I was greeted by a somewhat familiar face. Well I recognised the name, not the face though. She was a young woman with navy blue hair and bright blue eyes, she wore black robes but who she was trying to mimic became obvious when you compare the bone armour/bone opera mask that covered the right half of her body to Hel.
"It is good to see you again master." The young woman bowed to me as her information displayed itself.
[Saphee the Walpurgis]
The Hell's a Walpurgis?
[B Rank Monster Walpurgis-A Lich that has utilised their extensive knowledge of magic to modify their bodies and advance an incredible degree, becoming a being close to being alive again, can only be killed by the simultaneous destruction of their head and heart]
The more questions that I ask the less I know. How'd you turn into a B Rank? And why are you with Hel?
"After the battle with Leviathan I was flooded with a massive amount of points, Calisto attempted to claim me in order to seek revenge on you, the betrayal to one of her followers led Hel to find and rescue me. Since then Hel has been repeatedly extracting my soul from my body in order to guide me to this evolution." I looked through Saphee's history.
[Animated Skull, Skeleton Warlock]
Which I was familiar with, however...
[Lich, Lich Slime, Walpurgis]
I have some idea about Lich but where did slime come from?
[C Rank Monster Lich Slime-Parts from other monsters can be taken and used to enhance upon the undead, particularly if the two monsters were in contact with one another during the evolution process, this one has absorbed pieces of a particular slime and has inherited it's potent shape shifting and genetic manipulation powers]
So Saphee was covered in river slime when I ate Leviathan's ships, and then this happened. Is that the situation?
"Quite master, though it took me a considerable effort to get to this point." And Here I was thinking the power had been divided into Levi, Treyni and Thing.
[Dungeon Keeper: Tell me is Archie somewhere inside of Grave's body right now waiting to pop out too?]
[Ouroboros: Pluto said that he snatched up your other skeleton after the mass point infusion]
[Dungeon Keeper: He's one of your patrons right?]
[Ouroboros: Hence how he's using me as a messenger]
[Dungeon Keeper: So when he is going to give him back?]
[Ouroboros: I believe he is waiting for you to pledge the fourth floor to him]
Wealthy jewels, underground, and undead, yeah I can see why Pluto thinks I'm dedicating the fourth floor to him.
[Dungeon Keeper: There's still a tonne of work that needs to be done over there, I don't even have a boss ready for the fourth floor yet]
[Ouroboros: He says that he needs to speak with you as soon as possible, it relates to defeating Lucifer]
[Dungeon Keeper: What's the relationship between Lucifer and Pluto?]
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While Graves was explaining the political situation, Thing was going on the offensive outside. The Snow Storm was being weaponized by Thing, The Kinetic force was being gathered from the storm and channelled into bolts of pure force which were being smashed into Leviathan's ships. That was just the appetiser though, the main course was the nasty surprise being prepared above, all the snow in the storm being gathered together, crushed into a solid mass and forming a gigantic iceberg in the process, which then came crashing down on top of Leviathan.
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The summary of the situation from Pluto went as follows: Lucifer and Pluto are both considered to be lords of hell 'Pluto of Greed' and 'Lucifer of Treachery' Right now each of the other lords have dungeons that connect to Cocytus, the cores of which Lucifer is effectively holding hostage, much like how I am being held here until I get permission to leave. Right now he wants me to basically find a way of either forcing Lucifer to hand the other cores back over or some how get them back myself. Troublesome.
"Credit where due, you're effective at raising powerful monsters. But I fear that they are inadequate." Hel stated as she looked through the window I prepared at the fight against Leviathan.
I can't see outside of my dungeon right now, what's going on down there.
"That weapon of mass destruction you mentioned before, you took it's schema from Leviathan didn't you?" Yeah it was... oh.
