"A monster made of rock that had roughly a humanoid shape was behind the bars of a prison cell. On its head there glowed a single black eye that glared at the first bricks that were being laid down for the foundations of a grandiose structure that would come to be known as the Legendary Labyrinth Karl." A thought process ran inside of the very eye mentioned, because Karl was suffering a very light case of engaging in self-righteous monologues due to being unable to speak to anyone else.
"No that is completely wrong, the name is ridiculous and how can I lay the foundational bricks when I am actually just digging?" He had opted to make the entrance of his future dungeon in the basement of Fort Orlov, in the only cell he had found the keys to. It was convenient that he would already have a door without the need to buy it.
A solid door for free!
"And they always say that there is no free lunch in the world in cultivation novels. Bah! Liars! A door for free right here!" He continued to watch the digging process closely from the top of his minion's head where he was embedded.
"How much are a door to a cell anyway? Probably not that much." He ranted while watching his elemental build the entrance tunnel, as his second minion was still in the wilderness, constructing more pitfall traps.
Karl felt a long suppressed feeling swelling inside him, the urge that was being satisfied, an instinct he had not fully realized he even had. He would finally have a place of his own and was fascinated by its every inch being build, every grain of dust being moved by his tireless servant. It was fascinating to the point he began to worry about his mental health. How could moving rock be even a little interesting?
And yet, it was.
"What about a lift? Should I make a tunnel straight down like before? Should I make a large spiraling stairs down? I can also make the tunnel sloped to get the same result." He thought while fully captivated by the task.
Karl ordered his sole worker to continue for some time before deciding to make vertical spiral tunnel with just mild downward angle, planning to connect tunnels to its side in the future. He did not want stairs because any sort of wheeled instrument would have trouble traversing them. He had no idea why would he need the functionality, but he wanted to plan into the future.
After all the planning Karl remembered a minuscule problem that concerned Tyrn Riven. He was sure that the youngster was safe with the gang as long as he seemed useful to them. They had no reason to dispose of someone who had the potential of being useful to Wolves, yet there was an issue lurking in that logic. The Wolves had to believe that he was not completely gone.
Why would they keep a nuisance like Tyrn around if they believed that Karl was completely out of their reach, gone forever? It was the option Karl needed to prevent. He needed them to hope and keep nurturing their presumed asset.
"Yeah, that should do it." Karl's eyes lingered on a round stone that looked similar to him. He ordered his Elemental to stop working for a second and turn the stone into his double. It was quite easy given that Karl looked like a black stone with no engravings or other hard to duplicate features.
"Sending the bird flying back and forth a bit with this stone in its talons should do the trick. I can almost see the confused thugs thinking how desperately I am searching for their hostage." Karl marveled at his genius. "I love minions, you just send them out when the evil called work rears its ugly head and that's it!"
Maybe being a dungeon was really better than being an elvish pop star.
Well, but any proper elvish pop stars surely had fan girls.
Yet fan girls could not fly, unless thrown out of the window.
"But why would an elvish pop star throw his fan girl out of a window?" Karl thought seriously for a second. "Unless the fan girl was a stalker and witnessed the elf murdering a different fan girl. Then she might even jump out of the window herself out of desperation, the wet dreams of her idol's perfection shattered forever."
Karl continued in his brief thoughts on the fundamentals of the universe and suddenly, he noticed that the Elemental had already dug a long vertical spiral that was the continuation of the short horizontal access tunnel that led into the prison cell.
He needed to secure the entrance and as a proper dungeon, or a dungeon that was trying to be a proper dungeon, or rather was urged to be one by his new instincts, his property's safety was of great concern. He walked back and stopped at the prison cell's door, his first line of defense.
"I need to build something small before the prison door, it is my precious door!" He immediately rejected the spike trap, as the little holes were still visible. Instead, he decided to go with a wide pitfall trap that consisted of many meters deep hole covered with a thin layer of rock. The thin layer was being supported by the very same spikes from underneath and sliding the spikes back into the horizontal holes at the very top of the hole acted as the layer's support. This way he was able to activate and deactivate the pitfall trap using the spikes and even was able to close the trap from above with the spikes to prevent anyone from escaping. For a good measure, he added extra spike traps to the very bottom of the pitfall trap, to gain an option to deal the final blow to anyone who fell inside.
