"You see, dungeons don't evolve for combat. At most they do as support, crafter or energy source. Me evolving, which dungeons only do once by the way, since it's more akin to a class, actually strengthened me to 1.5 times my previous power, because of affinities and pure amount of resources, but most of what I got will actually help me more with crafting and some settlement building."
"Than why did that punch seem like it came from someone on the fifth rank?" Asked Gobu, who was also there defending the house thanks to Tsu being a 'queen' tipe monster and having special dungeon status.
"Here, you know what natural equipment is, right? This is the appraisal result of Tsu's bracelets." Said the hulking Aki while closing his eyes for a bit before the illusion of the notification window appeared for the youth in front of him.
[Name: Queen's armament. (growth tipe natural equipment).
Rarity: Purple
Defense: 1200
Durability: 5000/5000
Skill: Limited shapeshifting, Energy storage (10,000/10,000), Perpetua corporis.]
"While the first two are self explanatory, the last one is..."
[Perpetua corporis: Due to the soul's constant interaction with material of perfect mana conductivity, the body can temporarily be forced to reach new heights.
Effect: All body reinforcement effects gain a 50% buff to effectiveness. The amount of mana the body itself can handle before reaching breakdown is augmented by twenty five times.
Cost of activation: 10 soul power.
Upkeep: 1 Soul power per five seconds
Cooldowm: 24 hours.]
Gobu suddenly pinches the bridge of his nose and starts trembling while murmuring about unfairness. Aki, after noticing this, immediately teleports away and starts grinding some coffee while whistling.
*****
Since there is actually something insteresting happening elsewhere for the first time, allow me to zoom there.
In a cave with the form of a perfect dome carved in it's walls, plus some crystals around here and there to iluminate and decorate, a skeleton in a suit and monocle held a clipboard while silently waiting behind his boss, a sucubus also using formal ware, but she had a mini-skirt, black stockings and black heels, who was not so patiently waiting for the demon on the hexagram in front of her to form.
"Fifteen minutes danm it! how much longer does this..." She tried to mutter under her breat.
"'This' what? Miss Escanovar?" Asked the man withouth eyes that had just finished forming in a very sweet but obviously taunting voice. Blue skin, golden hair laid backwards held by small blue horns flowing in the same direction, and three pairs of ears, he was a devil.
"Nothing sir. If you would come this way..." She said while bowing slightly and showing the way with a poker face. It almost didn't seem like she was bitting her lip and stomping on the floor seconds ago.
The devil humphed and made a sign for her to lead the way. While the sucubuss was in the front, the skeleton actually aproched the devil and bowed slightly.
"A pleasure to have you sir. My master apologizes for not being here personally, but his avatar is 200 kilometers away at the moment, so he has no ways of comunacating directly before the discussion on the trade agreements begin. He is free at the moment, but would like to ask wether you would like to inspect the facilities constructed over the last weeks and test some products we intend to trade." Said the skeleton with the voice of an old getleman.
"That, would be my pleasure." Curtly said the surprised devil, who could actually appraise the skeleton and see he wasn't one high level lich, but instead a 'Great skeletal assistant', not even on the fifties, which contradicted most of what knowlege he had over necromancy on this world. There should have been no way for Aki to discover how to create inteligent undead yet, there was only one other person who only succeded slightly in this endeavor, and he was on the other side of the world, trying to give his wife a better body, not giving a danm about even trying to publish his discoveries. 'That means he is either very atuned to death and was lucky enough to correctly guess how, or he bought the knowlege from a rival company. Since he has shown this skeleton first, than i have no option but to look around for demonic influence that isn't ours.' The devil fronwed his brown. That was going to take a long time. 'He is either a genius in marketing and soul arts or very overconfident that we won't be able to take definitive proof and ask for compensation for the breach in contract.'
After a couple of minutes of walking through a smooth stone tunel with a series of doors on the walls, the trio reached a 'clearing' of sorts, full of small one or two story buildings, a river cutting the 'town', and several glowing cristals on the roof, twenty or thirty meters away.
A bit further away, to the base of the river, which apparently came from a great lake, were golden waves of wheat, maned by goblins, kobolts, beastman and humans working in harmony. Further away one could see an elevated terrain, with the earth sculpted like stair, where grapes and passion fruit were tended by ghosts and what seemed like wood golems.
