Ch 6 mk 1

Soz for no releases for a while. This chapter is a bit longer to compensate. Most ‘plot holes’ to date should be fixed, but if you do find anything that seems fishy or unnatural, do post below so that it can be addressed.

We should turn rank ‘X’ into rank ‘KS’ because kill stealing is the real way to level up fast, amirite?

If you have any questions, comments, complaints, rants, recommendations, or if you found an error in grammar or spelling, please post as a comment below.

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Part 1 -

Ikoi Kawasaki POV, several months earlier.

Spies are a natural part of any country, but isn’t this a bit ridiculous?

How did they get a hundred spies into the royal palace complex?

The palace complex is designed with a large shield dome so that we can repel the hardiest of invaders even with inferior troops.

But somehow, they’ve broken through the shield dome and now only we royal court magicians are left defending.

These spies are all rank SS at least… most likely from the warmongling Azsertech Empire.

“Who let these guys in?”

“That would be me.” High councilor Stacy said, smiling.

“Stacy Jurriaan? This is treason!” Emperor Jayce roared.

“Treason? Oops. I’m sorry.” Stacy said mockingly. “But according to the high magicks of the Azsertech Empire, I’m the true blood heir to the throne, and you’re just a usurper!”

“That’s a lie and you know it!”

“Well, the winners are the one who write the history books… so you’re actually the liar in this one!”

Seeing the hopeless situation, I realized there was no option left but to desert.

I’m no fool, I value my life. I’m not about to lay down my to fight in a hopeless battle. I’d much rather go behind the scenes and become a terrorist.

We’re badly outnumbered, badly outpowered and we have no trump cards left. Pretty much the definition of ‘hopeless.’

Welllll, time to get scarce!

I throw down an illusion of myself committing suicide while I blink out.

After blinking twice more, I find myself on a rooftop. I spend a lot of time practicing blink spells. Fleeing for your life is a tactical strategy and therefore should be practiced as such.

Now I’m going to warp out of this hellhole. Hideout alpha it is.

I attempt to initiate the teleport spell but it shatters.

Shit! They have a teleblock down!

“Going somewhere, miss?”

Turning around, I see a man with the ‘XX’ insignia.

I stab myself with a prop knife and send an illusion fleeing.

(Pic if u needs: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Hot-Sale-Joke-Magic-Plastic-Retractable-Knife-Halloween-Props-Toy-Slide-Dagger-Trick/32589450710.html?spm=2114.40010308.4.2.22Vl1v&aff_platform=aaf&sk=yZbA27MZN%3A&cpt=1458879477862&aff_trace_key=5c803414bea241bfb8ca6597daa5b0c9-1458879477862-08298-yZbA27MZN)

Sighing, he blinks to the ground and gives chase.

Hiding a smirk, I conceal my magic presence, jump down a nearby alleyway and hide in a tactically placed crate lying behind a two story villa.

Invoking illusion magic, I try to hide my body as best as I can.

I just need to survive until the Azsertech leave. Without his precious backers, Stacy won’t be able to hurt me.

For now, I just have to lay low and meet up with the pope.

---

A few days later, the commotion settled down and most of the military personnel left.

I guess I should visit the pope, I’ll be guaranteed protection if he knows I’m still alive. People don’t mess with the pope… especially if they don’t like bad luck strong enough to cause lightning strikes on cloudless days. Emphasis on the plural part of ‘strikes.’

Walking towards the church, the first thing I realize looks wrong… is how there is an altar covered in blood outside.

I disguise myself as someone I just passed by, using illusion magic and walk into the church.

Something is horribly wrong, an--

Someone puts their hand on my shoulder.

Spinning around, I see the pope. Looks like he can see right through my illusions… as usual.

Yeah! Safe!

Except for the fact the pope is dressed in the garb of the warmongering Azsertech death priests.

I drop the illusion.

“What the hell, Sigmund!” I say in surprise, “Were you one of the traitors as well?”

“Not at first” he said, “but the God of Death’s worship to miracle point ratios are higher, so I switched faith.”

“What?! You can’t do that!” I cried.

“Besides,” he continued. “If you’re a supporter of becoming a satellite state to the Azsertech, they’ll accept you as an ally at no cost.”

“Found you, miss.” Announced a rather familiar voice.

“I’m not falling for that trick again if you decide to escape,” he commented.

“And just in case you do, there are a few people watching the building,” he added.

“Well, there goes that plan...”

“Why did you desert your emperor in the throne room?”

“Wasn’t about to die in a battle we were guaranteed to lose.”

“We had no intention of executing anyone.”

“What about Emperor Jayce?” I ask.