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On the battlefield the iceberg that Thing had prepared was sucked away into a bag being held by a fallen angel on Leviathan's deck. Charles had explicitly warned me not to stuff a bag of holding into another bag of holding resulting in a violently destructive sucking of all the matter in the immediate area into a highly unstable and short lived black hole. Assuming that Leviathan hadn't just committed suicide then I assumed that he just dissolved one of the bags of holding.
[Leviathan: I've come on behalf of Lucifer]
[Dungeon Keeper: Now you talk? Where was this when you ripped North, Coral and Fort out of the ground and dragged them across the ocean floor?]
[Leviathan: You should keep better track of your own 'allies' before you go around sticking your nose into my business]
Wait Charles said he was letting the Adventurers into the Dungeon again right? Specifically into the tower? Damn it!
[Pirate Fleet Leviathan is Raiding The connected dungeon wosih]
DDDAAAMMMNN IIITTT!
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The Breach had taken the form of a tower, or a void it was hard to tell. The armoured arm of the Gashadokuro served as the centre point of this area, reaching up near as they can tell all the way to the top, they were standing on a marble platform with no walls, only a black void in the distance was another identical platform, with familiar figures on it. Julia had one of the men working under her shoot at the distant platform, and a few moments later the arrow came back and nearly hit them from the opposite direction instead lodging in the arm that they had entered through.
[Complete Combat Challenge to proceed to the Next floor Yes/No?]
Julia looked at the notification and selected.
[Yes]
[Defeat Five Turkes to proceed to the second floor]
What appeared before the group was five enormous fat creatures the size of a refrigerator, rough, rough and oval shape with a smooth scaly body. The group immediately got ready to strike down the creatures the moment that they attacked, and thus stood a good couple of awkward minutes weapons raised looking stupid. Eventually Julia just let out a sigh, walked up to the first of the creatures while holding her sword and ran the poor creature through the back of its neck.
"Stop wasting time and finish off the rest."
I stared slack jawed at the 'challenge' that the first floor managed to present, my mind lacking comprehension of whatever the hell this was supposed to be as a second of stairs collapsed into existence from the floor above.
"Did the core fracture when the Dungeon Breached or something?" One of the people voiced their confusion at what was happening.
"Count our blessings, there could be far worse things waiting for us on the upper floors." Julia stated giving me no further clues as to what was happening.
As the group of adventurers left I pressed down on a floor tile and the mechanism I put into place to hide the core for this floor opened up, the core itself was still very cracked and nearly split in two, held together only by the mana I had been feeding it. Without looking away I pulled over one of the corpses that Julia's group just killed and dissolved it into a Schema.
[F Rank Monster Turke-A malformed hybrid of turtle and snake, with all of it's rib bones fused together into a shell and no legs to walk with it cannot move, it is literally useless]
If I had eyes right now they would be twitching.
Would you care to explain how this happened? My question was answered with indistinct screeching, like two children caught in an argument speaking a language I didn't understand. I recalled the question that Julia's man had asked, about whether or not my core had been fractured. Did that have something to do with this walking tumour of a creature? Bah! I don't have time for this! Leviathan is on one of the other floors and I don't even know which one! I floated up to the second floor. This time Julia's group didn't even have to do anything, just wait until the sharks with bat wings suffocated to death on dry land.
I don't have time for this, I passed through more floors looking for the intruders. 3. 4. 5. 6! A pair of fallen angels had appeared on the sixth floor both of them carrying familiar items, bags of holding! By the looks of things they were trying to figure out where the core was. Why I outta!
[Would you like to raid the Dungeon wosih? Yes/No?]
[Yes] [Please select your monsters for the raid]
[50 Lightning Gear Poltergeists]
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Needless to say, both angels looked very confused by the sudden appearance of floating clockwork, that then shot lightning at them both. By that point though they were less confused and more dead and dissolving away.
[Leviathan is Raiding the connected Dungeon klowje]
Gah! I immediately flew up to my core room and started hammering on the interface.
[Would you like to raid the Dungeon klowje? Yes/No?]
