Chapter 42 – Regional Headquarters

Day 54

Sonja’s POV:

Sonja arrived in the teleportation room of the regional guild headquarters. She immediately asked for an appointment with the guild master Ignaeus. A little later, she was told that he had now time for her and an assistant led her to the his office.

“Hello Sonja, why was it so urgent for you to speak with me, I hope it’s not just about this newly discovered dungeon?”

“It is about the dungeon, Sir. The person who found it, his guild name is Iron Mike, told me he’d met a man at the dungeon who called himself Neo. This man gave him tasks to bring different animal types to the dungeon and paid him good for it. When Mike was hunted by a large group of goblins, he fled to the dungeon where this Neo dispatched them all and fed them to the dungeon. After this, he gave Mike a book with a lot of valuable information about cultivating, for example he got the Tough Body technique. Furthermore, Mike told me the side information in the book was much more valuable. Some of what he told me from its content was even new for me. I didn’t have time to look at the book myself, I wanted to report the findings about the dungeon as soon as possible, but the boy didn’t make an impression of a liar to me.”

“Hmm, so a boy gets some SS rank information for bringing in some goblins. That’s interesting. I can’t be sure, but it sounds like the Neo I know. None of his former apprentices had a high level or a special background, he just took them in if he saw something that interested him in them. Is there something special about the boy?”

“As far as I could tell, he has no affinity and trained to F12 before he started mana cultivating. He took the advanced examination and used earth and wind techniques and his age is around 18 years.”

“Not bad, really not bad. One could call it a perfect start.”

“Sir?”

“You’re at the S rank so you’re starting to train resistances. If you have a feel for your own affinities, you should already know that every increase in one leads to a decrease in the opposite one.”

“Of course, that’s why I started to cultivate wind in addition to my former earth specialization. I don’t want to be bad at something.”

“A smart decision, but what you don’t know yet, is that a negative affinity is decreasing your maximal resistance to an element. At the S rank that is not a real problem, your overall resistances are lower than your maximal resistance anyway, but starting at SSS you will have a weakness if you’ve focused on one element. Take me for example, I am a fire mage and up to the SSS rank I never even used water magic. My affinities are so out of balance that it will take me hundreds of years to get them back to neutral and that only if I stop using fire magic.”

“Thanks for the warning, Sir. I will keep in mind to try to start balancing my affinities.”

“Yes, but that is not what I meant. This Mike was probably born with a complete neutral affinity in his basic elements. That means, his intermediate and higher elements are balanced too. Influencing the affinities of these higher elements will take much more time. His neutral affinity will save him a lot of effort later on. This is extremely rare, in addition with his training up to the F12 rank, he has a pretty good potential for his future. So, in my opinion it makes sense for Neo to help this boy a little. But, that is not really important for now, let’s talk about the dungeon. To gather his interest it has to be special, too.”

“The dungeon didn’t throw everything it had at us. Its first ten levels a gradually increasing in difficulty and it had two mining floors without enemies. There were special places that were marked with a warning, when we entered them, we were attacked by a much stronger force than normal on these floors. One was an arena, the other a magically powered furnace. On the last floor, an army of more than 200 D ranked goblins were waiting for us, instead of attacking us, one of the goblins politely asked us to leave. I still checked the core and what I saw was a perfectly formed diamond with no detectable affinity. There were not beasts, yet so we can’t be sure, but I think we might have a dungeon that is not focusing on one element.”

“Maybe, he really did it.”

“Sir?”

“Oh, nothing I was just thinking out loud. I’ll leave the dungeon in your care, don’t mention the name Neo to anyone. In addition to the normal resources for the dungeon town, I will let the Mage Association install a portal to this city."

"That would sure help, but aren't portals not usually installed only at A rank and above dungeons?"

"Usually yes, but I'll make an exception."

"Thank you."

"Before you go, give me the teleportation crystal for a moment."

Sonja handed over the crystal and she saw Ignaous using his magic and inscribing runes into it. Then he handed it back to her.

"So, keep it. I changed the magic formation a little, it will bring you now to the headquarters and to the point from where you teleported here. Just focus on your target before you activate it. The portal they'll build, will only be opened for less than an hour each day. Use the crystal in case of emergency and keep the dungeon safe, it may be very important for our future. Keep in mind to reload the crystal with your mana after each use. You should now organize the essential personal you'll need, it shouldn't take the SSS ranks of the Mage Association more than a week to install the portal."

"I will not disappoint you, Sir."

Sonja left the office and went to the central communication center. There she ordered the information about the dungeon to be spread in all of the guild branch offices belonging to the region..

After this, she spent two days with various crafting and trading guilds and interest groups, trying to organize the people needed for a flourishing dungeon town. She even convinced the Eternal Bank to open a branch, but maybe that had been more of Ignaous' work in the background. As soon as the portal was created, there would be a lot of new migrants to Darkwood Village.

With nothing left to do at the Empire of Carthas, she used the crystal and teleported back to the dungeon. Back at her new home, she went looking for her scouting team. The first one she found was Hallvor, who tried to teach a wolf how to hunt rabbits.

"Hello Hallvor, do you have a new friend?"

"Guildmaster, you're back. Yes, this is Fenrir my new comrade."

"You sure it is named Fenrir? If I remember correctly, Fenrir was an almost godlike monster, but your wolf is hiding behind you from the rabbit."

"Yes, I have to acknowledge Fenrir as a little problem with rabbits. This is the wolf we found in the dungeon, after we finished our dive I went to get it. I found him hiding from the rabbits. I was still very angry about the evil rabbit that attacked me at the core level and killed them all. Since then, Fenrir is following me as his new master."

"Ok, a wolf afraid of rabbits. You'll learn something new every day. So what happened since I left?"

"Not much, Khadgar is helping with the road. Khorgan is still mining on the tenth floor and Sardian is mainly babysitting the boy, who is soloing the first dungeon levels."

"Not bad. Then I'll wait for them to come back."

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, the dungeon changed quite a lot. It has created instances for the first floors and the annoying labyrinth on the 12th floor is now one large room."

"Instancing sounds good. There will be a lot of people here, it would've been bad if only a few of them could take on the dungeon at the same time. "

Then she told Hallvor about her preparations for the dungeon town, and the creation of a direct portal to Imperialis Capitalis the capital city of the Empire of Carthas.

She hadn't have to wait long, after an hour, Mike and Sardian left the dungeon. She told them, what she told Hallvor, then she asked Mike for the book and began to read it.

After she was finished, she wished she had some of the information earlier. Thankfully, she'd never fully concentrated on earth mana and trained wind mana, too. But, she needed to balance out her power affinity with her force one. With nothing much to do until the portal was created, she decided to use force mana to help with the road building.