"He made you do what?" I asked the sprite coldly.
"I contacted her through the Dungeon Network. The old worm had some reservations about sending the daughter I suggested. Especially with Elisia here." the dire wolf said giving his daughter a look that caused her to hunker down beside me and curl her tail in.
"How much did you lose?" I asked Elisia.
"Let's just say I wouldn't need your help and leave it at that." Elisia replied in a low voice.
I sighed then nodded. "So a test for me to see if I could be trusted with one of his daughters?" I asked to clarify.
The dire wolf nodded. "Not one of his first tier girls, but still well respected enough to request a limitation on who she is sent to." he explained.
I shook my head not understanding any of this.
"We'll talk about it later." Elisia told me.
I nodded then looked back to Zephirah, "Anything else?" I asked.
Zephirah flitted about the room keeping out of arm's reach and refusing to meet my gaze.
"Sire?" I asked looking to the older man.
The ancient dire wolf was silent as he considered me for a moment. "No, the sprite probably doesn't want to reveal the price we paid for her silence." he told me.
"Oh, and what was that?" I asked.
"Essence to replace what had been used, plus a bit more." he replied.
I accessed the dungeon screen and then the essence to see that our current essence had grown to 10,038. A lot more than I had spent, plenty to play some more roulette or try making another gem shard. More tests. I shook my head, "I had a friend ruin his marriage and life because of his gambling, I have no interest in repeating his mistakes." I told the dire wolf.
The man nodded. "Good to hear. The old worm and I will check in from time to time, to make sure the girls are getting along." he told me then disappeared.
"Seems really concerned." I commented looking down at Elisia.
Elisia tilted her head, "It's odd. He cares, but this isn't his style." she told me.
"No?" I asked.
"No, we can always return to the pack, but he usually doesn't assist anyone once they leave." she replied.
I frowned as I considered it for a while. "Any way to find out if any of your siblings are participating in our trial?" I asked her.
"I can ask around, but I would need access to the network." Elisia replied.
"We can do that, but let's welcome our new friend first. Maybe she already has the answers." I replied.
"You want to summon your serpent queen?" Zephirah asked.
"I do." I replied.
Lilian flew over and settled down on my shoulder, I figured she just wanted the best seat in the house.
Zephirah glowed a bright white for a couple seconds blinding us. When she returned to normal there was a meter long amethyst scaled cobra lying beneath the sprite.
The cobra uncoiled and looked around. "I am never going to get used to those dungeon transfers." she muttered to herself. It was a sweet musical voice that I had trouble placing with a snake of any sort.
After looking around she turned to regard me. "Not unpleasant for a human, Elisia good to see you again. I hope you have overcome your issue?" she spoke.
Elisia hopped down from the bed her tail wagging happily. "Selia! I never thought they would send you!" she exclaimed happily then proceeded to start licking the serpents face.
The serpent let her continue for a few moments, "Okay! Enough! Down Dog!" Selia said sounding a bit vexed.
"Sorry." Elisia said backing away finally though her tail never stopped wagging.
"So you know each other." I commented on the obvious.
"Yes, I am one of the few of my father's children that doesn't care about our parent's feud. Especially when the pair of old fools can easily get along when they need to." Selia replied to me.
I nodded. "I should officially introduce you. I am Jason Nellis Dungeon Lord of this place, the sprite floating over you is Zephirah, my core, dungeon assistant, or whatever you call her position. The fairy on my shoulder is Lilian, my runic trainer. Whether she stays after imparting her knowledge to me is yet to be seen." I told her. "We also have a gemini who is supposed to reform soon." I added then looked to Zephirah. "Is that the proper term for it?"
"It is. Though I was told she was a variant gemini." Selia told me. "Oh and I am Selissias though I prefer Selia." Selia told me.
I looked to Zephirah. "I am not sure." I admitted.
"She is a variant with the incredibly rare multiplier skill." Zephirah told us.
"No wonder my brother wanted her." Selia said.
Zephirah coughed. "I believe you brother thought she was a Triple Mutation." Zephirah told her. "I only know she was more than that because of the scans."
Selia was silent for a moment then she began to writhe on the floor as she laughed a loud belly laugh. It was an unsettling sight. "If he ever finds out what he lost…." Selia commented once the fit of laughter had passed. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer snake." she added with a chuckle.
"I take it you aren't fond of Seth?" I asked.
"You could say that. He and I are full siblings, but still two of many. He thinks too highly of himself, expected everyone to cater to his desires, and looked down on those of us who didn't feel that becoming the strongest was the best use of our time." she replied.
"I see, well that is a relief, but do you have any idea what is going on? Elisia says her sire has been acting a bit odd." I told her.
Selia seemed to consider it for a while. "No, I can guess though." she told me.
"A guess is better than what we have now." I told her.
"I heard some rumors of new clans rising up. It wouldn't surprise me if this situation has just appeared at the right time to help foster a potential alliance between our clans. A starting point to work from." she told them. "Despite how much those two old fools dislike each other, they at least respect each other, unlike the new clans rising up the ranks."
I nodded then pushed it all out of my head. If it was like that then it wasn't likely to affect me within the trial, unless there were contestants from those rising clan's participating.
