by Fuse
Accepting Ramiris’s offer, we decided to build the battle arena in the empty space on the southeast side of town, a dungeon spread out beneath it.
Our theater, meanwhile, would be put up on the northwest side, near where all our high-end spa facilities were. We had actually put up a gym, a museum, and so forth among all the luxury lodging over there, so all we really had to do was refurbish a previously built structure for the purpose.
So the dungeon and theater were in place, but we still had no arena. Geld wasn’t around, but I’m sure I could rely on Gobkyuu and his crew. With them, we’d doubtlessly have something in place by the Founder’s Festival—
“I’m not sure we can do this, Sir Rimuru.”
Oh, no? Yeah, guess not. I mean, any normal project like this would require several years of work. Asking for a finished arena in a month or so was kind of insane. Even with monster-level muscle on our side, I wasn’t so sure we could do it, either.
“Yeah… All right. Let me lend a hand, then. I’ll help move dirt around and process the metal infrastructure.”
I may not look it, but I did used to work for a general contractor. I didn’t have that much on-the-field construction experience, but with what I learned imitating the veterans, I wasn’t a total amateur. Besides, I had Raphael.
“Me too! Let me help!”
“In that case, allow me to help, too.”
“As you wish, Lady Ramiris.”
I suppose that meant I had the support of Ramiris and Beretta and Treyni, too.
Let’s get right to work. I opened up my blueprints among the tents that lined the area.
“Hmm… All right. I don’t see a problem with this.”
“Great. Better explain things to your beastmen, then.”
A lot of our nation’s beastmen were out working on remote projects, so I decided to give Alvis and Sufia the full explanation for now. We would meet together this evening.
“If that is what you seek, Sir Rimuru, it shall be done.”
“It sure will. We’ve got no right to complain!”
Once I explained my whole plan to them, they accepted with surprising speed. They also stated that I wouldn’t need to explain it again to the other beastmen.
“Um, really?”
“Sure, Sir Rimuru,” Sufia said. “You’ve given us all food to eat and a place to stay. We’d all be glad to help out with building this arena or whatever.”
“Besides,” Alvis added, “I hear that Sir Carillon will be involved in the festival you’re holding. We all would be delighted to help you out. I am a tad under the weather, so I will leave the rest to you, Sufia.”
“You got it!”
So Sufia would lead the beastmen on this job—and once that was decided, things proceeded at blazing speed. One order from Sufia was all it took to get the beastmen out of their tents. As they all lined up in formation, Ramiris nimbly transported all the tents into her labyrinth. We now had a large patch of empty land to work with.
Still a little wowed by this feat, I used Belzebuth, Lord of Gluttony, to consume parts of the lot I didn’t need and pare it down to a square, flat expanse. The steel framing came up soon after, and once it did, Gobkyuu and his crew stacked up preprocessed stones to fill in the walls. Within the day, we had walls so hardy that not a single hole could be found in any of them. This gave us a sturdy-looking underground space with a large door in the front of it. For someone from my “modern” era, the whole thing was wrapped up with unbelievable speed.
“W-wow,” Ramiris gushed. “My new castle… Oh, right! If you touch this door, it’ll take you to the labyrinth floor where the tents are!”
We all took a trip inside. There, we saw the beastmen’s living space, exactly as it looked up on the surface. Alvis and Sufia couldn’t hide their astonishment—especially since the air was kept refreshingly cool down here.
“Do we even need these tents now, I wonder?”
“I dunno, yeah. I assume it doesn’t rain in here, so I bet we could just sleep on the ground…”
They didn’t seem at all dissatisfied with this. I could see them and the other beastmen experiment with going back and forth between the real and labyrinth dimensions—all it took was a moment’s thought for them.
“So does it get dark in here at night?”
“Sure does,” replied Ramiris. “We’re linked to the outside from here, so I can even make it rain if you like!”
