Eve glanced at her status noting a few changes had occurred.

Mana: (Infinite)

Ritual Runes of Body V

Runes (5/5):

Rune of Shroud

It was irritating that she couldn’t find a way to compress her full Status. The only option not to display everything was to look at bits and pieces for now. Eve put it on her list of things to do, to find a way to compress the length while allowing her to still see it all. There was always a way as long as a will existed, after all.

Perhaps a book of some sort? Eve thought as she continued to farm the Daedra that flowed from the Doorway. Pages that flip, or screens that shift?

As it stood now, there was a thin layer of Space like a sheet of ultra-thin glass in front of the Daedric Doorway. The glass allowed for one-way entry into the Prison Plane. Eve had placed it there to prevent information from enlightening the enemy on the other side. As a result, she now enjoyed the free-flowing experience known as ‘farming’ from the games back on Earth. Eve had already shifted back to her little old lady form to better appear harmless to the recently freed slaves.

Rex had taken the former slaves in hand, and along with Maxine, found a way to remove the collars on them using divine magic from V’nor. Eight women of varying ages were being cared for by Maxine’s skilled knowledge temporarily. The tiny terror, fake dragon extraordinaire, had already retreated back into the Hut. From what Eve witnessed at a glance, the small fake poison dragon was part of the preparation for her pipe’s new herbs. In a rather amusing twist, the small creature got along with Lily exceptionally well. The young girl had no trouble bribing her likely future pet for cuddles.

Turning her attention back to the Daedric Doorway, Eve compared the numbers generated from the last few hours and noted that a slow consistent increase had started. It wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle at the moment, but the potential for problems was a thorny future issue.

I don’t want to give up a source of experience outside the Deeps. Eve thought. On the other hand, I don’t want to be swarmed by Tier Sevens either. Even a single Tier Seven might be able to mop me up like discarded garbage. There was no way to tell what a Tier Seven might be able to do, although Eve did extrapolate from her own abilities that they couldn’t be weak.

Currently, there were only mid-Tier Fives passing through the Doorway. Eve was easily able to melt them with the Shroud attuned to Fire. In time though, as both the speed of the creatures and the number arriving increased, failure was inevitable. Felix quickly counted the optimum time to farm before Eve would be overrun if the exponential progression demonstrated continued.

Three months. Eve thought. Too little. In fact, after a month she would literally be forced to create a firestorm as the numbers became like water pouring from a corked bottle. The second month would require her to Seal space to prevent the escape of Tier Sixes that would likely appear. The end of the third month would signal the arrival of the first Tier Seven according to current calculations. At that point, this place would be a lost cause to Eve.

As she was considering the problem, Rex came over to her and asked, “What would you like us to do from here on out? The contract with the Cardinal ended the moment we brought those priests here.”

“First things first.” Eve said waving Maxine over, “We’ll have the women taken to shelter. Is there someplace they can recover and rest?”

Maxine approached and said, “Unlikely, they have no money, and are not part of any organizations.”

Eve’s eyes flickered before a suggestion from Kudzu made them light up and she said, “I’ll have my disciple handle it then.” A flicker of power pulled the women into the Hut for Lily to practice on. It wasn’t the best solution, but she wasn’t willing to let herself lose an opportunity such as this Doorway was.

Forming several Contract scrolls, Eve imprinted the required terms before creating letters to go with them. “Take these to any Tier Six or Seven that you know publicly. City Lord, Guildmaster, anyone. Use your own common sense, if you think the person deserves the opportunity to level up outside of the Deeps.”

“Leveling up outside the Deeps?” Rex looked confused as Maxine’s eyes widened next to him.

Eve nodded and pointed at the Daedric Doorway, “The creatures coming through that qualify as invaders from outside reality just like those in the Deeps. A scheme like this, probably took them a few centuries, if not millennia to set up in order to avoid detection. I can hold the Door myself for a short time, but eventually, whoever is on the other side will figure the game out. Once they catch on, the amount coming through will leave only two reliable options.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Such as?” Maxine asked curiously.

“Sealing or Farming. If we are fast enough, I’m sure the higher Tiers can cut a deal with the Dungeon to turn this Floor into a massive opportunity. If they can’t, I’ll have to Seal the entrance before forcing the Dungeon Core to wipe this floor out of existence. Or kill the Dungeon Core myself and feed it to one of my associates. Unlike an entrance to the Deeps, the System cannot directly block this one. I suspect the easiest route of containment that the System would take would be the same as me, except much easier for it to do.” Eve said.

“If it’s handled properly a boon, if not it would become a bane?” Rex said with a grimace.

“Exactly. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the entrances to the Deeps are basically handled completely by the System from what I know. I get the feeling an opportunity is being provided here as an experiment. If it works, great, if not….” Eve shrugged her shoulders fatalistically, “It’s far easier to shift space and feed this whole place to Dust for safety’s sake, I’d bet.”

