Dungeon of Niflheim

“Baron Adam is not someone you should mess with; I suggest you let me go now... otherwise I don’t know what he’ll do to you.” Barren gained more confidence the more he spoke, his injuries and burning cheeks didn’t even faze him. His attitude completely did a 180, returning to the man who cursed and insulted Frost’s monsters. That was how much confidence he had in the influence of his boss.

Frost smiled gently, slowing raising his hands towards Barren, hinting that he was about to remove the restraints.

‘That’s right asshole, let me go and I’ll make sure you pay the price for treating me like this.’ Barren was a very petty and vindictive man. Like the rest of the Sanguine Snakes, he was a complete asshole, probably the worst of the bunch.

The foolish man was a terrible actor, his aggression towards Frost was clear in his eyes, and it ticked Frost off.

Suddenly when Frost’s hand moved near Barren’s head, it quickly changed its target, grabbing onto Barren’s face with an iron grip, crushing down upon his cheek bones.

“Ahhhhhh you!” Barren roared in pain as his face was slowly being crushed. His eyes aflame with anger, he stared at Frost as though he was an idiot.

‘Didn’t this idiot hear me?’

“Funny thing is, I don’t care too much about your boss Baron Adam.” Frost spoke coldly, his expression no longer smiling. He moved in to Barren’s ear and whispered. “That’s why I killed him,” he reigned his neck back and stared at Barren in silence, allowing this bombshell to sink in.

.....

“Eh?” Barren blanked out, before his body visibly shivered.

“You’re lying!” Frost reduced the pressure, allowing Barren to speak albeit only slightly before crushing down once again.

“No Barren I’m not and I have no reason to. Baron Adam was killed a few days ago when I assisted the young heir Leonardo in assaulting his compound. His head is currently on a spike in Furano’s central district, shame you’ll never get to see it.” Frost spoke with a mocking tone, relishing in the disbelief of his victim.

“NO! NO! NO!” Barren screamed out, his eyes bulging and red, his wounds becoming more agitated as he used his entire strength to resist. Baron Adam was his only hope, without him he was as good as dead or worse.

“Hmph let me guess you and your group half assed your mission, putting it off for days before finally reaching here. You’ve probably not been back to Furano in almost a week hahahaha. There is one solace though, you did at least compete your mission.” Frost smiled evilly into Barren’s eyes.

“You!” Frost was the one responsible for Alex’s failure, the killing of his boss and now him. Frost slammed the back of Barren’s head against the wall and released his grip on his face, standing up, dusting himself of. He finished his interrogation.

Barren’s vision was darkened from the blow to the head, but he didn’t fall unconscious, he refused to. His fear and anger were violently fighting within him, with neither coming out on top. The unknown was always more frightening even if it wasn’t.

“Findlay here will be in charge of your situation.” Frost beckoned Findlay over to his side. “Thankfully you’ve met before albeit not on pleasant terms. I’ll allow Findlay to reintroduce himself.” Frost then started to walk out of the room, he was done here.

“Oh, and don’t worry, I plan to have you live as long as possible because I’m such a nice guy bye.” Frost waved goodbye to Barren and left the room, leaving the torture and management of Barren to Findlay. He’d already handed his ice troll commander a couple low level health potions in case he went a bit too far.

Within the room Findlay started his introductions.

“Hello Barren, my name is Findlay, we met the other day, when you sliced open my chest and killed my colleague the polar bear, it’s nice to meet you.” Findlay kneeled down low yet thanks to his massive frame he still towered over Barren. He had a friendly smile on his face, yet his aura was on full whack, pressuring Barren against the floor.

“Let’s have a little chat, shall we?” Barren looked up at the ice troll with terror.

Frost teleported back into the private space, feeling much more refreshed than earlier, a smile adorned his face.

“Young master” Maya spoke to him from the sofa, she was spying on his interaction with Barren.

“Yes,” no longer cheesed off with her he replied in a bubbly tone. Maya simply replied with a dramatic thumbs up from over the sofa. She was most impressed with Frost’s display, feeling oddly proud as she saw remnants of herself in him.

