Ian internally shook his head at both Yervin and himself, as he returned his focus to the goblin floor. Forgetting about the lights was pretty bad, but he did have the excuse that he could see everything fine without them. As he pushed the nagging mistake to the back of his mind, he resumed construction of the goblin floor. There were still a couple of hours before the next wave of monsters dove into his dungeon.

With the communal rooms out of the way, all he had left was the recreational rooms….well, at least for the goblin living area. Now, what would goblins want to do? Mina, Izu, Pugi, Botan, Narcy, and Yervin liked to train and chat with each other, although maybe not Narcy, but, based on his observation of wild goblins, that wasn’t normal.

They liked to eat and be mean to each other. Eating was dealt with by the dining hall and his planned hunting and farming rooms, and he didn’t have to do anything to facilitate goblins being mean to one another. Although, something encouraging them to fight one another would be good, like an arena. However, he’d have to make sure to establish a rule not to kill one another. If he was going to have them killing the non-goblins on the floor for food, then he didn’t want the additional mana expenditure.

In the large, circular room closest to the dining hall/entrance hall/throne room, he began elevating the edge of the room, forming stone seating. Most importantly, he removed all normal cave features that would interfere with spectating. Eventually, five rows of seats lined the edge of the room, with openings for the corridors to other rooms. He made sure to form pathways beneath the seats, so goblins could walk to other rooms without interfering in matches.

Immediately after he finished the physical design for the room, he began on the enchantment. It was an enchantment designed so the goblins weren’t restricted by his no killing goblins rule, but only in this room. He began to enchant the room with rank ten healing magic, which he could only hope would be supported by outside mana. Even his large mana reserves wouldn’t be able to withstand the constant resurrection of goblins knocking each other’s heads off.

Of course, being rank ten, it would take a while. In fact, Ian doubted he’d finish it in a couple of days. Was it overkill? Probably, but since he didn’t designate a difficulty for this floor, the answer was technically no. Besides, it was only one room, and it could be avoided. It would definitely intrigue intruders and not frighten them away. Yes, definitely.

As Ian enchanted, the rustle of creatures walking through the forest entered his sphere of perception. His focus shifted onto enormous, pure white wolves. Five wolves standing six feet tall growled at his dungeon. A circle of billowing white rotated around their necks, as white wisps broke off from them and drifted around the wolves. Cloud Wolves. Unlike what most would consider a white wolf, these wolves lacked any color besides white in every part of their body. They looked at if a picture had been left uncolored, but without any black borderlines.

The wolves slowly strode to the entrance of his dungeon with heads held high. However, as they reached the halfway point of his perception, one of the wolves shook her head and started to bark at the others. The four other wolves’ heads turned to the fifth wolf in unison, which caused her to growl and put her ears back. As the four wolves continued to stare at the fifth wolf, she started to shake her head and whine, eventually violently pawing at her own head. About a minute after she began pawing at her head, she stopped and continued walking on with the other four wolves.

It seemed five B+ to A rank monsters were the limit of whoever was controlling the wolves. That meant this might be the last wave before whatever was testing him out decided to invade themselves. However, they might specialize in mind control, and simply leave after all their mind controlled monsters failed. That was a possibility, but it was better to prepare for the option of an even stronger creature or creatures tackling his dungeon.

These wolves would be a good chance for Yervin to fight a stronger monster, but the other goblins would be eviscerated without learning much.

“Attention everyone….well, not everyone, just the six of you I’m actually talking to.”

Izu and Narcy each raised an eyebrow, Yervin rolled his eyes, Botan and Pugi looked confused, and Mina yelled, “Yes!”

“Five cloud wolves are incoming. They’re stronger than Yervin, so I’m ordering the rest of you to go back and do what you want. Just don’t protect the dungeon from these wolves.”

“That’s going to be annoying,” grumbled Izu.

The others, even Mina, although reluctantly, nodded in agreement.

Ian internally sighed. He knew this was coming, since they felt the same unpleasant feeling he did when an intruder entered. It made training and pleasure activities much harder to focus on for them. Still, it needed to be done.

“This will be good practice then,” Ian began. “If this becomes a dungeon that adventurers frequent, then you’ll have to get used to that feeling, as we can’t be killing all of them. That means if you can’t focus while there are intruders in the dungeon, you’ll never get stronger or enjoy yourselves.”

The five goblins nodded in understanding, especially Narcy whose head was nodding three times faster than the rest. However, Yervin spoke up, “If that’s the case, then why am I fighting them?”

“I had the others fight the boars because it was good practice to face opponents stronger than them, and it will be the same for you and these wolves. Besides, I know you’ve been asking the others what it feels like to die and respawn.”

“R-right,” Yervin stammered back as he scratched his cheek.

“Good, then go to the G rank floor and prepare for the wolves. You’ll be alone against five, so prepare yourself.”