Man. She could do just about anything, huh? But it wasn’t like they were farming crops in here, so I just asked her to set up a normal day-night cycle for me. This whole space seemed a lot more useful than I guessed at first; I bet I could adapt it to other needs, too. We’d have to brainstorm some ideas.
Apparently reassured, the beastmen went off to help with the outside work. They’d pitch in with the arena, evidently, under the command of Gobkyuu. A lot of them were women and children, but that’s beastmen for you—they all wanted to work, and each one was stronger than a human, at least. Gobkyuu was giving them the basic manual-labor jobs, it looked like, but better-trained beastmen were on-site as well now, aiding in construction.
Treyni was supplying logs for the building (don’t ask me how she got them), while Beretta’s precision carpentry turned them into usable boards. He could even cast a spell to dry the wood, which slashed the time involved dramatically. I thought I had abandoned my common sense long ago in this world, but it was sights like these that occasionally made me think Wow, I really am in a whole different world, huh?
If this keeps up, we truly could make it in time for the Founder’s Festival. I had spit out the land I ate earlier to create a small mountain, too, so perhaps we could use that as a field feature in the arena. It should work great.
“Leave the rest to us, Sir Rimuru!” said Gobkyuu.
I nodded, full of excitement over the arena’s imminent completion.
With the main construction now in full swing, Ramiris had been left to her own devices. She needed a job, if only so she wouldn’t start pestering everyone else. And what was she good at? Why, expanding the labyrinth, of course. Better use her while I got her.
“I gotta say, Ramiris, your Mazecraft skill amazes me.”
She had transported everything within a pretty broad stretch of land in the blink of an eye. I didn’t want to compliment her too much, but I had to hand it to her here. The labyrinth itself was pretty amazing, too.
“Hee-hee! Aw, it’s nothing! But right now, though, it’s only this room, the deepest depths where my spirit friends live, and a connecting corridor. I’ll have more levels for you tomorrow!”
It took one hour to build a level, right? Building a vast underground labyrinth that went down a hundred floors would be a pretty tall order even on modern-day Earth. Building up, after all, is a hell of a lot easier. Ramiris’s skill, though, made that possible—and suddenly, some pretty fantastic dreams seemed within reach.
“Okay, let’s go with your limit, then. One hundred floors.”
“Huh?! Do you need that many?”
“Yep. I want to fill it up with traps, and I want enough space to gradually up the monster-challenge level as you go down.”
“I mean, that’s fine by me, but can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“I was just wondering: How do you plan to expand the number of monsters in there? Are you gonna catch them somewhere?”
I suppose her question made sense. It’d take a lot of monsters to fill a hundred levels. But I had an idea. Let’s tell her a little about it, at least so she’ll cooperate with me.
“Well, between you and me…”
I let her in on the secret of how I wanted to structure this dungeon. As she listened, I could see her eyes begin to twinkle.
“Wait, so—so…”
“Right—right. So then, Ramiris…”
We began offering suggestions to each other as we whispered. This was getting exciting. And given it was the two of us involved, we naturally began to go off on tangents
we never should have. Before long, we had worked out the concept for our Advanced Dungeon, as we called it. I honestly wondered if we could get away with it, but there’s no turning back now. We had to do it—and Ramiris was itching to start, promising me that she’d build this labyrinth with everything she had.
“You can take your time and rest along the way, okay?”
“Ha! There’s no way I’ll take a rest after hearing an idea like this! I’m gonna do it, lemme tell ya!”
I was just trying to motivate her a little, but I guess I got her really riled up. I’m glad she liked the romance of the idea, at least. I was just as excited. It was like a fantasy come alive.
“Well, do your best. I’ll get everything we need ready.”
“All right. Good luck, Rimuru!”
“You too, Ramiris.”
We were comrades in arms now, grinning at each other.
Exiting the labyrinth, I found the sun was already about to set. We must’ve been talking for a while. Work had finished for the day, with crews cleaning up and starting to cook dinner. I didn’t want to bother them, so I told Gobkyuu and Sufia that I’d see them the next day and took off.