For the rest of the night, Frost, now no longer needing to sleep decided to get a head start on his reading. He had over 50 books to go through after all, it’d take a while.

2 weeks later, almost time for the family gathering.

Over this period Frost, Nanna and Loki underwent strict high frequency training under Maya’s tutelage and all 3 of them grew stronger. Nanna and Loki had gotten over their malnutrition, now the peak of health and growing muscle definition. They successfully reached beginner mastery with their respective weapons and even learned a little bit of lifestyle magic. Now they gave 7DP per day instead of the earlier 5DP.

Frost meanwhile cemented his adept level glaive mastery; he learned a couple glaive skills including the crescent slash skill he got from Leo. Bringing them all to a battle ready level. His magic also improved; he could now safely summon three ice bolts with a fourth occasionally being possible. His mastery over ice entanglement and his new spell ice spike both reached simple mastery ready to be used in combat.

The ice spike spell summoned quite literally a spike of ice from the magic crest. It was roughly 1.5 metres long and 20cm thick, enough to spear an opponent in place. It could be cast on the floor, walls or ceiling, a fairly useful and adaptable offensive spell.

In regards to the Dungeon, the income over the past 2 weeks was quite substantial averaging around 1000 points per day, including the 300DP from Barren. Unfortunately, Barren died after 14 days. He refused to eat so eventually with his injuries his body gave way. It was enough though, Findlay and Frost managed to get in a fair few rounds of torture abating their residual anger. Including the 14 days of being locked up and his eventual death Frost managed to rake in a substantial 5200DP, from just him.

With such a high income, Frost was able to finish his designs on the second floor, expanding the first and third rooms, adding a few more of his three new traps and outfitting them with respawning treasure chests, costing 1000DP a piece. He also added 3000DP worth of F and E-rank monsters, to populate the place a little more. His dungeon was finally looking a tad more dangerous and higher levelled.

About 8 days after the second floor was added, a decent strength D-rank party made it to the new floor. Frost watched them closely throughout their journey, he allowed them to witness the new floor so as to gauge their reaction. Their response was quite interesting, full of shock and amazement. A multi-floored monster lair was far more lucrative than a single floor one. The party instantly retreated and left the Dungeon in order to report the situation to the guild. Much to Frost’s shock but in the end, it worked out for the better. A few days later his rate of intruders increased by over 50% with many more D-ranks being included. The allure of a second floor was quite strong, plus a group of adventurers successfully won a treasure from the lure trap in the third room, reinvigorating the guests passion.

He was however forced to replace his monsters more often and felt it necessary to add a couple D-rank frost trolls to the second floor just to keep up. But with that came more DP per day plus stronger adventurers held more cash and better equipment he could reuse. In the two weeks he managed to scrounge up nearly 2 gold coins worth. Certainly, far less efficient than his few days in Furano but that was still another 2000DP if converted, every little helps.

Only one group fell into the bottomless pitfall trap and subsequently into the ‘what’s behind door number 2’ trap. Long story short, they died. After being bewildered by the room’s features they chalked it up to another oddity that would be found in monster lairs or special dimensions. Nothing that untoward. They were an E-rank party with 3 members, all full of fire and ambition. Of course, they chose the challenge room. The Lagombi there made short work of them, generating a healthy dose of DP.

Frost decided to temporarily keep the Lagombi in the challenge room, its personality was similar to the polar bear, it liked solitude.

Frost also discovered through sufficient trial and error how to add Findlay to the Dungeon core management. Meaning he now had access to the Dungeon menu, albeit with limited features.

Findlay could access the map and contact the other monsters but couldn’t as of yet use DP. However just accessing the map and communications network made his job so much easier. He could control and instruct the monsters like Frost from anywhere in the Dungeon and wouldn’t have to regale everything in person. It made him a far greater commander, something Frost was happy to see. When he goes off exploring there needed to be a monster of his that could manage the place without him. Maya was set to leave after a year and would usually be with him. Nanna and Loki were still young and not under the Dungeon’s influence, so Findlay was the perfect fit.