Ahri paces around her room in indecision. What if she just pretended that Rick did not exist, why didn't she contact her master immediately after finding the alchemist. She was not absolutely sure that he was an alchemy grandmaster but the probability was high. Ideas and worries flooded her mind as she slipped out of her University robes and changed into something that was more comfortable.
After her feet became sore she sat down at her workbench but the intrusive anxieties continued their assault on her psyche. Rick could be an invaluable asset to the University especially after the years of decline when the old king died. could the university even tempt such a person to begin with?.
The alchemist would have had known about the university before, there is no reason why he would not go there if he wanted to so maybe Ahri's worries were for naught.
What if she just went on another walk, the dungeon would never know, she walked to her bed and picked up the university robe she discarded there earlier then hesitated. The thought that the dungeon was watching caused her muscles to lock up, then she looked around futilely to find an existence that she could not perceive anyway.
Ahri normally thought that every line of magic should be studied but now firmly believed that the ban on soul-based magic was banned for good reason as the memory of what she had gone through only hours earlier sent shivers down her spine.
She dropped the robe back onto the bed and continued pacing again, she thought to herself 'I doubt that a Grandmaster Alchemist would be interested in anything the University could give so it's not like I did something wrong, because there was no opportunity to gain, to begin with so it doesn't matter' and nodded to her own reasoning.
'Now that he is bound by the dungeon he will be stuck in one place and we could slowly build a relationship in the future which is better than just randomly approaching his shop which I'm sure would be received negatively, ok I'm going to befriend this person first before making any decisions'. Ahri suddenly realized how tired she was after she calmed down and decided to go to bed before trying to befriend the alchemist, satisfied with the knowledge that he would not be going anywhere and time was the one thing she had plenty of now that she was not studying in the university.
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Lucifer watched Ahri pace around the room seemingly in an attempt to wear out the floor of her room, he saw her indecisively pick up her robe then drop it again moments later. When she got into bed and started to sleep he gave a sigh of relief that she did not immediately speak to her master, even if it appeared that she knew he was watching her.
The idea of what he was going to do did not sit well with him, but he needed to be able to trust the people he was working with and if he had to resort to manipulation to get that, he would grudgingly do it. Unpleasant memories from the past flashed past his mind before he violently suppressed the thought.
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Meanwhile on the dungeon floors groups of adventurers began running for the exit after the dungeon shuddered for a moment. The cave roof still seemed to be stable but any shaking the dungeon did was considered a bad omen and historically ended with everyone inside dying horrific deaths.
It took several days before adventurers started to enter the dungeon again after several scout groups declared it safe, or at least as safe as a dungeon full of monsters trying to kill you can be.
When the adventurers entered the dungeon again it did not take long before a group discovered the entrance to the fourth floor. News of undiscovered floors flooded the town above and caused celebration in the taverns and even the nobility who had moved to the new city held extravagant parties in celebration.
New floors meant that more people could enter the dungeon at once and more materials would be available, so every new floor regardless of how dangerous they were, are welcomed by the populace with celebration. The nobles who mostly consisted of 3rd or 4rth born sons and daughters again praised their own insight at moving to this new city before anyone powerful moved in and their lands were increasing in value at a frightening rate now that the dungeon was known to be expanding.
Lucifer was having a celebration of his own but for different reasons, he celebrated because an unprecedented amount of adventurers died in his dungeon. The only other time he received more life energy was during the attack, so he decided to spread treasures around the dungeon in appreciation of these people willingly giving their lives to him.
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The sudden appearance of valuable loot appearing throughout the dungeon soon became known to all the people above ground and caused even more people to enter in hopes of making a fortune. The guards even had to stop people from entering so the dungeons resources would not be depleted.
They received complaints from everyone trying to enter and tried to convince them that this dungeon has a delicate ecosystem and could not support hundreds of people entering at a time, however, the would-be treasure seekers were not convinced and the guards were having a hard time keeping everyone back.
