The planned layout of the tower was one hundred floors tall, on each layer the dungeon cores spit out monsters for people to fight against, once one of the one room floors have been cleared the path leading up to the next floor is cleared and they can move up. Once every five floors a 'Boss' class creature is produced stronger than the ones who come before or after. I swapped around the entrance room in the palm of Thing's hand with the core room in the shoulder so that I was now at the top of the tower. For the next phase of the plan I called over my three cyclopes. Can you build it?
"It is not exactly the eye of the storm." Blossom explained while indicating the blueprints of the wind turbine. "So yes, this should be significantly easier."
With the aide of my 'giants' I quickly built and assembled together another wind turbine and planted it on top of the tower, already the turbine was catching the wind and cranking electricity, the in built heaters in the fans converting the circular motion into electricity which was becoming mana with the reverse lightning formation circle that was now being fed to the tower. Every little bit helps, and expanding the city isn't going to be a thing as long as they guys are using me as a mana source. Speaking of which I still didn't know what was going on in the city, Charles people weren't poking into the dungeon anymore which means no passive mana gains from them either. Sadly I think the mana generator is the only thing going as planned in the dungeon stack. These cores don't really understand the concept of floors, or stairs or really here or there, their monsters were struggling with navigating their nonsensical floor plans, the cores having somehow managed to screw up what's supposed to be big empty rooms for people to fight inside of. No wonder that one goddess of Crazy people loves this place so much.
"Master, I believe there is an issue." Buttercup stated as she indicated the tower that was softly swaying. "The tower lacks stability."
The Tower has Thing reinforcing it and like... fifty dungeon cores.
"That's part of what's making it unstable." Bubbles provided the follow up. "If you can make a proper workshop for us then we might be able to build a stabiliser, before the entire tower collapses. With Master's core at the top of the pile."
In retrospect I may have jumped the gun a bit in trying to turn the tower into a proper arena. Alright let's head back to the fourth floor then.
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My consciousness arrived at the fourth floor along with the three cyclops girls, I selected one of the rooms and proceeded to build a forge, hammer, tongs, various tools the girls described to me, many of which I couldn't actually build, piles of materials which again I largely didn't have access to. Sighing as if it was understandable the three of them got to work. I soon realised that what they were building were the tools that I couldn't make for them, as well as making better versions of the ones I did make for them, well that would be a long day then, I'll leave them to it.
I entered another room, the model of the city that Charles made using my materials, every time a new building was added the model grew in real time, convenient. There was the wall from when Leviathan attacked and a new killing ground for invading monsters was being built. Here I built new trap doors and re-loadable turrets, that should handle defence for a while, my next biggest concern though was Mana, I have plenty of mana generation but the majority of it is being taken away by the Helheim breach. I could try and forcibly begin producing materials again but I believe that would just waste mana. I dug through my schema's for the answers to my questions... the cores for my undead are made out of a combination of metal and jewels... The Jewels stores magical power and the metal rejects it? No no that wasn't right... ejects it, forces the mana outside of the body where it can be manipulated. Well that makes sense. Well this floor has a lot of metal parts on it... Jewels are used in mechanical clockwork because the hard smooth surface reduces friction between two moving pieces? One by one the gears and other moving parts of my clockworks had jewel ball bearings put into place where pieces of metal were rubbed against pieces of metal.
The Clockworks were running more smoothly now, not that I knew what clock that they were operating or what all of this was doing, I could build a factory here, but I doubt that it would win out in efficiency to just willing things into existence with my mana. Was it all just aesthetics? A lot of the Gears and such didn't look like they connected to anything yet, mostly just turning in place sticking out of the walls, floor and ceiling. I tried lots of different jewels, Topaz, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Amber each of them turned the mana into a different magic affinity as the mana passed through them, but Diamonds leaves the mana clean, but they're also the most expensive to produce for some reason. Naturally, I made producing more diamonds and diamond adjacent minerals my top priority, and again I don't know why I know this but I knew how to do it.
From the manure slimes I had a steady supply of methane gas which I was now channelling into air tight containers. Next I had Levi take sea water, remove everything that is not water, using the lightning I can split the water into Hydrogen and oxygen and funnel the hydrogen into the same container as the Methane, finally I created a single grain of topaz lit the proverbial match. The gasses were quickly burned away producing water as a by product while it was built around the Topaz grain. Perfection! Now to do that a hundred more times and I'll have gemstone furnaces for every methane source in the dungeon. Fascinating I guess. I have my mana batteries ready anyway, mostly lightning attuned Topaz, now how do I get more mana generation going on here? With all these moving parts around it doesn't take much work to set up some more generators, a few copper gears here, some blocks of super magnet's there, some Lightning to mana formations over there, and the mana is increasing now albeit less than I would like it to.
