BOOM! WOOSH!

Heavy storm winds blew on the fifth floor unlike a common day. The cause of it is none other than Hook and Peter at an all out war.

“STOP YOU TWO!” Dia shouted her little throat out but the two were in the middle of a death match.

“Dia, give up, they are in too much of a craze at this moment, also, your control over your creatures are weak which is why they aren’t listening,” Mir said pulling Dia back. “You two, take the children and get away from this disaster zone, I will stay and clean this up!” Mir ordered the two dungeon fairies.

“Alright!” Pearl said and took Waid. Behind her a portal opened and she pulled him in, appearing in their house at the sixth floor. Misty did the same and Dia appeared in her room where she collapsed and began to cry.

“It’s alright,” Misty said and began to pat the girl’s head.

“I-It was scary!” Dia cried into her pillow.

Misty had nothing she could say to console the girl.

On the fifth floor, Mir turned serious after seeing the portals close. “Now then!” She shouted. Her staff shined and a sudden surge of mana came from her before it turned into a mass of green nature magic. She swing and it burst towards the two. “YOU TWO! STOP THIS RIGHT NOW!” she roared.

BOOM!

The two collided but suddenly felt the incoming spell. Somehow in the same mindset, they turned to her and swung their currently touching blades towards the incoming spell. “DON’T INTERFERE!” They roared.

Suddenly, like the roar of a dragon, the sharp blade wind and the storm gust released by the two weapons merged when they attacked together. They turned into a cyclone of wind blades that impacted into Mir’s attack causing it to burst after five seconds and continued on towards her.

Facing the combined power of a boss and a mini-boss made to control the former, she did not aim to face it. She instantly cast a short distance teleportation magic and got clear of the attack.

The two distanced themselves, while Hook landed on his ship, and looked at Mir, “Grivmir, do not interfere in our battle or it will be you who dies first!” Hook said.

“You idiots, are you deaf!? Dia already told you to stop this…” Mir said coldly.

Only then did they notice that Dia had been extremely close to them and looked around.

“Don’t bother, I already sent her to the floor above here where neither of you idiots can go.” Mir said.

They looked at her and then an unimaginable result happened.

“IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!” suddenly the two shouted at each other. Peter bolted at Hook who suddenly jumped and swung the sword behind him causing him to fly rapidly forward before the two made contact.

Mir was caught by surprise and was thrown back in shock by how it suddenly became even more chaotic.

She didn’t even have any time to react and was thrown several dozen meters back. Mir was still caught in the intense wind before she could put up a barrier to block the incoming wind.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

At that time, just as the barrier was raised, sounds similar to swords hitting a wall came into her focus and her eyes turned bloodshot as she imaged being attacked by these wind blade enhanced gales.

“These two are out of control. How am I supposed to calm them down?!” Mir thought.

In her mind, the many queens as well as the bell flower empress appeared. Of the creatures in the dungeon, Mir knew the strength of this spirit was the one closest to her. Mir felt a sense of crisis because until now she had been considered one of the strongest and might still be but she realized that her strength could still be surpassed if even one pair of strong spirits grouped up.

“Let’s not think about that for now,” she thought and looked around. They had, thankfully, flown into the cloud sea away from the island. Hook’s boat was as far away as Mir was because Hook, in his anger, used a strange method to fly, using the force of the gales he released to propel himself.

With the two locked in a stalemate, she scratched her head as to how to stop this. With a super high level of understanding of dungeons, Mir took some distance and drew near the clouds then actually ‘landed’ on the cloud sea with her feet slightly submerged.

Woo!

A faint glow came from them yet in her mind, the fourth, fifth and sixth floors all came into very clear detail showing where all the creatures were and what they were doing.

Amazingly, she was actually using the technique that dungeoneers were developing to a super high level to scan a dungeon. Through her feet, she connected directly into the flowing channels of mana in the dungeon.

Looking through it, Mir was ecstatic when she saw that this incident didn’t go unnoticed in the sixth floor, the bell flower empress and the many queens of all kinds of spirits were coming. The fastest were the lightning spirits.

The dwarves also brought out a large number of boats and were coming with the runts from the floor above. Still, for some reason, Mir didn’t think even with all these forces, they could stop Hook. In fact, she believed that with so many creatures, it would cause an unimaginable amount of casualties because the many pirates and marines were also gathering from the floors below, possibly to fight for a spot on the fifth floor with all these events.

