Chapter 15

With the spacial ring absorbed and studied, Pan turned his focus on the other items he had gained from the hostile assault on his dungeon. The first thing he absorbed was the explosive mana crystals. He was surprised to see that they were regular mana crystals, but had been tampered with through an enchantment to cause them to release all of their energy at once when the crystal's structure was sufficiently compromised. It was an interesting application of enchanting, and adding new enhancements to his growing repertoire would be a great boon now that he finally decided it was time to begin his journey down the path of the enchanter.

Next, he focused on the potions the man carried. There were seven varieties, with high-quality mana stamina and health potions being the first three. Pan absorbed those, and was pleased to see that the average ranked health potions would allow him to further improve his own basic ones, at the cost of more expensive ingredients. But what did ingredient costs matter to a dungeon who could create them at will? The final four were strength potions, damage boost potions, berserker potions, and a high-level magic potion that greatly increased maximum mana and mana regeneration for a few minutes, before leaving the user burnt out for a few hours. Pan absorbed all of them, and was already thinking of ways to significantly improve the potency of them.

Finally, he got to the enchanted equipment and amulets. The gear all had regular maintenance enhancements to keep the blades and the armor rust free, and a few had damage increases, with one being an elemental damage enchantment. The warrior's greatsword had an enchantment to decrease its apparent mass for just the wielder, allowing them to perform sword moves most greatsword users could only dream of. A few armor pieces boosted the user's stats, like strength or agility. The archer even had boots that boosted movement speed, and a cape that helped with stealth. The mage's robes were marginally more interesting, since they boosted the spell strength, maximum mana, and mana regeneration of the user all at once. The healer’s robes also boosted healing spell strength, as well as intelligence. They were a good assortment of enchantments, and Pan was excited to begin his experimentation with them.

The final pieces were the amulets, which protected users from an identify spell, but they were basic, and could only display a fixed range of characteristics. So if someone wanted to appear as a lower level, one person might see them as a level seventeen, while another might see them as a level nineteen. But Pan felt that as he improved his skill, he would be able to make them display things exactly the same to everyone, and he would be able to set it however he wanted. It could be a useful tool to help disguise monsters or bosses, as well as his body if he ever got enough for the skill.

Pan decided to focus on learning the enchanting skill first, rather than spend more time reverse engineering and improving his new potions. He figured it was about time he learned how to create proper magical items. To enchant an item, he needed to know the enchantment, and have a way to imbue the enchantment, along with the necessary energy into the item. For weaker enchantments, lots of mana could be used, but for powerful enchantments, like elemental damage effects, soulstones were needed instead. They were simply mana crystals that had been used to capture a soul. One that was done, the crystal could discharge the soul energy to create or recharge enchantments. Once emptied, they could usually be reused, but sometimes they would disintegrate, based on the quality of soulstone and the skill of the user.

Luckily, Pan could easily make an abundance of mana stones, and he hoped he would have the ability to cast a soul trap spell, since it was a basic spell many mages learned early on. If a mage ever got a mana stone, turning it into a soulstone was a great way to make money, since enchanters would pay to use the stored energy, and would reimburse them if it broke. It was also useful to be able to recharge any enchanted items they had, such as a wand or staff. The soul trap spell was a strange spell, one of the few that Pan felt he may be able to use with his limited abilities as a dungeon. He couldn’t directly cast it, but since he received mana from everything that died in his dungeon, he felt that he should be able to collect their soul energy as well.

However, even after hours of trial and error, he was still unable to direct any energy from the deaths of monsters in his dungeon into a mana crystal. He checked the dungeon store for any skills that could help him, and quickly found a solution. It was two hundred and fifty dungeon points, but he had no other use for them anyway.

Dungeon Soul Trap

Anything that dies in the dungeon will have a portion of its energy diverted to a soul gem.

5% of the mana gained from deaths will be converted into soul energy until designated soul gems are full. Note that sentients cannot have their soul energy taken.

