by Naosu N R
Still...you can use cell phones in the safe zone spot I found out today. But it requires a new type of enchant, where you apply the 'safe zone' code to an item like a cell phone. It doesn't let it become a safe spot. But it does let you use it in the safe spot, but uses more battery than normal.
But at the end of the day, dad had also sent me a warning that I need to be on guard. He thinks another group is hunting for 'Me' specifically from an enemy party attacking the clan. He doesn't know how they found out where I was. Only that they believe I'm on either floor 6, floor 7, or floor 9 of the 'Tower of Babel' dungeon.
Shit.
Did someone rat us out?
...
I get a voice mail late at night from Valerie asking me where I'm at and to call her. She says she couldn't get through.
Weird...
It should have let her since I was in the safe zone enchant. Plus, there was enough mana.
Or could the blocking be on her end.
But at the end I caught wind of her saying to hide and stay low, something about an invasion.
I must have misheard that. There's no way there would be something like that.
Right?
Further attempts to call Valerie, I'm getting nothing. It goes to a busy signal.
I'm getting worried.
An hour later the same.
Then when I tried to call dad, I also got a busy signal.
What the hell is going on?!
Plus, once I got to level 10, my family was supposed to give me a quest reward right? That's the traditional way of doing things in the clan. And or give me new instructions is what I also thought.
The others are feeling more relaxed now that Simone's forage skill is working.
But...I wonder now.
Shelly is really angry all the time, because she's basically bipolar and worried about her mom, and sister Janey.
I continued to have wife intimacy as much as I could with Melanie, Simone, and Linz, but I didn't touch Rita.
Rita is becoming a close friend but not a wife yet, like the others.
The stored water in the inventory slot for Melanie is almost gone. From tomorrow we'll have to either boil it or go to the town from level 5 and buy some.
The others aren't in agreement yet on which option to do.
Shelly wants to go to town but doesn't want to come back. And as the only one with anti-undead skills or cures for their infections this makes the others worried about going back.
And Miguel worries if we go back he'll lose the chance to find his missing sister and cousin.
Linz doesn't want to go back also because she's afraid she's wanted by the law, but she wouldn't say that to the others, only to me in privacy. And Rita is worried about deciding what kind of relationship she and I will have before going to town. She doesn't want to go to town with this undecided, because it could mean dumping her for someone else; though she didn't realize I was worried a bit about that too, but with the other way around of her finding another party.
Its amazing how complex this is when there's no mind control involved. I wonder how normal humans function, because they all want everything but can't have it. And then they get conflicted and can't get what they want without help.
Plus, I see that even though we're on level 5 its hard to make money.
I guess it would be even harder to make money on the previous floors in some ways. I didn't realize how good I had it when I was soloing.
And I had to give some of the money we got today to Miguel and Shelly, though the others are OK with me keeping the rest. I was surprised that Rita is asking if I can look out for her and take care of her since she's not able to even live without my 'pacify' skill.
And she technically knows she should be paying me for it. That's how the murim world is. But she doesn't have anything.
We discussed it, and she's not sure what she can do except offer to be my second bodyguard. She's open minded about the option for being a mistress also with the others, but not sure yet if she wants to do that yet.
I won't make her.
I'm just happy I saved someone from the dungeon.
But again, we have to finalize our plans for water tomorrow.
Today's loot totals;
8 cans of food (1 found last minute, and 6 used today for our meals.)
211 dungeon dollars (a small amount found off a roamer darkling last minute also).
Of that 211, I got lucky because I get to keep most of it since Mandy is being paid already by my parents, so most of her money loot goes to me and other loot also per her contract (but that depends on Dad's company not bouncing checks). Rita also is trading her treatment for her loot & money shares (not a bad deal, and she is cute looking). That leaves only Miguel and Shelly to worry about to pay.
At first Miguel was causing trouble thinking we were taking advantage of Rita, but Rita and Shelly then told him how expensive daily magic treatments would be for her to pay, and he shut up.
(But I wonder, does Rita not have any family that can help her? She is tight lipped about this part. I will try to figure out how I can help her.)
This means, I get 3/4ths of the dungeon dollars at 158.
What is the conversion rate of dungeon dollars to USD? And at first I wanted to exchange it all to USD, but the last few days we've gotten nervous that something is wrong with the communication with the surface!
