I was in the middle of pondering why Areth yelled at me. Again. I mean how I was supposed that Temptation Mushroom would cause her to experience sexual vision? If anything that was saying something about her desires! And it wasn’t aphrodisiac shroom. It was supposed to make them hyperaware. I am a floating gem unable to reproduce how the hell was I to know it would have that effect. She should have found some nice male grootslang and got over that.

Once I saw a man called Viper the Grumpy and was afraid if she would soon become Areth the Nag. I quickly dispelled that thought afraid I would make that happen and I would NEVER live that down.

It has happened suddenly. The fire consumed my entire dungeon, I saw Kaeden, Ordia and Maisoon die. Nicolas had summoned some kind of shield but was quickly overwhelmed and terribly burned. My queens tried to slow fire’s advance and get the eggs out of the dungeon but there was not enough time. Then my core cracked and shattered and the world turned dark.

I woke up panicked and in desperation reached out to my family. They all were safe. I was surprised how quickly I accepted them but that was truth. Grootslangs weren’t just my bodyguards or mobs they were the family and I would do anything, everything to protect them. Even those adventurers deserved to be part of that. They threw away their prejudice against the dungeons and treated me fairly. It didn’t matter if I was nothing more than strange and bizarre dungeon to them, I will not stand idle seeing someone threatening them.

Because that wasn’t a vision or some kind of foreboding. That was good, old-fashioned threat. Someone didn’t like what I was doing and decided to let me know. I was to be a good little dungeon and behave as all dungeons should. Telling anyone was out of the question as the vision would become reality then. I felt a hint of celestial energy in the message but it might have been a ploy as well.

I guess whoever that was I needed to thank them as it reminded me who I was and what was my truth. I was a guardian and I needed to get ready so no one could ever hurt my charges. No more idling, no more pointless experiments, I needed to become a vital part of the empire so everyone would think twice before even looking at me funny.

Then there were druids, they were crazy, no doubt about that, nevertheless they were here and they were powerful. I hated to admit it but they could be reasonable at least towards me. I would use them as I would use the elves. Anything else would be a disservice to me and to my people.

I was not sure why but I got back some of my memories from the past life, or impressions would be more accurate. I remembered the vast forest stretching over thousands of kilometres, I remembered my kin, guarding and caring for it. I had a vague sense of disaster striking after celestials arrived and me killing all my family. Strange thing, I felt no resentment towards my kin nor towards celestials who caused the situation.

The last thing I recalled and the strongest as well, was the forest burning and sense of peace. It didn’t make much sense but it also made me wonder did I chose nature affinity because I truly believed it to be the best choice at the time or I first chose it and then come up with the logic to back it up?

Areth was currently taking part in the council session so I reached out to her. She was in the middle of imagining killing all the members in the most gruesome and creative ways. Why did the Queens insist she was perfect for the job? I pretended not to notice and asked her to invite the council to the dungeon to meet me.

Soon they all were here and I gave each of them improved skill bestowal which could grant any common-ranked skill known by the user every 72 hours. It was, of course, non-transferable and shared a cooldown with other skill bestowal skills. I gave them a speech how I was looking forward to our cooperation and other bullshit. They seemed to like it.

My true purpose was to get the Archdruid down here. Her crystal had something extra included, the vision and the warning not to share it with anyone. I must say I was impressed with her, although her eyes grew hard and cold and nature was filled with uncontrollable rage the moment she saw the message, it was only for a split second. She quickly returned to your usual crazy tree hugger routine.

As everyone was leaving she casually informed everyone that her master, Sovereign Frozen Sky mentioned wanting to visit such marvellous dungeon and if none had anything against she would drop by next month. No one had, which was natural, you did not say no to Sovereign if you could help it. I had a strong feeling I wouldn’t like their response to the threat made against me. That said being mildly uncomfortable was infinitely better than seeing everyone you cared about die.

It was high time to get back to work and I started with the mine. It had three floors and was a sub-dungeon but took the same space as the single room. The first floor contained first tier materials like copper, zinc, tin and coal and there was a good chance of finding a copper vein with tin impurities. I even set it to contain between ten and fifteen percent tin so all you had to do is melt huge enough chunk and got bronze.

The only opponents were howler shrooms with occasional conductor mixed among them. I also made sure that the pseudo-core responsible for the dungeon management would randomly regrow them every eight to twelve ours. Additionally, the mine would close, and teleport out everyone inside, for two hours every night when it refreshed everything inside. Additionally every week it would change ore and monster placement.

