Chapter: Returning to Beast Mountain

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Quest: Restore power

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The Beast Mountain Dungeon is under threat. To a dungeon, mana is it’s lifeblood. You must find a way to increase the mana produced in the Dungeon or a new way to produce mana.

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Requirements:

[Use adventurer's to increase your power]

OR

[Repair the main mana gathering formation

Repair the secondary mana gathering formations (0/10)]

OR

[Capture a common Mortal Dungeon core, or equivalent dungeon cores to fuse with main dungeon core]

OR

[use 50 mana stones to recover the dungeon core]

OR

[Use Greater Earth grade Monster Core]

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Rewards:

Dungeon core recovers partially [1/12]

Mana per day generated increases based on repairs (can use more than one method)

Experience (based on results and time)

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Erik closed the screen, looking at Rugrat who was scanning through the different manuals Egbert had given them.

“Anything?” Erik asked.

Rugrat rubbed his eyes and let out a sigh.

“From what I can tell the gnomes that made this place were at least masters of formations, they might have been bordering on Expert. I simply don’t know this much about formations. I’ve been looking into weapon enhancements with arrays, not massive ground based formations like these. It’ll take time before I’m able to get to that stage, or we’ll need to find someone that’s capable of repairing them.”

“Looks like it’s about time to head to the second realm,” Erik said.

The room seemed to chill a bit as Rugrat’s face turned cold.

“I haven’t forgotten about Chonglu City,” Erik said, his voice was calm but his blood boiled thinking about the attack. It was the closest city to them with a ten realms totem.

There was a noise on the stairs, Rugrat put away the reading materials he had been looking over as Erik rose to greet them.

Elise, Jasper, Taran, Glosil and Blaze all walked into the dungeon headquarters.

Blaze had warned them about Egbert, but they were still all stunned by his appearance.

“Oh hey there boys and girl,” Egbert said, daintily waving his fingers on one hand as he crossed his knees and held a hand in front of his face as if he was blushing.

They all shivered, pausing their steps.

“Little bit of flattery and they’re all ‘It’s a skeleton’,” Egbert said to Erik.

“Stop scaring them,” Erik said.

Egbert seemed dejected but moved off to the side.

“Please, sit down, we’ve got a lot to talk about,” Erik said.

Everyone moved to the seats and the table that Egbert had pulled out from one of his storage fingers. He had removed it from the room to be more efficient. Now it sat in the middle of the room with the six levels of the dungeon floating above it.

“This is Egbert, our resident guide to the Beast Mountain Dungeon, he’s oath sworn to obey all of Rugrat and my commands, he’s a bit, quirky, but we’ll get used to him.”

Egbert seemed pretty happy to be called Quirky as he perked up at the side of the room.

“First of all, we have a power issue, we’ve got four months of power left in the dungeon, Rugrat has been looking at the plans and it won’t be a simple thing to fix the dungeon and increase our power.”

“Also the creatures on the lower levels can be up to level twenty, at least what I’ve seen,” Egbert added.

“So, we don’t want to be going down there and we need to get more power somehow,” Erik continued.

“We’ve got a lot of options but ultimately, we need to have groups head to the second realm to try and get what we need. At the same time, we want to build up the dungeon here so that we have a base and a place to rest. First we need to care for our own needs, food, water, housing and infirmary.”

“Umm, I might have forgotten something,” Egbert said.

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You have taken over the Beast Mountain Dungeon

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Construction ability unlocked

Blueprint store unlocked

Resource interface unlocked

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Resources

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Food: 6,350 Units

Stone: 54,000 Units

Wood: 215 Units

Mana: 235

Gold: 91

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Upkeep costs:

161 Units of Food per week

4 gold per week

1 mana per day

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You have gained control of:

Dungeon Core

Manor

Beast Stables

Smithy

Citizens: 184 (Trained, Morale increases by 20% working together they are 10% more productive)

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Erik felt as if he was directly connected to the Dungeon now as he thought of it a large map appeared in his vision, it showed him everything happening on the living floor of the dungeon, he waved to the side and saw the metal affinity floor, it was hazier than the living floor, when he waved his hand again, the next Earth floor was even hazier, and it was hard to make out an distinctive shapes.

Erik returned to the first floor and saw that there was a glowing blue looking outline around the dungeon core.

The outline changed as the interior of the building was altered, it turned red as the building was unable to support itself, it took shape in a few moments.

