Shit! Fuck! This was a disaster!

‘Goblins front and centre, squirrel squad march!’

Rox was frantically getting everyone to start moving.

Meanwhile the adventurer group had reached the entrance. The mage was looking around suspiciously summoning mana around himself… fuck if this fucker’s intelligence suddenly goes up too, we’re finished! The cat will be out the bag, have turned into a demonic beast and eaten the house.

The goblin troop were far ahead of everyone else as they marched to the entrance. Since they had been lying in ambush in the eighth room they were ahead of the rest who were way in the back of the dungeon… more than 30 rooms away.

Fuck.

A small troop of goblins to scare the adventurers back? Sure. To kill them off? All they needed was a single survivor…

I paused. Would I really kill a group of innocents because of my own mistake? What is it that separates men from demons?

‘Rox, stop.’

A vision, a memory. A field of corpses and men in uniforms. Monsters in human skin. My body felt cold.

‘What do you mean stop? We can…’

‘I said stop! As the dungeon master I order all inhabitants back into the secret rooms!’

My voice echoed in the minds of everyone rushing towards the adventurers, making them pause confused. I think this is the first time me and Rox had ever given opposing commands.

‘This is not how I do things Rox. This is not how the dungeon will grow.’

Rox looked at me. Her lips were drawn in a thin line on her face… but I guess she saw something on my face, because she whispered softly, ‘Alright Alex…’

I could tell she didn’t agree with me but she was smart, she could see the same thing I could… that we wouldn’t be able to kill the entire adventurer group without one escaping… and hopefully because she too didn’t want to simply massacre a group of innocents.

Dungeons had instincts. This I knew, they felt a hunger for mana and could absorb it, they were born with mana absorption skills. But I was born human. I become a dungeon master later… would I be affected by the instincts too? What about other dungeon masters? Were there other human dungeon masters that willfully ate up innocents?

In my mind, uniformed men, transformed by darkness paraded in front of me.

Yes, humans are definitely capable of that.

All the dungeon folk slowly crept back inside the secret rooms. Max, Levine and Eva joined Rox and I in the crystal room.

I sighed, ‘I’m sorry guys… I just can’t kill them like this. They didn’t do anything against us right?’

Rox sighed and said, ‘And we can’t stop them in any case… they’re already by the entrance so them escaping is just a fact. If we attack, we would actually make it worse, they’ll scour the entire dungeon for the threat when they come back…’

I nodded, ‘So we’re going to hide. We fucked up basically. I fucked up. Our cover’s blown and… well for them, it’s huge. Especially that mage. Imagine being a mage for a few years, you know that every say 3 months your magic power and your intelligence go up by one. Suddenly, you come to this cave and bam! Your intelligence goes up? This will be huge. So we have to prepare…’

‘We have to prepare for war.’

It was just like Alex said. The adventurer group stayed at the entrance way for half the day. Then that mage, who had been concentrating on a certain talisman got a shocked look on his face, then a smile and then finally an extremely excited look.

I knew what that meant. He had been suspicious when the two on his team gained an intelligence stat randomly. So he got them to retreat and waited. It seemed he was quite an important member of the group. Another reason not to fight this group… a talented mage, no matter what Rank… if he had a single spell that could help him escape, then it’s over.

Little fucker, what I wouldn’t give to see you die.

We watched as the mage walked over to each of the members and each of them become shocked then excited although a bit confused. All the while, the mage would be smiling brighter and brighter.

Yes, he had figured it out. The cave’s mana, no Alex’s Aura that was mixed in the dungeon’s mana was causing their stat points to rise. And the rise was quick, for them it had only been over a day… of course after the initial rise the increase slows down or else everyone in our dungeon would be Rank A in intelligence stat alone.

That group seemed to be discussing something. It looked like they were arguing over whether to finish exploring the dungeon or to go back and report it…

A brief hope welled up in me, if the group decided to explore again, we would have a chance to wipe them out!

That hope was dashed pretty quickly as the mage took over and seemed to convince them to leave. Fuck, I hate him already.

Then… they left. Just like that. And all of us in the dungeon could only stare dumbly. We had a lot of work to do now to prepare… Fuck, Alex was right, we have to prepare for war.

