Chapter 16

Tom established a shallow dungeon outside the city limits of Nashak when he arrived using Alpha Core for his monsters to remain in without alarming the populace of the city. While he was occupied with that, Antoine reluctantly performed his duties as a knight by alerting the city leadership that their Core was about to form a dungeon and no, there was nothing that they could do about it.

When Tom arrived at the city core of Nashak, the first thing he did was to level it until the sense of pain that the core was experiencing faded. This took several uses of his Level skill, and resulted in the core increasing from level twenty-one to thirty-three. Tom was about to begin Customizing the dungeon when Grant begged a minute of his time.

“Tom, before you begin, have you considered what sort of resources that the dungeon will produce for the city above it?” Grant inquired.

Tom frowned. “The truth is that I was planning on just making it like the Caseville Dungeon,” he admitted.

“Have you considered that Caseville might be worth revisiting as well now that you have explored more options for your abilities and learned many nuances which could be used to increase the value of the dungeon there?” Grant asked. “Just for example, your grasslands biome makes for excellent farmland, and you’re capable of seeding it with the food that the people in the city above already eat.”

Tom frowned as he considered the man’s words. “I see what you’re saying, I think,” Tom said after a few moments. “What are you suggesting? I can’t seed minerals in either Caseville or here in Nashak, but I guess you’re right that it’s a waste not to Seed something, since there are options which the people of the city can gather without causing structural damage.”

“How urgent is it that we form a dungeon for Nashak and the other two cities?” Grant asked. “Can it wait a few days for us to research the economies of the city?”

Tom considered. He put a hand on the Nashak City Core and Collaborated with it for a moment. “It’s not about to spawn monsters, since it still has Iota to use as its Miasma outlet,” Tom admitted. “I don’t like delaying, but I guess a few days won’t hurt it.”

Grant spent the next few days walking through the city with Tom and Emil. Both of the adults spent a significant amount of time educating Tom on their various perspectives on how the city was functioning. Grant focused on the commerce of the city, such as the products that were being sold in the street stalls and the stores that they visited.

While Nashak had an active foundry district which could likely benefit from local sourcing of iron, coal, and other minerals, Tom knew that the dungeon beneath the city wouldn’t be safe to turn into a mine. The leather workers of the city, however, would benefit from having several floors seeded with wildlife.

Similarly, there was a furniture industry which could benefit from a local source of oak, pine and mahogany.

Emil focused more on the basic necessities that he believed the city was lacking. Such as water, which he said was likely one reason why the city’s growth was stalled. While the city had a few wells, they were insufficient to provide for a larger population.

After consulting with both men, Tom developed a basic plan for his dungeon. While he still required Emil’s support in planning the structural supports of the floors, he knew what resources the dungeon would provide the city above it.

The first floor was set as a lake biome. Tom set it to seed fish to feed the population. It was strange to think that the landlocked Nashak would soon see an influx of the fishing trade, but Grant and Emil both assured him that this was all to the good. Being able to locally source a new type of food would increase the health and stability of the population. This was on top of providing a self-refreshing source of water, which Emil hoped to plumb into the city’s water supply once his public water initiatives had made more progress.

Tom selected water elementals as the monster of choice for the first floor for the simple fact that they were the least dangerous of the monsters available.

The next floor was a grasslands biome. Tom was surprised to find wild boars among his list of potential monsters for the floor, and after consulting with his advisors he promptly selected them to Spawn. They would double not only as a monster, but as a potential food source and leather. For his Seed ability, Tom selected Milnet, a grain that was popular throughout the kingdom. It was a common breakfast item, as boiled it formed a pleasant porridge. It could be milled for flour, but generally it was eaten whole as the flour tended to clump more than other types of grain available in Welsius.

On the third and fourth floors, Tom selected the forest biome. For his Seed ability he selected pine for the third floor and oak for the fourth. He once more was able to select wild boars as the monster of choice on the third floor, but on the fourth floor a more challenging monster was required. Tom selected wolves for that floor.

The fifth floor was dedicated to the rain forest biome in order to grow mahogany for the city. Having selected the tree for the resource that the floor would Seed, Tom reluctantly selected the giant wasps that his party had faced in Epsilon dungeon. While the monsters were dangerous, the dungeon itself was restricting the sort of monster which he could spawn.

Unlike Zeta dungeon, which had been happy to put wolves or dire wolves anywhere Tom had tried to stick them, the Nashak dungeon was being picky about what monsters were being placed upon the final floor, and the wasps were the only option that the dungeon would accept. He tried to get a sense as to why this might be while he was Collaborating with the Core, but all he got was a sense of stubbornness. Reluctantly, Tom caved and allowed the Nashak dungeon to have its way. Tom got a bit of a smug feeling from the Core after that, but it was more cooperative in making the other changes that he wanted to make to the dungeon.

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He didn’t make the dungeon any deeper than that. He could have, but he had come to believe that increasing the depth of a dungeon and the number of tasks for the Core to complete would lead to lower respawn rates. The entire purpose of this dungeon was to provide resources for the town above it, so it made the most sense to Tom to have the dungeon small and rapidly respawning the resources in question.

