The next thing on the list is the reward system.


    Miss Victoria had said that a dungeon should give the explorers who delve into them some form of profit in doing so. The early floors should give just enough loot for the low ranked adventurers to come back to the dungeon for more, while the deeper floors should give out large amounts of valuable loot for those who are brave and capable enough to bring them back to the surface.


    One of the things she mentioned was that many of the kingdoms and territories that find dungeons they want to keep will give those dungeons a chest full of coins and other valuable items. That chest will be the basis for the main source of income the people will receive from the dungeon, as the dungeons will replicate the valuables and have them drop along with the monster cores from the corpses of defeated monsters.


    This relationship between most of the kingdoms and the dungeons had been the product of hundreds of years of manipulation by the Demon Lords over the Adventurer Guilds of the races.


    All the dungeon monsters also have monster cores filled with mana that would drop upon their deaths. These monster cores are valued and used for many purposes by the races with larger cores being more valuable.


    I also implemented a system where the monsters will sometimes drop some part of their body along with the monster cores and the loot. This system was suggested by Miss Victoria as a good way to make the rewards given by the monsters easier to manage.


    This system does this by having the monsters drop a body part, which would have just dissipated into a bit of miasma, as loot instead of replicating rewards with pure mana, thereby lessening the amount of mana used for creating rewards.


    This drop system had already been implemented since the monsters were spawned in the dungeon a month ago, but it was set to only work when the adventurers are the ones defeating the monsters because the monsters kill other monsters mainly for food and not for treasure.


    When a monster kills another monster in the dungeon, the body remains intact allowing the predator to consume the corpse of the prey as food. But when an adventurer kills a monster, the corpse quickly dissipates into the dungeon as left over miasma leaving only the monster core and the loot it had dropped behind.


    Horned Rabbits are set to sometimes drop their horns or pelts along with other loot while the slimes will always drop their slime cores, which are a combination of a monster core and the slimes body, but nothing else. The horn and slime cores are often used in alchemy and potion making.


    The newly added Swarm and Dark Bats would drop practically nothing, albeit fingernail sized monster cores. The Giant and Echo Bats will drop their fangs and wing membranes if they aren’t damaged when defeating them. The Screecher Bats will drop better versions of what the Giant and Echo Bats will drop.


    The hide, claws and teeth would occasionally drop from the Giant Rats and stronger versions of the drops for defeating the variants. While the Giant Spiders would certainly drop a web sack, which are good for making fine clothing or equipment that uses silk.


    The Rat King will drop either its pelt or front teeth as additional loot when it is defeated. The pelt can be crafted into armor that will have decent protection and magic resistance. The teeth can be made into sharp but incredibly light daggers.


    Of course the primary rewards that will be given by the dungeon will come from the chest the evaluators from an adventurer guild will give me, my luck isn’t that bad to be spawned in a place that the adventurer guilds have no influence in right?


    In the time that we were making the dungeon I had been asking Sapphire many more questions about the dungeon. I had found a lot of important information from the answers I had received.


    Apparently, the races have a device that could track the general location of where the Dungeon Core is in the dungeon. All thanks to another one of the reincarnators the races had summoned a few hundred years ago. I also found that trying to move the Dungeon Core to a different location would require massive amounts of mana, my current maximum mana capacity isn’t even a quarter of the cost, and all of the other functions cannot be used while it is being moved.


    But the feeling of weakness has forced me into implementing a last stand plan in case the people who clear my dungeon have any desire on taking the core.


    This is the last thing on the list.


    To be honest, my dungeon feels kind of weak as a whole and that is to be expected from a dungeon with only one floor in it. And I did what I could to strengthen the dungeon in these few months. Judging from Sapphire’s estimates the other candidates dungeons would have two to three floors and could probably spawn peak rank E monsters now, maybe even D rank monsters.


    Well, if they hadn’t been killed off.


    I might also have been a bit too confident in my ability to make the dungeon and monsters stronger with my improvements. Game design was just my hobby in the end.


    I started creating many hidden floor traps filled with Corrosive Slime inside the Dungeon Core room, what’s different about these traps from normal floor traps is that they aren’t there the first time people come close to them. I instructed Sapphire to replace the floor with the traps after they have been walked over. Of course, experts and the attentive would notice something was amiss but this is the limit of what kind of traps I can currently install.


    There were a few empty rooms surrounding the Dungeon Core room, I had installed these rooms in the first month after I had reincarnated to increase the mana accumulation. I created a batch of rat monsters and the mushrooms they will feed on in the rooms. I then sealed the corridors leading to the rooms with a thin layer of soil. When attackers try to take the core I will quickly destroy these thin walls to let out the monsters hiding behind them.


    With this, the Dungeon Core room can at least fend off any attackers that might come. But if a lot of adventurers attack or if they are a strong D rank then I am done for.


