Uzar ends up grabbing Toga’s head and brings it all the way back to the elder before wordlessly showing it to her. He is holding it by the hair, with blood still dripping down from the stump of the neck.
Really gruesome sight. The elder, however, seems unconcerned by the display of brutal violence.
“She was wearing Ekana’s clothes and used her weapons?” She asks and Uzar nods. “It seems that the Dungeon did kill the outlaw for us. Interesting. I didn’t expect it to be capable of that.”
“Should we recall the youngsters?” Uzar asks back while dropping Toga’s head to the ground.
“No.” Elder replies calmly. “This will be a learning experience for them. Unless they drop their guard completely, nothing here should be able to kill them. And if they drop their guard while pursuing a wanted outlaw inside a Dungeon, then they clearly deserve to be culled.”
Wow, I finally found it
Hmm?
A perfect woman for Sensei’s waifu
They would get along soooo well
This is simultaneously soul-crushingly concerning and eye-bleachingly disgusting.
“There is also a small chance that Ekana killed another person of her race that she encountered on the way and threw them into a dungeon, naked, before having the Dungeon assimilate her outfit and weapons as well.” The elder adds after a few seconds of thinking. “Thus faking her death. If so, then she has to be hiding somewhere deep in the dungeon, as there is no sign of her leaving this place.”
“We’ll need to reach the deepest level of the dungeon to make sure then.” Uzar replies. “Any idea how deep it can be? I heard that some of the dungeons can be extremely deep.”
“They can.” The elder agrees. “The progenitor of them all is said to have reached level 200. But the further you get from him on the family tree, the weaker the dungeons get.”
Man I love talkative intruders
This is being really helpful, isn’t it?
Especially with how little Luna told us.
Yeah
“Now, there are only four dungeons total on Vestiria.” The elder continues. “One of them capped at 40 levels, others on 20. Considering the fact that the latter three cannot reproduce anymore and are effectively barren, this one is either a descendant of the other one and can’t grow beyond 20 levels, or is a descendant of one from the outside of the isle.”
“But it doesn’t go as far as it’s a newborn one?” Uzar asks for clarification.
“Indeed, it should have had one or two levels, neither of them very well developed.” The elder replies. “This is good for us. The nearest collegium is about ninety-five miles away, this is far enough to make the mages there not be able to pick up a magical signature of a dungeon that doesn’t grow too large. If it’s a tenth generation Dungeon with a limit of twenty levels, it should stay beneath their detection ability. Giving us our very own Dungeon to exploit.”
We’re not a tenth generation Dungeon, no way.
Yeah, if Luna could get that hero killed by any of the locally existing dungeons, she’d ‘convince’ one of them to do it, not summon us
We’re definitely an eighth generation one at the very least
Keep listening to them, I’ll check on the other two
Sure.
***
The other two were doing pretty fine, until they fought off the group of slimes and shards by the entrance to the secret passage that Toga just used. Because at this point, they had a very stupid idea.
Namely, they wanted to rush through the Dungeon to its very end, to see which one of them was stronger, and to show the other two (the Elder and Uzar) how good they are by reaching the end of the Dungeon so quickly.
How exactly they are planning to avoid having their torches snuffed out due to speed of moving is really beyond Tomura.
It wasn’t a very long contest. The catwoman’s jumps appeared to outpace the wolfman’s sprint, and she quickly turned around the corner… only to almost step into the trap. She must have noticed something amiss about it at the last second, changing her already started jump into a longer one, managing a very shaky landing right on the other side of the trapdoor.
How?
Oh, right. Tomura realizes it almost immediately. She must have heard the slimes hidden under the floor. That was enough to make her realize that something was amiss, and while she could no longer stop herself, she could still jump further and hope for the best.
Damnit, the beastkin senses and reflexes were truly something else.
The catwoman turns back immediately and starts to shout the warning about the trap, but alas - too late. Her companion runs past the tunnel’s curve at that very moment and fails to notice the expression of sudden fear on her face in time. And she doesn’t yell her warning in time.
The wolfman steps onto the trapdoor, which works exactly as Shigaraki and Midoriya intended it to. The very weak foundation of it gives up under the increased weight, and the entire plate goes into a free fall.
He tried to dash forward, she tried to grab his hand, both of which failed.
He falls down almost a four meter long shaft, and while that wouldn’t be so bad, the problem is that the impact makes him fall forward and land on all fours. And then be immediately submerged under a tidal wave of astral slimes, just as the catwoman above him is clearly panicking and not knowing what to do.
She then starts yelling “ELDER, ELDER!” Which is, well, not a great idea, but also not the worst one. She definitely couldn't have tried to get the guy out of this whole pool of slime that covered him completely and trapped him without giving him an opportunity to breathe.