I hammered Yes, and selected a group of my Crab people to deal with the latest attack. Leviathan spammed raids, I spammed counter raids, he wasn't even using any of the Bags of Holding he was sending over just forcing me to go and deal with his forces. He didn't have to either, he just had to keep me here spamming counterattacks so that I would be stuck dealing with them, they weren't even triggering the monster attacks on the other floors! You other cores! Do you even realise the amount of danger that all of you are in! You could hear the audible snap as my patience finally ran dry. Hel I need control over my own floor again.
"What are you planning?"
Do. It! Or do you want us to get eaten by that Ship bastard?
"Fine fine."
[Hel has granted you creation privileges in the 'Tower of Trials']
Don't go giving names to my floors by yourself! I calmed myself down. I created several hundred Wisps. Go down to every floor of this tower and activate all of the trials at once. The Wisps flew down the floors throughout the tower as I prepared an appropriate thank you gift for Leviathan for screwing with me. I made a ladder, it's not a complicated ladder, just one designed to collapse together via sliding, one bag of holding attached to the bottom, and another bag of holding attached to the other half of the ladder that when slid together is together inside the first bag of holding.
"What in my name are you planning?"
Thing! Throw the ladder Behind Leviathan! My giant kinetic force slinging hand got it's makeshift spear ready and hurled the damned thing at the ship in front of the fleet like a javelin. I could feel the ground rumble and the bell ring in my proverbial ears as what I created activated but I didn't care, I had five more ready to go thanks to Leviathan's antics and Thing was more than happy to use them to swallow the fleet.
[Various Gods of War are cheering as the Dungeon Keeper casually commits war crimes]
If the Peanut gallery isn't going to be useful would it kindly shut up please?
[Odin is cheering as his god daughter has blessed a good dungeon] She hasn't even blessed me yet! [Odin is sending his god daughter ideas for a blessing for the Dungeon Keeper]
"He hasn't even made a half way decent floor yet!"
[Odin is pointing out that Hel is being rather petty]
God these gods are giving me a headache. What's the blessing you're talking about anyway?
[Using your 'Reanimator' title as the basis the goddess Hel can grant your dungeon the power to return to life those who die within it's halls at fixed points designated by the Keeper]
Okay that's pretty good. For all I know this could just be standard protocol for the Adventurers guild, a new floor has been built after all, and inside of another realm. If I was a adventurer that would be the place I'd get sent to. So I'd like to avoid mass casualties.
[Odin says that you should hurry up, the raid party has stumbled across a doozy]
I set a spot to constantly mass produce war crimes for Thing to to fling down at Leviathan. In the mean time I travelled down to where the Raid party had been stopped, to my surprise by another hybrid monster, and unlike the shark bats or turtle snakes this one was actually good.
[B Rank Monster Quetzal-A seemingly impossible hybrid of Harpy and Lamia, this creature's physical appearance closely resembles that of the God Quetzalcoatl, who has blessed this creature with the power of the Sky, Sun and Agriculture] Oh f-
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I noted to myself that this creature rightfully made the previous floors look like a joke, and that includes the rail gun firing bone giant that used to be a mountain. That's what happens with Fractured core dungeons like this, the dungeon develops a clashing split personality and tries to create two monsters at once, nine times out of ten these broken Chimeric schema's are a joke, non-functioning monsters barely unlucky enough to be alive in the first place. But one time out of ten? You get a 26 foot long wing snake lady wearing the vestments of a god, flying around the broken open dimensional space of the dungeon while spewing fire and tripping you up with vines that she's able to grow out of solid marble.
"Burn in the fires of Quetzalcoatl you ignorant creatures!"
The monstrous lady yet again produced an enormous fire ball to crash down on their heads, a direct channel to her god provided her with a simply hideous mana capacity, but the bizarre way dimension and distance works in this place means that she now had more than a few arrows sticking out of her rear end. The good news was that this creature's schema didn't seem to include a very good grasp of it's powers, it had yet to produce anything more interesting than simple vines with it's powers of agriculture nor has it figured out thermal-dynamics either yet. A lack of experience with her hideously generous toolkit was the only reason any of them were still alive.
