Soon after that, Spinner has managed to find the abandoned quarry, where the elves once mined marble which was then moved south past the border. It was located near the lowest point of another valley, one without a river but going more or less parallel to the Iron Brook Valley.

There were no elves around, just a large hole in the ground and some dilapidated buildings surrounding it that once housed the workforce, tools and marble awaiting transport south. It was clearly left to rot ever since Tael fell and the border was moved south.

But it didn’t mean that it was abandoned.

What are those things?

Stone golems, imo

Shigaraki was checking up on Spinner pretty regularly, as a result it was him who called Izuku to check up on him too because Spinner had arrived at the first of the locations that Lorae gave them.

Their scout made a good call of checking the quarry out from a distance before trying to approach it. Because the amount of enemies surrounding it was… substantial.

Izuku counted twenty roughly humanoid figures stumbling around the quarry, each one of them made of solid marble. They were malformed, their arms often of different length, their postures tilted in every direction at random.

There seems to be no logic in their movements. They just shamble around without any conceivable goal in mind.

Huh.

“Looks like stone golems to me.” Spinner agrees with Shigaraki. “What do we do about them, though? I don’t think that any weapon I have can even scratch them if they’re truly made of solid rock.”

Makes sense.

It’s like trying to fight twenty Kirishimas’, except their quirk doesn’t eventually shut down on its own.

We’d need some solid firepower to deal with them.

Blunt weapons and high STR builds, I think

They don’t seem well constructed, they probably have tonnes of weak spots like joints

Even so, Spinner only has his arrows and a knife.

There’s no way for him to score a single kill here.

“I think I can take one down, but it depends on the positioning and timing.” Spinner counters. “I don’t know how fast they are and how good their senses are, but if I make them run after me and make them fall off a cliff, like into the quarry itself, gravity should do the rest.”

It’s going to be dangerous.

“Well.” Spinner shrugs. “What’s the worst that can happen to me? Will I die?”

Good point.

Ye

Go and kick their asses, Spinner

I have faith in you

“That’s the plan, Tomura.” Spinner replies. “I don’t think that I can carry even a single of those things back to the Dungeon, at least not the whole thing, so I’ll just try to trick exactly one of them and go back home with whatever I can carry. How does that sound?”

Like a very good plan

I’ll go have someone ask Lanna if she knows anything about the stone golems of this world.

Ochako, could you…

Seriously?

Again?

When he switched his attention to Ochako, he found her in the middle of a fierce spar with both Tokage-san (who clearly decided to enjoy some physical violence to forget about her recent hospital bed trauma) and Ay’zira.

They were all bleeding from multiple light wounds.

Himiko was observing the events from the side of the room, with a really dreamy look on her face.

“What?” Uraraka appears surprised by him being surprised. “It’s fun! We gotta do something to kill time, right?”

“Aye!” Ay’zira raises her jagged axe in a salute and a sign of agreement. Tokage simply nods.

She didn’t hear Izuku’s original words. The thing is, Dungeon Lords could only freely communicate with their servants, who seemed to be directly created from their power, establishing some deeper connection between them.

Odd.

the amount of bloodthirsty and deadly women in this Dungeon continues to grow

and it’s slightly concerning

You’d rather have the number of dogs grow.

Yes, obviously.

Dogs are precious.

“So, what’s up, Izu?” Uraraka then asks. “Cough it out.”

Spinner encountered some stone golems in the quarry, and I figured out you could ask Lanna about them for us.

No need to waste mana to manifest as Dungeon Lords to ask the question ourselves, right?

“Sure, sure.” Uraraka sighs, before turning her head towards the other two women. “Alright, girls. Izuku wants me to ask the head lampada about golems. So I guess I’ll be leaving for a while, but have fun in my absence, alright?”

“Sure.” Tokage nods. She knows better than to try to talk Uraraka out of immediately helping Izuku in something. “You’ll come back once you’re done with that, right?”

“Golems?” Ay’zira is still at that part of the talk and speaks right before Uraraka could reply to Tokage. “Hey, I know golems! My world has them. Tall humanoids made entirely of brass, with lotsa sharp edges and decorated with the trophies from the creatures’ they’ve defeated. They roam the plains, slaughtering everything that moves and are super powerful!”

“That definitely sounds like an awesome fight!” Uraraka grins back at the amazon who grins back at her. “But those ones are made from stone. Different types of golems.”

