What a great day it is! Ah, it's so refreshing to see sunlight down here on the third floor. I stand here proudly to present:
Miriel! Who's hard at work making sure the dungeon's energy on the third floor is stable,
Valentyn! Who's recovering from his battle wounds with three heroes,
And finally, Me! Who's doing nothing but watching Miriel working!
Miriel had used the divine power of repair on the entire floor, which is a power that I also can use, although, I have to admit—he's a lot better than me. Right now, he's flying around, closely inspecting every nook and cranny of the space if the divine power of repair has missed anything, and if he does he'll fix it up right away.
Due to our oath, he cannot finish until it satisfies me or until I tell him that's enough.
Well, since I have nothing to do, let's interview Valentyn and ask him what happened during his battle for the time being.
Putting aside the continent's name, Orth, one of the six major countries in Arula has a reported ten heroes. While ten doesn't seem like a lot, there are only around seventy summoned "heroes" combined in Arula, so having one-seventh of the entire hero population is quite the feat. Not to mention, there were also three hundred elite(ish) soldiers trained by the heroes themselves facing against Valentyn. Valentyn! What do you think about this battle?> Okay, but seriously, those heroes from Orth are no joke. They're capable of harming Valentyn, a vampire whose battle prowess is quite high. And while they cannot defeat him right now, they sure can give him a run for his money. I might need to make some golems in case they do come back again, then again... looking for more subordinates is much easier. I found and recruited Valentyn, but he's not enough manpower for the sheer size of my dungeon. I also need to make contracts with different types of monsters to roam around the different floors and also make some contracts with strong beings that are "willing" to act as guardians. Since Miriel is repairing the third floor, I should search the world and try to find some being that would act as the first floor's guardian. Yes, the guardians are my top priority, while the monster contracts are secondary objectives in my opinion. I'm going to search the other large masses of energy I saw earlier instead of searching blindly. I do have my worries though since I'm an angel, an existence that normally shouldn't exist in the mortal realm apart from the act of observing. My worries include being attacked or being spotted by the local population when I fly over them, but since I'll be flying at extremely high altitudes, I guess I could breathe a sigh of relief. I'll skip to the part when I arrive at one of the large energy sources since nothing was interesting along the flight path ten thousand metres above the surface. Just clouds... or rain. It was an interesting place, not going to lie. First of all, the location where the large energy source was coming from was over thirty thousand metres in the sky. Three times higher than the current altitude I was cruising. Who would live in a place like this? I mean, getting all the food or water you'd need to survive would be a challenging task. Too bothersome even. Well, I got my sights on a large lizard, maybe an older one too. Perhaps over ten thousand years old? Maybe. I think the energy source is coming from a rocky island with vegetation and probably fauna too. Only a powerful magic user could construct and make a rocky island hold itself together and make it float in the sky. So if the owner of the island was indeed an old large lizard, then I'll be plenty happy about it. Large lizards are quite useful; whether they're alive or dead. I could use the meat as a luxury treat or meal (served with premium red wine for the most pleasant experience), the scales as minerals or materials to produce high-quality armour or weapons that I could place inside chests scattered around my dungeon. Oh yeah, speaking of armour and weapons, I still have the useless holy sword that came with Valentyn. I still don't have a use for it. Why? Well, my dungeon isn't ready to open yet! Miriel's repairing the third floor and then I'll have to complete it along with six more floors and a boss room. Wait! If I find a large lizard living up here on the floating island, and then I convince (force) the large lizard to work under me, I can also make him or her the boss! It's a two-in-one deal! Hurray! What a deal! This is an opportunity that I cannot miss! And so, with that in mind, I excitedly flew to the floating island. I hovered above it and when I tried to descend to the rocky surface of it, I was repelled by an invisible force. "A barrier?" I mumbled, knocking on it. It felt sturdy and quite hard..? No, perhaps malleable is the right word to describe the feeling of knocking on the barrier. "Power of erasing, go." And with that said, I placed my palm on the barrier's exterior surface. Usually, a barrier is made out of several compacted layers "squished" together to form a thicker and sturdier layer. The thicker and sturdier the layer is, the stronger and higher the Defensive Power of the barrier will be. This barrier is comprised of three layers; each having a Defensive Power of roughly twelve hundred, and all combined, the DP (Shortened it. I'm lazy, okay?) would be over four thousand... there's some extra protective stuff between the gaps of the three layers. I wasn't bothered to include that, so there you go. Despite the high amount of DP this barrier has, it is still no match to the overwhelming power of erasing. After some ear-breaking and bleeding sounds that were produced when the power of erasing "ate" up the barrier, a small hole was formed that was just large enough so I could squeeze through and enter the floating island. It was a little tight... [Did you gain weight again?] No... argh, fine, maybe. I'll cut down my sweet intake from now on. Let me have my pudding as the last one before I cut down on sweets. I'll go eat it once everything is over. Once I entered the barrier, immediately afterwards, six large swords of light with more or less the same engravings surrounded me, with the intent of killing. They circled around and then multiplied to form a sphere of swords, engulfing me. I wasn't too shocked as these swords of light weren't able to harm me in any possible way, so I figured let's play along for some fun. "Woah?" I acted like I was surprised. "What's going on here? I mean no harm!" "If you really mean no harm, then why and how did you enter this place?" a voice responded. The voice