Five allowed himself to sink in his chair. The meeting room was silent and even the rest of the living quarters felt rather desolate. Most of his monsters had already left the dungeon. They were currently waiting somewhere in the wild between the Brown Bat Tribe and the Pronghorn Tribe.

They were committed to their plan of taking revenge on the other dungeon. As a result, most of Five's monsters had left the dungeon and were on stand-by near these two tribes. They needed to be ready to intervene as soon as one of the tribes was attacked. This resulted in the dungeon being quieter than usual.

It was not a bad thing; it allowed Five to take a step back and think about what he went through. Right now, out of his main monsters, only Dreidus was still in the dungeon. He was currently on the next floor, the workshop which was reorganized to accommodate the new Bonesmen.

The Bonesmen were the only societal monsters among the Undead. They specialized in Engineering and Necromancy and benefitted from the [Dwarfism] buff. Right now, the crafting team had already achieved a delicate balance between the monsters. The Bonesmen would slowly integrate into the team but for now, they spent most of their time converting the bodies of the barbarians in Living Corpses.

Five opened up his interface and manipulated the dungeon core to show him what was happening in the dungeon. It had been a while since he actually watched the barbarians exploring the dungeon for resources. It was very repetitive and boring to do so every day; it was usually his monsters who made sure the barbarians did not cross the line.

Five was at peace. Although most of his powerful monsters were out of the dungeon, he was not worried that he would be suddenly attacked out of nowhere. He had more than six million DP in his inventory. These were meant to heal the totem spirits but if needed, he could spend five million DP just to unlock a level 50 monster. He was already close to being able to unlock monsters at Harriet's level.

Unlocking the Harpy Queen cost 15 million DP. It was not that expensive but the most important part was that he needed to fulfill the conditions before being able to unlock her. The most difficult part in unlocking high-level monsters was to have a suitable environment for them in the dungeon.

On the projected screen, Five could watch the barbarians exploring the eighth floor of the dungeon where the Defacers, Haunting Ghosts, Living Armors and Gargoyles were. Five accepted to open one new floor as the barbarians started to share the dungeon with the other tribes.

He noticed a significant increase in the DP generation rate during the past few days. With the barbarians of the other tribes exploring the dungeon on top of those of the Musclewood Tribe, the dungeon now produced more DP than ever before. He took a hit after the update classifying the enemies as active or passive but he finally recovered. Furthermore, with the arrival of the players which should start in a few days, Five would receive even more DP.

He had already pushed the idea several times and the barbarians of the Musclewood Tribe could already see that licensing the dungeon to the other tribes was beneficial to themselves. Five was not a member of the Musclewood Tribe but he did have a certain amount of influence on the decisions they took.

'I am going to reap the rewards of sending Lyra out to give a quest soon. Better late than never. I wonder if these guys would be roaming the forest in search of Lyra since she said she would be there every month. There is no harm sending Lyra there just in case. It would be a great way to introduce the mechs to the players. Not that I think it would be really needed seeing from how invested they are in trying to get into the dungeon.'

Five watched the screen for a moment before switching it off.

He leaned against the backrest and checked his interface. The user interface was updated with every single update; it made it look fresher and more advanced. Five did not bother to look at his own characteristics. He did not change anything about himself since the last battle where he learned a new skill. Instead, he looked at the other parts of his interface.

However, it was not long before his mind started to wander. He felt that something was missing. The room was too silent; he was not used to be alone like that. There would usually always be someone around. He thought he would be able to focus and browse through the system with all the monsters gone but unexpectedly, he was missing them.

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There was not much work to do anyway. The dungeon had already developed to the point where they could work without him. The crafting department was making progress at an astonishing rate; he was no longer needed since the dwarves took over the forge. As for learning about the monsters, Five learned very quickly that browsing through the dungeon shop would not give him more knowledge and experience than his monsters. It was way easier to simply ask Harriet about the Wind-type monsters. If he needed some information about Dark-type monsters, he would ask Dreidus. For the Fire-Type, he would ask Ishan.

Five quickly came to the conclusion that he simply needed to summon a high-level monster of a specific attribute. He already set a goal for himself to summon a water-type monster next. It was the next biome he wanted to develop.

The only thing Five could not receive help with was the game system. Since the monsters had never heard of the game interface before and could not even access it, only Five could explore its possibilities and find ways to exploit it.

