The previous night had been the longest night of Leon’s life. Every time he made another containment block the experience seemed to get even worse. There was no getting used to the massive existential pain that lance through his entire being every time he tore more of his own soul off the walls of his core. He’d made fifteen of the Containment blocks in concentric rings around his Source each one getting thicker and bigger going closer to his source and getting thinner and wider at the farthest point away from his Source.

[Containment Block {Flesh Affinity} has been created. Stability 236%. Capacity 112%.]

[Containment Block {Bone Affinity} has been created. Stability 200%. Capacity 104%.]

[Containment Block {Blood Affinity} has been created. Stability 215%. Capacity 105%.]

[Containment Block {Soul Affinity} has been created. Stability 201%. Capacity 103%.]

[Containment Block {Curse Affinity} has been created. Stability 245%. Capacity 102%.]

[Containment Block {Mind Affinity} has been created. Stability 216%. Capacity 111%.]

[Containment Block {Celestial Affinity} has been created. Stability 339%. Capacity 117%.]

[Containment Block {Demonic Affinity} has been created. Stability 136%. Capacity 100%.]

[Containment Block {Holy Affinity} has been created. Stability 436%. Capacity 107%.]

[Containment Block {Death Affinity} has been created. Stability 936%. Capacity 167%.]

[Containment Block {Life Affinity} has been created. Stability 176%. Capacity 153%.]

[Containment Block {Unholy Affinity} has been created. Stability 122%. Capacity 101%.]

[Containment Block {Metal Affinity} has been created. Stability 1206%. Capacity 200%.]

[Containment Block {Earth Affinity} has been created. Stability 436%. Capacity 176%.]

[Containment Block {Wind Affinity} has been created. Stability 206%. Capacity 122%.]

Leon had gained the ability to use Metal and Wind affinities out his harrowing experience in creating the Containment Blocks. The experience had also notably changed the mana that was within his core. Before it had been practically all a white mist that permeated everything within his Core. Now that those fifteen different Affinities were being separated and funneled into the Containment Blocks Leon could distinctly make out the unique colors of those affinities sparkling throughout the cloud as they made their way into said Containment Blocks. And because of this separation Leon was also now starting to realize how many Containment Blocks he was going to have to make, as the white mist that was his mana now seemed to sparkle with hundreds of different shades of color. The thought of having to make potentially hundreds more of the Containment Blocks made Leon’s entire being shiver at the thought. But he was going to have to do it.

After having made those fifteen different Blocks, Leon finally loosened his concentration on the meditation skill and allowed himself to look outside himself. He was surprised to find the girls all practically dogpiled on top of him. He had specifically told them that he was going to be doing something and wanted to be alone tonight. But their comforting warmth against his body was actually quite welcome so he wasn’t all that upset over the invasion of his privacy.

Slipping fully out of meditation Leon gently brushed his fingers along Cynthia’s jaw line. Waking her in the process. She opened her eyes, then without warning planted a fierce kiss on his lips and roughly embraced him.

“What was that for?” Leon asked, Cynthia normally didn’t put such intense emotion into their interactions.

“Last night you were crying and sobbing hysterically every few minutes for several hours. But you wouldn’t wake up. We didn’t know what was wrong or how to help. So, we just came in and held you… You had us all extremely worried.” She practically gushed out, “What happened? Were you having a nightmare? Was it a Curse from one of the Dungeon Monsters? What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry for worrying you all. No, it’s not a curse. And no, it was not a Nightmare, except in the metaphorical sense I guess it kind of was. I’ll explain it to everyone once we are all up. We’ve got a couple hours before the Emergency meeting. We should probably wake up and get ready.”

Getting everyone up, fed and informed on what he had been doing last night took about and hour and a half. The questions about making Containment Blocks were quite thorough and all of the girls wanted to know how they could accomplish it as well. He did not know how to help them all with that desire, but he would if he could. The Containment Blocks were an important part of progressing in Tiers if you weren’t naturally born in high Tier mana environments. For each Containment Block created the body would start taking on aspects of that Affinity starting at Tier 4. Making the body more resistant, stronger, faster, and everything in between. Leon had no clue as to why this was, but it was verified, at least in the Lore books about it claiming that it was verified. After that discussion ended Leon and the girls all decided that it was time to head over to the meeting hall to see what was going to happen.

