“Ahem. Don’t mind me.”
In a related manner, the golems couldn’t evolve like other breathing monsters. For the first time, despite being nigh-indestructible and not having to consume anything as fuel, there were drawbacks to them. Monsters sure had their own pros and cons.
Speaking of the intelligence hobgoblin — Achilles — I had this one thought that I’d been keeping at the back of my mind since not even Lorelei could give me a satisfactory answer.
“Achilles. Do you perchance have any recollection before you were sum— I mean, created in this dungeon? Tell me all you know.”
Achilles stared blankly for a second before telling all he knew. He didn’t have a recollection of what he was in the past… and stated that he was created purposely for the sake of the dungeon, being its sword and shield. This made me wonder about what would happen if the Dungeon Core turned against its Dungeon Master… They’d definitely side with their “real” creator, of course.
Uh-oh. This is bad. I gotta have my own personal strength as a deterrent. Whether possible or not for the Dungeon Core to turn against its Dungeon Master, one thing was for sure, I should get on Lorelei’s good side to prevent such a thing from happening in the first place.
I glanced at Lorelei, who stayed seated closely beside me. Despite her deadpan expression, she looked like she was having fun surfing the food section of the Item Creation catalog. To judge by appearance, she didn’t look like someone that would stab me in the back.
Noticing my prolonged leering, she gazed at me and inquired, “My, what’s the matter? Have you fallen head over heels for me? Just kidding. Fufu.”
Uh, maybe she hasn’t given up on turning me into her minion… More reason to improve then. She was acting all close, probably to lower my guard down or something and strike me at my weakest.
Shaking that thought aside, I flung my hand to the right as if to command them. “Now, disper— Wait, actually, you guys stay here for a while longer.”
“Is something on your mind, Vincent?” Lorelei uttered, hiding an annoyed tone that the celebration — lunch — was postponed even longer.
While ignoring her subtle intention, I said, “Yeah, well...” This had been in my mind for some time, but how much of a difference was one point of a stat? Since I had a good number of specimens here, I might as well do the test.
I inspected my surroundings, looking for things that could be used to measure the easiest stat to gauge — STR or strength. However, there wasn’t anything of interest except some stones lying around.
It would be best if I were to have something like a dynamometer, but the Dungeon Menu didn’t offer electronic devices. And it was impossible to create with mana inside the Artificial Realm considering the lack of understanding behind the things.
Truth was, the toilets inside the mansion only worked through some special means, even though I could search the principle behind the flush toilet through Wikipedia. Anything that got inside, while flushed, remained inside a tank that later was absorbed by this place — there was no more string attached here. So, it was impossible to get things that I didn’t know of or those that I didn’t understand the principle behind.
And so, I may have to make some barbells out of stones as it was possible to adjust the density and volume. This place really only had imagination as its limit if I knew the principle behind all things. Simple was best…
Soon after that, I made a few sets of barbells ranging from twenty kilograms to as high as one hundred kilograms and ordered the goblins and kobolds to start lifting the barbells in order of the weakest to the strongest. And the result was quite surprising, to put it mildly.
Gauging some sample of error that could be caused by the minuscule difference of strength, other influencing stats, and whatnot that might influence the result, I found out that a single point gave rise to 5 percent of muscle strength of their previous points, meaning that the stat increase was exponential over time. For instance, a goblin warrior with six points of STR could only lift a fifty-kilogram barbell before tumbling down like a fallen twig, which was probably my limit as well. While at the same time, a hobgoblin with thirteen points in STR was able to lift twenty kilograms more than the goblin warrior.
Nevertheless, there was something off with the calculation. By reversing the process, I discovered that one point of STR was about forty kilograms in lifting power. Yet, that wasn’t the case for smaller creatures like rats, bats… They also only had one point in STR, but obviously, they couldn’t lift things dozens of times their sizes.
In all likelihood, the first one point in stats was abstract, or in other words, accounted for those at “that” weakest line and lower in value. Still, something as weak as insects frankly didn’t show any stats, meaning they were too weak to have any, to begin with.
Whatever the circumstances, since this experiment was hard to come by, I might as well go thoroughly with it by testing their agility. Of course, I just ordered them to run a swift sprint on a one-hundred-meter track that was then counted by the stopwatch on my smartphone. With this, I was satisfied with the good number of samples about stats that they gave me.
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Again, having seen the extraordinary power of the inhabitants of this world and now these monsters filled me with a sense of urgency. If I didn’t have a strength of my own, I wouldn’t survive outside the confines of this dungeon — the wilderness… Maybe it was in my best interest to increase my strength. Guess I’m gonna do some muscle training.
“Are you done yet?” Lorelei was starting to become impatient for the long wait she was subjected to, whereupon my back experienced an intense staring from her otherwise flat face on how hungry she was. Oops.
“Uh-huh. Guess I’ve had enough with this.” I nodded and had Lorelei transfer back the group of specimens back to the dungeon, of course not without rewarding them.
I gave them several [Low-grade Red Meat Chunk (5 CP)] purchased through the Dungeon Menu, which they received with delight and glee. The more processed an item was, the more expensive it was. Luckily, they didn’t have any problem being given chucks of uncooked red meat that cost a fraction of what it would have when processed.
Outwardly, by weighing one chunk of red meat with a baguette, I realized that the meat was about twice as heavy despite having a similar volume. If only we had a cook that could prepare delicious dishes…
“Now that that’s done, what do you want to eat for lunch?” Since I was thinking of training my muscles after this, I got to keep my strength up by eating a lot.