My next stop was Kurobe’s workshop so I could have him give me some of the weapons and armor he couldn’t sell on the market—stuff that was more to his personal tastes. The southwest side of town was currently an industrial kind of area, and Kurobe’s place was there, along with workshops owned by his apprentices. There was also dorm space for the newer pupils without their own sites yet, along with lines of warehouses. There were inns and restaurants for all these craftsmen and apprentices, of course, and overall it was a fairly lively place.
Kurobe’s workshop was dead in the middle of it, and when I popped in, he warmly greeted me, showing me to his storage building after wrapping up dinner.
“Right here, Sir Rimuru. The stuff I have locked up in this warehouse is all pretty unique—not the kinda thing anyone can handle easily, you know. Are you all right with that?”
I nodded my approval. Kurobe was right—not all of it was very user-friendly or accessible. Some of it was locked up because it was too powerful, but a lot of it was just a total handful to use. The armor was a great example—like the suit of mail that sucked the wearer’s magical force to erect a magic barrier. That might sound useful, but it continually sapped your power whether you wanted it to or not, eventually killing the hapless owner. Great defense, but a pretty damn pointless piece of equipment.
There was also a sword that attracted all magicules in the local area like a magnet, making it impossible to cast any spells, and transformed them into explosive force. You definitely got a bang out of it, but it didn’t exactly spare the wielder from the blast. I’d be way too scared to use that thing or the suit of armor that granted the wearer extraordinary physical strength for a limited time. Once that time expired, your muscles all ruptured, rendering you motionless and dead unless you had healing magic on hand…
So basically, you had a room full of equipment that could kill you if you weren’t paying attention. I doubted anybody in town was dumb enough to try any of this unevaluated stuff out—especially because I didn’t want to take responsibility for the fallout—but I thought it’d all work just fine in Ramiris’s labyrinth.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” I told Kurobe. “These actually seem really valuable if you take into account all their different features.”
This was decent stuff, after all. Much of it was valued at Rare or above, with a few Uniques scattered here and there—in the same lineup as the Scale Shield and Tempest Dagger I gifted Kabal’s party.
I picked up one of the items—the Tempest Sword—as I turned to Kurobe.
“It seems like kind of a waste, doesn’t it? Keeping all this high-quality stuff in here just because it’s still in the test stage. Don’t you want to pair some of it with the kind of people who could really take advantage of it?”
I was trying to lead him to the answer I wanted. Kurobe took the bait.
“Oh? Well, you can take whatever you like from here.”
I wasn’t tricking him, exactly, but I did feel kinda bad about it.
Soon, Kurobe’s warehouse was a fair bit emptier. Now I had a set of weapons I could populate the treasure chests in the labyrinth with. They’d be obtained by adventurers who earned the right to them by reaching the level I put them in, so I didn’t lie to Kurobe at all. No need to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Still, I was amazed at his sheer output. There was more here than the last time I had stopped by; I’d say it was at over a hundred items now. Much of it was dicey, yes, but some pieces were just difficult to master. The one common link among them was that they were all superior to anything you’d see in the capital at Englesia, the kind of thing you’d normally only see at auction.
During the Harvest Festival that marked my ascension to demon lord, Kurobe received the unique skill Mastercraft. This was a force that stacked on top of his previous Researcher skill, polishing it further. By this point, he was way past Kaijin. Whenever he got serious about a project, it wasn’t uncommon for a Unique-grade piece of equipment to result. Rare level for sure, at least. That was much of the reason why only his apprentices’ work appeared at public showings.
“Gotta say, though, I’m impressed. I’ve learned forging myself, but no way could I make any of this.”
“Heh-heh! High praise from you, Sir Rimuru. Oh, but lemme give you this before I forget.”
Suddenly serious, the ever-modest Kurobe returned to the tatami-mat room in the rear to fetch something.
