Day 6: Evening.
So, their heated discussion about Rocky gaining a body and going on a world tour ended when their train of thoughts stopped at a junction named problems.
The first problem they faced was that they didn’t have any Mana stone to test out his theory about presence shifting and form synthesizing like a ghost.
Second, even if he could somehow get such a body, even then he wouldn’t have got to travel outside, because humans would have hunted him down, calling him a monster and so.
Third, if he left the dungeon, then who would control it? The first name that came to his mind was Minie’s, but how could he leave her behind and go sightseeing alone. Obliviously, she would go with him.
So, they stopped their bickering and dug a hole to bury this discussion, for the future.
After their discussion stopped, they looked at each other and laughed, then shook their heads and carried on with their other duties.
“So, Minie, what now?”
“Let’s go shopping.”
“Sigh… you and your shopping.”
They weren’t talking about buying weapons and armors, but monsters. Though their dungeon was growing slowly and steadily, but they had a large deficit of monsters. They had a total of six monsters in their entire dungeon. Other than a buff ant worker, a queen and their newly bought worker ants their arsenal was empty, so they decided to invest in the option that would provide them with the options to strengthen their defenses a little more.
So they bought eggs and because a single egg only took 50Dc and reserved only 10 of Rocky’s mana, they were able to buy 30 of them. Moreover, the three eggs given by the queen also gave birth to three beautiful but cringe worthy larvae’s. Though they all were normal and didn’t get any mutation, but They both were still happy.
“Minie can’t we forcibly, mutate the eggs. You also know that system bought monsters can't evolve on their own, so if we somehow created an atmosphere like before, then won't we get even more rare and unique ants to ourselves?”
Rocky’s suggestion was good and she felt happy hearing that he was really doing his all and coming up with groundbreaking ideas, but this time they reached their limit.
“I would also like to do that, but we can’t do that. Not with your leftover mana and also not with our spells, they are powerful enough.”
“Sigh… only if we could create such a room with chaotic environment, then what could be better than that.”
“Yeah.”
Like this from there amassed 2000Dc they ended up spending 925 on it. Though it looks like they were being considerate of their credits, but no, they wanted to spend it all, but buying so many eggs of them reserved 580/666 of Rocky’s mana and he was left with just enough of it to move around and flow about in his dungeon.
The best thing about buying eggs was that it didn’t even take one fifth of the amount needed by a worker or any other monster to buy, but the disadvantage was that they would have to wait 16 hours for proper monsters to take birth.
All of the eggs popped out from nowhere midst a show of blinding lights and they circled around the queen like they were given birth by her and she also looked quite happy seeing so many of them around her at the same time.
Well, after all of that, they moved on to the second floor to take care of its structure and create their thoughts in reality.
“Okay, so Buffy you go and create three straight tunnels, but don’t go any deeper than 100 meters, we only have so much space to work around in after all, and you four workers, you all go and create a winding tunnel which would circle around the whole floor and arrive back at the entrance.”
He gave simple instructions, which the ants directly followed and got to work. Minie couldn’t understand what he really wanted to do, so she asked him about it.
“What kind of a master design do you have in mind this time?”
He gave a light laugh to her compliment in disguise and explained.
“This floor will be dependent on using illusions. We are going to create five tunnels at the start of the floor, which the adventurers would have to choose from, but there will only be one right tunnel from them and the others are going to be riddled with traps and monsters. The right tunnel won’t have any trap installed in it, but the room which it will connect to will have a mass of ants waiting for the intruders. Then there will be one straight tunnel which will only be wide enough for only a single person to go through and then he will face our Buff worker inside.”
She tilted her head in confusion on the words ‘Mass of ants’ and asked him,
“How many ant's are you exactly going to use?”
“Maybe ten or fifteen, we’ll see.”
“Huh, then what about the leftover ants? Did you just buy them for safekeeping?”
“Sigh… you are forgetting about the first floor. We need monsters there too.”
She winked and pulled out her tongue to show that she forgot about that and Rocky smiled to show that he understands.
