Waid’s expression showed a very large amount of discontent. Unlike what Dia had expected, he actually called all the fairies ugly, but he found almost all the ‘ugly’ plant monsters, from the thorn bush warriors to the dark treants, as ‘pretty’. Only because they, for some reason, could not access their dungeon powers did he not go on to make a lot more dungeon monsters by merging plants and animals which is what he found ‘pretty’.
Obviously Dia was completely against it because this was her dungeon to begin with and she did not want ‘ugly’ monsters like hybrid plant animals unless they were cute like mixing a fox and a plant, but keeping most of the cute fluffy fox with only a small flower on its head. Of course, when Dia said that he completely frowned.
“A ‘cool’ monster has to be big, muscular and strong.” He said frowning.
“A cute monster can be strong as well! All you want is something big and ugly and aggressive and mean!” Dia complained.
Waid crossed his arms, “A strong monster is ‘pretty’, if I make things only like these little fairies soon there will only be prancy weak monsters in the dungeon.” He said.
“HHMMNNNN!” Dia pouted while clutching her fists and shaking in a tantrum. “Cute animals can totally beat your ugly fat ugly monsters.” She said jumping up and down throwing a tantrum.
Waid grinned, “Then when we can make monsters, we will each merge the same monster, the same amount of mana as well, and make a monster to fight. You make a cute one, I make a cool one! Whichever wins will be the real ‘pretty’ monster!” He said with a triumphant smile.
“FINE!” Dia pouted. “I don’t wanna play with you anymore!” Dia pouted as she flew away while Waid was grinning before his face turned into a frown and he walked away.
He wanted to see what kind of monsters were in the dungeon so that he could think of what to make that was strong and cool.
For the next two days, although the children did meet up during this time, there was little interaction because of the disagreement. However, even though Waid became a bit darker in thought after that, he did not revert back to his massive depression.
Finally the dungeon system returned, but to them nothing happened. During this time, the pool of liquid mana had filled some, but it was plenty to make two monsters so they gathered at the pond.
The others had heard of the bet and finally they had gathered to watch since it would be dangerous if things get out of control.
“So what monsters will you be merging?” Waid asked.
Dia pouted and waved her hand. At that moment a single bird monster appeared followed by three fire spirits. He looked and was surprised because the next moment, a similar bird and three flower warriors appeared in front of him.
“Didn’t we say the same monster?” He asked.
“What is the point of using the same monsters, as long as they are the same base and the extras are the same strength?” Dia said.
To this point, everyone agreed. There was no point making extra of the same creature using the same combo, it would make the evolutions later on harder anyway so each one branching a different spirit is already good.
With that settled, the two then walked over to the pond, touched the water and finally touched the heads of their respective birds.
In Dia’s view, she saw the three spirits enter the bird and suddenly the bird went up in flames before it became bigger, showing the appearance of a rooster in the flames, but the wings were wide and the feathers were red and orange. She laughed at the burning rooster for a moment before she got serious and changed the outer appearance to look like a hawk half her height, unlike before where the rooster was nearly as tall as her. Then she concentrated the flames to the body. Unlike before where the flames were spread on the ground and air burning everything, now it became more harmless flames residing only on the body which would burn only enemies. The feathers were smooth orange with a light yellow belly and only the tail feathers were burning with orange flames while two longer bright yellow feathers had longer flames.
Finally satisfied with the beautiful fire bird, she took her hand off it, opened her eyes and began to watch the bird transform.
Dia thought of her father talking about all the strange mythological birds and many really fun things and then she remembered a really beautiful bird from the stories. “Fire Bird.” She said.
At the same time Waid stopped and the three warriors merged with the bird. Unlike anything that Dia would dream of making, the bird suddenly began to inflate. The feathers slowly fell off and the skin began to change into bark. Following that, leaves covered it as if they were perfect green feathers, but what made this really strange was that the wings had turned into tiny useless arms. The head turned to that of a rooster while the body became ugly and muscular. The legs were like two tree trunks with sharp root like claws as its feet.
Dia frowned seeing this thing appear in her dungeon. She did not want something like this and the fire bird was releasing a low hum of displeasure being around the primal treant bird. The bird itself was almost 2 meters tall and it was extremely ugly.
“Let's start the fight then!” Waid said grinning.
“If I win, that thing can’t appear anymore in my dungeon.” Dia said.
“If I win then I can make more of them!” He grinned.
“Hmph fine!” Dia said and turned to the fire bird, “Get it!” She said.
KRIII!
The fire bird let out a screech and spread its beautiful wings before flapping and taking to the air. The tail feathers swung beautifully and the two long yellow tail feathers trailed behind it like ribbons.
