With a clear goal, I felt a bit better. I could start the process of unfucking up the world.
The first objective was to get regular mana income. Hmmm...
I poked my Scout Towers and tried to get any info about anything approaching my domain, but it seemed like the spawn force field was obscuring anything 1km away from my borders. I checked the detection ranges and sighed. I had a few blind spots which was not good. I used free build time to rearrange my towers better and considered selling something to get mana back.
However... I still had skill points to spend.
System guy? Can I buy some skills or do I obtain them randomly?
Oh... I could buy skills. Of course. Only in free build mode. I noticed that the clock was ticking down quicker in build mode than it did while I talked with Amber. So I did the only reasonable thing and switched back to my body.
It was dark. Figures. It's nighttime. The second thing I felt was Amber, who was sleeping with her head leaning on my chest. She was breathing slowly and innocently. I sighed once again, feeling sorry for her and focused on skills.
There were three skills I saw that immediately caught my attention. The mana pool, the wise ruler and general. All three of them had notes from Eriar, which made me smile only with my mouth. He was fucking right.
Your mana drain from commanding your minions is lowered. -5%
*Error * I told you to not overdo it. *Error*
This skill would allow me, later on, to give more complex commands to my troops while reducing order costs. 80% mana less when maxed. Sure. I bought it.
This skill extends your mana pool by 100+2x1% WIS.
*Error* I TOLD YOU STAPH!! *Error *
I know Eriar. But with the idea I have, I will grow even larger, so bear with me.
Of course, I bought it too.
You are a wise King who learnt how to govern his kingdom. Your upkeep and build costs are reduced by 1%+3%INT+3%CHA
*Error* FUCK YOU! *Error *
* Error* Don't you dare to die early! *Error *
Yeh... Sorry about that. I should have read the tutorial. Too late for that now, though, Eriar. And thank you for your cheats so far.
When maxed, this skill would lower my upkeep costs by 80% and build costs by 65%.
It also depended on my charisma and intelligence, so that 80% was very hypothetical. But... It wasn’t even a question of whether I wanted this skill, but how far I wanted to level it up from the bat.
Instead, I focused more and spent time on reading skills descriptions. Eriar hadn't lied to me when he promised to cheat the system on skills. It looked like I could buy any skill.
But there are just too many of them.
I asked the system to sort them into categories and SysBro helped me once again. So. I'm a level 50 dungeon. That means my monsters can't be much higher. But what was more important was that I received 150 skill points. I wanted to quickly gloss over my inventory to solve the question: why?
But first, skills.
I bought a whole bunch of skills just to have them. All ten epic grade skills since I would be stupid to pass on them. All fifteen rare skills for the same reason. And twenty-five other skills that I thought might have been even remotely useful. After obvious choices, I focused once more on the skills I rejected at first. From them, I picked ten more, and I left all the skills which sounded easy to obtain naturally. With 63 skills bought, I was at 87 skill points to spend. From which 25 went straight into Wise Ruler, 25 to Mana Pool, and the rest I spread equally on other skills.
Now back to the question...
I should get 1 skill and 1 stat point per level. I received 3 skills and 1 stat point. It was not Eriar cheating, of that I was sure. So what else?
Hmmm... Oooohhhhh...
EPIC MYTHICAL grade item.
People have long forgotten about the angels and their divine power. However, angels are always nearby, watching and trying to protect. This item grants an entire plethora of effects.
+2 skill points per level.
Grants divine damage to any skill and/or weapon equipped (+10% of total dmg).
Grants 90% fall damage reduction.
Grants +1 HP per minute recovery.
Grants +1 SP per minute recovery.
Once per day (24h) prevent receiving fatal damage. Damage immunity for 5min if triggered.
Part of Heavenly Valkyrie Set.
Can be obtained only from an Angel.
This item can be only gifted in good faith.
This item effect does not stack.
The first thing that came to my mind was: So... I killed that Vampire Scion with Holy Garlic Bread. I couldn't help but smirk. And that 90% fall damage protection explains why I'm alive after literally falling from heaven.