“Sent to a correctional facility in the west.” He answered dismissively.

“Why didn’t you execute us?”

“As a satellite state of the Azsertech Empire, you’re to join us in our war against the United Xokaya Empire.”

Using A and S ranks in a war primarily between XXX-Z ranks? Laughable.

“So we’re basically cannon fodder.” I mutter.

“Being cannon fodder never killed anyone.” He says, laughing.

“...”

I’m pretty sure being cannon fodder all but guarantees your death. A snowball’s chances in hell are better than A and S rank’s on a true battlefield.

I guess what he actually means, is ‘people designated as cannon fodder have never gotten a single kill.’

“Since you Untermensch seem to be completely worthless in combat, even as cannon fodder… high command wants you to be a border alarm. Especially since you dogs are specially bred for fleeing.”

Of course. Who could ever rival the glorious aryan Azsertechs? I thought, mockingly.

----

After the coup, we were sent to the border to assist with defensive patrolling. However, we were recalled after the appearance of the ‘Pandora’s Boxes.’

After arriving back in the city, which looked like battlefield, we found that Emperor Stacy’s daughter had been kidnapped by ‘an elite team of guerrilla forces’ that led ground troops in circles whilst massacring any and all resistance from the few remaining A ranked teams.

Furthermore, the exploration team consisting of B ranks and a basic militia force was completely wiped out.

Why would anyone in the right mind try to explore a dungeon of unknown difficulty with mere B rankers and militia? That’s literally using personnel a step up from children armed using wooden swords.

It most certainly seems weird.

If it were me, I’d have a small AA or S ranked party of scouts survey the place first. Stacy should not have waited until the B-rankers were wiped out before recalling us.

This is even weirder, since AA and S ranks have always been the dungeon surveyors.

As our team prepared to leave, we bought some shish kebabs. The randomly sized chunks of food were haphazardly stabbed onto a wooden stake. It was pretty good.

On the way out of the city, I swear I saw the kebab seller again.

As we got closer to the dungeon, I noticed that there was an obelisk about where the dungeon was. Strangely, there were goblin parties roaming about, but we wiped them out easily.

We arrived at the obelisk around early sundown. A lone, humanoid soldier stopped us.

What a ridiculous outfit.

Whoever designed that puny fabric armor should be flogged. What’s that? A glass shield?

This is what happens when people with their heads in the sand go fight.

Lifting a large red and white object with a widened end, he shouted, “YOU ARE NOW ENTERING A RESTRICTED ZONE, LEAVE IMMEDIATELY OR WE WILL REMOVE YOU USING LETHAL FORCE”

Thinking back, this magic tool should have set alarm bells off in my head. I mean, if he has one magic tool, it’s almost certain he has more.

This single, lone, idiot dressed in cloth armor thinks he can take us on?

“Just ignore him.” I whisper.

The others seem to agree with me.

The only viable defence he has on is his iron helmet. Even the helmet is stupid, since the front consists of a piece of glass.

His face is covered by some sort of black mask and a weird pipe resembling a short nose-trunk that splits to both sides, attaching to some cylinders with holes punched into the sides.

We keep walking.

He shrugs and fires a small smoking can at us. Scary… not.

However, as soon as the smoke hits me, my entire respiratory tract begins to feel like it’s being doused in flaming oil. My lungs burn and instantly my eyes are a hot mess.

I try summon the cleaner air from around me, but It’s too late. He’s fired these smoking cans all over this area.

In sheer desperation, I create a massive gust of wind and blow the smoke away, being sure to use the wind to pick up the little cans and hurl them back at him.

The cans land around him… doing absolutely nothing.

(AN: activated carbon 2 op)

At this point, the burning seems to ease just a little, and our front lines rush him.

They try to take him out in a bum rush, but the humanoid pulls out yet another tool.

It pointed the tool in our direction and pulled a trigger.

When I saw the holes around the buildings, I thought they were using enchanted slingshots or something. I thought, oh I can just use the wind to move their rock bullets away from me while they’re in flight.

But it just lifted the black weapon… and loud bangs rang out in rapid succession.

Anything that wasn’t behind enchanted armor was quickly perforated by fast moving objects. They were so fast, in fact, that I could only see the damage being dealt.

A second weapon opened fire from about fifty meters behind the first humanoid, tearing even through areas protected by armor and cutting through everything.

I took a hit to the leg before I could throw up a shield.

The wound quickly goes away with a healing spell, but my mana is slowly leaking through where I was hit.

