“Okay with the dungeon made we need to get deeper quickly.” I said and clicked on the dungeon corpse and selected to move parts.

By choosing to break parts of the dungeon corpse, you will also break the energy network around it which will require a lot of time to rebuild once placed in a new location and adapted to the new dungeon. Do you still wish to continue?

“Yes do it!” I said.

With that out of the way, the dungeon quickly became accessible and i began to implement.

“System tell me, is it possible to empty the source rooms and change the specific liquid it flows?” I asked.

Rooms adapt to theme and resource available making it possible for the rooms to adapt to different liquids as long as there is a source to which they can draw from.

“Perfect!” I grinned.

I opened the book and there was a big ‘scanning surroundings’ on the planted dungeon and after five minutes a diagram of the entire volcano along with the magma chamber, which was already huge, could be seen.

“First let’s make this section bigger so that we can have minions moving about.” I mutter as i take corridors and simple rooms before i take and empty some water source rooms and put down three large ones in a triangle position around the magma chamber.

Then i have the book filter the flow corridors already made and made it point out the flow direction before I took them and started to connect them from the magma chamber to the source rooms to make lava source rooms. These channels were about 1 meter in diameter while i had a single 2 meter wide channel higher up in the empty area of the magma chamber where lava would go to spew out. I wanted it to work like a drain similar to how when humans make dams they channel the water out of the construction zone by diverting the river.

This would open three large openings that would create a heavy downward flow. Most of the incoming channels were in the upper section of the room and from the lower section i made more channels that head out to the base of the volcano. Naturally , I checked where it would flow and pumped it out in a safe area where it could deposit and not cause as much destruction as wild magma.

When I was done I nodded and confirmed.

Error! All dungeon corridors must be connected.

“Connected! Damn it!” I curse but then remembered the river and lake rooms and quickly thought of using them to connect the system together. It even went further, i had all three newly adapted lava source rooms connected with several circling channels and these along two of these i added a lake room with a simple shore that would connect two the flow channel going between source rooms and the land space was connected to two corridors moving through the dungeon. Another section would have a river room with more land with a river running through the back of the room.

When I confirmed it this time, the system accepted.

Completed dungeon design accepted. It will take 48 hours to adapt all the fractured energy networks into a single complete network and 1 hours to prepare the sections for materialization into the physical world.

“Wha!? This is nuts! Why does it take so long?!” I shouted at the system but it didn’t reply. I was left with a headache while I looked out the entrance where what could be called Armageddon was happening. “If I try to adapt and properly connect the flow of energy will it go faster?”

Affirmative, dungeon network is within manipulation capabilities of the dungeon maker.

After that message the book shined and rapidly spun just after the page of the design I made before it literally projected the image of the volcano and the interior dungeon design before the network of energy formed.

“Shit!”

Looking at the network, I knew it wouldn’t be so simple still it was impossible to wait so long so I threw out the thought of leaving it and sat down under the faux dungeon core.

As for what that is, it is a glowing orb of circling runes, the same one that formed when i archived the dungeon corpse and it had to have the network running again. Breaking that will be like killing the dungeon core so it is just as important.

The network, naturally, also starts from this point so i had to first work from the dungeon core room towards the entrance room and then connect the rest of the directly connected rooms. This section was still easy because networks are like veins which have vein and artery, I just needed to discover which network was what and connect it to the proper channel of the already fixed network.

The problem came at the flow rooms. There is a very distinct difference, flow rooms have only one direction. The reason for this is that the flow itself formed from a special magic that draws the liquid down the passage without letting it return even if it has to push it straight up.

The irritating lake and river rooms were a pain to set up and but after that it was more or less a simple pathway to the source rooms. The ones connecting the three source rooms had the weakest flow and were all in the middle of each room in a circle.

Thankfully I had systematically made the room so that it received flow from above and removed liquid from below. This helped a lot to let me find the necessary flow pattern to connect the flow corridors from the magma chamber to the source rooms and pump the lava outside.

All in all, it took me half the time as the system but I literally worked 24 hours straight on the energy network.

Energy network flow adequately adapted. Scan has detected a theme of Volcano Dungeon. Is this a theme which you wish to implement?

