden grootslangs modified their light spells to nourish the mushrooms. Of course, now I actively supplied ambient mana for the whole dungeon so any plant would grow much better than outside as long I maintained a high enough concentration of mana. I remembered Areth amusement when I asked if they ate those mushrooms. I admit the idea was stupid but at least I learned they used them to breed various monsters. There were huge but docile reptiles for food, small bug-like creatures for silk and some types of slime for magic components. Out of the whole lot, only the mushrooms showed potential for combat, limited as it might have been. Silver grootslangs had an additional sonic attack, were smaller and the most versatile of all subspecies. They also had the best burrowers responsible for expanding the territory and drilling tunnels. Well, drilling would be the wrong word as they vibrated their bodies rapidly and moved through rock like through water. After their passage, nothing but rubble remained.Sadly, the burrowers weren''t suited for combat as they were three times slower when burrowing and they made enough noise to warn the whole dungeon of their position. Black and green grootslangs were similar as they were the strongest physically and were the best fighters. Black grootslangs had high affinity with darkness which made them better scouts, assassins and guards and green had an acid attack which made them deadly both at a range and up close. Surprisingly they were also the most skilled artist out of the collectives, especially their sculptors. They could spend years carefully letting small drops of acid burrow and flow through rock creating fascinating shapes. The sheer patience required spoke volumes about the race capable of dedicating years for something, although beautiful, lacking practical uses. A rather loud cough reminded me that not all members of this noble race possessed this virtue. I briefly considered asking Areth how she as a serpent could cough but decided it was not worth The Look. In the past weeks, she mastered The Look and it was a weird mixture of respect, veneration and wonder how anyone could be this stupid. If her aim was for me to filter my questions then she certainly had accomplished that. ¨C "Yes, Areth?" ¨C I asked. ¨C "Not to hurry you, sire but weren¡¯t you going to create an entrance?" ¨C "Yes, Areth I was. I was just considering the past events. By the way didn¡¯t I ask you to call me Arnar?" ¨C "Yes, sire, you did." ¨C "And you are going to ignore my request?" ¨C "It is not proper, sire." ¨C The silence stretched for several minutes before she added ¨C "If you wish so I will try." ¨C "Thank you Areth, it means a lot to me." ¨C "But only in private and when the occasion calls for it I will use all proper forms. Now create that damn entrance." I decided to quit while I was ahead and promptly started. I could have done it as every other dungeon by slowly moulding rock to my will, yet concept visualisation allowed for much greater control and precision so I decided to use it almost exclusively despite the higher cost. I imagined a wide portal allowing up to 3 people entering at once guarded by a decorative column on each side. I settled on tree and floral ornamentations with the exception of tympanum over the entrance depicting a coiled grootslang with wings. When I was satisfied with the overall design I filled it with mana, the rock shimmered and the entrance was ready. All that was left was waiting for the first guests.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.
I was in the middle of trying to combine two skills into one memory stone when I got a strange feeling of wrongness. A quick scan of my dungeon revealed four creatures at the entrance. It would take them some time to reach any vital parts of the dungeon so I decided to finish the experiment. Or would have if the core hadn¡¯t exploded at that moment, at least after the first explosion I had learned to do it in an unused room instead of my core room. I knew they could store S class skills and one such skill needed tens if not hundreds of times more information than D rank skill so why did it reject the second skill? Having nothing else to do and not being eager for another failure I focused on the intruders. Each of them was bipedal, stood erect and had two dexterous arms. Each was wearing rough and used clothes, the only armour I could see were quilted jackets. Their weapons were equally pathetic; one axe that seemed more suited to chopping wood than to battle, two short bows, which I assumed were good for hunting but a doubtful choice in the dungeon and a large dagger or if you were generousa really short sword. Watching them I recalled my conversation with Areth, she claimed that we didn¡¯t need to worry about getting people to come. She couldn¡¯t explain it but according to her some unseen force made sure, once the entrance was made, the dungeon was discovered. Considering how poorly they were equipped to deal with anything moderately hostile not to mention a proper dungeon it was hard not to believe there was something to that theory. They were clearly discussing something and pointing in the direction of the next room, the problem was I had no idea what they said. For all I could tell, theargument was if they should proceed and it ended when the biggest and hairiest one yelled something and went ahead into my depths. That sealed their fate as I already decided to kill my first intruders, I simply understood too little of the world and unfortunately for them quickest way to rectify this was for them to die. When they were in the middle of the second room I sent a signal to my two black grootslang assassins and they sprung up from underground. One mind freeze and 4 bites later the unpleasant business was concluded. The amount of mana I have gained was pitiful but I was expecting that from them being G-rank. They died because I needed a target for my Soul Inference skill. I targeted the leader, least he could do was to pay for having his party killed. I decided to focus on three aspects; what a dungeon was to them, what motivated them and the language they spoke. Narrowing the focus really helped as I shortly knew why they decided to risk this expedition and also learned the proper term for them would be adventurers. When a new dungeon was discovered most guilds would pay good money for such information, according to their memories up to 10 gold. Such lucrative prize tempted them into losing their lives which was unsurprising considering the wealthiest of them earned 5 silvers a year and here they could get twenty times that in few days. I knew now that most new dungeons had only a few rooms, never really more than 5, and monsters rarely exceeded G rank. This coupled with the quality of species being low would allow them to easily sweep a standard dungeon, not that this was their intention, they simply wanted any proof of me being a dungeon in order to cash in the guild rewards. There was quite a competition for claiming dungeons as there were seven factions particularly interested; the adventurers¡¯ guild, the mages¡¯ guild; the traders¡¯ guild, the crafters¡¯ guild, The church, the imperial guard and local nobles. The faction who first laid claim usually got to manage the dungeon and it was their responsibility to destroy it if it proved to be too dangerous. Apparently, the empire tamed the dungeons by carefully developing them and when they grow powerful enough they already were subconsciously reliant on their masters. Both sides got benefits from this as really few dungeons got destroyed and factions got a good source of materials, equipment and place to train weaker members. The biggest drawback for me was that those factions usually restricted their dungeons from growing past legendary rank. I needed to show both usefulness and find a way to assure them of not being a threat. I have also accomplished my second aim and learned what would be a proper reward. This was actually more complicated than I assumed as in the Far Eastern Flatlands there were over seventy dungeons. I was quite fortunate as the area I was in, the Striped Beetle Expanse was poorer than average and mostly undeveloped. I was the third dungeon in one hundred kilometres radius from the biggest city Roseford, the capital of Roseford County. I was also the closest one, as far as my first adventurers knew it was less than a day so I assumed it would be around 20 kilometres. This allowed me to be more flexible with the compensation but still if I gave out too little no one would risk their life. Giving out too much would be even worse as I would get hordes of overpowered adventurers eager for an easy gain. The most desired were things which would help adventurers survive with the focus on good equipment and skill books making everyone crazy with greed. Then there would be rare materials for potions or enchantments, surprisingly gold was rather low on the priority list especially with higher rank adventurers. To my surprise almost all ¡°tamed¡± dungeons had one mining level with no to little danger and easy first floor containing useful low-level plants. It actually made sense as according to that unlucky fellow most dungeons quite quickly got to 5 floors and devoting one floor to get people, who would under other circumstances never enter the dungeon, to absorb their mana passively wasn¡¯t that bad idea. Plus it gave you brownie points with your guild, what not to like. I failed with my third goal. I learned the spoken language but either his soul was too weak and gave out after giving up answers for previous questions or he had never actually had a good grasp on the language he was speaking. He also couldn¡¯t write or read so no luck there either. The fact that my serpentine friends had no need for it made it harder as it was a wholly new concept for me. There was no sense in brooding over this as my gains this time were substantial and even the language thing was a partial success as I was now proficient in high serpentine and had a basic grasp on both Imperial and Eastern Flatlands dialect. As an afterthought I absorbed their corpses and equipment, it gave me elementary knowledge of human anatomy and a reference point for low-quality armours and weapons. If I combined it with things, which came from past grootslangs¡¯ raids, I absorbed those past weeks I should be able to make good quality loot which wasn¡¯t too eye-popping. I needed to ask Areth how they got that overpowered stuff in the first place, but that had to wait. I had an area for beginners to plan and build! Chapter 6 - Scouting Party It took five days to complete my entrance area and it was mostly due to my stubbornness. I decided to stick to one floor for now but wanted to add a few more rooms, which proved hard. With each one completed the resistance increased and the last one of the seven took me 2 days alone. Making another although theoretically possible would probably take a whole week and all my mana. Additionally now maintaining the dungeon takes three times as much mana. The unexpected gain of this experiment was realising that information provided by status windows weren¡¯t to be treated as absolute, but were a pretty good indication. Expanding by 10% increased mana expenditure by 200% so 70 room limit was mostly true. All that was left was to decide how much rooms should adventurers be able to access and the boss for the area. The very idea was quite a baffling one but apparently, it was common practice to make the last hurdle especially challenging and in turn increase the rewards given. I checked my newly created dungeon map and settled on 5 main rooms with 3 dead ends for 9 rooms total. I blocked further access with a stone slab enchanted with an indestructability rune, which sounded impressive but in reality was less so. The door would be protected only as long as the rune didn¡¯t run out of mana but connecting it to my mana pool made sure no random intruder would be getting through. If they tried to go through the wall they were in for a nasty surprise, the void obsidian gave headaches even to my silver grootslang burrowers. As for the mobs, which was quite a curious name for common dungeon monsters, I settled for two basic types of mushrooms; howlers and spore mushrooms. Howler family had purple caps and white stalks. The only difference from the Grey Swamp Marasmius that were coincidentally placed right next to them were yellow gills (Marasmius had white pores) and slightly bigger cap. Of course, there was another significant difference Marasmius had strong healing properties when prepared correctly. Howlers attacked anyone who approached closer than 5 meters with quite a strong sonic howl, effective up to 20 meters. It continued for 5 minutes after the offending object left it detection range. In the first rooms they were always solitary or surrounded by benign mushrooms but later they were either grouped together or accompanied by other varieties. One such variety was a slimmer screamer that emitted concentrated sound wave in a 30¡ã cone. It had shorter detection of only 3 meters but its range was 30 meters and due to concentration it inflicted triple damage. For some variety the red-capped alarm mushroom was placed in few selected spots, it could only sense things in 2 meter radius but if disturbed it set off all mushrooms in the room, as a compensation I gave it few rare alchemic properties like increasing potency of potions and granting night vision if proper concocting procedure was followed. The catch was that you had to remove it mostly intact or it became useless. The last howler present only in the side room with the treasure chest was called conductor. It was shorter with brighter cup and could enhance all nearby mushrooms¡¯ attacks by synchronising their frequency. For the spore mushrooms, I followed asimple pattern all were short with wide stems and resembled Stonewall Phelodon, which could cure poison with the exemption of bright dots. Those were colour coded spores; red caused itching; black caused 10-second blindness and yellow caused dizziness. They were placed in quite visible places so as long sufficient attention was paid they could be avoided easily. They released spores if they sensed any intruder in 1-meter radius and some lacked spores on one side indicating they were safe to approach from that side. The only real danger was if you stepped on one as it then released all its spores at once. In one of the dead ends, I placed a dense garden of valuable Triple Shields which were an ingredient for potion significantly increasing mana regeneration and it had no hostile mushrooms besides strongest colony of spore mushrooms placed on the ceiling. That should teach them how important constant vigilance is. As for rewards the ingredients were sufficient prize for general rooms and to promote exploring I hid some quality weapons among bigger mushrooms¡¯ colonies. There were two exceptions to that as chest guarded by conductor shroom had random alchemy recipe for mushrooms available on this level and few silvers, surprisingly it was just silvered copper with silver being less than 5%. The second chest contained already prepared potions with higher than normal potency and a masterwork weapon, not enchanted as it would be too much but still better than your average E rank adventurer could afford. It was of course placed in the boss room. To encourage guilds to treat me with importance I placed a silver chest next to the stone slab blocking access to the rest of dungeons. It was made unmovable which was bound to disappoint few intruders but the contents should more than make up for it. I placed there 10 silvers, one enchanted dagger and 2 sets of skill crystals, of course, it wouldn¡¯t be refilled after every boss fight but randomly when I felt like it, it was openable only after beating the boss so no one would know if it contained anything or not. Final room had only hostile mushrooms with the exception of Yellow Chalice Lichen, which was D-rank reagent, placed in the middle of each colony requiring the adventurers to be careful in combat in order to not destroy it accidentally. Although a mushroom boss seemed fitting I didn¡¯t want an immobile boss that could be easily taken out from afar. With my options being pitifully small I decided to adapt centipedes my healers used to get mild anaesthetic. I created 10 of them in an empty room and poured mana in, stopping when they reached 2meters. Shortly after creation, they started fighting among themselves and after few hours only one was left. I focused on it and willed it to die, which with such a simple organism wasn¡¯t hard, giving me a simple schematic of the new mob. It was usable after few modifications as I reduced its venom potency, strengthened the carapace and allowed it to rapidly recover health by consuming Yellow Chalice Lichen. If the adventurers were taking their time killing it then it would run to one of the colonies,eat the Lichen and get back to fight at full strength. It needed to be killed quickly or the mushrooms had to be destroyed reducing potential gain and presenting a nice issue for adventurers. It didn¡¯t deserve the name but it was a new species so I decided to collectively name them gardening centipedes. I also created two variants, one with blue carapace being more nimble, with increased health and boasting a stronger more valuable venom. The second was red had much stronger natural armour and instead of running to heal itself it would attack with increased vigour. Apprising yielded three satisfactory results.
Race Gardening Centipede Subspecies -
Class - Subclass -
Rank E Level 1/100
HP 1000/1000 Mana 50/50
Titles - Skills 2
Skills
Weak Paralysing Venom [E] lvl1/10 (Racial) Venom capable of paralysing the target. Effects vary depending on the subject, weak ones may be paralysed for longer and strong ones may be unaffected.
Engorge [F] 1/5 Eating vast quantity of chosen food (Yellow chalice lichen) will restore health and mana to maximum levels. After each use skill will be unavailable for 3 minutes. Cannot be used more than 5 times per hour.
Race Gardening Centipede Subspecies Blue Gardening Centipede
Class - Subclass -
Rank E+ Level 1/100
HP 1500/1500 Mana 250/250
Titles - Skills 3
Skills
Paralysing Venom [D] lvl1/15 (Racial) Venom capable of paralysing the target. Effects vary depending on the subject, weak ones may be paralysed for longer and strong ones may be unaffected.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Engorge [F] 1/5 Eating vast quantity of chosen food (Yellow chalice lichen) will restore health and mana to maximum levels. After each use skill will be unavailable for 3 minutes. Cannot be used more than 5 times per hour.
Agile focus [D] 1/15 For 30 seconds damage you inflict is reduced by 20% but your speed and reflex is doubled.
Race Gardening Centipede Subspecies Red Gardening Centipede
Class - Subclass -
Rank E++ Level 1/100
HP 1250/1250 Mana 175/175
Titles - Skills 2
Skills
Weak Paralysing Venom [E] lvl1/10 (Racial) Venom capable of paralysing the target. Effects vary depending on the subject, weak ones may be paralysed for longer and strong ones may be unaffected.
Berserk [F] 1/5 All your attributes are increased with HP loss, up to 150% at 10% HP
Barbed Carapace [D] 1/15 All ranged attacks have 75% chance of being deflected inflicting only 10% of their damage. Melee attacks deal 20% less damage.
Considering their low-quality race they shouldn¡¯t be life-threatening to a well-prepared party of D-rank adventurers with red centipede being a sound trial. To make things easier, centipedes were not allowed to chase adventurers if they escaped the room.
