บท 172: Completing the quest
"Welcome back!"
The army of monsters finally made it back to the dungeon after the long journey from the Vicious Rhino Tribe. They were exhausted. Nevertheless, the harpies rushed to the entrance where Harriet was waiting for them.
Five watched the heartwarming scene and smiled. He recognized the harpies but did not remember their names. There were too many and Five had already decided to distance himself from the harpies a little bit. He still talked to them as usual but he would no longer be biased toward them. The harpies were all different; some were older while others looked as young as a fifteen-year-old child. It was Harriet who named them but for some reason, their names all started with 'a'.
He turned his attention to the other monsters approaching and focused in particular on the new Boss Monsters. He received several system prompts earlier informing him that he unlocked new monsters. The Undead army looked quite impressive.
"Good job, Dreidus." Five nodded at the lich who was closely followed by Lyra, the new Wailing Lady.
"Let's go inside. We do not want to attract unnecessary attention."
As the sun was still up and many barbarians were roaming through the dungeon, the monsters entered using the back entrance. They went through the waterfall and used the backstage tunnels to return to their floors.
"Wait. The Dreadknights and the Wailing Ladies should stay behind. It would be inappropriate for you to guard the same floors as you got stronger. Your friends who stayed back to guard the dungeon also evolved. For now, you will stay in this unused biome, away from the eyes of the barbarians."
"While you have all evolved, I can still summon normal Death Knights and Banshees. They will be the ones protecting your previous floors in your steed. We will make arrangements for you soon," commanded Five. He had already been preparing for the monsters' return.
Dreidus nodded to the monsters. They obediently stepped to the side, allowing the other monsters to return to their floor.
"Master, we also brought a lot of items from the village. The monsters will deposit everything in the storage area of the workshop. We don't know what will be useful. There are also some relics that we obtained; they are with Alice."
"Good job, Dreidus. I knew you could do it," praised Five.
"Truth be told, we would not have succeeded without Ishan's help. He was the one who took down the chief and the Shaman of the tribe," replied Dreidus as he looked at the Flame Scarab Warrior. The latter displayed a proud expression.
Five was amused at Ishan's actions. 'Looks like he adapted quite quickly to the situation.' It has only been a few days since Ishan was summoned. With the massive amount of DP being produced every day by the Blue Eagle Tribesmen, Five no longer hesitated and summoned the Flame Scarab Warrior. He was already planning on building up the Volcanic Biome and would need someone to look after those monsters.
When he was first summoned, Ishan immediately rebelled. He was the same monster that belonged to Bugtopia. There, he was the strongest monster of the dungeon but unfortunately, he was at the auction's venue when Five destroyed the dungeon.
He was very happy with his life at Bugtopia and after learning that his home was destroyed, Ishan was enraged. He was once again summoned and this time by the very person who destroyed his home. Ishan immediately tried to attack but with Harriet and Dreidus looking after Five, he was bound to fail.
He was forced to swear allegiance under the coercion of Five's monsters and under the combined pressure of [Frenzy] and [Hysteria]. Five did not think much of him; he believed Ishan would just become a lazy monster. It was clear that his heart was not really there but to his surprise, Ishan proved himself in this battle.
'Looks like he is not the type to be let down by the circumstances. He adapted and is still trying to make a name for himself.'
"Good. Ishan, I am aware I did not take your opinion into consideration when building your floor. Take a hundred thousand DP and go modify the Volcanic Biome as you see fit. Actually, Dreidus and Angela should also get that same amount of DP. Angela will speak to the beasts and see whether there is a need for some improvement in the forest biome," declared Five.
He was in a good mood seeing the success of the attack. Furthermore, he had a few million in reserve; there was no need to be conservative. He saved a lot to summon back the two remaining totem spirits in his possession but in the end, he was not ready to summon them yet. Despite the nerf to the DP generation system, he was still making huge profits every day.
The Blue Eagle Tribesmen no longer spent their entire day sitting in the dungeon; they had other things to do at the village. Nevertheless, there were still three hundred Blue Eagle Tribesmen that came to tend to the fields.
"Thank you. Not that the environment is bad but there are a few improvements that we can make," commented Ishan.
Five chose not to comment. Instead, his eyes landed on the Horned Rhinoceros. "Are they the mounts of the Vicious Rhino Tribe?"
"I think they were trying to tame them for this purpose but the problem was their numbers. They only managed to raise twenty of them which is far from enough."
"It's good. They have been tamed to some extent but they are still wild. Bring them inside. We'll convince them to join the dungeon later."
...
[System prompt: Your monsters have attacked and destroyed the entity: Cobra Nest. You are awarded 999 Destruction Points.]