“Does it change anything if I do?” I asked tired.

Theme

A major aspect of dungeons. Themes are a focus on a specific feature that greatly modifies your dungeon’s outlook from corridors to monsters.

“Right, so it does. Well i planned for it anyways and thanks to the level up of dungeon archive to level 16 i have extra minion spaces so i accept. The theme is Volcano Dungeon.”

Confirmation granted. Adapting all corridors to be Volcanic corridors and rooms. Dungeon moss will not be modified.

Although the dungeon said it would modify the corridors to volcanic types, it did not specifically add them because they are simply volcanic versions of stone rooms, that is volcanic rock.

It is simply taking the rock around the dungeon to adapt to the surroundings.

Time until dungeon design is implemented, 1 hour.

“Finally.” I groaned and felt exhausted. I spawn some food from my book, i don’t even cook it and just eat the fruits raw as I fight to stay awake so that I can at least see the dungeon appear. I wanted to confirm everything worked as I hoped instead of overflowing.

Still if not for a loud sound from the system waking me up i would have fallen and remained asleep sitting there. The change was a lot more major than i thought. The reason is that one dungeon had used water and this one uses lava.

First off the rocks went from a darkish brown to grayish red, heat rose rapidly making me very uncomfortable. The air was stifling and hard to breath even with the scarf that filtered the air for me.

What was amazing is that the dungeon drew some of the lava and made a small bit bubble out from the walls and droop down before hardening and leaving that organic look.

I walked around and saw how the dungeon had rapidly expanded while the slimes that were in the natural dungeon and the dungeon corpse’s first floor, where I used most of the pieces, had also appeared and were moving about.

From the book from Daniel Rock, slimes are capable of adapting to nearly any circumstance, their bodies absorb material from their surroundings and they adapt as they eat even changing their habits in the process. For volcanoes though, there wasn’t any information. This is natural since the elves have no volcanoes. Dwarves have it but they have no dungeons in volcanoes where they might find slimes so there is little to no information on this subject.

I will need to be active but at this time I can't do a thing. I just tour the dungeon with a sluggish mind while checking out the flow through the book.

I was very happy when the flow channels showed an impressive amount of lava flowing out of the magma chamber. The heat from the earth fire caused it to become very liquidy and very fast moving lava compared to slow moving as seen in most movies and documentaries on earth.

Very soon, the flow brought so much lava that it couldn’t drain and finally reached the center space and began to circle between the sources.

“The expelling speed is weak despite having the pressure from the weight.” I frown as i notice this fact.

Waiting at the opening of a lake room, i watch the magma flow until it neared the entrance when i looked up.

I saw the red glow before it appeared and when it did, it gushed out like water onto the cold rock.

The first bit released a bit of smoke, the rooms having humidity of the water flow it once was covered in. That water though quickly vaporized and the red glow of molten rock slowly spread as the lava gathered.

The temperature started to become unbearable by the time the lava filled the lake and continued the flow. I couldn’t even stay in the room but as i left i did notice a small strange slime appear from the other corridor and go to the exposed wall furthest from the lava and release it’s slime on the newly transformed volcanic wall.

It took a short time for me to realize that the slime it released actually had moss in it and it was using it’s slime to keep it moist.

“That is strangely smart.” I muttered but shook my head from how tired I was.

I check out the rest of the dungeon, the lake and river rooms in particular, and when I finally confirmed they weren’t overflowing, I returned to the dungeon core room and opened an opening to the other dungeon and jumped in before closing it and going to bed. I left the Guardian as acting dungeon boss to protect the room.

As if my bed called for me, i feel in and instantly fell asleep.

While I did, the world outside was undergoing one of its worst turbulent periods but it also came with the rise of the heroes fame.

After only one day four names resound the loudest. Ace, Richard, Nickolaus and Misaki.

News was spread intentionally to the armies that Ace had gone to weaken the volcano while Misaki lead her party with Ace’s Living dolls to cause massive damage to the undead horde.

The fame of the dolls further added to his fame and with the countless kills, they would slowly grow stronger and more efficient.

Amazingly, after the first screw up, Richard began to take things a bit more seriously and due to the ‘heroes blessing’ that made him grow faster than others per level he had become very high powered in a short time but still wasn’t top class.

