The party was stopped just outside of the portal room, watching the latest wendigo to appear roar in fear. It had walked through the portal moments before and immediately begun to panic. Its head was swiveling from one torch to another. By the time it had begun to calm down, another wendigo had appeared.

  This new wendigo’s reaction, while still fearful, was much more muted than the first one’s. Though that didn’t stop it from smacking the first one on the backside of the head for being afraid. Now that there was another wendigo there with it, the first one needed to act like it was better than the second wendigo and unafraid.

  Moments later, the two hesitantly stalked from the room, staying in the middle of the path and never even getting close to the walls.

  “They’re really afraid of fire,” Nate muttered, turning to Lindsay, who had been keeping an eye on the cameras throughout the dungeon. “Have you seen anything? Have any of them died in the traps yet?”

  “For good reason, too, it seems. Check out the room five back from the entrance.” She said, encouraging them to look for themselves. “That’s the one where the bulk of them have fallen.”

  “Fallen, not died?” Angie questioned, pulling up the room in question on her camera display. “Oh, well, that is slightly disturbing.”

  Nate was only a few moments behind her and was quick to see the same sight she had. They were in time to see a wendigo burning to ashes, not to death, just ashes. Apparently, the monsters were highly flammable, save for one body part, their hearts, which shone like ice. Nearly a dozen of them decorated the floor of the room. Just hanging around, this meant that the wendigos weren’t actually dead yet, merely in a stasis form while they waited to regenerate.

  “Huh, well, maybe this was the wrong dungeon to go to if we wanted to fight, but if we can get items for each of those hearts… This might become our walk-in the park dungeon.” He said, a little annoyed that they wouldn’t be getting the fight they had all wanted.

  “Let’s go destroy those hearts, and then move on to a different dungeon,” Angie said, pushing them forward. “Lindsay is apparently a little too good at making traps and utilizing the themes you designate.” She teased.

  “Don’t blame me for this!” Lindsay protested. “This is all Nate’s fault. If he had chosen a worse theme, we wouldn’t be running into this problem.”

  Everyone stopped to stare at her, giving her a moment to process what she had said.

  “Ugh, fine. That was a stupid thing to say, and this is completely my fault.” She admitted with a roll of her eyes.

  “Dang skippy,” Nate joked, bumping her shoulder playfully. “Whatever, at least this dungeon will work as a nice place for us to stock up on items… Assuming that just taking out the hearts is enough to give us something.”

  This dungeon run was turning out to be much less exciting than they had hoped. It was still interesting, but they had been hoping to improve their ability to fight and give Mika some experience. Neither of which had happened.

  A few rooms later, they came across their first heart, finding it just lying on the floor. It glittered like ice because it truly was made of ice. How the valves were opening and closing in a frozen state was anyone’s guess. That said, apparently, the heart had indeed been working in some form prior to them burning to ash.

  Each of them took turns poking the frozen heart, finding it pliable, though ice cold. It felt like meat, or rather muscle, and looked like a glittery heart. Yet, it was made of ice, not muscle, as was normal.

  Finally, Lindsay brought her halberd atop the heart, cutting it in two. Within moments, the pieces began to melt. The liquid was absorbed by the dungeon, and as soon as it was all gone, a rainbow orb appeared in its place.

  That answered the question as to whether simply taking out the hearts was enough to give them items.

  With that matter taken care of, they ran through the rest of the rooms, dispatching any hearts that they came across. A short while later, they had collected everything and were making their way back to the portal. It was time to move on to another dungeon.

  They did get to fight a couple of wendigos, but with how scared they were of fire, the monsters were almost paralyzed with fear. Calling them fights was being generous as they only moved in a straight line, leaving them open to Angie, Nate, and Aura’s attacks, while Lindsay and Mika held them at bay.

  “Which dungeon should we head to next?” Nathan asked once they reached the portal.

  “One of the earlier dungeons, I think,” Angie said. “How about number nineteen, the one with the cockatrices?”

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  “Works for me.” He made the selection and sent them all to the new dungeon.

  While they were talking, Mika had gone silent and was currently curled up on Aura’s back. The party had only been in the new dungeon for a few minutes when Mika jumped up and ran away from them.

  “The cheese is starting to bubble!” The weasel called back as a small toot escaped from her bum.

  They all groaned and hung their heads.

  “So, I guess we’re using chemical warfare in this dungeon?” Lindsay muttered, pulling up the camera view for the dungeon so she could follow her little companion.

  “Whatever, it’s better that she gets it out of her system now, instead of us dying in the middle of the night in our sleep,” Angie returned. She had woken up to the weasel’s gas attack before, and it was foul. Oddly enough, the effect had only gotten worse once she formed a core instead of getting slightly better, as was normal.

