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“How are they doing?” I asked.
“You’re finally back? What took you so long?” Diamond asked with a displeased look on her face.
She had returned to her body, but she was watching a screen locked on the adventurers which I had created prior. I called the ability projection. So, I could enter monsters and borrow their senses, use spectator mode to float around invisibly to all but my monsters, create a camera that could lock on to people or places to watch from a distance or see the whole dungeon in an isometric view. The projection had limitations. I could only view one camera at a time, and I was limited to this room, but I could share that image with anyone in my dungeon, where my other abilities were locked to me.
“I was… ahem… settling things with Sandy.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You fucked it, didn’t you?”
“That is- okay, fine, I fucked her, you got a problem with that?”
“Fucking pervert.”
“Oh, fuck off! Aren’t you the one who wanted me to rape her in the first place?”
“Rape her! A human! Not a fucking monster. Mimics have no intelligence. They’re as dumb as animals. You might as well have stuck your dick in a goat, you sick fuck.”
“Fuck you! Sandy listens to me, and she’s a good and obedient girl.”
“It is not a girl!” she shot back.
“After I named her-” I closed my mouth as soon as I said too much, but it was too late.
I was never good at keeping my mouth shut. If I could keep myself from oversharing, I wouldn’t have had half the trouble I did growing up.
“You named her? You named a Mimic?”
“It was an accident…”
“You are an idiot! Why am I being punished by having to work under you? I can’t believe you turned a mimic into a monster! How much did that cost?”
“It’s not that bad… it just cost… a-all…” I responded, feeling a bit embarrassed.
“What? Did you just say all of it? You’re out of points?”
“W-we’ll get more… I’m already up to almost 100. Besides, a named monster can be useful.”
“Naming a monster increases their strength, agility, and intelligence.” She shot back. “You name your most powerful and accomplished bosses. It’s a badge of honor. You don’t name a fucking mimic!”
“So, you’re saying I shouldn’t name you when I have the chance?”
“Of course-” She froze in mid-yell and then looked away. “I’m naturally an exception.”
“That’s what I thought…”
“It doesn’t matter, you already used the points. My plan was for you to get 20,000 points before we have to encounter Missy again, but with a named monster, not only is your upkeep greater, but we have to start from the beginning again.”
“Why, what happens at 20,000 points?”
“How the hell do I know?” She shot back. “However, maybe it will be something good, or maybe I have a plan involving multiple things whose total is 20,000, Idiot!’
“Okay.” I threw up my hands in defeat. “I get it. I won’t do anything else outside of your plans.”
“Hmph… it might be too late for that. We’ll see.” She looked back at the screen. “They’re still trying to figure out how to proceed, by the way.”
“Still? Half the day is over!” I looked at the screen to see the girls working on something.
They had dressed in warmer clothing and had even started a fire. They had initiated various tests, including seeing out meat and fabric reacted to the slime guts. I couldn’t help but glance over at Diamond. Misty and Diamond looked like reckless idiots compared to these girls. Ignoring their previous moment of panic when they ran down the path, they met every challenge thoughtfully.
“What are you looking at me for?” Diamond demanded.
“N-nothing!” I was smart enough not to voice any of my intrusive thoughts out loud, turning back to the video screen.
“This is using up the last of the Deewood.” One of the girls cried, we had enough for a week, but this project will use the last of it.”
“If we’re stuck here, we won’t last a week.” The other girls responded.
“If you can complain, you can help me build. “I’d swear this was a C-ranked dungeon. That first level seemed simple, but a rat king on a second level? This ice maze is even stranger.”
“I wish we brought a sled.” One of the girls complained. “I hear some A-rank teams even bring boats in.”
“That’s because some A-rank dungeons have entire levels submerged in water!” The leader responded. “And how did you plan to bring it in? Without a large storage ring, such things are impossible to carry. We’re lucky Sandy wasn’t carrying any of the wood!”
I had to admit that some of the things in this world were truly marvels. Deewood was the slang term for Dungeonco Ever-Expanding Wood. I had gotten a close look at the Deewood the night before. It was like one of those towels that expanded to full size when you added air or one of those little dinosaurs that grew a hundred times when they were wet. They managed to shrink wood down into pellets. As they heated up, they’d grew to the size of slow-burning smokeless logs. The girls had a few hundred of them and they barely took up a cubic foot of space.
Their plan was pretty simple. They heated the remaining logs using the fire, and once the fire logs were full size, they strapped them together with rope, creating a wood base. They planned to sit on it and push it along the icy corridor like an ice toboggan. We could only sit and wait as they worked to build it in shifts. It took another night, and once they ran out of the wood and the fire went out, they were shivering by the time the morning came and they went.
I mean, technically there was no day or night in the dungeon. Although the dungeon had built-in lighting, it didn’t change with the time outside. Either way, the adventurers had their smokeless torches. Which they lit up to try to maintain some warmth. While you could get through a dungeon without light, it wasn’t ideal. Dungeons could dim lighting or switch it to their advantage, hiding enemies and traps. Even though there was no reason to work on this world’s schedule, the girls seemed to stick to the proper time, which I learned was slightly longer than my world as a twenty-five-hour day.
