Chapter 21 - Rough Experiences On Top

With a new race just at my doorstep and finally access to the surface I couldn’t wait to get my plans drawn up and into action. For the first step, I wanted to finally take a ruling position in the development of a new civilization.

With the aggrands, I was still mostly observing how they went about their daily life, while rarely communicating with them. The Dwarfs were even worse, with their initially mostly aggressive tendencies towards me, not to even talk about the draugr, which were just bad.

The problem was that I didn’t like the ways I could become the leader of the human caravan. Most of the solutions were violent and aggressive, and this wasn’t a good way to rule over a civilization long term. Furthermore, I would always be represented by my galeb duhr diplomats, which was acceptable, but definitely not preferred.

I wanted my future people to see me and rule them directly by myself. I wanted them to choose me as their ruler, not because I threatened them into it, but because they voted for me. I wanted the civilization to pray to me and be dedicated to my cause.

Yeah, a lot of wishes, but not enough solutions. I would have to either be anonymous until I was somehow able to represent myself personally or would have to have my diplomats rule in my stead.

While I pondered if I should wait or act now, the leaders of the caravan, outside my dungeon, met up for a meeting. During the conversations of last night, I had overheard that the caravan was actually just a fleeing group of refugees, chased away from their homes by the orc tribes.

During the meeting, they discussed various topics regarding their journey further, but in the end, came to a realization, they were stuck. They didn’t have enough rations to continue on, their people were dead tired, various wagons and tools needed repairs and they didn’t have a map for the area they would venture in. They came to the conclusion that they would have to set up a more permanent camp at the lone Pavillion. While they would prepare for the journey forwards they could investigate the Pavillion and the high mana in the area.

So, come the next day, a group of high-tier individuals, ranging from tier 4 weak to tier 5 weak, explored the Pavillion. They inspected the smooth and clean flooring, which should be impossible because it was positioned in the wild. They noted down the strange and embellished circle in the pavilion's center. And lastly, they noticed that the high mana density found its origin somewhere below the Pavillion, the energy just spilling forth like from a fountain.

Just when they were about to sit down for a meal in the pavillions center, they vanished with a powerful woosh. The other groups, that too had been inspecting the Pavillion, stepped back. Their eyes were wide and deathly silence allowed even the wind, rustling the grass, to be heard.

On the other side of the teleportation pad, the group had arrived in the surface instance of my dungeon, only housing the delvers from above. This was so the delvers wouldn’t be scared by strange races suddenly appearing in the entrance hall.

The exploration group, still standing exactly where they were teleported to, looked around, cautious but curious. After being frozen for a second too long for one of the members, he began to move out of the circle painted on the floor. Just then another team from the Pavillion entered through the same method.

They were a young bunch and didn’t stand around for too long, after having exchanged some stunned glances with the earliest group, they whizzed around.

The young team, too, were the ones that first reported the doors behind the hall’s pillars and then later entered my first zone. Just as they entered the older team followed behind them, not wanting to again be alone in the strange environment.

Once the group had explored the first zone for a while and defeated the guardian, one of the members let free a phrase they brought with it hundreds of emotions.

“Yo, guys, isn’t that cave similar to the one at home” “You know, The dungeon”

The other team members took another glancing view around them but quickly agreed with the young man.

Just then I completely turned off anything the group had to say and solely concentrated myself on what the man had just said. “You know, The dungeon”. I couldn’t believe it, but it had to be true. There really was another one of my species somewhere out there, and it wasn’t even that far away. At least, judging by the man’s way of speech.

At this point, I knew what I had to do. I wouldn’t send my representatives to get into contact with the refugees. No, I would try, as hard as I could, to somehow find a way that would allow me to personally represent my dungeon without any third party in between.

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So while the two explorations teams, that had now returned, reported to the leaders about my dungeon, I searched through everything I knew. I went over tens of years of my own experience and thousands of years of the absorbed memory.

To my dismay, I didn’t find anything. Even after going back to my first ever days upon this world. How I first “broke open the egg”, killed my first intruder, constructed my first zone, and evolved for the first t … Wait. Evolution!!!

That right, I could of course always evolve into the next tier, which may allow me to develop some ability that could help me in diplomatic matters. The chances were quite high, especially because of my diplomacy and politics-heavy development lately.

With a goal in mind and the needed motivation in abundance, I got to work. Which was quite difficult, to say the least. It’s hard to somehow get more mana without spending any, and all of that had to be as fast as possible.