A group of adventurers walked up to the gates of the city before being let in. The dungeon folk would have recognized them instantly, this was the dungeon invading group. It had taken them 3 weeks to get back to the city, but they had finally arrived back and they were excited. They expected a lot of money as a reward for this.

They entered the Adventurer’s Guild to make a report. They were in there for a very long time. In fact, night had fallen before they left again, laden with gold and bright smiles on their faces. Indeed, the reward for this information was more than 100 times higher than the reward for the dungeon evaluation.

The mage had been precise in his statement. All 6 adventurers, when they spent more than a day within the dungeon, had their intelligence rise by 1. If it was just one or two of them, then it could be coincidence, but all 6? The guild was skeptical at first, but when they checked the status record of the group and compared it, the stats had indeed gone up.

All dungeons had a specialty, this was common knowledge... but... if this dungeon's specialty was...

What convinced them wasn’t just this. This group had a good reputation amongst the adventurer’s group… but what they found the most shocking was that the mage of the group, who would specialize in magic power and intelligence… his stat rose too. What did this mean? Some of the mages in the city hadn’t had any changes in their stats for weeks or months! In some of the older ones, it hadn’t changed in a year or two! If this cave could give even just a single point rise… that was equivalent to the progress of several weeks or months!

No guild can be free of spies, and the Adventurer’s Guild understood this well so they didn’t try to hide it whatsoever. Instead they would make money by selling the location of the dungeon. The speed of rumour spreads faster than a wildfire. It was barely an hour before some of the prominent mage groups heard of this. It wasn’t even a day before the entire city knew… that there was a dungeon in the forest wilderness that rose your inherent intelligence stat. Not a temporary enhancement, a permanent rise.

In the Guild of Magic Artificers, ‘What?! Is this rumour true?! Send someone to the Adventurer’s Guild and get the information! I don’t care how much it costs!’

In the Magia Historica, ‘This is unique! We need to go there at once! Prepare our fastest team! Get some bodyguards from the Adventurer’s Guild’

The information spread far and wide, not just throughout the city from mage guild to mage guild, it went beyond. And not just to the mages that worked in the light, also to those in the shadows.

The Shadow Brotherhood, ‘Brother’s we need to capture this dungeon as our own. With this as the base of our power, we will be praised by our kin back home!’

Outside the city, in a pub, a non-descript man overheard this. Smiling he left towards some of the smaller towns in the region. He too wanted to prepare for this event. Reaching a small town, he went to the town’s graveyard… as he stood there, a dark fog seemed to seep out of him and spread slowly into the ground of the graveyard. Anyone who came to that town even a day later didn’t find a single person remaining alive.

We were on full schedule. Rox didn’t carry on with the training, instead every available hand was bringing in plants and bugs, stones and ores, fruits and vegetables, seeds. In fact every single thing they could find within 20 kilometers of the dungeon was being brought in. Max had even gathered a group to trek further and bring back a huge amount of material in one go. Mana was rolling in... but also just as quickly rolling out. We had a lot to prepare.

Meanwhile, since we had to prepare quickly we had chosen the [Demon Wolf] as the first floor boss. I wasn’t too happy about this actually, but we were rushed for time. We moved the crystal room to the hidden second floor. The Boss guarding the entrance to the secret second floor was another matter.

‘Special Summon.’

Special Summons

Certain individuals, leave a mark on history, or in the souls of those around them. This permanent mark leaves their essence and their soul drifting in the world. Those with special summoning ability such as dungeon masters can tap into and summon those they have great affinity towards, for a price. Special summons are vastly more powerful than most normal summons and thus have a much greater price. If special conditions are fulfilled related to the souls in question, they can be summoned for a cheaper price or perhaps without any price paid by the dungeon master.

Select rank

Rank Ex

None

Rank SSS

None

Rank SS

24 Available

Rank S

100+ Available

Rank A

100+ Available

Rank B

100+ Available

Rank C

100+ Available

Rank D

100+ Available

Rank E

100+ Available

Rank F

100+ Available

Rank G

100+ Available

‘Rank E.’

What Special Rank E would you like to summon?