"Mages lightning now!" I was was being very strict and very specific with the orders that I was handing out to her forces, we absolutely did not want this thing learning what kinds of powers it's supposed to have. So they were using lightning to chase it down, shields to deflect and soak up fire while archers filled the ignorant abomination full of little lightning rods and their men worked to cut themselves free. Then all of a sudden the snake monster flew below the platform that every one was standing on and they all collectively went pale with the revelation of what was happening. "We're being flanked!" To My shout the Quetzal shot up in the middle of the platform and grabbed hold of the nearest man by his head before slamming him into the ground. "Fire!" I intended to have everyone focus fire on the Quetzal but instead I provided a heads up as the monster puked fire all over them which was then followed up with a full body slam with her tail with enough force to send everyone flying off the side of the platform.
Evidently the bizarre space that loops around on the sides didn't just go from side to side, it also connected top to bottom as well. I slammed face first into one of the platforms with enough force to make my neck snap and shatter my jaw bone, my death was undignified and quick, as for why I am rating it? A few moments later I awoke inside of Thing's body, back at the forward operating base that her group had set up inside of the Dungeon's first floor. She wasn't the first to arrive there, but she wasn't the last either so she got to see several of her men reform inside of the dungeon like newly spawned monsters, and now she had a idea of how.
[Status Effect Rest: Through the generosity of the Dungeon and the blessing of the goddess Hel you have been returned from death Effect: Total Status reduced by 60%, if you die again in the dungeon while 'Rest' is in effect you will not be revived again Duration: 23:59:43]
I let out a sigh as she stood up and brushed herself off as she looked around. Everything was much colder now, which could be a side effect of Rest, but the large ruby red Jewel lodged in the wall that was visibly glowing with power despite the frost gathering on and around it implied that it was actively sucking the heat out of the dungeon. The air was different too, a blessing was in effect on the floor now.
"Huu."
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God damn that was close! I literally got the first floor ready and Hel to give a blessing in the moments that the adventurers were sent flying off of the platform! No matter. With my Hel Giant in place I could go back to managing the mess that was the tower in Hel's realm.
[Dungeon Keeper: Team meeting Dungeon Cores!]
I watched as fifty Gibberish names signed into the Chat, that was the first thing that had to go. An hour later I had replaced all the nonsense names with some semblance of sanity, even though it was unbelievably basic I had each of the cores named from one to Fifty.
[Dungeon Keeper: Now that we have that settled we now have the second matter that has to be addressed]
[Dungeon Keeper: What's the deal with all the hybrid monsters? With the exception of the Snake Bird lady they seem kinda useless]
[Five: She's a Lamia! No she's a Harpy! Lamia! Harpy! Lamia!]
[Five has been banned from Chat for 5 Minutes Reason: 'Come back when you're talking sense']
[Dungeon Keeper: Would someone mind answering my question now?]
[Ouroboros: Lithilas says it's rare, there aren't any in the area where I was born so I never met one before, but occasionally when a core forms something can happen to it that causes it to break open and split apart even though they're still attached to each other resulting in cores with two distinct personalities, now take into account that most newborn cores are somewhere between pups and toddlers in terms of personalities]
Twins! I've got the terrible two's!
[Dungeon Keeper: Are there any cores here in one piece aside from me and you Graves?]
[Various Gods are laughing at the Dungeon Keeper's naivety]
[Ouroboros: Even though they're still one core they usually end up trying to do two different things at the same time, including spawning two different monsters, most of the time the monsters they spawn end up as broken misshapen creatures]
[Dungeon Keeper: And then once in a while they cobble together the likeness of a god and spit out a Total Party Kill?]
[Ouroboros: Correct]
Fantastic.
