Lucifer floated above the sixth-floor sea, wondering 'what will I put on this floor to attract adventurers'.

Initially, he was content with continuing to create progressively stronger monsters the deeper the dungeon went, however, there was a problem with this line of thought. If the later floors only contain stronger and stronger monsters, what reason does anyone have to go there.

This seemed to go against any cost-benefit analysis he could think up and every conclusion he came to pointed towards the later floors being completely empty.

Another problem was the limited resources on the earlier floors, his dungeon floors may be dozens of times larger than the standard dungeon, but with the progressively more dangerous floors, the number of valuable materials on the first few floors that newbies could target was limited.

Lucifer started to think about his dungeons location and more headaches started to form, he had used his mana tower technique to see outside several times and was quite impressed with what had been constructed in such a short time.

Most of the nobles district above the dungeon entrance were now under construction, they had used mages during construction so they had already created a sizable home for the nobles to temporarily stay and the rest of the mansions seemed to be built in extensions from those homes.

With nobles comes money and with money comes merchants. The shopping district had shifted from mostly comprising of people selling directly from their wagons to small stalls and more permanent storefronts.

And that is where Lucifers contentment stopped, although the upper levels of the city were making great progress the lower levels were non-existent. Without laborers and tradesman, the city will never flourish. It had become immediately obvious Lucifer needed to be able to see the city for himself up close and interact with the people personally if he ever wanted to impact the growth of the city in any meaningful way.

He did not know how to do that at the moment but a significant portion of the research was already been put into getting a body yet it seemed a long way off, if he pushed his little prisoners any further they may break prematurely. So he settled for using second-hand information and set off to find his little ambassador.

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Meanwhile, Ahri was telling her story to Rick, it was nothing new for him if not disappointing, not at her but at humanity in general. After she finished telling her story and sat in silence with a dazed expression Rick sighed before responding "I thought humans were long past such behavior, or at least not in a such a position to breed such people capable of it, the last time I saw such things was in the age of famine"

This time it was Ahri's turn to be shocked, The age of famine was hundreds of years ago at the earliest and a thousand years at the latest, with the ages having no particular set dates of when they started or finished. She knew he was old but was never able to confirm it, she would never have guessed he was truly "ancient" by human standards. Merlin was only a few hundred years old by comparison and he was already one of the most powerful mages on the continent.

As for someone significantly older than him, Ahri could not even imagine what the ordinary looking old man sitting across from her had experienced, or even how powerful he was. Humans who reached the pinnacle of power could extend their lifespans significantly, living 3 or 4 hundred years was not out of the question, however, to live longer than that required either extream levels of power that only existed in legends or reach the pinnacle of a profession that could extend ones life.

Light mages could heal themselves indefinitely when they reached a high enough level, but after long periods of doing that they started to have abnormal growths, sometimes it was visible with large lumps growing on their bodies and any healing magic would only cause the thing to grow and other times it grew inside them even causing insanity on rare occasions. The upper echelons of the church survive this way and are forced to cut each other open to remove the growths only for them to grow back most of the time.

Dark mages can also extend their life by turning themselves into the undying or undead, while this attracts a lot of power hungry people who are interested eternal life, but the drawbacks are not any better than the light mages which made Ahri shiver unconsciously.

Rick did not seem like either type of those and the other ways of extending your lifespan with other magic systems were even rarer.

Ahri racked her brains but could not figure out how he managed to survive for so long, then she muttered "elixir of life" with a gasp.

Rick waved her off saying "if you're wondering how I've come to live so long you can forget it, all your going to do is strain your brain thinking because you would never guess it anyway. As for the elixir of life, I do know "of" it, however, considering the main ingredient is massive amounts of human lives I'll pass"

The blood drained from Ahri's face, she had heard rumors in alchemy manuals, mostly scribblings of a madman or almost unintelligible notes in alchemy study documents, something about equivalent exchange, but most of these sources were unreliable, one author who went into detail on the subject started to write about the fusion of a little girl and a dog. Absurd things like that are what she considers red flags when reading research papers. Too many an experiment have gone wrong because she listened to the ramblings of a madman who breathed in too much of their own work.

