My good mood instantly soured as the party of delvers began laughing. Apparently, they found my welcome and instructions of this floor to be amusing. I briefly wondered what they could have possibly found so funny, but they answered that for me once they got their laughter under control.
“Is this fucking place serious?” The bear beast blooded woman said in-between laughing fits. “These monsters are all a joke. Scrawny and pathetic goblins, gnolls full of mange and stringy muscle, kobolds covered in paper thin scales and lizard folk that have nothing special about them at all.” She began walking over to the entrance to the goblin wing and strode on in without a care in the world, great axe still hung over her shoulder. “This will be-” she interrupted herself with a blood flaked cough as a goblin stabbed her back and kidneys with a pair of daggers. That was followed by a goblin swinging a mace at her front knee.
The rest of her party had clocked onto the fact that their ally was genuinely hurt and rushed to assist her. The gnome drew and threw a dagger from his chest in less than a second, the blade flying between his teammate's legs and striking the goblin in the stomach. This caused her to double over in pain before being cleaved in two by an enraged bear woman.
The rest of the party made it into the room just in time for an arrow to impact their front lines shield. A retaliatory arrow from the elf ended that target, as four more goblins rushed from the grasses halfway through the room. The two humans met them with a clash of steel, the man locking blades with one as the woman parried two, as the bear woman split the fourth goblin from shoulder to crotch.
The fight didn’t look much longer after that. The gnome quietly executed the two goblins in the bushes that were trying to be stealthy. The humans quickly slashed open the three standing in front of them while the dwarf focused her magic through the staff to heal the barbarian bear woman.
“What the fuck was that?!” The bear woman shouted through gritted teeth as her organs and muscle stitched themselves back together. “This monolith said goblins so why the fuck are we fighting high goblins?”
“We didn’t.” The gnome said as he dragged one of the corpses from the brush. “I examined one of them before I slit its throat. A level one goblin.” He punctuated his statement by cutting the goblin's torso open and ripping out its core. “See? An F-Ranked core.” He held up the bloody orb to the incredulous expressions of the rest of his party.
“Hmm...” The elf began to examine the corpse in more detail, checking the eyes, mouth, limbs and nail like claws as much as he could without butchering it. “I may not be old enough to remember the old goblins, but these have been cured of their varies maladies the last hundred years or so have wrought on them.”
That comment drew the party up short. They all looked with various levels of incredulity at the elf, with the dwarf's being the most perturbed. “Are you trying to tell your druid about the natural order?” Her voice held a fair amount of heat. “What this place has done to these goblins is-”
“Restoring them to the way they once were. The goblins in the rest of the world have been on the decline to the point of being nearly extinct, which led them to breed amongst any available partners. Many of which were of the same blood. After having no choice but to breed as fast as possible with whoever they could for at least a century, how would any race’s natural state change?” The elf calmly interrupted while standing up from his examination.
“I don’t fucking care what these things are. Let’s go and kill the rest of them!” The bear woman growled out as her wounds finished healing. Just as she was about to storm off her rhino counterpart intercepted her.
“Check your blood lust Grelzur.” He loomed over her and stared directly into her bloodshot and manic eyes. “We are here to survey this place, as deemed by the allied tribes and kingdoms.” He leaned right into her face. “Do you wish to endanger our mission because you could not keep your instincts in check?” He practically growled the question, an interesting sound considering he was part rhino.
Her eyes cleared and widened at his words, forcing her to look away in shame. The rhino beast blooded then looked to the rest of the party. “Alice, Arthur and Shade-Strider go collect the cores from the remaining nine bodies. Check the weapons they had, I want to know what they’re made of and what rank they are. These weren’t sharpened stones on sticks we would expect to find goblins using.” The two humans and gnome bobbed their heads in acknowledgment and began harvesting the cores from the goblins’ chests before moving on to the weapons.
My attention drifted away from them as I looked over the rest of the dungeon. The comment about the goblins all being level one made me realise that while I had fully populated and armed my mobs, I hadn’t bothered to check what level they were. After a quick inspection, I found that all of my mobs were level one. While the increased numbers would present a bit more of a challenge throughout the dungeon, it wouldn’t be enough. I quickly infused the second room mobs with enough mana to increase them to level two, the third room mobs to level three with the elite at level five, level five for the fourth room mobs with level seven elites, and level eight elites and level ten for the mini boss in the final room.