Still can't get Simone to level 6 until we heal up.
Shelly says because Rita's condition is in the mind, she can't help her right now. (Part of that might be her level as a healer being low.)
Chapter 38
This morning we were woken up from sleep by a huge earthquake!
I was shocked.
It felt like everything would collapse. The tents, the sleeping bags, everything became a mess. And the quake even bounced us off the ground several times shaking us. But the weird part was that it was a sharp quick quake, not a slow unending quake. There was the initial quake, but that felt more like a blast than anything, and then many tremors after it which felt like waves.
However there was a lot of dust and debris shaken up by it. And minor mini-shocks kept going off, but they were small. For awhile the sun in the dungeon even was flickering like a light bulb, like it would go out but then stabilized.
"What happened?!" Melanie cried.
The others also are in uproar.
It took a long time to settle them down. And our camp site is wrecked. For over an hour we were just trying to calm the others down.
I ended up using pacify many times on all of them, but especially Rita.
But then someone said something that finally caught my ear.
"Something is wrong on the surface world, outside the Tower. We need to check it out," Shelly argued.
Currently we're in a meeting, arguing about what happened and what to do about it. This argument hasn't gone well, and has continued for a half hour. Some of the party are both for and against going to the surface.
What a pain, I have ethical dilemmas otherwise mind controlling them all could avoid all this hassle.
While they have been arguing about it, I've been checking my status screen. My stats are doing nicely, but every point of change is a tough battle.
While they argue, I'm mulling over my ethical dilemmas.
But what's going on outside the dungeon does concern me. Its just I can't do anything about it. And I do want to know what's going on also. I know whatever happened outside this dungeon, the biggest dungeon known to man, is extremely serious, however.
!
What did happen?
And are they right that it was something that happened on the surface, outside the dungeon?
Also the very good looking, 'bad girl' Linz is still being curb checked towards being good by my mind control. Without it she'd probably go too far in 'bad girl' mode; so I can't turn it off her in an effort to turn her 'good', and if I did who knows how many people she would hurt. Melanie probably doesn'
t need the mind control but I can't turn it off, and...its become real adoring love. She'd probably do anything for me. And its the same way for Simone. With Rita, its helping her have a normal life also, though not the same as for the others.
I guess there's nothing I should change in my team line up. But I'm still worrying what Mandy is up to.
I have tested using my hypnotism skill on Miguel last night. I used it to try to get information out of him. But my skill is too low. I released it after that, and he didn't remember it.
To do more with it I'd have to raise the skill level. And it seems that Miguel has lower magic resistance than Mandy. So I can't use it on her yet. (Miguel was too easy, but I can't go far with it.)
I couldn't enhance or enchant anything since last night because there have been too many darkling attacks. In other words, mana was too important to use on upgrades, because of needing it for defense purposes. And sure enough, I ended up losing enough that I was worrying about running out.
Even Bad Girl Linz was worried about it, who doesn't get worried easily. "Is your mana OK?" she kept asking.
"OK, for now. But I need to rest," I answered.
"Take all the time you need," Rita told me. "We'll guard you boss."
Boss? When did she start calling me boss?
But not long after that my nap was interrupted by hearing a commotion of the others disputing about going to the level 5 town or not. And how to check out what's happened on the surface world, the non-murim world.
Its a tough argument, because there's dangers in both places.
The argument is still continuing while I check my status screen.
"Please! Don't go back yet," Rita said worriedly. She glanced at me. and her face looks extremely panicked. "Please!" she added.
"I don't want to go back either!" Miguel said.
We heard an undead shriek outside. That's what stopped the fight.
"You guys are too loud," I growled at them.
They shut up.
The clock says 8:11 AM.
So early to have this many attacks...weird.
We'd been up since 7 AM, when 2 darklings tried to get into our defensive base. We've made no progress going up or down this small skyscraper yet.
But since last night, roaming monsters seem to be happening all the time! For any reason! Its a noticeable increase.
And we're worried.
Monster encounter! This one got inside the perimeter!
We were shocked and Rita screamed when a darkling broke through the skylight on the ceiling roof area and attacked us that way, bypassing other barriers. (Although we aren't on the top floor of the building, this building does have terraced balconies and roofing through a system of layered floors with certain sets of floors getting smaller as you go up. This was how it got in.)
