Once Leeko was taken care of, I checked on the Adventurer camp. Turns out that taking a dungeon from a bunch of greedy battle maniacs had… interesting effects. Most were staring at the stone seal like it owed them money, hands spasmodically clenching weapons. The only thing stopping them from pounding on the barrier was the glaring form of the female B ranker.
Glancing around, I noticed the other B ranker was gone; probably off to fetch Sigmundr. Judging from overheard conversations it would take him a few weeks to-
“YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE SOCIETY, EH?! I THOUGHT WE HAD A DEAL!”
“Gah!” I yelped as Sigmundr appeared directly in front of my archway, his distinctive booming roar rattling my domain.
Turns out a B ranker fetching an A ranker doesn't take long.
The entire camp froze, Adventurers staring with wide eyed shock at the cultivator. I didn’t see what the deal was; It was just an A ranker nearing the pinnacle of cultivation.
“We thought we had a deal as well.” Ryia intoned, her ManaSpeach using ice mana. I wasn’t sure where she’d gotten ice mana but hearing her speak was like listening to a whistling winter wind.
I wonder what earth mana would do. Maybe…
“WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?!” Ohhhhhh. So that’s why Sigmundr always sounds like he’s shouting. Well, that and he’s an A ranker. It’s probably harder for him not to shout in ManaSpeach, given how potent his mana is.
“Your books were crap.” I said.
I was expecting some big explosion, with Sigmundr flinging out denials and accusations. Maybe a few threats, followed by lengthy renegotiations to open the dungeon. Instead Sigmundr… smiled.
Now I’m not, by any stretch of imagination, a great judge of social interactions; but a guy smiling when being called a liar to his face seemed a little abnormal. And creepy. Yeah, definitely creepy.
“Well then, it seems we cannot come to an arrangement despite the best efforts of the Adventurer Society. A full expedition, A ranked ambassadors, and tomes prepared by an A ranked scholar were not enough for our ends to align. How unfortunate.” The last words were absolutely drowned in sarcasm.
Wait, this guy can talk without blowing my channels out, and he’s been screaming the whole time? Diabolical.
Sigmundr waved, and just like that every cultivator in my clearing was sent flying, yanked into the air by invisible strings of mana before hurtling into the distance with a chorus of confused shouts and panicked cries. A few seconds later and they were just specks on the horizon, rapidly fading to nothing.
Welp, didn’t see that one coming.
“I declare you Sanctioned. Any hostile actions taken against sapient beings outside of your domain will be met with lethal force. Any hostile expansion into areas populated by sapients will be met with lethal force. Any theft, intentional disruption of infrastructure, interference with sapients internal affairs, broadcasted mind altering effects, actions that threaten sapient communities, attacks made against sapients with no desire of conflict, refusal to obey the local government’s human rights laws, or interference with the local mana attunement will be met with lethal force.
You have been read your rights and are permitted to ask for clarifications. Do you have any questions?”
“Ye-”
“No questions.” Sigmundr interrupted.
He crouched, preparing to leave, then paused. He looked at me in that eerie way only A rankers could, his eyes full of… something. Wariness, happiness, vindication, worry, resignation, regret and maybe, just maybe, a faint touch of fear.
Then he launched into the air, the force of his launch scattering the tents set up around the clearing. We watched him fade into the distance, following the path of the other Adventurers.
“Uh… Ryia?”
“Yes Granite?”
“What just happened?”
“Lawyer stuff, Granite. Lawyer stuff.”
“...”
“What in the crap is that supposed to mean?”
“How should I know? It’s what my mentor told me whenever politics got involved.”
“Your mentor doesn't sound very helpful.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
This... wasn't great. I'm assuming Sanctioned meant what it sounds, meaning no Adventurers would be visiting my dungeon. This wasn't necessarily the end of my dungeon, there had to be people outside of the Adventurer Society who visited dungeons, but it definitely put a lid on things. I was in the absolute middle of nowhere, and it would take quite a while for word to spread of the Sanctioned dungeon out in the Wilds. Considering the Adventurer Society wasn't likely to help get the info out...
Regardless, life must go on.
The clearing was now a ghost town. The A ranker had given the cultivators zero time to prepare, meaning the place was probably a gold mine for a low-level ENAD. Too bad there wasn’t anything useful to a Co-
Ooooo shiny.
Inside a B rankers tent lay a full suite of enchanted, B grade armor. I still didn’t know how engraving worked, but a single giant enchantment scrawled across every inch of the armor had to do something good, right?
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
I reached out to infuse the armor and-
“STOP!” Ryia screamed. “The guy just said theft would be met with lethal action! What do you think you're doing !?”
“But-I-he…” I sighed. “Fine, I’ll leave the B ranked armor sitting in the middle of nowhere collecting dust. Happy?”
“Yes, I’m happy you aren’t committing suicide.”
I glanced around, looking for something to do. Without Adventurers there wasn’t a point in… oh.
There were some Adventurers left.
I flicked my perception way, way down, watching as a lava golem used one PantherCat to beat another to death, which looked as awesome as it sounds. The rest of the re-manifested Adventurers were watching Reinmund with a weird sort of apathy. Where was their drive to succeed? Where was the fire?
The fire elemental doesn't count.