"Default position is disarmed, definitely disarmed." Karl remembered the unfortunate accident with his first spike trap and did not want to repeat it. A proper dungeon should possess some level of safety regulation after all!
He pushed his demons quickly back into the back of his mind and prepared to start with the main dish.
"Right, it is time to see my repertoire again." Karl called for his status screen and dug deeper into the options, selecting the structures he could build. He needed more variety of traps and some that were more reliable and deadlier than the simple spike trap.
[Basic Tunnel Element 1 000Ma 0/s], [Basic Trap Element 10 000Ma 0/s], [Advanced Tunnel Element 10 000Ma 0/s], [Advanced Trap Element 100 000Ma 1/s]
[Basic Tunnel Element(2) 10 000Ma 0/s], [Basic Trap Element(2) 100 000Ma 1/s], [Advanced Tunnel Element(2) 100 000Ma 1/s], [Advanced Trap Element(2) 1 000 000Ma 10/s],
[Gunk Pile 500 000Ma 5/s], [Abandoned Graveyard 2 000 000Ma 8/s]
[Void Well(2) 10 000 000Ma 25/s]
[Dungeon Portal(2) 100 000 000Ma 10/s]
He could not believe how long he had not build anything using the system menu, it was definitely not normal for a dungeon, but when one had a hammer, there was the option of not seeing every problem as a nail. However, now was the time to use it extensively. The last time he had examined the Basic Tunnel Element and the Basic Trap Element and took just a quick look at the advanced versions. If he kept his pitfall handling Elemental in action, he could generate fifty juice per second, meaning he got three thousand mana a minute, or nearly two hundred thousand in an hour.
Karl focused on the Basic Tunnel Element and began scrolling though his options that appeared in front of him in the form of a hologram. This time he decided to go through everything more deeply, as he had plenty of time to do so.
Rock tiles kept changing in front of his black eye, with different colors and made of different materials. Wall reinforcements followed, including even luminescent materials that glowed in various colors, although the intensity of the light was really mild. Karl decided to use them as light strips along his walls and ceiling. That was about it and he fluently switched to viewing Basic Trap Elements that revolved around all kinds of spikes and pointy objects extending from the walls, even blades. When he ventured into Advanced Trap Elements he had even found a trap that consisted of a set of holes in the walls that were connected to a reservoir of magma that after touching a trigger tile on the floor ejected a stream of lava that was being kept under high pressure by a big stone lying on the surface of the lava reservoir that needed to be build in the wall next to the trap.
There were more elaborate traps like it, a trap that ejected pressurize water, a trap that slammed the whole tunnels floor against the ceiling and vice versa, a trap that by breaking a weakened wall ejected tremendous volumes of water into the tunnel, hopefully propelling people back towards the exit, a trap that set loose a giant ball of rock lumbering through the tunnel. It did not always followed the logic that energy had to be consumed to keep some of the traps active, but in general, all the more fanciful traps were contained in the Advanced Trap Element category and cost one mana upkeep per second.
Something that Karl would naturally never pay.
"Why should I pay upkeep for anything? I have never needed the Dig option either." Karl decided immediately to watch the more complicated traps only as an inspiration and use his Elemental to build them instead, using the most basic traps that did not cost anything for upkeep as triggers."It was quite a flood of information, but let's continue."
He forced his way through the rest of the tunnel elements and traps and his jaw had nearly fell off. [Advanced Tunnel Element(2) 100 000Ma 1/s] contained what appeared to be a regular space ship airlock doors, lifts that would make galactic empires proud, downright huge castle gates and many more. Within the trap category were traps blatantly shooting lasers from the walls. Still, the advanced traps of the second tiers consumed ten mana per second and Karl could imagine how the costs would add up if he began using the options that required upkeep. He wanted to build a huge, functional dungeon, not a space ship.
