Blacksmith vs. the System

Soon, I was on the first floor, which was currently empty, leaving the team on the third floor to operate alone. While it was a risk to leave them unattended, it was nowhere near enough to let them fight against an unknown threat without my presence. The guards weren't exactly strong, especially since we hadn't trained them through the new methods properly.

However, even with my control, I wasn't sure whether to train them to their full capability yet. I had a strong strategic advantage granted by the dungeon, especially my new ability to open temporary gates between floors. Together with my vision range and other advantages, I was confident to keep things in control in the dungeon, but I was still reluctant to fully commit to it.

Trying to control a hundred guards, each with a developed Epic skill seemed too dangerous to risk.

"I can decide that later," I muttered as I stopped at the hill where we had the experimental products. The metal there wasn't good enough to make a good replacement for my armor, but that didn't mean I couldn't fashion a chainmail I could wear above mine.

It was clunkier than I would have liked, but I didn't want to go out without the ability to block their fire effect that could bypass armor. I also fashioned a spear from the remaining metal, which seemed like the best weapon to have against them.

I didn't expect the first wave of monsters to be a challenge for me, but that wasn't a good reason to be unprepared.

"Now, let's see how far away from the dungeon I can move," I muttered as I stepped out of the gate, looking at the burning landscape.

It was a pity. Just yesterday, the hills and plains that surrounded the town were a beautiful green, but now it had turned into a red and black-landscape. The presence of the lizards had been enough to turn the area into a mess.

Once I was a hundred yards away from the dungeon, I used a mana attack, depleting my mana.

[-210 Mana]

It was filled back, but it wasn't instant like it was in the dungeon. It took a fraction of a second to refill, but still, the distance was clear. I moved another hundred yards away from the dungeon gate and repeated the effort, only for it to slow down even more, but it still stayed well below a second.

"It's not too bad," I growled as I kept moving farther away from the gate, carefully splitting my attention between my surroundings and the connection. I didn't know if suddenly getting ambushed or snapping the connection would be worse, but I wasn't in a position to test that.

Nor did I want to. Instead, I focused on the connection I had, trying to focus on the sensation of opening another gate, one that I knew to be possible from my earlier encounter in the volcanic dungeon. The sensation was hard to describe, but I could feel that, if I gave a push, I could open a gate. But, the effort that was required felt more significant than just opening a floor between the dungeon floors.

"Nice to know," I said, but I didn't continue with it, not willing to exhaust myself.

Instead, I focused on my task. I didn't move down too much, merely five hundred yards away from the dungeon, a distance where the sensation of stretching was already turning out to be uncomfortable.

I ignored that and pulled a small crusher I had brought and demolished a few shells from the monsters, separating mana from the shells before I opened the box, trying to bait the nearest lizards toward me.

I needed that since, even though they crowded the outskirts of the mountain, they weren't climbing quickly.

The trick didn't work, but due to an unexpected reason. The dungeon gate pulled the tainted energy back inside, with a stronger velocity than I had expected.

I reduced the distance to half, and repeated the trick, watching the strength of the pull, which seemed to double. "A linear relationship, not the hardest to beat," I said as I moved back to the earlier spot, fashioned a new box with a deliberately fragile shell, and once I trapped the tainted energy inside, I threw the box as far as I could manage.

Strength allowed me to throw it high, and the fact that the dungeon gate was on the top of the mountain made it even easier.

The fragmentation spread the energy even more, and the monsters reacted to the presence of tainted energy by rushing to the point of impact, their hiss of fury loud. I expected only the lizards nearest to the effect to rush toward the tainted energy, as I had a good idea about the general distance of the taunt effect.

To my surprise, fire lizards reacted to the tainted energy more intensely than I had expected. "Maybe it's the change they had when dying outside," I said. My general dungeon lore was limited, but it was well-known that the dungeon beasts that died outside didn't disappear the same way, and showed far more aggression.

It was absurd to think that the change would be limited to just that.

I threw a few more fragment containers to drive them closer and closer, expecting them to rush toward me. To my surprise, once they reached a certain distance to the dungeon, they stopped their approach, suddenly showing signs of fear and anger — as much as a group of weird lizards could show it.

I examined their behavior, frowning. Technically, their avoidance was good news. I hoped that they would continue to avoid the dungeon entrance, but I wasn't sure. The way they acted reminded me of how the giant insects reacted to the trees, only at a wider range. But this also meant that they might end up ignoring their fear once their numbers got high enough, the same way the insects ignored the presence of the trees.

If that was the case, I needed to be prepared.

Luckily, it was an easy test to conduct. I created several more containers and baited more and more lizards, turning their group into a horde. As their numbers increased, they moved closer to the gate, but didn't get daring enough to rush forward.

I used my new spear to cut through them. Since the lizards were the weakest variant, their defeat came with ease. One blow, particularly from the metal forged from their materials, was enough to demolish them with ease.

But, while fighting, they didn't start running away despite their numbers being reduced.

"Good news," I said as I finished killing them. While I didn't need that particular advantage against the weak lizards, the dungeon had thousands of people who didn't have that luxury. Not to mention, I would still welcome that advantage against the boss monsters.

There were about three hundred lizards that were outside the dungeon, which had been easy to demolish. I quickly cut their claws while leaving the rest on the ground, and returned to the dungeon with them.

Once at the dungeon, I used a temporary gate to go to the third floor for a quick check, but I deliberately targeted a hill half a mile away from the newly built forge complex. I wanted to check the situation without showing myself.

Things were going better than I had expected. The first set of apprentices were already working at the forges, some forging daggers from mana alloys while others worked on creating railways, while a bigger crowd was already laying tracks between the mine and the forge.

The situation seemed to be in order, so I went back to the first floor. The experiments with Maria were useful, as I was able to turn the claws into weapons and armor rapidly enough, enough to arm thirty people. Not an army, but enough to hunt for more lizards as a team.

But, I didn't use all of the claws during forging. I kept one, and demolished it in a crusher. Then, I used advanced Observe to see what would happen. Something about the reaction of the lizards had alarmed me, and I wanted to see if my vague worries had any basis. I hoped that I was just being needlessly cautious, as I already had too many projects to deal with.

It turned out that I was not, and my worries were more accurate than I had hoped.

If it was a shell I had demolished, the mana would have been absorbed back by the dungeon rapidly, while the tainted energy would follow the same path, only slower.

The mana acted as I expected and was absorbed by the dungeon. The tainted energy … not so much.

Instead of slowly slipping out to be absorbed, it started a silent conflict at the edge of the box. The speed of it wasn't high, nor was the process showy, but the dungeon mist … fought against the taint, destroying it slowly while spending itself.

"That's not good," I said with a frown. I might have been happier if it had been earlier, before my connection with the dungeon gave me a better sense of its internal process, showing that both the mist and the tainted energy were critical parts of the dungeon's operation.

The reaction between the different dungeons showed that their energies were not compatible, so the situation was even worse. It meant that we couldn't ignore the lizards that were outside. Eventually, they would climb the mountain and attack the gate.

And, I had a feeling that I wouldn't appreciate their presence inside the dungeon. This meant, I needed to put a defensive line outside, which would create significant defensive vulnerabilities…

Unless, of course, I could find a way to isolate the lizards once they stepped into the dungeon.

I sighed in exhaustion before I went out to draw another group of lizards to attack the dungeon. This needed further experimentation.

Like I didn't have enough problems.