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Logan appeared as a series of cries came from children and monsters in the training field on the dungeon ship’s training field.
They all were clutching for a moment before the first ones finally gave the hit spot a soft rub and each of them started to fix their posture and it continued.
They were traveling casually despite being so high up and the other half of the knights were spread out on patrol between the dungeon and Micro world.
Jin was present but Jade and Storm were not as they were currently on orders to catch specimens of any monsters appearing on the enclosed mine and forest airships.
As the training came to an end, they were all dismissed to meditate while Logan headed to the mines. It was a natural cavern system but there was a dense mana in this cave and minerals were already present. It was why Logan was working to get creatures. He needed to fill jobs quickly and being able to mine the walls and chop the trees would result in the mana focusing on growing new substances from the ‘damages’ to the dungeon.
When he entered, he discovered a wide room and within, the knights were in the process of pulling quite a number of small but wild monsters.
Among them were at least a quarter of them being goblins, another part being kobold, humanoid feline monsters.
“Is there more?” He asked.
“Ah sir. Greetings, yes, we are in the process of transporting them now, we have gone through the entire cave system, it is surprisingly large.” one of them said and took out his communicator and sent something to Logan.
He took his own out and opened the file. It was a map of the caves and his face brightened, “Fantastic. Hmm, what is this light colored section?” he asked.
“Oh, natural water flow formed. We’ve also gotten samples of anything and everything naturally grown by the dungeon including moss, mushrooms and samples of minerals to identify.” He said and shook the magic pouch which was literally bulging.
“Great work, send those to the adventurers guild to identify and then have them send a report with a full list. Now let’s see what the dungeon is spawning.” Logan said and began to use the golden lion’s eye.
He grabbed each monster and frowned when the world system automatically called up their status screen. He gave a look and saw the race name before pushing it away and examining the body itself. He confirmed the monster’s core was completely backwards and was the reason they were distorted.
He brought up the status again and began to look through all of them until he saw a slightly more red skinned goblin.
“Hmm? Red goblin?” he thought
He identified the race to understand what this was.
Red Goblin
An even more twisted, malevolent and murderous version of the Redcap Goblin, these completely monstrous and destructive creatures are said to be a scourge but their ability to hide among common goblins makes them difficult to identify until they achieve F rank when their skin will become blood red. A red goblin that has bathed in enough blood will degrade into an imp and grow demonic horns.
If their core is fixed completely, they will turn into a highly combat focused and violent breed of goblins
He picked it up and separated them and looked through them all and separated as many as 30 similar ones. Ironically, there were other colors as well.
Blue Goblin
A cautious breed of goblins. Although degraded into monsters, Blue goblins are a common breed found on Junpin and Elrukia. Their caution is birthed from an innate superior intellect making them primarily magic users if they can evolve. Wild blue goblins are treated as omen of disaster and are murderous and destructive as they grow very intelligent.
If their core is fixed, they are likely to become Blue Oni, a highly magical ogre breed with an even greater love and tolerance for alcohol than others. This does not undermine their brute strength though. They are significantly superior to common ogres and even normal Oni and they do not require horns to achieve mana infusion as this happens naturally as soon as they achieve capacity or quality equal to E rank
“E rank!” Logan muttered. That is a very early rank to evolve into an ogre or oni. Still, it was not as violent but it was a drunk. Fixing it into a sentient breed and training them even just to unranked would make them likely to achieve a different evolution path as well.
He found 14 of them, showing their greater rarity compared to the red one.
“Alright, these slightly reddish ones, kill any you find. They are red goblins, an offshoot of redcap goblins that are capable of becoming demon imps.” He told the knights.
He pointed to the bluish ones, “These are Blue goblin, they are able to become blue oni naturally and we will be able to use that so if you can find it, catch them.” he said.
“Yes sir! What of the rest?” they asked.
“They are regular goblins but since this dungeon is so new, they are all new souls and lack a lot of the extreme blended DNA that most goblins have. It’s going to be interesting to see what they become.” he said. “Goblins are a good start for filling up a lot of stations.” He said.
They all agreed and he got a few of them to start twisting the cores back into the proper upright position. As for the red ones, they were killed, leaving none.
Logan then went to the kobold and examined them. It was then that he noticed that it was two breeds. One was the kobolds they knew, aka lizardmen, and the other was dungeon lizards, a monster lizard. They were all so twisted that no one had managed to tell them apart.