With her thoughts still wandering Rick interrupted her daydreaming "do you know why I have been avoiding you?"

Ahri frowned "I don't know"

"your willing to admit you don't know something ha, that's good too many in the academia are simply unable to do that... cough* anyway I shouldn't be telling you this but Lucifer told me to avoid you"

"Lucifer??"

Seeing her confused expression Rick explained "the dungeon"

Ahri exclaimed, "the dungeon has a name??... wait why did it tell you to avoid me?"

Ignoring the fact that she was a servant to a being she didn't even try to find out the name of he replied "isn't it obvious, your trying to get between me and him, since I am his servant then you would have to go through him to get anything and you want to go behind his back and "avoid the middle man" so to speak. and its a wonder why he wants to prevent that"

Ahri started to look frightened by this point as she squeaked "was it that obvious"

...

"you were not exactly subtle about it, do you think a dungeon would not notice the goings on in his own body, I wouldn't be surprised if he knew anything or everything going on in here"

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Ahri was becoming paler by the second as she remembered the last time she upset the dungeon, it was not pleasant. She thought it was strange that a stranger was sticking his neck out for her so she quietly asked "why are you telling me this when you could be punished for it"

Rick chuckled "you mean the soul fracturing he can use on those who are bound to him. I'm not particularly worried about it, besides I've talked to him for a little while and can understand his character enough to be at ease"

He could tell that she was still uneasy about the dungeon so he wanted to help her along and probably help Lucifer in the process. "he is not an unreasonable person... well sort of... what I mean is he won't punish someone for doing something for him, so I am safe to help you as long as it helps him. I'm also quite sure that if he has not killed you yet then he has given you another chance to come around to his side.

However, I will warn you now, I've been alive for a long time and met a great deal of people, so I'm rather confident in my abilities to discern peoples characters. So although it may sound strange I think that he was hurt by a woman before judging by his attitude, Therefore you are on rather thin ice considering your a woman and have been trying to go around his back, something such people tend to explode into irrational fury easily from. Therefore if you want to live much longer I suggest you forget your old life and get accustomed to the new one. the start of which should start with "encouraging" your old master to finish sending over the promised library"

After finishing his intended speech he stood back up, dusted his clothes off and disappeared into the darkness leaving a silent foxgirl behind to figure out what she is going to do with her life.

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Lucifer floated gently above Ahri's head after having observed the entire conversation. 'While it is true that I won't punish someone for doing something "for" me, that doesn't mean I won't punish someone for doing something I don't desire regardless who it is "for". Although I think I will let off that old coot this time even if it is against what I said because I want the girl to finally make a decision before I am forced to seal her away to avoid future troubles. perhaps I will give her a few more days to decide to be on my side, I can't have an enemy in the castle'.

Lucifer decided against interrupting the girl's existential crises for some basic information on the town and instead went to look for Rick.

He found him collecting alchemical ingredients as always, he wondered why it took the adventurers so long to figure out the venus fly traps had ingredients inside them, the reason stood before him, Rick had taken all of the alchemical plants on the entire floor only leaving behind seeds in their place.

Just as Rick was bending down to pick an ingredient he heard Lucifers voice causing him to freeze. "It seems like you are enjoying yourself after picking several floors almost clean the last few days."

Rick smiled wryly as he slowly continued to harvest the plant. Lucifer was starting to get irritated "considering you just went against my orders a moment ago you have the balls to continue picking plants in front of me, especially after you cleaned a few floors clean of plants. And yet I know that I did say that you could pick whatever you wanted as long as you left seeds behind to regrow the population but, we both know that having several floors missing anything that remotely looks like a plant for nearly a week straight is taking it too far. ah and before you answer you might want to tell me what use I have for such a pest with such an insatiable appetite"

Rick never thought he would be the one being lectured right after he finished one he coughed then replied "I have been gathering essence from the alchemical ingredients, since they are not very high level it takes alot of them to create anything useful, but now I have enough to create something"

