The Illicitous Dungeon

Styx felt it was a shame that the tortoise, or stonebeast Monster Lord had refused to surrender to him, but he did not feel any regret. Either way, Whitecliff City was currently safe and would remain so for a considerable time. Even if the other Monster Lords lurking in the various forbidden zones were to discover the Goddess' injury and current absence and go on a rampage, there were no longer any close enough to him to warrant any concern.

He currently had shifted his focus onto several other projects, one of which was spatial magic.

"What is this?" Dragon asked whilst standing along the high mana density residences lining the central mana shaft.

He wasn't asking about the concentrated mana rising before distributing itself throughout the dungeon and powering machines, all of which was behind an energy shield and completely safe, but Styx's strange integration of magic and architecture.

"This is the future!" Styx stated grandly whilst raising his arms out wide, a giant grin plastered on his face.

Loreley stood silently besides Dragon and had been silently giving Styx a death glare the entire time, but even her face twitched as she struggled to not ask what it was too.

They were currently on the middle levels of the shaft where there were many large stone and wood architecture houses and shops built into the walls, bridges and stairs interconnecting various floors and areas together like some abstract painting.

The other angels along with a couple of the dungeon wives were also in attendance to see Styx's latest creation, the dungeon wives in particular were highly interested.

What everyone was marvelling at was the integration of a unique spacial array, or spacial skill, inside the construction of the home.

This home had been a two bedroom home that was somewhat spacious beforehand, or otherwise described as 'cozy', but had now been transformed into a giant mansion with vast halls, a pool sized bath and even a sports field out back.

Styx had built a basketball, soccor and tennis court, although only he knew the specific sports they were designed for. It was almost like the inside of the house was an entirely separate world.

However, there was no further excavation of the home, the interior space had simply been expanded to a preposterous degree. Styx had combined the knowledge he learned from the ancient city in the dead world with his own arts.

Able to see mana and explore his people's mana networks, he already had a foundational knowledge of skills. He had learned from Kale's mana network, the dark elf dungeon wife who evolved into a cosmic prowler. She was a species heavily attuned to space, and could freely fly through the air, teleport and more.

Just as the ancient people of that city integrated skills themselves into armor and weapons to create incredibly powerful arms, Styx incorporated the spacial skills of Kale into the very walls themselves.

To Styx and the dungeon wives who could naturally see mana, mana flowed through the walls and ceiling, even the floor, in intricate and complex, yet patterned and orderly routes. It ebbed and flowed and seemed to be completely alive.

That was because he used both Mana Vein Creation and Mana Logic Construct from his Mana Control skill to create them, the same way he could replicate skills within his own avatar or manipulate and mutate the plants and flowers to thrive underground off mana and have various attributes.

"It's beautiful," Kale mentioned whilst rubbing her fingers over the wall and feeling a deep intimacy with how the mana flowed through them.

Therina pushed some of her own mana into the construct within the walls and hummed happily as it seemed to respond to her input.

"Incredible..."

Upon hearing the dungeon wives praise and seeing their focus on the walls and floor, the angels pulled their halo down in front of their face and gazed through the ring. The vision through the halo not only made mana visible to the Fourth Step angels, but revealed a great deal of information relating to attribute and density as well.

Even Styx felt slightly jealous at how useful their halos actually were. They were Heaven's greatest invention, and he hoped to be able to create a similar support type apparatus that could become a part of his residents just the same in the future.

"God above, is this life creation?" Ursula, the four-winged white angel marvelled at the sight with eyes wide open. "But… I've never seen life quite like this before."

"Life?" Styx's brow rose in surprise. "Well, in a way yes, but at the same time no. There is no consciousness, receptors to the outside world, or thought pattern. It is more of an artificial existence like a computer program."

"A computer program?"

"A set of instructions built into something to create a specific outcome. This 'life' merely uses ambient mana to generate space and keep it within a specific boundary. I can also include magic arrays that it can activate under active or passive stimulus."

