A Dungeon Boss's Journal Chapter 7

Day 31

“[Dungeon Administration] has reached level 2, following this 2 additional floors are permitted, teleportation pads are now usable, and minion limit has been raised to 94.”

“Because of [Blessing of the Underworld], you may spawn the experience buffing monster Death Crow. Only one at this time.”

I went from only two floors to working with 4, can spawn 94 minions, something called a Death Crow was unlocked.

According to the summery on it, Death Crow is a rather passive lower class scavenger monster. In terms of fighting ability they are about the same as a goblin. However they are a rather unique sort of scavenger, rather to leveling up or living off flesh and water like most monsters and humanoids, they live off being around death. Experience, substance, they gather around places where people and animals are dying. As long as they are nearby they gain experience from that death. Their natural skill [Death Watch], is separate from the experience they might get from actually dealing the final blow. Meaning they gain double the experience. If I linked it to my dungeon, as long as they are near fights in my dungeon, that means double the experience, spreading the gains for everyone. A useful monster given to me by [Narull] as far as I could tell. The Death Crow is known for it’s pitch black form with glowing red eyes, but beyond that it has a human shape, [Humanoid Blend] in order to sneak into crowds so that they can get close enough to their prey if their bird form is not enough.

Of course I spawned it immediately. As a bird she was the same grey as all my minions, but any time she was near a shadow, her form disappeared blending in perfectly to the shadows. As a human she was rather soft looking, with incredibly pale skin and deep black eyes. A sort of weak form that seems like it was intended to entrance rather then blend in. But that may be the perfect disguise given how often weak looking women are protected by human adventurers.

Beyond that, for a bird she was incredibly smart, smarter then Faye in fact, smarter then even Ash when she was first spawned. After a few minutes observing her abilities I started reading off names Ash and me wrote up several days ago, in preparation for any later spawns of mine. Out of them she picked, Morrígan, hero class mage who slaughtered her way through several battle fields single handed in order to protect her family.

Adventurer immortality comes passing the test of one of the various gods. Passing the test of what the god values in adventurers gives them the ability to re-spawn from death and a boosted experience rate. Beyond these advantages, they are put under several rules, and if they break those rules their soul is destroyed. A extreme form of punishment to counter the risk unkillable beings come with.

There are apparently rules among adventurers that they can’t kill humanoids or monsters unless they fill out specific conditions or are given permission to do so. In order to kill anything beyond wild animals or the re-spawning monsters in dungeons they need to find a ‘quest’, a quest being a goal that the god they were immortalized by approves of. If they don’t gain a quest telling them to kill a monster or humanoid, they simply can’t kill. If a rule the god they are immortalized by says they can’t do something, then they simply can’t do it.

Morrígan was unable to gain permission from her god to protect her family, no matter how she begged she was not given the quest, yet still ran off into war, winning it, but having her soul destroyed in the process.

Given how much emotion is put into the piece, I suppose it’s meant to be a touching tale. But I didn’t really find it all that interesting. To much focus on how the hero felt, and not enough on the fighting. But Morrígan enjoyed the name and seemed to like and understand the story behind it, picking it.

According to Ash, Death Crows are one of the fewer lower class monsters that can speak if given enough time. A species that learns quickly as they gain experience points.

So I will have another speaking companion given time.

I decided to have her shadow Felix for now in order to learn his sneaking tactics. Once she learns how to stalk adventurers and stay hidden well enough, I will have her wait at the beginning of the dungeon, hanging around as close as possible to any potential fights for the extra experience. She didn’t seem to like Felix, but since their skills overlap and he is more experienced, she will have to get over it.

After I was done sorting that I started revamping my floor plan.

I moved my throne room to the lowest floor again, the 4th floor, before turning the 2 new floors into mazes with the same theme as the first layer, creating a network of dead ends, treasure chest, and traps. After doing that I added in various shortcuts for my minions so that they can slip between the different floors and throughout the maze. I moved my dungeon mid-boss to the new 3rd floor and placed Faye on the 1st floor, creating a miniature network of castles for her to hide her summoned wood dolls in, in order to make it easier for her to use the creatures for ambushes. While she is not labeled a mid-boss, she clearly has the right abilities to work as a lower class one. Today happened to be good timing, her natural skill to spawn wood dolls ranked up, she can now summon two ‘classes’ of wood doll, warrior dolls, which come with their own swords, and archer dolls that can fire dart like arrows. With this new environment, she should quickly become equivalent to a second mid-boss monster.

Beyond that. depending on how well Morrígan does, and how much her experience boost goes as she levels the skill up, I might have room for another monster or two without slowing down the level up’s too much. There are a few other monsters I would like to spawn but can’t because it would eat away too much experience from my other minions.