What does it mean that it can only be gifted in good faith? The smaller window opened with additional info.
This item can't be stolen or otherwise taken from the user. This item will always return to the user if the user is made to give it up under malicious influence.
Cool effect.
Also, I knew what would be the first thing Amber gets when she wakes up. I must admit I like her. Dunno if that's because of my sorrow, my man instincts or something else. The reason aside, her choice made her my Queen. And well... Wife.
What a fucked up world... I sighed.
I focused on my Scions and Spawners.
Let's start with the upper castle. I have my noble slimes.
So far, only one Maid spawned. It? She? I will go with She. She was level 50 and her stats were over the top. As a maid, she had skills like House Chores which were obvious. Noble Grace allowed her to act with decorum and even speak and Constructor allowed her to help with the construction of new structures when my free build ended. It looked like that last skill was the default skill that all my denizens had. However, over that, she is like some fucking ninja-mimic-special operator. Which is damn OP.
Sebastian was still upgrading himself into a Scion and judging from his progress bar, he would finish very close to the end of my spawn protection.
Besides that, I had three level 50 Hunter Slimes and about twenty Guardian Slimes on levels 20-40. Also, thirty regular blue slimes at levels between 5 to 15.
Next were my Thunder Eagles. Or Normal eagles. Arani was still hatching and had the same progress as Sebastian. No other Storm Birb was anywhere to be found. Just twenty badass eagles varying in sizes and levels between 1 and 30.
In the middle castle, I had three spawners. My skeleton knights, pixies, and snakes. What was interesting was the Knight Skeleton spawner was not producing regular skeletons at all and I suspected that was why it took that mana from me when I named Galahad and gave me one more basic spawner. The lowest skeleton it popped out was a pikeman that I could later upgrade to a guardian. I have so far three skeleton types out of ten or so. No. Four. Huhuh.
Pikeman, Archer, Knight and Cavalry.
I had about twenty Archers, or more like longbowmen, thirty Pikemen with long 3m pikes, and ten Knights. The Knights had big ass tower shields and spears but hmmm... I would rather them have halberds, and they would need swords as well.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
I guess the Cavalry will be a horse-mounted heavy unit. Couldn't tell if any spawned so far. Galahad would pop up a few moments after Arani and Sebastian.
Waaait... Heavy Cavalry? Dude... 'When the winged hussars arrived' ran through my head. I checked if I could summon something to play music from Earth but... That was tempting...
The Pixies were roaming the Magic Tower lazily, similar to flying shards of colourful light. There were like thirty of them so far. It looked like Pixies couldn't start any work in the tower until Stella woke up from her Scion-changing nap. Spawning protection also could have been a factor. Understandable. I focused on the tower library and faced the next problem.
Lack of blank books. SysBro?
Pattern? Umuh... So I would have to absorb an empty book as a pattern, and then my woodwork and magical tower could produce empty books. I spent 100 mana on buying some nice empty books from the Interdimensional Shop. Then I dropped one on the ground silently, so as to not wake up Amber. Then I focused.
Yup. I could absorb it.
Ok... The book crumbled into dust that was blown away into nothingness. So I would need more books to finish the pattern. I 'bought' a few more books and noticed I needed the same model to finish the pattern. So, after repeating the process for a while, I had three patterns of empty books. The first one was how I had always imagined what a magic book looked like; thick and with a dark brown leather cover, with thicker pages than a normal book. The second pattern was a thinner one with the same reasonable leather cover. The last one was shaped like a normal notebook, which was always good to have around. I also had a pattern for simple A4 printer paper sheets. I hoped the sheets would make good scrolls.
I just imagined a bearded wizard standing in front of this huge ass office-grade printing machine, copying scrolls printed on the office printer. It made me almost chuckle out loud.
But that gave me an idea. I dissolved and absorbed tons of things. Various clothes materials and clothes themselves. Cosmetics, shaving gear, pencils, colour pencils, rubbers and pencil sharpeners. Simply put, lots of utensils.
I told you before about the little things in life.
