In the middle of the night, Five was quietly sitting in his newly created throne room. With the few additional DP he had left after the trial, he decided to create this room to make it easier to meet all his monsters and to protect his own privacy. While it was called a throne room, at the moment, it looked more like a modern meeting room with desks arranged in a circle and a blackboard hung on one of the walls.
Five was anxiously waiting as the clock was ticking. In just a few seconds, the official time period of the trial would end. Although his own trial was already over, many other dungeon masters still had to go through their own but everything would be over in just a few seconds. He already instinctively knew that something would happen when the clock would display 0:00 and so, he was carefully waiting for the incoming announcement together with Dreidus.
Next to Dreidus, Lyra was quietly waiting, not daring to speak a word. Since the end of the trial, Five noticed that the two boss monsters spent a lot of time together. He was not oblivious to what was happening but chose to turn a blind eye to the two monsters' relationship. It did not seem to affect the development of the dungeon in any way; there were no valid reasons to not allow them to be together.
The Banshee Queen was nervously looking around; she felt out of place. Originally, only Dreidus was called by Five so that they could immediately discuss the measures to take after the announcement but under Dreidus' coaxing, Lyra ended up joining the meeting. With her current attire, she looked like a real secretary ready to take notes of the discussion.
"In just a few seconds, I will feel more at ease. It has been awfully quiet these days, right? I don't like being in the dark, do you know why the barbarians suddenly reduced the number of people they send to the dungeon?" asked Five while looking at Dreidus.
"I have no idea... I only know about the things occurring in the dungeon, as for the outside world, we are completely in the dark. But the fact that only 10 barbarians came to the dungeon during these three days was quite good for us. They quietly mined on the first floor and allowed us to gain some DP. We've got more than enough to resummon all the monsters as before."
"Mmm, that's alright but we cannot remain in the dark too much. We should also think of a way to prevent that in the future. It was my mistake if the trial was so rough... I did not really understand how this game works. I should not limit myself to just my monsters. We need to be more proactive and start to interact with the barbarians more..." said Five.
During the past few days, he kept getting a faint feeling of unease. It was not threatening in any way but Five simply did not like to remain in the dark. If there was one thing he learned from his training, it would be that the lack of information could be fatal. He naturally raised an eyebrow when the number of barbarians coming to the dungeon suddenly decreased. Could something have happened to the tribe?
If so, it was definitely not a good thing. He depended a lot on these barbarians for his DP. Additionally, when reviewing the trial, he realized that he did not make proper use of his environment. Choosing a good environment did not limit itself to just choosing a place that is hard to reach and an advantageous position, it also meant choosing the right neighbors!
If he was able to somehow involve the barbarians in the trials, it would definitely benefit the dungeon. For example, during the trial, if he had been able to redirect part of the beasts toward the barbarian's village, he would definitely have suffered fewer casualties. There were no doubts that the barbarians would have been able to deal with the beasts effectively since they essentially spent their entire life hunting them.
He needed to find a way to communicate with the barbarians, but he clearly could not randomly turn up and say that he was the owner of the dungeon. It was especially true since a few barbarians did lose their life there and as a result, the tribe might be hostile toward him if they knew his identity.
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"..."
[System Announcement: Congratulations to all dungeon masters, the trials are now officially over.]
"Wow! I did not expect so many of you to survive! That is quite impressive! Out of the 15000 prisoners who became dungeon masters, about half of you survived!"
Following the short announcement, the easily recognizable voice of Gaia quickly resonated through the room. Five quietly listened as Gaia continued to speak.
"While most of you relied on trickery, luck, and even external help to pass the trial, it still counts as a pass. However, I would advise you to build up your own force to survive on your own. I am continuously updating the game and I can guarantee that the next trial won't be that easy. I will see how many of you will survive the incoming trial in 30 days. Until then, I wish you all the best of luck."
