Chapter 10

Tom announced the next morning that he wanted to stay a while at the newly minted Zeta dungeon to make certain that it adapted to the new changes well. He was quite excited by his experimentation with biomes, and was looking forward to seeing the various resources which would be available.

Emil shared the boy’s excitement, particularly for the availability of his forested biomes. The engineer was very excited to see how fast the trees that were generated there could be harvested for wood. He knew from history that one of the primary struggles throughout the world was deforestation, and moving the foresting industry into dungeons might be a way for this world to avoid falling into a similar trap, possibly avoiding the dichotomy of economic development versus ecological conservation.

While they had left the Core Stone in its room on floor one rather than bringing it to the surface, it was a simple matter for the party to escort Tom to that location each day for him to take a census of the dungeon. With that information in hand, the team would delve the dungeons and wipe out the monsters which had spawned overnight for the purpose of gaining experience and levels in their class.

However, they did not remain in clumped up in a single group. Tom felt comfortable tackling the forested floors with only his monstrous minions to protect him. While the wolves that were spawning on those floors were dangerous, he had a pack of Korgoath which were more than the match of the canine predators, and that was in addition to three powerful minotaurs to protect him.

Antoine joined him, but spent most of the time skinning the wolves for their pelts. The wolves were monsters, and not naturally reproducing animals, so on top of having a natural hatred for humans, there was no concern of hunting the animals into extinction or causing ecological damage by removing an apex predator.

Since Tom got no experience from killing anything directly, he mostly just hung out behind Brutus, Cassius and Cicero, the minotaurs, and occasionally discharged his Crossbow when the opportunity arose. Mostly he allowed Lo and the other Korgoath to do the hunting for him.

Deeper in the dungeon, using the closely placed stairs to bypass the open fields of the upper biomes, the humans delved into the cavernous regions of the dungeon and hunted the monsters which had begun spawning there. The experience and the challenge was better for them, and over the course of several days they each received a few levels for the challenges they faced.

Unfortunately, the monsters they were killing weren’t able to provide any resources except for the experience generated simply by killing them.

Their formation centered around Sevin and Rory, the two warriors. Rory hadn’t acquired his plate armor yet, but with his ability to enhance his defense with his Stamina, he made for an impressive immovable object and worked hard to keep the squishier members of the party safe. Sevin wasn’t as defense oriented as the most recent addition to the party, being a Pikeman, but he was well-suited for front-line combat and made for a dangerous combination of offense and defense.

Surprisingly, Jessica was the next most important link in their parties defense against larger enemies. With the unlocking of her Illusionist subclass, she was able to create more believable dummies that resembled Sevin and Rory to some extent. The illusions didn’t stand up to careful scrutiny, but were enough to fool the goblins, gnolls, and the two minotaur they faced during the following days.

The result was that instead of two Warriors on their front line, they appeared to have four. Attacking the flesh and blood warriors would result in retaliation with steal weapons. Attacking the magical illusions, on the other hand, would result in Jessica attacking with fire.

Grant, for his part, hung around the edges of the front formation and provided support to the Warriors with his legerdemain skills. With the warriors distracting the enemy for him, it was easy for him to score critical and killing blows by reaching through the distance between himself and the enemies, up to three meters away, and attacking a vital organ, or to inflict a crippling blow by hamstringing his enemies.

Emil was more than able to provide support as well, although he lacked the sheer firepower of Jessica’s Fire Mastery or Grant’s slippery nature as a psuedo-rogue. With his level twenty skill storing rituals on his arms for later use, and his level ten skill, Ethereal Summoning, allowing him to keep up to ten active rituals at once, he was able to keep pace with his party during their adventures into Zeta Dungeon. While unable to commit mass extermination on the monsters of the depths like he had before against insectoid monsters, he kept ten potent fireballs active at all times and wasn’t afraid to expend them all at once if the situation required it.

Which it did, several times, as they were faced with wild minotaur enemies. Unlike Brutus, Cicero and Caesar, Tom’s minions, the minotaurs spawned by Zeta Dungeon would attack the party on sight. They were formidable opponents, possessing more strength than even the warriors of the party, although they were not as powerful as the level forty versions that Tom’s party had once faced inside of Gamma Dungeon.

Rather, the boss monsters they faced on the final floors of the dungeon were in the mid level twenty range. They were about two meters tall, with powerful muscles and a disposition to match the bull heads they possessed.

The party was caught off-guard the first time they stumbled upon one of the man-beasts. The minotaur saw them first and, issuing a bellowed challenge, charged straight for the humans. Rory met the charge with his shield and was knocked flying. He wasn’t hurt badly, thanks to his ability to enhance his own defenses with his Stamina, but it took him a moment to recover.

Using the strategy that had been successful against previous minotaurs, Jessica aimed for the enemy’s head with her Fire Mastery, hoping to blind it. Unfortunately the tactic was less successful than in previous battles, as the monster was in tighter quarters. She missed the first attack, and when the monster figured out her strategy it raised its arms to protect its eyes.

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She was able to deafen it with her Sonic Sovereignty. And it was quick to fall to her illusions, wasting time and energy charging at fake copies of Sevin or Rory, giving the real Warriors time to reposition and prepare.

While the monster was recovering from one unsuccessful charge, Sevin met it with a charge of his own, burying his spear into the monster’s flank. The minotaur roared in anger and agony and ripped the spear out of Sevin’s hands, but the young warrior had a backup weapon in the form of an axe. Together with Rory, the two warriors closed in on the beast front and back to prevent it from charging.

