Chapter 25: Business as Usual
"Up we go."
She tipped the beast’s body into the Heart, which swallowed it without a sound.
[ Absorbing 1 Faceless Devourer corpse. ]
[ Calculating amount of mana harvested... ]
[ The Dungeon Heart has absorbed 613 mana points. ]
Freya lingered in front of the window for a moment, rereading the number without quite believing it.
She’d approached the Heart full of curiosity, wondering what a creature like that would be worth, even what would happen if the gain went over a thousand — whether her reserve would overflow, or the cap would raise itself.
Instead, all she’d gotten was six hundred and thirteen points, which, for a Rank S beast supposedly reigning at the top of the food chain, was frankly ridiculous. Not counting anomalies of Aria’s sort, of course.
Thinking it over a little, the only explanation that held was that the thing had never been a creature of mana, but rather one of raw force, built entirely on physical stats. It fit well enough with what she’d seen in the tunnel, and she shivered just remembering it.
I’ll ask Aria when I run into her.
She pulled up her mana with a thought.
[ Mana: 785/1000 ]
Some time ago, a number like that would have had her screaming with joy and dancing across the chamber. Tonight, she simply noted it and moved on, her mind already turned toward what came next.
"System, I want to buy the Buildings category upgrade to level 3."
[ Spend 300 mana points to raise the Buildings category to level 3? ]
"Yes."
The window that unfolded before her was so long her jaw dropped.
[ You have unlocked five new buildings! ]
[ Magic Plant Greenhouse — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 100 mana ] Allows the cultivation of several species of magical plants. Requires a Gardener Mycofox. Consumes 1 mana point per day.
[ Slime Farm — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 100 mana ] Uses mana to generate slimes and breed them intensively. Requires a Breeder Mycofox. Consumes 2 mana points per day.
[ Slaughterhouse — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 100 mana ] Allows the painless killing of intensively farmed stock to obtain their loot. Requires a Butcher Mycofox.
[ Alchemy Workshop — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 150 mana ] Allows the crafting of any type of potion from magical plants and loot. Requires an Alchemist Mycofox. Consumes 2 mana points per day.
[ Spatial Trap — Level 1 (0/5) — Cost: 50 mana ] Displaces any intruder that steps on it to a set point. Consumes 0.1 mana points per day.
[ Building count increased! ]
[ Servants’ Quarters: limit raised to 2 buildings. ]
[ Trapped Corridor: limit raised to 5 buildings. ]
She’d barely finished skimming the lines when another notification opened over the first ones.
[ Anomaly detected! ]
[ Congratulations! As the Overlord of Greed, you unlock an exclusive building on top of the others! ]
[ Cabinet of Wonders — (unique) — Cost: 1000 mana ] As the personification of Greed, allows you to proudly display, in a bottomless hall, all the wonders of the world, be they weapons or trophies of war. Grants its owner a passive mana yield proportional to the number of unique treasures it contains. Requires a Warden of Wonders Mycofox.
Faced with all the promises scrolling past her eyes, she couldn’t hold back a small exclamation, her mind already racing to untangle what each line implied.
What struck her first was the way the buildings slotted into one another, since the greenhouse supplied the plants and the farm supplied the loot, and it was precisely those two resources the alchemy workshop needed to run.
A new chain was taking shape, exactly the way the farm and its neighbors had earlier. Her brain had already run three buildings ahead, calculating yields, when another thought — a less cheerful one — caught it mid-flight.
...Isn’t this a little cruel, for the poor slimes?
The idea of stock raised "intensively" for the sole purpose of being sent to the slaughter had something unsettling about it, when you stopped to think.
An automatic mob farm that ran on its own and churned out loot on a loop without her having to lift a finger — that was every gamer’s absolute dream, the kind of setup she’d spent hours optimizing in her old games. Except here the mobs let out little cries, bred for real and died for real, and transposed into real life, the idea weighed on her far more than she’d expected.
Her gloomy mood wasn’t helping, and she let herself drift for a moment along that grey train of thought, picturing whole litters born in a room they’d only ever leave to die.
Then something clicked, and her face brightened all at once.
I don’t have to send all of them to the slaughter, actually.
Nothing was stopping her from keeping some of them, after all, whether to let loose in the dungeon or even out in the surrounding area to make the terrain more hostile to invaders.
They were only slimes, sure, but if the farm produced them in bulk, their sheer number would end up counting for something — and who knew, with a bit of luck, some of them might even evolve. At the very least, a few would get the chance to live a real life instead of ending up as loot.
Give and take.
Her mood climbed back up little by little as that far more cheerful prospect took over from the previous one.
The spatial traps weren’t to be outdone either, and she already had an idea in mind — as precise as it was fiendish — of exactly how she meant to use them.
That left the last building on the list, the one that belonged to her and her alone, this famous Cabinet of Wonders.
Once again, the system is pushing me to plunder and conquer to grow, as if everything in its rules were carved for that single purpose.
That said, she had no reason to complain, since it was already the direction she’d chosen to take, and owning a bottomless museum at home that paid out passively was nothing to turn her nose up at.
She finished her full pass through the list, glanced at the mana she had left [ Mana: 485/1000 ], and moved straight on to the next step.
"System, upgrade the Summons category."
[ Spend 300 mana points to raise the Summons category to level 3? ]
"Yes."