He absentmindedly browsed through the interface. His profile was pretty dull. He did not have any friend and his inbox was empty. The only thing he had in abundance was friend requests. Since the auction, Five received a lot of friend requests, presumably from the dungeon masters who agreed to join the alliances and were now trying to recruit him.

Fortunately, it was impossible to send messages to other players unless they were friends or else, Five would have received countless invitations to the alliances. He briefly looked at the list and scrolled down. There, he saw Iris' name.

A bittersweet feeling rose in his heart. He wanted to strangle that woman; he wanted her to suffer as much as he did but at the same time, he also did not want to harm her and simply leave her alone. It was a really strange feeling. His actions had been fueled by the thoughts of taking revenge but when he last met her, doubts started rising in his heart.

She did not seem to be lying when she stated that she was framed. At that time, Five did not give her the time to explain herself as he did not want to be swayed but what if he had been wrong the whole time? What if she really did not harm him and if the evidence brought before him was truly fake?

After all, not once did she show that she wanted to harm him. Even when he was sentenced and when they first met in the game, she did not show any form of disdain. She looked really concerned and anxious. Unless she was a trained actor, there was no way she could hide her feelings so well. The more Five thought about it, the more doubtful he became. He also could not forget the two years they were together.

Nevertheless, while he was looking at the friend request list, something triggered him.

'Who is that d*mn idiot that keeps sending a friend request?'

The list in front of him was been updated in real-time and to Five's annoyance, the list kept moving up and down because someone kept sending a friend request, canceling it and sending another one right after. It was triggering to watch the list oscillate up and down.

'Does that person have nothing better to do? Is he a dungeon master? I am not sure if I can add a normal player as a friend...'

The player's name was Stargaze. Five stared at the flickering name and fell into deep thoughts. He knew he should not get complacent because of his recent success. He knew his dungeon was already above average but compared to the old dungeons, he was lacking behind. Furthermore, looking at the trend, he knew it would only get worse. All the updates have had something in common; nerfs to the DP generated and additional costs.

It was clear that the game allowed players to develop quickly to catch up to the NPCs but their advantage was slowly being stripped away. The old dungeon masters took decades to reach the point they were at; it would be disheartening for them to find that the new generation of dungeon masters could achieve a similar feat in a much smaller time frame.

There was another alarming point. After thinking about it properly, Five concluded that the monsters he saw at Kroff's dungeon were definitely not his strongest monsters. Just looking at Harriet, even Five could almost already unlock a monster at her level. Considering that the old dungeon masters could fork out billions of DP at the auction, Five had no doubt in his mind that they had much higher level monsters hidden somewhere in their dungeon.

The one monster that came to his mind was the Blue Scale Dragon he saw at the auction. That monster was powerful but had a very high maintenance cost. As a result, he would often be put in hibernation. It was possible that Kroff's powerful monsters were all in hibernation at that time, resulting in him successfully escaping.

'It is obvious that the old dungeon masters do not have the rights to intervene directly on the players but I don't know how long that beginner's protection will last. I know I am already extremely lucky to have gotten that far alone but I should be reaching my limit soon.'

'Before, I would be reluctant to bind myself to an organization but now, the situation has changed,' thought Five as his eyes landed on the [Void Contract] in his inventory. He had lived in the business world for long enough to know the rule of the jungle.

Small businesses would be ignored by large corporations but that was until they would have developed themselves to a certain extent. Then, whether they liked it or not, they needed to get absorbed to survive or else, under the pressure of the huge corporations, the small businesses could only go bankrupt. There were many ways for large corporations to destroy small business which included illegal practices like the use of connections to change regulations or legal ones like predatory pricing.

Five was in a similar position as the small businesses. He had been successful and had developed but soon, he would face the pressure of the big fishes. Considering that he had been facing three other dungeons near him, Five knew his dungeon location had already been exposed to at least one alliance. He knew he needed to find an umbrella under which he could hide soon.

In normal circumstances, that would be putting a shackle on himself. He would greatly benefit from joining an alliance in the short term but in the long run, he would end up working as their slave. However, he now had the key to those shackles in his possession. What if he joined an alliance, took every benefit he could from it and bailed out at the critical moment?

It was dangerous but it would buy him enough time to become strong enough to act independently.

"Alright, Stargaze. Since you have so much free time and is so insistent, let's see what you have to say exactly."

[System prompt: You have accepted "Stargaze" as a friend. Send him a message now.]