Oooh... ow. What did I do last night? I've got a splitting headache. Something about watching... I looked around, this wasn't my house but a cave. No wait this was my cave? Oh man that wasn't a pleasant experience. I would be immensely grateful if that was the worst of-
The cave split open, the entrance opposing masses of sharp Stalactites and Stalagmites as the head of a giant Centipede was shoved inside of the cave and the cave closed again cutting the head off before opening and closing several times repeatedly stabbing into the centipede, cutting it apart, chewing it! I was inside of a monster's Mouth? Oh that wasn't good.
[C-Rank Monster Omukade-A monstrous centipede specialising in the use of poisons to attack, is currently in the middle of the process of becoming a dragon]
I was inside of a monster who was using C-Ranks for food. I watched the familiar process of the monster pieces breaking down and turn into mana and schema's while I debated the implications behind that I looked at the corner of my vision to see that several new notifications had appeared. As usual I concentrated on the new messages and watched as nothing happened. I heard the distinct sound of tapping as I impatiently waited and paused as I looked at myself for the first time. My entire body looked to be made out of some kind of blue crystal with a bright orange material inside, as if fire was frozen in ice. Was I possessing one of my monsters again? Weird I'm usually a lot more conscious about that. Alright I would just leave and go back into dungeon mode... any time now... great. I fingered the notification and started to read the system messages.
[Achievement Unlocked-Mad Scientist]
How did that happen.
[Congratulations! You've evolved into a Unique B-Rank Monster: Fire Frost Fiend]
Come again?
[Dungeon Breach in Progress]
I don't even wanna know what that is.
[I'm borrowing your subordinates for a while. Pluto]
Excuse me!?
[Your contract with Echidna has been severed]
That was the one I was most concerned about. Apas! Nothing.
"APAS!" The familiar form of my Sphinx flew into the mouth of the cave before landing in front of me. So losing Echidna's blessing meant that she didn't take back her part of the deal? I thought about it some more: Right now there was the underwater district, and through the mouth I saw at least one building that could've been dedicated to housing the orphans from Jewel's city. The bare minimum standards of my obligation to build her a Demi-human city have been fulfilled.
"So you've woken up at last." Apas just let out a relieved sigh. "It's good to see that you're okay."
What happened? Apas didn't respond and eventually let out a sigh.
"I can't hear your thoughts anymore. You have to use your voice like when you usually possess the Ifrit." I worked my jaw for a few moments as I pondered the implications.
"What Happened?" My voice was deep and vibrated a little, like a base speaker.
"You better come out and see for yourself. You still remember how to fly that thing right?" Apas asked as she turned around.
"This thing? What are you talking about? I don't even know what this thing is let alone how it works!" Apas just let out a sigh and sat down.
"You should climb on." The two of us flew out of the cave and my jaw nearly dropped at what I saw.
A skeleton. A skeleton the Size of a mountain! That wasn't technically true I think. I couldn't see the Pelvis or anything below it so in reality only the torso was as tall as a mountain, even then I was fairly confident that it wasn't a normal skeleton, size aside it's entire body was covered in a rocky armour, the rib cage had fused together into a chest plate like armour and the head was covered in a eyeless mask, though it had two arms one of them was sticking out the back leaving the entire right side of the body without a second arm. The Second misplaced arm rose up until its hand was face to face with Apas and myself, a hunk of amber the size of a truck tire depicting the grinning face of a skull as it looked at us with empty eyes was attached to the ring finger.
"Thing. Keeper's awake, go find the human."
Thing? That's Thing? The giant arm identified as Thing twisted around and gave a thumbs up as it went and snaked around the growing base around the mountain itself apparently looking for someone. The elevator leading to the fourth floor was seeing use as people carried the slabs of pre-fabricated buildings up from below, the other arm was being used as a crane to carry the parts up the mountain of bones to several buildings that had attached themselves to what I was quickly realising was the dungeon via supports of wood and Marble. I guess Charles Geomancers managed to finally get around to making some of that stuff. They had time, spring was in full swing.
"Is Treyni awake too?" It would be kind of a problem if it turned out that one of the main sources of food for the city was out cold too.
"She's somewhere in all of that." Apas indicated the mountain of bones that Thing had become. I really needed to read my notifications soon, but a familiar mass of flames streaked through the sky and formed an arrow and pointed down at the killing field for killing invading monsters.
"Looks like we're talking to Charles first." Following my implications Apas flew down to where Charles had went out of his way to direct us to and landed down in front of him. I was about to go forward but he stopped me.
"We have guests cover up." I looked down at myself, it was hard to get a look at myself in the darkness of Thing's mouth but I was naked, and more importantly I had something to cover up so I concentrated, and toga of flame wrapped my form. So I have fire powers now? Whatever. "Better." Charles led me forward to the people sitting around a patio table, a man who wore several rings on his fingers, a brown skinned man in a robe, a younger one who was sitting in the back reading a book, and The shark woman captain from before, dressed in a ill fitting striped shirt.
