Chapter 36 - The dive II

Day 52

Neo's POV:

Before Neo went back to watch the adventurers advance, he had a look at his new materials Mike brought him.

Nickel: 75 mana /g

Cobalt: 200 mana/g

Titanium: 500 mana/g

Vanadium: 100 mana/g

Manganese: 250 mana/g

Tungsten: 1000 mana/g

Chrome: 2500 mana/g

Star Silver: not possible

Tin: 50 mana/g

With this and his blast furnace, he could probably bring down the cost for one gram high steel to 20 mana instead of the 200 it would cost him to create it directly. With this thought, he focused back on his visitors, who were still on his sixth floor.

They were more or less blazing through it. The goblins and the traps were far too weak to pose any thread to them. After they found the way to the seventh floor, they went back and checked the rest of the rooms. All in all, it took them only ten minutes to kill every single goblin on the floor.

Then they went on to visit the pig farm, where he'd forgotten to place the boars that he'd left for latter due to lack of animal material. He should've really been spending more of his focus on his dungeon Neo thought. First there was the overpopulation with the deer, then Mr. Floppy's sadistic behavior and now this. It probably hadn't been a wise decision to almost single mindedly concentrate on mining in the last weeks. One the other hand, it had helped him a lot with improving his dungeon expansion speed. So it hadn't all been bad.

While Neo watched his visitors, he reformed the large open room on the 12th floor to a maze. He had 150,000 m² to play with, which would at least result in a floor length of one hundred kilometers.

Sonja's POV:

When Sonja and her group entered the twenty-thousand m² sized main cavern of the pig farm, they were a little bit surprised to find no creatures.

"Just a large grassland, maybe it's the last floor and it's still not finished?" Khadgar suggested.

"Maybe, but it could be a trap too. Only one way to find out. Follow me."

When they moved further into the cave, they spotted ten small doors on one side and one larger door on the other. Khorgan kicked in one of them and caused a hell of a noise. While the eight blue goblins inside started to attack him, the other small doors flew open and another 72 blue and twenty black goblins came out. All of them had steel weapons in their hands.

Even being vastly outnumbered, the fight stayed totally one sided. While they were dispatching the goblins, they even had the time to chat.

"For normal groups, it would probably be a lot safer to use stealth and clear the rooms one by one, or to bypass them altogether and just go through the large door." Sardian commented while he killed three goblins.

After the group finished off the goblins and moved through the large door. They were greeted by a larger goblin and five mountain lions.

While they were killing them, Sonja was thinking about the dungeon. Something wasn't right here. After she'd heard of the involvement of an immortal , she already guessed this dungeon wasn't normal. That was why she selected an exploration group, which never made a first run on a dungeon before. With their lack of experience, they wouldn't question the odd behavior for a new dungeon.

But, this dungeon was way more weird than she expected. Normally, new dungeons would panic and they would throw everything they've got against the exploration party. Only after being cleared a few times, they calmed down and went to a more planned approach. This dungeon on the other hand, had already planned out floors which gradually increased in difficulty. Hell, it even placed signs and followed what was shown on it. Until now, they had never been attacked in a room with a green sign. Maybe, the dungeon wanted to lull them in and let them think they were safe, before staging a large surprise attack to finish them off. With these thoughts in her mind, they continued and moved to the eighth floor.

Neo's POV:

The floor the visitors entered was the maze. He'd placed a lot more traps on that level than before, maybe it would wound at least one of them.

After the sturdy dwarf triggered a few spike traps and just tanked through them, fell into a three meters deep pitfall trap, his guests decided to slow down a bit. Neo looked into the pit after the dwarf left it and he saw the iron spikes on the ground were bent and twisted. The mage would've probably been wounded, but the tanks armor was way to high in quality to be pierced by normal iron.

A little later Neo saw the mage trigger one of his new boulder traps. Well, what was rolling in the direction of the adventures wasn't exactly a boulder, but a larger ball of steel with a diameter of two meters. The tunnel they were in ended at a heavy and locked door. Just as Neo got his hopes high that at least the mage would get some broken bones, the red armored leader stepped for and punched at the ball of steel. It shattered and pieces of it crashed through the wall in the direction it came from. Then their barbarian kicked in the door.

"This is a green room, we're making a two hours break here. You've become way to confident and inattentive. This is a new dungeon we know nothing about, if any of the traps you triggered hat been more deadly, we would've already mourned some losses!" Sonja proclaimed.

They needed another four hours to make their way through the maze, while Neo gathered enough life energy to level up.

