Once all of the participants arrived, Maria, Ash, and Danor Dwarfsong immediately held their emergency meeting. Danor Dwarfsong was the chief craftsman as well as the vampire dwarven representative that Maria had asked Ash to bring because he would give Maria some good insight into what kind of remodeling her castle-slash-dungeon needed.
The entire castle’s first through second floors were remodeled to be similar to the layout of Heltania City’s Castle, while the garden on the second floor was moved to the fifth floor, where it would act as the final stage that housed the teleportation formation that led to the final area, the Ancestral Blood Hall–which was remodeled to be more of Maria’s Imperial Chambers after some debate was raised.
The Ancestral Blood Hall really served no other purpose other than being the ‘Boss Room’ as well as the place that Maria could access the [Dungeon Mode] of her castle. As for the place she would be holding meetings or the like, it would be the Main Hall on the ground floor. The Ancestral Blood Hall from this day forward became a forbidden area that only Maria could access.
Why Maria insisted on making this place a forbidden area was because she found a small secret to it. She noticed that while staying there, she gained an EXP buff that increased the rate of her EXP gain by 1% for every hour she stayed there. Thanks to this discovery, Maria wanted to turn the Ancestral Blood Hall into her Imperial Chambers so that when she left the game, she could do it without dematerializing her avatar’s body upon logout.
She wanted her avatar’s body to remain inside of the game within the Ancestral Blood Hall to accumulate this bonus, but leaving her body behind while being logged out was very dangerous because others could still kill you.
Thanks to this worry, Maria had to take precautions to prevent anyone, including her own subordinates, from entering the Ancestral Blood Hall. In the end, Ash gave her his assent, since the hall really only served as nothing more than a symbol. Even in the past, hardly anyone other than the Blood Lord or Blood Queen entered the place. With the Ancestral Blood Hall turned into a restricted area, Maria’s goal was accomplished, so they moved on to remodeling the rest of the castle.
Only the fourth floor remained relatively the same as it was the area where Maria would house her officials and high-ranking subordinates. The castle’s East and West Wings were the ones that received the largest changes.
The East Wing of the castle housed the living quarters of the castle servants, while the West Wing was where the Imperial Army and the Dire Army could be garrisoned, since the Armory, Barracks, and Training Hall had been moved over there from their previous places.
Maria was happy with the new layout, so all she needed to do was change a little bit about where the dungeon spawners and mobs were located, along with the locations of the constructs like the Blood Crystals that they needed to guard.
There were, unfortunately, no traps or defense mechanisms that were already available, so that was on the top of her [Construct Research] list. For a high-leveled dungeon, Maria did notice that it severely lacked any sort of defensive devices and traps.
“I had better research those and place them around the castle floors in the future. I need to reinforce my stronghold with them!”
Once all of this was taken care of, Maria finally had to assign the floor bosses for each floor from which she could choose from her list of subordinates. Maria made the Ground Floor Boss Orh’bankhur.
For the first boss, he would be a great hurdle for any dungeon attacker, so he would serve as the castle’s gatekeeper. The Second Floor Boss was going to be Carmilla, while her sister, Elizabeth, was the Third Floor Boss. Alexa was the Fourth Floor Boss and, finally, Ash was the Fifth Floor Final Boss.
Maria, unfortunately, couldn’t select Raijuu to become one of her castle’s guardians, since the lightning spirit wasn’t an NPC or Monster she recruited on Vanhal, but although she couldn’t assign Raijuu as a boss, she could assign her as a special roaming NPC that had her original powers that could move as she pleased around the castle any time she wanted. She would be like one of those special encounter bosses, but meeting her would be like a death sentence to anyone because of how powerful Raijuu was.
As for the mini-bosses, Maria chose Red to become one of those along with a few other Marquis-ranked Vampires from her Dire Army. The mobs inside of the castle would mostly consist of NPCs from her two armies, so she didn’t have to research and develop any units for the dungeon, though she still did so since it seemed to be interesting.
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Apparently, the highest-ranking unit she could recruit was a Heroic-rank, but she already had a few of those in her ranks and all of them were Floor Bosses or special mini-bosses. It was great that she could peruse the NPCs she trained in her army as her castle’s guardians.
Once everything was settled, Maria finalized the customizations and the castle immediately began to change. Everyone inside of the castle was ejected outside in an instant and they all bore witness to the immediate changes that happened to it.
