I looked at my war chest, by my estimates once these two are finished evolving they should be among the strongest monsters in my dungeon, the poltergeist gears that killed the Fallen Angels within the tower, with the effects of giant slayer they both individually netted over sixteen thousand points, which were divided with me giving them both well over 8000 points. Giant Killer was a beast, by my estimates that should at least bring them both up to the A-Rank at least, but Saphee disagreed with me.
"Master, Evolution works off of what you have to work with, reaching this state required that I went ahead and trained under our patron during our process of evolution, I can't say that these two are doing the same thing, so the multiple evolution's they are going through are being wasted."
Doesn't evolution give new abilities though?
"Yes but the difference is acquiring new abilities naturally or using the system to forcibly shove them into the body. The first method is vastly superior to the latter."
Well that's what I get for trying to cheat. Can you teach the other poltergeists before we raid Lucifer's dungeons?
"I'm afraid there is nothing I can teach them, they are lightning elements and I am water, I use magic and they use weapons to fight, namely themselves."
Well, that makes sense.
"I do have an idea though."
I'm listening.
"We should dedicate the fourth floor to Pluto."
Underground, undead, and precious jewels and metals, yeah it sounds like things that Pluto likes. But are we sure that he's the best fit for this place? We're using this place to generate mana I'm not sure if that's something that Pluto is the best suited for.
"You're generating this mana using metallurgy and storing it using gemstones correct?" Well when you put it that way... Whatever we're doing him a favour anyway I might as well get paid for it.
The Power Plant!
And Nothing happened. Of course it didn't I don't even have a boss for this place yet. Lovely. Other matter of importance then.
[Dungeon Keeper 16832/800]
I was over twenty one times what I needed to advance my floor production after the two arch-angels were picked off so why hadn't my extra floors kicked in yet? System! Any advice here?
[You will resume normal levelling procedures once you have exited the Godly Realm]
Oh come on! At this rate I'm going to punch into another realm as soon as I get spat out of this one! Huu. I need to finish work on my fourth floor. I have to be smart about this. I should have plenty to get Pluto's favour, what I need right now is another fighter. Huu. Apas, we need to talk to Charles again.
----------------------------------------
I explained, through Apas, to Charles my situation, he called over the mages, the merchants, the adventurers even the Lemurians as we all brainstormed ideas.
"What about creating a Legion?" Grim piped up with a familiar to me term. Just to be on the safe side though I asked Apas to ask a question for me.
"What do you mean by Legion?" Apas asked looking at Grim with blatant suspicion.
"Legion is a B-Rank monster, a spirit that through Necromantic ritual has had thousands of other spirits bonded to it." B-Ranks are 'monsters who can take on an army' by the sounds of things this one was literally an army though.
"So we just grab whatever Poltergeist is down there and bind the rest of them to it for the ritual?" Apas asked sounding suspicious.
"You could, if you ask my opinion that would be a waste." Grimoire stated while shrugging his shoulders. "A artefact spirit is a item that has gradually gained a consciousness of it's own over the years, either from being neglected or being well cared for, retaining the memories of what has happened around and to it until they eventually gain a soul of their own."
"Do we have anything like that?" Apas asked looking at Grimoire suspiciously.
"'We' don't." Grimoire stated indicating himself and Apas. "But she does." Grimoire indicated Julia, who took a step back and got ready to draw her sword. "The Prestigious Arclight family signet Ring has been worn by members of the Arclight family for four generations both into battles and at table meetings for war campaigns, starting with the family founder Christopher Arclight. You can get any old ghost to take up the mantle if all you want is a mindless swarm, but to make the most of those numbers, you need a general." Before Julia could make another move Apas pounced on her.
"You've already taken a shot at my mate once, he might see an opportunity in that, me though?" Apas leaned over Julia and pressed her front paws deeper into her. "I see someone who screwed up and now has to commit. So you have two options now, you can hand that ring over, or I can bite your fingers off!"
----------------------------------------
Apas flew back into my dungeon and Spat out Julia's ring, still attached to one of her fingers, alongside the second finger that she bit off in the process. Well that's disgusting, I ignore the taste that enters my mouth as I dissolve enough of Julia's flesh to get her ring off of her finger before handing both of them back to Apas. Take these back to Julia so that they can do... something with them.
"Understood." While Apas hopefully works on getting the fingers reattached to Julia's hand I turned my attention back to the ring and conjured a poltergeist to shove inside of it. The Silver Ring with a A stamp on the front of it slowly floated into the air, and then fell back to the ground lifeless. I sunk a greater amount of mana into the ring as I attempted to shove more mana into the ring until the damnable ring took on the characteristics I desired. I may have gone too far though.
