***** Bud's POV *****

Half an hour after Tracey left to go gather some plants, I had claimed as much territory as I was going to get. As such, I was waiting on her to get back with something to stick in my dungeon, when one of my contracted monsters showed up.

I had set a subroutine to watching the forest through the front door in hopes that I might have at least a little bit of a warning before something happened, but that didn’t help me at all with this fellow. One moment there was nothing there, the next he had already brushed aside the seal on the entrance and was laying down for a nap in the hallway with his head outside my dungeon.

Well darn. Now I can’t see anything out there because this great lump is in the way.

{Hey Tracey!} I called, using the long-distance communication capability of our bond for the first time.

{“Hey Bud, what’s up? I’ll be back in about a minute with some really good plants!”}

{Be careful on your way back, I found one of the contracted monsters. Or rather, he found me.}

{“Is that good news or bad news?”}

{Somewhere in the middle at the moment. The fact that he is currently taking a nap in the first hallway is a good sign, but his head is just far enough outside of my domain that I can’t see it at all. Before you come in, would you mind telling me what he has done with his head out there that he couldn’t do in here?}

{“Wait, I thought you said the entrance was sealed by magic. Which, by the way, is not normal for a dungeon unless they are doing some serious upgrades.”}

{Apparently he is the one who sealed it despite all of the status effects that he is under. At least I assume he is the one who made it because he brushed it aside like it was a flimsy curtain rather than an invisible magic wall. So, can you check on his head now?}

{“Sure, no prob-Eep!”}

{What’s wrong?}

{“There’s an adult dragon sleeping outside of your front door with a coloration that I’ve never even heard of before! It is black with what looks like stars scattered all over his hide, and he seems to have a pale white glow about him.”}

{That would be Broohn, the contracted monster I was telling you about.}

{“Well you could have at least told me he was a dragon!”}

{Oops, sorry. He is in a healing trance at the moment, and from what I can see he should be out of it for another hour if not two. Until then, short of flattening the forest or dropping half his weight in meat in front of his nose, he isn’t going to wake up. Now can you please tell me what is going on with his head?}

{“Alright, just give me a moment. Huh. Why is there a bush on his head?”}

{Is the bush around his muzzle or mostly above his forehead?}

{“It’s mostly above his forehead.”}

{Whew. Well that is good to hear.}

{“You still haven’t told me what is going on yet.”}

{Oh, right. Sorry. The “bush” is actually a dryad with really long hair, and she is laying on his head because she is his wife and that’s just where she sleeps when they’re both in their monster forms.}

{“How does a dragon end up married to a dryad? Shouldn’t that be impossible?”}

{The short version is that the magic of the world from which we came got sealed away in a manner that forced almost all the magical races into human form. Those it didn’t force into a human form it killed outright, which was mostly just the undead. By the time the seal released itself, all the magical races had been stuck in human form for so long that they gained the ability to resume their human forms at will. The other side effect of this was that it was now much easier for the races to intermarry, resulting in some rather… interesting combinations.}

{“I’ll bet. So why are you so relieved that she is sleeping on top of his head rather than on his muzzle?”}

{Because that means that both of them are still perfectly sane, even if they have mentally regressed somewhat. Since that is the case, we can leave them alone to get their issues straightened out while we finish planning the first floor.}

{“Are you sure about that?”}

{Absolutely. Once he is done with his nap, Broohn will probably find a way to claim half of the forest, at which point the rest of the status effects will be child’s play to deal with.}

{“What if he stumbles across a dragon hunter before he claims part of the forest?”}

{With his heritage, even if he regresses to the equivalent of a slightly drunk eight-year-old, fighting him in a rainforest is a really bad idea. That is, assuming that he lets you find him first, which isn’t happening with that many status effects on him. Now get in here, I want to get started building already!}

{“Alright, alright, I’m coming!”} she said before she flew into the second entrance.

So, what did you bring me? I asked in my normal speaking voice now that she was inside my domain.

