“Oh, right, before I forget, I have something for you, Angie,” Nate told her as they were eating dinner.

  The group was still in Pittsburgh, but they could leave whenever they wanted in the morning. They had managed to finish everything they needed to do.

  He slid the ring he had gotten from the dungeon the night before across the table to her and explained its properties. Lindsay and Angie kept giggling at each other, but wouldn’t explain why, and he eventually gave up and simply moved on.

  As they continued eating, they talked about which dungeons they wanted to visit and work on that night.

  Things were moving along well with most of the dungeons, but there were a couple that were giving them issues and being slow.

  Foremost among them was the second dungeon with the blighted elves, that hadn’t changed and likely wouldn’t until Halloween came around again. None of the others were as bad as that one, obviously, but there were a few that simply needed to be optimized again as their previous attempts hadn’t worked as they had hoped.

  Before they added any more dungeons, he wanted all the current Dungeon Cores, save the second one, to be elevated to the second level. Once that happened, the Dungeon Core would be able to start fixing any issues they made with the traps.

  Thankfully, only a couple of the dungeons still needed that particular change to be made. Angie and Lindsay had made great progress on the list while he was creating new dungeons before. Including the new dungeons, there were twenty-one Cores that needed to be raised to the second level.

  A short time later, that number had decreased by thirteen, and the overall number of dungeons he could create had risen to one hundred and four.

  Lindsay was watching as the newly finished second-level Core went about modifying the traps. Luckily, the newly formed second levels gave each of the Cores a chance to modify their dungeon.

  The Cores operated under different rules than Nate and the others, and they couldn’t make any modifications if an enemy was on that level. The actions they took were also more expensive by three to four times. What they could do, however, is create an automated task list. One that would go from item to item as soon as it was able to, so time never went to waste.

  At least for the first while, eventually the Cores would go back into a sort of hibernation. There was only so much a second-level Core could do after all.

  She made a few notes about what she could do better on the traps or room design in the future and then closed the screen. “We need to do some basic work on all of the second levels before entering the dungeons tonight.”

  Nate and Angie nodded. “Agreed,” He said. “Let’s just keep it simple for now, a bunch of walls for rooms, and maybe a trap or two. Something to slow them down, in other words. We can do more in the morning while we’re on the road.”

  “Is there anything special you want to do with the dungeon in the Grand Canyon?” Angie asked.

  That particular dungeon had been upgraded earlier, but they had left the second floor completely blank.

  Nate finished off his water and started playing with the cup as he thought. The floating jellyfish things were somewhat of an oddity in that they didn’t seem to be affected by whatever mental changes the portals caused. Just being near the portals was enough to affect the beings of the other worlds. Riling them up and proverbially making their blood run hotter as they tried to attack and progress in their own cultivation.

  For baser creatures, the effect was more pronounced than it was on thinking beings such as the blighted elves. They were still affected, but not to the point of being driven into a frenzy or losing control. When they had been warned to stay away, they had been able to do so, for the most part.

  In comparison, the floating jellyfish were just almost uncaring. As long as you didn’t attack them, they wouldn’t attack you. From what he had seen, all they wanted to do was float around and inspect the occasional changes he made to the dungeon near them. He didn’t even know what they ate, or if they did.

  He eventually shook his head. “No, just leave that dungeon alone for now. I’m still working on getting rid of the kinks in my new meditation method anyway, so I still need to study them. Besides, they aren’t hurting anyone at the moment.”

  That still left them with plenty of new second floors to mess around with and dungeons overall that could still be changed.

  At the moment, it was more important to get the second floors in basic running condition that night than anything else. They could work on the dungeons during the day as they had been. But the second floor gave the Dungeon Cores a chance to get ahead. The sooner they could get to work on those, the better.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  ***

  After dinner, they had started working on the dungeons. With the four of them working together, it had only taken a half-hour for them to add a series of walls to each of the new second floors. There were no corridors, and they were rooms in only the most basic of definitions. Really, they were more maze-like now than anything he had created in the past.

  They added a couple of traps and then closed their screens.

  “How many of these dungeons are you planning on turning into communities?” Lindsay asked with a yawn, putting her arms overhead in a tight stretch.

  “The way I’ve been thinking of it so far is if they are at least semi-intelligent, and I think they can be redeemed, then they’ll get a community. The slimes were an experiment to see if there is a reason to expand on those parameters beyond the simple desire to have more communities.” Nate replied while closing his eyes for a moment.

  Concentrating for that long could still wear a cultivator out if they had already had a long day. Plus, they were still relatively low-realmed cultivators. Well, outside of Aura, she was the powerhouse of the group.