[E Rank Monster Artefact Spirit Ring-A Ring that has spent decades on the fingers of warriors and generals absorbing their extensive knowledge of war, it may develop a unique ability]
The ring was the same grade as the other Poltergeists possibly because it's smaller than they are. In any case I moved onto phase two, I went down to the fourth floor to meet up with Grimoire so that we could proceed with phase two. Grimoire stepped out of the Dungeon through the elevator as I engraved the mass binding ritual magic to tie together the souls of the fourth floor into a singular legion, including the two evolving gears. The flood of Points went through the gears of the floor, rather than wasting Points on ineffective evolutions it was instead more efficient to evolve each of the individual gears into their next forms, including the ring. A few moments later the light of evolution died down.
[B Rank Evolution Greater Poltergeist Legion-A hoard of greater Poltergeists that have been bound together via a ritual spell]
Perfect!
[Make Greater Poltergeist Legion boss Yes/No?]
[Yes]
[Name Greater Poltergeist Legion]
[Leonaidas]
Now let's try this again.
The Power Plant!
Once again my consciousness was pulled out of my dungeon and flew up into the air, lesser constellations moved out of the way as one of the greater gods claimed the right of my audience before anyone else. I was brought into an audience chamber, or an office it was hard to tell in a castle. The place that should be the throne was surrounded, in the front a massive crescent shaped desk, behind a few shelves positively stuffed well passed the point that you can call the brim with countless folders and documents. The massive desk and block of documents behind it was only slightly less attention grabbing than the man who manned, massive, built like a mountain, and wearing a toga that exposed the various acid burns across his body. Pluto I presume?
"You took your sweet time. You made a floor tailor made for me and then you spend all this time teasing me with it? I hope you have a good explanation."
I was... fine tuning it? There was so much room for improvement but I don't know how.
"Yes your amateurish attempts at electromagnetic generation is quite obvious. And is the first thing that I am going to have to fix."
[Objective: Create a Necromancer's paradise in the Keeper's city]
What? Aren't I already doing you a pretty big favour by breaking your other dungeon off from Cocytus?
"That is something you're already doing for Hel, which at most means that I owe her one. Not you."
Is that really how this should work?
"If you want to talk about who already owes whom..." Pluto rung a bell, and immediately a figure walked in.
[Archie The Walpurgis]
Another skeleton turned human. Touche.
[Blessing of Pluto: Overhaul the Fourth floor to dramatically improve upon Mana generation and storage, return of the Walpurgis Archie Yes/No?]
Well, that's basically what I wanted in the first place. Whatever, arguing at this point just means I'm gonna lose.
[Yes]
"A wise choice."
And then I was expelled back into my Dungeon.
My dungeon shook, the gears of copper turned into silver, the blocks of Iron turned into... Neodymium? Neodymium, Iron and Boron composite? Silver is the most effective metal conductor that doesn't require subzero temperatures, the Neodymium composite is the strongest magnet in the world, so in other worlds my electricity generation was significantly dialed up. Not only electricity though: The topaz had changed in it's composition, the jewels were now filled with countless flaws, each of them part of a intricate magic formation that is designed to deeply, severely, compress the mana being generated into a dense package. I felt more than enough mana for the other dungeons flowing through the air and several times that going into those gears, the combination of Pluto's blessing and the high efficiency mana generators he installed. Well, I suppose that's what I get for relying on a professional. As for the most affected party.
[B Rank Monster Silver Clockwork Legion-A hoard of greater Poltergeists that have been bound together via a ritual spell and are inhabiting a massive number of silver clockwork that is generating massive quantities of lightning attuned mana]
Okay I can at least focus on dealing with-
[Achievement Unlocked: Mass for the Dead]
Go to hell system!
[Mass for the Dead: Acquired two Gods of Death for your sponsors Reward: Beacon for Necromancers activated]
Alright. How bad can this be?
----------------------------------------
Marrowind was a city in the far north, where it's so cold that no living being in their right mind would ever want to live there. No Living being. The ice and cold make for the ultimate preservative and they needed it, for the City of the Dead never has a shortage of its ever constant need for preservatives. Of course, so many powerful undead makes it the number one spot for the mass production of magic items, but to conduct trade with Marrowind you must surrender the only resource that they are not able to get from their dungeon of the same name: People. Here is the final resting place of Rapists, Murderers and other undesirables of all walks of life, it's slaughter houses expertly separate brain, blood, meat, bone and soul for the sake of those who 'live' within it's halls. Course they don't just accept any person whose head is made to rest on it's chopping block for this gruesome trade, the Brain Eaters, the parasitic monsters who devour the brains, are quite adept at mind reading and can with great ease confirm whether or not the person in question is guilty of the crimes they are accused or if said crime warrants death. It is, simply put, the number one undead capital in the entire world and right now they have received a message, of a new dungeon that has just made itself into their playground.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
"So another Dungeon Core who thinks that they can breach the realm of the dead and make it their own." The man with a skeleton arm laughed as he received news from his god, holding a skull up that he had been conversing with.