The girls began their trek using the wooden sled they assembled and the sticks they had used before to check for traps to move them along. Sometimes, the sticks would slip and one of them would curse, but ever so slowly, they made their way down the corridor. Their movements were slow and methodical, but their progress was steady. When they reached the split that had caught Misty and Diamond off guard, they stopped and pulled out a device.
After a moment, the leader spoke up. “The mana flows this way. That’s a dead end.”
She accurately picked the correct direction, and they turned and continued on their way. They reached the other turn that Misty and Diamond had missed again. This one led to the treasure. Had they had the dungeonco treasure sensor, they might have gone down the path to get the treasure, but it had been left on Sandy. Without it, they merely determined it was another dead-end, and continued straight.
“I didn’t even notice that turn,” Diamond muttered unhappily.
“There is a treasure chest there.” I explained to her the trap and what was inside.’
“A warmth potion and a steel sword?” She made a face. “You’re so stingy!”
“I thought the warmth potion was a nice touch,” I responded.
After freezing along in this icy prison for so long, I reckoned they’d sacrifice anything to drink that potion. While they could always put the sword back, if they drank the potion before realizing the mechanism of the trap, it’d be that much harder for them to escape. It was the temptation that would trap them. At least, that’s what I thought.
“No, the warmth potion is nice, but a steel sword? Every heroine brings her weapon and any blacksmith can make that. Heroines aren’t risking their lives in dungeons so that they can find something they can buy for fifty silver. If someone saw that sword, they would spit on you in anger for wasting their time, especially given how difficult it was to reach. You’re lucky no one has found your treasure, or they’d spread rumors that you’re dungeon gives trash treasure.”
“What kind of treasure do people want?” I asked with interest.
“Magic stuff! I said the potion was alright.”
“Isn’t that just alchemy?”
“Are you an idiot? Do you know how expensive it is to raise an alchemist? Every ingredient requires a specific environment to grow. Gathering the ingredients is nearly as expensive as the potions they make, so the profit margin is almost nothing, never mind the cost of training a skilled alchemist. Few people are willing to dedicate years of their lives and hundreds of gold coins so they can make coppers of profit while risking gold-valued ingredients. On top of that, there are only a half-dozen publicly known recipes. The rest are closely guarded secrets for families or governments. You have to sell your soul to them to get potions outside of a dungeon.”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” I waved my hands. “More potions.”
“Not just potions.” She scoffed. “Any magic items are also sought after.”
“You mean like magic scrolls?” I frowned.
“Scrolls, sure… but swords, armor, pots… pretty much anything with a magic inscription on it would make good money.”
“Inscriptions? Are those hard to do?” I asked, seeing her eyes narrow. “I know… I know… idiot, I’m a fucking dungeon. I’m a few months old. You were shitting in a diaper when you were my age. Continue!”
She frowned slightly, but then she sniffed. “Inscribers aren’t necessarily rare, and the inscriptions themselves aren’t restricted either. Quite the opposite, inscriptions are handed out quite freely. As a result, every starting adventurer tries them out hoping to get rich, but all they do is end up breaking their stuff.”
“How so?” I asked curiously.
“The ingredients aren’t expensive, but the skill required is heavy. It requires a very fine hand and attention to detail.” She explained. “However, more importantly, it requires focus. Every inscription has to be done all at once, and you must do it while continuously providing mana. Even the best inscribers in the world can only inscribe for sixteen hours without food, water, or bathroom breaks and they must do so while continuously providing mana. If they fail, the item falls apart. After that, there is a grade system as to the quality of the enchanted item.”
“Let me guess, F through S.”
“Mm, so you’re aware.”
I thought of the book that I had found on Sandy earlier. I could summon objects and monsters in my dungeon as long as I brought them into my inventory. This was the limit to my summoning ability. I could assign monsters to a certain level, but I’d need to go to that level as a spectator and remove them from my inventory, or they’d have to walk there. Both Diamond and I could go through walls and weren’t bound by the dungeon’s design, but the goblin and Sandy were solid and subject to the laws of matter. Not only could they get caught in traps they weren’t aware of, but they also were stuck on the upper floors because they couldn’t walk past the heroine’s party without being seen.
Of course, my inventory could be an exception. I could pull anything I owned into my inventory, and then drop it wherever I currently was. If I wanted to act as a ferry, I could move monster units from level to level, although they still suffered from status reductions as a result of being on the wrong level.
As for objects, I could only place unowned items in my inventory. I couldn’t take the backpacks or supplies of any of the F-rank parties, for example. There was an exception. If one of my creatures stole the item, I could claim it, but even that had a time limit. For example, it took a full day before I gained ownership over Sandy’s stuff, even though she was already dead. I supposed this was another one of those rules, it gave adventurers twenty-four hours to reclaim lost gear before I could teleport it away and treat it as treasure. This didn’t stop monsters from possessing it and using it before then, just my ability to place it in my inventory.
