~ Chapter 15: The wrong definition of ‘Easy’ ~

That night, I slept like a baby. Shanteya may have been part of the reason, given how I used her Holy Mountains as a comfy pillow, but it was also because I built that dungeon floor. If it was the old me from before my reincarnation, I would have probably stepped away from the task and declared myself satisfied only with repairing the Magic Academy while complaining that I didn’t have a computer to play on.

The following day, I was woken up by Shanteya’s morning kiss, which I received wholeheartedly. Her lips were soft and molded perfectly against mine. Strangely though, while I welcomed the kiss, I didn’t feel like I was betraying Alina with it, but when it came down to go a step further, I felt as though my heart was slowly and painfully being pierced by the horrible spear called ‘guilt’. Kissing and hugging was all I could do.

Before going off to build my dungeon, I took Shanteya’s list and began to repair all the broken things around the academy. The upgraded versions of my repair skills helped me a lot, and I was done faster than I thought possible before.

While flying around, looking for anything that looked heavily damaged, I heard a mesmerizing sound coming from the garden behind the school, not far from the forest. I recognized it immediately as the gentle tune of a violin. Back on Earth, I often enjoyed listening to a certain hyperactive dancing girl violinist. Some of her songs were quite energetic and just what I needed when the ambient game music didn’t cut it. This one, however, was far from energetic, it was calm, gentle, and held a sort of a sad, longing tune to it. I never heard anything like it before, it was pleasing to the soul.

The one playing it was a draconian woman. Her height was above that of a normal human, at an incredible 2.15 m tall. The tip of a long, golden scaled tail decorated with big pink ribbons could be seen popping out from under the hem of her white dress, which was filled with yellow frills, a design most suitable for a noble lady or a very rich merchant’s daughter.

All that extra fabric had the secondary role of hiding her well proportioned chest. It was bigger than Shanteya’s but for her height, it looked like a double D on a human woman who was about 1.70 m tall.

There were no wings on her back as far as I could tell. Her eyes were closed, as she listened to the beautiful tune she created, so I couldn’t see their color, but knowing how other draconian students looked like, they were certainly slit. Three golden scales decorated each of her cheeks, right under the eyes. The farthest one from her nose was the biggest, while the closest was the smallest. A few golden scales were on her forehead as well, ending with a rather big diamond shaped one. She had a pair of pointy, curved horns placed right behind her pointy ears. They resembled the horns of a Greater Kudu antelope, but not as long. Her facial features were quite beautiful as well, and her long, red hair flowed gracefully over her back. If I didn’t know any better, I would think I was looking at a princess scene from a movie.

Was she a student here? I asked myself as I admired her.

She probably played for a few good minutes, but each second was truly captivating. When she was done, she lowered the instrument and looked up at the sky. Blood-red was the color of her eyes and a gentle smile adorned her lips.

Who is she?… I thought.

A few moments later, she packed her violin and left the area. I kept a mental note on where I found the draconian lady and then left. In terms of distance, my dungeon was at about 1 km away from the academy’s main building.

“Now, to start working on the second floor!” I said with a smirk.

The excitement from yesterday returned, and I couldn’t wait to start carving into the ground and carefully place my traps. I was like a young child who was given a new toy to play with, but this need, this desire to build deadly dungeons came from somewhere within me. It was a newly acquired feeling, most likely an instinct belonging only to dungeons.

Before I started on this one, I decided to first draw a map of it. How large it was going to be? How complex? What sort of traps will there be inside? What sort of bosses? Where should I place them?

Those were all questions I was dying to answer, and one after another, I did.

First off, it was going to be extremely big, 1 km by 1 km or maybe even more, then it was going to be very complex, an actual labyrinth with 50 cm thick walls covered in something partially reflective. After that, I was going to make another door that opened only if the adventurer pulled two levers located in different puzzle rooms. Of course, the next system of levers would be located in the Mini Boss rooms at opposite corners, so the adventurers were forced to literally travel all over the labyrinth more than once. To make it even harder, I decided to camouflage these triggered doors in such a way that it would have been impossible to detect without them first being opened. The final room was going to be a big, circular one with an actual boss inside. I just had to make sure I figured out a way to make a tracking AGLMC Laser… The purpose of this floor was to stress out and annoy the adventurers as much as possible!

I remembered the time from my previous life, when I played through some guy’s labyrinth made in a sandbox voxel game, and it was frustrating to find the exit. The corridors were narrow, the walls made out of a dark-colored block, there were traps all over the place, and even some annoying mobs that kept chasing after me. I hated that labyrinth so much, I refused to finish it, but right now, I wanted to make something even more annoying and frustrating than that.

