Chapter 47: Chapter 46: The Upgraded Fort & the Sea of Islands

"Here you go, you damn bastard!!" 

What's going on? A blue-clothed magical girl threw a potion bottle at me the moment I entered the Union hall. I caught it in mid-air, a feat that surprised me more than the overwhelming defeat I handed to the intruders yesterday. 

"......oh, Jill." - Garami

"What's with the weak response!? It's your fault I'm like this!" - Jill

Jill had gotten a makeover. Or, he's being forced to wear makeup that's highlights his more feminine features. The outfit he's wearing is not the Saltwater Mage set from yesterday, but some hardcore magical girl-cosplay. It strangely fits with his horns, wings, and tail. A demonic magical girl...

"You're going all out? With the contest?" - Garami

"It's the Succubi that are going all out! Do you know how embarrassing it is to play a dress-up doll for those fanatics for cuteness!?" - Jill

Ah, they're more for cute than sexy. Though luck. Then again, they may have forced him to wear some kinky outfits if they favored the latter, so isn't this guy luckier than he thinks?

Jill looked like he wanted to complain some more, but a few Succubi dressed as makeup artists entered the building, resulting in Jill fleeing in fear when he laid his eyes on him. Live strong, buddy.

After the Succubi ran after Jill with shouts that practically had heart marks at the end, I drank the BITTER potion and saw that [Demon Taming]'s level had gone up to Lv.2. Then I used 6 AP to further increase its level to Lv.4. Doing this allowed the skill to now let me tame two demons, Nyx included. Therefore, I went to the Union's library. I wanted to look up the bestiary of the neighborhood.

Hmm? The Fort? That's put on hold. I've used up all the DP and have to wait for it to recharge.

Still not good enough? Fiiine, I'll take it from the top:

Yesterday, with the defeat of the invaders, the Dungeon's level went up. It was anticlimatic easily. I expected it would require killing up to a few hundred players before the first level-up, but I was proven wrong. It's probably more like with player levels. "The first levels are easier than the later" or something like that. 

Anyway, with the level increased the Dungeon gained access to a lot of new special tricks..., or not. The level-up only increased the DP-cap by 100. Though, that itself is worth a lot, as there are lots of facilities that require more than 100 DP to be placed. I've been only messing with the "trial-version" of most of the facilities. Take a look:

Facility List:

Floor 2:
Floor 3:
Floor 4:

It's starting to look like a decent Dungeon now. Maybe I should go over what everything is again so I don't forget what they do:

• The Alarm warns me about intruders.
• Friendly Fire-Free Traps is a special addition that prevents the traps from being activated by the Dungeon monsters. However, it's still possible for them (the monsters) to use the traps as "weapons". Like what the Dark Phantom did with the arrow traps yesterday.
• Intruder Spy-Eye is a floating, stealthy camera that lets me get a look at what's going on in the Dungeon. Unlike the basic camera that comes with the Dungeon, this one works on intruders as well as the Dungeon monsters.
• Robbing Dungeon is the effect that made the Dual Swordsman drop his item. The probability of an item going poof is low if the intruder's LUC is high, but not many players seem to care about that stat.

As for the facilities:

• Royal Pantry provides food for the Dungeon monsters only. Without food and drink, and all that.
• Royal Garden (Small) gives plants to harvest. Gonna add more of those, plus the non-small variant when I get the chance.
• The Casino is something I added on a whim, but I may be forced to add more. The monsters on the other floors are envious of the floor-2 monsters. It's a non-PVP/PVM area.
• The Café is my spot of relaxation. And for the intruders, if they have money. Like the Casino, no combat is allowed.
• The hotel is where Nyx and her future friends will stay when I'm not dragging them with me on adventurers.

