Chapter 12

Pan was genuinely surprised by the performance of his new floor. The party had only been D ranked, but they had obviously been on the cusp of C. The massive jungle cat had made mincemeat out of the group, and one of the iron stags had killed the light mage, giving him the ability to experiment with light affinities. The group had been unprepared, and unaware of the danger the new floor posed. If a party came prepared, they should be able to face the floor and survive. The floor would provide a good challenge for C ranked parties, and a D ranked group should be able to be successful if they came forewarned and prepared.

However, the floor still needed its own boss, and maybe a few other adjustments. The obvious choice for the boss was the massive cat who had butchered the party, so Pan called the monster to him. It had to enter the first floor’s original cavern to reach his crystal, but Pan wanted to do the ritual next to his core. Once he had a new boss, he would consider moving his core again, but the first floor felt more secure due to its seclusion.

When the cat arrived, Pan activated his skill, and gave the beast a name. He decided on Adul, the name of the great general of the ancient northern empire, who had drawn his enemies across the fertile plains of his homeland, ambushing them along the way until they lost too many men to continue, then chasing the army down and utterly destroying it. He hoped the name would shape his new boss, and it lined up with his desires for the third floor.

He began his modifications by increasing the size of the cat even more. It now weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, and rivaled even the largest black bears in size, although not in weight. He made it stronger and sleeker as well, a true ambush predator. He imbued its fur with dark magic, allowing it to hide in shadows with ease, nearly dissolving into them. When in the dark, Adul would be much faster, and nearly invisible.

He also strengthened Adul’s teeth and claws with metal, as well as some dark magic. His bite should pierce armor, and do extra damage with the dark magic status effect, wither, which would sap the vitality of enemies. His claws had the truly interesting effects. Each swipe would send out sharp ribbons of dark magic, allowing him to attack adventurers without touching them. But the most interesting attribute was his ability to infect adventurers with greater status effects by attacking their shadows. He could cause temporary confusion or daze them if his claws got ahold of their shadows. Nothing too insane, he was meant to be a rank C boss after all.

He finished his modifications to the cat and released it back into the second floor. It gave a massive earth shaking roar as it entered the cavern, and disappeared into the dense foliage, ready to stalk its prey. It was uncanny how easily a massive carnivore was able to disappear in the cave, and if Pan was not a dungeon, he would have no way of even sensing the cat’s presence.

He mentally smiled in satisfaction, and went back to his preparations, he still had one more name to bestow. The male iron stag that had killed the light mage deserved an upgrade, and Pan had the perfect idea. It made its way to his core, and waited for him to name it. Pan decided on Alarin, named for the great white stag of legend. Hunting the magnificent stag of legend was the dream of every hunter, even though he had never been killed.

He gave the stag an enormous, perfectly symmetrical rack of antlers, further strengthened by metals. His fur became a perfect white, and Pan imbued it with light magic. Alarin would be able to bend the light around him, allowing him to disappear completely in the blink of an eye. He would also be able to sense anything within twenty meters of him easily, based on the light reaching him. It was based off an advanced sensing spell, and it should make him nearly impossible to sneak up on. He made the muscles and bones even stronger, allowing the beautiful animal to bound away faster than the eye could see. He was truly the beast of legend, and hunting him should be a near impossibility. A few sightings should make an interesting story involving Pan’s dungeon, and draw more adventurers.

Pan had finished his upgrades, and was content to just let the dungeon take care of itself for awhile. He had some things he wanted to experiment with, and it would take a lot of time and mana to accomplish his new goals. He currently had quite a bit of magical knowledge from his time as an apprentice, and he noticed that whenever he unlocked new imbuements he would gain quite a bit of extra information. He still had to assimilate the new facts with what he already knew, and that took time, but that was one thing he had plenty of.

He found that everyone that died in his dungeon left an imprint of things they knew with him, he just had to sort through it all and learn from it. He had a bit of necromantic lore from his captor, and the death of the old man had given him an overview of alchemy and his fighting skills. He had no way of giving anything in his cave an alchemy skill, and it would be pointless anyway, since they couldn’t use it. However, he knew that if he ever got his body back, or created something sentient, he could use the knowledge to create potions by hand or teach his creations how to.

But he was a dungeon, and it would be pointless to create a body just to tinker with alchemy when he had no need of such a crude solution. He had finished compiling the stuff he had learned from the old man, and he would be able to experiment with alchemy on a much finer level than the man ever had due to his magical powers as a dungeon, and ability to create things out of magic. He could create any ingredient he wanted, and even change the properties of them with his evolution skill. He was excited to tinker with the magic, since it would give him something to do while he waited for things to happen with his dungeon, and he figured he could do things with alchemy that a regular mage could only dream of.