“I got some moss, some grass, a couple of different types of tree nuts and some healing herbs. I would have gotten more, but I forgot to try and find something to carry things with.” She replied as she dumped the plants on the floor so I could absorb them. Upon doing so, I received 28 mana in total.

Oops. Remind me before you go back out and I'll figure something out for you.

Then she looked up and saw the last half meter of Broohn’s tail sticking out of the hallway. “Wait, How on Earthonia does a fully-grown dragon fit in that tiny little hallway? I mean, now that I think about it, from outside it looked like his neck was completely filling the hallway all on its own. Which means there is no way that half of his torso fits anywhere in this dungeon, let alone stuffing most of him into that hallway.”

Have you heard the joke about where a dragon sleeps?

“No…Where does a dragon sleep?”

Anywhere he darn well wants to.

“That still doesn’t explain how he fits into the hallway.”

He wanted to sleep in the hallway, therefore he fits in the hallway. End of story.

“That’s ridiculous. So, you’re saying that if he wanted to sleep in one of the pockets on my shipsuit, he could.”

In theory, yes, but in practice the greater the spatial compression ratio, the harder it is to achieve and maintain. Most dragons would be pushing it to fit into that hallway, but Broohn could indeed fit in your pocket. Admittedly, he would probably only be in there for half a second before the pocket itself failed, at which point the backlash from the spell failing would knock him out for a week or two.

“So why is he so much better at fitting into small spaces like that?”

Because his father is the undisputed master of making tesserects, extra-dimensional spaces and other similar magics. Broohn may not have even a quarter of that level of skill, but he is still miles ahead of average.

“I see.”

Oh, by the way, while you were gone, it occurred to me that we forgot to select my starting races.

“Oh, well that was stupid of us, wasn’t it? So, what are your options?”

Let me pull those up real quick. I said as I mirrored the display for her.

Goblin: Goblins are green-skinned humanoids with low intelligence, high strength, decent speed, and low durability. They may not be the best fighters individually, but they are cheap and easily replaceable. They rely on superior numbers to get the job done.

Kobold: Resembling lizards standing on their hind legs, Kobolds have average intelligence, medium-high strength, are very quick and have high durability. While they are significantly more expensive than Goblins, they are also much higher in quality. While they prefer ambushing their prey, they are not afraid of a straight-up fight.

Treants: The lesser cousins of dryads, Treants are walking trees with low intelligence, high strength, low speed, and outstanding durability. They cannot control any plants other than themselves, unlike dryads, but they are harder to spot because they lack the aura of control.

Mechanical Golems: Mechanical golems come in a wide variety of forms, and are very good at a singular task for which they have been designed. Outside of that task, they perform rather poorly.

Skeletons: The basis of your average undead army, skeletons come in whatever form you can find them in. They retain the general fighting style and behavior patterns of their former life but lose most of their intelligence.

Imps: Imps are small red and black humanoids with claws, bat wings, a tail, and razor-sharp teeth. They are the lowest level of demon that can be summoned.

“First things first, the last two are decidedly not an option. As soon as you were discovered, you would be considered anathema, and they would destroy you at their first possible opportunity.”

Even without that, I would not have chosen them. Besides being evil, I have seen recordings of what happens when you mess with either of them, and I don't want anything to do with those messes.

“I thought you said that your world didn’t have any undead anymore.”

We don’t, but some of the neighboring worlds that we do business with have some serious problems with them.

“Wait, you do business with other worlds? Doesn't that require travel to other dimensions?”

Nope. Our home dimension has a ton of worlds that can be accessed through the void between stars. I'm assuming that your dimension also has these, it just takes a significant amount of resources to even access the void, let alone travel through it.

“Well alright then. Getting back on topic, that just leaves us with Goblins, Kobolds, Treants, and Mechanical Golems.”

Goblins are right out because I am not a fan of quantity over quality. When I make something, I want to do it right. That doesn’t mean that I won’t make a lot of something, but I want to make sure it’s not garbage first.

Treants are also a no-go because after dealing with the rainforest just to get here, people will be more likely to have the tools they need to deal with Treants. Also, I’m far less familiar with them than I am with Mechanical Golems, nor do they fit my style the way the Kobolds do.

