4.

Dorzath woke up.

He could feel stabbing pain coursing through his body, like needles were coursing through his bloodstream, tearing open gashes and gouges as they went.

Wait. He didn’t have a body though.

He remembered his teacher mentioning something like this during one of his first lectures. He didn’t have a body anymore, but he was created with one and it was too strange not having one. His mind and subconscious couldn’t adapt that quickly, and so when something was wrong he would still feel it as physical pain. He recognised this sensation however from his short time spent duelling when he had a physical body.

Mana Overuse, or rather to be more accurate, in his blind rage and need for more power he’d reached for mana which wasn’t there and he’d used the atmospheric mana in the air.

It was like lava pouring through his veins, he’d done it once on purpose when he’d had a body. Even though it was a terrible idea and he hadn’t wanted to do it, his Contract had made him do so, to check if it was an efficient way of training when it was used in controlled conditions as opposed to using it in the heat of battle. All it had done, however, was knock him unconscious for several days.

Unfortunately, Dorzath had no way of dealing with the effects other than simply lying there and waiting for his core to recover. It had a series of very small cracks running down the length of it and he didn’t want to risk further damaging the one thing that was keeping him from returning back to the seething pool of hatred and despair which had birthed him.

He could still use his power as a Dungeon though, as the Dungeons operation continued without him and it needed no input from him with all of the monsters he made being bound to a dedicated spawning area. He could still spend life energy, but using mana would literally just cause him to blackout as well as exasperate his condition. The boy Invim, he was safe though. He wasn’t quite sure what came over him, but he wouldn’t be doing anything like that for a long time. For one thing, he was a demon, it was very strange for him to save the life of a human. In addition, creating that bow for him had possibly roused the suspicions of the village as to his true nature as a Created Dungeon.

If the village managed to move past this situation then it would be fine, if not he could simply take them off of the map and continue building himself without any regards to concerns over speed. It would be slower without the ambient life energy absorption that challengers brought, but he would manage.

For now, he allowed himself only to buy upgrades which solely required life energy. He had quite a bit leftover from the death of the Abomination, who wasn’t considered his monster any longer and so it was quite a profitable kill. The main Corridor was wrecked, that arrow of his could wipe out a tier 3 so he wasn’t too surprised, but with Abominations, it was better to be safe than sorry.

He bought simple things, an upgrade to make the main Corridor repair itself over time if damaged and another which made it so every time it was damaged it came back stronger. He also set a pile of torches by the entrance finally, in a bucket which one of the villagers had provided him with, maybe the tier 2, with life energy going into making more appear over time if they were used.

He also used the Dungeon Interface to create another wolf cub in his fourth room, and this time left it with a single mana crystal. He would take things in moderation this time, but he still needed a more powerful enemy for the second floor. The cost was expensive as he was using pure life energy instead of Mana with LE in combination, the most effective mix.

You could use either form of energy in place of the other but with severely diminishing returns the more you upset the golden ratio of 1:1.

At first, Dorzath was worried he’d frightened away any potential challengers, but slowly more reappeared over time. Most children who entered with parents escorting them in case another tier 1 showed up. None did, he made sure of it, and the challengers took home their prizes probably just happy at the chance to have meat on the table. It was a pitiful existence these humans lived, but they would be getting none from Dorzath. He'd already used up several cycles worth of emotion saving that boy, and at great personal cost to himself.

It took him almost a week, but the cracks finally healed themselves over, Dorzath took it slow at first, he could have levelled up by now by burrowing down, the notification had been there as soon as he finished his second room. The only requirement for levelling up as a Dungeon was reaching half the number of available rooms for that floor. He’d now reached all 5 maximum rooms, but he would wait a while longer, just to make sure his injuries had fully healed.

During that time he extended the length of his main Corridor, so there were now 5 wolf cubs along the length of it instead of just 3. He also made the corridor a little wider and taller. He also made the surrounding three walls of the hole which was the entrance into his dungeon into a set of semicircular steps, so people could walk rather than drop into his Dungeon.