  In person, it wasn’t something they could see; however, when looking through the screens, they could see a distinct mustard yellow gas trailing along behind her.

  “Eww, she really is releasing a poisonous gas now,” Lindsay griped. “No more cheese or milk for Mika.”

  “Good luck with that,” Nate grinned. “Mika is a little cheese addict.”

  “So, it just occurred to me, but if we wanted to participate in these fights as well, this dungeon might not have been the best choice,” Lindsay said while flicking through the items inside her storage. “Ah, here it is.” She pulled out a book on mythological creatures and flipped it open. It took her a moment to find the right page. “I was right. Listen to this.”

  ‘Cockatrices have toxic breath, and stronger ones also have the ability to turn their opponents to stone for a limited amount of time. According to folklore, their weakness is the crowing of a rooster, which causes them to go mad. However, the weasel is their mortal enemy as it is immune to their gaze and toxic breath.’

  She read the page to them, causing Angie to groan. They had gone from one easy dungeon to another.

  “It’s fine,” She sighed out after a moment. “It wasn’t just about us getting to fight this time, it was about getting Mika some experience. Since it is a dungeon with monsters that she is strong against, it might be the perfect dungeon for that. Even if it will be boring for the rest of us.”

  Nate hung his head and sat down. He could either move on to another dungeon or he could do some work on one of the dungeons they already had. Normally, he would have simply moved on to another dungeon; however, he had just added eight dungeons. One of which had already been lost. He had no intention of losing more of them.

  Which meant he needed to begin working on them. Then, once they were somewhat secure, he would go back through the older ones that they hadn’t gotten to yet.

  The wendigo dungeon had already been taken care of… mostly. He was curious about how long it would take for them to regenerate from just their hearts. He also wanted to know if the dungeon would get energy from killing them a second or third time. If it could, then setting up Wendigo Heart Farms might be a viable way to get a lot of resources.

  Ignoring that dungeon, he focused on the second new dungeon, which was the golem dungeon.

  The theme for this dungeon was blunt force attacks. He wanted to squash them flat and not have to worry about all the more typical intricate details.

  Nate had never used full-on drop-ceiling traps before; despite how impressive they sounded, they had several inherent problems. One of which was being slow-ish; most beings inside the dungeons would be able to escape them before they hit the ground. Not to mention, they also displaced a fair bit of air, which actually forced the would-be meat-paste out of the way.

  The fix was easy enough to implement; all he had to do was add through-holes to the dropping ceiling. These would allow air to pass through and keep the displaced air to an absolute minimum. Faster was relative in this case, as it still wasn’t exactly quick.

  The holes would also have the added dubious benefit of squeezing random monster bits like a potato masher.

  Golems were slow enough that the drop ceiling should be able to catch them easily.

  It didn’t matter that some of them were made of clay, mud, wood, or stone. All of them were equally squishable.

  He couldn’t just make the entire dungeon full of drop ceilings, though, after all, he still had to think about the cultivators that would eventually come.

  During the time the had involved the girls in the dungeons, they had gone through several discussions involving the treasure chests. They had come up with the idea that dungeons that would be destroyed instead of conquered would hold the bulk of the treasure chests. The others would still have a couple, but that was it.

  At the entrance of the dungeons, there was a small kitsune in the arch, with the number of tails indicating the number of treasure chests. In the case of the golem dungeon, he hadn’t quite decided which it was yet. As a result, the kitsune’s tail formed a question mark at the moment.

  Those were a fairly new addition, and he doubted that anyone had picked up on the specific correlation just yet. The dungeons were supposed to be a challenge for the cultivators, not outright places of death. Well, not outside of the areas closest to the Dungeon Core. That room would be a straight-up place of death for anyone who entered who wasn’t part of their group.

  He split the Core room into a grid of activation triggers and then began adding the drop ceilings.

  He didn’t want to lose this dungeon as well. It probably still wasn’t perfect, but the drop ceilings were the best trap he had come up with yet, in his opinion. They were relatively simple, could be improved in different ways, and were utterly lethal.

  At first, he hadn’t been too impressed with them, but as he began to actually work on them, that had changed. The density of the material used could be raised and then stacked on top of the ceiling as much as he wanted, making it ever heavier. This would make it drop faster. He could also switch out the mechanisms that controlled it.

  With that taken care of, he started adding more traps to the dungeon.

  It was true that Nate had decided on the main trap for the dungeon, but he couldn’t just use that one trap. He needed to have other traps as well.

  So, at key locations, such as the exit/entrance of the dungeon, he placed the drop ceiling traps, then scattered them throughout the rest of the rooms. Everywhere else, he tested out every sort of blunt force style trap that he could think of.

  Massive hammers, small hammers, pillars that would shoot out from every angle, and even cannon balls, though getting that one to work without powder had been interesting.

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