Ian began work on his next floor, the G+ rank floor. He started by creating medium sized, hemispherical rooms arranged in a three by three. Pathways sprouted from the center room. They extended outwards until eight corridors connected the center room to the surrounding eight. These eight rooms also had pathways sprout from them. Unlike the center room, only two extended out to connect with the remaining two adjacent rooms. Each pathway met with another and formed the corridors between rooms.
The final two pathways began forming. One of them arose from what he designated the top middle room. This pathway did not act as a corridor, but began in a dead end. In this dead end, slowly the transfer formation that would lead intruders from the entrance room formed on the floor and the walls. Soon after, the inscriptions on the wall disappeared, leaving only the floor inscription visible to the inquisitive eye.
Opposite of the top middle room, the other pathway had formed from the bottom middle room. It too did not become a corridor, but a dead end. However, it was only a dead end for now. Only later on would its job of being a corridor to the boss room be fulfilled.
The basic cave layout was maintained throughout the rooms. Stalactites dripped water down from the ceiling, while stalagmites caught that falling water. Columns represented the final act of convergence. Of course, this was all created by Ian and not natural column formation. The only concession to a normal cave layout was the empty space present in the center of each room. He left more room than he assumed he would need, as he had yet to decide what monster each room would contain.
A few small clear ponds and puddles dotted the rooms. His proficiency in making them look natural had only increased the more floors he made. It only took two days for the barebones layout to appear. While he did have enough detail to appease himself, he didn’t come close to the meticulousness he needed for Magical Beauty. He could only hope his plans to mitigate the detail that Magical Beauty needed worked out.
The overall floor size was smaller compared to his previous floors, but the purpose of the floor would be centered around the checkpoint system he used in the EX rank floor and his illusion magic.
Each room would have a specific type of monster. Ian brought up his monster list and began scrolling through it. Habitually he flicked his pages to scroll. A habit people, and now books, often formed even when they knew any sort of interaction with the windows needed only a thought. He soon realized that having one monster type per room was limiting himself. Especially since he had so many spider variants.
To expedite the floor building he made the decision to not make any new monsters, no matter how much he wanted to.
The first room from the entrance would be the blind swallow room. Balls of rock popped out of the walls, columns, stalactites, and stalagmites. They hit and bounced off the ground before disappearing. The absences of these balls of rock left hollows throughout the room. Inside these hollows, nests of light formed string by string as they mimicked the clumped nature of a grass and mud nest. Swallows, created soon after, flew to the hollows where they rested and chirped at each other as ordered.
On every walkable path, lightly glowing formations appeared. In close proximity to these formations that dotted the floor, a separate formation appeared on the ceiling a small distance away. A swallow flew down from its hollows nest and landed on the floor formation. A flash of light lit up the room, while the swallow flew back to its hollow completely unphased.
In the middle point between two corridors a wood treasure chest appeared, filled with mana stones and coins. It was situated slightly behind a column. From the empty center of the room, only a couple inches of the edge could be seen.
From the entrance, to the right of the swallow room, and through a corridor, knee high mushrooms with mouths filled with vicious teeth sprouted from the ground. They lurked behind columns and stalagmites ready to nip at ankles that passed them by. A few hung from stalactites, ready to get their fill of a new meal, like eyebrows.
Mushrooms of the same size, but mouthless, formed around the ankle biters in both a physical and light form. The physical mushrooms clumped with the mouthy ones, while the mushrooms of light spread throughout the room. They grew from the ceiling, the walls, the floor, and every structure available. While lighting up the room, they also provided a nice distraction.
In between the mushrooms, pieces of shimmering cave floor appeared that futilely hid moderately deep holes. Their density made it impossible to walk the room without encountering one every few feet. A wooden treasure chest appeared near a wall, opposite of the corridors as the final touch.