“Yes, but I do remember my older sister saying that there are many types of elementals out there, all throughout the Creation.” Ay’zira is clearly trying to remember the words she once heard, at least judging from a somehow clouded look. “There was an entire tale about them, uhhhh… I think they are born in the Vortex in the center of Creation, from the High Gods of the four prime elements, who are constantly fighting and mating in there. But there are a lot of variants because most of them are just blank slates that get filled by whatever they encounter on the way out of the Vortex. I think.” She scratches the side of her head. “I… to be honest, I just didn’t listen to it because we were going on a hunt the next day, and that was kind of much more interesting.”

“As it should.” Tokage comments dryly, just to roll her eyes around when Uraraka gives her a questioning look. “What? I’d pick hunting some giant otherworldly beast over listening to old stories too. And I refuse to be ashamed of it.”

So, I guess that this is a case of stone elementals possessing some chunks of marble from the quarry, which makes sense.

And if we manage to obtain a stone elemental from it, we should be able to put it in limestone and make a slightly tougher stone golem

Sweet

“I do remember hearing that mages from the Physical Worlds often use golems.” Ay’zira decides to add something more. “Mostly for melee, because they’re usually a bunch of scared pussies unable to fight properly.” Izuku isn’t sure if Yaoyorozu or Monoma would have agreed with that assessment. “Some are made of stone, others of metals or crystals, a few from materials such as flesh or bones. I’d love to fight them.”

Of course she would.

Just how powerful a steel golem made by some sort of metal elemental has to be?

How do you even cut through a body made entirely of steel?

You melt it with heat or smth instead

but in general, yes

It looks like we can have a lot of further development with from the elementals and golems, sweet

Alright, I guess that we don’t need Lanna’s opinion on that.

Keep having fun.

“Alright!” Uraraka grins. “Girls, time to fight!” They both seem to be extremely enthusiastic about it.

***

The plan works great.

Spinner manages to aggro a single stone golem, which turns out to not be very quick. In both movement and thinking. It ran after him and then fell off the cliff, flying down to the bottom of the quarry, where it slammed into the solid stone floor and promptly broke into pieces.

It also made them realize that the quarry was creepy. More and more spirits were coming in, possessing parts of it and slowly forming their bodies out of it.

The walls of the quarry had arms and legs. Not the whole of it, but there were entire segments which were nothing but limbs, some of them actually able to move.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

And now that Spinner has arrived here, at the very edge of the quarry, he could see the whole of it. And there were some very different creatures down there. Golems, yes, and ones made from marble too.

But they were much better formed.

To Izuku, they looked less like animated chunks of rock and more like animated Roman or Greek sculptures of people, except ones that were for some reason faceless, nothing but smooth marble where their facial features should be.

Five of them scattered around the place. Were they the oldest elementals, the ones who had the most time to shape their containers, or were they shaped by more powerful elementals? So many questions.

Spinner slides down the wall and starts to quickly grab pieces of the crushed golem, throwing them into his backpack. Was it going to be enough?

DODGE!

Spinner does that instantly, the giant piece of rock slamming into the cliff’s wall close to him. When he looks up, he sees the nearest of those better formed stone golems sinking its fingers into the ground next to it, starting to pull another piece of rock from it, the stone under its feet being soft like a jelly in its hands.

They might not be the fastest creatures around, but it seems that they know how to deal some damage at range. Lovely.

Spinner takes that as his cue to leave and quickly climbs the wall of the quarry, dodging another rock projectile and then runs away into the forest as quickly as he can, easily avoiding the few stone golems that tried to stop him.

Great.

So, now we can only wait to see if those rocks are enough to give us a stone golem, as even one should be quite a potent tool.

Just have him block a corridor and voila.

Boulder trap!

Huh?

They are pretty much boulders that can walk, right?

We can put them at the end of the corridor and have them walk in the opposite direction to the incoming boulder, crushing the invaders between them!

You’re absolutely unhinged when it comes to murdering people.

Yes, yes I fucking am!

And I’m happy being like this.

***

The next step of the plan was the expansion of the spider level to ensure that it was up to their new standards for the commercially available levels. So, expand it several times, adding more [Spider Breeding Chambers], and more mining locations.

They need to fill their Residual Mana storage and then empty it in full to achieve that. But, there was progress. Sooner or later they were also going to start constructing their mana power plant.

Stat-wise, we’re going to need the barracks to be put on 9th Level to allow the regular Rose Guard warriors to lounge around.

You can see the problem there, right?

Yes.

We need more Levels.

A lot more.