They really want to make my life miserable, don’t they…

Mana diffuser, known as ‘Manatite’ is basically unprocessed mana crystal. It’s not particularly dangerous, but it absorbs any mana that touches it. This makes it ideal for things like a prison, or a slave collar, or perhaps even a MAGE KILLING TOOL.

I bombarded the leading humanoid with hundreds of fireballs, but they seemed to just fizzle out when they hit its cloth armor. The fireballs that didn’t fizzle out didn’t set him on fire either.

Fire and magic resistant fabric?

The cloth armor may be magic resistant, but soft defences are weak against crushing attacks.

I invoke 『Starcall』, summoning a boulder the size of a house. The meteor drew a line in the sky as it streaked across the darkening sky.

I strengthen our shields and brace for impact.

A mage wearing a white robe came out of the cave.

Each dungeon has exactly one mage in it which guards the dungeon core.

That being said, why is the boss outside of the dungeon? Does this dungeon core not value its own safety?

Hundreds of purple lances flew off the mage and raced towards the meteor from all directions.

On impact, the light from the ensuing explosions briefly illuminated the battlefield.

Now desperate, I invoke a large area bullet swarm and send them crashing at blazing speed into the two.

The soldier simply plants his glass shield on the ground and crouches behind it. The air around the mage distorts, causing the background to be magnified around her.

Rocks whip through the air and ricochet off the shield, creating spiderwebs of cracks all over it.

However, the as the rocks approach the mage, they curve off and miss completely. She’s probably using some kind of space distortion spell. Showoff...

Additionally, the glass shield is still in a single piece, although you can’t see through it anymore.

I’ve never heard of glass that could withstand even a single rock bullet, much less a large area swarm. Maybe he enchanted the glass?

But the dungeon’s mage is clearly an attack mage, not a support class.

The mage yawns and goes back into the dungeon in the middle of my attack.

I want to shout after her, but we have enough problems right now.

As soon as my attack ends, the other mages try to follow up with a large barrage of their own spells.

However, a large torrent of projectiles finally shattered the shields I set up and punched their way through us.

Our point man reached their soldier and stabbed him through his shield with a greatsword.

The blade completely pierced the already maimed shield, but stopped just past his armor.

Taking a closer look at the soldier, I realize that he has a lot of chunky things where flesh shouldn’t exist.

I thought it was just some weirdo, but is there actually full plate under that cloth?

“It has no openings!”

The soldier in the back switches targets our tanks and bruisers, punching a line of holes across enchanted armors.

Panicking, I threw up a large stone wall with the last of my mana.

How am I out of mana already?

Are all their weapon systems built to specifically destroy mages?

High velocity projectile launchers that create large mana leaks, gas that makes it impossible to focus, extremely magic resistant armor, and exploding green rocks that shoot out hundreds of little balls of manatite...

Damn, we screwed up.” I mutter.

A few seconds later, the projectiles tore through the rock wall, sending shards everywhere. Luckily, I wasn’t hit. Well, I’m dead anyways, so whatever...

A large explosion knocked the breath out of my lungs and threw me over. The fireball briefly filled my blurring vision.

I guess this is where my life’s supposed to ‘flash across my eyes’ or something?

Then something hot gets shot over my eyes and I’m electrocuted. Close enough.

--- Some time later ---

When I wake up, I find myself shackled to a wall.

Why am I alive?

My eyes sting slightly and my arms are a bit sore from being held above my head.

Why am I shackled to a wall?

A woman dressed in a white robe walks in and starts blasting everyone with cold water.

Then I remember the fight near the obelisk. We didn’t listen to their threat to kill us… and they pretty much wiped the floor with us.

“Why did you save us?” I ask.

“For your mana.” She answers nonchalantly while hitting me in the face with a large stream of water.

“Is that all?”

“Yep.”

I look around at the others, but they’re just as confused as I am.

After barbarically washing us, she warms the air and blow-dries us.

The water seemed to be absorbed by the ground.

Turning around, she opened the door.

“One last thing,” she said. “Those collars represent your living privileges. Don’t lose or break them.”

Then she left and the door closed with a click.

Part 2 -

Takuma/Rene POV

“I have an announcement to make.” I telepathically announced. “All complex defenders, please report to the current boss room where we will discuss several… problems.”

After everyone arrived, I began the announcements.

“As everyone is aware of,” I said. “This is a dungeon. Things run on dungeon points.”

“Like a game?” Someone asks.

“Exactly. Therefore, things like ammunition costs points. They’re expensive.” I declared loudly.

“Seems legit.” Everyone else seemed to say.

