This was infuriating. I was in the middle of fending off whatever pathetic excuse for a dungeon that was trying to preempt his arrival to their territory, torching one of my ships in the process and immobilising me on top of that, and I still weren't sure about how they did it. I had other things to be worried about besides the point. The Few dungeons that I had Keel Hauled half dead and dragging behind me were now in the process of re-establishing themselves, dozens of floors had been grown back like star fish in the half an hour since the ice formed. This would result in him just eating the bastards again of course but the halls of the enemy was being filled with undead from one of the dungeons that had joined the raid before. The Three dungeons had joined themselves together into a trinity as a united front, trying to over power me. Fine then, it just means that I'll have a light snack before I continue on my course to pillage the coastline. After all I didn't get blessings from fifty different gods of the sea just to let a little bit of ice slow me down. I send the command into my Wooden Gargoyles and they call upon their power over water, and the ice below shatters, torn apart in fifty different directions via fifty different methods. The thinly built dungeons that were trying to establish themselves shatter and I devoured the pieces.
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Well that should buy me a little bit of time, well it's nice to see that killing Leviathan is still on the agenda, but first things first, I have a new floor to establish. As soon as I return the menu was showing me a highlight single highlighted location for the new floor, before that though, me and Ifrit have some creative architecture to work on. My time inside of Leviathan's dungeon was a educational matter, and so using Ifrit I employed the same tactics as before freezing all of water in front of my dungeon solid and connecting it to the stair case Charles had prepared for me. Returning to 'Dungeon Mode' I selected the newly available space, the ice field for my new floor.
[Please Select a Theme for your new floor]
[Ice-Due to the high presence of ice and snow in the location you have selected a Ice Theme location has been made available to you, high probability of connecting to a god of winter]
Tempting, but I already know what kind of floor I want.
[Death/Life-Due to your actions of infusing a large amount of necrotic energies into your dungeon and a large amount of nature type monsters you have unlocked a option for a highly unique floor with a unique dual theme]
Oh so tempting, but I already got a nature floor, and I've got plans for the undead. I know you're in there, give it to me!
[Ocean-Due to your dedication to creating water type creatures coupled with the location of your dungeon you have unlocked a ocean theme dungeon, high probability of attracting a water sponsor for your floor]
Yes please.
[Ocean Theme Selected!]
Immediately my core room was filled with sea water. I haven't actually been back here in a while but it's the little things you learn to appreciate while waiting around for trouble. One, my core had gotten bigger, not my much though, it was still a size that made you think 'Golf Ball' with layers of colour added to it. Statues of my Bosses in the form of Apas and Treyni in both of her forms standing back to back had appeared to either side of my core.
[Please Select a new Schema to go with your new floor]
[E Rank Monster Sea Hags-]
Nope.
[E Rank Monster Schema Deepkin-Oceanic Bottom dwellers who feed off of the waste and refuge that other creatures leave behind in their wake]
Not appealing to me.
[E Rank Monster Schema Seawolf-A violent species of Lycanthrope whose monster form has a wolf's head mounted on the body of a seal]
Well, in the worst case scenario that will work for the best. I immediately select the sea wolf option as I use the dungeon chat room to contact my allies.
[Dungeon Keeper: Greetings!]
[Graves: That was a pretty good trick you pulled on Leviathan]
[Dungeon Keeper: It'll pale in comparison to my next trick. Jewel, still owe me a favour?]
[Jewel: Considering you already mauled my Mirror? I consider us even]
Still upset about her mirror I see. She called herself Bejewelled Concubine's mirror after all, that might've even been the mirror her personality is based on.
[Jewel: Graves told me about Leviathan, I'll light a stick of incense in your honour after Leviathan is through with you]
[Dungeon Keeper: Yeah yeah, How about some coral? I bet you have some around your dungeon some where?]
[Bejeweled Concubine's Mirror has offered you the Schema Fire Coral, Price: Amulet Spider Schema]
Ooh fire I like!
[Trade Accepted: You receive Schema Fire Coral]
[Jewel: Your scorpion isn't dead yet by the way]
Say what?
[Jewel: He's a dungeon contract, like your Griffin, he re-spawned already]
[Jewel: Is your Griffin available to deal with him again?]
I turned to the side, to the cocoon that Apas had been inside of since before I went on the raid against Leviathan.
[Dungeon Keeper: She's in the middle of something right now]
[Jewel: Evolving then? It might be something I can handle but Echidna told you to get rid of it. It might be bad for you if she figures that you're not holding up your end of the bargain]
Crap.