Once it was encircled, it took the party minutes of constant fighting to deliver it a coup de grace. Grant did a significant amount of damage using his Flicker ability to dart in and out of range, stab the monster with his daggers, and retreat before it could focus on him. Jessica kept the illusions active and spent her spare focus on burning the monster with her magical fire.

Emil quickly used each of his attack rituals and began spinning up more of them, choosing electricity for the second barrage.

Even with the formidable amount of damage the attackers of the party were able to inflict, the monstrous humanoid had a huge amount of vitality and it took all of their efforts combined to overcome it. When it finally fell into the clutches of death, it was a sudden ordeal. It simply collapsed, issued one last bellow of defiance, and went still.

Traditionally the horns of a minotaur were their bounty items, exchangeable for coin or credit. However, with Tom’s dungeons issuing bounties automatically, there was no need for the party to harvest the grizzly token to claim their rewards, and they simply allowed the monster’s body to be reclaimed by the dungeon.

In fact, they might have gotten in trouble if they had attempted to collect on the trophies from Zeta dungeon, as while the crown was accepting the bounties issued by Tom’s dungeons as legitimate, it took a unfavorable view on those who would attempt to double-dip on their dungeon delving exploits by bringing the trophy items from Tom’s dungeons to one of the exchange centers which were intended for traditional delvers.

The water elemental crystals from floor one were the exception to that rule, as the crystals themselves were valuable enchanting materials. None of the party was overly focused on floor one, however, and left that to the other adventurers who had come to Zeta dungeon expressly for the purpose of farming those valuable gems.

On the forth day of their stay, those adventurers finally confronted the party.

While none of them had bothered in delving the deeper floors of the dungeon, and they hadn’t in fact learned to the extent of which Zeta Dungeon had changed yet, they were extremely frustrated that Tom’s group wasn’t moving on. So it was that, after clearing out the upper five floors with his monsters, Tom and Antoine were confronted when they returned to rest.

“It’s time for you and the rest of your party to move on,” the leader of the antagonistic party complained to start the argument. She was a rogue, and she addressed Antoine, incorrectly assuming him to be Tom’s father and the leader of the party, rather than Tom’s bodyguard who was more or less just around to make certain that the Controller didn’t meet with an unfortunate end.

“Either that, or you need to provide compensation to the rest of us for taking away the elementals that you’ve been gathering over the last few days,” the rogue continued. “We normally don’t mind when a party comes in and takes a batch or two, but we rely on those crystals. If you don’t leave soon, there are going to be problems.”

Antoine, a level one hundred and six Swordmaster, regarded the level thirty Rogue with some amusement. He glanced at the Alchemist and the Enchanter who had come with the Rogue to participate in the confrontation and realized that, refreshingly, this party had absolutely no idea who he was.

“Tom?” Antoine said. “What do you say to that?”

“Dungeons are public property,” Tom said. “You don’t own this place. And considering that the laws about dungeon delving are changing, the truth is that you should be ready for the Crown to come in and begin enforcing the new regulations anyway.”

The Rogue made a dismissive motion. “I don’t care what the new laws say. Unless you’re a royal knight and you’re here to enforce this nonsense, that’s an irrelevant point.”

Antoine, who actually was a Royal Knight, albeit a semi-retired one, almost laughed. “In case you haven’t noticed, the dungeon is a lot deeper than it used to be. Have you even begun exploring the lower floors? There’s more than enough room in the expanded dungeon to share.”

The rogue frowned. “Wait, the dungeon changed on us?”

“You didn’t know?” Tom asked. “It’s got fifteen floors to it now, in addition to the first floor with the water elementals. I’m surprised you’re so bothered, since we’ve been almost exclusively focused on those floors since they opened up.”

The rogue’s frown deepened. “Well, if you haven’t been farming the elementals and keeping the cores to yourselves, then why have there been less than half of the number of water elementals than there should be Spawning?”

It was Tom’s turn to frown. He recalled how annoyed the Zeta core had been when he’d Collaborated with it, and realized now that he might have given it too much dungeon to manage. “Is it going to be a problem if there are less water cores produced by this dungeon?” he asked.

The rogue changed her unpleasant glare towards the boy, whom she mostly dismissed. While it was clear that Tom had some sort of beast master or monster taming class, he was too young to be in charge of anything. It was clear from her observations that Antoine was the leader of the party that was cutting into her own party’s profits.

Instead, the alchemist stepped in. “Although the adventuring community sees this dungeon as a small-time place because farming the water elementals does not provide too much experience, the cores are very important to the economy at large. Powdered elemental crystals are a vital portion of many advanced alchemical formulas. The truth is that my fellow and I don’t mind if you continue delving the dungeon, we were simply concerned that you were wasting this precious resource.”

“The enchanting community is even more reliant on this dungeon for the elemental cores than the alchemists are,” the enchanter said. “We’re the ones who buy intact cores from adventurers, while the alchemists take the ones that were damaged in combat. An intact core is important for creating the most powerful of enchantments, which is why the price is so much higher for an intact, undamaged core than for a broken one.”

“If this isn’t a matter of your party simply destroying the precious resource of the elemental crystals, but of the dungeon changing its behavior and spawning them less than before, then it might cause a significant increase in the price of restorative potions and magical items,” the alchemist concluded.

Tom’s frown intensified as the explanation was laid out before him. He had intended to increase the value of Zeta dungeon, but he hadn’t anticipated that his actions would have unforeseen negative consequences to the alchemy and enchanting industries.

“Tom? What do you think about that?” Antoine inquired.

“I think that I need to go back and revisit Zeta Core,” Tom admitted.