Yes… no mercy… I thought to myself as the feeling of creating something so dastardly evil brought me close to a state of pure euphoria.

As soon as the plans were made, I began experimenting with various trap structures and walls. That day was spent only on that sort of research. Of course, I also tried out a few ways to get the lasers to move, but failed miserably in all of them.

I returned sometime during the afternoon. The academy was quiet, and there were no signs of danger within my territory. The only monsters around were at a distance of over 6 km away. I had no reason to bother myself with them. With nothing else to do, I searched around for Nanya and Shanteya, whom I found taking a bath. A nasty little devil told me to take a peek, but I fought desperately against his temptation, although, I was also curious if the draconian lady I saw earlier was there as well.

“How was the bath?” I asked after Nanya walked out.

She was wearing a large towel covering her chest and bottom. A smaller one covered her hair, but I couldn’t see her tail.

“Illsy?” she asked a bit surprised.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t peek. I waited patiently here, outside.” I told her, but just then, a busty human woman with short brown hair walked out in Eve’s costume and headed off to her room.

Both I and Nanya looked at her surprised.

“That’s not my fault…” I told her.

“I know… She’s one of our… let’s say problem students.” said Nanya, letting out a sigh.

“Problem students?” I asked curiously.

“Yes. They are actually special students rather than problem ones. They barely attend any classes and don’t care about learning anything here, but since they are rich and can pay a more expensive tuition, that idiot Tuberculus allows them to do as they please. This is the case of that girl…” she replied, but that didn’t explain why she was streaking.

Wait! Does this mean I can actually look at naked girls walking around without fearing Nanya’s punches? Maybe that’s why Tuberculus keeps trying to sneak inside? I thought and seriously considered paying the dormitory more visits.

“Don’t even think about it!” the teenage-looking girl glared at me.

“What? I have no idea what you mean…” I said trying to play the innocent.

“Illsy!” she squinted her eyes and showed me a clenched fist.

I gulped.

“Alright… I won’t do it.”

And that was how I was stopped from paying extra visits to the dormitory. Thinking about it, though, it wasn’t that I was afraid of Nanya hitting me, but I just didn’t want to stay on her bad side. She was cuter as a friend than as an enemy.

“Won’t do what, Master?” asked Shanteya when she came out.

Just like Nanya, she was covered in a towel, and it was sticking close to her forms, offering me plenty to fantasize about.

Oh, the irony! I could fantasize, but I couldn’t touch!

“Nothing! I just dropped by to say ‘hi’!” I said with a smile, while my eyes were glued to her Holy Mountains.

Good thing I was invisible to them.

“If Master wishes to got to bed already, Master need not wait for this one. Tonight, I will sleep at Nanya’s. She offered to teach me the [Fireball] spell. However, if Master wishes me to join him… I won’t say no…” she explained, but her last words were spoken in a rather shy manner, increasing her cuteness points.

Nanya was eyeing me suspiciously. Well, to be more precise, the ghost next to me.

“In that case, I’ll be on my way. Good night, Shanteya! Good night, Nanya!” I said before I left.

“Good night, Master!” said Shanteya with a small bow.

“Good night, Illsy!” said Nanya.

Upon returning to my room, I decided to head straight to bed. It felt a bit lonely, but I put up with it.

The following day went by peacefully just as the day before. I didn’t find the draconian lady this time, but I was able to complete the first puzzle room and a small part of the labyrinth.

In order to make the walls have the effect I desired, I decided to make them out of polished steel with an undulating surface instead of a straight one. Just casually flying through that small section made me feel a bit confused. The constantly changing shapes reflected on the surface of the walls combined with the many twists and turns made the maze quite confusing. I pitied the poor adventurers who would end up in my labyrinth.

The downside of making nearly 3 m tall metal walls with shiny surfaces was the magic energy cost. Besides the room’s initial cost, the time I spent designing it in my imagination took a while. I didn’t want the walls to be copies of the previous ones, but actually show to be handmade, meaning accepting imperfections in sizes here and there. The good part about it was that it confused the brain even more.

Usually, a human’s mind would try to detect similarities in patterns and select certain parts as guiding marks for backtracking later. Small adjustments to the walls can lead the human into believing he already saw his mark and in some cases even cause him to forget entirely how his original mark looked like. Of course, this didn’t apply to those with photographic memory. They were the only ones who could detect small differences in the walls and thus navigate properly, maybe even better.