“If you look through history this situation might have happened more than once before,” Maxine said thoughtfully.

“Oh?” Eve asked curiously as she ran through her memories. She had actually thought this was a unique opportunity for her, but if not it had interesting implications. It could mean Wilson was trying to ‘bulk’ up the troops before sending them into the Deeps. Raising the quality and quantity all at once would be something expected of a calculating machine in Eve’s opinion.

The Prison Plane was enormous, formed from bits and pieces of worlds under the System’s control. From the maps she had access to, Eve knew the Endless Desert took the Southern portion of the Plane. The Golden City was located in a tiny pocket of the land at the bottom right of the maps where the Desert and Grasslands met. Goblins were the least of the powerful on the Grasslands, as the first circle of Hell only contained weak demons in theory. The reason for the establishment of the city, besides the prime trading location, was the existence of an entrance to the Deeps. Every entrance was both a blessing and a curse to the powers that lived around it.

Eastern Grass, Southern Sand, Western Wetlands, and Nightmare North. Eve thought remembering the mantra. If you look on a large enough scale, even the System has its lazy moments. I can’t complain much though, I’ve benefitted massively from favoritism based on family linage after all.

It was no accident that the most habitable part of the Plane being the center, also had the most entrances to the Deeps. In some mathematic manner she didn’t quite understand, the more humanoid sapient living creatures, the more an entrance would appear.

A very disturbing metric in Eve’s opinion.

“Quite a few of the older dungeons end up disappearing over the millennia.” Maxine said, “At first everyone thought they were destroyed but, any Adventurer knows that’s snake shit.”

Eve nodded, as a Dungeon grew older, it grew stronger, smarter, and gained even better control over mana. When something took several Tier Sevens to clear, the thought that it was murdered without even a warning sign was unrealistic, at best. No, something else had to have happened, and an experiment that went off the rails made twisted sense. After all, the Dungeon’s main purpose was to prepare people for the Deeps. Doing something like this was in essence the next ‘step’ in the process.

Why not take it a step further and have a sort of safe version of the Deeps on tap, right? Eve thought with a mental eye roll. Because nothing could ever go wrong with that.

The reason she was willing to disclose the location right up front was twofold. First, in Eve’s opinion if the upper echelons in the area didn’t already know about this happening in advance it would be surprising. There were a variety of information gathering methods that would have given the warning signs an accurate translation. Second, the Cardinal’s actions could be completely explained, if not forgiven assuming she knew of the occurrence early.

Rather than madness, it was a bid to grab power.

Eve suspected the Cardinal had learned, probably from her Deity, of the opportunity about to occur. Those two red-robed priests were selected not because they were blessed with favor. Instead, by using the two brothers caked in Sin the Cardinal could get paid twice. Once for doing the ‘right’ thing and eliminating those with Sin. Twice for removing idiots from her own faction. Win-win wasn’t a new concept, no matter the world.

This means I can expect the Cardinal’s real forces to be arriving soon. Eve thought. Since I don’t know their true strength, best to pull more players into the game. That was the reason she was willing to offer Contracts in exchange for the location. Rex’s team wouldn’t be able to tell the location, and unless they were stupid, they wouldn’t even approach anyone that was a risk.

Greed killed, but Eve wasn’t willing to let the fat pie from the sky hit the ground without taking a bite either. Eve would pull interested parties to her side in order to stabilize the situation. She hadn’t allowed any communication to breach the space around her as they descended. That meant the Cardinal likely had no information that she used spatial manipulation powers. Deities couldn’t ‘see’ her in the normal sense, rendering the ability to be informed by them moot.

The only way to learn about this place is from the Cardinal, or perhaps the Bishop. Eve thought. I’m willing to bet neither of them wants to share the spoils.

If the Bishop wasn’t involved or had taken higher advice not to be, Eve at minimum still expected the Cardinal. She had been keeping a watch on the Dungeon entrance with Witch’s Dust and it paid off handsomely. Even as she returned Rex’s team to the dungeon city, a full twenty teams of Adventurers triggered the alert at the entrance. Looking through her tool she could see a heavy proportion of magic users. Even more damning evidence appeared to Eve's eyes as the casters all appeared to be specialists in wide-area destruction techniques.

After watching the Cardinal’s teams begin their descent into the Dungeon, Eve looked at the empty space around her and said, “So? Do you want to cut a deal?”

A red cube of crystal flickered into existence outside her Shroud and Eve could feel the Dungeon looking back through it.

“If you don’t want help, that’s fine. However, revealing the true extent of your abilities can’t possibly end well. Killing the golden goose happens quite often outside of fables.” Eve said staring at the ruby gem as more creatures flowed out from the Daedric Doorway into a fiery death.

“What are you offering?” the red crystal asked in a respectful tone laced with curiosity.