Lewd Dungeon, Chapter 203 (Patreon)

Chapter 203 – Reflections

I knew it wouldn’t take Miguel long to get here. After all, I had already installed the portals in the different guild halls for the guilds that had agreed to work with me. Truth be told, I was getting quite a bit of mana from those portals, far more than the initial outlay. After all, it allowed quick and easy travel across the country in an instant, so long as you had a brief stopover in Swamptown.

Still, I had a few minutes, so I thought I’d check and see what my advancement had done to my dungeon, and my pets. The first thing I noticed was that many of the creatures I had in the dungeon had tiered up with me. The bosses and minibosses on my different levels were more likely to tier up than the normal monsters I’d created to fill the dungeon.

Annoyingly, very few of the creatures in the breeding halls tiered up. But then, they were not really doing anything other than just fucking constantly. I needed my breeders to get more combat experience, so they could tier up and unlock more interesting hybrids. Or just new threats for higher-tier people to face.

Fortunately, I already had an answer for that, even if I hadn’t thought of it before now. My bottom floor had a lovely little Arena, just perfect for people and monsters to fight to the death in. I could just toss any monsters or dungeon bound captives I had in the breeding halls down there, and let them fight. Have fights in the arena, 24/7. I could even use it as a reward, giving those who win in the Arena a temporary reprieve from the breeding halls… Yeah, I liked the sound of that.

Next, I checked my list of slaves. It was a LOOOONG list. Quickly, I manipulated the System interface, and arranged them by faith, like in a spreadsheet. The former Pofmis followers were already converted, but I had some other people who either worshipped gods that had been enshrined here, or followed ‘Earthly’ religions, like Christians and the like. Anyone who was bound to me and wasn’t a follower of one of the gods enshrined in this dungeon got to experience [Forced Conversion], giving me another rush of power.

I had just finished that when I saw Miguel step through the portal. The cross-country portals were located in a dedicated building on the midpoint between my spaceport and my dungeon’s entrance, allowing people to travel, without giving an army a direct path into my dungeon. Plus, I knew that the merchants and others would be happy for it.

Looking over the town, I admired how much it had grown. A couple years ago, there was nothing here except the entrance shack that I had hastily built. Now? Swamptown couldn’t really be called a city, but it was a legitimate town, with a permanent population of twelve hundred people or so, and transients adding another thousand, though that number had only spiked up when the portals went in.

There was now competition for any merchants or craftsmen in town, and there were no less than six inns (and two hotels), eighteen bars, and twenty brothels in town. Food and water would normally be an issue, out here in the swamp, but between Magic and my dungeon, there weren’t any issues. Greenhouses that were bigger on the inside were spreading around the world, and water could be conjured with magic. Between that, the reduction in the global population, and the fact that ‘adventuring’ was a viable career path for someone who had nothing left to lose, we were actually looking at the possibility of the practical end to global hunger in the next twenty years.

Miguel stopped on his way to the dungeon, and stepped into the Adventurers’ Guild’s local office. No doubt, wanting to check in, and let any worried adventurers know that he was about to check things out. That gave me a little bit longer to get my things in order.

Looking at the spread of my faith, I could see that, even without my recent wave of forced conversions, I was starting to get some trickles of faith from places all over the world. Naturally, those places were focused primarily around the dungeons I’d chatted with in the DEN, though there was a nice spike in Japan that didn’t seem to be centered on the Silver Mercy dungeon. I made a note to look into that, later.

Miguel finally made his way to the entrance hall for the dungeon, and one of my servants directed him to a portal that opened in the wall next to the ‘service desk’. The guild leader just nodded, and walked on in. Not even a bit of hesitation in his gait, much to my delight.

The portal brought him to my ‘audience lounge’, like the last time he’d come to see me, with all the other guild leaders. Smiling, I offered a hand, which he shook. Like a business partner would.

“Ah, Miguel, so good of you to come. Now, before you say anything, I just want you to know that I don’t hold you, or any of your adventurers responsible for the information that the Pofmisites had. I have no doubt that you told them, as best you could, that it was a suicide mission, and warned them off. I know that no one told them anything prohibited, because not only did none of my contracts activate the punishment clauses, but they were deliciously surprised when the floor fell out from under them.”

Miguel grunted. “Well, that ticks off one item on the list of things I needed to talk to you about. And, if you don’t mind me saying, it is a weight off to hear you say that. Fundamentalists. They’re trouble no matter what religion they’re in.”

I considered that for a second. I had worshippers now, after all. If I didn’t want them flying off at the handle and causing me all kinds of trouble, like the former Crusader-Champion just did for all of the Pofmisian church, then I would need to keep an eye on them, and make sure they didn’t get stupid. “True enough. And thanks for reminding me about that. Though, if any of my followers are stupid enough to do anything like what that idiotic champion did, I’d kick them to the curb myself.”

