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Chapter 592
“Ladies… ladies!” I stepped up just before the girls started a brawl. “I said… I love you all, no matter shape or size.”
Although it was a scummy line that should have gotten me kicked out of the room, with the power of my charm and harem affinity, it seemed to have an effect on the girls. However, before anyone could say anything else, a voice broke into the conversations.
“Th-that’s right!” A booming voice caught everyone’s ears.
There was a giantess sitting on a massive throne in front of us. That was the giantess dungeon boss I had conquered on the 30th floor. I had teleported everyone straight to the boss room, where it looked like the giantess had managed to set up shop. Actually, standing next to her was the siren, who was also nodding in agreement while looking at me with loving eyes.
“Eh? You two! Aren’t you my dungeon’s bosses! What are you doing here?” Elaya cried out.
“Hmph… Master gave me pleasure and made me feel like a woman. So, I naturally left your dungeon!” the giantess snorted, while the siren just kept nodding.
“Y-you… really stole my entire dungeon?” Elaya responded tearfully.
“You didn’t know?”
“When they are cut off from the dungeon, I feel their loss, but it’s not any different than if they died. Rather, I’d have much sooner expected you to defeat them. I didn’t realize my love is a dungeon poacher! Is that what I am to you? Another dungeon boss?”
“No…” I shook my head. “Actually, I’ll make you your own room with a means of reaching the surface. You won’t be a boss in my dungeon. I’d like these two girls to grow on their own instead.”
“Hehe… he called me a girl.” The giantess blushed in a very girly way, and even the siren was making seductive looks my way.
“Ah… I probably should name them…”
“Not yet,” Elaya said.
“Huh?”
“You’re a Monster Tamer, and they are unnamed monsters. At level 30, you get the skill Naming. You can bestow a name on a monster then, and it would cause them to grow stronger and evolve. If you do it beforehand, it may stunt their growth.”
“I see…” I nodded. “That is exactly what I need you for. I need your experience and knowledge.”
Elaya’s eyes flashed with a pleased expression. “In that case, to answer your other question, treasure has ranks. You’re a Dungeon Builder, not a Dungeon Master, so your progress is much slower than our own in what you can do with a dungeon. You’ll probably eventually unlock Dungeon Master with time, but for now, you must work within the confines of your ability. With respect to that, treasures cannot be selected. When you create a treasure, it is randomly made. Furthermore, there are levels of creation. I’m assuming your current Create Treasure is the weakest level. That means the magical artifacts you create will be quite weak.
“Furthermore, the treasure is also limited by the size of your dungeon. So, a dungeon of only ten levels such as this one is a small dungeon indeed. Sadly, only time will change things here.”
Astria broke in with a throaty laugh. “Says you! Master, the dungeon is ready to be expanded to level 20!”
“So soon!” Elaya made a noise of surprise.
“Don’t underestimate the production of a fairy spring! This dungeon is growing at an unimaginable rate! Although, it doesn’t hurt that I stole the miasma of your dungeon.”
“That’s what you did with it!” Elaya sighed, “Well since things turned out this way, I suppose it is for the best. The larger your dungeon, the more power it will have.”
“I also recommend that Master add some more concentrated Waters of Life into the fairy spring. We should expand it, so the dungeon’s consumption doesn’t exceed the output of the spring. I can teach Master how to produce more concentrated Waters of Life. It’s more taxing, but the richer it is, the more advantageous it will be, both as a potion and as a mana source.”
“So, Master, are you ready to expand your power?”
The two experienced women didn’t seem to give me any time to rest. I had kept them exactly because I wanted their experience, and they didn’t waste any time pushing me to start growing my assets. I had been away from Chalm for too long, so it was a good time to start focusing on being a lord.
“Expanding is what I’m good at!” I declared.
“Oh my!”
Chapter 593
“That last match was really scary! Master, the enemies are getting much stronger! I need your bonuses so that I don’t die!”
“Uh-huh…”
“Seriously, Master! My armor was severely damaged! A beauty like me almost got a scar! What would you do if you had slaves with scars! Other slavers would definitely look down on you.”
“Of course.”