I look to the girls in the forging room, at the very least they were making good use of the clockworks, a hammer was connected to a crank shaft which was being used to beat on a slab of metal into shape, another section had air being pumped into a furnace producing hotter flames in the process, in yet another a cylinder of beeswax was rapidly spinning around on a lathe and was having bits shaved off of it. Well as long as they were happy I guess, if this floor had to go to war all these moving parts would really be helpful, but we still needed more, more mana production, more control over the floor, more, more, more. More cyclopses? Until I figure out how I produced three children instead of giant bruisers that seems like an exceedingly unwise decision. My train of thought went back to Fort, the little monster seemed to mass produce poltergeists as easily as he breathed, sure that'll work here right?
[F Rank Schema Poltergeist: A weak spirit unable to survive by itself, requiring a physical object in order to inhabit in order to contain its essence]
F Rank eh? I formed a mot of mana and soon the spirit in question was born, and just like that it faded from existence. Right then, you need physical objects? I can hook that up. I moved over to the nearest wall of gears and began stuffing it full of Poltergeists until my mana started to get low, and so I repeated the cycle of recharging mana and stuffing the wall full of Poltergeists. Why? Well until the girls are finished getting all the equipment they need built or the delvers come back I have nothing else to do so I might as well start increasing my mana generation, when I was about half way done with the processes Bubbles came and found me again.
"Master, we have completed work we need to produce the counterweight, and we have gathered the material needed to produce it."
Sweet. But please stop calling me master, people are gonna get funny ideas about me if they catch a bunch of little girls calling me master.
"Understood."
Let's see how the tower is doing then. The four of us arrived in the top of the tower, the three girls started working while I funnelled them materials, they used giant plier things to shape the metal, hammers to beat it into shape, giant paintbrush looking things to shape material into small pieces and plant engravings on the metal, somehow. When the three said that they had all the material they needed I looked down into the tower. It had gotten worse than I could possibly imagine, I'm fairly certain that the tower was now bigger on the inside than it was on the outside, and while I had succeeded in conveying the need for wide open area for this to work it seems that they have yet to understand either the concept of flat ground to fight upon or three dimensional physics that a normal person can function in. All in all I wanted to scream 'go back and do it again!' For... I don't know, Oceanus's sake? Yeah for Oceanus's sake I'm going to invite people to come into this place as soon as my Avatar has respawned what am I going to do with this?
Huu...
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I looked out at the instigators of the riots that had broken out a couple of days ago, a full scale brawl between the Mage's association and the Adventurers guild which resulted in large scale damage done to the city.
"Normally, when someone invites you into their place of business you do your best to remain polite and courteous to the people there. Tell me." I pulled open the curtains of my office and revealed the burning buildings across the street. "Does this look to be polite and courteous to you?"
If Apas didn't swoop in and wreck everything they would probably still be fighting too, Apas and Thing that is. 'B Rank if your stupid' was a excellent description for their favourite construction crane, though it did mean that there was some building damage from the creature slamming it's hands down wherever there was fight.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
"They wish to destroy the Dungeon!" Professor Phalanges shouted pointing accusingly at Julia Arclight.
"Yes, because the dungeon has connected to Cocytus." Julia snapped by way of response. "I am not letting 'The Lord of Treachery' have a foothold into this plane of existence!"
"That is not your decision to make you little brat!" Professor Phalanges snapped in return.
"Nor is it yours." I snapped as I gave an unamused glare.
"I am going to contact the Keeper and discuss with him our next move, one that is hopefully more than adequate for fending off any potential invasion from the lord of Treachery."
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Charles could already tell that there was change in the air when he reentered the dungeon, though still mostly solid stone various gears were sticking out of the walls, floor and ceiling, connected to the mana generators that the Keeper had made before and yet quite different. The Gears had bearings of Topaz, and their copper was possessed by Poltergeists, aside from the mana generators they were quite likely contributing to the other mechanical contraptions that I liked to use to support Charles people when they're invaded by monsters. So like the Treants used to their jobs are to strike at the outside of the Dungeon, Thing for the heavy artillery and these... mechanical poltergeists for the light work. Though after the Second floor is finished getting restructured their roll might see changes again.
