Museum Core Chapter 83: Expansion 

Thomas wasn’t too sure how much time he’d spent tricking out various versions of his tank, but by the time a new group of first-time visitors distracted him from his work, he’d completed two separate iterations, and days had passed. 

His first creation had obviously been the standard enhanced version of the Tiger tank. 

He’d started out by replacing every bit of armor and structural component with modern alloys. Modern tanks still had better armor because, well, they had to deal with modern weapons and had absolutely monstrous slabs of metal and ceramics on their front especially. But it was still a significant upgrade over what he’d started out with. 

To be honest, at some point, he should just ask them to design a new tank or vehicle without vulnerable electronics to let him play around with. Eventually. 

Because right now, with the upgrades he’d made, he’d take the eighty-year-old tiger over an entire modern tank battalion.

The armor had started out as modern alloys, but been filled with countless small hollows, each, in turn, containing silverspit venom that would leak out and harden the moment the armor was breached. Granted, after a dozen or so hits, the vehicle would start to look like some kind of “infected” enemy from a video game, with crystalline spikes protruding from every point where it had been damaged, but that was alright. Figuring out that the anomalous material could only solidify once removed from wherever it “naturally resided” had allowed him to create an auto-repair function. 

And then he’d started ranking up the materials through a rather simple exploit he’d figured out. He could take a basic creature, any basic, unranked creature, use his D-Rank power to merge patterns to add the needed material to their body in some way that wouldn’t poison them, and then rank that creature up, leaving him with a tiny sample of F-Rank material … which Thomas, as a dungeon, could infinitely replicate. Or, at the very least, as long as his energy reserves lasted. 

Granted, he currently only had F-Ranked versions of all the things that made up the tank, but that was enough to make it a massive step above regular armored vehicles. As far above F-Ranked superhumans as a regular tank was above the soldiers who piloted it. 

But as for the shells themselves, he’d done so much more than simply replacing materials, he’d gotten himself samples of modern fragmentation, high explosive, and armor-piercing shells and done a little engineering. Not much, he still wasn’t all that good with it, but this was a fairly simple adjustment of scale. 

And then he’d added even more exotic materials to them, materials that no one would have ever used normally because they had a hell of a lot better uses for them. Who’d have ever used iridium just to allow a shell to better pierce enemy armor? For that matter, who even had enough iridium to make more than a handful of such projectiles?

And so on, and so forth. 

Then, of course, he’d added a machine spirit, a D-Rank monster, to control the whole affair, and an E-Rank Titan Slime Mold to the underside. 

The latter was a new version that, rather than buoyancy, had a mass manipulation ability that let it not only cover the “buoyancy” issue but also allowed the tank to drive over ground that might not be able to support it. Once again, the solution had been painfully simple: make the increased size the slime mold’s F-Rank power, and using far stronger E-Rank power to affect the mass of something it was holding. 

Two monsters to count against his command limit, and the material cost of the tank itself. 

Not impossible to hurt, modern weaponry could reach absurd levels of destructive capability even before you got into the area of nuclear weaponry, but certainly highly resistant to most conventional anti-tank weapons. 

And if he put Jan in the driver’s seat, the monsters that made the tank function could be summoned by him using tokens, allowing the whole affair to function anywhere, not just inside his dungeon. 

But he’d also gotten started on creating something to allow for the easy traversal of the mangrove transformation area. 

Yeah, a heavy tank was hardly the obvious choice for that, but then again … magic. 

Modified Heavy Tank “Matschtiger” (D-Rank, legendary, composite)

A decades-old weapon of war, resurrected by an ambitious dungeon core and reforged for an environment it was never designed to be in. This is achieved through a series of enchantments on multiple individual components that may be activated separately or together as is needed. 

This machine is capable of driving on any solid or liquid surface, gaining traction regardless of what lies under its treads, filtering toxins in the environment before they enter the vehicle, or even generate its own air wholesale. In addition, this tank can generate its own shells from mana, summon a Spiritus Machina whenever its mechanical components are required to function, camouflage itself, and has a limited self-repair ability.