Sighing in his mind Lucifer asked "what can you make with such a large accumulation of ingredients"

"well I can make a variety of things but, I think the thing that would interest you the most would be assimilation stone. before you say that it sounds useless considering all the alchemical ingredients I took that you could have turned into life energy from dead adventurers I will say that any kingdom would go to war for such a thing and I will make quite a large one with how much essence I have"

interested Lucifer asked "what does it do for entire kingdoms to fight for it"

Rick explained "It gathers mana from the atmosphere at an alarming rate and purifies it, even several arch-mages would not be able to mimic such an effect of a decently sized one. The arcane university has a small one which allows the mages of this small Swadia kingdom to compete with the Magedom that has significantly better resources than it.

Now, most people use it to make a training room for talented upcoming mages, by surrounding the person in controlled high-density pure mana they can train at a frightening pace compared to others. the other ways of using it involve allowing it to store large amounts of energy for years then releasing it all at once in a spell, as you can imagine this is the reason why grand alchemists are respected, no one wants their castle to disappear.

Such things probably mean nothing to you, however, you can use the stone in much more imaginative ways because you are a dungeon. you can absorb an absurd amount of mana and you are only limited by the purity of said mana, but the stone is not limited in such a way. You could use this stone as an intermediary between the polluted mana and yourself."

After finishing his little sales pitch he looked smug when he thought that the Lucifer could not complain about a few missing alchemical ingredients when he could obtain something so valuable.

"well get on with it," said Lucifer.

[Rick]...

Lucifer suddenly remembered why he came here in the first place and asked "what do you think I should add to the dungeon to make people enter the lower floors"

After getting over how casually Lucifer skipped over the assimilation stones he answered "If I assume you want large amounts of people to enter the dungeon and die I would suggest something useful for a warrior to use, right now you have plenty of things for alchemists but nothing in particular for a warrior to use, which most adventurers consist of warriors or people who would benefit from the same things one would use"

"thank you, that has given me some good ideas. ah also I wanted to ask you for any ideas to increase the number of people of the lower and working class in the city above, there seem to be very few houses built in that area."

Rick thought 'one second he seems like he's about to murder someone the next he thanks them...' then replied "I've had my shop built there shortly after the first group arrived to build the city and I've noticed a lack of commoners too. hmm... I would have to say that the problem is the lack of work and food."

"the dungeon has plenty of food" Lucifer returned.

"how do you expect commoners to pay for food obtained from a dungeon, you seem to think if they are hungry they will go to the dungeon to hunt for something to eat, despite the fact that most commoners don't know how to hunt for one and secondly they would never enter a dungeon because they don't know how to fight, nor do they know the first floor is relatively safe for anyone to hunt in." lectured Rick

Lucifer said "It seems I have overlooked such an obvious thing. when you finish making that stone you can move into the alchemical farm that I have created for you." then he left and proceeded towards the 6th floor.

Rick reflected 'I'm starting to think I haven't quite figured out this one yet'.

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Lucifer arrived back on the sixth floor. Then he looked through his Earth-mails for a suitable material or creature for a time. After several minutes all he could find was a giant clam shell that created some sort of mana crystal in its mouth instead of a pearl, the crystal could be absorbed by the body to strengthen it slightly, but the crystal could only be used on a person a limited amount of times, even so Lucifer was sure that such a thing would be quite popular amongst the adventurers.

The clams were a good idea for the floor, but they did not seem to have any killing power and Lucifer was not going to just give people valuable material for no reason. He could not figure out a way to modify the clam to be any real danger so instead, he modified a crab species to be 2 meters in height, upgraded their claws then made the clams grow a fungus that the crabs liked to eat on their shells.

Now the crabs would protect the clams for the moss and the clams could do their clam things in peace.

This floor did not seem deadly enough considering the floors before it so he added a fish similar to a swordfish and only increased it's size'speed and aggressiveness.

Although this floor did not feel complete to him he decided to leave it at that for now because the author is tired. and instead, he went towards the Ant queen because he had a new objective for the worker ants.