"Captain Merrow would you like to start things off?" Charles asked looking at the fish woman in question.
"The Trio have already left." The Shark woman stated bluntly. "They were given the impression that their staying here was actively hindering your recovery, talk to them when you get the chance."
I'll remember that. I've had my rough patches with the trio but I didn't want them worrying over me for no reason.
"I'll try to contact them when I get the chance." I turned my head to the next person who stood and bowed. "I am Amadeus Callow of the Merchants Guild, later I shall introduce you to the adventurer's guild and craftsmen guild heads later when they aren't so busy." The man held out his hand to shake.
"Dungeon Keeper, I apologise for not returning your shake, first day with the new body and I only just learned that it can shoot fire." As I said that I turned my attention to the other two humans.
"Professor Phalanges of the Magic Academy, and one of my many students Grimoire." The one in the back barely acknowledged his professor, merely continued to read his book. "I brought Grimoire as your dungeon presents an ideal opportunity to study in his chosen field of Necromancy."
"I would've preferred the Consecrated Mass Grave but he's harder to pin down these days." The young man explained as he flipped through the book in question.
"Right. I have to go manage my dungeon now, I've been unconscious for a while. Did anything else happen while I was asleep?"
"Babel flew over while you were unconscious and threw a giant golem into the water." Grimoire stated bluntly, displaying the same level of interest in the topic as he had been all this time. Well that's good I guess? Far as I'm concerned the pain in the butt can drown, and he's making himself useful now cleaning up the ocean instead of attacking Lithilas day and night.
"This guy's family is making a tuff about trying to take control over the dungeon." Grimoire indicated Charles.
"I'm handling it." Charles replied bluntly.
"Sure. Sure." Grimoire flipped the page on his book completely uninterested.
"Right. I'm off to dungeon now."
I took the elevator down to the fourth floor. Once Inside I experimentally raised my arm and attempted to weave something into existence. Nothing. Or this new body I can't leave is interfering with my dungeon powers. Lovely. For now I made my way to the core room. A new table had been added, things like a microscope and test tubes and other scientific equipment had been added. I'd look into that later for now I went to the console and checked the list of achievements.
[Mad Scientist: Combined two completely different species of monsters together]
Didn't I do that with Levi? I thought about it more, most of Levi came from Leviathan's monsters, and the one to sort her out was Oceanus not me so it didn't count. But what two monsters are you talking about? I went over to the list of monsters I had active, while I would deal with the numerous horrifying descriptions that had appeared later for now there was one that had caught my immediate attention.
[B Rank Fire Frost Fiend-A rare fusion of a Ifrit fire Genie and a Dungeon Core, normally impossible this unforeseen fusion has pushed the pyrokinetic abilities of the Ifrit to it's limit and has managed to create a entirely new species of elemental after being forcibly stuffed with power]
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I'm the hybrid!? Is that why I can't separate from this body? I looked at Thing's Evolution log.
[Bone Hand, Bejeweled Hand, Bone Spider, Bone Collector, Gashadokuro]
So instead of going through one evolution, Thing had several, and that was why it was taking him so long.
[C Rank Monster Gashodokuro-A undead reanimated from a particularly large mass grave, whether the victims died from war, disease or via natural disaster such individuals died miserably. Rather than turn into individual undead they decided to join together to form a single mass]
How is this a C Rank? Thing doesn't have any legs so he can't move around, so he isn't on the level of threatening armies if they want to run away from him. Is that what it's saying? What about Archie?
[Archie the Skeleton Warlock N/A]
[Saphee the Animated Skull N/A]
I recalled the message from Pluto, of whom Archie was supposed to have a pact with as a warlock. I don't know what he meant by borrowing but it fills me with nothing but bad feelings. This though, this made me concerned.
[D/B Rank Plague Dragon-The infantile form of a vicious poisonous dragon, every part of their body is extremely toxic, their claws induce paralysis, their shed scales poison, and their breath rots, they have the ability to assume a human form to spread their poison more discretely, this one is just a infant and has thus been given a reduced rank]
As for where that particular can of worms came from.
[Monster Egg, Plague Dragon]
Well, that's what I get for letting Archie nurture them with necromancy I guess. Everything else was just locked out on the second floor. I turned my attention to the laboratory and I went over to it. Shouldn't I be getting a-?
[Would you like to play the Laboratory Tutorial? Yes/No]
I rubbed my hands together as I hit the Yes Box.
[Welcome to the Laboratory prolific monster breeder, because of your experimentation you have acquired the ability to manipulate monster schema's through the laboratory function, here you can combine and separate schema's as needed in order to breed new creatures, let's work on a new hybrid!]
