Theodore sighed as he materialized at the dungeon entrance. Of all the dungeons he was in charge of, this one was also the biggest troublemaker. The Dungeon Master was a lich that had evolved from the undead skeleton of a darkness elementalist. Most darkness magic just involved creating poisons or illusions, but some dark elementalists held such strong grudges that their spirits lingered too long and ended up turning them into mindless skeleton [Monsters]. This one just happened to have been chosen by a dungeon core and got a nice upgrade into a lich.
As a result, though, the Dungeon Master was rather obsessed with death and had made a dungeon completely themed around it. Many of the floors had large, open areas or involved several rooms clustered together with no hallways between them. The Dungeon Master had ended up choosing a graveyard for the first floor with a zombie as a starting [Monster]. However, that wasn't even the real problem.
The zombies led to a rather painful death as adventurers would be eaten alive, but it wasn't like the zombies could spread their disease or anything. That would have classified this dungeon as a plague spreader and gotten it destroyed a long time ago. Instead, the problem lies with the first floor contracted [Monsters].
Ghosts and will-o'-wisps couldn't do much damage to adventurers and they weren't really good for collecting things outside of the dungeon either. That combined with how much adventurers detested the dungeon and a lack of useful resources had led to the rather slow growth of the dungeon. This, of course, led to a rather bored Dungeon Master.
"You can't keep doing this master Alexander. You know that your ghosts bother the locals and then they drag me in to complain about it."
Alexander laughed and the ghastly sound echoed across the chamber. This wasn't the dungeon core room, but a room off to one side of it that Alexander had turned into a throne room of sorts.
Luckily, the slow growth meant that Theodore didn't have to travel across too many floors, but it also meant most rooms were either turned into living quarters for Alexander or were large expanses of graveyard or withered forest. This floor had more skeletons than zombies, Alexander finding a sort of kinship with the mindless [Monsters].
As a dungeon diplomat, Theodore felt attuned to dungeons in a similar way to elves when it came to their forests. However, even he found this dungeon rather unpleasant. The pitch-black dungeon core, the rotting smell of the living dead, and the lack of anything resembling life were a bit off-putting. Still, Theodore would do his best to complete his job and be respectful to all of the Dungeon Masters he worked with.
"You can't possibly expect them to want to remain in the dungeon all of the time. We haven't had anyone visit it a few years now and you know it. They want to have some fun and they are lucky enough to live on one of the floors with access to the outside. Of course, they are going to want to go explore outside of the dungeon."
Theodore rolled his eyes at Alexander as he replied
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"Yeah, but they could, at least, stick to the forests and not wander into town. The locals have accepted the forest as haunted and as part of your territory by now. However, you are making it nearly impossible for them to go about their lives by doing this."
It was certainly true that it didn't help that the ghosts were on one of the bottom two floors. Contracted [Monsters] could travel between floors freely and even outside of the dungeon, but they could only go two floors in either direction. Their range was limited enough that this wouldn't even be an issue if they had been assigned to a different floor.
"You can't expect me to keep an eye on all of them every minute of every day. Besides, if they know the area is haunted, they shouldn't be so surprised by a few harmless ghosts."
Theodore could feel a headache coming on as he continued to argue with Alexander. Why a lich who had once been part of the living couldn't understand how they felt was beyond Theodore. I mean, sure, he was several hundred years old, but it still seemed like something that shouldn't be so easily forgotten. Finally, having had enough of Alexander's antics, Theodore compromised
"Look, how about this? I'll try to get a hold of some dark magic crystal for you so you can create a new mine. I'll even increase my frequency of visits so you can have enough magic to develop it. Then, so long as you agree to keep your spirits within the dungeon and not let them wander past the forest, I'll even try to encourage some new adventurers to come to explore. With the new crystal mine, I'm sure plenty of them will be convinced and you won't have to worry about being bored for a few years, at least."
Alexander smiled unnaturally as he easily replied
"Deal."
Alexander shook his head as he pulled out a dungeon contract. He wasn't so naive as to expect a Dungeon Master to hold up their end of an agreement so easily. Too many of them had twisted morals and would even try to find loopholes in their dungeon contracts.
This deal wasn't exactly going to be cheap on Theodore's end of things either. Well, he had already bought the crystal and brought it with him, knowing it would more than likely come down to this. However, it was still a painfully expensive magic crystal to get ahold of. Most of the more basic elemental crystals were cheaper, but light and darkness magic crystals were rarer and incredibly expensive.
Theodore was paid with taxes collected from the towns and cities in the kingdoms he and the other Dungeon Diplomats served in. It was one of the stipulations in the dungeon accords that couldn't be broken. Originally, his race had a different name, but that information had been lost to time as everyone just knew them as Dungeon Diplomats now.
His people were born from the union of Dungeon Masters and the other races. So they had the ability to teleport from dungeon to dungeon and could wander the world freely. They also had unique abilities to interact with dungeons' cores and systems to enforce contracts and check the status of their cores. From their other ancestors, they gained the strength of shapeshifters, the appearance of humans, and an affinity with the dungeons from the elves whose affinity for nature had been twisted.
Theodore's mind drifted to Violet as he wondered if she was doing any better now. Perhaps he should visit her again in a few days? Hers was the newest dungeon of those he had bonded with and he couldn't help but genuinely worry about her naivety and innocence. New dungeons could appear every few decades, but the world was vast and many dungeons also died over the centuries. Theodore hoped that Violet wouldn't share a similar fate as, despite her flaws, he thought she was quite nice and her dungeon held a good bit of potential.