[Dungeon Keeper: Let me make a few arrangements first]
It'll be pretty bad for me If I can't even get things finished with my third floor before Leviathan get's here, my stunt with the ice should mean that he'll be busy for a while at least but fortune favours the cautious. As a start I begin by having the majority of the ice melted and vacuumed away by the River slime, followed up by lining the ensuing gap I created with the Coral courtesy of Jewel, I also took the liberty of lodging Saphee's skull into the coral at the same time. I could no longer create rooms in this space, but the flip side was that I now had a much larger space, space that I began filling with my river slimes. Slimes you have a very important mission. In a few moments you will be filled up with all kinds of water type monsters. Your mission will be to strip these creatures of their flesh but spare the bones and shells! The slimes saluted in acknowledgement, which gave me the chance to talk with Saphee. Saphee, your job will be to reanimate the shells and bones back into monsters. With that I released the monsters, the croc, the various fish, etc into the slimes and they quickly went to work feasting on them, I almost left but was then greeted by the sight of a notification for evolution. Even without looking I selected the new option for them.
[D Rank Lake Slime selected]
I held down the button for the D Rank Evolution, watching as the effects of giant killer meant that they instantly got enough to evolve, and then they were wrapped in the light of evolution again.
[C Rank Ocean Slime Selected!]
I again held down the button for ocean slimes until the entire space that I had created was covered in the light of evolution. There, that should keep them busy for a while. Course there was all the monsters inside of their bodies too that were caught up in the field of evolution. But I'm sure that they'll be fine. Onto the raid!
[Would you like-]
I impatiently held down the button to join the raid in progress against the sand dune dungeon leaving the chaos of my third floor behind. I appeared alongside my greater Alcohol Slime and Archie, I as usual was in the body of Ifrit. One of Jewel's monsters was waiting for me, a Lamia I presumed.
"A convoy is on its way south with the people they took hostage. You better hurry." Opposite of the Snake woman's request I instead went deeper into the dungeon.
"I am bringing the scorpion here. Archie this place appears to be made out of stone. Get rid of it." I snapped my fingers confidently, already having my plan set in motion.
"At once master!" Archie brought his staff down, his mana tearing the stone apart.
Sand stone is brittle, easy to smash unlike my lime stone, if this was another dungeon Archie couldn't do it. I don't need to get all the way to the core, I just need the core to know that I'm here. I could hear a deep and profound feeling of wrongness as the dungeon was torn open by Archie, I could hear it wailing in pain under the influence of the blatant torture I was putting it through but frankly speaking, I don't really care. If you don't want people to get mad at you then you should keep a better eye on what your monsters are doing!
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
"If you want the pain to stop bring your contracted monster here to me!" I turned to the entrance, to the monster that was running after the caravan, and was now running to me instead. The Manticore was quite pissed when he re-entered the dungeon.
"Unfortunately for you I don't have the time to deal with you properly." I don't have the time to waste on killing this bastard over and over again, not with a raid on my doorstep.
"You think you can 'deal' with me do you little genie?" The Manticore was in a foul mood, it must have still been sore about the beating from last time.
"Of course, after all I am the master of the one who has defeated you before." The Manticore snarled, looking like he wanted to tear me apart right now, but I was made out of fire so that was a bad idea. "And if I cannot kill you, I must instead break you!" With a pillar of stone the Manticore was shot into the air, before he could react I produced a blade of flames and accurately slashed off each of his limbs and tail.
"You believe that this humiliation is enough to stop me!? I shall hunt you down! I will eat you and take your monster as my play thing! I will break her right in front of your eyes You Bastard!"
"I don't have the time to get rid of you right now." I said indicating the Dungeon. "So I'll spare you. But if I ever have to deal with this bastard again." The Slime shot a stream of alcohol through my Ifrit's body turning the sand that it hit into molten glass. "I shall return, in greater numbers and utterly destroy this place."
A spike of sand skewered the manticore and he soon started to disappear into the light, and then stopped.
"What are you doing!" And then the Manticore died, and stayed dead without re-spawning. We can sever Contracts? Good to know.
With that I ended the raid.
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I returned to my dungeon, my third floor was still going through its evolution so I just left it be. It would be good if my third floor was finished in time for Leviathan to get here, but it's not a absolute necessity, I could just as easily wreck the bastard with what I got now, presuming that my idea actually works. I haven't actually talked about it with anyone, I'm that afraid of what'll happen. What Do I mean? The system that the dungeon seems to operate on is far too... unnatural, programmed, with its ranks and points and all the rest of the stuff about it. My plan is so brilliant that I'm afraid that if I actually implement it then it'll be patched as soon as possible which means that I'll only have one chance to go against Leviathan, even if it's declared that I must be destroyed I can at least take Leviathan down with me.
