The fight with the wolves had brought a great loss of personals to the dungeon, but the credits gained from killing them had even things out. Moreover, the owners had gotten something extra, brought to them on a silver platter.
The gains included 3 Level ups, one new monster, two new skills, which unfortunately, his ants couldn’t use, because of them having no wind affinity at all, and finally the completion of the third floor.
About the skill points, they decided to put one level worth of points in wisdom every five levels.
Adding 30 skill points to intelligence the status turned out as,
Status
Self / Dungeon
Name
None
Race
Crystal
level
8
Affinity
Dark, Fire, Life
Rank
0
Job
Dungeon Core
Nature
(+50)Neutral
Class
None
Titles
Born Killer, Named Helper, Fairy’s Blessing
Health
85
Health Reg.
1.1/min
Mana
1050/1140(-90)
Mana Reg.
1.3/min
Vitality
8
Knowledge
102
Resistance
10
Intelligence
24
Skills
(Passive)
Beginner
Telepathy, Mana Presence lv(1), Mana Regeneration Lv(1), Soul shifting
Skills (Active)
Beginner
Outburst(Special), *Locked*, *Locked, Meditation Lv(3), Wind cyclone lv(3),
Intermediate
Wind Blade Lv(9)
Skill points
0
Being content with his overflowing mana Rocky giggled feverishly. And Minnie like always shook her head seeing him act like an idiot.
“Having fun, Are we?”
“No, just marveling at this feeling. I don’t know why, but I am feeling powerful for some reason.”
Rocky spoke giving a toothy grin.
But Minnie gave him another surprise saying, “That is because your mana has crossed the first small boundary, this feeling of strength will increase even more once you reach level 10.”
“Huh why is that?”
“Because then you will get a free skill at that point.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but don’t get your hopes up. The chance of one receiving an active powerful skill is almost negligible.”
And that actually turned him mood a bit bitter.
“Damn.” He jested. Then he shook his head making weird noises and slapped his face. He turned around to look at Minnie, and seriously spoke the grave matter which was haunting him.
“Minnie, I think, we need to strengthen our dungeon somehow.”
And the fairy who wasn’t unknown to the danger that they were in just yesterday, approved his suggestion saying, “Yes I agree. We both know how near we were to death by the hands of the wolf. I think we have been relying on our luck too much.”
Rocky snorted, but nodded giving reason.
“Yeah, If it wasn’t for that little cub…” but was cut short by Minnie who started repaying the real problems that they had.
“But the problem is that the option to customize the dungeon will only open once we reach floor number ten, and before that we have to make do somehow.”
The words rang inside Rockies head like a bell, because Minnie had somehow forgotten to tell him about the rewards for reaching the tenth floor.
“What customize? I didn’t see anything related to that on the Dungeon store.”
Understanding that she had made a mistake, Minnie tried to play it cool, but looking at Rockies eyes made her chest feel hot and she looked away.
“Of course you did not see it.” Her voice turned into whispers by the time she ended her sentence, “The option was locked, so…”
‘Strange…’ he thought, but let her be and gave her another chance to salvage her pride.
“Anyways what will that option grant us…”
Which Minnie perfectly explained saying, “Stuff like skills, potions, weapons, floor customizations, monster variations, evolutions, but the most important thing for every young dungeon…”
“.…”
“Traps!”
“….”
Minnie understood the reason for his silence after all, the store was the most precious thing that a dungeon had, and she had forgot to tell him about it. She quickly changed the topic.
“Oh? So should I instruct the ants to dig…” But was cut in short by Rocky, who insisted on doing something else first.
“No, let’s buy some monsters first.”
“Okay.” And she complied with his request.
Fiddling with the interface Minnie brought out the store to see if any monster variation was available, but unfortunately the store was still as barren as ever, not including the inclusion of Stones name in the store.