"When I have more mana, we can do a space ship, but how much would that cost?" Karl quickly calculated in his mind how much it might cost to build if his system really contained everything to construct a space travel capable base and he just shook his head. Some components would certainly be in the higher tiers and the cost together would be surely in thousands of mana per second. That said, he had absolutely no idea how much would a powerful energy core or engines cost if the system even contained them.
"No, for now I have just my trusty Earth Elemental to construct for me advanced traps. Let's make some surefire way to squash opposition." Karl pushed his infinitely long tunnel idea to the back of his mind as pathetic, again, and thought about a trap he would place right behind a wooden door he had positioned right where the original prison cell's wall should have been. A simple wooden door did not cost upkeep to create and he happily created this Advanced Tunnel Element. It cost him a few minutes time and no upkeep, so it was a breeze and the result was a sturdy wooden door that he liked very much,
He had to do much more of them in the future.
"Fine, at this point, people here are aggressive intruders, so the kill zone now." He thought for a while on a mechanism he could use until he came up with an idea of a fake right wall. The right side wall would be actually the part of a huge right triangle with its longest side being tiled by forty five degrees and the triangle's weight would be resting on it. As the consequence, the huge triangle made of rock would need to be held in place by extended spike traps placed inside the wall, off the tunnel to the right. The idea was that if he retracted the spikes, the triangle would come free and slid along its tilted base. From the perspective of the tunnel, the right wall would be moving left until it slammed against the left wall, crushing everything in between. Naturally, it would be sliding left and down, meaning the floor tile needed to be made a part of the trap too, because it would halt the triangle's movement if it was not a part of it.
The resulting shape was that of a huge triangle that had in its shorter vertical side the imprint of a tunnel,
The whole contraption was the work of a genius and Karl began a monumental construction work to complete it, but realized a vital defect of his invention when the work was well underway. If people simply stayed in the cavity, they would move to the side with the triangle and would be trapped instead of crushed, which defeated the whole purpose of the trap.
"What a useless complicated mechanism! Who has invented such a faulty thing!" Karl raged, but had only himself to blame. "No, I need something more straightforward! Not a difficult to construct nonsense!"
Karl then opted to make a thin, fake ceiling made of rock and above it suspended a huge rock slab in the shape of the tunnel, but slightly smaller to accommodate for debris. It was again hanging in the air on the tips of half-extended spikes. He had not opted for the solution at first, because the fake ceiling was needed to cover the spikes, but it proved to be the more simple option in the end. He had unleashed his minion and watched him shape the rock with the perfection that was only to be expected of his kind. The trap would be really huge measuring forty meters and would be triggered manually by him operating the spikes.
At the end and the beginning, Karl added a different type of door, thick extendable vertical bars that would provide him with the option to enclose the space of the trap. He had eliminated the visible holes by having the upper bars perfectly aligned with the ceiling before coming down and the slots for them on the floor had been covered by a thin reinforced floor tile that would cover the whole tunnel. The thin floor tile would simply be shattered after the bars came down into its holes. After a while of thinking, he decided to use the same principle at the top, making the steel bars completely undetectable.
"That is for the main dish." Karl was happy to invent a trap that would certainly kill even the monster rabbit from before, if the creature was small enough to fit inside his tunnel.
While looking at his creation, he realized that covering the holes with a thin layer of reinforced floor tiles was a good strategy and decided to use it everywhere from that point on. Having almost reached the downward spiraling tunnel, he decided to create a space on all sides filled with concealed spike traps and enclose the space with the vertical sliding bars. At the very beginning of the slope down, he added one extra wooden door for the good measure.
"Spilling some really slippery soap here might be fun, people would slide all the way down." Karl chuckled inside of his mind, thrilled by the image. In the end he added a huge boulder at the very beginning of the spiral tunnel that was ready to fall through the fake ceiling and roll down on his command. He had always wanted to make the trap and something was telling him that its efficiency would not fail him. The downward spiraling tunnel was the ideal place for it.