“How do I stop them all!?” Mir shouted mentally but suddenly when she stretched her mind to the edges of the fifth floor, her mind caught hold of one creature that she knew least of but had the most conventional ability for this situation. “That’s it!” She exclaimed and turned before rushing out, leaving behind a green trail of light where she flew.

The two didn’t even notice and just blasted away. News traveled very quickly on the fifth floor. As soon as the two were said to be fighting seriously, pirates and marines boarded their ships and all the wandering wind elves and tinker fairies from the Lost Isles took to the air armed for battle. Along with them were actually a large number of children 5-12 years old, all of who appeared from the mystical fog hiding the island. Each and every one of them were abandoned children lost in forests while trying to making a living and were brought here by the Lost Island’s magic.

With many magical items and childish creativity, they were different from halflings, dwarves and the wind elves. They made many creative items for battle and had many strange items. Acting as babysitters were tinker fairies for each of them and the children all were able to fly thanks to their fairy dust.

Marine commanders and captains, all from the floor below, all gathered at the hurricane between the floors.

They each pull out a seven colored rose and dropped them into the water. After a moment, large red bus lobsters appeared.

The oldest and strongest halfling marine walked forward and turned back to the fleet. “TODAY! WE RISE TO THE FIFTH FLOOR! WE SHALL BATTLE AND FORGE OUR PLACE!” he shouted.

The boats all resounded with shouts of victory.

The lobsters extended their huge claws and gripped the claw grips all ship were built with to make it easier for them. The boats were lifted and advanced into the hurricane heading up.

At the same time, queen spirits from all floors were heading up due to the danger that was brought by the battle of Hook and Peter. Amazingly, almost all spirit races with monarch titles were heading up and numbered, at the fewest, 50 and the most with more than 100 of the same race.

The location of battle was also easy to find because the water had become incredibly turbulent and sounds of the battle resounded with the wind. In five minutes, the flying flower queens and the empress arrived. Her eyes were completely cold and amazingly, her flowers were doing the inverse effect of turning cold water mana into warm mana. It was absorbing hot fire mana in the air making it frigid.

“You two… STOP!” Her voice resounds with a ting of a bell ring through the entire area striking the ears of both boss ranked creatures. It drilled into their heads momentarily waking them up from their unabating rage.

They split up and took a distance before looking at the empress and were shocked to see such a huge gathering of spirits.

“What are you doing here?” Hook asked solemnly after landing on his ship and walking to the front.

“What are you doing, battling like that?” She said and suddenly several little spirits flew up and began to squeak and talk rapidly in their own strange language.

Suddenly the faces of all the queens turned extremely horrid as they glared at the two spirits, “Battling to the death because of simple jealousy… are you two men or children?” She said, her voice incredibly cold.

“This has nothing to do with you, little queen,” he said and looked at the swarm of queens, “No, I shouldn’t call you queen, there are plenty behind you. You're all just one of many,” Hook said venomously.

The faces of all the queen flower spirits twisted in anger.

Sha!

Suddenly the sounds of water splitting was heard as, from all sides, pirates, marines, dwarves and runts rushed into the area and an amazing force gathered.

What was curious was that because of the concentration of spirits here, the sea creatures, even the sky sharks, all distanced themselves greatly.

“What in blimy are you two doing!?” a runt shouted.

“BOSS! We ready ta battle!” a pirate captain said.

“Peter!” The wandering wind elves all appeared behind Peter with daggers drawn and the children all had small round objects.

“You filthy pirates! You think you can easily fight all of us!?” a halfling marine shouted.

“Shut it half pint!” One of the captains said and laughed.

At this time, five completely separate forces were staring at each other and things were getting more and more chaotic with each insult.

“So it’s one force of self righteous midgets, one force of midgets led by a tall midget, a swarm of flower hugging so called queens, a group of brats, many buzzing irritations, oh and would you look at that, walking humanoid trees. How nice that anything calling themselves a sovereign or has a hint of smarts in their tiny heads joined up here today,” Hook said extremely pissed off.

The rage bottled up rapidly with his insults.

