[Dungeon Keeper: Do we have any idea what I should look out for on the other-side of the breach?]
[Lithilas: Leviathan]
[Dungeon Keeper: !?]
[Lithilas: Cores can get souls too, and when someone dies their soul gets sent over to the afterlife]
[Lithilas: Theoretically that applies to cores too, unlike Graves though I didn't open that can of worms so I don't know for sure, I've been trying to get into contact with him before I panicked you but...]
[Dungeon Keeper: But that ship has sailed already]
The damned breach was days away after all.
[Dungeon Keeper: I know that Leviathan probably wants to kill and eat me but is that the worst of it?]
[Lithilas: As long as he hasn't regained his mobility or was plopped down somewhere he can't get to you? Yes, there's a huge difference between wanting to do something and being able to do it]
I sensed a but.
[Lithilas: He's already breached into Cocytus, he's been there longer than you've been alive, we can assume that he's already got the infrastructure to match]
Oh that's just...! Huu...
[Dungeon Keeper: What do I do if I wind up in Cocytus?]
[Lithilas: Rock Paper Scissors isn't going to do you any good here. Fallen Angels have both holy and demonic power going for them, it shouldn't work and yet here we are]
[Lithilas: Play to your strength's and the environment, you said before you got the chance to get a giant type Schema for maxing out Giant Killer? Use it!]
If strategy won't work then use brute force instead? Works for me. I went down to the fourth floor again, rather since my core room with the chat function was here I was already here. I turned to my core, a final crack left in it that was presumably supposed to represent my fourth floor, I had no time to be picky about how I do things. I will the mana that I've been working to generate all this time and focused it on my core, I watched as the crack filled in and suddenly I felt myself become bigger.
[Congratulations on reaching the fourth floor overachiever!]
Why does it feel like the system is talking to me right now?
[Core restored, functionality on the Fourth Floor Granted]
I released my mana and let it claim the underground area that Charles and his men have dug out for me because man it feels like it's been a while since we did this.
[Please select a new theme for your floor]
[Catacomb-Your seeming obsession with the Undead has been taken noticed by the system, strong chance to attract a god of death to your call]
Hasn't this option been upgraded?
[Sewer-For those distinguished dungeons with very specific tastes Warning: The sheer repugnance of the floor will repel almost every god in existence]
I'm more concerned about the ones that wouldn't be repulsed.
[Clockworks-An area full of mechanical parts and gears filled with mechanical hazards]
And we have a winner!
[Clockworks Selected!]
This floor was already full of mechanical things, various turrets and loading mechanisms that allow me to arm my people for battle on the surface. A battle ground that had since become out dated but still, but as if sensing my concerns mechanical devices started to appear all over the dungeon, configured into the same turrets that I had already set up and trap doors to send them to the surface. For now.
[Please choose one of three new Schema's for your floor]
[E Rank Schema Gremlin-Though individually weak and unimposing Gremlins are vicious monsters that will continuously grow other gremlins out of their body for as long as they are exposed to water, they love to cause havoc and are easily fascinated by shiny moving objects]
E Rank? I need brawn! BRAAAWWWNNN!
[D Rank Schema Automaton-A Mechanical being similar to a Golem capable of deadly assassination with machine like precision]
D Rank is better but where is my Giant Schema?
[C Rank Schema Cyclops-A powerful Giant Kin, distant descendant of the weapon smith's to the gods they are capable of making a variety of powerful deadly implements and complex machinery]
Now that's more like it.
[Cyclops Selected]
My mana whirled and formed a shape in front of me as I put the schema to use in the Fourth floor, curiously one that only came up to my chest as a short petite figure appeared before me with one large eye occupying most of her face and wearing heavy leather gloves and a apron. I blinked stupidly.
"Greetings master." The Short figure let out a girlish voice as she bowed to me.
"Aren't you supposed to be a giant?" I asked looking down at my new monster.
"I am a giant though." The little girl tilted her head at me in confusion.
"Why aren't you giant sized?" I asked as I slowly became horrified with the answer.
"Because I'm a child." The Little girl replied. Quickly I used the schema again and another little girl appeared, and then a third.