"Fine, now that I feel the very basic sense of safety, it is time to address the elephant in the room." He was very satisfied with his measures, he wasted no mana upkeep on none of his traps and even then had a lot of deadly options. There was still the issue of some Earth attribute cultivator that might just breeze through his traps, but he decided to take care of that complicated issue later.
"Channels of acid surrounding the facility can be a solution, but enough of that." His mind raced with possibilities when he stared at his additional building options.
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He had the same building options as the last time except for the [Temple of Earth(2) 5 000 000Ma 15/s] which had disappeared. Karl did not think it was substantial, as he would extend the reach of his dungeon to the place that enabled him the option. It was only a matter of time. This time, he was not stingy and decided to build all of the structures even if he would be forced to tear them down right after. He knew very well how game changing could the options that environment dependent features offered be and with time, he planned to at least try out every possibility he encountered.
Karl decided to start with [Gunk Pile 500 000Ma 5/s] that should take under three hours to build if he canceled both of his Elementals. He constructed another tunnel at the bottom of the spiral and placed the structure at the side. The process was peculiar, he just needed to build a short straight tunnel branching from the main one and place the structure in there in the hologram mode and it began building itself.
Slowly.
Sometimes, he was glad that he was a dungeon and time was merciful on him. The three hours passed like a breeze with the whirling mass of magic and rock doing whatever it did and lo, there it was, a Gunk Pile!
The tunnel had been widened by the Build spell and there were multiple piles of gunk that had to stink terribly, because they even looked like smelling bad. For a good measure, Karl decided that a good old heavy wooden door was a good fit there and promptly build one.
And than build another one just for a good measure.
After all that he and his faithful Earth Elemental began running back and forth in between the piles of gunk, but did not see anything spectacular, or even remotely useful. He had given up on trying to identify the origin of the gunk after a few minutes and looked if his status could provide some guidance.
Karl Gulden
Level 2 Dungeon Core
Mana Regeneration - 100/s
Spells- [Dig], [Build], [Manage]
Summons- [Skeleton(Pestilence) 5/s], [Goblin(Filth) 5/s]
[Experience 350/1000]
"Goblin? Do not tell me that it is the only effect of that pile of trash." Karl had never seen a Goblin as an option and knew it had to be the effect of the structure. He focused on the Manage option and another transparent screen appeared in front of him.
[Gunk Pile 500 000Ma 5/s]
Gunk Regeneration - 10/s
Spells- [Build]
Summon- [Goblin(Filth) 600Gu 1Gu/s]
Mesmerized by all his options, Karl immediately chose the nested [Build] option while calculating his new summoning possibilities.
[Latrine 100 000Ma],, [Waste Dump 100 000Ma]
Karl's enthusiasm lessened immediately, when even after building both of the buildings in the area of the Gunk Pile, they appeared to serve no special purpose other than the obvious one.
"Meh, what have I even expected from the cheapest structure? Let's focus on something more juicy." Even then, the sheer number of Goblins he would be able to generate through the new Gunk resource was considerable. Although they were probably even weaker than the skeletons. However, Karl's eyes were already focused on the next structure that looked much more promising. He quickly walked to the next prepared side tunnel and selected his most anticipated option.
[Void Well(2) 10 000 000Ma 25/s]
It took Karl longer than a full day of channeling his mana into the construction with all his Mana Regeneration capacity to finally materialize a crack in space that glowed with unnatural energy that kept seeping through it, the deep purple substance shone with ominous light and was clearly not entirely safe for ordinary people. The room turned bigger than the one created after building the Gunk Pile with its diameter about thirty meters, a few thin spires from black metal supporting the ceiling with the purple energy snaking upwards along them. Karl quickly summoned his skeleton, as he had not had any minions summoned during the construction and walked into the room, greedily choosing the Manage option.
[Void Well(2) 10 000 000,25/s]
Void Regeneration - 100/s
Spells- [Build], [Void Burst 1 000 000Vo],
Summon- [Warped Flesh(Void) 100Vo 5Vo/s], [Void Horror(Void) 600Vo 100Ma 10Vo/s 5Ma/s], [Void Knight(Void) 10 000Vo 10 000Ma 40Vo/s 10Ma/s]
Karl was at this point reacting like a cobra, launching his consciousness at the Build button to see more options that he could devour with his greedy eyes.