“Well, I understand that the first floor is designed to make the humans fear darkness, but what about this floor? Are you creating it with something I mind?”
“This floor…” he giggled thinking about it as he said, “Is just a big time waste. I am going to do everything in my hand to make sure that everyone who enters this floor will have to waste at least half a day to reach the queen’s room. And we are going to achieve this by placing pits and spike traps everywhere. We’ll riddle the floor bare and full of holes to make them attentive and cautious enough to take every step with fear, fear of falling down the endless abyss of holes in the ground. Ah! This is going to be so good~!”
Minie felt happy, seeing him acting so out of character, as she giggled thinking about the future where they would watch poor humans attentively taking steps to cover the distance, while looking here and there for traps and deep holes in the ground and just as they would lose their vigilance ~BAMM~ an ant would attack them out of blue, but then she remembered.
“Huh, then what part does your illusions play? You were so excited about them, are you not going to use them?”
“The illusion part comes after they tunnels get finished.”
Hearing his confident voice she decided to ask him his plan and he answered with,
“Simple you see these five tunnels, because I only have the ability to distort vision and create visionary illusion so I have decided to make it so that these five tunnels look like there are 25 of them. I do want to do a lot more than that, but I don’t think I have the capacity or the ability to make it any more puzzling.”
“What?” was the only word she could utter when she heard him say that, but Rocky continued explaining the details.
“So after dropping down from the first floor, the humans will be directly presented the option to choose to enter one tunnel from the 25 of them. This should be enough to make them waste an hour or two of their time, but skilled adventurers won’t get caught in it, that is why I ordered to create five tunnels.”
“So, what now?”
“Nothing, we are going to wait for the adventurers to come. With the number of ants we’ll have in the next 24 hours there is no way they would be able to reach the second floor without losing some people and even if they did Buffy is still here isn’t he!”
“Yeah.”
“They will give their lives to help me level up and increase my mana.”
“Then tunnels and dead ends are fine, but aren’t, we lacking in something, something important?”
Rocky nodded his head in affirmation.
“To improve our dungeon we are going to lay traps, but I don’t know anything about them. Can I leave them to you?”
Her confident smile and demeanor was enough to make rocky believe her. He didn’t even dare to think about how the traps would come to be, after all she was taking care of them. He just hoped that they would end up killing everyone.
“Osu.”
“Then, install traps in all of the alternate tunnels only leave the correct tunnel alive. Riddle all the rest of the tunnels with traps, but don’t go overboard. Make sure that the traps are strong and invincible, but not great enough to stop everyone. I don’t wasn’t to be called the bane of adventurers, but also not become too easy for any and everyone to reach the queen.”
“Now that it is over on my part, shall we test how the illusions will look like? Though I can’t leave it be for the time being, as it uses a lot of mana, but we can take them for a try. What do you say?”
“Heehe… Let's do it. I also want to see how they are going to look like!”
She pumped her hand high up in the air and gave a low shout.
Rocky shook his head to her childish behavior and opened his skill illusion craft to see the restrictions and area, it could cover and found that the conditions were just right for him to give it try.
The width and height of the newly created tunnel were just right to use the skill.
Fusion Skill : Illusion Craft (Lesser)Fusion : Illusion + CreationLevel : 0Rank : DCan create Arrays, which block and molds Visionary data. Possible to Implement and project illusion over a very large area.Restrictions:
Can only mold one type of sense.Illusion area: 5x5x5 metre^3Mana rate: 60Mp/hour.No of illusions: 5Sense: Vision
He used the skill and four balls of light started floating in front of him. New information about using the skill entered his mind and he acted upon it.
“So I have to place these balls in the four corners and then give them the instructions as to what kind of an illusion I want to show. Huh, it sounds… intriguing.”
Then he fiddled with them to distort the room and to make it look like there were twenty five tunnels and then he placed the balls at four corners of the room.