“What’s this?”
“Well, it’s something I’ve made you wait far too long for.”
He handed me a long, straight sword, the blade a jet-black in color. Not too long, but not too short—made just for me, at truly the ideal length.
“So this is…”
“Yep. My greatest masterpiece yet.”
At first glance, the only unusual thing about the sword was its black body. There wasn’t some ultra-powerful aura shooting out; it wasn’t generating its own magic or anything. But that’s what I wanted. This blade’s focus was squarely on durability. It’d never break, never bend, and would fully adjust itself to my magical force—without wreaking havoc around me, like with Hinata’s Moonlight sword. It allowed me to be wholly unrestrained in a fight.
“Well done. You’ve made me proud, Kurobe.”
“I’m just as proud of it as you, trust me on that. But the sword isn’t complete just yet. As you know, my weapons usually have a hole at the base, the way you suggested they should.”
I looked at the base. “Oh? I don’t see any here.”
“No. The other weapons get that hole when they’re complete, but not this one. Because once it acclimates to your magic force, it’ll grow…and evolve. And despite that, I built it so it’ll always look like just another sword otherwise.”
He had a right to be proud. As he put it, this sword in its complete state could be a piece of Legend-class material…not that it felt that way presently. The other equipment in the family was still under development, and the magic crystal meant to go into the hole he mentioned wasn’t done yet. No point having a hole if there was nothing for it yet. I would just look forward to that forthcoming moment.
I left Kurobe’s workshop with a spring in my step. I had my own sword, and I also got all the other stuff I wanted. Now I could seed those treasure chests and spread them all around the Dungeon. It’d be kinda fun to insert boss monsters to protect the particularly nice pieces, too. This was almost like designing a real-life dungeon-crawl RPG, and it was unbelievably exciting.
Yeah, you could probably make a mint selling these test items and failed experiments at auction—I’m sure Mjöllmile or Fuze could hook me up with the right people for that. It’d be a surer way of earning income, but I didn’t want that. The key here was to get humans interacting with monsters. I wanted to bring people over here and have them experience everything tha
t made Tempest great—and if they liked what they saw, I’m sure they would come back. This was just one part of that effort.
Plus, this wasn’t just a matter of bribing adventurers with loot and sending them on their way. I already had the next step of the process in mind. Let’s say you have someone hacking their way through the Dungeon, collecting assorted items and bringing them back to the surface. Using non-appraised weapons or armor, I had heard, was considered extremely dangerous. That’s where my little friend Assess comes in. This stuff was made in Tempest, so I naturally knew all about their traits and features. A lot of it would be quite useful to adventurers, assuming you used it right—yeah, some of it was downright dangerous, but we’d offer a buyback service for that.
Money’s meant to be circulated, not kept in a vault or whatever. As long as we purchased the materials we needed and paid for necessary upkeep, we could give back the rest to the adventurers. Word would spread about this over time, and I was sure it’d make our land famous. Besides, filling adventurers’ wallets would improve the outlook for our inns and lodging houses. More people coming to Tempest meant less downtime for places like that, which was important—for business and for advertising.
So the southeast side of town would have a battle arena, with Ramiris’s dungeon underneath. On the southwest, we’d have discount inns and hostels. Unlike the high-end facilities to the northeast, we’d keep things cheap down there, attracting primarily adventurers to help delineate our offerings. Their location would be convenient to the labyrinth, and I was positive it’d be a booming success.
I was worried at first when Ramiris talked about moving here, but maybe that was the right thing to do all along, huh?
We also planned to have at least one or two large-scale events at the arena each year. Mjöllmile was no doubt filling in the rest of the year’s schedule with other things, too—military training, test-your-mettle events for adventurers, and so on. There could be a lot of demand for that kind of thing, I thought. We could have people try to use that training in the Dungeon—a kind of standardized exam, you could say. If you can’t die in there, you could try some crazy stuff you’d ordinarily never dream of attempting.