He was disappointed to have to give up some mana, but he felt that it would be worth it if he could learn enchanting. He created a small mana stone, capable of holding fifty mana, into a soul gem by directing the new soul energy he could feel into the gem. The amount of soul energy it could hold was one-tenth its previous maximum mana. He could feel the energy trickling in, since there were always monsters dying in the ecosystems he had created. It seemed that for every ten mana lost, he would gain one soul energy, further slowing the acquisition of the valuable resource. He decided to create a massive soul gem from the old one he had from his time as a slave. He increased the size of the already enormous mana stone to five thousand maximum mana storage, then he set it as the target for the soul energy produced by his dungeon. He absorbed the little soul gem, since he figured it might be useful later on to create them directly. It was actually just as expensive to create a soul gem as it was to create a mana stone and convert it, so there would be no cutting costs there.

A maximum of five hundred soul energy was an enormous amount, and although Pan didn’t know it, any enchanter who saw the battery would probably sell him his family for a chance to use it. Pan simply thought it was convenient to have all of his energy in one place, and it would be much easier to use once he started enchanting with it. For now, he would start by using mana to enchant items while he waited for the gem to fill and his skill to increase. He could already feel the power slowly trickling in, but there wasn’t even a point of energy.

Pan started his research by making a copy of a basic iron dagger he had absorbed, since it was the cheapest weapon he could make. He wanted to try some of the more basic enchantments that used mana to add magical properties to items. These mana enchantments were mostly limited to basic maintenance, such as rust prevention or increased durability, but they were still valuable to adventurers. Less maintenance saved time, as well as money in the long run, and you would be assured that your weapon or armor wouldn’t be likely to fail in the middle of a fight. All that was needed was a bit of mana every once in awhile, and the enchantment would keep on working. The major disadvantage, aside from their lack of damage increase, was that if the enchantment ever ran out of mana, it would disintegrate entirely, and need to be replaced.

He decided to start with the rust prevention enchantment, since it was by far the most basic. He pushed his mana into the sword, making it follow the pattern he had learned from absorbing previous items. At first, the mana resisted his attempts to bind it to the item, and a sort of pressure built up in Pan’s mind. He forced his will into the item, and the magic seemed to click into place, successfully enchanting the item. Enchanting was easier for Pan than alchemy, probably because a dungeon was a species completely based on magic, and he could manipulate it as if it was a part of his body, which was pretty much exactly the case. Alchemy needed some physical interaction with the ingredients, while enchantment was entirely based on shaping and moving energy. He was rewarded with the enchanting skill, and a poorly enchanted item. It was much weaker than it should have been, but that was because he hadn't had the skill when he made it. As he leveled his enchanting skill and increased his experience, the effects would be better and better.

Enchanting Level 1, Beginner

The ability to give items magical effects. Effects increased based off of enchanting level.

+1% enchantment strength per level

One advantage of being a dungeon was his ability to reabsorb the item and try again, slightly offsetting the mana cost. He had used over one hundred mana to enchant the sword, but he gained more than three-quarters of the mana back when he absorbed the item. The next enchantment he added to an item was twice as effective as the first, needing half the mana to keep the enchantment active. He continued to refine the process of enchanting and absorbing to grind the skill, and increase his knowledge of enchanting. Pan was able to improve the enchantment marginally from there, getting about a five percent increase in effectiveness, not counting the level bonus. He would have to improve his knowledge of enchantments, or improve the base enchantment to gain any extra effectiveness.

The mana pattern he used to enchant the items was a series of small runes, connected by lines of magic. Since he was a dungeon, he could view the magic itself, and noticed imperfections in the runes and connecting lines. It seemed that whoever enchanted the items he absorbed was not an expert, and Pan started modifying the pattern to fix the mistakes. Some modifications caused the process to fail, while others weakened the enchantment. But over time, he was able to iron out the flaws, and the mana flowed much easier through the pattern, increasing the efficiency of the enchantment by nearly another twenty percent. The experimentation helped his skill level even further, but the gains from practicing the same enchantment had already started to diminish.

He started working with a more useful enchantment, which improved the durability of the item at the cost of needing mana every so often. He was able to improve the durability of an iron dagger from fifteen to eighteen, even before tinkering with the pattern. After hours more of experimentation, he got that number to twenty, a full third higher than the original. At that point, he felt that he would need to level his skill to see any improvements, or redesign the enchantment. Since he did not know enough about the theory behind the patterns, or even know how the runes interacted, he decided to leave dreams of creating his own enchantments for the future, once he had teased out the secrets of the craft.