Each room received their monsters, traps, lights, and treasure in a similar manner. Slimes, jellies, moss, water elementals, ferns, spiders, and cicadas all placed in ambush spots and walkable paths. Traps, placed to fit the monster of each room, were numerous. Luckily for Ian he had already created the traps he needed. Although, more elemental traps would have been nice for the elemental spider room. He supposed he could make those in the future.
A single treasure chest was present in each room with the same reward. For the adventurous types? Boring. For those who made adventuring their job? Stability. It was something he could do without driving off high rank adventurers because it was such low floor. If he did it on a high rank floor? Say hello to scorn and goodbye long lasting adventurers that would unknowingly help him spread mana to the universe.
Near the end of the fifth day when he was finishing up the last room, the center room where he placed the cicadas, he realized that he in fact didn’t have traps to thematically fit each room. He was willing to shrug off having illusion pitfalls in the mushroom, moss, and fern rooms. But having illusion pitfalls in the cicada room? It bugged him to no end.
Since everything else was finished in regards to placement, he spent the rest of the fifth day making the sound trap. It worked in the same way as the flash trap. When the formation present on the floor was touched, it would trigger the other formation to release a wailing sound. Unlike the flash trap, the formation that released the sound was at head height rather than on the ceiling. To make the trap G+ appropriate, Ian didn’t use any mind altering effects. The trap would hurt the ears, but not the mind.
Even thought it was a G+ floor, he didn’t want the checkpoints to be solved by just walking in a circle or going from room to room in a linear fashion. However, first he needed to make the ‘items’ each checkpoint would be attached to. He had used reliefs of Gazers on the EX rank floor, but these checkpoints would be golems. Why golems? Because he had a great punishment idea for the idiotic and dense.
Ian began with the spider golem. Even though he put elemental spiders in the room, the golem would be based off of a normal spider. He first created the core of the golem, a fistfull of dirt which surrounded a G+ rank mana heart. The outside was enchanted with durability, resilience, life, golem, and automata magic. Slowly but surely, Ian created new layer after new layer each enchanted with the same magic and supported by multiple G+ rank mana hearts. Each layer mimicked the biology of a normal spider to the utmost degree of Ian’s knowledge. It was not to the molecular level, but the function and form of each organ and body part was accurately portrayed.
The core started in the abdomen between the intestine and ovary. Each layer couldn’t incorporate a whole organ, so connections between layers had to be made to correctly mimic a biological organ. Thus, the first layer beyond the core contained parts of the intestine and ovary, but both organs were only completed after a few more layers. The layers continued to build outwards, forming the heart, the lungs, the stomach, the silk gland, and the spinnerets. The eyes, brain, and venom glands were formed in the last layers of the golem construction. Every organ worked magically, but not biologically. For instance, every thread spun would act as magically casted string, and only last for a limited time.
Finally, the last layer was placed and an earth based spider golem stood about waist high in the center of a room. However, mana rushed from outside the dungeon into the golem spider. *ding*
Achievement: Indestructible Spider Automata [S] created for the first time.
+100 DP
Achievement: Forced the Dungeon System to create a monster for you.
+10,000 DP
Achievement: Forced the Dungeon System to create a monster for you far above your current total mana pool.
+100,000 DP
You’re a fucking cheater, Ian.
“Hey! I didn’t force shit. I made a golem like I normally do, and your dungeon system decided that it deserved to be a monster.”
Silence.
“Well,” Ian continued, ignoring the lack of a response, “no matter how much I wanted to punish idiots, an S rank golem is a bit much. Although….,” he brought up the status menu.
Race:
Indestructible Spider Automata
Rank:
S
Attribute:
Earth
Development:
0/100
Titles:
Dungeon Born
Skills
Bite
Stealth
Venom Creation
Silk Creation
Physical Resistance
Physical Nullity
Magical Resistance
Magical Nullity
Sentience
Tackle
Description
A spider golem enchanted to such a degree that is has reached near indestructibility. Although not truly indestructible, it is close enough to have earned the moniker. Beyond its indestructibility, it has gained minor sentience and became an automata. Only time will tell whether it can grow its sentience.
