Dungeon of Niflheim

198 Chapter 198: New room

“Alright an additional small room will cost 1500DP and for a regular basic iron mine environment it’ll cost 8500DP, 10,000 in total.” Even if he had a medium sized room or even a large sized room the output of the iron would remain the same, just the space it covered increased. The mine environment followed the same rule of thumb as the other environments, room size did not affect the price, something Dark decided to keep the same. Of course, there were limits to having it in a small room, it could only be upgraded so much before requiring more space to function. Not only to house the iron ore but also for his monsters to gain access to the mine, more iron being generated every day would require more miners. But thankfully Dark thought of this plus it was refined at the gathering when the issue was brought up by Damascus who already had his own iron mine and ran into a few problems.

At its current level he’d be able to mine 50 kg of iron a day, enough to make around 20 ‘three foot’ iron swords. Not necessarily a lot but not a small amount either. Dark didn’t set a limit on the amount of iron he could store therefore if not used it’d be around 1500kg a month. Pretty substantial considering his current amount was zero. To upgrade the output to 60kg a day it’d cost another 1000DP but once it reached 100kg it’d start costing 1500DP per 10kg increase.

There were many other upgrade option available such as changing its quality, or even changing the material directly to something else within the iron metal chain i.e., steel, frigid iron (cold aspected) or even dark iron (darkness aspected). Of course, again all these upgrades had a fairly substantial cost with some being more than others, way out of his current price range.

He did think of getting a regenerating glacier of 1 star level ice to be used in making pykrete, but he felt more drawn to iron and his frost dwarven smiths were learning quite quickly thanks to a book he bought on blacksmithing. Though they’d struggle to manage fire at their current level, they had enough brute strength to mould the ore into shape, plus he expected when one of them reached max level he’d be able to choose a smith related evolution making iron the most beneficial. Also, he could sell iron weapons or use them as treasures. Pykrete not only required wood pulp it also didn’t suit everyone’s tastes. Iron was a more vanilla option that no one really liked but not one really hated either. Plus, with the right equipment he could potentially produce steel.

Once he finally unlocked ice dwarves or another intelligent species that were good with their hands, he’d be able to make full use of his iron stockpile that would surely had built up by then. For now, however it’d give his frost dwarves a place to call their own as well as a new line of work, the higher ranked monsters didn’t get quite as much action given the level of intruders at the moment. Plus, he wasn’t afraid of wastage, if they don’t practise, they’ll never get better. Levelling up wasn’t the only way to improve as Findlay demonstrated when he was still a frost troll.

By practising his axe skills, he ultimately became a more proficient fighter, the same would work for magic and hopefully trade skills. Damascus also asked a quite important question that not only affected him but also Gobuske and some other cores. He himself liked to work the forge but so did his monsters, a few archetypes in particular were not that strong offensively but were great crafters similar to Gobuske’s goblin engineers. He asked Dark if there could be more ways to level up his monsters i.e., his crafter monsters gaining experience from creating things or mining.

Dark was genuinely surprised by this request and never thought about it before. The sapient races tended to have skills that could be unlocked through practise, and this not only included offensive techniques but trades like farming, forging, artificing etc.... he didn’t think to incorporate such a system into the dungeon but when Damascus brought it up a whole world of possibilities exploded in his mind.

Dark couldn’t help but show a prideful smile towards Damascus as he laughed out loud and promised to work on that as soon as he was able. For now, however monsters still only got experience the old fashioned way, by killing and fighting.

Frost added the new room and its iron mine environment to the cart before clicking confirm. The dungeon started to shake throughout, alerting Findlay and his other monsters before come to a stop 30 seconds later. A new room was established with the entrance appearing behind the fortified glade, some of the frost dwarves were alerted by this change and quickly reported to Findlay who then called Frost for clarification.

.....

“Umm Master did you add another room by any chance?” Findlay asked awkwardly, the shaking caused quite a panic among the new monsters, extra work that he did not need.

“Ah yes Findlay sorry for not informing you in advance, the new room will be an iron mine specifically for the frost dwarves. This will allow us to produce our own raw materials and hopefully they can get to work crafting some more advanced weapons.” Frost replied with a slight bit of embarrassment realising that he probably made Findlay’s job harder.

“I see that’s a could idea master, a lot of the frost dwarfs usually have very little to do at the moment.” Findlay nodded his head agreeing with his master’s intentions. “But why place it directly behind the fortified glade.” Findlay was rather stumped in this regard since a mine shouldn’t need to be protected. Sure, most of the dwarves live around the fortified glade but they could always relocate.

“I plan to add a frost dwarf spawner to the room and have the summoned dwarfs take care of the mining, so in order to protect my investment, best to place it in a heavily defended area.” Frost could now live with the loss of a goblin spawner since he not only had a second one, but they were only 3000DP, a frost dwarf spawner however was 12,000DP four times as much.

“Ok, anything else I need to be aware of?”

“N...No, that should be it, no more shaking for now.” Frost couldn’t help but guiltily look to the side. Maya sniggered quietly.

“Great, I’ll get back to work now master, bye.” Findlay happy with Frost’s response ended the communication and got back to work, arranging all the new monsters, outfitting the goblins with spears etc... a couple frost trolls stood at his side, learning from his actions. They’d take up some of the burden, with each managing a room to themselves while Findlay overlooked the entire dungeon. Both he and Frost were keen to take advantage of the frost trolls’ intelligence. Making for a much more cohesive and responsive system. The gloves were about to come off, Frost planned to up his killing ratio so as to attract more customers and ones of higher value. With the new mine and a frost dwarf spawner he now had enough -or will over time- forces plus materials to arm them somewhat. The next step would be to expand and expand a lot, from his conversation with Yami and Aqua he knew that they each had four floors and three floors respectively which generated far greater pull for intruders. Their DP income was several degrees higher than his and Pyro’s who were in third and fourth place.

His fifth brother Terra also had 3 floors, but his situation was rather unique. Not only could he expand his own dungeon through manipulating the earth (his specialty) he had very little costs in terms of monsters and traps since his approach was far friendlier. Many outside monsters willingly came under his control and the nearby sapient races such as the wood elves were quite accepting. They didn’t constantly choose to hunt beasts or monsters but instead lived among them, with their whole race being vegetarian and close with nature. Terra even had an impromptu camp/village that was being established in his dungeon which he was more than happy to have. Frost couldn’t help but be slightly jealous. All his intruders came to kill and hunt, not a single one wished to ‘live amongst the natural fauna’ as he would put it. Even the few groups of foreign monsters didn’t even stop to talk before lashing out or running for their lives. Terra said it was probably due to his aura being too aggressive or his cold looking face that scared them off. But it wasn’t as though he could copy Terra’s ‘big friendly giant’ persona, that really wasn’t him plus he doubted he could pull it off.

“Haaaaaaaa I really wonder if I got the short straw when it came to locations.” He sighed and let out his complaint. Terra wasn’t the only one with similar benefits, Gaia also had quite a close relationship with foreign tree based monsters but the worst of all was that Pyro did as well. His barbaric and brutish personality seemed to coincide with most monsters of the fire element allowing him to have brought foreign monsters under his rule, though few it was still more than him.

“Hmmmm don’t think so, it must just be your personality.” Maya giggled as gave a blunt reply. “Plus, none of them were woman, if a female frost goblin entered, I’m sure she’d more than willingly come under your banner hehehhee.” She didn’t let up, poking his back as she made fun.