Chapter 23

Hello Yagaru, Pan responded, speaking directly into his newest boss’ mind. If Pan still had a mouth, he would have had a manic grin splitting his face. It was a success, and he finally had something to talk to. The dungeon side of him didn’t need communication, but the human part of him had thirsted for it in a way he was just now barely beginning to understand. Pan noticed it had been nearly a minute since his response, the “conversation” with Yagaru had quickly petered out. What do you say to something you created? What does a creation say to its creator for that matter?

Yagaru, Pan started again.

Yes creator?

How are you adapting to the new body? Oh, and call me Pan.

It is….. Different. But you are my creator, why should I recognize you as anything other than that.

How so? And call me Pan because being called creator all the time is disconcerting. I’m more comfortable with my name.

If you wish it so, then I shall do so. As for the changes, it is in my mind. I now am. Or at least I know I am. It is strange, and I will have to ponder it for a time. The body is new as well, and I can feel a well of power within me that I know how to use, but can’t fathom why.

Well take your time, you’ll have plenty of it.

After that, Pan felt Yagaru pull away, something no other creature had been able to do. It was all very strange, but he had felt what Yagaru had been unable to explain. The newly expanded mind was overwhelming to Yagaru, and he was trying to figure out the nature of his existence. Yagaru’s mind was new, so Pan didn’t judge him for his lack of ability. The fact that he could hold a conversation at all so soon after being created astounded Pan. But he had felt how overwhelmed Yagaru was through the link, and knew that it would take him time to sort through his new state of existence. Despite knowing this on an intellectual level, Pan couldn’t help second guess himself. As a human, he had never been the most social, and when he finally got a conversation partner only a few words had been exchanged. He was anxious, He wanted to have someone to talk to, but would they want to talk to him?

Pan knew that the reason Yagaru had pulled away was so he could sort out his new thoughts, and with time develop his personality. Just the act of contemplating his existence had left an imprint on Yagaru's mind, forming the base of a deep thinking contemplative mind. Pan found the idea of a philosopher crocodile amusing, especially since he had been named for an ancient magical sage. Attempting to relieve himself of his emotional worries, which were starting to become an annoying holdover from his time as a human, he looked to another one of his projects.

Removing his focus from the crocodile, Pan decided to make more modifications to his creatures. He had one final species to upgrade, and he finally felt ready to begin. He called to the bats that lived in the swamp, choosing the strongest specimens for upgrades. They were small things, nearly a foot across from wingtip to wingtip, but they were fast and agile, and had something nothing else in the cave did. A sixth sense. Theirs wasn’t based on magic like some creatures he had heard of, but sound. They used echoes to map their surroundings, and ever since he had discovered this, he had wanted to weaponize it. Sound was simply waves traveling through the air, and he finally had air magic to play with.

He began by increasing their size and strength, quadrupling their size. The now formidable bats were perfect for imbuing with magic. He started with basic air magic, doing the same things he had done with the dragonflies to improve their aerial performance. They could redirect their flight with gusts of wind, and power ahead on a self-made breeze. He didn’t give them a simple air dart like the one dragonfly species, however, but made something completely new, at least to him. He gave them the ability to vastly increase the pressure behind their sound waves, giving them a weapon that could be targeted at a single enemy, or a whole group of them. The sound was loud and disorienting, and would be able to stun or deafen enemies, potentially rupturing ear drums if the bat got too close. The sound would be disorienting and debilitation, but to do damage, he gave them a wicked set of teeth and a love for red meat. The flying devils would stun their prey, then fly off with a mouthful of their flesh while they recovered. They were aerial piranhas, just in smaller swarms. Pan didn’t want to anger too many adventurers.

The new bats were ordered to form self-sustaining colonies before attacking too many creatures, and many of the old bats evolved soon after the upgrade became available. One downside he had noticed with his constant tinkering was that nothing evolved naturally in his dungeon, forcing him to do it all himself. It was a minor disadvantage in his opinion, and he would have no trouble creating his own creatures to excel in any situation. It was more expensive, but the massive amounts of life in his dungeon gave him an enormous amount of mana.

He had no idea how a regular dungeon functioned when they had to summon each individual monster. He remembered how skeletons grew cheaper to summon as he summoned more and improved his skill, but even then it must take a lot of mana. Although if the mana cost could be reduced to single digits, then a dungeon his size could spawn hundreds of monsters a day, even if their regeneration would only equate to half of his own. That seemed to be why dungeons specialized in a certain type of monster, because after looking at the costs in a bout of curiosity, he saw his skill with one type of skeleton translated to a skill with summoning all types he had access too. He had no desire to change his style now, and he refused to ever summon one of the skeletons he detested ever again.