Common Item Drops
S mana heart
Automata Cores
Ian started coughing, but soon regained control of himself. He sighed. It seemed the resistance and nullity of his golem….automata affected the rank more than its lacking skills. Also, with the enchantments he placed on the….automata, there should have been no nullity and only level seven or eight resistance skills. He thought the low level skills with high resistance would create around an E rank monster. He was wrong. Did the mana injection from outside the dungeon, or the dungeon system as the System called it, influence it? It must have. Especially the fact that he finally created a damn automata.
He gritted his non-existent teeth. All those years after discovering that ruin with automata magic, he never succeeded in making an automata, only stronger golems. As soon as a dungeon that can create life interferes, his golem gains sentience. If sentience and life were required to make an automata, then how did that ancient nation create them? It looked like he had another thing to add to his to do list after he got an avatar.
With that in mind, Ian glanced at his time remaining and realized he spent five days creating the spider automata. He could only slap his inner spine with his pages. If he wanted to get an avatar and find everyone, then he needed to pick up his pace. Although, being closed off from the outside world and knowing they weren’t in any imminent danger didn’t help his urgency. How he died affecting the others concerned him, but if he hadn’t been able to do anything about it then, he couldn’t help them now.
With the spider a bust in terms of difficulty, he revised his golem plan. He needed to make golems similar to his early days. He registered the automata in the respawn room and placed it with the five goblins and one hobgoblin. Subsequently, he asked them to get along. He ignored Yervin’s glare and pursed mouth along with the other’s slight shaking and got to work.
Three days later, Ian had successfully made an E- rank spider golem. Intentionally reducing the ability of something was a lot more work than he thought. He supposed it was unsurprising as a lot of the strength of a golem came from its intricacies, and the better control over mana he had the more intricate he could make the golems. It no longer had the nullity and sentience skills, and its resistance skills were reduced to level 6, even lower than his original goal. With that, he spent eight more days creating the other eight golems.
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Most of the golems were straightforward, but a few needed some changes. The fern golem required stronger roots, so it could pull itself up from the ground and chase after intruders.
Do to prior experience, he knew that the water elemental golem needed to be made out of water, otherwise it would be an earth elemental golem. As such, he used the cave water to form a mimic of the floating light that all low rank elementals were. He had long ago learned how to use magic to write enchantments on liquids, so the process took no longer than it would have writing the enchantment on rock.
Even though a moving moss golem could still move, it was slow. However, the moss ball boss from the boss room wasn’t, so even though it wasn’t a mimic of the monsters in the room, he created a moss ball golem.
The ankle biter golem would have the same immobility problem that the fern golem had, so rather than make an ankle biter golem, he made a golem based off of the mushman.
Mushmen were another variety of mushroom monster. Unlike ankle biters, they didn’t have a mouth and instead had legs, and sometimes arms. It wasn’t his main focus, but he had spent some time studying the connection between the two. His studies had shown they were closely related, but he had never been able to evolve one into the other. However, the fact that the boss monster for the ankle biters was a variety of mushman, meant there was a definite connection.
Did he need to make a mushman? With the creation ability he could shape feet onto the ankle biter in a similar fashion as he had shaped the scythe spider’s front legs into scythes. The ferns and moss had low mobility in the same manner as the ankle biters, but with the wet ferns and the mosses better spore creation ability, their range was farther than the ankle biters. He knew he had already decided on his course of action and got started.
He used his creation ability on the G- rank Ankle Biter, and he gave an ankle biter legs. Using his knowledge of anatomy, he formed legs that would accurately support the weight and shape of the ankle biter. They weren’t exact duplicates of other mushman legs as they often didn’t have a movable mouth to support. The successful addition of legs to the ankle biter produced a new monster called Vicious Tiny Mushman. Now rather than biting at ankles as they passed, it could run up to people and bite at their ankles. A truly innovative creature.