Ye

tbh I think we’re going to start snowballing from now on

so it’s not that bad

True.

The more daemons we already have, the more forces we can field outside of the Dungeon to help us in obtaining more daemons.

I’m fairly sure that Ay’zira will gladly follow Uraraka and Tokage during any away missions, just to have fun fighting something.

Makes you wonder just how many overpowered creatures that a Dungeon with 200 levels can field at will.

Tens of thousands, probably.

Awesome

Anyway, are we having them go somewhere right now?

We could try to fight through another chamber in Aeonia’s tomb

You’re really interested in going back there as soon as possible, huh.

Anything you want to tell me?

Yes.

But then you’ll be a bitch about me telling you to finally end yourself, thus ridding me of your annoying presence, and you’ll rat me out to your girlfriend who is going to be a pain in the ass

I know, right? She’s so cool.

…

***

They ended up not doing anything significant for the next day. The closest they got to doing something constructive was debating where to put the [Blood Hornets], and wondering what exactly they are.

They haven’t ended up deciding on anything.

Others were mostly busy with doing their own stuff.

Uraraka did some more combat training with Tokage and Ay’zira, before retiring to their home and having a very nice evening with Himiko. With Izuku present in spirit, and perhaps in something more.

Or, to be more exact, observing what was happening there in great detail. And he refuses to be ashamed of it.

Although, to be honest, if someone did call him out on it, he’d be extremely ashamed of it.

Kirishima and Ashido have finally admitted that they’re together, managing to overcome their surprisingly intense denial on the matter. They spent a while talking with the rest (and observing the combat training) and then went on a walk together through the Dungeon, talking with each other about a variety of things.

Monoma and Yaoyorozu were reading something in the library, for some reason ignoring the presence of each other completely. They only seemed to leave it to refill their mugs with some of the herbal tea that they could now brew.

Yanagi kept butchering corpses in her laboratory with wild abandon, while noting down some things in a notebook. And for as much as Izuku liked notebooks, he was sure that he didn’t want to know what was written down in this one.

Tetsutetsu ended up doing some arm wrestling with Ay’zira once she was done with combat training with Uraraka and Tokage, before moving on to regular wrestling and general combat training.

Ay’zira was really simple-minded, but she did end up announcing that Tetsutetsu is strong and pretty cool, which he liked and told her that she’s invited to challenge him anytime, and said that she was ‘manly’.

She didn’t seem to mind it, instead immediately taking that as a compliment, which led to Izuku starting to realize that her world is clearly inhabited by nothing but an endless army of people resembling Miruko, Stain, Uraraka and Kirishima. Oh, and Muscular too, to somehow make it worse.

He had no idea what to think about it.

For now, he should probably be happy that Ay’zira has found another friend(?). It’s good, right?

“My world?” Ay’zira asks back, surprised, when Tetsutetsu does ask her about it. Izuku immediately listened a bit closer. “Oh, it’s a great place. Lots of strong people to fight and prove your own strength.”

Thankfully, Himiko and Ochako were done with their things by now, so he could do it, although he really couldn’t help but have his imagination race and his thoughts being rather… lewdish. Not openly lewd, but he was leaning that way.

He had seen some truly incredible things and he regretted none of that.

“Yeah, but how does it look, exactly?!” Tetsutetsu says back loudly. “Spiritual Worlds sound like a weird place.”

What an understatement. Then again, they only knew of one, and it was occupied by the forces of Rapturous Ecstasy. Which by default made them… well, maybe not weird, but definitely as yucky as a world could get.

“It’s not weird, Physical Worlds are the weird ones!” Ay’zira shoots back. “Vanarea is awesome! Endless plains covered with either steppes or forests, inhabited by tribes like my own and numerous animals and other creatures we hunt or fight for glory. We have martial tournaments each time blood begins to rain from the sky, establishing who is the strongest among the tribe’s warriors. We also clash with other tribes for resources, but fight alongside when someone invades our world. Vanarea’s never boring!”

Tetsutetsu seems to have some mixed feelings about the whole idea (especially the ‘blood raining from the sky’ sound pretty sus, to quote Shigaraki), but he goes along and admits that boredom’s definitely not a problem for people of that world.

Ay’zira has no idea how evasive that answer really was and goes along. Phew. Izuku was definitely surprised by how diplomatic Tetsutetsu turned out to be. Although, considering how good at it she was, this wasn’t even nearly as much of an achievement.

Kaminari had nothing interesting to do and went to sleep earlier.

