Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler :

Voice created some unholy fusion of magical negation, and evolved the baby gryphon. Kretchof dug to the magical artifact, and stored it, unknown to Voice. Voice then left the cave and sent out a message to lure in the other participants into what he thinks will be a small dungeon.

Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment!

After the notification of the dungeon I noticed the familiar blue blinking icon in the upper right corner of my vision, telling me that I had other notifications.

For gaining 100 points in Compassion, you have been granted a skill related to relating to entities.

I must have dismissed the notification earlier since I was in such a hurry to leave. If anything went wrong after the evolution was complete I would have been blamed.

The skill I gained was good, but the fusions I got after were even better. This is how it went: The skill I gained from the 100 point mark was:

Empathic Link

Current Level: Novice Level 1

This skill can be leveled up by forming, and continuing empathic links to individuals. An empathic link will allow the user to form a very basic version of mind reading. This is a one way skill until higher ranks.

For every level this skill will increase the power of the empathic link. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to use this skill with more people, as well as increasing the abilities of this skill.

This skill can instantly communicate someone’s emotions to you as long as they are within a 1 mile radius.

Can currently be fused to: Group Skill: Task Master.

Can currently be fused to: Skill Enhancement.

It asked if I wanted to fuse it to Inspect, but I did not. I wanted to fuse it to task master and body enhancement first. Although I now could fuse it even if I did put it into inspect, it would just be more pop up screens for me to look at.

I fused the skill to task master first. The result was, as I said earlier, even better.

The combinations were:

Empathic Link + Task Master = Minor Mental Domination Link

Empathic Link + Skill Enhancement = Empathic Connection

Minor Mental Domination Link + Empathic Connection = Mental Domination Connection

Minor Mental Domination Link

Current Level: Novice Level 1

This skill can be leveled up by forming, and continuing domination over lesser minded creatures. A Minor Mental Domination Link will allow the user to form a very basic version of thought suggestion.

People with higher levels, or higher willpower, will be resistant to this skill.

For every level this skill will increase the power of the link. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to use this skill with more people. Every rank in this skill will evolve the skill into a more powerful version.

Empathic Connection

Current Level: Adept Level 50

By fusing Empathic Link and Skill Enhancement, Empathic Link has evolved.

This skill allows the user to form a strong emotional connection to the target. This skill can be leveled up by forming, and continuing a deep emotional connection with other entities.

For every level this skill will increase the power of the connection. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to use this skill with more people. Every rank in this skill will evolve the skill into a more powerful version.

Mental Domination Connection

Current Level: Adept Level 50

By fusing Minor Mental Domination Link and Empathic Connection, Minor Mental Domination Link has evolved.

This skill allows the user to form a strong mental domination over the target. This skill can be leveled up by forming, and continuing domination over lesser minded creatures. A Mental Domination Connection will allow the user to form a version of thought suggestion similar to low-end hypnotism.

People with higher levels, or higher will power will be resistant to this skill.

For every level this skill will increase the power of the domination. For every rank in this skill, you will be able to use this skill with more people. Every rank in this skill will evolve the skill into a more powerful version.

The mind controlling skills caused me to question the exact nature of skills. Normally one would think a mind control ability would be an ability not a skill. Still, I wasn’t one to push a gift away just because I didn’t understand why it worked.

Mental Domination Connection sounded a lot cooler than it actually was. It just let me implant a thought in someone’s mind. I tried it on Sol. He seemed to think about my suggestion ‘be quiet’ for a second, then disregarded it.

Empathic Connection, and Mental Domination Connection could both be fused into group skills. Empathic Connection fused to Inspect, and Mental Domination Connection fused int Task Master.

While the empath ability didn’t really do all that much for inspect, it did multiply the usefulness of ‘sense motive’ by several fold.

The Mental Domination upgraded task master to apprentice. Which increased the total amount of auto-tasks it could perform. That was great, but I quickly became obsessed with the idea of complete mind control. The fact that I could take on small minded creatures was great. I decided to keep trying to mind control the things in this dungeon until I could use this skill on auto.

I decided not to use the map right away. It would be more interesting that way. I gave a few orders to Kretchof as I walked around the tunnels. Several skeletons arrived at the entrance, and started laying down.

The dungeon had been lacking in any creativity. I couldn’t buy any extra traps, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t physically create some. The undead at the entrance wore armor fit for adventurers.

With that done I began to create a map of the dungeon myself. I knew the map would be useless in a few days at most, but it would still upgrade my skill.

