Chương 79: Glowing harpies

Dreidus lowered his head slightly as he continued, "I think it is time to give Lyra a proper floor to guard but I would appreciate if Lyra herself could stay away from fights and stay in the background. It is not that she is scared to fight but she is still relatively low leveled, and she probably won't survive if a group of barbarians attacked her."

Five suspiciously looked at Dreidus and then turned his attention toward Lyra. The Banshee Queen quietly shifted her body, just enough to hide her face behind Dreidus' head. Five was not clueless about what Dreidus wanted but he was worried about the state of the dungeon. It was true that the death knights were much stronger than the zombies and Dreidus' plan made sense. However, his plan also clearly displayed favoritism toward Lyra. Was corruption already appearing in his dungeon while it was still in its initial stage?

"mmm. Give me more details about it. I agree that the banshees need a floor to guard but creating an entire floor might be a little expensive at the moment. We only have 100000 DP and considering that many barbarians suddenly stopped coming there..." said Five.

"Of course, this is just an idea, but I would like to create a floor that looks like a forest. The settings will be similar to a haunted forest with Treants mixed among the decorative trees we'll put. The banshees will be the main monsters, but we'll also add some ghouls. Ghouls exists into two forms but for that floor, it would be better to use the one where they have a physical body; they are quite fast and can easily hide in an environment like a forest. I believe that the banshees can already deal enough magic damage while the treants could serve as tanks for them. Also, a forest is a good floor to put some herbs that the adventurers can collect."

Dreidus explained the details of the floor while keeping an eye on Five. He purposely avoided Lyra's topic and hoped that Five would agree. However, it was precisely what Five pointed out:

"It is a good idea, I can agree to this. But there's something that have been missing from our dungeon. We don't have a single boss monster that defend the floor. A dungeon needs some milestones and the best way to represent them is to use boss monsters. We have you and Lyra but none of you will be fighting if we follow that plan. Truthfully, I was planning to put Lyra as the 5th floor's boss."

Dreidus lightly coughed in embarrassment. "I understand that, but it would honestly be beneficial for the dungeon if we do not use the boss monsters on those floors and only use them as last resort if the dungeon core is threatened. I am not saying that just to protect my own life or Lyra's but as I previously explained, something strange and dangerous happen as if we die. Compared to normal monsters who just die, we can revive after a day, but I am certain that this revival has a heavy cost. Although I have no proof, I hope that you will trust me for that. I am honestly thinking of what is best for the dungeon and also... boss monsters are not an absolute necessity."

Five looked at the lich and the banshee queen. He could see the sincerity in their eyes and according to his experience and intuition, it did not seem that they were lying. But in the past, his intuition has proven him wrong countless time. He had been mercilessly betrayed by the people he trusted the most, including his fiancée.

"Are you certain of what you are saying? I really hope that you are not just making up a story..."

"Master, I am a hundred percent confident. Something bad must happen as we die and revive. I hope that you will trust me, but you are the master. In the end, if you refuse, we will still comply with your orders," declared Dreidus.

"Alright then... Let's do as you say. As for the boss monsters, for now we'll just use higher level monsters for that," said Five. In the end, he still chose to believe Dreidus. The lich was sincere and did not have any reason to lie to him. After what he encountered in real life, Five was not willing to blindly trust anyone, especially if they put forward groundless theories. However, without trust, his dungeon would never grow, and he would never reach his goal.

He looked at the two boss monsters', whose expression immediately changed from a fearful and expectant one to an expression of relief and joy. 'Sigh... I am still soft-hearted and cannot say no when people look at me like that... I really hope you don't betray me Dreidus...'

"Thank you! Thank you, master. I promise that you won't regret it," exclaimed the two boss monsters at the same time.

At the same time, the door suddenly opened, and 3 golden silhouettes rushed into the meeting room.

"Master! We are back! Ouch that was heavy. Quick master, look at what we brought back. Praise us!"

"We came back a bit earlier than usual. Sorry to interrupt your meeting."

"..."

The two distinct voices of the harpies interrupted the two boss monsters as the harpies stormed in. Without hesitation, Alice rushed forward and dropped all the loot she was carrying on the table in front of Five.