Mana based enchantments weren’t the most powerful, and they rarely added any extra damage or effects to the item, but they were useful for utilitarian purposes. Not to mention that any enchanter worth his salt would include such maintenance enchantments on his creations. After all, who wanted to buy a magical sword, only to have it rust away after being unused for awhile? No, these sort of enchantments were the foundation of the craft, and important parts of all the best enchanted items. The greatest enchanters in history, the Drasians, had devised methods of adding mana enchantments to items that recharged themselves from ambient mana. These items were sometimes found in old caves or graves, always in pristine condition. The methods had been lost, but Pan felt that with his abundance of time and mana, as well as the ability to create any materials or items he needed, he could eventually devise a way to do it himself. Besides, a dungeon had a lot of free time, what else was he going to do other than perfect a craft or two.

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He continued to create and enchant daggers, grinding the skill for nearly another day until he reached apprentice rank in the skill, which had the same bonus as apprentice rank alchemy. His progress was extremely slow at that point, and he realized he needed new enchantments to work with. He had a good amount of soul energy, nearly fifty, collected from the two days he had spent learning the basics of the skill. Pan decided it was finally time to start experimenting with the vastly more powerful, and interesting soul energy. He conjured another dagger, and decided to try a freezing enchantment he had absorbed from the dagger carried by the archer he had killed. He pulled a small amount of energy from his battery, and pushed it into the dagger, forcing it into the shape he knew it needed to be in. He felt it snap, and just when he thought it was a success, the dagger exploded, sending shards of metal everywhere. Each shard froze the spot it struck, and frost spread from each spot until the shards ran out of energy. Unperturbed, since he was in a separate experimentation room, Pan pulled more energy and tried again. This time, he was gentler when he pushed the energy into the proper shape, and when he felt the pressure build, he eased off and pushed even slower. Eventually, he felt the magic lock into place, this time with no explosions, and the enchantment was successful.

Iron Dagger of Freezing

Quality: Superior

Grade: Common

Attack: 7-14

Special Effects: +7 points of freezing damage. 5% chance to freeze the target for 2 seconds.

The enchantment was decent, but the original he copied it from had been better, probably due to a difference in skill level. But creating the dagger had nearly leveled his enchanting skill again, although at a rather steep cost of five soul energy. He had already gone through twenty percent of his stockpile, but it was there to use, so he tried another enchantment he had learned from one of the better-equipped adventurers, as well as one the necromancer had.

Iron Dagger of Burning

Quality: Superior

Grade: Common

Attack: 7-14

Special Effects: +7 points of fire damage. 5% chance to ignite the target for 2 seconds

Iron Dagger of Reaping

Quality: Superior

Grade: Common

Attack: 7-14

Special Effects:+7 points of death damage. 5% chance to temporarily lower the target's vitality by 2

The last he was loath to practice, much less give out as a reward when enchanted weapons became appropriate, but learning it would provide him with valuable experience, and he had no other weapon enchantments to practice with. He really needed a way to get new items, since he rarely got something he wanted from dead adventurers. After all, the better equipped they were, the less likely they were to die. He needed a way to entice adventurers to give him new items, preferably without much of a cost on his end. The adventurers would try to take advantage of him in any way, so he needed a method that would keep him in control, and not dependent on any guild for new items. Besides, any kind of trade deal would probably come with ridiculous demands, like safe zones for beginners or some other nonsense. He was a dungeon, safe zones, if he ever made any, would be rewards for people who reached them, not some concession made to a guild so he could get items. Even if he did negotiate with the guild, they would probably cheat him with inferior items. He needed to bypass the middleman, the guild in this instance, and rely on the greed of individual adventurers to get him what he desired. After a few hours of brainstorming, he came up with a decent plan.