""Greetings master!"" Both of the little girls gave perfect bows to me as if they had honed their manners for a lifetime. I fell to my knees and pounded my fists.
"DDDAAAMMMNNN YYYOOOUUU SSSYYYSSSTTTEEEMMM!" Where was my giant bruiser ready to charge through the enemy lines like a fully armoured roid raging quarterback! This? This was the freaking water boy! No I didn't even get a boy did I? These are girls! Not only that, but polite proper cute little Girls! If I brought any of them with me on a raid I would be laughed out of my own Dungeon! I'm on the cusp of getting ram rodded by the god of treachery and my heavy hitters are three little girls!
"Master is there something wrong?" I looked up from my over the top despair at the three children, one with red hair, one with black, and a blonde.
"You're Blossom. You're Buttercup. You're Bubbles." Light swirled around the trio as robes of spider-silk appeared draped on their shoulders, one had a pink cherry blossom pattern on her robe, a second black and green buttercups while the third was teal blue with white polkadots. "Now go pick out your room, I need a moment alone." The three gave another well mannered bow before leaving my core room. In the meantime I rolled over onto my back and looked up at the ceiling as I mused how much trouble I was in.
[Achievement Unlocked: Breached!]
"System, I swear if I never see you again-!" Suddenly I felt my entire core room being rocked and shifted. "What is it now!?" I have no idea what just happened, but things just got colder, and more important than that, I was swaying as if the entire room was moving. "Oh you are F-" I looked through my list of achievements.
[Breached: Broke through into the domain of a god Reward: One Free Floor!]
I got a sinking suspicion I knew exactly where that floor was. I looked over at the iron door I set up in order to cut off access to my dungeon through the breach. I raised one of my fingers to express my opinion on my 'reward' but it wasn't my thumb.
[Dungeon Breach Tutorial Yes/No?]
I angrily jabbed said finger into the yes button repeatedly.
[Congratulations! After many hundreds of years of fighting with other dungeons you have accumulated enough blessings and prayer to breach into the realm of a god that has blessed you]
Skip to the important part you troll!
[As such you have been tasked with building a formidable dungeon for your chosen deity and once you've completed their task you can return to your dungeon on the Mortal plain]
"You mean complete a task for a god that I haven't received the blessing of who has every reason to hate me!?" I grabbed the sides of the message box with both of my hands. "Answer me you damned system!?"
[As this is the realm of a god, you cannot chose the theme for your floor, also please consult with your deity before you make any monsters here]
"I can't even make a monster here without a god's permission!?"
[Please enjoy your fun journey in another world]
With that last line that felt like I was being mocked the window vanished.
[You have entered the Divine Realm: Cocytus]
"Damnit! Thing we need to lay low!" The room went side ways as the arm I was in slammed down flat. If I can rally support from the-
[You have entered the Divine Realm: Helheim]
I blinked stupidly.
"Thing. Feel around a bit, see if you can find what direction we were pointed in before." It took a few moments of Thing blindly feeling around before we got the notification again.
[You have entered the Divine Realm: Cocytus]
I was wondering why a realm for traitors and one for people who were betrayed effectively had the same description in terms of environment. First order of business: Door.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
[You cannot modify a floor that is being occupied by Delvers]
As I was saying my first order of business is to consult with the adventurers guild and Mages association so that we can figure out what our next move is.
----------------------------------------
"Helheim and Cocytus share a border with each other?" Grimoire actually had to sit down for this one, completely stunned by the contents of the conversation.
"I take it you weren't aware of this?" I asked looking down as Grimoire looked like he needed a moment.
"This should be impossible. Gods realms are supposed to be wholly separated from one another. Lucifer is supposed to be the ruler of several realms and they aren't even connected to each other!"
"He has several realms under his control!?" This was getting worse and worse by the second.
"That is what we thought, but this is making me question his success as a conqueror." Grimoire stated as he immediately pulled out a note book.
"That's swell and all but I need you lot to get off my floor so that I can make another plug to keep the whack jobs out of my dungeon." I stated and immediately I saw both Julia and Grimoire spring into action.
