Lewd Dungeon, Chapter 232 (Patreon)

Chapter 232 – Answered Prayer

“Oh Great Kuronoth, thank you for hearing my plea! A host of followers of Binja and Idos have descended upon Atara, and are cleansing the world of dungeons, which they say are the source of the world’s corruption!”

OK, so someone went and formed a crusade, had they? The only question was whether they were doing it on their gods’ orders, or just in their name. Even when gods could talk to their followers, those mortal followers often decided to do a bunch of things in their god’s name, without consulting whether the god actually gave a damn about whatever their cause was.

“I understand your plight, my child. I need to know more about your defenses, so I can know how to help you. First, how close are the crusaders to you? Have they actually entered your dungeon, yet, or are they still outside? Do you have access to Dungeon Laws, Taboos, or whatever the System calls it for you?”

“Yes, my Lord. I have the Dungeon Law skill. And the enemy is still on the march. It should be two rotations of this planet before they reach me. I called out to you as soon as word of their crusade against all dungeons was announced.”

I checked the system. Two rotations on that planet were roughly equivalent to 54 hours. So, just about two and a quarter days. That was fine. I could work with that.

“You did well to call me so soon. Much and more I can do to aid you with such time, if you are willing to do what is necessary. Necessary to triumph. Necessary to survive.”

“I am, my Lord. I want to survive, and grow!”

“Excellent. Then, the first thing you shall do is create a Contract, and a series of dungeon laws. The contract will bind you, in some ways, but it will bind your enemies more. And, in truth, the bindings on you will be things that all aid you in making your dungeon someplace that adventurers want to delve, anyways.”

“What will this Contract say?”

“I will display it for you. But first, I want you to look at the DEN. The Exotic Pleasures dungeon will soon open a private trade with you, giving you the pattern for what he calls ‘Escape Charms’, for a price of 1 Anima. They are single-use teleport keys that teleport an individual to just outside your entrance, but there is a cooldown of one week before you can use it again.

“That will be the bait for this trap. It is something that even the lowest newbie adventurer can see as a boon. With it, they can escape with their lives if they look to be overmatched. At least in theory. Using it in the midst of combat is tricky, so they’re mostly used by parties that have just scraped through a fight, and are self-aware enough to know that they cannot go on. That is fewer groups than you might expect.

“Now, the point of the Dungeon Contract is that it will form a binding magical contract between you, and the adventurers. In return for not only swearing that they will not try to bring harm to you or your dungeon, and will do all in their power to stop those who do, those who sign the contract will be able to purchase Escape Charms from you, allowing them some measure of safety and security in your halls, without affecting you too badly. This is the first part of how you entice them to sign the Dungeon Contract. The second part is what you will do if they do not.”

“I do not understand. The ones coming will not sign anyways?”

“Yes, I am aware. We are laying seeds for the future, here. You are going to add as many traps and monsters as you can, making them powerful enough that your floors would be considered a deathtrap, like those young dungeons who reflexively try to slaughter everything as soon as it gets past the entrance. Those who sign the contract will face the normal version of your dungeon, while those who do not will face the Nightmare version. In addition, all those who refuse to sign the contract will be branded as Dungeon Foes, making any assault on your dungeon far more difficult.

“Now, I can already feel your next question. What is stopping them from signing and then going back on their word? Buried in the contract you will have a clause that says that anyone who breaks their contract shall be automatically enslaved to you, by the System itself, and teleported into some dark corner of your dungeon where you can deal with them later. In addition, you make it so that any organizations that they belonged to get hit with the Dungeon Foe title, unless the organization properly atones to you. That would include their party, any guilds they are part of, their nation, and the church they are a part of.”

“Th-that would make large portions of the population into Dungeon Foes!”

“Yes, and those in power will be afraid, because it would not end with your death. Because the penalty was laid upon the organizations, it would affect even those who signed up after the offense. The powerful of today might be able to forego dungeons as a means of gaining power, but they would see that their children would be prevented from gaining power properly. The next generation would be weak, and other forces would capitalize on that fact.”

“I understand, my Lord. Where did you come by this wisdom?”

“It is the wisdom of Earth, the planet that was only recently added to the System. Without a System to enforce contracts, the people of Earth developed contract law into a battlefield all its own. And the gladiators that fight in that arena are known as Lawyers, and they are some of the most feared beings on the planet.”

“Great must be their power!”

“Indeed, it is, but their strength lies not in force of arms, but in their minds. Their ability to find loopholes and persuade others of their cause is their greatest skill. A lawyer, in their prime, would see a person injured in a vehicle crash, and then convince a jury that not only was the driver of the car not at fault, but that the injured person should pay for the damage to the driver’s car, as well as any ‘pain and suffering’ they might have endured. If they are particularly nasty, they’ll even make it so that the injured person must pay for all the court costs and the legal fees of the very lawyer that just piled debts after debts upon them!”

I could practically feel the dungeon’s shudder. “Great and terrible a foe they are, though I do not think that they would be best suited for my dungeon.”

“No, they would not. But that is fine. When this is over, should you make it through the storm, open a dialog with the Exquisite Pleasures. Now that trade is established between Earth and the galaxy at large, it may be possible to entice a human lawyer into finding fertile pastures to start a new branch of their business, like an adventurer’s guild making a new dungeon town when they find a baby dungeon.”