Dungeon interface / Status
Monster
Home /Store
Dc(875) / Mana(590/1140)
Name(Rank)
Mana reserved
Price(DC)
Name
Mana reserved
Price(DC)
Ant egg(0)
5
10
Bee egg(0)
5
50
Ant worker(0)
10
50
Bee worker(0)
10
100
Ant soldier(0)
20
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
100
Bee soldier(0)
25
250
Ant queen(1)
100
500
Bee queen(1)
100
1000
Stone the Wolf(0) (UQ)
300
500
Only one specimen allowed.
---LOCKED---
They looked through the store and something caught Rockies eyes.
“Why is the wolf a unique monster?” He asked and Minnie replied looking bored saying,
“Probably because he has slight affinities with other element, although his species is known to only have wind attribute…”
“Oh? So what are we going to buy this time? Should I bring the wolf out? I have enough mana for him to reserve, but what is with its mana expectancy. Isn’t it absurd?”
Brought to light by Rocky, Minnie checked what he was talking about and found it questioning too.
“Huh, now that I see it… well, there could be a variety of reasons for it. One that he is a monster from outside of our dungeon type, and second that, maybe he is subconsciously fighting against the dungeons control. So it is taking much more mana to control him, than otherwise would have been required.”
“Oh?” Rocky nodded in understanding, before asking, “So more soldier ants it is?”
Minnie gave an alternate suggestion.
“Um, why don’t we buy the ant queen? I mean it will continuously lay egg every hour, and it being a ranker herself, she will probably be a lot stronger than the wolf! What do you say?”
Rocky weighted the benefits with the presence that the wolf had, and in the end the ant’s ability to lay eggs won his heart.
Rocky turned to Minnie and nodded his head, who smiled back and bought the Queen in return. They waited for the wonderful performance of the mana and light to commence, but proving them wrong, something entirely different, but oddly familiar happened from the summoning.
No dots of light appeared, and instead a dark black whirling gate opened on the roof; similar to the one from which Minnie had appeared from. It came into existence and expanded till it became 10 meters wide.
Comparing both of this and the other one was like comparing a fish to a shark, the difference in size was that obvious.
The gate appeared and hurriedly closed, before dropping something heavy into the room.
*Boom*
The floor shook, and dust scattered everywhere and blocked their view of the outside world.
Both Rocky and Minnie excitedly waited for the dust to scatter, so they could marvel at the being which could create a mini earthquake just by dropping onto the ground.
And when the dust finally settled, what they saw didn’t excite them, but instead scared the living shit out of them.
Minnie looked amazed after observing the queen. Starting from the bottom, its legs looked like sharp pep sickles, which were 20 centimeters wide and a whole meter long. The ends were so sharp that they she had gotten embedded into the floor due to her own weight.
She had spikes on her legs.
‘Truly made as a war machine’, Rocky though, but then Minnie corrected him telling him that those were her hairs.
She had a leg span of 5 meters and her main body was 3 meters wide. But her height was on the smaller side considering her other proportion, standing at 2 & a half meters tall, while her legs only amounted for 1/5 of the total height.
The queen looked like she was an ant on steroids. Who knew ants could have muscles. Well, it didn’t have actual muscles, but her curves and contours, made her body look really stunning and ripped.
Her bulged body makes her look extremely vicious and ruthless. The mandibles looks more like a scythe, ready and waiting to show their ability to remove heads cleanly from the neck. They had enough circumferences to engulf a 3 meter wide tree and cut it in half.
Her sharp steel like hair were not just a part of her legs, but covered her whole body; especially her neck. Completely covering the one obvious weak point that she had.
Well, leaving aside her physical appearance the thing which shocked them both was her status, which appeared displayed exactly why she was the queen.
Ant Queen (Rare)
The queen helps them grow. The soldier protects the queen and worker obeys them both. Ant queen is a special monster, with a very small chance of being born in a colony. Queens specializes in laying eggs, but can also defend herself, if needed.
Level
20
Species
Fire Ant
Rank
1
Affinity
Fire(24%)
Health
1050
Mana
2500
Can lay eggs without a limit, but only 100 ants will woke at once.