[Void Crystal 1 000 000Vo], [Void Portal(3) 100 000 000Vo 100 000 000Ma 250Ma/s],
"Holy! That is expensive, but I do not need tier three structures now. I need bulk and options." He was curious what the Void Crystal did and quickly began constructing one. He had to begin somewhere and there was no reason not to begin with that particular option. The purple mass in the middle began immediately condensing at one point at the one of the two black spires, slowly creating a purplish substance there. It was clear that it would take a while anyway and Karl switched his attention to the summons.
"It is definitely a tournament arc now, but I do not need silly heroes, students, soldiers or whatever. It will be my minions' testing ground!" He waited patiently for the Void Crystal to be build, the time seemed to pass almost instantly as he kept fantasizing about his future greatness.
Sadly, the void crystal did not provide any kind of description, his system being stingy about explanations as usual. He had to find out what it did.
A second later, he did not need any explanation, because it was clear what it did after he had tried to summon one [Void Horror(Void) 6 000Vo 100Ma 10Vo/s 5Ma/s].
A hunched monster with deep purple skin like silk appeared near him, its two hands extended into sharp claws and its eyes shining with bright purple light. It had no legs, as its torso was submerged in a swirling purple mist that floated above ground and the space around it seemed darker than usual, the dim light of Karl's skeleton's eyes that he traditionally used to lit his tunnels lost the battle instantly and was sucked into the monster. The structure was still lit by the purple Void that danced in the middle on the two supports and in the horror's eyes, but it was like the other light had been stolen, consumed by the purplish monster. Its face reminded him of a dog's maw with its teeth bare, the purple substance swirling down in its throat that was visible through its teeth. Karl felt that the monster had a similar demoralizing effect as undead, but the feeling seemed less repulsive and more unnatural, just wrong. He did not envy anyone who would find himself fighting the minion.
Especially in the dark tunnels, it would surely make the incoming heroes soil their pants.
"Wait, my dungeon will not be attracting heroes or adventurers at all, there are not any!" He reminded himself that he would probably be leaning more to the offensive side of dungeoneering.
"Wait, why has it popped into existence instantly?" Karl's attention focused on the Void Crystal and understood why it did not take the logical sixty seconds that it should
"Oh, man! This structure is OP!" Karl could not believe his eyes. Void Crystals obviously served the purpose of storing Void in them that could be used later. He was sure that their number was not limitless, but it certainly opened a terrifying option to hoard Void to use it later for a burst of force in a short assault.
"This is a vital option to explore for later, I need to find out the maximum number of Void Crystals I can make." Karl was more and more wondering why what he was doing at the moment did not provoke any Heavenly Tribulations and was inclined that the rumors were true and something really terrible had befallen the Heavens. He could not imagine that him playing with Void would be alright if everything worked as it should in a cultivation world.
"That is good news, but also a little bit scary. What if the demonic cultivators can exploit the same fact to their benefit?" An unease gripped Karl and he no longer felt safer even with his newly found advantage.
"If the Heavens has truly fallen, it will be the race to the top and judging by the state of Jinsheng, it has already began." Karl immediately dismissed all his summons and began creating more Void Crystals just in case.
He discovered that he did not need to wait almost three hours for each of the crystals to be created, but he could just queue the construction in the building and go away. he decided to furiously queue an insane amount of Void Crystals and summon his Elemental again to expand his dungeon.
"This is annoying!" He found out that he was able to summon the elemental only in a few particular parts of the dungeon and had to travel halfway up the spiral to summon it. It was good that the Elemental ran on mana, not Void, which reminded him of his idle Gunk resource.
"Wait, let's build the last structure first, that is the priority!" He walked back and started to construct [Abandoned Graveyard 2 000 000Ma 8/s]. He had not even considered to build the Portal before leveling into next stage, because it would take him ages to channel the ridiculous amount of mana.
