‘Hiring’ the lampades to serve the Dungeon turned out to be a good decision, even if Izuku was genuinely worried the whole time that Tomura was going to enter genocide mode and try to slaughter the beastkin for daring to not only injure but actually slay the dogs in his presence.

However, to his surprise, Tomura remained uncharacteristically restrained. And intelligent. Hell, you could even say that he had enough foresight to foresee his own murder spree and managed to take some steps to prevent it from happening!

By informing Anaya’s group that he’s not going to be with them for that one fight and refusing to elaborate on the reasons for it.

Izuku is, secretly, very proud of his progress. Perhaps one day he was going to become something that actually resembled a human being.

Izuku has his hopes, but he knows that he should be realistic about it.

It was deeply unfortunate, but the visitors to their Dungeon were, eventually, going to exchange their knowledge about it, making every surprising twist to their Domain not stay surprising for long.

Why was that a problem? Because goddamn, the beastkin just completely froze in shock when they ran into three lampades (and their small group of Very Large Dogs) right after a whole level full of skeletons.

It was as hilarious as it was surprising even to Izuku. He genuinely expected them to be more conscious in combat.

Lanna raises her staff without a word, the lantern at the end of it glowing a pale white light, before the staff suddenly descends, the hilt hitting the floor and the light explodes out of the lantern.

The motion drew the visitor’s eyes onto the lantern, making the resulting blast of light to hit them all in an instant. It was downright crippling , the glow transferring to the victims and making their eyes glow faintly as they staggered around in shock, one or two of them shouting in shock as their entire party briefly lost cohesiveness.

The gravehounds rushed forward. All nine of them, the two remaining lampades holding them back while Lanna was casting her magic.

For a moment, Izuku actually worried that it was going to be a total party wipe. That they were going to really mess it up and have them downright slaughtered, and completely helplessly. But it doesn’t happen.

Despite her advanced age, Anaya reacted the fastest out of all of them. She realized what was happening in time and closed her eyes in time, which was enough to resist most of the influence. Then she immediately cast a defensive magic bubble around her party.

The gravehounds slammed their full body into it, the lampades all joining their attack by firing some sort of pale light beams out of their lantern staffs, the attacks hitting the shield right above the gravehounds heads.

The bubble doesn’t last for long. But it’s enough for some of the warriors to recover before the wave of flesh fangs slams into them.

Two gravehounds are dead or severely injured by the beastkin’ spears before they get too close. And then, things get complicated for the beastkin, who are absolutely swarmed by the gravehounds.

Izuku sees one of the gravehounds closing its jaw on one of the warrior’s hands, making the man lose their blade and scream in pain. Another one actually tried to lunge at the man’s throat at the very same time, but one of his compatriots stopped it by grabbing the hound’s neck and wrapping his arm around it, struggling with the enraged animal and proving to be surprisingly strong.

Another wolfman was actually toppled over, losing the grip on his spear, the gravehound leaping on top of him and trying to tear his face off. The man managed to grab his upper and lower jaw with his hands, desperately trying to stop them from closing on their throat.

All while screaming at the others to help him.

Izuku is briefly surprised by the fact that gravehounds are doing so well, despite the servants of the Bloom failing to do so. Then he remembers that the gravehounds are all on the level of [Spider Maidens], and this starts making more sense.

They are still dying one by one, but with lampades’ assistance they’re actually having problems with that.

Speaking of lampades… Uzar manages to decapitate the gravehound that landed on his comrade a moment later, only to get hit by a light beam from one of the lampades. He actually shouts while covering his face and taking a step back, clearly blinded and not enjoying that a lot.

A moment later the lampada that achieved that was hit by a surprisingly large fireball casted by the elder, which almost immediately set her robes on fire. As she is trying to put it out, she is almost cut in half by a sword of one of the beastkin.

They didn’t actually get close to her. It seemed to be some sort of short distance ranged attack with a sword, projecting its cutting edge away from his actual sword.

The defenders are definitely losing the fight, but it’s definitely not as smooth as Izuku - or Anaya for that matter - expected.

Before Uzar can recover from the light blast, one of the remaining gravehounds bites him in the thigh, toppling him over once more and starts shaking its mouth around, its fangs trying to force their way through the armor.

It shakes Uzar out of his stunned state. The beastkin warrior has no chill and immediately shoves his thumbs straight into the dog’s eyes.

Izuku is happy that Tomura didn’t see it. He had a much less extreme attachment to dogs, but even to him, this was just painful to watch.

Uzar used that method because the dog’s initial attack made him lose the grip on his sword. It seemed to be happening almost too often for it to be natural. Is it some sort of side-effect of the lantern light? Some slight relaxation of the muscles that makes it easier for the gravehounds to disarm their opponents when they get into melee?