"Your orders master?" The skull's eyes lit up as a voice came from it.
"We'll start with diplomacy and work our way down from there." I sent Apas to the city, let Charles know that I would be out, and that she would be in, leaving her to manage the dungeon in whatever way she pleased. In the mean time I had a job for Archie.
"My master has deigned to allow me to lead our raid into the enemy dungeon." I'm coming with you Archie, I'm going to be in your body. "My master believes that some fresh air will be good for you. I feel inclined to agree, looking at this sorry sight."
Archie looked at the descriptions he got from the monsters that the other cores had created. There was the familiar Turke immobile on the ground, but it wasn't even the worst of the lot.
[F-Rank Monster Bark-A illogical chimera of Bat and Shark, although theoretically capable of flight for a period of time without constantly moving under water they will quickly suffocate to death, while the wings make the creature too hydro-dynamically inefficient to swim ineffectively]
One of the Barks was on it's side desperately gasping for sweet oxygen filled water that wasn't there.
[E Rank Monster Bose-A Hybrid of Bobcat and a rose bush, lightly poisonous with a tendency of rooting into prey for nutrients]
Adding insult to injury the Bose was sucking what was left of the life out of the late Bark.
[F Rank Monster Bird Skeleton-The reanimated skeleton of a bird, too small to be a real threat and too few feathers to fly]
It looked like a chicken, I'm pretty sure those can't fly feathered or not. Well one out of four isn't bad. I guess. These hilariously ineffective creatures make up what people can expect from the first four floors, but on the fifth was the creature that wiped the raid team single handily, not to mention that there's three or four other critters around here like it.
[Would you like to Raid the Dungeon Ouroboros Yes/No?]
[Yes]
[Would you like to bring along your Vassals Yes/No]
[Yes]
[Please Select Vassals]
[1, 2, 3, 4]
I should probably take more but we're already working on a mana budget here, I want these floors protected by the time the Adventurers get here.
[Raid will begin in 3. 2. 1]
----------------------------------------
"What are you doing here?" Hel initially thought that they were being invaded when she saw the unfamiliar Walpurgis appear within Ouroboros wearing Pluto's toga, then she saw the immobile Turke, the Bark laying on it's side gasping for air, er water, the frustratingly flightless chicken skeleton and the lackadaisical Bose.
Not exactly an elite hit squad. For now I had Archie convey our intentions to Hel.
"Apologies for our untimely interruption lady Hel." Archie flourished his arm as he gave a bow to Hel. Did Pluto give him etiquette training on top of magic? "The Master believes that for these four to become useful they must first understand the implications behind what kinds of monsters that they have created." The Gasping Bark stopped moving, the Bose didn't waste any time in walking over and sinking thorny claws into it's body for nutrients.
"I understand your point. Very well, so long as they don't interfere with our own scouting the other dungeons."
We don't plan on taking too long...
"The master says that we shall be along shortly, we will have to employ the services of the Zombie the master fought alongside when he and the Dragon raided Leviathan."
A nearby... door(?) opened with a wet squelch as the zombie walked in, the Grappler right? Graves explained to me that after his dungeon turned into a dragon he had to replace a lot of his bosses with monsters that can act as Organs, he was already up at one of the dungeons up north and picked up ones suitable as a Brain and a Heart already but I don't care to know about them. The zombie was a little disappointed to see the monsters assembled before him, a tumour, a plant, and decoration. It honestly felt like a bad joke. I started by throwing the Bose out, still rooted in the Bark and not intending to go anywhere or do anything, instead kneading into the shark corpse and falling asleep. The Zombie looked ahead unamused, suddenly zipping forward and slamming his foot into the morbid topiary hard enough to send it flying smashing into the fleshy wall opposite of him before falling to the ground, dead. The Chicken skeleton could do jack all as it looked up at the bottom of the Zombie's foot as it was ground into dust. The Turke was thrown out last, being the generous teachers that we are Archie and I allowed it to struggle to move as the zombie walked up to it, picked it up by it's tail, and proceeded to repeatedly smash it into the ground until it was splattered meat chunks on the ground.