    * * *


    I had been letting Sheila consume the miasma in the room as she desired, which she happily did and watching her sway as she moved around the room was a rather relaxing sight. Although my body doesn’t get tired, my mind does. The fact that the dungeon is going to open to the surface has been giving a lot of mental stress lately. Seeing Sheila like that was helping in relieving the stress.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Sapphire had been telling me to stop indulging Sheila though, but I had been telling her that it was for the experiment that I was conducting. And that wasn’t just an excuse, mostly.


    As Giant Spiders were already at the peak of F Rank, consuming the miasma finally pushed Sheila into E Rank.


    Sheila could evolve into an E rank monster despite the F rank cap because she did it by consuming the miasma herself. I can’t forcibly increase a monsters rank but when the monster does it on its own then it will get stronger and evolve once it reaches a higher rank.


    This was a loophole in the system that Miss Victoria had told me about, although she told me about it more as a precaution of monsters born with more intelligence than they should have and how they would disrupt the balance of the dungeon by becoming stronger than what the floor it is on should have. Realizing that Sheila had greater intelligence when she refused to listen to Sapphire, I decide to test the loophole.


    Sheila was shrouded by light and glowed for a few moments as she finally evolved.


    Sheila’s body became a bit larger, her legs had lengthened and her body color turned completely black. The eight eyes she had were now golden instead of the red that the Giant Spiders had, now shinning with greater understanding than before.


    Sheila dropped from the ceiling and on to the floor then started swaying from side to side as if dancing.


    Uh…


    What did Sheila turn into exactly?


    [Scanning…]


    [Rogue Giant Spider has evolved into a Shadow Arachnid, a unique E Rank monster. Shadow Arachnids are widely known for their stealth abilities and intelligence. They can hide incredibly well even in just mere shadows and are practically invisible in the darkness. They ambush solitary prey and trap them with hardened threads and drag them to their nests. These monsters are low on the rankings because they do not have much attacking power and vitality but due to their superior stealth ability and intellect they are given a unique prefix in rank.]


    ‘SCREEEEEEEEEEEE’


    Sheila was screeching in happiness.


    She probably evolved into a monster with a stealth attribute because she had been living in pure darkness since she was spawned. And Sheila turned into a Shadow Arachnid because of it and her unusually high intelligence.


    Did I forget to mention that I don’t have any torches in the Dungeon Core room? I didn’t install any torches here in the first place because I thought they were unnecessary. I could see in the dark just fine. Sapphire can see everything inside the dungeon because she is the A.I. of the Dungeon Core. And Sheila can see in the dark because, well, she is a dungeon spider.


    Sheila came up to the pool and stared at me in anticipation. I could instinctively feel her eyes on me, not the Dungeon Core, but on me. She seemed to be waiting for something.


    Hmmn…


    I created a slime tentacle and tried to pat the spider’s head. Sheila murmured in delight as I patted her head, after a decent amount of patting she started jumping around the room but when she realized what she was doing, she turned invisible and hid in her nest.


    That’s a cute reaction.


    Hehehe…


    […]


    …


    Anyways, now that the final touches have been made and with Sheila becoming a E rank monster that will protect the Dungeon Core room, we can now create the entrance to the surface!


    [Master, what about the plan to alter the Giant Bats?]


    Oh right, now that my experiment with Shiela had worked better than I expected I can use the plan I thought of on the bats. I was just ecstatic about having another higher rank monster defending the core room that I forgot.


    Thanks for the assistance Sapphire.


    […]


    [It is my duty to serve the Dungeon Master]


    …


    heh


    I feel a lot better now.


    We have about two days left to alter the Giant Bats before an entrance to the surface is forcefully created by the dungeon. The Giant Bats are the only flying monsters I currently have and they are the only other monster I can alter right now aside from the Giant Rats, which I had already worked on.


    To reiterate: The Giant Spiders are already at the peak of F rank and I had already decided on keeping the Horned Rabbits and Slimes the same so that the low ranked adventurers don’t get killed in the early parts of the floor by having no knowledge of the monsters they will be fighting.


    Unlike the Giant Rats I am not planning on creating a large number of variants that will appear by chance for the bat monsters, instead I plan on creating an experimental hierarchy system based on the length that the bats will live for. This is an experiment. Sapphire and I will be monitoring the monsters and will act accordingly after seeing any of the results.


    Many of the bats that will be born from the current Giant Bats will be the size to that of a regular bat from earth. The current Giant Bats will breed this new type for a few months to act as a buffer to allow the new generations of the weaker bat monsters to create a stable population, after that the Giant Bats will spawn regular Giant Bat offspring. The small bat monsters will be starting form of the bat monsters that I will name Swarm Bats.