"I see…"

Ursula nodded her head but the confusion was still visible within her eyes.

"So what did you need me for?" Dragon scoffed and said sarcastically, although his attention was glued onto the space expansion.

"To pay off your debt of not delivering on your promised protection."

Styx didn't mince his words and got straight to the point. The way he said it could be considered as being rude, but Dragon took no offence.

He turned around and faced the main mana shaft again, indicating towards it with a nod of his head.

"Your job is to dig several more mana shafts for me. This one is nearing its peak efficiency and more are needed to cope with the ever growing need for more mana."

"Dragon is a Fifth Step Monster Lord," Loreley glared at Styx and finally spoke to him. "Don't waste his time with mundane things like digging holes, you have cannon fodder monster and miners for that!"

Rather than wasting Dragons time though, Styx felt she was simply still bearing a grudge against him and wanted something to find fault with.

~~~~~

⠀

Styx's army of miners, goblins and so forth couldn't compare with the work efficiency of a Fifth Step Monster Lord, especially one as strong as Dragon.

He burrowed through the ground like it was water, digging giant shafts deep into the earth both in his dungeon and also below Lagoon Porter City

Completing this task under Styx's guidance also served as practice for Dragon who could then create his own, which Styx had previously said he would provide the equipment and plants to make it functional.

Styx transplanted the heavily modified mana absorption plants into the bottom of the shafts, along with the concentric rings that generated the shield to contain and direct the released mana.

With the flowers planted, he found himself in a standoff between the opposing forces of bees.

The blood crystal bees formed a small army on one side of the cavern, the blood crystal queen bee present herself within the giant swarm. The reason she was here was that this was where the majority of her army were. She used to reside in safety within her hive at all times, but the dungeon bees had mounted a siege attack on her previously when her main army was distracted elsewhere.

One the other side were what Styx called dungeon bees, but had become something so much more than that.

The dungeon bees were originally ordinary bees and weren't even considered monsters, but their life in the dungeon had been incredibly hard just like all the other native creatures that wandered in or created new homes in Styx's bowels.

Just like all the other species though, the dungeon bees were forced to adapt to survive in an incredibly mana dense area. The mana formed a powerful force too that caused them to mutate, something that insects already did very easily.

Through countless rapid generations, survival of the fittest created a swarm off bees with powerful toxins, could consume mana, and had large, powerful bodies. Whilst the blood crystal bees were naturally still stronger due to their mana networks and monster status, the dungeon bees reproduced incredibly fast and had grown to the point they could challenge the former.

This lead to countless wars over "bee-turf" where each hive claimed ownership over certain regions of flowers to collect pollen from.

Whilst the dungeon bees didn't have Styx's mana band to shield them from the over-saturated mana density at the bottom of the mana shafts, their bodies were sturdy and had a high enough mana resistance that they could enter with just their body, albeit not stay for longer than an hour. They would lose their flight ability after merely twenty minutes, but they could still groggily crawl out or be rescued by a fellow bee for the remainder of the time.

"Do you really need to do this?" Styx helplessly asked the blood crystal bee queen, her emotions of anger, frustration and greed flowing back to him in response.

Styx had seen all these turf wars, especially over the past few weeks, and was already accustomed to this war that ravaged his fields below the leaves.

As he left, this sparked the war for this mana shaft and the freshly painted flowers. The blood crystal bees were vicious, stinging and pulling apart the dungeon bees with reckless abandon.

Razor sharp wings hummed in the cavern and even more fell like autumn leaves.

The dungeon bees, albeit a bit weaker than the blood crystal bees, were more numerous and used large wave tactics under the control of rare commander bees flying in the front line and buzzing angrily.

Despite his avatar no longer being present, Styx could still see the battle unfold with his dungeon vision. He couldn't help but roll his eyes as this battle would play out again over and over with each new mana shaft. He also knew the hidden location of the dungeon bees' nests, but wouldn't tell the blood crystal bee queen so as to give her an unfair advantage.