“Yeah.” With a twinkle in her eyes, she showed her menu to me. “Here, I’ll have two of this, three of these so-called cheesecakes, two tenderloin steaks, a large blueberry pudding, a parfait set with extra tea, and—”
“Stop, stop! What is this, an all-you-can-eat restaurant?” While we got a ton of CP after the invasion, it didn’t mean that we should spend them all haphazardly. “Just choose one.”
“Hmph. Miser,” she said, but she wasn’t that indignant and appeared to have been joking earlier. “Okay then, let’s get this one.” She swept aside her cover and revealed her true intention, showing me a large circular food with toppings on top.
“A pizza? Sure.” I was always an avid enjoyer of cheesy pizza, so I accepted her offer right away.
Placed on the umbrella table was a large pan of pizza with mixed toppings: two slices covered with meat, two with thick mozzarella cheese, two with sausages covered with mustard, one with chicken meat, and lastly, one with pineapple and chili sauce instead of tomato — hidden from plain sight. Hehe.
Pizza was among the more processed food, so it cost quite a bit; these large eight slices of pizza were priced at 50 CP, an illogical way of spending CP where I could almost get one self-improvised clay golem instead.
“Mmm. This thing you humans call pizza is so yummy!” Lorelei was wolfing down the pizza with her small mouth. “I wish we could eat something like this every day— No, every hour.”
Dang. Maybe bringing out this pizza was a big mistake after all. In all honesty, although the food served from the Dungeon Menu retained good flavor and texture, it felt like something was lacking compared to the “real” one as if an imitation.
While blissfully enjoying our food, our hands reached out for the remaining slice.
“Uh, you can have the last one.” I retracted my hand in fear of being eaten for having a design on her food.
“Really?” Her hand touching the lips, she said, “My, I don’t think taking the last one is polite. You can have it.”
Huh? Why is she suddenly acting all polite? I pondered, looking at the last slice. Wait, isn’t this one… Oh, so that’s what she’s planning.
“You know what, let’s play a game. Know about rock-paper-scissors?”
“Um… I guess. What of it?”
“The loser will eat this last slice. How’s that sound?” I suggested, revealing a cunning smile.
“I don’t quite get it, but I’ve nothing to say against it.” Lorelei accepted without as much as a blink.
In less than no time, we positioned ourselves against each other, clenching our right hands into a fist all the while.
Feeling that explaining the rules felt customary, I announced, “The rules are simple: We will pump our fists to the cadence of ‘rock, paper, scissors, shoot.’ On ‘shoot,’ we revealed our hands. Rock beat scissors, paper beat rock, and scissors beat paper. Is that clear?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Great. Then let’s begin.”
I felt bad for her since I knew a way to win this. First, the rock-paper-scissors cadence would involuntarily make someone form a fist for “rock” to beat out the last word spoken which was “scissors.” Here, I would spread my hand to make “paper,” thus winning the game. Easy.
““Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.””
We simultaneously revealed our hands, and two different results emerged.
Silent. Lorelei was pretty much unmoved by the result of the game while I couldn’t hold my poker face any longer and—
“NOOOO!!” I yelped, clawing my head with both of my hands. Contrary to what I had in mind, she actually held out her index and middle finger for scissors. Scissors beat paper; I needed to eat that insanely spicy pineapple pizza — the food that I purposely made out of prank.
“What are you screaming for? If you don’t want it, just say it.” Lorelei snatched the last slice of the pizza and munched on it.
“Wait—!” My warning was too late, however, and she finished the last slice in a heartbeat. “Huh? Are you fine eating that?”
While licking the sauce smeared on her glove, she shrugged. “What do you mean? Yeah, while this one tastes sparky on the tongue, weirdly raunchy, and soggy. I have tasted worse. Do you know the feeling of eating wastes and corpses? While I didn’t eat those directly, it gave me an awful flavor.”
“I see.” I never thought about that; still, I was glad that I didn’t have to comply with my end of the deal. Danger averted. Wait, were we not even on the same page? Or was she ignoring my prank intentionally?
“All right. Now it’s about time I ask you this: What are you gonna do with the three brainwashed insects?”
“Insects?” I teased, “I recall that you call anyone under you your children—”
“Oh, please. Don’t equate those things with monsters created by me; they are not the same,” Lorelei refuted in an instant.
Anyway, those three insects were the three people of Rowan’s gang that were still alive, namely the unlucky guy that first got inside the dungeon, one mage or elementalist as they called him, and Rowan himself. They were currently put under the watch of the mud golem.
I had previously planted the unlucky guy as the impostor among them, triggering trap after trap along the way. If not for this guy being sent first to recon the dungeon, the defense wouldn’t have gone so smoothly. Really, having the mud golem kidnap him and silently bring him to the Core Room to be brainwashed must be heaven-sent.
“There are also their belongings that you said to keep.”
“I will have a look at those later. Gonna be useful sooner or later.” I contemplated for a bit about our next objective and spoke. “Um, you said that you can extract information through brainwashed creatures.”
“That is affirmative.”
“Good. I want you to extract as much information as you can from them. I wanna know whether there are towns around or any danger that we need to be cautious about.”
With a strange gaze directed at me from her eyes, she concurred, “M’kay, I will do just that,” before teleporting away like a ghost.