Next morning pair of adventurers showed up at the entrance. The man was wearing agreen hooded cape, studded leather armour and worn but high-quality boots, while the woman was clothed in a brown unadorned robe and similar cape secured with an ornamental buckle bearing adventurers¡¯ guild mark. For weapons, the man had a long practical sword and a short bow that looked to be customised to work well in a dungeon, his partner had a staff she used more as a walking aid than a weapon. The adventurers¡¯ guild seemed to beone of the best guilds for me with the crafters¡¯ guild being the optimal candidate. A close second would be the mages¡¯ guild due to my affinities. The church seemed to overreact and destroy cores just to be safe unless dungeon had a high divine affinity of right alignment. If your divine attribute was infernal or chaotic you were out of luck. The imperial guard was a unified force and dealt with thousands of dungeons across the Empire so another one wasn¡¯t as valued. The best treatment received dungeons affiliated with local nobles but you always could get incompetent family, not to mention if nobles entered conflict with the imperial family or imperial officials the fate of their dungeons became precarious. That said even them would be better than some small minor faction or warriors¡¯ guild stumbling by blind luck upon the dungeon as they lacked the resources and knowledge to properly raise and protect a dungeon. Small grootslang strike team waited prepared to take care of any intruder with undesired affiliation so I sent thema stand down order and called Areth to my room where I would share the whole eventtelepathically. Unfortunately, my basic grasp on the imperial language allowed me to get onlya vague sense of their conversation. It appeared that they were here to scout the whole dungeon, get samples of resources available and if possible make a detailed map. Beating the dungeon seemed to be a secondary goal, in case of unforeseen danger they were to retreat and report the situation to higher ups. Having finished their preparation they started carefully advancing inside. The woman, most likely a healer, stayed few meters behind the man and prepared to assist him. The man with his sword drawn arrived and stopped at the end of the tunnel leading to the first room. He quickly scanned the place and carefully collected one of the mushrooms placing it in the bag. The woman pointed towards my howler saying something quickly getting a nod from the man in return. He picked the stone and thrown it at the suspicious mushroom. Apparently, they were thinking rather lowly of my intelligence if they expected that to work. ¨C "Arnar wasn¡¯t that one of your mobs? Why has nothing happened?" ¨C Areth asked ¨C "You see that was inorganic matter, and I designed them to respond only to organic targets." ¨C I confirmed proudly ¨C "It would be too easy to find proper path in later rooms." ¨C "So if he had thrown that mushroom he picked up earlier he would have got a reaction?" ¨C "Hm, you are right, I will need to change that later to living organic matter. Good catch." In the meantime, the ranger approaching the howler crossed 5-meter boundary and jumped back surprised. Sadly surprise was all he got as my F-rank mob couldn¡¯t do anything more to a C-rank target. After confirming the mushroom had no other means of attack they returned to the opening of the room and waited five minutes for it to quiet down. Seconds later poor fellow¡¯s life ended, skewered by ranger¡¯s arrow. I noticed that I got slightly more mana back than creating him required, must have been due to his growth. I also confirmed that killing humans wasn¡¯t necessary for me to grow as those two C-ranks gave me enough mana to respawn the boss and his whole room three times just by being in my dungeon. When I had a chance I wanted to find average time spent in the dungeon for an adventurer to give equal mana to killing him. By the time I finished my musings they entered the fourth room and discovered spore shroom. The man got hit in the face by itching spores and his companion cast some kind of cleansing spell on him. While being the less effective or threatening, that variation was most unpleasant which probably prompted healer to act. Once again they took a singular sample of everything new and went into a side corridor, where they spend 15 minutes testing different combinations of shrooms present. Alarm shroom actually forced them to retreat as a whole room of mushrooms suddenly producing a cacophony of sounds were too much even for them. ¨C "I am impressed Arnar. This combination is much more effective than anticipated." ¨C "Thanks, I wonder how much damage it actually dealt and if I added more mushrooms would it cause them true difficulty." ¨C "Most likely it wouldn¡¯t work." ¨C Areth answered after quick consideration ¨C "Notice how they are trying to minimalize any damage they deal to your dungeon. If they were truly in danger they would use some area of effect skill and all your mushrooms would get obliterated in seconds." ¨C "So you think they are limiting their skills on purpose? I guessed as much myself but I am unsure why." ¨C "Arnar, if you were a new dungeon that never had any intruders the shock of losing all mobs could potentially kill you. Even if you survived they don¡¯t know how long it would take you to repair all the damage. Weak dungeons would probably need months for what you did in days." Areth was probably right once more, after all, who could guess that I had an army of grootslangs who generated enough mana just being inside to allow me to recreate that section from scratch every 5 seconds and still have the energy to spare. As to prove her point the man in a flash of movement reached the poor alarm shroom and scooped it up and retreated back. By doing this he exposed another flaw in my design, the remaining mushrooms were blissfully unaware. On second thought that probably was for the best as this was supposed to be an easy area. Future explorers would have a choice of carefully avoiding it or destroying it first, decreasing their gains as it was easily worth double of everything else in the room. The final side room on this side proved quite challenging to the pair as they seemed really determined to bring back a sample of every unique monster back with them. They immediately noticed increased attack of shrooms in the room and after killing one of them they compared it to previously collected one.I was unclear how they arrived at the conclusion but they determined there was something else in the room responsible for the change. Making conductor shroom smaller and hiding it among its common brethren was certainly a good choice. Watching them trying to find a culprit was entertaining until the woman grew tired of fruitless exercise and yelled a sharp word that clearly was in a different language. To my surprise, the conductor shroom got illuminated and somehow incapacitated as it stopped coordinating other mushrooms. Shortly after they collected new mushroom and went on to the last unvisited side room. I was unsure how they determined the way but they always picked dead ends first, which if they were to scout the place seemed most efficient. I actually caught myself cheering them on as seeing them pick just the right path to avoid all hostile mushrooms, which I made quite complicated with few sections that forced you to move away from the room¡¯s exit, was much more entertaining and rewarding than killing those weak intruders earlier. That must have been my powerful mind trait at work and I was fine with that as less death meant more adventurers. Just as they were exiting the little maze room the woman accidentally stepped on a hidden spore shroom and the spore cloud that exploded was truly magnificent, it even had enough force behind it to also set other nearby spore shrooms off, all of them being itching spores. It actually took the woman two tries to successfully cast the cleansing spell and judging by the intensity of their voices they didn¡¯t appreciate the effect being proportional to a number of spores released. She forcefully scribed something in her notebook, I was sure it was a warning not to step on the damned shrooms. Curious about their reaction I quickly changed all spores in next room to the itching variety. It didn¡¯t actually require much effort on my part as spore shrooms could produce all varieties of spores just not at the same time. Sadly only the man had fallen into my trap this time and following quick cleanse spell was back to action. They proceeded more carefully now and avoided all other colonies, they only fell for the last one as they didn¡¯t expect mushrooms being placed on the ceiling in such a low-level dungeon. Their mood seemed to improve after they found Triple Shields and they moved towards the boss room briskly. I considered greeting them with variant centipede but decided against it, I wanted to have some surprises left for other adventurers. They must have sensed something wrong with the room as they paused at the entrance. Seeing nothing special the man entered the room leaving the woman behind. My boss didn¡¯t take the bait as I made sure he would only attack when the whole party entered or if attacked which wasn¡¯t an easy feat as it was hiding among mushroom colony. The moment the healer entered the room events happened in a flash. The boss attacked her from behind, startled she swung her staff and landed a solid hit on boss¡¯s head and it died. Well, at least I now knew she could use it for more than just a walking aid. The man was clearly displeased and I got an impression they had to check the boss'' properties to adequately evaluate a dungeon so they had to stay here until I respawned it. I think they decided to wait for two days outside before trying once again and began leaving without even checking two chests that were their rewards. I certainly was not going to wait for two days just because they fucked up, so I concentrated on the boss concept I had stored in my core and willed it to spawn in the boss room. I was actually unable to spawn it closer than 2 meters from them and even picking the most distant corner it took fifteen times the mana normally required. So that was why dungeons didn¡¯t just drop monsters on intruders, they couldn¡¯t. The bright light coming from the corner drawn their attention, the mana overflow needed to overcome their auras interference was making quite a spectacle. After 30 seconds or so, which was six times longer than usually, a new perfectly healthy centipede plopped onto the floor. Surprised, the man drew his sword and went to meet the new enemy. This time the fight took 20 minutes, not because he was weaker than she but he took utmost care not to kill it too quickly. The venom didn¡¯t seem to affect him at all, bites were parried and he easily avoided tail sweeps by taking a step back. They allowed the boss to use engorge five times and when they were sure it couldn¡¯t do that anymore and had no additional abilities he killed it with one strike cutting its head off. They collected its body and the remaining Yellow Chalice Lichen as I made sure the boss would leave at least 10% of each group, so all adventurers knew what they lost not killing the boss quicker. They calmly continued collecting all the loot discussing the fight and concluded the boss would be a good training exercise for D ranks as it had behaviour patterns seen only in much more dangerous monsters at lower dungeon floors. Having newbies getting used to that with low-threat enemy seemed an attractive idea to the pair. They didn¡¯t put much thought to the boss appearing in such a dramatic fashion, the earlier surprise seemed to stem from me being able to do it and not from the act itself. Only seeing the skill crystals broke their composure and provoked a heated discussion. Once again cursing my inability to understand their conversation I focused trying to catch anything that could shed some light on the argument. Apparently, they never saw such crystals before and were unsure what to do with them. The woman¡¯s intuition must have been really good as she was the one who found out how to use them. Focusing on them mentally they were able to get a basic understanding of the skill and a choice if they wanted to learn it. The man decided to take the risk and use one of them, what exactly the risk was remained unclear. For a second his eyes became unfocused and then he immediately activatedthe second crystal which shocked the healer. The skills may have been low rank but despite that, they were extremely useful, after all, I have designed them for my grootslangs, especially for scouts. The man grew more excited as he tried the farsight out. I made sure the rooms beyond the stone slab were protected from divination by grootslangs so he couldn¡¯t get anything from that direction but checking the previous room must have satisfied him, the advantage of seeing potential ambushes in a dungeon couldn¡¯t be overestimated. They decided to rush back to their headquarters to deliver the news and remaining two crystals, just before leaving my dungeon the man stopped and placed a few potions, one of his arrows and some strange alloy on the floor, then hesitating he reached into his pocket and added a strange token before leaving for good. Chapter 7 - First Contact It had been two days since the scouting party had left and I spent most of that time trying to advance the proper way. You could accomplish that either by expanding your mana pool or by making your mana denser. Given the choice between quantity and quality I would choose quality every time, luckily I quickly realised that I didn¡¯t have to choose. As I pushed my mana further inside my body and compressed it I allowed new mana to enter freed space. I was aware this was making the process overcomplicated and it would take much longer but I had time and if needed I had an option to repeat what I did earlier. I was sure grootslangs had some more destroyed cores which I could use to forcefully expand my mana capacity. I was expecting adventurers¡¯ guild¡¯s representatives in a day or so and nothing significant happened in the meantime. Although a few hours after the scouts had left my dungeon a small party of five entered they almost immediately bumped into Areth, who was checking out my mini maze. She wanted me to make as hard as possible to find a perfect path through it that would allow crossing the room without triggering a single hostile mushroom. I made it as hard as possible but left quite a few obvious routes that would mean one or two encounters. I even changed the layout several times enjoying a little competition with my champion. As for the unlucky adventurers, Areth prolonged the fight to almost ten minutes to allow me agood look at B rank adventurers¡¯ skills. They were from a thieves¡¯ guild and came here to steal me, dungeon cores¡¯ prices reached astronomical heights on the black market and there was even a chance of a core surviving removal from the dungeon. Among them was one C-rank, an elf, and despite it being illogical I felt drawn to him so I used my skill to look through his soul focusing solely on languages this time. I hit jackpot this time as he knew Imperial and all three local languages; Joisarhi of North-Eastern Flatland, Oigseti the language of Low Flatland Nomads and Aucian, the language of the only barony in the region that retained its identity after being absorbed by Empire. On top of that, I could read and write in all of them now. And that was only human languages; aside from some dwarven runes, I got five elven languages including their equivalent of universal language ¨C High elven. What interesting creatures they were. They had 8 forests just in Striped Beetle Expanse and each had their own language. I guess it was due to their past; they used to slaughter each other regularly with abandon. Even if you got fertile only once every twenty-five years but lived for over ten thousand years the overpopulation could become a serious problem. Their solution was inelegant but effective so they stayed in the state of perpetual war for most of their history. It only changed after Empire emerged as they had to put united front. They weren¡¯t happy about it but somehow managed to stop killing each other long enough for them to kill most of the imperial armies. After the sixth war empire announced the elven forests were independent vassals of the Empire with the right to self-govern and exempt from all tribute. It was nothing more than legal fiction but both sides seemed pleased with it so nobody really poked at that. Once again the elves were left with the population rapidly expanding but with no ways of easily controlling it. The solution presented itself quite soon and young elves started dying in dungeons. I was a strong supporter of this solution as I wasn¡¯t going to turn willing food away. Sadly most parties never employed more than one elf at the time. It must have had to do something with the fact that if you had more the extras tended never return to the surface. After all elves'' greatest enemy was a fellow elf. The intruders brought nothing of interest with them except few vials of poison but I saved that for later and returned to analysing that man¡¯s gifts. The potions were pretty basic but covered everything that adventurer would need in the dungeon; health and mana recovery, antidotes for poison, cures for paralysis and disease with the addition to some burn and acid ointments. The metal ingot turned out to be an alloy of iron, zinc, orichalcum, copper, aluminium and chromium with minuscule amounts of silver, gold, carbon and mythril. It allowed me to replicate all but the last one. It needed some kind of component I couldn¡¯t understand in order to retain its properties. The arrow was made out of wood and bone with an unknown featherfor the quill. It turned out to be completely useless as I could only replicate it and it would have made poor loot. If I decided ever to create arrow traps then that would be a different story, especially that it had minor enchantment allowing for greater speed and accuracy. The true wonder was the token. Upon activation, the user was returned to the previously designated point. The magic was complicated and so far eluded my understanding. I did succeed in making a copy but it already had destination set ¨C my entrance. Once cracked it would open a vast array of possibilities but for now, it would make good rewards for adventurers too lazy to go back the same way they came. There were also two limitations I was grateful for; it was impossible to set destination inside my dungeon due to ambient mana interference and the range was limited to little over one kilometre. Out of a sudden, I felt the strange sensation of being in two places at once when I started seeing strange images and hearing unknown sounds I realised that it was the enhanced Farsight skill. I saw a small room with the desk at the middle and bookshelves at every wall leaving only a small opening for the door and a window. The man behind the desk raised his head from the document he was reading after hearing the knock. ¡°Enter¡± - He looked for a place to put the current document and seeing no free space he put it on the shortest pile with a sigh. ¨C ¡°Ah, Kaeden Randallson and Ordia Freesnow I didn¡¯t except you before dinner. Have you rested?¡± ¡°Thank you, Deputy Guild Master Neruz, we heard you had questions regarding our report?¡± ¡°Mrs Freesnow this is standard procedure in our Roseford branch, there is no reason for concern.¡± ¨C He paused to wave his arm at two empty chairs in front of his desk ¨C ¡°Please take a seat and give me your impression about the run.¡± ¡°The monsters were interesting and the challenge level is appropriate for E-rank adventurers¡± ¨C Kaden spoke first ¨C ¡°For the boss, I would advise at least one D-rank to avoid any nasty surprises¡± ¡°I would add a requirement for a competent healer.¡± ¨C Ordia added ¨C ¡°It doesn¡¯t have to be a cleric, a druid or a ranger would do fine. A backup would be prudent.¡± ¨C Seeing Neruz questioning look she added ¨C ¡°At one point even I failed to remove effects of the itching spores.¡± ¡°They were resistant?¡± ¡°No, just distracting enough I failed mid cast¡± The deputy guild master nodded and made few quick notes on new parchment ¨C ¡°And the dungeon what was your impression on it?¡± ¡°It was strange, it seemed more advanced than it should be.¡± ¨C Kaeden paused and then quickly added ¨C ¡°I saw over one hundred dungeons, from tamed and perfectly docile to wild and hating the living. I took part in the crusade against the revenant hordes the crystal of moaning steppes spawned. This one was different. I know I don¡¯t make a lot of sense but we will regret it if we don¡¯t get this one. Ordia knows I am right.¡± ¡°Yes, things don¡¯t add up. You know why I am here and I am sure you are aware of my talents¡± ¨C Seeing both men nodding she went on ¨C ¡°The complexity we saw could rival epic-ranked dungeons maybe even low legendary-ranked, you either did things in a way the dungeon wanted you to or you lost a significant part of the rewards. What was lacking was the desire for us to fail and die. We analysed the mushrooms and they all should be equally difficult to create for the dungeon. Given the maze layout, it could easily set it in a way that you had to trip that guardian mushroom in a position where you were surrounded by several screaming ones backed up by those weird buff mushrooms. It would be actually easier and less complicated and believe me this one is capable of much more than that. It just chose not to. This also has added benefit that some of our recruits may learn to think instead of charging forward in a relatively safe environment.¡± ¡°Given what you said do you believe it should be destroyed?¡± ¨C Neruz asked with reluctance. ¡°You saw the crystals. I doubt you will find anyone in this guild willing to destroy it unless we get a serious dungeon break.¡± ¨C Ordia stopped and then added after short consideration ¨C ¡°Actually I am pretty sure even then we wouldn¡¯t do that provided someone talked those lunatics from the church down.¡± ¡°I doubt it will ever come to that. You saw what happened in the boss room¡± ¨C Kaeden seemed convinced ¨C ¡°It should be stupid and act just on instinct but it doesn¡¯t. It can be reasoned with.¡± ¡°You and your theories.¡± ¨C woman sneered ¡°I spent more time in dungeons than you spent breathing. I always treated them fair and it never hurt me. If people like you could believe anything beyond your moronic¡­¡± ¡°Enough!¡± ¨C Guild master cut the man short ¨C ¡°You are sure it wasn¡¯t a young dungeon overreacting? Mrs Freesnow was rather rough with its boss¡± ¨C Both adventurers answered with a firm no. ¨C ¡°Ok, I didn¡¯t believe that either but had to ask. Tomorrow we set to establish a camp. Master Oakstaff will attempt to tame it¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡°Guild master, he only spawned the second boss after hearing us talk about staying longer. He clearly understood us shouldn¡¯t we try communicating with it?¡± ¨C Kaeden¡¯s outburst surprised both the guild master and the healer. ¡°Kaeden it never tried to talk to us. It might have been coincidence¡± - Ordia seeing Kaeden trying to add something stopped him ¨C ¡°No, even if you were right we have no means to do that¡± "Then what you make of the recipe it left us? Sure it was crude but the pictures were clear enough. If anything it would be harder to create such a thing without using a language. Guild master, is it usable?" "Surprisingly yes, we had the proportions and necessary steps to follow so figuring the rest was relatively easy. It works more slowly than the standard health potions but it recovers more health. The consensus among our alchemist is that during the battle they would perform worse than the existing ones but if used outside of the fight they would be 30% more effective and they are 15% cheaper to make. We expect them to become a popular commodity as they can be manufactured locally which is likely to make them available at three-fourths of the current health potion price." - The guild master gave them time to process the information and then added - "That said, I can''t imagine actually communicating with the dungeon using pictograms and wecan''t be sure it didn''t found the recipe and mindlessly copied it. Which brings me to my next question, have you left him a starter kit?" - The look on their faces prompted next question - "What?!¡± ¡°Kaeden left him his return token as well¡± ¡°He have helped us and deserved a reward¡± ¡°And since when you believe in training dungeons?¡± ¡°For the love of the goddess, I didn¡¯t train him. He has helped us so I returned the favour. This. Is. What. You. Do.¡± ¡°Sure if it was an intelligent being and not¡­¡± ¡°IT IS INTELLIGENT¡± ¡°NO, IT IS A DUNGEON¡± ¡°You should get some rest as you are leaving tomorrow for the dungeon¡± ¨C Neruz stopped the argument before it had a chance to get out of control¡± ¨C ¡°Kaeden you know that if it analyses the token it may be able to stop them working in the dungeon entirely. I won¡¯t waste time as it is already done but next time please don¡¯t give a dungeon potentially deadly tool. I will see you tomorrow. The vision started to fade and the last I heard was scouts continuing their argument in the corridor and the guild master¡¯s sigh. What a useful skill, I got a lot of useful information, and called Areth to discuss it. I was even in the middle of planning a bestiary that I needed to drop on the first adventurer so they would know PROPER names for my shrooms when I felt a terrible, horrifying aura moving towards my entrance. Within seconds it was inside the dungeon and I saw the source. It was an old man wearing loose clothes and a strange hat as if he took his cape and tied it up on his head. Where he passed I lost contact with my dungeon as if it was no longer part of me. My monsters didn¡¯t attack him at all, not that it would have made any difference. It only stopped when he saw the door blocking access further. I felt the strange impulse, almost compulsion, to apprise him and after few seconds I had given in.