Luna Everthorn

Luna looked over the reports on her desk with mounting frustration. This was not Ideal in the least. With the distance that her troops needed to cover to reach the island where the Dungeon was located it would be at a minimum four months before they could even begin to lay siege to the town. There was no doubt in her mind that the town was already well established and defensible. None of their long-distance spying techniques were working to gather any information on the town. Apparently, every time the skills were used there was interference from what seemed to be some form of massive mana gathering array.

All of this together meant that the forces Luna would be taking to try and seize the town would be operating with almost no intel prior to engagement. And to top it all off, the information that had been gathered about the Founders didn’t look good for their forces. Fifty Tier 3 Mentors of fifty Tier 2 individuals with Hero Titles and quite a few years of magical training under their belts. Luna had fifteen Tier 3’s at her disposal, and 150 Tier 2’s. Only one of those individuals had a Hero Title and that was Luna herself.

Luna was, by her kingdom’s standards a highly powerful Tier 3 individual wielding Lighting and Bone affinities of mana. But she knew that her own level of understanding and skills were probably considered mediocre at best by the Guilds standards. The Guilds Tier 2’s at the Dungeon were probably better trained and close to as powerful as she was. Though their Tiers were lower, and she could probably take on three or four of them at the same time, there was no way she was a match for Hero Titled Mentors of the Guild.

It was because of these facts that a delegation had been sent to the Empire. And an agreement was being hashed out to form a cooperative force to seize the Dungeon. The empires forces were similar to their own, but they would only be sending 10 Tier 3’s but 200 Tier 2’s who were considered exceptional. A few of them bordering on Tier 3. The agreement would make the Island a neutral territory where both the Kingdom of RhodinHiem and the Empire of Willow would share in the resources of the Dungeon.

Luna was fairly sure that the agreement would break down the moment the fighting ended if the joint forces actually managed to take the Dungeon. At that point it would become a war between nations. Which is why Luna was busy creating contingencies should they actually win.

All in all, both the Kingdom and the Empire were going to be frantically trying to set up for both the attack on the Dungeon Town and the aftermath of the attack. Meaning, if Luna had calculated everything right, that it would take at least six months to actually get everything in position and be ready to assault the Island. That would give them precious little time to take the Dungeon Town, but it was all they had.

Leon Crumbl

Arriving at the meeting hall, Leon and company were glad to see that all of the other Mentees were still alive. With how severely they underestimated the Tier 2 floors of the Dungeon they had been worried that some of the other teams might have experienced even worse luck than them. Though it did not appear that everyone had made it out of their first delves into the Tier 2 floors unscathed. The Gnome Chad was missing his left arm at the shoulder. And John the Orcanon looked entirely pale. Like he'd seen a ghost.

Chads missing arm appeared to be regrowing, but it was a solid reminder that anyone could be taken down. Chad was known for his long-distance attack skills, but also for his seemingly ridiculous level of durability. His Metal and Fire Affinities making him somewhat of a known powerhouse on the island despite his tiny stature.

Everyone gathered in the hall seemed to have gone through a rough time during their Dungeon Delves but otherwise they were either recovering or on their way to getting ready for their next dives. Though Leon was unsure how Delving was going to work if everyone was going to be busy getting ready for a mini war. Or what was basically going to be a tower defense game. It was different from a war in that there were strict rules in place about how everything was going to go down. But aside from that it would be a real life or death battle to control the dungeon.