"I need to go report this situation to my superiors in the Adventurers guild." Julia stated as she hurried barked to her men and led them up the stairs of the dungeon.
"Right! I need to talk to professor Phalanges!" And Grimoire ran right up the stairs too.
Yah know what that's fine, save me the trouble of rallying the back up. As soon as the two of them leave I set up another door, and this time I make it so that the solution to the puzzle is light up all five torches mounted on the ends of Thing's finger tips at the same time, in the middle of howling winds. It'll be easy if you use Charles Kinetic to fire magic spell though. I now had the chance to survey my surroundings, there wasn't a huge difference between Helheim and Cocytus near as I can tell. Both sides had howling winds and broken buildings as far as the eye could see, did this place used to be a city of some kind? Well I have the power of flight, I'd like to do some scout work but there's too much snow in the way. What I need is some extra power. I flew back into the dungeon and created another Thing Sized ring, this one fitted out with another skull shaped jewel, a Ruby. I don't remember where exactly I learned how to make rubies but I'll worry about it later. For now I fitted the ring around Thing's middle finger.
"Alright Thing! Look at me and do what I do!"
I gathered the kinetic energy whirling around in the air and made a fire ball out of it, it wasn't long until Thing was doing the same thing too. And then the situation rapidly, spectacularly, spiralled out of control. When you take a raging blizzard and you make a giant ball of fire in the middle of it you create a hurricane, a giant mass of kinetic energy that soon began whirling around us despite the kinetic to heat magic that we had already laid down. The numerous surrounding buildings that were already deteriorating rapidly began breaking down as they were scooped up by the winds and carried into the sky. I didn't know if fire and ice elementals can go pale but I suspect I was white as a sheet. I don't know whose buildings these belong to but I might've messed up a little bit, for now let's try and put them into a pile Thing. Thing cancelled the hurricane and all the rubble was piled on top of us.
"Well, this is a mess isn't it?" I let out a sigh while looking down at the mess we caused. "What do we even do with all this stuff? It would be one thing if we still had buildings but-" Suddenly all the rubble started to assemble itself into a neatly organised mass around Thing's arm. "Huh. I didn't know that you can do architecture Thing. I guess all that time you spent building the city is paying off." Thing formed a fist and immediately swung it back and forth like he was shaking his head. "What do you mean it's not you who's doing it?"
[You've connected to the dungeon of ihouo8y8]
[You've connected to the dungeon of khvcvjgtc]
[You've connected to the dungeon of ujboiuyg65e5]
[You've connected to the dungeon of awsrtwryah]
"Oh this isn't good."
----------------------------------------
Out of the dungeon, outside of the guild building that was made attached to the dungeon itself, Julia Arclight had desperately connected to the upper echelons of the adventurers guild.
"Sir guild leaders, the situation has gotten out of control. The Realm in which the breach connects to is Cocytus." The Guild leaders response was grim, even if the low quality magical transmission equipment meant that their figures couldn't be made out clearly.
"Guild policy is clear. Any dungeon that connects to the demonic realms must be eliminated at once." Realms that are ruled by, even if only indirectly, the king of Traitors cannot be trusted under any circumstances. The enemy within cannot be truly defeated, for it has an inexhaustible legion of constantly reviving undead. The Nine Hell Rulers ambitions are known far and wide, any dungeon that connects to theirs becomes a stepping stone for their invasions of the mortal realms, and the existence of such a dungeon cannot be tolerated. But the hits kept coming.
"There's more."
----------------------------------------
Grimoire was relaying similar new to Professor Phalanges, Who was rapidly pacing about the room as he swallowed the implications.
"The realms of Treachery and Realms of the Dishonoured are linked together?" One thought went through Barnabus Phalanges's head. "What an unprecedented opportunity for research!" Not only was the two realms connected together, but the Dungeon Keeper was sitting directly on the boarder between the two realms. The Demonic realms are so hard to enter but Helheim? Significantly easier, and if they held any hope of neutralising the ever looming threat that they near constantly pose then they needed to properly understand and study those realms! "We'll need to prepare our fire mages to enter the dungeon." Grimoire started to make a list. "We'll need labourers, engravers, fire mages-" Suddenly the entire tower shifted, down below a rumbling could be felt as the tide appeared to be sucked away to parts unknown. "And someone to tell us what the Dungeon is doing with the tide."