What was that?
They just heard shouts and are rushing over to investigate
Well, I have good news and, errr, schrodinger’s news
What?
Good news and then news that is good for me but probably bad for you
So, the good news is that your trap worked
And the good/bad news?
Yeah, so the ‘non-lethal’ part of it didn’t work
I think your trap just killed one of them
what
HOW
He fell onto his knees while falling down the shaft and the slimes covered him completely, he seems to still be struggling but he’s definitely starting to asphyxiate
And even if I tried, I can’t order the slimes off him because there are so many and they are so unstable as footing that they would just fall back into their place right now
So unless their shamaness can pull him out of this pool of slime with her magic in time, he ded
You’re there?
By the time the elder and Uzar got to the trap, it was too late. All signs of the submerged wolfman struggling against the pile of slimes that was drowning him had ceased. All that was left was the natural wiggling movements of slimes themselves.
“Did he…” The elder says to the catwoman over the now open trapdoor. She doesn’t have to say anything more. She gets her answer - in the form of a shocked look and a quick nod. “That fool. That’s what you get when you underestimate your enemy and act rashly without thinking.”
“Is he…” The catwoman tries to say, but she reads the answer from the elder’s face.
“Return to the entrance, and stand guard there.” The elder retorts shortly. The catwoman nods shakily after a few seconds, and then jumps over the trap and quickly hurries back, leaving the elder alone with Uzar. “Hot-headed fools, all of them.”
“Itar paid the price for his carelessness.” Uzar agrees. “He should have been smarter than this. Did you expect such a trap here?”
“No.” The elder replies, her eyes still on the pool of slime under the trapdoor. “No, I did not. My knowledge about Dungeons is secondhand only, but I do believe that they grow smarter the bigger they are. A single-Level Dungeon shouldn’t have the wits needed for such a trap.”
“An anomaly then?” Uzar then asks.
“More like a curiosity.” The elder replies. “For now, let’s make sure that Ekana isn’t faking her death. Stay on your guard, we can’t be sure what we’ll encounter next.”
Seriously though, are you there?
… yes
I just helped kill an innocent person and I don’t like it.
Even his supposed fellow tribe members don’t seem to care, why would you
Because all I ever wanted was to be a hero?
And heroes don't kill innocent people?
You need a better life goal, let’s start with that
that one sucks
That was the best one
Not anymore, apparently
Besides, wtf is wrong with you, was being a hero your only life goal
What would have happened if you failed, like, would you just jump off a rooftop or smth?
That was certainly on the table.
…
Now I’m the one concerned
Who the hell has only one extremely high goal and has literally no alternatives to that
You? It’s not like any other option was on the table for you after USJ
Yeah, but that’s when I committed to an achievable goal
I had other ideas for what to do
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
I don’t think that you ever had a real choice, Shigaraki. I can’t imagine All for One accepting you becoming a videogame streamer, not after all the time and effort he put into making you a villain.
I tried not to think about his
Ugh
But yeah, let’s just say that interacting with the League members has started giving me some complicated feelings about Sensei that I was yet to unpack before all of this happened
Anyway, we’ve just assimilated that guy and we have plenty of new unlocks
We can go through that once the intruders leave.
***
It doesn’t take the intruders a long time to reach the large room with twenty astral shards hidden in the walls, firing at random. The sight is enough to make Uzar whistle loudly.
“That again, is something unexpected.” The elder says as she stands right in front of the entrance to the room. “This is definitely beyond the intelligence level that I’d expect from a newborn Dungeon.”
“In other words, it might become something important, given enough time?” The warrior asks. “Important and valuable?”
“Yes, definitely.” The elder replies, her eyes still locked onto the trap room ahead of her. “Sufficiently developed dungeons offer you a lot of goods, especially those of more luxury status. Not to mention being a good place for training. Finding it is definitely a good omen. Gods are being unusually generous.”
“Yzor might take that as a good omen too.” Uzar replies. “He might say that it’s a sign from the gods that they favor us and that we should press south.”
“Yet another proof that while the Hierarch of Conquest has blessed Yzor, granting him impressive combat skills and strong body, the Hierarch of Deceit hasn’t done the same to his mind.” The elder replies dryly. “Yes, if all the tribes march south we might overpower the limitanei, but the moment the actual army of the Grand Empire shows up, we’ll be happy if a tenth of us remains alive and free. Our presence here is tolerated only because we don’t cause trouble, because we’re a good source of auxiliaries and because we’re a handy counterbalance to the elves. But if we do something as stupid as what Yzor wants us to…” She sighs loudly. This really feels like a sore spot to her. “Let’s go. Stick close to me if you want to avoid injuries.”