With a nod of affirmation, Yervin ran off. The others left the G+ rank floor and returned to the town.

The wolves had entered the G- rank floor and were slowly sniffing around and chewing on things. However, they were slowly making progress. He was glad they were exploring the dungeon rather than rushing through it like the others, otherwise the goblins might have already been attacked.

He saw a wolf turn down a corridor, where its head perked up, it bared its teeth, and a guttural growl rose from its belly. The spider automata had its front legs raised in preparation of rushing intruders. Right, he couldn’t have the spider killing all the wolves.

“Spider automata, please back down from the wolves and return to the core room to protect it, please.”

The spider automata’s body shook slightly, but it brought its front legs back to the ground. It started to turn around, but gave a glance back at the wolf where it brought its leg to eye level and then pointed it back at the wolf. Afterwards, it scuttled off, and the wolf didn’t give chase.

Once the spider automata was out of sight of the wolf, it resumed its sniffing and chewing through the floor.

The wolves proceeded easily through the G- rank floor and dispatched the boss with a single swipe of the smallest one’s paw. Yervin had decided to meet the wolves in one of the more inconsequential rooms on the G rank floor. As the wolves continued their slow trek, he waited.

♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️

The first wolf entered a rectangular room with her snout to the ground. Soon after her ears perked up, and she bit towards the side of the door. Her jaws snagged a chunk of meat from the invisible opponent.

Yervin cursed to himself as he lost his concentration, and thus invisibility, as blood pulsed from the open wound of his arm. Annoyed with himself, he activated his strengthening skills, but while they would make the fight more even, they did not stop the bleeding. He used his flash skill to blind the wolf that bit him, along with the other four now rushing him. As the room became enveloped in light, he heard five yelps.

He focused on the location of the wolf that bit him, and executed the same blink, push off of ceiling heel drop he did to the boar. As his heels were about to make contact, the blinded wolf rolled out of the way. However, Yervin was already swinging his right arm towards the wolf’s face, where his claw jammed itself into the left eye.

The wolf let out another loud yelp and sprung backwards. A small smile started to appear on Yervin’s face, however a jaw closed around his torso and flung him across the room into a wall. He leaped up from the ground, attempting to ignore the puncture wounds the covered his body. At least he didn’t lose another chunk of flesh.

The wolves were getting their vision back as their eyes were blinking furiously. Yervin let out another flash, but right after he used the skill, before the flash of light appeared, the wolves all closed their eyes. He still used the skill, but quickly moved away from his previous position. Four wolves each bit at a separate body part but met empty air. The fifth wolf had her nose in the air and gave a quick bark and howl to the others.

Yervin waited as the four wolves rushed towards him. Just as they were about to reach him, he blinked backwards and shifted space. In front of the four wolves with gaping jaws dripping with drool, the fifth injured wolf appeared. Before the fifth wolf could make a noise, jaws bit down on her neck, back, and legs.

A screech of pain erupted from the wolf. The other four let go after discovering they had injured their partner. However, the wolf was soon silenced as a full powered heel drop smashed her skull in.

Growls of anger reverberated from the remaining four wolves as they rushed towards Yervin. He blinked backwards to create distance, but collapsed to his knees right after. His vision blurred, and he noticed the fully formed large red pool around the belly of the dead wolf and not her head. He tried to blink again, but his concentration wavered and the skill failed. Soon after, he awoke in the respawn room.

♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️

The four wolves that killed Yervin, tore him limb from limb. They tried to do as much damage as possible, but his body disappeared soon after. They had blank stares for about a minute before they resumed their previous sniffing and chewing on everything.

If Ian had eyes, they’d be wide open right now. Considering their rank and experience difference, Yervin being able to kill a wolf, especially in a five on one situation, was quite the feat. There were of course other factors like the wolves being mind controlled and the element of surprise from his unusual techniques, but it was still quite the accomplishment. Although, now that he thought about it, they didn’t use any cloud wolf techniques or magic. Still, he’d have to give Yervin some congratulations, even if it would make him smug for a while.

It took awhile, but the wolves clean sweeped the room and one hit the boss. The real test would be the next floor. They seemed smarter than the previous creatures, but would they be smart enough for a floor puzzle?

As the wolves entered the G+ rank floor, they continued their same process of sniffing and chewing. However, when one of them reached the center of the first room, its priorities changed instantly. It walked over to the swallow golem and booped the golem with its nose. The swallow’s eyes lit up red and the illusion on the room evaporated.

The wolf paid no attention to the change in the room. However, its eyes flickered, and it shook its head slightly. Eventually it returned to normal, and the behavior of all four wolves changed. Rather than sniffing and chewing everything, they headed directly for the center of each room and booped their noses on the golems.

The wolf that booped the swallow had headed to the cicada room and booped the golem there. However, unlike the rest it just sat there afterwards, while the rest continued to roam the floor booping the golems.