Then we have the traps. The bread and butter of all Dungeons~:

• Wooden Arrows and Poison Arrows are what you can imagine. Arrows flying from holes in the walls.
• Hidden Traphole is a concealed traphole, but "concealed" is stretching it. Even an idiot can see that the part of the floor where the hole is has different color compared to the rest. May have to upgrade it in the future...
• Dark Mine sucks up MP from the poor fool stepping on them. Then they're randomly replaced on its designated floor. Tough luck trying to make a strategy around them. 
• A Rotation Floor is a crossroad that makes the invaders enter a different road at random when they pass it. Go into the crossroad from the south, try to exit from the north, and you'll end up in the west! Though, since it's random, the intruder may end up where they wanted to go. 
• Bomb Crystal (Small) are fakes of the Recovery Crystals (Small). Instead of healing, they go *BOOM!*. I like them.

Speaking of Recovery Crystals, I can't forget about the FP-giving, invader-supporting facilities:

• Rest Areas prevent Dungeon monsters from entering. It can also be used as a temporarily log-out area that's overwritten if they try to go somewhere else when they log in again.
• Springs of Recovery now come in (Small), normal, (Darkness), and (Crystal)~. Drinking from it will recover an invader's HP and stuff, but only 1 unit of this type can be placed on each floor.
  • The small one recovers the least and only gives 25 FP.
  • The normal one recovers more, even the MP, and gives 150 FP.
  • Crystal springs give even more recovery than the normal one, plus it gives more FP as well. A Crystal element-limited item. I may set one up on the first floor only for the FP.
  • The Darkness spring recovers more than the normal spring, but there's a risk of semi-permanently lowering your stats until you leave the Dungeon. Gonna stuff the upper floors with these.
• Recovery Crystals (Small) has a charge of "recovery energy" that can be used on 1 invader, then it needs 1 hour to recharge. It's nice to have along with the bomb variants.
• The Treasure Chest (Small) lets me store any items inside, and while it's filled, the chest will give me FP. After it's been emptied, it transports to a random location on that floor. Lots of the harvest from the Royal Garden is placed in these.
• Gift Shops give you the chance to buy items instead of gambling with a treasure chest. They come with small non-combat areas.
• Lottery Machines look like vending machines and are filled with stuff that you can get from the treasure chest and the gift shops (as they're all connected to the same "storage). They're sorta like gatcha machines, and the invaders need to spend sol for each spin. 

I'll be upgrading the support facilities to higher variants for now, then use the FP to upgrade the second floor into an "invader-friendly floor" filled with facilities like the Casino where they can play and stuff. There's also this "Return Terminal" thing that lets the invaders return to the entrance of the Dungeon, so I'll place one there, and only there. 

As for the third floor, I gotta make it brutal. The sudden change from Darkness element demons up to E-rank to Crystal element demons up to D-rank is sure to throw most invaders off their game at the first visit, but I gotta do better than that.

And the fourth floor..., it's the final line of defense. We're back to Darkness demons, but these can reach even the D-ranks. And again, I gotta turn the floor brutal. No, fiendish even! 

The first floor is fine as it is. Filled with traps and tricks. Maybe I'll add some more stuff once I get the chance. 

Anyway, I can't do anything more with the Dungeon until the DP recovers, so for the rest of the day, I'm on demon hunt duty. The lucky thing is that this town's within the region of the Umbral capital. Lots of wild demons around. 

After consulting the Adventurers' Union's books of wisdom, I found three potential areas around this town that could give some good demons to tame.

I could also include areas around the Dusk Woods and the Darklands, but there's no info about them here, there are no libraries or books in the Dusk Wood village, not to mention there are no human (or demon) settlements in the Darklands at all! 

Therefore, by the process of elimination, I've limited my search for a new ally in the places near this town that I can study on. 

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The three areas that caught my interest is: the Demonic Plains with all the animal-type demons; the Barataria Gulf, the sea-area that's connected to the port and has lots of small islands here and there with demons living there, and the Alberido Alpha Swamp that's a "Haunt", a special area where a specific element is going crazy.

On a different note, the Darklands are also considered a Haunt, one made of several Haunts. The Alerido Swamp is also the same, as there are Beta and Delta swamp close to the Alpha swamp. There are lots of Poison element creatures there, demons included. But I need specialized protection items if I wanna go there without dying from the poisoned air...