[Abandoned Graveyard 2 000 000Ma 8/s]
Rot Regeneration - 100/s
Dread Regeneration - 1/s
Spells- [Build]
Summon- [Zombie(Rot) 5 000Ro 10Ro/s], [Skeleton Warrior(Death) 10 000Ro 10 000Dr 1 000Ma 10Ro/s 5Ma/s], [Dread Knight(Dread) 10 000 000Dr 10 000Ma 1Dr/s 50Ma/s]
Karl immediately chose the build option, before his brain was fried due to the unbelievably overpriced Dread Knight.
[Crypt 1 000 000Ro], [Mausoleum 1 000 000Dr], [Early Grave 1Exp]
"This is even more complicated than the Void resource!" Karl honestly did not get how was he supposed to amass the required ten million Dread with a measly one Dread per second.
"Suppose the Mausoleum option is the equivalent of the Void Crystal, am I supposed to be hoarding Dread for half a year for a single knight? That is ridiculous!" He quickly lost his feeling of being overpowered and started to search for a catch in the whole Dread mechanic.
"The problem has to do with the Early Grave, but I will never spend Experience points to just summon a silly unit." He just rage clicked the Mausoleum option many times along with the Crypt option and abandoned the disappointing Abandoned Graveyard.
No, it was rather frustrating than disappointing. He could use just the Zombie for his tournament.
"Fine, it is time to put things in order." He decided to construct a mental map of his dungeon.
There was the access tunnel connected to the prison cell. It led into the downward spiraling tunnel that he dubbed the Spiral, which he planned to extend further down in the future, but it was already almost a mile deep. At its end was the main South Tunnel that was the main tunnel for the time where all the buildings were, that was his Monster District. At that point he decided to start building an arena for his tournament to the west, introducing the Laboratory where he planed to test anything that needed testing, in this case his minions.
"Isn't it too arrogant to call one tunnel with three buildings a district? Nah, we are in the cultivation world now!" Karl chuckled in his mind with an evil voice. He did not stop for even a second to doubt about building an arena and call it the Laboratory.
The construction proceeded slowly, but smoothly and the completion of the Laboratory was just a matter of time. He opted for a huge circular room that had a deep pit in its midst that was only a few meters in diameters smaller and a good thirty feet deep. He positioned himself at the high ledge created by that design and prepared the first opponents. In total, he planned to test his [Zombie(Rot) 5 000Ro 10Ro/s], [Warped Flesh(Void) 100Vo 5Vo/s], [Void Horror(Void) 600Vo 100Ma 10Vo/s 5Ma/s], [Void Knight(Void) 10 000Vo 10 000Ma 40Vo/s 10Ma/s], [Skeleton(Pestilence) 5/s], [Goblin(Filth) 600Gu 1Gu/s] and had to run back and forth to his buildings, because the minions could only be summoned there.
For reference, he planned to pit every monster against his skeleton first, creating a basic skeleton benchmark that would indicate how many skeletons that particular minion could handle.
First was a little green creature roughly a meter tall armed with a dagger that did not look particularly sharp. It tried to do damage to the skeleton, but the dagger proved to be absolutely ill suited for the fight and goblins were able to fight the skeleton to a draw only when they were ten against one and even then it could not be said with certainty that the skeleton would not manage to get from under the heap of goblins and kill them if given enough time. Repeating the goblin fight with a zombie was even more hopeless, because goblins were unable to dog pile it due to its greater strength. Karl slowly understood that Goblins would be totally useless against particular types of opponents. Thankfully they might be well matched against humans, as their daggers would be effective against them.
"That's it for Goblins. Might be useful against humans, but ill suited against monster, meaning useless in dungeon defense as my dungeon will be probably most threatened by high level cultivators and monsters." Karl sighed, but the Gunk Pile still cost him only five mana upkeep and was able to sustain ten Goblins and he decided to keep the structure.
Karl's skeleton benchmark continued with the zombie, but he already knew what to expect due to his earlier three versus one battle. After a few fights it was obvious that one zombie could take on two skeletons with a reasonable chance to win.