Each egg will birth a small ant and has a slight possibility to give birth to variant ants.
Can lay an egg every ten seconds.
Skills
Active
Mandible Cutters Lv(5), Crush lv(9),Fireball Lv(6), Fire breath Lv(6), Intermediate Fire Resistance Lv(2)
Passive
Sleep, Egg laying Lv(6), Control, Hive mind.
Her eyes wide open and glittering, with drool dripping from her face, Minnie yelled, “We got lucky! We got lucky!! We got lucky!!!” She squealed like a pig.
She Hugged Rocky out of happiness and pecked his cheek, before she started jumping all around the queen like a child. And her sharp voice did not make her sound any better, but Rocky liked this new unknown side of her.
‘She looks cute.’ He thought, while rubbing the cheek she had kissed.
He wanted to ask her why she was so happy, but she didn’t give him any time and started firing words at her like a parrot.
“You know how lucky we are? Gosh, this is so amazing. Who knew we would get a variant ant so easily, Moreover a queen! This is so great.”
Rocky understanding what she was talking about smiled too.
“We should install shock proof walls when the store unlocks, okay.”
“Yeah sure.”
But then an idea hit Rocky.
“Minnie actually what is the cost of buying a floor right?”
“What you forgot?” She tilted her head to the left in confusion, but still explained it to him.
“It costs 100 Dc for every floor and the same amount of mana required to be reserved for the floor.”
She saw him squinting his eyes and looking lost as if trying to remember when she had told him that.
“Huh, Didn’t you see the difference between your total mana and the mana being consumed by the monsters?”
“Hee… I.. actually didn’t see that.”
Minnie face palmed and looked at him like an disappointed parent.
“You know you need to remember stuff, here…” She opened the Dungeon interface to show him his dungeon status and repeated everything once again.
Dungeon Interface / Status
Home
Monsters / Store
Name
…
Type
Insect
Floors
3/5
Total no of monsters
7
Rooms/Floor
4
Total no of invaders
0
Mana used / Total mana: (670/1140)
Floors
500
Monsters
170
Resources
0
Upgrades
0
Dungeon Currency
375
Reputation
15(Neutral)
“It’s simple. Every tab explains itself. Like number of monsters literally tells us the no of active monsters we have in the dungeon. Now, eggs won’t be considered active monsters, okay.”
“Aha…” Rocky scratched his head in shame. After all, being tutored and being told was two completely different things.
“Humph…” Minnie pouted, but continued explaining. “The most important thing to take not of in this panel is the amount of mana you have reserved for the various activities like; monster summoning, resource planning, floor buying. And at last is the amount of Dc’s you have.” She finished explaining, exhaled a deep breath and asked him, “Now, was that difficult to remember?”
“Haaha…no.”
“SO don’t forget this common information now.” She turned around and slightly pumped her fist, ‘Safe!’ she mumbled, but Rocky hugged her from behind.
“Really, did you really think I don’t remember you telling me that you will explain it later? Huh?”
Minnie’s cheeks dyed red, she struggled to get away from him, but unfortunately she couldn’t. With her back touching his chest, she giggled slightly before saying sorry.
Rocky let her go, she turned around and their eyes met. She looked at him like a hurt puppy which made him snort and they both ended up laughing at their performance.
And while they were getting heated over useless stuff the ant queen started moving around in the dungeon.
They didn’t notice but a new numbers were being silently added to the interface and it showed the current number of eggs in the dungeon and the counter moved every five seconds.
And by the time Minnie and Rocky noticed it, the number had already climbed up to 34.
“What the hell? What is that?” Rocky marveled.
“That… I think is the number of eggs in our dungeon. I said the monster tab doesn’t tell us the number of eggs, and the system added the facility for it… Scary isn’t it? But that’s how the system works. It grows everyday, like how we grow.” She said with pride, as if the system was her brain child.
“Amazing… but what is with that absurd number. We don’t even have 10 monsters and the egg counter has… oh it reached 40!”