I had thrown the goblin and the book in my inventory earlier, and I brought them both out. After possessing the goblin, I began looking through the book. Its explanations were rather simple. In the back of the book was a list of inscriptions from the first you should try to the hardest. The book suggested once you completed the hardest you were ready to move up to intermediate inscriptions. Beginning was F, D, and C. A and B were intermediate. Then S through SSS was advanced. The first inscription was simple. It increases the durability of an item, making it more resistant to dents, chips, and scratches.
“You wouldn’t, by chance, have these ingredients?” I showed her the page.
She was lying down on a bedroll she had pulled from her storage ring and was casually sleeping. She opened one eye when I spoke, then she rolled it.
“You’re an inscriber now?”
“I’d like to try it,” I admitted, wincing slightly.
She looked like she was going to call me some names, but then she hesitated. “You don’t need to eat or sleep, and your mana is many times stronger than that of a human. I’d say dungeons aren’t intelligent or disciplined enough to do such a hobby, but you might just be smart enough to not fuck this up.”
“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Whatever.” She huffed, waving her arms causing a few things to appear in her hands. “This is basic inscription ink, an inscribe pen, and a pan. Only high-level inscribers make their ink. You can try a basic inscription on the pan. If you show any talent, maybe I’ll even help you out a bit.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, taking the stuff she handed me and moving over to my corner.
She watched me huddle in the corner for a few minutes and then snorted, closing her eyes. A flicker of a smile appeared on my lips as I looked over the inscription one last time. I was confident I could do this. Although I never had a steady job, that didn’t mean I was without skill.
There was one thing I had spent a lot of time on besides video games, and that was tabletop gaming! I had spent countless hours assembling and painting figurines. I was good at it too! A few people even offered to pay me, which I used to buy more games. My parents always told me it was a waste of my time though, and so I never considered making a living doing it. Either way, I was confident in my ability. I had perfectly replicated countless complex emblems and sigils, and the idea of dedicating my attention to something for sixteen hours straight… well, wasn’t that a basic requirement for MMOs?
“I’m finished.” I declared an hour later.
“Mm?” She looked up. “Already? Bullshit. Most inscribers I see take at least two hours for even basic shit. Inscription even has its alphabet and you haven’t learned it yet.”
“How do you test and see if it works?” I asked, ignoring her cutting comments.
“Give me that!” She snatched the pan away from me, looking at the inscription and frowning.
“I detect mana in this!” She spoke in surprise, but then she narrowed her eyes.
She put the pot down and then pulled out a similar pot and put them both down on the ground. She pulled out her sword and stabbed the uninscribed pot. Her blade cut right through the bottom. She then did the same potion to the other pot. The blade was blocked. It left a small dent, but it was blocked. She let out a cry of surprise.
“A two-star? On your first try?”
“Stars now?”
“Did you not read that book?” She gestured at the one I had open in front of me to the first inscription sample. “The difficulty of an inscription is rated F-SSS, but the quality is rated five stars. A one-star inscription is the bare minimum. I was expecting a ½ star for your first attempt, which isn’t good enough to sell, but you reached two stars.”
“That’s sellable?”
“I’ll put it this way, you need one star to sell it as enchanted, but the most you’ll ever find in a store is three stars. That’s because no one would sell anything higher rank than that. It’d be kept as an heirloom.”
So, it’s good then?” I asked cautiously.
“If you can do more of these inscriptions, I think your treasure problem will be easily resolved.” She admitted.
I kept a bit of excitement at her words. I may not understand this world completely, but I played enough games to know that turning standard steel items into magic items would be a great way for me to make money. My goblin hand felt a bit cramped, but I could switch mobs when I needed to, or find a monster with better drawing stamina. Hobbies were always a good thing, especially when those hobbies could make you rich.
“Ah, it looks like the party has reached your fourth floor.” Diamond casually commented as I was growing excited.
The icy hand of death once again touched my neck. I had almost forgotten about those girls. I watched as they tore up their sled and then used the wood for fire. They were all shivering, their skin blue. It had taken all day and it was deep in the night now. They were cold and tired, but they were quickly warming up against the fire.
“How are we going to escape once we’re done if we destroyed the sled?” One of the girls asked.
“Hopefully, there will be something below that can help us on the way out.” The lead girl explained. “However, we all agree there was no choice. If we didn’t start a fire tonight, some of us might not wake up tomorrow.”
“At least it’s warmer on the fourth floor. Are we sure it’s safe?”
“The monster detectors see a few monsters, but they’re probably behind those doors.” The leader pointed at the door at the end. “We’ll camp here tonight. We should be safe enough with a guard. We should be done with this dungeon in just a few more days.”
“How should we mess with them tonight?” Diamond wondered out loud.
As I watched them make camp, my eyes couldn’t help but fall on the evil bone. They decided to sleep in the room with that. Diamond didn’t know it, but that bone had a mental attack, inducing horny desperation. Diamond and Misty had only been affected by it for fifteen minutes and they were breathing hard. These girls planned to spend all night with it a short distance away. Diamond might not need to do anything. I was very curious what the night would bring.
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