Finally, on the final hour before he was due to descend, and under his careful supervision and watchful eye, a wolf cub evolved into a tier 0 Biter, a teen wolf.

His LE count had improved tremendously over this time as both the iron and wood room had been well received and used since their creation, bringing in the highest LE numbers as the quality of materials extracted was improved when a higher tier with higher tier skills was the one doing the extracting.

This made the quality of the wood and ore mined in his Dungeon higher than that of the surrounding area, that and the fact that it was always in a predictable spot, made it well sought after by many of the non-fighter jobs in the village, as it allowed them to quickly and easily level. Over time, Dorzath started to see even the children entering his Dungeon had better equipment than before.

He was ready to descend. He was a little sad that he hadn’t seen Invim though, he hoped he hadn’t frightened him away.

He mentally tapped on the notification, again this was something that he could do instinctively as a Dungeon Owner, but it would provide him with a skill, which although would lower the cost of descending, he would rather keep his skill energy for something more worthwhile.

Do you wish to level up?

It was an interesting phrasing, but he would leave the analysis of the Systems intricacies to the Scholars.

His LE plummeted as he clicked on the option to use a combination of Mana and LE.

/Life Energy 400 - 150/

Interestingly the cost wasn’t even a third of what he’d paid for that upgrade which allowed him to see the status screens of challengers, while in his first floor main Corridor.

Immediately, he could feel the sensation of levelling up, a new feeling for him as through tier 0 - 3 levelling up had only been accompanied by a small rise in physical strength as Dorzath was created a Demon, one of a high tiered race, and so levelling had a limited effect on him. DMs received an equal upgrade to all of their characteristics. For Dorzath who’d never had a physical Job, it was a massive upgrade in durability and survivability. His Core would resist a tier 2s blows at this point, although probably not that tier 2 Swordsmaster’s blows as the influence of an art had unpredictable effects.

Below him, a dirt room was created, and he could feel a pulling sensation on him, like the gravity of entering orbit, pulling him downwards. Dorzath complied with the sensation, allowing himself to be shunted as he was in his previous core room, and then suddenly he was in his new one as the surroundings around his core changed slightly.

He quickly created a set of stairs leading down to the new floor, as the feeling of being trapped had started to build up, and he had no intention of repeating that terrifying experience again when he’d had his entrance briefly sealed off.

Dorzath wanted to do something with his previous core room, which had become the fifth room of the first floor while he’d brought his previous fifth room with him as he could use it for experimentation purposes he had in the future as he’d done in the past both successfully and unsuccessfully. Maybe if he continued using it for that purpose the System would recognise that and give him some relevant upgrades, he’d tried already, but it seemed the System disliked artificially evolving monsters in weird and unpredictable directions.

He thought and thought, even as challengers saw the new entrance to the next floor and excitedly dashed down the stairs, only to be greeted with disappointment as they found there was only one room and it was the core room.

Slowly the challengers, who were mostly children, with some adults there to collect resources, trickled out of the Dungeon as the light outside faded. Nobody wanted to walk in the dark, so they left in groups, taking a torch as they left.

Eventually, Dorzath fell upon what he thought was the perfect thing to use the old core room as. He wasn’t going to put a mini-boss on the first floor, as he would for the later floors, but he did want to start to encourage the challengers to be raiding in groups. So he put a nest in the centre of the floor, and spawned three wolf cubs there, binding them to that location in the process.

They were gathered around a pile of rocks, out of which sprang a statue. It was a boy, holding a bow and aiming it at a wolf. He didn’t put any of the actual details of the wolf, like it's bleeding eyes and open sores, on the statue, and instead left it purposely vague but made it massive, to emphasise the terrible odds the boy had overcome.

Hopefully, this would serve to emphasise that he was a peaceful Dungeon and that what had happened had been a terrible mistake.