Upgrade dungeon level -> 14 Costs: 29160 life energy Upgrade dungeon level -> 15 Costs: 52488 life energy

Name: Neo

Species: Dungeon core

Affinities: Mental magic 1

Rank: D-4

Level: 14

Structural Integrity: 64/64

Mana: 99813 /99813 (520547)

Floor area: 620k /1168k m²

Max dungeon extension from core: 5962 m

Mana Regeneration: 10500 /h *8*50000% = 10111.11 /s

Life energy: 53.3

Life Energy generation: 76241.1/d

After finishing expanding, he would be able to compress his core again. When he thought about his situation for a moment, he decided to use the new floor size to keep increasing the maze on the 12th floor. If he could keep the S rank long enough in his dungeon, it would probably be possible to get another level.

While Neo was at his work, the intruders stepped onto the gravel path to his goblin fortress on the ninth floor.

Sonja's POV:

"Thank god, finally we left this cursed maze. This large open space is a lot better, but I must say, the high grass on both sides of the gravel path looks kind of suspicious." the barbarian cursed.

"I'll check it out." Khorgan offered and was immediately attacked by a squirrelling after he stepped into the grass. He grabbed it at its neck and went back to the road.

While he had it at the neck, the squirrelling was struggling to get free and to put one of its knifes through Khorgan's armor, who just responded with a smack on the head which knocked the squirrelling out.

"Kind of cute, I've never seen a squirrel in this size. It's even using daggers. With the grass this high, you can't really see them until they attack and they're pretty fast too. We should probably emphasize in our report to be careful and stay on the road." Khadgar suggested.

Sonja looked at the ceiling.

"This cave is almost ten meters high, but it would still be a bad idea to just burn down the grass. Maybe, it's the dungeon's plan for higher leveled adventurers like us to suffocate ourselves? Doesn't really matter, let's move on."

When they saw the granite wall that separated the cave in two parts, they stopped for a moment.

"Kind of looks like a fortress wall, let me pick that door, I don't want to make too much noise and be swarmed again like on the seventh floor." Sardian offered.

After they entered, they found themselves on a large inner courtyard with three large and ten small buildings.

"Wait a moment, I'll clear out the small buildings quietly." with that said the rogue disappeared.

Ten minutes later, he came back.

"Ok, let's go into one of the buildings with the ominous red X on the door." Sonja ordered.

They were immediately attacked by 20 goblin chiefs and 80 hobgoblins, all of them equipped with good quality steal gear. This was the first time since the start of the dungeon that they needed to use spells and techniques to win.

When the last goblin fell to the ground, all of them except Sonja were breathing heavy. Hallvor even suffered a few small cuts. His fighting style concentrated on offence and he was a purely focused on fire. That was why he wasn't good at defensive techniques like the Water Shield or the Iron Skin. After the battle, Khadgar used his water magic to heal him.

"Damn, opening this door is a sure death sentence for the adventurers that are normally on a floor like this. There isn't even any loot. So the red X probably means to fuck off." Khorgan cursed.

"Yes, seems like it. This building looks like some kind of arena. Maybe, the dungeon is training its troops here and doesn't want them to be disturbed. Let's go through the building without the red X first and see if we are getting attacked from behind." Sonja decided.

They cleared the boss of the floor without issues. They didn't even go to the second floor and kill the archers first, Khadgar just froze them with his water magic.

"Good, this was a lot easier than the arena fight and there was no activity from the last building. Let's check it out now."

After they cleared out the furnace building, Khorgan was in awe while he looked at the blast furnace.

"It's a pretty large magically powered blast furnace. The design is simple and even goblins can operate it. Looks like we found our answer, why this room had an X on it and where all the steel equipment came from. Would've been pretty neat to have one of these bad boys on the mining floor. You wouldn't need to move in and out of the dungeon all the time and just stay and mine while refining your ore on site." Khorgan said.

"Yes, but entering this room and dismantling the furnace, would probably piss the dungeon off. Let's just leave it and go to the next floor." Sonja determined.

After they dispatched the weregoblin that was in the boss room of the tenth floor, they discussed the last levels.

"If you don't open the doors with the red X, I would probably rate these last floors as high E ranked. The boss on this floor was a low D rank, but if you attack it with a group, it shouldn't be too difficult for a high E ranked party." Sardian commented.

"Yes, you're right. so floor one to five for F rank, floor six to ten for E rank. The loot was pretty bad all in all, maybe that is because we are vastly overpowered compared to the inhabitants. Let's use this room and make another two hours break. If the pattern continues, the next floors should be rated D rank, still easy, but we shouldn't let our guard down."

With this suggestion of their leader, they sat down and started to eat their provisions.