After telling the two that Ein was a dungeon master, their attitudes changed completely. Now, they treat him as if he were some sort of god and keep on kneeling in his presence. After continuously telling them to just revert to their previous attitude, they reluctantly agreed. But now they are calling his name with some prefix attached, "Lord Ein". Thinking that Ein would technically be lord of the land if the castle town was completed, he allowed them in the end.
After that small incident, everything proceeded much more smoothly than expected. With the income from the magic items made from the mana stones that the goblins mined, the total DP of the dungeon slowly became a significant amount.
After four days of peace passed, the slimes managed to complete the deforestation around the premises. The collected logs were gathered in a temporary warehouse made by the goblins. Now, the mountain is surrounded by a wide clearing.
"This should be enough," Lilith finally said after midnight on the fifth day.
Their daily DP earnings were about 70 to 100 thousand during the four days. Including the DP from hunting, they have now finally collected 500,000 DP, which was more than enough for their initial funds.
"Okay!" Ein nodded. "Lilith, make the Mana generator!" He commanded.
Hearing his order, Lilith immediately took out the fool's stone from her pocket.
"Then I'll begin. Master, please take a few steps back."
After telling him such, Lilith immediately held the fool's stone in between her two palms, holding it against her bountiful chest like in a prayer. Soon, inside the dungeon master's room, where there were no windows or doors, a gust of wind started blowing.
'No, this isn't the wind, but Mana!' Ein noticed that what he felt was actually the mana in the room moving.
Soon after, rays of blue light started to leak from the closed palm of Lilith. It was so bright that Ein couldn't help but squint. After a few seconds, the light died down along with the flowing Mana.
"It's done," Lilith announced while showing the newly made Mana generator.
The small red gem was now something that looked like a blue bead. Though its size didn't change, its presence was several times stronger. Even without focusing his senses, he could feel an enormous amount of Mana coming from it.
"Amazing! So this is a Mana generator!" Ein praised. "What should I do now?"
"You just need to bring it close to the dungeon core. The core should give you a prompt regarding an upgrade," Lilith explained, passing the blue Mana Generator to Ein.
"I got it."
Ein quickly brought the bead to the dungeon core, and as Lilith said, a prompt appeared.
[Mana Generator (Small) detected]
[Analysis: Mana compatibility with the core is at 99.9%]
[Consuming the Mana Generator (Small) will upgrade the dungeon core from "Tutorial Stage" to "Beginner Stage"]
[Do you wish to consume the Mana Generator (Small)? Yes/No]
While he was reading it, Lilith commented by his side.
"I maximized the compatibility of the generator with the mana of your dungeon. With this, the transition period should be shorter."
Hearing this, Ein didn't wait anymore and quickly pressed "Yes" on the transparent notification.
In response, the blue bead on his hand vanished as it was consumed by the dungeon core. The dungeon core then let out a bright golden light for an instant before calming down to how it was before.
"...?" Ein tilted his head. "Is that it?"
Lilith nodded by his side, saying, "Yes, the upgrade should have been finished."
"But I didn't feel anything at all, though?" Ein asked. He was expecting the room to shake or something since the place was about to be upgraded.
"The dungeon master room is in a different dimension compared to the actual dungeon's premises," Lilith explained. "So we shouldn't be able to feel any changes from here."
After exchanging a few more words, the two decided to head out and check out the upgraded dungeon.
...
By the time the dungeon was upgraded, the residents of the dungeon were extremely surprised. The earth shook so much that they feared the cave would collapse. However, visible to the naked eye, the walls of the cave slowly changed materials. From its initial rough and rocky surface, it was transformed into smooth concrete walls. In just a few seconds, their surroundings changed from the initial cave into a somewhat extravagant-looking room.
From the outside, it was even more of a gaudy transformation.
The land, approximately within a 2-kilometer radius of the dungeon, let off a bright light. All the plants, trees, and rocks within instantly vanished. The animals fell from high in the air as the trees vanished in an instant. Everything around the dungeon became flat, graveled ground.
Next, two waves of bright light appeared. The first wave was approximately up to where the slimes deforested, raising 10-meter-tall, sturdy-looking walls. At the edge of the area marked with light, the other set of lights transformed into a 5-meter-tall wall.
In a matter of seconds, a great castle town was made. Though right now, there's nothing but the large white castle in the middle, with a small makeshift warehouse by its side.
...
"Woah." Ein let out an amazed sigh as he got out of the teleportation array.
He was in what looked like a throne room. 'This should be a slime floor, right? Where are the slimes and goblin prisoners?'
As if reading his mind, Lilith quickly replied.
"It seems that the structure of the dungeon changed quite a bit, as expected," she explained. "You initially only had 4 floors before, but now there's a total of 20."
Apparently, the throne room was on the last floor, set at the top of the castle. Below it, there are a total of 15 empty floors, constituting a three-story castle structure with five dungeon floors combined to make a single floor. On the ground floor, all the living beings within the dungeon were gathered forcefully.
Then, under the castle is an underground area, on which the goblin farm was transported. Instead of what was originally a hole in the ground, it became a proper prison. Although it was just one large floor that was blocked by bars of metal to separate the prisoners from the outside, it was definitely an improvement from before. The whole underground only counts as one floor.
Outside the castle, the area from the door up to the inner wall is considered a single floor. Similarly, the area from the inner wall to the outer wall was also a single floor. And somewhere along the side of the outer wall, a small precipice was seen. It was the entrance to the mine that was initially near the dungeon entrance.
There was one problem, though, and that was that the mountain vanished. In its place, a white castle appeared. This castle pierces high into the air; however, it was far from the initial height of the mountain. At most, the tallest spire was about 100 meters high.
Although they lost the advantage of having the higher ground, the appearance of two layers of thick circular walls made up for it more than enough. Although the outer wall only had two entrances, one up north and another down south, the inner wall had a total of eight entrances spaced evenly.
Standing on the balcony on the third floor, Ein observed everything around him.
"Amazing! To think that a single Mana generator could change this much!"
Lilith, hearing his words, couldn't help but laugh.
"Fufufu, it would be great if that's true," she said. "However, try checking your remaining DP for now."
Ein, upon hearing this, felt some foreboding. It was Lilith who told him to stockpile his DP before they made the Mana generator. Trusting Lilith's judgment, he didn't ask further regarding the matter.
When Ein ran back to the dungeon core and checked, he was flabbergasted.
"Z-Zero?!" Ein was shocked.
He had half a million DP just a few moments ago, and now all of it was gone. Lilith, who just came in after Ein, saw this and said,
"The dungeon core used all your DP to upgrade the whole place. The mountain was even offered as material for the dungeon; however, it was still not enough, I guess?" Lilith chuckled.
"Seeing that it only made two layers of walls, I guess that's the limit of your 500,000 DP."
Ein wanted to faint after hearing such; however, since his body doesn't need sleep, he just blanked out.
"Don't worry, you can recover that amount in two days' time," Lilith reassured him with a wry smile.
Ein, who was so shocked by this event, was in a blank state for two days' worth of time. When he finally saw that he had recovered the initial 500,000 DP he had lost, life came back to his eyes. And, finally, a week has passed since coming to this world.