“So, we’re going with Kobolds and Mechanical Golems then?”

Yup. Well, that was easier than I thought.

Starting Race: Kobolds selected.

Starting Race: Mechanical Golems selected.

“Fine with me. Now we have to choose two starting abilities.”

Pulling up our options really quick.

Mechanical Cognizance: This allows you to upgrade the intelligence and awareness of your Mechanical Golems, increasing their ability to adapt to changing situations.

Draconic Heritage Acquisition: Allows your Kobolds to embrace their draconic heritage by observing an actual dragon in action. The more time they get to observe and interact with a dragon, the faster they will grow.

Dimensional Instancing: Allows you to create multiple copies of the same space, allowing more adventurers to enter your dungeon at once.

Nature’s Blessing: Your proximity to an area with high natural vitality such as a Rainforest allows for a greater diversity of plants in your dungeon and improves all plant-related growth metrics appreciably.

So, what is the deal with choosing abilities like this? Is it a once in a lifetime opportunity, or if I skip an ability for now, can I come back to it later?

“That depends on the ability. Since all of these are starting abilities, I would tend to assume that they will always be available, but you will always have a limited number of abilities to choose from.”

Hmm. If I don’t choose an ability, will that prevent me from achieving the same effect in a different manner? In other words, can I do the same thing on my own without wasting an ability slot?

“That also depends on the ability, as some will be harder to replicate than others, but for the most part yes. Why do you ask?”

Because I am fairly certain that given some time for observation I can upgrade the Mechanical Golems, especially with Broohn’s help. Same for the Draconic Heritage Acquisition ability, even if it will take a bit longer. If I could access my ship and its abilities, the last two wouldn’t be a challenge, but I can’t.

Starting Ability Dimensional Instancing selected

Starting Ability Nature’s Blessing selected

“Good, now we’re ready to start building things in earnest. Wait, when did Broohn get up and leave?”

I don’t know. Dragons can be sneaky that way.

***** Anderson's POV *****

Finally, after weeks in this bug-infested, overgrown forest, we have almost caught up to some bandits. I thought to myself. Once we catch up to them, we can start trying to figure out what is attracting so many bandits to this rainforest.

It's been three weeks since my party accepted the C rank assignment to go and investigate the source of the bandit problem in the Rain-Soaked Forest. The main problem we've run into was the consistent rain erasing the bandits' backtrail time and time again, making it much harder to track them. One might almost say it was impossible to track them once the rain started.

Fortunately for us, our magic-user is an elven druid, so even when the rain erases the trail we can still track the bandits through the disturbances they make in the forest.

“Good work tracking the bandits Shelvin! Even I can hear those fools carousing from here!” I told the elf.

Once again, slightly annoyed that Shelvin was still taller than my own 120 centimeters when he crouched to look at something on the ground. My annoyance was only momentary however, as I remembered that each of us brought something unique to the party.

I may not be the tallest member of the party, but I am the widest, which, when combined with my plate armor, makes me a much more effective shield for the rest of the party. Add in my neatly braided reddish-orange hair and bear that hangs down to my waist, and I'm also a contender for the best looking party member. In my own opinion at any rate.

“Thank you, Anderson. That means a lot coming from a Dwarf like you,” Shelvin replied.

His obvious contribution to the party was his magic, but he's most definitely not a squishy as most people assume. At almost 2 m tall and rather skinny, even for an elf, with his pale bronze skin, long white-blonde hair, pointed ears, and high cheekbones, that was a reasonable mistake to make. However, the willowy muscle hidden under his green leather armor and his hefty ironwood quarterstaff made him a much tougher opponent than his appearance would suggest. Factor in his piercing blue eyes and perpetual smile, and he was far from ugly.

Turning to the other two members of the party, Shelvin said, “Are you guys ready to try to talk with the bandits?”

