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Perhaps there were other options. I could have added more levels to my dungeon, but it appeared that after five floors, the cost of each additional level went up. There was a reason there was an apparent cut-off at five floors between a D-rank and an F-rank dungeon. The sixth floor and on would cost 10,000 points each. It was a fold more expensive. I imagined after ten floors, there would be a similar jump. That meant that prices weren’t standard, and things could get pricier the more of them you got.
There was no point in replacing the goblins right now. It would cost me two thousand points, and if Misty came back, then she would cut through them just as easily the second time. I had a feeling that despite her clumsiness, she never fell for the same trick twice. It was only because of her extreme inexperience that she succumbed to my dungeon the first three times.
That meant that the only way to fight her was to change my dungeon. Dungeons weren’t quite as easy to change as they were in the games. Like a real building, once you build something, it couldn’t be unbuilt easily. I couldn’t just, for example, swap out my puzzle rooms, or add one on the 1st floor in between the hallways I already built. I could add mobs to a floor, and I could add treasure chests, but I couldn’t add or remove pitfalls. I couldn’t rearrange hallways either.
The best I could do was add a few surface-level traps, but the ones powerful enough to stop Misty would more than likely also kill her. I didn’t spend so many points keeping her alive just so she could die to some other trap.
As for remaking a floor, I could add intersections and have a path offshoot from the main path, but it ultimately still needed to connect with the stairway leading down to the second floor, which was also set and couldn’t be moved. If I did send a hallway out and then connect it again, I could demolish the original hallway once I had a new path. However, the dungeon charged a “removal fee” which cost twice the amount it originally cost to put the hallway there.
Ultimately, after considering all of my options, it seemed like the best way to prepare was to strengthen the boss room. I had to create a boss that Misty could not defeat. Once my boss defeated her, I could take control of it and prevent it from giving her a killing blow. That was the only option I could think of where I could be assured she wouldn’t accidently die. Why was I going to such an extent to keep her alive? Even I didn’t know the answer to that question. I just knew that I couldn’t let the woman who took so many of my firsts die. I didn’t have many scruples as a man, but this turned out to be one of them.
“Yeah, but before worrying about stopping her… what about this?”
I looked down to see the headless corpse of the girl named Diamond. Her body was cold now, her head still stuck in an expression of horror. She had been stripped of all of her armor and was naked. I wasn’t aroused though. Her small titless body wasn’t to my taste, and there was also the fact that she was dead. I wasn’t some crazy necrophiliac!
The real problem was that I didn’t have a helping hand. I had no one to get rid of her for me. I had already suffered from a lack of help just bringing her down to my lair behind the boss room using the rat.
At the moment, the only things in my dungeon I could possess were the wall of hands, the gelatinous cube, the evil bone, and the rat king. I supposed I could toss her in the gelatinous tube and let her dissolve her, or have the rat king eat her, but both things made me feel a bit nauseous.
I decided that I needed to summon an assistant. I didn’t want it to be a goblin though. Not only were goblins dumb with poor teeth that made it difficult to speak properly, but they were also short and weak. I wanted someone that could do a lot of tasks. I wanted it to be able to move around the dungeon easily, fight if necessary, cast spells, and do manual labor. I also wanted it to be dirt cheap. I still had to worry about stopping Misty, after all.
“Ghost.” My eyes landed on one of the cheaper options.
Ghost was only five hundred dungeon points. That was pretty cheap! It was strange because I swore that the ghost was five thousand dungeon points when I looked before, but I checked several times and it said five hundred points. I was just about to buy it, but then I hesitated. Could a ghost even touch things? Could it cast spells? Could it fight? Eh, screw it. For five hundred points, I could try it out.
Unfortunately, every creature was a gamble. The one thing the dungeon store did not have were pictures or descriptions. All I had was a name and a price and the rest was left for me to experiment. Even the price didn’t appear to be written in stone. In this case, since the dungeon store was giving me a ninety percent discount, I’d indulge them a bit.
“Rise… Ghost! Do my bidding!”
I didn’t need to do that. I had already bought the thing and it would just appear in my room until I assigned it orders.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” A voice came from right next to me, causing me to jump slightly.
I looked over to my side, and there was a familiar girl. It was the orange-haired Diamond. However, this orange headed girl was partially transparent and floating. Meanwhile, the real Diamond was a headless corpse lying on the ground.
“Ummm…”
She turned and jumped. “Who the fuck are you? Where the fuck am I? Is this the dungeon? That’s right, that fucking bitch killed me!”