For now though he was looking for my avatar but the reality of the situation was that the avatar being a monster that had been killed I'm back to my previous normal dungeon state for a while. To put it another way, I was already aware that he was here. For now Charles assessed the work that I had done, my mana generators with built in batteries, the turrets that were waiting for use, the forge room that I built for the girls. Before I was in a rush to finish off my previous floors, now though? I would take my time. Expanding the first and fourth floors to their limits as I dialled up the amount of floors that I could own. I still owed Echidna an apology, but I don't think any of the floors I got right now are right for her. In any case Charles clearly wanted to talk, so I called Levi over to the fourth floor to act as a mouth piece.
"Where's the Keeper?" Charles asked looking at Levi with suspicion.
"Indisposed." Levi replied bluntly. "Is there a problem?"
"There's a lot of people who are concerned about the breach leading to Cocytus, and evidently Helheim as well, but mostly just Cocytus."
Is it that bad? I'm not going to join forces with Lucifer, and I have no intention of letting him through my dungeon.
"The master understands your concern, even sympathetic, were there a way of severing himself from the realm, even at the risk of core damage then he would've separated himself from the breach already. But his core has been trapped on that side of the breach. And it doesn't appear that the gods over there are really content to let him go either."
Through Levi I told Charles what was going on in the land of bitter cold that I had landed in, the mana starved dungeons, my blow up at Hel for reasons I wasn't entirely sure about in retrospect, and right now my attempts to wrangle the other cores and my plans to rehabilitate them away from a bunch of screaming crazy pits of madness.
"It would be pretty hard to convince people to willingly walk into that realm."
They want to smash my core don't they?
"The Master's core is in that realm, if anyone wants to break it then they will have to enter that place." Not just enter either. Kukuku! "They'll have to go through the entire tower if they want the core."
"A hundred floors in a undead realm designed by insane cores." Charles asked for the sake of confirmation. "Let me know when work on the tower is done, there'll be no need to show any restraint after that."
It won't be too much longer...
"The Master is using the cyclopes to build a stabiliser in the other realm, after all the foundation of the tower is a giant skeletal arm, it's not unreasonable to assume that it would be a touch unstable, just as it's not equally unreasonable to assume that after their work is done the tower will be stable again."
"Then I'll arrange for the rioters to be released if you're so confident." Saying that Charles walked out of the dungeon.
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At the top floor my preparations were being completed, one high efficiency power generator, and one bell? The Stabiliser the girls had made looked like a huge bell. Would one of the three of you mind explaining how this is supposed to stabilise the tower?
"When the tower shakes momentum causes it to lean in one direction, this triggers a equal and opposite reaction in the bell which causes the tower to be pushed back in the opposite direction instead." Blossom explained and then together with her sisters straightened up expectantly.
Um good work. Setting a cloud of mana above their heads to pat them there I surveyed the tower. With the wind turbine mana should begin passively building throughout the tower, along with the influence of the War Gods. Blessing worked different on this side, I'm supposed to have a blessing on my first floor already connecting me to either Lucifer or Hel but I'm not getting that here, instead mana seems to come in from the attention that gods were paying here. Still I can't say that I'm very fond of the idea of one of them blessing my floor. First impressions are important, and I don't want mine to come out of a war god, that doesn't even touch on Manea who only seems to be here cause she likes the scenery. And I'm pretty sure that if I get a different blessing for my first floor than what connects me here it could be bad, like rip this whole bloody tower out of the realm and toss it back into the land of the living kind of bad. The last time another dungeon suddenly appeared inside of mine I was left in a coma, and I'm not doing that again. So either Lucifer or Hel, I can imagine what Lucifer would want me to do, but since I was in no mode to 'betray' my city I elected to ignore it.
Hel might be a bit harder to reconcile with on the basis that I've already insulted her to her face but that was that, for now I had the dungeons that they've been blatantly ignoring that I had to look after. I looked over to the three cyclopes and saw a look on their faces that I could only think of as being utterly filled with joy. Right I should return them to the fourth floor before things got messy here. As I was thinking that the entire tower started shaking, more than what it was before, it took me a while to realise that it was being done in a pattern. Someone was knocking on our door...? Does the Chat room function still work in here?
[Dungeon Keeper: Who's there?]
[Ouroboros: Thank Hel you finally answered us]
[Dungeon Keeper: Graves? How in the?]
