Chapter 15 - Their dark counterpart

I awoke from my meditative state, trying to gain control of my senses and ordering my mind. After I had calmed down I realized how much time had passed during my creation of the zone and the meditation afterward.

Going through my subconsciously recorded memories I took a look at what I missed. It was quite a lot, natural because I was away for nearly three months. I was again stunned by how tranced I could get when I build a new zone.

During me building the new zone the dwarfs had advanced quite far. The small cave from before had developed into a large cavern. Housing all of the dwarfen village, consisting of up to 750 people.

They worked in different, quite advanced, workplaces. Warehouses stored the dug-up minerals from inside and outside my dungeon. They then were sent to different places to further work on them.

Most of the normal copper and iron was first haphazardly refined and then worked on. They would form weapons, shields, armor, or mundane items. The more precious metals such as attributed and imbued iron or blazing steel were carefully refined by masters of their craft. They were then worked on by specialized weaponsmiths, armorsmiths, or even the rare jeweler. Under the fire of heavy coal, they were reformed and refined into powerful items.

Though I quickly noticed a bottleneck in the dwarven development. While they surely were far superior to any other race I ever saw in metalwork other professions were left behind. This slowed down their development and even brought their metalworking progression to a slow improvement.

This was a natural problem of the dwarfs, which were intrinsically talented and passionate in Metalworking and not much else. Though masonry and mining still advanced alongside their most loved craft, due to their closeness and similar skill set.

After I had a look at the dwarfs‘ settlement I look at how far they advanced inside of my dungeon. Except for the special diving parties, most of them were just about to challenge the 5th zone. The special diving parties even came to the sixth zone, though this was without me interfering because I felt threatened by them. And additionally, only one squad was able to really delve the 6th zone, the others quickly fled the fiery hells.

Now again calm and having had an overview of what happened the last 3 months I took a look at my new zone. The last time I was in a trance-like state and couldn’t clearly think about what had to be done to improve the zone.

After analyzing the 7th zone I first came up with a name for it, the subterranean oasis. It reflected the abundance and complexity of life within the large cavern, not all too normal for the depths I found myself in.

With the zone finally named I adjusted the layout slightly, adding a bit of earth there or removing a tree right here. The area got a new makeover, changing into a smoother environment with more realistic terraforming and a fully working ecosystem. I had to tone down some of the monsters so others would not go instinct and spend a long time perfecting the zone.

In its complexity, this was something quite new to me. The zones I had created before were smaller and mostly inhabited by only one race or one evolution tree. The 6th zone came close to it but most of its size lay within its height and its monsters were all of the fire attributes. Not of the darkness, earth, light, and water attribute inside the new zone.

The zone though was still not complete, I had forgotten two very important things I had overlooked while designing the floor. Traps and resources.

Starting with the first area in the 7th zone, the 100 lake. There I installed some avalanches which would destroy parts of islands. And mini earthquakes that would create large waves of water rushing toward an intruder.

Second, the marshland was outfitted by the same mini tsunami trap. But adding to this I created a strangle root trap, slime trap, and breaking log. The strangle root would entangle and sometimes even kill an intruder of this power level. And the breaking log was a kind of pitfall trap that would drop the delver into the dangerous waters.

In the last water attuned area, the muddy plains I created mud traps and pitfalls. Once a mud trap was sprung it would turn the ground under the assailant into an inescapable mud bath.

A special thing I installed into the three water mana areas was a rising water level. Once the delver entered the 100 lake the waterfalls would start to increase their flow speed. Slowly flooding the area and creating a large wave that rises behind the delvers if they aren’t fast enough. If they are extremely slow the water could even flood the other areas.

Finished with the first three I went on to create some more complex traps for the 4th area. There, pitfalls, mud traps, strangle roots and vines, falling logs, slime traps, net traps, bear traps, thorn traps, and blinding traps made the jungle a trap-filled disaster. This was to balance out its low difficulty because of its relatively weak creatures.

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The strangle vines were similar to the strangle roots in how they worked. The falling logs were timber that was strung up on a rope, the two logs would then collide when the trap was sprung.

The net traps would entrap the delver in a rope and vine net. Bear traps were there to provide some danger from below and together with thorn traps were sure to cut open the intruders. Though the blinding traps were the representatives of the jungle using its bioluminescence to create a blinding explosion of light.

In the 5th area, the crystal paradise blinding traps, crystal arrow traps, and crystal spike traps created sharp protection. The crystal arrows were just that, crystalline arrows. And the crystal spikes were sharp crystals impaling the delver from below.

