Pov Leader of the Beasts

  "Sir, we found another, but like the last one, it killed itself and the sample before we got anywhere near. This one wasn't human; instead, it was a wolf."

  "Anything else?" I asked while cursing our luck.

  "The Delvers found three more Pixies one more and the Masters have found none since last year’s meeting. Here are the locations," he said while placing a piece of paper on my table.

  He said nothing else, so I indicated that he should leave. I looked at the piece of paper he gave me and placed the appropriate locations on the world map that hung on my wall.

  The four factions have only found twelve of the dungeon’s agents, all carrying a suspicious device that they destroy before they kill themselves. Supposedly, there are at least a thousand out there, and from the looks of it, they seem to be everywhere, as the ones we have currently found are spread all around.

  Many think that if we could only get a sample of those small life, we would be able to make countermeasures. Perhaps that is true, but I wasn’t willing to bet the future of this world on that fact.

  The decade after the lifting of the siege has been both frustrating and amazing. All of our dungeons are advancing a lot faster thanks to us making them make living space, which we fill up with anyone we can.

  My dungeon experts said that we were still missing something. We are falling way short of the expected values of mana generation that the numbers from that dungeon were showing.

  I personally think it’s the dungeon-born that makes the difference. It’s most likely that the other powers are experimenting as well, but I do not know if they have the bravery to do what we’re doing.

  Many of our dungeons now have guardians, and we’re allowing them more freedom, especially the older ones. Is this a risk? Most definitely. But I still think that the newer dungeons need the strict control we have on them; otherwise, things could get dangerous.

  The older ones—the ones you can reason with—I’ve never actually agreed with the Pixies that they needed to be controlled so tightly.

  While all of this was helping us get a lot more platinum ranks and even more diamonds, this sort of boosting of our dungeons seemed to do basically nothing for our highest-ranked dungeons.

  Their mana requirements were astronomical, and to keep up with the other powers, we needed to burn those mana reserves—meant to increase the rank—to instead make monsters to help our diamonds get more fighting experience and for them to increase their rank at a more reasonable speed.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Looking at the map, every dungeon in the world was marked. Now that the darkness was gone, no dungeon was able to be kept a secret. More of them were popping up every week, as absolutely everyone was planting all the shards they had stored up. At least this seemed to help figure out who ruled over what sections of the world.

  I know that we have taken control over every nation in our sphere of influence, and while we kept their current leadership so they could keep managing their areas, we simply didn’t have the manpower or the time to deal with rebellions on such a scale.

  Still, the world was slowly being divided by the four of us. Even if we managed to destroy that dungeon, we would never stop fighting each other. Now that we had a solution for the dungeon ranking problem, the stalemate was over, and there would not be a peaceful time until the next making happened.

  In all honesty, I think we can push our dungeon to the next rank, after which that dungeon would be destroyed anyway. But the Pixies are pushing for us all to fight it. Most of us think that they’re hiding something like they know something we don’t. And perhaps they do—but I know their pride. I have seen that be their downfall many times. Yet from the reports we are getting, the dungeon is fortifying itself to fight this entire world, and that’s truly scary.

  It would also mean that we would need to fight with our dungeons to have any chance. But the Pixies are idiots if they think we haven’t noticed their plan. Currently, their second-highest-ranked dungeons territory hasn’t even gotten close enough to joining the fight.

  Their excuse is that the dungeon is too far away, but it’s just an empty excuse. All the dungeons that are ranked so high basically have their territories at the core of this world. So, it could easily extend its territory to join the others, who have all extended theirs close to that dungeon.

  They’re using the excuse their dungeon can just send its monsters through other dungeons' territories, and while I guess that’s true, dungeons can't control their monsters when they go into other dungeons' territories. I can already see them using it not being able to control some of the wilder monsters as an excuse so they could keep them back in reserve.

  We also have reports of them moving a significant population into that dungeon along with a few others. That’s not to say that we aren’t doing the same, but I think our end goals are a bit different.

  I’m pretty sure that they will try to get us all to assault that dungeon, weakening us significantly. While they will enjoy ending that dungeon their true goal is not its destruction, but what will follow.

  They want us to think that nothing will happen. In every meeting we have, they emphasize that such a small live, as the dungeon describes, is impossible—but I think that they do know exactly how devastating it will be. Instead of fearing it, they’re counting on it.

  Like them, we’re all moving parts of our population into dungeons that will be turned into living bunkers. While every dungeon would still need to be open to the world, there are ways to secure them even against small life. The world outside would be devastated, but we would survive in our deepest dungeons while trying to have them rank up to be the ones who will win this age.

  That sounds horrific and worst of all, what would the world be like after? If basically everyone became that living death, the small live would turn the entire world into. I would not want to see what becomes of us after the making, and I certainly don’t want to win so badly as to see that outcome. What would be the point in ruling over a dead world?

  Yet what could I do? The Pixies have the most dungeons. If I were to declare war on them, they would crush us. If the other two joined us, currently going by the numbers we know, we would eventually win, but they have more dungeons, deeper dungeons.

  They would eventually grind us to death. And in all honesty, I think they’re lying about their numbers. The only reason they don’t try to attack us is that we would weaken them too much. As we are no longer the only power that can contest them.

  We had all been stupid. I know that now. The millennia of peace allowed the Pixies to slowly build up enough strength and influence that when the time came, they could wipe us off the map. They are secretive bastards.

  As my eyes fell upon the location of the dungeon that has caused so much trouble, I perhaps saw a way out. But I could not voice this to anyone nor make any inquiries. I could only hope that when the time comes, I would have been able to maneuver everyone into the correct positions so that perhaps this world could be saved from the madness that’s about to come.

  The armies and the weaponry have been built up. It won’t be too much longer before the Pixies make us march to once again siege that dungeon, but this time we will have the force to assault it fully. The dangerous dungeon will be dealt with, and hopefully, afterward, the Pixies will fall as well.