"Oh my, that means that I can have ten zombies for just eight mana upkeep with one Abandoned Graveyard. That is very good. " Karl's enthusiasm was cooled down when he realized that the zombies were quire slow, much slower than the skeletons. They were extremely unsuitable for ranged fights or chasing down frankly anything, as their speed was really underwhelming. Karl estimated that a zombie's run speed was equal to him swiftly walking to a toilet.
That would hardly catch anyone.
Another skeleton had risen from the ground and against it entered an entirely new opponent, Warped Flesh(Void). If was a disfigured humanoid figure with muscles bulging everywhere and visible pulsing veins that circulated its blood, obviously laced with purple Void, through the monster's system. Its height was considerable, two meters and it looked physically strong with its hand having only three fingers that looked more like tentacles than ordinary fingers with bones. Its eyes were purple like with all the other Void summons, but its teeth were not pronounced, it did not seem to be equipped for bite attacks at all.
The opponents ran against each other and Karl noticed that their speeds were comparable with the Warped Flesh slightly quicker than the skeleton. The skeleton initiated a swing from right to left aimed at the Warped Flesh's head and its opponent made a mirror attack from left to right with its hand. The rusted sword hit the monster's head with no visible effect and the skeleton's head flew away the next second, the single blow turning it into a pile of bones.
"Now we are talking!" Karl was surprised by the obviously one sided duel. He quickly repeated the battle with five skeletons, but the result was still the same. The rusted swords were simply too dull to cause a critical injury and the Warped Flesh won even against ten skeletons facing it. After a few matches, it lost only once when a lucky skeleton managed to stab it through its eye.
After more combinations, Karl made the decision to test Void Horror against multitude of opponents and was pleasantly surprised when finding out the monster quire durable. It could take on anything he could throw at it. After some thinking, Karl arrived to the conclusion that his monsters had simply too bad equipment to actually harm Void Horror. None of his minions possessed good quality sharp weapons and the Void Horror had a tremendous advantage in all fights possessing both speed and strength. He was interested in the match up of Skeleton Warrior against the Void Horror, but he did not have enough Dread to do the test.
"Fine, let's wrap this up. Here comes the star of our show!" Karl made the skeleton that carried him run back to the Monster District to summon the Void Knight for the last set of matches.
Karl admired a little over two meters tall figure in a full plate armor that held a robust two handed sword in its one had like it was a toothpick, its eyes glowing with purple light, having the armor plates engraved with runes and depictions of horrific beasts emitting the same glow. Suddenly, the robust knight turned with the speed of the wind and its sword heavily engraved with similar runes shone with bright purple light while moving in a wide arc. In its path a purple light had been emitted turning into a projectile that quickly moved to bisect the incoming Void Horror.
The fight was over just with that one move.
"That is my boy! How many can I make again?" Karl was ecstatic and quickly pitted the Void Knight against every opponent he had in his repertoire, but none was his match. The only one who was even capable of damaging it was the Void Horror with its claws, but it was always dead long before it managed to get into its striking range. Karl calculated that if he build two Void Wells, he would be able to summon five of them and the upkeep cost for one would be twenty mana, which was incredible. It was definitely his most efficient combat unit at this point unless it had a weakness he did not know of.
"I cannot spend one hundred mana upkeep on them, even if I make two now I won't be able to summon my Elemental anymore and that is crucial." Karl mulled over his situation and decide he had to do two tasks. The first was to farm monster kills to level up and the second was to find the building that had something to do with earth element. It had popped up in his status when he had been in his old labyrinth and he would be forced to make a forward base there to claim the prize.
He had seen the Void Knight operate, he was sure that the cost of the summons that did not require buildings was deliberately much higher and it was inefficient to keep using the expensive ones that were not generated from buildings. He had seen how powerful dungeon structures could be and decided to reinforce his base and start searching for more buildings, hoping that his pitfall building Elemental had built enough of the traps and he did not need to summon him again.
"Wait, at what paint I have canceled all my summons to build faster?" Karl's mind froze, when he realized that he had made a tiny mistake in his plans. "My Bird Force One! I hope nothing serious happened."