The third member of the party was a human cleric named Ragnar. He was by far the least imposing member of our party, with brown hair, and pale green eyes. His slender build meant that he was one of the taller members of the party, even if he wasn't quite as tall as Shelvin. He was dressed in a white tunic and trousers since robes are generally a bad idea when going adventuring. He was also using his staff as a walking stick, except his staff had a 15 cm tall silver cross on top with a 2.5 cm diameter ruby in the middle. It was his job to put us back together when our opponents tried to take us apart.

“Sure, I’m ready.” Ragnar replied, “How about you Bobert?”

The last member of the party, Bobert was an orcish rogue with green skin, black hair, black eyes, and slightly pointed teeth. As usual, he was dressed in black leather armor with knives strapped to every conceivably reasonable location on his body. The only thing that stood out about him was that there was nothing that stood out. Unsurprisingly, it's his job to do all of the sneaky stuff.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he replied.

“Alrighty then, let’s do this thing!” I said as I slowly led the party into the smallish clearing the bandits had used to set up camp. It wasn’t very big as clearings go, maybe 10 m in diameter, but it was relatively flat and surprisingly free of tree roots. That plus the medium-sized pond off to one side made this an ideal place to set up camp. With the fifteen or so bandits and all of their stuff, it was a bit cramped. Even so, it was a lot more comfortable than some of the places that I had slept in the past.

Raising my voice in my best parade ground bellow, I yelled, “Hullo the camp!”

There was immediate silence as all of the bandits turned to look at me in shock.

This turned out to be a good thing as this silence allowed me to hear a very large and slightly whistling inhale from somewhere beyond the far side of the camp.

“GET DOWN!” I yelled as I pulled my shield off of my back and threw up a shield bubble around the four of us.

I was just in time too, as no sooner had the bubble gone up than the rest of the clearing was immediately engulfed in flame.

“Yikes! Where did that come from and how did you know it was coming!?” Ragnar asked incredulously as Shelvin and Bobert were still reeling in shock.

"I used to live in the Dwarvenstone Mountains back when we had several young dragons try to set up shop in the area. Once you've been on or near the receiving end of dragon breath a time or two, you don't forget what it sounds like when a dragon is preparing to roast you," I replied.

About the time I finished speaking, the fire went out of its own accord.

“Well, that was fast. Normally the fire would last at least another 30 seconds or so. Also, does anyone see- Oh, there he is.” I said, pointing towards the dragon’s head and taking the shield bubble down. If I’m going to be fighting a dragon, I need to preserve my mana any way I can, and the shield bubble only has a maintenance cost. If the dragon tried to fry us again, I could have my shield bubble back up before the fire got to us.

Then I noticed that the dragon was looking at us kind of funny.

“No burn?” it asked in a voice that was deep and growling as one would expect from an adult dragon, except this one somehow managed to also sound a bit like a four-year-old.

“Stay calm everybody. I don’t think he’s going to attack us at the moment.” I whispered to the others. All I got in return was a gulp from Bobert’s direction.

In the meantime, the dragon’s head had come closer to us while somehow managing to keep his torso hidden in the trees across the clearing.

Naturally, I had my shield in front of me and my sword drawn just in case the dragon decided to pull some funny business.

“Ooh, shiny.” Said the dragon as he gently poked my shield with a forefinger that I didn’t see coming. Well, it was gentle for a dragon at any rate.

Then he sniffed us several times.

“Soap.” He proclaimed, before shaking his head and declaring “Not bandits.”

“Wait, did the dragon just decide that we’re not bandits because your shield is shiny and we smell like soap?” asked Bobert.

“I believe so,” replied Shelvin.

At this point, the dragon seemed like he was going to wander off into the forest and leave us alone when he suddenly sensed something coming from the direction of the pond. He immediately started preparing his fire breath again and vanished back into the woods.

I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but it seemed like a good idea to put my shield bubble back up just in case.

Then a bunch of tentacles erupted from the pond and a very loud screechy voice yelled “HOW DARE YOU ADVENTURERS KILL ALL OF MY PIRATES! I KILL-SKREECH!”

