Some time later, Uraraka’s group begins their return journey to the Dungeon, accompanied with three lampades and nine gravehounds. The lampades were named Kana, Aeria and Lanna and seemed somewhat excited by the prospect of working in a Dungeon for a while.

For ten years, to be exact. The contract they’ve agreed upon permits the Dungeon to use them for combat purposes (and combat purposes only), together with a lot of additional clauses, including one that they and the servants of the Breathless Tide cannot be hosted on the same Level.

At least, the spirits can’t.

Yaoyorozu was quick to point-out that lesser undead generated by the Dungeon are pretty much puppets resembling actual undead, and that three lampades and nine gravehounds is hardly enough for a Level.

Lorae didn’t like it, but she did decide to concede the point. Meaning that they could put skeletons on the level while using the lampades for a boss fight. That was the material for a completely new level.

Great!

In the meantime, Shigaraki returns to the Core.

I’m back

Did it work?

Seems so.

Keran didn’t open the letter and they seem to be preparing to leave to get back to their tribe.

Great

Anything else to mention?

We’ve got some last-minute intel that I’ve already confirmed with Lorae.

There’s a ‘Chosen of the Sun’ on the island, who is currently busy campaigning against the Breathless Tide’ holdout on Mount Kalenir, which is a solid distance away from us.

oh

Well, alright then

I have something to add too

That being?

We gotta make the levels bigger.

First Level is all cool but it was just dominated by a group of seven newbie invaders within thirty minutes or so

It’s not good

Yes, but it’s not SUPPOSED to be good in that way.

We’re supposed to let people exploit that level commercially, The defensive-oriented levels start from Second Level onward.

It’s not even that good in that way

It’s too small

Clearing the whole level completely takes maybe an hour, and then what?

More creatures means more resources to be harvested and more groups of adventurers that can operate within our domain simultaneously

We need it bigger

We should make all the levels bigger eventually

That… makes sense.

At least for creatures like the elementals which we can easily produce in any number we want.

How do you picture it?

I imagine it like this:

We concentrate the resource harvesting and processing rooms, there’s no point spreading it around completely at random, we also add some [Lairs] there to keep the stuff have at least some difficulty level

We construct every Level from such zones, and the deeper you go, the more goodies in them

Plus some occasional [Lairs] between them to make sure that there aren’t any large parts of the level that are without any creatures to let people rest deeper into the Level

Makes sense.

But this is going to make our every level much, much larger eventually.

We should keep the level change/floor guardian rooms in the central zone though, at least until we’ll get something to allow us to move between levels faster, as otherwise we’ll spend hours just walking out of it.

… wait, it just occurred to me.

?

We don’t need to keep the inhabitants of every level to be on the very edge of the ambient mana limit, right?

All that matters is a growth in difficulty level between the Levels to make sure that getting to more valuable stuff isn’t easy

Adventurers will just be able to reach a level or two deeper, but it’s not like it matters, it’s just a number.

Where’s this going?

We can split the current First Level into two, turn the entire First Level into a sort of guest area slash divine favour farm and then massively expand the second part of the First Level into a dedicated, giant elemental Level

Oh, I get where it’s going

One more level, stronger creatures, less content restrictions sooner

Yes.

And I really think that eventually one or more of the ‘killzone’ Levels will likely be just our equivalent of barracks, holding all the bound daemons that act as our regular army to repel deadly attacks or operate outside of the Dungeon if needed.

Yes

We’re slowly figuring things out, aren’t we?

Yes.

One more thing that Dungeons likely figure out naturally as they develop.

So, what do we do first? Expand First Level, expand Second Level, split First Level or what?

I’d split First Level in two.

Why?

So that we can improve our servants asap.

Ochako and Tokage-san using only their shields and either a spear or a sword is illogical. Spear has greater reach by default, but when you lose it (or, in this case, if Ochako loses it), you’re basically helpless.

We should give them both a spear AND a shield.

That makes sense

And also, if we do get a bunch of creatures from the Ecstasy, we might want to have the barracks level as soon as possible and have it have the highest possible Ambient Mana Level to accommodate for when we’ll start forming our army

especially if we want to ‘recruit’ the Rose Guard, they look like they have a bit higher AML than the usual riffraff that we’ve encountered thus far

Great

We haven’t expanded in the number of levels in a while

It was like a week.

