A Lonely Dungeon

They have come, breaching our city walls with their evil magic. They are here to liberate us, they say. We are to rejoice in our new found freedom as we 'donate' everything, even the very food from our tables, to their war effort so that eventually every other citizen of Soutso may come to know the same freedoms that we now enjoy. We are to thank them for releasing us from our oppressors as their soldiers rape our wives and daughters. We were made to cheer as they publicly executed our lord for crimes against the people. The same lord who has lowered crime, raised employment and had taken our city to new heights of prosperity. The same lord who pays out of the city budget to ensure everyone in the slums are fed, and that their houses are at least dry.

- The final entry in a diary in one of the final Soutso cities to fall to the Jetosu armies

The Soutso town was no different from any Jetosu one. Homes, shops, eateries, inns. A rich district and slums. A needlessly ostentatious central manor. Walls surrounding the whole thing. Even the architecture was similar to Jetosu border towns. Were it not for the very obvious dividing line, it would not have been obvious that Erryn had crossed into a completely antagonistic country at all. Being so near the border this town had fallen early, and was thoroughly ransacked and looted. The town was relatively devoid of bones, and nor were there nearby graveyards or mass graves. The civilians likely fled before the Jetosu armies came. Although that in itself did not match the picture of Soutso painted in Jetosu literature, which would have had Erryn believe that they would have forced a dagger into the hands of every child and sent them forward as fodder rather than permitting retreat.

It was a picture that was repeated as Erryn moved further into Soutso. Every town was ransacked, with signs of Soutso retreating further and further back. Fortunately Erryn had a stockpile of cores from the border wall so it mattered little that the town had been looted. Erryn did find the odd readable diary and report written by the Soutso side, which cast the country in a very different light to what it had so far seen. A very authoritarian country, but one in which the emperor put a good deal of emphasis on the well-being of his people. They were under constant threat from Jetosu simply for their differing method of governance, which Jetosu wanted to 'liberate' the citizens from. They also claimed that this war was actually sparked by Jetosu, by an assassination attempt on the Soutso emperor. Again, Erryn had to take this with a pinch of salt; there were alas no neutral observers in this war creating unbiased documentation. At the least, it was certain that the world was not divided into clear cut 'good' and 'evil'.

The effects of the war were one thing that was very different between the two sides. In Jetosu, damage was done by hex bombs and self-contained raiding parties aiming for soft targets. On this side the aggressor was a well organised army, moving slowly forwards, but with a full supply line and capable of conducting sieges and assaulting fortresses.

The first thing Erryn found that caused it to pause was the remains of a pyre. It was built outside a city, and was big, enough for tens of thousands of corpses. The remains hadn't been touched, leaving behind a circle of ash and scorched bone. It wasn't the overall size that caught Erryn's attention though; it was the size of some of the individual bones. Adults, children, toddlers, newborns. The presence of toddlers could not be explained by forced child conscription. Civilians had been slaughtered here. Worse, the pyre was on the east of the city, and some of the other debris mixed in made it obvious that many of the victims had been carrying heavy loads at the time. The most likely explanation was that these citizens were fleeing with whatever possessions they could carry, and the Jetosu armies had slaughtered them as they ran.

The next thing that caught Erryn completely by surprise was a hex bombed city, the attack having impacted the city centre but not being quite large enough to erase the outer districts. Why had a city on this side of the border been targetted? Was Jetosu using the weapon too? No, it had read documents in the vault that talked about how some of the first wave of attacks had been launched against their own side, presumably by mages unhappy to be forced to sacrifice their lives. Was that true? If the mages objected to the plan, would they not have aimed at military installations or empty wilderness rather than a city filled with non-combatants?

The next few towns and cities had their defences breached by hex bomb, but the interiors of the settlements were largely intact. It was quite obvious by this point that as the Jetosu armies pushed east they had stolen the secrets of the hex bomb and eventually begun using it themselves, too late to help with the siege of the earlier cities but making full use of it later in the war. Furthermore these settlements had still been occupied at the point the end came. Erryn recalled documents in the vault that described citizens of Soutso settlements happily defecting. It did not mention that those defections started after one city was put to the sword as they fled for their lives, and another was erased by a human-sacrifice powered weapon. The citizens had 'happily' defected because they knew full well what would happen if they didn't.

The further east Erryn grew, the worse the taste of the mana in the land and the air. It was obvious which direction the source of the corruption lay in now, purely from the feel of the mana. Erryn stretched towards it, eager to purge it. Eventually Erryn hit the front of the war, the furthest the Jetosu armies had reached before the end came. Military camps on both sides were small and spaced out, a defence against entire battalions being wiped out by one hex bomb.

There was literally nothing salvageable among the rotted camps and piles of crumbling bones. Everything was corroded. Mythril weaponry held by the higher ranking knights and even the few orichalcum weapons held by commanders and heroes had decayed. That was all sorts of scary because mythril was not supposed to corrode, never mind the even more magical orichalcum. If this was the result of long term exposure to the corrupted mana then it added another reason for Erryn to find and purify the source as quickly as possible. Erryn did not like the idea of its cores suffering the same fate as this battlefield.

