I left her to worry on the ground. My teacher and I came upon the research lab I'd made, and I created a new room to seal off later. Therein lay four coffins made by me using the labyrinth's passive ability to let me change it as I will. She procured another chunk of flesh and had me make her a magic circle, after providing the components necessary she emersed them in the waters of the coffin and cast the spell. It took a bit of waiting but as we could see through the intentionally transparent box the flesh began to slowly shift and grow. I then prepped the second box and cast the spell myself.
She was a bit concerned with my lack of a magic circle and the lack of all the components namely the chunk of flesh, but as I'd made the dungeon it made little difference. The components were added to the coffin at my will and the spell cast in my own time. She was a bit surprised to see the chunk of flesh just appear in the box when I was done chanting and more surprised to see it begin to grow.
"I'm curious to see if this will work if I cast it on someone else." I then used my spell focus to cast it again. "Oww…" my pet quietly mumbled from the floor of the other room as she lay waiting for the damage done to her to regenerate. Another of the coffins filled up and began to grow.
"Hey if someone breaks your phylactery as long as you don't die before this little thing grows to maturity you should be fine."
"…yay…"
I added more coffin shaped boxes and began sending out telepathic questions to my parents and my girlfriend. I knew they all had the radiant self defence spell so even if I cast this clone spell on each of them, they should regenerate the damage done to them. I'd originally made four but as I used one of the ones meant for the twins on my pet, I made four more for my family and the twins. I then cast the spell five more times and was about to leave it at that when the fiend spoke up again.
"What about me?"
"You can't die can you?"
"I mean I technically can but I'll end up reviving eventually."
"You want me to make a clone of you?"
"If it's not too much trouble." She made a face and shook her chest from side to side in a mock bashful way before laughing and wrapping an arm around my shoulder. "I also want to see how many layers of fake materials we can pull off before magic just doesn't work."
"We could just try for all fake materials. Though my spell focus is kind of something like that."
"You made it in the dungeon?"
"Completely."
"How'd you do that?"
"I did a couple of magic experiments on myself and found out that due to the effect of one of my self-defence spells any weapon driven into me is destroyed and recreated inside my enemy. So I used immaterial weapons forged in the dungeon to create something that I could take with me outside. Though the forms of the objects, once they left the labyrinth more, resembled the kind of spell used to create them… oh no."
"That implies if this does work in resurrecting us we might only be alive so long as we stay in the dungeon and take on a more necrotic appearance once we leave." My professor chimed in.
"I'm guessing it didn't matter with her because she was summoned with an infernal spell anyway and comes from the birthplace of infernal magic," I said.
We began to speculate for a bit before we came to a realization. "I'm probably going to have to set this dungeon down somewhere."
"Remember to get a permit for that or you'll get a fine from the city." My teacher reminded me.
"Fine, fine. Ugh, now I'll have to set up actual rules for my dungeon so I can ensure people don't try to steal all my stuff flood the markets and ruin the economy."
"It's a dungeon, the second people find it they're going to steal from you."
"What if I link my dungeon to one of the rings of hell? Make it so people have to traverse the ring in order to get to any of the things I care about."
"The demons would probably steal your things… or the devils… or just both." The little fiend informed me.
"I'm assuming there's no way to perfectly secure my things as if I don't leave the space open when the dungeon naturally spawns in an evil entity into my room, they'll start breaking things trying to escape."
"You could just set the room to kill any non-humans that enter with a very specific trap you know?"
"I'd rather not, most of my entourage isn't exactly human."
"Whose fault is that?"
We began arguing over how best to specifically bring the dungeon into the real world where to set it down as it would cause a massive disturbance wherever we decided to leave it and someone would eventually show up to try and steal all my stuff.
There are always pros and cons to this kind of thing. There's a way to set up the dungeon so it spawns mostly traps and the monsters it spawns don't have the leeway to destroy my things within the dungeon because of how trap heavy everything is, but if I do that it'd become increasingly difficult for me to bring anyone else into my dungeon which I've been getting more and more use out of lately. But if I don't bring the dungeon to the physical world, I can't take whatever I make inside the labyrinth outside.
That and the spell we used requires that the boxes remain undisturbed until they are finished growing so we don't even know if bringing the dungeon into reality won't cause a massive earthquake within the dungeon as the earth is literally carved away to form a massive shapeshifting dungeon underground.
Also, if we did create the labyrinth and tried to just spawn money, we'd hit our neighbourhood with mass inflation and send the whole place into poverty. Also, that would definitely draw the eyes of the greedy nobles already trying to tax lock the adventurers into serfdom.
We argued within the labyrinth until magic club was about to end and I returned the professor to her classroom. After which I teleported back home collecting the little devil who likes tormenting my pet… apparently… and bringing her back to my house. When I saw my girlfriend, she wasn't quite as peeved with how close this little fiend chooses to impose herself on me.