The treant bird roared and jumped after the fire bird in hopes to hit it, but the bird was very agile in the air and quickly veered away only to turn and screech once more causing a blaze of flames to shoot from its beak completely engulfing the treant bird.
The treant bird suddenly fell down lifeless from taking one burst of flame, while the fire bird screech victoriously at having defeated its first opponent towards its survival.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Waid was pouting, “No fair! You used my beast’s weakness against it!” He shouted.
Misty appeared on Dia’s shoulder covering her mouth and giggled, “Doesn’t know how to lose with honor.” She joked.
Dia giggled along and held her hand to the catgirl fairy who high fived her.
“I want a rematch, but this time the same element of creature to make it fair!” He shouted.
“Okay if you want.” Dia shrugged and looked at the pond. It had been somewhat drained when they used it to make the monsters. “Let’s do this in… 2 days to let us recharge and to let me make more of these pretties. Misty, make sure he doesn’t make more of those uglies.” Dia said and grinned at the boy before rubbing her face on the beautiful fire bird’s head. It sang a happy screech as it enjoyed the petting.
The boy stormed off while the fairies giggled.
***
As the dungeon system came back online, Clover was just meditating when it all started up which caused him to wake up.
Clover looked at the messaging and at the new dungeons. Of course they were both new dungeons, but he didn’t think that he got the wrong mixture for the dungeon’s affinity. He had expected it to be simply Air affinity, but when he thought of how clouds are formed of air and water plus the solid stone island at the center of each floor, it finally clicked and he sighed. Of course his dungeon was one affinity away because it was both Air and Earth.
He snorted because it was even more ridiculous than he expected, but could do nothing. What he was most interested in was this strange mana pool creation. He stood up and walked out finding Maribell.
“I see you're already ready to explain.” He said.
“Of course, trash. This system update happened because Dia’s dungeon is fundamentally different from the previous ones. This caused the balance of the world to tilt so now all dungeons must be updated.” She said.
“So all dungeons have this?” He asked.
“Of course, if not then the problems it would cause are beyond what you can comprehend.” She said sneering.
He looks at her with disgust, but just grunts and says, “Show me this, ‘mana pool’ it was talking about.”
“Where, in this shitty rock, is the location that concentrates all the mana? Think of it as feeling your mana channels inside your body, where does it converge to?” She asked.
Clover closed his eyes feeling the mana in the rock. Slowly he felt the flow and soon he turned to his hut. “In the center of my house where I meditate everyday.” He said.
“As expected.” Maribell rolled her eyes. “Move the house over and leave a 5 meter area around it open, then use magic to build a small 30 cm in diameter and 10 cm deep pool. Then harden the earth.” She said.
With the dimensions spoken he simply walked over and touched the ground and the earth moved out of the way. Dia and his mana control can’t be compared, one is an archmage who trained for several centuries while the other is a 4 year old human girl who only uses the dungeon system magic.
Once the pond was formed, Clover felt a large amount of the channels connect to it, but did not know why.
“Now put your core over the pond, the dungeon core should release from your control and hover over the pond from now on.” She said.
Following the instructions he did that, but far from releasing, he suddenly felt his body freeze and a fear of death looming over him appeared. He tried to move, but he did not have strength and he slowly discovered why. Slowly his mortal body was turning hollow like a ghost while the dungeon core was slowly getting brighter and brighter. Maribell watched in awe as the dungeon core ate up Clover’s body leaving only his hollowed ghost image that was the same as Dia’s.
Finally only the hand was left and as soon as that was gone, the metal earring around the core was absorbed as mana. The core fell down halfway to the ground before it stopped in midair and slowly lifted to eye level. Unlike the pure green or light green that the core had before, now it had a dark murky shade. Clover’s body being absorbed finally caused him to become a pure dungeon and no longer a dungeon master. The dungeon soul fragments and his own soul were complete merged and his soul bound to the dungeon. He now had a sense of the dungeon he never had before, but he suddenly roared as he escaped from the control of the core that had stolen his body.
“My body! WHY DID IT DESTROY MY BODY!” He roared.
Maribell was silent as the information was being processed in her mind. Clover was glaring at her, but she was holding her head so he knew that she was trying to find the answer, though what she said when she opened her eyes was far from what he wanted to hear.
“It seems that, to the new system, dungeon masters don’t exist. When someone enslaves a dungeon like you did, the soul is taken to a new dungeon while the old dungeon stays with the captor and forms a new core through the dungeon fragment that is left behind. Should someone enslave the soul of a dungeon, their own bodies will be consumed to produce a new dungeon core. As for those with dungeon cores, the body is consumed to completely break the bond of the body and soul so that the soul is bound only to the dungeon and the body used as a bridge to do this, making the core your true body by absorbing its essence into it and mixing it into the core.” She explained.
