Yaoyorozu, naturally, loved all the new information about this world that she obtained through him. What she didn’t love was not having any tools to write them all down, even if her memory was - as always - extraordinary.
Izuku ended up renewing his promise of obtaining those for her as quickly as possible. If only he knew how to get that done! C’mon, they were literally in the middle of nowhere, it’s not like there is a shop that he can visit in the area, right?
Soon after the night came, Aeonia departed towards her graveyard alongside Toga, as someone had to seal her chamber from outside, before taking the key back to the Dungeon, to ensure that no one could easily unseal her sanctuary.
It was then that Shigaraki suddenly spoke to him.
PFFFTTT
What?
I found something absolutely hilarious.
Just check the [Rooms] lmao
What do you
why is there a Shrine of Occasa
and why did we get some favor from her in [Religion]
Weeding out the weak, Midoriya
If we killed her servants and creatures, it just means that they were weak
This is probably a fraction of the points we could get by actually working for her, but for as long as we don’t go too far, she probably just laughs at her worshippers thinking that they were the top of the foodchain and then gives birth to more monstrosities
That answers the latter question.
What about the former?
Wait.
You think it’s because we technically assimilated some of, you know, her followers?
Nah
I think it’s the symbols and other cultish paraphernalia
Makes sense.
…
So, are we, like…
… putting that in the Dungeon?
what
dude
Spinner’s my best friend, but the moment he makes any offering to Occasa, I’m yeeting him out of my life
Yeah, I mean, I don’t plan to permit any worship happening there, obviously.
But I just kinda want to spit in that cult’s face by putting their deity’s shrine in a Dungeon which they hate so much and see their faces if they ever get to see it.
…
You’re a vicious bastard, have I ever told you that?
I’m a legitimate child, and my mother wouldn’t ever cheat on anyone.
But yes.
Yes, I’m vicious.
Ha!
I guess that ‘Fuck Occasa’ is something that we both agree upon.
I’m in.
Let’s make her a shrine so that we can piss off her worshippers.
And they do make her a shrine, right next to the one of Luna, all the way up by the entrance. It’s… creepy.
Seriously, big no. The sculpture looks exactly how Aeonia described it a long time ago - Occasa is portrayed as a beautiful young woman, pregnant and both covered and surrounded by spiders, hornets, rats, centipedes and a lot other things that they didn’t even want to name.
Izuku genuinely hopes that the next visiting cultist of Occasa will get a brain aneurysm and die when he sees it.
***
The next thing they add is a major expansion of Shigaraki’s Sen’s Fortress Lite, which somehow amps its difficulty level significantly. To be fully honest, it makes Izuku feel vaguely guilty.
How did Shigaraki decide to somehow make the history’s most terrible trap design an order of magnitude worse?
See, in the original trap design, a boulder pierced the fake wall and then rolled down the corridor before hitting the small alcove at the end of the corridor, where it came to an instant halt.
This immediately blocked said alcove, preventing the enemies from hiding in it while right next to them another boulder pierced another fake wall and began to pursue them down another corridor.
Simple but effective. But it had a weakspot. Namely, if you stopped a boulder mid-corridor, or if you moved extremely fast after reaching the end of the line (and sidestepped the boulder coming from before, before leaping back into the corridor you came from before the second boulder came), you could dodge the threats almost perfectly.
And that was unacceptable.
What was Shigaraki’s solution to it?
Projectile traps. Projectile traps that were scattered around the last fragment of the lengthy corridor, right before the trap switch, so that whoever jumped back from the incoming boulder would be forced to deal with being fired at by astral shards from every direction.
He also added some additional traps there. Like some additional sticky things on the floor that could stop someone on either steps of that direction switch trap.
Ha! Perfect!
Shigaraki, answer me honestly.
Who hurt you?
My father, All for One, All Might, all the pro-heroes, a lot of the villains, society, and the absolute assholes from Gamigo
Gamigo?
The true Symbol of Evil
A company that obtains successful and interesting MMORPGs so that they can push a shitload of microtransactions inside them, move it over to shittier but cheaper servers and limit updates so you can fire as many developers as possible, all to suck as much money from the players as they can before the game inevitably collapses
tfu
Bastards
The fact that they still exist until today just proves that the Earth’s society should be destroyed
Riiight.
Anyway.
I rate your trap design “10/10, I hate it”.
Ha, suffer.
***
The next thing that they’ve decided to work on (and yet, it was an achievement for Izuku to persuade Shigaraki to do that) were the living quarters for their servants. Because, to be honest, they became quite… outdated.
Once they’d get the elemental level, their living space would become the 6th Level, meaning that it would have a baseline AML of 2.0. This, in turn, meant that Kirishima could be housed there without any stupid tricks with technically housing him in the Throne Room.
This was made even more important because Uraraka now hit level 19, so just like Kirishima she outgrew the 5th Level.
And, well. Izuku isn’t going to admit it aloud, but having solid wooden doors (and pretty thick ones, too) in your apartments might decrease… the noises. And he thinks that it might be a good idea to decrease the noises.
He figured out that they… that they all might require some privacy, alright?