While the tentacled thing had been speaking, it had whacked my shield bubble several times with individual tentacles. Then it gathered them all together to hit my shield with them all at once.

Then the dragon came out of nowhere, grabbed the ends of all of the tentacles with one forepaw and yanked the entire creature out of the water, revealing the smallest fully adult Kraken that I had ever seen, which was about 15 meters long.

Then the dragon wrapped the end of his tail around the bottom end of the Kraken, pulling it more or less taught. This allowed the dragon to stab the Kraken three times with a single foreclaw from the forepaw that wasn’t holding the Kraken, bringing an end to the Kraken's struggles.

As soon as the Kraken was dead, a wave of magic rolled out of the dragon and continued on into the forest for quite some distance.

“Ah, that feels so much better. Having no territory to call my own sucked.” The dragon said to nobody in particular as he used his tail and his forepaw to neatly stack the bandit's stuff in a pile off to the side of the clearing. “Would you mind helping me move all of this stuff out of the way?”

As a quick side note, it wasn’t until he said this that I realized that the bandits’ stuff was completely intact other than the few things which had fallen into their campfire.

At this point, I figured that the dragon wasn’t going to attack us or anything so I took down my shield bubble and looked at the rest of my group. They were all flabbergasted by this turn of events, so I shrugged and said “Sure, we’ll help. Oy, don’t just stand there gawping, help the man – I mean dragon clean up!”

Shaking themselves back to reality, they got to work, even if they were still clearly shocked and had no idea what to say to a dragon.

Fortunately, I didn’t have that problem.

“Pardon my ignorance Noble Dragon, but I can’t seem to remember your name,” I said with a hint of a bow in the dragon’s general direction while I started gathering the bandits’ bedrolls.

The dragon cocked an eyebrow at me as if he was somehow surprised by my formality. Then he shrugged. “That is hardly your fault, kind sir, as you lot are the first people that I have talked to since I got dropped into this new world. My name is Broohn de Celestine, the Celestial Enchanter. You may call me Broohn. And what might your names be?”

Between the five of us, we had removed all of the bandits’ stuff that might possibly be useful or valuable from the vicinity of the campfire, and Broohn started setting up what looked like dragon-sized cooking equipment. It wasn’t long before he had a skillet sitting on top of a four-legged frame with a tube-shaped vaguely like a smoker’s pipe underneath.

“My name is Anderson, the elven druid is Shelvin, the human cleric is Ragnar, and finally the orcish rogue is Bobert,” I said, pointing to each of them in turn. “Now that we have introductions out of the way, do you mind me asking why the bandits’ stuff isn’t burnt to a crisp?”

Since we had the bandits’ stuff out of the way, the four of us sat on the log the bandits had been using as a bench, facing the dragon.

“Not at all.” He replied as he started cleaning and gutting the Kraken on a dragon-sized cutting board with legs that he pulled from somewhere. “I made a magic item that adds napalm, powdered C4, some secret ingredients and some more magic to my fire breath, turning it into an extremely useful substance called Dragon-palm. This substance burns much hotter and faster than regular dragon fire, and since it is my fire that was used to make it I can control what it burns. In this instance, I was aiming for the bandits themselves, so none of their gear was even singed.”

I don't know what kind of materials C4 or napalm are, but somehow this didn't seem like the time to ask.

This time it was Bobert’s turn to ask a question. “If you were only aiming for the bandits, then why were you confused when we didn’t get hurt?”

I winced internally at this since it is generally not a good idea to bring attention to a dragon’s mistakes, but showing weakness in front of them is even worse.

Fortunately, Broohn seemed to be in a good mood as he didn’t even twitch at this question. “Because I was suffering from the effects of having almost all of my territory ripped away from me by the passage between worlds, my brain was pickled enough that I didn’t notice that you guys weren’t bandits until afterward.

“Sorry about that by the way.” He apologized as he started filling the skillet with some sort of oil.

“Don’t worry about it, that kind of thing happens to everyone,” I assured him. “Besides, you didn’t hurt us and you got me to put my shield back up before the Kraken showed up. Speaking of the Kraken, what was it talking about us killing its pirates and what are you turning it into?”