Name Maisoon el-Sharef
Race Human Subspecies -
Class The arch-mage Subclass Mind mage
Rank Sapphire Level 218/250
HP Unknown Mana Unknown
Titles Unknown Skills Unknown
He must have sensed something as immediately after I was drowning in a sea of alien emotions and feelings. I was losing myself in a never-ending stream of friendly, non-threatening, helpful, kind, and other all-together positive impressions. Just before I blacked out I yelled ¨C ¡°STOP¡± ¨C and to my shock, he did exactly that. ¡°You can talk?¡± ¨C He stupidly asked. ¡°Yes I can and for the Mythic rank you don¡¯t seem too bright¡± ¨C fear and absolute certainty I could do nothing to stop him allowed me to push through with bravado ¨C ¡°Why did you attack me?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t¡± ¨C He collected himself immediately ¨C ¡°This is how you communicate with common rank dungeons. They are quite dumb you see and anything but simplest emotions confuse them. Before you ask, it takes a lot of effort to make them even notice you are trying to communicate with them hence the intensity of the message. We humans prefer not to talk to empty air, it makes other humans look strangely at us especially that you are communicating telepathically and no one else can hear you so could you please give me something to actually talk to?¡± That was weird I was a dungeon core and had no way of producing sound and there was no one else so who was going to stare? And who the hell would have had balls to make fun of the Mythic-ranked arch-mage almost ready to step into divine rank? I wasn¡¯t going to argue that point exactly for the aforementioned reason. So I projected my image approximately 5 meters from him at his eye-level. ¡°So what do you want?¡± ¡°Ah, how direct. You know little bit of manners wouldn¡¯t hurt¡± ¡°Sure because barging into someone¡¯s home uninvited and overwhelming them with barrage of emotions was such a polite way to start the conversation¡± ¡°I assure you that was completely unintentional¡± ¨C I swear my answer amused him ¨C ¡°As for the purpose of this visit I wanted to invite you into a cooperation with the illustrious mage guild of Roseford¡± ¡°So you wanted to tame me before the adventurers¡¯ guild got here?¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t put it that way. I guarantee that you will benefit greatly from our agreement¡± ¨C with those words he pulled out an elaborate book literally from the thin air and placed it on the floor¨C ¡°Here is cultivation a cultivation manual that will allow you to reach legendary ranks with ease¡± ¡°No thank you. I would prefer not to get stuck at the legendary rank if that¡¯s of no difference to you¡± He clearly was not happy with my answers and I think his patience must have run out. After all, I doubted he was used to people not doing exactly what he wanted. ¨C ¡°You know that I can destroy you and everything inside you with no effort. I think I will do that, of course, I will make sure you survive maybe that will make you more eager to accept my generous offer¡± ¡°Aren¡¯t you arrogant? You realise that I can spawn nothing but swords and full plate armours for next, let¡¯s say, ten thousand years. I guess mages in full plate could become a trademark of Roseford branch.¡± ¨C I was so grateful my farsight showed me that vision. Without it, I would probably shit myself scared and agreed to anything he wanted. I knew that he wasn¡¯t going to kill me, I was too valuable. I didn¡¯t know why exactly but that wasn¡¯t the important part. Then he did probably the most unexpected thing ¨C he laughed. ¡°This is so much better than trying to make those clueless dungeon cores do what you wanted. You wouldn¡¯t imagine the horror of explaining the rules to them. So what do you want for exclusive agreement with mages¡¯ guild?¡± ¡°You are just going to give it to me?¡± ¡°Surprised? Yes, as long as it isn¡¯t something completely unreasonable then it will actually save us both time and resources managing ordinary dungeon would entail¡± ¡°First of all why? I know it has something to do with skill crystals but I have no idea what. And don¡¯t bullshit me, if it wasn¡¯t extremely important I wouldn¡¯t have a Mythic at my doorstep.¡± That really took him aback and he took few minutes to answer me. Good for me as I needed a break, the stress was killing me but I knew on this conversation hinged my future. Destruction wasn¡¯t on the table but I didn¡¯t want to be a domesticated pet doing trick for their master. True independence was a pointless dream but I hoped to first become an asset and then a partner for them. When the mage was ready to speak he looked completely different, I guess all his act gone. ¡°I don¡¯t know what you are and how do you know that but you are right, the potential you bring is significant enough so I am willing to take a chance. At least your intelligence will make this easier if it even can be done. What do you know about skill books?¡± ¡°That they exist and are similar to my skill crystals.¡± ¡°You are wrong. From what I can tell they are completely different. They use imperfect symbols, words, to pass information and it is impossible to record that perfectly. When created the most respected masters use a lot of redundant information to ensure that if some part has a mistake in it there is another correct one. With legendary skill, there is 60% chance to fail to learn it and that is only true if the skill book was produced by the best. If that is all that goes wrong then all you lost is a lot of gold. Every skill book can damage the mind or in extreme cases be rejected injuring the body. The catch is that the only way to see if the book works is to use it. And that doesn¡¯t even cover people trying to learn skills beyond their ability. According to adventurers¡¯ guild researchers, your crystals could potentially bypass those problems or at least lessen them.¡± ¡°And if that¡¯s not true?¡± ¡°Then you are still extremely intelligent dungeon capable of producing other valuable resources so no one loses by investing in you¡± ¡°I will open the door please don¡¯t attack and don¡¯t go through¡± ¨C I decided to take a risk, it wasn¡¯t a huge risk as I was sure he could go through that door whenever he wanted. I quickly created small silver chest and filled it with 10 sense danger skill crystals. The task of carrying it to the mage fell to the closest golden grootslang. He levitated it in front of himself and crossed into the room. *Greetings human* - with that he left the chest and went back into the dungeon. I closed the door behind him. ¡°What was that? ¨C The mage asked. ¡°Acting in good faith¡± ¡°You know what I meant, the creature, what was that?¡± ¨C After several minutes of silence, he added ¨C ¡°Fine we will talk later about it.¡± He took the chest, opened it and surprised touched one of the crystals. He seemed satisfied and seemed ready to leave. ¨C ¡°I will be back later¡± ¡°Ok, but bring back the adventurer with you, one named Kaeden Randallson.¡± ¨C That got his attention. ¡°Why do you care about him? Who is he to you?¡± ¡°Nobody, but he gave me a nice gift so I want to repay the favour¡± ¡°You want me to believe you are a friendly dungeon that wants to get along with adventures?!¡± ¡°Hell no. I want you to trust me¡± ¨C He raised a brow at me. He didn¡¯t buy that for a second. ¨C ¡°Listen I know how people think about dungeons and for all I know they may be right. I want to grow strong, strong enough that I don¡¯t have to fear a random mythic asshole dropping inside my dungeon and obliterating me because he could. And for that, I need to keep my promises and not kill everything that enters. I want guilds to value me as that will get me resources I need. So if you treat me fairly I will do the same.¡± ¡°And what then, you get to divine rank and kill all nice adventurers as you won¡¯t need them?¡± ¡°You should have realised by now I am not a complete moron. Yeah I will be able to kill ten divine-rank adventurers at that rank but I won¡¯t stand a chance against one hundred and the Empire would make sure I would regret that for the rest of my life. I am also pretty sure they are quite rare so I am going to get more benefit from one regularly fighting inside me than killing him and seeing no other for years.¡± He didn¡¯t seem entirely convinced and surely didn¡¯t trust me but I had a feeling I managed to prove to him a deal would be the best course of action. I was 100% honest when I said I was going to honour all the deal as only that gave a good chance not only for survival but for the life I wanted. I had important negotiations ahead so I called Areth hoping she could help. Chapter 8 - The negotiations I was waiting for Areth when everything in the dungeon froze. The reason for that soon became clear when five powerful minds greeted me at once. The queens decided it was high time we had met and to save me the embarrassment of being chided publicly they stopped the dungeon. Or should I say the decision was theirs but the act itself was carried just by the Azure Queen. If that wasn¡¯t shocking enough I learned that the smallest of them, the Silver Queen, was two hundred meters long and ten meters wide at the thickest point. The biggest was the Green Queen easily double the size of the Silver Queen. Their massive bodies making impossible for them to leave the Palaces. I felt amusement through the psionic link they established, quickly followed by the visions. The Green Queen send the image of her spitting the acid which melted the rock and made tunnel big enough for her to fit through, the Silver Queen showed me herself moving through rock quicker than any burrower could and those were just ordinary compared to the rest. The Golden Queen could turn into light, the Black Queen had an ability to turn immaterial and pass through anything physical, the Azure Queen could create mental projections of herself that were only slightly weaker than she was. If she ever had a need to move her physical body she was capable of short-range teleporting, short being relative term in this case. Curious about their strength I appraised them and was grateful previous events rendered me unable to feel any more shock. The strongest was the Azure Queen at Silver-rank and the weakest was the Golden Queen being stuck at omega-rank. The only reason she wasn¡¯t legendary ranked as the rest, was that there wasn¡¯t enough light in the dungeon. She was expecting me to fix that now that I was awake. They seemed satisfied by the impression they made and entrusted me with five memory stones I was supposed to give to their successor if they were killed before passing their legacies. My assumption that only the queens could lay the eggs proved wrong, it was just a custom as their offspring was stronger and they had to take care of some useless floating gem with a limited population. They weren¡¯t stuck laying eggs all the time either. If they needed to expand population they accumulated mana for few days, laid up to hundred eggs at once and went about their business as if nothing happened. Currently, there were over hundred thousand eggs at the hatcheries ready to hatch at any time as they could stay dormant for thousands of years without any adverse effects. It was also the queens who determined grootslangs class shortly before hatching. Seeing my interest azure queen produced empty high-quality memory stone and all the queens transferred most of their knowledge into it. I was told it would work better than direct transfer and there was a smaller chance of my mind shattering this way. I knew they were keeping secrets from me but I was also sure of their loyalty so I let that go especially that I already suspected what those secrets might have been. The last mystery was how the hell I didn¡¯t notice almost five legendary beings in my dungeon. The free mana every being released naturally should be a dead giveaway! It turned out that they had a skill which lowered that significantly, it couldn¡¯t change the quality of mana but the quantity was possible to be vastly reduced. They rightly assumed it would be counterproductive in my case as any drop in released mana would make me lose territory. I still got it as I wanted to collect as many skills as I could, partially for later making them into skill crystals but in this case, it increased my control over ambient mana. Now I could increase its density in any room without affecting the rest of the dungeon. The queens left with the promise I could contact them anytime and they would do their utmost to aid me. I also got an impression they were going to grant Areth direct connection to them so she could get and give proper advice during our discussions. As their presence vanished from my mind everything in the dungeon returned to normal oblivious to events that transpired. Seconds later I was contacted by Areth mentally. - *So they paid you a visit?* - She was no longer going towards my room and before I asked I got another message - *I need to go to the Palace, the Queen summoned me. If you plan on absorbing the crystal do it now. It will take few hours and we need you in to recover before the negotiations.* I marvelled at their¡¯s ability to pass information quickly. She already knew what happened and adjusted her plans. The perk of being a psionic race I guessed. I had every intention of doing exactly what she said. Knowledge being an irresistible lure for me I used the crystal. I awoke several hours later amazed at the wealth of information I now possessed. It didn¡¯t grant me any new skills or ability to create new monsters as for that I needed to absorb the creature myself. Dungeons perceived the world in a fundamentally different way so other races weren¡¯t even aware of the information needed to spawn monsters or items. However; I now had enough theoretical knowledge to improve and evolve most of the things as soon as I actually absorbed them. The immediate gain was a few new mushrooms¡¯ types and I could create mythril as I figured out the missing component. It could only exist in places with high concentration of mana or it would never gain the magical properties that made it what it was. *Areth are you busy now? I need your help with preparing for the negotiations.* *I am training other voices. I will be free in a few hours* - She sent back with the mental image of the training hall. *That is fine. Will it be too distracting if we discuss a few issues while you train them?* *So you don¡¯t need me physically present in your room any longer?* *Thanks to the crystal I seem to be free of that irrational need* - That was the truth. It was silly to insist on talking face to face and using spoken language when mental conversations were quicker, more efficient and unimpeded by physical distance. Skilled psionic could keep up with several of them at the same time while keeping them all separate. - *I also realised how unnatural it was for you to keep all of the conversations to yourself. I think you should include the Queens in our conversations from now on, as long they aren¡¯t private* *You know that you could include them and anyone you wished as well?* *Yes, I know. I don¡¯t think I am ready to have them in my mind if it isn¡¯t absolutely necessary.* After a few hours, I was as ready as I ever would be so I focused on creating new skill crystal. I decided on skill bestowal as I was sure that would be interesting, at least for the mage. I managed to keep it as D-ranked skill but it was only usable once every 72 hours. I could have given it to them as it was but I needed if not a monopoly on granting good skills then something close enough. Two days and countless frustrated curses later I got a new skill.
Congratulations! You have gained a new skill! Skill modification [C] lvl 1/20 You now have greater control over your skills. With effort, you can add permanent changes to your skills. If the change is significant enough you may save it as a separate skill. In conjunction with a skill able to pass or teach skills, you may impose restrictions on the skill use, increase the cost of the skill, exclude certain effects or limit its effectiveness.
Congratulations! You have met requirements for new trait: Enlightened Trainer You have realised that skills should not be passed freely and some need tight restrictions. You can pass skills up to two ranks higher than otherwise would be possible. You are capable of imposing a wider range of restrictions and they are up to five times harder to overcome. You are able to tie one restriction to the skill in a way that bypassing or modifying it will make skill unusable or forgotten. It takes ten times the mana to pass the skill.
If I was a human with pitiful mana pool then the drawback of this trait would be somewhat limiting. For me, this meant I could produce hundreds of skill crystals a day instead of thousands and now had a way to deal with my biggest concern. In the end, I had created around three hundred of those beauties:
Skill Crystal of the Skill Bestowal [C] (Quality: Epic)
Grants the skill ¡°Skill Bestowal¡± [C] after use. The item is destroyed after use.
Skill Bestowal [C]
Grants the target one C-ranked or lower skill known by the user. The target must be able to use the skill or this skill will fail. This skill can be used only once every five days. This skill cannot be transferred, copied or stolen by any means.
I even made sure that if the last restriction was tampered with, the skill would disappear. I was aware that the skill wasn¡¯t anything much by itself, it was the promise that should make the guilds go crazy. The possibility, no matter how low, that I could make such skill for epic skills or even legendary skills would guarantee they would do anything to ensure my survival. Sadly that didn¡¯t mean I could do anything I wanted, I was sure they had means to control dungeons beyond just destroying them. I saved 6 of those and gave the rest to the collectives. All that was left was waiting. By the time the guilds¡¯ delegation arrived I had advanced to C-rank. The Queens didn¡¯t include any knowledge regarding advancement or cultivation, as the humans called it. Their understanding of the process could impede my progress as they followed pretty unorthodox path tailored to their race but from what I could understand I wasn¡¯t going to hit any major obstacles before attempting to reach Mythic-rank. It was a unique racial trait of dungeon cores as for most races reaching epic was a substantial challenge with less than fifth making successful attempts. Advancing from H to SSS was only matter of effort and almost everyone given time and resources would accomplish it. Sure less talented would be forced to take a longer route with few B+ and A+ ranks but if they lived long enough they would get to SSS-rank. Advancing to the next tier, and every tier after, was a true test as it involved a qualitative change in mana. Figuring what was different about me was the key if I ever wanted to be free of the guilds¡¯ control. This time three adventurers entered my dungeon, Maisoon and Kaeden I expected and Ordia was a surprise. This shouldn¡¯t affect my plans too much so I patiently waited in the boss room or should I say Areth waited there I just created a psionic projection of my form. I wanted Areth safe in my core room but we had discussed it and I had ultimately lost. If I ever had any delusions about being in control they were thoroughly dispelled. She claimed that their loyalty demanded to do what was best for me even if I ¡°temporarily lost the ability to properly assess the situation¡±. It was just a fancy way of saying if I ever did something dumb they would be there to save me from the effects of my stupidity. I watched the negotiators arriving at the meeting place and noticed that although the amount of mana Kaeden gave off was right for a C-rank it was much more concentrated than it should be, it¡¯s purity being even greater than Mythic-rank Maisoon. I decided against sharing this piece of information and decided to wait for them to initiate the negotiations. "What is this thing?" - Ordia exclaimed causing Maisoon to smirk. He must have enjoyed someone else reacting in the same way he did when he saw Areth. "It is a grootslang." - Kaeden managed to shock us all. - "What? I spent my whole life in various dungeons and they have a knack at uncovering obscure and long forgotten evolution patterns. It pays to be informed. They were supposed to be extinct with the last dying in fourth planar war and she seems to be a variant." "I am not even going to ask how you know it''s a female" - Ordia grumbled. - "So how do we start?" ¡°Simply. Hello, I am Kaeden and this is Ordia. Nice to meet you¡± ¡°I am Areth¡± ¨C Areth decided to make use of the language crystal I made her instead of using telepathy. She argued it was better not to make them wonder if we can influence their minds. Ordia attitude coupled with being ignored made her snippy so I decided to try cover for her. *I am Arnar. The pleasure is mine.* ¨C I was not the expecting the reaction that followed after my greeting. They were surprised after Areth introduced herself but they were speechless now. The first to react was Ordia and every time she opened her mouth I disliked her more. "How do we know it isn''t a hoax by those grootslangs. It can''t have a name!" - Kaeden looked at Maisoon giving him a sign it was his turn to explain. "You are supposed to be an expert so stop embarrassing yourself. Dungeons have a quality to their voice that is impossible to imitate. I can''t explain it to you but you learn to recognise it with experience." - Seeing her unconvinced he added - "If you think that they have a creature capable of tricking a Mythic-rank mind mage during a mental conversation then we are already in deeper shit than any dungeon named or not could ever cause." - He then turned to me. - "Would you mind telling us who named you?" Considering their reactions I wasn''t in rush to tell them I technically named myself. Before I managed to decide what to do Areth answered with a sigh. - "He named himself, and before you jump to conclusions it caused him to enter into a long period of inactivity. She slept for thousands of years." - I wondered what she was trying to accomplish by making me hundreds of times younger but after my last blunder, I was going to follow her lead. "Arnar could you tell us your rank and affinities?" - Kaeden''s question caused Ordia to explode once more. "This is not how you do it, we have a ritual that will tell us exactly that and it will be infinitely more reliable" "Yes the ritual, I guess you are fine paying for it out your own pocket then seeing you reject simpler and cheaper way?" *I will gladly tell you.* - I couldn''t let such opportunity pass. - *For only half of what you would have to pay for the ritual* "I seriously regret bringing you both here" - I could almost hear Maisoon gritting his teeth - "Half is way too much, I can agree for one tenth and that is a final offer". * Ok, have fun with the ritual. I wonder if there is a way for me to interfere with that. Do you think rapidly changing mana density in the dungeon would affect it?*If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. "Ok, we will try Kaeden''s approach. We will treat you fairly and hope you will do the same. How one forth sounds?" - Kaeden was openly grinning at this point and Ordia seemed stunned. Maisoon was the best actor of the trio, I had a feeling it was just a game to him and he didn''t really care about the details as long as he got what he wanted. I could use that to my advantage. *Sure, I am C-ranked blue diamond core with greater mind and soul affinity. I also have weak earth affinity.* "Common-ranked dungeon with two greater affinities and self-named at that. Do you have any more surprises?" ¨C Kaeden asked. I was pretty sure he wasn''t expected an answer but I decided to go all out. It wouldn''t be good to be underestimated by a potential ally or a potential enemy, especially during negotiations. *Yes, as the matter of fact I do.* - I willed the chest with previously prepared crystals to rise from the ground. - *If I were you I would use one of those crystals* - Only Ordia hesitated but she knew what crystals I have made the last time and that seemed enough to overcome her reluctance. When they came around I saw the determination in their eyes. Kaeden reached into a pocket and placed a pearl on the floor which I immediately absorbed. I couldn''t say no to such a well-deserved gift. "Did you really had to give him the core now? In the middle of the negotiations? And how the hell you got a core, Mr-I-Love-Dungeons?" - I was barely able to follow their conversation as I was overwhelmed by the other core''s memories but I thought this time Maisoon seemed genuinely irritated. "I have killed this one after it tried to hunt and kill me for no apparent reason. And I mean going all out not just your normal ¡°you are my food so die¡± dungeon mentality. It was spawning monsters from the last floor on the upper floors, immediately refreshing cleared rooms and triggering traps manually. I only said you should be fair dealing with the dungeons not friendly." He shrugged and added - "We need him at epic rank as soon as possible and that was ¦Ä-ranked core. In a few days he will wake up. We need to build a camp anyway and that will take time." They started preparing to leave when Areth stopped them with well-prepared mind pulse. It was designed to be extremely unpleasant but leave the target unharmed. To my surprise, even the mind mage was affected although to the lesser degree. "I don''t like being ignored. The core you gave him was a standard sea pearl or was there something special about it?" ¨C Ordia was preparing to cast something at her but seeing her two fellow adventurers doing nothing she aborted the spell and settled for glaring at Areth, which my champion ignored. After Kaeden confirmed the core being ordinary one she continued - "Then you should wait, he won''t take longer than 10 minutes¡±. The party was unconvinced but ended waiting. In the meantime, Maisoon asked Areth a few questions and even shared a few of his experiences as a mind mage. They both seemed to enjoy the conversation. When I dealt with all of the alien memories I blurted - *I have a lesser water affinity now, and that core was paid to kill Kaeden.* "What do you mean paid?" There was something cold and dangerous in his eyes as he asked that question. It wasn''t hard at all to imagine him killing that dungeon. I briefly pondered how C-rank kills delta-ranked dungeon but I wasn''t that curious. Not when he was looking at me this way. - * The same way it always got instructions. Some powerful mind contacted it and ordered your death. It even got some rare resources to motivate it.* Maisoon decided to quickly change the subject. - ¡°Have you finished absorbing the other core? What rank are you now? ¨C When he learned it was barely enough to get me to B-rank his excitement rose -"You are not stupid so you must have realised how important you are for our guilds what do you want?" That was unexpected, I considered starting with outlandish demand or making them make the first offer but in the end decided they would agree to pretty much everything. That said it would be extremely unwise to antagonise them before we even started working together. I had to understand his strange behaviour first. *You said you wanted me epic-ranked as soon as possible and I guess that core should have been enough for that, yet when you heard I got only to B-rank you got excited, why?* ¡°Rank although important is not everything. Take Areth, I am guessing she is epic-ranked but as a dungeon boss and ancient monster, she would trash any ordinary legendary-ranked human. It wouldn¡¯t even pose any challenge to her unless he was close to mythic-rank. Dungeon cores are governed by the same principles. We don¡¯t know how you are created¡­¡± ¨C Maisoon made a slight pause here, hoping I would reveal that mystery as well. I had no idea either but keeping him in the dark if I truly didn¡¯t know or just didn¡¯t want to tell him could help in later negotiations. It also made me wonder how my Queens would fare against him. I was fairly certain they would lose in the end but he wouldn¡¯t get away scot-free. ¡°Anyway, we saw dungeon cores made of various materials, some were common rocks, some were rare metals and some others being more exotic like the pearl you just absorbed or crystallised flame which is the closest divine-rank dungeon to us. Usually but not always the rarer and more precious base material is the stronger the dungeon can grow and even if you compare standard S-ranked granite dungeon to S-ranked iron dungeon the latter will have more rooms, more complex floors and what¡¯s more important higher quality of drops and mana. The drawback is they need more time and mana to advance the rank. There are two special cases, one is those exotic dungeons I mentioned earlier as they need to be appraised individually because their base material gives no indication of strength and they have quirks. The second are¡­ I immediately interrupted him. - *What are those quirks?* ¡°The closest would be self-imposed rules the dungeon sets for itself.¡± ¨C Kaeden explained and properly guessing I would want more information continued. ¨C ¡°For example, bone dungeons usually focus either on undead skeletons or on monsters with exoskeletons, the pearl dungeons focus on amphibian creatures and like to add drops that mature with time as pearls do, you can collect them early but the value is diminished. The crystallised flame dungeon, the only of its kind as far as we know, really likes fire monsters and infuses everything with celestial energy. When the church learned of this they bribed the emperor and he granted them sole rights to it.