He separated them properly and informed them. They were kept that way for the time being and then he got to the interesting ones. Wolfmen, these were basically humanoid dogs, many snarled at him with fangs baring but they each had a piece of rope around their muzzles and couldn’t even bark.
This one was interesting because wolf biology applied to these guys. Some of them were born as brown wolves, others as gray and some as black.
It might not seem like anything but besides just being different breeds of wolves, there was a power scale. Brown wolves were common animal wolves but gray and black were not, these were monsters and traditionally they were almost F rank. Many of them are F rank but these were all unranked but biologically, they would be able to achieve it as long as they gathered sufficient mana.
He split them up and then the felines.
“War cats, as expected. There are also shadow fiends among them.” He said and split them and stopped at a curious one that sat against the wall and looked at him with great anger. He examined her and raised a brow.
“Diabolic Nekomata.” he muttered and examined it.
Diabolic Nekomata
The most twisted version of this breed. They are a monster cat with countless mystical abilities. They are born when a cat forms two tails and are able to vanish from sight.
These are also known as Bakeneko in Junpin. A proper nekomata will be a domestic cat that grows old enough to become a gentle but powerful magical feline.
Fixing the core will remove the diabolical nature of this creature but the form, whether they maintain human shape or become a feline once more, is up to chance.
“Interesting, so many breeds of unique monsters are already appearing once we left Nuntip. Is that why they say the islands between the continents are oftentimes much more dangerous.”
He pulled it out and only found one other while the rest were divided by different breeds of felines. War cats were divided between feral cats and domestic breeds and most were likely to display their strong biology once their core was fixed. War cats, when repaired, tend to become werecats. Those with big cat biology might even become a tiger or lion if they are of the breed.
“Alright, it’s clear to fix them up, besides those I’ve ordered to kill, the rest are to be converted into sentient.” he said.
The goblins were already sucking up mana and in the process of transforming while he went back to the dungeon lizards and once more examined their race again.
Fixing it to sentient would result in a highly intelligent predator and that was not what they needed.
“These lizards turn their cores until it is at 90 degrees. After that, release them back into the caves.” He said.
“Is that safe, sir?” one knight asked.
“Yes, they will fall under the full control of the dungeon as long as the angle of their core is lower than a 150 degree angle so 90 degrees is very under control. It will produce predators for the cave and control the population making it easier for us later on when we mine and have to clear the mines.” he said.
“Understood sir!” They said.
At that moment, Jade and Storm came while dragging a lot more monsters of the same types.
“Master, are you done training?” Jade asked.
“Yes, I’ve already examined these so let’s see this catch and separate them up from the keeps, kills and releases.” He said.
“Kills?” Jade asked.
Logan explained what the red goblins were and the danger they posed.
She nodded, it was no different from accepting imps into a dungeon if you aren’t at least S rank to make them not dare corrupt the dungeon with hellish influence.
He went through them and got rid of the bad seeds and the rest were viable minions. Dungeon lizards were released back once their transformation was complete while the rest underwent a lot of transformations as their bodies changed and started to grow more stable until it was finally stable and perfected.
He looked at the unique ones like the nekomata. One of them had turned into a very humanoid feline and still looked around with caution while the other was a full two tailed cat. The size had decreased to a similar size of an old domestic cat.
The war cats all began to show their true feline colors and were all similar to kobold and wolfman and looked like scrawny weak feline people while ones like shadow fiends were similar to black cats or black panthers. Basically black colored fur which made them better for hiding and stalking.
Logan exerted the dungeon effect and instantly a momentary pulse ran through the mine and they all opened their eyes wide and looked at him fearfully.
He smiled, “Good, they are fully under control. Although they are very stupid but it seems they all formed a low level of sentience and intelligence. They just need to evolve now and we can finally make proper use.” he said.
“How are you going to know which person goes to which function?” One of the knights asked.
“Just assign them, the dungeon system has a registry. Also, the dorm they are placed in will dictate which jobs they get. Monsters assigned to support boat dorms are considered common mobs. Those in specialized quarters, such as the engine crew, combat crew or common crew quarters will evolve into different functions to occupy the positions of the main ship and other facilities.” he said.
“So which do we do first?” Storm asked, “Engine, send the goblins… about half of the goblins should be a start.” he said and separated that part, “You are now part of the engine crew.” he said simply. Everyone saw a minor glow in their chest as the function was infused through the dungeon system. “Go rest in the engine crew room.” he said and then began to pick out different members of different races to become squires.