He looked at her dumbly as he digested and he realized that he truly became a dungeon without a way back now.
“Don’t look like a pile of shit on the road, your hollowed image is the same as Dia’s and every other dungeon now, it's a magic body similar to a spirit. As the dungeon grows and the mana gathers, your ghost image will slowly solidify into a spiritual body. You can still physically touch things in your own dungeon and possess all senses. You can eat your own magical fruits to gather more mana and you can use the water in the mana pool to slowly strengthen your body after exerting it or training. It will absorb a trace amount if your body is bathed in the water.” She said.
He got some hope after hearing that, but he was still a dungeon. Previously as a dungeon master, as long as the core was broken he would have stayed alive without a doubt. Now he was a true dungeon so he would be hunted. He lost all his magic, his body and his freedom.
“Well, you should probably start working to expand, the mana density will get many times better now.” she said.
“How do you expect me to do that without any elementals to gather mana for me?” He asked.
“You're a foolish idiotic man, you know that? All magical monsters can refine mana within the air and soil. Thorn bush warriors especially are good at using their roots to refine earth mana. If you spawn springs here at the top and make small riverbeds or streams, they can safely refine the water mana through the earth. If that doesn’t work, you can even try forming a pond and evolve plants into water plants to do just that. All the mana channels are connected to your mana pond and will slowly flow over time to it. Slowly.” She said and turned.
Shrugging at the man she left him after saying that as to keep his mind preoccupied. She really did not want to help, but as a dungeon fairy, she did want a successful dungeon even if the master of it was extremely repulsive. She was happy though, when she had previously examined the notice of the update, she fell in love with the idea of the killing instinct of the dungeons being removed. Now dungeons would be regarded as a sentient race instead of a demonic race.
She was only holding back to not return to the spirit world to see how the dungeons already corrupted by their dungeon instincts were doing after having the killing instinct removed.
What she didn’t know was that almost all the dungeons that were controlled by the dungeon instinct suffered catastrophic consequences to the new system. The dungeon instinct had comprised more than 80% of their soul after taking over. When a dungeon is corrupted and taken over by the dungeon instincts, the original soul is greatly suppressed inside the instincts. When the instincts had the killing instinct removed, the stability of the instincts was completely destroyed causing the dungeons soul to fragment all around the dungeon core.
All over these dungeons, the monsters would either die or go mad while the cowering dungeon fairy noticed this and finally peeked out only to find these fragments. Then they would feel a surge of information and their faces brighten like never before. They quickly moved and gathered up these soul fragments. To their glee, they found that most of these fragments were made up of the dungeon instinct itself while they found the previously sealed soul of the dungeon bundled up in a single fragment. Putting the smallest fragment, which was also the original dungeon’s soul, back first, the dungeons would slowly awaken from their stupor of being controlled.
The fairies explained everything that happened since they went mad slowly and carefully, while slowly putting the soul fragments back into the core from smallest to biggest, allowing the original dungeon to slowly absorb them and grow a stronger soul no longer controlled by the dungeon instinct. Of course, not all dungeons were nice like the children, even after waking up they had a large hate for the world. If they did not then the dungeons would not be controlled by the dungeon instincts of course, but a good number just wanted to cry or were greatly depressed.
Some even wished to end themselves causing the fairies to sigh in defeat, but of course they also tried to encourage the dungeons to slowly get better.
Slowly the depressed dungeons opened up and looked at the dungeon. Many felt repulsed by how the dungeon instincts made the dungeon. Simplistic, grotesque and bloody. This was the dungeon instincts. Now with so many dungeons awake after being consumed by it, they found that they wanted to truly enjoy beauty after seeing the darker side of the world and the first thing they did was to access the new system and make the mana pond under their core. After that, they sealed their doors and completely and utterly destroyed all the monsters that the dungeon instincts had created before using all that mana to forcefully transform their affinity to Air and Earth alongside their original affinity so that they can rise up as a sky dungeon.
Of course, there were those that did not do such a thing. Instead, they kept all the monsters and took to above ground and began to construct a magnificent castle that would be their home from which they will eventually destroy the world. On the other hand, many killed all the monsters but didn’t take to the sky out of fear and instead just choose to rebuild themselves in a safer less destructive way.
As for all the sentient creatures and wild monsters.
The message sent waves around the world and soon they understood what the chaos was as dungeons throughout the world began to break out of their earthly bounds and fill the air with land.
In the shadow of Clover’s dungeon, a cat like grin appeared followed by a small chuckle.