It took a few days for the bats to fully settle in, and over that period of time, he watched Yagaru's mind grow. The monster still hadn’t tried talking to him, but he had let the worries slip from his mind. It would happen when it happened, and nothing good could come from forcing it. Over the time, Pan had saved up a good chunk of mana, despite his wasteful experimentation, and had decided to push for the next floor so he could properly hide his core. He didn’t want to build a new floor yet, as he still needed time to experiment with new ideas, but he would make a solid defense for his core. He wouldn’t make the new floor until someone was close to defeating the third, but wouldn’t leave it undefended either.

He would need seventy-five thousand mana to create the floor, which he was only a little over a week away from. He was not worried about waiting that long, no adventurers were even close to completing the third floor. Even the original discoverers were far from reaching the end, and he hadn't even created all the bosses. He supposed that the third floor might upgrade him to a B ranked dungeon, but the guild hadn’t sent a new ranking party to test him yet. They did send a lot of parties to kill behemoth, and strip him of his armor, which annoyed Pan. It wasn’t fair for them to send B classed adventurers to kill his boss. Maybe once Yagaru was situated he would give them the old bait and switch. They might win, but it would teach them a lesson.

Recently, Pan had improved his skills in enchanting enough that he felt comfortable giving out enchanted weapons as rewards. They would only be given out for boss fights since well-enchanted gear was in high demand. He even decided to custom tailor the rewards to the group, so they would be sure to receive at least one item that would be useful to them. That should entice people to fight his harder bosses, now all he needed was for someone other than that damn B ranked party to succeed.

Three days into his wait, and he finally had a chance to create another boss for the third floor. A group of adventurers had attempted to reach the center of the silk forest, sure that there would be a valuable treasure there, which there was, but they never discovered it. They had been very successful, at first, but that all went downhill when their pyromancer, who had been easily clearing the way, was bitten by an assassin spider. He had freaked out when he lost connection to his mana, and when he was unable to resist the confusion effect, he had run straight into the webs. Another member had also gotten stuck when trying to help him, and the final two had fallen when besieged by the horde of angry giant orb weavers. One of the spiders had killed both trapped adventurers, and was larger and more powerful than the rest of its species, the perfect candidate for a name.

Pan decided to make the new boss another large monster, although nowhere as large or as smart as Yagaru. He chose a name for the new spider, deciding to call her Sentinel, since she would watch over the forest, but wasn’t a queen like Elaria. Pan pumped mana into her, increasing her leg span to over twelve feet. She stood six feet tall, able to look an adventurer straight on in the eye. Her spindly chitinous legs, although seemingly frail, were incredibly powerful, and terminated in wicked sharp points. He used the knowledge he gained from creating the insanely fast monsters of the second floor, and adapted it to give her rapid reflexes and movements. She wasn't based on strength, but on speed.

He didn’t give her the most powerful defenses, her main way to avoid damage would be to avoid attacks altogether, but she was sturdy enough to withstand a few heavy blows. Her armor was nothing close to Behemoth’s, but it was impressive. He imbued it with both the air and dark elements, augmenting her stealth and speed. The other spiders had bright yellow exoskeletons, but her’s was a matte black, and covered in a fine fur to ensure no light reflected off her. Her main weapon was her web, which was strengthened with mana, and a small amount of her elements. The spinneret glands were overcharged with mana, allowing them to rapidly produce the incredibly strong strands of sticky web, and a bit of air magic could fling them far away, attaching to the target. She had a few different glands for different types of web. One was long and sticky, like a massive lasso that could be used to drag food towards her, or for locomotion. Another could shoot globs of web covered in an acidic adhesive compound that would bind the victim and eat through their skin until the acid ate away the glue and the victim could pull the web away. The final type was non-adhesive, and was used for creating things she didn’t want to stick to, like a rope to hang from.

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She was in a clearing in the center of the silk forest, standing watch over a chest Pan placed in the center. The chest wouldn’t open until she died, and would give the victors a special boss token that they would need to pass on to the next floor, as well as any loot someone who opted out of the token style loot received. There was also a chance to spawn an additional special token that could be redeemed for extra rewards, a little incentive to spark greedy thoughts within adventurer groups as the one who placed it in the large chest in the safe room would receive a customized reward. All that Pan needed was more adventurers.

