Chapter One Twenty-Four Milestone Shopping (Patreon)

Misaki looked up at the sky, this wasn’t an easy choice. Seeing that she had some DP she had gone through the shop as well to consider prices. As that might play into her choice. In the end, she’d spent long enough that the sun had moved well past its zenith and into the evening. Her choice was now solidly made. Now that she had grown and traffic had improved, instances seemed essential, but she also found that they were reasonably priced in the shop. So she had chosen to buy them, adding the trait to her list. She’d also ended up buying adaptive difficulty, which had narrowed her choices for her free trait.

Conditional Curse was certainly interesting, but as much as she wanted it in the end she realized it wasn’t immediately helpful. If she was going to be facing off against a Child Eating Serpent, she wanted more tools in her arsenal. With that in mind, she finally chose to take Dungeon Towers. The trait just called to her. Maybe it had something to do with her being a Stronghold Dungeon? Whatever the reason, that was the one she wanted, so she took it. Yet she couldn’t help staring forlornly at Conditional Curse, next time maybe?

As she finalized her choices, she took a moment to look at her status.

Name: Misaki

Race: True Demonic Dungeon

Level: 50

Rank: C

Alignment: Demonic

Attribute: Lust

Mana: 7500/7500

Mana Generation: 750/hr

DP: 230

DP Generation: 450/hr

AE: 3750/3750

AE Generation: 375/hr

Dungeon Traits:

Curse of Lost Manhood: Failure in your halls carries an extra price. All those who fall in your halls are cursed into a female form for the rest of their lives. This curse can be reversed if they manage to clear your dungeon, but a second failure would make the curse permanent.

Realm of False Death (Path Trait): Death is forbidden to those that fall within your halls. The fallen are instead teleported to the entrance, or a predesignated respawn point such a shrine. All items and equipment in their possession are kept by your dungeon. If they possess an inventory half the items within will be kept by your dungeon. If teleported to the entrance the fallen will have all their skills locked, and will be afflicted with the weakened status which reduces all abilities by half. If teleported to the shrine, no such penalty will be applied.

Dungeon Law: Rules that bind those who intrude, and set the tone of a challenge. They can govern but one room, a floor or the whole dungeon. These rules, these laws must be set in place with mana. Also allows the creation of safe zones.

Dungeon Tactics: Your monsters, servants, and pets have a better than average grasp of tactics boosting their ability to fight together.

Dungeon Loyalty:  Greatly increases the loyalty of your monsters, pets, and servants. Grants your monsters, pets, and servants immunity to all mind control effects except those that ignore this trait.

Dungeon Pheromones: Unique to dungeons of the lust circle, these magical pheromones incite lust in those who breathe them. Boosting the alure of not only yourself, but your female monsters as well. These pheromones are emitted from your core, and as such are most potent near your core. Effect scales with level, and size of your dungeon.

Dungeon-Guild: Through your bond with the local guild Mistress, the dungeon and guild are but extensions of one another. Allows dungeon law, to reinforce guild policies. Guild policies can be made into dungeon laws at the cost of dungeon resources. Must be maintained. Dungeon laws can be made into guild policies at the cost of dungeon resources.

Instances: Everyone agrees that having a hundred adventures all on the same floor, doesn’t work out very well. It’s fine for a safe zone, good for business, but it doesn’t make for a good experience on the floor itself. This trait draws on the natural mana of the dungeon to create magical copies of the dungeon, separated only by a magical spatial barrier. All aspects of the dungeon are cloned allowing multiple parties to run the dungeon without interfering with each other. Party size can be set by dungeon law, other traits may modify this one.

Adaptive Dungeon Difficulty: Allows the dungeon to temporarily buff or nerf her monsters to better match the abilities of the challengers. The strength of the buff is determined by the average level of the challengers. Floor limit rules still apply, but are adjusted according to the dungeon’s level. 

Dungeon Towers: Allows the creation of fortified towers on the dungeon’s territory. These structures can be used to defend the dungeon and its residents, both monster and mortal, against raiders. Each tower is protected by a magical shield, equal to the dungeon’s level multiplied by one thousand. Hostiles in range of the tower, may be attacked by a magical ray that ignores armor. Attack scales with the dungeon’s level, and can be enhanced at the cost of AE.

Recalling something about how Adaptive was an upgradable trait, but required instances for the better versions, she quickly poked her head around in the shop, and let out a breath. It wasn’t something she would be getting for a while, the upgrade wasn’t cheap, not cheap at all. Neither was Conditional Curse. It might be a bit before she had the points to spend again. It was just that DP was so useful and there was so much she wanted.

Suddenly Arietta’s smiling face slipped into view, “Like your choices?”

She nodded, “Um yes.”

“Great, it’s getting late, so we’ll just do a bit of practice and then you can rest.”

___

The girl rolled over, just as the lights came on. She groaned as she blinked the lights out of her eyes. Her mind already recalling what it meant, it was time to get ready for her day. As she slipped out of bed, the thin sheet fell from her frame revealing her naked body to the air.

