Kaiden’s attention caught for a mont on Scarlet.
She was still leaning against the corridor wall, a Nightclaw draped across her shoulder like a heavy shawl, another circling her ankles in slow, curious passes. She was watching the pack with the sa idle amusent she’d shown for everything else.
A visitor. Inside his dungeon. And she would now move past the Safe Zone, past both corridors, all the way into the Verdant Expanse and the cathedral at its heart. He had never let outsiders that deep. The layout of this place was the kind of knowledge that could let a determined enemy draft a siege plan.
He looked at Vespera.
She was already eting his eyes, composed and unconcerned. She had brought Scarlet to his dungeon herself and said nothing about securing her after. That was the only endorsent he needed. Vespera did not make security mistakes.
He let it go without a word.
"Co on!" Nyx was already tugging Scarlet by the wrist again, deeper into the dungeon.
Soon enough, the scene repeated inside the abyssal palace, the Fla Monarch dragged by an overly enthusiastic Space Valkyrie from wall to wall.
Scarlet let herself be pulled along for the second ti in ten minutes while Nyx talked a mile a minute. "The cathedral is the heart of it, but you have to see the walls, allegedly Cali designed those lava cascades herself, and the throne is literally made of bones, and oh my god we have to find lty at so point..."
Scarlet followed the tour with a faint grin and occasional hums of acknowledgnt.
Kaiden watched his aweso space babe drag the legendary Fla Monarch around by the sleeve, talking a mile a minute about every corner of the palace, and allowed himself a small smile.
Then the interface pulsed against his awareness, and he turned back to it.
Mid-Tier.
A chi cut through Kaiden’s thoughts before he reached the nus.
[Mid-Tier Ascension Complete. Reviewing dungeon compliance with new operational paraters.]
[Creation Mode: Available. Cooldown reset. Editing rights restored on all previously committed terrain.]
[Notice: Tier-gated rules require adjustnt before Mid-Tier benefits can be unlocked.]
[Minimum corridor dinsions increased. Current corridor (3m × 3m) falls below Mid-Tier threshold of 8m width × 10m height.]
[All Mid-Tier benefits locked until compliance is achieved.]
Kaiden read it through twice.
’Ugh.’
His thumb tapped the armrest.
The rule made sense. He hated that it did, but the logic held.
The system had always been balanced this way. Dungeons had to leave at least two paths open. A Dungeon Master could not just wall himself in and dare anyone to find him. The right of ownership ca with obligations.
If Mid-Tier was about to hand him monsters that pushed past what he’d been able to field so far, it was fair to ask him to give the opposition enough space to actually walk in. Otherwise the renovation would turn into an even crueler at grinder that fed invaders into single-file butchery.
The notification pulsed again. Beneath the compliance requirent, a new button had rendered.
[Auto-Apply Minimum Tier Compliance? (Free)]
[Upon confirmation: the Abyssal Corridor and Magma Spiral will be scaled to et Mid-Tier minimums. Layout, trap placents, and ambush chambers will be preserved where possible and proportionally adjusted. Creation Mode rights remain available for further refinent.]
A free, one-click renovation that would do the heavy lifting of stretching his corridors without him spending the next hour in Creation Mode shoving walls outward by hand.
He clicked the button with his mind, accepting the proposal.
The dungeon responded in the sa instance.
Kaiden selected the scrying view and the cathedral dimd around him. His awareness rode the system down into the Abyssal Corridor, and the corridor was already moving.
Stone flowed. Walls drifted outward like a tide pulling back from a shore, ceilings rose as if the rock above them had decided gravity was optional. The chokeholds he had designed to pass a maximum of two armored fighters at a ti opened into proper throats, wide enough now for six or seven abreast, tall enough that a horse-sized flyer could climb to altitude and dive.
The ambush chambers ballooned from cramped caves into broad rooms, their shapes preserved but their scales tripled. Trap bands along the floors stretched wider without losing their placent. The Nightclaw perches along the upper crevices retreated further up into new darkness, the pack resettling without complaint.
The shape was unchanged, but now it was a corridor a mountain could send its army through without threading them one by one.
He shifted the view.
The magma spiral was doing the sa trick. The corridor skin scaled outward, and beneath it the magma pool widened, the molten surface expanding. But the hidden access Kaiden had carved to let lty and her sisters circulate stayed intact, and the sli-coated approach stones kept their trap profile, their footprint simply larger.
The final chi ca seconds later.
[Compliance Achieved. All Mid-Tier benefits unlocked.]
[Creature upgrades available.]
[New Defenses Unlocked.]
[Master’s Domain: Available for configuration.]
[Structural purchases unlocked.]
Kaiden grinned, excited to see what all these entailed, and pulled the main interface open.
[Dungeon ID: #A23-6679]
[Tier: Mid]
[Rank: 4]
[Dungeon Master: Kaiden Grey]
[Available DMP: 18,100]
He noted the DMP pool and pulled up the Creatures tab.
[Current Roster]
[Abyssal Maulfiend ×40]
— 24 at Lvl 99
— 16 at Lvl 40-60
[Abyssal Nightclaw ×50]
— 20 at Lvl 99
— 30 at Lvl 40-90
[Abyssal Salamawyrm ×6]
— 6 at Lvl 99
Calypso leaned over his shoulder to read the roster, her horn almost brushing his ear.
"So. What do we have to work with?"
Kaiden scrolled into the Maulfiend entry.
The twenty fresh units from today accounted for most of the maxed count. The other twenty were older, summoned at inheritance to plug the chokepoints in the Abyssal Zone where the slim corridors had funneled invaders into single-file slaughter. Back then, DMP had been tight and the math had been brutal. He had put a handful at the cap and spread the rest across whatever levels he could afford at the ti.
Good enough for human raiders walking two abreast into a kill zone. Not good enough for what the Claimant was going to be sending.
The Nightclaw readout was ssier. They were a swarm, so Kaiden reasoned that having so heavy hitters and so weaker ones made sense, as they fought with numbers more than individual strength.
The Salamawyrms were the clean picture, all of them maxed out. They were protecting one path by themselves, so Kaiden didn’t feel comfortable with skimping in case an invader could deal with the magma environnt.
He pulled back to the main view and tapped one of the Lvl 99 Maulfiends.
A new option blood under the standard upgrade slider.
[Evolution Available]
[This creature has reached the previous tier’s maximum threshold. Mid-Tier access permits evolution into specialized variants. Evolution is permanent. Once selected, the unit cannot be rolled back to base form.]
[Evolution paths: 3 available. Select entry to view.]
Kaiden’s pulse ticked up a notch despite himself.
Branching. The sa Maulfiend could beco three different monsters depending on where he pointed it.
Kaiden selected the first entry.
[Evolution Path 1 of 3 — Monolith]
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