Dungeon of Niflheim

Chapter 8: Touring the Dungeon

“Good, good, now that my legs are raring to go and you’ve studied a little, how about we go and see the fruits of your passing out.” Maya continued to kick the air to show off that she was fine, unable contain the excitement bubbling within her. The powers of creation, seeing someone other than a God do it was absolutely thrilling.

Due to the incident happening once he woke up; Frost had entirely forgotten about the reason he passed out.

‘My monsters,’ he regretted that he couldn’t see his first summon in person but better late than never. He smiled as he pictured his horde of monsters.

“Sounds great,” he was raring to go as well. He handed the dungeon guidebook back to Maya who returned it back to her magical silver bracelet.

‘I should definitely ask about that bracelet when I get a chance later.’ Frost had seen Maya use that bracelet to take out and store the book several times, each time increasing his curiosity but there was a more pressing matter. From the guidebook he learned a few tricks in using the dungeon menu, such as exiting the private space. Frost walked over to the dungeon core and motioned for Maya to join him.

Once Maya stood next to him, he grabbed her hand and with the free one he touched the floating core and said.

“Exit.” The orb began to glow, and another space distortion appeared sucking them into the orb just like last time only in reverse. Eventually he should be able to exit the space as well as jump between locations within the dungeon with a simple thought but for now he still needed to use the menu and voice commands.

.....

Space distorted, Maya and Frost suddenly appeared once it finished twisting. They arrived within a very large open area, a blizzard was blaring in front of them, and thick snow covered the floor. Snow covered cliffs and rock formations as well as a half-frozen river could be seen far in the distance.

“It’s a lot colder than the cave.” Frost could certainly feel the drop in temperature quite clearly, but it didn’t bother him in the slightest. Other creatures would shiver even at the mere sight of this much snow but to him it felt lukewarm at worst. Maya wasn’t any different, she just stood there gobsmacked at the sight before her.

‘Well, she is a Fenrir after all, it’d strange if the cold weather bothered her.’ They had arrived at the start of the winter highlands environment, the beginning of the dungeon.

Frost turned his head to see what was behind them. Before him was a massive stone archway at least 6 metres in height and 4 in width and it was blocked off by some kind of black barrier preventing Frost from seeing the other side.

‘I guess this’ll disappear in a couple days.’ Envisioning the first set of intruders coming through the entrance filled him with excitement, he smiled evilly and clenched his fists together.

His evil thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a strong clasp on his shoulder. Maya had grabbed him with a sufficient amount of force, almost to the point of being painful.

“What the hell are you looking at a black wall for?!” She forcefully turned him around and pushed him forwards.

“Do you not see this amazing scene before your eyes, a simple small cave turned into this white wilderness. Look you can even see some of your frost goblins camping over there, look.” Maya grabbed the sides of Frost’s head forcing it in the direction of the goblins.

In the distance, a few hundred metres away, a group of frost goblins were gathered in front of a rudimentary campfire.

‘They look happy.’ It was difficult to see their faces clearly, but Frost felt that they were smiling and even laughing.

The goblins were discussing their new home amongst each other through grunts and gestures since they couldn’t speak the common tongue. They didn’t have a need for food due to the dungeon’s ambient mana and the environment suited them perfectly. Plus, there were many fellow goblins to hang out with so as far as they were concerned this place was heaven.

Frost seeing the joyous atmosphere amongst his monsters broke into a proud smile, they were his monsters, his responsibility.

“That’s more like it,” Maya removed her hands from the side of Frost’s head. Their loud or rather Maya’s loud talking managed to gather the attention of some of the nearby monsters. A few frost slimes were apparently nearby, hidden by the snow. Once they noticed Frost they jumped for joy, signalling to their friends before hopping along towards him at full speed. To the monsters Frost was their creator, their most important person so they moved like excited children seeing their father.

“Ugh!” A slime that was closer than the others reached Frost first, jumping into his chest without warning, causing Frost to recoil back from the impact yet refusing to let it fall. Maya let out a slight chuckle at this sight.

Frost responded with a slightly annoyed look, but his focus was primarily on the little white blob squirming around in his arms. It had no teeth, eyes, nose, or anything it was just a cold to the touch white blob that jiggled and hopped to express its emotions, pretty cute for a monster. Even though it couldn’t speak, he was able to understand how happy and excited it was while it laid in his arms.

“It’s so cute” Frost subconsciously said while petting the blob.

“Yeah, it is” Maya agreed as she moved closer to pet the creature. The slime was slightly wary of Maya’s hand, so it moved closer into Frost’s chest. Maya smiled as gently as possible and stopped moving her hand closer, allowing the slime to take the first step.

The little slime still slightly wary looked towards Frost for help. Frost smiled in response encouraging it that Maya was friendly. Seeing this the slime jiggled and instantly jumped towards Maya once it got permission.

Maya initially just wanted pet the thing but quickly reacted catching it in her arms. The slime was now cradled in Maya’s arms acting like a pet cat rubbing deeper into her chest to show affection.

“C...c...c...it’s so goddamn cute!” Maya screeched before hugging the slime with everything she had, even rubbing her cheek on its soft body.