The 6th area wasn’t changed though, the large amount of very strong creatures was enough danger for this area. Same in the 7th area the brittle earth, there only rolling boulder and falling stone traps provided any trap wise coverage, but the environment itself was a challenge to traverse.

Finished with the traps I took a look at any possible minerals and metals I could use to encourage the dwarfs to delve even further.

I filled the water attuned areas with underwater mines and veins of imbued iron. This resulted in the creation of the deep-sea iron, a water-mana heavy metal that was created under great pressure.

The luminescent forest too brought forth a new metal. The iron and copper mines and veins were heavily concealed by the undergrowth. Rewarding any daring to explore the thicket was the passively glowing metal, shining iron, and lightning copper Both of them were extremely useful in the creation of a better and safer torch.

Within the crystal paradise, nothing was changed resource-wise. The crystals already provided any delver with hundreds of different varieties. Especially the glowing and absorbing crystals would be useful in crafting.

In the 6th area, the stalactite forest held the dark attuned iron and new zink metal. The shadow iron and gloomy zink were useful for crafting heavy stealth armor, whoever would need that. Special to this zone all of the metal was found within the stalactites, encouraging delves to risk encountering a stalactite octopus.

In the last area, the brittle earth I filled the area with nuggets of gold and even the rare imbued gold. This was a metal I saw the dwarfish jewelers and rich use to craft or pay with. I was sure that this area would soon be filled with greedy dwarves searching for vast riches and treasure.

With the last area finished I took a look over the zone. Finally, everything was finished and in order, terraforming was done, the zone was filled with a complex ecosystem and supported by various traps. And last but not least to encourage the dwarfs' mines and veins of metals were hidden within the large cavern.

The whole work took about a week in which not a lot happened. It was mostly quiet calm, the dwarfs lived their abundant lives and I enjoyed the steady development of my cultivation.

Sadly this idyllic serenity was shattered with only one word, druegr.

This was a report from one of the dwarfen scouts having a lookout and planning expeditions into the tunnel they came from. Immediately after the report, the elders went into overmode, preparing for the coming battle.

Through the hundreds of dwarves, I had killed I too knew what this meant. The druegr were a dark attuned side evolution of the dwarfs. The two sides didn’t like each other at all, an agelong conflict between both sides, started because both thought they were the better ones.

The dwarfish village that had settled down outside of me had already fatally lost once to the druegr. This was the reason for them fleeing their previous home and resettling outside of my dungeon.

This previous experience also immediately showed how disciplined and hardworking they prepared their defenses. Most other races I had observed up to now at first spoke down a possible threat. They were either too comfortable or too arrogant to immediately do everything against a possible threat.

On the other hand, were the dwarfs which started to produce weapons designed to kill druegr. Craft armor that protected them specifically against druegr weapons. Trained in martial arts solely focused on defeating druegr and build defenses specialized to shrug of druegr attacks.

I was sure that the dwarfs were far stronger than they were the first time they engaged the druegr. But I also knew how pitifully they were defeated last time, and how fast-developing the already more advanced druegr were.

The dwarfs only hope would be that they had enough of a development boost because of me to defeat or repel the dark dwarfs.

While the dwarfs' preparations continued I watched them patiently. There wasn’t really anything for me to do. I was unable to further improve my dungeon because of a lack of mana and wasn’t really concerned that the druegr would pose a threat to me.

They were not strong enough to kill me and would, similar to the dwarfs, see a business opportunity in me. Not as prominently in mining but more in monster corpses and cultivation. The center of their strength-oriented society.

But I would be a bit sad to see my “friends”, the dwarfs, being defeated and exterminated. Though my curiosity to see how the druegr worked won in the discussion of if I should help the dwarfs to protect themselves.

While I waited and the dwarfs prepared the druegr advanced. More and more scouts had to be pulled back and reported of a large force of dark dwarfs making their way towards them.

In the time of just a week, the forces had arrived at the dwarfs' door. The tunnel leading to the village was filled with three gates, from the top to the bottom. To ensure that no druegr could just dig around them the tunnel walls were enforced with metals and mana, similar to how I strength my dungeon walls, just significantly weaker.

The dwarfish forces were prepared and a meeting was called between the druegr general and dwarfish elders. In a short and unfriendly conversation, born from year-long hatred, nothing productive was done.

Both sides simply threw insults at each other until they split up, sure of what they were going to do.

Together with a loud war horn and the shout to attack the battle started!!!!