"What were you trying to ask me yesterday?" she asked while standing at the door frame
"Oh yeah." I got down on one knee looked her in the eye and pulled out a tiny box with a ring I made by hand out of the bones of one of the boars we killed together with gems I'd otherwise used as components littering the outside of the ring. "If this isn't clear enough I'll ask again but I've pretty much been waiting for your answer since the moment you tracked me down"
"I want to hear it and I don't remember hearing it the first time." She had a determined look in her eye. Her face seemed flush with knowing what it was I was going to say but she was still brave enough to try and draw it out of me.
"Will you become my possession and in turn take me as your own?"
Her eyes showed that it was a strange way to ask but soon looked as if she realized I wasn't wrong in the wording of my question. "I've been waiting since the day you left me to say yes to that question. I just didn't figure you'd ask it like that."
"Well, I wanted to surprise you and 'would you marry me' is a bit overdone yeah?" she offered me her hand as I spoke, so I slid the ring on her finger.
"It certainly was surprising." The fiend on my shoulders looked down and put her face between ours before we could even consider kissing to commemorate this occasion.
"When do I get a ring?" She asked while pouting.
As if summoned by the mood the twins teleported themselves over to my location. They first saw the fiend on my shoulders with a look of a small child denied a toy she wanted on the face of an adult proportioned body that was the size of a child. The second thing they saw was the tiny empty box in my hand. The third thing they saw was the new piece of jewellery on my now fiancé's left ring finger.
"No fair!"
"When do we get our rings?" the two complained.
"Who are you?" the fiend asked.
"Um…" I replied. "Did I not already introduce you three or have you just forgotten?"
The twins and the fiend stared at each other as I wracked my brain trying to figure out whether or not they've been introduced. The fiend replied. "Are these the two you were talking to telepathically when you summoned me to eliminate your problems?"
"Is this the devil that made our dad go crazy and move us halfway around the continent?" sparks began to fly between the three.
"I'd really love to mediate an argument between an extremely powerful malevolent force I contracted and a couple of idiots who willingly gave up their souls to an uncaring master, but I'd like to enjoy the evening of my engagement, so you guys figure out how I'm supposed to get either the money or the materials to get you rings of your own or I won't even consider it."
"Is that a challenge?" the fiend asked.
"First to get him enough money gets the bride-to-be's sloppy seconds."
"You're on" the fiend and the twins began their competition. One of the twins dove into her sister's cleavage and re-emerged a second later with a mountain of precious metals and a fist full of assorted gems. "Please surprise us with the design. They said after dumping the stuff in my house."
"Alright I got this." She set down a blank check on the counter signed by over fifty nobles. With this I have enough money to buy whatever I feel like for the rest of eternity… or so I thought. "I promised the people I was extorting I'd give it back after I got engaged and that you'd only use it to buy my ring, so…"
"You're serious? Are you really going to force me to make and buy you three rings right now?" the three looked at us in our situation.
We were currently both soaking in the bathtub a glass of absinthe in each of our hands, candles lit, incense burning rose petals on the ground. My pet being forced to play the violin in the corner in the clothes we had tailor-fit to her. I gestured around the room as if to draw their attention to the atmosphere they seemingly don't care about. And then I spoke. "If you three expect to join my harem, which is a sentence I never wanted to say, do you expect to have moments like this with me if you three can't read the room and let moments like this happen?"
The three responded not with words but with action. The twins turned bright red and walked out of the room muttering incoherent apologies as they left, the fiend smiled brightly as if to say, 'you plan on spending some "quality time" with me, like this, too right?' and walked out after collecting the pile that was set before us and moving it into the adjacent room.
It was a bit difficult to restore the mood those three ruined but we tried our best. We waited for the noise from the three scrambling away to die down and once the house was silent again we clinked our glasses and began to slowly take in the bitter and yet sweet liquid that he had in our hands.
After a couple of sips of this amazingly strong toxin, we began to loosen our grip on the grudge building from those idiots ruining the mood and tried to enjoy ourselves. But… "If you three plan on watching I expect you to contribute to the mood we're trying to set not actively hinder it."
"Right what do you want us to do?" the twins said standing at attention.
"I don't know set the table and cook us a… just set the table." I looked away.
"What? We can cook!" they began to protest but I just silently turned away and shook my head. My fiancé giggled she knew what this meant.
"Looks like I'm going to be the favourite, cause I can cook." The fiend said smugly hovering in the air.
Book raised itself from the ground and showed me a passage, "It says here you only know how to cook 5 things… and they're all potato-based recipes."
She quickly ran over and took it from in front of my face. "How'd that get in there? (forced laughter ensues)"
My fiancé and I smiled knowingly from the edge of the tub. We clinked our glasses and watched with amusement as the three began to bicker over which of them knew how to set a more romantic atmosphere. They got loud enough that we couldn't hear the music in the background anymore.
"You know, I was kinda sceptical about this whole harem thing but seeing idiots fight futilely for second place in my heart is kind of amusing," I said to the beauty sharing the bath with me.
"If we're lucky they'll keep fighting through dinner and we'll get a nice show out of it." The irony was not lost on her and we drank while watching in amusement as the three fought over me unaware that we were quietly judging them and laughing.