Satisfied with the five floor dungeon, Tom took a step back. He joined his party members on the surface and inquired as to how they had been spending the time.

Jessica was surprisingly reticent about her activities. She informed him that she had a surprise planned for his birthday and that her secrecy was in regards to that. Tom accepted her word and didn’t press her too hard on the matter, content to allow the surprise to be revealed on Jessica’s schedule.

Rory and Sevin had spent most of the time trying to figure out which of the weaponsmiths in the city was the best. With the way that Tom’s dungeons automatically rewarded bounties, and the extent to which they had been active in slaying monsters lately, the two young men were among the richest people in the city.

Especially since the entire financial system of the city was currently in disarray as it switched from the network of the kingdom at large to Tom’s smaller but growing network. Fortunately King Fenard had learned from Caseville, and the process of changing over was going more smoothly than it had in the past.

While the moneychangers were initially reluctant to allow either of the teens to withdraw from their accounts due to the lack of correlation between the account on Tom’s network and the account on the Welsian network, the matter was straightened out in a few days.

The two warriors had both been disturbed by their encounters with Iota dungeon. The ghosts of that place had been both dangerous, and impossible for the two young warriors to defeat on their own. As such, they were in the market for weapons with enough magical enchantment to them that they wouldn’t have to worry about being in another situation where they were completely helpless.

Fortunately there was a recent spike in mana-rich steel that was flooding the market as several dungeons were being ‘discovered’ to contain vast amounts of iron ore and coal. This “Dungeon Steel” was expensive, but both boys could afford the cost of the metal. In fact, they added to the price by electing to have their weapons enchanted, although they saved on that expense by providing the enchanting crystals from their time at Zeta dungeon.

Sevin commissioned a halberd with three enchantments to it. One on the primary blade, which was powered by an air elemental crystal and enhanced the sharpness of the blade significantly. Another on the spear point, or spike, increased the penetration of that part of the weapon for when Sevin used it as a spear.

The final enchantment was on the fluke of the blade, or the rear spike, which possessed an enchantment powered by a flame elemental core. The fluke of the blade was useful for penetrating armor and carapace, and the enchantment that added fire to that part of the weapon was just a ‘screw you’ to whatever Sevin happened to be fighting with it.

There were downsides to upgrading from his pike to the halberd. Primarily that he would have to train for the new weapon. Although he had fought previously with both a spear and an axe, neither weapon was quite the same as the new poleaxe he’d commissioned. While the weapon was being crafted, the smith loaned him a dull dummy halberd to train with, assuring him that the weight and balance of the weapon was mostly the same.

Rory, meanwhile, went for a much simpler option. He purchased a new shield and a long sword to go with it. The shield was enhanced by an earth elemental’s crystal and enchanted to provide additional durability and protection to its wielder. The long sword was enchanted with the same air-elemental powered sharpness enchant on the axe blade of Sevin’s halberd.

Selecting the smiths to craft their new weapons had taken them several days, along with resolving the financial issues to pay for said weapons, and it would take several days longer before the weapons were ready. Rory, also, would have to make a journey back to Caseville at some point to acquire the plate armor that he had commissioned when he’d awoken as a Shieldbearer.

Fortunately, one of the cities that was had been accidentally linked to Tom’s network through Iota core would take them back through Caseville soon.

After hearing what the boys had been up to during the time that he had been investigating the economy of Nashak for Tom, Grant realized that he’d almost missed an opportunity. He consulted with the boys as to who the third best weapon smith in the city was – the first two being occupied with Rory and Sevin’s weapons – and commissioned her to craft him a new pair of daggers enchanted for sharpness.

Theoretically, once all of the melee members of the party were in possession of enchanted blades, they would no longer be as vulnerable to ghosts and other noncorporial enemies.

Aisha joined the party a few days later, staying with them in the same inn but spending most of her time healing the people of the city or collecting data for her study. She was still behind the others in levels, but expressed little concern about the matter.

Tom’s birthday came, and he had two major surprises.

The first was that his parents had unexpectedly made the journey from Weaver estate to Nashak. This was not entirely done simply to be with Tom on his birthday, as Norman had put together a small sample of his high-quality cloth, and Sue was intending to try to find buyers in the city.

Aside from that, the two were looking for ways to invest Tom’s money for him. The predictions of how much Tom could expect to take from benefiting from his seeded dungeons was extreme, far too much for the Weaver family to manage itself. Grant and Emil had suggested a number of industries which might be expected to see a surge of value over the next few years, and the family intended to invest Tom’s money in any promising company they could find.

The second surprise came as, well, a surprise. Tom was walking with his parents through a park on the eastern edge of the city, unaware that they were in on Jessica’s plan, when a sudden flash of color and light lit up the night sky. The words “Happy Birthday Tom” were formed in the air, followed by an hour long light show, the best that Jessica could manage with her current level of proficiency.

Tom thanked Jessica afterwards and admitted that he’d been caught completely by surprise. Unfortunately, when Tom asked after Jessica’s birthday, he learned that Earth used a different, more complicated calendar than Welsius, and Jessica wasn’t exactly certain what day to assign as her birthday. They mutually agreed to celebrate the day of her summoning instead, and Tom began making plans to pay her back for her surprise on that date.