The heroes were more of a moral booster as each of them contained strange and powerful abilities that caused many problems for the demons.

In the records of all the known heroes, maybe this group of humans was the most varied and due to the chaos of the times and the people summoned, were the ones who matured most quickly.

This fame naturally extended to the heroes party. It is unknown if heroes attract uncommon people or they make their allies uncommon but all the natives in a heroes party had some uncommon factor to them.

In Ace’s party, Luna was the brightest shining light for sure.

Although she was very shocking during the day when the battle started, it wasn’t surprising but when night came that changed.

Maybe it was her presence or something else but the sky had become strangely clear during the night when the moon rose.

When the light of the moon appeared the moon elf began to change and her attacks grew stronger.

Battling undead was battling an unending force with no fear of death that felt no fatigue but as moonlight fell more and more on the moon elf, they learned of a new fear beyond the holy light of holy magic.

With moonlight flowing like physical silk, and a glowing powerful aura like a deity under the moonlight, the moon elf had the undivided aid of the moon against the undead blasting intense waves of moonlight enhanced magical blades.

It even shocked the A ranked adventurers and the leading demon commanders.

She was far from their strength but that would hold for only a short while, no one knew how she gained such force but they knew that as she grew, she would surely equal that of the heroes or more.

As for Raven, the magic bard could still not do as much as he wished. Even with the aid of one of the living dolls in a duet while the other lead the other living dolls, the magic they cast was great support but not war changing like the lich incident. Mainly because his rune in its current state, while healed up and in the proper form now, was in a state of recovery not permitting him to exert all his magical energy.

Eventually the undead were forced to retreat under the unrelenting destruction that Luna produced while the A ranked adventurers occupied them producing the first win for the human side.

In other battlefields there were many different results but they ended with the fame of the human heroes rising.

At the end of the battle of Ace’s party, Raven and the two puppets played the same song they played in East Grove purifying the souls of the dead and the land while sending them to rest and bringing new life to the land.

As for what came after, well naturally it followed with the aid from the alliance arriving, shocked that the humans could still withstand such a massive wave.

Sitting on his throne, the demon lord’s aura of death was filled with irritation.

His shade messenger relayed the battle report.

“It seems my own army is lacking. I guess it is normal when my barrier blocks so much mana from flowing naturally.” He said but nonetheless irritated.

After a thought a black book floated in front of him and he touched a section and drew a circle with his finger.

“Tell the army to retreat. It seems the humans are still not weak enough to take by storm. We will wait for the volcano to destroy their lands and ruin their crops. Once their food supply is weakened they will not be able to sustain their large army.” He said.

“A-about that my lord.” The shade said very worried.

The demon lord narrowed his eyes.

Outside the castle, suddenly thunderstorms formed from his anger as he heard the news but eventually calmed down.

“Earth fire is not something a common human can control. Without massive runic knowledge to contain it, it will be a simple futile struggle.” He said with his anger now stored inside. “Now I remember why I hate new dungeon makers appearing. Just like that accursed elf we now have to tolerate this human.” He said.

“Does my lord wish for us to dispose of him?” The shade asked.

“Yes, but I doubt we can get anything too powerful through without being noticed. With the alliance reacting it is even less likely we can pass the borders now.” He sneered and shook his head.

“The dungeon maker is safe but we will need to end his existence before he can strengthen the humans once more.” The demon lord said, his anger burning in his eyes.

“What of master’s puppet watching him?” The shade asked.

“It cannot teleport using the alliances damned system.” The demon lord said simply leaving an awkwardness. Eventually the shade was dismissed.

Back in the volcano, as nature would have it, basic changes happen very quickly.

As i awoke refreshed after not sleeping for a day, I was met with a few messages.

You have gained two new minion breeds

Magma Slug

A strange and miraculous evolution of slimes raised near lava flow. Constantly exposed to extreme heat and fire mana, slimes adapted by absorbing small bits of lava at a time blending it into their sappy slime to form a gelatinous magma slug. They are the favorite food of certain weak creatures and have near full immunity to fire.

Warning, they are dangerous for leaving trails of lava where they pass.

