Day 644

The Church delegation arrived today and met the Earl. He made a good impression and they don't seem to care about him which is a good thing. They wanted land in the central square but I refused, so the count had to negotiate. Eventually he managed to give them land in the residential area, the clergymen were furious to be relegated to the third enclosure, but the count pointed out to them that they would be closer to the people.

What really convinced them was that they got a huge piece of land in the center of the residential area and a big square in front of their church. Finally what finally convinced them is that the count showed them the plans of a magnificent church, too much for the city, of which he will pay for the construction in full.

The delegation left very satisfied and work began immediately. The first priests and stewards will arrive in two weeks, the church will not be finished but their accommodation will be. The count has planned a crypt under the church, which I could reclaim if the need arises.

Day 646

The master of an alchemist guild in the city has been assassinated. I don't care and continue to perfect my soul defense system.

The queen ant has approached evolution since I allowed her to venture into the mountains and hunt where the adventurers are not. The ants have brought back everything that may exist in and around the forest, but sometimes bring new things from the mountain, like today when they brought back an orc from the mountains. It's a slightly tougher orc variant. Orcs are creatures of a little over two meters, very strong, not very intelligent and violent, they live in small tribes because when there are too many they kill each other. Orcs can be obtained by evolving a goblin but generally orcs are descended from orcs.

They will make a good inhabitant for the following floors if I modify them a bit.

Day 653

The orcs have counterattacked en masse in the ant colony, all orcs in a tribe are fighters, and although there aren't many of them, they are powerful. With 50 individuals, they penetrated deep into the tunnels before getting lost, they killed three secondary queens and thousands of ants before being stopped by a squad of ant guards on one side and warlike ants pushing the charge of the other.

Although the dead are very numerous, the colony can repair itself in just a few weeks, but the survivors have grown stronger. The Queen Mother has fed on the orcs' cores and is only days away from a new evolution.

Day 658

The churchmen arrived and took possession of their accommodation without incident. They have also started to build a dispensary and a clinic, it is usually the church that takes care of the care, that is what allows them to maintain their building and to pay their stewards. This is good news for a city of adventurers because alchemical potions are only useful in emergencies or in the dungeon.

I further upgraded my core with the influx of mana and it is now 12 meters in diameter. I need to find a way to condense it without reducing the mana storage capacity. I can't find a method, but I think analyzing a natural dungeon core would help. However, I do not have any more and it is extremely difficult to buy, I charge the count to find me one but I do not expect to get one for a long time

The dungeon is visited regularly and I'm making some minor adjustments to fix some issues. I'm happy with the artificial core that handles the maintenance because it frees me from a boring load.

Day 660

The queen ants is ready to be improved, I start with an increase in size to 2.50 meters long, I raise her torso, so that on its six legs the first pair no longer touches the ground. She keeps an ant appearance all over her body but looks a bit like a centaur. In this position she will be able to use magic more effectively, I increase her intelligence to five times that of a human, and improve her affinity from darkness to superior. She can decide to pass on a weakened version of this affinity to whomever she wants. Her two front legs end in two short scythes, she can use human language but with difficulty, she has, on the other hand, total control over the transmission of speech by mana.

The biggest change for her is the new ants evolution path. The workers have the intelligence of a 10-year-old child and measure 90 cm, they can evolve into minor ants, soldier ants or apprentice ants.

Minor ants can, in turn, evolve into artisan ants, then into architect ants or runic ants.

The soldier ants evolve into warrior ants or guard ants, the warrior ants into archer ants, which shoot acid, or infantry ants, specialized in melee and the guard ants evolve into defender ants.

Finally, the apprentice ants evolve into learned ants then into shaman ants, the learned ants are more intelligent than humans, they must absorb affinity gems and enough mana to evolve into shaman ants. The shaman ants are as intelligent as the queen mother and have magical powers according to their affinity, they have a few less innate spells but will especially have to seek them themselves to transmit them to future generations.

Finally, the secondary queens have the same role as before.

(for the path of evolution see the tree below)

This upgrade took a long time as I had to rebuild the entire ant evolution path.

Day 672

In releasing the queen mother in the room Royal E, I observe the orders be sent to the colony to accommodate the new generation.

I am checking out the town and there are already 20,000 people living there, the growth has started to gradually decrease and a small slum has settled outside the town on the left side of the wall where it meets the cliff . I thought of a way to exploit this grouping of people and I ask the count to attract more poor and destitute to come and swell the ranks of the slum.

I claim the interior of the cliff, on the left side of the city, compared to my dungeon it is located above and next to my first floor, I also claim up to a hundred meters deep. In the end I get a cube 100 meters high, 100 meters deep, 1 km wide and 2 km long.

Day 679

Once I claim this cliff cube I regularly infuse my mana to create veins of iron, iron is an important metal as it is the basis of steel, used for all tools. It doesn't cost much for me and I only create good quality iron veins. I don't need to focus on it and can keep looking for the soul defense board. I also discovered an enchantment which allows me to reduce the weight, I will use it to support the ceilings of my floors which are more and more high.

