Chapter 42: Calamity of Luck (and Cute New Species?!)
[ Upgrades Category -> Level 3. ]
[ New upgrades are now available. ]
[ Dungeon Heart — Level 3 -> Level 4 — Cost: 500 mana points ]
[ Buildings Category — Level 3 -> Level 4 — Cost: 600 mana points ]
[ Summons Category — Level 3 -> Level 4 — Cost: 600 mana points ]
This time again, I won’t be able to take everything.
At that thought, she did as she always did and gave priority to what mattered most.
"System, raise the Dungeon Heart to level four, please."
[ Spend 500 mana points to raise the Dungeon Heart to level 4? ]
"Yes."
[ Congratulations! Your Dungeon Heart has reached level 4. ]
[ You now generate 25 mana points every hour. ]
The sphere at the center of the room pulsed a little stronger, its glow spreading further across the smashed walls, and Freya felt the flow of mana around it thicken noticeably, like a spring whose flow had suddenly been widened.
Oh, not bad at all, times two and a half this time.
She was now almost certain that the mana improved in tiers, one, five, ten, twenty-five, and the next would surely be fifty, then a hundred, and so on.
Back to this tier. Instead of two hundred forty mana a day, I’ll now be generating...
She ran the math in her head, once, twice, three times, not out of difficulty but to be quite sure she wasn’t wrong in front of the figure.
"Woow~" Freya couldn’t hold back her delight as she realized she’d now be earning six hundred mana a day from her Heart alone.
These past few days I thought I’d gotten lucky, between the corpses, the Rank S monsters, the one percents, the shop... but it looks like it’s still going the same way.
She jumped in place in the middle of the dungeon with a "Yay~," before remembering, cheeks flushing, what had happened the last time she’d gotten too carried away, and sat back down with a clearing of her throat, checking out of the corner of her eye that she really was alone.
Let’s see what I’ve got left in mana.
[ Mana: 468/10,000 ]
So not enough for the rest.
Her gaze was already turning greedily toward the imp’s body sprawled on the floor, though.
She got up, went over to it, and threw it into the Heart, before picking up the severed head a little further off, that one half-burned and no longer really looking like anything, to toss it into the red glow in turn without a word.
[ Absorbing 1 winter calamity corpse. ]
[ Calculating amount of mana harvested... ]
[ The Dungeon Heart has absorbed 1,322 mana points. ]
Freya stopped dead at the notifications, her mind going completely blank for a few seconds, before everything exploded at once.
What? What? What? One thousand three hundred twenty-two mana? So he was a mage-type fighter, not a physical one?
Freya thought back on the long fight, on everything he’d absorbed, and she’d naturally assumed that, like the Faceless Devourer, he’d been a physical type.
But apparently not. And that name, winter calamity?
She immediately made the connection with the so-called Artalia, the one Aria had fought.
Don’t tell me this monster, who was already far too strong, also had control magic over snow or ice, and that this whole damn time, he hadn’t even been able to use his real strength?
That was what seemed most consistent, though, something of that sort, given the mana the Heart had returned.
And the more she thought about it, the more a far more troubling detail came back to her, because this monster wasn’t one she’d lured in, it was one Artalia had sent up to her as a "gift." A simple present, tossed upward without so much as a second thought, and that present had already dragged her to her death a good hundred times over, even while fighting held back, stripped of its true power.
If that was just the gift she saw fit to send me from below... then what is Aria up against down there, face to face with the kind of creatures that can keep beasts like that as mere pawns?
The question knotted her stomach a little, and she chose to push it away for now, since there was nothing she could do about it.
She understood once again just how lucky she’d been to beat him, because a great many things had worked in her favor during the fight, far too many.
And to think Aria can beat monsters that strong in a few hits... on top of everything she knows... she really is a walking cheat.
That was what she felt deep down, this sense of having been seriously favored from the very start compared to the other Dungeon Lords.
Whether it was her draws, her skills themselves, or the simple fact of having become an Overlord without ever wanting it for a single second, by sheer luck, with the world right beneath her feet and all the rest.
Wouldn’t I be more of a Calamity of Luck? she thought to herself, letting out a little laugh, before remembering that the other Dungeon Lords presumably had just as much luck as she did.
Now that I think about it, whether it’s Blackflame or Lucas, they’ve got insanely powerful unique skills too.
One had literally the ability to reshape matter, while the other had control over time.
Freya also figured the skills they unlocked at each tier of their system had to be tied to a theme, like the Gacha for her, so Lucas surely had other skills related to time, and Blackflame others tied to matter or something of the sort.
Just as dreamy as my gachas, in the end.
Anyway, enough rambling. Back to where we were.
"System, raise the Buildings category to level four, please."
[ Spend 600 mana points to raise the Buildings category to level 4? ]
"Yes."
[ You have unlocked six new buildings! ]
[ Crystal Mine — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 300 mana ] Grows crystals from mana, then mined by your Worker Mycofoxes. Requires 10 mana points per day to operate.
[ Gem Cutter’s Workshop — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 500 mana ] Cuts raw crystals into gems. Requires a Lapidary Mycofox and 1 mana point per day.
[ Silkweaver Nest — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 300 mana ] Habitat and breeding ground for Silkweavers. Consumes food each day to function.
[ Silk Spinnery — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 300 mana ] Spins the Silkweavers’ raw silk into thread. Consumes 2 mana points per day and requires a Spinner Mycofox.
[ Weaving Workshop — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 500 mana ] Weaves the thread produced by the Spinnery into cloth, to make clothes, sheets, and everything else. Consumes 2 mana points per day and requires a Weaver Mycofox.
[ Enchanting Workshop — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 500 mana ] Requires a weapon from the Forge and a gem from the Gem Cutter’s Workshop. Assembles the two to create enchanted weapons.
[ Building count increased! ]
[ Storage Vault: limit raised to 2 buildings. ]
Ooooh~~ Isn’t this the best upgrade I’ve had since the very beginning? For starters, isn’t it completely broken, a crystal mine powered by mana?
But above all, Freya understood that the building chains were finally starting to link up with one another, and the gamer in her got carried away at once as she realized the swords from the Forge could now be paired with the gems from the Cutter’s Workshop, to be assembled and enchanted in the Enchanting Workshop.
This... this is... MAGNIFICENT!
She could already picture running the chain from start to finish, a raw blade coming out of the Forge from Jūyon, set with a gem cut from crystal, then enchanted for good in the last workshop. A powerful, permanently enchanted weapon, with no expiry date, and no need to leave things to chance.
Maybe in time, I won’t even be dependent on my draws anymore... she thought to herself with a satisfied little laugh.
It was all rather neatly tied together, and that was quite literally the word for it, because on top of all that, she’d also just unlocked a whole new chain geared toward weaving.
Exactly what I need right now, on top of it, seeing as we’ve got literally nothing of the sort left in the dungeon after burning everything.
Even if, with that, a new species was moving into the dungeon, and not exactly one of Freya’s favorites, spiders.
"I hope they’ll at least be cute..." She paused for a moment’s thought, before bouncing back in a surge of positivity. "Yes, they definitely will be, just like the Mycofoxes!"
Good news on top of good news, she couldn’t help marveling at it all and letting it out by breaking into a victory dance.
She raised her arms, swayed to one side then the other, strung together two or three utterly ridiculous steps that no pride should ever have allowed her, and let herself go completely, carried by the thrill of the moment and the certainty that she was quite alone in her room.
"...Madam?"
Freya froze, a shiver crawling slowly up her spine.