Summons available

Orc Fighter ‘Masher’

1 000 Mana and 100 Souls to summon

Imp ‘Tresher’

900 Mana and 120 Souls to summon

Hobgoblin ‘Gashul’

1100 Mana and 100 Souls to summon

Giant Slime ‘Dearth’

1200 Mana and 90 Souls to summon

Ghoul ‘Pyre’

1000 Mana and 120 Souls to summon

Drakin ‘Drango’

1200 Mana and 110 Souls to summon

Skeleton Mage ‘Fys’

1400 Mana and 90 Souls to summon

Panther ‘Shade’

1300 Mana and 100 Souls to summon

Corrupted Pixie ‘Nix’

1100 Mana and 110 Souls to summon

Orc Shaman ‘Sightless’

900 Mana and 150 Souls to summon

Please purchase current available to unlock more

The main problem with the special summons was their high cost, in both mana and souls… but in return, I received vastly powerful creatures.

‘Summon Masher, Shade and Sightless.’

For the defenders of the true, hidden second floor, well let’s say I was not going to give anyone a good time.

These monsters were ones I had helped defeat back on earth. Masher had been head of a orc tribe on the outskirts of the city. We ran into him as we were escaping the city. With Shade… well she stole our lunch after we hunted down a deer. Sightless was a lone shaman living in a cave… we hadn’t killed him so this special summons page has to have a different criteria than those simply killed by me… I hadn’t offered them contracts either… So I wasn’t sure how they came to be in my special summons… Also, none of the Rank E humans I had made a contract with were on the list but then again it was only a list of 10.

As the three appeared in the new boss room, I smiled.

Preparation of the second floor was rapid as well. My previous plan for the second floor was put into action. First was expanding both sets of the second floor to 10 rooms each. Then, incurring a massive mana cost, I embedded mana stones in the ceiling of the cave. This made the entire second floor washed by the light of mana from above so that it could be mistaken for an overcast day while inside. To protect these mana stones I made the height of the rooms incredible, more than 30 meters high, much too high for them to harvest the stones, at least I hoped.

The next phase of my preparation, was to plant trees and bushes. Yes that’s right, I was making this floor a forest. I had realized that the greatest fighting power that the squirrels could bring out, was in an environment with lots of vertical scaling areas… such as a forest. So instead of creating a room full of stone pillars, I figured I would make the home environment of the squirrels within the dungeon itself.

Of course not everyone was happy.

‘Blasphemy! Pure blasphemy! You’re doing it again! With your oh this is a good idea look at me so smart ho ho ho but you’re breaking the rules! Again!’

Rox was having a moment. But from what she said, what I’m doing is similar to what a dungeon skill I would unlock later, like when I made that cliff room and then later unlock [Create Special Room]… but hey since I haven’t seen any problems, I must be still within the rules.

I had used the [Create Plantlife] dungeon skill while referencing my huge repertoire that had been collected by the dungeon folk. Really, more than a 100 different species! I did this rather than plant the seeds myself so that I could have pretty much full grown trees and plants. They were a lot more expensive though.

First was large trees that I planted in as random and haphazard a way as I could to mimic a natural forest. Next came the bushes underneath to create an overall dense foliage no matter where. Then I added all the other smaller plants. To finish it off I create a few of the smaller bugs and worms and things that I figured were good for the trees. That was for the decoy side.

For the hidden side, I created a forest as well but this was to create a place for the squirrels and hares to make villages. The squirrels immediately began to build treehouses in the last 5 rooms while the hares built warrens.

I had to change the soil in both second floors to be that loam, soft earth that could be found in forests. I had also moved the walls of Greywall but this time the area behind Greywall was much larger. It was to be used by Rox to train the various troops we had.

In fact, she had some breakthroughs in the training. More than half the hares had shown a great aptitude for the Holy element. Rox placed them under Levine saying they were close to picking a path the unlocking a class, they just needed to have one more key requirement… well whatever she says.

The squirrels on the other hand, apart from Eva, there were a few showing aptitudes towards magic as well. They were split between fire and plant based magic which I found surprising. Of course this was just aptitude, they hadn’t actually shown anything beyond that yet.

All in all, our preparations had been mostly complete, now we were waiting for those pesky adventurers… of course our strategy was to try and fool them or chase them away.

Or… if they posed a danger to us, we would kill them all.

This section is not needed to enjoy the story, only for those who, like me, are interested in the technicalities.