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Dungeon monsters have the most adaptive biology so literally beating them up while training them will allow them to achieve compatible body structures for knights.
“The blue goblins are to all be placed to become priests.” Logan said, looking at Jade who nodded.
He set that and she guided them to the quarters under the temple formed by the dungeon for them.
“Master, can we make the lizardmen into my breed?” Storm asked.
“No, don’t bother with that. We already have the first kobold as your breed as well as the crystalback lizards that are still growing. Let them evolve naturally.” he said.
He then opened the system and thought for a while before picking out several goblins. “You are the bank staff. Go rest in the bank quarters.” he ordered.
They followed his command like a divine decree and the rest were sent to the common crew quarters except the female nekomata. “You will be in charge of the leisure room.” He said.
She grumbled and ran off on all fours.
“Why did you leave that feral thing with the leisure room?” Storm asked.
“Eventually the leisure room will grow into the leisure district if this grows like a city. She is likely to become very intelligent and very humanoid. Such a cautious person will be just fine once ‘those’ types of leisure rooms are made. Not to mention that commanding the leisure room also puts her in command of all inns, bars and breweries that the common crew will start to occupy the function of. Now, it’s late so let’s get busy. Tomorrow we have a busy day examining all parts of the ship to find the rare commodities formed inside the ship that wouldn’t form naturally.” he said.
Storm nodded and they headed to their rooms. Logan sat in the captain room while the many others were allowed into the micro world while the night shift came out.
It was much easier to monitor the ship. The entire place was well lit so there was no place for things like shadow fiends to hide in a small dark spot because it was hard for such spots to be left visible.
Logan sat in his quarters and began to absorb mana but neither he or Helix accounted for one thing with the fact that he was dungeon master and that was that the Micro world had a world tree.
The dungeon’s innate function was to supply mana into a world tree. As soon as he finally found time to train, the stored up mana that was gathering in the dungeon instantly unloaded and Logan felt the surge that was nearly 5 times denser and it forced its way into his body.
In the heavens, the God of Dungeon’s eyes suddenly bolted open as he turned to Logan’s dungeon and focused as he saw the field of the micro world form and suck in power. The dungeon’s primary function was activating mid flight and Logan sat at the middle, processing mana into C rank mana and 95% of it getting swallowed by the Micro world.
“Micro world… of course… of course… if a dungeon builds an altar to hold one…” He muttered silently to himself but he would never give such freedom to such creatures as dangerous as them but looking at Logan, he thought of doing that before shaking his head. “No, he benefits best from absorbing it himself for the time being.” He said.
Inside the micro world, the tree was absorbing mana and everyone sensed the increased quantity rising.
Storm looked up from his spot with confusion. “Training in a dungeon where mana isn’t being released sure has a different effect.” He said, he was happy because he could sense that the micro world was growing as the island size pushed out towards the edge while the world tree grew taller.
The wild spawn rate in the mines that had begun started to fall under control and with the coin production bags in his possession, all that mana was producing coins like crazy.
He continued for a few hours until the great excess finally began to wane and the dungeon’s mana dropped down to natural amounts.
Logan was finally able to get some respite and could finally start to consume the mana and started training.
***
Although Nuntip was in its turbulent state, the other continents were beginning their movements. They all viewed Nuntip currently in the same view they had of the continent of demons. A big piece of meat waiting to be eaten. If they did not have trouble taking the continent due to the demonic monsters awakened by the ancient demon lord, they would have naturally taken it.
Of course, at the same time, the Dark empire did not dare wait to face all these continents alone but in the same way that the old general achieved his grand capacity of rebirth, so to have various ranks of demons.
The ones with the greatest capacity were the generals but of the 10 ancient great generals, 8 of them were totally eliminated and two survived by the skin of their teeth living by a hair's breadth long enough for the hero to leave so they can hide in a demon crystal and recover.
Below them were the 1000 demonic commanders that led the demon armies.
The hero had been more brutal with them since they are weaker but 3 of these survived. In fact, the ones to survive were because the hero at the time had just merged the three into one and they were very unharminous causing them to carelessly ignore the possible rebirth they did not know about and assume the demons had died since they had almost cut them through and through.
The other general stalked Junpin while the three had each wanted power but not all of them found the current Elrukia easy to take.
The main reason is that the Endless desert, the name of the desert that occupied the northern section of Elrukia, possessed no less than 50 caravan dungeons which were the very key to the grand and powerful monster empires that were literally dependent on the caravans.