A week later, Pan had discovered that alchemy was much harder that he ever could have imagined. Sure he could create the potion out of nothing, but it was imprecise, and he couldn’t get the purest potions. He could make the ingredients, as well as all of the necessary equipment since he had absorbed the necromancer’s lab. His equipment was even better, since he could control the shape of things he created down to a microscopic level, removing even the smallest imperfections. But he had no way to move the stuff with the fine control needed to properly follow a potion recipe. He could move stuff around his dungeon, but it did not allow him to be as precise as he needed to be.

He had hoped his abilities as a dungeon would let him make short work of alchemy, but contrary to his expectations, he needed to have a body. It turned out that the ingredients needed to be prepared in exactly the correct manner, otherwise the potency of the potion would never reach the needed levels. Simply thinking of a potion and willing it into existence made a very crude copy, that was too weak to have any real value. His healing potions might be able to save the life of a novice adventurer, but once someone reached the D ranks the effects would be negligible and next to useless. But when he recreated a healing potion from one he had absorbed from a dead adventurer, it retained all of his potency. It seemed that he needed to create the potion first, then he could make them easier than a human ever could.

Even his attempts at following the proper procedures using the equipment he created in a separate experiment room were met with failure. He could move things with his dungeon manipulation, but it was difficult to get it right, even though he was improving. He would need to spend hours practicing moving things in this way to get the exact precision he needed to properly purify the ingredients. He was encouraged to see that he had the ability to sense what was going on during the purification processes on a magical level. If he ever perfected his techniques he could get concoctions of perfect purity, he just needed time and practice.

He had a breakthrough a week later. He started modifying the equipment to be useable by a dungeon instead of by a human. Instead of valves to release things, and pouring solutions into others, he created vessels out of his dungeon. He was able to create perfectly sealed containers, that he could release in any manner he wanted, from creating a small hole in the bottom, to letting it all out in an instant. He could create flames that burned at the same temperature in a sealed container, to heat his concoctions without any interference from the outside. Every variable could be perfectly controlled, from the temperature to the composition of the air. If a herb needed to be crushed, he could grind it between two moving walls, if it needed to be boiled, he could boil it in the purest water.

His only trouble was still things that required precise preparations. Some herbs needed to have certain parts of the stem sliced away carefully, or they would lose potency. He had no way of using a knife and he was endlessly frustrated in his attempts to do it. He even created the herbs without the parts he needed to cut away, but their innate magic was nearly inert when he did so. He even created new herbs, but he did not fully understand how the intricate mosaic of alchemical ingredients worked, and they came out much weaker than the original. He did have some success in mitigating the drop in potency, but it would take him much longer to unravel the secrets of magical plant creation.

The culmination of two straight weeks of experimentation and problem solving was a replication of a basic health potion, and strangely enough, the alchemy skill. An alchemist following the basic recipe could possibly make a potion that restored forty health over ten seconds. That wasn’t much, but it was still a significant amount, even to a C ranked adventurer, who might have about two hundred overall health on average. Pan’s best so far healed eighty health in eight seconds, a massive improvement. This was comparable to a mediocre health potion, which would require much more expensive ingredients.

New Skill: Alchemy Level 1, Beginner

The ability to create potions and poisons out of ingredients found in nature. Effects increased based off of alchemy level.

+1% potion strength per level

His alchemy leveled up quickly as he created the powerful healing potion, refining his skills and the process as he worked. It took him most of the week to create the final potion, and he felt there was still room for improvement. When he reached level ten in alchemy, he received a notification telling him that he had reached the apprentice rank in the skill.

Alchemy Level 10, Apprentice

The ability to create potions and poisons out of ingredients found in nature. Effects increased based off of alchemy level.

+1% potion strength per level ten and under

+2% potion strength per level over level ten

When he created his final potion, he was at level fifteen in alchemy, giving him a twenty percent boost to potion strength, on top of the already improved strength he was able to achieve due to his abilities as a dungeon. He had experimented with trying to create other potions, but the basic health potion was the only full recipe he had, and all of his other attempts were met with failure, or a weak potion. He noted which processes were somewhat successful, and marked them for future experimentation.

He absorbed his health potion, and was glad to see he was able to recreate it perfectly, although at a steep cost. By making the potion, which only required crushed and boiled ingredients, he was able to learn a lot about alchemy, and how the essences of the ingredients would mix to create the final effects. Alchemy was only the process of more efficiently extracting the magic from the base ingredients and combining them, while losing as little as possible. Even now, he was able to see that some energy was still lost during his nearly perfected process, around ten percent. He imagined that a perfect basic healing potion would be able to heal around one hundred points over five seconds. Maybe more if the alchemy skill bonuses applied to perfected potions.

He had only managed to get so far due to the memories of Gerald, who had specialized in healing potions. He was having much more trouble with improving on the other recipes he had been uncovering. Most of his progress now was being made by improving his equipment. He had made progress by experimenting with the materials he used, as well as the shape of the vessels he performed the reactions in. He used a specifically modified version of glass he had designed, called dungeon glass. It was very hard, and completely chemically inert. It was unable to react with any of his concoctions. He had also made progress by shaping the reaction chamber, better channeling the energy released by the ingredients, and catalyzing the mixing.