Spoiler: Spoiler

Today I’m going over elements and skill alignments

Skill Alignments:

Skills belong to one of 4 broad categories

Magic

Physical

Mental

Law

Magic represents the use of mana to create an effect – It represents Chaos, using chaos for your own means

Law represents changing the mana around you to create an effect – it represents order, creating order in the chaos

Magic and Law oppose each other. That isn’t to say you can’t have skills in both, simply that you can’t be top tier in both at the same time. However, there are some that will, instead of opposing each other, will benefit each other if used in specific combinations. As long as the skill acquisition and utilization is smart, you can do anything.

For example: [Aura of Fire] which is one of the [Laws of Fire] will turn the ambient mana surrounding the skill user to become more saturated in fire elemental mana. This will have a natural effect of increasing the power of fire spells, the downside is that with the [Law of Fire] skill formation, it will be more difficult to have a spell formation at the same time. That is because the flow of mana needed to power [Law] skills and to power [Magic] skills are different, so although the combination reaches a synergy, the potential for that specific power to grow is blunted.

What do I mean the flow is different? [Magic] skills operate like alternating current, needing that back and forth flow of mana, without the flow, the transformation of the mana into the effect needed for the skill won’t exist. [Law] skills operate like direct current, they need the constant supply of mana to function and don’t work with alternating current.

The main problem is that [Magic] skills create more chaos and are opposite in alignment with [Law] skills which embodies order. Magic needs chaos, Law needs order.

Combining their incompatibility in alignment with the different mana flow needed make them difficult to use together.

Mental represents an internal focus of power

Physical represents an external focus of power

Mental and physical oppose one another; like [Magic] and [Law] skills, [Physical] skills need the alternating mana flow while mental need the constant mana flow (This is actually true in real life, the brain needs a fairly constant inflow of glucose, approx. 30% of the needs of the body, to function while muscle needs for glucose vary with exertion.)

Like [Magic] vs [Law], these two lie on opposite spectrums making them less compatible with each other.

Next Laws and Mental skills are more passive skills dominant, while magic and physical are more active skills dominant.

In the story, you might have noticed that Alex has no physical attack skills. This is the reason, his [Contract] skill belongs in the [Mental] type, making it more difficult for him to learn physical skills. And then he learnt the [Aura] skill which belongs in the [Law] group. Of course there is more to that story.

On the other hand, Mental and Magic skills are quite complimentary – they usually have quite a synergy

How is it possible if they need different flows of mana though? The skill structures for Mental and Magic are usually in completely different areas. If you are skilled enough at mana flow to have constant flow in to the head while having alternating flow in the limbs (where the magic skills are) then it works out. More importantly, there is no incompatibility between them. Magic is chaos and mental is internal focus. The synergy mostly comes from the fact that the stats needed to be good at Mental and Magic skills overlap a bit, ie Intelligence or Magic Power although that isn’t always true

And Physical and Law skills usually also have synergy, this isn’t due to stats but because Law skills, consuming barely any mana, change the fighting environment around the skill-user, making it an ideal fighting arena for Physical skills

Swapping partners though, there is no synergy. These are a weird one: When the two passive dominants Mental and Law are in the same body, that means the whole body only needs to have one type of mana flow. One disadvantage of this combination though would be that without enough active skills, there are no ways to truly utilize mana which is a bit of a waste.

The opposite is true for a [Magic] and [Physical] combination, where it’s mostly just active skills. The depletion of mana from using many skills back to back limit the effectiveness of having that many skills.

To summarize:

Magic

Physical

Mental

Law

Diagonals oppose each other

Columns complement each other

Rows no special relationship with each other, though some disadvantages exist

Top row – active skills dominant

Bottom row – passive skills dominant

Now to Elements:

There is a lot of elements, and some elements are determined by the Path you walk when you take the First Step, breaking your species limit. I’ll go over a few of them though because they’re interesting (this isn’t a full list, I haven’t finished making that yet)

Your classic elements first

Fire, Water/Ice, Earth, Air/wind

The last one being Heart so you can summon Captain Planet

I joke, there are a few others in this category as well such as wood/plant, poison, acid etc but they are more rare

Then your slightly more complex elements

Metal, Lightning, Light, Dark, Yin, Yang

Then your special categories

Blood, Solar, Lunar, Holy, Shadow

I haven't written up any elemental interactions yet because I haven't made that yet, although intuitively some of the interactions will be there such as fire and ice being opposing elements.