SPENDING MY RETIREMENT IN A GAME

Chapter 927: Around the Dungeon (2)

By the next morning, the first group of individuals that would be taking part in the expedition entered the forest's clearing. It was basically a small army, since it wasn't only fighters that were going to take part in this. Beside the fighters, there were numerous support roles that had to be taken care of during the dive, which may very well take some days or even weeks, depending on how fast they were going to head down to the bottom.

In the first place, not everyone that arrived would be heading down into the dungeon. A large group of them were going to stay up here and prepare for some semi-permanent settling. For one, they were going to prepare things for the players that would arrive at some point in the future, but there was more to this. It was very likely that it would take a long time for the general playerbase to reach a level of strength where this dungeon became available to them. So, before then, Asgard was going to monopolize this place.

The whole operation would be split into two main parts. One, the 'Transcendent Killers', led by Eisen and Brody, would head down into the dungeon. These were elite members that Eisen was sure would be a great asset to the fight, and that the old man was sure were going to largely survive an encounter with a transcendent monster, even if they were only backline support. The others, meaning Xenia, Evalia, and Jyuuk, would come down once a map to the bottom of the dungeon was created and join the fight then.

The second part was what would happen for long-term development. While the 'transcendent killers' headed down the floors, the 'dungeon development' crew would take their time, slowly exploring the dungeon floor by floor.

They would map it out, figure out where certain monsters gathered, what sort of traps were scattered around, and things like that. After all, despite planning on becoming this dungeon's master as well, Eisen didn't intend on actually changing a lot about the dungeon. Basically, he wanted to become involved as little as possible to ensure that the dungeon could continue on as it did now. Eisen was sure that a dungeon whose master was a transcendent monster was going to be naturally impressive, so he didn't want to jeopardize something like that.

Maybe it was possible to use the materials that weren't needed for Silber's resurrection to create a core guardian that could take on some of the transcendent monster's qualities and have it continue to be in charge of the dungeon. That way, hopefully, the dungeon would take on less of Eisen's own qualities and stay as it was now. But that was an issue for later; right now, Eisen was really just focused on slaying the transcendent monster and gathering as many of its materials as needed.

But beyond just learning more about the dungeon and using the expedition members for that, for the next few months before the players showed up, Eisen wanted to use this place as something of a 'training ground'. Considering the amount of people in Eisen's military, it was hard to actually find enough opponents for them to defeat. Otherwise, it would probably end up in whole ecosystems being destroyed. It's actually already an issue that's seen around some parts of the central continent where players are hunting very specific monsters to near-extinction. Jyuuk has been worried about that for a while, fearing a total collapse of the central continent's ecosystem, and was working on some countermeasures.

That being the case, dungeon monsters were practically infinite. You didn't need to worry about causing some kind of extinction. Sure, dungeon monsters gave less experience than wild monsters, but they came as an infinite supply. Plus, this meant that their skill levels wouldn't lag behind. Many players suffered from inflated total levels, while their skills were absolutely inadequate for the point they were supposed to be at. Eisen wanted to avoid that as much as possible; after all, true strength came from skills, and not just physical might. Eisen himself would have been unable to reach the level peak without his skills.

As the expedition members started setting up their camp for the night, the old man finished up some sketches that he wanted to develop into proper blueprints later on. He wanted to first see what the dungeon itself was like to make the town that would form around it 'blend' into the dungeon itself a bit more.

Eisen stretched lightly and rolled up the sketches, putting them away into his item storage. He was pretty happy with what he had come up with, and all the plans that he had made so far. It was a fine distraction from the reality that he found himself in. After all, no matter how sure he was, and no matter how 'transcendent' the energy flowing out from the dungeon seemed, there was no way to actually know if there was a transcendent monster down at the bottom. What if there wasn't? What if they were just wasting their time?