This only took me five minutes, which was just enough time for the party to have collected the ten F-Ranked cores, and the iron weapons piled up before them. Each of the six had a different expression; the two humans had a slight grin, the dwarfs’ eyes held a look of concern, the gnome was mostly unreadable but seemed like he didn’t overly care, the bear woman just looked pissed, the elf looked amused at the situation and the rhino man had a speculative look to his eyes.
“The weapons themselves aren’t that impressive,” the rhino man began, “Simple iron F-Ranked common weapons. Better than the sharpened stones and sticks we would find regular goblins using, they won’t pose a threat to us.”
“Fuck you Duran!” The bear woman shouted in his face, “I got stabbed right-
“You went into unknown territory, alone, with an attitude of invincibility.” The gnome, Shade-Strider I assumed, said in a quiet and emotionless voice. “That was entirely your own fault.”
“There is a reason we let the tank and rogue go first you know?” The human man, Arthur, spoke through a chuckle and a grin. Grelzur turned to them and looked like she was about to attack when Duran stepped in front of her.
“Leave. Now.” His voice was deep, commanding and showed that he was not going to take her attitude anymore. “You have underestimated this place to your own detriment, failed to take the words of your fellow warriors to heart and were ready to strike them down in a fit of rage!” His voice slowly increased in volume and anger as he held her eyes. “I will not allow you to endanger our lives or our mission any more than you already have done.”
‘Uh Orthrok, can you go and make sure she actually leaves and doesn’t decide to just kill everyone in the room with her? She looks ready to blow a fuse over there.’ He gave me a quick nod and quickly made his way from my core room to the first room of the goblin wing. By the time he had arrived, things had gone as I had feared. Grelzur had drawn her great axe and taken a swing at Duran, forcing him back and letting her get a few nasty looking strikes on the humans before the other two could react.
Orthrok came up from behind the party and rammed his shield into the back of her legs, causing her to stumble and lose the grip on her weapon. He planted his boot on her back with his own axe blade held at her throat. “Your lead warrior told you to leave.” His words, spoken clearly and with an air of authority that it stopped the weapons that were being pointed towards him. “You dishonour yourself and the warriors around you with such acts. The Chieftan has decreed that you will leave the dungeon with your life.” He lowered himself down to her eye level, and something Grelzur saw there stopped her cold in her thrashing. “Do not make me have to remove you in a much more permanent manner.”
Orthrok removed both his boot and axe, took a few steps away, and took a defensive stance to show that he was ready to react if needed. The party was wary, alternating their stances between him and Grelzur, ensuring they could react if either of them attacked again.
The bear woman slowly got back to her feet, eyes wide and teeth grinding. She reached for her axe as she scanned the eyes of everyone around her, possibly hoping to find help with whatever attack she was planning.
She found none.
Her mouth opened and she bellowed, spittle frothing and flying from her jaws as she leapt towards Orthrok. He calmly intercepted her wild swing with his shield, the force repulsion enchantment repelling her attack and leaving her open. His axe came down across her chest from shoulder to hip, spilling blood and guts as she fell to the ground screaming. “You were warned.” He said simply as he took a single step forward and removed her head.
The other five warriors didn’t know how to react to this. Weapons wavered from aiming at him, eyes flicking from him to the cooling body of their ally, conflicted emotions crossing their faces. They all focused back on Orthrok as he spoke. “I will now leave your war-party to continue with its inspection.” He turned to leave, as an arrow thunked into the back of his shoulder.
“Do you really expect us to let you walk away after what just happened?” The elf quirked his eyebrow as he drew another arrow.
In the same moment that the bow was fully drawn, the shadow stalker panther emerged from his shadow and landed on the elf's shoulders, fangs closing around his neck. The night panthers emerged from the shadows of the room to the back of the party, crouched and muscles tensing for a pounce. The steel fanged wolves ran in through the door to the wing, spreading out and surrounding the front of the party in a semi-circle. Finally, the Grave bear lumbered in to stand next to Orthrok, rearing up on her back legs to add to her imposing stature. Her crimson eyes shown with anger and the desire for violence, and her accompanying roar filled the area with the stench of death and chill of the grave.
The eyes of the five remaining warriors widened at this, the dwarfess’ eyes in particular as she could feel the power and mana in the different beasts and knew that they were all powerful variants. She slowly looked over the eight beasts that had surrounded her party and sweat rolled down her face and into her beard. Her staff shook steadily as her hands trembled. “These beasts...” She quietly shared, “All are of an elemental variation.” Silence greeted her proclamation.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“You repay an honourable act, one that saved two of your companions lives no less, with a treacherous backstab?” Orthrok growled out the words with barely restrained rage through his gritted teeth. He began to march over to the elven archer, who was sweating bullets with the realisation of just what his hasty actions may have cost him and his allies.