Disarm them in terms of their weapon first, then do the same for their arms. Those were some really angry doggos.

But unfortunately, they were running out of their numbers very quickly. But if there were two or three more gravehounds, the entire squad of professional fighters that just faced them in fight wouldn’t manage to get past this room without casualties.

Izuku considered that a good enough grade for the boss room.

Second lampada dies when a beastkin warrior that was freed after defeating ‘his’ gravehound impales her on his spear. Since it was actually Lanna, Izuku considers this to be an unofficial end of the fight.

Then the third remaining lampada reminds him that despite her theoretically command position, Lanna was the same type of creature as her two ‘sisters’. By firing another light beam at the elder and actually hitting her in the face, stunning her briefly, and then immediately firing a different, slightly greener light beam.

Judging from the fact that hit the elder in the shoulder and seemed to do it with enough impact strength to actually dislocate said shoulder , it had to be carrying some kinetic energy.

Note to self - just because a demon listens to another one of their kind and seems to be less confident about things and less knowledgeable, doesn’t mean that their personal combat skills are sometimes lesser.

Good to know.

Even if Uzar promptly decapitates the lampada (does he have some sort of thing for decapitating his enemies?), she still managed to teach Izuku something important for the future.

The rest of the beastkin finishes the last of the gravehound and starts to check up on their injuries (even if there weren’t many of them and none seemed to actually take anyone from the further fight). Uzar, naturally, rushes to the elder’s side.

“Set it straight.” Anaya says immediately. To Izuku she seems annoyed more than concerned by the injury. Uzar, without a single word, just does it.

Anaya doesn’t even flinch, earning some respect for her pain tolerance from Izuku. He has no idea what sort of stuff she lived through in the past, but she really does give him a vibe of someone that has quite literally seen it all and refuses to be shaken by anything.

“Well, I’m definitely going to feel that in the morning.” She says while shaking her head and checking out how her shoulder now works. “Being old is really annoying. What a great reward for managing to survive so long. Are you alright?”

“Yes.” Uzar replies. “It didn’t bite through the armor, though I probably got a bruise out of that. Anyone injured?” He then shouts to the others.

They shout back at him. Only one reported being actually injured - it was the one who got bitten in the arm and almost flanked by another gravehound. The fangs actually managed to pierce the skin, but the injury was minimal.

It’s over, Shigaraki.

I think you can enter now.

“The dogs corpses didn’t despawn?” Shigaraki asks. It was clear that he didn’t like even hearing that fight.

They came to the Dungeon while physically manifested.

They’re not despawning until the visitors leave this Level so that I can assimilate them.

“Ugh.” Shigaraki groans. “Fine, fine. I’ll try to kill them all for this next time.”

He then walks into the boss room.

“How was it?” Shigaraki asks, Anaya giving him a mildly irritated look.

“How did you manage to have servants of Mors coexist in a single Level with forces of the Breathless Tide?” Anaya asks. Yeah, that was definitely a surprising thing to see.

“I’m very persuasive.” Tomura replies. Judging from the look that he gets from Anaya and Uzar, none of them are buying it. “The skeletons are just puppets resembling corpses, not actual corpses. The lampades decided to agree to act as a floor boss fight for as long as none of them invade their personal space.”

“I see.” Anaya sighs. “That was… unexpected. Your Sixth Level definitely represents a sudden increase in difficulty.”

“Good.” Tomura replies dryly. “I intend to make every five Levels into a separate segment of my Domain. An over-Level, of sorts. Having a sudden spike in difficulty is intended.”

“Then it definitely worked out as you hoped it would.” Anaya replies before sighing loudly again. “Almost too good, in fact. Evakh, grab their lantern staffs. They’re valuable and hard to come by without annoying Mors permanently.”

“On it!” One of the beastkin nods and moves over to pillage the corpses. Tomura doesn’t seem to mind.

Being a Dungeon Lord was a really weird experience. Izuku just saw a few people get slaughtered, one of which had spent a while talking with his best friend. And… he’s supposed to not care as someone steals their stuff.

All of that because their lives weren’t actually endangered in the process, and their stuff wasn’t actually lost.

Weird.

He should do his best not to get desensitized to violence and death because of that. People outside of the Dungeon could still die permanently, after all. And so were the invaders and visitors entering the Dungeon.

“It only gets harder from here, doesn’t it?” Uzar then decides to speak to Tomura. If anything, he sounds vaguely resigned.

“Yes.” Tomura replies without batting an eye. “If you struggled here, I don’t think that you’re going to make it past the next one. But you’re invited to do your best.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Well, we’re definitely planning to try.” Anaya replies while shaking her head a bit. “On a sidenote, I meant to ask about it earlier. This Level is modeled after the mine?”