We killed it, with only a few scrapes.
Everyone is shook up, amazed that it got inside.
But my mana is down by 17%. Shelly's is down by 21%. (She must have a much lower mana tank than me. Hers should have gone down way less since she didn't have to do much with her mana.
I had to do stuns, damage shielding stuff, and all kinds of things.
The skylight is exposed and open!
This has us worried. Its hard to guard a skylight from an aerial creature that could in theory hook its limbs, or claws around the edge and grab us before we know what's going on.
"Can you fix that?" Shelly asked Miguel first.
"If I had an arc welder, or a gas welder maybe. But I don't and we don't have the materials anyway. I'd need some of those construction re-bar rods also," he frowned as we looked at it.
"Oh shit! There's another one incoming!" Linz said.
Monster encounter!
...
By 9 AM, we'd fought 2 more darklings.
My mana tank is struggling to keep up.
And because of that we can't leave!
The only good thing about it, is that we're getting dungeon dollars from each darkling kill, plus a chance for food.
I can see Rita and Shelly's hands trembling as more darklings are trying to get in. Plus, all of us are worried about waking up the nests in the basement.
Uh oh.
I'd discovered also that it seems like each individual monster skirmish is also cutting EXTRA time off how much the pacify skill is keeping Rita mentally stable also! This amount is about 3 times the normal time of the skirmish!
I'll have to manage that well. Rita is an important team member.
Damn.
I wish I'd caught that sooner. And today is an unusual day also because the skirmishes are popping up everywhere. Plus, I need to build more skill with pacify, not so much for the effect, but to practice having it last longer, and cost less mana.
I'm realizing how wonderful Pacify is also.
Because of those darkling skirmishes, I've been using my spark mana creation tool sub-skill to weld materials together and literally lock up the stairs.
By 12 noon we sealed the ceiling holes shut with some metal material that I'd mana welded. This has been good for my skills also.
I can weld anything with mana, I think. But some things might need more skill to do.
I'm thinking about welding a ram protection setup on the front of the car.
But I hope not too. It would make the car look bad, and its so new also. I don't yet have the skill to make it look nice and stylish in the protection set up also.
"Guys, if they are this aggressive we shouldn't go out," Rita told them.
"We still need water. We can't live without it. And we have more people than Jay's portable water can supply needs for," Shelly said.
"Can't you bless it, and make it holy or something to keep it from being infected with undead virus?" Miguel asked.
"I-I don't have that skill yet," Shelly stammered.
She looked away.
"What kind of healer job can't make holy water?" Miguel scoffed.
"Quiet Miguel," Linz told him. Her eyes narrowed while she's looking at him.
I think she might not have that skill because we're in the Demon lord clan. But I can't say that aloud. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the reason, the more I think about it. And that might be why she'd focused instead on the single undead burst skill that she uses to sometimes nuke them like a mage. And that to make it look like she's just using another build, when in fact the Demon lord clan wouldn't have access to holy water!
"So we have to find a way to get to the car, so we can leave," Melanie sighed.
I finally got them debating plans on how to get us out.
Why are things suddenly heating up so much? Did something in the dungeon map change?
The others are asking this while I lay with my head in Melanie's lap.
...
It doesn't get any easier.
The darkling attacks intensified today.
Some of us are worrying about if they are following us.
Some time passed. Just like that its passed 10 AM.
We try to rest as much as we can. And thanks to the safe zone we can do that.
And this is weird.
Were the darkling monsters trying to prevent us from leaving?! They couldn't know we planned that right? They shouldn't be that smart or be able to listen. Plus having the human language skill would be...
Wait, if they ate a human would they be able to get the skill?
Damn! This is bad.
We got worried because every darkling attack costs me at least 10% of my mana, sometimes even close to 20%!
This means, we can't leave period. We ended up going back into the safe zone after another failed attempt to beat the monsters back.
"Well I'm glad you have that safe zone enchant," Linz told me with a seductive kiss.
I made love with Melanie briefly at 10:23 AM while we're in the safe zone. Then with Linz at 11:02 AM.
Huh? My mana is up enough to fix the safe zone! (11:31 AM)
I used a bit of mana to try to reinforce
the safe zone's stability. This didn't take too much mana, but used about a half hour to stabilize. This will strengthen it all around also.