Chapter 10 - The arrangement

Day 10

Mike's POV:

"Good, great, an arrangement sounds great."

"HAHA, interesting. Your first reaction told me, that you heard about dungeons and their danger before. But you got your shit together pretty fast. I admire that. Now for the arrangement, if you bring me different types of animals, I will give you ten silver each. For more powerful beasts like a brown bear or a mountain lion I will give you one hundred silver. If you manage to kill a goblin and bring me his corpse, I will create something special for you!"

That did not sound too bad. He could earn more money than he would otherwise see in a year, just by killing some squirrels, deer or foxes. He was even thinking about accepting the deal and then never coming back to this place, but his instinct told him it was probably not a good idea to betray this dungeon, especially with it being this close to the village.

"Ok, I accept the deal, but I will need some time. These woods are dangerous and I have to be careful. In addition I don't know if I can find a goblin. I can't just attack their hideout or one of their hunting groups, that would just be suicide!"

"Great. Don't worry I have time. To give you a taste of your future riches let me show you something."

Mike saw a large pile of silver and gold coins appearing before him. There were more than a hundred gold coins and more than a thousand silver coins. He've never seen so much wealth. Even in Geldern, the most expensive items he saw in the stores, were only around two gold coins. Then the treasure disappeared and only the ten silver coins from before remained. He gulped and took two steps, bend down and took them. After putting them in his purse he got ready to leave.

"Before you leave, you have to swear an oath for me. First you will never tell anybody without my approval that you talked to me or that this dungeon is intelligent, and second you must wait for at least thirty days and you have to bring me five different creatures before you are allowed to talk to anybody about this dungeon. When that condition is fulfilled I will instruct you how you can inform the authorities about this dungeon without getting yourself killed by some greedy noble."

"That's right. Swear now or feel the wrath of the mighty Luna!"

Mike immediately turned his head only to see a big fluffy rabbit with a 20 cm tall woman sitting on its back. She had wings and was wearing a full plate armor , in her hands she held a small lance like knights were using in jousting. He rubbed his eyes, thinking he hallucinated. It did not help, she was still there.

"Mike meet Luna. Luna meet Mike. Good. The third oath is that you will never speak to anybody about Luna, do we understand us? In exchange I will swear that I will not attack you if you don't try to go deeper in the dungeon than this room."

Mike just nodded dumbfounded. The little fairy and the cute rabbit aside, his instinct told him, that he could not escape alive if he didn't swear the oath. It did not take long and he got a grip and they swore their oaths.

Mike immediately could feel the magic gripping at him. Something told him, that it would not be a good idea to break this oath.

"Very good. Now a let's have a toast to a good cooperation."

He saw a table appearing in front of him. On it, a fancy looking goblet made out of crystal, in it, what seemed to be wine. Thinking for a moment, he shook his head.

"Thank you, but I don't drink alcohol."

"Haha, great. You are smart that's good. Let me tell you something about magic oaths, it's not important what you think they mean. The only thing that matters are the spoken words. I only swore that I would not attack you, if I would've put poisoned wine in front of you and you drank it, it would be your own fault. I would have not infringed on our oath. One last advice, don't try to cultivate mana yet. You are at the rank F11, it would be best for your future if you reach F12 before you start using mana and break through to E0. With that said, I wish you a good hunt."

A little overwhelmed from the events, Mike turned around and left without saying a word.

Neo's POV:

Neo was in a very good mood when Mike left. It seemed like he managed a promising agent, one that could save him a lot of time waiting for creatures to enter his dungeon.

"Why didn't you kill him? He would've almost delivered enough life energy for two more levels. You could've used the wolfs. Even if they are individually a lot weaker than him, he couldn't have killed all of them before they would have gotten him."

"Sure I could have killed him and I would have if he hadn't sworn that oath. You know, I was a human just a few days ago. I have a problem with just killing people for their life energy. This way I would be no better than a demon. No, you showed me another way. It makes far more sense to create a dungeon where humans, elves, dwarfes and other people can challenge themselves to improve. In addition higher ranked dungeon divers repeatedly visiting will bring far more life energy than culling large amounts of weak E and F ranks."