In short, they’re all spending a pretty nice time, doing their own things. It actually takes Izuku a while to realize that there was someone he didn’t check up on. And so, he looks for the person in question.

Mr. Compress was busy throwing knives at a wooden plank hanging up on the wall in the now empty communal dining room. Judging from the holes and scratches on the plank in question, his accuracy was actually pretty decent.

Huh.

Good aim.

“Hm? Oh, thank you.” Mr. Compress replies after a second of pause before he realizes who was talking to him. “I decided to do some additional training. Retrain old and somewhat rusted skills. Like this.”

He throws his knife again, the projectile hitting the board almost in the very center of it, with enough strength to partially pierce the thin wood.

Not bad, especially at the range of about seven meters.

“I was much better at it in the past.” Mr. Compress then adds as he pulls another knife from the table nearby. “Though back then I could use dedicated throwing knives, not this. Still, not bad. Might be useful.”

Yeah. It could be.

He weighs the knife for a moment in his hand, before sighing loudly.

“I really missed my arm.” He then adds. “I’d say that getting it back is a big positive of this isekai adventure. I also don’t have any issues with my new body. It’s pretty good.”

Great.

…

This is really awkward.

“It is.” Compress agrees before throwing the knife again. It, once again, almost hits the mark. “ Nice . Look, about the Training Camp, I wanted to say that…”

I don’t think that I really want to talk about the Training Camp.

“But I want to.” Compress sighs. “I wanted to apologize for it, alright?”

Really?

“Yes.” Compress replies. “In my defense, by the time I heard that Muscular and Moonfish were supposed to be there, I couldn’t exactly walk out on the group without becoming a loose end. And you don’t want to become a loose end for someone like Shigaraki’s Sensei.”

You didn’t seem awfully concerned with All for One and villainy in general afterwards.

“Because All Might punched him out literally the next day.” Compress counters. “And then my civilian name was publicly known and I was a designated villain. We as a League were a group. Yes, we had our… problems , but we were comrades. And I remained a part of it willingly. But the only person we lost during the Training Camp and Kamino that I actually missed was Mustard. Definitely not Muscular and Moonfish, and definitely not All for One.”

So you’re regretting that night?

And, you know, the whole kidnapping of a minor?

“Ugh.” Compress clearly didn’t like it being put that way. “In Shigaraki’s defense, it was supposed to be a recruitment attempt, not a kidnapping for blackmail or a ransom. And just so we’re clear about it, the kid in question was shown on TV earlier, restrained and wearing a muzzle. And definitely not having consented to any of that.”

…

Alright, I guess that’s one point for the League.

This does sound like something that could be argued to be an act of vigilantism more than villainy, at least until Muscular and Moonfish showed up in the same forest as a bunch of children..

And I guess that if there’s someone out there who could be considered a master of manipulating people into burning their bridges, it’s All for One.

“Yeah.” Compress replies while glancing at his shoes. “So, in short, my sincere apologies for the Training Camp. I’m not going to apologize for anything that happened afterwards, though.”

Not even the death of Snatch?

“No.” Compress shakes his head. “We were villains. We seeked to obtain something that was needed to achieve our goal, and Snatch tried to stop us. He was an appropriately trained combatant and knew the risks. I’m not going to apologize for that. But the Training Camp just really stuck with me, so I figured out that I could as well apologize, at least to the people that I actually ran into that night.”

Well, I’ll be honest.

I don’t think that I’ll ever like you as a person, especially considering Snatch.

But I accept the apologies for the Training Camp.

“Great.” Compress nods. “That’s what I hoped for. Aside from endangering minors, I’m all for doing the dirty work for this Dungeon. If you need me to spy on someone, or rob them blind, just tell me. Although I’d prefer Shigaraki to be the one to do it. I kind of like him.”

That can be done.

Although I don’t expect a lot of robbing people blind.

“This is fine with me too.” Compress shrugs. “Although I have to admit, I was looking forward to becoming this world’s Oji Harima. A thief of undying fame.”

If we find some genuinely bad people, there’ll be room for negotiation.

“And now you’re speaking my language.” Compress grins. “And can I…”

No clown make-up in my Dungeon.

Compress gasps loudly, falling onto his knees and pretending to have been struck in the heart by something. Izuku can practically feel Shoto Todoroki writing down his newest conspiracy theory suggesting that Mr. Compress and Neito Monoma are secretly related. And that man doesn’t even exist in the same universe as he does.