That night, I returned quite late and found Shanteya dozing off next to my crystal body. After I absorbed her, we slept peacefully until the following day.

I continued to work like this for the next couple of days. Sleeping with Shanteya became a regular thing, and her morning kisses were as delicious as ever. It was starting to become a habit, or maybe I just got used to her presence in my arms? Either way, most of my focus went into building the labyrinth.

Speaking of which, one day, I came across a discussion between Rufus and one of his students. It caught my attention because they were talking about the difference between a Maze and a Labyrinth. In my mind, they were synonyms, but not according to what Rufus was saying.

“Labyrinth is the more popular and widely used term for what a Dungeon Core usually creates inside their dungeons. However, there is a clear distinction between the two. A maze allows multiple paths to be taken from the entrance to the exit, while the labyrinth only one.” explained Rufus.

Thinking about what he said, my dungeon was part maze, part labyrinth, and part deadly… It didn’t actually fit in any category.

Should I bother myself with the name? Erm… nah! Dungeon Labyrinth it stays! I decided and flew away.

Three days later, I was able to find the pretty draconian lady while she was in the middle of playing her violin. I listened to her song together with two other students who so happened to pass by. When she was done, she returned to the dormitory. As far as I could tell, she was one of the special students Nanya mentioned.

Just like that, two weeks had passed by since I first began building the second floor of the dungeon. Day after day, I mostly did the same things, meaning waking up in Shanteya’s embrace, getting a morning kiss from her, flying around the academy to fix whatever was broken the day before, flying to the spot where the draconian lady was playing the violin, flying over to my dungeon, continuing building until late in the evening, returning to my crystal body, and sleeping together with Shanteya. Only once in a while did I get the opportunity to go and chase off some monster or some bandits who got too close to the Academy. In regard to everything else, nothing interesting happened, however, I was starting to wonder how the people in this world lived like, but all in due time.

The day after I finished the second floor of my dungeon, Nanya and Tuberculus arrived in my chamber and requested an audience.

“Illsy, I heard you finished your dungeon! Nihihi!” said the teenage-looking girl with her hands on her hips and showing me a bright smile.

“Yes, just the first two floors.” I replied a bit surprised by her sudden appearance.

“How many rooms?” she asked me.

“Erm, around 40 rooms? Some more closed off than the others, why?” I asked.

“Around 40? Sounds good enough for two weeks.” she rubbed her chin as she pondered about something.

Is there something strange about the number of rooms? I asked myself.

“Very well! We’ll go in today! It will be me, Tuberculus, Rufus, and Angius! It shouldn’t take us too long to prepare. We won’t need much because the first two floors are never that hard to finish.” she said with a satisfied smile.

“Huh?” I looked at her surprised.

“Is that a no?” she asked squinting her eyes at me.

Like a child waiting to go to the amusement park, I could tell she really wanted to go in.

“Of course not! Please! I just need to go and build… erm… a pair of stairs or something to get in and out at the end…” I told her.

“Do that. When you are done, let me know, and we’ll head inside! Nihihi!” she laughed.

With that said, she walked out of my room and went to let the other teachers know about their upcoming new adventure.

I guess she got really bored these past two weeks… I wonder if she’ll just speed run through my dungeon in two hours or less? I thought and then let out a heavy sigh.

My biggest worry laid in the amount of destruction three Emperor Rank Adventurers and one Godlike would do to my poor dungeon.

With a heavy sigh, I flew towards my dungeon to begin preparing it to welcome its very first visitors.

Building the stairs was the easy part, but then I had to check all the Power Crystals, all the traps, all the [Magic Thread] connections, all the summoning circles, all the four mini bosses, and the final boss room. The hardest part was probably making sure the puzzles worked and that there were no mistakes in the labyrinth’s paths.

If I wasn’t able to fly and have a dungeon’s perception, I might not have managed to finish the job in just three hours, but when I was done, I was sure everything was perfect. The second floor had total surface of 1 km by 1 km. It had two mini boss rooms in the lower left corner and the top right corner, one mini boss in the top left corner, two puzzles, and countless mini rooms with monster summoning circles in them.

Accessing the final boss room meant finishing the two puzzles, killing the three mini bosses, pulling the levers inside their rooms and then finding the now open room in the top middle of the floor. Inside, they would find the stairs leading up to the first floor, where they would find another maze, but this time, with undulating reflective steel walls. Upon reaching the end of it, they would come across the drop hole leading to the final boss.

