I watched the struggling Adventurers in silence. They were on the ground now, blood pooling around them as it leaked from their mouths and eyes. They weren’t the only ones affected by the pressure, the PantherCat rapidly succumbing to the harsh environment. The enchantments patterned into the beast's fur had originally enhanced the growth of plants but had been modified by Intent and heavy mana expenditure to work instantly on anything biological. They were designed for instant recovery, there was little they could do for the pressure’s constant strain.
Despite the C ranker’s dire straits, they were more or less alive when the PantherCat died for the last time. There was no fanfare, no music. A stone door ground an inch to the side, air slamming through the gap. While the rapid decompression would have killed even a D ranker, the mana infused in the C rankers allowed them to shrug off most physiological ailments, including decompression sickness. There were limits, but the relatively controlled decompression didn’t break them. Once the pressure normalized, I manifested air in a wave, flinging them from my dungeon. While she had said it in exactly the wrong way, Ryia had a point. Killing these people would do nothing but put their blood on my metaphorical hands.
I methodically cleaned my dungeon, dissolving the pasted remains of the berserker cats and the limp bodies that had once been my strength enhanced kittens. All the little noises that had once filled the chambers, the meowing of cats, the growling of the berserkers, even the chatter of Ryia, all of it was gone leaving cold, empty stone chambers behind.
Leaving me alone.
I forced aside the silence, focusing on the future. I wasn’t sure if Ryia’s words about deviant dungeon’s getting hunted down was true or not, but I did know one thing. I was terrible at being a normal dungeon.
I thought about what that meant, the ways I’d have to change my view of what a dungeon was to raise mine above the level of absolute crap. For starters, all of the mobs except that last one had been at best poorly done and at worst downright lazy. While the berserker cats had seemed like a good idea at the time, looking back it was just piling a bunch of oversized house cats into an enclosed space, making them go insane, and then hoping they could somehow take down a team of Adventurers. Sure they were enhanced, but I’d dramatically underestimated the power cultivators could bring to bear.
The last mob had worked, but there was one, no, two major problems with making them standard mobs for the dungeon. The first and more practical reason was mana. More specifically, his lack of it. Making those kinds of enchantments was expensive, but that was only half the cost. I’d discovered that the more mana poured into a manifestation, the better the results. Whether it was making a weapon, wall, or mob, mana just seemed to make things better. While the PantherCat had cost twice as much mana as just manifesting a normal panther would have, the results spoke for themselves. Unfortunately, while I’d made some rather spectacular explosions in my time, I was still less than a year old. There was no way I could manifest more than one of the PantherCats and still have enough mana left over for regular mobs.
Which brought me to the second problem. In a word, balance. Sprinkling that quality of a mob through the dungeon without a boss mob to follow up was just…wrong. Fortunately, there was one aspect of dungeons that I seemed to excel at. Traps.
Traps were a hit or miss solution. There was a middle ground, things like poison filled chambers or a crushing ceiling, but generally speaking traps tended to kill their targets or only wound them, which for a cultivator was usually negligible. My best bet on improving dungeon lethality was to add a heck of a lot more traps, then concentrate the mana I normally spent on manifesting mobs into a few powerful beasts. This would hopefully allow situations like that with the assessment team, which had worked out ideally.
And out of the blue, Ryia flashed through my mind. She was in the wrong, and hadn't even had the decency to apologize, just vanishing after I threw her out of my domain. I’d been surprised I could affect Ryia; the action had been so instinctual it might as well have been someone else doing it. I knew dungeons subconsciously performed tasks that they couldn't manage normally, like keeping the air seal up, but even so...
Despite that, it only went to show that her words had made even his subconscious angry. I swirled my mana, the equivalent of an ENAD shaking his head, focusing back onto the dungeon.
Overhaul time.
The first room I refurbished to be a maze, of sorts. The floors of the entire chamber save the first few feet were divided into tiles. Each tile was made of a dark metal and, if stepped on in the incorrect order, would trigger an effect, varying from moderately bad, like a spike trap, to “Oh crap we're all going to die.”, like flooding the room with air until they all died of overpressure damage. Sound familiar? The lethality of the room was toned down by my lack of rune knowledge, but it was better than nothing. There was a trick to the room, but probably not one the brawny types were likely to figure out.
The second room was, to all appearances, empty.
Wink wink.
The third room held cat fights 2.0. I totally didn't double the size of the space and throw in a crapton of obstacles, just to make things more interesting. I also didn't increase the mana density of a cat each time it killed an opponent, making the strongest rise to the top. That would be inhumane. I definitely placed a free platinum chest with no traps in there.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The last room held a beast of a cat, twice the size of a PantherCat. I’d added a bit of theatrics to the surroundings, but the space was large and open, allowing for ranging battles that would hopefully allow the cat to take full advantage of its enchantments. My dungeon's current arrangement took up exactly all of my mana reserves, but I could manage it. Improving further would require a large amount of mana, like the death of a high-ranked Adventurer. But what were the odds of that happening anytime soon?