Leon had been busy contemplating when the Malorie of all people gestured to everyone to quiet down and began speaking. Informing everyone that there would soon be an attack on the Dungeon Town and that certain preparations would have to be made. One of those preparations Directly involved Leon. He would need to incorporate a series of enchantments into the walls. Both to strengthen them and help prevent scrying spells from reaching into the town. Though apparently the later was not a big deal because Cynarina’s continual consumption of ambient mana already functioned as a low-grade anti scrying defense. Adding enchantments to that would make it practically impossible for all but the most powerful of Diviners to see into the town surrounding the Dungeon. Luckily for Leon he had already set up everything for temporary enchantments that would fortify the walls during any kind of attack. His part had been taken care of nearly a year ago.

The other thing that Leon was going to have to take care of was securing some form of anti-siege weaponry to place on the walls. Enchanted weaponry like that was going to be difficult to come by quickly. But fortunately, the Mentors already had the weaponry they just needed emplacements for them. It would only be the work of a few days.

Really the biggest thing about this turn of events was that the Mentees were now only allowed to delve the dungeon one team at a time and only for two hours at a time. This meant that most everyone would be on call 24/7 in case of an attack. On top of that a watch rotation schedule was set up and everyone on the island was on it.

With the large ballista like weapons in place on the walls, Leon’s part of the preparations were mostly done. But only in the official sense. What he was doing now was using his monster creation skill to create an army… Technically. Now that Leon was Tier 2 his monster creation skill was significantly more effective than it had been before. He could create multiple adult creatures now in a row without even making a dent in his mana supply. Depending on the size of the creatures he was making of course. He had enough mana at his disposal to make a creature that was Tier 1 that weighed up to a thousand pounds before he needed to rest for a minute or two to recover mana. The best that he could do for Tier 2 creations was an egg. And a small one at that, like a sparrow or a pigeon egg. So, Leon was focusing on making Tier 1 monsters as minions.

The creatures that Leon was focusing on making? Two specifically. And they were monsters from one of his favorite movie series ever, that he had created a Biology video on in his past life. The Fell Beasts and Trolls from LOTR. The trolls stood about nine feet tall and weighed in at about 900lbs when he made them, if they lived long enough, they would continue to grow until they were around twelve feet tall and weighing in at somewhere around a ton. Essentially Leon was making adolescent Trolls. His intent with the trolls was to actually make armor and weapons for them eventually. For right now he was simply equipping them with massive clubs.

The Fell Beasts which were essentially a kind of wyvern he maxed out on the weight limit at 1000lbs, but they were pretty huge by comparison to the Trolls. Their long thin bodies with hollow bones and huge wings. If you’ve ever seen the Trilogy and seen the size of the witch kings mount, then you’ve practically laid eyes on the version that Leon was making. The only difference was that he’d gone with the more traditional version that had a beak instead of gaping maw of teeth.

Leon was busy churning out monsters and keeping almost all of them in his Utility Pocket for now. The reason for keeping them in storage? Well, he’d discovered a limit to how many he could control all once. Leon could control up to twenty-five creatures at the same time. The twenty-sixth would go wild and follow its instincts. Leon wasn’t sure if that limitation would grow in number or not as he hadn’t really experimented before. So technically Leon could only bolster their forces by twenty-five monsters at any given time. But if he had a great many of them in storage, he could essentially maintain an infinitely replenishing group of twenty-five combatants.

What Leon was definitely experimenting with was giving the creatures that he made different affinities. For some reason the affinities had big impact on the individual monsters looks and even physical capabilities. For example. A Troll with Metal Affinity was much tougher and heavier than a Troll with Wind Affinity. But the Wind Affinity Troll was faster and lighter. They also developed strange colored patterns on their skin that reflected their Affinities.

The Fell Beasts differences were even more dramatic. Celestial Affinity resulted in what was basically an albino Fell Beast. Wind affinity turned them an obnoxious yellow color. Metal turned them a lustrous grey. The Earth Affinity Fell Beast he’d made couldn’t even fly for some reason. Whereas the Wind affinity Fell Beasts seemed to be able to simply hover on the smallest of air currents. It was weird, but also something that had been covered in the Lore books he’d recently Harvested. For unknown reasons, non-Sapient creatures were immediately affected by any Affinity they might have, and their bodies take on aspects of that affinity instantly. As they grow in Tier the impact of Affinity dramatically alters their bodies to an extent that is only seen in the highest Tiers for Sapient races.