Of course, it wasn't as though there was some kind of time-limit on Silber's resurrection. That would have been the cherry on top. No, that wasn't the issue here. But the pain that Eisen felt at having his brother's life in his hands was immeasurable. Silber was already stuck in something between life and death for almost a hundred thousand years. Eisen had left him behind, having no choice but to follow what Samuel had told him to do. But now, he finally had his brother back. For a few weeks. And then, Silber was thrown right back to another confusing state between life and death that he had no hope to escape from on his own.

The only good part about all of this from Eisen's point of view was that Silber wasn't aware of what was happening right now. From Jyuuk's explanation, to tamed monsters, death was just like an extremely heavy, dreamless sleep. They closed their eyes one moment while on the verge of death, and the next, they woke right back up, healthy as ever. That meant that, from Silber's point of view directly, it wouldn't make a difference whether he was 'dead' for a week or a year. But it was what came after that. The longer that it took to resurrect Silber, the more he had to catch up on again.

Silber finally got his life back. He had made some acquaintances and even some friends in Prototype, and was looking forward to heading out and travelling to all those places he's been told about. He had heard of fantastical places beyond his imagination – and now, all that was taken away from him again. There was no way Eisen was going to let Silber miss out on the things he was looking forward to. There was no way he would-

"Eisen?"

The old man snapped out of it as he heard his friend's voice from behind him. Turning around with slight surprise, Eisen saw Brody standing there with a concerned frown, "You good? You've been just kinda staring at the dungeon for a bit."

Eisen slowly nodded, "Right, sorry. I was just lost in thoughts. Thanks for coming here so quickly," he said, and Brody scoffed immediately.

"No need to thank me. I've got the opportunity to face a proper dungeon, why wouldn't I take it?"

"What, you haven't been in a dungeon yet?" Eisen asked, and Brody just shrugged in response.

"I mean, sort of. But most of them are pretty fucking boring, if you ask me. There's no real threats in there. Plus, there's tons of kids running around, thinking they're the shit and annoying the fuck out of me because I'm walking around on my own," Brody let out a deep long groan, shaking his head as if he didn't even want to think about it anymore, "But a dungeon like this should be fun. I imagine the monsters will be pretty damn strong, huh?"

"We haven't checked it out yet, but considering the amount of mana the dungeon is giving off... I imagine the dungeon on its own is rank 9. So not only is it going to be massive, most likely in the ballpark of... 150-200 floors, but even the lower floors are going to have strong monsters in them. So don't expect a joyride to the bottom," Eisen pointed out, and Brody just grinned.

"That many, huh? Should we try reaching floor 50 by the evening tomorrow?"

"Hah, we can try," the old man scoffed, "Actually, apparently Bree has been working with Sigurd to figure out how to properly analyse dungeons, so I think she should be able to guide us down to the steps for the next floors pretty easily, as long as there aren't any gimmicks connected to it all."

"Sick," Brody stretched lightly, "In that case, I'll warm up a bit. Wanna... you know..." he looked at Eisen eagerly, but the old man just laughed and shook his head.

"Sorry, I don't think so. I still have a lot of things to prepare for tomorrow," he explained, "Oh, but I do have something for you to try out."

The old man quickly opened his item storage and grabbed the cursed sword that he had just made, holding it over to the orc-demon halfling, "I got an ability from the black dragon that allows me to make cursed items. So... here you go."

"Cursed? What, you think I'll just let you curse me?" Brody laughed, though he took the sword without hesitation, slowly pulling it out of the sheath before Eisen could even explain what the curse was, "So, how does it work?"

"Well, basically, in exchange for placing a curse on an item, it's possible to heavily strengthen the item's options. This one is just a test, and since it's made for you, I went less gimmicky and more straightforward. I just made sure that it would boost the attack power as much as possible," Eisen explained, and Brody eagerly looked at him for the drawback, "And in exchnage... it drains all the mana in your body."

A massive grin formed on Brody's face, "I guess I can live with that."

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