"I also think we are the only representatives in this trial, and each of the rising families has a representative, whether as a dungeon lord or a racial leader." Selia added as an afterthought.
I groaned, but it didn't really change anything.
"Father said that you were trying to create a farm based dungeon?" Selia asked.
I nodded looking to the sprite. "Yes, we have an odd connection to a company that we can buy seeds and sell plants too. We are planning on converting the currency to mana to grow the dungeon rather than focusing on killing intruders." I replied.
"It's going to be legendary!" Zephirah cheered excitedly.
"Interesting." Selia said. "We should see what my brother had in his possessions. Father hinted that he would make us suitable offers for anything my brother shouldn't have had, or anything he might find interesting. Besides knowing him, there are probably a few people trapped in there."
"Huh?" I said confused.
"There are spells similar to your stones, they create a prisons that can be stored in a bag of holding. Time stops in there so we need to be careful as they will be incredibly disoriented when we bring them out." Zephirah told me.
I frowned then got up off the bed then turned around and held the bag up while thinking of releasing all the contents. Not my best idea. Seemed Seth was a great deal richer than I expected him to be. The coins and items quickly overflowed the bed landing on the ground.
"I got the currency." Zephirah called out happily. A moment later a large mound of coins that covered most of the bed disappeared leaving only other items left.
"Wow, once you convert it he had seven platinum, thirty gold, eighty silver, and nine iron coins!" Zephirah announced happily. "We can definitely do some more upgrading now."
I nodded but didn't pay much attention as I noticed several black orbs on the bed and one on the floor. I stooped down and picked the one off the floor and placed it along with the others. "Is there anything else that fell off the bed?" I asked the sprite.
"Yeah." Zephirah replied disappeared into the gap between the pair of beds emerging a moment later with a larger orb made up of black and gold swirls.
"That isn't good." Selia said looking at the orb Zephirah was holding.
I reached out and took the orb from the sprite. As soon as I had it in my hand, I could feel a strong energy emanating from inside.
"How did he get his hands on that." Selia asked as she grew to three meters long and moved closer to the bed so she could look at the orb more closely.
"What is it?" I asked.
"This orb and the other black orbs are the prison orbs we were talking about. This black and gold one is just a higher quality used to contain much stronger individuals.
I looked at the bed and counted nine other orbs making it ten all together. For some odd reason I felt a strange chill along my spine. I didn't understand why, but it passed quickly enough. Along with the orbs there were a large number of items that looked like collars, wrist bands, and crowns, all made out of a blood red material. "Would those have something to do with the orbs?" I asked.
"Slavery bands. Probably, though I don't know why he has so many." Selia replied then started to push the slavery bands around with Elisia's aid. When they finished there were nine full sets. "Why would he need cuffs, collars, and crowns for all of them?" Selia asked more to herself than the rest of us.
Looking at the piles I could see that the cuffs came in sets of four, probably one for each wrist and ankle.
"What else is there?" I asked looking around. I saw a potted plant with a tiny sprout inside of it. It had a brown stem with three dark emerald leaves. Besides that was a small pouch, five blue rocks the size of my fist, three black rocks the size of my fist, and a golden pebble that glowed despite the light in the room, four white crystals, three red crystals, three green crystals and a purple crystal.
I picked up the pouch to find it contained a variety of seeds. "Zephirah can you identify these?" I asked the sprite.
"Nope." Zephirah replied without even glancing into the pouch. "Unless I have it in my records I can't identify it and none of those are the same as the seeds we have received from the company.
"Let me see, I might be able to identify them." Selia offered.
I nodded then dumped the seeds on the bed in front of her.
Selia peered at the pile for a moment, "There are ten kinds of seeds here. Let me check my notes in a bit and I should be able to identify most of them." Selia informed me.
I nodded then scooped the seeds up and placed them back in the pouch. "What of the sprout?" I asked.
"World tree sprout." Selia replied immediately.
"Seriously?" I asked amazed.
"It isn't something uncommon. For a tree large enough to be called a world tree it puts of a flood of spores, an enormous amount of them sprout, but none ever last very long, the density of the mana in most worlds isn't high enough to sustain them." Selia told me.
"What about here?" I asked curiously.
"Its enough, more than enough, but it will eat into the ambient mana we receive." Selia replied.
I frowned but gestured at the other items. "The rest are ore hearts and elemental crystals. Those will probably be our biggest gains out of all of this." Selia told me.
I nodded even though I wasn't actually sure of their use. We had dumped the bag because of the orbs, taking stock of the rest was fine, but I would deal with their usefulness in the morning.
"Shall we see who that snake imprisoned?" Elisia asked.
"Be careful, I can sense some very angry emotions coming out of those orbs, the big one especially." Lilian spoke up finally.
I nodded, "I would be mad too." I told her.
Lilian nodded but when she looked at the bigger prison orb she looked incredibly scared.
A slightly late drop.
Unfortunately I have my family received news that my mother-in-law doesn't have much time left. We will be leaving to go say goodbye. Honestly this will affect my release schedule. Any missed chapters I will make up at a later time, no promises as to when yet. I don't want to break them.
Thanks for reading, I am hoping to get back to my normal release schedule next week. Thanks.