Oh boy, I hope this was going to be an interesting fight. Kölgə dashed forward, soundlessly and effortlessly moving over the group, unaware of his presence, the boss monster landed behind them and whipped his tail around the smallest guard, aiming for his leg instead of his neck.

The man let out a startled yelp and kicked his feet up with surprising force, forcing kölgə to unwrap his tail before it was chopped off. This instantly put the group on high alert.

“MEN! ASSUME TURTLE FORMATION.” Roared Staruth as he and the others swiftly turned their backs around and moved closer together, enclosing Zappatur in a tight box. Their souls pulsed with soul essence and a soft blue shield sprang into existence around them.

Another pulse followed and their swords began crackling with golden thunder, oh boy, things just got a lot more serious. Kölgə stalked from the shadows, looking for any exploitable opening but found none.

He dashed forward with inhuman speed and leaped off the floor at an angle, his form flying over their heads. He slashed at the top of the barrier while he passed over their head and I was surprised to see it crack slightly, what happened next though, was shocking.

As soon as the crack manifested itself the entire barrier along with the guards shifted and gave way as the hand of Staruth shot out with so much speed that it looked like he teleported from Kölgə’s perspective.

His armored hand impacted Kölgə’s chest and I felt his bones turn to mush from the sheer force, an ethereal turtle mouth naturalized over his body and snapped, splitting Kölgə’s form cleanly in two.

Kölgə!

I was about to do something rash when a soul detached itself from the dead body and melted through the floor, repairing back safely into my sea of souls, glowing brightly at the top. Phew, he’s alive, relief surged through me.

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been worried as some part of me, the dungeon part, knew that his soul would come back to me, but the human side was very human and started worrying anyway. The fight was rather anti-climactic though, I expected him to last a bit longer and at least take out one.

Bummer, oh well. There was always next time, I suppose. I hoped kölgə learned from this and adapted. I will be giving him some upgrades though, as he is now, he’s hardly a boss monster. I could give him the cultivation system I made a while ago, but I didn’t want to, as that would no longer make the floor unique.

I wanted each floor to be unique and while I did plan on reusing some elements made in some, like the monster cores I did not want to do this too much, I also didn’t want to overemphasize the unique touch each floor had to the point where it felt too unique to look at, balance was important, and I hoped to strike the right amount of balance between my floors.

Seeing that I didn’t lose my first boss monster, I turned my attention back to his killers. They reacted defensively when the sudden darkness snapped out of being and the room became a simple, well-lit, stone room.

They watched the stone wall before them cautiously as it morphed and flowed like water until it pushed out the loot chest I placed there. It cracked open with a groan and they moved over to look what was inside after some time.

Greed flashed in their eyes as they eyed the daggers, and Zappatur was the first to act.

“MOVE!” he bellowed, pushing them aside in a mad dash to grab one of the daggers. Staruth was faster though, and grabbed him by the neck, easily lifting him off the floor.

“W-” was all he managed to say before a fist connected with his face, knocking him aside as Staruth let him go mid-punch.

“What’s the meaning of this!?” roared Zappatur as he rubbed the side of his face that was rapidly growing red.

“What do you mean!? Are you mad? WE’RE IN A BLASTED DUNGEON! Now is NOT the time to be overcome with greed! What if that thing is trapped? What would I tell your father? Think young master, THINK!”

Zappatur looked like he wanted to protest, to say anything that would let him have the last word but decided to stay silent. The man had a point, after all. Zappatur went to the back with the three other guards and Staruth approached the chest with measured and cautious steps, he constantly scanned his environment with every step he took.

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Gosh, what a cautious guy. It made sense though, he looked to be the strongest and smartest of them all, also the most long-lived despite looking the youngest, his soul told another story. I estimated him to be around 60 despite looking like he was in his late twenties.

When he saw that he wasn’t about to be impaled to death by the sudden activation of a trap he dipped his armored hand into the chest and retrieved one of the daggers. He held the blade awkwardly, and I could tell he had no experience with short blades like these but the look in his eyes told me it was valuable.

“Golden grade..” He muttered in pure disbelief, that was pretty high up, based on the human ranking system. With a wave of his hand, it disappeared along with the others in the chest. Hey! That was cheating! At least tell me how to do that!

He quickly made his way back to the others and relayed the news, the greed in their eyes spiked to a new level but they restrained themselves when he told them that there were only two and that he pocketed them for later.

