CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: BECOMING INDISPENSABLE

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Brandr watched as his ‘guests’ went about killing the Guardian of the Fifth Floor. Watching them work was pleasing in its own way. They were all skilled individuals, powerful experts in their respective fields, and even though they were not used to working together, their experience made it a cinch. They did not need to. Thorn’s friend Sarrod could probably handle everything on his own.

This world was strange. Its power system did not match up perfectly with his, but if he were to guess, Sarrod was mid-stage Nascent Soul. However, he had the aura that was indicative of someone preparing to face a tribulation. Brandr frowned. There shouldn’t be a tribulation in the middle of the Nascent Soul tier. The tribulation should be at the end, when he had reached the peak of his tier, a test when ascending to Dao Seeking. How strange. He chalked it up to yet another difference between this world and the world of his birth. Come to think of it, did this world even have tribulations?

Whatever.

Watching these ‘guests’ was interesting, much in the same way watching someone very good at their job could prove interesting, but there was no tension. There was no doubt that they would win, and win they did. If the principal parties weren’t Thorn’s friends, Brandr would be worried because they stood a definite chance of killing their way to his core.

He really lucked out there. Taking Thorn as his dungeon guide was the gift that kept on giving. With such highly placed allies, his safety was ever more assured. Brandr planned to leverage this to win even more favourable terms from the Adventurer’s Guild. Even so, he prepped his defences and made sure that his formations were in tip-top shape in case they decided that seven floors were not enough and a dungeon core would make for a better trophy. They might be Thorn’s friends. They were not his.

Absentmindedly, he turned his attention to his work on the eighth floor. The one designated for the element of earth. In the background, Sarrod, the conjurer, wrapped his eagle in chains so the rest of the party could wail on it to their heart’s content. Brandr sighed. He would need to make the Eight Floor Guardian resistant, if not immune, to such ‘control tactics. With the sixth floor, his options were limited. The giant eagle, Windwake, had too much manoeuvrability. This, combined with an environment that favoured it, meant that he was in danger of creating a monster that the adventurers could never reasonably defeat.

The sixth floor, with its sky islands and open plains, was a terrible place to fight an aerial opponent. To compensate, he made the Sixth Floor Guardian frail while increasing its strength. This allowed it to hurl trees and boulders at its attackers in addition to its wind abilities. The adventurers were unlikely to get many hits in, but any they did would debilitate the guardian and ensure their victory. If he went ahead and found ways to prevent them from restricting its movement, they would never get any hits in.

In truth, this guardian existed largely to frustrate the adventurers and test them in a way they had likely never experienced. It was also an excuse to give them a flying skill, one he knew would be invaluable to the people of the surface. Aerial supremacy was a core cornerstone of war where he was from, and Brandr was sure that the Golden Empire of Basileus would delight in having a skill that gifted them with so great an edge. As the only source of the skill slates that granted this vital skill or, failing that, the equipment that would allow for the creation of a uniform flying unit, Brandr’s dungeon would soon become a favoured supplier of the Basilean army.

That was the goal. He would become so invaluable to the Basileans that they would rather dismember themselves than harm him. He wanted the empire that existed right outside his doors to become his chief protector from any bad actors, hostile parties and dungeon haters. He wanted to create the conditions where the adventurers would rise against their lieges if it meant preserving him. Where the army would rather pacify the religious zealots who feared dungeons and believed them an affront to the gods than cut off their supply.

As Thorn led his tour group through the portal to the seventh floor, Brandr grinned. He watched as they realised that there was nothing else on this floor. Just a pit and a Guardian. With bated breath, he observed as the Old Sage walked out to meet their challenge and bore witness to the protracted battle of spells and blades that erupted afterwards. From his abode above the faeriethorn, the dungeon core beheld the adventurers’ combined disbelief when they claimed their loot and realised just what they had obtained.