“THEN WHY ARE YOU IDIOTS WASTING SO MUCH AMMUNITION?” I screamed. “YOU THINK I CAN’T SEE YOU WHEN YOU FIRE OFF EXTRA ROUNDS FOR EFFECT?! YOU CAN’T KEEP SHOOTING AFTER WE WIN JUST BECAUSE YOU LIKE SHOOTING!”

“AND KANO” I yell, absolutely pissed. “PLEASE REFRAIN FROM BLASTING DOORS OUT WITH BREACHING CHARGES BECAUSE YOU CAN’T BE BOTHERED TO USE A DOORKNOB!”

Everyone stared at him accusingly.

“I swear, the doorknob looked at me funny!”

Controlling my anger, I say, “Anyways, just conserve DP from now on, guys.”

“Says the person who spent the entire reserve fund for enough ammunition to destroy a small army… all in order to kidnap a girl” Kano mutters.

“She’s important if we want to overthrow the current government!”

“What are you going to do, marry into the royal family?” Kano says sarcastically.

“No.” I said, smiling. “You are.”

“Huh?”

Part 3 -

Kano has started to try to talk with Stacy’s daughter, but she seems to have something against him, which is hilarious.

Meanwhile, I’ve begun interrogating the sixteen elites and I quickly realized that they don’t really have any loyalty towards their city-state.

They’ll tell me anything I want to know. I just need to ask.

Interestingly enough, they have no idea what ‘Pandora’s Box’ is. After explaining the myth, they seemed to be rather shocked.

Apparently all they were told was that if they successfully destroyed me, they would get a large city-state wide buff.

After a day of ‘research,’ I found a list of interesting people.

I sent a whisper to Fate with the list of people.

Fate. What an interesting name. I heard they call him that because he has thirty-seven apostles.

Izumi says he is a really tall man with a chin-curtain beard who is always wearing a top hat. According to Rin, he was a vampire hunter in his past life.

It must be nice being a god. From what I’ve been told, the god’s actual title has been changed after we entered the game. First, it was POWER_USER, but now it’s just USER.

Izumi said that she can see everything that I can see, plus their own apostles on a UI. Apparently, they’re in the place where I first met the Kotonashi Dungeon Core.

That being said, I trust that fate will quickly get us much needed intel with his hyperrealistic shapeshifter.

The most interesting person of all seemed to be Emperor Stacy. He seems to be the traitor to the Azsertech Empire and is now a puppet. By sending large sums of ‘protection money’ from treasury, his safety and position is guaranteed.

From what I’ve heard about him, it would seem that he is a man who only cares about learning more magic. He is a man of science who overwatches human experimentation and the like.

An ambitious researcher, if you will.

Now would probably be a very good opportunity for him to learn magic, seeing as his ‘nigh-invincible’ buddies will likely show up soon to ‘do battle with a never before seen enemy.’

With the new DP savings and increased generation from the four good mages, we can buy 30 first floor rooms a day.

When I hit a hundred rooms on the first floor, the price of buying a room doubled, making a room on the second floor 25% cheaper than a room on the first floor.

For the second floor, I chose a monster called the ‘Dark Hobbit.’ They walk around in unlit areas and shank enemies that walk by. In essence, a really low level assassin.

There was an obelisk upgrade that increased the aboveground influence radius to 60 meters for super cheap. (radius = 50*(1.2)^upgrade_level)

Each upgrade also adds a bit to your… ‘height.’ I’m talking about the obelisk, obviously.

In an experiment, I sent goblins outside of the dungeon. Surprisingly, the dungeon respawned more goblins. However, if the total number of mob_type exceeds the carrying capacity of that mob_type inside the dungeon, the spawn rate will slow down to 1% of the original spawning rate, for each type.

Goblins generally take around 100 seconds or so to respawn, so if we try to push the ‘soft cap,’ the spawning rate slows down to two hours and forty-five minutes for each extra. It also becomes impossible to spend DP to boost respawning speed.

There’s an inherent problem though. Goblins are weak. They’ll die from practically anything.

Enhancing a genetic trait, (int up, speed up, str up, etc) costs a hundred times an enhancement for a single complex entity.

I modified the spawning so that the goblins either spawn with a spear or a bow. (9:1 ratio)

‘Why spears?’ You may ask. Spears are so simple that an idiot can use it. Pointy end at bad guy, stab. Form a line of pointy things and charge. Everything in the way gets poked.

Enemies have fancy footwork and can craftily swing their swords? Bullshit! Poke them until they die!

I sent the goblins to run around and look for materials to build with. Buying stuff is expensive, so the obvious solution is to build it yourself… ‘themselves,’ I mean.

After the goblin scouts found a forest, I sent a group of ‘bored people’ with chainsaws into the forest to cut it down.