¡± *Thank you for explaining and Maisoon, sorry for interruption* - Kaeden helped me with this explanation more than he could know but I decided to conceal the reason why for now. They were interestedin me already and anything more could be detrimental to the negotiations. I was confident they would agree to my demands anyway. ¡°It¡¯s alright, as I was saying second special group were rare gem dungeons. They were almost always the most powerful dungeons but had considerable limitations.¡± ¨C He continued giving me the detailed information without any prompt now. Areth was right they could be trained. ¨C ¡°In contrast to quirks which can be overcome if the dungeon is either in danger or is given the right motivation, those limitations are the very nature of the stone. Fire opals can¡¯t create anything even loosely affiliated with water and any monster with that affinity placed in the dungeon will deteriorate and die. Aquamarine although almost always affiliated with water don¡¯t share similar limitations and can have strong fire creatures. Its limitation is linked to its Divine Feminine aspect, female of any species can have triple the usual strength and males are sometimes weakened to such effect it is pointless to collect their bodies as it would produce nothing but inferior quality goods.¡± ¡°There are only three exceptions to that rule. Zircon gemstone is limited to the lesser number of mobs but they are stronger, clear quartz being limited to weaker mobs but compensating with the number of them are two that has, from our perspective, no meaningful limitation.¡± ¨C Ordia finally overcame her stupor and decided to contribute to the conversation. ¨C ¡°The diamond limitation was having no limitation, which made it still precious gem dungeon but slightly weaker than most of this class. They are extremely rare with only seven found, well now eight if we choose to include you, but so far none had better affinity than strong. They do seem to have more of them and pick them up quicker. You identified yourself as blue diamond so as a previously unknown variant we had no idea what to expect. We are excited because you seem to have no limitation similarly to the standard diamond core but already have a greater affinity. Before doing careful research I can¡¯t confirm this but the amount of mana you need for rank advancement is likely to correspond to fire ruby, earth agate or blue emerald which are both the strongest and have the harshest limitations.¡± ¡°Do you have any other questions?¡± ¨C Maisoon asked. I didn¡¯t not really¡­ I just couldn¡¯t stop myself as it was gnawing at me since the first time I saw him. *Why do you have a cape tied around your head?* - For that I should have gotten a new title, the one saying: Congratulations! You managed to render a mythic-rank mage speechless and made his companions burst into uncontrollable laughter. ¡°THIS IS A TURBAN. It is customary to wear one among my people. Do you have any IMPORTANT QUESTIONS, or can we proceed with negotiations?¡± *I want you to jointly manage me with the crafters'' guild and I want a fourth of what you will charge all adventurers entering my dungeon and 10% of any tax, rent or payment you will be collecting in the city. We all know that it will become the city eventually and I want it called Arnar City. And of course you will be giving me resources as you would to any other dungeon.* "Dungeon never received any money and you want that on top of the standard resources you would get?" - It looked as if it was the mage''s job to negotiate. - "What do you even need money for?!" *You will be giving me resources that will help me grow in the direction you want. I don''t want money I want you to buy me things of my choosing at the standard market price. So I can grow in the direction I want. Before you protest further, you seemed satisfied with the potions and skill crystals I made. You have seen what mob I made and decided they would be excellent training for your novices. Training no other dungeon could give you. You want me different than any other dungeon, so it is in your best interest to agree with that request.* "We will agree to it. Each party getting one-fourth of dungeon fee is fair but we won''t agree to the 10% from the city" *You will. Or do you think there would be a city if not for me? I acknowledge I won''t take any part in managing or taking care of the city that''s why it is only 10%* "Fine but we will be able to make a request for specific materials or monsters and you will agree to few standard features like a mine and a herbalist garden. They must be no danger areas" *Ok, you can request any material or monster but how and when I implement it is my decision. I will also be able to refuse any request if I decide it is to the detriment of the dungeon, grootslangs or me. I promise I won''t use that as an excuse. You will get your mine and garden but they will be MINIMAL danger areas and that will only apply to the first floor. If I make additional mines or gardens on lower floors I may make them as dangerous as I want. I may concede and make them easier than average for that floor unless some extra circumstances appear. There are two more conditions that are non-negotiable; my final floor is off limits and Grootslangs are to be under no circumstances attacked or killed.* "But you only have one floor!" - Ordia chose that moment to make that insightful comment. "Yes, and he plans to be the first divine dungeon with a single floor in the history of the Empire" - Areth apparently shared my feelings about Ordia. - "Before you compromise yourself further, we plan to expand to eleven floors before the first adventurers show up. Moreover, it will be the guilds'' responsibility to ensure no Grootslang is attacked. If they are ever seen in the dungeon they are either to be ignored or will offer a test that is not life threatening." ¡°We will do our best but we are not dungeons and we can¡¯t control all our members as you control your mobs. What will happen if one is hurt or killed?¡± ¨C I may dislike Ordia but she had a point, if only she knew how little control I had over the Queens or Areth¡­ *If a grootslang is hurt but they live the offending party is to surrender all loot gained during this run, pay harsh fine and is banned for a month from the dungeon. The second infraction triples the fine and incurs a yearly ban. Third and they are banned for life assuming they get away from me alive as I will do everything in my power to kill them. All the loot in the dungeons will be significantly lowered for a week after any grootslang is hurt. Please note I will know if the party was provoked so that defence will do nothing and may result in harsher punishment.* ¡°I guess that is fair, Kaeden, Ordia you agree? Great, then what if a grootslang dies? *Then they won¡¯t make it to the surface. If they somehow manage I want ten times the standard fine, the body of the grootslang returned and the heads of those responsible. If you don¡¯t manage the heads fine is once again multiplied by ten. The dungeon stays closed for a month counting from when the body of the grootslang was returned. If I don¡¯t get proof those responsible were killed before I reopen the dungeon difficulty will be tripled and any drops halved until I do or you manage to convince me otherwise but that is going to cost you.* ¡°That is excessive but I won¡¯t waste my breath trying to convince you otherwise. If someone is stupid enough to kill one despite the guilds¡¯ joint prohibition then I see no reason to protect the idiot. I want the option to open the dungeon sooner. I get what you want to accomplish by that so I propose we pay you a reasonable amount and you open it after a week, the entrance fee is doubled and so is the difficulty. That will make the community itself enforce the rules. No adventurer will want to pay double and work twice as hard because someone wanted quick cash or was plain stupid. If we can¡¯t retrieve the body we will destroy it.¡± ¨C Hearing no disagreement from me he continued ¨C We want the guarantee that our training parties will make it back alive as there is little point in spending resources on them if they die in the dungeon.¡± *If they know they won¡¯t die then the training won¡¯t be good and I won¡¯t agree to allow anyone with guild token to always survive. You know that so get to your counterproposal now. I already agreed we will treat each other fairly.* ¡°We will send guardians with important novices, they will limit their skills and will be acting as leaders.¡± ¨C Maisoon seemed to be displeased that I am cutting negotiations short. I guess he enjoyed haggling, well, he wears a TURBAN some weirdness was to be expected. *I will permit one such group every other day per one dungeon level. Each level will have five floors with the level boss at the end. The guardian will not take part in battles as I won¡¯t stand epic-ranks slaughtering F-ranked mobs. I doubt other dungeons allow for such things. If the guardian does anything beyond saving the lives of your trainers, and that includes giving advice I will act as well, which is most likely to end in a party wipe as the mob will be at guardian level. And no, I don¡¯t care how it works in other dungeons. This way your trainees will have to learn how to think for themselves instead of relying on someone else. If one of them dies then that¡¯s a small price to pay.* ¡°That will work. We sometimes will be getting VIPs that absolutely can¡¯t die and you will have to ensure that. I will notify you of any such guest.¡± ¨C Kaeden request was reasonable, I wouldn¡¯t want to kill an Empire heir either. Which didn¡¯t mean I couldn¡¯t try to get something out of this. *Of course, but you have to realize how straining managing the dungeon is, all this distracting adventurers would make it even more taxing. I can¡¯t guarantee my focus won¡¯t wander for a second or two* ¡°You want to be paid for that too?!¡± *No of course not, I wouldn¡¯t be opposed to completely voluntary donation but that¡¯s not what I am after. If I grant you a favour I want one back. I would even allow a training party, without a guardian, few times a month and would do my best to ensure they would come as close to death without experiencing it as possible. I would make it realistic so they wouldn¡¯t realise they were protected the entire time. We could even negotiate scenarios or specific monsters they were to encounter. If you wanted to reward someone without anyone realising then I could make sure he finds exactly what you want and no one would be the wiser.* ¡°Dungeon dealing with abstract ideas instead of demanding payment up front. Don¡¯t take it the wrong way but I sincerely hope you are a freak or all my research, all THE RESEARCH on dungeons is garbage.¡± ¨C I guess that explained Ordia¡¯s behaviour pretty well, I should cut her some slack. I also got an idea¡­ *When I was born something went wrong, so I should be at least nonstandard. As a result, I don¡¯t have all the instincts the dungeon should have. Consuming the other core helped a little but it is just gaining knowledge how I should act. Apart from that everything else is fully functional so we can work some kind of the deal. I am sure you have theories you would want to test and no means to do that with all my brethren more interested in eating you than working with you. I will help you with that in exchange you will fill some blanks I have, help me with monster evolution and things like that.* ¡°Can I invite others? Only those I trust and if we publish you will become centre of attention¡± *Ordia, as I told Maisoon I want to become Divine-rank and that is the start. I realise becoming Sovereign, and what¡¯s more important not being destroyed immediately after, is near impossibility but it is what I aspire to do. If you wait with publishing until I reach legendary-rank I doubt it will be that shocking. After all, dungeons are greedy and for big enough bribe they would postpone eating you for long enough to carry out some of your experiments.* Afterwards, we spent over 8 hours fleshing out the agreement and Areth has been indispensable. The task of producing the contract was given to me as it was the most efficient way. I learned that Ordia was high ranked crafters¡¯ guild¡¯s official with her being famous researchers so we had all parties present. Magic contracts were inspected and signed shortly after. I was able to do that as this particular brand was produced by infusing one¡¯s will into it, which was undoubtedly the reason they went for it, dungeons having no hands. The magic part ensured it couldn¡¯t be altered, stolen, lost or destroyed and it automatically placed the copy into Imperial Archives, with them being as humongous as they were there was no danger of revealing my existence as you had to know what to look for to have even a chance of stumbling on the document. To make it magically binding you would need to include soul shackles and no one below Sovereign could shackle the dungeon. Even if you had the rank it was attempted only once and the core spent rest of its life fighting against the binding eventually succeeding and causing what was later known as First Grand Crusade of Sentient Races. It was one of five times when Empire worked with hand in hand with the Republic and the United Kingdoms and only third when all races of light took part in a single conflict on the same side. No one was eager to repeat that. I watched them leaving my dungeon satisfied, this was a good start and with time I would convince them to trust me. Now I would have the time to deal with one of the popups I got after consuming that core.
Please choose your first divine affinity.
+ - ¡Þ ?
Celestial Infernal Transcendental Abyssal
Order Chaos Nature Void
Creation Destruction Infinity Nothingness
Life Death Eternity Oblivion
Chapter 9 - The choice The rare resource given to the dungeon to kill Kaeden was actually a catalyst. It was my luck Kaeden was such a decisive person if he waited few more days the dungeon would have processed the catalyst and the most I could hope was getting lesser affinity the other dungeon chose. I spend next day trying to analyse and decide which affinity to choose. It was anything but simple so I decided to call the popup once again and go over all my choices.
Please choose your first divine affinity.
+ - ¡Þ ?
Celestial Infernal Transcendental Abyssal
Order Chaos Nature Void
Creation Destruction Infinity Nothingness
Life Death Eternity Oblivion
I had the feeling there were other divine affinities but had no idea if I was unable to choose them because I was not suited to them or because the catalyst was unsuitable for other affinities. I was leaning towards the second choice as even the placing of affinities seemed to matter. To simplify it the first column were positive affinities, second were negative ones. Third took me a while to figure out but seemed to be both while the last was neither. It would have taken me much longer if I haven¡¯t accidentally focused on Nature affinity which seemed to not fit with the others and that gave me the taste of its power. It contained both orderly and chaotic power. It turned out if I focused on any affinities I would get a sample of its might. That alone was priceless as it increased my knowledge significantly and even that bit would aid me when creating new mobs, evolving them or trying to make new variants. I also found that each row had a theme. Most people assumed that celestial and infernal were good and evil respectively and they had some point, there was a strong tendency with those powers for that. Yet it was more like celestial was focused on others when infernal concentrated on self. If you ever saw a fanatic you knew celestial could produce tyrants who in their self-righteousness caused enough evil to rival the worst of internals. Infernal was capable of good, if your desires were to be admired or to be better than everyone else then there was a high chance of doing good deeds. It stemmed from selfishness but was good nevertheless. Strong conscience in infernal aligned creature could also make them a champion of good. All those were just layers of those affinities, at the core of every single one lied emotions. When you used Celestial powers it produced euphoria and contentment both in the user and the target. It changed your body to be stronger, more resistant and to be able to channel more celestial power which in turn intensified positive emotion experienced. A skilled celestial user could even use the positive emotions around him to enhance his skills, it was no wonder it was associated with good. The infernal affinity seemed to be the exact opposite as the every use of the power would bring pain and misery. The body was changed in a way that would allow it to withstand more suffering and the power could be augmented by the suffering of the others. With time infernal users learned to transfer all the pain associated with the skill to the target. I guess it was to be expected considering selfish nature of the humans and other races. While celestial accessing good emotions would diminish them, infernal using negative emotion would intensify them. This allowed any infernal to become much more powerful than any celestial could, provided they were able to bear the pain. The association with evil seemed obvious. Transcendental affinity was much more interesting as it used both positive and negative emotions. It would be wrong to think about it as a mixture of celestial and infernal as embracing both aspects of emotion transformed the power into something completely new and unique. It was also the strongest when harmony was maintained if you lowered or increased one element the overall power would drop. Despite that, it offered flexibility as positive aspect could help things grow while negative had the enormous capability for destruction. However; even when using the purest positive emotions transcendental wouldn¡¯t be able to exclude the negative ones, there always would be the smallest seed of opposite force present as transcendental power couldn¡¯t exist without both. Abyssal was the most alien and obscure. It was associated with Outsiders, strange and mysterious creatures from beyond. In its essence, it rejected all emotions and followed the pure logic. You couldn¡¯t call it rational as it was based on a totally different set of rules that this world logic. Neither was wrong just incompatible if this world followed 2+2=4 then abyssal would be six squares make up the cube. I almost skipped the next four affinities as I didn¡¯t found them that interesting but even by not choosing them I was getting important insights and I was truly amazed. People of this world seemed to have an only basic grasp of the divine affinities. Yes, Order was the Law and Structure but it was so much more. It was extreme control over every single element within the system, it was a singular path to greatness that disallowed any non-adherence. If left unchecked it could be stifling, unaccepting of creativity and variations. The chaos was in fact randomness, anarchy and disorder. It also was change, freedom and flexibility. It was driving force behind inspiration and revolution. Without proper attentiveness, it quickly becomes uncontrollable. From that, there was just a step to becoming a slave of chaos forever beholden to its whims, unable to affect or direct the change. Nature was not the power to make plants grow quicker, it was the power to create entire ecosystems even words, to create laws governing them and allowing enough chaos in to make evolution possible. Every variant was meaningful, every evolution exciting even if, in the end, it turned out to be lacking. Either species would adapt or be replaced by another. The change and randomness were strictly limited by intricate rules introducing order. It was the endless pursuit of perfection that promoted success and mercilessly discarded failures. The void was a complete negation of both chaos and order. It was static, unchanging emptiness. If there was nothing, no structure then there would be no order, no potential for change. Its unique properties could nullify other powers and create powerful barriers, even separate dimensions. Yet those dimensions would be empty and inhospitable. It would take enormous power and focus to preserve anything there and it ultimately would prove futile. Its truest expression would void all existence. The power of creation allowed to bring forth infinite wonders, endless possibilities that with a thought would come true. It allowed recreating, combining and changing elements. It was knowledge and ingenuity. Yet it lacked practical aspects to it, it urged you to create endlessly just for creation sake without regards to usefulness or danger of things you made. The act itself was glorified and then the product would be discarded offering nothing new to explore. It was forever pushing forward in unattainable goal to create every possibility forever abandoning your creations. Destruction was unmaking, dismantling and ending existing things. It wasn¡¯t disintegration as the process would always end with the object attaining new form. It may be ashes, unusable debris or raw materials ready to be shaped again. In some form, it was a final mercy to flawed or aged creations yet it appetite was insatiable and it would gladly eradicate any form or being regardless of right or wrong. Infinity was a sum of all that was, is and will be or even could be. It united creation and destruction into an endless cycle of reshaping. In its attempt to contain every possibility it collected unique forms with insignificant differences. It could attempt to create thousands of copies of the same item in every possible and impossible shade of red. Then it would do the same for every other colour. After that was done it would repeat the entire process for the exact same thing just slightly bigger, smaller or its mirror image. Then it would try to mix different colours in endless and frivolous attempt to make every variant, option and alternative. Nothingness was the power to unmake things yet compared to destruction it left nothing behind. It was endless hunger that strived to reduce all possibilities, all infinite options to one, to nothingness. It was simplicity in purest form with only nothingness existing or rather non-existing. It could affect all possibilities reducing them to one. Life was boundless vitality, youthfulness, flourishing and more. It was a struggle, competition and selfishness. It was growth and proliferation. It didn¡¯t discriminate and empowered all being leading to strife and conflict over limited resources. It was a constant activity, the pursuit of one excitement after another. Death was decay and entropy, weakness and infirmity. It was release, absolution and peacefulness. It gave meaning to the life and at the same time couldn¡¯t exist without it. It was merciless and uncaring, yet it made space and room for growth of new generations. It offered stillness and reflection, made struggle the life was worthwhile. Eternity was the impact of life and death on others. It was memory and effect preserved indefinitely. It was consequences of actions reaching through ages. In its ultimate, it was release from the cycle of life and death, immortality. To be eternal was to be free of death but at the same time, it was abandoning life. Not living or dying just existing. Changing into a concept, idea or a truth. Oblivion was the loss of meaning, fading through time into obscurity. If everything was forgotten was there any true existence? At the same time as every divine affinity, it served a purpose. It destroyed any preconceptions, animosities and assumptions. It allowed to tread the same path and arrive at a different outcome. While it erased the good it also get rid of the bad, leaving a black slate ready to be rewritten again, and again. At its height, it offered power to reject the reality. Sixteen options and I could pick only one. They all had both advantages and disadvantages, all required tight control or consequences would be dire. They all offered possibilities and the danger to become mindless executor of their will. I was excited and terrified, you couldn¡¯t reach divine-rank without divine affinity so gaining one was enormous luck and yet it may be my downfall. It was extremely unwise to get one as a common-ranked yet to pass such opportunity would be even a bigger shame. I needed to operate under the assumption that picking one of the group made acquiring others impossible. I found that unlikely but in this case, I felt it was better to be safe than sorry. I went through them again and decided to first cross out those I knew I wouldn¡¯t choose.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! The celestial affinity had a danger of making me too sure of myself. If after every decision I enforced it with celestial power the euphoria connected to it could make me convinced of my infallibility. In my current situation that was a danger I couldn¡¯t risk. Infernal would either require causing or experiencing pain, despair and hate. I wasn¡¯t sadist nor self-sacrificing type so that was out even before adding the Church to the mix. Transcendental had me really intrigued but once again I would be severely limited in using it. On upper floors, I would need to channel positive aspect to make sure things weren¡¯t deadly. On lower ones, I would probably lean towards negative aspects. Both aspects if pure enough could be confused with celestial or infernal and when used in equal proportions could confuse the Church. Neither option seemed something I would like, especially now that I managed to convince guilds to work with me. Adding another player would upset the balance even if it was someone more open to compromises. The unyielding Church was the last faction I wanted near me. Abyssal was out of the question as I lost everything I was but a name. I adapted and enjoyed being the dungeon but to willingly lose another aspect of myself was out of the question. Sure my rashness and my emotions resulted in bad decisions but they were part of me, for better or worse. I also need to understand human logic and they needed to understand mine. Appearing as unpredictable would get me no favours. The order was out as I didn¡¯t want to limit my creativity and chaos would take too much effort to keep in line. I didn¡¯t want to see Areth changing into giant spider one day or worse. Additionally, both guaranteed the Church¡¯s involvement. The void would be great if I tried to take on the empire and that was not going to happen, I would like to stay alive for now. Creation would definitely aid me and that seemed perfectly aligned with my personality. That was why I couldn¡¯t choose it as I needed to make sure all my creations were useful and had a clear purpose. I already was likely to be lost in possibilities and only after creating things trying to desperately find them a proper place in the dungeon. Destruction offered interesting options but I could always kill the experiment and get back part of materials and mana used to create it. I wanted something that would have a bigger impact. I had no idea who would even consider nothingness with those options present. I guess making the only possibility for something to fail would prove useful at times yet limiting oneself just to one option was sheer insanity. Life and Death seemed incomplete without each other. With my soul affinity associated with necromancy, death would make people jumpy. Life would make stronger mobs but their purpose was to ultimately die to make adventurers happy and me stronger. I only cared for grootslangs and them, being ageless, would do without it. Eternity was too abstract and I understood it the least, yet I had instinctively feared it limitations. It left me with three choices; the Nature affinity, the Infinity affinity and the Oblivion affinity. Infinity offered the most options and at the same time, its drawbacks were the most severe. If I was likely to create a being and only then consider its usefulness I would be prone to making endless copies with meaningless differences. I was taking huge risk picking divine affinity as a B-ranked core so I couldn¡¯t choose one with such pronounced disadvantages. Oblivion would allow me to create several blank slate monsters and erasing all assumptions from my mind. After thousands of attempts, I would eventually be able to find small differences in their evolutions leading to improvement of the species or even to new evolutionary paths. It also had a vague promise of rejecting the reality. If I understood it correctly I could remove any effect and any consequence that happened in my dungeon by pouring mana at it. If I was successful it would be as it has never happened. Nature would produce similar effects when it came to monster evolutions as oblivion just be different means. If I put a species into different ecosystems they would diverge at some point creating different evolutions. The difference was I would have less control over the changes in exchange of the process being easier to carry out and demanding less knowledge from me. I believed some evolutions would be unlocked only by either Oblivion or Nature with the majority being possible through both. The choice boiled to two things. First, how much I wanted that Oblivion ability to affect reality. The second was the option of easy and somewhat automated but random evolution discovery or painstaking, time-consuming but allowing direct and precise control process. I regretted not being able to choose freely as I would love to choose Infinity or Transcendental or even Creation. I didn¡¯t exist in a vacuum and had to consider consequences of my actions as well as my circumstances. I allowed myself to consider alternatives, to imagine myself wielding different powers I knew I could never choose. I even allowed myself time to feel regret, anger and loss. Then I steeled myself and made the choice.