Finally, its storage has been expanded using dimensional magic and extraneous components removed to make space for sleeping quarters and a kitchen. 

Energy draw: variable low – titanic depending on environment and number of active systems 

Restrictions: cannot be wielded by those originating in the transformation zone known as “Manatee Grove.” 

The “composite” part of the tag had been a surprise to Thomas, but turned out to basically just mean that the magical item in question had been put together from multiple different pieces with individual enchantments, rather than being one thing with one “power.”

For example, instead of just handing over a bunch of summoning tokens for the machine spirits, he’d taken one and integrated it with the tank itself, to be activated as needed. It couldn’t be lost without something actively tearing open the vehicle, was able to be activated as needed, and did not require someone to permanently have a machine spirit as a bound companion either. 

He’d handed out a whole lot of permanent tokens when his dungeon had first opened, but to his knowledge, very few had actually been used since, once activated, you’d be “stuck” with whatever you’d summoned as a pet.

Sure, you could summon a tiger and pet it and have the time of your life … but were you in a position to take care of a tiger for the rest of your life? 

Apparently, the people who’d gone to explore his dungeon had had a lot more foresight than him, because had he been in their position, he’d have likely used the token before thinking of the long-term logistics. 

And in addition to it running on pure mana, he’d obviously tacked on a whole lot of extra upgrades.

Obviously, the ammo-generating ability of the machine spirits had been baked into the turret itself, allowing the tank to fire much more rapidly, and removing the need for an internal magazine. Combined with a general repair ability based on an axolotl’s regeneration and the same silverspit “hole filler” he’d had in the dungeon version, this thing perfectly combined both firepower and survivability. Though its accuracy was not up to snuff, not compared to modern tanks and their fancy electronics. 

He’d also given it a ton of envirnomental protections, allowing it to drive on amy ground regardless of how unstable it might be as well as the surface of any body of water it may find itself on, filter out gas attacks or even generate oxygen ex mana in case the damn thing may somehow find itself burried or underwater. And since he’d been able to strip out a lot of components, he’d actually been able to add a living quarter. 

They’d be cramped as fuck, but he had no idea how terrible the swamp would be deeper in. Being able to live in the tank needed to be an option. 

And finally, he’d started using the ability to dimensionally expand their stomach held by void wolves to create bags of holding, or rather, compartments of holding. 

It was amazing what you could figure out if you just knuckled down and gave your all to the creation of artifacts. 

He’d tried to make something for Jan to use, but sadly, he couldn’t charge artifacts with any of his creatures, leaving all the cool things he made in the hands of humans. 

Something he did sadly have to note was the fact that the whole assemblage’s overall rank was a reflection of the enhancements he’d layered it with, rather than the tank itself, which was functionally identical to the barely enhanced chassis he’d built for his own use. Still ungodly durable compared to anything manmade, but it had nothing on actual D-Rank artifacts. Comparing this tank to them was like equating window glass and diamonds. 

But that was the way the cookie crumbled. Creating something that powerful and durable would have taken a lot longer than Thomas had had, but he would eventually gain the needed materials and could create upgraded versions. 

As for the restriction, it was simple: he didn’t want the creature at the heart of the hostile transformation zone to be able to turn his “gift” on this world, on the off chance it was capable of even entering the machine. 

And that was his tank, the “mud tiger.” Somewhat costly to produce, roughly as expensive as one of his champions, and actually using it required a mage or someone else with deep mana reserves, but it was a magical tank that could drive across water. Anyone claiming they could get or operate that sort of thing for cheap was clearly cutting corners somewhere. And would likely get someone killed when those corners failed at the worst possible moment. 

Ultimately, though, Thomas had the distinct feeling that the raw utility of pure mechanical machinery would eventually fail. Or rather, fall short of what true magic could do. As impressive as humanity’s technology was, being able to fully integrate it with magic, rather than simply building it out of magical materials, was likely where true power lay. And Thomas was nowhere near a good enough … any kind of engineer to make that jump himself. 