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With triumphant eyes, Brandr took stock of them as they argued with each other; the doting grandfather eager for his grandchildren to learn the skill it offered. The druid, torn between his suspicions and his desire for power and knowledge, arguing for patience and tests. The Adept was beside himself, completely stupefied that such a thing was even possible. The confusion of the youths who had none of the knowledge or experience necessary to understand the impact of their latest prize. The accusations of the dungeon pixie as she launched into a tirade against his dungeon knight. Best of all, the yearning he saw in the eyes of the conjurer. A hunger only surpassed only by the bottomless craving he picked up from the huntsman.

The cause of all this, a single tray-sized piece of the Old Sage’s shell. A customised skill crystal that offered to teach ten people a cultivation method named [The Secret Art of the Valorous]. That was it. A simple cultivation method with guaranteed practice methods of the first three tiers of cultivation. With it, a person could cultivate all the way from Essence Gathering to Core Formation.

This was it. That right there was his insurance that Adventurers’ Guild and the empire it served would never destroy him, even protect him. This was how he made himself indispensable.

Skill crystals were rare and exorbitantly expensive since they required a ritual to create. The people of this world needed to train for years to develop their skills and techniques. It had taken a decade for Thorn to create his signature [Blight Blade] technique. As such, special schools, the equivalent of sects in his world, existed just to train people and pass on skills. Their only other options were finding masters to be apprenticed to or performing ‘feats’ noteworthy enough to earn the acknowledgement and reward of the will of the world. These paths were easy enough if you had great talent or a lofty background but far out of reach for the average person.

This was familiar to Brandr. Talent, wealth and power set people apart even on the worlds he once ruled. Hoarding of resources, knowledge and power was common among the upper echelons. Even he was guilty of this. The strange part was their ascension.

The only way to ascend to higher tiers of power in the world of Tignar was to grow your parameters. It was simple enough, advance in at least three parameters, and you will ascend in rank. The only bizarre thing was the fact that there was no unified method to do so. The so-called ‘secret arts’ that helped a person advance were so exclusive that despite four hundred years of life and fame, Thorn had never obtained the opportunity to learn one.

For the people of Tignar, magic was akin to a muscle. It grew with use. Its growth, like those of the muscles, was dictated by genetics, aptitude, training, diet and supplementary ‘resources’ as well as Tignar’s special feats. It was for this reason, the fae could sit pretty and ascend through age and casual use of their powers. People here grew their mana and then used this mana to develop their other parameters to supernatural levels.

To Brandr, this was madness. He never would have wrapped his head around it if he hadn’t seen it in effect. To this day, he had no idea what the so-called secret arts were or how they affected this since they were the prized possessions of religious sects and influential noble houses, so he was left with assumptions. What he did know was that Tignar’s path of power was very compatible with his brand or cultivation.

His dungeon fae were proof of this. Thorn, Echo and all the other practitioners of [Elemental Sigils] he created had repeatedly proved this. Thus a plan was hatched. If Thorn’s experiences were correct, a shocking ninety per cent of Tignar’s rankers never advanced beyond what they called the Adept stages of the fifth and sixth ranks. Thorn himself was at the fourth rank until recently. Even his friend Ulak, despite his talent, the backing of one of the most powerful dwarven noble houses and the formal acknowledgement and blessing of the world will, had faltered at the eighth rank. Thorn’s other friend Sarrod was at the end of his rope but still hadn’t broken past the ceiling of the tenth rank.

Truth be told, his dungeon was too difficult. Brandr was forced to admit this after listening in on several of Gauwyn’s council meetings where the topic came up. Despite having hundreds of adventurers delve into his dungeon, only twelve parties had made it to the fifth floor. The higher-ups were worried that he was growing beyond their level to keep in check. Most ancient dungeons had a hundred floors, he had only five confirmed ones, and those five were already a grindstone for adventurers. Who knew what would happen when he had ten times that number?

This would address all that and more.

Not only did this allow the adventurers to grow with him, but it also bound them to him. How? The ‘secret art’ would vastly increase the speed of their growth, but without the heavens of his dungeon world, they could never advance to a new tier. This meant they could ‘grow’ all they wanted outside the dungeon, but when the time came to advance to the Heaven Reaching tier or Core Formation, or when the time came for their tribulations, they would always have to return to his dungeon. It did not matter if there was a drawback. In fact, he made sure to put it in the technique. No one was going to turn down a straight path to power.