I finished the board at 80%, the rest should speed up from now on. I also worked out a method to destabilize the demonic bond but I haven't been able to test it yet.

Day 681

I finished the future slum mine and thanks to rumors the Earl spread, a few hundred more people arrived. I inform him that he can simulate the discovery of the deposit whenever he wants.

I must create a weak monster that will defend the mine and kill reckless miners without discouraging them from coming. My choice is slimes, the most adaptive monsters in this world, I create a weak version of them that slowly feeds on mana and rock, they are quite resistant and their only method of attack is choking or crushing when they are big enough, I also create rare variations of metal slime. Slimes are seeping everywhere and should proliferate in the hallways.

Day 682

The earl asked an earth mage adventurer to test whether there were any mineral sources around the city. Immediately the great concentration of high quality iron was noticed. The count has promulgated a law prohibiting the exploitation of iron, only the authority of the city can do it. He therefore built a stone building at the foot of the cliff in the middle of the slums, this building serves as a toll for all voluntary miners, when they leave the mine they are forced to sell their work to the city. I provided the count with a map of the main mining veins to make it available to a mining engineer. The solidification of the mine is the responsibility of the miners.

It's a strange operating model for an iron mine, but the working poor were happy. The explanation for the slimes is a mana leak from the nearby dungeon.

Day 687

The first miner died today, he fought with another miner for a better vein, I had not thought of the possibility but the operating system chosen by the count favors this type of behavior since bodies are consumed by the slimes, leaving no trace. In reality, I absorb them when there is no one there.

The slum is gradually filling up and it has already reached 2000 inhabitants, they are forbidden to enter the city and stay away from the walls. If the population grows too much I will use it as a bigger mana source.

Day 692

My soul defense board is finally ready, I decide to test it immediately, it should be able to defend itself against a superior demon but I remain cautious. I summon a lesser demon and seal its soul before killing it, again trying to hold back the soul by pushing all my mana into the sealing ritual.

As the last time the soul slowly walks towards the soul crystal, when a higher entity notices it and tries to take it back. This time I'm trying to invade the bond and sever the bond between the two demonic souls. The higher demon strikes back and I activate my defense board to help me resist. With all my might, a Soul Sealing Board, Soul Defense Board, and my full attack on the link backed up by an offensive board, I barely manage to contain the soul in the Soul Crystal and corrode the link slowly.

With a roar of anger transmitted through the Link, I feel a surge of demonic power destroying the Link and pushing it back up in an attempt to detonate the lower demon's soul and everything around it. I barely manage to move the Soul Core to another location which weakens the already corroded bond.

The explosion fails to reach the soul core but completely devastates the ritual hall and digs a hole in the ground, the ten meter thick wall separating the ritual hall from the enchantment hall is thrown and destroys enchantment facilities. On the other side, there are only five meters separating the alchemical garden from the explosion. Part of the garden is corrupted by the demonic aura and a third of the plants die.

I feel the whole dungeon shaking and am amazed by the violence of the explosion. If I had left the soul core in place with the strength of a demonic soul, I don't know if my core could have survived, the hall of rituals is on the same floor as my core. The only thing that saved me was the Dungeon Reinforced Stone I put everywhere.

I come to my senses and I wait to recover the mana to rebuild the room of enchantments, to fill up the room of rituals and to clean the alchemical garden. I also have to recreate the Garden Golems because they died from the pressure. I check the soul crystal and it's intact.

Day 694

I decide to move the different rooms away for the experiments from my central room, I arrange them in a six-pointed star. I also solidify them with enchanted steel.

There is no adventurer in the dungeon, I think the guild was scared and denied access while an expert is carried out. The count takes care of it personally with his mages, my servants.

After I rebuild everything I examine my loot, the soul crystal looks like all the others but the soul inside is much more powerful, it is equivalent to about a thousand human souls . I wonder if the demons will accept it as payment. I examine it in the biological lab, as I thought a demonic soul is built on the same model but is simply reinforced by other human souls.

These souls are welded and merged with the original soul, it seems that this absorption process is very complex, one has to remove all the impurities from a soul and refine it before absorbing it to avoid being tainted by another soul.

I am removing the personality and the bodily form of this soul, but I am studying all of these memories, I am not learning anything new. The skills are gone, but the soul core remains, just before the core there is a demonic mark. This is the mark of control of a higher demon, it is kind of the same principle as what I have except that I cannot directly control the soul. I can control all the movements of any of my monsters, but I cannot bring back a soul. I have no way of studying this mark but I am storing the Soul Core separately.

I'm also trying to develop a way to break the link or weaken it and avoid another such explosion, my soul defense seems to be fine and I haven't found anything that could improve it so I don't touch it.