As for there teleport pads, they’re far too expensive for me at the moment.

Nothing else interesting happened that day.

Day 32

Morrígan is doing a rather poor job of sneaking around, often getting Felix and her caught up in fights with adventurers, as Felix has next to no fighting experience, often killed any time he’s spotted, and Morrígan was only born yesterday, they were slaughtered almost every time.

Because of that I decided to call them into my throne room half way through the day and spent the rest of the day training them to avoid me, punching them if they let me get close. I took it easy on them, intentionally giving them plenty of room to avoid me, but they were pretty much just as easy to catch as they were from the get go.

It will likely take a few days to a few months of training before they can really avoid me even when I go easy at this rate. I’ll need to train them using weaker targets.

Maybe Brook?

Nothing else happened really. It was surprisingly peaceful.

Day 33

Today I came across my first summoner.

Of my minions, Faye and Cerberus are capable of summoning spirits to fight by their side. But these spirits are a aspect of their own species, a natural skill that my [Skill Learn] seems incapable of capturing it, likely because I lack the parts to copy them. A part of my mind seems obsessed with the idea that boss monsters should have some level of summoning, extra creatures they can endlessly call upon to balance up fights against larger groups of adventurers.

So when I saw this summoner, a level 19 elf girl, only a few levels away from ranking up her class and learning a second one, she was half buried in some sort of multi-colored robe with as equally colorful pointed hat on her head. So I couldn’t really name her features other then sharp eyes and long black hair.She was relying on beast like summoned monsters in order to get through my maze like first floor.

I was ecstatic to say the least.

Rather then allow her to die to my maze I drew her in further, only allowing my minions to kill her summons and intentionally bait her around the first floor in order to make her more and more loose her way.

Those summons, I wanted them so bad that I started leaving all sorts of hp and mp potions around in order to keep her going. She eventually stopped to rest after most of the day was through after finally making it to the second floor.

By the end of the day I learned, [Lesser wolf Summon], [Lesser bear Summon], and [Lesser spider Swarm Summon]. As the skills get stronger, so do the summoned creatures, and all of them are capable of ranking up. I am free to summon as many as I like as long as I have enough mana and they persist until detail.

Useful backup for my minions without slowing down experience gain.

Like my minions these summoned creatures are all grey instead of what ever natural color they were. Like all of their colorful details have been washed out by what ever I am.

She had more powerful summons, and I plan to learn them all before I am done with her.

After a entire day of fighting on the second floor she finally blacked out.

Day 34

The elf summoner slept in, after she blacked out yesterday she must have assumed she died, and when she realized she was still alive, I suppose she mistook the place as a safe zone. So she stayed there most of the day, likely resting and preparing herself for the rest of my dungeon.

Since she refused to move I spent most of the day fighting using only my new summons, chugging so many mp potions that by the time the summoner started moving the entire first floor was filled with grey wolves, bears, and spiders.

Even though I’ve been wasting mp potions and throwing them around that summoner elf I still have more then I could ever hope to use. Going to need to figure out a use for these things, their not all that valuable, so don’t work very well as bait.

Anyway, I learned [Lesser Fire Elemental Summon], and [Lesser Earth Elemental Summon].

Same rules as the previous summon-able creatures.

Grey fire is really weird to look at.

Anyway!

She made it all the way to Cerberus but almost died. I decided to save her, leaving her somewhere in the maze like 3rd floor with plenty of hp and mp potions. I would have given her food or something, but that’s a bit outside of my abilities. Luckily she seems to have planned for this being a long venture, she had a bag full of food and drinks on her, so she should be fine.

Day 35

After waking up the Summoner Elf decided to wait most of the day away again, so I spent most of the day fighting adventurers and filling the second level with elemental's as I went. This is the most lively my dungeon has ever been.

I want more summons.

Luckily it seems like I’ll have plenty of chances.

As most of the adventurer population died down the summoner elf attempted to contact whoever saved them. Apparently the day before and now she had been waiting around hoping that her savior would show up.

So since she started calling for me, I figured I might as well appear.

She started screaming.

You’d think a adventurer would be used to seeing monsters but she seemed scared of me.

Since she wanted to talk before she saw me, and was the first to try since Anna and Alex I decided to wait for her to cool down. I sat down cross legged and just waited there.

After what felt like hours she seemed to calm down enough to realize I was not attacking her. Hiding herself even further in her robes she finally started talking, saying, “Y-you’re that ‘Grey Lord’ everyone's been talking about? I-i-i, just wanted to thank you for supporting me.”