[Ouroboros: For now open the door, even for a ice dragon it's freezing out here!]
It took me but a few moments to create an entrance into the dungeon from the upper most floor, letting inside a serpentine monster in the process. The Creature resembled a long bony snake bar a few details, horns, small vestigial legs, wings, the fact that it's entire lower half of its body was cut off into a flattened mass of marble. Aside from that the entire creature was silver coloured. Just what the heck was this thing supposed to be?
[B Rank Monster Ouroboros-A unique Chimera born from a dungeon as it grows new floors it gradually transforms them into parts of a dragon. This particular limb borrows from a Silver Dragon]
[Dungeon Keeper: You've been busy, more than I have]
[Ouroboros: What made you mouth off to Hel any way?]
Hel, if she ever appears before this place I swear I'll-!
[Dungeon Keeper: I don't know. I might be getting influenced by the other dungeons that I've been bunking with]
[Ouroboros: They're either working for Lucifer or Hel couldn't help them]
[Ouroboros: After all there's only so many living dungeons that connect here, she can't supply mana for all the dead ones too]
Curiouser and curiouser.
[Dungeon Keeper: Right now the thing I need to do is come up with a way to get back to my real dungeon, and the least costly method of doing that is to team up with Hel]
[Ouroboros: What's the problem?]
[Dungeon Keeper: I don't know what to do for a bribe]
[Ouroboros: Isn't it obvious? We screw Lucifer over]
[Ouroboros: You already smashed Leviathan, certainly you can come up with something to ruin his day right?]
I crossed my imaginary arms and thought about it, an idea popped into my head. I basically have the materials for a weapon mass destruction in my dungeon already right? If I can just put a few of them together...
[Dungeon Keeper: You do realise that this hinges on me getting into Hel's good books before we start launching weapons of mass destruction right?]
[Ouroboros: That's the easy part]
The dragon opened its mouth and out stepped a woman her appearance unfamiliar to me. Her left half was that of a beautiful healthy and shapely figure with bright red hair flowing down her back, her right on the other hand, less so. Her face was a skull, as was her arm, and her foot that peaked out from underneath her dress when she walked were both bone, I questioned her bust for a moment up until I saw the mass of sparkling material in the boob window of her dress, the left half was real and the right was made out of snow.
"It would seem that you and I have gotten off to the wrong foot, Keeper." Hel produced a chair made out of ice and seat cushions made out of snow before she sat down. She was goddess alright, just by her being here I was being flooded with a massive amount of mana.
[Ouroboros: Hang on I'm getting another call]
Okay, that's not unusual. So what do we do now?
"Firstly you are right about one thing. I'm not able to look after all these cores by myself. The creatures that you dungeons produce are alive, active, this realm is a place of entropy, without cores like yours to stimulate the environment the mana would turn stagnant. You have some idea of what kinds of horrors would be born then I assume." The monsters that attacked me down below were called 'Hel' something or other, except for the troll that is. "Dungeon's copy what they eat, those creatures were among the native inhabitants of this realm, or at least they were natives up until the stagnant mana got to them." I was outside in that! "Broken and damaged as they are the cores are unable to regulate the mana and keep it fresh, and thanks to Lucifer they've been unable to get the resources they need to repair themselves." Hel let out a troubled sigh. "I'm troubled by all the extra cores around here too."
Then why do you keep taking new cores in?
"You're old friend Leviathan kept sending them to me." Hel stated bluntly. That Troll ended up in Cocytus from eating another troll right? If cannibalism is considered an act of betrayal then getting cannibalised is an act of getting betrayed? Is that what's happened here? "Your perception of events is quite accurate if nothing else." So these are all cores that have been chewed on by Leviathan? "Not all of them no. But there is enough that Leviathan has a lot to answer for. And we're in luck too, if my intelligence is correct then Lucifer's envoy is on his way as we speak."
As in...?
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Outside a massive warship made out of ice and stone on a sled was being dragged through the landscape by a pair of massive brutes that were directly chained to the front of the ship, a massive gaping hole was already opened in front of the ship as one after another old and worn out buildings were being scraped off of the ground and disappeared into the ship like a hungry monster swallowing it's victims whole. Above the ship the figure of a massive winged figure carrying a morning star spanned the front of the ship, looking down at it's victims with cruel pitiless eyes. Well becoming it's food isn't the worse fate that they could have, that said though they were mere appetisers, Leviathan has been moving towards its main target all this time. The Keeper.