But the creation process had been the past. The present was currently entering Thomas’ dungeon. And it was unmissably obvious that these guys (and gals) were different. 

Thomas’ usual delvers were British police or military, with the matching equipment, or whatever the BPA was qualified as. 

These guys were clearly different; that was obvious from the flag patches on their shoulders. French, German, and Belgian. Thomas couldn’t get much out of the other insignia, such as rank indicators, branch tapes, unit patches, and so on, but they seemed competent. Not just like people who’d passed basic training, which was already an impressive achievement, but those who’d gone beyond that. 

Perhaps to the level of SAS or Navy Seals, perhaps not, Thomas’ knowledge of elite military units began and ended with him knowing those names. But it would be interesting to see where this went. 

Everyone had firearms, which tended to mostly be modern, heavy-looking assault rifles but they also had three of what he assumed to be sumachine guns, a couple of machine guns, and two massive weapons that short sniper rifles but likely had a different purpose, considering the ranges in the dungeon tended to be far shorter than at what you’d use them at normally

There were twelve in total, and two-thirds were unranked. 

“Just for the record, we have permission to visit, we want to delve normally,” one of the men announced, his German accent heavy and pronounced. Not quite “WW2 movie Nazi” heavy, but still highly noticeable. 

As he said that, one of the British soldiers outside leaned around to look inside and gave a thumbs-up to where he assumed Thomas was viewing them from. He was ludicrously far off the mark, but the gesture was appreciated. 

With the fact that this was a regular delve all but confirmed, Thomas settled in to watch while sharing the feed with Elias. 

The delvers turned right first, heading into the area known as the cradle. 

And it was a slaughter. 

The delvers communicated to easily and succinctly that he could barely follow along, and their smooth coordination allowed them to each pick a separate target, bullets ripping apart the wolverines and antelopes he had in there with casual ease. 

But the man he assumed to be the leader, the German, one of the F-Rankers, was borderline terrifying. 

He wielded one of the big rifles, and, well, it lived up to what its appearance promised. Every time it fired, a sound like thunder rang out, and a bullet that nothing in this room could withstand tore apart another one of his creatures.  

But his weapon wasn’t what made the man so overwhelming. No, that honor went to his downright ridiculous ability to spot and target creatures that should have been entirely hidden from view. 

Including the hippo that was meant to be the boss of this area, whose head exploded five seconds into the fight. 

“How?”

“That’s the first power of the Apex Hunter at work,” Elias explained. “Every kind of vision you can think of, they have. Heat, energy, magic, vibration … they can even ‘hear’ with their eyes if they practice enough. They can’t do it all at once, but they’re still almost impossible to hide from. 

“But the most ridiculous facet of their power is the ability to tell what their target can see, where it is looking, and if it’s starting to notice them.”

“Cool,” Thomas commented, but the fairy wasn’t done yet. 

“And once they’ve managed to reach E-Rank with just fantastic vision, that’s when things get really crazy, but that’s a story for another time.”

“Elias …” Thomas growled, prompting a laugh. 

“Alright, alright. Basically, their second power is a pretty good cloaking power that draws a ridiculous amount of mana because only half of it actually goes into the cloak itself; the rest is lost to the ether until the hunter spots its prey. 

“Then, it’ll start accumulating, becoming focused on empowering the hunter’s next attack while adapting to the target, growing stronger and stronger until it is unleashed … or the hunter gets spotted, then it all just vanishes.” 

“That seems weird,” Thomas commented. “Why would the energy vanish like that?”

Elias shrugged. “Eh, ritual magic’s weird like that.”

“Huh, so it is,” Thomas decided to cut off the discussion there in favor of watching the slaughter in the cradle area, which was already coming to an end. 

That had been impressive … 

But seriously, holy hell. They’d handled that so easily that it felt almost disrespectful. 

He was used to the BPA, who did make their people level using their Class powers with their eyes focused on the higher ranks, rather than simply trying to get through the dungeon. 