“So, since we are talking about the Golden Host, what happened there at the end of the Crusader-Champion’s fight? The stream you put out of the Crusader-Champion’s run was visual only, with subtitles, but the subtitles censored themselves a few times.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, I ran it with a ten second delay, so I could keep spell and skill names off the stream, as well as keeping any sensitive information from coming out. Suffice to say that the former Champion used a spell that she was certain would destroy me, but, unfortunately, she did not know who, or what, she was dealing with.”

Miguel’s eyes narrowed. “So, a race-specific spell, then?”

“Exactly. And, since she used one for the wrong race, the spell literally had no effect on me. Like Sun Tzu said, ‘If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.’ Simply put, I knew what I was facing, and she did not.”

The guild master nodded slowly. “So, I know that one group managed to get out, but the men were all obviously wearing slave collars, and the woman stripped out of her armor like it was burning her.”

“Probably was. She converted before her group could run through the Black Temple on Nightmare difficulty. She wanted no part of that, so she asked for a deal. She joined me, and enslaved her party, which obviously would have made Pofmis really quite angry with her.”

“So, what happened to the rest of the Golden Host? There were seven hundred of them, according to reports.”

“Dead, enslaved, or contractually bound to the Breeding Halls for a set period of time, depending on how their runs ended. They’ve all fallen, in one way or another. And, before you ask your next question, yes, so many Tier 2 people falling in such a short span boosted the hell out of my XP, giving me enough levels to break through to Tier 2, myself.”

Miguel nodded. “We didn’t know how Dungeons dealt with that. I mean, obviously you have to have some kind of Experience gain, since that is a part of the System that seems to work on everyone. But there was some definite question whether dungeons could tier up, and how that would work. I’m guessing that the waves of energy that the whole town felt have something to do with it?”

I grinned. “Ah, yeah. You know how, when a normal person Tiers up, they get a rush of energy all through their body, as they suddenly gain a new class and new abilities? Well, the same thing happens to dungeons. But the difference is that my ‘body’ is basically the area of my influence. Not just the dungeon proper, but the area on the surface, as well.”

The guild master sighed. “I should have expected it would be something like that, since we’re talking about you. What about the adventurers who were in the dungeon when it happened? Are they all right?”

I could feel my face go blank. “Ah, that’s right. There were other adventurers in my halls. Sorry, I was too busy toying with the Golden Host, and wasn’t really paying attention to any of the others, unless they called out to me. Let me check real quick.”

Casting my sight through the dungeon, I could see that there were six teams currently in the dungeon. Five of them were regulars, people who knew they didn’t have the strength to make it to the end, and instead came in once a week to farm the dungeon’s early floors. None of those groups ever went past the Water Temple. Most of them didn’t even bother entering the Water Temple itself, just farming the aquatic herbs and materials in the lake around it.

The last group was a party from California, according to what I had overheard. Actually, now that I looked at them, I could see that they were worshippers of mine, apparently on a pilgrimage of some sort. No doubt, this was the result of my lovely servant at the head of the LA guild was spreading my gospel.

“Six groups in the dungeon right now. The off-world celebrity dungeon diver was in earlier, but left after getting his interview, but they’re still in Swamptown. The six who were inside when I tiered up are all fine. None of them were in combat when it happened, fortunately. The pilgrims from LA were just about to attack some ghouls on the Undead floor, but managed to pull their attacks when the first wave hit. Lucky for them, since one of the ghouls they were targeting evolved during the wave.”

Miguel nodded. “Would it be possible for you to put out an update to the dungeon contracts, to force-teleport anyone who is inside the dungeon proper outside, the next time this happens? Just the ones who have signed the contracts and are following the rules, of course.”

I considered the request. I had built my dungeon on the idea of it being ‘tough, but fair’, and had included safety valves like the teleportation charms or the tithes to leave through the portals rather than continuing to the end. Certainly, a Tier up like this could be problematic if someone was caught in the middle of combat when it happened.

And it wasn’t like I could predict when the advancement would happen. Sure, I could keep track of my XP. I could even get a rough estimate of how much XP certain people would give me when they died. But it was only very rarely that I knew when someone was about to die in my dungeon beforehand. My dungeon’s magic kept the monsters at a relative strength that they were all potentially deadly, especially if people were distracted from Enflaming Gas.

The PR benefits of the move were obvious. Even if I didn’t see Tier 3 for years, or even decades, as was likely the case, the knowledge that I’d put another safety valve in would encourage people to keep diving. And it wasn’t like I would have to do a whole ton of work to fulfill those obligations. I could just set up a spell script or dungeon law to handle it, and forget about it. All in all, I saw no downsides to this.

“Sure, I can do that. Won’t even toss in any conditions for it, since it is great PR. I’m sure there will be other changes, as I work through all the goodies I got from the Tier up, so I can slip that in while I put other updates to the contract in.”

I paused, and then said, “Since you’re here, why don’t you go back to the local Guild, and grab some friends. I have something you’d like to see.”

“What is it?”

“The dungeon on the moon is ready for visitors now.”