It's decided. I'll ignore the swamp for now. And the Demonic Plains doesn't seem to be that interesting either, so I'll take a look at the Gulf. 

After giving my thanks to the librarian, I paid for a spot on one of the small ships that were going to the islands and set off. 

On the way, I asked the sailor what he knew about the Gulf. According to him, only normal fish and fish-type monsters lived in the Gulf, but the ocean had some big-shot sea monsters, and he's serious when he says "sea monster". Stuff like C-rank creatures is the norm out there. Luckily, the big ships have good-enough stealth technology to escape their attention. 

However, I'm not gunning for fish-type monsters or sea monsters. The latter may be cool, but neither are exactly demons. And they're limited to the sea, so even if I tamed them, there would be few opportunities for me to use them. 

That's why I want to find the monsters living on the dozens of islands in the Gulf. These are the typical hunting grounds for adventurers that don't have any fishing-type skills, and these creatures are amphibious. Can act both on land and sea. That's what I want.

But I gotta be strict about this "audition". If I only get demons that can do the same thing, it would end up with me only summoning the strongest demon and turning the other guys into NEETs. I need different guys to fulfill different needs. 

Nyx is sorta like an assault trooper. Fast legs and sharp claws. Not sure what class she can end up with, but she's training in the Fort even now to level up her Warrior class.

If needed, I can summon her, but I wanna do today's hunt on my own. I have a new skill bought for the last of my AP that I wanna test out as well.

This is the skill that the Stygian Clown had, so I know it could become something awesome with training. And combined with the effect of [Evasion], maybe I'll be able to do dodges like in the M*trix? Could probably use Nyx's [Prediction] skill for that. Eh, let's go with what I have for now. 

Oh, and I almost forgot to check out the new title I got yesterday. There's still some time before we reach the islands, so...

Hmm, a commemorating title. Tch. It's probably a good title for someone like Jill, but I have the [World Quest Clearer] title, not to mention [Dungeon Ruler]. It's not worth equipping.

Just then, we reached the dock made on one of the bigger islands. The sailor was gonna be fishing for the rest of the day, so he warned me that he may not be available if I wanted to return to town. Sorry pal, but they have one of the Player Room-connecting fountains here. I'm good. 

The port island didn't have much except for a tavern and an inn for sailors that were too late to return to the town, so I ignored it and went for the next island.

After getting out of the "town", I finally realized the nickname the locals had given this area. Several small islands covered most of this part of the Gulf, with small stripes of bedrock connecting the islands like bridges. The sheer number of rocky islands truly lives up to the name "sea of islands". I found the spectacle resembling a spiderweb thanks to all the bridges.

It wasn't difficult traveling through the islands on foot, and on the way, I saw several other players fighting against strange, sea-based creatures. A big clam with spikes is jumping around and trying to skewer some players, a fish that's doing rider kicks with realistic-looking human legs, and an eel that's so slippery that even magical fireballs are slipping off its skin.

It's important to mention that all mentioned creatures are walking and breathing on land. Good to know. Better find those demons. And hope they're not as weird-looking as these guys.

I kept on walking through the various islands while undercover with [Lurk]. It's to test whether the monsters can notice me or not. Something like a prerequisite if I should tame them or not. 

So far, there's been no creature, demonic or not, who's noticed me with [Lurk] active. Not even the players! They did get a scare when I "suddenly appeared" when turning off [Lurk] to let my MP recover.

Hmm, should I lower the "difficulty"? At this rate, none of these demons will satisfy...whoa!?

*CRASH!*

That was close! Someone finally answered my prayers and attacked me. Even with [Lurk] still functioning! This guy is showing some promise~. 

...huh? Like, for real? ...maybe I should introduce this one to the locals in the port town? Yikes...

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Skill List:

Attack Skills:
Magic Skills:
Crafting Skills: Active Skills: Passive Skills:
Perception Skills: Leadership Skills: Elements: Monster Skills:

Title List:

Hunting Titles:
Status Titles:

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