As Orthrok loomed over the elf, who’s eyes widened in true fear, he simply said “If my Chieftan had not simply asked me to ensure that that woman left before she killed one of you, you would already be dead thanks to my sister’s jaws.” Having said his piece, the panther slowly opened her jaws and walked off the elf. “Now, if you all need to continue your inspection of the dungeon, I suggest you continue to do so without my having to intervene again. Be warned,” he said, his voice darkening with finality, “This is the one and only time that you, or any war party, will be saved by anyone in this place. If a challenge that you cannot surmount and no retreat is taken, you will die.” With that, each of the beasts made their way out of the room, eyes trained on the party the entire time.
Once the party was again alone, and some colour had returned to their faces, the elf meekly let out a quiet apology. “Sorry everyone. It seems I almost cost us all our heads.”
Nobody had any response to that, all their thoughts turbulent with what had transpired.
I let my focus drift away from them and back to Orthrok. “Thank you for that, even if it wasn’t the result that I had hoped for.”
“It was no trouble, Chieftan.” He looked over his shoulder to the goblin wing before spitting on the ground. “Her actions showed that she not only lacked honour but was no better than a mindless beast controlled by fury.” The Grave bear walking beside him turned to give what I can only describe as the bear stinky eye before he quickly spoke up with, “That does not mean that any of you are of that sort either. Just from the fact alone that you were able to express your desires to our Chieftan shows you are intelligent creatures.” She gave him one last intense glare, before huffing and shouldering past him and back out the dungeon to hunt.
I couldn’t help but laugh at his predicament. “A word of advice, Orthrok.” He looked towards my core room intently. “Never say anything around a woman that could even remotely sound like a negative to her, no matter how small or innocent what you actually say is.” Chuckling to myself at his abased expression, I asked him “Would you return to my chamber and watch the party through my core for me? I want to finally take a look at this upgrade list without distraction.”
“At once Chieftan.” He hurried back to my chamber, which then caused me to remember that I was currently down one boss mob. Once he arrived, I quickly spun up another Stone Blooded Goblin Knight, with less impressive and powerful equipment, for the boss encounter and shifted over to passively viewing the party.
Thanks to my nature as a dungeon core, I was aware of everything happening in my depths at once. Unless they were using a sufficiently powerful stealth ability, as my shadow stalker panther had proven. I opened up my upgrade list and was immediately bombarded with hundreds upon hundreds of entries that made my metaphorical head spin.
Thankfully there was a filter option, so the first thing I did was filter out all the options that I did not currently qualify for. That shortened the list considerably, but not by enough for me to take in everything presented. Scanning the filter options, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could get quite selective with my choices as well as get a good idea for what I could purchase.
I filtered out the options for mob core improvements, elemental core options, and mob equipment, as I could already do all of that thanks to my unique nature and Divine Blessings. What I eventually limited myself to was room designations their upgrades, and improved dungeon features to see what benefits I could get for my dungeon.
New room designation: Breeding chamber.
This room allows for enhanced breeding among both dungeon mobs and haven creatures. This upgrade is universal; however, each designation must be selected for an individual species and will only work so long as they stay within that evolutionary line.
Cost: Three upgrade points.
New room designation: Arena.
Mobs may battle each other in order to gain new variations and evolutions. This will be heavily influenced by how they fight, what they fight, and ant equipment they or may not be using. If mobs kill those not of the dungeon within the arena, they will gain a higher chance of evolving with a small chance of an uncommon, and a very small chance of a rare quality or tier of evolution being unlocked.
Prerequisits: Mob evolution.
Cost: One upgrade points
New room designation: Coliseum.
An upgraded version of the arena, the coliseum allows for not only larger battles between mobs that may result in new variations and evolutions, but it will also do so at a much higher rate than that of the arena. If mobs kill those not of the dungeon within the coliseum, they will gain a much higher chance of unlocking a new evolution, with a moderate chance at an uncommon quality, a small chance at a rare quality, and a very small chance at an epic quality evolution or variation being unlocked. The longer a particular mob stays alive and kills both mobs and those not of the dungeon in the coliseum, the higher this chance increases until the gain a new evolution or variant.
Prerequisit: Arena.
Cost: Five Upgrade points.
New room designation: Elemental chamber.
Allows for mobs to gain an affinity for the element associated with the chamber. This may create new elemental variations or spellcaster type evolutions with enough time.
Prerequisits: Mob evolution, Mob variation, at least one mana type unlocked for use.