Congratulations! As the divine power of Nature courses through your body, your mind expands. All your skills increased in efficiency. All your stats were enhanced. You are able to infuse divine affinity into all your actions and creatures. As you advance through ranks power of Nature will further strengthen and change your body.
Congratulations! You have gained new title: Divine-Touched You have reached exceptional integration with the divine power. You are now one with the divine and it is impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends. Your mana will be infused with the divine increasing its potency and granting additional benefits. The divine power will now be forever present in your dungeon.
Congratulations! You have gained new title: Harmonious with the Divine You integrated with the Divine at low rank increasing your compatibility. You will be able to use divine powers with ease and any drawbacks or flaws will be significantly reduced.
Congratulations! Connecting to the Divine elevated your rank. You have advanced to rank ¦Å lvl 1/150. You have recovered all HP and Mana. Your maximum HP and Mana increased. All your skills increased in efficiency. All your stats were enhanced.
Congratulations! Your Affinity (Nature) gave you new skill: Divine Barrier (Initiate) Lvl: 1/1500 You are able to create divine barriers with the help of divine power. Such barriers are highly resistant to any mana based powers and take additional damage from attack containing opposite affinity.
Congratulations! Your Affinity (Nature) gave you new skill: Ecosystem Creation (Saint) Lvl: 1/1500 Instead of creating monsters individually you are able to create whole ecosystems. You must first devise schematic containing at least 10 different species, specific environment and laws governing species behaviours and evolution. You are able to input additional data and restrictions. You are able to create virtual simulations based on schematics. The mana cost varies depending on complexity, time dilation and desired duration of the experiment.
Congratulations! Your Affinity (Nature) gave you new skill: Ecosystem Understanding (Passive) (Saint) Lvl: Max Your understanding of Ecosystems is deepened. You are able to notice regularities quicker and inferring information based on previous knowledge is easier.
Name Arnar
Rank: ¦Å Level 1/150
HP 100 000/100 000 Mana 500 000/500 000
Floors 1 Rooms 77
Titles: 8 Skills 17
Traits: 3 Affinities 5
Affinities
Absolute Affinities Nature (Divine)
Superior Affinities -
Greater Affinities Soul, Mind
Strong Affinities -
Standard Affinities -
Lesser Affinities Water
Weak Affinities Earth
With the addition of the negotiation skill, I gained when bargaining with Maisoon, I now had 17 skills. For an epic-rank that was low but considering I awoke less than a month ago, I was happy with my progress. My new tiles made me regret not picking Oblivion affinity but I wouldn¡¯t be able to use it to the fullest for quite a long time anyway. Not to mention that I had no guarantees the skill I wanted would be granted as soon as I picked it or if it actually did what I assumed it did. Even if I get it I was pretty sure such heaven-defying skill would need ungodly amounts of mana. It was also entirely possible I was still alive and sane only because I picked the Nature power as it was the gentlest of all. Sure it had the potential for violence and destruction but I was not ready to bring it out yet and in its natural state it was easiest to absorb. I risked the guess I was part of nature innately when other powers seemed more like outside forces. The divine touched offered both new dangers and new possibilities. I should have been used to that by now. I had no way of hiding my divine affiliation now but the nature power in my dungeon would make all my creations stronger. It would even benefit adventurers. I had no idea what effect would have the Oblivion power had but I was sure Nature would offer fewer complications inside and outside of the dungeon. I was unsure of the ranks of my new skills but Areth as always come through sending me a useful resource.
Common Ranks H, G, F, E, D, C, B, A, AA, AAA, S, SS, SSS
Epic Ranks ¦Å, ¦Ä, ¦Ã, ¦Â, ¦Á, ¦Ø
Legendary Ranks Copper, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum
Mythic Ranks Amethyst, Onyx, Jade, Opal, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, Diamond
Divine Ranks Initiate, Adept, Enlightened, Saint, Demigod, Minor Deity, Major Deity, Lesser God, God, High God
Sovereign Ranks Squire, Knight, Grand Cross, Baron, Count, Duke, King, Emperor, High Sovereign
I guessed divine affinity granting divine skills shouldn¡¯t be surprising yet I was Epic-Ranked and got skills three tiers above me. If not for me being the dungeon with insane mana pool I wouldn¡¯t be able to even dream about activating any of them. I would have to ask queens to stop limiting their passive mana emission or sustaining ecosystem simulations would be an issue. I was also expecting to get divine power stat similar to mana but I discovered I couldn¡¯t store divine power, only channel it from its source. The source seemed to be both unlimited and abstract located both everywhere and nowhere. I had no idea if it remained the case when I reached divine rank or not. I asked my Azure Queen to contact Maisoon telepathically and ask him for an urgent meeting. I believed he deserved to know as soon possible about the situation and he would have found anyway so I hope it would make him more amiable if he believed I was as forthcoming as possible. I even revealed the existence of Azure Queen to convince him to my openness. He didn¡¯t ask about other queens but he saw golden grootslang and was quite clever so I assumed he found out. He brought with him some plants and basic monster bodies so I had new material to work with. I guess it was high time to take that environmental simulation for a spin. Chapter 10 - Unexpected complications I had quickly run into a serious problem with my ecosystem simulations I was unable to sustain them, at least not for as long as I would like. I set five of them and planned for them to run for ten thousand years. One minute, in reality, would equal to one year in simulation as stronger time dilation had ridiculous mana requirements. That meant I had to wait for almost a week for it to finish and I even reduced mushrooms lifespan to only a year hoping to get enough generations for significant mutations. If my calculations were correct with the current mana drain I was able to sustain it for only three days assuming I did nothing else and actively focused on regenerating my mana. Which meant I had to either reduce the number of simulations to two or end them after only little more than 4 thousand years. I was debating which would be better when I got another vision. I saw the interior of a large tent with luxurious pillows covering the entire floor, next to ornamental short table sat four people. Three of them I knew as they were Ordia, Kaeden and Maisoon. The fourth was wearing a simple robe and his fingers were stained with ink. His old face formed a scowl. ¡°Maisoon, you are mythic-ranked and have been here for how long? A week? You had enough time and power to create the simplest of buildings. Or did you actually managed to fracture your feeble mind so much that you forgot the little geomancy you managed to learn? Why do you insist on staying in this primitive tent?¡± ¡°Ordia, Kaiden, this charming old fellow is Nicolas l¡¯Amy the imperial scribe I was telling you about. Nicolas I will allow you to mock myself but say another word about my ancestral home and I will kill you. This primitive tent, as you called it, houses entire magic of my tribe and only a fraction will be enough to end you where you stand.¡± ¡°You and customs of your people. I gave up on talking some sense into you over a thousand years ago.¡± ¨C He looked at the other two present in the room and smiled ¨C ¡°Ms Freesnow nice to finally meet you, you are quite famous among researchers in capital. Mr Randallson it has been a while, I see you are adapting to your circumstances quite remarkably.¡± ¡°Pleasantries aside, did you managed to get it?¡± ¨C Maisoon was behaving strangely, I was sure there was nothing that could make him impatient. ¡°No, I did something much better.¡± ¨C With those words, he passed them a document with two elaborate seals. Even I was impressed with the calligraphy shown it must have taken hours to write this thing. ¨C ¡°Take a look for yourself.¡± ¡°This is a land grant officiated by both the Emperor and the Church. it gives exclusive rights to anything in roughly 10-kilometre radius to Arnar.¡± ¨C Only Nicolas remained calm. ¨C ¡°How the hell you managed to do that?¡± ¡°Well if you read the whole thing you would know all three guilds was given temporary rights of representing Arnar in dealing with the outside world. Everyone at the capital is convinced that it is our ploy to make sure control over this dungeon remain in your hands. The Church went for that as they don¡¯t want to bother with a dungeon in the middle of nowhere and if by accident you manage to grow it into something truly valuable they plan on waltzing in and bribing the dungeon to kick you out and name them its representative. If this was a normal dungeon their plan would succeed easily, you are sure this one won¡¯t go for that? Or do you plan to get into its good graces by regularly showering it with gifts?¡± ¡°That won¡¯t work. The Church would quickly outbid us. We actually are hoping he will be loyal and stick with us. Please don¡¯t make that face, you haven¡¯t met him. Plus there is a legendary psionic monster inside that makes Maisoon wary. The moment I or Ordia enter the dungeon he will know if we try to cheat him. Does that make him a noble?¡± ¡°Kaeden you spent more time in dungeons that the rest of us combined if you say that I am willing to trust you. As a matter of fact, yes he is the first dungeon to become a noble, a baron at that. Before you worry that the Emperor will be able to command it,¡± ¨C Ordia look make the scribe correct himself quickly. ¨C him to do anything, he will be the head of the independent barony similar to how elves are treated.¡± ¡°The tax?¡± ¨C Ordia asked. ¡°They would never give that up. The proper dungeon is a gold mine and if we went through all the trouble of getting that paper then there was no way anyone would believe he wasn¡¯t special. There will be 10% flat tax imposed on the barony and that will apply to all the goods taken out of dungeon as well.¡± Hearing that Maisoon winced ¨C ¡°That is steep, isn¡¯t 3% standard for a noble? The guilds have to pay 7% so it will be 17% before we even add the fee for using the dungeon. We are looking at 30-35% total and when you add the cost of supplies and equipment we will be the most expensive dungeon in the Empire. We will never get enough adventures!¡± ¡°Oh, Maisoon do you take me for an idiot? There is another document that you haven¡¯t read yet¡± ¨C Nicolas grinned openly and even started to laugh seeing their shocked faces. ¡°How is that possible?¡± ¨C Ordia mumbled. ¡°This must be a forgery¡­ No way had the Emperor agreed to that!¡± ¨C Maisoon words prompted small sphere of light hitting him square in a chest and flinging him across the room. I hadn¡¯t even seen Nicolas shooting it. ¡°Maisoon, you know that forging the Emperor¡¯s seal is a death sentence and only if you are lucky. Think before you say anything.¡± ¨C It took ten minutes of fervent apologies for the scribe to even consider sitting down. ¨C ¡°You know that I am friends with the Emperor, right? This is my retirement gift and the church doesn¡¯t know about the second document or you would have already had a cathedral being built here.¡± ¡°In short, the barony is exempt from all other taxes and is allowed to set their own laws, regulations and taxes as long they are not contradictory to the Imperial Charter. We have even permission to set our own imperial order. Of course, if nobility ever got wind one of their class had to pay 10% tax we would have regular upraising. You know how those bastards fear precedence so his Imperial Majesty in his infinite wisdom promised to build, within five years, a class 7 teleportation platform for the barony, to pay its maintenance and operational cost with half of the fee going straight to our coffers. The fee can never be bigger that three-fourths of the average teleportation price across the entire Empire. Also, there will be a full contingent of the imperial guard stationed here responsible for the safety of both the platform and the Baron. He even put that as eternal pledge so no one can change that even the Emperor himself¡± ¡°The Church will shit themselves when they hear that. The nobles will make sure Arnar will never be stripped of any privilege. I never expected nobles to do anything for the guilds but you can always bet on them protecting their interests. How the hell Roseford family agree to have their land taken from them?¡± ¡°You know how they pissed the Emperor a few decades ago and now that they have trouble with Bonpries and Tirasse they agreed to cede their claims to anything east of Amm Steam in exchange for Imperial Guarantee. We will be surrounded by three counties now, and this will be only neutral ground for them.¡± ¨C I was not sure what that was significant but seeing their reaction that was a good thing. ¡°Before you start overestimating my abilities please consider the implications. Firstly the Emperor gets back at Rosefords and no one can say anything as they were the one who requested that. Secondly, he will strengthen the guilds and weaken the local nobles because nobody believes this is anything but the guilds¡¯ plot. Thirdly he places teleportation platform beyond the reach of any noble, by the way, five points of seven were already decided, and they will be Amber Duchy, Rose County, Silver County, Great Fall Barony and the Imperial city itself. Those are the most overpopulated areas with the highest amounts of complaint about an insufficient number of dungeons in the area. So he boosts the colonisation of the Expanse while reducing the number of complaints he needs to hear. He knows we wouldn¡¯t go through all this trouble for ordinary dungeon so he is sure eventually all those disgruntled adventurers will make their way here. He just doesn¡¯t realise how special Arnar is. As a bonus, he gets a trusted person to observe the situation locally.¡±Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. ¡°Wait you weren¡¯t joking about retiring? You love your job!¡± ¨C Maisoon shouts in disbelieve while Kaeden gets visibly nervous. ¡°You expected me to sit this one out? You know I always loved exploring the dungeons, I just got tired of them always trying to kill me. Plus there is a limit of how much imperial politics I can stomach. I look forward to not being stared down daily by Sovereigns. We both know I barely qualified for the job as only a demigod.¡± ¡°So you will be staying as¡­¡± ¨C I wondered why Maisoon seemed to hate the idea. I was thrilled to have new quality food to visit my dungeon. ¡°So you weren¡¯t notified? I pulled some strings and this will dungeon will not come under Roseford jurisdiction. You all are to become the new branch guild masters and I will be the head of local scribes¡¯ guild. I wonder if I could check out Arnar¡¯s dungeon, it has been years since I was in common rank dungeon and he already has four affinities.¡± ¡°Well, he will probably do his best to keep you inside permanently. He said I should visit often as my mana was tasty. He will go nuts over yours. There have been some changes since we last talked¡­¡± ¨C Maisoon started explaining my new situation and the vision faded. Ten minutes later I got visitors. Ordia collapsed on the floor panting, I haven¡¯t expected the scribe to outpace her. Maisoon was right, I was going crazy over that man¡¯s mana quality. I also found the way to finish the simulations, all I had to do was convince him to become my battery. *I am Arnar, nice to meet you, Nicolas, you are a scribe, right? I will make you wonderful office inside the dungeon, I promise you will love it. So what colour of walls would you like?* - I felt Areth cringe. I should either tone down the enthusiasm or keep the conversation from her. ¡°You are only proposing that so you can syphon my mana?¡± *No! Maybe?! Will you stay?* ¨C Ok, Areth was right this was pathetic¡­ but his mana was wonderful. I wanted more¡­ I wanted it all. For a second I understood why dungeons wanted to kill the adventurers. I needed to get a grip. I had no way to kill an actual demigod and I would get more mana if I managed to convince him to visit regularly. ¡°You should know there are dungeons capable of turning humans into puppets. We don¡¯t want even suspicion that you can do the same and no sane person will stay inside the dungeon for an extended period of time.¡± ¨C He looked quickly at Kaeden. ¨C ¡°Maybe besides him, but I am unsure if he qualifies as sane. So why do you want me to stay so much?¡± That was a dangerous question. I couldn¡¯t tell them everything but I didn¡¯t want them turning suspicious. - *I started a project requiring enormous amounts of mana and realised I can¡¯t supply enough. But don¡¯t worry it is totally safe and will allow me to make a better dungeon. No, really it fine, seriously.* - So¡­ total failure at not making them suspicious. I needed to make Areth my spokesperson. ¡°Will it be enough if he visits you every day for two to three hours? That will explainable and I can come as well and actually exhaust my whole mana pool.¡± ¨C When they looked at him with surprise he added ¨C ¡°What? We already decided to trust him and I am known as an eccentric. I can always say I am trying to convince dungeon to produce a psionic mushroom.¡± *Thank you that will do. I will need you to keep that up for a week. By the way, what is your divine affinity?* ¡°That is a rude question, divine affinities are considered taboos and often even one¡¯s spouse doesn¡¯t know. But I guess you voluntarily told us yours so I can make an exception, I am a runic demigod.¡± ¨C He pointed his finger at wall make a writing motion and produced a rune that exploded with light. ¨C ¡°It is a lesser divine affinity which is part of the language branch. I guess you don¡¯t know that but there are countless divine affinities but most are just the offshoot of the major ones. It is important as I can cultivate by myself or enter the dungeon with matching affinity and my body will passively absorb it. Finding the one matching your affinity may be challenging so any of the same branch would be acceptable, little less effective but acceptable. The exception would be a dungeon with a major affinity of your branch or even better superior one, in my case that would be Order dungeon.¡± ¡°As with everything in this world, there are exceptions, one of which is Nature aligned dungeon that is just slightly worse than your superior affinity, as long as you don¡¯t have a null affinity that is. Depending on the affinity level it may even produce better results. I, for example, have strong runic affinity so I have to visit dungeon with at least standard affinity. There is only fourteen greater affinity Order dungeon and current waiting time is four months to enter one. You know, I was in strong affinity Order dungeon two weeks ago and imagine my surprise when I found I get a bigger benefit from visiting you. That means you have at least greater affinity with nature and we need to get imperial guard here as soon as possible. So would you mind confirming my suspicions?¡± Congratulations! You managed to royally fuck up and step into the deepest shit yet. I didn¡¯t actually get a popup but it would have been appropriate¡­ Long story short I needed protection and quickest way to get it was to cooperate with them. I no longer could afford to keep secrets for them, I guess we all had to hope the other party would prove loyal. *I don¡¯t have greater affinity with nature¡­* ¡°Please don¡¯t lie I know what I feel, If this is going to work we have to trust each other. If it was you listening to our previous conversation, and yes I have noticed, then you know we are now all in the same boat.¡± I was surprised but the other three defended me and told of Nicolas for not allowing me to finish. *I don¡¯t have greater affinity with nature, I have an absolute one.* ¡°I am getting the Emperor to deploy an entire company of the black guard here. Do you need anything before I release a one-tenth of my mana to help with your project?¡± I quickly channelled all my mana into already ongoing simulations and set up five more. Then I remember golden Queen request. *Don¡¯t resist please.* - I gave him the non-transferable skill bestowal [A] usable every day and asked him to teach me the rune he used. He generously gave me knowledge of runic language and one hundred basic runes that could hold power. - *Ok, I am ready* The mana he released was enough for me to refill my pool twelve times. I so wanted to become divine-ranked. Just before he left he stopped and directed a question to nothing in particular. ¡°Wait, he is Nature aligned dungeon, right? Does any of you know a reliable wood elves or druids? ¡°I am a friend to the Mysterious Silverbell Grove, they are a joint community of wood, silver and sun elves.¡± ¨C Looks like our Ordia was connected as it amazed her companions. ¡°Very good, write them a letter telling them they have to establish an embassy here before the end of this week. Don¡¯t tell them why. I will try to deal with the Druids.¡± *Excuse me, I get an impression those factions are bad business so why invite them at all* ¡°We don¡¯t have time. Kaeden, almost every major faction in the Empire hates you so you stay and explain it to Arnar, we need to go.¡± ¨C Nicolas was such a charming fellow. Surprisingly no one protested which meant he was at least partially right. I wonder what Kaeden had done. ¡°Nicolas is sadly right. If we don¡¯t inform them about your existence they will declare war on us. The good news is you don¡¯t have to worry about the Church anymore, the bad is Druids are worse. The usually keep to themselves but if someone provokes their ire they go absolutely overboard. The last time they moved was one hundred and twenty years ago. The church, during one of their crusades, destroyed a third of a plant affiliated legendary dungeon. In response one of their High Archdruids destroyed the Imperial Cathedral and forced the Pope to run. We still got nice grove in the middle of the capital that no one dares to touch.¡± *How much of the problem will they be?* ¡°The tree-huggers are always pain in the ass. You won¡¯t have to worry about them, everyone else will. They will grow a fortress around you and organise pilgrimages to visit the fourth know Nature dungeon in existence.¡± *They will be killing my mobs?! If they are that crazy then I won¡¯t be able to regrow dungeon on time!* ¡°No, they will try to avoid combat and if they fail they will die so you will get stronger. Unless you manage to convince them to fight your mobs. And forget about normal adventures they will rarely have a chance to enter.