Fire Wisp

A fire-attuned wisp the most basic manifestation of a fire spirit. Formed when a mana rich area with high amounts of fire element achieved mainly in volcanic areas. They gather and process mana into fire mana and deposit them around lava flow.

I sat there looking dumb at the two messages before taking out the book of the monster rearing guide.

Although it contained magma slugs, it didn’t actually connect it to slimes for some reason. Magma slugs are known to be wall crawlers or even ceiling crawlers. They are live off fire mana and lava as well as moss to retain their gello constitution but do not shy away from meat when presented as they detach from the ceiling to fall on their prey. They are also mentioned to be the favorite food of salamanders and lava tube centipede.

As for Fire wisps, they are spirits who have a mana rich elemental area formed of their element or conditions extreme enough to provide for them. The actual makeup of wisps is very simple in fact and it even showed a simple spell for producing a spell circle that can gather different types of spirits in a dungeon and provide them with mana to become wisps. That is how simple they are.

“Okay. Fire creatures are strange.” I said. Although other magic creatures aren’t any less so but the idea of fire breeding life and creatures living in molten lava just seems strange.

I decided to check the book to see if anything besides the slug and wisps, though i highly doubted there would be any creature that could invade given how active and new the volcano was. How wrong I was. Amazingly, there were a few salamanders at the lava lake producing nests with eggs already laid.

My face twitched a bit by how quickly nature worked so to obtain a new and possibly important minion, I quickly jumped up and ate something before dressing up.

Ready i quickly jump out only to stumble as i was stuck by a massive heat wave.

“Fuck!” i shout but still walk out into the dungeon core room. “The heat raised so much!” i said and looked around.

The small spurting lava on the walls had increased and the dungeon adapted by making a hole below it so that it would flow indefinitely.

The sulfur rich fumes in the air was also just as bad as the heat and even the scarf around my neck was having trouble making breathable air.

Not wanting to stay more than needed, I ran to the lake where the heat was even more intense but it did not affect the magma slugs crawling on the walls and floating through the surprisingly fast flowing lava.

Taking the book out, i find where the nest is and looking in that direction, i also see three salamanders.

Salamanders are half meter long yellow colored lizards attuned to fire. Their attack pattern generally is primitive with tail whipping and biting.

They are a low rung F rank monster. Not caring about them all, I pull out my sword and run at them.

They instantly go on the alert when i approach and his but i don’t mind as I stab out and activate the lengthening rune suddenly making the sword extend into one of their skulls and following be returning it to normal and tossing the corpse away.

I swing at the next one and also kill it. As for the last one, it hisses and jumps at my leg but i kick it’s nose stunning it before grabbing it by the neck and lift it up.

“You will be useful.” I said and put the sword away and take the pen out as i bind it.

There was surprisingly no binding to these meaning they were young and might have just recently become adults and being in the dungeon also protected it from the demon lord’s curse.

I got the prompt that it was bound before I let it go. It was no longer wary of me as I move to the eggs and bind each of them.

I open the book and see if there were any more here but it was just this small group at this lake.

“Good now to get the hell out of here.” I said and ran off to the river room where another nest was nestled and i tamed them all.

Getting the salamanders would set up the basic ecosystem but i didn’t know how it would be like.

After that was settled I ran back to the dungeon core room and jumped into the other dungeon only feeling relief as the normal livable temperature hit my body.

“Damn that was intense.” I said as I removed the scarf and took off my clothing that was soaked in sweat. “Although it is obvious but why is the dungeon so hot?” I asked the help system.

Sadly no reply came from it but it came from the dungeon core on the book.

“Idiot, of course the dungeon possesses toxic air and burning heat. You aren’t properly filtering the air.” the dungeon said.

“Filter? Oh right, many dungeons somehow make it possible for their dungeon to flow air despite having only one entrance. How do you guys do that?” I asked.

“Spirits, of course.” He replied.

“You mean like fire wisps?” I asked.