"Thank you for your services brute, may your master grow to appreciate your talents once more." Was making compliments sound like insults a part of you etiquette training too Archie?
[End Raid Yes/No?]
[Yes]
[Raid ending in 3. 2. 1]
I reappear at my core room as I called a meeting.
[Dungeon Keeper: What have we learned children?]
[1: We're not Children!/We're older than you are!]
[2: That Dungeon raids are boring and uneventful/Being outside the dungeon is like being unable to breathe]
[3: That your friend is a bully!/That you like to steal our kills!]
[4: That we need to stay put/We need to stay where it's safe]
[Dungeon Keeper: Good Guesses, but wrong]
[Dungeon Keeper: Aside from the Bose each of the monsters you four have created and brought with you suffer severe flaws that keeps them from being useful to anyone]
[Dungeon Keeper: 1, your Turke isn't a monster, it's a joke, a deformed fat tumour that can't move or fight]
[1: We're a dungeon!/We're not suppose to move!]
[Dungeon Keeper: 1. This isn't a dungeon!]
I threw the splattered corpse of the Turke at them.
[Dungeon Keeper: It is the monster equivalent of a teddy bear that your bickering has managed to tear in half that we have to fix now!]
I moved on with my lecture with the next one in line.
[Dungeon Keeper: Still at least if I left it alone where no one would be able to find it for five minutes I am at least confident that it would still be alive, that is more than I can say about this!]
The Bark's corpse came out next, still with the puncture wounds where the Bose had ripped open a hole and made itself comfortable.
[2: It's your fault/You brought it to a bad environment]
[Dungeon Keeper: And what is a 'good' environment for it? It can't breathe in the air and it can barely swim!]
[2: You have a water floor don't you?/Send it into the Ocean floor]
Children! Levi I have something for you to pick up, I need you to send some water up here to the tower in Helheim.
[Dungeon Keeper: I'm going to save the one I have the biggest gripe with for last]
Thus I skipped over the spot where I left the broken Bose Cat and instead turned my attention to the useless bird skeleton.
[3: Why did you look at us when you said that?/What's he planning?]
[Dungeon Keeper: Should I at least congratulate you for making a functional creature?]
Considering the Immobile tumour and self suffocating shark it really feels like I should.
[4: We don't know how to make it stronger/We can't make it stronger]
[Dungeon Keeper: Luckily undead appear to be made out of lego bricks, especially skeletons]
[4: What's a Lego Brick?/What's Lego?]
[Dungeon Keeper: I'm leaving my top necromancer in charge of fixing this until it becomes usable]
"Leave these useless piles of bones to me master!" Archie immediately stood ram rod straight at attention as he gave a salute.
[Dungeon Keeper: But as for you...]
[3: What is it?/What did we do?]
[Dungeon Keeper: What you did was make a barely actually dangerous creature that's too lazy to do anything, and I get the disturbing feeling that you two are a little too much like you're little pet as well]
These two were put into the body of a monster, told that they were going to get into a fight, and then promptly got their arse handed to them. Why? Because they took one of the laziest creatures that ever existed and they crossed it with a immobile plant.
[Dungeon Keeper: Was your first material a blade of grass or something or did you just filter-feed all the time?]
[4: Hey don't judge us!/We managed to breach all the way into another realm!]
Which according to Lithilas probably means this was a hundred floor dungeon at some point, if what they said was true, me personally I was working on the story that they simply died and was sent to the afterlife. I'll leave grinding my imaginary teeth in frustration later.
[Dungeon Keeper: I'm going to go ask one of the other cores if we can use their monsters to grind for points for a while]
Archie I want you to set everything up on the fourth floor to grind.
Levi extended her body as far up the tower entrance where I dumped several of the Barks for her to deal with. Good luck Levi! As for the rest, Archie if you would.
"This ball of Amber will do for a core for now." Archie produced some amber from somewhere and shoved it into the chest cavity for the chicken skeleton. "This shall be a rather fruitful experiment."
I had the chicken skeleton and the Bose hook themselves into Archie, who was holding onto the tail of the Turke like it was a flail. This set up is okay right? Well I need to negotiate with the fifth floor core anyway.
[Dungeon Keeper: 5. Are you there?]
No answer. I went down to the fifth floor where the Quetzal was eagerly shooting balls of fire into the void.
[Solarus the Quetzal]
Oh she's already named! But I need to talk with her core. Archie I need you to go up to the fifth floor. Archie walked up and stuck his head into the fifth floor where Solarus was busy firing off balls of flame.
