Fenrir

“Well as you may have heard, the Kingdom of the Fallen is sending a large force of twenty thousand soldiers to ‘negotiate’ with us,” the Princess says with a light grimace on her face. “So we were wondering if you would be open to working with us-”

“No,” I answer right away before turning around and beginning to leave.

“Wait, Fenrir! Please hear us out!” Leon shouts while blocking the door, making me narrow my pitch black eyes at the man.

“I do not meddle in mortal affairs,” I state, repeating the line the Vampires told me about an excuse to get out of things like this. A line that I rather like.

Also gives me a bit of perspective on the outsiders considering they’re called mortals when Dungeon Cores aren’t. Although then again, I don’t exactly need to sustain myself on anything like food or water while they do.

“This would be a simple business interaction,” the King further in the room declares, bringing my attention back to him. “You wouldn’t be picking one side or the other. You would simply be doing something you already would’ve been doing otherwise in exchange for void orbs from us.”

I stare at the King for a few seconds before glancing at the others and then returning my gaze to Leon.

If that’s all I need to do…

“Explain,” I state rather succinctly.

The Knight lets out a sigh and starts talking, “To begin, the Raizel Empire is too far away to send reinforcements and are already dealing with a potential war from the South as it is, and the Drezar Kingdom isn’t powerful enough to stand up against the Kingdom of the Fallen. So we would like to work with you, along with the other four dungeons in my and the King’s territory to raise the average level and cultivation of our forces for the coming war.”

I furrow my brows at that before huffing slightly and asking, “Just who is the Kingdom of the Fallen?”

Leon glances to the others then back to me as he answers, “It’s a nation made up of Fallen. One of the more powerful Demonic Races with a nation almost on par with the Vampire’s Empire of Eternal Night. They’re led by an Emperor, but also have a few Demigods backing them as well.”

Oh. So they’re a step below the Vampires.

Not a threat to me then, considering the Vampire’s protection. Definitely a threat to these people though.

In that case…

“What about the Orcs?” I ask while glancing towards the Orc Lord amongst us. “You never mentioned them when you were listing the other dungeons. Why not? Are they not participating? And if so, why are they here?”

The group looks awkward at that and none of them answer for several seconds.

Then the Orc Lord himself finally speaks up, saying, “That would be because our nation is currently without a dungeon.”

I blink in surprise at that.

“Why?” I ask while narrowing my eyes a little again.

I’m pretty sure I heard about them at least having one dungeon over there.

“A traveling Collector… destroyed the dungeon and took the core…” the Orc states, making the hair on my neck stand up as I let out a low growl while standing to my full height. But before I can say anything on the matter, the Emperor speaks up, “There’s no need for concern. Not with the Vampires here as your defenders. There’s no way the Collector will come anywhere near here until they’re gone at the very least.”

I stare at the man for several seconds before eventually calming down a bit and returning my focus to Leon.

This is something I need to tell Dawn about. She never mentioned that a Collector might target a Dungeon Core before.

Although I guess it’s possible she didn’t know.

Either way, I continue my questioning by asking, “Do you know when these Fallen are going to arrive and where?”

“Within the fortnight, and off the coast of Wolfmoore,” Leon answers right away, making me blink in surprise.

“A fortnight?” I ask, absolutely sure I misheard that.

“A fortnight,” Leon reassures me with a nod of his head.

I stare at him like he’s an idiot.

“This is war between two nations, so they aren’t going to strike a full-on war right away,” he answers my stare without even flinching. Although I get the feeling my stare made him feel a tad bit insulted considering his tone. “Instead they’ll come to ‘negotiate,’ in which they’ll just ask us to surrender in a polite manner before officially declaring war and leaving for a time. Thanks to the conditions of land contracts, they won’t be able to attack for a month after the declaration of war. So they won’t actually be attacking for likely three fortnights.”

Six weeks? That’s still not very long to train… but then again, I don’t really care who controls these lands. As long as I benefit.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask, deciding to forgo talk about their politics any longer.

Leon smiles a little as he answers right away, “We would like you to focus entirely on creating new instances for your dungeon. And in exchange for that, we’ll give you a void orb of this size,” he pauses while holding up an orb that’s about large enough to fit in his palm, “every day until we run out of them.”

Okay, that’s a rather tantalizing offer.

But…

“How many of those do you have?” I ask just to make sure.

He smiles and says, “Enough for three months straight of this deal.”

“Very well,” I answer with a nod of my head. “We have a deal.”

I’m very curious to know where they got these orbs, but at the same time, it doesn’t really matter.

“So when will you send me the first orb?” I ask with my eyes glued to the orb in his hand. Only to be surprised when he suddenly tosses it to me and I quickly grab it with a small amount of void energy – something I learned to do after eavesdropping on some magic lessons after spreading my dungeon’s domain a little into the city.

I’m really glad I’m finally able to do that.

“Just create new instances whenever you can and we’ll keep giving you orbs,” Leon says, his smile still present on his face. “The stronger you get, the stronger we can become.”

I wonder just how many orbs I’m going to end up with by the time I reach Tier 10 in the far future?