Cameron
I glared as the bug girl cheerfully skipped her way toward the exit of my Dungeon with the rest of her team on her heals.
“Flur,” the group's leader called out in exasperation, “would it kill you to at least pretend to be on guard until we're out?”
“Oh, come on, it's not as if anything in here has changed since our first clear.”
“Still–”
I stopped paying attention to them. I was more concerned about Vie and Pee. They had just been killed again.
Three days had passed since the group showed up with the alchemist's apprentice. That first day, I hadn't received any additional visitors after them, but from the next day onward, the situation in my Dungeon had changed drastically. All at once, I stopped having groups recklessly charging in for my core. In those three days, no one had even made an attempt to kill me for profit. That was a good thing because I wasn't sure I was equipped to deal with them if they had.
The scout group had made a habit of showing up twice a day. In fact, they were just leaving after their second clear. The frequency of their visits in itself was a little concerning, but my issue wasn't them being in my Dungeon; it was what they were doing in it. They came like clockwork. No sooner was the respawn timer for Vie and Pee up than they came waltzing back in to restart it. It seemed that their solution to the high death rates was to kill my dearest companions over and over again, always in the instant I was able to bring them back. I didn't like it.
Sure, I got a cut of the experience every time they were killed, and it was a good amount too. That didn't make up for what they were doing or me any happier about my two-headed snake constantly being slaughtered. I disliked seeing them get hurt at the best of times. Being forced to watch them die over and over again without being able to do anything about it was torture. My feelings on the subject weren't what mattered, though. It was my snakes' that did.
After their first deaths to the scouts, they had been dejected. Once they had respawned, they conveyed that they felt like they had failed me. I vehemently objected to that. I had tried to reassure them and let them know that I didn't blame them. I had told them I was fine, so they shouldn't be too hard on themselves. That had done little to cheer them up. To make matters worse, them finding out that there was a newly awakened monster as soon as they had revived made them jealous. They felt like they were being replaced, and explaining the situation to them in full didn't seem to do much to convince them otherwise.
I had been worried about their mental state. Those worries hadn't subsided as they began throwing themselves into self-improvement wholeheartedly. They were making huge strides in that regard, but I was afraid they were pushing themselves too hard.
First thing in the morning, they would fight the scouts to the death. As soon as they respawned, they would fight the scouts to the death. Once they respawned again, they insisted on training for the ten hours they had until the cycle repeated itself. They were improving with every fight, and their growth was much more pronounced than it had been with training alone. They improved their tactics, coordination, and instincts with every battle. I was proud of them, and I had made sure to tell them that many times over. Still, I worried as they continued to push themselves harder and harder. I feared that they were pushing themselves too hard.
Adraugon, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. He had barely bothered to stand over the past few days, and when he did, it was only to reposition himself atop his pile of five copper coins. He showed complete disinterest in the common folk who delved my Dungeon, and I had forbidden him from attacking the scouts. That led to him doing a whole lot of nothing.
I was a little irked by that, but things were working out. I knew he would be there if I truly needed it, and so far, I hadn't. No more than a couple of well-prepared groups had dared to give my second room a shot. That left me with plenty of time to work on expanding.
Occasionally, I would have to stop to resummon my fallen monsters, like I started doing as soon as the scout group left. That left me the rest of the time to further develop my Dungeon. I had, of course, built a small room for Adraugon's hoard and attached it to my core room. I had also spent a good amount of time playing with my new terrain and doing some minor tests with the various monsters I had at my disposal. I was liking the results so far, but I had to admit they were lacking in some regards. I was trying to cover for those weaknesses and improve upon their strengths, but it was slow going. For that reason, I was mostly working on that in the background.
I was also expanding my Dungeon once again. Nothing I had done there was close to being ready, but it was progress. I currently had my new room connected to my core room but positioned behind my fake core room. That let me work on it without having to reveal its existence. More than anything, in its current state, it was a testing ground for me.
I began to work on it again once I was sure the scouts were gone. The swamp terrain had proven far more useful in my tests than I had dared to hope, and I was figuring out how to make the best use of it. The only thing that occasionally pulled me from my work was an occasional notification alerting me to the deaths of my monsters.