“That’s why Master needs to buy me this armor I saw in the store! It’s very shiny… ahem… I mean, it’s very protective! Please increase my budget so I can buy it! The guys have already made a killing betting on me, but they won’t let me see a single penny! Plus, Sister snuck into my bed last night! She said she was cold, but then she touched this and that! Master, this can’t stand!”
“I see…”
“Your beautiful Paladin is putting her life on the line for her Master, and you definitely must give her the love and adoration she deserves!”
“Yup.”
“Are you listening to me, Master? Send me some money immediately…”
“Oop… caaaaaaaa… I seem… be… losing… reception…”
“What reception! This is a magical communication stone! You can definitely hear me fine! I even hear girls giggling in the background! Why am I the only slave who must sacrifice her life-“
“Oop… it’s a magical tunnel I’m going through… magic reception loss… keep up the hard work. Bye!” I turned off the magical stone and leaned back with a sigh.
When I sent them such a device and contacted them, it was more of a formality. I was just checking up on their progress. The ranked matches had begun, and she had already been through three such battles. However, the big matches didn’t even start until next week. That was when she could get eliminated. Yet, after an hour of listening to Carmine complain about everything, I was tempted to just give up on the gladiatorial race completely. However, a promise was a promise, so I held on.
It had been a week since I had returned from finishing Widow’s Dungeon. In that week, I had expanded the dungeon and the fairy spring. There were three dozen fairies caring for it now. I ended up getting swarmed when I went to visit, and Celeste ended up blowing them all away. Even then, I was nearly stripped naked. The giggling fairies took off and hid when Celeste went to punish them.
As for the dungeon, I had worked with Raissa and expanded the training facility per her observations with the troops. They had encountered the siren but not the giantess yet. As for the Queen, I made her a room which had a long hallway connected with the mansion. She complained when that entrance didn’t go directly to my room. I made sure it actually deposited nowhere near my room. This was for my own safety, of course.
This technically meant that the mansion functioned as a side entrance to our dungeon, in a similar way that Widow’s Dungeon had the mine. However, the Queen’s room required several extremely difficult conditions to enter. Technically, you could call her one of those end-game bonus bosses, but at the level of the troops entering the dungeon, this sort of thing would be impossible.
It did make me wonder what other secrets the Great Dungeons were hiding, considering what I could do with just this small one. Well, my dungeon was a little different from the get-go. Most curses developed naturally and were controlled by an ego that only gained intellect with time. While the dungeon bosses themselves protected the dungeon and pulled on its miasma, they didn’t usually directly interfere with its growth unless there was some need. As for me, my dungeon was designed and nurtured by me, so it was built with a more direct purpose. That purpose was training soldiers at the moment, although I eventually hoped to turn the dungeon into something like Dirage, where it could be a staple of our city.
At the moment, there were four safe rooms, one on the first, one on the 5th, one on the 9th, and one on the 14th. The siren trial was on the 10th, basically untouched from its original form. The 15th floor had the giantess, who was mostly just there as protection, although I did promise to visit her regularly. From what I understood, Astria and Elaya visited her too. Astria found the miasma to be thickest in her room, so when she was eating it, she stopped by. As for Elaya, she said that the giantess reminded her of Xin.
I asked her if the giantess was an actual representation of Xin. She admitted it was. Had Xin died, and the curse managed to get a hold of a piece of her soul, the corrupted boss might have ended up looking more like her, but this was the form that Xin took. She reminded me that while representative, they were not too similar. After all, the siren was representative of Elaya’s own desires, and it looked nothing like her. The giantess only had vague similarities to Xin. That was coming from my own memories delivered via the lore.
The 5th floor didn’t contain a mini-boss. I didn’t actually have the Summon Boss ability yet, so I could only tame strong monsters and use them as my bosses, and if any died, I wouldn’t be able to replace them. Well, with Raissa leading the soldiers on expeditions, it was pretty safe, and I didn’t worry too much.
Raissa still wasn’t showing yet, but I did hire a midwife who functioned as her assistant. I still didn’t have the guts to tell her I knew she was pregnant, and I didn’t know if Raissa knew herself. Well, the midwife was given explicit orders to make sure Raissa ate well and got plenty of rest. I think she figured it out pretty quickly, but that was fine. It wasn’t that I wanted it to be a secret, but that I thought Raissa would get depressed if she wasn’t the first to know.