[System prompt: Congratulations, Player Five. You have completed the quest: "The Third Trial". Rewards will be distributed at the end of the quest's duration. Note that it is possible to upgrade your final reward by collecting more Destruction Points. Time left: 12 days and 17 hours.]
"The last Cobra has been killed. I received the notification that we destroyed the Cobra Nest," declared Five.
"So that means we passed the trial? Wasn't that a little too easy?" asked Dreidus. At the same time, he was using [Dead Mind], coordinating the monsters roaming around the Musclewood Forest in search of the Cobras.
Killing these snakes was a piece of cake. The monsters were already more powerful than the reptiles and there was still no sign of the Cobra King. Furthermore, as the temperature was already quite low, the snakes spent their time hidden, in brumation. They were less active and weaker in this period of the year.
"It might have been easy for us but that is not necessarily the case for others. First, we don't know how the Destruction Points are calculated. Some dungeons might have to destroy a lot of entities to pass the trial. But the most important part is that we are attacking instead of defending!"
"It means we are attracting attention to our dungeons. It can be a good thing if the dungeons get more visitors but at the same time, the attacks might attract powerful existences that dungeons cannot deal with yet."
Dreidus paused for a moment. "I see. Attacking the people outside is like poking a hornet nest. They ignored us and farmed at our dungeon because we were passive but now that we attacked, they might feel threatened."
"Yes. In our case, we were quite lucky that the Vicious Rhino Tribe attacked the Musclewood Tribe first. It should not create additional enmity. And as you saw, neutral entities like the Cobra Nest provided a much smaller amount of Destruction Points. However, that does not mean that we can just rest now that we have completed the quest."
"We should use it as an opportunity to get rid of the other dungeon. Angela spoke to the Shamans. According to them, the most likely target of the dungeon, if he is going for the tribes, will be the Brown Bat Tribe or the Pronghorn Tribe. Although the situation has been diffused, there is still some hostility between them and the Swift Gazelle Tribe due to the incident involving the Bramble Deer Tribe," explained Five.
"So you want to use these two tribes as baits and possibly ambush the monsters of the dungeon?" asked Dreidus.
"That would be the ideal case. Who asked him to try to us first? He needs to pay for his actions. It might even be possible for us to attack the dungeon after eliminating its monsters outside. The problem is the Swift Gazelle Tribe. I don't know if they came to an agreement but at the very least, the dungeon should be attacking alone. If they don't do 80% of the work, they won't receive any Destruction Points."
Dreidus nodded. "No wonder Harriet was sending so many harpies and Blue Eagle on those scouting missions. You were keeping an eye on that dungeon but we need to be careful. They might be doing the same thing. Furthermore, we are too far away from these tribes. It would take almost an entire day to reach there. Only flying monsters can travel there quickly but even then, it would take them a few hours."
"I know. We'll need to think about this. I already asked the Shamans to send a messenger to these two tribes, to warn them to be ready for the battle. The next step should be to dispatch some of our monsters to a set up a small camp close to these tribes. This way, they would be able to react quickly and take the other dungeon by surprise."
"Speaking about our monsters. They improved quite a bit using Necromancy but you've also brought back quite a few corpses. I was not planning on that but do you think we should summon Bonesmen? They are good at Engineering and should be able to help you convert the corpses," asked Five. Although he was reluctant to summon even more Undead Monsters, he knew Bonesmen would be a great addition to the dungeon.
They were previously not required as Five believed that Dreidus could simply slowly convert all the corpses into Living Corpses. But now that the system was asking him to go on the offensive, he would without a doubt end up collecting more bodies. It would be a waste to not enlist them into his army.
"Bonesmen for Necromancy? It might be a good idea. The Tinyland Village you built for the craftsmen should be able to accommodate them. With more Necromancers, this place is going to look more and more like Necro Valley," answered Dreidus.
"Is that a bad thing? We can never have enough monsters."
"Copying and absorbing the positive points of the different forces might be a good thing. Necro Valley is a powerful entity but unless you copy its entire system, you are bound to fail. Unfortunately, it will be impossible to implement their system here and you also shouldn't."
"For example? What should we not take from Necro Valley?" asked Five with a curious expression.
"Necro Valley is the only place in the world where you can find human farms. Countless areas are used for farming humans. The female there are almost permanently pregnant as soon as they come to age. As for the male, they work as slaves during the day and spend the night impregnating women. It would be more accurate to describe humans living there as animals. They are literally raised as cattle and most of them do not even know how to speak."
"Thousands of humans are killed every day and are turned into Living Corpses. Then, the Necromancers perform additional rituals to refine them. As the Living Corpses were malnourished people when they were alive, they are pretty weak. The Living Corpses are used as building blocks to create the higher existences of Necro Valley."