Ian watched as another wolf approached the fern room. Once it reached the center and booped the fern golem there, it sat down and waited like the wolf in the cicada room. He was uncertain how he should feel about this, as the wolves seemed to have figured out the puzzle for the floor. However, the way they were acting, while mind controlled, was a bit too large of a jump compared to the boars. Maybe his ‘looking through the eyes of the mind controlled monsters’ wasn’t as far fetched as he initially thought. Whoever had these mind control powers was better than he thought, especially considering how well they were controlling advanced intelligence wolves. He would need to make some preparations in case they had enough power to mind control dungeons.

Even though he had suggested the possibility, Ian wondered if the gods would actually allow one of their dungeons to be mind controlled by any being not at the level of a god. Though, considering the odd restrictions on dungeons, it wasn’t an impossibility.

He layered mind protection spells with a combination of defense and mind mana throughout his dungeon consciousness, with focus around the core. It was a far larger process than while he was human, as through his studies, mind magic affected the head and brain of individuals. As a dungeon, he didn’t have any evidence of where his consciousness resided, but his core did make the most sense. Still, taking precautions and layering it throughout the dungeon was a good idea. While making sure his spells didn’t affect the use of mind magic spells in his dungeon, just the ones directed at himself, the fourth wolves continued trying to find the correct order. The other three would boop their respective golems after the fourth one chose wrong.

Hours later, Ian watched the final run through with annoyance, as he couldn’t cast his mind defense spells on the G+ rank floor while they were there. The G- rank floor had been annoying, but ordering the creatures on the floor to wipe out all the bugs had worked pretty well.

As the wolf booped the moss golem, all nine golems lit up green and the door unlocked. With that, the other wolves stood up from their golems, and entered the boss room with the fourth.

The boss room and F- rank floor were just as easy to the wolves as the previous floors. The puzzle doors opened for them just like the other monsters, while the enchantments had little to no effect on them. However, after clearing the boss of the F- rank floor, they appeared on the floor that Ian was waiting for. Finally, the first intruders on his EX rank floor had appeared.

♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️

The wolves immediately grouped together in the deep darkness with their hair standing on end. The clouds surrounding them began to rotate at an increasing rate, but slowed down soon after as it did nothing to the surrounding darkness. Even with their hair standing on end, they continued the same process as previous floors. Soon after, they reached an intersection with a golden apple tree.

They had munched on the golden apples frequently on previous floors, but now they showed no interest as the smell of death was slowly growing stronger. As a group, they headed down the straight path. A black saffron plant came in to view, but the wolves hugged the wall opposite, creating as much space between them as possible.

As the wolves slunk past the plant smelling of death, the smallest one at the back was suddenly floating in the air. It flailed its legs, as it fell to the ground. It fell on its right side, with its right hip taking most of the impact. The wolf whined as it started to get back up, but it fell back down as its right leg would not work. It growled and looked at its right leg.

The glaze of mind control faded as the wolf frantically tried to bite its leg off. Its hip was black, no longer covered in hair, and pieces of flesh were falling off. Unluckily, the wolf touched the black part with its mouth, and the contagion spread there. Screeching whines echoed from the wolf until its vocal chords no longer worked, and it died. Where the wolf had landed, the black saffron lay crushed.

The other three wolves with eyes wide, sprinted further into the floor. Soon after, the front runner started to plummet into a pit. Before it could wonder where the pit came from, white clouds formed beneath its feet as it leaped back up. Following suit, the other wolves ran across the now visible pit with cloud footholds. After three corners, all three wolves disappeared without any indication.

Now, in a pitch dark room with no openings, the wolves frantically scratched at the walls in an attempt to get out. As they were doing so, the room lit up enough to blind them, but they didn’t have enough time to contemplate the brightening of the room in the first place. The corpses of three wolves, now looking like swiss cheese, disappeared into mana.

♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️

That was a bit more anticlimactic than Ian imagined when he first came up with the idea to have the wolves test his EX rank floor. Although, he did learn about the potential combination of death saffron and the blink hobgoblin. The overpowering smell of death got rid of the wolves’ ability to detect the goblin while invisible. Also, he didn’t think the effect of just touching the death saffron would be that potent.

He didn’t expect the pit to be that useful, but still seeing them just run over it was immensely disappointing. The teleport trap did its job, so there wasn’t much to say about that.

Still, no laser hallways, earth spike hallways, vaporization hallways, or water cutters. Depths, they didn’t even reach the B room, the closest one to the entrance. Admittedly, it was right after the teleport trap they reached, but….

Ian wondered how much the mind controller saw. Fear seemed to kick the wolves out of their mind controlled state, so he wasn’t sure they saw anything besides the first wolf get eaten away by the death saffron.

Well, he would just have to see if they sent more creatures or came themselves tomorrow. Until then, he resumed enchanting the arena. Hmmm, maybe he would try to fight them himself tomorrow.