Whenever that would happen, I would give any and all invaders a cursory glance to gauge them and keep a distracted eye on their progress to ensure I knew when to summon more monsters. That happened a couple of times over the next few hours. None of the groups warranted any special attention, though, or at least, that was the case until I went to check on one group in specific. I met with a sight I had no clue how to respond to.
There was a man with a dagger plunged into the skull of the Shadow Viper I had patrolling the first room. That in itself wasn't anything worrying. His appearance did catch my eye. The shoddy rags he dressed himself with and the clear unpreparedness about him was the same that I had seen from most of the groups that had gone after my core. As bad of an omen as that was, that wasn't what had me concerned.
It wasn't the fact that he looked like he had struggled to kill the snake or the person collapsed to the ground behind him that drew my attention, nor was it his old age. It wasn't his evident malnutrition or the two others pushing him onward before he could so much as catch his breath. It wasn't even the dirt caked to him that made it clear as day that he hadn't bathed in a long time. No, it was the size of his group that had thrown me for a loop.
He was standing in the middle route of my forked path. There were the two pushing him and the man still on the ground. That wasn't too abnormal a group size, but it didn't end there. There were an additional three men with them. That was still a normal enough group size.
On the right path, the Trenti in the room was shooting Spore Waves down from above, but it wasn't just one or two more people that it was casting spells at. It was an another entire group, one person bigger than the first. They were running and screaming as magical spores clung to them.
On the left path, there were even more people, nine in total. They were taking it more slowly than the other groups and occasionally shooting concerned glances in the direction of the screaming. Adding all three groups up, it was a total of twenty-four people. That was several times more than I had ever had in my Dungeon at a time before, yet it didn't stop there.
There were four more people still at the intersection and another climbing the walls. Two more were making their way through my entrance, and casting my gaze behind them, I was left unsure as to how many more were left outside. Each and every person in the horde of invaders resembled the first in terms of their unkempt appearances and the predatory looks in their eyes. I did not like where this was going.
Hey, Adraugon, we have company. Fabian, take a look at this really quick.
The lizard's eyes flicked open, but he remained motionless as he lounged atop his pocket change. I didn't bother trying to talk to him beyond that. I figured it would be a waste of time. If the group meant me harm, which I had a suspicion they did, he would be magically forced to help me anyway. Until that point, arguing with him would only be a waste of time.
Fabian, on the other hand, was much more diligent in responding to my calls of distress.
“That's a problem. No one goes into a Dungeon with forces like these and good intentions.”
Even as he spoke, I immediately began making preparations. I couldn't adjust anything in my first room thanks to the presence of the people there, but I had maybe a minute to bolster the defenses in my second room and beyond. After the scouts had given me that scare a few days prior, I had come up with some extra precautions that I could put in place when push came to shove. Push looked to be coming to shove.
* * *
Albert Chorlus
I grinned as I watched the men I had brought here enter the Dungeon like lambs to the slaughter. Forty-three people, that is how many I convinced to undertake this suicide mission. I had lost two in the chaos of taking down the newly stationed guards from the Adventurers Guild before the sheer numbers won out, but when I had so much fodder at my disposal, that hardly mattered.
“Move! Go, go, go! Stay grouped up! The more of you that are in there together, the easier this will be!”
The easier this will be for me.
I had to restrain myself. If I didn't, I was risk of bursting out in laughter. It was all too funny, and everything was going so smoothly.
I had brought together every vagrant, outcast, and piece of contemptible scum I could find from the neighboring villages. Lowlifes, thieves, and those so far down on their luck that there would be no point in trying to dig their way out, I had assembled them in the name of greed and was sacrificing them to pave the way for people far worse than they could ever hope to be.
They didn't even know that if they succeeded, a force stronger than the Dungeon's, one of men who killed for fun and did so on a regular basis, would be waiting to cut them to ribbons and splatter their blood. There was no winning for them, and that was the beauty of it.
I continued shouting false words of encouragement without looking to the rabble. Instead, I was watching the few faint glints of metal my eyes caught sight of through the forest. It was the light reflecting off of already drawn weapons. My smile widened. That old codger would rue the day he messed with me. He would see how much of a mistake supplanting me as head of the village and seizing my power had been. When all of this was over I would be on top, and he would be nothing.