Chapter 594
The city wall erected by Terra was finally completed. This was a rough wall of compressed dirt. It was nothing close to the grandeur of the Capital city, but considering it was erected in less than a month by a single person, it could be considered a miracle.
So far, we hadn’t gotten any signs from Bandits or monsters. Since we were in the wilderness, the Bandits avoided this area, as they considered it not worth the time. Besides the fact that few merchants made it this far west, there was also a certain level of danger given the monsters in this area. It would be far too much trouble to attack such an out of the way city that offered little wealth.
As for monsters, the Bandits didn’t know that the existence of Karr’s Dungeon had kept the place safe from monster attacks. The symbiotic relationship between Hell and the Demon King’s Castle was a rare event. Most dungeons were territorial and avoided each other. There were even records of some dungeons getting too close and then destroying each other.
After the destruction of Karr Dungeon, it turned out that Chalm had been protected by Astria. She was still a dungeon boss, so using the fairy spring I built, she had kept any monsters from attacking. Then, when I finally built my dungeon, it finally set in stone the safety of Chalm. Yet, now that Chalm was growing wealthier, it might start gaining the interest of certain Bandits. That was why the wall was built.
However, when it came to my war against Reign, the army still needed a month or two, and the city needed better protection. We’d have to start working on a real wall soon enough.
“I can do better,” Terra responded.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“My Earth Manipulation is getting better. I can compress the dirt to be many times firmer than before. If you give me time, Master, I can give you a city wall harder than steel!”
Terra took my desire to bring in labor as a personal challenge. Since Terra said to trust her, I definitely would. After completing the wall, she began working on improving it. She compressed the dirt over and over again. She gave me a sample of what the compressed dirt felt like, and it did approach a metal-like consistency. I was impressed. Plus, compared to the mound-like dirt wall that currently existed, the compressions had caused the surface to smooth out, giving the city wall a sandstone like appearance, except in a darker shade of brown that approached black. Actually, now that I looked at it, with grey streaks, it sort of looked like obsidian and gave the feeling of a dark or cursed wall that felt intimidating.
Well, no one ever said a city wall should be inviting. At least we were protected.
I checked on all of the girls, one after another. Lydia was giving out Swordsman drills to the most promising students. Celeste was flying around singing, which turned out to be a magic that caused good feelings and increased productivity. This sort of felt like population control, but I decided not to think about such things so much. Shao was in the dungeon, practicing her shadow control.
Miki was going around using her spiritualism to help people. She particularly focused on the elderly. It turned out that her time in the slave caravans had spread throughout the city, and she had grown into a bit of a popular consultant for those coping with loss and death. Although she never claimed to be able to talk to people’s ghosts like the spiritualists of my world, she seemed to be good at providing comfort to such people.
In fact, the only one who didn’t seem to have anything to do was me. I followed the Mayor around for a bit, but after two days of it, I felt like he was intentionally trying to avoid me. I then went to the Adventuring Guild to see if they needed any help, but no one was willing to be healed by me. Apparently, Mary had sent five Priests to Chalm, and they were working under a reduced rate for the next five years.
With nothing else to do, I decided to go relax in the spring. After pulling off my clothing, I walked up to the hot spring built in the back of our mansion. I had been working so hard since coming to this world, that it felt itchy not doing something. I suppose it was okay to sit back and relax for a bit after everything I had built.
Just as I thought it wasn’t so bad to take a load off, a magical circle suddenly appeared under me, and I felt the feeling of being transported. My vision changed from the calm bubbling of my hot spring to a throne room. The towel wrapped around my hips fell to the ground. I looked around to see a room full of people. There was a supply of reagents on the ground, and I was standing on a magical formation that resembled something like that Blue Mage drew.
“A… summoning circle?” I asked in wonder.
“D-Deek! Your clothing!” Eliana covered her eyes.
“Hehe… he’s bold even in summons!” Prince Edward nodded.
“Silence!” The King bellowed. “I have you now! You thought you could hide in your city after what you did? Guards! Kill him!”