I wandered around for several hours. Eli offered multiple times to guide me, but I refused. Mazes tasked the mind. It was a pointless yet fulfilling pastime.

Of course I could have just kept one hand on the wall at all times. That was the correct way to navigate a maze, but I felt like plotting the entire thing in my mind.

Once I grew bored of it, mostly because there were no attacks made on me, I gave Kretchof two questions and an order.

“Kretchof. How many of those dark-kin spiders do we have?”

“One moment Master.” Not even a full second later he responded again. “I apologize for the wait. There are currently 100 Dark-Kin Male Spiders. They seem to tear down each other’s nests when they encounter them, so I have not been able to produce as much silk as you would have liked.” The regret in his voice was palpable.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. How well can you control them?”

“I am only competent enough to give general instructions to them. Such as ‘avoid skeletons’ or ‘don’t destroy the moss’.” His voice continued to sound more depressed.

“Hey I said it is fine.” His depressing tone was getting annoying. “Alright, let’s get this going then. I want to be attacked by the dungeon. I feel like it would give me a better idea of how you operate it.” It would also give me a better idea of how to work my mind control skill.

Kretchof’s POV

Master decided to directly test me! He was going to use his own powers to actually see my capabilities! I could not disappoint him. Within seconds I came up with a plan I thought suitable. Others were going to be entering soon, so I knew master would hate it if I put too much man power to fight him.

I used only a handful of undead, and directed a dozen spiders his way. This would have to be enough. I had the skeletons perform a complex maneuver while the spiders worked ‘together’ to lay even a scratch on Master.

I could feel him somehow trying to burrow himself into the minds of the spiders. Without pausing Master sent out a tendril of wind, that tossed the many spiders and skeletons away from himself. He repeated this process for several minutes.

I began to make the skeletons attack with more ingenuity. While I was focused on the battle, I had to grant the necromancer girl a bit of control over the creatures in the dungeon. She seemed pleased, so all I had to do was make sure she didn’t try to steal the power permanently.

After a few minutes of the battle Master called for a halt. Confused, but obedient, I obeyed. The spiders were harshly frozen in place by my will, and the skeletons near them holding them down. One of the spiders began to spin a web on the wall.

Voice’s POV

It didn’t take long before I finally implemented a successful suggestion. I kept sending out thoughts to the spiders to spin their webs. There wasn’t any recharge time or any cost to use the skill, so I figured ‘why not’?

Only one of them took to the suggestion. Still I had sent out a large number of the suggestions to the spiders. The skeletons didn’t elicit any response from the skill. I guess the undead are immune to the skill. That’s unfortunate. Makes sense though.

After Kretchof called off the attackers I had him send them all back. I didn’t need to fight to be entertained anymore. I just had him keep the spiders here. I repeated the instructions to the spiders until they were all spinning webs.

As soon as one was done it began to tear down the other’s webs. That’s weird. Why would they attack each other like that?

But then I noticed something. They didn’t directly attack each other, just the webs. It almost seemed like a way to cull their own numbers.

From what Kretchof told me, the queen reproduces after eating a certain amount of food. The spiders would only bring her food when they had three webs up, and then managed to catch something else. If they didn’t have three up, they’d eat the food to make a new web.

I decided to implement some enchantments to make the dungeon a bit harder for the others to conquer. Since the dungeon wouldn’t change until all the players left I planted several different traps. I only laid the traps randomly though.

I’d have loved to place the entire dungeon filled with the traps, but doing so would take much more time than I had. Using the abomination of an enchantment as a base I created several stones. I had Kretchof appear before me, and raise several undead.

It was an easily copied spell with darkness as the base, and light and a bit of earth surrounding it. After raising a few undead myself I went to enchanting the stones. I obviously dismissed the undead I summoned. They took too much mana.

The stones would absorb any mana near them, and change the mana into the summon undead spell. That way the dungeon would become even more hazardous. My favorite part of my scheme was that I made sure the part of the spell that absorbed mana could be toggled.

From Kretchof’s explanation, monsters would naturally go after any intruder, but there were not enough monsters in this dungeon to completely destroy the number of high level people without help.

The biggest problem was the durability of the stones. Each one had a countdown of five days. I assumed after that I would have to re-enchant them. Five days was more than enough for my plan though. Although i didn’t look at the abomination too long. I wondered if it had an expiration date as well.

I just had to keep the players in here for up to five days for it to change. After that I wouldn’t even have to worry about them. But the thing that bothered me was that the notification said the dungeon wouldn’t change while players were in it.