“Hook, it is best to withdraw now, I was called by Misty saying Dia is crying because you and Peter suddenly started a war right in front of her!” the bell flower empress said.

“You shut up you blow hard. Just because you are called ‘Empress’ everyone is supposed to bow to you?! Poppycock! You have neither nation nor island to your name and are simply a small spirit with a grand ego!” Hook shouted.

“What did you say!?” the empress said. Her hair was waving, her bell dress was releasing a very menacing ringing and slowly, balls of cold flame were starting to form around her. “You say no one can bow to me? So why should that trash following you follow you?” She said.

“Heh…” Hook snorted, “I’m the first pirate, the strongest yet I never took the title King, you were born as an ‘empress’ and had your nose so high up. Since you insist then I will start calling myself the Pirate King! The commander of all pirates!” He said laughing in a mocking tone making all their faces of the others twist with anger

“AHHHH!” the pirates exclaimed happy at having him say that.

What happened after this though was far more shocking than anything else.

The boss, Captain James Hook, has proclaimed himself ‘The Pirate King’. Nation system has been activated.

Nation System

The pirate, James Hook, wishes to become a monarch. The requirement to become a monarch is total domination of all pirate crews and a minimum of five controlled islands, not including the boss island.

Pirates of all species and floors must be under his rule and each floor must have a selected capital with a ruling ‘noble’ to manage the floor.

No other ‘kings’ must exist beside the king. All other crews ‘must’ be under the control of the king for him to obtain King status.

Besides a window, a dungeon wide voice was proclaimed throughout the dungeon causing everyone, from adventurers to spirits, to freeze in shock.

After a long while, Hook began to chuckle and finally he burst into laughter, “The world is truly grand! Such a simple means to become king!” He laughed and turned to the countless pirate crews that had gathered from the lower floor. “You all, bow or die!” He said.

His ship was put on the side then all the cannons suddenly moved out and aimed at them. Unlike the other ships, the Jolly Roger had full powered cannons ready to fire that was loaded by magic and not crewmembers.

They all trembled, but a voice came from behind.

“If that is how you wish it, I shall proclaim myself Empress of all Flower Spirits!” The Bell Flower Empress said.

The winter fire bell flower empress spirit, has proclaimed herself ‘The Empress of all Flower Spirits’. Nation system has been activated.

Nation System

The winter fire bell flower empress spirit, wishes to become a monarch.

Requirement to become a monarch is total domination of all flower spirits and a minimum of five controlled islands, not including the boss island.

Flower spirits of all species and floors must be under her rule and each floor must have a selected capital with a ruling ‘noble’ to manage the floor.

No other ‘kings/queens’ must exist beside the king.

Queen spirits who are defeated or submit shall devolve into Noble Flower Spirits and will serve the winner as a noble of their force.

What followed were the lightning spirit’s queen lightning spirit priestess, the original dwarf king, and the oldest halfling commander.

Hook’s face turned into a scowl as each of them had a monarch who appeared but what caused him the most headache was a loud laugh. “Old man! Today, I’ll let you go! From today on, I’ll make my own ‘Lost Nation’! I’ll be the ‘Lost King’ and we will never let you have a peaceful day!” Peter shouted and laughed.

The system announced that Peter needed simply to obtain the five island minimum because, as the mini-boss, he was already the leader of all the wandering wind elves who lived on a single island which was the only Lost Island. None of them thought of fighting for the position so they simply needed to obtain the minimum of five islands.

“Do you think I will let you!?” Hook shouted.

“Not like you can stop me!” Peter said laughing and then gave a shout that caused the wind elves to disperse towards the five islands near where the Lost Island was hidden. Ironically, three of them were pirate islands that Peter wanted to destroy and obtain just to irritate Hook.

Hook shouted in anger as he hit the railing and glared at the pirates, “Bow or die?!” He shouted.

The pressure he released caused them to bow but these weren’t all the pirates. Only the third, fourth and fifth floor pirates could even reach this floor while the second and first floor ones were just wandering rag tag groups but he still needed to go down there.

“Hook, watch your step,” The Bell Empress said. All around her the queens were glowing and actually grew a little bit but grew a bit weaker as they turned into noble flower spirits.

The same was happening to all the spirits present on the fifth floor.