----------------------------------------
As the tower was built various shackles of ice appeared and clamped themselves onto thing's body. Surprisingly durable shackles as it turns out. Below various schema's were forming different kinds of creatures.
[D Rank Monster Hel-Harpy: A deceased harpy's soul given new form by the power of Helheim, wields ice magic with great proficiency]
[D Rank Monster Hel-Arachne: A deceased Arachne's soul given new form by the power of Helheim, spins webs of ice in order to attack]
The ice spewing chickens and oversized spider monsters looked cute next to the one that really caught my attention.
[B Rank Monster Wendigo Dire Troll-Cannibalism is one of the ultimate forms of betrayal, for this the punishment is endless torment as a broken creature, a wendigo/A Dire Troll is the end result of one troll consuming another, the second troll's body starts regenerating inside of the other, growing their limbs, organs and other body parts like cancerous tumours]
I've never gotten two descriptions for a creature before, I think that means the ram rodding is about to begin. The brute was easily double the size of my Fiend body, and that's when you discount the seven or so extra arms that were going out of their way to find places to poke out of the body, or the three or four heads that were poking out places, and each of those arms had weapons, spear, kanabo, sword, axe, staff. Oh boy this was gonna be a dosy wasn't it.
"Normally I'd say YOLO but I think I've been reincarnated so... COWABUNGA!"
Without Thing or me to suck all the kinetic energy out of the blizzard anymore and turn it into heat the storm resumed raging without interruption. Which was good because I needed a lot of kinetic force right now, not for fire though, instead I gathered together as much energy from the storm into a tight knit ball and fired it directly into the rapidly forming tower that meant to entomb Thing. And Failed to move it one inch, though I did end up crushing all the monsters that were inside. No experience notice appeared, of course I was considered a B-Rank, and thus anything weaker than a B-Rank wouldn't give me any power. For now this was a good thing, I have no idea what'll happen if I start Levelling in this damned place and I'd rather not find out, with that said...
"Come at me you weaklings!"
I gathered another mass of kinetic energy into my fist and fired it down into the tower again. And Again. And Again. Aside from killing a bunch of monsters I wasn't doing much to slow down the progress of the dungeons to try and take over my floor, honestly I kinda feel inclined to let them have it, I can't do much with it and I kind of had it forced on me. But I'm using it right now, my core is here after all. This dungeon is gonna be built, I suspect that I cannot stop this from happening but I do believe that I can have a say in it if I hit it hard enough. Now how do I-GAH!? I looked down at the spear the troll bastard was carrying around with him that was now lodged directly in my chest. And then I exploded.
----------------------------------------
Huguguu! Well I'm a Dungeon again, I think.
[Fire Frost Fiend Dungeon Keeper Will be revived in 7 Days]
So I'm gonna be sick in bed in recovery for a week? Thing's arm shook again as another shackle clamped down on him anchoring the tower to him. Right! Priorities! LEVI! Levi looked like she was in the middle of some paper-er stone work I guess when my howling nearly gave her a heart attack.
"Master! I hear your voice again it's been so long-"
No time to explain, I need you to climb up the dungeon and pump as much of yourself into Thing's right arm as possible. Like right now!
"At your pleasure master!"
The floor shifted and moved, Levi turned herself inside out as she ripped into the dungeon proper, sea water rushing in to fill the negative space she was leaving behind. Levi's avatar climbed up the shaft into the space of the first floor and immediately entered the path that led to Helheim. The collaboration of fifty dungeon cores working together to build a dungeon was showing it's results, even despite Thing continuously bombarding them with kinetic energy, it was obvious that this time around they were building to last against me. Even with Thing blasting the poor bastards with kinetic force the tower was still building and eventually succeeded in entombing Thing completely, and then Levi erupted from the entrance located in the palm of Thing's hand like a volcano and flowed down into the enemy forces. The air was so damned cold that most liquids would freeze on sight, but Levi wasn't most liquids, she was a slime reinforced with genetic material from creatures that make their home in the coldest, darkest depths of the ocean with no light and no warmth. She was backed up by a creature that can take the raging storm outside this tower and turn it into heat. You guys on the other hand? Your only back up is a bunch of dead cores. Go take over someone else's dungeon!