Does this mean I can separate myself from Ifrit now? I guess not eh.
[To the left of the table are slides where all of your available Schema's are kept, let's select two of them and see what happens when they're combined together]
I felt around for the slides as I thought about what would make a good combination, of course since I have no advance knowledge about this world chances are good that I won't think of something good just working off of that. Crossing my arms I thought about... that place. The place that gives me a headache, the one from another world. Think... think... I should probably stop now. I just randomly picked up a couple of schema's and waited for the system to tell me what to do.
[To combine two schema's together place your chosen monsters into the beaker and place it on top of the flame]
I dropped the two slides into the beaker and dropped the beaker onto a Bunsen burner.
[Will-o-wisp + Wolf =?]
[47 : 59 : 57]
So it doesn't even tell me what I'm going to get? Whatever, moving on.
[To break down a hybrid into individual schema's insert one of the highlighted schema's into the centrifuge and activate the on button]
I only had two to work with, and one of them was the Fire Frost Fiend.
[Cursed Mirror = ? = ?]
[47 : 59 : 57]
[Remember to keep using the laboratory to improve time and increase your allotted number of slots]
I blinked at the laboratory as I thought about the implications. I stepped aside and created another Warlock Skeleton.
"When these are done fill up the slots with those slides." I had to go back to the console to decipher the last of the messages.
Dungeon Breach. I looked at the map of my dungeon but there was a rather significant difference compared against what I remember seeing outside, another arm where the right one should've been. Time to talk to an expert.
[Dungeon Keeper: Sorry for being AFC for so long guys]
[Jewel: Keeper!]
[Coral: Keeper!]
[Fort: You're still alive?]
[North: Keeper!]
[Lithilas: Are you done your nap yet?]
[Babel: What the hell does AFC mean?]
[Dungeon Keeper: Away From Chat]
[Dungeon Keeper: Everyone's been doing good since I was out?]
[Lithilas: Without Conquerete to attack me any more I've had the freedom to complete adjustments and my people can get out of the city to stretch their legs again, some of them should be setting up operations around your dungeon]
[Dungeon Keeper: The three guilds right? I met with the guy representing them earlier, I assume the other two were just getting their own buildings set up]
[Dungeon Keeper: In any case I've got a some what relevant question, do any of you know what a dungeon Breach is?]
[Lithilas: !?]
[Lithilas: Why am I not surprise?]
[Dungeon Keeper: What is it what did I do?]
[Lithilas: If I had to guess? When you ate Leviathan you managed to concentrate their divine blessings into your floors, force a breach into another realm massively expanding your influence in the process]
Somehow I could see Lithilas twitching.
[Lithilas: Normally, it would be a hundred levels before you get your first breach, but because of you nearly breaking your core it couldn't take the extra floors and instead crammed it all into the three floors that you have]
In other words, I acted so recklessly that I broke the system.
[Dungeon Keeper: Anyone know what Graves has been up to?]
[Lithilas: He's had five breaches since the last time he talked to you]
[Dungeon Keeper: !?]
[Lithilas: The combination of the prayer that he's constantly receiving and answering those prayers which tends to involve using his Dragon body's A Rank stats to slaughter monsters and wrecks hostile dungeons he's building up divine power to set off breaches one after the other]
Someone else change the topic fast!
[Babel: The Ocean is getting a lot safer these days, now that I don't have to worry about Leviathan trying to eat me I can deploy expeditions to pick off as many sea monsters as I want, take that together with Conquerete and the Trio wandering around the ocean and we should start to see the bastards be picked off soon]
Rot in hell Leviathan, you won't be missed.
[Lithilas: You four made sure that Leviathan's core was disposed of properly right?]
[Coral: Of course]
[Fort: Of Course]
[North: Of course]
[Dungeon Keeper: Charles took our piece and stashed it somewhere]
I could feel the others glaring at me through the chat room.
[Dungeon Keeper: Don't look at me like that! My core's all busted up remember! I don't wanna shove even more things into it right now!]
[Lithilas: Yes I'm aware. Go 'AFC' right now and slap a door wherever you think the breach is forming, before whatever is on the other side learns that you're there]
[Dungeon Keeper: Why? I thought breaches are a good thing?]
[Lithilas: It's a gamble. Some worlds are so mana deprived that they start sucking on the dungeon, others are filled with the brim with the combination of stagnant mana and hundreds of years of survival of the fittest, or it's something completely normal and beneficial, with a hundred floors you'd have countless ways of dealing with any trouble on the other side, but you barely have four! Go. Seal. The Breach!]
After leaving the Chat I went back up to my first floor inside of Thing's rib-cage. There was another glowing mass of a mana cocoon lower down, Treyni and the second floor, I'll worry about them later but for now... Just like the other two the right arm was a skeletal arm wrapped in a layer of limestone armour, but it was different from the other arms too, not to mention that this was way more space then I used to have. Does the first floor being a monster give me more room to work with? Or is this part of the second floor. The major point I was leaning into was that the arm where the breach was happening, the space was occupied by a rainbow glow and a deep chill was coming off of the arm.