In the mean time I looked at my Mana.
[Mana 160/900]
[Mana 150/900]
My mana is dropping? I looked through my various floors. My third floor was coming apart at the seams! Various cracks had formed as the coral was cracking up. I immediately began filling in the cracks with more coral but what was happening here? Every time my slimes had ranked up they grew in size, but I already filled up the third floor to the brim with them, so after expanding two times the floor is reaching it's limit! It might've been different with the ice to block it off but now all that I had between me and the outside world was thin coral! Serious damage control time! Saphee I need you to compress down the fluids in the slimes as much and as hard as you can! In the mean time I pumped more coral into the walls trying to make them thicker while filling in the cracks in the coral.
[Warning your Final floor is suffering from dangerous structural damage! You must recall your core immediately!]
No shit Sherlock!
[Move Core? Yes/No]
[Yes!]
I even held down the yes button until my core was safely back on my second floor. Then after I recalled the third floor-YYYEEEAAAGGGG!
***The goblins were coming down from the mountain. With a quick cross of my arms I summoned the ice bow and fired into the goblins with a quick flurry of hands. Then a ogre crashed down in front of me. This called for heavy artillery! I produced a ball of fire in my hands, grabbed it from both ends and pulled, the fire pored into the ground and split the ground open with a line of fire. That was this level cleared. Now for the ne***
ohhggg... I don't feel good.
"Keeper!" I saw an unfamiliar woman wrapped around my core, no wait... this is the lamia I saw when I went to help Jewel before but what is she doing here? "...You're only two floors deep?" The snake woman made a horrified realisation. "You're only two floors deep and you're picking fights with Leviathan?"
You can make fun of me if you want. You have my literal heart in your hands after all.
"How are you picking a fight with Leviathan?" The Lamia who I suspected was being possessed by Jewel looked at me with a horrified realisation.
If you're not here to kill me or do something unpleasant with my core then would you mind telling me what you came here for?
"A warning was sent out to me, Lithilas and Graves that you suffered severe structural damage. We thought Leviathan was attacking you." The Lamia looked back to my core again, muttering under her breath. "How are you only two floors deep?"
If I had named myself according to normal conventions my name would be 'the Miserable sap who got eaten by a Dungeon Core.'
"You-you were born with a completed soul already?"
You're not catching flies close your mouth.
"Who else knows about this?"
Lithilas, I didn't tell him he figured it out on his own.
"Not Graves?"
No. Charles the leader of my humans seems to know too, right now he's cooperating, mostly because he wants to kill Leviathan too.
"You let a human know that you're this vulnerable and not us!?" Jewel had an horrified reaction to her borrowed features.
It's not like I had a choice!
"Huu..." Jewel let out a sigh while he held her hand to her head as she tried to fend off her headache. "I'm working to repair the damage done to your core now." Jewel stated bluntly. "I'm pretty far away as far as cores go so I could only do it via this method." There was a crack in my core, I was lucky that it was only this much, any bigger and the damned thing would have broken in two. "In the mean time your monsters have some work to do."
To do what?
"Repairing your third floor."
Saphee and Treyni had both been given marching orders. Well Saphee wasn't quite strong enough yet that she could manipulate all the water that I needed her to by herself, so I had to get Archie to work on power levelling her some first.
[E Rank Monster Warlock Skeleton-A skeleton Warlock that has taken Calypso the sea goddess of death as her patron]
The Description for Saphee was different than Archie's but she was able to do what I needed her to do. Coral has more in common with animals than plants, it grows from fertilised eggs, which is somewhat difficult with Coral being a stationary organism the only way it can do this is to release the unfertilized eggs and sperm into the water and hope that they mix together with the sperm and eggs of other corals. Not really the best method. Instead Saphee went to work, churning the waters out in the bay outside the dungeon with the Tide Caller staff while Treyni worked on the other half. Even though Coral is technically an animal it works off of a symbiotic relationship with a type of algae, so it's necessary for Treyni to use plant growth acceleration magic to speed up the growth of the organism in question. After that is a matter of food, but the the deaths of the multiple slimes from earlier filled the bay full of raw organic matter so that much was already taken care of. Now all that was left to do was wait for the coral to grow in so that I would have a solid mass to work with to grow my dungeon's third floor.