“There is probably a catch, let’s check out the Queen.”
The display on the screen changed to the place near the slope to the first floor. The queen waited for a second, moved and laid a fist sized egg.
“Oh! So that is reason!” Minnie face palmed.
“What, what are you talking about?”
Seemingly in a low mood, she pointed at the eggs and said,
“The eggs, they are so small…”
----------------------------------------
Meanwhile, in the Adventurers guild of town Ragnarock, Annie the guild master was looking through reports, and sorting them out.
A Small bun on her head, plain reading glasses lying on her nose, and a bang of hair trying to escape the clutches of her left ear, she was a heaven defying beauty. Her fluffy red cheeks making her eyes come out alive. She was an enchantress, the dream of all the princes, and a goddess for everyone else.
Wearing a loose pure white shirt, with three open buttons and her grey colored laced bra peeking from inside. A black office coat over her shirt, and a matching plain black skirt hugging her hips, she looked more like a hot office women, than the dangerous master that she was of something like an adventurers guild.
Her assistant, a long eared Elf by the name of Leaf, stood beside her. His face straight and tense, his nose ready to smell all dangers, and his eyes looking straight onto the guild masters cleavage, he was feeling horny.
A drop of sweat travelling down his neck, a sharp sense of excitement in his heart, he waited till his master asked him to look away, which she had become tired of, but his wish didn’t come true.
The room she was in was also exceptional like her. Made from the mana nullifying stones and coated with sound proofing paint, having vigils installed to break stealth, teleportation and skill formation. It was one of the best rooms that a anyone could ever dream of.
It was not an exaggeration to say that the small 7x7x7 meter sq room made the guild bleed 30 million gold coins.
The room had a full glass wall facing the North, giving a perfect view of the forest, flourishing just outside the town walls.
While the master and her servant were busy with their activities, the guard outside the door knocked twice and opened the door.
“The receptionist is here madam.”
“Send her in.” She nonchalantly replied.
The door opened and a neatly dressed, but pale looking girl entered.
Her eyes as big as the moon, scanned the whole room, before settling at the guild master sitting behind a dark rectangular prime cloud marble desk, who was reading guild reports.
She didn’t give the old pervert standing behind the guild master a single glance. Even though she could feel his sight all over her body, she didn’t look at him. Because she knew the kind of attention seeking pervert he was, and knew that the more one refute him, the he happier he would be.
She felt disgusted remembering the day when the guild master had beaten him with her wand in front of the whole guild, and he had moaned like he was having the time of his life.
‘Fuck him.’ She thought, but didn’t let her thoughts show on her face.
She came in and bowed respectfully, lifting the helm of her frilly dress. Then attentively standing back up, she greeted Annie.
“Good evening madam.”
Annie closed the report she was reading and looked up at the receptionist, who shivered as their eyes met and asked, “So what do we have? Anything worth my time?”
“Yes madam” She replied, and brought the file containing the information brought by the scout to Annie’s desk.
“According to the scout, the place of explosion has a deep dark hole going straight into the ground.” Then she recounted all the information said by the scout and finished by telling, “He greatly emphasized the second explosion and told us that the ants though powerful weren’t able to tackle the party inside the cave, and it was the purple blast which in the end took their lives.”
Annie carefully listened to her, while reading the scouts testimony, before sighing.
“So although that useless fellow did give us information, he didn’t bring anything concurrent. Ants underground could mean anything. It might be their mound or they might just be travelling somewhere else. Though the purple blast intrigues me, but according to our sources the first explosion was a bright white and not purple. So rather than having our questions answered, we have more of them now.”
“….”
“Jade…”
“Yes master?”
“Put another job for scouting the area. The job will be given ‘Rank B’ for the anonymity of the dangers. Information required is the whole map of the underground, including the monsters, habitat, recourses, and environment. And put the reward as negotiable.”
“Reward according to the information brought, master?”
“Yes. Let’s wait and see, what the party of tried and tested individuals will bring us.”