¡± *Kaeden, Maisoon owes me a favour right? Then please tell him I want him to convince druids to not commit suicide by dungeon and to allow the other adventurers.* ¡°He will love this.¡± ¨C Kaeden grins threatened to split his face. Well, I wanted to see adventurers test and struggle against my designs. Those druids were freaky and I wanted as little to do with them as possible. ¨C ¡°You realise that wood elves will throw their entire younger generations to die inside your dungeon? Apparently, they get extra power and prestige if they survive Nature affiliated dungeon. With those optimistic parting words, he left. I should have chosen Oblivion affinity. Interlude 1 - I. AM. GOING. TO. KILL. THAT. STUPID. CORE. I was on the second floor of the Arnar¡¯s dungeon and wondered why he couldn¡¯t have spawned those new mushrooms at the grootslangs¡¯ floor. It probably had to do something with me being his official spokesperson. Nothing but an excuse not to deal with those freaking druids. They have arrived a week after the blackguard did. I actually had no idea how Nicolas managed to convince the Emperor to send them but they arrived two days after Arnar told the Council he had absolute nature affinity. It was a month since then and I still wanted to pulverise his mind. I even had a spell for the occasion that wouldn¡¯t leave any permanent damage. I also was a member of that stupid council, Arnar¡¯s idea to make us recognised as a proper race instead of monsters. I would be even grateful if it wasn¡¯t a ploy to push all the boring work at someone else. We were promised the magnificent dungeon core, our creator to awake and take care of us, instead, we got Arnar. He was great, and made an effort but had the attention span of a demented butterfly. Sometimes I just wanted to scream at him for hours. We had collected information about the majority of the affinities and could have shared it with him. If he picked nature affinity after that we would be fine with his choice, we were supposed to serve him not rule or limit him. But he picked it blindly! I guess it could have been worse, he could have picked nothingness and destroyed quarter of the continent after losing control over it. That was not the point, though! HE SHOULD HAVE ASKED! I still had half the floor to go through so I thought back to the first time I spoke with him. A few weeks earlier we have detected a new dungeon core being born only seventeen kilometres to the north. We usually killed all the dungeons in the 200-kilometer radius unless the guilds managed to get to them first. So far we only failed three times. There was something strange with this region as the new cores appeared every two or three years, we had so many stored for Arnar that we stopped picking the common ones. I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if that was Arnar¡¯s fault as well. He attracted troubles like a magnet. This time everything went flawlessly and my reward for good leadership was to look at him sleeping. I worshipped him then. I still did but nowadays I was too irritated with him to notice. He created or actually resurrected our race and gave us purpose. He gave us our history and legends or as much of it as he could. My favourite was our progenitor hiding from our actual creators afraid of our power. She was a divine creature of untold power, but I admired her intelligence the most. She hid for thousands of years and when she was forgotten she started her brood. She was the last of her kind and she refused to mix her blood with lesser species. So she laid the eggs on her own, fertilising them with her own power, mana and dreams. It had weakened our bloodline and reduced all her offspring to mythic creatures. When Arnar recreated us he managed to make queens into only an ancient race. We didn¡¯t hold that against him, he actually did a marvellous job with how little information he had. The first generations were common monsters, intelligent but lesser shadows of current grootslangs. As the Queens grew and passed their knowledge to their heir''s, the fourth generation of Queens reached the peak of ancient creatures¡¯ potential. This allowed them to create us, barely qualified to be called Ancients but ancients nevertheless. When I saw the weird flash my heart stopped I was terrified something has happened to him so I called to him. He was so different from what we expected. He lost all the knowledge he passed to the first queens. I felt guilty as I suspected the effort to create us must have taken a toll and was a direct cause. I gave him the weakest core we had stored hoping that it wouldn¡¯t cause him any harm. He absorbed it as if it was the easiest and most obvious thing to do. Then he tried to name me. I was ecstatic, no grootslang ever had a name. I felt a minuscule pang of regret as this was most likely going to make me unable to progress considering how weak acore he currently was. And then something that had no right to happen happened. I was slammed with more power than any Queen had. I was confused and then furious when I realised what he was trying to do. He must have passed out as he didn¡¯t hear my protests but more and more power was poured into me. I was sure I would be ripped apart. I had no idea how I survived but had no time to celebrate, that stupid floating gem went dormant again. I wanted to smash it to pieces. That was just to not think how terrified I was for him and for me. I had no idea how to explain what happened to my Queen. It turned out they all already knew. They told me to check my stats and I was speechless. He did what we always hoped for, I was a legendary creature and the way to mythic, maybe even divine was open. It would take millennia but there was a glimmer of hope for us. The queens needed a week and they elevated their bloodline to legendary as well. This would do nothing to the already laid eggs but all new ones would be much stronger. Compared to this me reaching epic-ranks was nothing. Next come the bitter-sweet part, I lost my command and become a glorified babysitter. When he finally awoke two weeks later I wanted to have eggs with him. Well, not literally but I dreaded he will take another thousand year nap. I chided him properly and believed all will be glorious from now. I should have eaten him right then. He refused to make an entrance, he refused to make another floor instead he spend a week making seven additional rooms. In that time he could have made seven floors. But nooo, he said he had no idea how to design that floors so until he knew what adventurers wanted he would stay as he was. No arguments were good enough. He always could have remade that floors, he could have made one more so he hadn¡¯t have spent an entire week making seven stupid rooms.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. When he gave a freaking skill crystal, the great secret of grootslangs to random adventurer as if that was a common rock I went to the hatcheries ready to activate legacy bestowal, let some other poor soul deal with that maniac. I was so done. My queen somewhat convinced that this would be inhumane to stuck a newborn with such responsibility. The fact that he awakened when I entered his room was fate at work and it was my destiny to aid that glittering gem. I am still convinced she used her psionic powers to make me buy that bullshit. When I hoped for some normalcy he babbled all his secret to Mythic Mage and invited him to the partnership. Then he picked the only affinity that guaranteed the most unreasonable people in the Empire would start to worship him. The fact that all his insane ideas worked was no excuse. They shouldn¡¯t have worked! Kaeden and Maisoon weren¡¯t that bad, even Nicolas was tolerable. Ordia turned out to be just young, not stupid. Little difference it made at this time but at least she would grow older and hopefully wiser, stupidity was incurable. The druids were the problem. One such idiot got shot in the face by the itching spores and had fallen on the second mushroom. He then spent four hours in complete agony not daring to move or even scratch himself and this is a quote ¡°to not disturb any plan the divine dungeon could have by his unworthy existence daring to defile his sanctuary¡±. Arnar got eventually tired of his screams and had me remove him from the dungeon. I hit him with the cleansing spell and got called ¡°the holy avatar of the divinity the mighty and omnipotent Arnar created to interact with those unworthy to hear his holy voice¡±. After five minutes of the uninterrupted prize of my divine attributes I ¡°accidentally¡± dropped the idiot on the head. It couldn¡¯t possibly do any more damage to what was supposed to be his brain and silenced him. The druidic leader, archdruid GentleOak was a petite woman that seemed sane at the first sight. When I learned he turned a man into a tree for a week for overhearing him wondering how much grootslang¡¯s scale may be worth I was forced to reevaluate my previous assumption. The elves appeared two days ago and so far seven of them tried to kill me, one was Gold-ranked and actually managed to injure me. Arnar went ape-shit after that. It was kind of cute actually. He ordered Azure Queen to teleport the local elf leader into the maze and heal him every time he was about to die. After ten hours the council appeared and the poor fellow was given an ultimatum. If one single elf ever tried to attack a grootslang again all elves would be banned from the dungeon, if any managed somehow to enter they would be teleported out. He even pledged he would personally request druids to close all elven forests in the Expanse and trap the inhabitants inside for hundred thousand years. He managed to scare poor sun elf shitless. The druids were crazy enough to actually go through with that and there was no greater dishonour for the elf to kill a clansmate. Something they would be forced to do with their insane population growth if trapped within communities. After that, the druids made proclamation that anyone who would hurt a grootslang would become their personal enemy. I guessed if I wanted I could march straight into the palace and sleep on the imperial throne now. No one even the Emperor would dare to harm me. This proved if you were insane enough no one would dare to mess with you. If I actually tried to kill the Emperor that would be a different story. But for something as minor as occupying the throne no one was willing to risk having and imperial grove instead of an imperial palace. Maisoon actually came through and convinced tree huggers that Arnar¡¯s divine plan was to test adventurers and it was their holy duty to help with the trials. So we would get regular adventurers with the occasional druidic party. When I wasn¡¯t pissed at Arnar which sadly was a rare occurrence I was amazed by his ingenuity and perseverance. He would pick at a problem until he solved it. When he actually included me in his creative process it was the most exciting I ever felt and I didn¡¯t let the fact that he included me only to kill his creations if it proved too dangerous to bother me. Lately, he was asking me questions out of his own initiative, something about talking with other being allowed him to see the problem from a different perspective. There were also amusing situations. Both druids and emperor gave him gift packages containing rare and obscure materials, that the guilds wouldn¡¯t have access to or couldn¡¯t justify using due to their prices. The emperor even sent the shards of the gem used in teleportation gems. Arnar still had to create his own mini network as there were few quirks to work out but in the meantime, he learned how to manipulate the space. Due to his nature, he couldn¡¯t do anything crazy to his dungeon, the most he managed was to make a room twice the actual size. That didn¡¯t stop him from doing crazy shit to the two sub-dungeons he created. He picked two of the shards that split when he named himself. He fashioned them into dungeon cores and made them into dungeons. They had absolutely no intelligence and only followed his commands but he could create a set of behaviours for them which was perfect for the mine and herbalist garden. He also applied his newfound understanding of space and fit a tree floor dungeon into a single room. The expression of the council when I explained the concept to them was priceless. I was also used by now to daily screams of outrage followed by the head scribe storming to the dungeon to discuss one of Arnar¡¯s ideas. I was sure he was doing this on purpose to lure the old man into the dungeon and feed on his mana. He couldn¡¯t actually have planned to put third tier materials on the third floor of the mine. I think Maisoon was just a step from killing Arnar once, the sentiment I understood perfectly. After five hour lecture about the currency in the Empire, Arnar¡¯s response was: ¡°Oh what? Yes, yes, no creating imperial coins due to infraction¡±. They had a lot to learn, firstly you don¡¯t try to talk with Arnar when he is experimenting, and secondly he has no interest in ¡°unimportant¡± details like inflation, economic stability or Empire¡¯s policy. You had to be clear and precise. No imperial coins, no tier two materials on the first floor, no perverted trees. Although I was sure that the last one was an accident. I just made it into the room with the new shrooms. First I got hit with new spores to be immediately assaulted by psychic attack. ARNAR! NO APHRODISIAC SHROOMS! AND EXCLUDE SEXUAL DESIRES FROM THAT TEMPTATION SHROOM! I. AM. GOING. TO. KILL. THAT. STUPID. CORE. Chapter 11 - The mine I was in the middle of pondering why Areth yelled at me. Again. I mean how I was supposed that Temptation Mushroom would cause her to experience sexual vision? If anything that was saying something about her desires! And it wasn¡¯t aphrodisiac shroom. It was supposed to make them hyperaware. I am a floating gem unable to reproduce how the hell was I to know it would have that effect. She should have found some nice male grootslang and got over that. Once I saw a man called Viper the Grumpy and was afraid if she would soon become Areth the Nag. I quickly dispelled that thought afraid I would make that happen and I would NEVER live that down. It has happened suddenly. The fire consumed my entire dungeon, I saw Kaeden, Ordia and Maisoon die. Nicolas had summoned some kind of shield but was quickly overwhelmed and terribly burned. My queens tried to slow fire¡¯s advance and get the eggs out of the dungeon but there was not enough time. Then my core cracked and shattered and the world turned dark. I woke up panicked and in desperation reached out to my family. They all were safe. I was surprised how quickly I accepted them but that was truth. Grootslangs weren¡¯t just my bodyguards or mobs they were the family and I would do anything, everything to protect them. Even those adventurers deserved to be part of that. They threw away their prejudice against the dungeons and treated me fairly. It didn¡¯t matter if I was nothing more than strange and bizarre dungeon to them, I will not stand idle seeing someone threatening them. Because that wasn¡¯t a vision or some kind of foreboding. That was good, old-fashioned threat. Someone didn¡¯t like what I was doing and decided to let me know. I was to be a good little dungeon and behave as all dungeons should. Telling anyone was out of the question as the vision would become reality then. I felt a hint of celestial energy in the message but it might have been a ploy as well. I guess whoever that was I needed to thank them as it reminded me who I was and what was my truth. I was a guardian and I needed to get ready so no one could ever hurt my charges. No more idling, no more pointless experiments, I needed to become a vital part of the empire so everyone would think twice before even looking at me funny. Then there were druids, they were crazy, no doubt about that, nevertheless they were here and they were powerful. I hated to admit it but they could be reasonable at least towards me. I would use them as I would use the elves. Anything else would be a disservice to me and to my people. I was not sure why but I got back some of my memories from the past life, or impressions would be more accurate. I remembered the vast forest stretching over thousands of kilometres, I remembered my kin, guarding and caring for it. I had a vague sense of disaster striking after celestials arrived and me killing all my family. Strange thing, I felt no resentment towards my kin nor towards celestials who caused the situation. The last thing I recalled and the strongest as well, was the forest burning and sense of peace. It didn¡¯t make much sense but it also made me wonder did I chose nature affinity because I truly believed it to be the best choice at the time or I first chose it and then come up with the logic to back it up? Areth was currently taking part in the council session so I reached out to her. She was in the middle of imagining killing all the members in the most gruesome and creative ways. Why did the Queens insist she was perfect for the job? I pretended not to notice and asked her to invite the council to the dungeon to meet me. Soon they all were here and I gave each of them improved skill bestowal which could grant any common-ranked skill known by the user every 72 hours. It was, of course, non-transferable and shared a cooldown with other skill bestowal skills. I gave them a speech how I was looking forward to our cooperation and other bullshit. They seemed to like it. My true purpose was to get the Archdruid down here. Her crystal had something extra included, the vision and the warning not to share it with anyone. I must say I was impressed with her, although her eyes grew hard and cold and nature was filled with uncontrollable rage the moment she saw the message, it was only for a split second. She quickly returned to your usual crazy tree hugger routine. As everyone was leaving she casually informed everyone that her master, Sovereign Frozen Sky mentioned wanting to visit such marvellous dungeon and if none had anything against she would drop by next month. No one had, which was natural, you did not say no to Sovereign if you could help it. I had a strong feeling I wouldn¡¯t like their response to the threat made against me. That said being mildly uncomfortable was infinitely better than seeing everyone you cared about die. It was high time to get back to work and I started with the mine. It had three floors and was a sub-dungeon but took the same space as the single room. The first floor contained first tier materials like copper, zinc, tin and coal and there was a good chance of finding a copper vein with tin impurities. I even set it to contain between ten and fifteen percent tin so all you had to do is melt huge enough chunk and got bronze. The only opponents were howler shrooms with occasional conductor mixed among them. I also made sure that the pseudo-core responsible for the dungeon management would randomly regrow them every eight to twelve ours. Additionally, the mine would close, and teleport out everyone inside, for two hours every night when it refreshed everything inside. Additionally every week it would change ore and monster placement. The second floor was still easy with the same monsters and 75% of the ore was the first tier. The second tier metal always present would be iron for 15-20% also the remaining ores would be either silver or aluminium alternating every week. The new features were treasure/trap rooms which should force miners to look for bodyguards as sweeping the floor once every few hours wouldn¡¯t work here. It was a room randomly found during mining containing random resources and enemies. The most common would be bronze or iron ingots with some first-floor medicine shrooms but there also was a chance for a blacksmithing blueprint or recipe. The difference was that recipe would tell you a general process of making an item and once found most adventurers sold them to crafters guild where everyone could learn it for a price. While the first one found was usually very valuable subsequent ones would be almost worthless. The blueprint was single use item that required the knowledge of a relevant recipe. When consumed during crafting it increased success chance and produced stronger items, rarer versions or gave additional benefits like elemental damage, glowing in darkness or increased sharpness to name a few. The guardians in those rooms were alarm shrooms set just by the entrance combined with screamers, conductors and paralysing spore shrooms. If the chest contained a blueprint there would be three additional centipedes of random subtype. The only modification to them was they now could store the Yellow chalice lichen essence inside their body. On average it would allow them to heal twice but I allowed for slight variation here. The third floor contained exclusively tier two materials with 40% being iron and rest would be a random mix of silver, aluminium, onyx and serpentstone. Technically serpentstone was almost third tier but as I was Lord of the Serpents it strangely fit. I also allowed for small fragments of obsidian and water crystal to randomly appear on the third floor. The trap/rooms would still appear on this floor but I increased the number of centipedes to five per room and increased their rank to D+. I have also created two new monsters unique to this floor. The first was the dark gardening centipede that would always try to attack the weakest party member first. The second one was the guardian centipede that would protect the silver chest in the middle of the floor. Once the chest was opened guardian centipedes would start patrolling the whole floor. The chest would always contain rare blueprint and other valuables but could be opened only during the first three days of the new week and would stay open until the mine refreshed at the end of the week. I wondered if the adventurers would rush to the chest as soon as possible or choose three days of easier mining. To not make it too easy for the adventurers I also told the council that if the entire vein was unmined for a week it would upgrade in quality and after four weeks it would change to tier three material, either gold or bloodstone. It must be my mind trait overcomplicating things but I set an upper limit for the number of dark centipedes to be ten and twelve for guardian centipedes. They would be respawned every six hours but if at any time there was less than half of the centipedes of one kind all centipedes would vanish to be replaced by a full number of elite variants. In the unlikely case that adventurers managed to repeat this feat with upgraded mobs, they would be replaced by champions this time. I almost wanted to keep this one a secret but decided that it would hurt my credibility too much. I tweaked the basic design of my new monsters and opened mine for the first adventurers. When I told Kaeden he told me the test team would arrive within an hour.