"Sir has a great eye. This batch of passion fruit has come out specialy big, and the grapes have had the most attention paid to their terroir. Master asks wheter you would like to visit the wine plantation first. He has already been able to succesfully reproduce three variants of Vitis vinifera. Further in the grounds, there are plantations of coffee, tea, peppers, yogurt, agave and 'devil's grass', plus experimental plantations of rice, red and yellow algae, tobaco, cassava, sugar cane, cacao, coconuts and various other frutiferous trees in other floors. While our pecuary is a little laking because of lack of personal to care for the animals, we currently care for pigs, sheep and goats, beside some chicken in lesser amount as well. Further in the city you will be able to see the pastures of the sheep. It is currently considered a great stress reliever to most citizens, to go and carress one's extra soft wind wool. We are currently looking into starting a horse and war mountain goat husbandry as well, but we have neither found someone who can rear horses, nor war mountain goats. Though my master intends to contact the surface dwelers some time soon, and start with elven and dwarven tribes, which should be more than able to provide us with such professionals." Consisely explained Oscar, the 'old' squeleton.
The devil continuosly nodded and paid a lot of attention to all he heard,getting shocked at the amount of diversity that was implemented, sucessfully or not. The amount of diferent nescessities was not small at all, never mind the upkeep of the magic fields hastening succesfull grownth.
Thanks to mind magic, which works on the soul in case of lack of brain, Aki was able to get tons of knowledge, and tons of it were about economy and agropecuary. Be it school projects, wanting to talk about the situation of the economy or just pure curriosity, Aki had skimmed throuth tons of things. Like any good teenager.
Back to it though. As they approached the city and passed through many desserted buildings in rows of family filled ones, empty shops seemingly at random in the middle of the chore of working men and women, Oscar started explained.
"As you might imagine, for a new and isolated comunity, we do not have many specialists and profecionals. Blacksmiths, warriors, beast masters, mages, alchemists and miners, we have enough, but more are being trained as we speak. Some professions, however, are very hard to learn by reading of a book. We currently have around 1,250 living or unliving habitants such as myself and the D-class personal, and around five thousand more dead working as tireless machines. Currently we have ten apprentices on glass work, wine making, seamstrery, jewerly making, engineering, pecuary, enchanting, and of course, cooking. In another month they will be full fledged initiates in their arts. Two more and they should have enough proficiency to sell their work on market level. As you might imagine, that does not sound realistic at all, but if you accompany me i can show you their efforts, since they are simply doing training and would not expose any special technic or product." The old skeleton offered, but the devil shook his head and said he believed him while smiling. "Understood. Then would you like to look at our 'slave pens'?" The old man asked while making quotation signs.
"Ah, yes, the abolition of slavery and adoption of the dead as a task force. I must say that i can actually see that working with such a ruler in comand." The devil slightly noded and signed for the squeleton to lead the way.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"That is only our posture about war and captured enemies sir." Oscar said while walking towards the center of the city, where two elevating plataforms with hidden weigths waited for them. Taking the one to the left and maning it towards the mining floor (4th), he turned back towards the devil who patiently waited for him to continue. "You see, our master does not discriminate between living and unliving, mem and women, or even by species, but by decisions. One needs to choose a path in life, even if it is a bad one. Something he likes to say is: 'Mother always told me i should never talk about the murders in my head. Instead of getting angry at being treated like that, i thought of ways to make people live better. I still have not found ways to redeem the worst of all, but i at least know how i should live.'" It didn't take long for the elevator to reach the mine floor, and there many prisioners could be seem to reside. "These are the living D-class personal's living quarters. Separated by age, gender and work. Old and new hatred is irelevant, they merely live. They live in silence, work in silence, tortured by their own consciousness in silence. These are all redeemable people. They did not have choice or opportunity to actually live without their mistakes. They accumulate points by working and behaving, so they can buy things they can take away when they leave the prison. Some even send money to their families through their work, even if little. Children, however, are either tasked a fine for their guardians to pay, or sent to do light jobs while studying." Emotion was obvius in the skeleton's usually flat tone.
"This seems a bit..." The devil didn't know what to say. This was definetly not something he expected.
"Naive as fuck. I said exactly that when i was passing through here. It will make more sense when you see the heinous criminals and the irredimable. We can feel the sadness and anger forming to some extent here, but there's none on the levels below. Guess why." Drily said the sucubuss who had been silent untill now.
The man expected something to happen to the bimbo in front of him, but the only thing he got was a chuckle from the skeleton.