With this, Dorzath discarded the matter of the Abomination, it was dealt with and he could stop caring. The boy Invim, he had probably ascended through taking part in such a high stakes battle and had even received a tier 2 artefact, the silver bow which was enchanted with a self-repair function as long as silver was supplied to it, and enhanced durability. It also gave any arrow fired from its extra piercing power.

He was lucky to have entered the Dungeon that day. Lucky.

He thought that even after that expenditure he would be fine in terms of suspicion levels if he were to go about building out a rough outline of the floor so far. This time he wanted to build several rooms in a sequential pattern, so in order to reach the next floor, you had to pass through every room on the second floor.

It had to be simplistic though, he would love to spruce things up a little at this point, but once again he didn’t want to risk revealing his full strength. Thankfully he had a few grass seeds which he’d received along with the base tier blueprint of the wolf, and some had blown into his entrance anyway.

From the descent of the stairs, the first room was a battle against the only enemy type on this floor, the tier 0 Biter wolf, which was both a small challenge, a measure of the challenger's power and one last warning if their power was lacking, to turn back before it was too late. Dorzath planted tufts of grass at random points around the room, not enough to hide the young wolf, but enough that the next room wouldn’t be too much of an abrupt shock. In his next room, he raised the ceiling to a height of 5m, but he would alter the ceiling further when he had the right skills later to make it look different. For this room, he planted thigh-high grass and widened the room to his greatest size yet, a staggering size of 500m by 300m.

The room had three trails which he plotted through it, one which took a long, almost scenic route, but would have the highest encounter rate between challenger and monster. The second route would take the most direct route, cutting straight through the field of grass to the exit on the far side, and the third route was somewhere in between, allowing the challenger to fight monsters, but also not serving as too large of a detour, unlike the first route.

He set the room to have it's own respawn ability and set an area of the field to be the wolves resting spot. After they ascended to tier 0, a normal wolf would have their tier 1 skill Playfulness evolve into the tier 2 skill ‘Roughhousing’. While it meant they would still follow orders, the skill meant the monsters would occasionally seek out each other to engage in mock fights, during which they would experience massive skill and level growth. In this way, Dorzath would obtain the blueprints of many different mildly stronger wolves for free, by just having them engage in mock fights occasionally in the resting spot. The challengers could run into the resting spot, but only if they went off of the path, which was suicide even for a tier 1 as the wolves were practically invisible in the low grass.

Dorzath bound ten wolves to that room, with the ability to hunt as a pack if a tier 1 attacked.

He moved on, making a small 1m by 1m dirt space as the next room but leaving it bare, even though he had Mana and LE to spare. Maybe now that he had tier 0 enemies, Invim would finally return …

Dorzath recoiled at his thoughts. Where had that come from? His Contracts fluctuations were low, so it was clear that neither of them was affecting his behaviour in any way. Maybe this was a side effect of his Job? Some Jobs could warp the user's personality, far away from what it used to be. It was quite useful for a demon as it made them more focused and inquisitive the more advanced they became, but for other races, it could be quite a problem. Dorzath wasn’t sure how the Job Dungeon Owner would affect his personality though, other than making him more interested in his monsters and their development.

He threw the stray thoughts away as a new day was reached, and challengers stumbled into his Dungeon, the young adults and children were rubbing their eyes especially. His first five cubs were quickly eliminated and strung up, their fur stripped and meat separated, bones were kept separate. It was remarkable their efficiency, but then again the weak needed to maximise every small benefit they received. One group of tier 1 adults strode forward, however, maybe three pieces of metal armour between them, but they were the best equipped out of any challengers who’d raided his Dungeon so far.