On the Containment Block creation front Leon was making progress. Every night he was making them and enduring the ridiculous self-torture that it was to create them. Leon didn’t know how many Affinities there were, or how many he had. But after he’d made about seventy of them, he was starting to unlock the use of some very strange Affinities like Effervescence and Cloud. He always used the same amount of material to create each Block, roughly four times the amount of material needed in on of his skill Stalagmites. And the Rings were spreading out pretty far from his Source now. He was actually layering them on top of each other now.

Needless to say, the end was not even close to being in sight for making Containment Blocks. But he had noticed something beneficial. The repeated abuse of his Soul was making his Soul stronger and tougher. It was quicker to heal from the repeated damage he was causing when he ripped off chunks for the Containment Blocks. Which made the agony he had to endure shorter but no less intense.

Now with time limit on Teams Delving the Dungeon, there was no point in going to the Tier 2 floors. What they had discovered upon talking to the other Teams about the Tier 2 floors was that though there was only one entrance to the Eleventh floor from the Tenth floor, every team was deposited at different location upon entering. Each of those locations seemed to be hostile to the creatures surrounding the entrances and the monsters avoided those areas like the plague. It was almost always at least an hour’s journey once they entered the Eleventh floor before any monsters were encountered. Meaning that it was significantly more efficient to just delve the first ten floors.

Leon and his team passed up on delving in favor of training, studying, and continuing to prepare for the invasion that was sure to come. Every few days the Mentors would give everyone an update on what the Guilds spies had learned so far. So far, we had learned that the enemy forces were brining nearly four hundred Tier 2 individuals to this fight, but only thirty or so Tier 3’s. They would be traveling by boat and were expected to arrive within four or five months. Meaning that we had time to prepare. But we still had to keep our guards up and maintain a watch just in case they sent a specialized strike group ahead of them. The coming battle looked like it would be at least four to one in their enemy’s favor. The time frame was not enough for Leon to get his created monsters to develop into Tier 2 monsters. But he still had four of his Centipede monsters and Lucifer the Imp. Those five were all Tier 2s and would be of significant help.

Leon’s practice with his Aura was going slowly. The reason that the skills didn’t take up any space was that Aura skills were intrinsic to the existence of the Soul, everyone had an Aura, but unless you had certain knowledge given to you, you’d never see it or feel it. Malorie was teaching him how to control and use it properly for a few hours each day. Needless to say, Leon’s daily schedule was full all of the time between training his skills, creating monsters, watches that needed to be stood, and Aura practice, he hardly had a minute in the day to use for relaxation.

Three Months into preparations

Malorie Flesh Shaper

Malorie found herself checking the state of the Island and its preparations for the upcoming battle. She sighed as she made her way around the Island feeling very sorry for the two nations that were sending a joint force to try and take the island. The preparations were overkill to an extreme. Sure, the Islands inhabitants were outnumbered. But between the enchantments in the walls. The defensive weaponry and the fact that her pupil had made what he was calling a ‘Flight’ of wind affinity monsters… the invading forces stood no chance. This was barely going to be anything more than sheep lining up and walking into a slaughterhouse and obediently laying down on the butcher’s block.

It was a shame that those two countries had committed to attacking instead of just waiting until the end of the Founding Period and establishing trade routes. The level of preparations that the founders of this particular Dungeon City had made were simply too much for these backwater nations to overcome. Although admittedly this is how it usually went down, it was still a shame.

In other news her Pupil was learning to control his Aura quite well. Though he had a long way to go before he was ready to be introduced to anyone in high society. Standards of Aura control among the higher ups were almost ridiculous. It didn’t help that most places restricted access to anything about Aura until a person reached Tier 3. It was a kind of petty nobility thing that made the upper echelons feel good about themselves and allowed them to control situations or just people of lower rank in general. Being able to see uncontrolled emotions and even influence them to a small degree gave those in power even more power.