To my surprise, it was Ragnar who answered my first question. “Sometimes a Kraken will develop an affinity for pirates and have an entire fleet of them at its beck and call. It isn’t very common, but it has been known to happen from time to time. In this instance, since the Kraken was living in what I can only presume must be a flooded cave system under the forest, there were no pirates to be had.”

“So it ended up with bandits instead. Fascinating,” said Broohn. “Just a heads up, I’m going to use my fire breath to light my stove real quick, so don’t be alarmed.”

“We appreciate the warning,” I said, completely relaxed. At this point, I had seen enough of his behavior to be fairly certain that he was a LightPath dragon, meaning that he would do his best to honor his word and generally do what is right. Yes, there probably would be times where he would bend his words in such a way as to get what he wanted, but that would take some serious extenuating circumstances which were not present.

Broohn waited just long enough before inhaling to make sure that the other three had noticed my relaxed posture, and concluded that I trusted him.

Then he inhaled with far more vigor than earlier before putting his lips against the upper end of the tube under the skillet and exhaled with just as much vigor. This caused a surge of magic to come from the stove, igniting runes all over its surface that hadn’t been visible before now.

“Wait, is all of your cooking gear enchanted?” Shelvin asked.

“Of course it is!” replied Broohn, “I’m not called the Celestial Enchanter because I look good. I earned that title through blood, sweat, and tears working my way up the ranks to be one of the best enchanters on Earth! Admittedly the celestial part is largely due to who my parents are and inheriting both of their color patterns rather than anything I did, but I still earned the other half of it.”

“To answer your other question Anderson, I am cooking Krakenmari. It is essentially calamari except it is made from Kraken instead of squid. When it is very fresh, as in still hot from the skillet, it is good for helping with mana burn and other mana related medical issues. Besides, it also tastes wonderful!”

While he was saying all of this, he pulled out a large mixing bowl and started adding ingredients and stirring them all together. He finished with whatever was in the mixing bowl about the time he said the word “wonderful”.

“Now, the reason I am cooking this here in front of you rather than waiting until I got home is three-fold. First, Krakenmari is a very finicky dish that requires the freshest ingredients. So much so in fact that if I waited until I got home it would already be too late. The only reason I even have time to wait on the oil to heat is because of the preservation spells worked into my cutting board.

“Second, I wanted to apologize for using you as Kraken bait. Normally I would ask you for permission beforehand, but I wasn’t in any condition to do so and I had a very small window of opportunity in which it would work.”

“Huh?” we all asked.

“What do you mean you used us as Kraken bait?” demanded Bobert.

“I had already killed several other groups of bandits by that point, each one of them near some sort of pond or something that the Kraken could have fit at least partway into from beneath. This was the last group of bandits left, and after I realized that you weren’t bandits, several things clicked into place in my head. My territorial instincts told me that I was very close to inadvertently claiming a bunch of territory from something that was fast approaching through the cave under the pond, and I desperately needed to finish that claim. At the same time, my hunter’s intuition told me that whatever was coming would attack whoever it thought had killed its bandits. Despite my severely pickled brain, I was somehow able to turn this into a plan of action where the whatever it was would attack your shield, allowing me to ambush it in return and claim its territory.”

“So you’re saying that the wave of magic that came out of you when you killed the Kraken was you claiming its territory?” asked Ragnar.

“Precisely.” Broohn agreed. “Also, the third reason for cooking in front of you is that in order to enchant things for people and avoid boredom I need them to know about me. The easiest way for me to accomplish both of these objectives is to give each of you one of my products and let you tell them for me. So the products that I’m going to give you are-“

Suddenly he stopped talking, tilting his head sideways and squinting as if he was in deep thought. He recovered a moment later, shaking himself out of some sort of daze.

“Well, that changes things a bit. I just received some new insight, and because of it I have a gift for your Guildmaster Marybothane.” He continued. “Anyway, here are the things that I am going to give you. First, you all get…”

Spoiler: Dungeon Map