[Hel is looking at the Dungeon with Confusion]
[Lucifer is looking at the Dungeon with Intrigued]
Why are all these dead cores suddenly acting up? Both of you properly look after your dungeons so that they don't become like this!
[Lucifer is Laughing at the Audacity of the Dungeon Keeper]
[Hel is wondering where the Dungeon Keeper Came from]
I think I'm beginning to understand what's happening here, all these cores were too close to the border with each other, neither of you wanted mana feeding into the enemy side, so you hoarded all the mana away from here hoping to starve out the enemy dungeons. No wonder these things are all latching onto me.
[Hel and Lucifer are attempting to assert control over the 'Floor Unnamed']
Well isn't this a laugh, I haven't even done any work yet and you guys are already trying to claim it for yourselves? I felt mana surging and the winds intensifying as two forces attempted to shove themselves into the tower of dungeons. You guys couldn't care less about this place before but now that a third party is here all of a sudden you want it for yourselves?
[Various Gods of War are being drawn towards the clashing mana of fighting gods]
I felt more presences entering the tower.
[Manea, the Mad God, looks upon the broken minds of the other Dungeon Cores with Glee]
[Oceanus is getting uncomfortable with the presence of one of his blessed inside of the other realm]
Huu. My apologies. Levi return to the Third floor and wait for my orders. "Understood Milord." Levi bowed to me and retracted her slime back to where it had come from. As for you lot, who do I have to talk to to get my arse out of here?
[Lucifer is laughing at The Dungeon Keeper's foolishness]
Next!
[Hel is quite curious with the Dungeon Keeper's tone considering whose realm this is]
Oh you're curious eh? Lemme tell yah something about the gods that I've met. Echidna? She got me to rescue a bunch of kids that were going to be eaten by a monster, though I'm starting to think that she tricked me into a relationship with her worshipper.
[Various Gods being drawn by the commotion are beginning to gossip]
Castor and Pollux? They gave me the blessing that let me kill Leviathan.
[Ares lets out an impressed whistle at Castor/Pollux's cunning]
Oceanus? He saved my monsters from getting eaten by Leviathan's Gargoyles, and helped save my third floor boss with his blessing.
[Various Sea gods reluctantly confirm Dungeon Keeper's words]
But you? You took the cores that were relying on you and you abandoned them. You Betrayed them!
Suddenly I could feel a pressure on me as if the entire realm was exerting all of its pressure on this exact point.
[Do you want to die!?]
[Various gossiping gods are oohing and awing at the shots fired!]
Oi you Peanut Gallery! While you're here what's the story between these two knuckleheads tearing the realm apart?
[A Certain Goddess of Gossip whispers that the Gods of Betrayal and Betrayed used to be husband and wife, but Lucifer Cheated on Hel and-]
Are you serious!? An entire realm has been divided in half because of your Marital Spat!?
[You're a mouthy one aren't you?]
I felt the soft swaying of the dungeon tower, various conflicting powers were boiling inside.
Hel's Anger, Lucifer's Laughter, the Peanut Gallery Gods excitement, the other cores fear and madness. All irrelevant. You can come and find me when you're willing to discuss returning my core home, until then both of you bugger off! As for the rest of you, what do we need to do to get some blessings worked out in this tower?
[Battle!]
I can arrange that.
----------------------------------------
Tensions in the city were starting to run high, it would be weeks until reinforcements from the Adventurers guild and the mages association would arrive. But in the mean time a cold war was beginning to brew between the two factions, and a argument, the two leaders had made the mistake of informing each other of their respective intentions concerning the newly formed breach and now their hostility was being made known to each other. At least one enemy at the gate, and another in the rear, it would seem that the Keeper's troubles were only just beginning.