    These Swarm Bats would be ranked a very low F when they are found and recorded by the adventurers. They do not have much in attacking power, speed or vitality. Instead they will move and attack in swarms. Depending on who they are attacking they may even have the upper hand, a swordsman for example will have a hard time trying to take on a swarm while a mage with a fireball spell would probably have an easier time.


    Any Swarm Bat that lives for more than a few months will turn into the next phase called the Dark Bats. Dark Bats will move with Swarm Bats but would prioritize any weak points they find on the prey the swarm is attacking. These bats have sharper fangs and more powerful wings than the Swarm Bats but have roughly the same vitality. They look relatively the same as their lower tier kind except for being slightly larger.


    The next phase after the Dark Bats is the Echo Bats. The Dark Bats will turn into these when they live for more than half a year. These bats are roughly the same as the current Giant Bats in size and strength but with one difference, the Echo Bats have an ability.


    They have the ability to induce a slight headache to a target with high frequency sound waves, although it can only be used for a few seconds before needing a few hours of rest for the Echo Bat to be able to use it again. This short use ability may seem rather weak but a single lapse in concentration could cost the adventurers their lives. These hunt alone or in small groups of Echo Bats like the current Giant Bats do.


    The last phase is called the Screecher Bat. To become a Screecher Bat, Echo Bats need to consume a large amount of blood from the races or other monsters to evolve. When these bats are spawned they would be same rank as the Giant Spiders being peak F rank. They are larger and tougher than the Echo Bats. They can command Swarm Bats to aid them in hunting, these also have a stronger version of the Echo Bats ability that can be used continuously for a minute and need a few hours to be usable again.


    The Screecher Bats would behave like a leader for the bats and will take control of a nest for themselves as the strongest type of the bat monsters. The next in line in the hierarchy are the Echo Bats followed by the Giant Bats as the standard types.


    The majority of the bat population will be comprised of the Swarm and Dark Bats that are trying to survive to become Echo Bats. The Giant Bats are set in strength will have a good rate of survival unlike those that are born as Swarm Bats, but they do not have the ability to get stronger no matter how long they live.


    The idea for this experiment actually came from watching Sheila get stronger from consuming miasma and finally evolving into a Shadow Arachnid today. But unlike Sheila the bat monsters aren’t getting fed with miasma but will have a natural born trait that slowly increases the mana in their monster cores. I am trying to bypass the rank limits by creating monsters that just need to survive for long enough to be able to get stronger on their own.


    The monsters that can slowly increase in strength have the down side of being born very weak as a compensation for such a powerful trait. This would not work with the other monsters in the floor. Too many of the ground monsters would die at their first phase while the flying bats have a higher chance of living long enough to get to the stronger phases.


    After creating the plans for the Giant Bats, it was time to implement it.


    Sapphire proceed with the implementation.


    [Acknowledged]


    The Dungeon Core glowed brightly and pumped out a massive amount of miasma into the dungeon. Sheila is still in her nest but seemed calmer than the first time this had occurred.


    The Giant Bats immediately sensed the change in their bodies and quickly flew back to their nests. It will take some months before the changes appear in the bat monsters though.


    And by the time the Giant Bats were starting to leave their nests, there was only a few hours left before the dungeon is forced to create the opening.


    I guess I’ll just wait for it to open.


    And for the first time since I reincarnated I felt time move so painfully slow.


    .


    .


    .


    What was I expecting when the dungeon opened again? Now that I think about it, thinking that adventurers would immediately find and delve into my dungeon was a little silly. Of course it would take some time for anyone to be able to come here even if the dungeon started giving off its mana signature.


    It’s been half a day since the dungeon created an opening to the surface. All the tension I felt flew out the window er- dungeon. Sheila, now a Shadow Arachnid, started expanding her nest on the ceiling on the Dungeon Core room, she was already half way done covering up the whole ceiling with her webs.


    [Master, please control your pet spider’s rampant actions]


    Sapphire, I will tell you why I am letting Sheila do this. And no it’s not just because she looks so happy doing it. Look at her right now. She looks really cute weaving the webs while swaying about!


    [Master, please proceed with the explanation]


    Right, I had this idea of making it look like the guardian of the Dungeon Core room is Sheila and making my pool body look like it is just a part of the room. While the intruders are busy fighting Sheila and let their guard down I will ambush them.


    [Analyzing data…]


    [Master’s proposed plan has been analyzed. Ambushing targets that are focused on the Shadow Arachnid believing it to be the Dungeon Core room guardian has an incredibly high chance of succeeding with great effectiveness. The cost requirements for the plan are almost none existent compared to its simulated effectiveness.]


    So adorable.


    […]


    After watching Sheila as she expanded her nest for at least half a day, I had finally collected myself enough to look at what is outside the entrance of the dungeon.