A 2 kilometer trail was thus turned into a wood transportation route.

During one ordinary day of palisade construction, I noticed a man watching the construction from a distance off.

Immediately, I scrambled a few of the light infantry into above ground fortified positions and sent out three scout groups consisting of goblins and a few bored battle maniacs.

Man these guys get bored easily.

Part 4 -

Blood princess (rank YY) POV

“Pandora’s box, huh?” I mutter. How did I get stuck with a dungeon subjugation job? Just because a few A and S ranks can’t do their jobs properly, I’m stuck with this shit…Well, protection money is protection money...

But then when I arrived, I noticed that goblins were building a palisade around the dungeon.

The monsters look weak as hell, although their behavior is certainly odd, the elite team should not have had any problems.

Three teams break off from the workers and run towards me. They’ve spotted me?

Well, if they want combat that badly, I’ll have to entertain them.

In minutes, a group of about fifty or sixty surrounds me.

“State your business or fight!” Someone yells out

“Fight!” Someone else yells

I slit my right wrist with a small ceremonial knife and let the blood flow out to form a rapier.

Using the blood arts, I can infinitely exchange blood for mana, and mana for blood at 100% efficiency. This makes me extremely effective against numbers.

My blood arts techniques allow me to increase my mana pool each time I kill something.

I only rose to where I am today because of how massive my mana pool is, even by Azsertechian standards.

If I keep expanding my mana pool this way, maybe one day, I can become the Δ++... the one closest to SYSTEM.

“Itadakimasu” [頂きます]

Everyone around me looks rather surprised at my rapier.

Shrugging, I rush up to the closest person and chop his head off.

Strangely enough, although his body was unable to follow my movements, his eyes were.

Creepy.

I turn his blood into mana, and into my blood so that I can control it. The blood turns into hundreds of throwing knives, which I impale into every goblin in sight.

Goblins are the weakest, and therefore will ‘donate’ their blood to me with the least resistance.

“Yo, that’s some freaky shit, man!”

“Yeah, that’s unnatural!”

They all rush me and attack.

It doesn’t matter how much damage they do. Even if I’m left with only a head, I can regenerate everything back. The key technique of the blood arts involves sacrificing the defences of the ‘expendable’ body to protect the mind.

By focusing all the already tough defences of a blood mage into the head, the blood mage becomes invincible until they run out of mana.

After making quick work of the scout group, I make my way towards the dungeon.

It seems that everyone has fled into the dungeon. Did I scare them off?

If I go and clear out the dungeon, I’ll be able to claim all the credit and get all the bonus mana.

Sorry team, you’re out of luck.

Sacrifices, here I come!

I walk boldly through the entrance and walk into the first room at the bottom of the staircase.

The first thing I notice is that this place is smoky as hell.

Killing intent?

Bangs ring out from my front and my left, easily ripping through my body. Mana seems to leak out of my wounds like water. I have to rinse my wounds out with extra blood before healing off the wound.

I throw blood blades at where the two attacks came from, but they’ve already stopped.

I start walking forwards, but attacks ring out from behind me and to my right, giving me another round of wounds to deal with.

I don’t bother returning fire, since they’re already gone.

I rush through the first doorway before they can start their stupid attacks from behind again.

My leg catches on something and an explosion to my left rips my body apart and sends hundreds of small pellets through everything but my head.

Cursing, I heal off my body, which has now been ripped into multiple pieces and turned into pincushions.

Wait, didn’t they teach defensive magic?

Did I sleep through that section?

I’ve never had to use defensive magic, after all.

After scavenging through my early days as an apprentice to the Seraph of Blood, I recalled the spell.

It involves surrounding my body with a layer of blood, didn’t it?

I never used it since it just needlessly used up mana, but here, I’m already down to 95% after half a minute.

Something started firing off rock bullets ahead of me.

I lifted up my rapier and charged.

When I reached him, however, my head and body were in separate parts.

“Huh?”

A piano wire?

The time it took to reattach my body gave the man in the black armor time to escape.

What’s this? He seems to have dropped this short fat green iron dildo.

It blew up as I inspected it, blasting off a chunk of my blood shield.

Fucker!

This dungeon is seriously pissing me off.

Another burst of fire came from the end of the hallway before the dungeon was silent again.

How are they even seeing me through this smoke?

I create a mist out of blood, but I can only maintain it about five feet around me.

With this blood mist, I’m able to avoid the tripwires and piano wire booby traps.

Eventually, I reach another door.

Wait, didn’t the last door explode?

Standing five feet away, I extend an arm of blood and open the door.

It exploded.

Of course.

I walk into the next room and a massive steel door slides shut behind me. The door is at least six inches thick. What the hell?