  “So, that means you aren’t going to go and create a community for the ant or rat dungeons, then, right?” Angie asked with a shiver.

  There was no need to even mention the earwig dungeon. They all knew how he felt about those things.

  He shook his head. “Nope. I’m not creating any communities around the insect dungeons, period. Or around the undead ones either. Those are the hardliners; every other one depends on how the monsters act inside the dungeon. I haven’t been impressed with the goblins or kobolds so far, but I’m trying to keep an open mind.”

  The mental effects of the community would do little for insects or the undead, which is why they were automatically out. They tended to have hive minds or be driven purely by instincts, outside of a very rare few. He wasn’t sure how it would affect the ultra-violent races, which was why he hadn’t made up his mind on them yet. It really just depended on how the experiment with the slimes turned out.

  “Which dungeon do you feel like going into tonight?” He asked after they had finished changing.

  “I was thinking that we should make a quick visit to those dwarves from before,” Lindsay said. “It would be good to explain to them what happened with the second floor before any of them… I don’t know panic or something.”

  They all nodded and agreed on two dungeons to go to after that.

  The visit to the mixed dwarven, kobold, and golem dungeon only took a few minutes, and then they were able to move on.

  The dungeon they chose to fight in that night was the first dungeon he had opened in Japan and contained what they referred to as a ‘Rokurokubi’. It had been his second Asian dungeon after the one he had created in South Korea. Then he had created two more in Japan a while later, so the country now had three dungeons.

  He should create a few more in South Korea and the rest of the Asian areas, probably.

  The rokurokubi was a type of Japanese yokai, which, as Nate understood it, could either mean apparition or demon. It wasn’t entirely clear to him, and the internet wasn’t exactly being much help.

  There were several different kinds of them inside the dungeon. They had seen some cultivators entering the dungeon as well, which had actually helped them with the traps. The locals knew how to deal with them, unlike him. The initial traps he had created hadn’t done anything to them. It was only when he copied some of what the local cultivators were doing that the dungeon began to make progress.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to copy everything the local Japanese cultivators were doing. In part because he had previously set the theme, but more so because they were mainly fighting them using skills. If he had still been on his Old Earth, he would have said they were using Shinto or Taoist magic. Based purely on his oh so extensive knowledge gleaned from years of watching anime.

  Regardless, whatever skills they were using were effective, and they weren’t something the dungeon could mimic. However, from those cultivators, he did learn that the rokurokubi did have a few weaknesses, which is what he redesigned the traps for.

  From what he had seen so far, the Japanese and Korean cultivators weren’t nearly as interested in destroying the dungeons as most others were. That meant he didn’t need to have the traps as focused on attacking them. They still did, but he wasn’t as focused on taking them out as he was in the other dungeons.

  The rokurokubi were very human-looking, save for a couple of differences. One of which was the stretchiness of their necks; some of which could detach completely and fly around freely. Another was the sharp teeth and stretched smile that took up most of their face.

  The group appeared inside the dungeon, brought up their screens, and began their hunt for the night. There were a few cultivators inside the dungeon, and in all likelihood, they would even run into them.

  Normally, that was a prospect that Nate and the others would avoid. However, since these cultivators were overseas, it wasn’t something that they were overly worried about in this case. In fact, meeting the local cultivators was even something that they were considering as a positive in this case.

  There were other Dimensional Zones in the country, and Asia in general, that needed to be taken care of. If the monsters that were coming out of those zones were as unfamiliar to him as these particular yokai, then they would need all the information they could get.

  The group wouldn’t push for a meeting, but if it happened, then they would be ready for it.

  In the meantime, they would take their time dealing with the rokurokubi, one at a time. Not that they were particularly worried in that regard. At the absolute worst, Aura could take care of them with her various skills.

  Nate’s own attack skills should also be able to deal a fair bit of damage to them.

  Lindsay’s skills were generally oriented more towards defense, but she also had an excellent cutting attack.

  Then there was the new attack skill that Angie had gotten that day for her sling. She had quickly decided to forget one of the attack skills she had previously learned from the school and learn this one instead. It had taken slightly more time for her to learn the skill than it had in the classroom. The Overlander wasn’t exactly conducive to learning in that way.

  It didn’t take them long to come across their first yokai. It was a single monster, with its neck curled around like a bendy straw and then stretched out toward the group. Its overly wide grin showed off sharp blackened teeth and a long lizard-like tongue.

  None of what they were seeing was appealing in the slightest.

  Thank you to all the people who have taken the time to rate the story and to my latest Patrons! I have other stories up on my Patreon, including my current WIPs. Which are now Created G.H.O.S.T. System(My Cyberpunk story), WetWorks2, plus The Restaurateur and His Daughter and DungeonFall. :)

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