“You’re alive?” I asked and then shook my head. “No, your body is already cold… wait, you’re my ghost?”
“I’m not anyone’s shit!” She snarled, making an obscene gesture at me. “I’m getting out here!”
She turned and fled toward the door, but as soon as she reached it, a barrier of light appeared, pushing her back.
“That’s why it was on discount,” I spoke in realization.
The dungeon store seemed to base prices on availability. If I were to summon a ghost from the nether, it really would cost five thousand points. However, since I had a recently deceased human, her lingering spirit was easier to claim. I had been looking to dispose of her body cleanly, but this was completely unexpected.
“Diamond, you’re dead and a ghost, and you now serve me, the dungeon you died in.”
“How do you know my name? No, Fuck that, why are you talking. Wait? Serve you? Fuck you! I ain’t serving no lame F-ranked dungeon.” She declared in a barrage of words. “Why did you make such a perverted dungeon anyway? Are you a creep? All I see is a talking orb floating next to me… I know, I’ll destroy you!”
She suddenly turned and attacked me. I let out a cry, wincing in my mind as she struck me. However, just like with the room, she rebounded back. When I saw she couldn’t hurt me, I coughed and firmed up my voice to hide my previous fear.
“You are my servant now. You must obey me. If you don’t… I’ll just take control of you.”
“Go fuck yourself.” She stubbornly cried out.
“That’s it!” I entered spectator mode and tried to enter her body.
However, instead of merging with the ghost monster, I felt like I slammed into a wall.
“Ow! What the hell? Why did you shoot a light out at me?” She demanded.
I tried to enter her again but collided with the wall again. “I can’t enter your body…”
“Fuck! If I’m a ghost, it means I have no physical body.” She declared, glaring at me disdainfully. “I can only be affected my magic and soul items. Otherwise, I can’t interact with the world.”
“Seriously? You can’t touch anything? How about spell scrolls?” Wasn’t she just as useless as my spectator mode?
“I can cast them, but only if someone else opens them for me.”
“Fuck!”
“Are you a dungeon core?” she asked, to which I nodded. “You know I can’t see you nodding, right?”
“I… wasn’t nodding… I am a dungeon core though. Cough.”
“What fucking gives? Dungeon cores like you should move on instinct. You shouldn’t be able to talk until you’re C-rank at least, and even they have the intelligence of a toddler.”
“That’s on a need-to-know basis, and you don’t need to know.” I shot back. “What you do need to know is that you’re now my servant.”
“I’m dead, I can’t do shit without my body. Give me my body back and maybe we can work something out.”
“Your body? It’s dead.” I looked at the corpse on the floor.
“No shit, idiot. I mean, bring my body back with Reanimate Corpse. Souls can inhabit magical objects that lack a soul, so if you animate my corpse, I can directly control it. We both get what we want.”
“Reanimate Corpse costs 5,000 points. It’s expensive! Couldn’t you inhabit some cheaper mob? I’ll just make a goblin.”
My original issue with a goblin assistant is that I would need to control it myself. I didn’t care as much if it was Diamond having to deal with a short, ugly creature with a small dick.
“Huh? Points? Wait, you’re just being a cheapskate! You better bring my body back. I’m not going to walk around in some goblin body.”
“And you’ll serve me loyally if I get you your body?”
“Yeah, sure, whatever.” She responded, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Fine, you’re lucky your brain wasn’t crushed or even Reanimate Corpse wouldn’t save you.” I purchased the scroll, even though it felt painful. “Here!”
“…”
“Uhhh…” I handed her the scroll, but it went through her hand and bounced on the floor.
“I said I can’t touch physical objects!”
“Right.” I coughed. “In that case… to level four.”
My little rat king dragged her corpse back up to the fourth floor. Daimond no longer had trouble leaving the room behind the boss room where my core was hidden. She watched the rat king dragging her corpse up a flight of stairs. It was a lot more difficult than when he brought it down. When it finished with her body, it came back with her decapitated head held by the hair. Diamond’s expression turned to disgust.
“Be careful! My brain is in there!” she shouted when the rat king dropped her head on the ground with a thud.
The rat king let out a squeak and then ran back out of sight. He was a cowardly boss. I used the wall of hands to open up the scroll for her, and finally, she read the incantation from the scroll. It exploded with a flash and then turned to ash. A few moments later, the head flew back onto the body, and then the body slowly stood back up. She had a dead-eyed look, a little bit of drool running out of her mouth.
“About time!” Diamond declared, flying right into her body.
Its movements suddenly perked up, and it touched its body, letting out a sigh.
