I Looked at the small sphere curiously, pondering the implications of the day. By the sounds of things Ratatoskr was the one behind the system, which makes sense since the little rat was supposed to be the god of messengers and thus far that was exactly what the system was, messages. But much about it didn't make sense either, the collection of points, the dungeons, the gods blessings. While I think that he's a corner stone of the process I don't think he's everything it's got to have about it either. For now I looked at his 'gift' and how to use it. Last time I just threw this thing off to the side in my core room and this happened, so I dropped the ball next to the globe and watched it align itself into place like a moon.
[Connection established: Administrator Authority for the Realm of Helheim/Cocytus established, reconnecting to Mortal Plane Dungeon Chat System]
Did it work? I looked over to the Dungeon Chat system.
[Dungeon Keeper: Old Man, Jewel, can you hear me?]
[Lithilas: ?]
[Jewel: ?]
[Lithilas: I thought you were stuck in another dimension?]
[Dungeon Keeper: I am, but right now I need to manage the mess with Leviathan, Hel talked to the Troll and he gave me the ability to talk with you guys again]
[Jewel: The Troll?]
[Litihlas: If you are talking about who I think you are, while I feel your pain, I have to live with him]
Well that's just your own silly fault.
[Dungeon Keeper: Jewel, I made a monster I think you'll like, it's a kind of Harpy called a Passista]
[Jewel: !?]
[Jewel: Where'd you get a schema for that!?]
[Dungeon Keeper: Oh Chicken egg, Ifrit, power levelling, the usual deal]
[Jewel: There's nothing usual about any of that!]
[Dungeon Keeper: Look I have a little girl, and I get the impression that if I leave her here Apas is going to eat her, do you have a contract slot open or not?]
[Jewel: Just send the Schema over to me!]
[Dungeon Keeper: I have to kill her to collect the Schema]
I was growing a little bit annoyed with Jewel at the moment I will admit.
[Dungeon Keeper: And I seem to recall you being in a not too dissimilar position a while ago and I fixed it for you, except that at that time you had a whole bunch of kids you needed me to look after]
If I had fingers I'd be tapping them with impatience at the moment.
[Jewel: Your lord has a brother from my city correct? Give the child to him and she will be taken care of]
[Dungeon Keeper: Taken Care of as in?]
[Jewel: Brought to the city safe and sound where she'll live a fulfilling and happy life]
That's better.
[Dungeon Keeper: Pleasure doing business with you]
[Dungeon Keeper: Now does anyone know what Leviathan is doing?]
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The Priests finished their work on the Dungeon Creature, Levi, the third floor boss. The creature had been rejuvenated body and soul, and right on time too as the fiery avatar of my business partner flew out of the Dungeon and landed directly next to the group of priests who had been hard at work.
"It is done Keeper." I stated bluntly looking at the individual in question suspiciously.
"What are you planning now?" I asked looking down at the rainbow coral.
"Killing Leviathan. Permanently this time around." The Keeper replied as if he was speaking about something obvious.
"I'm in." What else would I be doing but Killing that bastard dungeon?
"I thought you might be like that Charles. And the solution you understand is quite simple. Think of Leviathan as a block of butter-" Levi suddenly leaped into the air in the form of a giant fish, free of the shackles of the dungeon, before crashing back down again. "-and Levi here as a hot knife." Already Levi was dissecting and reassembling Schema's for the perfect form. The Jaw Fish's armoured body, the Kraken's propulsion jet, the bladed nose of a sword fish, the crushing jaws of a crocodile, the strong mana manipulating power of the Maride, the claws of a boxing shrimp, most importantly of all the anti-mana shell of the flail snail blended throughout the bony coral shell.
"Levi! You know the mana of Leviathan better than anyone! Seek and destroy!" Levi responded through the bond with a feeling only describable as blood lust.
"With Pleasure!" And so my entire third floor shot off into the distance like a fire and forget missile.
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I was sitting out in the ocean, far away from the enemy territory as I operated my proxies. The time spent with that blasted dragon sticking his nose into my dungeon was quite... illuminating! A 'Connect two places together' style Bag of Holding expanded and turned into a passage way? Why didn't I think of that? It's not like I haven't eaten anything like that before. So right now my warships were on their way to multiple different dungeons to devour, and while it was true that I could still only 'raid' them one at a time as that Dragon bastard has already pointed out to me, there's more than one way to skin a fish. Right now I was on my way to pick up something that I lost: the three dungeons that bastard Keeper cost me, I owe them a great deal after all. In the Northern sea I saw that the first chunk of my food was coming to me. A massive ice berg that was crawling along the floor of the sea, the entire thing covered in magic formations that converted the heat and light that was supposed to melt the ice into kinetic force to push it forward. I began with the usual opening move, several spears fired at the block of ice in question with the intention to tear it apart.