The air is sickly sweet.

Poison? I hold my breath.

Around me, I see that there are holes in the walls around me with small metal tubes sticking out. They all light up instantly, creating a maelstrom of shrapnel.

Not even caring about mana loss at this point, I send attack after attack at the door.

On the tenth hit or so, the door gives and I charge out.

I’m feeling really drowsy…

I chop my body off and grow a new one after I flush out all the blood in my head with new blood.

My head is still drowsy, but it’s less severe now.

55% mana and I’ve explored five rooms. What the hell.

I fire off blood spikes behind me as I flee for the entrance.

One of the spikes connects with something.

Dodging traps, I flee as quickly as I can. I need people with trap and life detection to fight this shit.

This dungeon is total stupidity.

How do you even fight this without an entire team of Y ranked specialists?

When I get back to the first room, I realize that the gas here is different.

It stings my eyes and hurts like hell to breathe.

I try to run, but my legs are shot out from underneath me.

I focus my blood shields around my legs and keep running.

A man approaches from in front and sprays me in the face with some light red liquid.

Because I’m unable to react in time, it completely covers my face.

It feels like my eyes are on fire, but it’s nothing unbearable.

“Pacification methods seem to at least somewhat work…” He mutters before stabbing me in the ribs with a black rod that hosts some kind of electric arc at the end.

My mind goes blank for a second as the current courses through. All my muscles freeze up.

But I don’t need my muscles to use magic.

I force a large glob of blood out of my arm and cut him in half.

“Oops,” he remarks as his upper torso slides off the rest of his body.

After redoubling the shield around me, I rush up the steps, and out of the dungeon… to safety…

With 25% mana to spare!

Apparently not.

They kept accurately hitting me with long ranged rock bullets, torching me with lightning, and dropping meteors on my general location the entire way back.

When I got into the city, I had barely 15% mana remaining.

After getting back to the inn the team was at, I was asked if I found out anything useful while they tried to stifle their laughing.

Troops of the Azsertech Empire are highly competitive, so it’s only natural that they are extra nasty after discovering that I failed.

“Yeah. That’s one nasty shithole of a dungeon we’re up against.” I spit out. “I would highly suggest calling for reinforcements before continuing.”

However, they just seemed to laugh. “Just because a high ranked antipersonnel mage failed doesn’t mean we dungeon specialists have no chance..”

“After all, the Azsertech Empire has already cleared three of these ‘dangerous’ pandora’s boxes. What’s the worst that could happen?”

I don’t know. I have a pretty gruesome imagination…

I should get some clothes.

Part 5 -

Sweet.

That crazy blood mage was really a gift from the admins.

Mana lost by mana dispersion gets converted to DP if they’re in the dungeon. Mana really is really easier to absorb… unlike the weird aether crap.

The mana we got from bleeding out her mana was worth two weeks’ passive DP regen.

It turns out that the dungeon can also process certain types of blood into DP. The blood can’t belong to the dungeon’s defenders.

The defenders are made out of aether secreted by the earth.

The deeper you go, the higher quality the aether.

The higher quality the aether, the more mana extracted, the better the 0-DP automatically generated stuff.

Of course, the air is completely saturated with aether, and since each room core has a hard cap on its conversion rate, it’s completely pointless to kill your own defenders.

It would be like dumping water into a water tower in an effort to increase drinking rate from a straw.

Now, aether isn’t to be confused with soul material, mana or ectoplasm… rather, they’re all flavors of energy, much like heat or electricity.

And that crazy unkillable blood mage just gave me a two week boost of DP…

It’s like the birthday of my current conception of a higher deity (which in no way will infringe upon your current conception of a higher deity or lack thereof) come early.

(Ref: Triumph the insult dog)

The amount of bullets we shot off were worth about a full day’s DP though.

The explosives… another day’s worth.

According to my analysis, pain compliance and ‘lethal’ attacks were completely ineffective.

Bullets just opened a hole that healed quickly and pepper spray… showed no useful effect.

However, other tactics, like the chloroform room and the shock batons seemed to have somewhat more of an effect.

Additionally, according to an autopsy on a body left behind, the mage does not appear to be a normal human.

The tensile strength of her bones were stronger than that of stainless steel. The ‘surgeons’ also found several unidentified organ systems. Other than that, everything looks human.

The assassins (and some other bored people) are cutting up her body and documenting everything they find. Maybe we’ll get some insights when they finish their tests.

I’m really bored because I can’t fight.

Well, technically, I could fight, but if I lose, everyone dies…. Soooooo… now I spend all my spare time designing traps.

