Balance is key

"Lumen! Stop flying around like that. We need to go. They are all waiting for us." Angela grabbed the Firefly Queen and placed it on her left shoulder before hurriedly leaving her personal lab.

The atmosphere at the dungeon had been quite heavy during the past few days. Angela was surprised to see Five suddenly appear in the dungeon. She also saw Harriet appear a few moments later but somebody was missing!

Angela did not need to ask to know what happened to Ariel. Alice was also present and hugged her almost immediately. The harpies cried a lot on that night and remained depressed for the next few days but they could not continue to do so for too long. They needed to move on and return to their task.

The harpies did not blame Five for bringing Ariel to such a dangerous place. They could see that he was affected too just by seeing how he holed himself in the forge for the whole day and rarely spoke to anyone.

However, as time went by, Five gradually returned to his normal self. A few days have passed since they came back from their outside expedition but the dungeon remained exactly the same. The absence of Ariel did not have much of an impact on the dungeon's activity. She did not have to fight on the floors and was free to do what she wished but her absence still had an impact on the emotions of the monsters.

Five did not make any changes to the dungeon since his return. He knew he needed to quickly upgrade the dungeon. Currently, there were only 5 floors that the barbarians could farm on. He had planned to make a floor dedicated to Zombeasts, zombified monsters that died to black magic.

Five currently had more than 1.5 million DP in his inventory but he was unwilling to use any. The dungeon already worked well. It was already generating as much DP as it could and he did not need an additional line of defense. As long as Harriet was here, she alone could defeat the entire Black Iron Tribe.

Five was not being stingy in saving all those DP. He could easily build 3 to 5 floors but he knew he would soon need all the DP he could gather. The auction was approaching and according to the system, would take place in just two days after the end of the trials.

According to the information Five had and the description from Harriet, the auction was a unique event that could allow him to obtain a lot of rare items and monsters. Many things that could not be purchased in the dungeon shop would be available there and it would be an opportunity to compare himself with the other dungeon masters.

He did not know how well the other players were doing but if he did not want to return empty handed, he needed to save as much DP as he could.

Besides, increasing the number of floors and monsters would not do him any good at the moment. As long as the daily number of barbarians inside his dungeon remained stagnant, the DP he would obtain daily would remain the same but his cost would increase as he would need to feed the new monsters.

Before adding a new floor, Five would need to ask the barbarians to send in more people but it was just a matter of time before that happened. Winter was almost there and Harriet had already reported that the number of beasts in the forest decreased considerably.

He had already planned 3 floors for the dungeons and had discussed the idea with his close monsters. However, his plan would need to be slightly tweaked. Earlier this morning, when Five was asking Harriet for more information about the dungeons, he suddenly saw a bright light being emitted from the meeting room.

The monsters first thought that it was an attack of some sort but when he got close to the source of light, to Five's surprise, he heard Noon's voice.

"Uhm.. Is there anyone here? I left an anchor point in this meeting room. If anyone hears this, can you please ask Five to come and speak to me? If no one answers me, I will come back in two hours."

When Noon first spoke, only Dreidus was nearby and heard the voice. The Lich immediately called the other monsters and Five. Just a few moments later, Five entered the meeting room and in front of everyone, unleashed a stream of insults at the source of light.

Five spoke to Harriet over the past few days and learned the truth behind everything. He learned how he was essentially used as a bait and how Noon had promised to protect him and Ariel during the battle. Who would be happy at the idea of being used by others? Furthermore, Noon even failed to properly protect them, causing the death of the harpy.

It was only after he vented his bottled up frustration that Five finally calmed down and they were able to discuss properly.

Five was unable to see Noon's figure but he could feel the distress in his voice. Although he managed to survive, he was not in good shape. To make up for his mistakes, Noon agreed to share some information he had about the dungeons.

The most important information he got was that balance was key!

The monster he chose would not only affect the dungeon but also he himself. According to Noon, the dungeon master's personality would also be shaped along with the dungeon to reflect the monsters there more. Over the years, several dungeon masters changed drastically after founding their dungeon, resulting in the creation of some alliances and enmities.

The dungeon master's personality would reflect that of his monsters. According to Noon, Fire attribute monsters tended to be more vocal and daring. Water attribute monsters were more open-minded and caring. Earth attribute monsters were peaceful and carefree. Wind attribute monsters were more cheerful and lively. Light attribute monsters were stubborn but honest while the Dark attribute monsters were lonely, aggressive and territorial.