They walked past the other ‘challengers’ who were mostly there just to farm resources. Dorzath pulled up their status screens absentmindedly, lazily scrolling through them. Honestly, this entire process was tiresome to him, pretending to be weak was so boring, he just wanted to tunnel down ten floors, build a maze, and fill the entire thing with tier 3 minotaurs. It was necessary, however, although he was confident he could dig down the first 15 floors by his own effort, the journey to floor 50 was a marathon, not a sprint, and he would need willing challengers all the way for that.

They would be unlikely to journey past the fifth floor if all that awaited them was certain death, even though they were just so annoying, always shepherding their children like they were made of glass, and then congratulating them when they did a terrible job-killing his monsters. They should follow Invims example more, any human child who could go against a tier 1 Abomination and survive on their effort was okay in Dorzaths book.

His thoughts were drifting back to Invim again, and Dorzath forcefully jerked his consciousness back to the statuses of the challengers about to raid him. Without the chains of his old Contract, he was steadily slipping back into a demons laziness. They were all tier 1, a Guard, a Follower, an Ingredient mixer, and a Trapper. They were also accompanied by the tier 2 Swordsmaster from before, and Dorzath took the opportunity to take a look at his status screen.

Name

Femmet

Race

Human

Tier

2

Job

Swordsman

Level

5

Skills

Detect Danger (1)

Sword Mastery (2)

Fast Reflexes (1)

Fighting Proficiency (1)

Weather Resistance (1)

Carry Load (1)

Intuition (1)

Second wind (1)

Sword arts

Osshold Basic

Proficiency - Intermediate

Not bad, for a human. Although humans were a less advanced species, who were slow to grow, they had a few advantages which were supposed to even them out according to the System compared to the higher-ranked species. One of these advantages was an ability to learn and create arts with ease, at least compared to other species, who might have a few arts here or there, but mostly self-developed ones by tier 6 and 7s, which were difficult to teach to lower tiers due to the complex concepts and ideas contained within.

In contrast, humans were able to use arts at all levels, and even a lower grade world like this one had arts which it taught. This ‘Femmet’ was at Intermediate proficiency, which meant he had mastered the movements of the low tier, and was working on understanding the broader image or concept of the art, but had comprehended enough that flashes of the image would probably occasionally slip out whenever he fought, strengthening his attacks and movement. Unlike a skill, an art worked on a concept of belief and integration with the user's mind. The user would meditate, possibly with some guidance from an instructor.

Dorzath knew that this process was simply harnessing the small amount of life energy which was produced naturally by a person, and binding it together with the concept, giving the idea life and allowing it to have a physical presence in the real world. It also meant that if a user of an art were to meditate and attempt to grow their art in a Dungeon they would experience massive growth due to a large amount of LE energy in the air. This was risky for the Dungeon, as higher tier individuals had been known to just take the life energy straight out of the Dungeon Core, giving them immense growth in their art, but also damaging or if done frequently, destroying the Dungeon Core.

It was impressive that a human had done so well at a young age, but compared to higher grade worlds, this was nothing.

The group approached the final room of the first floor, the Follower and the Ingredient mixer fingering their wooden clubs nervously. Dorzath had initially been concerned when he saw a Follower enter his Dungeon, but he was relieved to find that he was a Follower of one of the non-purified Gods.

They were a little surprised once they saw the statue, but the Swordmaster was unfazed. He motioned the Guard forward, towards the three cubs, who held his spear steadily, with a wooden plank strapped to his hand.

Out here, the Guard was probably a veteran and he’d probably never encountered something more dangerous than a tier 2 bear. He caught one of the cubs in a thrust, pinning its corpse to the ground briefly, before retreating back to one spot as the other two approached. He had an Ingredient mixer behind him, but he was wary of being bitten either way as a small cut was better off being healed naturally than with a potion.

The Swordmaster was just giving him levels, a Guard was an easy to acquire Job, but hell to level for the lower tiers. It had an extra five levels which improved the user's body but gave no skill energy. Very little experience was actually given from doing any guarding, and a Guard would do very little killing, so this man would have likely been stuck at tier 1 for the rest of his life. He actually gained a level in killing the cubs, however, which made the pitiful human actually cry a little, before he was chided by the Follower.

