Chương 81: The inbetweeners. The in-between years. The forgotten times.

The in-between years. The forgotten times.

Hey! Pops! Progenitor old man! I heard uh… what's the ascended dwarf who came before us's name again? Give me a sec… OH Onyx! Yeah, I heard he phones home every once in a while… so I thought I'd give it a shot. Anyways it's Ilm, you're favourite dwarf gal! I'm calling you from my new crib in the city! I have a whole shop to myself. Got it just before the prices hiked and let me tell you, I am so glad I bought it out when I did. Did you know some of the shopkeepers here don't even own their own shops?

They rent them! They are living credit to credit with all their funds being funneled to some faceless nameless probably low-level smuck who bought strips of property when the "single building per person" settlement rules relaxed – CRYSTAL SHEER! Innearth. I know you don't drink so you can't appreciate just how tasty crystal sheer is. Listen. It's some mineral-based alcohol that can melt through tankards if you're not careful and is currently what all of my free credits are being sent to.

I've spent so much on crystal sheer you don't even understand. Thousands of credits worth. Gallons! I could have bought a second shop for the amount I've spent on crystal sheer this past month. Its that good. Now, I was going to just start expanding my basement down but it turns out I needed to get a permit from the city for that. Can you imagine needing permission to dig? What? I just want to connect my basement to your dungeon and half the permit process is proving I wouldn't expand into your dungeon!

So here's what we are going to have to do. I've managed to get permission to build 30m down for a workshop. They analyzed that with some speciality tools and determined it wont intercect you. I'll finish that, then set up a beacon alternating earth and crystal pulses downwards right. Then you can expand up and meet me in the middle! This is all so you can analyze this crystal sheer stuff and try and get me a better source. I'm counting on you!

Excerpt obtained from one short ranged transmission between Ilmenite and the dungeon Innearth. Around the same time that Innearth had been working on the facility, his dungeon began settling. Patterns began becoming more obvious and adventurers began mapping out his floors. Even though Innearth had a whole section of his consciousness in charge of hiding chests and changing where monsters roamed, his biases for certain areas slowly made themselves known.

His floors became slightly easier because adventurers knew what to expect and could prepare themselves accordingly. And that was okay. This was something common to established dungeons and while it was kind of annoying that he was becoming predictable – at least on his lower floors – it also made him feel more adult. Besides. Finding carelessly dropped maps of his floors with coloured in "drop tables" and "chest chances" let him abuse it a bit.

So adventurers thought there was zero chance a chest would appear in this hallway? I'm going to place a chest there even harder! The natural monsters on his lower unfinished floors had grown to such a point they would be a challenge for low to medium-skilled adventurers – they were located in a sealed-off area deeper than the upper mid levelled floors so they weren't actively fighting adventurers – but also Innearth didn't use them as a free source of combatants.

Instead, he mostly let them live naturally – giving them competition to fight in terms of his own monsters and affecting their evolutions with runoff from his steadily increasing in quality filtration system. Pools of different lesser madness affinity gunk were made from the different runoffs and then purposefully introduced to the monster ecosystem. Some monsters took to the affinities and became stronger without being negatively affected. Others took to them and became insane attacking like they were rabid.

All the resulting materials created from their bodies after they died were either strong or useful and nearly all of them were safe in terms of not containing the original madness. Innearth didn't feel bad about laundrying the pollution through a closed-off ecosystem of monsters. He was a scientist! They were treated well! He made sure to give them plants and space and free experience. This "monster farm" was mainly used for his crystal dwarf workshop, but it was also a great source of unique monster parts.

Innearth continued to pick and choose choice bits to include in his own monsters – creating unique magma spiders with twisted dripping drill claws or attaching the head of a wolf-like crab onto a crystal snake. This insured there were constantly unique monsters in Innearth's dungeon and adventurers needed to deal with unknown challenges in every zone.

It wasn't the end of the world that Innearth hadn't been expanding downwards – his dungeon hosted adventurers all the way from beginners to upper-intermediate/lower advanced pretty well. The scaling in his current dungeon didn't reach all the way up to transcendents… but that was what the facility was for and 95% of his adventurers were currently being challenged. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

In ascended monster news, his ascended crystal dwarf "Ilm" had settled into the silver city above him and seemed to be doing well. She dug a basement and helped him connect to her workshop so he could see when she was at work – it was like she had never left! The big project that Ilm had his help setting up was a giant distillery and brewing room.

He snuck her care packages of raw materials from his monster farm – transporting them up an elevator and into a hidden walk-in freezer and tried his best to help her try and figure out how to make different alcohols. Good quality alcohol really didn't like his attempts at cheating. She had one brand called "crystal sheer" he had attempted to mass produce by including in a sort of "incubation monster". The bottle was embedded in a monster that would drip it constantly while healing it back!