It was unsuprising that Ian ended up making both a new trap and a new monster after promising himself that he wouldn’t.
With the golems completed, he placed each of them in the center of their respective rooms. For now he ordered them to stand still, but that would change later.
Before he set his checkpoints, he made a double door, rounded at the top and square at the bottom. He placed it between the pathway to boss room and the water elemental room, the former bottom middle room. Now he could set it to unlock after all checkpoints were reached in order.
Ian set the order to go from the cicada room, the center room, until the moss room, the room right of the water elemental room from the entrance, for the final checkpoint. The checkpoints were setup so that the only time the intruders went through a single corridor was from the first checkpoint to the second. All others required at least two corridors and another room, mainly the center room. Unlike the EX floor, the checkpoints would reset after an incorrect checkpoint was touched. Thus, the floor required not just touching the correct checkpoints, but remembering their order. He debated whether to randomize the checkpoints, but thought that would be far too difficult for such an early floor. Besides, one of the key elements for any aspiring dungeon diver was information exchange outside the dungeon.
The next element of the floor would make or break his ability to produce a floor faster than he had previously. Each room slowly, and methodically disappeared. Swallows flying in midair turned to nothing. Treasure chests blinked out of existence. Every glowing formation piece by piece evaporated. Eventually all that was left of the rooms were the cave formations, and the lonely golems in the center of each room. However, Ian coursed illusion mana through himself, his core and the dungeon, until everything was normal again. Well, normal in that he could now perceive what was always there.
The illusion cast upon the floor was more than visual. Any intruder entering the floor would not smell, hear, see, taste, or feel anything in the room. Everything was still physically there, but even if the intruders were to step or run into a monster, the illusion would reconfigure their memories instantaneously to make it as if it never happened. Ian made sure this effect was applied to both his creatures and the intruders, otherwise his creatures would attack and kill the intruders before they had any idea what was going on, a bit much for a G+ floor.
This type of illusion, while interesting, would have no effect unless there was a way to dispel it. He had made this illusion even more detailed and powerful than the fish from the G- floor, so an illusionist would have to be EX rank to even consider dispelling it on their own. Thus, he would tie his illusions to the checkpoints. When a checkpoint was touched incorrectly, the illusion on the room would dispel. The revealed room was, of course, filled with traps and monsters.
At this point a thought occurred to Ian and he got to work. Magic flowed through each golem. A lattice of green and red light appeared tied to the eyes or the most prominent feature of each golem. This lattice was in turn connected to the checkpoint system. If the checkpoint was touched correctly, then the golem would light up green. If the checkpoint was touched incorrectly, then the golem would light up red. The most notable feature of the light up golems was that the green light would persist, while the red light would disappear after a few seconds.
There were three scenarios that Ian had yet to take into account. The first was if every checkpoint was touched correctly the first time. If that happened, no monsters would have been killed and the boss room would remain unopenable. Thus, he placed a lone blind swallow in pathway between the water elemental room and the boss room. He supposed the reward for getting all the checkpoints correct the first time could be only fighting one monster, but he was sure adventurers would complain.
Thus, he created the last treasure chest. Stone rather than wood like the rest. A puzzle treasure that would appear next to the lone blind swallow. This treasure would be a test. He made a simple wood sword and enchanted the blade with flame magic. He made sure the sword was made of balsa and the fire burned at a low heat. It was reward for a G+ rank floor, so he was still a little wary. However, he removed the mana limits, inputs, and outputs. If he had made this sword while human, it wouldn’t work. But in a similar manner to the items he created in the town, it registered at a treasure called Flame Enchanted Wooden Sword.
He transferred the sword to the goblin village, although it was currently more like a goblin house circle, and asked Mina to test it out. She activated it and the blade caught fire. It certainly seemed like it would persist, but they were still in his dungeon, where everything was supported by the vast mana ocean directly outside. When he had an avatar, he may have to take one outside, or procure one, to see how it worked without the supportive mana ocean.