As for the marines, the halfling commander proclaimed himself fleet admiral and as the original marine, the respect he had was highest. The other commanders pledged themselves to help form a marine nation.

They glared at the pirates as they headed to look for an island. That said, this would set off a grand war on the fifth floor because this floor has only 24 islands while there are pirates, flower spirits, marines, lightning spirits and wood elves who were now needing the required 5 islands.

By the time Mir returned, and behind her a glowing yellow being made of glittering sand, the several forces were spreading out and returning. The dwarfs went back to the sixth floor where their capital was set and were the first to establish a nation.

After Mir inquired about what was the system notice with the wood elves, she sighed and looked at the wood elf wanting to be queen. She was looking at Mir sharply. “What is with that look?” Mir asked.

“I am going to be queen. As a wood elf, I need all to bow!” She said.

Mir had veins appear on her face and her staff appeared, “You little brat! LEARN YOUR PLACE!” She said finding an outlet for her anger and she senselessly beat the wood elf then said she was going to be the wood elf queen. She organized a few groups and told them to go to the four farming villages on the fifth floor as well as the entrance island and proclaim them as her domain.

No other wood elf challenged her because she was a wood elf given a name by Dia.

Names to monsters were unique, the stronger the person giving the name, the more mana they had, the greater the power boost for the monster/creature who was not of the sentient races. Dia is a dungeon with incredible mana reserves since not all the mana remains inside her mana pool but flows naturally through the dungeon. Giving a large power increase was easy for her and she used it to name nature spirits or fantasy beings she created. Hook’s power was almost on par with Mir due to her being formed and named on the 2nd floor while he was made while having five floors. The difference was obvious, even more so because of the fact that Hook grew stronger the larger his crew was. Mir could only slowly improve her body while Hook had spirit items that increased his power.

She was incredibly depressed that she wasn’t able to stop any of this from happening and could only try and set up a nation as fast as possible on the fifth floor then quickly spread to the lower floors to minimize the impact.

On the fifth floor, she was the first to form a nation after the dwarf king while on the fourth floor, they still kept the top lead since all the gnome and dwarf kings were already at the incident.

Mir took control of the treemen and alraunen and from them, made her second capital on the fourth floor and the third floor had the alraunen as the leaders. She could only remain on the fifth floor because of the danger of the other monarchs attacking.

She also obtained the Queen status. That said, as a humanoid wood elf, such a status was not an evolution, unlike a being similar to the bell flower empress, who was born with the rank in their race, humanoids obtained what is called as ‘Titles’,

Titles were similar to names and the first one given usually had unique effects such as increase in power and skills. For Mir…

Title: Queen of the Wood Elves

The sovereign of the wood elves and all plant creatures. Under your order, sentient plant creatures are your subjects and you have uncontested rule over them.

Ability:

Suppressive aura towards plant based creatures. (Weakens enemy plant creatures)

50% increase in power.

Increase in power of Nature magic.

With her capital as the safe zone in the fifth floor, her main force was made up of treemen, alraunen, tree warriors, flower warriors and all plant creatures. All islands under her rule also no longer wandered aimlessly and instead, rotated around the capital where her unique aura spread from all capital cities she placed down.

Under the nation system, all islands doubled in size.

***

“Let me go! Let me go! LET ME GO!” a crazed voice roared from within an ancient ruin.

A large amount of magical runes were glowing and one could see that these ruins were old but were perfectly functional.

Clover looked through the mana barrier at the door and within was Nighty who was crazed as he tried to escape.

“This madman? What the hell happened to him?” Clover frowned as he turned to Maribell.

“I don’t know, I made sure to check the dungeon system’s description of him, he isn’t supposed to be violent or ‘evil’ as this,” Maribell said sweating.

“He works with nightmares! How is he not evil?!” Clover shouted.

“Just because a person works on the dark side of the moral world doesn’t mean he is evil. What I think is going on is the fact that your dungeon is too weak to let him control his power,” Maribell said.

Clover scowled and looked around. The sky dungeon had grown significantly since the time he first beat the first dungeon.

It was up to four floors. He had battled a significant number of sky dungeons that lived in the human nation. He had already set up his own connection with the human nation but it had required a number of negotiations with the other dungeons through his disciples. Since there were a lot of dungeons, they had to set up territories since they couldn’t kill each other.