One problem I kept coming across was the width and depth of my lack of knowledge. From runes to enchantments to basic physics, all of the things that would help me advance my dungeon to the next level required knowledge I didn’t have. All I could do was hope I’d learn fast enough to make up for my slow start.
I continued to expand my domain until it covered all of the clearing and a bit beyond. However, my main expansion had been down, widening the domain around the shaft I used to reach the surface. I was wondering what I should do with the substantial space when I sensed an ENAD approaching.
It had been… a while since the incident with the Adventuring party; I wasn’t certain exactly how long. Between developing the blueprint and enchantments for my final boss to the frustratingly difficult task of getting the second room's hidden trap to work, I’d been quite busy.
The ENAD was different. It wasn’t his appearance; he was dressed in practical gear meant for long travel. His face was worn, telling of a long, hard life, but the hardships he’d endured clearly hadn’t taken away from his physique. His tanned skin indicated he spent most of his days outdoors, and over all his appearance was something like a moderately successful Adventurer. But still, there was something about him, some intangible felling of the incredible that drew the eye up to him.
Oh yeah, and he was flying. That might have had a little something to do with it.
The man landed in front of the entrance to my dungeon with a surprisingly gentle motion, like stepping off that particularly long step off the stairs. He raised his head and looked directly at me. Not at the archway, not around the forest, at ME. It was the most unnerving experience of my life. Ok, I hadn’t been around for that long, but still.
“Greetings, Core. I am Zimisite. How shall I address you?”
“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
I know, stupid answer. You try talking to a guy who fell out of the sky and looks straight at you, then talks in ManaSpeach while you're less than a year old and have very little social experiences to speak of.
“Granite.”
“Very well, Granite. I am, here on behalf of the Adventurer Society and the Kingdom of Siegfried. I would like to talk with you regarding your operations on these lands and the rights, privileges, and responsibilities that come with it. Would now be a good time?”
Na, I’m gonna go stare at my mobs for another few weeks. Seriously, did he ever get a no after an opener like that?
“Sure…” Gosh, I hadn’t felt this awkward since Ryia had…had…I refocused on the topic at hand, shoving her memory to the back of my mind.
“Very well. Let us begin.”
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Ryia was exhausted. She didn’t have a heart, brain, muscles or body to, but was absolutely utterly soul crushingly out of it. She’d been on the move for almost a fortnight, slipping through the earth to avoid any complications as she moved ever onwards. By the time she started to recognize the quartz around her, her light was nothing more than the faintest of glows, her mana levels depleted by the constant strain.
But she had made it, a journey that would have taken an ENAD literal years and she’d made it in less than two weeks. As she rose to the surface, her long rehearsed words rising to her mind, she froze as an aura washed over her.
When a cultivator reached a high enough level of cultivation, usually around C rank or so, they developed a field of infused mana floating around their bodies. It was similar to a Core’s domain, increasing their awareness of their surroundings and bolstering their passive regeneration. However, it did come with some drawbacks. A powerful aura improperly controlled could be sensed, and a particularly adroit cultivator could read a person's aura, picking out their emotions by the Intent fluctuations it gave off. Another aspect of an aura was to give an approximate indicator of a cultivator’s strength based on its mana density.
The aura Ryia sensed was not that of a C ranker or even a B ranker, but that of a full blown, bona fide, honest to God, mid to high tiered A ranker.
“This can’t be happening.”
It was the only thought Ryia could formulate through her exhaustion and shock. When the assessment team had gauged a dungeon’s strength, there was no telling how long a dungeon had lived without being discovered after all, local Adventurer Society or the Kingdom would send representatives to discuss the terms of a dungeon’s operation. Because of the World Core’s rules, that no Core could break its word, any promise made would permanently bind the Core. After all, there was no fighting the World Core. The last Core that had tried, an S ranked dungeon that thought it was on top of the world, had vanished without a trace, all of its S ranked power culminating in a sudden and complete disappearance.
The presence of an A ranker didn’t make any sort of logical sense. As far as she knew Windhollow, the nearest city with an Adventurer branch, only had two A rankers. That one of them had left their doubtless busy routine to come all the way out here was… not good.
She rushed towards the surface, but the aura had already noticed her. With a total disregard for her wellbeing, it stopped her in her tracks, flinging her far below the surface, where the stone grew warm and the mana erratic. She shuddered as the chaotic and powerful mana smashed into her incorporeal form like a blizzard of hail, but eventually, mercifully, her momentum settled. She once more began to rise, desperate to stop Granite from making a deal.
Because if there was one thing that every urban A ranker knew how to do, it was to make slavery sound like a steal of a deal.