The Breach happened during the winter, so the realm I'm connecting to is cold I guess? For now I had my priorities in order, more important than securing myself is acquiring information, so I flew into the breach until I reached the far end and prepared my security camera, a large silver ring with a equally large skull shaped Saphire crystal just like Thing's amber, which I then attached to the ring finger of the other hand. Then as quickly as possible I retreated back into the dungeon itself and sealed up the entrance with a mass of steel.
[The path to the Core from an entrance cannot be obstructed]
Come on! This wasn't even an entrance I had made!
[Choose one of three locking mechanisms]
[1. Lock and Key 2. Combination 3. Guardian]
Well I'm not exactly fond of going back there to hide a key underneath the doormat, the only monster I have on the other side is my surveillance unit, and I'm pretty sure the connects to Thing, so that just leaves my third option. Alright system, you wanna be a pain? I'll show you how it's done!
[The Answer is Simple 31549...]
And like that I included a 6 digit answer to a 1000 digit code. Eat my spite you Trolling system!
The guild buildings were made using marble and wood from my dungeon, and on top of that were also being grafted directly to Thing's body, naturally the dungeon influence extended to the buildings themselves. Inside of the Craftsmen who were hard at work making a variety of dishes and items had hit the minor obstacle of the contents of their forges, ovens and other open flame sources suddenly coming alive.
[F Rank Fire Sprite-Small masses of flame come to life, too weak to pose a threat to living beings beyond small burns, occasionally born from furnaces and ovens]
The Dungeon mana is going wild around here, it's not just the fire sprites either, the cleaning slimes were basically left in charge of all the laundry so they were multiplying at a steady rate too. Other small fossils had gotten reanimated by my mana, and went through the similar process of accelerated evolution too, the Centipedes had turned into Omukade, right now they were going a steady cycle of being butchered, boiled and returned to the dungeon to get reanimated. I eventually found the duo that I had been looking for inside of the Craftsmen guild, the two baby Plague Dragons. There was still a lot about myself I didn't understand. I think this is like the fourth floor? That if I want to I can claim this building as part of my dungeon? That's why these two are
"They haven't been giving you guys any trouble have they?" I asked while looking at the two sleeping dragons in a basket. "The description says that they cause trouble just by existing."
"Yeah, on account of all the different poisons that they give off." One of the chefs had a bottle of goat's milk she was feeding one of the Baby's. "But those same poisons lets us make all kinds of antidotes, not to mention that they can cure all kinds of diseases, not to mention that these two have affinities for healing magic, so whenever they make someone sick they just heal them again. I take it that's you're doing?"
"Maybe?" I replied shrugging my shoulders. "They always had strong life force."
I sat down and took the two chicks into my arms. I needed to do more planning, the turbines down at the killing field would have to be moved and expanded to Thing's head or shoulders, even if Echidna wasn't holding a grudge about what happened to the floor I was still down auto mana regen. The entire floor had been turned into a undead, I don't think there would be many severe consequences for lightning flying around inside of it. Still I feel like I should make a new floor for Echidna somewhere, Charles would probably still want a room made up for breeding attack monsters so I'll bring it up at the next meeting, the Apas Thing combo would be great if the city came under attack so I'll keep her as the boss for now but I feel like Thing's offensive power is limited by his immobility. Maybe I can attach something to his arms? As I was thinking that Apas came into the tavern, the Dragon Chicks certainly were happy to see her.
"How're they doing?" Apas asked while she wiggled one of her toes over one of the chick's heads.
"Good near as I can tell." I replied while shrugging my shoulders.
"Good." Apas nudged the chicks back into the basket. "We'll take the room I discussed before." As Apas said that she started pushing me up the stairs into the room above.
"Good luck miss Apas!" The Tavern owner shouted, what exactly was she wishing her luck for? After pushing me inside and closing the door Apas locked the door.
"You had me worried there, I will admit. Newbie cores aren't designed to take the abuse that you put yours through." Apas stated as she climbed onto the bed I had sat down on.
"Sorry for making you wor-!" With a single paw Apas had pushed me down and pinned me to the bed. "After all, if you died I wouldn't be able to get your seed." Apas smiled at me like the cat who caught the Canary.
"Say what?" I was very much confused.
"You've built a home for me, kept me fed, and proved your mettle as a hunter. Who else was I going to fall for?" Apas asked as she moved her face to mine.
"Do I get a safe word at least?"
Apas looked up to the side as she thought about my question gave a short "Mn nh" as she shooked her head in the negative. The entire tavern shook, the force of which caused the petals to start to fall from a potted flower that was being kept on the receptionist's desk.