He created a few metal chests, that he placed at different places in the dungeon. He left instructions for the adventurers engraved on stone tablets next to the chests. They would place items in the chest, and close the lid, locking it in place. Then, if the items were new to him, the loot chest at the end of the room, or nearby if they were in the cavern, would reward them with money equal to the value of the items. If any items were not new, there would be no gold, and the adventurer could retrieve the item from the chest. Different chests would give increased amounts of money depending on how hard they were to reach. The best chest on the first floor gave an extra twenty percent gold, while the final chest on the second floor, after the boss, gave seventy percent more than the item was worth. He even put a chest right in the first room that gave eighty percent of the value, but that was still better than what people could get from a merchant. This chest also had a tablet explaining that higher rewards could be gained by going deeper into the dungeon. The chests had the added benefit of enticing adventurers to take risks to try to increase their profit, and if Pan was lucky, they’d die in an attempt to reach a better chest and he’d get the items for free.

The next morning, the new chests caused quite a stir. The first group to enter saw the new chest in the otherwise empty first room, and after investigating it, decided to try it out. One of them placed an iron dagger into the box, and even though Pan already knew how to make one, he rewarded them with money anyway, in an effort to get the ball rolling. Once they saw it worked, they excitedly set off deeper into the dungeon to look for the better chests. They eventually stopped at the chest giving one hundred and ten percent of the value, and put all of their nonessential items into it. Some were new to Pan, and although uninteresting, he rewarded them accordingly. They retrieved their money and unabsorbed items, and left the dungeon, spreading the news to any other parties they came across. Pan hoped that the news would quickly spread outside of the dungeon, and with it would come an influx of useful items that would hopefully expand Pan's library of knowledge. He really wanted new potions and enchantments to experiment with, but he was hopeful that something would come through that surprised him.

Over the day he received a massive influx of new items, most of them useless, but some of them were noteworthy. He had no need for random trinkets, or assorted toiletries, but he only had to absorb each item once, and it may be useful to have some random items in his database later on. One jokester even put a handful of dirt from outside in the chest, so Pan rewarded him with harder monsters in the next room. Needless to say, that adventurer wouldn’t be warning others not to try the same thing. But there were gems among the items he was given, sometimes literally. He had received a satchel full of assorted ingredients from an alchemist who had hired a few adventurers to escort him to one of the better chests. Most of them were unknown to Pan, and he was able to plant quite a few of them since they were still alive. He only hoped that the alchemist would return with some potions later on, since those would be real prizes. There were a few enchanted items, but none of them were new to him, since they only had basic mana enchantments. It may take time for word to spread far enough to attract people with better items, since most adventurers at his dungeon were D or low C ranked, and didn’t have access to, or were unwilling to give up more powerful enchanted items.

He was pleased when a blacksmith presented him with some assorted ingots, since even though he had a large supply of iron from absorbing gear from the dead, he had less of the other metals. Copper and bronze were almost never used to make weapons because iron was better and more readily available, just harder to properly forge. Most people had simple steel weapons, and the poorest could afford the metal. Richer adventurers might have equipment made of high steel, which was simply very high-quality steel, with some basic magical enhancements. By mid D rank, most people had all good quality high steel gear, and most C ranked people would have some equipment made of more exotic metals. The invaders he had killed had had moonstone armor, named for its illustrious white appearance. It was a useful metal, since it was very good at channeling magic, making it easy to enchant, as well as being lighter than steel, without giving up any strength. But the blacksmith gave him a surprisingly wide range of ingots, up to tier two metals, like moonstone, cobalt, high steel, and etherium. Tier two metals were more enchantable than base metals, and all had other special unique properties when properly forged.

Pan was pleased with the success of his first day's profit, and by the end of the day, less junk was coming in and people were giving him their more expensive items and materials. The new metals gave him an idea when they reminded him of another skill he had seen in the dungeon store. It should help him attract more people, and hopefully, net him some extra mana. It was fifty dungeon points, but he was willing to pay for it.

Dungeon Ore vein

The ability to create ore veins that will slowly consume mana to grow the assigned ore. The ore must have already been absorbed by the dungeon. Higher quality ores cost more mana to grow.