I wouldn’t exactly call it a long period of time.

Whatever

We’ll start working on that once the beastkin leave the Dungeon.

***

And eventually they do. After squeezing some of that colorless liquid from that strange pouch-thing into a small metal bottle, through a funnel to not lose a single drop. There truly wasn’t a lot of it.

Then again, they just didn’t know how much of it counted as ‘much’. It could be really valuable. But it just couldn’t be more than a 10th of that bottle, and that - together with earlier words of the beastkin warrior tasked with collecting it - makes it unlikely to be a lot.

By the time their servants and their new recruits return from Lorae’s tomb, they are done with that expansion of their domain.

First Level is now composed of two parts. First one is a meeting hall/dining room of substantial size, with a small kitchen by it and a small [Growing Area] right beyond it, set up to automatically grow a handful of herbs like sage that can be used for culinary purposes.

Yes, there’s a fake hole in the ceiling there.

Look, if they’re making a proper guest area, they could as well do it properly. And in Izuku’s opinion, that works. Everything is completely bare other than the most basic of furniture, there’s not even any cutleries there, they don’t want the newcomers to straight up steal them.

And besides, they only use wood there. Very primitively shaped one. Just to make sure that the visitors won’t steal the furniture.

He even added some showers. Pretty much a harness for a bucket of water above your head, with a handle attached to one side of it so that you can easily douse yourself in water. It’s rudimentary, but it works.

They have the same thing in their apartments on the lowest level. It’s primitive, but works well enough. Especially when you, errr, fill the bucket with hot water and do this with two very attractive and naked girls, the three of you making washing into an… errr… team-building exercise.

Anyway.

The other side of the First Level is the Divine Favour farm. They intend to fill the whole area with as many shrines as possible. They do not care if the gods in question hate each other, this is a neutral zone for their wars and rivalries and everyone can worship in peace.

All while feeding the Dungeon with the divine favor of the High Gods who get themselves venerated by the visitors. They aren’t exactly doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, obviously.

The rest of the past First Level gets massively expanded, growing more than five times in size and being populated with even more basic elementals and earth golems. The next time the beastkin will show up for a visit, they’ll find a much larger place to explore.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

They’ll expand the spider-themed level too. After all, now that they’ve expanded themselves from six to seven levels, they are contractually obligated to make their Second Level open for the beastkin as well.

They should have enough mana for it soon. And to expand First Level some more.

So, I think that I have an idea.

What is it?

Mana power plant.

… go on

We should be able to put a significant number of Node Rooms right next to each other, and it shouldn’t matter for our safety unless we let someone reach all the way down here which, objectively speaking, would mean that we’re done for either way if someone hostile got this deep to begin with.

Oh

Oh, I guess.

We can spend a while putting it up from surplus mana, like when we have nothing better to do and we’re close to filling the tank completely

That’s another good idea in a short succession, sweet

Speaking of, are we going to cash in on those favors?

Your girlfriend #1 is earning some brownie points from Mr. Not-Khorne with her acts of wanton slaughter and we could cash in on that

Wait a fucking second

No

NO

NONONONONO

What?!

Luna did another Luna thing and changed the way the favor rewards work

Just check this horrific abomination yourself

O…okay?

And he does as he was told. He heads to [Religion] and immediately sees that there’s a large ‘Redeem Rewards’ button right next to it, very clearly not fitting the general theme of the UI, just like the one that led to Luna’s ‘cheat code’.

And he clicks it. Just to immediately see a large window with what quickly turns out to be a letter. From their divine kidnapper.

Hello there, my favorite kidnapping victims!

It’s me, ‘ya boy (for about twenty seconds more and before I get bored of, you know, being a boy). See, I’ve been thinking a bit more and I realized that the whole thing is still not unique enough.

I mean, I’ve copied you into a foreign world, gave you the cheat code and all, but it’s still not quite unique enough. I want the new story of your life to just be… extra spicy, you get me? And a tad bit more random.

So, I’ve been looking through the memories of your past world and then it occurred to me. I figured out how to achieve both the extra spice and extra randomness and chaos.

Gacha games!

From now on, instead of directly buying appropriate rewards in exchange for the divine favor, you’ll instead unlock High God-themed gacha rolls.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, and it’s probably screaming in abject horror. Especially Shigaraki. But! It’s better.