‘Lucky bastard’ was the thought going through Frost’s mind right now as he saw the previously wary slime being squished against Maya’s bountiful chest, deforming its shape. He couldn’t help his upper lip from twitching the longer he looked. He tried to think of something else to distract himself.

‘Hmm maybe I should try that?’ The dungeon guidebook mentioned a few useful tricks he could try out.

“Menu” Frost muttered quietly causing the dungeon menu to appear in front of him. Frost could access the menu from anywhere in the dungeon with all of its features. He could even access the menu outside of the dungeon but with much more restrictions. Frost manoeuvred the menu screen to cover Maya and the slime before clicking a small button in the corner.

“Kacha!” The menu released a light clicking sound as it took a picture of the scene before it. One of the features unrelated to the dungeon’s management was the ability to take pictures. Frost believed this scene was worth remembering. Luckily Maya didn’t seem to notice his actions as she was fully engrossed in raising her intimacy level with the little frost slime.

Frost then looked closely at the jiggling slime trying to activate the next ability the core gave him. Once he focused his vison a holographic screen appeared next to the slime similar to his own status page.

Race: Frost Slime

Name: Nameless

Rank: G

Level: 1/10

Any monster that he summoned; Frost could view their stats like such. And apparently the stronger he grew the more details he’d be able to see, such as skills or known magic. Whether it would work on monsters he didn’t summon i.e., intruders was unknown, another thing he needed to experiment with.

After looking at the slime’s stats, the other monsters had enough time to reach him, thus repeating the earlier instance of him receiving an impact against his chest. Frost was now surrounded by the remaining slimes in this room as well as the frost goblins from earlier, a fox and two rabbits. The other monsters were too far away to notice Frost and Maya’s arrival, but he planned on greeting each and every one of them while travelling through the dungeon.

Maya walked over to Frost’s side with the frost slime in her arms. Frost had a large grin on his face as he greeted and petted each of his monsters, this sight brought a smile to her face.

“You look like an adoring father.” She spoke her mind, bringing a happy blush to Frost’s face.

“Thanks for the compliment.” All of the monsters including the frost goblins looked cute to him.

“I hate to break up this happy get together but we’ve got a lot of space to visit.” Maya gently placed the frost slime on the ground much to its reluctance as it had grown quite comfortable. But it quickly changed gears after seeing its friends on the ground as well.

Maya was right, the first room alone was 5 kilometres long, which would take them over an hour to walk even if they made a beeline straight to the next room. But they needed/wanted to inspect every last detail. Frost couldn’t waste all his energy here playing with the monsters, he even started tossing and catching the slimes up into the air.

“Yeah, I suppose your right.” Frost caught the slime he tossed upwards and placed him back down next to his friends.

“Sorry guys but we need to move on and see the rest of the dungeon, go back to what you were doing earlier.” The monsters looked quite sad at the fact but eventually listened to him. Waving goodbye to Frost and Maya as they returned to their previous actions. Frost then turned to face Maya and presented his hand before speaking.

“Shall we go then Maya?” Maya’s brow raised slightly seeing that Frost was asking to hold her hand as they walked. Her hesitation only lasted a second before she placed her hand in Frost’s palm.

“Sounds wonderful young master.” She moved closer so she could rest her head on his shoulder as they walked, fully intending to enjoy the experience.

Frost slightly shivered from her actions; he didn’t actually place a great deal of hope on her taking his hand, but she went even further causing him to be a little nervous.

The two of them travelled hand in hand when they could throughout the winter highlands, inspecting each of the major areas and greeting each of the monsters that dwelled there. Each monster reacted the same way towards Frost, even the wolves though they weren’t quite so attached, their tails still wagged side to side when he came close. In fact, the wolves had a greater reaction upon seeing Maya. They instantly flopped onto their backs, displaying their bellies at the sight of her.

‘Well since she is a fenrir, I can understand their reaction.’ Frost saw Maya rub the wolves bellies as if they were cute little puppies. For the frost wolves a fenrir was like their greatest ancestor or even a God to them.

While visiting the half-frozen river Frost noticed that fish were swimming within it.

‘That’s weird, I didn’t summon any fish.’ He knew that there were fish available in the beast category, but he definitely didn’t select any.

“Maya, do you know why there’s fish in the river?” Thanks to the ambient mana in the dungeon neither him nor the monsters required food so there wasn’t a need to add fish.

“They came with the winter highlands environment. Included in the cost is occasionally some basic wildlife to help make it more realistic. It doesn’t just include wildlife, however, remember about 20 minutes ago we came across some berry shrubs they’re also included.” Frost thought back to the red berries bushes they came across earlier, the berries were fairly sweet and tasty. He didn’t think much of it at the time, but it made sense. The fish in the river were pretty common whitefish, very cheap even if bought with DP.

“I see.” Frost placed his hand in the river, feeling a fish rub against him as it swam by.

‘These environmental templates are incredibly useful, they contain many little surprises, father really put in a lot of effort.’

If Frost chose to design the environment from scratch, he knew he’d miss many important background features such as this.

Frost continued to marvel at all the little surprises and interesting oddities the winter highlands had to offer.