“I will consider it, my Lord. But I would very much like to live through the storm.”

“Yes, and we should continue with your instruction. Starting with the Dungeon Laws. First, we need to keep the army from using sheer numbers to overwhelm you. This is actually the simplest of the threats to deal with. Make a Dungeon Law so that any party or group of more than ten creatures, including familiars and animal companions, that enters your dungeon has their attributes reduced by 15% for each creature over ten, reducing all attributes to a minimum of 1 for the duration of their time within the dungeon. Meanwhile, dungeon creatures facing them have their attributes raised by 15% for each creature in the invading party over ten.”

When the dungeon spoke, he (the dungeon mind sounded like a he, at least) was clearly shocked. “So easy? I thought that it would have been harder to break the large raids that some guilds do to shelter the weak and force them to ‘power level’.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “It works, I assure you. And this will force them into smaller chunks, which you can then properly destroy. Second, you should put in a dungeon law forbidding the use of any teleportation or planar travel. A small exception for summoning, and reaching into a pocket dimension used for storage. I trust you to refine the wording of that law yourself.”

“Yes, yes! I see, that will keep people from escaping with their own magic, or opening portals to summon endless hordes that I would have to work to gain control of, if I ever could! Brilliant, my Lord!”

“Then you will love the next few pieces even more. Make Dungeon Laws to cut off communication between those who have not signed the dungeon contract. Other than the products of their own senses, in person, they would be cut off, and unable to communicate while in your dungeon. This will make it impossible to relay information to their allies until they are completely through the dungeon.

“And they will have to completely clear your dungeon to escape, because on ‘Nightmare’ mode, the entrance to each floor, including the first, shall be made into a one-way door, enforced by the System. For anyone who has signed the contract, everything would act normally. For those that haven’t? They would be forced to clear your dungeon, in groups of ten or less, and do so without any resupply or conferences with their allies.

“Now, for the biggest trap, you will create a Safe Zone in the first room of your entrance, before you get to the dungeon proper. In this room, you will have a minion, someone who can speak for you, get people to sign the contract, and manage the sale of the Escape Charms. If they are the zealous type, they will attack what they see as a monster or a minion of evil. This will trigger another Dungeon Law, prohibiting that individual, and any organizations they are a part of at the time of the offense, from benefiting from ANY magical items while in the dungeon. Even gear they wear will act as though it were a nonmagical item of its type, including how easy those items are to destroy.”

“Oh, I get it! The point isn’t to create some unstoppable force that would make the adventurers wary, and possibly consider that I’m going rogue. The point is to layer on enough inconveniences so that even the weakest enemies are able to dispatch them with ease!”

I felt a bit of pride in the fact that my new follower caught on so quickly. But then, he was a dungeon, and a follower of mine. That implied a certain level of cleverness as a baseline.

“Very good. Now, this is all as much preparation for the future, as it is for the current situation. But for the immediate problems, I’ll need to know more about your dungeon. How many floors do you have? What monsters do you have available to you?”

“Yes, I have fifty floors, being Level 30 of Tier 2. As for monsters, my starting type was Demons, though I also have some Slimes that I purchased through the DEN.”

“Oh, excellent. I can give you many tips on dealing with the slimes. If possible, you want to look for a few patterns on the DEN, if you don’t already have them. The Passionslime and the Slime Lord are both relatively weak on their own, especially to Tier 2 or 3 adventurers, but if you throw groups of them at foes who are already suffering, then you can seriously demoralize an enemy. And getting Passionslimes will allow you to use Enflaming Gas in traps.”

“Oh! I heard Exquisite Pleasures talking about those! They seemed very useful, especially since my adventurers have come to expect traditional poisons. I already have the Slime Lords through the System, but the Passionslimes are definitely something I’d like to get.”

“Good. Go ahead and do that. You know your own dungeon’s layout the best. Figure out where you can stage the traps and slimes to augment what you already have to the best effect. You want each floor to be a battle of attrition. In some areas, just have an endless horde of low-level slimes start attacking, driving the invaders forward so that they have to try and speedrun your dungeon, while not knowing about all the new monsters and traps, lest they be literally drowned beneath a tide of low-level slimes!”

“Is that what Exquisite Pleasures has done, my Lord?”

“No, but now that I thought of it, I am certainly going to recommend it to him. Fortunately, he has mostly moved to the point where he is useful enough to the outside world that people have a reason to encourage his continued existence, and all his enemies have found that the effort required to destroy him is not worth it, especially considering the losses they WILL take. So, it isn’t likely he’ll get any new challengers anytime soon.”

“I understand, my Lord. I will begin the changes at once.”

“One last thing. Before the zealots arrive, I would have you build me a shrine outside your entrance, so that I might speak with them. While I do not care if you slaughter them all to the last, I would forestall any open warfare with these churches, until the both of us are established enough that we can take them on, without risk. Ideally, I can turn them away with words, but the chance remains that they will not listen, which is why you must complete the other changes first, so you’ll be ready.”

“Your will be done, my Lord.”