On the other hand though, the dark empire did help the one to remain here. He now had his core in natural position and a legend sword but no legend smith to forge it despite it having the burns glowing purple and the mana channels developed.
They currently found themselves inside the subterranean castle of an ancient demonic fortress along with many other hybrid demons.
As for the other two, they had gone to the last of the world’s five continents, Neruca.
Compared to any of the other continents, Neruca has both the smallest human population as well as the largest sentient monster population making it the most dangerous continent for humans. Even with their order intact, the monster presence of this continent is the highest simply because it has the least control of their dungeon population. After the sudden surge of dungeon monsters bursting out after the Dark empire’s reveal, the continent is even crazier now as monsters are rampant.
The two demons here worked together and didn’t even need to destroy humans, they simply lived outside of human reach as they gathered monster followers, adding demon blood and helped their demon bloodline replace the other one.
Elrukia is no different except it was more cautious but they had reached a point where they could finally strike.
Unlike the demon on Nuntip though, he was very aware of the danger posed by the Order of the Goldwing Griffon. The people of this nation were the greatest Druids of the world, they favored the bow and spear making them exceptionally dangerous for fliers and their holy artifact made it even more dangerous as their Legend weapons all give magical drops of Holy water which caused holy mana to fill their magic.
The demons had trouble getting anywhere near the main artifact while they lit their entire bases with drops of this holy water which caused the skin of the demons to crawl and could barely find places.
Still, weaker locations still had places they were not careful enough and slowly they placed the demon bombs.
They did the same for both monster and human empires but they had to be careful when planting in the order’s homes.
Any place with anything in S rank they would not approach, the objective is to cripple the control of the order. Until they had equal numbers of S rank, they had to fight from the shadows but being able to extend the darkness over the land bathed in sickening light was their first objective.
He was extra paranoid because druids could converse with nature and nature itself could give up his position and he would not see how he died for sure.
Thankfully the druids were not the Golden Lions, men who had to survive no matter what to the point that they trained each generation in cruel and unusual manners to make sure they can react to danger and even extended their reach into dark magic, which had not been something they originally knew, so that they can attack in the shadows.
“The second fall of humanities guardians shall begin soon.” the demon said as he looked at the world network and with a grin, he started to utilize the blessings of this system and accepted a basic class to start enhancing his power and used his vast knowledge to advance in the ranks to match his current C rank that he had just achieved. He did not have the ancient demon lord’s technique. He only had the method he designed for himself upon peering into the laws of the world.
His followers followed him and began to accept countless professions to begin training in the shadows but the strongest were prepared to continue attacking.
Once everyone had done so, he looked at a message from the demons in Junpin and Neruca. A countdown was going down and was just 10 seconds from ending. A grin appeared on his face as the countdown hit 0 because that was when all the activated bombs detonated.
In the places the bombs were placed, all the people A rank and up felt the disturbance but only those of S rank and above had the reflex to attack.
The countless weaker branches of the Order of Goldwing Griffon, Golden Phoenix and the Golden Dragon were instantly exterminated.
At once, three coordinated attacks throughout the world were implemented and the demons silently began to move in the shadows of this chaos to stir up the boiling pot.
Ironically, this saved Nuntip’s remaining empires from the hardship that came with knowing they could be invaded by foreign forces because now they had to worry about the problems at home.
When dawn’s light hit the airship dungeon, Logan stopped training and looked at the news and his jaw dropped at the news and the shocking fact that the Dark empire reacted before anyone could speak.
“Do not look at us for these incidents. After all, scattered demons are not limited to just Nuntip. We have more than enough worries cementing our empire here for us to think of invading other continents.”
It was honestly a solid statement. What would 1 million demons, an army of monsters and enslaved humans be able to do on a global scale? Taking on a continent is already a big burden without an immense army but now this.
Nuntip emperors and those of the other continents looked to this and growled as they instantly turned to find where the demons might be slithering on their own shores. They also had no way of knowing if someone in their own armies were demons.
Obviously there were none, that tactic was used once and would not be possible to repeat so none of the others did such a thing. They now looked to rip the continent through fear and paranoia that their great protectors will not be able to save them. What is the use of powerful holy magic users when they have no power to react to slaughter and kidnappings.