I glanced over my backlog of memories, tracking their actions over the past week of nonstop fighting. They didn’t have bodies to fall over from exhaustion, and I’d just kept subconsciously manifesting new mobs.
Whoops.
I unmanifested the set of KingCats coming through the rooms one door, watching as the Adventurers just stood there, twitching a little. Five minutes passed, with no one making a move, their brain equivalents taking a while to come out of combat mode.
“I think…” A pure metal golem, formerly the replacement guy, groaned. Then his metal legs gave out, sending him slumping to the ground. Considering his body had no muscles to give out…
His collapse was like a signal, sending the others crashing to the ground, or the equivalent. The wind and fire elementals, formerly Janus and Jeannette, just sort of hovered in place.
Pfft, they were exhausted after that? I hadn’t stopped working since… ever. I’d been created and Ryia had immediately put me to wo-
wait a minute.
“Ryia, I demand a vacation!”
“What?” She sounded utterly flabbergasted.
“You’ve been driving me to work on this dungeon since the moment I existed! It’s time I take a break.”
“Fine.”
Feeling proud of my victory, I sat back and relaxed.
And relaxed.
And relaxed.
And relaxed.
And relaxed.
And relaxed.
And relaxed.
And relaxed.
And relaxed.
And relaxed.
And relaxed.
And-ARG!
How do ENADs manage it, sitting around for days on end just doing nothing?! I glanced at the sky, realizing the sun had barely moved.
Well, crud.
“Stupid vacations and their stupid sitting around with their stupid....” I muttered at the very edge of my domain, working on a new mob for the Underworld.
The staple mob of the Underworld needed to be something unique, something practically unbeatable, something that would stick with the Adventurers after they finally left my dungeon. Biologicals, like an enhanced snake or something, were out of the question. On top of them being too… boring, I still wasn’t great at modifying biologicals, and Intent could only take me so far.
The more complex a magical matrix the more Intent could modify it. I could take a pig and use Intent to turn them into a human or a Core, but at some level they’d always be a pig. They had four limbs, two eyes, breathed air, used blood, had a brain, etc. This was a lot looser with matrixes as complex and developed as a cultivation technique, but there was still a hard limit. Turning Leeko into some sort of ultra intelligent monstrous ogre forty feet tall wouldn’t work right now. If he increased in cultivation maybe, but not now.
All this to say, I was stuck. My original plan was to develop a magical matrix and make some sort of huge ghost mob, but making a magical matrix out of scratch was more difficult than I’d thought. Plus, ghosts probably weren’t the best mobs for the Underworld. Maybe zombies? Using Intent and my knowledge of microbes I might be able to create a virus that could…
Yeah, even I could see where that was going.
Ghouls? Nah, not enough style. Vampires? Sure, but that seemed too… intelligent. I needed something terrifying, some unstoppable force of nature, something primal. Vampires would work, but not as a staple mob. I needed something undead to match the whole Underworld theme, something classic, something powerful with a place in mythology. Something like…
Skeletons?
Still, I’d need a magical matrix, preferably human. It’s not like I had the magical matrix of someone I didn’t like just laying around, that would be way to convenie- Oh. Leeko.
Yeah… that wasn’t going to work. The little snot would probably huddle into a corner somewhere the second he was threatened, powerful skeleton body or no.
This meant I’d actually try to reform Leeko instead of sticking him in a personal never-ending hell- erm- commando training. That sounded like an awful lot of work; the kid was a long, long way from any sort of skeleton overlord mindset.
Well, nothing for it.
I unmanifested Leeko, ending the very thorough Piggy massage, and re-manifested him as a human on my first floor. His matrix was already infused, so I could manifest him as pretty much anything I wanted, anywhere I wanted.
Cores are balanced by the way.
“Alright, listen up.” I barked.
____________________________________________________________________________
Leeko was on the ground, being beaten to death by a snarling pig, with no idea of how he’d gotten here. One second, he’d been dying, the next he’d been staring into the black eyes of a pig. When he’d proudly proclaimed his heritage, ignoring his base instincts of fear enhanced by his recent death, the brutes had started beating him, like it was his fault they were too weak to stand against his party.
His world had collapsed to pain. Unknown to him, the blows had been carefully calculated to leave no permanent injuries. He was, after all, wearing the uniform of a new initiate. Their love taps would strengthen his body and mind, hardening him into a future warrior. Or they were supposed to. A person had to have a base level of spine for the method to work, which Leeko was lacking.
He staggered as the pain finally, finally stopped. He only had a moment to recover, as a will encompassing the very world around him spoke.
“Alright, listen up. You need to grow a spine.”
Leeko’s mind short circuited, struggling to comprehend what he was feeling. This… insignificance. All his life he’d been sheltered from those truly more powerful than him. Even after he’d been shunned by his family, he’d still possessed talismans that warded off the effects of powerful auras. But there was nothing shielding him now, no excuse he could conjure up. This being's power was so much greater than his there was no comparison.
As his entire worldview crumbled around him, he heard a second voice.
“Step aside Granite, this is my territory. Hey you, snap out of it!”
The world faded to black around Leeko as his psyche clocked out.
___________________________________________________________________________
Leeko’s eyes rolled up in his head as he collapsed, out cold.
“Indeed sensei, your ways are far above my own paltry methods.” I somberly acknowledged. Ryia just stared at the guy like he’d grown a fourth head.
Yeah, we had a long way to go.