He placed the balls and the room started distorting and changing and started growing. It continued to grow until it became large enough to cover150 meters of area from left to right. And 25 open dark mouths entered their vision. Like he wanted the five tunnels warped and changed into 25 of their counterparts and the best thing about it was that everything looked natural.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Of course he could see right through the illusion because of his mana perception and he also came to know a bitter truth about the illusions. They weren’t that great, no his idea wasn’t great at all.
“Minie, what do you see?”
Holding her hands and with shining eyes she answered him.
“It’s true. The room really changed and grew bigger than ever and like you said 25 tunnels really have been formed out of now where. This illusion is amazing.”
“Sigh…”
“What happened?”
“Nothing, just fly toward the last of them tunnels. You will find out.”
And like he said she flew towards the end of the room abut unlike she expected, her head banged with the wall and she fell down.
She had gone with high anticipation, but came back with a bump on her head, as she started shouting with tears in her eyes.
“You knew this was going to happen then why didn’t you tell me before? If you had, then I wouldn’t have crashed into the wall like that!”
“Sigh… You see, this is the limitation of having the ability to distort only one type of sense and create illusions with it. I knew Just as the illusion started that it won’t work and it really didn’t.”
“Ah! Yeah, this really won’t work. At most, humans would feel intimidated at first but after finding out the truth, they will not even look at the other tunnels and travel straight through the real one.”
“This won’t work. We need to do something, something great that would make everyone crawl in fear and run for their lives.”
Then they both started racking their brains to find a plausible solution. Some time passed by when Minie opened her mouth and slapped her head in contempt after all, as if the answer was in front of them from the start.
“The hell, are we trying to spend our brains when the answer was already provided by someone else.”
“What? What did you get? Tell me~ tell me~”
He was excited, she was excited, they were both excited, and she could hold herself anymore and started explaining.
“All we really need to do is use the method used by the assassin to deceive everyone. We could dig deep pits and hide them with illusions or make our ants invisible with illusions like the assassin. If we can really create and produce any and all types and forms of visions, then, why not make one of our ants a dragon and other a phoenix. The ideas and opportunities are endless. If we do this then killing and scaring the shit out of those humans will become as easy as breathing. What do you say, isn’t this the greatest way to use illusions?”
Rocky heard her suggestion and his mind exploded. Countless new ideas started filling his mind and a cry of joy came hurling out of his mind.
“Minie, Minie, Minie, if I could, then I would have kissed you right now. Though we can’t actually have a dragon in our dungeon, but so what! Ha-ha, you are a genius Minie, a genius!”
But he didn’t stop there and added.
“Though we can’t kill too many humans intentionally, but what if someone from a party disappeared right in front of his friends? What will be more shocking than that! Such a story will then become a great mystery in itself and will increase our popularity even more~!”
Minie snorted when she heard him say popularity, and rebuked him saying,
“Notoriety, not popularity. Such incidents will increase our notoriety, but the humans will love it, after all they are challenging our dungeon for excitement and that is what our illusions will provide them.”
She laughed with her mouth open wide as her bright white teeth made Rocky mentally gulp down his saliva.
“Hah, I can already see humans bragging about killing dragons in our dungeon, a dragon which dropped a mandible that is… heehe.”
*Puff*
“Haaha,… a dragon dropping antenna's, now that is going to be fucking hilarious to see.”
They both shared their ideas and laughed till they couldn’t breathe anymore. Minie laughed so hard that she choked, but she still couldn’t stop her laughter. They laughed together for a whole hour before they stopped.
“Yes, let’s do that, but not now. I need to increase my level by 20 of something first. Otherwise, I won’t be able to handle the load from high mana consumption and go back to my slumber and I don’t want that to happen. Who knows what kind of a dream I will see this time!”
Then he was moved to remove the illusion spell, but suddenly the sound of gods notice rang in the dungeon and even Minie heard it.
*Ding*
Hidden Quest complete.
Rewards granted.
Please check the Quest panel on the interface to see further information.