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After a considerable amount of effort I finished my twenty seventh floor of my dungeon, having quickly filled in the bricks of lime stone he hollowed them out and replaced them with another material, spongie bone marrow, extracted from the skull of a dragon given to him by Lithilas. The Yew wood tree had been grown in the middle of the boss room, and after feeding it a sufficient amount of power a Yew Wood Dryad had been born exactly as Lithilas had told me. Finally, it was time.
The World Branch.
Immediately I was pulled out to meet with the patron chosen for my floor and I bowed towards the god of messengers.
"Aziraphale's boy?" Mighty Ratatoskr was smaller than most gods, being a squirrel and all, but no less powerful and no less deserving. "This is unexpected."
Ratatoskr, I fear a grave threat, though I have not known the Keeper for long I consider him a friend, and I fear he is already passed. I will grieve for him, but now I fear I am on the verge of losing another. Conquerete is at the doorstep of my mentor.
"I don't know what you're asking me to do about it." The Squirrel took out a bag of trail mix and started loudly munching on it. It was good trail mix after all. I possess the ability to receive power through prayer. Now I ask for the power to address the world.
"My we are ambitious are we? Very well then. Lithilas has been good to me so I'll make an exception despite your rather bare bones floor."
[Reward: One time opportunity to issue a quest to the world. Objective: Save the Dungeon Lithilas]
"I don't need to keep the floor after you're done, dedicated it to whatever deity you choose."
With that I was returned to my dungeon as I issued my world quest.
[Prayer for Salvation: A servant of the gods above has heard your prayers, and until such a time that he is no longer in this world he shall do his best to answer your prayers, thus speak the name of the servant in your prayers so that he may know of you, your plight and your location]
The Consecrated Mass Grave, sadly that is not the name of the servant, or at least not what he shall become, another of the mobile dungeons has been born on this day.
[Ouroboros]
The members of the Order of the White Flame had noticed a certain change within their dungeon and without. The entrance had been replaced with the skull of a fire dragon. Their scholars researched for days on what this could mean, drawing numerous theories when suddenly, the entire dungeon started to shake. The group looked as the dungeon ripped itself out of the ground, material fell away to reveal, limestone, no, bones! The Bones of a dragon were pulling themselves out of the ground where the dungeon use to be! A quest notice appeared in front of the soldiers faces.
"Ouroboros?" The amount of power taken from the soldiers was insignificant, barely what you would make off of their death's, but that 'barely' was taken from every living creature in the world capable of uttering the name as they made their confusion known. Then the ground really shook, dozens of one room floors were added to the Dungeon formerly known as Graves grew like the proverbial magical bean stalk, only downwards so magical carrot? The Dungeon Core screamed internally from the strain being put on it's core, but before it could manage to start growing actual rooms to go with the floors, the flood of prayers from people desperate for salvation flooded into the dungeon. The Core let out a second scream as it experienced growth strong enough to rip its body apart. "What the hell is going on!?"
[C Rank Monster Bone Dragon-A necromantic construct made in the image of a dragon, while not a true dragon it has a strong drive towards evolution and desires to become one]
The man dropped his halberd, not out of fear, rather it was important to loose the unnecessary weight so that he could run faster and report back to HQ sooner of what has just occurred.
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Charles looked out to the bay in confusion, first it turns into ice, then the ice is hollowed out and replaced by coral, then the coral collapses with a pop releasing a small tidal wave in the process and now a whirlpool was occurring as the bay slowly filled with algae. Charles would go up to ask what exactly was going on but right now they had other priorities that they had to worry about, and he suspected that the dungeon already knew that, because although he needed the telescope to see it, a massive fleet of ships was on it's way.
"Prepare the catapults, our target is almost on the way over." Charles had barrels full of flammable liquids prepared, courtesy of the dungeon, and had them corked with strips of silk cloth soaked in much of the same liquids. Balista were already prepared to strike at the enemy craft while mages were preparing a ritual spell to visit violence upon the approaching fleet of warships. Everyone that wasn't involved in the fighting went to the dungeon to seek shelter. If this was a normal fleet they would be well prepared. But it wasn't. It was a dungeon, unconventional though they might be this dungeon had over 100 floors to its name, and at least fifty of those were dedicated to the manipulation of water. All fifty of those floors acted in unison with each other, unleashing a massive formation and whipping the water in front of it into a massive tidal wave large enough to blot the horizon and it was heading directly at them!