Kaiden stared at the three nu columns for a beat. His girls stood around the dais, concerned yet hopeful seeing his focus.
He left the nus untouched and spoke to the entity he had not consulted in so ti.
The Demonic Pornstar System.
"System, please tell what you know about this challenge."
The response unfurled in clean lines.
[The Claimant has been recognized as a Dungeon Master. It has issued a formal challenge against the Successor. A Dungeon Master Duel will take place upon the conclusion of the granted preparation period. The Successor must mount a defense utilizing all available resources. Should the Successor fail, the Successor’s domain, core, contracted creatures, and bonded subjects will be transferred to the victor.]
Kaiden’s mouth flattened.
"I see..." His thumb traced the rim of the armrest. "What about the Claimant itself? What can you tell ?"
The pause this ti was longer.
[This phenonon is not docunted in the system’s archives. No equivalent occurred during the Heavenly Demon’s tenure. The best estimation: an irregular interaction between Earth’s mana saturation and the dungeon network it has cultivated has produced a self-organized entity. The Claimant is, in functional terms, a natural dungeon. One born from the assimilation of Earth’s mana and the converging dungeon monsters.]
Kaiden exhaled.
He turned in the throne to face his girls. He’d made the window visible to them, and they were all intently reading the responses from the system.
Nyx’s eyes had gone distant the mont he started talking. By the ti he finished, she’d already worked it through.
"That tracks. A dungeon of Earth, with a Dungeon Master no one’s ever cataloged."
"Which would explain its unnatural strength." Aria’s hand was woven into his.
Luna pushed off the dais, arms crossed.
"Which ans the bastard is a walking, portable dungeon that can keep respawning the sa monsters we already killed. As many tis as it wants, until its defeat." She tipped her head back and looked at the cathedral ceiling. "Fuck."
Then the halo above Kaiden’s head flickered once and dropped weight.
Alice materialized in his lap. Her hands clamped on the front of his shirt. Her face was set in the most serious expression she could mount, which was very serious indeed.
"I’m going to defend this place until my last drop of blood!!" she declared. "Mother gave away the manor, so we’re legally holess now! That ans this is our ho too! I’m sure Mother feels exactly the sa way!!"
Kaiden blinked.
His hand settled on the crown of her hair on autopilot.
"You and Mother are more than welco here, Alice."
Alice bead and nuzzled into his chest with a happy, contented hum, the existential terror of the Claimant and her newfound holessness apparently both resolved by approximately three seconds of headpats and one sentence of welco.
Kaiden’s gaze drifted past her, back to the nus.
[Available DMP: 30,000.]
[Ti Until Defense: 10:41:42.]
Ti to spend it wisely.
Kaiden’s gaze drifted past Alice back to the nus.
"Bastet."
She straightened beside the dais. "Master?"
"Please recall our dungeon-born. It’s ti for them to defend their ho."
She inclined her head and produced the communication artifact from her sash, the rune brightening in her palm as she opened the channel. Taigi answered on the second pulse. Bastet spoke briefly through the link. Return to the dungeon. Bring everyone. Now.
Kaiden’s attention returned to the interface. He selected the 3D Map.
The cathedral dimd by a fraction as the projection blood above the dais, his entire dungeon rendered in shimring light. Five square kiloters rotating slowly above their heads. The girls drifted in around it.
The Safe Zone sat at the dungeon’s mouth, a perfect hundred-ter circle of abyssal stone where no trap could be laid and no creature could spawn. System rule, non-negotiable. Past that ring, the two mandated pathways branched.
The first dropped south and steeply down. Magma spiral. Sli-coated stone leading into a hidden molten pool, with lty and her two sisters cruising the molten rivers below.
The second cut north through the Abyssal Cavern. Tight chokes, ambush chambers, spike trap bands sweeping the floors of every wider room. The route they had used to enter today.
Both converged at the boundary of the third zone, three kiloters of Verdant Expanse opening into temperate forest, freshwater springs, blooming adows. The cathedral they stood in sat at the far end of those three kiloters.
Five total. Two for defense. Three for sustenance.
If the siegers locked them in for weeks, the team would eat venison from deer and drink from clear springs while their attackers starved in the depths. That was the idea behind this setup, which made a lot of sense considering how cheap it was to secure the sustenance areas.
300 DMP total for three while the other two areas cost 600 DMP each.
Calypso circled the rotating projection, tail thumping the dais.
"I believe Magma’s going to hold up well. You were very cruel with the design there, Darling. lty and the girls are terrific hunters."
"Three defenders are not enough," Aria said.
"I agree. We need more girls," Nyx nodded.
"More girls and a wider river network."
Luna had been glaring at the northern pathway.
"That’s the small problem honestly. The Abyssal Cavern route is the one that’s giving a headache. The whole thing was built for human invaders with swords coming at us in a single line, like, narrow chokes and floor spikes and ambush chambers that funnel squads one at a ti, which is great against a guild raid and completely useless against a pack of monsters that flies over all of it."
"Yeah, the spikes need changing..." Nyx agreed.
"And our Nightclaws are dog-sized. Solid against humans, fine against monsters in their weight class. Have you seen what ca out of that fucker’s mouth? Cragweavers the size of a guild hall. Three Shellback Gorgers with wingspans that blocked the sky. Our boys are not winning a straight aerial fight against that."
Bastet’s tail thumped as she returned from the call. She tilted her head.
"Wait. Master, those creatures..." Her brow furrowed. "How would they even fit?"
The cathedral went quiet.
"The corridors barely fit two armored fighters abreast. A Cragweaver the size of a room does not pass through that."
Nyx’s eyes had narrowed at the projection.
"Right. Once you start counting what physically fits, half the monsters we saw get removed from the equation."
Aria’s grip on his wrist tightened.
"The Claimant itself is an entire mountain range. If it tries to step into our dungeon, either the abyssal rock kills it the mont it touches the cavern walls, or it crushes everything by its sheer mass and renders everything we did useless."
The system answered.
[The Claimant is both Dungeon Master and dungeon. Such an entity cannot enter the domain of another. The rules forbid it.]
[The Claimant must defeat the Successor by destroying his dungeon core: either by ending the Successor’s life or by destroying the throne to which the core has been linked. The Claimant will fight by proxy. Its minions are its weapons.]
Calypso was the first to laugh, loud and relieved.
"So the big boy stays outside. Phew!"
Luna had not joined the relief. Her arms uncrossed slowly.
"Okay, that’s great news and all, but it doesn’t actually answer the kitty’s question. Most of what we saw co out of that mouth was upgraded versions of monsters that were already huge to begin with, and even the smaller stuff was, like, horse-sized."
She squinted at the rotating projection.
"So I’ll ask it again. Do we just win by default? Do we just sit here while the Claimant chews on Calypso’s old door?"
Calypso’s tail rested flat on the dais.
"I wouldn’t bet on that. The abyssal rock is strong. Darling could not scratch it with a mana-powered pickaxe under [Doomrend], we already know that much. But we cannot just assu that thing and its minions have zero answer to either of our paths. Mountain dwellers know stone. They live in it, they crawl through it, they break it for fun. If it has anything in its arsenal specifically for cracking another dungeon’s walls, we are going to find out the hard way."
She gestured at the magma section.
"Sa goes for the molten path. Three Salamawyrms in a kiloter of magma is not a lot of coverage if it sends sothing built to swim through it, or what if has a monster that can drain the magma?"
A short silence followed her words.
Bastet’s purr broke it first.
"Then the dungeon must ascend."
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