You only really started to see immunity to firearms in the D-Ranks, and heavier weapons could be useful against even low C-Ranks. Though between Elias and his knowledge of Earth weapons, most nuclear weapons would start to fail rapidly at that point as well, especially if they weren’t used at point-blank range. 

An important reminder of the fact that modern weapons were, in fact, powerful. 

***

Major Johann Müller was feeling strangely … not out of his comfort zone. Even with all the retraining they’d been doing lately, fighting monsters should have been far outside of his wheelhouse. 

But as the Gepard GM6 Lynx anti-materiel rifle bucked against his shoulder and shattered the skull of an unexpectedly feathered raptor, he felt calm, and centered, the action almost meditative. 

No one jumped at the sudden burst of fire; they were all too well trained, too experienced, for that, but he could tell that he’d surprised them as none had noticed it was there before it had died. 

Magic was … well, enhanced senses might not have been his “go-to” superpower when he let himself daydream, but they were ludicrously useful. And as he slowly rose up through F-Rank, his overall physical and mental abilities increased as well. In fact, the recoil of the massive beast of a rifle he was currently wielding was already noticeably lessened. 

And they weren’t bringing any supernatural offensive abilities to the table either. 

No, they had four people, three others and himself, who’d initiated themselves into the jungle’s system of advancement, and the rest of them used firearms alone. 

To test themselves, the dungeon, and the system itself. 

How good were firearms against magic? The Brits hadn’t exactly been very helpful in that respect, since they’d gone all in on the magic train. It would likely pay off as their people shot through the ranks and firearms failed to catch up, but right now, information on all that was highly limited. 

How dangerous was the dungeon? Would it remain fair, even “docile,” in some ways, to foreigners, or was it only nice to the people with easy access to it? 

And finally, were there more systems to be unlocked through sheer effort?

They likely wouldn’t be able to completely beat the dungeon with firearms alone, but that hardly meant the armory had skimped on their equipment. 

There was a second Lynx in use, the heavy rifles firing bullets capable of cracking engine blocks in half with ease and continuing on to go straight through whoever might be taking cover behind it. 

In the middle of the group, there were two men holding light machine guns, the FN Minimis, able to unleash up to eight hundred 7.62 NATO rounds per second and turning most targets into Swiss cheese before they could even react. 

Leading from the front were three soldiers wielding B&T APC-10 SMGs, the submachine guns loaded with alternating armor-piercing and dum-dum bullets. The former were self-explanatory, the name said all, but the latter were a little special. 

They were designed to expand and flatten upon impact, resulting in them causing utterly horrific tissue damage to the point where they’d been banned and their use against humans declared a war crime. 

But they were fighting monsters, and the bullets had, for some reason, been available. 

Now, loaded the way they were, the compact weapons would be able to both pierce armor and turn a soft-bodied attacker into goulash as needed. 

And finally, the last five of his people were armed with HK417 rifles in their carbine configuration. Semi-automatic, high-caliber, normally used as marksman rifles, but serving as the standard here due to the sheer amount of damage they could deliver in just a single bullet. Overkill in such close quarters against humans, and too cumbersome as well, but the situation warranted it. 

The various creatures they were hunting might have been ten times as powerful as beings of flesh and blood had any right to be, but the weapons his men carried were enough to kill their foes a hundred times over. 

But before they headed into the dungeon’s proper delve, Müller ordered them to head into the panacea challenge. It seemed like a better fit for their current low-magic high-firearm loadout. 

… Only to retreat after less than a minute. 

There were spider monkeys literally everywhere, each capable of hurling incredibly pointy nuts that were effectively just flechette darts at speeds that made them almost as dangerous as bullets. 

Those damn monkeys were always deep in the foliage and functionally impossible to see, let alone shoot, without perception enhancement and the same ability that allowed them to endlessly gain more projectiles also affected the gear of the delvers, which meant that by the time they retreated, Müller’s men had left almost half their own munitions behind, only a fraction of which had acutally been fired.

So they took a crack at the dinosaur section. 