I asked Kretchof to clarify.

“Master, if there are intruders in the dungeon when it is supposed to change, the dungeon will temporarily grow steadily more powerful until they are dead. Unless they are in a safe room, or boss room.”

That was good to know. So basically the dungeon will kill off anyone not in a safe area. That meant that they basically had to get to a safe room right away if they wanted to breeze through this one.

“Alright Kretchof, I want you to make sure no one can get into the safe rooms. Keep the dungeon difficult, but make sure as few as possible make it past the safe room barrier.”

Kretchof accepted my command, and began to work. Meanwhile I placed the undead summoners randomly through the dungeon, using Eli to help of course.

That would at least grant me a bit more time to figure out a more permanent solution. The monster’s began patrolling as normal after my command.

The amount was actually astounding. They were almost all insects or undead, but I saw a few spiders, and even one large monster. Kretchof must have been busy while I wasn’t looking. Honestly I didn’t actually think he’d be able to make anything useful.

The sheer quantity of enemies would prove difficult to manage for most of the dungeon crawlers. As I was reinforcing some of the stone tunnels, Kretchof sent me an urgent chat message. “Master, a group of four high-leveled enemies has entered.”

I smiled. “Good, show them the proper hospitality.” I made a small hole in a nearby wall, and went inside it. I felt like being a ninja.

I closed the hole, and slowly made my way up to be on the level above the group. Kretchof was giving me directions since they were far too far away to see with my skills.

I was moving the earth mana from in front of me, to behind me. That way the hole closed itself as I went. When I was just above the group, they had already made it a few hundred feet. Eli had come back by then, and was helping to speed the process of moving the earth.

I watched the fights they went through by using my sense mana, and other skills. The mage took the rear, guarded by the archer, and one melee guy. The lead girl was tanking the enemies. I decided to spice things up a bit.

The mage was in stereotypical mage robes, and carried a staff. Seriously? What’s the point of casting magic if that’s all you do? No melee or defense? What a waste of potential.

The archer was a bit more intelligent in that regard. He at least wore some heavy leather armor. His bow seemed to have some type of enchantment as well. I guess he’s ok, but why does no one wear heavy armor besides melee classes? In the end all armor does the same amount of guarding. Heavy armor just requires less work.

Sure my heavy armor was thing, and hid easily behind whatever clothing I generally chose to wear, but others could also have the chance to see the folly of only wearing the ‘class appropriate’ armor.

At least the two melee units did a better job of it. The one guarding the rear was in chain armor, and wielded a large bastard sword. The one in front was in plate armor, and had a tower shield and a parrying sword.

That is a sword that was designed in such a way as to most easily block incoming attacks. Truly a well rounded fighter that one. If no one can hurt you, you can’t lose.

The rear group were doing most of the damage to the insects in front of them, but the tank did a bit.

I placed one of the twelve undead stones I kept into the ceiling above the mage. His magic instantly started to wane. The thing did drain 100 mana per second after all. It took 500 mana to summon one undead.

It only took me a hundred to summon one, but I guess using enchants to summon cost more. That was something I had to work on.

After five seconds an undead skeleton was summoned. The mage, already sensing his mana depleting, wasn’t caught completely off guard. He and the archer near him instantly spotted my undead minion. Tsk. I was really hopping to off one of them.

Despite the lack of a surprise attack, they still had a fraction of a second where the melee guard near them couldn’t get to the undead in time. Just as my undead attacked the mage I had a brilliant idea.

I used the pain inducing darkness water in a tight ball in front of the skeleton’s clawed hand. The mage cried out as the attack hit him. Normally the skeleton would deal small damage quickly. Now it dealt small damage quickly, with the added pain serum.

You could say this was like training in preparedness. One should always expect the unexpected. Or at least be ready to flee at the first sign that something unpredicted happened.

The mage sank to the ground, clutching at his stomach. What a whiner. Geez, it’s not even that bad.

With the mage temporarily out of commission I started drying out the air of the small section of the dungeon. The group started to get understandably worried at that part. I moved down about five feet while drying the air, and had Eli start to weaken the stone above the group.

The archer knocked an arrow, and aimed at the skeleton. I couldn’t easily dry out the area and create the pain spell, so I let them be. The tank was too preoccupied to do anything but guard himself. Without the help of a few DPS players, he was essentially in a dead lock. (*AN* DPS: Damage Per Second, these are the major damage dealers in an mmo.)