“Yes, but what i mean are Wind Wisps. Under different circumstances, the purpose of spirits changes. For instance, if a dungeon, by some miracle, was born in the clouds, the wind and water spirits would gather wind and water mana to form more clouds that can actually be walked on while the fire spirit would instead gather fire mana coming from the sun to form a pocket of warm air that is livable. For a volcano on the other hand, a fire wisp actually absorbs fire mana and deposits it on the banks or in the lava itself keeping it from cooling but it doesn’t clean out the air. Wind wisps are for that, Lava produces not only fire mana but death, earth and wind mana. When the following three are mixed, the air becomes highly toxic but in a volcano, wind wisps actually gather these three because they are mixed together and breaks their bond, keeping the wind mana while using the death mana to break the earth in the walls and form wind channels while earth is deposited on the walls. Of course, to make stupid wisp do such a complex task isn’t easy and is probably even considered a miracle of nature that is needed in the volcano dungeon to make it livable for things besides salamanders and magma born monsters.” the dungeon said.

“Damn so complex.” I cursed but nonetheless i understood what was the problem now at least. The trouble came in the form of ‘how do i fix it’.

I go wash off the sweat in a bucket with rags first before sitting down in bed where I looked at the book and tried to figure out the problem.

Naturally, I also tried to make wind wisps which, shocking, were pretty easy to make and would reproduce by splitting, once it had enough wind mana.

I released the wind wisp to watch what it did after binding it as a minion race.

The place i released it at was the dungeon core room and not the rooms with lava flow.

Surprisingly, the little wisp began to move in circles which actually made the network tremble slightly. After circling a bit, the weak green color was gone as it had turned dark green and it moved to the left wall near a small pocket of lava flow that had formed and somehow entered the wall.

In that point was a flow of fire mana coming to the faux dungeon core. Amazingly the spirit connected to the network and pulled it into that pocket suddenly causing it to release fire mana into the dungeon core room. It was almost like a release valve but with the red fire mana was brown, green and black mana forming a cloud.

The spirit came out after doing that and the lava flow actually stopped flowing and the hole sealed up with the remains of the lava on the wall.

It went into the cloud and began to process the mana.

After some time, fire wisps actually appeared and joined it and took the fire mana while it gathered the wind mana for itself and after a long while it headed to the next lava flow and did the same releasing what seemed like improper pockets of fire mana.

The fire wisp took the released fire mana to the nearest lava flow and deposited the mana there.

When the final pocket of fire mana was released, the dungeon core room actually visibly turned cooler. The bright red color in the walls seemed to darken as if the lava had cooled down.

I even went to check it out and despite being hot still, it wasn’t that unbearable heat from before.

“That is amazing.” I said.

When i looked at the wisp, i noticed it was bigger and it was trembling until it burst apart and reformed into three wisps.

“So that is how it breeds.” I muttered.

They quickly moved out and I went to check out the network. The small connection was just like a small escape valve to allow the elemental mana to escape while pure mana would flow naturally.

Thinking about this fact i went and touched the faux core with the pen and closed my eyes. Like a dungeon when i do this i connect to the dungeon and let me sense the network. The flow was pretty normal all over but the core room was particularly good.

“Are elemental mana impurities?” I asked.

“Yes and no. Dungeons actually prefer pure mana over elemental one while mortal creatures use more elemental over pure.” the dungeon core replied from the book.

“I see, no wonder the wind wisp released the energy built up in the network.” I said releasing the core and walking into the corridor to see the wisps doing the same to all the flows of lava on the walls to stabilize the structure of the dungeon.

“Everything a dungeon does is to stabilize our network and make it run efficiently. One of the biggest rules of stability is ‘accessibility of mortal kind’. No dungeon is really sure why but we must provide a dungeon where creatures like humans and elves as well as wild beasts and such to be able to live within the dungeon.” he said.

I just stood there in thought before turning around, “Well that is good and all but i really wonder how it is outside and if we actually had an impact on the volcano.” I commented but sighed. “I should probably keep expanding the dungeon to divert more lava out of the chamber and control the flow better.” I said and entered my farm dungeon where i can be safe and relaxed while working on expanding the dungeon more to make a better dungeon and make sure the volcano doesn’t erupt as much.

With that I begin planning out a better layout to build using the dungeon corpse parts that would need to be adapted to the newly formed network which will be yet another pain to deal with.