They both looked at each other to see whether the other knew about what has just happened, but their blank minds were enough to tell that they didn’t.
“Mine, what is a hidden quest?”
Rocky asked her in a very soft voice as if he scared of someone hearing him and spilling some great secret to their enemies. One must have thought that Minie must have called him an idiot, but no, she also replied in the same manner.
“That I don’t know. This is the first time I am hearing about something like this.”
*Ahem*
“Then what should we do?”
“I don’t know? Let’s check the dungeon interface and see what the hell this hidden quest thingy really is!”
Her crisp, but soft voice sounded in his mind as he nodded his head; mentally.
“Yes, let’s do that.”
Then Rocky hurriedly opened the dungeon interface to see if there was anything indicating about the quest and what not and they saw the option to a Quest panel right beside the other options.
Dungeon InterfaceStatusFloors/ Monsters/ Store/ Creation/QuestsNameThe cave of MiseryTypeInsectFloors2Total no of Monsters6(36)Rooms/floor7/2Total no of invaders0---Reserved Mana: (540/666)Dungeon(Floors/Rooms)200+50+40Monsters250Resources0upgrades0---Dungeon Currency1075ReputationGood (+145)DC Inc.95/dayMana Reg.20/hr
‘What the’ he thought as he saw a whole panel dedicated to the quests.
“There Minie, there. There is a whole panel dedicated to the quests and we didn’t even know about it.”
“Huh, what can I say! These past days have been so heretic that I didn't even have the chance to carefully look at the interface. How would I have known about this?”
This time He snorted to her child like reply which was clearly blaming him.
‘Huh, if you didn’t have the time to even check that then everyone else must be working to their deaths.’ But he didn’t say that and locked his thoughts away in some corner of his heart.
“Yeah, these days surely has been quite heretic.” Though he wanted to be sarcastic there, but they really had gone through a lot in these days. Therefore the words which came out were a lot more serious than he intended.
“Okay~ then Rocky~ let’s see what kind of a thing these hidden quests really are?”
“Sure, let’s do it~!”
And they opened the quest panel. There wasn’t much info on it, but they felt that each and every word written there was priceless. It not only amazed them, but it also opened a new door for rocky to get stronger.
Hidden Quests1.Kill a living intelligent life form in the first ten minutes of being born.
Reward- Achievement (Born Killer)2.Indirectly kill a human on their first official invasion.
Reward - 500Dc3.Use an evolved master trap without buying it from the system.
Reward - Restriction on traps lifted, Illusion Traps unlock
Their bulging eyes and opened jaws were enough to show their excitement. Because the number of quests they had unknowingly completed wasn’t one or two, but three. And each of them was even more absurd and weirder than the preceding one.
Rocky cried out when he saw that his greatest achievement was also the result of completing a quest.
“What the hell is this Minie? What the actual fucking hell?!”
“I- I don’t know. I have never heard anything about quests before. Forget me, I think even my mist… they probably haven’t heard anything about quests before or maybe she didn’t tell us about them. Yeah, if it’s her then it is very possible for her to keep such important information to herself.”
Rocky didn’t catch her voice getting low and her quivering lips because all of his attention was fixed on the reward from his newest completed quest.
Just as he saw the reward given by it, he started shouting loudly in Minie’s mind.
“Minie, it’s a miracle. It’s a miracle. We can finally buy traps. We can finally buy some traps!”
Hearing him suddenly get so excited and shouting loudly in her mind, her trance broke as she looked towards him and questioned him with a straight face, but confused voice.
“What happened?”
“See there the last option. This time we really hit the jackpot. Ah! God is so benevolent.”
She wasn’t in the mood to cry and jump with joy like him, as she clicked her tongue in annoyance and looked at the reward, but then even she started jumping around and crying in joy.
“We struck it rich, we struck it rich.”
But before they could see what kind of a treasure they had really gotten their hands on, a red information box came and blocked their sight.
WARNING
INTRUDERS ALERT!!
Rocky’s eyes bulged out as he cried.
“Again?!”