Settlements further to the east had been spared invasion, but had been claimed by corruption instead. Walls and buildings had collapsed, regardless of materials or construction. There weren't even bones remaining, having crumbled to dust. By this point the waves of corrupted mana were making Erryn nauseous. Ignoring other settlements and everything else, Erryn concentrated on heading straight for the source.

Designation [Errant] has been lost

Erryn's exploration of the latest crumbled settlement was interrupted by a system message. A brief one, but still important. It had already been a year, and for the first time in its existence Erryn had both dungeon points and the means to spend them. "System, show me the dungeon point store."

Dungeon Points: 2315

Available categories:

The category had some very interesting and highly lethal designs, but as expected there was nothing relevant to Erryn's current situation despite how fun some of them looked. Superheated steam or falling lakes of lava were a far cry from Erryn's trip wires and spikes that were only vaguely pointy.

The category was huge, but prices were high. Erryn remembered that being a [Slime] type had given it a discount on slimes, so maybe [Hope of the Lost] had a similar effect? A quick scan showed that light affinity monsters were indeed priced lower than other affinities, while darkness affinity monsters were priced higher. There was a similar but smaller correlation with life and death.

While Erryn now had far better control over mana it still had to admit that there were some tasks that really needed opposable thumbs, and so splashed out a few hundred points on a glowing steel golem whose description claimed them to be human shaped. Radiant steel golems were also an option, but were three times the price, and Erryn wasn't particularly interested in strength. There were likewise goblins and other humanoid monsters for a lesser price, but Erryn wasn't sure what effect [Merciful] would have on such creatures, and there was such a thing as too weak. Creating a new glowing golem, Erryn was not disappointed. They stood two meters tall and despite being apparently solid metal had a full range of movement, the metal seemingly flowing smoothly around joints. Their dexterity was sufficient for any manual labour tasks Erryn would find for them. Taking a brief glance at other monsters, Erryn saw that they ranged as far as elder dragons for a hundred thousand points, but there was nothing there that would currently be useful.

The category was very highly specific. There were many variety of sword to begin with, but then each material and enchantment was a separate item on top of that. Short sword or long sword. Iron short sword or steel short sword. Plain iron short sword or an iron short sword enchanted with sharpness. The options exploded exponentially. They were all cheap, but it was nowhere close to feasible to grab everything. Then again, when loot categories had unlocked it had given Erryn some customization ability, blurring the differences in form and material. Perhaps in the future that would grow further, and permit customization of enchantments. Perhaps one or two items might prove useful as templates at some point, but really Erryn had already scavenged enough that there was nothing more it needed right now.

offered more varieties of wood, stone and metal, as well as affinity infused versions that Erryn didn't have. None of that was interesting at the moment; now that Erryn could grant arbitrary affinities to mana it could manufacture the new varieties manually. There was no flora category in the shop at all, despite it clearly being its own thing in Erryn's Status. contained the options for new floors and core reinforcement, but it also had other options to modify the structure of the dungeon. There were choices for additional entrances, shortcuts and teleports. There were a variety of safe rooms, filled with treasure or healing fields or nothing at all. Like it was all very interesting, but not immediately relevant.

Erryn lastly looked into the category it held the most hope for, , but sheesh were they expensive... [Master Rune Crafting] was there, but it cost 20000 points, almost ten times what Erryn could afford. There was an upgraded [Analysis] that increased the amount of information available about invaders, such as their available Skills. There was an upgraded [Empathy] that permitted limited mind reading of invaders. Both sounded very useful to a regular dungeon, but without anything around to invade they were pointless. At 5000 and 10000 points respectively, they were also out of budget. Given the prices in other categories, Erryn suspected that it had less points available than a regular dungeon. Without any other dungeons around as a point of comparison Erryn wasn't sure if the quantity of dungeon points it was accumulating was low or high, but the simplest explanation was that there was nothing wrong with the rate at which Erryn was earning points and it was just ridiculously young to be a hundred floors deep and looking at high level Skills.

[Enhanced Reclamation] and [Enhanced Absorption] were affordable at 2000 points, but both only improved the efficiency of the matter to mana conversion, which was not something Erryn cared about. [Enhanced Relocation] had the same cost and permitted the transfer of monsters, but again that was not something Erryn required. While the shop contained upgrades for most of Erryn's Skills, there wasn't really anything new. Even [Master Rune Crafting] probably wouldn't have been there without Erryn cheating to get the base skill. That made sense; dungeons spawned traps and monsters, and didn't attack directly. [Spawn] was pretty much the only skill they really needed. Which brought up an interesting point; there was no higher tier spawn skill. Buying extra things to spawn was pretty much equivalent to upgrading the Skill, but since [Reclamation] and [Absorption] had efficiency upgrades it was surprising [Spawn] didn't too.

So after all that effort to get access to the dungeon store, Erryn had made a grand total of one purchase. Seemed a bit of a wasted effort. Nevertheless, opposable thumbs were not an addition to be looked down upon. Erryn closed the dungeon point store, and prepared for its next large project. It had finally found the end of the world.