"Twelve Living Corpses can be combined together to form a Corpse Slave. Then, twelve Corpse Slaves are again combined together to form a Corpse Servant. This cycle repeats itself and the corpse continue to become stronger and stronger. The corpse stages are as follows: Slave, Peasant, Servant, Squire, Knight, Noble, Lord, Commander, and King. With each stage, the strength of the corpses goes up by ten levels. Considering the level of the Living Corpses from the barbarians, once refined, they should all become Corpse Servants."
"This is why Necro Valley is so powerful. Using the human farms, it produces many Living Corpses every day. They are all refined and integrated into the existing corpses. Naturally, each fusion has a chance of failure but still, after so many years, Necro Valley has a few powerful beings guarding it. The higher-ups also refined their own body. When they fuse the corpses, the twelve consciousness battle it out and only one survives and take control over the new body. With the system Necro Valley has in place, the consciousness of the corpses is almost inexistent aside from those of the higher-ups."
Five and Harriet attentively listened to Dreidus' explanation. They were getting an insider look at the working of Necro Valley. They previously thought the holy land of the Necromancers was a place full of Undead roaming around. But now, they were learning that the valley was actually full of life. All the Undead were concentrated in those few powerful beings.
"I see and I suppose there is something similar for liches since you said they were trying to absorb you into their system," tentatively said Five.
"Yes. Necro Valley tries to keep the majority of the humans they breed stupid. They usually just leave them to their natural instinct but every year, they take a few humans and actively teaches them magic. This is because, in order to become liches, they need to have a certain understanding of magic."
"The one qualified obtains better treatment while the untalented one gets discarded and turned into normal corpses. I was one of the few who learned Necromancy but, in the end, even I could not escape my fate. They wanted to turn me into a lich, but I escaped in time. The lich stages are slightly different. They are Initiate, Apprentice, Journeyman, Evoker, Conjurer, Wizard, Warlock, Mage and Arch-Mage," explained Dreidus.
"Then, were you planning on doing something similar in the dungeon?" asked Five.
"I will not hide it. I indeed did have this intention which is why I did not use Necromancy on myself to turn me into an Elder Lich. If I do so, I would lock myself out of this system for good. In the future, we would have a lot of Living Corpses. It might be better to combine their strength into a few monsters but my knowledge of Necromancy is limited. I can only upgrade them up to Corpse Noble which would be within the range of level 60 and level 70."
"Wow. That's a lot. And you say we need twelve corpses at the same stage to move to the next one? And there is still a chance of failure? I wonder how many people Necro Valley killed to form their army." Five pondered at Dreidus' revelation. He was indeed attracted by the ingenious system. The system Necro Valley had in place was very efficient. It could create powerful beings but it could not be implemented in his dungeon. He would never be able to find so many corpses.
Seeing Five's expression, Dreidus spoke, "I know what you are thinking, Master. But it took centuries for Necro Valley to come up with this system and build their human farm. At first, they relied on the corpses they found on ancient battlefields. Furthermore, it is the secret of Necro Valley, if they find out that you know about their internal system, they would immediately dispatch an army here. And I don't think the other forces would stay idle either. You don't have a powerful defense like Necro Valley has."
"What are the forces of Necro Valley then?" asked Harriet.
"When I left a few decades ago, there were eight Corpse Kings and three Lich Arch-Mage. All of them were powerful Necromancers with their own summons."
Five's eyes widened. The Corpse Kings and Lich Arch-Mage were all existences above level 90! However, Harriet reacted differently.
"That's it? If so, Necro Valley would have long been destroyed. With their inhuman method and how they are hated by all the empires, I doubt the empires did not try their best to destroy such an evil organization. And as far as I am aware, the minimum qualification to call themselves an empire is to have at least one transcendent being; someone above level 100."
Dreidus nodded at the harpy's comment. "You are right but those were only the forces they openly showed. However, during my stay there, I heard a rumor about an experiment that was performed decades ago. They once tried to fuse twelve Lich Arch-Mages together. The outcome of this experiment remained a secret but since that day, a name circulated around the valley: Lich Longsoul."
"It is said that the experiment had failed and the empires immediately took the opportunity to attack but against all the odds, the army of the empires was repelled and since then, Necro Valley was allowed to develop in peace. It is not hard to imagine what happened with the rumors. I even heard the saying that when the empires' army returned they tried to build up a training area to prepare the next generation to fight against Necro Valley."
"And this was just the forces of Necro Valley during my stay there. With the number of corpses they can make every day, there is no doubt in my mind that it should have many more powerful beings."
Five and Harriet fell silent. "An existence above level 100. Let me guess: Corpse Emperor? Lich Grand Arch-Mage?"
"No. At Necro Valley, they were called gods: Corpse God and Lich God."
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