[Northern Ice Flow: Not this time you ass!]
Suddenly the entire block of ice transformed and stood up, a notification entered my vision as if I was looking at a monster instead of a dungeon.
[D Rank Monster Maride: A magical being made out of pure water, though normally mindless the magical formula that determines the structure of their body can be altered in a variety of ways depending on the summoners knowledge of magic]
Like hell that's a D-Rank! I'm calling haxx!
[Northern Ice Flow: RUN!]
Well that's a wash I guess. A blessing of a fire god to melt him? No he's thought of that already, the heat to kinetics formation that's covering that place is proof of that enough already. Ice shatters enough easily, I guess I'll just have to use brute force.
The waters around my ship and the Maride turned giant of ice rapidly started to churn, rocks picked up from the floor of the ocean by a whirl pool that began rapidly circling around the ship in question.
I rapidly dumped Mythril cannon balls into the water for extra bite, let the items build up force spinning around, even smash and tear away at the ice giant as it got closer.
[Leviathan: Charybdis might be a weak god of water but even the weakest god is still stronger than a third rate genie, and I'm stronger than a half baked dungeon like you!]
[North: Yeah I know, but you still made a mistake]
[North: You let my monster get close!]
The walking ice berg then picked that moment to slam it's fist into my ship, grab hold of it, and then toss it over it's shoulder through the air and skip across the water. This punk was testing the limits of my ship's structural integrity I'll give him that much. However my ship had bigger problems to work on.
[You are Being raided by Marrowind]
Inside of my ship a group of undead monsters made their appearance known. Oh come on!
[B Rank Monster Deathgaze: A creature from the void turned into a undead monster, it's potent psi-manipulating abilities are paired with a variety of eye abilities to petrify, vaporise, charm and the like]
A giant floating skull with numerous misty blood red eyes floating around it, a length of shadow connecting it to another monster.
[B Rank Monster Dullahan/Gogmagog-The Corpse of a person executed by decapitation, a vicious warrior on a path of vengeance to reclaim his lost head, that said he's more than willing and able to 'borrow' a few in the mean time/A especially brutal Fay Giant raised as a weapon of war, when they enter a state of uncontrolled rage in battle one of ten random effects activate including nearby wounds turning necrotic, teleporting in a random direction 30 yards away from their current Location, or vines erupting from the ground to bind individuals in the vicinity]
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
A Undead monster who is only head and eyes meets another undead monster looking for a head, quite a pair these two, and yet they weren't even the only ones that were there either.
[D Rank Monster Adamantine Guard Drake/Grim-An alchemical creation using a scale from a Adamantine Dragon as a key ingredient, holding loyalty to the first person to feed them this meaty flightless drake is built for defence first and foremost/The Spirit of a animal that held great loyalty to their now deceased master in life, rather than move on this ghost chose to keep watch over their master's grave for the rest of eternity, pity the fool who disturbs it]
The Drake might rank lower but rankings don't give a damn about the chariot full of cannons of the spinning scythes attached to the sides of it.
"Let's get this over with it's almost happy hour." The Giant bellowed, and then the floating skull blasted a hole through my ship and I lost my awareness there.
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Well that's a failure. Let's see how we're doing on the other fronts.
The Sea Side Fortress had attached itself to Ring of Fire's puny island turtle. Luckily I've been killing this blasted turtle for years, so I sent the ship blessed by Borealis, the god of the Blowing Northern Winds.
[Fort: HAHAHAHA!]
[Leviathan: Laughing at your demise? You always were the stupid one]
[Fort: I'm laughing at yours, stupid!]
Something flew out of the back of the Turtle where the idiot built his dungeon and I admitted my legitimate surprise.
[C Rank Monster Stymphalian-A massive eagle favoured by the war god Aries and born with metalic bronze feathers, fond of dropping boulder sized chunks of excrement with acid potent enough to melt metalic structures on top of the heads of their enemies]
[Fort: You like them? My sponsor told me where to find them!]
[Leviathan: No]
Rather than face the indignity of losing a ship to a pile of bird dung I intensified the winter storms of my blessing to push the bird dung away from me.
[Fort: Well played Leviathan, but there is something you don't realise! I am on a TURTLE!]
My Gargoyle looked at the idiot confusedly, then I saw the massive tidal wave coming at me, in the direction of the Ring of Fire. Fort and his turtle went under the water. My ship didn't.
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Well that's two fights that are a write off. Let's see if I'm owed for three. Unlike the previous two ships, Dagon was a god of the Deep, thus we worked together to build a ship that can sail under the water. A ship design that would be seeing more use in the future, and revisions.