And then they blatantly cheat their way through their trap. The elder casts some sort of magical spells which seems to make them both tougher, allowing them to just walk through the trap.
“Well, that was annoying.” The elder announces once they get past the room. “More than half of the holes in the walls didn’t seem to fire a shot, so they’re likely yet to be filled. Once the room gets to its full capacity, it will be a serious deterrent to most people.”
“It feels like this place is really hard to pass through, for such a small Dungeon.” Uzar points out. “I always had an impression that most of them aren’t filled with traps and are relatively easy to navigate.”
“Yes and no.” The elder replies. “The ‘civilized’ ones are like that. Usually, all but the five last levels are open for adventurers, with regularly spread treasures to invite people in. This offers the Dungeon an ability to grow in variety over time due to the occasional deaths of the people inside it, and to obtain protection from the local authorities due to being, quote unquote, ‘civilized.’”
“The last five levels are a killzone.” Uzar less asks and more states.
“Yes, the ‘self-defense’ zone of the Dungeon where all bets are off and everything's made to kill anyone who enters without the Dungeon’s explicit permissions.“ The elder replies. “Wild dungeons tend to develop entirely that way, which often changes when their mind learns of the benefits of becoming civilized. It being so… hostile makes perfect sense for a wild Dungeon.”
Heard that? We’re apparently being wild
The elder being so talkative is extremely beneficial to us, as we can learn how to behave in the usual way for a Dungeon.
We don’t want to appear strange.
Fair
Good luck achieving that with Toga, you know, existing
***
It takes them less than two minutes to get into the node room, which they immediately check out in detail and yet, they manage to miss Slimy-chan whom Toga hid in her wardrobe - miss or possibly ignore.
“Living space for their servant?” The elder raises an eyebrow when she sees the small room.
“Is that strange?” Uzar asks.
“To be honest, I don’t know.” The elder admits. “I think that the servants usually aren’t particularly intelligent unless someone swears themselves to their master, giving up their soul and agreeing to be bound to it and be its servant in exchange for living for as long as the Dungeon does and for as long as it’s satisfied by their work. But if Ekana did it, the servant you’ve killed earlier would have been wearing her face.”
Oh, so that’s how you usually obtain souls!
Yeah, but it’s not like it’s super useful to us rn
We have way more souls than we will need anytime soon
Yes, but the problem is that eventually we’ll have visitors, and we need to make sure that they don’t ask questions such as ‘where did all those souls come from?!’
Right, good point
We’ll probably have them all act like impersonal automatons in front of the visitors
should be easy
Should be?
…
Okay, so I have no idea how long we can keep the charade and honestly I’m surprised that Toga didn’t ignore our instructions and talk to them while trying to kill them
She’s really listening to you
And I don’t know how to feel about this.
“Can the Dungeon change that? Uzar asks.
“I… don’t know.” The elder replies. “Maybe? But if so, then the tracking magic would still pick her up. And it did not. So, most likely not.”
“And if it did?” Uzar asks. Looks like someone is even more suspicious than the elder. Who would have known?
“Then being bound to the Dungeon and being regularly resurrected only to be killed while being barred from the afterlife is a fitting punishment itself. We’ll just have to make sure that it never frees her from the deal.” The elder replies, before glancing in the direction of the Node. “I’ve always heard that mages and martial artists find it easier to learn their skills in places like this. But I never get to try it.”
“Do you want to do it right now?” Uzar asks.
“It’d have to be a much stronger node to benefit me.” The elder shakes her head. “The youngsters could do it, but good luck making them dutifully spend hours refining their pathways or cores. They’d rather get drunk, get laid or go hunt something.”
“Now you’re being overly negative.” Uzar replies while giving her a mildly apprehensive look. “There was a time when we were youngsters like them, and while I don’t know about you, I definitely remember myself getting drunk and laid aplenty back then. And also hunted a few things, now that I think about it.”
“I remember doing that myself.” The elder scoffs. “I also remember how many others from my generation did that with me, and how many of them are long dead, often due to their rashness, stupidity and lack of diligent work on their fundamentals. Let’s continue on, judging from the mana flow we’re practically there.”
And, yes, she’s completely right about it. Right after the Node Room is the Throne Room, which is composed of a large table with their Dungeon Core resting on top of it.
They figured out that making it just lie on the ground looks kinda bad, so they’ve added a table there.
“Well, here we are.” The elder says after looking around to make sure that Ekana wasn’t hiding in any corner of the room. “It really is a newborn Dungeon. Can’t be older than a few days.”
“And still no Ekana.” Uzar points out. “So, is she…?”