“Watch out for the velociraptors, they’re the size of chickens, spit fire, and can hide in the low grass. There’s at least one draconic tyrannosaurus in there; use the columns to protect yourselves from fire breath. Focus on the eyes and throat of anything larger than a horse.” 

Blasting apart even an E-Rank spider monkey with a rifle meant to take out armored vehicles was perfectly doable. 

But elephants, rhinos, and other large animals routinely managed to kill humans even after getting shot, and while the military gear they carried was far beyond what hunters wielded, their foes were powerful beyond all reason, capable of acting beyond anything a living being should be able to do. And the fact that he would soon be able to exhibit similarly supernatural strength did very little to help in the moment. 

Gunfire roared out barely two seconds after they entered, both the SMGs and machine guns ripping apart small dinosaurs as they leaped out of their hiding places. 

It was almost like something out of a zombie movie … except these zombies were fast as lightning, too small to easily target, and breathed fire. 

But Müller had a different target. 

A giant sauropod that had been front and center in the bestiary the British had created and passed along, a prehistoric titan capable of extending its tail and cracking it through the air like a whip to reach virtually any point in the room. 

The Lynx’s stock pressed against his shoulder, his finger lay firm against the trigger, and unbeknownst to him, his eyes literally glowed from how many different modes of vision he was drawing upon right in that moment. 

Time itself seemed to freeze, slowing to a crawl not through magic but his sheer focus, a single moment stretching into infinity. 

When the gun finally fired, the spell broke in an instant … and so did the sauropod’s head, which erupted in a shower of blood. 

Or at least that was what it looked like, yet when the crimson mist parted to reveal the damage, Müller saw its bare, undamaged, skull through a massive gash in the skin the bullet had rent. 

Oh … 

“Tail incoming!” Lieutenant Renard warned a split second before Müller noticed the attack being wound up, and with a tremendous sound like the world’s biggest whip cracking, the grotesquely stretching limb hammered down where he’d been standing a split second earlier in an eruption of dust. 

He fired twice more, this time paying as close attention to what they were doing as he could. They punched straight through the skin and flesh of its head while slowing down until they bounced right back out, creating a huge flesh wound while leaving the skull itself undamaged … and, in all likelyhood, shooting straight at the skull would likely fail, horrifying as the injuries were, they were too small on a moving target to easily hit. 

The dinosaur’s bellow of pain slammed straight into him, a deep roar that he felt in his chest, but all he was doing was pissing it off, wasn’t he?

Müller’s hands flashed across his ammo belt, pulled free a different magazine, and slammed it into place in barely a second. 

.50 BMG bullets were massive, beefy, projectiles, large enough to contain the necessary components for more exotic functions. Such as the Raufoss Mk 211, a round that combined armor piercing, incendiary, and explosive properties to utterly ruin anything they pierced into before detonating. 

Yes, the flesh that covered the beast’s skull sufficiently blunted his regular armor-piercing projectiles to the point where they couldn’t get through the bone. 

But with these things?

He’d either blow himself a breach in that “armor,” or an explosion that close to its brain would kill it outright. 

Even as the first bullet fired, the dinosaur was already charging, tail flailing side to side and smashing into walls and even its own “allies” as it desperately tried to get at and crush him. 

But the effect of having switched munition types was immediate, dramatic, and gory. 

Once again, the explosion deflected off the skull, but even so, it stumbled. 

In the distance, a much louder explosion rang out as one of the carbine’s underbarrel grenade launchers was used for the first time, breaking the leg of some kind of club-less mini ankylosaurus. Müller had memorized all known abilities of all known dungeon creatures, but that thing’s name had slipped his mind. 

His Lynx fired once again, and this time, finally, the sauropod dropped like a sack of potatoes. 

Müller briefly considered switching magazines again, saving the more powerful munitions of which he only had a few left, but decided against it. That ankylosaurus-thing looked tough. 

And then, another roar, louder than the sauropod, tore through the room even as the ground started to shake. 

A Tyrannosaurus. He didn’t know what had set it off, what had made it begin to charge, but it was charging nevertheless. 

