Dungeon of Niflheim

“To offset this, I was forced to enter battle a fair number of times, yet the intruders continued to increase as did their average strengths. Once it was made clear that I was defending a third floor, parties of upper D-rank and even C-rank funnelled in, greed clear in their eyes.” Findlay subconsciously shivered as he remembered the expressions many of them showed, willing to die for a chance at treasure, pure madness in his opinion.

“Along with our stronger D-rank monsters I managed to eradicate the last high level party 8 hours ago, and since then things have thankfully been rather peaceful. With the amount of intruders present this morning being less than half our usual levels. Upon realising that not a single one of their higher ranking colleagues returned from their delve, fear must have finally sunk in, making them wary. A good thing too given that our forces are significantly reduced from extended battle. But now that you’re here master, such an issue has become irrelevant.” If Frost hadn’t come back for say another 2 or 3 days then things may have gotten dicey. But Findlay skilfully took care of the danger and even managed to preserve a lot of the upper echelon thus replacing the lost monsters would likely only cost 8000DP, a tiny sum in comparison to his current whopping 100,000.

“Good work Findlay, I’ll take care of the replacements right now before we go any further.” Frost now understood why the DP levels were so high. Killing not only released 10 times the daily amount but given that it was from many high level adventurers the numbers made sense.

Frost decided to replace the lost monsters immediately given that although the intruder level was low it still wasn’t zero. Couldn’t have them thinking that the place was in a period of weakness, that would be bad for business. He brought up the dungeon menu that now sported a whopping 104,580DP in the top corner- the most its ever held by far- before using the dungeon’s records feature to replace any monster killed within the last 12 days. The sum came in at 7,580DP, thus reducing his total balance to 97,000.

As he clicked confirm the core in the private space hummed to life, glowing brightly, and spinning as it used divine energy. Frost could feel the godly substance flow between him and the core. He could sense the wonder that was divinity far clearer than previously, sufficient proof that he was growing stronger.

The entire process lasted a few seconds yet magically over 60 monsters had been created and placed within the dungeon, bringing it back to full strength.

“There that’s that problem taken care of; you don’t need to worry about a lack of manpower anymore.” Frost patted Findlay’s shoulder in praise before pouring him another cup of sake. His ice troll commander performed very well in his opinion and deserved a good reward.

After bringing the dungeon to full strength, Findlay finally relaxed a little more before regaling to his master all of the other important details such as the dwarven smith’s progress, the amount of iron available, dropped loot, efficiency of the traps as well as current monsters types in battle. It was a lot of information, but Frost was very keen to hear it all, not finding it dull or boring in the slightest. Though it would have helped if he had documents to read instead of relying on oral reports, something he’d need to look into once the camp was established.

.....

Over the past 12 days the iron mine had produced its entire 50Kg allotment each day making for 600kg. 75kg were subpar quality not fit for use, 300kg has being used by the frost dwarven smith and his associates leaving 225Kg in the dungeon vault. A large assortment of leather equipment, adventuring gear as well as weapons below 3 star were collected and stored for either future use or to sell. Plus, a grand total of 6.8 gold coins were pilfered from the dead, all of which being made of silver and copper.

Over a dozen low level foreign monsters entered the dungeon, none of which could be negotiated with thus they were killed, and their meat distributed as rewards. The C-rank party’s equipment was stored separately awaiting either Frost or Maya’s appraisal. No magic devices or books were recovered but many groups did carry maps which could be resalable. All of this ‘stuff’ was important to Frost’s long term tenants plan.

Once the adventurers clear out in preparation for the monster stampede he’d set about turning the external room into a fully functioning camp i.e. defending walls, inns, weapon shops etc... Everything stored within the dungeon vault would be used as stock for these places. Establishing a pure profit cycle, kill the intruders, take their gear, sell it to another group of adventurers, rinse, and repeat.

Of course, Frost wouldn’t just simply rely upon the gear of dead adventurers for business, that alone wouldn’t be practical. The frost dwarven smith was already hard a work practising his craft for such an eventuality. The problem however was volume, after seeing Furano and Kranor especially in action Frost realised that even a monster lair or in this case dungeon camp required a hell of a lot of materials to run efficiently, he needed more men and resources. His gargantuan stock of almost 100,000DP would not last long, creating territory was veritable money pit or rather DP pit.

“I’ll need to head to Furano shortly in order to report my findings from section 23 in the Gamma sector. Bastion should then be able to give me a more accurate time for the monster stampede. Once the adventurers have left the area I’ll expand the external room to 5 kilometres, perhaps 10 since we’d struggle to get a chance when the camp is already chock full of tenants.”

“We won’t start building until the monsters have thinned out so as not to scare them off. I want to use these few weeks to build up a significant war chest, 100K isn’t nearly enough to finish the foundation. The upcoming stampede should also serve as great experience, allowing our forces to reach max level and evolve thus expanding our monster repertoire further. Of our current monsters I’d like for you to focus on training up the frost dwarves, the wolves and of course the trolls as I feel they have the greatest potential.” Frost cupped his chin in thought, gauging the potential of his monsters. The goblins were cheap and followed orders well, but Frost was not Gobuske, their evolution paths with him would be limited.

“I encountered no small number of new monsters while out in the Glacial mountains, some of which should make great additions to our line-up.” Frost brought up the monster catalogue from the dungeon menu and smiled. All of the monsters that he’d personally killed were there, available for purchase.

Ice snake E-rank: 110DP

Ice golem E-rank: 140DP

Frost elemental E-rank: 210DP

Frost lizard E-rank: 120DP

Frost lizard D-rank: 500DP

Coeurl pup D-rank: 650DP

Great frost centipede D-rank: 750DP

Lesser yuki-onna D-rank: 720DP

Frost revenant D-rank: 880DP

The monster list also had a fair few other additions thanks to Dark’s update as well as Frost’s strength becoming half-step into B-rank. However, C-rank monsters still eluded him, only when he truly reaches B-rank will they be unlocked. He’d have to wait until then to see if the ice revenant and ice griffin were available.

“The frost lizards are incredibly lucrative for adventurers in regards to usable materials while at the same time being rather easy to defeat as a team whereas the elementals are a nightmare for non-magic parties, even I had some difficulty ending the things relying solely on my glaive mastery. While the frost revenants are just complete beasts when it comes to battle potential plus they sport some heavy duty weapons and armour making them highly valued by those that can successfully take them down, making them the best of both worlds.” Frost gave Findlay a quick rundown of all the monster’s capabilities, focusing particularly on the frost lizards, elementals, and revenants.

“I agree master, from what you’ve told me these three would be the best choices to focus on, but I’d also like to summon a few lesser yuki-onnas for the front lines. Not only would they improve our magic corps deficiency, but they likely have high evolution potential given that they’re ice spirits.”

“Good point, they could provide long lasting gains instead of short term power.” Frost nodded his head in agreement. He was the dungeon core of ice therefore ice spirit monsters should be his forte. He’d avoided them so far due to how weak they were in the lower ranks but the lesser yuki-onna did show promise. If he could evolve it into a yuki-onna its magic devastation would be greater than that of the C-rank ice revenant.

“In addition to expanding our forces and enacting the long term tenants plan I want to grow the dungeon. Specifically expanding it to five fully outfitted floors.” Currently the dungeon was three floors in size with only the top two being completed outfitted. The final floor was just a series of 3 empty 1km blocks.