Yet she wasn’t thinking much about that, her mind was once again lamenting how her life had taken a turn for the worse. Not that long ago she’d been a man, with a nice growing harem on the path to being a respected hero. She was sure of it, but now she was stuck here in the body of a tiny Lesser Dark Elf. Most sapient races were at least tier two, but here she was stuck at tier one. At least she would be able to evolve once she hit level twenty. Well she hoped she would, but with that damn repentance quest hanging over her head and... Mistress, she wasn’t sure if that would ever happen.

Stepping into her tiny bathroom, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Reflected in the mirror was a small girl, whose form she still sometimes had difficulty accepting was her. Long silver hair framed a pale purple face with rounded features, a button nose, and most notable of all her large soft eyes with their azure lenses and silver highlights. The girl in the mirror was so cute! Especially the way her pointed ears poked out of her hairline. Down below, she had some muscle, a good healthy body shape. Just above a pair of modest breasts with large pink areola and cute nipples was the stylized image of a bird, seemingly painted silver. The girl knew better, it wasn’t painted, it was burned into her flesh, a brand. She winced slightly at the memory.

Down lower, she had a cute little slit, and some nice curves with a tight belly. The kind of figure she knew would draw eyes. In addition, like most elves she had very little body hair, which just served to make her seem cuter. That pale purple skin of hers, went strangely well with the pink of her breasts and pussy as well.

 It was a painful physical reminder of how she had been changed. Might have been why Mistress kept a mirror in here. She didn’t really get much. Her bed wasn’t much more than a thin mattress. Mistress wouldn’t give her clothes either. Letting out a breath, she moved past the mirror and turned on the shower. Cool water sprayed from above, but she didn’t bother to wait for it to warm up. It never did, the damn thing only ever gave her lukewarm water at best. At least it was good for waking her up. She didn’t dawdle and quickly washed off, before stepping out. Where some enchanted stones in the floor activated to dry her off, that was perhaps the only luxury she got around here.

It wasn’t much of one, but it was something. Her gaze fell on the comb, Mistress gave her and picked it up. A sigh left her lips, this was the worst part about getting ready. Why did long hair have to be such a pain. A part of her was tempted to just leave it, but... Mistress wouldn’t be happy. Her mind flashed back to the last time, she didn’t and winced. That wasn’t fun.

Suddenly she heard the door open. Looking over she paled, Mistress was here. Her gaze turned back to the mirror, she wasn’t presentable yet. Did she dawdle? She didn’t think so. “Mistress! I... I...” she choked over the words.

Her Mistress stood there in the doorway, a slight smile on her lips letting one of her fangs poke out, a reminder of who and what her mistress was, a Vampire Princess. Regular Vampires were tier two, high vampires often called the vampire nobles were tier three, and the royals like this one were tier four. She was just a lowly tier one girl, with a pathetic level of ten. What chance did she stand against someone well over level two hundred? Worse, vampires had a natural power to control minds, she’d felt that it was weird, not fun. Part of her wanted to think of her Mistress as a monster, but it was hard, she was utterly gorgeous and the girl had seen her be kind to others.

She stood there with a face framed by lovely black hair. Her eyes were a dazzling topaz, and she had a lovely smile which went well with her elfin features. Mistress was dressed in the usual garb of a dark priestess of Rumina. Not just any priestess either, but a high priestess with elaborate skimpy robes that did little to hide her figure, if anything they exposed it. The robes were detailed with an intricate motif of thorns and vines that wrapped around her figure. The other woman’s chest was on full display, letting her see her lovely mounds as they stood proudly on her chest, the robes wrapped around her belly before flaring out leaving her pussy exposed to the air as well. Yet the other woman didn’t seem to care how exposed she was. Like most Vampires, she looked youthful and full of energy, yet her eyes held the wisdom of many years lived. Even after being here for a couple of weeks, she still didn’t know how many, but she just felt tiny before the woman in front of her. Even if she wasn’t that large, about 155 centimeters tall, maybe a little taller, she wasn’t sure.

At that moment, Mistress Valmeri giggled, “Oh don’t be so afraid, finish your hair Aya.”

She bristled slightly, she hated that name, but she held her tongue. Something that only seemed to make the vampire smile brighter, she turned away. Even as she wanted to scream and shout or do anything to wipe that smug grin off the vampire’s face. 

After a moment the other woman spoke up, “You should really hurry up, since you’ve been a good girl lately, I was thinking I’d take you out to town. Unless you would rather continue with the usual lessons?”

Gripping the comb tighter, she started furiously working on her hair. Ignoring the slight pain of working her hair too hard. Avoiding lessons? Yes please, she didn’t want those, she hated them.

___

Phyllis walked up the steps to her door, Mother and Misaki following. It had been a busy day, she sighed. Mom still wasn’t happy with her mana flow and the half-breed wasn’t happy either. She shuddered at the thought, more lessons wasn’t on her plan. She had a guild to run.

Before she even reached the door, it suddenly flung open and she found herself on the ground as a weight pressed into her. “BIG SIS! Welcome back!”

Mother giggled, “Looks like someone missed you!”