His current dungeon currently has 38 islands. Fifteen on the first floor, twelve on the second, eight on the third and three on the fourth. The more islands he has, the more stable the flow of mana in the dungeon becomes. Fifteen was the most he could fit in the first floor and twelve on the second. Now he was trying to fill up the third floor which had a max of nine and six islands for the fourth floor.

As for Nighty, ever since the incident on the second floor, Clover was on the alert against the strange nightmare spirit and it saved his life.

An hour before, Nighty had actually appeared at Clover’s core and was about to try and corrupt it with his nightmare dream sand. Sadly, Clover had been greatly researching the magic of the destroyed dark elves. One thing he learned was restraining magic that could be used to capture a target. Something like Nighty, who was a spirit as well as a being made of sand, needed a specific barrier catching magic and Clover had properly learned it with Maribell helping.

Even she had been wary of the spirit so she helped with it and after that, Clover pulled an island from the second floor and crafted a ruin matching the dark elves’ ‘Monster Cage’. It perfectly imprisoned the crazed spirit. It was the most complete ruin he made and to make it so perfect, he needed to sacrifice a very large amount of mana to reconstruct the structure, everything down to the magic written on the walls and its effect.

The island’s goblin tribe watched in horror and Clover turned to them, “Never let anyone approach, this is a forbidden zone. Also, if any of you dare break anything on this structure, your life is over!” Clover shouted.

The goblins were trembling out of fear. These were the goblins converted into monsters from the first dungeons he beat. They feared him and his disciples greatly.

They ran away to their village on the island and hide away as Clover shook his head.

“Let’s go finish the base of the dungeon,” he said looking one last time at Nighty before flying to the mana pool. “Create new islands.”

Dungeon Expansion

Floor 1: Max

Floor 2: Max

Floor 3: 8/9

Floor 4: 3/6

Which floor do you want to create a new island?

“Floor 3, make the final island,” he said.

Suddenly the 120 cm wide mana pool began to drain completely and on the ocean of the third floor, a small rock formed in the ocean.

When it fell in, it connected to the dungeon network and sank underground for only a moment before rising above the water.

The puppets in the water reacted. Mermaid puppets went and picked up other puppets then dropped them off at the island where they began to absorb mana to help slowly grow the island. There was no need to spawn anything on it because in time, they will appear on their own, from weeds to trees. There were plenty of avians in the dungeon who ate the plants and fruits as well as sea creatures.

“If only there wasn’t such a huge cost for making a single island,” he complained.

He discovered that he can make islands but at the cost of slower mana absorption since the island sucks up much of it for a while. If too many new islands are made, it would impede the formation of mana in the pool until the islands are completely formed.

“Stability is everything, for now I have no problems in structure,” he said leaving the pool area then walked out and looked at the lower seas.

On the first floor, there were four teleporting platforms reaching out like piers but it sent those entering the dungeon towards four close islands. The key to reach the next floor is to reach the furthest island, but to do that you need to find the proper island so it is like island hopping. The islands are also much bigger after stabilizing and experiencing the growth of several floors. There is plenty of game inside each island. In addition, ruins and caves with both natural and ancient treasures naturally spawned thanks to the theme and creatures living on the islands.

Those who look to the sea for resources, they use boats and harpoons to kill the predators and swim to get the coral and water plants. Of course, there are human residents in this place and a good number of them are from fishermen villages.

Clover looked down coldly at the common people like some god looking at mortals. He felt disdain at needing residents but he found it slightly comical as if it was raising cattle. Still he looked and tried to make sure a very important feature was built and that was an ecosystem. As an elf and a dungeon, he knew the importance of this and he still lacked a few things because of the constant killing.

“The size of the ocean and number of islands limit me far too much,” he thought.

The size grew far too slowly for his taste and there wasn’t such a growth like cloud dungeons. They were more close ranged like an apocalego instead of a large ocean with free floating islands. He wanted to reach that stage where he wouldn’t have to worry about the fragile ecosystem of his dungeon and to have many monsters in his dungeon to protect his main body as well as his soul body.

He had no trust for things like Nighty and only believed in creatures he made himself. With that thought, he began to think of any possible creatures that could help him further stabilize his power as well as go research magic.