“Okay, that’s useful as hell,” Rugrat said, calling Erik back to reality, he dismissed the screen as the others in the room looked at them with concern.

“Was that you messing with the building?” Erik asked, looking at the pieces of paper in front of Rugrat.

“Yeah, so the construction ability allows us to put down blueprints of buildings. So we can plan out buildings and place them down, just like you could in strategy games,” Rugrat said. “The difference is that we can modify the blueprints or make them as we want. I’m guessing that we will be able to buy them, from the store as we could in Alva Village.”

“I’ve just got a message from one of my guards, it looks like a blueprint has appeared around the dungeon core,” Glosil said.

“Will it be easier to build than if they were to make it themselves?” Erik asked. If he could groom a few architects then they could design all of the buildings they needed instead of wasting their gold. The construction ability would allow them to use people who weren’t trained in construction much more efficiently. As the fine arrow blueprint improved the quality and the speed that the people of Alva village could produce arrows, this construction system would allow them to do the same.

“Egbert, can you put the living floor on the table?” Erik asked.

With a few gestures the floor appeared in the middle of the table.

Now Erik could see information ringing his vision as he looked at the table, if he stared at the information it would pop out at him, giving him a more detailed insight.

He selected the house that Rugrat had designed and put it in the middle of the table. It was a two story structure with a living room, kitchen and bathroom on the first floor, upstairs there were two bedrooms and two bathrooms.

“Do you think if it would be okay to do one house per family for now?” Erik asked.

“Wait, you want to give a family this house?” Elise asked.

“Yes,” Erik said, finding her reaction strange.

“This kind of house is something that only nobles would find,” Elise said, Rugrat and Erik could see that this was a common idea between the others in the room.

“This will be the current standard for homes within the Dungeon, in the future we will make improvements and upgrades,” Rugrat said.

“Other than houses we will need to build a school, a hospital, an area that we can grow crops, and a warehouse district to hold the goods that we brought and the ones we will get in the future. Also we will need to build a market square to allow people to trade among one another and sell to the trading houses that will venture out to the other towns and cities around beast mountain,” Erik said, he looked into everyone’s eyes, “this is just the start of the Beast Mountain Dungeon. Going forward we will develop the dungeon together, people will work growing crops, building up the village, hunting and patrolling the area around the Dungeon, or going on trade convoys to other towns and increasing their knowledge in the academy. To progress we need to increase our strength first. I want to build up sources of food and the infrastructure of the dungeon, or at least have everything in place before we leave, we will leave you with a plan and as of right now you are all part of the Dungeon’s council, a replacement can only be picked by us, but you can vote to build more things and change items in the living floor,” Erik said.

A light appeared around the others as a screen appeared in front of their eyes.

Elise agreed to the screen and pushed it away, she was the first to do so.

“Then we’re going to need to build a marketplace if we want to buy new blueprints, also, how can we upload new building blueprints into the system?” She asked.

“As long as the blueprints are brought here, then one can test them out. The construction ability makes it so that people don’t need to design an entirely new blueprint. They can use building blocks from different buildings that are in the dungeon’s storage. Think of it as a prototyper and testing tool, you can check the building out here, then you put it down in the dungeon and people can see the parts they have to make with what to complete it. This way with each building you can accurately estimate the resource cost,” Egbert said.

“It wasn’t possible to do this in Alva Village,” Blaze said.

“Did you have an architectural school of study in Alva Village?” Egbert asked.

“No,” Blaze said.

“Then you wouldn’t have been able to unlock this. Beast Mountain Dungeon had one in the past, certain things have been unlocked ahead of their time because of what the gnome’s did and the fact that my master has given this to you freely instead of you taking over the dungeon. If you took it over then you would have to start from the beginning. Now there are buildings you will need to create or things you need to do to unlock other abilities. You will not be able to just get alchemy recipes because we have an alchemy workshop and had alchemists in the past. I do have the manuals and information of the gnomes that ruled this dungeon so I can give you that information, but you will need to raise your own alchemists.”

As long as we can advance a little, then the knowledge that Egbert kept from the gnomes we’ll be able to advance a lot further. Erik thought to himself, looking to Rugrat, he had some Novice knowledge of formations, but looking at the formations in the Dungeon he was lost. If he learned more he might be able to understand them and advance his skill faster.