The Illicitous Dungeon

Irie ended up ignoring Styx after she learned he can't actually do anything to harm her, although she could do nothing to avoid his incessant chatter as he spoke directly into her mind.

Unwilling to simply surrender, she headed over to the Eve Temple the next morning.

The Eve Religion was several millennia old and started by the founder of the Maple Dragon Kingdom, who apparently had ties with the goddess Eve. She was a war goddess who stood with a spear in one hand and shield another. Her godhead was that of victory and valor, her believers said to be indomitable forces on the battlefield who fought to their final breath.

During the early days of the kingdom, not long after their world had merged into this hodgepodge checkerboard of kingdoms and myriad life forms, the newly established religion took on the role of healers for wounded soldiers. They also providing faith workers who would cure curses and other myriad afflictions the befell humans from battles and war.

These days, the temples offer full health care services and function not only as a place of worship, but also hospitals. There are small clinics who offer healing services, but the temple basically held a monopoly on providing healing arts.

"How can I help you today?" A formally dressed nurse with long blonde hair asked Irie with a genial smile as she entered a private consultation room.

"I was out hunting wild monsters the other day with a comrade when I was struck with a mental attack. I am unsure of the cause, but I have had a constant droning noise in my head ever since."

Irie avoided the subject of it being the dungeon core that had infected her after it threatened her constantly of the consequences of what it would do to her for "betraying" it. She did however insinuate that something was affecting her mental state to the nurse hoping she would find it inside of her head and remove it.

"I understand, please come lie down on the bed and I will run some diagnostics on you."

Irie followed the blonde nurses instructions and lied down on the bed before she used several magic tools with arrays engraved inside of them to examine and provide feedback to the user. The companies that made these medical devices were truly brilliant with some of the inventions they came up with, and were always widely renowned in the healers' circles.

Irie watched the various magics at work and the weird ways the machines manipulated mana. It was a marvellous sight she had never been able to see before getting the ability to see magic.

"There are no abnormalities detected," The nurse stated as she ran one final test which placed a considerable sized magic array above her head that shone in a dull red light.

"…Are you sure?"

"Very much so. As it has only been a few days, your mind is likely suffering from a trauma, which will naturally heal by itself, and even needs to do so. There is no physical damage in your brain, nor are there any scarring or rot in your psyche, everything is in full health."

"I understand, I at least wanted to make sure."

"It is always best to have a checkup when you are unsure, please don't feel like it was unnecessary. I will prescribe you some mental relaxants which can aid in mental recovery and completely healthy to the body, but they can be a bit expensive, so it is your call. If the droning persists for longer than two weeks with the medication, please do return for follow up consultations."

"Did you hear that?" Styx's voice chose this moment to speak in her mind. "I am completely normal, and a part of you. Just accept it."

Irie was unwilling to respond in public as it would look like her talking to herself.

"Please do be careful in the future," The nurse gave her a serious expression and spoke solemnly. "Some monsters who can use mental attacks are generally instinctively highly skilled in that domain. They don't always attack directly, but can leave suggestions or other mechanisms in your mind which will affect your judgement or thinking without you even being aware of it. If you don't get it inspected and treated in time, the consequences can be severe."

~~~~~

Once she had left the temple and was out of ear shot, Irie hissed under her breath, "What do you want?"

"I already told you, I want you."

She snorted contemptuously with an arrogant expression, but Styx couldn't see that.

"You value your strength very highly, don't you? I watched you training early this morning, you are more studious than others in this aspect."

"Hmph, there are plenty who train harder than I do in order to build up potential."

"Potential can be built up in many ways, but that is not the point. If you stop trying to fight me, I can make you very strong."

Irie remained silent, but Styx could tell from her sight that she nodded ever so slightly, making him extremely happy.

"First, we need to destroy this Silver Wheel Investments and take all of their treasures for ourselves."

"That will be hard. I cannot kill anyone within the city after all. The entire city is classified as part of the dungeon, which is why it is called a dungeon city. The moment a death occurs, the dungeon lord, Duke Ashburn will know immediately who died, and who, or what, killed them."

Styx was greatly shocked to find out that even his dungeon core notifications system was heavily impaired compared with other cores. They not only received more information, but could also run search queries on the log, which he didn't have altogether. Once a notification was gone, there was no way for him to ever check it again.

"That doesn't matter, there are plenty of other means in order to do so. We will just make you the company head. Then you can just give me everything. Not to mention, there are other methods of killing people to fool a dungeon log."

"That would be impossible. I cannot take over the company just like that. As for killing, there is, but such actions garner the attention of the city guard and the punishment can be as high as the death penalty once found."

"You only need to do as you are told. Do not forget, only those with a resolve of steel will become powerhouses."

~~~~~

Back in the dungeon, Styx was multi-tasking several different tasks at once.

A small portion of his attention was on the farm for different plants and fungi he was forcibly mutating, which was a constant drain on his mana that slowed its already slow mana regeneration to a snail's pace.

On the good news, the farm was proving to be a great success, and the dark elves were taking over most of the manual duties so he only needed to split a small amount of attention on it, sometimes none at all.

The grass had fully adapted to its mana network, although it took Styx a few dozen rounds of trial and error to create a mana network suited just for grass. Apart from the garden beds for various plants, the floor was now mostly covered in a carpet of soft grass with blue tips on each blade.

Taking from this example, he started creating unique and wonderous mana structures for the flowers, each getting its own unique one which was the most compatible he could create for them. They were all now flourishing, each flower growing double the size as they used to be and more vibrant.

The royal ariches, a blue lotus like flower, even adopted a strange phosphorescent trait with a dim blue glow. The all emitted a decent amount of mana into the atmosphere that they absorbed from the earth, but it was nowhere near the level it was before in which they would emit so much they would drain their own life force without Styx's mana infusion supplementing them.

The wheat and cotton seeds were growing steadily, and Styx reworked their mana networks to be forcibly closed networks to prevent any from leaking out of the plant. He saw mana by it's true nature – energy. He wanted that energy stored in the products of the plant, rather than being expended.

The room itself had expanded in size to twice its former size, now having giant intricately carved stone pillars supporting the ceiling of the room.

Of the dark elves, Styx's favorite were the twins, Klair and Kale.

Klair was an Apprentice Hunter and quite skilled with a bow. Contrary to the regular expectation of elves, stone elves were in fact not instinctively skilled with a bow and had to put even more effort into training the skill than the average human. Living in dark cave systems, they were more inclined towards stealth, spears and daggers.

Kale was a Novice Dimension Mage, an extremely rare class and would not have been exiled from her village should she not have decided to remain with her sister. There was an argument during the vote that Kale was as much or more valuable than two people, so the twins would be excluded from the vote, but in the end, the food shortage was more severe than anticipated Klair was deemed a necessary loss.

Kale naturally left with her twin sister without a second thought.

The twin had bubbly personalities and accepted being the dungeon's women the quickest out of everyone. They supported each other and did everything together, even breeding, such was how close their sibling bond was.

They were currently each half way through the 12 hour pregnancy period of a stone-tail fox, one of the new monsters Styx was exciting to breed through the dark elves as their mana network channels were nurtured and expanded to all new levels and they had had adapted to higher levels of burden.