Dungeon of Niflheim

528 Chapter 528: Quick fix

What Frost ideally envisioned was to create an offshoot of his current dungeon, not necessarily creating a second dungeon but another entrance that differed from the current layout. He first wanted to attempt such a notion and see if the dungeon menu rejected his proposal as it has happened before putting all his eggs in one basket.

Frost along with a great number of his siblings attempted to push the boundaries of their dungeon creation skills over the past few months with a great many being shot down by their father’s ‘actually’ fairly rule bound system.

One such example was a certain sibling wanting to place their dungeon core in an unreachable room therefore permanently preventing anyone from getting access to it lest they started destroying the dungeon’s many walls and boundaries. This was of course immediately shot down with the statement ‘intruders must be able to reach the dungeon core some way or another or rather the dungeon core can’t be cordoned off from any part of the dungeon’. The limits imposed by this rule however are dependent on many factors such as the dungeon’s location, type, intruders etc… but the basis was that the dungeon core needed to be accessible through some shape or form to those that would be entering it.

Others thus took that word ‘accessible’ with a grain a salt and further pushed the boundaries, some succeeded in their machinations, but many were outright rejected. If one wished to go to far with their ploys and get away with it there was one possibility that Dark eventually- after getting annoyed with the inundating creativity of his children- established. Which was the possibility of creating a second/subordinate dungeon through the use of a dummy dungeon core (a hollow soulless entity, like what Dark used to explain monster summoning to Frost and the rest in the first couple chapters) or the core of a monster lair.

The first method was pretty safe and posed fewer limitations but so far no one knew how to get their hands on one of these dummy cores and Dark didn’t bother telling. The current assumption was that they could be prizes in the gacha and or rewards given by Dark during future gatherings as currently the dungeon menu didn’t offer them for sale anywhere.

The second option of using monster lair cores however providing a definite route to establishing a subsidiary dungeon though with many caveats. First being that you’d need to subdue a monster lair and absorb its core which was not only difficult and possibly dangerous the act itself would put a target on your back. There was an established accord throughout Nova to not mess with monster lair cores as the monster lairs served as a significant sources of income and materials for their surrounding populace. Losing said source threatened their livelihoods so them becoming furious and coming after the one who caused such a loss was to be expected.

Secondly the subsidiary dungeon would be limited in size, equal to whatever size the monster lair was at the point of acquisition. Third the DP retrieved from deaths within the subsidiary dungeon would only be 50% of what would be gained in the primary dungeon given that they were a poorer imitation of the real thing.

Finally recovery of monsters, traps and environmental assets would happen far slower than compared to the main dungeon though the larger and more developed the monster lair the smaller the difference.

Basically the way to go was dummy dungeon cores but since access to them was severely restricted monster lairs offered a way to grow quickly albeit at the expense of quality. This was certainly true for the moment where only the top half dozen or so cores were at the B-rank. The level of monster lairs they could conquer was quite limited.

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Frost currently had no plans on embarking down such a route, especially at his current juncture. He’d already been at war for several weeks so he wasn’t keen on starting another one just so he could establish a substandard dungeon solely for wild monsters. Instead he was thinking of creating a second entrance that would eventually lead to the regular dungeon albeit through a rather circuitous route.

Thanks to the magic of spatial magic the internal layout of the dungeon could be completely lobsided but still line-up well with the following and preceding floors. Frost could pretty much build in whatever direction with a great deal of leniency. Of course if he ascended further and further up the mountain there’d eventually be far less actual space to work with but at the moment he had more to work with than he could ever dream of using.

“I could create an out of the way entrance somewhere within the external glacial mountains and have it eventually lead back to the main layout thus keeping the two separate while at the same time not tripping up on any caveats, however…..”

“Error! Error! Error! As expected,” when Frost went to create a second entrance somewhere far in the distance he was met with an error message. Unless the entrance was connected to the dungeon core in some way it wouldn’t fly, he couldn’t build after the fact only before.

“This could end up being quite DP intensive.” The second entrance needed to be far enough from the camp so that the two forces wouldn’t need to interact and hidden well enough that sapients would really be interested/attracted to it over the main one. The idea being that only wild monsters and beasts would really use this entrance. A simple solution would be to put an entrance above the camp, higher up the mountain where the dungeon resided thus granting him access to the plethora of monsters residing there. The distance in that case wouldn’t need to be that great and the link up could happen within a couple floors therefore saving a lot of DP.

However, the monsters residing on the mountain weren’t the same as those residing on the floor. They were far stronger thus posing a serious danger to the dungeon given its current forces. Frost wasn’t stupid enough to open up a path to his core for a tide of C and B-rank monsters that were beyond his abilities just for some extra DP. This solution also wouldn’t help with the DP lost from the wild monsters the dungeon currently had access too.

“Haaaaaaaa if I’m being really cost effective I could theoretically create a floor with really long and narrow rooms to cut down the distance but that feels like a real cop out... I could instead make something simple a little out of the ways with the plan to eventually abandon it or repurpose it. That way the DP cost will remain low and it’d be able draw the monsters within the Northrend forest and very, very slightly beyond.” The question was either to spend a decent amount of DP to create a proper wild monster attraction, completely devoid of sapient interaction and with full draw effects to a vast area of the glacial mountains or set up a small, nearby hub that would only offer an alternative route to the very local monsters.

Personally Frost frowned on low quality choices especially after reaching his current strength but practically he didn’t have enough DP to embark on such a grand plan. There was an issue affecting the dungeon in the present and he could only afford the quick fix. He wasn’t set to make any significant DP gains during the coming weeks, perhaps even months. Though the stampede injected him with hundreds of thousands of DP likely rocketing him beyond his other siblings he was in for a significant dry spell now that it was over.

“Haaaaaaa well I can always incorporate the area for other means and even alter its environment, it won’t become a lost fixed asset at least.” Frost decided to go down the simple fix route thus reducing another chunk of his stored DP.

As divine energy flowed through his body four new sections established themselves beside the second section of the fourth floor leading off towards an 8m by 6m stone entrance approximately 30km away from the camp. The entrance though fairly large was facing away from the regular sapient traffic, people would have to really be looking for it if they wished to find it.

The four sections were each expanded to medium size and sported greater length than breadth thus allowing Frost to cut down the required sections while still retaining a similar ambience to the other areas of the dungeon. Simple winter forests were used as the environments thus filling the new areas with bountiful flora and fauna, perfect for attracting the wild monsters in the nearby vicinity. Access to and from the fourth floor was also well hidden and difficult to transition between the two areas -though still possible thanks to Dark’s connected policy. It wasn’t exactly atheistically pleasing when Frost looked at the Dungeon’s overall 3d image, but it did the job.

“Perhaps when I add more rooms to the other floors it’ll balance out in the end, regardless the wild monster issue can be now be considered resolved, at least for now.” Frost nodded his head, relatively happy with his solution but noted in his mind that he would definitely establish a more effective solution in the future. The amount of DP lurking in the glacial mountains both upwards and to the north was not something he wished to neglect for long.