[Dungeon Keeper: Does anyone have any idea as to How many floors have managed to actually produce functional monsters?]
[A familiar god of the Sun is quite proud of Five]
[Odin recommends Eleven]
[A wise goddess recommends Twenty eight]
[The one who thinks the wise goddess can go suck herself says that 36 has a rather nasty surprise waiting]
[Dungeon Keeper: Four out of fifty isn't bad right?]
A pause while I waited for someone to answer me.
[Dungeon Keeper: Right?]
Oh who am I even Kidding?
[Dungeon Keeper: Graves you work from the top, I'll work from the bottom, we need to go through this nightmare palace one by one and sort out this mess]
"About that." Hel was sitting off to the side sipping her drinks. "I intend to take the Dragon for use as a forward operating base against Lucifer."
Say what?
"With a allied dungeon at the edge of the territory we will be able to invade Lucifer's main base of operations, once you've managed to get the other dungeons into proper fighting shape we'll be able to use them to attack Cocytus."
I smacked myself in the face. You do realise that there are fifty dungeons and a hundred floors worth of work to sort out here right?
"I didn't say we were going to attack immediately." Hel replied bluntly.
The longer you keep me here, the more people that are going to try and invade from my dungeon will arrive!
"I also didn't say that we were going to take our time either." Hel stated as she put her tea down. "It's precisely because there's so much work to do here that we need to divide our tasks, and why we need to start now." She walked back to where Graves was sitting, the legless undead dragon preparing to take off again as she climbed onto it's back.
Fine. I'll be coming along as soon as I fetch some of the other dungeons.
"What's the plan?" Hel asked looking at me suspiciously.
You need to be strict when raising children. Kind, but strict. Right now their monsters are the proverbial teddy bear caught between two warring children that have been torn apart, before I mend it I need to make sure that they don't break it again.
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I used my fire magic to prepare a steaming hot cup of tea for Julia, dumping the remaining boiling water into a basin that had both of her feet inside. Reduced stats and extreme cold was not a good combination.
"Anymore bright ideas?" I asked as he set the kettle down.
"ACHOO!" Julia let out a cute squeak as she sneezed. "Your core's broken." Julia stated as she sniffled.
"Keeper is fine." Apas landed on the nearby balcony and Julia moved for her blade before I stopped her.
"Even if you were at full strength you would be dead before your sword cleared it's sheath." I stated making his opinion known, he had no desire to die from all the air being sucked out of this room. Monsters are known for being crazy over protective over their packs, because a pack consists of an animal's mates and their young. Apas would defend that dungeon with every ounce of fury as a mother bear would her cubs.
"In fact he is inviting you and your little crusade to come visit again at any time that you want." Apas stated as she smirked maliciously. "After all Keeper needs all the mana that he needs to decimate Cocytus." That legitimately surprised Julia. "Lucifer has been sending over raids one after another, and worst, the corpses of dead dungeons over there means to connect to Keeper's and take over the dungeon, thus regaining a foot hold in this world. So he opted to wipe them out, one by one. So he needs all the mana that he can get his hands on."
"He's inviting people into his dungeon who want to kill him just for a little extra mana?" Julia was stunned by what she heard.
"It's no different than what a dungeon normally does." Apas stated shrugging her shoulders.
"There's all kinds of things that are different about this situation!" Julia snapped glaring before sneezing and letting out a sigh.
"Keeper's core is in Helheim right now, at the top of that tower that clobbered all of you. How high did you get again? Fourth? Fifth?" And they could assume that there would be more monsters like that, lots more of them in fact. At this point people of their level were just food for the monsters, or mana sources for the dungeon.
"Try to have fun while climbing the tower, in the mean time my Keeper is going to be busy killing Lucifer's Dungeons!" With that Apas flew off, perhaps to join in on the planning, it was hard to say. Julia in the mean time just put her face in her hands and breathed a sigh of exhaustion.