Race Gardening Centipede Subspecies Dark
Class - Subclass -
Rank D+ Level 1/100
HP 4000/4000 Mana 500/500
Titles - Skills 5
Skills
Weak Paralysing Venom [C] lvl1/20 (Racial) Venom capable of paralysing the target. Effects vary depending on the subject, weak ones may be paralysed for longer and strong ones may be unaffected.
One with the shadows [A] lvl 1/50 Upgraded version of stealth utilising dark energy. The user will be very difficult to spot be the enemies of the same rank. The first attack breaks the stealth but gets +200% bonus to damage and cannot be resisted. Consumes mana every second it is active.
Dark inheritance [A] lvl 1/50 [Passive] Grants 30% bonus to all stealth related actions and abilities. The user is undetectable by enemies unless they use legendary detection skill or are closer than eight meters to the user.
Weakness detection [B] lvl 1/25 [Passive] You always know who the weakest victim is. It also grants 25% increase in damage and success rate of attacks against unaware or paralysed victims.
Quick Burrowing [C] lvl 1/20 You can hide underground getting 20% bonus to stealth (100% if you remain unmoving). It takes two seconds to completely burrow yourself and any damage taken during this time may stun you. Movement speed is halved when underground.
Race Guardian Gardening Centipede Subspecies -
ClassUnauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. - Subclass -
Rank A Level 1/100
HP 10000/10000 Mana 5000/5000
Titles - Skills 8
Skills
Paralysing Venom [B] lvl1/25 (Racial) Venom capable of paralysing the target. Effects vary depending on the subject, weak ones may be paralysed for longer and strong ones may be unaffected.
Charge [A] lvl 1/50 You are able to charge the enemy increasing the damage dealt by 600% and crossing ten meters in a second. Can be only used when there is no enemy in the melee range and the chosen target is at least 5 meters but no further than 50 meters from you. Additionally, increases the damage by extra 100% per every 5 meters travelled using this skill. You have a good chance at knocking down your target.
Armoured Body [A] lvl 1/50 [Passive] All ranged attacks have 90% chance of being deflected inflicting only 5% of their damage. Melee attacks deal 40% less damage. No attack can deal more damage than 90% of your total HP. The first time your health drops below 20% you will ignore all damage dealt for 5 seconds (You still take damage and if your health drops below 0HP you will die after the 5 seconds are up unless healed).
Sturdy [D] lvl Max [Passive] If your health is above 40% any attack that would kill you will reduce your HP to 1.
Last Struggle [B] lvl 1/25 [Passive] When bellow 1/5 health you become 50% quicker and stronger. You can choose one enemy that will receive double damage from all your attacks and skills but you are unable to switch targets until they die.
Relentless assault [C] lvl 1/20 You perform a series of quick strikes with damage increased by 50% but your defence is lowered by 25% for five seconds.
Bash [C] lvl 1/20 You strike the target with your head for triple damage and chance to stun it. It is possible to take damage using this skill while striking hard materials.
Magic Hater [H] [Passive] You take 10% more damage from magic. Any magic user that damaged you in last 30 seconds will take additional damage from your attacks (5% per 1% of damage received). Your hatred for magic makes you more likely to try to kill any mages first during combat.
I have decided against opening the Garden for now in case it would need some minor adjustments. After all, I wasn¡¯t sure if this was an appropriate challenge for the rewards given. I also wanted to test the traps that were a unique addition to the third floor before I decided if they would be a part of the garden as well. The party, which arrived to challenge the mine, consisted of 6 people; Nicolas, Hallvard ¡®Mammoth-blow¡¯ Sigvaldisson, ¦Ø-ranked warrior armed with two-handed axe, Cassin Bertran, ¦Á-ranked knight in heavy armour and with a kite shield and Wilidon Aracaryn, a ¦Á-ranked half-elf Mystic Archer, who surprisingly had a long sword but no bow. The support was provided by a surprisingly well-behaved wood elf Folwin Zylyra ¦Ø-ranked elemental healer and ¦Å-ranked thunder shaman named Hasanati. She was the most colourful as well, who goes dungeon hunting in long crimson dress and soft court shoes? I guessed she was here to get some experience and the rest of the party was rather unhappy about that. ¡°Mr Arnar, good day to you. We all are pretty excited to get to work and explore the mines so if you don¡¯t mind we will start immediately. ¡°¨C I was surprised both that the healer was the leader and that he greeted me politely. I was sure they were going to get in, get out and in the process massacre everything alive inside the mines. Pleasantly surprised. ¡°Mr Zylyra, the pleasure is mine and of course you are welcome to start whenever you wish. I just have two questions, is you being an elf going to be a problem? And Nicolas, aren¡¯t you tad overpowered for the dungeon?¡± The last question made the experienced adventurers smile while the shaman looked confused. ¡°So you don¡¯t know? Lord l¡¯Amy is quite famous for his passion of dungeon exploring, however, he wasn¡¯t able to do much of that lately. The weak dungeons panic when he enters and throws everything at him in useless attempt to stop him. I think one core exploded right after he entered a few years ago. The experts concluded it was scared to death¡­¡± - The knight stopped mid-sentence after seeing the look Nicolas was giving him. Then blushed deeper red than Hasanati¡¯s dress, a bashful knight, who would have thought? Nicolas coughed and explained ¨C ¡°The strong ones also tend to go overboard trying to kill me so if you exclude the ones I train my divine affinity in then I wasn¡¯t in any dungeon in last two hundred years. I am here just to observe and rescue them if it is needed. Per our previous agreement I won¡¯t even advise them¡± The Hasanati scowled when the rest nodded which made me wonder if making her a target of most traps would go against the agreement. My intuition was telling me other adventurers wouldn¡¯t mind that much. ¡°I can also assure you Folwin have spent last one hundred years as the member of the various scout teams, he got rid of the elven attitude quite quickly.¡± The party pretty much skipped the first floor as there was nothing of interest there, only Nicolas stopped few times to collect ¡°samples¡± as he said. I guided them to few selected trap rooms on the second floor so they would get a feel of the challenge. Nicolas removed all the rock and ores with the wave of the hand so it took only a few minutes for them to reach the hardest room. It turned out the guilds sent them in blind, without relaying any information I shared to not influence the reports they had to complete at the end of the run. I made all three centipedes spawned were of a different kind so they could properly evaluate the place. The common one attacked first focusing on the knight and was immediately knocked back towards the centre of the room by a mighty shield bash. The rest of the party quickly followed the knight and spread out to maximise their range potential. If they were the normal party that would prove to be a fatal mistake as both blue and red centipede hiding among mushrooms decided it was invitation they couldn¡¯t decline. Blue one attacked the healer and red focused on the shaman. When the centipede entered the five-metre range from the elf the bright light from above smashed it right in the middle of the head. Not only it spoiled the ambush but also stunned pure fellow. Folwin made a slicing motion which conjured a wind blade aimed straight at the offending monster. I guess I knew what the elemental part in his job title meant, good to learn not to assume healers equalled walking health potions. To his surprise, the centipede survived the attack as it was healed completely thanks to its skill. Not that it changed anything as following two wind blades decapitated it seconds after. The shaman fared much worse as she focused on the healer¡¯s fight completely missing the red centipede approach. The bite from behind startled her enough that she summoned quite an impressive electric discharge. Unfortunately, she panicked and the skill was too widely spread to actually kill the attacker. At the verge of death thanks to the berserk skill it spat the venom all over the beautiful dress the woman was wearing, ruining it and dying right after. Hasanati was left with the choice of stripping the dress or taking low but continues poison damage. Cassin seeing his comrade plight beheaded the remaining mob in one swift sword strike. Then promptly turned his back on the half-naked woman. Must be the knightly thing to do. Nicolas convinced me to create a basic robe for her and in exchange, I got to assimilate ruined dress gaining a few enchantments and new material, fiery silk. They ignored the shrooms and looted the chest being quite pleased with the blueprint they got, it was for the iron long sword and it made the weapon almost indestructible, forever sharp and slightly raised the quality. From their comments, I had learned that once opened the initial burst damage from screamers was going to really unpleasant to the warrior and would most likely moderately wound the miner. The loot was slightly too good, especially the blueprint with three options and no restrictions but as two of those didn¡¯t directly increased the combat strength but were utility I got a pass. Not that those options weren¡¯t great. The truth was the swords break, and if it happens during fight chance of heavy injury or death was significant. Outside of battle, it would mean that you had to spend money on the new sword, something common-ranked and epic-ranked adventurers were always short of. Professional sharpening of the sword wasn¡¯t expensive but it added up so the blueprint was going to be a hot commodity. The biggest advantage of this particular blueprint was it A-rank which meant most of the ordinary blacksmiths would be able to utilise it. I was grateful for their input as I knew they only reason they were discussing it was for my own benefit. I was shocked to be in depth analyse provided by the warrior, another reminded not to assume big and roughish axman had to be stupid as well. I decided on fitting reward and dropped a skill crystal into his hand, which managed to stun everyone.
Skill Crystal of the Blueprint Duplication [B] (Quality: Epic)
Grants the skill ¡°Blueprint Duplication¡± [B] after use. The item is destroyed after use.
Common Blueprint Duplication [B]
Allows the user to attempt to duplicate the blueprint of the common rank. If the skill fails the blueprint is destroyed. There is a slight chance of producing an additional copy. Upon success, the new blueprint will be created and quality of the original will be lowered by one. Blueprints created by this skill cannot be duplicated. This skill can be used only once every three hours. This skill cannot be transferred, copied or stolen by any means. Upon mastering this skill you will be able to teach it to one person. Skill Crystal (Epic) bonus: + 5 to skill lvl, +10% success rate when duplicating sword blueprints. You will be able to teach this skill to five people upon mastering it and they will be able to teach it to three people.
I shouldn¡¯t be able to produce those skill crystals as I didn¡¯t have the skill myself, which for me was ridiculous as it was a basic dungeon ability similar to breathing for humans. My persistence led to a multitude of experiments and one of them allowed me to quickly customise this skill for the occasion. ¡°What is it?¡± Hallvard asked confused, in hindsight dropping unknown objects at adventurers would be a bad idea unless I wanted the said objects to be destroyed. ¡°The skill crystal, it is Arnar¡¯s speciality, same as skill book but better. If you want my advice I would use it immediately as all of the crystals he created so far turned amazing, so no matter which of the three types this is you won¡¯t lose out¡± ¨C Nicolas was right in the most important part, he had no way of knowing this was the fourth one. ¡°Folwin can I have the blueprint for a second?¡± The warrior asked immediately after using the crystal and used the skill without any warning causing everyone to be shocked one more. ¡°How the hell did you do that? This is an advanced blacksmith¡¯s ability and even they need several hours to copy the scroll.¡± Wilidon exclaimed to be showed away by Nicolas rushing to grab the scrolls. ¡°They both are identical and only the quality of both dropped. Small price to pay. This is huge! This is the first time non-crafter managed to perfectly duplicate the scroll.¡± Nicolas oblivious to everything else muttered examining the scrolls. Then started pestering the warrior. ¡°Is the skill transferable? Please tell me it is!¡± ¡°No, it isn¡¯t.¡± Seeing Nicolas disappointment Hallvard quickly added; ¡°It can be taught to one person when mastered. You didn¡¯t tell me those crystals gave such a great bonuses, it is already lvl 6/25.¡± ¡°Arnar?!¡± ¡°Relax Nicolas, those type of skills advance by practising and gaining experience. Which can be simplified as making new memories. I simply added few such memories to the skill crystal alongside with some insights into duplicating sword blueprints which gave an additional bonus.¡± Seeing him trying to say something and having a good idea what he was about to ask I decided to help Hallvard further. ¡°Before you demand your very own skill crystal, you should know he can teach it to five people so go pester him. It won¡¯t be easy to master the skill so your help will speed things up considerably.¡± ¡°Are there any special restrictions on its use?¡± Cassin asked while Nicolas were busy convincing the warrior he just had to be one of those five people. ¡°Not really, but I wouldn¡¯t use this skill on blueprints below above-average quality unless you have a whole stack of them or you advanced pretty far in crafting profession. Success rate plummets with average and lower quality goods.¡± After Nicolas got the promise he wanted, the adventurers advanced to the last floor, I was afraid Hallvard was about to be abducted and forced to copy blueprints until he mastered the skill but the scribe managed to restrain himself, barely. The third floor was uneventful for the most part. The shaman seemed to make an excellent job of testing every traps effects, much to her chagrin. Two such occurrences were especially noteworthy; she triggered the same trap twice falsely believing that it couldn¡¯t possibly reset itself in just fifteen minutes. The second one was a special trap filled with extremely stinking black substance, once you got it on any part of you no amount of washing or cleansing spells would save you. Besides being putrid it also attracted centipedes in quite a long range. Coupled with the fact she was the weakest her mood got even worse. Once she even stepped on lurking dark centipede and it got under her robe. The resulting thunder summon charred the centipede and shocked everyone but Nicolas. The elf healed everyone with AoE wind healing spell which to me made a lot of sense. When the party got to the middle of the last floor Hasanati decided to vent her fury on the guardian centipedes managing to strike seven of them with one spell. Unfortunately, she was less than forty meters from them and reduced their health to 10%, which combined with the charge forced Nicolas to use protection rune on her. She got knocked out of the fight as a result and Folwin killed weakened defenders with one spell. This triggered the disappearance of remaining mobs but five seconds later on top of the party spawned twelve elite ones. Due to their teamwork, they managed to stall them long enough to learn non-magical means and limited damage output was the best course of action. That is until second contingency kicked in and they had to face twelve champions, which were all ¦Ã-ranked. They would be in huge trouble if the shaman didn¡¯t manage to recover and summon small lighting elementals to distract the attackers. It only worked as centipedes considered them magic users but still it took almost an hour but the last centipede had fallen. ¡°Good job guys, I have added five skill bestowal crystals as an apology. I will disable champion spawning until the chest is opened and only four elites will join the normal ones.¡± It was a stupid oversight as it never occurred to me that you needed to kill all the centipedes to open the chest and THAT would trigger spawning stronger ones. I also learned why Wilidon hadn¡¯t brought the bow, he could conjure one out of magic light, arrows included. ¡°That would be a smart idea. This is usually the 20th-floor difficulty and only in legendary dungeons. The changes should bring it down to what we had expected ¨C 10th-floor difficulty. If you planned champion version of the dark ones please limit it to only one and add some kind of clue it is close or it will kill every miner it targets.¡± Folwin then concentrated on the unlucky Hasanati. ¡°I hope you realise you would have died if not for Lord l¡¯Amy. You NEVER attack a monster in the dungeon when your team isn¡¯t ready. Doubly so if the monster is the one you have never seen before and you don¡¯t know what abilities it has.¡± What followed was an in-depth analysis of the dungeon and the fight which would normally occur in the guild but they stayed for my benefit. The ring blueprint I gave out was judged to be a great reward for the mine as it has 20% increase in mining speed, mining precision and stamina recovery. Nicolas stayed behind to thank me for the experience and get detailed monster stats and skills. On the one hand, it was much easier when the dungeon could tell you all you needed to know. On the other, today''s exploration showed test runs were still a necessity. Chapter 12 - A garden is not a mine... so a mushroom garden. Two weeks had passed since I had opened the mines and all the basic amenities needed for the dungeon town were more or less completed. That included guild houses for each organisation with plans to expand to proper headquarters in the future, town hall, nature temple, several inns and barracks for the blackguards. It was a mess of different styles and conflicting tastes with buildings shaped out of living wood by elves, burrows hiding luxurious homes constructed by druids and towering stone constructions enchanted by earth mages yet it had its own unique charm. After all, it was my own town. Townhall main function besides hosting council meeting was an entire floor dedicated only to quest postings and acquiring resources brought from the dungeon by the adventurers for a fixed, regulated and fair price. Usually, guild halls would have those but here with three guilds cooperating this solution seemed the most straightforward. It was possible to get a better price from the various merchants slowly showing up in the city but you would need to spend the time to visit several of them as almost all either specialised or changed prices based on their current stockpile. The other surprise was nature temple as I was sure druids were more likely to grow a grove. Areth explained that it was easier for adventurers to buy supplies and get healing in the temple and the druids didn¡¯t get annoyed by improper conduct in their sacred groves. Both sides won and as a bonus, it was less likely the church would be build due to competition, at least in the beginning as my fame grew we were sure to see cathedral constructed at some point. I was also getting more and more guests with mine being more popular simply as it gave better rewards compared to my standard floors. Nicolas advised waiting before reconstructing and creating garden until more people showed up due to mana needed for day-to-day operational costs. I was yet to tell him that was not an issue due to Grootslangs but it proved beneficial anyway as I observed normal adventurers¡¯ behaviours compared to guild elites and it gave me time to finish quite a few ecosystems simulations. Even with their enormous benefits almost none of the species would work in a dungeon without modifications or few further simulations to refine the species in very narrow direction. Nothing compared to me directly altering mobs and was absolutely useless for bosses nonetheless it was a great treasure-trove of ideas and inspiration and I could do both simultaneously. I was actually planning on doing a similar setup to the mine for the garden which not only would be a huge waste and in bad taste but it would make absolutely no sense. The first attempt was to use Advanced Concept Visualization but the amount of mana needed was mindboggling, I doubted if completely draining Nicolas few times would be enough, not that it was a feasible solution. In the end, I managed to somehow fuse three floors into one massive level with just three ¡°rooms¡± and handcrafted all the plants. With all that done the sub-dungeon was smart enough to mix thing up occasionally while maintaining overall design. First was a huge cave being mostly weakened howlers, screamers and spore mushrooms, nothing lethal really and third of them were to attack only when they sensed someone started collecting resources nearby. I wanted to startle collectors to either ruin or damage mushrooms they were trying to get, mostly to include at least some challenge instead of giving resources for free and of course, that meant only the most common mushrooms were available in this cave. Next was a corridor with nine guardian centipedes, two elites and one champion backed by new light centipede capable of healing allies and blinding foes. The room would reset every thirty minutes and if all mobs weren¡¯t dead, it additionally spawned one guardian, one elite and one light centipede. Collectors could either hire adventurers to keep the corridor clear at all times or ask them to clear it couple times a day. Given the challenge, I was sure all gatherers would have to pitch in and employ elite team as those usually available as bodyguards wouldn¡¯t manage on their own. The true wonder was waiting in the third room if the gigantic cave easily double the size of all three mine levels added together could be called a room. The entire ceiling was inscribed with light runes simulating day and night. It was separated into three sections by two artificial rivers with the lake and tiny island in the middle. Although garden should contain plants I decided to cultivate a ¡°brand¡± and made anything worthy of collecting a mushroom. Due to the amount of available space, I hid the mushrooms among ordinary grass, flowers and trees and that wasn¡¯t the only thing hidden as I decided against placing chests in the open this time. The first section contained potion ingredients of tiers one to four and I allowed Areth to decide the distribution and it proved to be a stroke of genius. I was not scolded for whole two days. Anyway, she decided to make50% of the mushrooms low tier one, 25%upper tier one and20% being tier two. The remaining5%was randomly split between tiers three and four, I just had to make sure the later would neverexeed two percent.