Dylan sighed as he stared at the destruction in his second floor; the broken corpses of rage boars and wolves were scattered around in the area of one of the deep valleys in the second floor. A horrifying beast stood, razor-teeth tearing into the body of a boar. Many things had happened since Dylan entered the dream world and chose the quest orb once again. Sighing, Dylan reflected over what had happened over the past week or two. According to Kuraura and Grotho, two weeks had passed, and Dylan had been leveling up like mad. Of course, Dylan had had to teach both of them what a week even was, and although he wasn’t even sure if a year in Thunberg could be split according to weeks, he didn’t mind it and continued with his plan.

The level up spree over the course of 2 weeks had brought Dylan to level 18, and his mana capacity had drastically increased to 2830, nearly reaching the 3000 mana required to summon a Fireball Wolf. In the back of his mind, Dylan had been calculating the growth of his mana capacity, and had been greatly confused due to the fact that mana capacity grew at seemingly completely random rates. The levels up until 10 had provided consistent increasing increments of mana capacity, yet the levels after 10 up until now provided anywhere between 100 to 200 mana at a time. Dylan had all but given up trying to make sense of things and merely kept the numbers floating in the back of his head.

In terms of skills, monsters and quests, Dylan had received a total of 1 skill, 2 monsters, and 1 quest with his levels. Apparently, opportunities did not come with every level up as well, but Dylan made the most of what he got.

Regarding the skill, it had been an upgrade of Dylan’s previously learned skill: [Trap Knowledge I]. The upgrade had brought it to [Trap Knowledge II], and it taught Dylan a plethora of new things such as doors or walls which could only be entered using certain items or assigned keys, traps which launched materials such as spikes or rocks across a distance, and traps which summoned monsters when activated. This gave Dylan a fairly simple way to prevent his breeding caves from being breached easily. He set a stone wall which mirrored the wall of his dungeon to block the entrances of the breeding caves, then he set a [Dungeon Law] allowing monsters to exit into the main dungeon, but prevented anything without a ‘key’ from entering. The specific key was a rock which Dylan found and set as the key, turning it into a unique, one-time-use item which he could summon. He then needed to set a monster to drop it, so Dylan chose to set one of the giant bats within the first floor to drop all four keys to the breeding cave if it died. Then, Dylan set a [Dungeon Law] preventing that specific bat from leaving the safety of the roof-cave it nested in and also prevented all other monsters on the floor from attacking it. In this way, it would be incredibly hard for people to enter his breeding caves; not like there was anything majorly important hidden within them anyway.

From the two monster orbs in the level-up dreams, Dylan had received a monster called Thunder Skink; with a smooth head, black body and two bright yellow streaks running down its body which was a mere 20 inches long, this small predator didn’t contribute much to Dylan’s Dungeon defense. It had a passive skill which allowed it to scatter electricity over its body and the area around it, as well as electric resistance(D). Other than that, it didn’t have any other skills. The two thunder glands stored in the yellow streaks on its back could prove to be useful for Charlatan or other monsters in the future, however. The Thunder Skink was merely an (E-) ranked monster, but it was still a welcome addition to Dylan’s Dungeon, where he seeded them into the breeding caves to build up their population.

The other monster he received however, was quite astounding even to him. It resembled a muscular horse with a strange triangular head and sunken eyes which were almost unnoticeable. Two curved horns sprouted from its skull, and a row of dull-brown spikes ran down its back. Its body was incredibly muscular, with strange symbols which seemed to be carved into its thick skin, and it possessed a muscular and long tail which equaled the length of its body, ending in a razor-sharp bone spike. At the shoulder it stood at 7 feet tall, and from the edge of its nose to the tip of its tail, it was about 15 feet long. It did not have any skills other than a strange passive skill called [Rune-Covered Body], which gave the creature anywhere between 1-5 runes on its body which could be activated at will, granting the beast varying abilities. Due to the fact that he could summon the beast, Dylan could tell that these were incredibly ferocious and territorial. In addition, their rune passive skill determined their hierarchy; the more runes one had on their body, the more powerful the beast was. Lastly, the runes on each beast were unique and all contained different powers, almost like the fingerprint of a human. This terrifying monster was called Amordophon, and it was a creature possessing (B) rank strength.

That’s right. (B) rank.

Dylan had been stunned as soon as he had received it, to the point that he had even asked Gehennia how he was able to acquire such a powerful monster despite the fact that he couldn’t even summon his (C ) ranked Fireball Wolves yet. He was certain that it was a mistake. The reply he had received instead came from Lurewich.

WHEN THE LORD GRACES YOU WITH A GREAT GIFT, YOU DO NOT QUESTION HIS INTENT. Is what Lurewich had said, so with that, Dylan was able to accept the beast. To be fair, he still couldn’t summon it even if he took the time to level up. The beast required 15,000 mana to summon. Overall, Dylan had gained a great harvest from skills and monsters, even if he couldn’t currently use one. That was, until he acquired the quest orb.

The quest was to contain a rampaging Amordophon within his Dungeon without dying, killing the amordophon, or letting it escape for 3 days. If he managed to survive and complete the quest, the amordophon within his dungeon would become subordinated, and another amordophon of the opposite gender would be summoned as a part of his dungeon as well. Considering the beast in question and the knowledge he had gained of it, Dylan had already felt bitter just reading the quest.