The second floor was still easy with the same monsters and 75% of the ore was the first tier. The second tier metal always present would be iron for 15-20% also the remaining ores would be either silver or aluminium alternating every week. The new features were treasure/trap rooms which should force miners to look for bodyguards as sweeping the floor once every few hours wouldn’t work here. It was a room randomly found during mining containing random resources and enemies. The most common would be bronze or iron ingots with some first-floor medicine shrooms but there also was a chance for a blacksmithing blueprint or recipe.

The difference was that recipe would tell you a general process of making an item and once found most adventurers sold them to crafters guild where everyone could learn it for a price. While the first one found was usually very valuable subsequent ones would be almost worthless. The blueprint was single use item that required the knowledge of a relevant recipe. When consumed during crafting it increased success chance and produced stronger items, rarer versions or gave additional benefits like elemental damage, glowing in darkness or increased sharpness to name a few.

The guardians in those rooms were alarm shrooms set just by the entrance combined with screamers, conductors and paralysing spore shrooms. If the chest contained a blueprint there would be three additional centipedes of random subtype. The only modification to them was they now could store the Yellow chalice lichen essence inside their body. On average it would allow them to heal twice but I allowed for slight variation here.

The third floor contained exclusively tier two materials with 40% being iron and rest would be a random mix of silver, aluminium, onyx and serpentstone. Technically serpentstone was almost third tier but as I was Lord of the Serpents it strangely fit. I also allowed for small fragments of obsidian and water crystal to randomly appear on the third floor. The trap/rooms would still appear on this floor but I increased the number of centipedes to five per room and increased their rank to D+.

I have also created two new monsters unique to this floor. The first was the dark gardening centipede that would always try to attack the weakest party member first. The second one was the guardian centipede that would protect the silver chest in the middle of the floor. Once the chest was opened guardian centipedes would start patrolling the whole floor.

The chest would always contain rare blueprint and other valuables but could be opened only during the first three days of the new week and would stay open until the mine refreshed at the end of the week. I wondered if the adventurers would rush to the chest as soon as possible or choose three days of easier mining. To not make it too easy for the adventurers I also told the council that if the entire vein was unmined for a week it would upgrade in quality and after four weeks it would change to tier three material, either gold or bloodstone.

It must be my mind trait overcomplicating things but I set an upper limit for the number of dark centipedes to be ten and twelve for guardian centipedes. They would be respawned every six hours but if at any time there was less than half of the centipedes of one kind all centipedes would vanish to be replaced by a full number of elite variants. In the unlikely case that adventurers managed to repeat this feat with upgraded mobs, they would be replaced by champions this time. I almost wanted to keep this one a secret but decided that it would hurt my credibility too much. I tweaked the basic design of my new monsters and opened mine for the first adventurers. When I told Kaeden he told me the test team would arrive within an hour.

Race

Gardening Centipede

Subspecies

Dark

Class

-

Subclass

-

Rank

D+

Level

1/100

HP

4000/4000

Mana

500/500

Titles

-

Skills

5

Skills

Weak Paralysing Venom [C] lvl 1/20

(Racial)

Venom capable of paralysing the target. Effects vary depending on the subject, weak ones may be paralysed for longer and strong ones may be unaffected.

One with the shadows [A] lvl 1/50

Upgraded version of stealth utilising dark energy. The user will be very difficult to spot be the enemies of the same rank. The first attack breaks the stealth but gets +200% bonus to damage and cannot be resisted. Consumes mana every second it is active.

Dark inheritance [A] lvl 1/50 [Passive]

Grants 30% bonus to all stealth related actions and abilities. The user is undetectable by enemies unless they use legendary detection skill or are closer than eight meters to the user.

Weakness detection [B] lvl 1/25 [Passive]

You always know who the weakest victim is. It also grants 25% increase in damage and success rate of attacks against unaware or paralysed victims.

Quick Burrowing [C] lvl 1/20

You can hide underground getting 20% bonus to stealth (100% if you remain unmoving). It takes two seconds to completely burrow yourself and any damage taken during this time may stun you. Movement speed is halved when underground.

Race

Guardian Gardening Centipede

Subspecies

-

Class

-

Subclass

-

Rank

A

Level

1/100

HP

10000/10000

Mana

5000/5000

Titles

-

Skills

8

Skills

Paralysing Venom [B] lvl 1/25

(Racial)

Venom capable of paralysing the target. Effects vary depending on the subject, weak ones may be paralysed for longer and strong ones may be unaffected.