"Excuse me good-"
Archie was blown off the stairs by Solarus's fireball.
Oh so someone is getting a big head about this eh? Archie are the passengers okay?
"Indeed master!"
Go back to the fourth floor and walk around the edge, see if you can see where the Quetzal is from down there?
Archie looked as instructed and looked up at the rowdy hybrid with annoyance.
"I see her master."
Drop the Turke under her. Archie did as instructed, the Turke dropped four stories, looped back around and fell another 90 slamming into the head of the Quetzal with enough force to cave her skull in. The Quetzal dissolved into light and reformed into a staff depicting a snake with rainbow wings, which Archie grabbed, while the bird skeleton, the Bose and the Turke were all encompassed in the light of evolution. Split between the monsters and the cores that's over two thousand points each, more than enough evolutions to become something useful I wager. Now while we're doing that I need to-I watched surprised as the Quetzal reformed in mid-air, less so when the Turke's cocoon slammed into her head again before she could figure out what was happening, more surprised when I saw another two thousand points appear in my recepticle. So the combination of Archie, the chicken, and the cat was the one who threw that hunk of bone and scales off the side of the platform, so we're all getting a cut of the points. And what's with this respawn speed? It's taking me a week to get my FFF body back!?
"Perhaps if she is considered an intruder in your dungeon then the Rest effect is applying to her?" Archie asked while examining the feathered headdress that the Quetzal dropped.
Does that mean that Rests debuff is applying to her too?
The Quetzal reformed a few moments later and latched onto the side of the platform without strength to pull herself up, and then she got crushed by the Turke again.
This could be a problem.
"How so master?" Archie asked looking at me concerned. Well we can't gain dungeon levels here right?
"Right."
So that means that these cores are gaining explosive amounts of points right?
"Perhaps it's wise if we end this before it goes any further."
Archie watched as the Quetzal got beamed on the head again, grabbed the priestess robes that had spawned in the process, caught the Turke, and pulled the little meteor to safety.
Alrighty then, time to play damage control. 4, spawn 19 more of the Chicken skeletons.
While the core gave me a questioning feeling of asking me what I was doing I had more Amber crystal spawned into the room to install into them and at Archie's request enough gemstones to give each of them more cores.
What are you up to you bone head?
"Only to make preparations to create stronger forces my lord. Experimentation is the essence of creation." With that 4 now had 20 of the bird skeletons and I moved on to stage two. I had Archie bind the birds to the one on the ground in an evolution cocoon and soon they all were in their own cocoons as well, and not a moment too soon either as Solarus floated back down.
"That was beyond cheap!" Solarus growled as she looked at the cocoons of evolution, born out of power taken right from beneath her wings.
"Do you surrender?" Archie asked as he sat in the lotus position. Solarus responded with two balls of fire. "Then you leave us no choice." The cocoons shattered.
[C Rank Monster Flock of Famine-Over Four dozen Kapri Soul bounded together by the Legion magic formation, because of their few numbers though they lack the power to be a true Legion, thus instead a cohort]
Okay I know what I'm looking at but what the heck is a Kapri Soul?
[E Rank Monster Kapri Soul-A crude undead approximation of a bird with amber flowing through it's marrow with the power to drain the life from it's victims and imbue it into an ally]
A small bird like creature, in lieu of wings there were two boney hands with a thin golden film between the fingers, it had a sharp dart shaped head like a humming bird and it's chest was a golden mass that was slowly inflating and deflating like it was breathing. Solarus didn't even blink and threw the ball of fire down, Archie erected a wall of stone to block the shot while the Kapri's scattered. I thought undead were suppose to rank up as they acquired cores, these ones look like they melted theirs down and spread it throughout their bodies.
"Well said master!" Arche allowed the original Bird Skeleton to grab onto his arm with it's hand wings, he already had several of the jewels in hand as he allowed the bird to pick one that it liked and swallowed it whole, a ruby.
Of course you knew this was going to happen, that's why you had me prepare the extra cores. While I was debating how impressed to be with Archie the Flock of Famine had surrounded Solarus.
"Get! Off! Of! Me!"
The fire was washing off of their backs, fire magic spread from the ruby in the one Kapri and into the others. The undead birds stabbed their beaks into Solarus's body, their amber chests inflating before they went down to the gemstones on the floor and swallowed them up, and soon just like that Solarus died again, this time spitting out a set of robes, while the Kapri's entered cocoons of evolution. Right I'll leave them to you while I focus on the other floors. I had five cores managed already, I can do forty five more easy right?