"It's as she says. It's just hard for these old bones to curse like a that. Master himself calls it naive thinking, but he still hopes for it to succed. The other level is much more reasonable." Sudently, both the skeleton and the sucubus both nodded before a small pink sphere fell from thin air. "The master says it would be best to hold this while passing the third floor, just for convenience." Said the skeleton while handing the pearl to the devil, who pronptly took it and examined it, finding it to be a crystal enchanted to filter sound. "You see, master refers to the third floor as a 'cognito razard', something that damages those who smell, hear or see it, depending on the kind of damage it causes. There are several species of plants that can cause mild disconfort or disorientation by being looked at, and the monsters in here mostly use wind and sound magic to some extent. The real threat is the boss though, it roams around the jungle and it's screams are..." Oscar suddenly placed a hand on the side of his skull, seemingly anoyed before taking a breath and countinuing while a tropical jungle unfolded behind him. "It's screams are toned with mind magic and cause stacking effects of enrage. Finding and hitting it is the chalenge instead of actually just doing the maximun amount of damage. The stone you hold is supposed to be a rare drop from it, which would turn it's attacks mostly ineficient. The elevator hatch on this floor is enchanted to cast a spell of similar use for those just passing through the floor, but it is not the most efficient at the moment and may cause disconford and slight head ache to some individuals because of some technical problems. It is mostly a problem for those wearing several enchanted items already, but the spell has a small time of effect or it would be abused, similarly making it's negative effects not last long." Curently, this floor is the center of our production of honey and some of the experimental plantations, but we intend to start producing dyes as well as some rare and magical plants. Though the last one would only e available to those that have purchased rights of safe passage to the safe zones of the second and third floor." The old skeleton turned around and, in an amused voice, remenber to tell the visitor of something important. "The law of this floor is 'all buffs given by items not from the dungeon have their effects cut by at least 50%'. My master thought important to inform you of such."
'And i thought my superior was kidding when he said skeletons can be very expressive with their facial features.' Thought the devil while thinking of all the overcharged goods they could sell through the dungeon. No adventurer worth their danm clothes would go though... the list is too big, but it certainly goes from walking around somewhere so humid and hot in full plate, and ends around fighting the giant birds he saw flying in the distance.
"Well, we're about to reach my work place, so it's my turn to be the guide. I am, technically, one of the bosses of the floor, 'Sister Teresse'. Though I'm not the one you need to defeat to reach the next floor, i basically comand it." There was a tremor as the elevator reverberated, signing that they had reached their destination. There was also no elevator shaft for the fifth and sixth floor at the moment, so that was literally the end of the line. "As you can imagine from the view, the only place with firm ground is the plataform we reached. 'Father Jonson', normally sleeps right above the entrance to the next staircase, so there's nothing really stopping the marine life forms from spreading and flourichising." Getting a bone to the side, Tery took to explaining the important parts. "Except for where we deal with kelps and shrimps, that place is cordoned by a ward. To better understand my actual job, one must understand how D-class personel are classified. The D is a denomination that even i don't know what means, but the number right after it defines their level of wickedness and what kind of jobs they are to take before rejoining society. 3 means they commited normal crimes and will stay on the second floor between a couple of months and five years. 2 means they have done heinous crimes, like mass murder, slave trading, tried to rape a child, stuff like that, and will stay here, going through constant mental terrapy to be shown the error of their ways, with sentences between ten and a fifty years. 1 means they have comited iredimable acts, and will be automaticly enlisted into the silver bullet project, being turned into undead made specially to serve, further brainwashed into leaving behind their old personalities and then put through hellish training. They have both the shortest and longest sentences. From a week in jail, to being turned into tools for the greater good for the rest of their undeath. Though they are supposed to serve with joy and pride when the training stops." Said the succubus with a grin. She was once taken to the training chamber, when the second recruit came over. The 'cleasing ritual', that did exactly that actualy, was as painful as the tortures the succubus queen did in front of her court, if not more since the good parts were left and forcefully nurtured, which would result in the person being practically reborn instead of dying off. The torment stoped there though. Further in, the new soldier would not even remenber anything from before the memory capacity of it's souls was restored. She'd seen D1001. THAT! Was a man. Big, focused, muscular, caring, a bit of innosence in his eyes, AND HE WAS LEARNING TO COOK!!! The way he blushed when she saw his big, veinous and girthfull... *Smack*
"Master told me to do that. I'm not going to lie though, i would have hitten that peverted, drolling face one way or another." Said the skeleton who had just bitch slapped the sucubus with a brick in a glove. While that may sound like straight harassement, please do remenber, her face is as hard as iron, so that did little damage, and as a sucubus, it is biologically nescessary to get her back from her sexual impulses or she will start to affect other with her magic by instinct. Besides, she was doing a very disgusting face while muttering. "The rest of the code consists of a letter and three number. The numbers go as high as 999, the count resets after that, and a letter is added or passed. More decimals are planed to be added when the number of D3 are too high."
*****
Aki's evolution:
[Primal core of comcepts: An individual. Only obtainable for those that reach the system requirements before all others. As the first to have reached enlightenment in many a concept, including duality, the system is more than happy to help you evolve in a way to further the development of all such you represent in reality.
Note: The system has deemed it reckless to allow for most entities known to it know about the host evolution choice.]