“Retreat!” he bellowed. They might be able to beat this thing, but there was no guarantee they’d be able to pull it off and this was hardly a situation where them dying to achieve their objective would serve anyone. Ultimately, this was a ludicrously dangerous training mission, nothing more, nothing less. 

However, retreating was easier said than done, with every step the creature took, the ground jumped. But it wasn’t, he could see that, it just felt like it … yet that “feeling” had a physical presence, actively picking them up and dropping them, slamming into their footing, and overall making it impossible to run quickly. 

If they didn’t manage to get out of here quickly, this would turn into a “I don’t need to be faster than the monster, I just need to be faster than you” situation. And leaving someone behind to be eaten was not acceptable. 

Several grenades slammed into the dinosaur’s chest and bounced, the beast already having gotten below their minimum arming distance. 

Müller fired straight at its face, emptying the magazine as quickly as he could while still maintaining at least a distant semblance of accuracy. And it barely mattered. 

A bullet detonating in its nostril failed to do more than make it sneeze blood, bleeding furrows were torn into its face elsewhere, and the greatest “effect” his attack had was making it focus on him, charging, jaws opened to chomp him in half. 

And then, the tear gas grenade landed in its open maw and detonated. 

It had been downright ridiculous how hard that thing had been to get as a soldier, especially considering how accessible other “war crime if used on human targets” munitions had been.. 

Being a chemical weapon, tear gas was banned under the Geneva Convention, despite how it was alright to use for police actions, which was apparently a large part of the issue, somehow … but it had been ridiculous still. 

The tyrannosaurus saw him, kept seeing him, kept charging … but it was blind enough that he managed to throw himself to the side and had its jaws slam into the ground less than half a meter from his head. 

And then, he fed it the one piece of magical loot that had been obtained thus far. A temporary summoning token for a Nile hippo. 

When the grey titan appeared in its mouth, blood sprayed from both the summon and the dinosaur’s suddenly broken jaw, and the so-called tyrant lizard practically squealed in pain as it went berserk, tail sweeping through the group of retreating soldiers and scattering them like bowling pins. 

Müller could hear the sounds of breaking bones even over the dinosaur’s tantrum, but didn’t even have to give the order for the injured to be picked up; taking care of one’s comrades was part and parcel of modern military training. 

So they retreated together, out into the entrance hall, knowing there were medics with magical medicines outside the dungeon and that the dinosaur wasn’t supposed to be able to leave … but they had to make it out first. 

Behind them, the rex finally managed to ge calm down enough to chase them, crashing out into the entrance hall, feet flying out from under it as it unexpectedly found itself running through shallow water, and it crashed to the ground heavily behind them. 

Could they run, or would they have to fight it before they could safely leave … they could. 

They stumbled out barely ten seconds later, all but collapsing into heaps while an invisible force dragged the t-rex back into its rightful place in the dungeon, and the medics swarmed. 

Ach du heilige Scheiße. 

While the medics tended to his men, Müller scanned the surroundings. 

His body was still high on adrenaline, heart pounding as though it were trying to smash apart his ribcage from the inside. 

It did not matter that, intellectually, he knew that the monsters would stay in the dungeon. Subconsciously, he simply could not accept that he was safe from monsters that were barely a hundred meters away, monsters that had been trying to kill them all barely five minutes ago. 

But soon enough, he’d managed to shed his combat mindset, and the medics had assured him that not only would everyone live, but also recover in short order.  

So he allowed himself to look at the notice board, where he saw a very prominent series of tear-away posters that he was positive hadn’t been there when they’d entered. 

“Due to a lack of modern equipment usable in transformation zones, many of the most modern weapons systems are unsuitable for use by dungeons, or as vehicles to hunt down powerful foes elsewhere in the hands of humanity. As such, museum-gained WW2-era armored fighting vehicles are presently the best available basis of vehicular artifacts. However, better options are theoretically available. Design, build, and deliver any of the following: an armored scouting vehicle, main battle tank, heavy tank, and receive the promised reward. 