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Another brilliant idea of hers was to change how fast the mushrooms would regrow depending on how well it was picked. If just pulled out carelessly it would take up to five days to appear again. The more skilfully it was performed then the quicker and closer to original location it would appear. If someone managed to do it perfectly, collecting only essential parts and leaving the rest preserved not only it would grow back in the same spot it would take only two to six hours depending on the rarity. The rivers could be crossed using three bridges that would change it locations every other day and to spice things up I decided to put special kind of underwater mushroom at random locations. Each type corresponded to every other ingredient present in the first section but would be 30% more potent. The second area hid catalyst mushrooms based on the plants the guilds provided me or the ones I created by modifying the results of my simulations. As I was sure none or only a few of those mushrooms were present outside of my dungeon it could increase the number of people I could syphon mana off and more food was never a bad thing. While catalysts in the second area could be used to strengthen the potions by either increasing potency, or modify minor parameters like making it heal more per second but shorten the overall duration the third area offered more attractive options. The one I was sure to cause the most stir was combination reagent that allowed to combine two potions into one if the proper recipe was found the final product would have the full effect of two potions but would require fewer ingredients. However; in the dungeon when one second could spell the difference between life and death such potion would truly shine. The other reagent I was proud of was actually a result of my mistake. I forgot to remove negative side-effects of few mushrooms and once again if proper procedure was followed potion made using them would sometimes be even five times as strong with no change in base price. The only downside if two were consumed in quick succession or more than four-five times a day then side effects were a sight to behold. The last category present in the third area was enhanced reagents which strengthened one aspect but without sacrificing other parameters as would happen with those available in the second area. The island in the middle of the central lake was where the boss of a kind grew. It was a colony of blood-red spore mushrooms that was absolutely lethal to anyone bellow legendary rank. They would release all it spores only once a day either when attacked or an hour after light from the runes was switched off. The spores would reach the entire cave and would take two hours to dissipate. As the ¡°day¡± in the cave was 15 hours long and it took at least 6 hours to reach the third area it was quite an efficient way to ensure the rarest mushrooms would remain appropriately rare. As an added obstacle teleportation was blocked in the gardens. The only thing left to do was to assign various mobs to the appropriate sections and after quick consideration and keeping in mind that most adventurers would only be able to spend three to four hours in the last area I decided against adding new creatures with one notable mushroom. The deception mushroom had several subtypes like zap mushroom that would store static electricity and discharge it all at once upon contact, sleep mushroom that when collected would release a spore that should put anyone to sleep for few minutes or stinking mushroom that once pulled out turned into vomit-inducing sludge. The most damaging would be the prickly mushroom that on the slightest touch would explode and send a shrapnel of tiny pricks in every direction. It would hardly injure anyone but F or E graded adventurers but its purpose was to shred all valuable mushrooms nearby, making them either worthless or severely damaged. Additionally, with the rules proposed by Areth, it would have a long-lasting effect of increasing the time after which all those affected mushrooms would reappear in the garden. As we wanted to test gatherers¡¯ knowledge and skills we decided that each deception mushroom would have at least one flaw that should allow them to be identified, be it wrong colour of dots or its absence, growing on tree when it should be near the sandy riverbank or simply being present in area it shouldn¡¯t appear. I believed the last one to be the hardest to resist as I could easily imagine adventurers getting all excited for tier 4 ingredient in the second area and rushing to pick it up only to fall for the trap. To avoid making collecting resources triviality I assigned garden centipedes to all areas, making sure they were travelling in groups of two to four joined by the light variant in the second area and a guardian centipede in the final area. If too many people decide to swim through the rivers instead of using the bridges I may add some water mobs but for now, I decided it wasn¡¯t worth it and I really wanted to save them more the main dungeon. I was unsure if I should add a recipe to every chest for few weeks or the exact ratio of recipes compared to the alchemic pills which were equivalent to blacksmithing blueprints for potion makers. In the end, I postponed making that call until after Nicolas''s team assessed the garden as they should arrive in a few hours. I am perfectly capable of waiting patiently despite those ridiculous claims Areth kept making. I will just contact them quickly as Maisoon didn''t answer any of my ten mental probes in the past hour and now I can''t even reach him... strange. Chapter 13 - Its a feature. ¡°YOU CAME!!!¡± ¨C I saw Nicolas wince hearing my mental greeting ¨C ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure you were going to show up. Is Maisoon all right? I couldn¡¯t reach him for over 12 hours now, and I have been trying every couple minutes. You are sure that it is all right for you to be here? If he needs help, I will understand¡­ on the other hand, as you just arrived it would be waste if you went back now! I am sure Masoon will be fine after all he¡­¡± ¡°Arnar!¡± ¨C I focused on the source of the interruption, the elf, I think this one was named Folwin Zy-something. ¨C ¡°Please stop. Maisoon had to use mind blank spell to get any sleep after you kept him up for over 80 hours making sure that we were indeed coming today to test the garden!¡± ¡°Oh well, let¡¯s not dwell on such trivialities after all you are all here ready to enjoy my breathtaking ingeniously created alchemical garden!¡± ¨C I had a peculiar feeling as if Areth was glaring at me at that moment but a quick scan showed she was nowhere near my core. Strange. ¨C ¡°So come in, come in, let me welcome you to the incredible mushroom garden. Hihhihihihi *Ahem*. Yes please kindly enter.¡± I saw Wilidion startled conjure the light bow and whisper to Cassin ¨C ¡°What was that terrifying sound?¡± ¡°I think dungeon giggled. Are we sure it is sane? Maybe we should withdraw?¡± ¨C Knight replied. Although I wanted to scream ¡°NO¡± with all my might, I barely stopped myself. Saving whatever was left of my dignity was much more critical than some third-rate adventurers running away after being spooked by perfectly normal and dignified display of happiness. After all, they weren¡¯t going to run. RIGHT?! ¡°Arnar you should already know most of the team.¡± - Hallvard said ignoring the interplay ¨C ¡°It took us little longer to organise as we had to replace Hasanati. So please meet Bunneck Teundefinedamdast, a gnomish sage and quite a renowned herbalist and Druarloshk a half-lizardman and a master alchemist¡± ¨C They bowed toward my projection when their names were mentioned, and a quick inspection revealed both were of delta rank and had an aura of an expert around them. Pity as Hasanati was quite amusing but I could see how shaman throwing lightning left and right at slightest provocation may not be an ideal person around delicate and valuable resources. ¡°Lord Nicolas, will you be joining us for this evaluation?¡± ¨C Folwin asked hopefully, and I held my breath. Well not literally, being a floating crystal but nevertheless, I was waiting impatiently for the answer. ¡°I guess I could spare an hour or two. Arnar has such a novel ideas¡± ¨C I definitely wasn¡¯t going to tell him it would take at least a day to explore the garden. I almost drolled thinking about all the mana I would drain from all of them today. After all, it was he who asked me not to share any details before first evaluation. They checked their equipment and entered the room with a door to the sub-dungeon. Well, it was actually a portal to extra-dimensional space rooted in both past and future but with a strong enough anchor in the present to allow the time flow to match and every action inside would still affect current continuum. As neither of them was time and space mythic I skipped explaining the intricacies. I am sure they would be awed by my brilliance but time was money, and I wanted to see how they ranked my precious garden. I have expected my explorers to just cross the first cave and start the test from the corridor, but enlightened Bunneck Teundefinedamdast opposed the notion vehemently. You would never expect less than a metre tall creature to command such respect among seasoned adventures, even Areth was impressed by unmovable conviction shown in this short but quite intense quarrel. I believe at one point Cassin also attempted to lift the sage and move him physically towards the back of the cave. All it took for him to stop was a look full of indignation and outrage. And yes, sage Bunneck Teundefinedamdast insisted on using his full name every time he was to be addressed with a list of acceptable titles including; master, sage, enlighted, learned and few even more obscure that caused only confusion for everyone but Nicolas. I wasn¡¯t sure how screaming that in the fight was even plausible with even esteemed sage being a mouthful. Apparently, someone tried once shortening his name to ¡°Bunny¡± in some particularly challenging skirmish only to found himself banned from ever entering any gnome city. I was told that he was lucky as if it was during some more formal occasion the unlucky warrior would have had difficulty escaping alive. Eventually, the team plus my favourite saint spent little over two hours in an attempt to discover every possible way to collect all the mushrooms in this cave. What could I say¡­ I was a fan! All that yummy mana I got in the meantime made it worth it even if slightly dull to watch. There was one rather unpleasant surprise, the alchemist sprinkled something into my mushrooms, and they froze. Not like froze, froze but I lost any connection to them, and they couldn¡¯t attack even when plucked from the ground. Fortunately, some minuscule amount missed the mushrooms and landed on the bare rock so I could have absorbed it. To my astonishment, I was unable to reproduce or even guess what it was but at least I had modified all the mushrooms so they should be if not immune then at least highly resistant. When they had reached the corridor, they assembled into proper formation with two melee classes up front, sage, alchemist and healer in the middle and the archer in the back. When asked why not keep healer at the rear I learned that it helped avoid ambushes and boosted survivability. I couldn¡¯t help and wondered if other dungeons were that dumb? I merely made a note to attack from the flanks. Well, not this time of course but my main dungeon was bound to have such surprises including attacking from bellow and monster dropping down from the ceilings. Predictability was boring anyway. When they reached the welcoming committee, they spent few minutes trying to bait few centipedes to leave the leading group and failed. I made sure they would ignore the weak attacks as those could be quickly healed by the new species. If they received serious enough wound, the whole group would engage at once. The party as always tried to draw out the fight to check the capability of my mobs and adequately assess the danger. They had quickly determined only new challenge was the healer, and it wasn''t limited by the number of heals like previous centipedes, so they decided to swiftly eliminate the enemies and proceed with the exploration. Two of the elites were killed almost in an instant, and the rest were sure to follow them when suddenly the adventurers discovered a severe design flaw in my planning. While they were fighting the time for the monsters to reset come and for some strange reason the rule, I set recognised all mobs currently engaged as dead, so it spawned the new set of monsters on top of those presently fighting. It also acknowledged that the corridor wasn''t cleared, so it added extra centipedes and healed all present bugs. It has even respawned the dead from the original squad. So my guest not only had to deal with almost triple adversaries than a few seconds ago but due to fighting they have pushed further into the tunnel. Consequently, the new danger appeared precisely in the middle of the group. I think one of the centipedes actually materialised under the healer shirt. I swear I have never imagined any being would be capable of reaching such a high register but Folwin exceeded even his teammates'' expectations. The ensuing shriek managed to startle even my cute guardians who froze unsure how to react. Except for the light centipede as it was closest to the source of the sound it panicked and unleashed all its mana as a bright flare. It actually revealed other imperfection I failed to foresee. Giving a bug, with nothing even approaching rational brain, a mana pool of epic ranked adventurer may not have been the smartest choice. In my defence, I made sure none of its skills drew much of the mana it possessed and with the forced cooldown no one could even guess its capability. I just wanted to make sure it could heal other centipedes for as long as it took. The healer unable to restore health was slightly more useful than a heater in hell. So it not only managed to blind everyone primitive enough to rely on sight to locate threats, as it is self-evident that higher being light myself should never put any faith in such imperfect method, but also managed to explode itself in genuinely spectacular manner and spray the whole party with bits and pieces. I pondered briefly if I should make its chitin harder to work as shrapnel while I observed the ensuing chaos. Wilidon noticed guardian sneaking up on the sage and split it in half with an arrow, unfortunately, the upper half of the centipede landed on the sage''s head making him jerk his hands up in surprise and miss the champion with the fireball he just released. He instead managed to hit Hallvard square in the face. At the same time, Druarloshk was trying to lob a bottle of repellent at the most prominent clustering of enemies, yet he failed to anticipate Cassin charging in to help the elf with the splattered centipede. The potion must have had an acidic property as the knight''s armour started dissolving with a hiss producing a copious amount of smoke in the process.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. I am not sure how this would end if not for Nicolas who has used the stop rune to freeze everything in place. Or almost everything, I am not sure if it worked only on the living or the piece of the centipede that was sliding down the healer pants was too small to register. Actually, calling it a piece was too generous as it was nothing more than revolting sludge of meat and green blood similar to the colour Folwin face was becoming at that moment. As an excellent host that I am, I chose to give face to my guest and focused elsewhere for a few minutes until they managed to get themselves somewhat presentable after this debacle. "ARNAR! WOULD YOU MIND EXPLAINING WHAT THE HELL THIS WAS?" - The angry shout of the knight. I gracefully decided not to mention his armour appeared to still release small puffs of acrid smoke through his wild gesturing. "Yes, I will gladly do so" - As they say, it''s time to bullshit through this mess - "I see you have discovered my newest design. I dare to say it went splendidly! "Placing exploding bugs under people clothes is your design?! - Folwin demanded to know in brief break between puking his guts out - "This is insane." "Minor oversight I assure you. I will make sure no mob will appear closer than one meter to the adventurer." - Seeing their doubtful gazes, I added quickly - "You see the light centipedes are quite timid, so they blind their enemies and run, those have slightly more mana end their weak bodies are unable to shoulder the stress of releasing it at once. As long as you let them heal the guardians several times, they won''t explode." "Then what''s about the extra bugs appearing in the middle of the fight?" "That, Mr Druarloshk, was your bad luck" - Before they had time to protest I had a stroke of inspiration" - It''s a unique... feature of this garden. The corridor resets twice an hour, and if it isn''t cleared, it increases in difficulty. I didn''t want it to be too easy, so I set a time limit to kill all mobs. If someone tries to game the system it punishes them by doubling the enemies they have to face". After they got all the details and made sure there were no more surprises the team continued on led by now hairless and slightly charred Hallvard. When Bunneck found collection method mattered, he muttered something about youngster having to finally learn the proper way to handle ingredients and grinned like a madman until Wilidon accidentally triggered prickly mushroom and obliterated a sizable group of fungi. After few hours the group managed to convince the sage to speed up which actually meant he collected only one of each specimen. I suspected the main reason he agreed were the catalysts in the second area. They have confirmed what I suspected, they were 100% unique and crazy herbalist couldn''t wait to experiment with them. In the end, it took them two days to reach the end of the third zone, and I was tempted to let the spores kill them but the reason won, the short-term gain of killing few epic-rated adventurers was nowhere near worth the damage it would cause. The look on their faces when I told them was actually worth missed mana, plus I got to leech Nicolas energy for the whole time they were exploring. They promised they would make this information easily accessible and if someone was too stupid to do the research or keep time while delving, then they could only blame themselves. Getting access to the last cave required an experienced group of epic adventurers, and then either S ranked team would have to keep the corridor clear or second epic-rated group to clear it again in the evening. If anything they seemed happy, not only collectors would profit with that setup. They were sure someone would set up a company to organise the process. The single change requested was to cap the additional mobs at seven days in the unlikely case no one cleared it in a while. The last thing to do was to lead them to one of the chests and let them see the sample reward. The alchemist, seconded by the sage, vehemently disagreed with giving out recipes. Apparently, all the joy was in the discovery. Adventurers were weird. On the contrary, the alchemic pills caused much more enthusiastic response than I anticipated. The only modification they proposed was to give more tablets of the same kind instead of one of few types. They argued that opposed to the blacksmith''s blueprint they couldn''t be easily identified and was single use while the blueprint could be used up to five times by skilled craftsmen before it lost its energy and become a scrap of ordinary paper. The upside was that they released all their power at once and that resulted in much more profound effect. I wasn''t going to allow some unimaginative amateur to stop people from appreciating my ingenuity to the fullest. So we settled on releasing one recipe a week with a random chest, changing daily, containing the second one. "Mr Arnar, if I may presume, there seems crucial type component missing." - Bunneck Teundefinedamdast continued after making sure I wasn''t offended. I should endeavour to promote such a respectful demeanour in all adventurers. - "Usually before such advanced plants or in this case mushrooms appear the dungeons allow for small amounts that are used for potions permanently increasing some attributes. The boost is small, and you can''t take more than a couple of them in a month as the toxicity builds up, but over time it adds up. Hunters go crazy for them. I do have few samples if you are interested." I allowed myself to be convinced, after all, who would say no to free samples. My only condition was that I would only introduce them after I converted them to mushrooms. Branding was of paramount importance. "Arnar if you don''t mind. Why did you set up the mine and the garden?" I couldn''t understand what Nicolas meant - "Why? You have asked me to make them, didn''t you?" "Yes, but usually dungeons only make them a small part of the first floor. What you did is beyond complex, I am worried it will cost you floors that could attract Legend rank adventurers. Don''t misunderstand me, this will be tremendous boost now and will expedite the expansion of the town immensely. The concern relates to the long-term growth of your dungeon." This was one of the difficult choices I knew was bound to come when I made the bargain with the guilds. How much should I tell them? How much could I say? Eventually, I chose to ignore the jaded cynic that reared his ugly head in my mind. I opted for truth, it may have been silly, but that bond meant a lot to me, and I refused to be first to break it. I hoped that acting in good faith would ultimately lead to real alliance although that didn''t mean I wasn''t going to keep few aces in my sleeve. "Technically this isn''t part of my dungeon" - Seeing their shock I quickly gave further clarifications before they become suspicious - "This is a sub-dungeon subordinate to me and having a faux-core. I can set a layout, rules and mobs then it will maintain it according to my instructions. It can''t grow or change anything on its own. Plus I can only maintain two of them with three floors each being the maximum." - Not to overdo I decided against telling them it gave all the gathered mana to me and how I created it. The slightest thought of sharing with anyone even Areth that I was incomplete and those cores were broken shards caused utter panic. As they finished exploring, I decided to distract them further... I mean reward appropriately for their efforts. The alchemist got two recipes showcasing new potion types, strengthened weak health recovery potion and impure weak curse removing medicine. Despite the grumbling indicating I robbed him of the joys of discovery, he seemed genuinely pleased. I decided to have some fun resulting in unique skill crystal.
Advanced Skill Crystal of the Distillation [B] and the Alchemist¡¯s Intuition [S] (Quality: Legendary)
Grants the skills Distillation [B] and the Alchemist¡¯s Intuition [S] after use. The item is destroyed after use.
Distillation [B]
Allows the user to attempt to distillate the potion of the common rank. If the skill fails, the potion is destroyed. Distilled potions have both positive and negative properties enhanced. At level 1 the distillation ratio is 5:1 and potions can be distilled up to two times. With each additional distillation, the chance of failure sharply increases. This skill can be upgraded to make removing adverse effects possible (counts as two distillations). This skill cannot be transferred, copied or stolen by any means. Upon mastering this skill, you will be able to teach it to one person of opposite gender. Skill Crystal (Legendary) bonus: + 5 to skill lvl, You will be able to teach this skill to three people of opposite gender upon mastering it.
Alchemist¡¯s Intuition [S] [Passive]
Gives a small chance of discovering hidden properties of alchemic ingredients and potions. Allows identifying alchemic pills. Gives a chance of discovering the brewing process¡¯s flaws. There is a minuscule chance of epiphany during brewing process granting improved recipe. This skill can be upgraded to make increasing the effects of alchemic pills possible. This skill cannot be transferred, copied or stolen by any means. Upon mastering this skill, you will be able to teach it to one person of opposite gender. Skill Crystal (Legendary) bonus: + 5 to skill lvl, You will be able to teach this skill to three people of opposite gender upon mastering it.
The moment the alchemist used the crystal I was afraid I had broken him somehow. I found out that the strange and disturbing noise he produced was lizardfolk laughter. How they got spooked by my innocent giggle when they had THAT to compare to was beyond my understanding. When he managed to calm down, I learned that identifying alchemic pills was guessing game and even grandmasters wouldn¡¯t be one hundred percent sure. Additionally by absorbing the ambient mana pills could be strengthened but each place had a unique aura that could introduce variation to the pill. Finally, no recipe was perfect and most advanced alchemists would spend countless hours trying to invent new ones or just improve existing ones. Anything that could cut that time even by few hours was a godsend. As expected Nicolas was determined to learn those skills making me wonder if he was some weird collector. Restriction on passing the ability didn¡¯t deter him at all, as he produced from his backpack a scroll allowing changing one''s gender for 72 hours. He blushed when inquired why he even had it in the first place and promptly produced an excuse why he was needed elsewhere. In a rush, he even forgot to pester me how I fit two skills into one crystal, something impossible with a skill book. It wasn¡¯t that hard after I realised the stone quality was the issue, then I made small adjustments which boiled down to viewing both skills as one memory string instead of trying to force two separate ones into one crystal.