Danmachi-Hell's forge

"What did you do!?" the dude demanded furiously as he started to squirm and resist again.

"Naturally I just made sure you couldn't bitch out before I had my fun is all. It's so very rare that I get people I wouldn't have any moral issue with experimenting on. Did you know that the anatomy of monsters and people are vastly different? I don't mean the obvious shit like organs and the mana stone either but the very fundamental stuff that makes up the bodies of monsters is entirely different than people. Oh sure it LOOKS the same but it isn't I assure you. Due to this I haven't gotten a chance to test my theories on body modification, until now. I thank you in advance for your cooperation." I said with a mad cackle as I sealed his vocal cords still to remove his ability to scream.-

I may have intentionally played up what I was going to do to this guy out of pettiness. To be fair though I didn't ACTUALLY lie about using him to test some theories of mine. But I wasn't some evil fucker with no moral bottom line. The experiments I had in mind were in truth probably more beneficial to him more than anything else.-

See I had this theory that I could sorta alter the material properties within the body to improve it. Things like increasing the density of the skin to improve durability or altering the lungs to allow for more efficiency in each breath taken. Naturally I needed a guinea pig for this since I was a poor choice due to my semi-formless state thanks to my technique. I also wasn't going to conduct experiments on my familia or random innocent people.-

This probably was solved thanks to this brave "volunteer" after he so passionately risked his comfort and health for this good cause. Jokes aside the fuckers soul was so drenched in sin that I felt nauseous just looking at it. Murder, rape, thievery, you name it and this dude had a little bit of that flavor of sin on his soul. If that wasn't a good enough reason to use him as a test subject with or without his consent then I don't know what is. Throwing the squirming dude over my shoulder I quickly started to descend into dungeon even further while making sure I didn't run into anyone.-

Shit would get real awkward real fast if someone saw me looking like I was kidnapping the dude, which to be fair I kinda was. The funny part was that it wasn't even hard to avoid other people thanks to the dungeon being as maze like and large as it was. I just needed to listen out for the sounds of people and carefully check the corners before I crossed them to remain unseen. Once I got to the sixteenth floor though I had to fold the guy up with my technique so he fit in my big decoy bag since I needed to dash through floor seventeen to get to the safe floor after that.-

I certainly wasn't going to fight the Goliath while literally backpacking a dude. No my plan was simply to drop into the eighteenth floor and drop off this dude at my tree safe house base place before heading back up to take out tall dark and angry. That said the entrance from floor seventeen to eighteen was frequently visited by adventurers and that meant I needed to hide this guy better, at least temporarily.-

Said dude was NOT happy with getting unnaturally folded into a compact shape before being stuffed in a bag. At the same time however that was too damn bad cuz he didn't have a choice in the matter. Like usual the Goliath didn't spawn in immediately after setting foot on the seventeenth floor but rather waited till you were a good quarter the way in. I ignored the rex though as I full speed dashed across the floor and slid down the ramp leading to floor eighteen.

"Ah the lovely aroma of plants thriving." I mutter with a grin as I inhale deeply upon reaching the floor.

There was something refreshing about reaching a dense forest after trudging through a monster infested cave system. After taking a moment to relish the experience I headed towards my tree base. I thought it rather funny that despite how close it was to the entrance of the Great tree labyrinth floors no one had found it yet or if they did reported it's discovery. The place was certainly not a thing anyone was likely to misunderstand the importance of. I as said previously despite the floor being a "safe" floor monsters did come into it from other floors and destroyed anything manmade they could.-

That was where my base's importance came in as it was made of dungeon grown trees fused together and thus totally ignored by the monsters who may have otherwise noticed it and attacked. A great deal of people would go to great lengths to figure out how to replicate this on a larger scale so that an actual settlement could be permanently set up down here. It should be kept in mind that Riviera has been destroyed and rebuilt down here no less than thirty eight times since people first started trying to settle this place.-

If it was no longer necessary to keep the place made of cheap easy to fix stuff due to monsters ignoring it a genuine lasting town could be made and that meant a LOT of profit being involved. That sort of thing brought REALLY dangerous kinda of attention to those behind it. If Evilus wanted me dead due to my potential now they'd pull out all the stops to murder me if they found out I was capable of making something like that a reality. Not exactly good news for me at all.-

I was pretty strong and hard to kill normally sure but the endless malicious creativity of the Evilus meant I would have death breathing down my neck constantly. I didn't want that to happen so the moment I get even a whisper of my base being discovered I was going to pretend it didn't exist and I had no relation to it. Honestly it wasn't even like it would cost me much to do so either as I could easily just make another.