“Reward: 10 magically upgraded versions of delivered vehicles (D-Rank overall, minimum E-Rank materials), equivalent to what the dungeon creates for its own use. Special variants adapted for specific environments available upon request.

“Restriction: limited to NATO members only. (status must be confirmed by a British government official)”

Huh … that sounded like an interesting offer. Unless he was massively misreading both the reward and the relative power of magical items, ten tanks with D-Rank enchantments and built out of massively supernatural metals would likely be equal to a sizeable portion of the Bundeswehr in terms of both durability and firepower. 

Müller took one of the pages. It would be up to his superiors whether or not to follow up, and as to what wound up coming from it was entirely out of his hands, but he was pretty sure that ten magical tanks were likely the most valuable thing one could possibly get from the dungeon. 

But before he ever took another group into this dungeon, he’d make sure that everyone had a system. 

As for what system, that was a question of what they could get. The one tied to the jungle, the one the Brits used, perhaps the one the Americans had discovered in the Pacific for a Kampfschwimmer?

Things to try, powers to experiment with, and ultimately, dangers to most of humanity to defeat. He’d have a full calendar going forward. 

***

To be honest, the idea had been blindingly obvious, hadn’t it? 

Yeah, he negated the flaws of the Tiger with his magic, and more than compensated for its outdated nature using, well, magic, but a stronger base would make for a far better outcome, wouldn’t it?

Of course, such a stronger base would have to be custom-designed and built, and with how much time that would take, he’d have likely wound up upgrading WW2-era machinery anyway, but it was still not exactly a good sign that he’d only had this idea now?

As for where to go from here, it was simple. Keep building things, keep creating artifacts, and eventually kill all the anchors and save the world. 

And get stronger from all the delvers he was getting from all over, too. 

He’d largely stick to directly dealing with the British government, doing the usual deals via the noticeboard with others to maintain his relationship with the government that was “his,” in all practical respects, but overall, he had access to goods from all over the world and keeping his prices “reasonable” just kept them coming back for more. 

But he didn’t want to be too approachable, especially outside of the group he already knew. Because if people got used to him being personable, they’d start to assume he was a person … specifically, a person like them. 

And then, when people inevitably died, shit would well and truly hit the ground. 

All in all, though, he saw the current developments as an absolute win. 

***

Two weeks later, the Dungeon was absolutely hopping. Still no deaths, something that was almost miraculous, but only because they were ludicrously cautious. 

The delvers were, at present, almost entirely soldiers who had absolutely no intention of dying in a dungeon. For all that delving gave the power to defend whatever nation they served and ideals they’d sworn to protect, risking getting oneself killed just to eke out just a tensy bit more power out of a delve wasn’t worth it. 

Injuries happened, severe ones, even, but so far, Thomas had only been getting a trickle of experience through the challenge and education aspects of his power, rather than deaths. 

Oh, and he’d also gotten another layer of security, in anticipation of soldiers of fortune and even adventurous individuals arriving. 

A simple stall, set up outside and manned by the BPA, to provide a workaround to Vretkag’s ironclad “dungeon cores must not have unrestricted access to magic treaties” rule. 

They made people sign a simple contract, one that only had a single clause, which said that signing while any of the three statements below were incorrect would result in an obvious mark to appear on the body of the signee, signifying untruth. 

And the three statements were as followed: 

“I am not here to destroy the dungeon. 

“I am not here to provide support, in any way, shape, or form, including purely information-gathering, to such an effort.

“I have not misrepresented myself and my reason for being here.”

It would immediately let him know who to unleash his full power on, and anyone who was here for any kind of “hinky” reason would also wind up getting denied entry, though he would have to get a report as to why that had happened. After all, he wanted people to delve, having them be stopped for some kind of innane reason ran counter to that. 

Oh, and kids were, of course, banned. Thomas had absolutely zero intention to ever endanger a human child, or let himself be put into a situation where his existing defenses threatened harm. Human or dungeon core, some lines were the same regardless of what you were.