They’ve also decided to add a bathroom. For now it’s pretty much a number of stalls, where one can wash themselves with a water bucket. There are sinks in the floor that send all the water used there into the fake exit of the Dungeon, where it all disappears.
They’ve also added a campfire to the kitchen (now relocated), with a fake exit on the ceiling that vents smoke out and - to the south of the main path to the Throne Room - two shrines, to Saevius and Luna.
Officially no one did anything when worshiping Luna was involved, but there was a small improvement in her favor level and Izuku had some suspicions concerning Toga’s involvement in the matter.
image [https://images.squidge.org/images/2024/06/06/image.png]
1. Entrance, 2. Common Room, 3.1. Throne Room, 3.2. Shrine of Saevius (sorry for 2x 3, my oversight), 4. Shrine of Luna), 5. Bathrooms, 6. Living Quarters.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
That has succeeded in making their living quarters somewhat more livable, but it also made Uraraka and Kirishima slightly outgrow their living quarters in terms of strength, so they had to add a new level to the Dungeon as soon as possible.
And that was their next goal. One that they managed to achieve pretty quickly, in big part thanks to their policy of putting plenty of bonus Nodes in various places, not just in Floor Guardian Rooms, but also in Komori’s Grove, and the bonus one at the beginning.
And, well, it seems that early Dungeons grow up quickly. Which makes sense - they have to grow quickly to not get easily murdered by some vagrant murderhobo.
There was a brief argument over where to put a new level. Tomura wanted it as the new 3rd Level, while Izuku suggested some deeper overhaul of the Dungeon and making the elementals replace the current spider habitat, while moving said habitat a level below it.
It would mean a lot of changes, but in the end, Shigaraki decided that Midoriya might have a point, especially considering the fact that they didn’t know just how useful elementals were in combat.
After all, the new information about the way magic worked wasn't exactly very… optimistic in that regard. Yaoyorozu’s magic wasn’t very dangerous in direct confrontation, and she had a higher ETL than the elementals available to them.
image [https://images.squidge.org/images/2024/06/06/image82c521236e909f40.png]
In the end, the First Level grows quite a bit, the internal area surrounded by the secret maintenance tunnel being filled with intersecting corridors and - and it took them almost two days to get it done - eight [Elemental Overflows], two of each of the four elements.
Yes. Their recent attack made them slightly concerned with their future survival, so, in the absence of quality, they’ve decided to go for quantity. Extreme quantity.
Look. If they get quote unquote ‘civilized’, they might slightly tone it down in the visitor-accessible section of the Dungeon, but for now? For now they were more concerned with their own security than their comfort. Or… well, survival.
The elementals turned out to resemble small, child-sized humanoids of unspecified gender, immaterial, floating, and made of their natural element. There were no faces on them, it was just the rough shapes.
They seemed to be just… floating around, doing pretty much nothing. They kind of regretted not asking Aeonia about them. They didn’t seem very intimidating, but hey, ATL 10, right? But there were like eighty of them roaming the whole Level, meaning that you’d have to withstand constant attacks from them.
Then… came the 2nd Level.
***
image [https://images.squidge.org/images/2024/06/06/imagec325a012fe35c745.png]
They’ve expanded it as well. Two more [Spider Breeding Chambers]. A new mining area in the middle that had both [Cassiterite] and [Malachite]. And… the great thing.
What was the great thing? What was the main reason why Shigaraki agreed to waste so much time and resources to rearrange the first two Levels in that particular way.
It was now the 2nd Level. It had a baseline AML of 1.2. And that meant that it could house creatures of ETL 12.
Like [Spider Maidens].
There were now a lot of [Spider Maidens] wandering the area, with three of them acting as [Floor Guardian].
After it was the 3rd Floor, with Komori’s [Hamadryad Grove] and the [Underground Ecosystem], with no changes there. Then the 4th Floor, which had the projectile trap and the fall trap and was, frankly, pretty weak and urgently required some expansions and modifications.
It was, frankly, outdated. But they had nothing to put there. Unless…
What about the Cynocephaluses?
Cynocephalii*
Alright, alright, Cynocephalii
We’d need a lot more of them to populate a whole Level with them.
There are a lot of them in that mine, tho
Good point.
So I guess that we’re putting the Cynocephalii down to that level, and look to obtain more if possible.
Yes.
Those two we have now too?
Why not?
And so, they put the two Cynocephalii in the Node Room. It feels… kinda weird, and they almost immediately start trying to bite each other in their endless hunger. As they suspected, their injuries seemed to heal as they devoured each other’s meat.
How… lovely.
With the living area of their servants now being a Sixth Level, they’ve decided to switch its Biome to that of the [Elven Mine]. The changes were instant, and left its inhabitants briefly confused before they decided that it was much better.
The elves knew how to mine their corridors. The walls and ceilings were smoother, and the new doors that they’ve switched offered much better sound isolation, giving them a bit more privacy.
All while improving the AML of their quarters, so that Kirishima and Uraraka could live there comfortably.
Finally
the first segment is more or less done
We still need to catch some cynocephalii to populate the 4th Level and to expand it a bit, and there will probably be some expansions to the entrance (new shrines etc.), but other than that, the [Limestone Cave] segment is pretty much done
Yes, yes it is.
