Nodding in appreciation, Gill walked back to the core room with the five in tow. Opening up the menu once more, he purchased the cheapest gold mine extension, fit for up to 50 miners to work at the same time. After a series of rumbling noises, a part of the floor collapsed and was replaced with a large shaft. After another outburst of mana from the core, a lift was installed from thin air that could carry major loads without issue. Standing on the platform with the five undead, Gill controlled the menu to lower them down into the earth.
After about ten minutes of sinking, the lift platform stopped. In front of their eyes a stretch of tunnels giving out the shimmers of gold could be seen with their naked eyes. The gold vein in front of them was rich beyond compare, just waiting for a group of miners to excavate the riches. Cackling softly and feeling this approach truly was the best one for his future endeavours, Gill ordered the five undead to start mining. Without any tools, the idiotic five started slamming their bare hands on the rock surface. Soon, their hands started bleeding and they probably wouldn't stop even if their bones were to break.
Slapping his forehead, Gill quickly ordered them to stop. After opening up the menu once more, he realized he couldn't afford even a mining pick with his final 65 gold. Asking the five to wait on standby, Gill returned to the surface and sold another copper sword, leaving the weapons rack with one pair of daggers, one copper sword and the dungeon scanner. Using the added 250 gold plus his additional 65, he bought a mining set for 10 people worth 300 gold in total. Ten sets of pickaxes, ten mining helmets with a pale light from installed mana shards and a few sets of workers clothes popped up out of nowhere.
Returning back down to the mine, Gill handed the supplies to the five idiots and ordered them to resume working. Shortly, clanging of metal on rock started resounding, swiftly amounting to several large piles of gold ore. Watching the undead work with satisfaction, Gill glanced at the piles of ore while looking through the menu system to see what kind of processing apparatus he should adapt for the mine. Since he only have five miners at this point in time, the cheapest option that could chug through the produce of 10 workers an hour would serve his purposes to the point.
Looking at his measly stash of 15 gold, Gill looked over the leather armor sets the five undead had stripped out of to equip themselves with the mining gear. Checking in the menu, each set of leather armor would go for 250 gold if he were to buy them, but only 125 each were he to sell them. If he did that, his undead couldn't really take a beating anymore in case he needed the minions.
Looking at the contraption meant to process the ore, which happened to cost exactly 600 gold, Gill couldn't help but let out a rueful sigh. Picking up the sets of leather armor and pressing the sell button, Gill ended up with 640 gold. Buying the ore processor, he placed it next to the bottom of the lift to the core room. He then ordered his minions to carry over some of the ore to try it out to see how it functions. The processor looked like a type of magic circle with a lot of myserious lines filling its center.
As soon as the first batch of ores was placed in it, the circle started glowing with a brilliant blue light. A few instants later all the ore disappeared and a little more than 10 gold coins remained in its place. Gill found it particularily interesting that his profile was minted on both sides of the coins with the current date in place. The calendar was based on the day the core summoned Gill into the world, so it simply stated 0th year, 0th month, 5th day.
Glancing at the resulting amount that wasn't much more than pocket change, Gill gave a few perfunctionary orders to the undead to always fill up the magic circle with ore and to keep on mining. After everything was settled and he was slowly generating gold coins automatically, he returned to the core room to keep on planning his next setups. If he wanted the dungeon traits to be useful, he would need to save up for a proper dungeon schematic before anything else.
—
Back in Fairweather, the mood wasn't remotely as good as Gill was yucking it up. The five most promising youngsters in the entire county had just been slain less than ten minutes after they sent the message they'd enter the new dungeon. That the level 1 youngster and perhaps one or two of the level 2's died wasn't very surprising. But that Billy, the renowned little genius at level 3 didn't fare any better spoke volumes of the dungeons treachery.
During the meeting at the town hall, all the major families of the deceased were staring with bloodshot eyes at the mayor that looked like a meatball in fury. 'Weakest dungeon in the history of Dachin'? 'Barely a signal of mana signature'? 'Weaker than the slime dungeon'!? What a load of bullshit! Their families most brilliant youngsters died in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea while this meatball of a mayor was living the life of a hero.
"Count Fairweather, I believe we deserve an explanation." The family head behind Billy stepped forward waving his hand in a threatening gesture. "Our Billy was already at the third level of the warrior stages, and he died with his friends in minutes! Their team could clear the whole of the slime dungeon in that same span of time, but instead they died basically instantaneously. At almost the same time no less! Is your mana device faulting? Has your brain turned into fat!?"
"Clan head, please, let me explain.. The mana signature from that core truly is on the level of borderline empty. The dungeon wouldn't even register on our devices if it wasn't for a sudden spike out of nowhere.", the mayor explained. "Most likely the core was just an ambient mana crystal of a slightly larger size that evolved. During that process it emptied itself to summon a dungeon master, a creature that rules over the dungeon in its stead."
Noticing that his explanation so far didn't placate any of the members of the meeting, he continued hastily; "For example, the slime dungeon is called as such since the dungeon master was a stronger type of slime monster. Another example, the legendary dungeon near the capital of Dachin called Vampire Kingdom. Its called as such since the master of that dungeon is a nigh unkillable entity known as a vampire lord. We don't know what creature has spawned in this dungeon, but it should've been extremely weak. Perhaps another slime, maybe a beast type like a wolf or bear.."
"Get to the point!", the families clenched their teeth as they listened to the mayor's rambling.
"Since the dungeon didn't summon something matching its mana signature, I'm afraid a rare summoning has happened. There are stages to these kinds of things, and it's beyond rare that it happens. The first time a dungeon didn't match the signature was the beforementioned vampire lord of Vampire Kingdom, and this seems to be the second one in our Dachin kingdom..", noticing how the people around him started circling him like a pack of jackals, he screeched; "Anyway! The signature matches a slime, wolf or other types of cretins. But since it could beat a party of five with a level 3 adventurer, as a newborn dungeon master, it might've gone even beyond the vampire lord!"
"Typical for its mana, it should be a beast or cretin! A rare summoning would be something like a vampire or demon! But if it's a legendary one, it could mean we've got a Dragon or Chimera at our hands here! Our little Fairweather can't handle anything of even the rare level, not to mention that the entirety of Dachin can't handle something of legendary status!", as the mayor finally got his point across all the families in the meeting paled in fright. Only the clan head behind Billy's family had a glint in his eyes.
'A rare or even legendary young dungeon would have incredible riches in its stores..', he thought to himself. Noticing the stifling mood in the town hall's meeting room, he bellowed at the mayor; "What are you standing around here for then!? Immedietly report this to the King and the nobles! We must immedietly take action against the dungeon before it grows stronger!"
Noticing the crowd dispersing to immedietly contact their superiors in the capital, the clan head silently started preparing another set of hidden assets to head out towards the dungeon immedietly. If his specially trained secret soldiers could conquer the dungeon before the nobles arrived, incredible wealth and several hundred years of extra life would be his!