Charge [A] lvl 1/50

You are able to charge the enemy increasing the damage dealt by 600% and crossing ten meters in a second. Can be only used when there is no enemy in the melee range and the chosen target is at least 5 meters but no further than 50 meters from you. Additionally, increases the damage by extra 100% per every 5 meters travelled using this skill. You have a good chance at knocking down your target.

Armoured Body [A] lvl 1/50 [Passive]

All ranged attacks have 90% chance of being deflected inflicting only 5% of their damage. Melee attacks deal 40% less damage. No attack can deal more damage than 90% of your total HP. The first time your health drops below 20% you will ignore all damage dealt for 5 seconds (You still take damage and if your health drops below 0HP you will die after the 5 seconds are up unless healed).

Sturdy [D] lvl Max [Passive]

If your health is above 40% any attack that would kill you will reduce your HP to 1.

Last Struggle [B] lvl 1/25 [Passive]

When bellow 1/5 health you become 50% quicker and stronger. You can choose one enemy that will receive double damage from all your attacks and skills but you are unable to switch targets until they die.

Relentless assault [C] lvl 1/20

You perform a series of quick strikes with damage increased by 50% but your defence is lowered by 25% for five seconds.

Bash [C] lvl 1/20

You strike the target with your head for triple damage and chance to stun it. It is possible to take damage using this skill while striking hard materials.

Magic Hater [H] [Passive]

You take 10% more damage from magic. Any magic user that damaged you in last 30 seconds will take additional damage from your attacks (5% per 1% of damage received). Your hatred for magic makes you more likely to try to kill any mages first during combat.

I have decided against opening the Garden for now in case it would need some minor adjustments. After all, I wasn’t sure if this was an appropriate challenge for the rewards given. I also wanted to test the traps that were a unique addition to the third floor before I decided if they would be a part of the garden as well.

The party, which arrived to challenge the mine, consisted of 6 people; Nicolas, Hallvard ‘Mammoth-blow’ Sigvaldisson, ω-ranked warrior armed with two-handed axe, Cassin Bertran, α-ranked knight in heavy armour and with a kite shield and Wilidon Aracaryn, a α-ranked half-elf Mystic Archer, who surprisingly had a long sword but no bow. The support was provided by a surprisingly well-behaved wood elf Folwin Zylyra ω-ranked elemental healer and ε-ranked thunder shaman named Hasanati. She was the most colourful as well, who goes dungeon hunting in long crimson dress and soft court shoes? I guessed she was here to get some experience and the rest of the party was rather unhappy about that.

“Mr Arnar, good day to you. We all are pretty excited to get to work and explore the mines so if you don’t mind we will start immediately. “– I was surprised both that the healer was the leader and that he greeted me politely. I was sure they were going to get in, get out and in the process massacre everything alive inside the mines. Pleasantly surprised.

“Mr Zylyra, the pleasure is mine and of course you are welcome to start whenever you wish. I just have two questions, is you being an elf going to be a problem? And Nicolas, aren’t you tad overpowered for the dungeon?” The last question made the experienced adventurers smile while the shaman looked confused.

“So you don’t know? Lord l’Amy is quite famous for his passion of dungeon exploring, however, he wasn’t able to do much of that lately. The weak dungeons panic when he enters and throws everything at him in useless attempt to stop him. I think one core exploded right after he entered a few years ago. The experts concluded it was scared to death…” - The knight stopped mid-sentence after seeing the look Nicolas was giving him. Then blushed deeper red than Hasanati’s dress, a bashful knight, who would have thought?

Nicolas coughed and explained – “The strong ones also tend to go overboard trying to kill me so if you exclude the ones I train my divine affinity in then I wasn’t in any dungeon in last two hundred years. I am here just to observe and rescue them if it is needed. Per our previous agreement I won’t even advise them” The Hasanati scowled when the rest nodded which made me wonder if making her a target of most traps would go against the agreement. My intuition was telling me other adventurers wouldn’t mind that much. “I can also assure you Folwin have spent last one hundred years as the member of the various scout teams, he got rid of the elven attitude quite quickly.”

The party pretty much skipped the first floor as there was nothing of interest there, only Nicolas stopped few times to collect “samples” as he said. I guided them to few selected trap rooms on the second floor so they would get a feel of the challenge. Nicolas removed all the rock and ores with the wave of the hand so it took only a few minutes for them to reach the hardest room.