I concentrated my entire mana flow to drying the area out. It didn’t help that the mana stone absorbed my mana as well. Just as it summoned a second skeleton, I turned it off. The second fighter had just defeated the first skeleton, now had to deal with another.

The skeleton was only level 40, these guys were each above 80. The reason for the five seconds to kill the skeleton, is that Kretchof was directly controlling it. That helped out a lot. A good worker knows what to do without being told.

Just before the second skeleton was killed off, Eli had finished the task, and brought the stone back to me. I sent out a large wind/fire blast of mana.

The cave shook for a moment, throwing the archer off balance. Then it happened. The cracks began appearing in the tunnel. Suddenly large chunks of the stone began falling from five feet above the group’s heads.

At first the two fighters managed to dodge most of the debris, but the insects paid no heed to it, and kept attacking. Even though their brethren were squashed, that just seemed to anger them more.

After only a few seconds the insects managed to crawl up the tank’s body, and held her down. She was instantly impaled by three earth spears I summoned. Attacking while your opponent is knocked prone basically made any attack a one hit kill.

The archer and mage quickly died by being crushed to death. The melee unit that was still alive, was quickly trapped by the falling stones.

After the dust settled down, thanks to Eli and SparrowHawk, I took a look at my exp. I quickly realized the dungeon must have gotten it. I was still the same as before I entered the dungeon.

For no reason I decided to be a bit more cruel than usual. I made the stone encasing the only survivor solidify. The stone coffin only had enough air in it to allow him to avoid suffocation for a few minutes.

While looking at his light mana signature, I tried filling the tomb with water. Back in River’s cross the water mana was so abundant I had gotten used to it. Here the water mana amounted to little more than a trickle.

Instead of waiting while the water slowly filled the chamber, I made several earth spike impale the poor guy’s head. The exp again went to the dungeon. While I was happy that I could raise the level of my dungeon, it wasn’t anything special. I would have put the level up to better use anyway.

Still the picture of his dying mana signature was fun. I and Eli began to fix the tunnel. After half an hour, it was as if nothing had even happened. The bodies were quickly dragged away by several undead, while their equipment was stripped from their corpses.

Well I guess that’s one way to get loot. Of course not all of their equipment was able to be taken away, but my dungeon could get enough to make it slightly more enticing for others to try their hands at conquering my dungeon.

At least I got the points for killing the group.

After that I played the same hit and run tactics for the next few days. Whenever a new group of people entered, Kretchof let me know. I quickly killed most of the teams. The harder ones required me to cooperate with Kretchof.

They all ended up falling though. Whether it was from cave ins, or massive fire blasts, eventually they all died. One group did take a lot of set up to kill though.

They were a group of nothing but warriors, which was a common theme, but they all had high magic resistance. They easily slaughtered the undead summoned to fight them, and the stone didn’t work since they had such low mana.

I ended up having Kretchof force the spiders towards them, and slowly turned the entire tunnel floor for twenty feet around them into lava. Of course Eli and Draco helped with that. While they slaughtered the undead, and dealt with the spiders, the heat of the lava rose.

By the time that they realized what was happening, it was too late. They began to run, but the ground crumbled and fell into the lava pit. After they were submerged, I covered the top for a few minutes. After I was sure they were dealt with, I let the undead in the cave system take what was left of the melted items.

While I wasn’t hunting down foolish trespassers, I was training my mind ‘control’ skill on the spiders. I learned that the skill could only give commands up to a certain level. After that the order would be ignored 100% of the time.

I gained a bit of practice, which was nice, but it ended abruptly with one announcement from Kretchof.

“Master, your former companion EDI has entered the dungeon.”

Spoiler :

Stats WindowNameVoice0fReasonClassMana EnchanterLevel 45Health: 100Mana: 2980[4172]Stamina: 350Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 25(20)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/sStrength52Agility50Wisdom250Intelligence298Endurance51Dexterity50Luck0Vitality50Charisma35Compassion105Leadership66Logic22Piety89Unused Stat Points0Fame1535

Skills WindowSpeed Reading Novice Level 9 Exp 00.00%

Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Apprentice Level 40 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 5.01%

Group Skill: Magical Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23%

Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Breakdown Novice Level 12 Exp 46.64%

Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43%

Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 00%

Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept

Group Skill: Task Master Apprentice Level 25 Exp 00.00%

Affinities WindowLight70%Water75%Wind25%Nature75%Metal50%Earth45%Fire25%Darkness100%