I also summoned the most technologically advanced chainmail I could find and made a pattern from it. I was wondering if it would be possible to reproduce it. Judging by its description and stats, even the basic one was badass.
Later, I summoned advanced steel ingots and other heavy-duty materials samples and managed to receive their patterns as well. I could even spawn resource nodes for it, however, I would have to wait for that. They require being spawned deeper in the caves. However, no rush. Advanced Earth steel and other heavy-duty material types might be good back home, but I expected to find something even more badass here. Like mithril.
Besides, this time it was me who had a plan.
With my mana pool upgraded by skills and leveling after spending almost 40 000 mana to get patterns, I was at 200 000/500 000. I was very tempted to spend 50000 on an audio system to blast random music for the sake of the memes, but... Dunno... I would decide that later.
Back to the spawners. The snake spawner was asking for a Scion, but I’d assign that later, too. I had plenty of low-level snakes roaming around, but nothing fancy. Since the spawner was basic, I shouldn't have expected anything better.
In the lower castle, two elemental slimes roamed in the cave. Also, plenty of low-level mobs roamed around, like basic snakes, wolves, spiders, rats and skeletons. All spawners without Scions were spamming me with Scion Requests, but I already checked and Scions could be appointed at any time.
It seemed like mana regeneration skills for me were currently blocked. I hope it's the effect of spawn protection, but dunno. What I managed to figure out was that my body could respawn if killed. But... Boi... I would lose about a million mana and the process was automatic.
"Good morning, my King!" I heard Amber's dreamy and melodic voice.
"Good morning, my Queen. Have you slept well?"
"Verrrry" she yawned, which made her sound like a purring kitten. "Sorry."
I looked straight into her beautiful eyes which were full of happy sparks. She returned my smile.
"I still can't believe that the last two days are real." She covered herself tighter in her fluffy soft and thick blanket. "I wish this could last forever..."
"I will do everything to make that happen. I don't want to die..." Again. But I didn't say that aloud. She stretched herself with yet another yawn and sat on the bed with a happy face.
I stood up and gave her a serious look. When she saw my face, she frowned with worry.
"Amber, I have a gift for you."
"Another one? I'm so happy!" She brightened.
"No Amber. Compared to this, any other item you ever received before is nothing." She nodded with curiosity on her face.
I focused on my inventory and grabbed one Angel Feather. It glowed with a bright light that mimicked flames. She stood up on the bed with shock and awe, stepped backwards and lost balance due to the mattress's softness. She landed graciously on her butt, bouncing up and down a few times for good measure. I saw her swallow nervously.
"I... I can't!" she started with a shaking voice. But I firmly shook my head in denial.
"Please. You are my first friend in this world. I even dare to say you have become much more important to me than I would have ever believed. Amber... This item will protect you if I won't be able to and will help you to get stronger. You are a very special person to me."
I outstretched my hand holding Angel Feather towards her. I saw tears of happiness flowing from her eyes when she brushed her fingers against the Feather. Amber then slowly, with reverence, closed her hands around the Angel Feather and brought it to her heart. When she touched her chest with it, it disappeared, fusing with her soul as flames of light briefly covered her.
I checked her status. Yes. She had it equipped. I exhaled in relief. She really is important to me.
She was sitting in silence on the bed, still pressing both her hands to her chest as if she was in prayer. When she finally looked at me, I saw a strange conviction within her.
"Theon, I don't care if you are Dungeon. I don't care what you choose in the future. I want you to know that I will always be with you. I will support all your decisions. I..." She stuttered as her face turned a delicate red. But this conviction in her made her press her thoughts till the end. "... I think I love you. My mother told me when I meet that one special man I will know that's him. And I know it's you, Theon. And I don't care if that's the effect of the euphoria of newfound happiness and safety. I don't care if that's the effect of the title of Queen of Avalon. I want to be your special person, as you said."
Well... What now?
Amber, you are right. This might be the effect of anything and everything you mentioned or even something else. Yes, I like you. One day, I may even love you. But let's wait for now. This is what I wanted to say. But instead, I said:
"I think I love you too."