The worst thing is that all fallen angels knew how to summon hell demons and it was far too easy to summon hordes of many weaklings through blood sacrifice. Obtain a few quality bodies and they might even be able to get smarter and more powerful demons and form a rolling wave of hell demons which can be blamed on cultists instead of the fallen demons instead. In fact, sending a single horde into a dungeon and helping them corrupt it to form an unending swarm while enslaving the dungeon to protect themselves. It was the tactic Elruka demons took.
Each of the other demons had different tactics but none of that was obvious. Only that things would not go peacefully from now on no matter where you go in the world.
***
On the demon continent, the young demon prince projected that knowledge. All his followers could see but they were all sentient demons and he was E rank already going on to D rank soon while the dragons were already outside because of their growing size.
“Those old demons are really stirring up trouble.” the dragon the prince bonded with said.
“Seems we can’t take things slowly. Once I am D rank, we need to start gathering Prana tribes in spades to build a strong enough kingdom that we can deal with the old things.” The prince said.
“Weak as you are, you need at least A rank to be heard and you are against a 1000 year old demon which had that much time to horde mana. He is likely already a C rank while we are struggling.” The dragon said.
“Yeah… Do dungeons appear on this continent?” he asked.
“No. If they did, they were likely destroyed by the awakened demons.” He said.
The prince groaned and looked at a particular demon that was not from the generals that followed him.
He was a very loyal Prana native to here who showed affinity for crafting and so he had been turned into a Legend smith and they were now preparing to gather materials to make the first basic forge that would allow them to start making magic weapons. Finding countless others to start smithing was important.
“Five years might not be enough to even get a few forgings.” the prince said with a groan but they could only start working faster now that the world was in utter chaos.
***
Logan looked at the news with a scowl and knew he couldn’t be slow anymore. He called adventurers guild and knights and handed out material lists.
“We need this and fast.” He said.
“What is this?” One of the guild managers asked.
“List to build a temple which will allow the gods to grant official classes to us. The professions we have in the class slot of our status does not give us the blessings or special abilities or extra power involved. For a golden lion, they will be given special religious classes prepared by the gods while for those who are not from our order, they will be granted different more common classes that can evolve. It is a ritual that will become vital for humans to gain strength.” He said.
“Alright but a lot of this is hard to find.” He said.
“I am aware, I’ve been making a dungeon outside which can produce many materials, especially mana infused stone.” he said.
“Dungeon?!” The guild manager said.
“Yes, I’ve become a dungeon master of a special kind of dungeon unique to me. Right now that isn’t important. The important part is if the new guild masters are ready to start helping?” He asked.
The manager forced a smile, “How could they, they have just woken up from the surge of knowledge.” He said.
“How are they?” He asked.
“Confused but getting better, most of them are able to meditate at the very least.” he said.
“Good, that helps process the knowledge. I’m sure there are also mana development techniques in the middle of that grimoire so they can grow properly. The mage guild master is the most vital in this. I will start to gather the materials needed and you all begin preparing the land. Jade, these are the blueprints. Make sure to find the spot I pointed out on that map based on the map of the micro world. It is a special area, built there with the proper facing and everything.” He said.
“I will find it.” She said and looked at the storm who nodded and transformed and she jumped on to join her.
He walked out and summoned all the common monsters on the ship that had not gained a specific profession.
“You all will begin mining the caves without protection, I expect no complaints.” He said, glaring at them all.
The mining camp ships descended and surprisingly, mining tools began to rise from a magical cargo within and each monster was given a pickaxe before the first of the caves appeared and the knights entered to clear everything except the dungeon lizards and protect the room that the monsters were ordered to start mining.
The mining camp actually connected to the entrance and shockingly it extended rails to the mining site and automatically spawned a mining cart.
It would take the mineral and dump it into the boat and store it in cargo until it was full and proceed to a special bay in the cargo hold of the ship where it dumped it and returned, all done automatically.
There was no separation of mineral and stone however and that would need to be done but most of the wall was stone while part of the knights went with Logan identifying specific nodes of minerals and marking the important ones before they brought the monsters to clear those areas out.
This would need to continue for several days and he would need proper masons. For blacksmiths, he would have to depend on the disciples of the legend smith or the young smith himself.
When he heard the news, he equally knew things were getting very bad. He actually joined and started to prepare to receive the materials. At noon, Logan brought him to help sort the metal and magic crystal before he gathered up the monsters that a part of the knights had captured and continued to increase the minion numbers within the dungeon. He asked for the gold coins everyone generated and taking some of the monsters to the bank, he began to examine the bank system so he can evolve them into a slightly better and much more intelligent creature.