But the main thing she was concerned with today was the feeling she was getting from the Dungeon. The Mana around it had started to show signs that it was getting close to advancing in rank again. That was concerning on more levels than one. Not to mention the sheer size of its interior. Malorie had been in more dungeons than she cared to count. Sure a few of them had had Biome Floors which were almost always massive. But this Dungeon had become nothing but Biome Floors, and each floor was individually larger than the entirety of most Tier 3 Dungeons total floors. And aside from the first ten floors, which if not continually harvested definitely would overflow. Floors 11 through 19 were full scale worlds. Designed in such a way that she and the other Mentors all agreed made it almost impossible for them to overflow. The environments where the exits of the floors were, were so hostile to life on those floors that nothing would even approach them.

Floors 11 through 19 were particularly amazing because they seemed to have thousands of individual ecosystems that were all self-regulating. The Mentors had been exploring them all in their off time. Not harvesting or killing anything, just getting the layouts of everything, and monitoring for potential overflows. But the vast diversity of monsters in this dungeon was astonishing. There seemed to be millions of different species. From tiny insects to giant herbivores and predators. The oceans were particularly amazing in their diversity and in the danger that the different monsters represented. Malorie wouldn’t be surprised if various Sapient Species didn’t start to colonize some of the dungeon. In the distant future there could potentially be cities built inside of this Dungeon. Which was insane to think about.

But by far the most disturbing thing about the Dungeon was not its size, or its diversity of life. The most disturbing thing about it was that the monsters reacted to the intent of people entering it. The mentors only ever entered to explore and study, and the monsters around them behaved as natural animals or monsters in the wild would. But when the Mentees entered, the Mentors had observed very unnatural behaviors in the Dungeon Monsters. They seemed to set themselves up to intercept the Mentees, acted radically more aggressively to their presences, and seemed to be modulated. By modulated she meant that the Dungeon seemed to send just enough monsters for it to be challenge for the Mentees but didn’t overwhelm them with extreme prejudice. Everyone had always assumed that Dungeon grew stronger by killing the unwary, but what Malorie and the other Mentors were observing seemed to indicate that Dungeons just needed more diversity in their monsters to grow.

The Mentors could no longer hide the unusual nature of the Dungeon from the Guild. Which meant that things could get a little hairy politically over the next year.

Annise Crumbl

Annise’s life may have been turned upside down by her arranged marriage into the Crumbl family, but she found that it wasn’t as bad she’d though it would be. Gerald was a humble and gentle soul. Ameillia could be domineering at times, she was very assertive and fairly dominant, but she was kind and loving as well. Annise was glad that Ameillia was the one dealing with the interfamily politics. Gnome families were practically like Mafias. All running a rat race that seemed centered around bloodlines and old or ancient grudges and promises.

Currently Annise was in her greenhouse aboard the AirShip Gerald had gone and bought. It had taken a few weeks to transplant everything from he home greenhouse into this one, but Gerald had gone above and beyond in making sure this place was set up for her. It was actually incredibly sweet of him to have set everything up as he had.

Right now, the cargo bays were loaded, and they were acting as transporters for good between cities. Annise didn’t know where they were currently headed, or even what city they had just left. The ship was fast, and ever since they’d moved onto it, they had been moving around constantly. She wasn’t sure exactly why they were taking on so many jobs. But apparently Gerald’s investment into this thing was actually make money hand over fist. And they were blitzing to make as much as possible right now for some reason. Apparently, it had something to do with their human son. She hadn’t met him yet; he’d apparently been accepted into the Guild under a special program. Ameillia had told her earlier that she would get to meet him in a year or so.

Annise had to admit that she was curious about meeting the boy. The fact that the gods had made Ameillia give birth to him was something that was incredibly hard for her to accept. She’d never had much faith in gods. But all of that aside Annise found that she was happy. Lilly and Jerry were just adorable, and she found herself thinking of them as her own children at time. Jerry was actually showing a lot of interest in her greenhouse and was learning about the different plants that she grew and how to tend to them.

Her life had changed… but Annise was actually happy with life right now.