Lucifer entered a room he had just created while he was walking followed by his people, once inside he sat down on one of the four seats facing a blank wall. Salenia followed suit and sat down on the end seat next to Rick, Ahri stood in front of the last empty seat as Lucifers cheek twitched intermittently.

Lucifer noticed that Ahri was staring at his lap and occasionally glaring at the open seat next to him as if she wished that seat would just disappear, he thought to himself "note to self, create spiked pants if I ever intend to sit near Ahri again" because he was not dense and he could tell what she wanted to do, but this was not the time for it and he just plainly wasn't interested.

One of the first things he did when he obtained this body was to enhance it, and one of the more complex enhancements that took a few days to figure out was disabling the amygdala, so now he couldn't feel lust and caused a few other side effects one of which was a lack of fear response, which was not something he would miss anyway. Although even Lucifer thought that this was a rather extreme modification just to prevent himself from being manipulated, but he knew from experience that horny people are easily led by the nose.

While Lucifer was thinking Ahri finally begrudgingly took the empty seat, Lucifer looked across and saw her expression was as if someone had stolen her puppy and he couldn't ignore the sniggers coming from the other side, he glared at Rick and began.

With his dungeon voice, he said "this is the current situation" before creating a projection of the enemy frontline on the blank wall.

The group looked on as Drake ordered his men occasionally while monitoring the situation and the army slowly edged forward, Salenia said "they are near the end of the ant nest which doesn't look anything like how I remembered it, also do you think the water trap will stop them"

Ahri asked "water trap?"

Lucifer answered "I have restructured the dungeon layout a bit, the last group to attack completely bypassed the maze-like ant nest with a strange magic, so I restructured it to be more direct and longer in length rather than relying on the enemy wasting time getting lost--

Rick interrupted "indeed that would be a wise move if the enemies were the same as last time, now these common soldiers can just barge through with numbers and more importantly a longer dungeon will not effect warriors the same way it effects mages because they are not limited by mana reserves the same way"

Lucifer acknowledged "I know, I was wrong to change it with the assumption that the enemies would use the same tactics" Rick and Salenia looked surprised for a moment, they didn't expect Lucifer to admit he was wrong, while a certain someone was staring at Lucifers body and her mind was in another place altogether didn't hear anything.

He continued "don't be so surprised even I can make mistakes, in fact, I think most of my moves as a dungeon have been a mistake if you consider the outcome, anyway as I was saying I restructured the dungeon, now the end of the ant nest leads back to the first floor"

Salenia said, "but what if they used a dungeon compass and didn't go through the door, wouldn't that mean most of your defenses be useless?"

This time Rick answered in Lucifers place "that would not be a problem, Lucifer asked me about the maze problem earlier, so I created a few false cores and scattered them around the dungeon, now dungeon compasses and other such methods of finding the dungeon core will only make you go around in circles, hehe through all the most dangerous part of the dungeon too of course"

Ahri finally came back to reality and remarked "so even if they can't use a compass what is stopping them from accidentally finding the shortest route to your core"

Lucifer already anticipated this question and with a thought, one of the walls in the room fell away, after a soft grinding sound and a thump the group saw several beaten up men chained to the ground, Lucifer explained as green "While you were slaughtering people I was capturing several scouts just for such an occasion", Then he continued with his dungeon voice, "they are already bound to my will, so in the event where people start going the wrong way, these scouts would report that there are rumors of the dungeon core being bhind the door. If they still failed to go in my direction then another scout would report "the door is heavily guarded by strong monsters, which of course would appear suddenly around the door"

Ahri thought for a moment then rebutted "what if they still went the other way"

"then we are screwed" replied Lucifer as green, Ahri panicked and quickly said "but you will be ok, the dungeon let its servant go last time it was in danger"

Rick was off to the side having more fun than he's had in a century which only annoyed Lucifer more, Selenia was observing the entire situation and the weird atmosphere in the room, several things didn't add up and were nagging at back of her mind, she always got this feeling whenever someone around her was an imposter or pretending to be someone they weren't. She leaned forward and finally took a closer look at the new member and after a moment she gasped in surprise.

Meanwhile, Lucifer was trying to ignore Ahri's strange attempts at placating him, he was becoming increasingly aware that she has zero social skills as she jumped from topic to topic seemingly unaware of the original conversation.

Just before Lucifer was going to forcibly stop the awkward verbal assault by continuing the meeting with his dungeon voice Selenia suddenly interrupted, "He won't be ok, he will be dead"

Ahri froze for a moment than almost shouted back "no he won't, you got to go the last time why wouldn't green"

Selenia sighed, "you are in heat you silly little girl so at least try to control yourself" causing Ahri to blush heavily, she resumed "the reason why green would die is because green and Lucifer are the same being"

"what!?" exclaimed Ahri.

Lucifer was almost as surprised as Ahri, he didn't expect Selenia to figure it out so quickly or even at all for that matter, Lucifer asked: "How did you figure it out, so quickly no less".