“We’ll check the few side-corridors on our way back to be sure, but thus far I’ve seen no signs of her being alive.” The elder replies. “She probably ran into this place while it was even less developed and decided to kill it in order to sell the remains of the Dungeon Heart to whatever criminals she wanted to hook up with after reaching the Grand Empire, but underestimated it severely and died. Probably to one of the traps we’ve passed through.” She sighs loudly. “I swear, if she jumped from the level of her ego to the level of her actual abilities she’d turn into a pancake.”
“Right.” Uzar shakes his head. “Well, that was an interesting adventure, but I guess it’s time to go back. We don’t want Yka to do something stupid.”
“Sure.” The elder seems to agree with him. “Looking forward to coming back when this place can actually be a challenge to you?”
“Obviously.” Uzar replies shortly.
***
They end up taking the other ‘secret passage’ back, going around the shard trap, which Tomura considers a sign that they would rather crawl through the narrow crevice (which, especially for the elder - whose name they still don’t know - must be a pain in the ass) rather than walk back through it.
Right before leaving the Dungeon, the elder turns out and throws a few coins onto the ground. Then, without a word, she exits the Dungeon.
Huh, looks like someone wants to use us as their personal money printing machine
Hmm? Oh, yeah, looks like it
Imperial coins, copper and silver.
How do they even balance their economy with Dungeons around?
They probably made more valuable coins from more valuable materials
Look, we can’t even place silver coins around because silver is harder to make by the Dungeon and we need an AML of two to place it anywhere.
Ah, fair
Golden coins probably need it to be like four or above. So you have to face pretty dangerous things on your way there.
Right.
So, we got a lot of unlocks and it just occurred to me that the first level of the Dungeon is way too small for a miniboss and a regular boss
So?
What about making the floor boss be a dual fight against two servants of roughly the same level as Toga?
Huh.
That sounds reasonable.
If you exclude putting someone in one room with Toga.
We can put that Uraraka girl there
It’s not like either of them can die, so if Toga gets too annoying, just kill her or smth
…
really?
Is murder your answer to all questions?
No
Murder isn’t an answer, it’s the question
and the answer is ‘yes’
This line was actually pretty funny, its morbid and concerning contents excluded, and thus I’m completely certain that it’s not yours.
Oh fuck you Midoriya
Are we resurrecting Toga first?
Yeah, I want to make sure that being killed carries no adverse effects on our servants.
You’re just worried about your girlfriend, aren’t you?
Wh
WHAT?!
She’s not my girlfriend, she’s my best friend’s stalker! And mine too!
So what? Crazy in life, crazy in bed as they say
……………
Let’s just bring her back so that you stop worrying about her and we’ll be able to go through the new unlocks.
We’ve got loot and I want to know the deets of it asap
***
“Oh.” Toga blinks into space a few times, before looking around in slight confusion. “Back in my room? Guess I died, huh?”
Yes, you did.
It was, errr… pretty one-sided. But they left and we got some new stuff.
So, yeah, it worked out pretty well.
“Awesome, Izukun!” Toga replies cheerfully. She has to check on Slimy-chan as soon as possible, but before that… “But now you’ve gotta call me Himiko, got it?”
Errr
O-okay?
Hi-
Hi-hi-
Himiko-san?
“No san there.” She pouts. “Just Himiko!”
A-alright.
H-Himiko.
Himiko.
Yes, I can do this.
Fucking
Normies
“Shiggy, don’t be like that!” Toga pouts even more. How can he be ruining her big moment?! “Some of us have others that they are romantically interested in! I’m sure you’ll find someone for yourself. Eventually.”
Yeah. Someone without a working sense of smell.
Stop that
Look, I still remember how you smelled in that mall, could you - the next time you try something like that - at least wash yourself beforehand?
I literally don’t have my own body and we currently share body, technically
My smell is your smell
…
You won this one battle.
Get used to it
Hmmm
No.
“Boys, so what’s the next thing on our to-do list?” Toga decides to interrupt the prolonged silence (to her it was mostly silence) and bring their attention to something more important . “It was an interesting and quite funny thing to do, but c’mon, I want to do something funnier, or cuter or…”
We think about using our new unlocks to create another person like you. To, maybe, get a bit closer to being able to explore and exploit that burial site you’ve found.
“Oh, and who’s that going to be?” Toga asks, suddenly finding herself interested. It sounded like she’d have a playmate! Slimy-chan was great when she wanted to hug someone, but she wanted more than that!
… it’ll probably be Uraraka-san.
“Yes!” Toga throws her arms up. “Hell yes! My body is ready, Izukun!” She doesn’t get to hear what they said to each other right after that.
Uraraka-san is totally going to knock her out the moment they meet, isn’t she?
I have no idea, but I definitely regret not having any popcorn on me