To make any further progress he knew he would also have to learn enchanting, and he barely knew anything about that. He had learned a few runes from minor enchanted objects dropped by dead adventurers, but his ability to use them was very minimal. He knew he would have to spend weeks working on that as well, unless an enchanter died in his dungeon, which was unlikely since they were very well guarded. A skilled enchanter could make items that greatly improved someone's fighting ability. However, the stuff he learned, were things like runes keeping clothes dry, or a blade sharp and rust free.

He knew there were weapons enchanted with elemental damage effects, but nobody with one had ever died in his dungeon. As much as he enjoyed playing with alchemy, he was more intrigued by enchanting. He had wanted to be an enchanter, but had focused on mage craft since apprenticing to an enchanter was out of his reach. But now as a dungeon, he could break limits he had faces as a human, and learning enchanting was a matter of when, not if.

Deciding for now that he had pushed his alchemy skills as far as they could go, Pan focused on his dungeon once more. He had researched alchemy because it gave him something to do instead of the mind-numbing waiting that seemed to be a dungeons life. Very little happened in a dungeon, aside from a few deaths here and there, and his skill allowed him to avoid the monotony of his new existence. But he did need to attend to his duties as a dungeon, and he had a few ideas strike him while he worked.

He needed traps, after all, what self-respecting dungeon had no traps. Aside from himself, he couldn’t think of any others. The problem was regular traps were boring. Pitfalls and arrow traps were known to adventurers, and it was rare that anyone past the F rank ever died to one. He needed something unique, something that went with his dungeon. He had an idea, based off something he had learned a long time ago, as well as from some memories he had captured.

There were some places where plants grew that would consume insects. They came in three main varieties, ones that moved, ones that insects fell into, and ones that trapped its prey with sticky substances. He found all three varieties in the dungeon store, and picked them up for five points overall. They were cheap because they were no threat to a human, but Pan could make them a threat easily.

The jawed plants were the easiest to make, as well as the most obvious trap. An adventurer would have to be a real fool to walk into a four foot tall set of jaws lying on the ground. They resembled a bear trap, with a sensitive trigger on the ground, that when stepped on would release the jaws, which would snap closed at around waist height on an average person. There was a natural sedative on the “teeth” that ringed the jaws, that would pierce the person, and subdue them quickly. It wouldn't be too hard to escape from if the party was helpful, and an alert person should be easily able to avoid them, but Pan hoped they might catch distracted adventurers during a fight or some other moment of opportunity. He distributed them around the second floor, mostly covered by other foliage, others in the open, and a few on the first floor.

The second trap he made was a massive pitcher plant. It would dig out a massive hole in the ground, and had thin leaves over the top, creating the illusion that there was ground in the spot. Anything stepping on the leaves would fall into the hole, and there was a heavy sedative gas in the bottom to knock out any victims. There they would drown and be digested in the fluid that the plant excreted into its cavern. These were rarer, and he planted them only in the second floor’s massive cavern.

The final species was one that had long sticky threads that would capture its prey. Once ensnared, the plant would curl up, trapping the victim in its threads. He made these larger as well, and they became long vines hanging from the branches of his trees. They looked just like vines covered in dew drops, but if anyone walked into them, they would find himself adhered to the vine, before it rapidly curled up, dragging them into the canopy. There, the victim would be digested by the plant, before it uncurled and returned to looking like another water covered vine.

He spread these across the second floor as well, and they should provide a good challenge to adventurers, without killing too many. The hidden trap would train them to always be aware, observant, and on guard. Essential skills for any adventurer who wanted to reach the C ranks.

Pan was quite pleased with his progress over the last two weeks, and he even started including small vials of his health potion as rewards. The smaller portions would heal twenty health over ten seconds, but it would be invaluable to any low leveled adventurers.

The new changes had quite the effect on the dungeon, and although nobody had attempted the second-floor boss, plenty had faced off against the massive cats. Surprisingly, most groups had survived, and the silver coins they received seemed to excite all of them. The traps hadn’t claimed any lives yet, but had only had them set for a few hours, and didn’t expect any results right away. Besides, it was still night, and no groups entered after the sun was at its peak. Since his dungeon wasn’t large enough to take more than a day, most people wanted to enjoy the profits that night.

The next morning when the day’s new challengers arrived, he was pleased to see the traps work. They wouldn’t be as effective in the future once people were warned, but for now, it was entertaining to watch adventures slip up and be caught in them. Most were saved, but a few didn’t make it. The most lethal were the sticky vines, followed by the pitcher plant. The only time people died was when their group was unable, or unwilling to save them, since all of his plants killed over time. Some groups were too busy fighting to release their comrade, and one made approving comments when their talkative archer was grabbed by hanging vines.

All in all, it was a productive two weeks for Pan. He had mastered a healing potion, and created deadly traps. But the next day he felt a strange presence enter his dungeon.