The tier two ores were expensive to upkeep, but the base metals like iron or copper cost him very little. Before he set them up, he needed proper guardians for the deposits, but not something the miners couldn’t handle, or else they would never come. He did set up a few tier two deposits for himself, since he knew that later on he would want a good supply of high-quality metals for use in enchanting. He put a few copper and iron veins on the first floor, far enough in that a prospective miner would have to be a decent fighter, or hire one to reach. At the very least, it would get more people in the dungeon.

The deposits were noticed the next day, but there were no miners around. The first group to notice them turned back to report to the guild, claiming that they would receive a reward for the news. Sure enough, later that day, a group of miners escorted by some adventurers started poking around the deposits. They seemed pleased with the quality and purity of the ore, and spent a few hours completely stripping some veins. The plan already bore fruit, since one of the escorts died when he set off on his own to “make a little extra coin.” The second floor would have better ore, but there the veins would have their own specialized guardians, which he would spend the night creating.

But by far, the best part of the day was when an unassuming man gave Pan the best items he had received so far. He had not even expected or planned for the kind of item the man brought, but when he received them, he was surprised he hadn’t thought of it earlier. The man brought him a stack of books, most of them useless, but a few outlined how to start a number of professions. They weren’t skillbooks, items that magically imparted skills, but they would teach the reader how to learn the skill on their own. Some more advanced books could help someone level their skills, and expand their knowledge on the subject. Pan absorbed a useless book, and when he saw that recreating it didn’t distort the words at all, but unfortunately didn’t inject the material into his mind, he absorbed the rest. He recreated the few that dealt with alchemy or enchanting, and put them aside to study later.

For now, Pan needed to design a designated ore guardian, and he had a plan in mind. He looked through his list of summonable animals, and stumbled across a small tortoise that sparked his inspiration. He spawned one, and decided it would do nicely. He increased the size until it’s shell was nearly three feet across. He made them stronger, and slightly faster. A tortoise should never be fast, but they would be able to surprise any attacker with a burst of speed. He made their jaws much stronger, and they would be able to tear through armor with the metallic beak he gave them, although that wasn’t the intended purpose. He gave their shells the ability to absorb metals eaten by the tortoise, strengthening them, and adding special properties based on the metal absorbed. They would eat plants normally, but would guard ore veins for the metals they provided, strengthening themselves in the process. When they retreated into their shells, they would be nearly invulnerable, due to armored protrusions on their feet that would seal the holes from the outside world. They would do nicely, and the better the ore they defended, the stronger they would become.

Pan spread them out on the second floor, mostly in the cavern. He placed some ore veins around, better quality iron and copper in the tunnel section and cavern, then moonstone and magicite in the cavern only. Magicite was a special form of iron, that formed when exposed to high concentrations of magic. It was useless in armors, since it had a brittle crystalline structure, but it could be forged into high-quality magic wands or enchanted jewelry. The tortoises were quick to begin their consumption of the ores, and after an hour, they had already started to gain their special properties.

The ones that ate copper had a change in coloration, and their shells grew stronger. The same happened with iron, although those tortoises grew stronger and heavier to help carry the denser shells. Any that ate moonstone grew lighter and quicker, with strong white shells. The ones that ate the magicite were similar to the iron ones, except they had a strange energy around them. Pan knew that they could cast minor spells, and would be almost immune to magic. He considered them a success, and waited for the morning to come so he could see how they fared.

Dungeon Menu

Level: 10

Type: Sentient Dungeon

Name: N/A

Titles: N/A

Mana: 18,153/25,000  (+1000)

Soul Energy: 41.3/500

Rooms: 122

Floors: 2

Animals: 100,000+

Plants: 100,000+

Monsters: 7,592

Skills: [Dungeon Menu], [Dungeon Manipulation], [Dungeon Absorption], [Dungeon Creation: Level 12], [Dungeon Expansion], [Dungeon Summon], [Targeted Evolution], [Monster Imbuement], [Dungeon Map], [Name Bestowal], [Drop Assignment], [Floor Creation], [Environmental Manipulation], [Dungeon Soul Trap], [Alchemy: Lvl 15], [Enchanting: Lvl 13], [Dungeon Ore Vein]

Dungeon Points: 415

Achievements: Evolver, Legend Slayer, Boundless