Oh, so they’re finally asking about it. Izuku wondered when it would happen for a while now. Anaya probably didn’t want to waste time talking before they would clear the level properly and would be safe from random ambushes.

She gave Izuku the vibes of being a person who would do that.

“Yes.” Tomura replies. “Except the corridors there are usually wider and have a minecart rail in the middle.”

“I see.” Anaya nods. “What about the skeletons? Are there any chances of fielding them in the battle?”

“It won’t work.” Tomura replies. “They’re puppets made from my power. They can’t leave my domain.”

“Regretful, but understandable.” Anaya replies before deciding to change the subject into something much more constructive. “Very well then, let’s continue on.”

***

Anaya’s group run into the Dungeon ends on the Seventh Level, exactly as Tomura suggested earlier.

It’s not even a lengthy fight.

They barely have the time to use the elevator to get to the second level of the mine segment before they hear howls. Coming from every direction at once, the elevator room on the Seventh Level opening in four directions at once.

There’re barely any enemies coming from two of them, but the remaining two are nearly immediately swarmed by the Cynocephalii. A whole tide of Cynocephalii seeking nothing else but to tear them apart and devour their body as they’re still alive, screaming for help.

The beastkin - very reasonably if someone was to ask Izuku - responded by immediately hitting the lever, making the elevator start to go up, only some of the Cynocephalii managing to grab onto the edges of the elevator before being promptly pushed off it by the nearest warriors.

In short, their reaction to the swarm is best described with the word ‘NOPE!”.

“Yes, that’s… not something that we can deal with in our current state and with our current numbers.” Anaya manages to look confident and authoritative even while admitting her defeat. “How many of them are there?”

“Sixty-nine.” Tomura replies calmly. “And then you get to the trap segment that you already know, except when you get past the projectile room one, there’s no short corridor. And instead you immediately walk into the fight with the Gore Munchers.”

…

There is an awkward silence at the elevator, interrupted only by the howling of the hungry Cynocephalii the level beneath them. Eventually, it’s Anaya that breaks it.

“Difficulty spike, I see.” She says before shaking her head. “Well, it’s definitely a place that could use some… thinning out of its population. And did you really have to make four exits from the elevator room?”

“Yes.” Tomura replies while giving her the Stare. “I’m tailoring those levels for when I’ll have to deal with actual invaders. We’re past the commercially accessible part of my domain, after all.”

“And that’s a fair point.” Anaya concedes the point. “Are there any interesting things from here on out?”

“There’s the smelter I mentioned on this level.” Tomura replies. “And some mining areas. Beyond this is the boulder trap that I’m planning to improve after the battle. And then my personal living quarters, where I don’t want any outsiders in. I also plan to put a barracks level between it and the boulder trap, where I’ll house my army.” He tilts his head a little. “Mostly Rose Guards right now.”

“You want to make the boulder trap even more annoying?” Anaya asks. Tomura can congratulate himself - he actually made her look horrified with something. Rare achievement.

“Yes.” Tomura stares back at her. “Stone golems. I consider putting stone golems there that can make for a walking wall to crush you between themselves and the boulders. I consider this to be a wonderful decision and a great improvement to my domain.”

Izuku genuinely can’t tell if Tomura was sharing that with them for the sake of more successful deterrence (making it a logical decision) of potential betrayal or if he just wanted to scare them a little and perhaps receive some words of acknowledgment for his planning and trapmaking skills.

Without even considering how he’s betraying a significant part of their defenses. Thus making it an extremely bad idea.

Classic Tomura.

What he managed to earn was a moment of complete silence in the room. The elevator has already reached the still empty lampades’ boss room, drowning out the howling. While only Uzar and Anaya experienced that place, the reaction of the other beastkin seems to make it clear that they heard the tales.

“I see.” Anaya breaks the silence eventually. “You’re definitely investing a lot of time, effort and thoughts into your own defense. That’s… good .” She says nothing, but it seems that she has a lot of thoughts on the level in question. Huh. “Is it enough for you? I believe that we’re done with this visit and we should probably make our way back to the camp.”

“Hmm?” Tomura blinks at her, surprised by the sudden change of subject. “Oh, yeah. You can go. That’s all that I needed from you. I think that you’d need one of my servants to follow you for communication, right?”

“Yes, that would be perfect.” Anaya replies. “You should start to prepare your forces, too. We don’t know when exactly the enemy will respond to our presence in the area. Can you get everything prepared on your end within a full day?”