It turned out the guilds sent them in blind, without relaying any information I shared to not influence the reports they had to complete at the end of the run. I made all three centipedes spawned were of a different kind so they could properly evaluate the place.

The common one attacked first focusing on the knight and was immediately knocked back towards the centre of the room by a mighty shield bash. The rest of the party quickly followed the knight and spread out to maximise their range potential.

If they were the normal party that would prove to be a fatal mistake as both blue and red centipede hiding among mushrooms decided it was invitation they couldn’t decline. Blue one attacked the healer and red focused on the shaman. When the centipede entered the five-metre range from the elf the bright light from above smashed it right in the middle of the head. Not only it spoiled the ambush but also stunned pure fellow.

Folwin made a slicing motion which conjured a wind blade aimed straight at the offending monster. I guess I knew what the elemental part in his job title meant, good to learn not to assume healers equalled walking health potions. To his surprise, the centipede survived the attack as it was healed completely thanks to its skill. Not that it changed anything as following two wind blades decapitated it seconds after.

The shaman fared much worse as she focused on the healer’s fight completely missing the red centipede approach. The bite from behind startled her enough that she summoned quite an impressive electric discharge. Unfortunately, she panicked and the skill was too widely spread to actually kill the attacker. At the verge of death thanks to the berserk skill it spat the venom all over the beautiful dress the woman was wearing, ruining it and dying right after. Hasanati was left with the choice of stripping the dress or taking low but continues poison damage.

Cassin seeing his comrade plight beheaded the remaining mob in one swift sword strike. Then promptly turned his back on the half-naked woman. Must be the knightly thing to do. Nicolas convinced me to create a basic robe for her and in exchange, I got to assimilate ruined dress gaining a few enchantments and new material, fiery silk.

They ignored the shrooms and looted the chest being quite pleased with the blueprint they got, it was for the iron long sword and it made the weapon almost indestructible, forever sharp and slightly raised the quality. From their comments, I had learned that once opened the initial burst damage from screamers was going to really unpleasant to the warrior and would most likely moderately wound the miner. The loot was slightly too good, especially the blueprint with three options and no restrictions but as two of those didn’t directly increased the combat strength but were utility I got a pass.

Not that those options weren’t great. The truth was the swords break, and if it happens during fight chance of heavy injury or death was significant. Outside of battle, it would mean that you had to spend money on the new sword, something common-ranked and epic-ranked adventurers were always short of. Professional sharpening of the sword wasn’t expensive but it added up so the blueprint was going to be a hot commodity. The biggest advantage of this particular blueprint was it A-rank which meant most of the ordinary blacksmiths would be able to utilise it.

I was grateful for their input as I knew they only reason they were discussing it was for my own benefit. I was shocked to be in depth analyse provided by the warrior, another reminded not to assume big and roughish axman had to be stupid as well. I decided on fitting reward and dropped a skill crystal into his hand, which managed to stun everyone.

Skill Crystal of the Blueprint Duplication [B] (Quality: Epic)

Grants the skill “Blueprint Duplication” [B] after use.

The item is destroyed after use.

Common Blueprint Duplication [B]

Allows the user to attempt to duplicate the blueprint of the common rank.

If the skill fails the blueprint is destroyed. There is a slight chance of producing an additional copy.

Upon success, the new blueprint will be created and quality of the original will be lowered by one.

Blueprints created by this skill cannot be duplicated.

This skill can be used only once every three hours.

This skill cannot be transferred, copied or stolen by any means.

Upon mastering this skill you will be able to teach it to one person.

Skill Crystal (Epic) bonus: + 5 to skill lvl, +10% success rate when duplicating sword blueprints. You will be able to teach this skill to five people upon mastering it and they will be able to teach it to three people.

I shouldn’t be able to produce those skill crystals as I didn’t have the skill myself, which for me was ridiculous as it was a basic dungeon ability similar to breathing for humans. My persistence led to a multitude of experiments and one of them allowed me to quickly customise this skill for the occasion.

“What is it?” Hallvard asked confused, in hindsight dropping unknown objects at adventurers would be a bad idea unless I wanted the said objects to be destroyed.

“The skill crystal, it is Arnar’s speciality, same as skill book but better. If you want my advice I would use it immediately as all of the crystals he created so far turned amazing, so no matter which of the three types this is you won’t lose out” – Nicolas was right in the most important part, he had no way of knowing this was the fourth one.

“Folwin can I have the blueprint for a second?” The warrior asked immediately after using the crystal and used the skill without any warning causing everyone to be shocked one more.