“This is interesting. May I keep it, my lord?” requested Mina.
Ian’s focus shifted back to his helper, “Are you sure? I made that one intentionally bad. I can make you a better one.”
She looked at the sword, still burning, before responding, “Okay, but,” she raised her finger up in front of herself and sported a toothy grin, “I’ll keep this one until you do.”
He chuckled back, “Fine,” and went back to finish the floor, while she turned the sword off and ran back into her house yelling for Izu.
The second scenario was if all checkpoints were touched out of order at least once. A nearly impossible scenario as that meant touching the cicada room checkpoint again after already touching it correctly. This was where his ultimate punishment came into play. If all checkpoints were chosen incorrectly at least once, then all nine golems would activate and rush towards the intruders to attack them.
Of course, Ian also included that the golems would respond to violence with violence. This brought up the third scenario: what if the golems are destroyed? It’s simple, the floor can’t be completed. Defeating a golem resets all the checkpoints, and a destroyed golem can’t be touched for a checkpoint. If that happened, the intruders would have to leave the dungeon and retry.
Ian originally considered having the golems attack the intruders if a checkpoint was selected wrong twice, but decided it was a little much with a destroyed golem eliminating the way forward.
Up until this point, his pages had been flapping back and forth a mile a minute. Would he get them? ….Yes, he did! The entrance room and boss room were now ready to be attached.
Depths yeah! He had been right! Well, one of his two all inclusive guesses was right. If he made his floors more magical, then he didn’t need the meticulous detail that went into the previous floors. Now he could only wonder about what else he was wrong about in regards to his Magical Beauty restriction. But, now wasn’t the time for that. He only had a day left.
He looked at the two rooms while cocking his core side to side. Did he have time to finish them? Well, he should at least copy stuff over first.
After doing so, he realized there was more to do than he thought. He kept forgetting his golems were considered monsters. Ian scrunched up his pages before nodding to himself, and got to work.
Creating the environments for the golem bosses and the mushman boss didn’t take as long as he anticipated. He copied most of the environment over from their biological counterparts, and only had to make a few changes. Mainly earth related. With only a few hours remaining before he could finally get his assigned job started, his floor was finished.
Dungeon Level [4] → [5]
1 Cubic Kilometer Floor Space Gained.
Mana Generation Increased by 10,000
DP Generation Increased by 1
It was good to have another floor, but even a floor that was meant to take a short amount of time still took around twenty five days. Should he compromise on what he considered a good dungeon and copy his floors? Would Magical Beauty even allow him to do that? After a year, admittedly he didn’t have a fire under his ass during that time, he only had four floors and a core room. Four quite large and intricate floors, but still only four floors.
He scratched his pages with his cover before sighing internally. Even if he disliked the idea initially, as long as he got his avatar as soon as possible, it would be for the best. Besides, he could replace them with nice floors later on.
With his focus on getting an avatar, he wondered if he should spend his DP on as many perks and dungeon functions as possible. However, the auction would happen eventually, so he decided to save most of his DP until then. There might be things normally unpurchasable in the Dungeon Shop, and he could get some advice from more senior dungeons. But, he did purchase two of the perks that he originally had the option to choose when he was completing the tutorial.
Mana Generated vs Mana Coalesced (General): Provides a precise measure of how much mana the dungeon has released into the world, both old and new, while also estimating how much mana has been coalesced due to the dungeon’s actions.
Mana Generated vs Mana Coalesced (Specific): Provides a precise measure of how much mana will be released into the world for loot, treasures, and other items taken from the dungeon. Each item will receive a scale indicating how likely the item is to coalesce mana. These values can be viewed prior to creating said item.
First he used the general version.
A window appeared in front of his core. It was mostly blank except for a vertical and horizontal line, along with words on the left and and bottom sides. A graph if he ever saw one, and based on the word placement below the bottom line, a bar graph. New mana released to the world, old mana released to the world, total mana released to the world, and total mana coalesced in the world. Only a few hours before he could get those numbers to start going up….hopefully only the first three.