There were also countless trigger traps scattered throughout the entire floor, most of them spike or gas. Back on the first floor, I built a pure mini maze filled with snakes, imps, and gas traps. At the end of it was a 10 meter drop into a small pond in the room of the last boss, a three meters tall, giant axe wielding, black-furred, four-handed, level 37 Minotaur with red eyes.

The three mini bosses on this floor also had a higher level than the one on the first floor. They were level 30. My best guess was that the level increased with the floor number or maybe the size and number of monsters in it.

Of course, the room was equipped with nine AGLMC Lasers activated by a timer and moved around by a couple of pistons. The Minotaur was ordered and trained by me to know when to retreat to the center so the lasers didn’t hit him. Target locked wasn’t available yet for me, but I was thinking of trying to train goblins or some other minion to do it.

Flying out of the dungeon, I flew back to the academy, where the group of adventurers was ready to challenge my newly built Dungeon Labyrinth.

“I've finished the preparations...” I announced as I flew closer to them.

“Good! We’re ready!” declared Nanya, showing me a big, excited grin.

She was wearing a leather robe, covering her pants and boots. On her hands, she wore a pair of steel gauntlets, but nothing to protect her head. Next to her was Tuberculus, who didn’t look any different from his usual appearance. Rufus was the same as always, wearing his long brown robe and reading from a book. Angius was wearing his former adventurer armor made out of a monster bear’s hide. It was quite durable.

Looking at this party, I began to feel sorry for my poor, little dungeon. Three Emperors and a Godlike were about to waltz inside and make a mess of what I began building over two weeks ago.

I led them all the way to the entrance to my dungeon, and once there, I told them in a not so excited tone of voice “I’ll show you in.”

“No, Illsy! You’ll stay out here! We want to go in test it without you showing us the way around! It will be more fun this way! Nyahaha!” said the over-energetic Nanya.

“Alright, but please be gentle with it…” I begged.

“How difficult would you consider it is?” asked Rufus without raising his eyes out of what he was reading.

“Easy? Maybe?” I replied.

“Sigh… We will be back in a few hours…” he said and closed the book.

“Come on, old friend! It’s been years since we last went together to explore a dungeon!” Tuberculus patted him on the back and showed him a big smile.

“I suppose.” replied the man.

“Let’s go, you old bones!” shouted Nanya, who was the first to dash inside.

I gulped as I watched the powerful adventurers enter my little dungeon.

“Will they be alright, Master?” asked Shanteya.

“I’m more worried about my dungeon… They will wreck it! I’m sure of it! And there’s no little guy with a hammer to jump all over the place to fix it up!” I groaned.

“A goblin?” she asked.

“No… a video game character… ah, never mind!” I sighed.

Two days later, they finally came out. I was honestly starting to get worried, believing I messed up with the [Magic Thread] or the complicated passages in the labyrinth. Even Shanteya and the other teachers expressed their concerns about it, but I still felt their life signs inside, so they weren’t dead at least.

“Illsy… What in the name of all the known gods was that?” Nanya asked me with a raised eyebrow when she stepped out of the dungeon.

Her robe was in tatters, she was missing a boot and there were signs of hardened lava between her toes. There were multiple holes in her leather armor, well what was left of it anyway. Most of it looked like it got burned off, revealing quite a bit of her beautiful white skin. There were no scars on her body, though.

Behind her, she was carrying three unconscious grown men. One of them was Tuberculus, but his clothes were singed black. He was missing his hat, eyebrows, beard, and top hair. He looked similar to a catholic monk. On his behind were a few arrows from my traps. Next to him was Angius with countless bite marks on his body, he had no boots, and singed eyebrows. Rufus was no different. There was no sign of his books, but he had a lot of bite marks, and his clothes were in tatters, however, he still had his boots on.

“Illsy… YOU CALL THAT EASY?!” she shouted at me.

I gulped.

“Erm… wasn’t it?” I asked innocently.

“I nearly got my tail cut off by some weird beams of light! And seriously? LAVA? LAVA on the FIRST floor? And what was with that complicated maze! I nearly went mad trying to find my way through there! Rufus started speaking to the walls, Angius was crying, and Tuberculus got lost the very second we got there! Plus, what was with the rat room? And a SNAKE maze? Illsy, if I wasn’t a Godlike Rank adventurer with powerful Magic Armor, I would have died MORE than once just at the FIRST FLOOR!” she shouted at me.

“But I seriously thought it was easy…”

She squinted her eyes at me.

“Erm… Oopsie?” I said with a smile.