[ You have unlocked four new summons! ]
[ Gardener Mycofox — Level 1 (0/1) — Rank E — Cost: 20 mana ] Tends and maintains the Greenhouse’s magical plants. Can tell a mature species from a single sniff.
[ Breeder Mycofox — Level 1 (0/1) — Rank E — Cost: 20 mana ] Watches over the Farm’s stock and oversees its breeding. Grows attached to its beasts despite itself.
[ Butcher Mycofox — Level 1 (0/1) — Rank E — Cost: 20 mana ] Kills the Slaughterhouse’s stock painlessly and extracts the usable loot. Grows attached to nothing.
[ Alchemist Mycofox — Level 1 (0/1) — Rank E — Cost: 20 mana ] Distills plants and loot into potions in the Alchemy Workshop. Its failure rate is proportional to its enthusiasm.
[ Summon count increased! ]
[ Soldier Mycofox: limit raised to 10 units. ]
[ Congratulations! As the Overlord of Greed, you unlock an exclusive summon on top of the others! ]
[ Warden of Wonders Mycofox — Level 1 (0/1) — Rank S — Cost: 1000 mana ] Watches over the Cabinet of Wonders and every piece resting within it. Keeps inventory of everything its master owns, and lets no one leave with anything whatsoever. Its master included.
Nothing particularly surprising in this batch, all in all, since it was just the Mycofoxes that went with the buildings she’d unlocked.
With the notable exception of the extension that raised her soldier limit to ten units. Or rather nine, she corrected silently, her hand closing around her own arm.
...Anyway.
A shadow passed over her, but she shook her head and forced herself to move on, determined not to wallow more than necessary.
She had a hundred and eighty-five mana points left, and the dozens of corpses still littering the chamber floor would easily have let her do far more.
But she didn’t want to push back the Gacha’s cooldown any further, wanting to be able to run it again as early as possible the next day.
"System, run the Gacha."
[ Initiating Gacha! ]
A wheel materialized in the air before her and began spinning at full speed, its symbols and letters blurring into an unreadable streak. Then it slowed, and stopped.
[ Rank A+! ]
Oh?
The light gathered at the center of the chamber into a silhouette whose height forced her to look up far higher than she’d expected, all the way up to nearly two meters of armor.
The first thing that unsettled her wasn’t the size, though, but the silence — because those two meters of dark plate, without the slightest gap or a single inch of skin exposed, had risen before her without producing the faintest note of metal.
The second thing she noticed a moment later, and it was of an entirely different nature.
Far from hiding the body it enclosed, the steel hugged it. The breastplate wrapped around a heavy chest, far too generous for war armor; the waist pinched in beneath the plates before the hips flared out; and the cuisses clung to a full backside they outlined without the slightest modesty.
The whole thing, traced right into the black metal, was frankly indecent, while a heavy dark sword hung across the creature’s back, its guard jutting up over the shoulder.
Good grief...
Everything about that silhouette should have suggested nothing but a war machine and nothing else, and yet, planted there in the red glow of the Heart, it gave off something so distinctly disturbing that Freya felt her cheeks heat up in spite of herself.
A disorienting blend of sensuality and raw force, which left her, for a moment, not quite sure where to look.
[ Congratulations! You have summoned Mei, Black Knight, Rank A+ ]
The notification pulled a smile from her that she didn’t bother to hold back, since it was, after all, through her subordinates that she herself grew stronger — and this one promised a great deal.
The seconds ticked by, however, and the armor stayed planted there without making the slightest move, which eventually threw her.
But why is she just standing there like that, not saying anything? Isn’t a summon supposed to introduce itself, ask where it is, something?
"Uhh... Mei, right?" she tried, just to break the ice.
The armor flinched so violently that those two meters of war plate gave an outright hop in place, before the gauntlets rushed to meet each other in front of the breastplate, wringing together nervously.
The legs pressed together, the head sank into the shoulders, and the visor fixed obstinately on its own boots, as if the floor had suddenly become fascinating.
Then came the trembling.
It started in the hands and spread through the whole body in an instant, a vibration so rapid the steel looked blurred in places, and the plates finally began to clatter against one another in a tiny frantic rattle that ran across the entire armor, while the pommel of the black sword swayed on her back like a metronome in a panic.
She looked like a schoolgirl planted behind the gymnasium, wringing her fingers and staring at her feet, all that courage gathered over days to confess her feelings and not one word willing to come out. Except the schoolgirl was two meters tall and wore black war armor.
Oh no... Freya felt the dread rising. No no no, I’ve got a bad feeling. Don’t tell me the high rank is hiding something under there too, exactly like with Aria...
"...Yes?" Freya prompted cautiously, already bracing, deep down, for the worst.
"Uh... I’m... I’m..."
The voice was climbing in steps, each syllable a little higher than the last, and Freya felt it coming a second too late.
"I’m ME-ME-ME-MEIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"
The shout literally knocked her off her feet, and she found herself sitting on her backside, palms flat on the stone and eyes wide, while the echo of the cry bounced from wall to wall before dying somewhere at the far end of the corridor.
In front of her, the armor had frozen for a second, as if surprised at itself for managing it, before starting to tremble all over again.
What in the world did I just summon again, seriously...
Then she got up, brushed off her suit, and took a long breath to pull herself together. An overpowered summon with a screw loose, the second one in a row.
Business as usual.
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