Cost: Three upgrade points.
New dungeon feature: Mob experience.
Your mobs may now gain experience and level up on their own from successful kills within the dungeon.
Cost: One upgrade point.
New dungeon feature: Mob evolution.
Your mobs may now unlock new evolutions through their actions without you having to manually evolve them.
Cost: One upgrade point.
New dungeon feature: Mob variation.
Your mobs may now unlock new variations from their actions without you having to manually create them.
Cost: Three upgrade points.
New dungeon feature: Dungeon spellcasting.
You may cast basic spells, limited by your core rank, once per party from a magical focus imbued with a specific spell. May only use elements that have been previously unlocked.
Prerequist: Have at least five different mana types unlocked for use.
Cost: Five upgrade points.
All these upgrades were right up my alley, and it was depressing that I couldn’t pick them all up right away. I had fifteen points to play with, and decided to go with what I felt would be the most beneficial right away. I spent four upgrade points right away on mob evolution and variation, thankful that these were even there and more than a little interested to see what would come about as a result. I then spent six points on the arena and coliseum upgrades, glad not only for more chances of new mobs, but also that there were ways to get them other than waiting around for parties to dive and see if anything came of it. That left me with five points left, and I decided to go with the elemental chamber. Having access to every type of magic there is, I reasoned that this would let me get the most out the remaining options.
As I finished my upgrade choices, leaving me with only two points left, I was startled to receive a new feature.
Hidden dungeon feature unlocked: Blood Frenzy.
By unlocking mob evolution, mob experience, mob variation, arena, coliseum and elemental chamber before core has reached rank D, you have unlocked this hidden dungeon feature. On floors where there are no creatures from outside the dungeon present, you may instigate a blood frenzy with a constant mana cost. This will force all mobs on that floor to fight and kill to gain experience, variations and evolutions.
I was both excited and little perturbed by this. If it wasn’t for the fact that my mobs didn’t feel pain or experience trauma at death as a truly sapient creature might, I would never use this. I couldn’t deny that it was going to be a very useful tool, however.
Before I could use it however, I pulled myself to the requirements for designating a room a coliseum. I don’t know why I was surprised by what they were, but I shouldn’t have been. I literally had to turn a room into a coliseum. The size could be varied depending on what I wanted to use it for, but with what I had in mind, the minimum size was all that I required. A fifty-metre diameter circular base covered in sand, with three rows of benches circling the walls to give seating to spectators. A VIP box for announcements to be made, which I would have Orthrok take over for now, and that was all she wrote.
Fortunately, I had enough mana and time to get it all set up before the party finished with the inspections of the wings. Even with the ability to shape reality around me with mana, it wasn’t always a fast process. Plus, it had cost me three times as much mana to build the room with those not of the dungeon present in it. I had been forced to take several breaks to pull more in.
After about an hour, the party had emerged back into the main room. They were breathing heavily with multiple new scars and dents in their armour.
“This place is fucking ridiculous!” Arthur, the human man, screamed as he threw his bastard sword down in frustration. “There is no way that this place is gonna be worth anything close to what the gods promised! Too many monsters for anyone looking to rank up in here. We only made it because these are all F-Rank and we’re D-Rank.”
Oh shit. My bad habit had come back to haunt me again.
When I had first started out running tabletop games, the encounters that I made tended to be a bit...or a lot unbalanced for the party. ‘Looks like I’ll have to cut back the numbers in these wings. Really should have thought of that...’ I bemoaned inwardly.
Orthrok emerged from the door to the boss chamber, causing everyone to tense up. “Be at peace. The dungeon has heard of your criticism and has taken it under advisement. The wings shall have lower numbers going forward, and the boss encounter will be further balanced as well. However,” he continued “That does not mean that it can be re-done for your inspection.” Everyone began to voice their complaints before they were spoken over, “New changes cannot be made while those not of the dungeon are present inside.” He looked over them all with a raised eyebrow. “Or would you prefer that the rules binding my, and all future dungeons, to allow for infinite respawning of monsters and alterations to the environments at will?” Five jaws clicked shut at that. “Now that you have the four keys to the final encounter, make use of them soon.” With that, he turned on his heel and left them to catch their breath.
I could see that each of them wanted to say something snarky or respond in anger, but the weight of what they had just been told settled over them.
“Let's get this over with.” Duran sighed as he stood up and readied his equipment. Everyone else gave even louder and heavier sighs and followed along with their leader and used the keys to unlock the boss chamber.
Time for the debut of my boss's coliseum match.