But the act of giving life to this monster altered the alcohol into a alcoholic monster blood that tasted awful. Without an "alcohol mana" or alcoholic affinity… Innearth wasn't able to control the taste or quality of alcoholic monsters or materials. All that really happened was a line of materials that were closer to hand sanitizer in smell and taste.

Now, circuits helped somewhat with the goal – especially with Innearth's budding "circuit sense" – but monsters with skills and alcoholic parts still didn't work well and Ilm's dream of free high quality alcohol constantly on tap was not achived. There was a snake that intoxicated anything it touched but that was a magical intoxication and fought off by magical resistances. There was a turtle that shot alcoholic liquid that was then set on fire in a flame-thrower-like manner...

but that was an attack and ended up just being sent off as a unique monster. The closest Innearth managed was a spider that created an alcoholic web goop that could then be refined and purified into a low-quality moonshine. The most exciting ascended monster news however happened at the two-year mark. While Innearth was done with his part of the facility and was waiting for his friends to be ready to open it up a powerful illusion wurm slid up to the roach knight guarding the facility tunnel. Level 251 and strong.

Strong off the constant fight against demons. Strong enough she could slip past the roach without it noticing and then come back and taunt the creature seemingly everywhere at once. The wurm travelled up and out of Innearth's dungeon, snarling mentally as it crossed through the barrier and headed off to get its last few levels. It had found the oldest ascended – Innearth's level 150 snake scout who was now over a kilometer long – and convinced them to hunt in the void before disappearing for a month.

When the wurm returned they were level 257 and solid. It was incredibly hard to track the strength of the illusion wurm – they were never visible and in many ways, they seemed the same now as they had hundreds of levels before… but their illusions couldn't be called illusions anymore. They were simply reality and reality could be anything the wurm wanted. Anything within a domain that stretched over a hundred meters in every direction could be changed.

Hundreds of monsters, created from nothing, that could fight evenly with super soldiers in the facility. Whole buildings could appear or disappear at will and even with Innearth's dungeon senses, they looked like normal matter – not like conjured fakery. If it weren't for the fact that most illusions broke down a few hours after the wurm had left an area, Innearth would have said they could do anything. The final "ascended news" was that the pool snake finally ascended.

They were lazy and hid constantly but with a combination of a huge amount of time and the dancing dragon constantly pushing them out of their comfort zone… or leading adventurers to them, it happened. A water mage entered the chaotic crystal pool searching for a treasure chest and continually beat the snake about – their [water manipulation] and related skills acting strangely in the magical liquid, but still managing to damage the old monster.

Finally having had enough and on the brink of death – for no reason other than a search for treasure that didn't exist – the snake pushed with all of its mental willpower and the pool responded. A dozen separate chaotic needles pierced the mage's body as crystal water bent to damage and kill. The water mage's team members rushed to save him but that's the moment the crystal snake ascended. They had such an attachment to the chaotic crystal pool they "took the whole thing with them".

Liquid flashed in a glare of mana that spread out from the injured snake and back into it like a heartbeat. Crystal blood that had leaked into the water was the first to change – seeming to bind tightly to the surroundings even as it consumed the water mage's blood as well. Chaotic liquid shattered again and again, being sucked inwards even as the snake expanded like a balloon. The creature's body seemed to pop even as it reformed and legs were suddenly very much there where none had been before.

One of the adventurers – a young-looking [Warrior] with cheap-looking armour swung his mace confidently towards the still transforming snake. Metal squished crystal flesh inwards even as the sound of shattering glass reached a crescendo. Spikes shot out in all directions. A hundred separate shards of glass that seemed to break the air behind it like cracks in reality. Blood pooled and the warrior died even as the team's healer dragged their heavily injured water mage towards the door. The snake did not pursue.

They weren't a snake anymore. Their bloated squished body looked like a fat lizard crossed with a frog and designed with glass that constantly broke and reformed. Instead of following the escaping adventurers, the chaotic lizard turned to glare at the far corner of the room. Angrily pointing itself towards where a snout and undulating body bobbed happily. The lizard did not pursue the adventurers but did pursue the dancing dragon.

It slowly thundered after the other lizard chasing it around and around and around the crystal caverns. The two created a strange procession that made adventures stop and stare. First one lizard came past, hopping about in a rhythmic beat flicking paws and tail to some tune only they could hear. Magic effects accompanied their passage – a snap of a finger shifting a crystal boulder or causing walls of crystal to form.

Behind them charged a second lizard, this one which looked like a someone had broken two glass statues – one of a frog the other a lizard – and then glued them haphazardly together. It shot, sharp jagged shards after its tormentor, a roar like shattering pottery accompanying its chaotic galop. More than one adventuring team turned to watch, some frightened, others laughing at the spectacle. The two ran about for over 24 straight hours before collapsing in a heap in the crystal pillar room. … well okay then.