To begin with, there wasn’t an actual divine ‘favor’ being involved in the process. Sorry for putting it that way, but High Gods are usually a bit too focused on their own stuff that’s done on a multiversal scale to notice a mere Dungeon.

Oh, make no mistake, you need to be noticed to receive a theurgy from a god such as Saevius, even if it’s a passing notice (and trust me, there’ll be more waiting for Midoriya’s girlfriend if she keeps acting the way she does, she has all the traits that the Nine Hordes endorses as a pantheon).

What was I talking about… oh, right. Divine favor. Usually, it’s more about aligning your very nature more with that High God or another, which makes you a more inviting environment for certain entities that you can then openly just invite. So, with other High Gods not being directly invested in the process, I could twiddle with it a lot.

And I made it better!

Look, normally, it was almost entirely about the shard spirits and daemons. Now, there’s more. Pulling a Saevius roll will reward with you either a spirit or a new unlock fitting his theme. Weapons, outfits, armors, martial arts manuals (and martial arts themselves), valuable crafting schematics, Wrath Magic spells etc. etc. And guess what?

Element of randomness.

You can, technically, roll something that’s much more valuable than what you’d normally get. Nothing stops you from rolling a legendary top tier archdaemon at your first roll (however confused THEY would be with appearing here in such an odd set of circumstances).

Wouldn’t it be funny if that happened? Lmao.

Hell, you can even roll some unclaimed legendary artifacts. Of course, the chances for it are astronomically low, but…

Wouldn’t it be INCREDIBLY funny if that happened? Lmao.

Anyway, have fun!

Signed:

Luna,

High God of An Actually Great Sense of Humour

PS1. And you’ll even earn some favor from Proditio, the Hierarch of Dice. Because, you know, Dice. Gambling. Random chances. Ain’t I great?

PS2. For the love of myself, don’t tell the lampades about me and your mission. Mors is the closest ally of my sister among the exarchs, and while their murderboner against the Hierarchs is focused entirely on that nerd Nex and my brother, they’ll still have issues with me trying to strike a blow against Sol.

Although congrats for earning their help, that’s NOT something that any of my followers would have done in your place. I’m really curious as to where it would lead to :D

PS3. Put Shiozaki in the body of another hamadryad (or any other daemon, really) and then make her choose it to be her body forever. I’m curious what the outcome will be, but if my suspicions are correct, she’ll love it. And with some thinking, I think you’ll figure out why :P

Izuku read the whole text, realized that Luna managed to simultaneously be a jerk and be surprisingly helpful. Her changes to the system appeared to be rather beneficial to them, even if with a radical addition of randomness to it.

The warning about the lampades being allies of Sol was… a welcome one. They didn’t know that, and they wouldn’t know that at least until their next meeting with Aeonia. Izuku immediately made a mental note to contact and warn everyone about not talking about Luna and their mission whenever the lampades were anywhere near them.

As soon as possible.

As for Shiozaki-san… what could that be? What could that do?

Oh.

Oh.

When Aeonia changed her beliefs into that of the Breathless Tide, she changed her very nature to that of one of the daemons of the Tide. Because to daemons, their identity defined everything, including their equivalent of the species, or at least that’s how Izuku imagined it for now.

But Shiozaki-san was extremely Christian in her beliefs. And while temporarily possessing a body of a daemon seemed to not trigger the ‘identity crisis’ thing - at least judging from how Komori was alright with being a hamadryad - what would happen if Shiozaki-san possessed a daemon and was then fully merged with it, permanently?

Would she become some sort of angel? Were they a thing in this universe?

That would be… interesting, that’s for sure. Definitely a potentially interesting experiment. Maybe something to persuade Shiozaki-san to cooperate, but he needed more knowledge about this world to try that.

That and, well, a completely animalistic and hostile daemon to try it all on. He is actively against doing that to sapient daemons, even ones hostile to them. This is just way too much to do to someone capable of reasoning.

Dismissing the pop-up leads Izuku straight to hell.

The screen is colorful but in the worst possible way. It’s a hell of mismatched colors, with even fonts different in every word. Even someone as unfashionable as he is (Ochako had a lot of opinions about his T-Shirts even in the past world, and she was the second least fashion-interested person after himself there) realized that it was just bad.

Absolutely horrible.