“Should be possible.” Tomura replies. Izuku agrees with him. It’s going to be a bit tough, but they should manage. “You can go back on your own. The creatures won’t attack you, but don’t rush back or my servant won’t catch up with you on the way back.”

“I assure you that we’re not planning to rush anywhere.” The elder replies dryly. Yeah, right after having your shoulder dislocated Izuku would prefer to take it slow too.

Tomura says nothing. Just despawns himself, vanishing into thin air. That was a bit rude in Izuku’s opinion, but alright. He didn’t expect him to be well-mannered either way.

Okay, I’m back.

How was it?

Surprisingly good for you.

Asshole.

Compress is on his way to join them as our representative.

Great.

…

…?

Okay, so I’ll say it.

Good job, Shigaraki.

You’ve managed to milk them for quite a lot of stuff.

I’m especially looking forward to the hot springs.

You fucking horndog

you imagined yourself in the hot springs with Toga and Uraraka

I did

And I regret nothing.

…

And also don’t have me start on the additional properties of the blood hornet’s honey, as I’m really looking forward to testing it.

pervert

… maybe a bit.

You weren’t like this in Japan.

I didn’t have a girlfriend in Japan.

And I didn’t even consider that being an option. Like, ever.

Now I have two (one and a half?).

And both of them are very much into me.

…

So, yes. I’m enjoying that. A lot. And I refuse to be ashamed of it.

You’re fucking insufferable

Should I find myself a goth gf just to flex on you

First of all, why would that be better than having a khornate berserker gf with her perverted catgirl rogue sidekick gf?

STOP MAKING ME FUCKING UNCOMFORTABLE

YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE FUCKING G-RATED YOU PRICK

Second of all, you want a girlfriend?

You?

I, uhm…

I’m sure you’ll manage to find one! Eventually.

Somehow?

AND DON’T YOU DARE FUCKING PITY ME, YOU BITCH

…

Fine I won’t.

let me guess, it’s because you prefer to not pity me and instead fucking bully me

No.

I just realized that I shouldn’t act like a mean person just because I have two girlfriends.

It makes me feel like a bad person, even if you’re a bad person yourself.

In fact, I even feel bad about calling you a bad person.

…

And I shouldn’t look down on you, regardless of the reasons for that.

Stop being so blindingly fucking pure

What?

You’re being annoyingly nice and this is, well, annoying

I don’t think that being nice to you should annoy anyone.

It’s annoying because it’s YOU who is doing it, as you’re annoying by default.

And not a single fucking word about me needing therapy for anything.

Okay, okay!

…

Be honest with me, are you jealous? Is that why you’re so angry right now?

YES, YES I FUCKING AM YOU FUCKING JERK

I NEVER HAD A FUCKING GF IN MY LIFE BECAUSE MY ‘ADOPTIVE FATHER’ WAS GROOMING ME FOR SOME FUCKED UP GOALS I DON”T EVEN KNOW AND DIDN’T WANT ME TO HAVE ANY FUCKING ATTACHMENTS IN THIS WORLD

AND HE ALSO KILLED MY DOG AND MY ENTIRE FAMILY

Stop rubbing salt into my wounds, okay?

… will you chill down and not be as annoyed at me if I tell you that if you find someone you like and it won’t be anything in any way illegal, I’ll be ready to help you make them like you?

Wait, really?

Yes.

… why though?

I just realized that I feel kinda bad about myself for acting as if I’m better than you for having a girlfriend.

People shouldn’t look down on other people for something like this. And I don’t want to feel bad about myself.

I only accept looking down on other people when it’s because of what they did, and even that only if what they did was evil .

… and you also think that the right gf might help make me become a better person because you have a thing for sobby redemption stories

Guilty as charged.

Sigh.

You know what, fine.

We have a deal.

Alright.

… be honest with me, is there anyone that you already like?

what?

I think that you wouldn’t be THAT angry if it wasn’t some serious thing down there. Something personal.

… I’ll tell you, but if you tell anyone forgive you

I’d say that you’re yet to forgive me for the fact that I exist, but I assume that this would be an extra level of no-forgiveness.

Yes.

Alright. I swear on All Might that I’ll keep your secret a secret.

Ugh.

Aeonia.

Happy?

…

DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE TO LAUGH AT ME

I’m not going to laugh!

I… I can actually see you two together, you know?

Really?

Yes. I think you would feel right at home sitting in a room and comparing your plans for world domination.

Uhm, alright, that… that kind of makes sense.

Y-yes. So, anyway, if you need any help there, just tell me.

And for now, we should make a new level and put the Rose Guard and the undead there. Business before pleasure, right?

Right.

You’re still a total hero jerk and an annoying All Might fanboy.

And you’re still, well, you’re still Tomura Shigaraki.