“Your summoning abilities were interesting, so I figured keeping you alive would be more interesting.” I replied.

“You talked!?”

“So did you.”

“Y-yeah but I’m-...”

“An elf? A Summoner?”

“I-i..”

“Hm, after a book I read, I’ve come to call myself Zeno.”

“What?”

“I’ve been told sharing names is how people first introduce themselves.”

“O-oh...That’s true.” The summoner said, staring at me, unsure what to do.

“And your name is?”

“Gabrielle OakWood...”

“Quite a mouthful...hm, so miss Gabi, what did you want to talk to me about?”

“I-i just wanted to thank you for all of the potions and letting me l-l-level up my skills and class so much.”

“I suppose my help was a bit too obvious.”

“Ye-yeah.”

While she was quite a nervous creature, I suppose she might just be afraid of me.

Hehe.

“Anything you want to talk about then? Nobody who comes in here wants to talk normally, I’d like to learn a bit more about what you adventurers do when not trying to kill me.”

“Sorry!”

“No, thank you for talking to me.”

After a short conversation I offered her the right to fight me, to visit my throne room to talk more, or a shortcut out of the dungeon.

After all, I am the kind sort of monster if one ignores how I trapped her in here for 3 days now.

I think.

She decided to leave, as she was tired and running out of supplies, but wanted to be able to contact me again, curious about me and surprisingly happy to learn that I liked history books and seemed to be interested in works of fiction. So I told her that I would meet her next time I saw her enter my dungeon before letting her out.

It would be nice if she actually returns and wasn’t just running away in fear of me.

Day 30

~-??? perspective-~

“-and then the great mother said ‘From my flesh I gave you life, and through work and effort one can hold onto that life even by the knife. To feed and be eaten for the greater whole of my world, my pride and price.’ Now many focus on ‘to feed and be eaten’, a reference to the kill or be killed world of adventurers. How often they empower themselves or their enemies in death and killing. But the ‘price’ is far more important. What is the price of our unkillable bodies? ” A short gnome in gold lined grey robes shouted his sermon, his voice filled with a passion that seemed twisted in his childish voice. “The great mother [Narull] is a glorious goddess of life. That is what the world says, and indeed they are right!”

He’s standing on a podium decorated with bones and flowers, a odd mix of life and death, well lit under torch light in a massive tent, a wall of people in grey robes with gold lining all stared silently, hanging on his every word.

“But the tragedy is that they forget the death that [Narull] also entails. From her left is a beautiful maiden, dressed with such savagery and gentleness that none can hope to look away. From her right is a beautiful corpse, rotten, putrid, covered in such harsh and brutal wounds, for those unprepared, it is...blinding. They forget that she is not just the greater goddess of life and the planet, but also of death and the underworld. Through this ignorance they refuse to question why such a fair goddess would give us this escape from her domain. You see-”

Outside of the massive tent is a complex of half finished buildings, it’s only been a few days, but the network of tents called [GreyRune] was actually starting to turn into a town. One lined with the white marble Adventurers had been gathering from the local dungeon. Of course dungeon towns normally don’t pop up over night. They often take months to years to start developing when a dungeon is found. But a wealthy group came in, using their connections to the kingdoms nobles to speed up the development. In order to speed it up further, the various followers of this group brought in all sorts of adventurers, tying them up in all sorts of emotional and economic connections so that they stayed in the town. Of those emotionally invested, a rule existed where family and friends who are not part of the following had to wait outside. Because of this a massive line had formed around the tent, all unwilling to convert to that following but unwilling to leave the one who dragged them to this newly formed town.

In this line of people was a Knight Templar, dressed in thick silver armor, muttering to herself at how she shouldn’t have chased after the elf like her mother said. For the past few days, the boyfriend she was so proud of was using her to feed some weird grey hobgoblin. The creature even started using her [Lesser Regeneration] skill after a few fights. A skill that took most of her childhood to learn after being beaten and healed over and over again. Seeing that creature pick it up so easily was almost as painful as what she endured to gain that skill.

That thing was brutal in how it fought, and had a horrifying number of skills at it’s disposal. Even if she would just come back from death, doesn't mean she wants to get killed so much. Yet her previously kind and understanding man and all his friends left her alone to fight that thing. Claiming it was all to help [Narull]’s child grow. Which was quite weird to her since as far as she knew, everyone was technically [Narull]’s child, given she was the goddess of life and all.

Why was that thing so special?

That thing was giving her nightmares, yet her boyfriend kept bragging to that cult of his about how many skills it copied off her.

‘This sucks’ she thought.

But the thing that sucked the most was...

The guy she chased after, the guy she left her old life behind for won’t even call her by her name anymore...