Just as the group of guards was being overpowered and started to get pushed back into the barricades surrounding the dungeon entrance a person flew overhead and heavily smashed against the barricade then fell onto the ground unconscious.
Everyone suddenly froze at the sudden turn of events and looked behind them, the guards protecting the entrance saluted as Wolfram came into view followed by one hundred of his elite soldiers. Before anyone could react he picked up another man and yelled "IF YOU WANT INSIDE SO BADLY LET ME HELP YOU" then threw the person over the heads of the crowd, the man sailed past and like the one before him slammed into a barricade and slumped down unconscious on the ground.
Wolfram made a grabbing motion towards the closest man, but the person left the crowd and ran away, Wolfram continued to walk and the people parted like the red sea in avoidance of him.
Once he was standing between the dungeon and the crowd with only a few men by his side he announced "this is not like a normal dungeon that you are used to, it has a functioning ecosystem down there and I would prefer it if you people did not trample it into dust because we don't know how long it would take to recover and start producing materials for the city again. Now if you still want to enter LINE UP, we will be allowing 5 groups of 5 an hour, no more. If you don't like the rules you can leave."
The crowd grumbled as they started to form a line under the watchful gaze of the soldiers. Some disputes arose during the process however, the soldiers simply grabbed these people and threw them to the back of the line.
One of the mages began explaining the rules reasonings to his party, he said "although this rule seems intrusive to what adventures do, but it's for our own good in the end" his party looked confused at him before he continued "think about it, he is only letting in groups of 5, which means that these solo adventurers that are here for the sudden increase in loot won't be entering by themselves, instead they will form groups which are safer" someone from another group overheard and interrupted "yea sure, but they only do that because the city wants more adventurers to live so we can brave the dangers of the dungeon to get them more money".
"yea sure, but they only do that because the city wants more adventurers to live so we can brave the dangers of the dungeon to get them more money".
The mage paused for a moment then retorted "is living longer such bad thing." then seeing as the other person was silent he continued "also the dungeon is an ecosystem type which is much more fragile than the normal type we are familiar with. I can see you don't understand, so for example if all the Panthers of the third floor died what would happen in a normal dungeon, it would simply summon more to compensate, however, this is not the normal type of floor, everything is in balance with each other, so if all the Panthers died then the deer that they feed on would have an explosion of population, then they would eat all the foliage until there was no food left and they starved to death, but it is a dungeon so I doubt that they could outeat the foliage... but I digress.
so we could never predict the outcome of any action we take in there, if we send in hundreds of people we might have thousands of deer just wandering around the third floor... or more frightening, having thousands of Panthers wandering around"
The rogue cut in when he saw that the mage was starting to go off into his own world "more importantly, having hundreds of greedy adventurers suddenly looking for loot would cause no small amount of fights. There would probably be more deaths related to looting than monsters".
The mage finally snapped out of his own thoughts and added "these rules are already in place in most dungeons, just not officially" the others cast questioning gazed towards him so he elaborated "well normally the floors that have fully functioning ecosystems are much deeper than this one, so only powerful adventurers are able to even get there which acts as a sort of filter to limit the amount of people entering such floors. You may not know this but there is an unwritten rule about such floors which is, if you can still hear the battles from an adventurer party you are too close, this spreads out the amount of people on such floors so they don't damage the ecosystem. Of course, there are exceptions where there are giants and such which make enough noise that you could hear it wherever you were in the dungeon but --" The mage had gone off on a tangent and everyone zoned out.
Similar scenes and discussions were taking place throughout the crowd and they slowly started to calm down. Seeing the way everyone was behaving Wolfram decided to only leave twenty men to maintain order then left with the rest to attend to military matters.
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After a sudden influx of adventurers since he added temporary treasures to the dungeon floors, Lucifer noticed that the amount of adventurers entering the dungeon started to even out to a suspiciously identical frequency of roughly one group of five entering every ten or so minutes. This caused concern for Lucifer as he thought that he may be under attack again but after observing the groups move about the dungeon like normal adventurers for a few hours he went back to the lab for more experimentation.