"And if they are in over their head, will you try to save them?"

"No, that is the price you have to pay on your way to the top. Without the risk of injury or death, your senses dull, you become careless and your progress slows down. Even if they have the same rank, a person that challenged himself, faced death and overcome this obstacles will always be way more dangerous than some sheltered noble or a mage living in his ivory tower living without risk."

"Didn't you live in a secluded tower, guarded by golems?"

"Hehe, you got me there. But I only did this when I made experiments, researched some spells and learned theoretical knowledge. In between, I challenged myself, went for adventure, explored the unknown and fought for my life."

"So what is your plan then exactly?"

"Our dungeon will be an anvil on which people can temper themselves to improve, at the same time we will sort out the trash. The greedy, the stupid and the traitors. We will do our best to dispose the scum that kills others for their own greed."

"Wow, you're so noble, that's kind of annoying."

*chuckling*

"No not, really noble. Sooner or later the trash will die anyway. They will annoy somebody, that they shouldn't, underestimate their victims and so on. If they die, it is better when we get their life energy."

"That's more like it. But I think the rewards you promised him are way too big. Ten silver for some random animals, are you crazy?"

"Hehe, if this was a dungeon dive you would be right. Dropping ten silver from a weak animal is far too much. But look at it from the costs we have and the gains we get. It will just take a few minutes of mana expenditure to create that silver, but we get new animals, some for which we probably have had to wait for weeks to get without a hunter and if other humans find the dungeon and start building a town in front of the entrance, we won't be able to get new creatures before we have a second entrance. No, this is a good deal for us. I only need to expend some mana, he has to roam through the woods for days."

"If you say so. What is next?"

"First I need to figure out the lighting issue, without it we can't grow plants. Then we can start population the dungeon with plants. After that we have to wait for the boy to come back or animals entering on their own, or we could just use rabbits to feed the wolfs."

"No you promised and don't forget the mana density problem!"

"Yes ok, you are right. About our problem the mana density I think it would be best to find a way to gather most of the mana I radiate and store it away."

"Good, good. In the meanwhile Luna will teach Mr. Floppy new skills!"

Did he just hallucinate or was the rabbit nodding his head when Luna said that. Maybe he was imagining things, he decided to get to work, but first had a look at his status.

Name: Neo

Species: Dungeon core

Affinity: None

Rank: F-4

Level: 3

Structural Integrity: 1/1

Mana: 335/335 (365)

Floor area: 700/700 m²

Max dungeon extension from core: 77 m

Mana Regeneration: 600 /h *50000% = 83.33 /s

Life Energy: 99.8

Life Energy generation: 2.93/d

He forgot about the life energy he got from the bear. This immediately improved his mood even further. But first he checked the information he had of the bear and his active creatures.

Black forest bear

A medium sized bear. It likes honey and climbing on trees. It feeds on plants and on meat.

Rank: F8

Traits: tough(rank 1); strong(rank 1)

Costs: 900 mana ; 95 kg animal material

The costs were high, he could not afford to create one of the creatures for the moment. His active creatures showed no surprises.

1 mutated grey rabbits G1-> 0.02 LE/d

1 Mr. Floppy G2-> 0.03 LE/d

7 mutated big bad wolfs F2-> 1.68 LE/d

3 mutated big bad wolfs Mk2 F4 -> 1.2 LE/d

After that he improved his dungeon level and looked back at his status.

Upgrade dungeon level -> 4 Costs: 40 life energy Upgrade dungeon level -> 5 Costs: 80 life energy

Name: Neo

Species: Dungeon core

Affinity: None

Rank: F-4

Level: 4

Structural Integrity: 1/1

Mana: 335/335 (365)

Floor area: 700/1500 m²

Max dungeon extension from core: 93.7 m

Mana Regeneration: 1000 /h *50000% = 138.88 /s

Life Energy: 59.8

Life Energy generation: 2.93/d

Great his max floor area more than doubled and his regeneration improved again. Now he would be able to create some bigger rooms.