One even tried removing the chest, but it was fused to the floor and didn’t budge no matter how hard he pulled. Eventually, he gave up and they gathered and began to discuss all their plans.

“We must return to the capital immediately; the king and the patriarch of the divine thunder clan must be the first to know.”

“But sir, will be able to find such an opportunity again? Won’t the royal family swarm this place soon?”

Staruth gazed at the stone ceiling contemplatively for a good minute before answering.

“Yes, but so will the sons and people of the Divine Thunder Clan, we were the first to discover this place, and by law, we are its owners. All of you, with the sole exception being the young master, will be bribed out of your owning rights if you aren't careful, I’ve known each of you all my life, but money and influence is a powerful thing.”

He grabbed his massive claymore and hoisted it over his left shoulder before continuing.

“I despise traitors, and will not hesitate to cut down any of you who fall under, do I make myself clear?”

“YES SIR!”

“YES SIR!”

“YES SIR!”

“Good, and do not think you can hide, I know you more than you know yourselves, I will find you, and I will cut you down.”

Everyone remained silent at that, and they walked back into the first room in total silence, they didn’t even glance at the glowing door, which impressed me, they certainly didn’t lack discipline and control, which was a commendable trait.

Overall, I think this was an interesting dungeon dive, I learned a lot about the outside world, and even if what I learned were just snippets of information, I drank it up greedily.

Also, the items I made were golden ranked huh? This was an issue, I didn’t want such high-value weapons to crop up so early on, that would only cause problems in the long run. Nobody would want to go deeper if they could get what they wanted on the very first floor.

And that simply won’t do, I needed people to go deeper, see the unique sights held within, and push themselves further and so much more. It would seem that the item and spawn system would have to be made early, as I didn’t want to manually respawn everything in my dungeon.

I would only grow larger in time and while it was manageable now, it wouldn’t be for long as my mind could only be split so many times before it started to break, I wasn’t even nearing such a limit yet, but it paid to be cautious and efficient, sometimes quite literally too.

These systems would span my entire dungeon and would be interconnected to each floor, I also wanted to give the systems the ability to expand with me, essentially, I wanted smart enchantment systems. Ones that would adapt and distribute entities and items differently for each floor with my input.

I had to be careful though, as this was new ground, even to my dungeon instincts. I had no guiding hand here, as only I knew what I wanted and could mess up really badly if I wasn’t careful. The last thing I wanted was a rouge super intelligent and adaptable enchantment that hated me running loose.

I contemplated which system to start off with first, which one was more difficult? Hmm, I didn’t know, so I began to think deeper. Which of the two things was easier for me? I thought about it and concluded that it was spawning animals.

I had to really work my will into the soul essence to get the exact thing I wanted. Sometimes this took up to twenty minutes, which was a lot of time for a dungeon like myself to spend designing one monster. I wanted something to cut down that work time dramatically or remove it completely, which was a bit ambitious, but a dungeon had to dream.

I didn’t want it to spit out generic-looking monsters with little to no variation though, as that would defeat the entire purpose of making it.

I was tempted to use the third floor as a testing ground for my highly experimental and potentially lethal project, but common sense rightfully slapped me in the face and advised otherwise.

Instead, I claimed a large chunk of stone directly beneath the third floor and hollowed it out until it was the size of a medium-sized living room. This would be my lab, where I test unsafe and stupid stuff.

Next, I wove the thickest thread of soul essence into the walls and laid down the strongest durability and anti-soul essence enchantment I could currently make. It was safe to say that nothing, but my will could freely move into this room without struggling.

Next, I made the walls repel any type of energy that I didn’t permit, I also gave it self-healing properties just to be on the safe side of things. When I was done the stone had changed dramatically and took on a deep shade of grey and was texture-less, with not a single pore in sight.

It could no longer be called stone at all, it had transcended, and now firmly sat above ordinary stone. I named the pattern dungeon stone, and made a mental note to replace all my walls with this substance later, as it just made sense.

Focus! Right, back to the main thing at hand. In the absolute center of the room, I spawned a normal rat, and had it stand on its hind legs simply, next I wove a thick thread of soul essence over it and connected my mind to it.

Next, I instructed it to extend tendrils of soul essence down to the rat and it did, only for them to slide right off.

Huh?

Why did they just slide off? I repeated the same thing two more times, all had the same outcome. Why weren’t they sticking? What’s the difference when I do it? I willed a change to happen and watched as the rat changed instantly, a bit of soul essence disappeared directly from my pool after.

Welp, this is going to take a while.