“Feels normal again. Thankfully, you didn’t wait too long or decomposition would have set in. Like this, I still feel like I’m alive. Wait! Why am I naked! You pervert!”
I sighed. “I wasn’t planning on you being still alive. You still have your storage ring on your finger.”
“Hmph… that’s the only reason I don’t kill you.” She made a set of clothing appear and started dressing. “Are you going to keep watching, perve?”
I spun around, only to realize I was a ball and I could see her no matter what. How did she even know I was looking? I just wanted to know if the carpets matched the drapes like they did with Misty. It turned out they did. I also noticed their hair matched their eye color too. Was that also a feature of this world?
She finished dressing. She looked a little paler than before, but I would have had no clue she was dead if I hadn’t seen her headless corpse myself.
“I’m surprised you can speak after losing your head,” I commented.
“Undead can heal quickly. As soon as my head returned, it reattached automatically.” She lifted her neck, showing a scar along her neck before wrapping a choker around it to hide the mark. “I’ve battled a few undead, never one with a soul controlling it, but the undead are quite difficult to deal with if you don’t have a cleric with you. Done.”
She seemed to be satisfied with her appearance after looking in a mirror she summoned from her ring.
“Alright, fine, I fulfilled my part of the bargain. Now, you’re my servant.”
“Fuck that… I’m leaving.” She put her mirror away and then turned and started walking toward the door.
I watched as she walked off with my mouth open. Weren’t servants supposed to be loyal? Thankfully, I didn’t need to do anything. When she reached the exit, just like before, her body was repelled by a barrier of light. She let out an annoyed growl.
“You work for me. If you serve me well, I will free you eventually.”
She paused from her next attempt to exit. “You’ll let me leave?”
“I don’t even want you here now.” I declared. “I only resurrected you because I wanted some help.”
She crossed her arms in front of her nonexistent chest once again. “What information?”
“Let’s start at the beginning. Where are we?”
I proceeded to ask her an assortment of questions which she answered to the best of her ability. It turned out we lived in a world called Fallen Shadow, and the country we were located in was Argent. We lived about a day’s walk from a city called Brail where a C-rank dungeon existed. Dungeons came in difficulties from F-S, matching the ranks in the adventure’s guild.
An unknown amount of time ago, a portal opened to a place called the Ember realm. This was a realm of devils and demons. The demon king began an invasion against Fallen Shadow. To survive, the countries sent man after man to war. Although she didn’t know much about the start of the war, she knew that countless men died pushing the demons back through the portal. As the men fought, women assumed increasingly more positions of power.
Eventually, the war brought countless profits back through the gate as the ember realm had many rare resources, but perhaps the biggest was a substance called ember. When used on humans, it extended their age, youth, and beauty. The greedy ruling class of women passed laws demanding men of all ages join the army to fight demons and devils to extract more ember. The demon king naturally fought back, destroying these mines.
It got to the point where every child over ten and man under ninety was gathered into one last stand. The final coalition was sent to the Ember realm with the task of killing the demon king, ending the battle once and for all. The army went in, but they were never heard from again. That battle was five years ago.
The opening of the portal also seemed to change Fallen shadow, leading to the appearance of dungeons. As dungeons spread, it became up to women to create the adventurer’s guild to keep them under control. Women who entered these dungeons became known as heroines, a name selected to encourage them to risk their lives. Over time, more and more women became heroines, and dungeon exploration became a major business.
Eventually, a powerful S-class heroine party entered the ember realm and then returned with the demon king’s head. Although they had fought countless battles, they never found the men. The war ended, and it was then realized that there were almost no men left alive, even among the old and young. Afterward, all the ember mines dried up, and ember has slowly become harder and harder to get.
Only two years ago, strenuous breeding programs were introduced. All the living men were gathered up and put under lock and key. All of the governments declared that only S-class heroines were permitted to breed with the males so that only the strongest genes were passed on to the next generation.
This was a controversial decision, not the least of which because every country only had a couple of S-class heroines. The vast majority of the women were left to a male-less society. They had to fight for themselves and their survival. Women could be pretty brutal to each other, and living in the current era as a woman wasn’t easy. At least, that was the story as explained by Diamond. Many women became heroines, since it paid quite a bit and allowed them to become strong enough to protect themselves from other women.
“Thanks, that clears up a lot, thank you,” I said when she finished.
“Alright, can I go then?”
“What? I still need your help!”
“About what? I answered your questions.” She complained.
“About Misty,” I responded, causing her expression to darken. “I want to know how to deal with her.”
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