For the specific version, he needed some items to test. The G- mana heart he created with creation and a balsa arming sword were good candidates. After he tested the G- mana heart, a small window appeared.
G- Mana Heart
Mana Cost:
10
Mana Released:
10
Mana Coalescence:
None
Ten? It cost him ten million to make it, and that much to make each one. Ian grumbled to himself a bit, but it make sense. Mana hearts didn’t use any outside help, whereas a lot of his other items did.
Balsa Arming Sword
Mana Cost:
25
Mana Released:
1,000,000
Mana Coalescence:
Unlikely
*cough*. Now that was a big difference. He just stared at the window in amazement for a few minutes. A million mana released for a mana cost of twenty five? Holy shit.
However, his pages scrunched together in thought. The treasures did receive outside help, but the amount of mana they received was far less than any of the creatures, especially the monsters, he created. With that, he used it on the goblin in his monster list.
Goblin [F+]
Mana Cost:
600
Mana Released as Experience:
600
Mana Released:
100,000,000,000
Mana Coalescence:
Dangerous
Silence reigned as he slowly took in that number. ….What would an adventurer produce? The same? Or more? If killing adventurers produced such an inordinate amount of mana, it was no wonder dungeons spent all their time trying to kill intruders. He had entertained the idea of having intruders take as much crap as they could from him, but the sudden influx of useful items was more liable to boost the population. The mana coalesced by each child born would far outweigh whatever mass of items he allowed them to take.
Could he just take his creatures out of his dungeon and ritually sacrifice them? That’d be equivalent to two hundred and fifty years of mana generation if he never generated any mana above his base level. A single damn goblin would give the same amount as existing for the same amount of time he existed as a human.
Why the Depths was mana generation for dungeons so low?! He’d have to make sure to ask the Helper later before giving the ritual sacrifices a try. He’d also ask why mana generation was so damn low, and why, even though he considered his mana generation low, was the mana generation of other dungeons most likely even smaller than his?!
He fumed for a bit before his book perked up, as he remembered the Newborn Hasjam he selected. Even though he hadn’t created one to see their intelligence or physical features, they would provide a good baseline for sapient individuals.
Newborn Hasjam
Mana Cost:
100
Mana Released as Experience:
100
Mana Released:
1,000,000,000,000
Mana Coalescence:
Dangerous
An increase by a factor of ten and it was still a baby. He just folded his right cover and pages to his inner spine and shook himself back and forth. These numbers were insane for living things. No wonder the universe started having mana problems after people started popping them out, and no wonder killing adventurers was such an important matter for dungeons. Even though he didn’t know while a human, he felt a bit guilty for implementing so many ways to save lives in dungeons.
Saving lives in his clinic, he was more conflicted about. He was not sure if he could have prevented himself from saving them even if he knew the consequences. Ian shook his body to clear his thoughts. He’d figure out how he’d react to people in need of medical attention when the time arose. For now, he just needed to wait and see if anything happened when he opened to the world.
◆◆◆◆◆
Time slowly ticked down as Ian’s core did a little shimmy on his pedestal. Five. His shimmy grew faster. Four. He added in a couple of upper body moves. Three. His movements became larger, encompassing the entire pedestal. Two. He started to hop back and forth. One. His pages rippled back and forth like someone was speed reading him. Zero.
His vision expanded. No longer did his sight, hearing, and physical feeling only encompass his dungeon. An invisible sphere, his dungeon entrance as the center, with a radius of approximately one kilometer, as far as his new vision could tell, was its full extent.
The evergreen trees rustled in the wind, the chirp of birds resounded through the forest, and the clop of feet on dirt echoed as animals ran both from and to the sudden influx of mana to the region. He could see the caves in the mountain, and all the living creatures underground. No wonder dungeons always seemed to have foresight into adventurer plans.
Finally, he could begin, but first, he had to deal with the numerous flashing windows.