What Do you Mean All Dungeons are Girls!!!? Enhanced Edition

Eriko followed the demon girl through a door. The dungeon’s courier was guiding her down to the lower levels. While her guards followed behind, carrying the pool in which the mermaid kid she’d rescued was resting. The guards had tested the floors a few times, they even reached the fifth one a couple of times. The dungeon was still digesting the results, but Misaki said she had a few ideas on how her next set of floors would go. In the meantime, she’d adjusted the fifth floor to contain a nice lake on the west side of the floor, not far from her castle.

Now they were going to go see if the lost mermaid child they had rescued liked it. It was going to be her home for awhile. Dungeons were well known for being excellent mothers, lost children often ended up in them, emerging later in life as productive adults. In Stormwind it wasn’t uncommon for cities near dungeons to forgo the construction of orphanages, since the dungeon was better for that. In the capital, however, they had plenty of them, and a dungeon nearby. It was an open secret that all the orphanages in the capital were run by the local dungeon. Eriko had even met her avatar a few times. She was kind, if a bit strange at times, Eriko always felt like a child in front of that woman. It was different with Misaki though, but Misaki was young, which might have something to do with it.

As they came to the end of the path, she looked around as the trees opened to a nice sandy clearing, dominated by a wide expanse of water. Dotted with a few small islands, upon which flowery fields and a few trees grew. She gasped at the sight, it was... for a moment words failed her as she took in the natural picturesque landscape before her. A visual reminder of the artistry that seemed inherent to dungeon kind. Kneeling, she put a hand in the water finding it pleasantly cool, with fish swimming in it.

The courier spoke up, “So what do you think?”

“It’s wonderful, but is there a reason the dungeon isn’t here to greet us?”

“She wanted to be here, but something came up.”

“I understand,” she replied while turning to the young girl peeking out of her pool. “Well Misha, what do you think?”

“It’s pretty! Can I... go in?”

She smiled, “Have fun!”

The girl suddenly lept from the pool splashing everyone with water as she flew into the water with another big splash. The girl swept up from the water and turned, revealing herself to everyone for a moment. Like most merfolk she was naked, they weren’t much into clothes, although some merfolk did wear things like shells, often more for ornamentation than anything else. She had a long thick tail covered with a mix of red, purple, and blue scales that blended together to form a very pretty pattern, the massive fish tail was perhaps a meter long and meld with human like skin at her waist, she had a tight belly with a bit of muscle tone, her skin was a nice creamy tone, her arms looked mostly human, aside from the webbed hands. She had a pattern of scales that dotted her chest in a “W” shape, wrapping around where her breasts would be if she was older. On either side of her chest, and running half way down the side of her belly were a series of gills, that gaped slightly to let water in. 

Misha had a very cute face with webbed ears, and long blue and purple hair that loosely framed her heart shaped face, while a dotting of scales patterned her cheeks like freckles. She had a small button nose, and large green eyes. Eriko knew she was going to be turning heads when she got older. Right now she was so very cute and seemed happy already in the water. “It feels lovely!

Eriko smiled, “Glad to hear you like it.”

Misha gestured towards the water, “Strip! Join me!”

Eriko giggled, “Um sure.”

Misaki settled on the side heavily while staring at the Husk Wrym she’d just killed. Fighting these things was getting easier. Her level was climbing rapidly too. The System, seeming to realize she wasn’t in combat anymore, chose that moment to fill her vision with a new box. 

Misaki glanced over at the others, who seemed busy. Much to Phyllis’ current displeasure, but it wasn’t like she didn’t need the lessons. That gave her a bit of time to think and look into the traits. As she considered them, she opened her current status.

Looking over her list, for a moment she wished she had taken the time to buy another trait. They were expensive and the better they were, the more they cost. DP was basically her money, everything in the shop cost DP. In that light she had a decent income, but there was so much that cost it that she could never get everything. Honestly she was kinda happy that these milestones gave her a chance to get a dungeon trait for free.

Taking a breath, she started looking through her options. She remembered Adaptive difficulty from last time, and she knew what the Pheromones did as well. Mentally she pulled up the old descriptions.

 Adaptive Dungeon Difficulty: Allows the dungeon to temporarily buff or nerf her monsters to better match the abilities of the challengers. The strength of the buff is determined by the average level of the challengers. Floor limit rules still apply, but are adjusted according to the dungeon’s level. 

Improved Pheromone Potency: Increases the potency of pheromone-type traits by 25%.

Adaptive certainly sounded useful, but she had to wonder if it would be better to get it or instances first. It seemed like the sort of thing that would play well together, this mention of her level was why she didn’t get it last time. She was only 25 and if she understood properly, that trait could level her monsters up to her level. That meant back then, she could have temporarily buffed her monsters to level 25. Now that she was stronger, it would be better. She frowned, she had 17000 DP right now, wasn’t there something of a trait guide?

She opened the store, and soon found something and looked it up. Flipping through the pages, she blinked. It seemed Adaptive was an upgradeable trait, but its better versions required instances to unlock first. That was interesting.

With that in mind, she flipped through it to look up the other traits. It wasn’t long before she found their entries, with some details the guide had on them.

Dungeon Towers: Allows the creation of fortified towers on the dungeon’s territory. These structures can be used to defend the dungeon and its residents, both monster and mortal, against raiders. Each tower is protected by a magical shield, equal to the dungeon’s level multiplied by one thousand. Hostiles in range of the tower, may be attacked by a magical ray that ignores armor. Attack scales with the dungeon’s level, and can be enhanced at the cost of AE.

Fortified Puzzles: Puzzle gates are a powerful tool in any dungeon’s arsenal and no one likes cheaters. Reinforces your puzzle gates with a magical shield and doubles their inherent integrity, now not even over-leveled asshats can bypass your gates. The magical shield is equal to four times the dungeon level plus 35 multiplied by two thousand. Shield will regenerate instantly for a small cost of dungeon mana upon being attacked.

Conditional Curse: As a nonlethal dungeon, failure penalties are always important. Leverage the power of dungeon law to add additional penalties upon failing, your main curse remains in effect.

Hmm interesting, she wasn’t sure she needed Fortified Puzzles, she hadn’t had issues with people bypassing them. While Conditional Curse was attractive, it certainly wasn’t something she would use on the first floor. The guide to the trait called it an essential upgrade but recommended using it on later floors. Right now she only had five, and it didn’t feel right to add it to those floors. Dungeon Towers certainly sounded attractive though, especially if she was expecting a Child-Eating Serpent, having those might make it easier to kill the damnable thing. Might help with the Theocracy as well, if what Arrieta said was true, the place was a rotting cesspool overrun with evil. She wasn’t sure if the church of the naturally evil Abyssals were worse, but it certainly didn’t seem to be a pleasant place. Misaki would leap to clean it up if she could, but she wasn’t able to leave her lands.

A figure settled next to her, “A Dungeon’s Guide to Traits, and Abilities. Interesting, did you get a trait unlock or something?”

She looked over at the half-abyssal girl, Arrieta did seem nice, some of the time. The rest she was a demon. “Um, I hit level fifty which, um, comes with a list of traits I can take for free.”

“Oh that’s lovely. Take your time, a choice like that is important,” said Arrieta as she stood back up.

Misaki blinked, “Huh?”

“Let me know when you are done, so we can resume training.”

“Uh, sure...” said Misaki surprised, was she nicer than she thought? Then her mind drifted back to her choices, some of these were great short term, others seemed better in the long run. Mentally she cursed this was a tough one, now what was she going to pick?