I bought all one hundred regular(1x) priced rooms for the second floor and began a few rooms on the third.

I also discovered that floors with a ‘safe-room’ were granted a 50% boost in DP production.

I placed the safe-room for each floor at the bottom of the staircase leading into that floor and popped a mini boss room at the top of each staircase.

Unfortunately, this meant that I had to retrofit my dungeon with defender teleport pads for cross dungeon transportation… but I needed those for a while now.

I mean seriously, why bother walking when you can blink.

Exercise? Bullshit!

My body is stuck like this for the rest of my foreseeable future. I can’t get stronger, weaker, taller or shorter.

I’m not getting any younger standing here? Well I’m not getting any older either.

Damn deadlines. They should have pushed the rapture back a few years.

Now I’m permanently stuck at 140 cm.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Several Days Later

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

A group of twelve was sighted approaching the obelisk.

Naturally, anything and everything of value was evacuated to the lowest floor.

As they walked down the steps, I sent a group of goblins to attack them.

The goblins were defeated effortlessly.

Death by incineration.

How scary.

I’m not too hyped to send my wallets to fight twelve of the broken bullshit I had to deal with earlier, so I’ll just sit back, set traps and occasionally try to roofie them.

---

The group approaches the first door.

A smokescreen is deployed in the room behind the door. I have a goblin with a spear hiding in the corner as well.

The exploding doors are for later.

The blood mage cautiously opens the door from five feet away, and leaps back the second it opens.

The large amount of smoke floods out of the room.

The blood mage walks in boldly… and gets impaled in the neck.

Well, if I was nigh-invincible, I wouldn’t care about petty things like getting stabbed either.

I get a message from Fate stating that Stacy is leading an elite unit to backstab the subjugation team.

Maybe we can strike up a deal…

Part 6 -

Blood princess, (rank YY) POV

After walking through the door I breached, I get stabbed in the neck.

Insignificant.

I kill the goblin instantly and pull the offending spear from my neck.

Strangely, this spear wasn’t treated with the mana dispersion bullshit.

“Are you stupid?” Clair asks.

Clair is the elementalist in our group and I’m told that she’s a hell of a researcher.

“Stand back.” She barks.

I jog out of the doorway and get away from the line of fire.

My hairs stand up as the air sparks with electricity.

The smoke quickly vanishes.

The room is empty except for a can that is spraying up smoke.

Using earth magic, she builds a little tomb around the can.

“What did you do?” I ask, perplexed.

“Colloidal coagulation.” She responds, dismissively.

“Uhh, what’s that?”

“Ions absorb colloids.” She explains.

“I still don’t get it.” I say, scratching my head.

“It’s magic.” She irritably replies.

The others seem satisfied with this answer.

In the next room, we find the wreckage of a door broken into multiple pieces.

The door is riddled with holes and splinters litter the floor.

The hinges are still attached to the wall. A piece of door attached to the hinge lazily swings as I tap it.

Something smells remotely like fruit.

There are a lot of crates in the next room and a very thin layer of smoke fills the room.

It’s easily visible through.

A burly man in our party appears to be in thought.

In the corner of the room, there is a small black cylinder with a little flap at the top.

Pushing open the flap revealed a trash can inside.

“A civilized dungeon?” I quietly mumble. “Did you guys encounter any of these in any other pandora’s boxes?” I ask.

“In one other.” Clair answers.

“I got it!” The burly man exclaims.

“What?” Clair asks curiously.

“That smell.” He says, “It’s alcohol.”

“Alcohol?” She asks. “Smells like…”

Suddenly, her eyes go wide.

She immediately started waving her staff around violently, forming a clear bubble of clear air around us.

Clair looked around fearfully.

“The dungeon just tried to intoxicate us…”

The dungeon did what?!

I grab my ceremonial dagger and shakily slice away at the vein at my neck.

I immediately start replacing my blood with fresh blood. I need to get this out of me ASAP.

“We need to be more careful from now on.” I say angrily. “I told you the dungeon’s dangerous”

“Wait” One of our party said. “Do you hear that?”

Instantly, we quieted down.

I can hear a very faint crying.

We quickly run through the low hanging arch and make a right turn towards the cry.

In front of us, a gruesome battle scene unfolds.

Goblin parts are plastered everywhere.

A team of adventurers are laying on the ground, dead, in the middle of a four way junction.

A lot of crates are scattered around.

In the middle of the dead adventurers, I spot a girl crying.

She’s been impaled by multiple weapons and she’s rapidly bleeding out.

“Is it a trap?” I ask.

“HEeel~ p,” the girl feebly screams before falling unconscious.

The others instantly rush towards her.