Nevertheless, I introduced some minor mana-generation improvements. I decreased the maximum amount of people within a single instance, which allowed the delvers to not have to wait for long. More incentives for delvers were developed, such as specific and refined drops from monsters.

This would lure in greedy adventurers, out for money and powerful items. Now instead of the corpse of every creature rapidly decomposing, they would instead drop some of their more valuable parts. Crocigers would drop daggerlike teeth, envelopers would leave behind sacks of shadow-illusion ink and the nova bear would award a solar crystal.

Not only would trade see a drastic increase, which lured in more people, but the delvers risk to reward rating went up drastically. I even had to open up 2 more instances, allowing a total of 2800 people to delve inside my dungeon at the same time. Though mostly half to two-thirds of the total was filled up, which still resulted in a horrendous amount of mana.

Going along with those changes I created some mana-powered shops, which allowed people to pay for products and incentives in mana instead of hard currency. Or I optimes some minor spawning algorithms and made the teleportation pads and instances more mana-efficient.

With all those changes, together with large donations from the dwarfen city, in exchange for coins, I was ready to evolve after just a full month of stocking up the rest of the mana.

The human refugees were still at the Pavillion and would remain there for the foreseeable future. They quite liked the place, a river at the bottom of the hill, enough and lively farmland, abundant and fruitful forests, and access to a dungeon.

With no cause of concern, I started my evolution into the next tier. As the mana inside my core formed into an intricate pattern and the density reached its apex, I saw something alarming.

Both of my galeb duhr diplomats were dashing through every zone as fast as possible. With their quite recently evolved bodies, of tier 6, and their knowledge of secret passages, they made their way through all my seven zones, from the entrance hall into the subterranean oasis, in the time it took for me to fall into the deep slumber of evolution.

In the last second, I just saw them enter the core room and my last defender, the boss nighthaunt, protectively standing above my core.

-

I awoke from the evolution and a piercing pain was interrupting my every attempt at a coherent thought. While trying to control the pain I saw glimpses of my core room. Rubble was littering the floor and blood covered the ground. In the next vision, I saw the corpse of my boss nighthaunt laying around my core, as if it was trying to protect me even with its corpse.

I thought it had ended for me, with my last defender dead I was sure that I would die any second. Until I jumped up in relief, within my defender's mouth I could see the bloodied corpse of the female galeb duhr. Below her lay the remains from the minced meat male galeb duhr, he truly got what he deserved.

Both of the backstabbing lovers were dead for sure and I quickly absorbed them, so that their avenging spirits won’t haunt my dungeon forever.

Now that I had calmed down and knew I didn’t risk full annihilation I lost my grip around the pain and fell into blackness. I awoke many times, giving me at least some relief from the deep black mindscape.

With each iteration, the pain lessened and I finally was able to take a look at the damage that had been done to my heart. A, for me personally, too large crack ran along the top of my core. It split the one-meter large, shard-shaped core into 2 and 1 third. The split itself wasn’t that deep but it still caused severe damage to my everything.

Even after a full week I still wasn’t who I was before. It was like the experiences of hangovers I got from the adventurers I killed, just hundreds of times worse. I couldn’t form all too complex thoughts and could feel a significant amount of earnt mana escaping my clutches.

I tried to somehow repair the damage by fusing together the crack, though this worked only partially. With a large amount of condensed mana, I was able to seal up the crack, though some kind of crystalline scar was still visible. Though after the resealing, I was finally up to what I knew it to be, sadly some side effects still remained.

I now had to sleep about 15 to 20 hours a week to recover from any mental stress and still lost some mana and mental power.

Nevertheless, I pushed on and finally took a look at the perks of my new evolution from an entrapping experigist Dungeon into the Tier 6 Nuernberger Warden Dungeon.

The most important thing was my new ability to create an avatar, a representation of how I saw myself mentally. The avatar would allow me to talk to others and freely move within my domain.

Though the next thing was what surprised me the most. I could actually feel that it was influenced by the mental damage I had suffered during my evolution and would ease the mental stress I had to go through.

They were called my neurons and were responsible for various different management jobs. Diplomats, that would advise me in political manners, without backstabbing me the first time I was vulnerable. Or generals that would manage far away armies and charge them into battle. And lastly, wardens that we're able to manage different affairs within my dungeon, such as the leading and optimization of zones and the administration of shops and minor matters.

These were the two main perks I got from my new evolution and would be a significant part in the scheme to become too human refuges’ leader!!!