They continued onwards, weapons at the ready. The wolf in the first room was quickly spotted, which reassured Dorzath once again that he wasn’t dealing with idiots. Once again, the Guard took the kill and he was overjoyed at the fact that there were tier 0’s on this floor, allowing him to actually level. He strode forward, taking the lead while the other members of his group followed behind, curiously looking around. Dorzath had added some rocks mixed in with the dirt for the walls on this floor, if just for variety's sake.

The group was mildly surprised when they saw the next room, however, including the Swordmaster. To Dorzath it just looked like a big room filled with grass and wolves, but he was sure that to the humans, it looked like they were now outside.

Dorzath had just whitened the roof of the room, mixing in an element called clearstone, which naturally produced a strange illusion from it which made its surroundings look like the sky. To the challengers, however, it would appear that the Dungeon had gained a skill called ‘Mimic Environment’ which mimicked either the environment a Dungeon had been in or the landscape surrounding the outside of it.

They took the third path, while the Guard took care of the rest of the monsters. They didn’t have much trouble, however, as the monsters were ordered to leap well clear of the surrounding grass and landing on the path, before attacking the intruders. If Dorzath really wanted to kill them he could just order the wolves to engage in sneak attacks, which would surely take out the entire party.

Once they reached the end of the room, they were visibly disappointed to see that the next room was barely started, but the Guard was grinning from ear to ear, as based on his wild yelling not that long ago, he’d managed to level up again to level 5.

The rest of the group chose to use the core to teleport back to the entrance, while the Guard walked back, slaying a few more wolves and collecting the bodies of the ones he’d killed earlier.

Now that a group had been down to check the new floors difficulty, small groups of children and young adults were allowed, with supervision. Dorzath also increased the number of wolves bound in that first room to 25, as some wolves were almost always in the resting spot, and some challengers could go longer than ten minutes without seeing anything. He also widened the room slightly, too slowly for the humans to notice, but some of them were looking around quizzically as they left at night.

When they left, Dorzath took the opportunity to slightly change some of the paths, as the first path needed to be changed to take account of the larger space. In addition, some of the paths crossed each other in place and the challengers, especially some of the smaller ones, had gotten confused and gotten mildly lost. He reduced the number of times they intersected, but made the first and longest path, run close to the resting spot in one place, which although the wolves couldn’t attack challengers on the path while they were in their resting spot if the challenger stumbled into the spot themselves…

Dorzath was initially worried about killing a child and setting the fury of the entire town on him, but he realised that anyone who travelling alone was likely a tier 1 so it was unlikely to be a problem. He also thought any child would realise how stacked the odds were against them and retreat immediately.

He also raised the grass level so it would come over the eyes of the smaller ones, but not obstruct the view of the taller ones. As the town developed, it would likely only be the youngest who would use these lowest floors, and Dorzath would rather design the floors with that in mind now than have to go back and change things later because he was unhappy with the layout.

Dorzath still didn’t have the ability to have his monsters drop anything, and it would remain that way until he reached his third floor, but he still wanted the challengers to be incentivised to enter his Dungeon, the more people who entered him regularly, the faster his growth could be. He thought and thought but eventually came to the conclusion that the challengers would just have to be happy with the skill levels and advancement the Dungeon provided.

When the challengers entered the Dungeon in the morning, they were surprised at the changes that had taken place, and that gleeful Guard was yelling loud enough he made the wolves cringe with their sensitive hearing, but he threw himself into hunting in the first room with a cold intensity. As the day progressed, and he’d taken the majority of the kills that day, he was spoken to by several of the other bigger humans, no, adults after which he walked out of the Dungeon, a curious expression on his face as he then proceeded to kick several of the Dungeon walls and floor for no reason at all.

Dorzath was shocked at the blatant disrespect. He would be punished when he returned.