Selenia replied with a smirk "I've been hunted for most of my life so being able to pick out a fake is one of the unintended benefits of that"

Ahri said "you say that like its a good thing--- wait a minute if green is..." she paused for a moment and her face paled slightly then immediately turned blood red, "my god I'm in love with a dungeon"

Rick raised his eyebrow, he didn't expect the shy little fox to confess her love like that. Lucifer waved his hand and a hole a meter deep appeared in the corner of the room further raising Rick's eyebrow.

Rick asked, "why did you make a hole?"

Lucifer chuckled and replied "I've always heard people saying "they were so embarrassed they wished there was a hole they could jump into", so I made a hole to see if she would jump into it" while gesturing to the fox girl that now resembled a giant cotton ball, Ahri was using her tails to cover herself.

Both Selenia and Rick looked strangely at Lucifer for a moment before laughing at the ridiculous situation which Lucifer decided to ignore.

He watched the screen with his body and used his dungeon sense to see everything more clearly, Drake was pushing his army through the last group of traps and limbs were flying everywhere or being crushed, soldiers were falling into dark pits with spikes at the bottom or floors raised to meet the ceiling with the soldiers still in between the two. Everything was painted a thick coating of crimson as his traps fulfilled their deadly purpose.

Now with everyone here, he asked something that had been bugging him for a while now, "why do these soldiers charge through my dungeon like they want to die"

Rick stopped laughing and his tone became grim "Their lives are already paid for... the Dutchy leaders pay families for their fathers and sons, or anyone that can fight for that matter. They pretend it's not common slavery by saying they are paying insurance for the soldier's lives, but they only pay a small amount up front when the soldiers enlist and give the final payout when the soldier dies in battle. This means that most soldiers in the Dutchy armies are there to die for their families, mainly because most soldiers don't live long enough to receive their "wages".

Selenia added "even worse is what happens to the families who send their husbands or children to one of the endless wars in the Dutchies. Once the strong family members leave, scum crawls out of the woodwork and the families are either tricked into giving away the money they bought with their loved ones lives, or if that doesn't work then its taken by force"

Lucifer asked "then why do so many people enter the army if they know their family will end up with nothing for it anyway"

Selenia answered "because the wars ravage the lands so badly that there is nothing left for them to do, it's a vicious cycle"

Rick added "that's only the half of the sad story, the people who coerce the grieving families out of their "compensation" are actually working for the nobles, so the money they pay the soldiers just gets recycled and only the minimal amount of money to convince the people that it is worth enlisting ever gets used by the people."

Lucifer frowned slightly but didn't take it to heart, similar things happened on earth all the time and as far as he was concerned this was simply human nature, however, Selenia, on the other hand, looked as if she was about to explode from rage, Lucifer quietly said to her "calm down, there is nothing you can do about such people because they exist everywhere"

"such people" growled Selenia "how are they "people" if they do this"

Lucifer did not have enough time or energy to deal with this type of thing so he used his dungeon voice and boomed "QUIET. you will do nothing about such a thing unless I say so, we both know how poorly your last adventure went, just take a look around the dungeon"... then he used his body's voice to quietly add "the Duchies won't be around for much longer anyway" causing everyone to jump in surprise.

Rick asked, "you are going to take over the Duchies?"

Lucifer replied "yes, but not anytime soon, I'm too weak right now"

"why," asked Ahri.

although Lucifer could tell that Ahri was fishing for information her old master might like to hear he replied anyway, "because the power backing me is not strong enough, so while I am maturing as a dungeon I want protection, considering the fact I am being invaded right now I don’t think Swadia is powerful enough for that purpose.

Then there are the other angles, why would the Kingdom protect me if they receive nothing in return, so my intention is to have Swadia expand using my power as the price for letting me dungeon in peace.”

Ahri was secretly ecstatic, she thought that the dungeon would fight Merlin's every step and make it almost impossible to get anything out of the relationship, instead, she found out that the dungeon actually intended to cooperate, this would make all future dealings with the dungeon much easier. Perhaps if the deal went well enough the arcane university and the dungeon could form a true alliance, if that was possible then perhaps they could create a legend like the first dungeon and create a golden age, although she hoped that it didn’t end the same way it did in the books she researched before coming here.

Meanwhile Drake was finally pushing past the final group of traps, he was covered in blood and if he wasn’t a strong adventurer it would be his own blood instead of others, he had stopped trying to keep clean long ago, not because he didn’t mind anymore but because it was simply impossible to wade through blood and gore without staining something red, or worse… brown.

He could see a portal at the end in sight and called for a halt, he remembered what had happened last time and wasn’t going to make the same mistake again this time. He sent a few soldiers in one at a time and only peaked in before coming back out to report.

After several minutes he was sure he had enough information to send people in. a line of soldiers entered the portal and jumped down the hole, they were prepared for the fall this time and it wasn’t very far so they easily landed and moved forward for the people behind them.

After half an hour all the remaining soldiers had regrouped in the new location and Drake was busy reorganizing everyone when a scout come up to him and whispered something into his ear.

“FUCKING WHAT”, he jumped up onto a nearby tree and in the distance he could see “the door”, at this point he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or cry, so he just sat there in the tree for a few minutes while he thought about what he should do next.