It was quite magical, even for Maria, to see Castle Bran suddenly change shape so rapidly as entire halls, rooms, and other kinds of objects that were part of the castle shifted and moved to their newly designated areas.
“Wow! That’s so cool!”
This was likely something that would only happen once, since it was the reward she received from possessing the title, [The First Dungeon Master]. Just like the title’s reward had stated, all of the changes were completed very quickly, and Maria’s new castle was presented before her.
*DING*
Would you like to change the castle’s name? Y/N Note*** Changing the castle’s name will also change the dungeon’s name!
She immediately pressed the [Yes] button and inputted the new castle’s new name.
*DING*
Castle Bran has been renamed to Heltania Imperial Palace
Maria crossed her arms proudly and turned towards all of her subordinates who were ejected outside of the castle and were quietly waiting in formation behind her. At first, they had been scattered around but Ash and his two brides quickly had them get into an orderly formation.
“Alright, this will be our new home from now on! It will be our stronghold on this continent as we continue our conquest to take over the world!”
Everyone cheered after Maria said her piece but she still wasn’t finished yet.
“We’ve just solidified ourselves, the Dire, as the new reigning power over the Blood Continent. For now, we’ll have to start consolidating our foundations and create a firm, iron grip over our vast lands!”
“Long live Her Imperial Highness!”
“Long live Her Imperial Highness!”
“Long live Her Imperial Highness!”
“For the next period of time, until I feel like we are ready, everyone will dedicate all of their time and effort into building up our power and influence! Until then, I hope you will all show me a good performance~”
Maria ended her words with that before turning around and walking into her new home. She was feeling a little giddy because she wanted to see how much better it had become. The first and second floors gave her a sense of coziness since they were modeled after her very first castle which she had been living in for so long. She continued moving upwards to the next floor while her subordinates began filing into the castle and manning the stations that Maria assigned to them. She just needed to continue bolstering her castle’s defenses with traps and devices while training her soldiers to become even stronger so that it would become an impenetrable dungeon.
The benefit of having a dungeon abode wasn’t only because of the security, but also due to the benefits, it could provide for her. Maria could list the dungeon as a raid-able one, so players could access it via the [Raid] tab on their [Main Menu] screen. To enter the dungeon, one needed to pay a toll that was in the form of rare materials or even just money. Half of the toll fees would go into Maria’s pockets so she wasn’t going to waste this opportunity.
Maria had the system adjust the toll accordingly and the payment would be in gold. The payment for a full team of 10 players to raid the dungeon was a whopping 1,000 gold, which was quite expensive. Of course, the rewards for clearing the dungeon were set really high too, but as to how high, Maria didn’t actually know, as that was left to the discretion of the system.
She only designated the First through Third Floors of the castle as the raid-able areas and the type of dungeon it would be was an [Instance Dungeon], so anything that happened inside of those instances wouldn’t be reflected in her actual castle.
The fee could actually be higher if she designated it as a field dungeon, but she didn’t want players to suddenly appear in her castle and start wrecking it. Also, the difficulty was adjusted to be clearable so the bosses and mobs in those instances were weaker than their actual counterparts.
It was likely that the players would be able to clear her dungeon and she’d probably gain quite a lot of traffic from it because of the clear rewards, but if any of them think that the conditions inside of her [Heltania Imperial Palace 1F-3F] Instance Dungeon were the same as the actual Heltania Imperial Palace, they’d be dead wrong.
If anyone was foolhardy enough to come and attack her castle once they arrived in Vanhal because of the strategies they came up with for attacking her castle’s Instance Dungeon, they would be plunged into a world of pain for underestimating the true Heltania Imperial Palace.
Maria had actually thought further ahead and wanted to see if any idiots would actually try that. If those people died in her dungeon, their equipment would be left behind and she’d earn quite a bit of profit from that. Not only that, but if she was able to unlock the dungeon construct that she saw from the tutorial which allowed her to siphon away 10% of a player’s EXP and Gold if they died in her castle, then that would be a large source of EXP and income for her.
“Hehehe, I’m just going to lay the foundations for something even bigger. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for me in the future~” Maria said as she smiled deviously while looking at the new appearance of her dungeon on the [Raid] menu.
“Anyway, let’s go accumulate some of that EXP buff while I work on developing the dungeon!”
Maria returned to her Imperial Chambers, which was now the Ancestral Blood Hall, and locked herself inside for a few days.