“No!” I yell, grabbing Clair by the arm and pulling her back.

She tries to throw me off, but I hold firm and forcefully yank her back.

The others ignore me and rush to the dying girl’s side with bandages.

This is the problem with our society. Our civilians are indoctrinated with the fact that we are ‘Ubermensch,’ and as a result, they feel themselves to be an invincible heroic force.

They are mere rank Xs and XXs. They’re nowhere near invincible.

Clair looks at me, clearly annoyed.

Using my brute strength, I grab her and push her behind me.

“I’m sorry Clair, if you die, I would be screwed.” I say. She’s the only one with the clean air bubble, after all.

I can only use blood magic, so it would be bad if she dies.

I shield us with a thick blood shield and continue retreating.

The crates around the adventurers explode, blasting us into the far wall.

When my senses return, multiple series of loud bangs and explosions ring out everywhere.

I brush a piece of flesh off my face, and I realize it’s half a hand.

Turning around, I slap Clair awake and throw her over my shoulder.

I activate my blood shield and blood mist. It begins to steadily burn through my mana supplies.

I only need to hold this up until we get clear of the traps, then Clair can shield us from the rest.

I rush towards the exit while projectiles *ping* off my shields.

As I enter a hallway, I turn my shield to maximum power and tear through every single trap.

It’s very mana costly, but I’m out of time. If the enemy army catches up, I could be very screwed, very quick.

Bangs ring out from behind me and I start taking fire from behind.

I create a swarm of blood arrows and send them at full force backwards, ending the onslaught, albeit temporarily.

In the next room, I can see a container sitting in the middle of the room.

Can it be any more obvious?

I impale the suspicious device with a blood lance and it violently explodes, throwing up a thick cloud of dust.

I’m safe since I’m far away from the explosion and the few pellets that fly in my direction are repelled by my shield.

I pass through the cloud of dust, marvelling at how a small bubble of clean air surrounds me.

I’m a blood mage, and unfortunately, blood mages have large, negative, ‘affinity corrections’ applied to all other affinities.

Using spells from other affinities is impossible for me, and so they’re impressive to look at.

“Hah… so that’s why you’re ranked YY” She mutters as I charge through another explosion.

Suddenly, the ground vanishes from under me and we fall into a pit filled with white liquid.

The liquid is runny and sticky.

Judging from how quickly my mana pool is committing suicide, I assume that mana dispersion powder has been mixed in.

I jump out with a single hop.

“Clair, get this off of us or we’re in deep shit!” I bellow.

“Like we aren’t already.” She commented as she blasted us with a stream of water.

Most of the sap-like stuff came off, but there was still a rather thin layer of it over my skin.

A large blob of mud hit us and scrubbed for a second before falling off, carrying all the sap-like stuff off before a jet of water washed us off.

Clair gasped, signalling mana exhaustion.

She’s officially useless now.

“Sorry Clair, it’s nothing personal.”

I cut her neck open and absorb as much blood as I can in ten seconds before dumping her to the ground.

Without the extra weight, I leap in between the trap wires with my newfound agility.

10% mana. I can make it.

I throw myself up the stairs before anything can prevent me from reaching my freedom.

At the top of the stairs, I find… Emperor Stacy?

“What happened to your unit?” He asks.

“Annihilated.” I answer. “I’m going to need to request more reinforcements, preferably Y and YY ranked due to trap deadliness.”

“Negative, Blood Princess.” Stacy said, smiling. “Sadly, the Blood Princess did not live through the dungeon subjugation. Her team along with her were completely wiped out.”

The twenty men behind him raised their crossbows and I was hit by every bolt.

“S-Silver?” I cried. “W-wwhy? Yyou can’t do this! I’m a high ranked member of the Ubermensch!”

“No.” He retorted. “You’re a lab rat.”

He smiled. “What secrets do you hold, little rat?”

Part 7 -

Takuma/Rene POV

“Rene, we’ve successfully captured one of the subjugation unit.” Kano reported.

“So, I presume the others were unrecoverable?”

“All but tiny pieces.” He remarked. “Teeny tiny bits and pieces.”

“A metric ton of C4 generally does that.”

“I still think it’s overkill.” He says.

“Gotta be sure they die. Kudos to the actors though.”

“I’ve thought up a new name for the light infantry because of this…” He says.

“What might that name be?” I ask.

“Expendables.”

===============================

Footnotes:

I proofread this a few times now, but proofreading doesn’t catch fundamental errors.

If you feel like something doesn’t seem right or you have a question about the plot, be sure to ask. If the problem is serious, I would like to patch problems earlier than later.

Thanks!