telepathically entered my mind and only skilled magic users could easily use telepathy like this person has. I raised my hands in the air, trying to signify that I meant no harm to whoever lived there. "I saw a large bundle of energy leaking from this place and I got curious enough to go and explore it! I bypassed the barrier through a small hole that I created with my power!" I answered. "You broke into this place? Impossible. How could a young child like you perform an act that many powerful individuals from my species cannot do? You said you made a small hole in my barrier? That is utterly ridiculous." "Uh... it's true, you know... otherwise, how could I've entered? Teleportation? I mean, I know this is your territory, miss large liz- wait, no, 'dragon', but you can just check for yourself." I pointed towards the hole I made in the barrier. From the interior's perspective, I can see the barrier; it was translucent and the translucency made it easy to identify where the barrier is. It was like a white wall in the Overworld (since the Overworld is white) with one side being painted with a thin layer of black. "Hm. How did you know I was a dragon?" she asked me. "Well," I replied, "It's a given since you live thirty thousand metres above the surface, and then you got this very nice little floating island filled with all sorts of plants... and animals?" "I see. Since I sense no bloodlust or any sort of malicious intent from you, I guess it's fine for me to introduce myself." A large shadow appeared in front of me. The outline of the shadow was a large dragon shape, not exactly a 1:1 to a real dragon since the owner of the island was a large lizard, not an actual dragon, but she still had a large, powerful and thick scaly tail connected to a large scaly body with tough limbs and a long neck with a sharp head connected (I presume). Then, the large shadow suddenly grew smaller and condensed into a more humanoid form. I could tell there were two arms, two legs, a torso and a head with two horns connected. But the most surprising part came next. I saw that she also had a pair of wings very similar to mine; so like an angel's pair of wings instead of your normal, typical large lizard wing, where it was similar to a vampire's pair of wings; an extended "thumb" with a patagium in between that thumb and the body. The swords of light that were surrounding me vanished into nothing and I finally got a clear view of the large lizard who lives on this island. I was a bit surprised, even though the shadow of the large lizard was twice as tall compared to me. but when she materialised, her height had shrunk down to my height level. "You're... tiny now." I said. "Well, thank you for pointing that out," the large lizard sarcastically replied. "You're the reason why I'm this small. I don't believe you should be talking." I can almost hear this large lizard puffing her cheeks like a child with her last sentence. But what's up with me being the reason why she's small? I don't remember casting a divine power to make her small like myself. "Tch. I shouldn't have imitated you with my skill." the large lizard complained. "What was that? I didn't catch what you said." "Nothing. I said nothing." "If you say so..." The materialisation of her humanoid form was taking a little bit longer than usual; a little weird, but not too unusual I guess. I took a seat while still in mid-air and then materialised a small white metal chair just underneath me, and a small white metal table with the same theme as the chair. Both of the two newly materialised objects took the large lizard by surprise and she said, "Creation? That's rare. Well, if you have mastered creation, then it's no wonder why you can break through my barrier. Oh right, that reminds me, such a fellow like you once visited me. Her creation ability is truly frightening." "Hm?" I put down the doughnut that I was eating, and without wiping off the bread crumbs, "There was someone who visited who before? And they also used creation? That's interesting. Go on, have a seat while your form is still materialising and tell me about this person." I asked. I then extended my hand to invite the large lizard's still-materialising humanoid form to take a seat on the chair I just made and served her half a doughnut on a white ceramic plate. How generous of me to do that. The large lizard took up my offer and sat down on the chair opposite where I sat and faced me with all of her attention. The fuzzy black and white substance that covered her slowly dulled in colour and starting from the very top of her head, I saw colour for the first time. Over time, the rest of her hair started to gain colour, and what's the funny bit? Her hairstyle was exactly like mine! What a coincidence it was! Although she didn't have the short low double ponytail that is a staple of my image, but I admit, is alright since it's such a pain to maintain for long periods. While my hair colour is mainly pink with a soft tint of purple, the large lizard's hair colour was a firey red... or lava-red? It has yellow, red, white and orange, all colours that you can find in a fire... but the shade of those colours more resembled that of lava. So I don't know how to describe it. Maybe I'll use the term "molten" for the time being. She also had the same coloured eyes—that is a red and black outline of the pupil, with orange as the main colour with some streaks of yellow and a white iris with a faint light blue outline separating it from the very molten-coloured pupil. Her skin is tanned with a very dry and crusty(?) appearance, and she wears a fine black dress that reveals her shoulders and everything just above her breasts but covers everything up to her ankles as you go down. The black dress has many beautiful engravings of pearls, fine silk or fabric and precious gemstones. If a human wore that, it would've cost them a massive fortune. Apart from her two small black horns on the top of her head, she could've passed off as a very beautiful human, but I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in the person who'd visited her before. "Let me introduce myself," she placed her hand on her chest, "I am one of the Three Ancient Dragons of the world—the Dragon of the Atlar Flame, Hestia!" she proudly announced with a confident look. Well, her name's Hestia. That's good to know. But I don't care about this "Dragon of the Altar Flame" stuff that she is so proud of. Well, I guess I'll make the boss room similar to a volcano—very hot temperatures. I'm thinking maybe around two thousand degrees Celsius. That should be fine, yeah?