The latter was overwhelmed and exclaimed with a surprised expression, "What. what are all of these? Did you do something dangerous? Where did you go? You are all glowing like that! What happened?" His eyes quickly moved from the pile of items in front of him and moved from Alice to the other two harpies who were emitting a golden glow.

Confused, the three harpies looked at each other, not knowing what to say. After a few seconds of awkwardness, Ariel stepped forward and also emptied her arms, "Master, we don't understand what you are saying. Are we glowing?"

Hearing her question, Five became even more confused. Ariel, who was now standing right in front of him, was clearly emitting a golden glow. It looked like one of those special effects used to highlight characters in movies. But now, the harpies were saying that there was nothing wrong? 'Did my eyes get damaged after looking at the dungeon screen too much?'

"What about you guys? Do you notice anything wrong about them?" asked Five to Dreidus and Lyra.

Unfortunately, the two undead monsters simply looked at him with concern, "Master, there is nothing wrong with the harpies. Are you having hallucinations? Could it be that you are under the effect of a curse or a debuff?"

The situation was awkward; it seemed that he was the only one able to see the golden glow but that glow clearly did not have any harmful effect. "I have not been exposed to any enemies, so how could I be under the effect of some debuff? It's something that only I can see... Then it should be something related to the game... Could it be that the harpies were being affected by the update?" A thought crossed his mind but he was unsure whether it meant good or bad news. An update could mean either a buff or a nerf and considering that the harpies played a huge role during the trial, it was likely that their stats would be lowered.

To confirm his hypothesis, Five quickly opened the dungeon interface to look at his other monsters and as he expected, the skeletons and zombies were also glowing!

The monsters were curious, their master's behavior was simply abnormal; they silently watched as Five randomly smiled after looking at the skeletons and the zombies.

"Sorry about that. It was just me overreacting. Let's forget about that, what are all these items? Where did you find them?" asked Five, completely dismissing the matter.

"Eh? ok..." Seeing Five changing the subject, Ariel chose not to pursue the matter. Instead, she explained the scenario that the three sisters agreed on. Following the request of Harriet, the three harpies decided to lie about the origin of these items to hide the fact that the Harpy Queen was nearby.

"We were flying through the forest when we saw a group of beasts fighting each other to death. Apparently, they were fighting to become the new Beast Kings of the forest. Since we have killed the Ape King and the Forest Tiger King is severely injured, the other beasts were taking the opportunity to overthrow them. They were focused on the battle and did not notice our presence. In the beginning, we just watched the fight from afar but when we saw that all the beasts were injured, we simply snatched the items and finished a few injured ones," explained Ariel. She tried to keep her explanation as vague as possible; since she was making up a lie, it was better to not go into too much detail to avoid getting caught out.

Five frowned upon listening, "That is very dangerous. Did I not say to not take risks like that? Were you injured?" While he inquired about their state, Five quickly looked at their HP bar.

"We are fine! Look at us. How could those silly beasts even hurt us when we can just fly above their head," declared Alice. She quickly spun onto herself and flapped her wings, showing that she was not injured in any way.

Having already confirmed this through the HP bar, Five was relieved. He then turned his attention toward the pile of items in front of him and the ones still in Angela's arm. His eyes shone as the information about each item appeared.

The items were clearly the drops of the beasts of the forest. After the trial, when it was time to clean up the floor of the corpses, Five noticed that he could actually harvest the drops of the fallen beasts from their corpses. Each beast would leave one or two items before disappearing and it was thanks to these items that the dungeon was quickly replenished.

These items were not very useful to the dungeon but simply by selling them in the dungeon shop, Five quickly made 50000 DP. The trial was not cruel to the point of depleting all of his DP; in the end, he was able to harvest quite a few DP. If he were to compare his gain to the cost of the dead monsters, his profits were actually astronomical. It was just a pity that most of those profits had to be used to purchase skills to guarantee his survival instead of being invested in the dungeon.

After facing the severe decline in revenue during the last three days, Five was naturally delighted to see free DP coming his way. The most interesting part was that 2 beast cores were quietly lying inside the pile of items. They were without a doubt the most precious items that the harpies had brought back. Just one beast core could be sold for 15000 DP.