It’s been a journey, wasn’t it?
Yes, and I hated every single moment of it that I spent with you.
You’re only motivating me more to act like I did.
Asshole.
Are we doing some upgrades to our servants?
Yes and I still dislike them being called like this, but okay.
Let’s do it.
***
For Yaoyorozu they replace [Herbalism (Vestiria) II] with its improved, III-ranked level, [Basic Alchemy I] with [Basic Alchemy II], and give her a few new language skills: [Western Elven (Vestirian Dialect, Modern), Spoken VII], [Western Elven (Vestirian Dialect, Modern), Written VII], [Itavian, Spoken VI], [Itavian, Written VI], while also giving her a [Temperate Forest Survival II].
This has changed her from [Hedge Mage, lvl 16] into [Hedge Mage, lvl 18].
For Uraraka they couldn’t improve a lot, as she was simply too close to the limit. But they did manage to squeeze in a [Tracking III] and [Temperate Forest Survival I], making her a [Barbarian Warrior, lvl 20].
Toga got an upgrade to her [Temperate Forest Survival] and [Basic Cooking] skills to III (she had seemed adamant about cooking for ‘her Ochako-chan’, and others too while at it, but it was clear that she was holding the skill for Ochako). This made her a [Barbarian Rogue, lvl 15].
Spinner received similar boosts to [Temperate Forest Survival] and [Tracking], making him their second ‘proper’ hunter. This made him a [Barbarian Archer, lvl 16].
Monoma got the following upgrades: [Herbalism (Vestiria) III], [Basic Alchemy II] and [Temperate Forest Survival III]. They’ve elected against giving him additional language skills - the more skills they put in their servants, the more it costs to resurrect them.
Yaoyorozu having those skills was enough for now.
Monoma leveled up to a [Barbarian Shaman, lvl 14].
So, the question
What do we do next?
I think we’re appropriately geared up and secured, and the cultists didn’t come back, so it might be a time to send them on another expedition
Elven Mine 2.0: Electric Boogaloo, or the Banshee in Aeonia’s graveyard?
Or are we going to look for something new?
Spinner mentioned that he might have noticed something somewhere on the slopes of the nearby mountain while out hunting btw.
You’re telling me this now?
It wasn’t anything concrete
Just thinking that it might be something amid the forest, like a building
It might as well be nothing
But thus far our attempts to look for something out there were, ultimately, pretty successful, right?
Well, yeah.
So, I guess that we could go check out what it was, if anything, all while looking for anything to bring back to the Dungeon.
Besides, I think that Ochako’s getting anxious about wasting time, doing nothing.
Simp
What?
You’re an absolute simp for her
You’re doing everything you can to make her happy, all in the hopes of getting another banging
Oh.
Then yes, I’m Ochako’s simp.
What about it?
I
You were supposed to deny that!
Why though?
It’s the truth.
Except for the ‘banging’ part.
I’m fine with a hug.
Or a kiss.
Or holding hands.
But I’m not against, errr, snuggling.
You normie son of a bitch
What did you just say?
I called you a normie son of a bitch?
Did you just call my mother bitch?
Uhm?
Don’t you DARE say a SINGLE bad word about my MOM!!!
She’s the nicest, kindest and most hardworking person IN THE WHOLE WORLD
She has done her utmost for me, being a SINGLE MOTHER of a QUIRKLESS child, pouring all the love and kindness she had in her onto me, making me feel LOVED every single moment of my childhood
And then she forced herself to support me when I joined the Hero Course, because it was my dream, despite being CONSTANTLY WORRIED about me and all the NEARLY DEBILITATING INJURIES that I survived, in big part thanks to a CERTAIN SOMEONE
She had All Might kneel before her and apologize for not helping me enough that I wouldn’t suffer said injuries and promise to do his utmost to keep me safe, as that was the only way for her to not show the middle finger to Nedzu and the rest of the UA and pull me out of the school that has failed to keep me safe so much
Once again, DUE TO CERTAIN SOMEONE’S ACTIONS
And even then, I lived in constant fear that CERTAIN SOMEONE and his band of socially inept goons alongside their little SUGAR DADDY with the world’s most powerful chuunibyou syndrome would target her to get to me
Don’t you DARE call her names, or I’ll do my utmost to find a way to excise your soul from this joint body so that I can do something really, really HORRIBLE to you, you handjobs-fetishizing unfunny CLOWN!!!
Okay, okay, fuck, jesus christ
Your mother’s off limits, I’ll never call her a bad word, even indirectly like right now, alright?
I swear, I never considered going after family’s of my enemies, alright?
I’m not that much of a loser, alright?
…
Jesus, fuck, go on a date with your girlfriend if you need and chill the fuck down
You’re scaring me right now
Not a single bad word about my mom. Ever.
Alright! Alright!
Just one question about it
… she really made All Might kneel?
Yes.
… so your mom’s more powerful and definitely cooler in my book than All for One, okay, good to know
You think she’ll adopt me if I ask?
You definitely need parents, despite being an adult. But I don’t think that I’m ready to be your brother.
Loser.