In the week since the first flood of adventurers to the third floor, Pan had nearly two hundred more adventurers attempt to reach the rich final floor. The only reason he never reached his estimated capacity of two hundred and fifty people was due to the attrition the adventurers faced. Nearly forty percent of people attempting to reach the third floor either died or turned back, and around twenty percent of those who made it to the third floor were killed Nobody had even challenged the bosses yet, aside from that guild sponsored B ranked party, but he didn’t count them. Despite the seemingly massive number of casualties, the adventurers seemed to expect it, and continued to throw themselves at his creatures with reckless abandon. His dungeon had made people rich, and they were willing to risk the higher than average death rates in his C ranked dungeon for a slice of the rewards. He considered his third floor to be right on the cusp of the B ranks, even with the deadly bosses.

He did notice that only competent parties survived his dungeon, which was how he had designed it. It was a challenge, but not impossible if a group worked well together. If a party made it to the third floor on their own skill, and survived the first day, they were highly likely to survive many more days. Not because they earned some special trophy from Pan, but because they knew their limits, and pushed them to improve while not putting their lives in needless amounts of danger. It was all very interesting for Pan to watch since he had always had a very analytical mind, and by looking for certain predictors, he could be reasonably certain of which group would make it and which wouldn’t by the time they reached the second floor. It was a good way to pass the time while waiting for mana to collect when he couldn’t recklessly spend it on alchemy or enchanting experiments.

That side of his mind had been heightened by his transformation into a dungeon, and he found himself able to observe things and make connections that he knew he would never have been able to before. The air magic he gave his bats was one example of this, and the improvements he had made with alchemy was another. Being a dungeon gave him the tools to see things and understand them on a level even the greatest archmages could only dream of. There were downsides, however, as evidenced by his tendency to overthink social situations, such as the current one with Yagaru, and a few others he would rather leave in his past life as a human. It had been days since he created Yagaru, and he hadn’t heard a peep from him. It was understandable, as even humans needed years to develop before they could understand themselves, and the fact that he had spoken to him at all was astonishing to Pan when viewed in this light. These thoughts were coming from his loneliness and excitement, he had no reason to feel anxious. He pushed them from his mind as best he could, but they remained in the back of his mind, nagging at his consciousness.

A week later, Pan had enough mana to create the new floor, something he did immediately. In the center of the third floor, right next to the tree, Pan constructed a stone building. It looked like a mausoleum, with four large columns in front of a sealed enchanted copper door. There were special slots on the columns that would take the boss tokens, and they were carved with the boss they represented. Each carving was a large artistic rendering of the boss, made into a two foot diameter circle inset in the front of the column. One column had a image of Behemoth, carved perfectly in silver. The next was of Sentinel, created from pure black obsidian. The third was of Yagaru, sculpted from flawless moonstone, matching his white scales. The final Column was left blank, for now, with a steel disk representing the boss that would come. The door would open when a group placed all four tokens in the respective slots, and it contained a staircase to the fourth floor. Once a group had used their tokens, the enchantment on the door would allow them to open it at any time without them, and would punish anyone who tried to get through the doors early.

Pan was satisfied with the plan. It was efficient to leave the entrance where it was since he wouldn’t have to make another safe room, and would protect his soon to be moved core. All he needed now was to start carving out the new floor. This floor would be his pet project, something he wouldn’t even start populating until adventurers got close to reaching it. For now, he would carve out a floor, letting his mind create something impressive. Then, he would design monsters around the unique environment he had in mind. But for now, the floor was only a massive room with an altar for Pan’s crystal in the back. He connected the new fourth-floor room to the hidden first-floor cavern where his crystal still hid, and asked his dark ant queen to move him to the new room. He would make her his personal guardian, and with that responsibility, would come an upgrade. He would move the chamber as he sculpted his new floor, keeping it well protected. He really just wanted to hide it, but doing so impeded his mana flow far too much.

When his core finally reached it’s intended resting place, he breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t realized how much his previous position had stifled him, and he could now feel comparative torrents of mana flowing into his caves through the new, much more open layout. Just the act of placing his core deeper gave him access to denser and more abundant mana, increasing his daily regeneration by over one thousand. The new position also helped the mana his core gathered disperse properly, flowing up through his floors like smoke. The way the ethereal substance worked was strange, but he knew he would be keeping his core at the lowest level from now on. It felt better, much more stable. He hadn’t realized it before, but having his core collecting mana on a much higher floor felt like balancing a boulder on the edge of a cliff. Having his core at the bottom of his dungeon felt like having that boulder at the base of the cliff, a much steadier place to be.