[C Rank Monster Kelp Arch Spore-A unique monster combining the corpses of various sea life with Dead Man's Rope to create a vicious sea monster]
A monster resembling a Kraken, composed almost entirely out of seaweed that had been blended together over and over again to create strong tentacle like rope with hard coral spikes creating grasping claws that had wrapped around my ship.
[Coral: Feeling troubled you pirate bastard?]
[Leviathan: Not really]
Another thing that Dagon and I have been working to develop, take his pressurisation blessing, load into a metal tube and shoot it into the water at a target. Boom! My missile attack blew off the vine like tentacles, and another one was fired into the creature's mouth by way of follow up.
[Leviathan: Got anything else you'd like to try before I rip you out of there?]
I felt a disturbance in the mana flow, but not from the Great Coral Barrier Reef. Something was coming here at an extreme pace, ripping through what should be miles of stagnant mana like a hot knife through butter. Before I could get my ship turned around to investigate I got a massive blade stabbed through my body.
GRR! Alright who is picking a fight with me right now? Is that coral? Flail Snail? Someone shaped it into a spear and skewered me? How the Hell do you shape something that deflects and neutralises mana!? The spear was hollow, and I felt a familiar presence flow out of the spear and enter into my dungeon. The Form was unfamiliar, a hybrid of different sea kin, but I recognised the soul.
"Hello Leviathan! It's good to see you again!" My gargoyle got a better look at her body now, a mixture of fish and shell fish, probably a compilation of the contracted monsters that Keeper bastard took from me!
"Sadly I'm a B Rank, so there's probably not much I can get out of killing your monsters with Giant Killer in effect. Ah well." The Traitor's body turned into slime and suddenly flowed into every nook and cranny of my floor.
I had to sever my connection to the floor after it was consumed in slime, all of the monsters there in were consumed and eaten by the blob, that was the third ship I lost in these attacks. Which was disappointing, but not nearly as disappointed as I was. I froze a chunk of the ocean and let my floors pop back into existence inside of the ice.
Mizuchi, we need to talk.
My tenth floor was dedicated to the two headed snake, the golem willed with his essence was wrapped around the head perimeter of the ship, said god opened the eyes on one of his heads and turned to speak to me.
"Problem?"
You sold off my monster to the Keeper.
"You never were good at keeping your pets under control." The two faced god stated amused.
I'm beginning to understand why you and Lucifer are such good friends.
"Leviathan you wound me!" The double ended dragon pulled back in mock shock and appal. "It is not my fault that I have more vision than you do!"
Your vision cost me a floor.
"And already you're working on correcting it's flaws and the flaws present in your other floors that were exposed by your failed siege attempt." Mizuchi's snake oil act was only exacerbated by his snake like body. "You're not getting your old sea monsters back, and even if you could they are already redundant. You are no longer reliant on their pitiful power to drag your ships along. Think bigger!" I didn't need to be able to see the dragon bastard to know which way he was looking. Huh. That'll work.
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Make no mistake, while I was happy about Levi carving off a piece of that ship bastard's hide I was also a little concerned.
[Absorbing Blessing: God of the Deep Dagon]
Is this a good thing?
[God of Water Oceanus sends his approval]
Do I get a prize...? Nothing? Alright lets go back to conquering dungeons then.
"Fellow dungeons!" I shouted out to the assembled crowd, a hodge podge of different monsters from the dungeons that I have allied myself with in Helheim. "Through our noble Allies sacrifice, the mighty leviathan has been fended off another day thanks to the noble sacrifice of the Wendigo troll." A monster whose name I honestly couldn't even be bothered to remember beyond the technical specifications of what he was. "For now our current success means that we need to focus on another of Lucifer's dungeons. Graves is on his way over right now, and we need to decide on the monsters for the raid. I humbly propose two of our most infamous B-Ranks, Solarius the Quetzal and our Genmu!"
"He is Snow Fang!" The resident turtle snake shouted in response, doubtlessly possessed by his dungeon!
"And the dungeon that I propose we raid is the one being run by The number one hothead of Cocytus!" Graves report mentioned a massive storm around the area of the second dungeon, and hot winds blowing therein, a massive warm front opened up in the middle of Cocytus, it's safe to say who this dungeon belongs to.
"Satan is Lucifer's brother." Hel stated leaning her bony cheek against her skeletal hand. "And the demon lord of Wrath and Retribution."
"Does that mean that he and Lucifer get along?"
"No. Not even close." Hel stated quite bluntly. Wrath and Retribution, in other words the god that you go to when someone has done you dirty and you want payback. "It's not in Satan's nature to 'get along' with people."
"So the God of Revenge is the brother to the God of Traitors, and the Goddess of the Betrayed is his wife." There was a pattern forming there, these gods and goddesses forming relationships with one another based on how the things they are the gods of relate to one another. "Ex Wife, not that I had any say in the matter to begin with. I always got along with Satan better than Lucifer. Mind you he did try to kill me once or twice."