Uhum. What have I just said?! I never intended to say this...now. Maybe sometime in the future, when we get to know each other better. This is very disturbing and I will have to understand what is going on here.
In the meantime, the love story of a half-elf and dungeon begins. Camera ready! Roll sound! And… Action!
Maybe another time.
But she looked happy, and I understood that I really might love her. That's strange. I mean- I'm a dungeon. Technically, I'm a human who reincarnated as a dungeon and was sent with a mission to save the world...
You know what? Fuck it. Let's flow with the river.
"I'll make you breakfast and you prepare yourself for a walk around our kingdom." I saw happy sparks in her eyes when she heard that. She quickly rushed toward the bathroom.
In the meantime, I focused and re-equipped my daily gear. Seriously, this system is fucking lit. Two seconds and you were ready to go. Then I tried my teleportation skill. I focused on the chicken spawner and closed my eyes. When I opened them, I was standing in front of it. Neat.
A few moments later, I was standing in the kitchen looking at the frying pan. I had eggs from the spawner. At least that worked as intended. What's more, I could copy the spawner if I needed more of them. Interestingly, anything I bought from an interdimensional shop was locked. They could grow only in my domain. Maybe that was for the best, considering the fact of how stupidly overpowered simple apples were. Anyway…
I had spawned butter and ham, and now I was watching the ham fry. While doing so, I was trying to solve yet one more of my food problems. I would need sugar and yeast. While sugar was relatively easy to obtain, yeast was an absolute mystery.
Shop dude? Can I have a yeast spawner that spawns a packet of yeast? Or a dried one? I had no clue where or how people got yeast before they were introduced to shops in the form people from Earth knew them. Before classic yeast was pressed into small bars, I had always bought the dried ones. Historically, humanity had homemade bread. Logic said it had to be obtainable somehow.
I will need them for making bread. Or sweets like cakes.
I waited a long time for either my Shop Dude or SysBro to answer and when I thought it was a no, Shop Dude finally responded.
One of the specialisations of fungus node is the production of every yeast type. Accept patterns.
Cost: 8000 mana.
Thank you Shop Guy. I will miss you when my free build is over. Also, 20% discounts are sweet. After a moment of consideration, I placed a Fungus node in the kitchen and patterned all yeast types I could remember. I fried scrambled eggs with the ham and spawned some bread.
It turned out I could already make local apple juice. When I teleported back to the living room, Amber was already waiting at the table wearing a green dress from yesterday and matching shoes. She smelled the air and made a surprised face.
"What is that? It smells wonderful!"
"Just scrambled eggs with ham. Also bread and apple juice." She looked at her plate and tried some using the fork I gave her.
She gasped with excitement and ate the full plate in a few moments. I smiled and gave her seconds. We sat in busy silence and I discovered that eating food still brings me joy. This was very good news to me, considering the fact of how much mana I threw into the entire food business.
"That was absolutely fantastic. You are sure I wasn't killed by that Vampire? Because this must be what heaven is like."
"Haha. No. You are still alive. I'm glad you like that. I wasn't sure how my cooking knowledge would translate to food prepared here but it worked quite well. So, are you ready?"
She blinked a few times with a blank facial expression, but then she smiled and replied.
"Show me your kingdom. Show me Avalon!"
•••
I started with an overview from the highest point in all of Avalon. We were standing on the roof of the main castle and Amber was holding its rampart. She was amazed by the sheer vastness of my domain. I watched her, entranced by her slender and beautiful shape in the green dress from Earth that looked so familiar to me but so foreign to this world. A light wind was blowing her red hair.
"Theon... All of this… is Avalon?!" she finally looked at me with awe and admiration.
"Yes, Amber. What do you think?"
"It's magnificent! It's the biggest castle I have ever seen!"
"Hahaha. I don't think so. This country's capital is bigger for sure."
She turned around and looked straight into my eyes with a serious face.
"Theon. I was born in the capital! The Capital itself is smaller! And the Queen's castle? Smaller than your main castle!"
I looked her straight in the eyes but my passive skill Truth Seeker already ensured me she was telling the truth.
Well, shit.
That may complicate things.