"Oh! Since it is the first time, let me give you all a piece of information; There will be an auction held for all the dungeon masters right after the next trial. That is all I can say, prepare well for it! Also, it is a coincidence, but the first major game's update will take place tonight, so don't be scared if your monsters' stats randomly changes; it's all for the sake of fairness. More details about the changes should be given soon. I hope to see you all at the auction, that is if you are able to survive that far."
Gaia's announcement ended up as abruptly as it started. Silence filled the room as Five was still listening in case Gaia would come back. It was only after he made sure that everything was over that he relaxed and organized his thoughts. From her tone, it seemed that Gaia was in a good mood; her attitude toward the dungeon masters was considerably better than when she announced the start of the first trial.
"An update, another trial, and an auction..." murmured Five.
The update was to be expected; the most successful games would often fix their bugs, balance their characters and continuously add in new content. In the real world, many game companies would perform live updates once per week; now that a whole month has passed in New Earth, the update did not seem to be out of place.
As for the auction, Five suspected that it formed part of the new content that would probably be added along the update. Not much information was available about that event but from his knowledge, it was obvious that the auction was an important event. Many strange and powerful items would probably be available for sale. It was a clear message from Gaia to start stocking his DP.
"What do you think about that Dreidus? I thought there would be more information, but it seems that we should just continue to upgrade the dungeon and prepare for the auction..." said Five as he turned toward the lich.
"Mmm, indeed, we did not learn anything new except for an estimate of the number of new dungeon masters. At least we can confirm the date of the next trial; it is highly possible that the trials would be a monthly event. We should quickly reinforce the dungeon; we barely survived the last trial and she said it was an easy one. I cannot imagine what the next one would be like but at the same time, with the auction coming, we should save about 10% of our DP for that event."
Five calmly waited for Dreidus to finish speaking before smiling. "You are wrong... It is very likely that the auction is a trap!"
"What? A trap?" asked Dreidus with a stunned expression.
"It is just a mind game. If I am not wrong, the reason it is scheduled right after the trial is precisely to reduce the amount of DP we would use for upgrading our defense. It is basically a bait to make our dungeons more vulnerable! She is basically tricking us into saving our DP instead of investing in defenses. If you think about our situation; if I was not over cautious and did not save some DP and instead used them on summoning more Death Knights, wouldn't the trial have gone more smoothly? The charge would have completely wiped out the beasts in one go and we would have been able to focus on the beast kings. In other words, the trials are not that wrong if we spend our DP correctly. Saving is a wise action but our DP is precisely saved for this type of situation! It was just that we did not expect that most of the functions of the dungeon would be blocked during the trial..."
After taking a moment to digest the information, Dreidus quietly nodded. The explanation made sense. Although there was no proof, it was better to be safe than sorry and if they did not even survive the trial, what would all the DP they saved for the auction be used for?
"In that case, should we continue upgrading the dungeon? We did not take any actions for the past three days. I believe it’s time to properly finish the 4th floor," said Dreidus.
"Of course, the barbarians already went as far as the 3rd floor, they can go to the fourth one at any time. But the lack of information about the barbarians is still bothering me. Are there any undead monster that is suitable to gather information?"
Dreidus thought for a moment and answered, "Gathering information? Apologies but undead monsters are not very good at that. They are very noticeable especially since they tend to emit a cold aura wherever they go and living beings are generally hostile toward undead monsters. You should try to look more into spirit-type monsters, they tend to have abilities that can be used to gather information."
"That's fine, I will have a look later. For now, let's talk about completing the fourth floor. I would like your opinion about that," said Five.
As he heard Five, Dreidus shifted his gaze toward the silent Lyra before answering, "Yes master, about that, there is something I would like to point out. I believe that the difference between the third and fourth floor is a little too big. If we follow your plan, we should aim to smoothly increase the power of the monsters through the floors but clearly, the death knights alone are already far stronger than the monsters of the graveyard. I believe it would be better if we add a floor between those two floors... And also... I think that the Banshees would be suitable for that floor."