"Well, hello there! I'm Aki, future skooma cat. No offense, but there's only a very small chance I'd remember your name, so is there a nickname you would prefer I call you with?" Asked the dungeon core after starting the negotiation.
Currently, the devil sent to negotiate further details, Oscar and Tery stood inside of a crystal sphere, which was again inside many bigger spheres of noxious gases, dissolving liquids, compressed vapor, among other things all encapsulated inside layers and more layers of thick adamantite, which, turns out, is just steel compressed by tons of mana. The core itself, a set of constantly shining crystals that passed through tons of colors, was set in a golden hold in it's base which had some pools of a sparkling transparent liquid which overflowed into channels circulating the standing platform, making small rivers of it, that went towards small holes leading to a completely different scenario.
"Kevin. I usually am called Kevin. I must say, you have an impressive defensive mechanism." He said while looking at the semi solid liquid floating above them.
"Oh dear, you have no idea. Don't think this little pillow fort would fall against anything short of a squad of arch demons, though yes, I know a big enough raid of high classers would be able to break the walls. Small talk asside, want any refreshments before we start?" He responded with some mirt, but Kevin waved him off.
"I'd prefer to move on to the negotiations. I shaw be forward with you, our company wishes for a colony to help expand our power to a new world. Though I was prepared to throw some weight around, the walk around has showed me that such advance would be a futile endeavor. Instead I would like to offer a sponsorship." Said the devil without the slightest shame.
"It's good to know we are both sensible people. Then? I'm sure you know what I need, but now I need to know what are your interests." To that, the devil smiled.
*****
Day after day Aki trained. Be it his combat skills, crafting, magic or even sex, Aki improved by leeps and bounds? was that how the expresion goes? Anyway, he tried to reach the maximun on most of the support skills he could think of. Aparently, there is considered to be a great gap between the fifth and sixth level in any skill, so only those who exceed in it would ever devote their time to certain skills. As a sociopath, Aki actually exceds in plenty of fields.
In other news, Aki finally acquired the torture skill, which imediatly leveled five times, which was very incovenient since he was being the dom in a BDSM session for the first time at the moment, to which he also aquired the skill, and somehow, also aquired a rare skill called Empathy. While it's effects are minor, to allow one to better intuitively understand others, it is considered a very important skill that is generally possesed only by kings or merchant lords of big companies.
On a more important note, he might have awakened a new fetish. Which might or not have leveled his peverted title. Goodness, it's so embarasing to narate these parts.
After intense sections of tireless work, followed by more 'work', Aki actually unlocked some other things. Sex magic being another rare skill aside, our dear protagonist has finally reached more than a hundred level in his combat skills, which gave him both a dungeon title and a talent point.
He had to stop and send others to kill the ant monsters that were atracted by the new colony of wood ants he tried to implant in the enviroment. It was also only one ant, though it was the size of a car, and it was a queen specialy made to produce strong ants.
'Lord?' It almost couldn't comunicate telepaticly yet!
"Everything is fine Gwen, tend to the broad, soon there will be plenty of food for you all. I just need to take care of something before going back to protect the colony. This might be very good to increase our general combat strength or anything else, i don't know yet, just that it is powerful." He said and started ussing his big hands to clean her antenae. Ants actually really liked to stay clean.
[Talents currently avaible:
Complete avatar: Produces a perfect dungeon avatar. Due to the dungeon already having made a pseudo avatar of good quality, the cost is reduced. Due to the dungeon's familiarity with using avatars, the cost is reduced. Cost: 1 talent point.
Automated system: Allows for the setting of automated dungeon functions such as spawning mosnters, looting, mana upkeep of itens and systems within the dungeon. Cost: 1 talent point.
Specialized research: Allows for the construction of better research pods. Due to one of the dungeon's titles, the cost has been reduced. Cost: 1 talent point.
Greater influence: Raises the amount of status percentage gained by the dungeon monsters while inside the dungeon territory. Cost: 2 talent point.
Specialized biome creation: Allows for the automatic creation of set biomes whitin dungeon space. Due to one or more of the dungeon's titles, the cost has been reduced. Cost: 1 talent point.]
And so went on and on. Aki was kind of surprised to know he apparently far surpassed whatever requirements some talents had, and now they simply weren't available anymore. Examples would be some level of instinctual light and heat manipulation, the knowledge of how to harden his walls, how to speed the creation of monsters by shoving mana into the production chamber, soul bind something and so on, things that he had found out how to do on his spare time.
As Aki scrolled through the list, he found some very strange things. He hadn't opened any portals to other realms yet, because that would be idiotic to do without preparation, but he could apparently use a talent point to relocate where the portal was, get more rights over it, open an additional one to a plane he had already opened a portal to, but more importantly, he should apparently be unable to reclaim territory on the other side of those portals, because there was an option costing ten talent points that unlocked exactly that.
That made him smirk.
'Watch this daddy figure it out without you! Hell if I'm buying something so expensive. Even if i actually fet all talent points a dungeon core i absorb I'd still not buy this shit!' Thought the sheapskate.
Skimming through the less usefull talents he'd unlocked for some unknown reason, or talents that needed other talents to unlock, Aki saw some things he might want to buy when he had more points, like a second mana reservoir inside himself or a sound mastery, but then he passed through a very interesting option when he was about to finish brushing the ant queen's carapace, and he imediatly chose it.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
[Crafter's aura: Makes it so the dungeon influence can also affect items made inside of the dungeon. Due to one or more of the dungeon's titles the cost has been reduced. Cost: 1 talent point.]
