Valens growled in annoyance as another group of adventurers tore his newest boss to shreds. All the hobgoblins had had to do was not charge them directly and maybe he would have had a chance against the group of five tier-two adventurers, but no the stupid creature just had to go straight for the kill. The core was more and more appreciating Aspen’s more deceptive style of hit and run tactics and Sora’s more considered method of straight-up violence. Both of them seemed far more suited to fighting multiple opponents as opposed to the hobgoblin which if he was being very generous might do well in a one-on-one fight.

The boss was still alarmingly strong and on occasion would get a kill in when it surprised an adventurer, but that was happening less and less often as parties were learning that they could just sit back and let the enemy come to them. Once his boss had charged out at them, they could then gang up on the monster all at once not allowing it any opportunity to really fight back. It had only been a few days since he had put his third boss in place, but it was already being countered far more effectively than either Aspen or Sora ever had.

Taking a deep breath Valens moved his attention away from the tenth floor, the hobgoblin would get better, hopefully at least. Its evolutions would make it stronger and stronger, and Magnus was optimistic about its developing intelligence at some point. Sighing again the core took a look at its newest and only tier three floor. Well tier three in name at least, there weren’t any actual tier-three monsters around yet. Sora hadn’t even made it to tier three quite yet, though she was close, it would take his normal monsters at least a bit longer to start evolving as well.

The twenty-first floor was going to be a bit of a change from the previous five floors, for one sand stretched out over the floor as far as could be seen. Valens had created small artificial rivers and oases, well only one so far but he would add more as he grew the floor. His monsters would need some sort of water source, and he figured that once he got around to connecting the floors a little better, he could use those rivers to let his aquatic monsters pass through his floors. Magnus was also ready to help him shift around the mana type of the floor; Valens was pretty sure this would work but he wasn’t quite positive.

Are you sure about this Valens? This particular mana type isn’t the most conducive to a teeming environment.

I’m positive it’ll be fine. Besides you mentioned yourself that deserts actually have a lot of things that live in them. I’m just taking that idea and running with it. Valens projected false confidence as much as he could, but what was the worst that could happen? He might have to redo this floor, sure, but that would just take time and effort, so he wasn’t that worried about the possibility.

Alright then. Several large rune circles flared to life, and Magnus gathered his mana unleashing a steady stream of fire mana himself as well. Valens could sense the elemental mana a lot more easily after his rank up, but he still hadn’t had any success shifting around his aura himself. The tiny twenty-first floor was quickly filled with fire mana, and Valens felt a familiar shift in his aura.

Stop. The drake halted his spells and allowed his arrays to slowly wind down as the power feeding them was cut off. The overwhelming sense of fire mana in the air stayed put through just as he had wanted. The core grinned in anticipation, this environment was wildly different from the previous one, and that might make it hard for his creatures to descend, but he was sure it would work out fine. After all, maybe a monster from the ice floors could evolve on one of his fire floors and passively possess both elements? He wasn’t sure that it worked that way, but he was eager to try it out.

Magnus made his way back to the core room and Valens reminded himself that he needed to make the drake his own room at some point, but not right now. He had more important things to do, like playing with plants. He started with grass, spreading normal seeds all around the floor. Then he flooded them with his mana forcing them to grow and adapt, a good portion of them died, unable to handle the heat and fire mana. He didn’t think the sand was necessarily the best place to grow grass either, but eventually, some of the plants managed to survive, forming scraggly patches of dirty brown grass that blended quite nicely with the dunes around the floor.

Next came the bushes, which were rather disappointing, they didn’t change that much, they just became less leafy and more scraggly. The trees he created next changed a little bit more than the bushes but by that much. Thin and almost skeletal-looking branches stretched from squat trees with clusters of green at their crown which made a nice contrast to all the sand around them. Valens carefully examined his floor, the plants would grow and spread on their own now, he just needed to add in his monsters and then it would just be a matter of waiting until something evolved into tier-three.

Something was missing though, but the core was drawing a blank as to what. He had his plants, the monsters were obviously missing, he had put the sunstones in so what would wait a second, he didn’t have any cacti. Checking the memories, he had inherited from Magnus the core confirmed that deserts usually had spiny plants that were called cacti or were they called cactuses? Anyway, he needed some, the desert aesthetic didn’t seem quite right without that ubiquitous plant. Hey Magnus.

Warily the drake looked up from his book, his codex the core reminded himself. Yes Valens, how can I help you?

Do you have a cactus?

No, I do not have a cactus.

Why not Magnus? You always seem to have everything I need.

We’ve been over this before Valens, I’m not a genie I can’t just magically have whatever you want whenever you want it.

You know what fair enough; he had mentioned something along those lines before. What’s a genie, Magnus? Maybe he could create some of these genie creatures in his dungeon and get all of the patterns he would need. That would be very convenient, come to think of it why wouldn’t Magnus have brought him one of these creatures, to begin with?

The drake sighed deeply and rubbed his forehead. That’s because they don’t exist, they’re just made-up stories of creatures that can grant wishes. If they did exist, I just would have found one and wished to evolve, trust me on this one.

Fair enough. The core was a little disappointed now, having a genie would have been great. Now he still didn’t have a cactus, looking over his desert floor he shrugged. Nothing to be done about it he supposed, it was time to start populating the floor anyway.