He turned to his queen, deciding on the improvements he would give her. A few of the ideas had been floating through his head for awhile. The first order of business was to improve her magical ability. Mages are always the hardest fights for his monsters, and it would feel good to turn the tables on them. He made her armor in a similar way to Behemoth’s, but instead imbued it with powerful dark mana, increasing her ability to manipulate the element. He also improved her intellect, similar to Yagaru, but hopefully with enough changes to the process that she wouldn’t be out of commission for a long time. He wanted a true mage, so she needed to be intelligent enough to create her own spells, and maybe a bit more. It was very expensive for Pan, but with the dungeon inn, he had a massive amount of mana to work with. It had been hours since he created the floor, and he had enough for this project.

She was now an eight-foot tall queen ant, with an elegant carapace that somehow glowed with dark mana. He could feel the magical power rolling off her, and he wasn’t even done. He changed her posture slightly, so she now walked on four legs, and had two free for casting and fighting. She looked like an ant centaur, except she was one hundred percent ant. Her arms looked similar to a human's, but he decided that he wouldn’t give her hands for now. Instead, they ended in wicked sharp points, perfect for aiming spells or drawing complex runes. Not to mention the fact that they could pierce steel armor due to the insane amounts of magical reinforcement he added to them. Then, he added his final touch, something he had been experimenting with in his head, and in his labs, for a long time.

He began by engraving lines into her armour, something to guide the power he was going to put into them. He then inlaid the lines with silver, beautifully accenting her deep purple-black carapace. He inlaid a few runes alongside the lines, ensuring perfection in every detail. Then, he enchanted the silver with a massive amount of his stored soul energy, tailoring the power to his new and improved queen. He couldn’t directly enchant living things, but by using runes connected by lines, he could bypass that restriction. Normal items could be enhanced without runes, but using runes could make the enchantments much more powerful and efficient. The ones he selected for his queen improved her abilities with manipulating dark mana, giving her spells a massive damage boost when channeled through the limbs. It was like a supercharged wand, that was tied much more closely to the wielder because it was part of them. They would also help her create new spells, since she would be much better at manipulating dark mana through the engravings. It was why he hadn’t given her hands, she would be able to make her own out of dark mana, something Pan couldn’t wait to see.

Finished with the alterations, Pan released Elaria. She stumbled a bit, getting used to her new body, and turned to his core. He watched as dark mana flared up around her silver highlights as she powered her runes. It looked terrifyingly impressive, and in Pan’s opinion, more than a little bad ass. He reached out to her, hoping his new idea had worked, and that her mind would be well-formed enough to function.

Hello Elaria, he called out to her mind.

A musical voice responded to him, confirming the success of his recent breakthrough. Hello master, how may I serve you?

Serve me by protecting me, my queen.

Pan could have sworn he heard a melodious giggle, and the queen bowed to him, before turning away and tending to her colony. Pan had given her a more developed mind to start with, something he wished he had thought to do with Yagaru, based on knowledge he had gained from an unlikely source. Skill books.

Skill books put knowledge directly into the user's mind, and Pan used that ability to transfer information to give Elaria a head start in development, mainly in language and reasoning, with a side of general information. This helped her quickly adapt to her new self, and it didn’t create her personality. Pan had mixed feelings on the idea of creating a personality, and had decided against it, instead, allowing her to develop that on her own over time. For now, she could talk and understand him, as well as her new existence. Just the simple act of giving her mind some context helped her to jump far ahead of Yagaru. This technique helped develop their understanding, strengthening the mind and helping it to mature rapidly. Instead of starting from nothing, Elaria had a solid base of information to help her understand her new mind, and the new way she perceived the world.

Seeing the success, he reached out to Yagaru's mind, and even though he could tell that he was almost fully developed, he used magic to give him some more information directly, cursing himself for not thinking of it earlier. A few moments later, a deep rumbling voice slowly spoke into his head. Thank you creator, this helps….. Put a few things into perspective.

Dungeon Menu

Level: 12

Type: Sentient Dungeon

Name: N/A

Titles: N/A

Mana: 1,003/100,000  (+1000)

Soul Energy: 14.7/500

Rooms: 123

Floors: 4

Animals: 100,000+

Plants: 100,000+

Monsters: 29,208

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 43], [Enchanting: Lvl 31], [Dungeon Ore Vein], [Mental Communication]

Dungeon Points: 407

Achievements: Evolver, Legend Slayer, Boundless