Leon

One day later

"Welcome to Wolfdenn, Lord Gray!" I declare with a smile as I see a man walking up the hill outside of my manor with Pallus. The man has the same dirty-black, bordering on gray colored hair as his son, with his own fancy set of enchanted armor. He has gray eyes to match his name and hair, and a pensive look on his face as he stares at me.

Lord Gray doesn't say anything as they approach, meanwhile Pallus just looks ahead with a smile on his face, as if whatever his father was doing was normal.

According to Pallus, his father was originally going to visit a while back, but he had a change of plans at the last minute and couldn't come.

And now that he is here, it looks like he is sizing me up. Likely trying to determine if I am good enough to be the leader of his son's mercenary party.

I stay silent while meeting his eyes for several seconds before a smile emerges on the man's face.

"It's good to finally meet the man who was able to make my son become a mercenary," Lord Gray says while reaching his hand out towards me.

I raise an eyebrow at this under my helmet with a glance in Pallus' direction before accepting the proffered hand.

"And it's nice to meet you as well, Lord Gray," I respond in kind.

Lord Gray shakes his head and says, "Just call me Darius."

This time I raise both eyebrows in my surprise.

That's a surprise. Not entirely unpredictable, but a surprise none-the-less.

"Alright, Darius," I say with a nod of my head as I let go of his hand, "come in!"

He nods with appreciation before we all enter my manor and begin walking towards my office.

"Alright, it's time to get down to business," Darius says after several minutes of casual conversation within my office.

I straighten in my chair a bit with a glance towards Pallus before focusing on his father again.

"As you can probably guess, I have come to check in on my son and determine what sort of man was able to make him become a mercenary," he begins with a straight face.

I nod my head. That was pretty easy to guess at.

"But," he continues as a more pensive look emerges on his face, "I have also come as an envoy for His Majesty, King Drezar."

An envoy for the King? I guess he did say that he would visit at some point in that letter, but I wasn't expecting an envoy.

Darius seems to take my silence as a cue to continue speaking with a slightly confused look on his face, "His Majesty wishes you well, and apologizes for not being able to visit himself. He says that he will come in about three to four months time after he deals with a few issues, the Kraken being one of them."

I smile at that last part before nodding my head.

That should take care of the Kraken problem at least.

"And," Darius continues speaking, no longer looking confused, "he would also like to set up an embassy in Wolfdenn."

Another embassy?

"And I'm guessing that you are here to negotiate for this?" I ask him while tapping my finger on my arm.

He nods his head before glancing towards Pallus, who takes that as his cue to leave the room before the negotiations begin.

As soon as the door closes behind him, Darius turns back to me and begins the negotiations.

Fenrir

"How is the eighth floor going?" Dawn suddenly asks me as I finish building another room.

When I turn away from my work, I find her floating at the entrance to the eighth floor.

"It's going pretty well," I answer her before looking back at the work I have done so far.

This floor will still use the same environment as the past couple of floors, with them being taigas, but instead of just being one large room, it will be separated into sixteen different rooms in the form of a cube. Only one of these rooms will have the entrance to the mini boss room unsealed, and that room will change with each dungeon run so that they can't map out the correct path. Each of the rooms will be connected only to those adjacent to it, making it a little bit of a maze.

"I have finished three of the rooms so far, so I still have quite a bit more work to do," I explain further before focusing on the enchantments attached to the door leading out of the most recent room I have made, "but the rooms themselves are turning out pretty well."

Each of the rooms has a taiga, with various monsters spread throughout the rooms, including some of the new ones that I got from that annoying Princess. They also have traps spread throughout the taiga, and even a few fake exits that lead towards a monster house - a room full of monsters.

Most of the monsters that I have been placing into the rooms are the general wolves, direwolves, and lycans to keep my dungeon from straying too far from my main monster, but I have also placed some arctic bears and yetis around the floor.

The annoying Princess was oddly nice when it came to which monsters she gave me first - having chosen the first ones to show me with an emphasis on my taiga biome.

It was rather surprising to say the least, and it makes me feel a touch bad about calling her annoying.

That said, she is still annoying.

I turn my attention towards the party of intruders currently moving into the sixth floor.

"The mixed party again?" I mutter with some interest as I decide to put down my work for now and take a break.

I haven't just stopped to watch a party of intruders in a while. The last time I really did that was with the Hybrid's party.

Every time since then, it was only watching them for a few minutes before moving on.

"I'm gonna watch this party go through the sixth and seventh floors," I tell Dawn before focusing on the party again as they enter the floor and begin shivering at the cold.

This will be interesting.