And that’s what led to his second floor being in this state. In all honesty, Dylan was surprised that fire wasn’t spreading over the whole field right now. He had a feeling that burning the whole second floor would only drive the beast up into his first floor, where a lot more trees awaited to be destroyed, and a higher chance for the beast to escape awaited. Originally, Dylan had pulled all the monsters and animals away from the amordophan when it had been summoned, and gave a [Dungeon Order] to avoid the beast. Calling the goblins deeper into the forest, he had them scattered up in the trees of his forest, and the wolves hid within the cave with his ember wolves. He intended for the goblins and wolves to pull away from the threat and make the forest look less suspicious. The other animals such as stone spiders hid around the edges of forested areas, or wandered away from the general area of the amordophon. The rage boars and normal boars on the other hand, had some trouble wandering away from the general area due to their bad vision; Dylan needed to continually move them with [Dungeon Order] to move them a good distance away, where they scattered into the forested lands and the fields.

The first day had gone fine, in fact, Dylan was greatly intrigued by the amordophon. Due to the quest, it currently counted as an intruder, but Dylan wanted to at least see what the creature which would be joining him was capable of. The first day was spent observing the beast as wandered the area it was summoned in. Originally, the beast steadily wandered around the area as it sniffed at the ground. Due to its proximity to the other animals it started to catch up, but it occasionally stopped to roll around in the grass. It only had a single rune on the right side of its body, making it one of the lowest of its species in the hierarchy. This rune resembled a sun with small figures appearing to bow before it, though Dylan had no clue what that could mean.

As the sky outside of the dungeon turned dark, the beast somehow seemed to notice the spreading night despite the darkness of the second floor. The beast lay its head down and rested for the night. Come the next morning, everything quite literally went to shit; the beast woke up and started rampaging across the second floor. Dylan could only bitterly watch it overtake all of the other creatures within the dungeon in terms of pure speed and stamina. When the amordophon had encountered its first rage boar, they had turned to face each other, the amordophon roaring aggressively as the rage boar snorted and pawed the ground. After the slightest moment of tension, the rage boar burst with power as its rage reached the limit, its body launched like an arrow from a bowstring. The amordophon had roared in challenge and charged as well. When the two collided, guess what the result was?

The rage boar flew. Dylan had watched the moment of their impact and came to a conclusion. Even the rage boar at its strongest couldn’t compete with the amordophon for a moment. Even with its head start on the charge, the boar had been tossed back, flying through the air for a good dozen feet after its neck snapped and back crumpled under the impact. The broken rage boar was dead before it even hit the ground, and one of its eyes had even been crushed out of its skull from the impact. Unfazed, the Amordophon had taken a few bites of flesh from its body before charging forward once again.

Following that, the beast continued to overtake the other monsters as it outran and picked them off one by one. The entirety of the second day had the beast killing dozens of monsters which couldn’t escape in time. Anything lurking in the open fields was overtaken and killed, and the amordophon even rushed into a densely wooded area and took down the stone-clawed spider hiding within. It barely took the time to eat bodies; only tearing out a few mouthfuls of flesh before it moved on in its pursuit. Only when night came did the beast lay and rest like it did the previous night, though this time surrounded by a pile of corpses. On the third day, Dylan had decided to take action, and gathered a swarm of monsters including rage boars, stone-clawed spiders, and all types of wolves. Among the mixture, some goblin shamans were present as well, with hordes of other goblins hidden within the forest lines. Dylan mobilized nearly the entirety of the second floor for the sole purpose of beating the beast half to death so it wouldn’t cause any more problems. Afterall, he could just heal it when it became subordinated to him, right?

In all honesty, I didn’t think this would happen…Dylan thought to himself as he stared at the dozens of corpses on the ground. All of the preparation had led up to this moment, however, in the end they still failed pitifully. Rage boars and stone-clawed spiders simply couldn’t stand up to the amordophon’s attacks, and even the quick-moving wolves were overrun. The goblin shamans with their earth magic sought to control the amordophon’s movements, yet the rune on its body had suddenly began to glow, and it emitted a glowing orb which had gently floated into the sky. The orb had caught the attention of everything facing its general direction with its beautiful glow before releasing a light so blinding that all monsters immediately staring at the rune were blinded, long enough for the beast to escape and kill them, at least. The entirety of the second floor had lit up like day when its rune activated! At the end of it, the few monsters which hadn’t been killed were left collapsed on the ground, twitching.

Currently, the amordophon just stood amongst the pile of bodies, roaring occasionally as it tore apart the bodies to devour.

Tch, this damned beast is so troublesome! Dylan angrily thought to himself. The amordophon had already claimed the lives of 33 rage boars, 20 horned hares, 22 stone-clawed spiders, 13 iron-spine wolves, 10 wind wolves, 12 dire wolves, and 10 goblin shamans, not to mention the countless non-evolved animals it had taken down out of pure spite. Dylan’s heart ached at the amount of mana which had been lost. Although he could recycle the corpses, the amordophon had claimed some mana of its own, and many of those monsters had been newly summoned, meaning they couldn’t possibly give back as much mana as it took to summon them. It took time for those sorts of things, after all.

Just one more day! No, LESS! Dylan roared in his heart as he watched the beast trudge into the large southern forest, the area where the goblins lived and the buffer to the cave where his core was hidden. I’ll survive, and you will become MINE!