The head of the Bancroft family reclined on his chair sipping wine and looking out over the gardens that surrounded his mansion. The sun played pleasantly amongst the trees and flowers and glinted off the roofs of buildings. He sneered at the thought of the city, ruffians, and imbeciles, the lot of them. His family had ruled in the kingdoms for generations yet here they were in the middle of nowhere, wasting away on some forsake frontier.

Well, the joke was on the Storms now, they would be lords again soon. He would personally see to it that that upstart family got what it deserved. They could finally build a proper mansion for one of the great houses, not this hovel in the center of a stinking city. With his good mood ruined, Bancroft took a deep breath and a deeper drink of his wine. It was too fine a day to get so upset about such trivialities. He eagerly awaited good news from his son, about securing their new dungeon, it should be any day now.

“My lord.”

Bancroft savored those words, lord, they were lords again after so long. “What is it…” He searched around for the servant's name but came up blank. It wasn’t his fault they were all interchangeable anyway.

“A letter from your son my lord.”

He took the letter carelessly and the servant scurried away in the opposite direction. Bancroft looked on in amusement, was it just him, or were the servants getting faster. Maybe he was just getting old, the hired help had certainly gotten quite adept at steering clear of his son Gary. The noble snorted, so long as they did their job he didn’t care too much, his son was perfectly capable of expressing his displeasure at the servants in any case. Not that he caught them running away from him too often, the boy had the subtlety of a brick and all of the awareness of one too. If he had been a little more careful about his ‘habits’ maybe he wouldn’t have to run around at the Mage Guild like a common knight.

The noble snickered a touch at his son’s humiliation, most of the other noble houses disdained the chi class, but his family had trained in the energy long before the kingdoms were even founded. With a practiced gesture, Bancroft broke the seal on the letter and unfurled the note. He went through several rapid emotional shifts in the span of a few moments while reading it, annoyance, anger, indignation, and then an icy rage.

Getting up from his chair Bancroft stormed through his mansion, a beautiful day and wine forgotten. House Storm would not be laying claim to another dungeon, but he had letters to right to make sure it didn’t happen. He was sure that their benefactors would have a plan for this, or at least the resources to support one of the ideas he would come up with to deal with the situation. They would need to be careful, but if all went well no one would suspect, or at least be able to prove anything.

Silas groaned with his head in his hands. “This Kira is why I don’t like dealing with nobles.”

Kira sat across from him with a grim if slightly amused expression on her face. “Really? It's not because you find most of them insufferable arrogant and horrible pieces of human refuse?”

The old mage lifted a finger. “You know what that too, but what actually gets me is the politics. Why did those two have to bump into each other on the training grounds?”

“It’s your own fault old man, you ordered Gary to go train while he is here which to be fair is exactly what he did.”

Silas slumped in his chair. “Yeah, don’t remind me I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly when I did. To be honest, though, sending him to train with the other knights is the only thing I could have done to keep that noble brat out of trouble. I expected him to get bored after a few days and then leave.”

“You expected him to get bored? Seriously with the dungeon right here? I’m surprised he hasn’t gone dungeon diving yet.”

The old mage snorted at that. “If you knew him at all you would know that he doesn’t like fighting at all. He’s only tier three and most of the monsters he’s killed have been caught by others and brought to him trussed up like pigs.”

Kira looked slightly incredulous. “He got all the way to tier three doing that? That must have cost his family a fortune.”

Silas looked down darkly at his desk. “No, that's not the only thing he did to get to where he is, unfortunately. You know how humans are actually a tier-five race, and when we die, we give the experience of a tier-five monster?

“Yes, I’ve heard of that. It’s the reason that half of the new nobles start out in one of the armies, right? Wait, you don’t mean that the Bancroft...”

The mage nodded grimly looking suddenly even older than normal. “We don’t know for how long but one of our knights eventually caught him killing people out in the slums. We threw him in jail at the mage guild and in my opinion, we should have left him there to rot for the rest of his noble life, but his family kicked up a ruckus. The duke wanted to leave him in jail as well, his father used to be a commoner after all, but the Bancrofts went over his head to the local king. The compromise that was reached, if you can call it that is that Gary is nominally under the command of the mage guild. What this means in practice is that we can order him to go train and have him followed by our knights and the little sociopath just has to put up with it.”

Kira swallowed hard and looked a little sick. “That’s awful, and you think he figured out that Vance is part of House Storm?”

“Yes, I do. Vance seems like a nice enough kid, which is surprising for a noble, but he really doesn’t know how to behave like a normal person. Lots of people saw the carriage he arrived in, and he just doesn’t know how to pretend to be a commoner around another noble. I don’t think he even noticed Gary watching him, that might actually be why Bancroft noticed him. He’s used to everyone either fawning over him, or being afraid, or at least having some reaction, not just straight up ignoring him.”

“So, what do we do now?”

“Nothing really. I can’t order Gary to leave and frankly doing so would make him even more suspicious. I’m going to send a letter to the duke explaining the situation, hopefully, he gets it sooner rather than later. The Bancrofts are literally right next door, and I don’t like the idea of them scheming without me being able to do much about it while I’m stuck in running this dungeon town. Hopefully, Gabriel will be able to keep a lid on things back in Corinth.”