“How the hell did you do that? This is an advanced blacksmith’s ability and even they need several hours to copy the scroll.” Wilidon exclaimed to be showed away by Nicolas rushing to grab the scrolls.

“They both are identical and only the quality of both dropped. Small price to pay. This is huge! This is the first time non-crafter managed to perfectly duplicate the scroll.” Nicolas oblivious to everything else muttered examining the scrolls. Then started pestering the warrior. “Is the skill transferable? Please tell me it is!”

“No, it isn’t.” Seeing Nicolas disappointment Hallvard quickly added; “It can be taught to one person when mastered. You didn’t tell me those crystals gave such a great bonuses, it is already lvl 6/25.”

“Arnar?!”

“Relax Nicolas, those type of skills advance by practising and gaining experience. Which can be simplified as making new memories. I simply added few such memories to the skill crystal alongside with some insights into duplicating sword blueprints which gave an additional bonus.” Seeing him trying to say something and having a good idea what he was about to ask I decided to help Hallvard further. “Before you demand your very own skill crystal, you should know he can teach it to five people so go pester him. It won’t be easy to master the skill so your help will speed things up considerably.”

“Are there any special restrictions on its use?” Cassin asked while Nicolas were busy convincing the warrior he just had to be one of those five people.

“Not really, but I wouldn’t use this skill on blueprints below above-average quality unless you have a whole stack of them or you advanced pretty far in crafting profession. Success rate plummets with average and lower quality goods.”

After Nicolas got the promise he wanted, the adventurers advanced to the last floor, I was afraid Hallvard was about to be abducted and forced to copy blueprints until he mastered the skill but the scribe managed to restrain himself, barely.

The third floor was uneventful for the most part. The shaman seemed to make an excellent job of testing every traps effects, much to her chagrin. Two such occurrences were especially noteworthy; she triggered the same trap twice falsely believing that it couldn’t possibly reset itself in just fifteen minutes.

The second one was a special trap filled with extremely stinking black substance, once you got it on any part of you no amount of washing or cleansing spells would save you. Besides being putrid it also attracted centipedes in quite a long range. Coupled with the fact she was the weakest her mood got even worse.

Once she even stepped on lurking dark centipede and it got under her robe. The resulting thunder summon charred the centipede and shocked everyone but Nicolas. The elf healed everyone with AoE wind healing spell which to me made a lot of sense.

When the party got to the middle of the last floor Hasanati decided to vent her fury on the guardian centipedes managing to strike seven of them with one spell. Unfortunately, she was less than forty meters from them and reduced their health to 10%, which combined with the charge forced Nicolas to use protection rune on her. She got knocked out of the fight as a result and Folwin killed weakened defenders with one spell.

This triggered the disappearance of remaining mobs but five seconds later on top of the party spawned twelve elite ones. Due to their teamwork, they managed to stall them long enough to learn non-magical means and limited damage output was the best course of action.

That is until second contingency kicked in and they had to face twelve champions, which were all γ-ranked. They would be in huge trouble if the shaman didn’t manage to recover and summon small lighting elementals to distract the attackers. It only worked as centipedes considered them magic users but still it took almost an hour but the last centipede had fallen.

“Good job guys, I have added five skill bestowal crystals as an apology. I will disable champion spawning until the chest is opened and only four elites will join the normal ones.” It was a stupid oversight as it never occurred to me that you needed to kill all the centipedes to open the chest and THAT would trigger spawning stronger ones. I also learned why Wilidon hadn’t brought the bow, he could conjure one out of magic light, arrows included.

“That would be a smart idea. This is usually the 20th-floor difficulty and only in legendary dungeons. The changes should bring it down to what we had expected – 10th-floor difficulty. If you planned champion version of the dark ones please limit it to only one and add some kind of clue it is close or it will kill every miner it targets.” Folwin then concentrated on the unlucky Hasanati. “I hope you realise you would have died if not for Lord l’Amy. You NEVER attack a monster in the dungeon when your team isn’t ready. Doubly so if the monster is the one you have never seen before and you don’t know what abilities it has.”

What followed was an in-depth analysis of the dungeon and the fight which would normally occur in the guild but they stayed for my benefit. The ring blueprint I gave out was judged to be a great reward for the mine as it has 20% increase in mining speed, mining precision and stamina recovery.

Nicolas stayed behind to thank me for the experience and get detailed monster stats and skills. On the one hand, it was much easier when the dungeon could tell you all you needed to know. On the other, today's exploration showed test runs were still a necessity.