Five could not believe what Noon was saying. It sounded so over the top. How could a game actually morph someone's behavior? At the moment, Five's dungeon was highly leaning toward the dark attribute but he did not think that he was lonely, aggressive or territorial. After thinking about it more carefully, loneliness could be associated with the fact that he now spent most of his time alone in his forge, aggressiveness could be seen in his actions to constantly try to move to the player's towns. As for being territorial, everyone would want to protect their own home and right now, the dungeon was his home.

It was possible that the game was using psychological factors to affect the player's behavior. In particular, it was using the "We all want to fit in" factor. Humans were social creatures and would generally adopt similar behaviors to others to blend into the groups. When thinking about his monsters, if he truly only had Dark attribute monsters, Five would have nobody to hold a real conversation with. The Undead monsters did not say a word while Dreidus was a man of few words who was very protective of Lyra. Without the harpies to liven up the dungeon, he might very well have been depressed by the dull atmosphere.

"It is scary... but it is only a hypothesis. It is very possible that the game is actually not doing anything. However, now that I heard of this... I will start to worry about it... Stupid me, I should not have read all those psychology books."

Noon explained that this was the reason why in the past, many old dungeon masters stopped their own development. They did not want to be affected by their own monsters and had to introduce new races to balance it out. The easiest way to reduce the impact of the monsters on their own behavior was to have an equal amount of monsters of each attribute in the dungeon.

Five did not fully believe Noon's statement. It might be true for the NPCs but he was a player; the game company, Valor would not take things so far as to actually brainwash the players.

Five had been planning to focus on making undead monsters. They were cheap and did not cost much to maintain. However, it seemed that he would have to change his plans. He did not want to take the risk to really change himself.

After speaking about the monsters' attribute, Noon revealed another important piece of information. The dungeon cores were not as simple as they looked. Noon did not know much about them as his own core was different but when he was at Five's dungeon, he felt a strange gloomy aura coming from the dungeon core.

This was immediately backed up by Dreidus who also added that it was somehow related to the monsters dying. As someone from NecroValley, Dreidus had a good knowledge of Necromancy; he could tell that something had happened when he died but he could not pinpoint exactly what.

All they knew was that the dungeon core represented a threat that could very well cause Five's downfall.

Noon could not hold the communication channel for very long. He was clearly weakening as he spoke and Five eventually cut the conversation short. He had obtained a few useful pieces of advice from Noon. Although he was not happy that Ariel died for this, there was nothing he could do.

...

"Let us begin." When Five saw that all his main monsters have arrived, he immediately started the meeting.

"Following what Noon has said, there will be some changes to the dungeon. We will continue to summon more undead monsters but they will be restricted to the first 10 floors. After that, we will have to change. We will discuss this in more detail after the auction. It is useless to make plans now that we cannot execute them and maybe we will stumble onto useful items there."

"Let's focus on today's main topic. Harriet, please."

The Harpy Queen nodded, "I have scouted the surroundings of the dungeon. I was able to find three dungeons within a radius of 100km. Two of them are underground dungeons like ours but the third one is a spatial crack. By going through the crack, we will be sent right into a dungeon space and will then have to climb floors as usual."

"I did not go in their dungeons and could not determine what monsters they have but the tribes they are near to are the Bramble Deer Tribe, the Prairie Dog Tribe, and the Rat Snake Tribe. The first two are medium tribes like the Black Iron Tribe but the Rat Snake Tribe is a large one. I have also noticed several movements from the tribes sending messengers to each other. It is obvious that they are debating about the ownership of the dungeons."

Five quietly listened. He was curious about the other dungeon masters in the surroundings. Harriet was not exactly an expert at scouting but she was the best suited for this kind of job at the moment. While Five just needed to wait for winter to come to receive more NPCs in his dungeon, he needed to be careful of the actions of the other players.

He was completely in the dark; it would be useful to know their strength for when it would be time to engage in PVPs. It was not exactly a precautionary measure; Five was also looking for opportunities to dominate the region. The one who took the initiative would definitely be at an advantage.

Furthermore, Five was well aware that it was a very sensitive period. Although none of the dungeon masters in his region would go through the trials, the auctions would take place in just 2 days. Five did not have much information about the auction but he knew one thing; all the dungeon masters were saving as much DP as they could for the event, resulting in an overall weaker dungeon than normal. Secondly, all the dungeon masters would be teleported to a different place for the dungeon. He did not know how smart the AIs were but chances were, it would be much easier to raid other dungeons in the absence of the dungeon masters.

Five was not tunnel visioning on the auction. There were two ways to make a profit from this event; stock in as much DP as possible to purchase unique items or spend all his DP on an army of monsters and secretly raid his neighbors, obtaining even more DP and monopolizing the region.

The question was which way would Five choose. Should he go the conventional way or take advantage of the event? Both methods would provide him with a significant advantage in the future; he needed to choose wisely.