My face got more confused by the second.
"Why did he try to kill you twice?"
"I've yet to give him a chance for a third." Hel replied as if it was obvious. "What you seem to fail to realise is that Satan is wrath incarnate, he's not capable of calming down, trapped in a perpetual cycle of hatred like he is."
So in layman's terms, his default mode is too angry to die? Lovely.
"So what kind of monsters can we expect from this lovely and reasonable gentleman?" I asked looking at Hel suspiciously.
"The Noon-Wraith is one of his favourites. A B-Rank ghost type monster classified as a Legion." Hel summed up in simple terms.
"I have a Legion of my own, and I know what Ghosts are, but the heck's a Noon-Wraith?"
"Well it's debatable whether your Legion qualifies as one." There's no need to insult my monster lady! "A few have popped up into my realm from time to time. I could just give you the schema for an explanation but I get the feeling you wouldn't like me extracting a toll from you." Hel looked like the type that was bad at explaining things.
"'B Rank Monster Noon Wraith-When young women die with especially strong feelings in their hearts during the blistering hot days of summer they might return to the land of the living as a Fire Breathing spectre.'" Merlin raised his hand to speak, no doubt another gift from patron 'Lost and Forbidden.'
"This might make me sound like a hypocrite but how does that make them a B-Rank?" I soon voiced my confusion. "Can she change the temperature of an entire field like I can? And where's the talk of the Legion?"
"The Noon Wraith does have some peculiar traits about them I will admit. There are more exotic traits like that they can only communicate via poetry, however their most dangerous trait is that anyone that they torch with their flames gets converted into one of their minions bound by flame, and anyone that they torch will be similarly bound." This isn't a monster! It's a plague!
"Are we going to have to deal with our monsters getting snatched up by this other dungeon?" I did not want to have to deal with feeding an enemy dungeon more minions for it to be able to use.
"Thanks to you we name all of our monsters. When they die they get pulled back into our dungeons and are reconstituted a short period of time later, depending on how high ranking they are." Well that's one thing I don't have to worry about.
"You're officially part of the scouting team Merlin. I leave the task of figuring out the other dungeon to you." When one needs knowledge, ask the knowledgeable.
"In the mean time, I have to entertain the bounty hunters that have come looking to collect." Thus I entered my core room, a collection of slides neatly arranged to cover a wall, organised by rank, type and alphabet so that the skeleton that I had assigned the task of managing all of them could work. Were there always so many of them? Whatever I have to talk with these two.
[Dungeon Keeper: Greetings fellow dungeons]
[Marrowind: That's a high ranking administrator for you, you don't even show up in the list of dungeons I can talk to]
[Dungeon Keeper: I'm between worlds at the moment, so forgive me for not being able to get into contact with people for a while]
[Ring of Fire: Save your sales pitch I already know what monster I want, give me the schema for your Chimera Slime]
['Dungeon Keeper' has given 'Ring of Fire' the 'Chimera Slime Schema']
[Dungeon Keeper: Pleasure doing business with you]
[Ring of Fire has left the Chat]
Well that's one person I don't have to entertain anymore today.
[Marrowind: Show me your list of monsters]
[Dungeon Keeper has opened his list of Schema's: 3458]
Where did this come from!? I looked over at the wall, and at the skeleton that was putting in schema slots one after another.
[Marrowind: A vampiric Mer-shark? I haven't seen this one before]
Wait a second? Isn't that Two's monster? Am I getting the other's monsters too?
[Marrowind: Genmu?]
A pause as if Marrowind was reading the description for the creature in question.
[Marrowind: Oh it's kin to him, that would explain it, he'll love it if I populate his floor with these]
[Marrowind: I'll take the Genmu Schema]
['Dungeon Keeper' has given 'Marrowind' the 'Genmu Schema']
[Dungeon Keeper: Pleasure doing business with you...]
[Marrowind has left the Chat]
I crossed my legs as I sat in thought. Well I wasn't technically sitting but the pose remained the same. First Archie and now this guy. My skeleton warlocks seem to be pretty productive when I leave them to their own devices.
"Just to recap. I left you there, mindlessly stuffing Schema's into that thing for weeks-"
"Month's." The skeleton felt the need to correct me apparently.
"Sorry Months. And you've accumulated literal thousands of schema's?"
"Vassalising the cracked cores helped a lot master. I've had no shortage of Schema's to separate and recombine. You shall have the most powerful monsters in the world under your command one day!" I thought about it for a few moments. This is fine right? It just means I have more currency when dealing with other dungeons now. I mean I don't have to find a use for all these creatures right? And it's not like there's something weird that's gonna happen again... right?