It was an absolute hell to read through it and figure out how exactly it worked.

Okay, so apparently they have several different… types of rolls? Yes. They can make a Normal roll, a Special roll, a Premium roll, a Deluxe roll and a… Special Premium roll? Deluxe Special roll? Special Premium Deluxe roll? Errr?

Luna was absolutely atrocious in naming things. Then again, it was probably the point. What really mattered was that the better the roll, the more favor it cost, but the better their odds.

He immediately elected to rename all of those atrocities. Numbers? Yes, numbers. Level one roll to level ten roll. This is much better than, say, saying that they’re going to do a Super Special Deluxe Super Premium roll.

What is your opinion about that absolute atrocity

That it’d be classified as illegal gambling in all the countries of the Euro-American Trade Zone due to the odds of scoring items in question not being mentioned anywhere.

Making it be against the rules.

Which, I suspect, is kind of the point.

For once I fucking agree with the law

… Do you want to talk about this?

You’re the second last person that I’d want to talk about my problems with.

The first one is All for One?

No, Overhaul.

All for One ties with you for second place, as I could at least have fun about his manipulation tactics while he was trying to employ them as now I’d know that they’re manipulation tactics.

I

That hurt me more than I think it would.

SCORE

Anyway

Gacha games fucking suck, and to this day I’m salty about failing to roll for that dog which resembled Mon-chan despite emptying my allowance and running hundreds of fucking rolls

Sigh.

It all goes back to Mon-chan with you.

Will you become a better person if the lampades will let you pet their dogs?

…

No promises are made.

Okay.

Do we make some rolls?

We have enough favor for 3x Level One Saevius rolls, 1x Level One Occasa roll and 3x Level One Luna rolls.

Wait, that’s how we’re calling them now?

Yes.

Okay

Why not, what’s the worst that can happen?

Let’s roll all of that and empty the bank for now.

We should be able to recover sooner or later.

Aye.

The results of the rolls are as followed:

Saevius rolls have given them two Common-Grade and one Uncommon-Grade unlocks.

Common-Grade were [Brass] (as in, the Copper and Zinc alloy) and [Blessing of Carnage], which was apparently a type of a spirit.

Uncommon-Grade was an [Amazon], which was a daemon of Saevius. Izuku could guess from the name alone that it was going to be some sort of female daemonic warrior.

They already had Ochako, but having another fighter like her was always a plus.

Occasa roll resulted in the [Blood Hornet] unlock, which was a Common-grade… monster? Oh. They could actually produce it in any numbers they wanted! And as a side-effect of that unlock, they’ve immediately unlocked [Blood Hornet Hive] as a [Lair]!

Big win. Unexpected boon from Occasa. Very nice. She was still an abominable demon of a god, but at least they’ve got some cool things out of her roll.

Luna rolls have given them a Common-grade spirit called the [Blessing of Shadows], Uncommon-grade material called the [Shadow Iron] and, surprisingly enough, a Very Rare-grade spirit called [Snatcher-in-the-Dark].

[Blood Hornets] had the same threat level as Giant Spiders. Both Blessings had their Threat Level stated as N/A, oddly enough (it required some more practical testing to figure out). Amazon had stats comparable to that of the [Lesser Hamadryad] and as for [Snatcher-in-the-Dark]…

Threat Level Sixty-Two.

Izuku had a lot of questions but he was a bit too busy being scared of the answers to do so. The one with likely the most terrifying implications was this one: If ‘Very Rare’ unlocks included ETL Sixty-Two creatures… then what sort of threat levels could one obtain if they scored a Legendary-grade unlock?

Was there even such a grade? There probably was one.

We’ll probably end up having to test the [Blessings] and summon the [Amazon], as it seems like a decent strengthening for our current combat group.

Oh, aren't you afraid that she’ll steal Uraraka from you?

…

Okay, okay stop

I can tell I’ve crossed the line, and I’m immediately crossing it back, okay?

Uraraka loves you, she’ll never betray you, I never implied otherwise and I wouldn’t dare as she’s a great girl that loves you deeply and will stay like that for the rest of her natural and unnatural lifespan

Happy?

Yes.

You’ll live.

That’s when Izuku decides to calm himself down by checking up on their expedition party that was returning to the Dungeon… only to witness a scene of unmitigated carnage.

Purifier was back.