Imediatly after Aki mentally confirmed the choice, all soldiers could feel their weapons have some kind of reaction, while some captains and generals even started to burn with fire or burn even brighter than they already were. Mind you, those two are brother and have good afinity with fire, so when one of then evolved into a fire ogre variant, the baby brother imediatly started training with a flaming sword that had been bought for him. Now they were quite famous in the military, though the dungeon didn't really have many sentient soldiers, those were mostly captains at least, but some just didn't want to the promotion. Said fire ogre being a great example. Undead made specialy for combat and monster are the main forces of the dungeon, each of those soldiers carrying equipment, in contrast to the their siblins at home.
The attacking colony started being massacred even faster by the time Aki came back. Instead of going to the front lines again, the walking piece of metal sank into the stone ground and swan until the back of the ants' army before closing their other attack routs with spiked roots and laughing loudly before singing 'Chosen one-from valey of wolfs'.
Result: Complete aniquilation of the offending party. And to think that testing the pheromone glands of an ant in the middle of the colony tunnels of another species would cause the... That's what he did? Of course the entire colony went off to kill a chalenging queen of another species who was insulting their queen! That's exactly what ants do! Why did i have to read it like that!?
*****
After the leveling festival that was presented to me in a strange way... Urg, i will just ignore that happened.
"You, are supposed to be Elizabeth Akita Victoria? You know, maybe you should at least try to pass off as someone from the same gender and build as, whata fuck was that!?" The magician aplying the test for scholarship was rapidly surprised as the hulking man in front of her got a confused expression, went into realisation and then suddenly made several sounds of meat and bones tearing while turning into a small female that matched the exact description of the examinee.
"I'm a pure blood vampire, you see? I can practically change into whatever form i want, but i just came back from training my armor technique, so i was still in my big form and since i'm ussed to it i forgot." Said the small white haired woman dressed in a enchanted blue robe that fit whatever size she was, using a white blouse and brown pants beneath, and actually using some boots for once. Oh, right, she's scratching the back of her head with an apologetic look while saying all of that.
An appraisal proving her identity later, and Aki started the test.
Now, our protagonist raised many levels in academic skills in great part for fear of not being able to enter the academy like an actual main character. Even knowing there was a chance the test was going to be easy as pie, Aki was not so condensendent to believe an easy test would just fall in his lap.
So what actually happened? Well, first was the history part, he had practically memorized it, so he just wrote the answers in a couple of minutes. Notice he has five hours to fill the answer sheet. Then came matematic. He didn't blaze through it like something he could just memorize the answer to, but his brain was practically half as good as a computer at this point, nevermind that the people watching him do the test were completely confused as to what formulas he was ussing. Half because Aki has the habbit of not writing down easy ones and because they didn't know what he was bassing the complicated ones from.
After that was magic theory part. Last just say that no, you are not supposed to use mana to draw your answers and that no, you are not supposed to complete the master level extra question by making the following page into a scrow with the formula inscribed into it to a functioning degree. You can, but you're not supposed to.
"There are four hours remaining." One of the fiscals said. He was sweating a lot since he was ussing plenty of magic to try and figure out if Aki was actually cheating or not. He was not, but it was certainly scary to think so from the point of view
On the teological section, which asked for the writer's religion and their vision on the queen of spiders, Aki simply wrote "I'm apateist" (Which translates to i don't care about the gods as long as they don't care about me.) and "She's a feisty bitch with lots of power. I see lots of bitterness and anbition in her. Someone searching for something she knows will find, but that will do nothing to heal any scar or lack emptiness in her. Should go look for a psicologist. Not the torturer kind, someone to talk to. A warning, whoever burns this will problably send it to her somehow, so your majesty, holyness, milfness or however you prefer to be called, can come and make an appointment when it is most convenient for you. I'm only a student of the art of understanding the mind of others, but my skill is most certainly, the only one leveling by thinking of ways to help stabilize and make my victins more content/atuned to their reality/lifes, in the planet and most related planes, so an exchange of words might be in the best of interests of both parts."
The fiscal didn't read that while Aki wrote since he was very fast, but he was bound to see it later.
Then came the nutcraker. The thing that made most people drop out of the test because it comprised about half the thickness of the thing. The philosophy/sociology section.
Now, while this world certainly doesn't have the same focus and history as dear earth, they certainly want their sages to be wise and their governors to be good at what they do.
"Excuse me. Yes, i would just like to ask how much time i still have." Aki meakly said.
"I just said, four hours." The woman by his side was kind of anoyed at his inatention, but she too didn't pay much attention to her surroundings while dealing with tests when she was a student.
With his answer confirmed, Aki gave her a wry smile.
"Sorry to bother." Looking at the ten sheets of paper in front of him, Aki crakced his knucles, spine and neck, before starting to answer the question: "What is moral? How does it differ from ethics?"
It took him five minutes, but that was because he scribbled the whole page. The writing didn't take much of that time, but making obvious what was the correct way to read his answer did.
Next question. "How can one make the maximum amount of money with tax but not cause the comonmers to revolt?" They were not asking for a dissertation. Definetively weren't.
"I'm sorry to bother again, but i believe i will need more pages to answer this question properly, could i sumarise my answer in the space allocated and write the rest of it in extra pages?" Aki apologeticaly asked the fiscal by his side, who actually answered him positively, giving him a stack of papers in case he thought he could answer more for the other questions too.
That was her last mistake. How could she think that the cute girl in front of her would write confusing but wise and consise argumentation on academic level, in all of the pages provided?
What? You thought no one on high school was either forced to read philophy or actually liked to read and think about those greasily old man's words?