Dungeon of Niflheim

Chapter 10: Touring the Dungeon (3)

It was hard for Frost to react in this situation. The dwarves looked like they were about to cry, which in itself was hard to manage but the main issue was that each of them looked like a middle-aged man armed with a full beard making him hesitant. Their appearance was too much for him to treat them like the frost slimes or wolves. They were basically burly short middle-aged men about to bawl their eyes out, not cute in the slightest. Maya sniggered at his side.

“It’s ok, it’s an easy mistake to make don’t feel bad.” Frost tried to calm them down, even using hand gestures hoping they wouldn’t cry. One of the dwarves even looked like he was going to commit seppuku even though his weapon was a blunt hammer.

After much effort on Frost’s part, he managed to calm them down without anyone crying or killing themselves. The dwarves now calm and collected saluted Frost like soldiers waiting for instructions.

‘They seem a lot more intelligent and reliable than the goblins, perhaps...’ Seeing their actions and range of emotions gave Frost more confidence in having them become craftsmen albeit basic ones to start with.

“Good work in creating this base you should have no problems killing intruders in this area.” Frost was inspired as he gazed over the sharpened logs that helped defend the entrance.

“Urah!” Each of the frost dwarves grunted loudly while slamming their hands against their chests with pride. Unknown to Frost the dwarves spent many hours combing through the forest in search of such a good base hoping to be praised by him.

‘Right, they can’t speak either.’ Although they couldn’t speak in common tongue, they were able understand most of it, so they shouldn’t have any issues following orders.

.....

Frost moved towards one of the sharpened logs, he grabbed it with both hands and pulled it out of the ground forcibly. It was only a simple defence, so it came out of the soil fairly easily but still in one piece, no cracks. He then put some force along the log feeling how sturdy it was before exerting pressure on the tip until it snapped.

‘Not bad, it’s simple but effective. They left enough of a tip that it takes a fair amount of force to snap.’ Maya knew a little about what Frost was doing but the frost dwarves were completely in the dark. All they understood was that they had pointed their weapons at him earlier and now after calming them down he was breaking their self-made defences. The colour drained from their faces when the log’s tip snapped with a loud noise, showing the amount of force Frost was exerting. They audibly gulped and looked towards one another for reassurance.

‘You call this a barricade, pathetic!’ That was how the dwarves saw Frost at this moment. Frost however was completely oblivious to this, he turned back towards them planning on praising them and asking them to try and make something but...

‘Eh! Why do they look like they want to cry again?’

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“Pfft” Maya released a restrained laugh since she understood exactly what was going on.

“You just broke apart, without hesitation one of their hand-built barricades with a smile on your face hahaha.”

“Eh!” Frost instantly realised how his actions must have come across, he felt guilty. He moved closer towards the dwarves to try and explain, ignoring their increased trembling.

“First off sorry.” Frost did what he felt was natural, he bowed his head and apologised, holding that position until he received forgiveness.

The frost dwarves jumped back when he bent down thinking that they were going to be beaten as punishment. Their eyes were closed in anticipation of either being struck or yelled at, but it never came. One of the braver dwarves opened his eyes first to see Frost bowing before him. He rubbed his eyes in confusion, struggling to believe what he was seeing. However, Frost was still there bowing, so he wasn’t imagining it. He shook the shoulder of the dwarf next to him causing him to open his eyes and have the same reaction. Only after all the dwarves were gawking at him did one of them remember that he said sorry before bowing, this dwarf quickly tried to lift Frost up.

“Ungun” the other dwarves followed their friend’s actions trying to force Frost to raise his head, they released a gentle grunt to show that they forgave him. Frost happily stood up with a smile on his face after hearing their voices.

“Thank you” Frost genuinely gave thanks; he didn’t want to be a symbol of fear for his monsters. He pointed to the remains of the sharpened log that lay on the ground.

“That was good work, I wanted to test its strength before asking you to try something and didn’t mean for it to come across as it did.” The dwarves now calm were able to understand his words.

“Magha?” The braver dwarf grunted as if asking a question. He wanted to know what it was Frost wanted them to try. Frost smiled slightly in response. He wanted the dwarves to first make a few spears for the goblins since their rusty daggers seemed pretty useless, especially since their opponents would be larger than them.

Next would be building up areas with wooden barricades to help the goblins with defence. The frost goblins were incredibly cheap and weak so anything to help strengthen them even slightly would be a great bonus since they’re currently the most numerous of his summoned monsters. Plus, it being free was icing on the cake.

Frost started to explain his requests to the now curious dwarves. Maya meanwhile simply took a seat by the fire and relaxed for a while.

“That went better than expected.” Maya spoke as she and Frost left the protected glade. Frost spent 30 minutes chatting with the dwarves about making weapons, only receiving grunts or hand gestures in response. Maya couldn’t understand the meaning of their grunts so she was shocked as to how he could maintain such an in-depth conversation with them.

“Yeah, they’re pretty smart and know their limits but all around they should be able give good results.” The frost dwarves wouldn’t be able to work anything like metal but making simple wooden weapons and stuff didn’t faze them. Frost wasn’t expecting much from them since they were only E-rank but still something’s better than nothing. The two of them continued to chat a little while walking towards the final section.

“The artic castle section next.” Frost and Maya once again stood before a stone gateway which seemed rather out of place in a room with nothing but trees.

“The final area shouldn’t take as long since its smaller, plus I don’t think it’ll contain anything useful like the forest.” As they walked through the winter forest, they found multiple patches of the red dwindle flowers as well as a few more plants such as the spicy winter mushrooms which according to Maya can be used to create cold resistance potions.

“I agree but it should look the most dungeon like I think.” Frost believed that the layout of the last section felt more like a dungeon. He couldn’t really explain why just a gut feeling he had.

“Well, we’ll find out in a second.” This time Maya took the first step through the gateway leaving Frost behind, a little bit of revenge.

Frost just laughed it off, thinking that she was just really eager. He quickly followed after her.

Maya arrived through first with Frost quick on her tail.

“Wow” was all she could say. This section was much different from the other two.

“I see what you meant by probably feeling more dungeon like.” Maya had goose bumps on her arms as her eyes darted across the room. The first room was about 20 metres long and wide, broken furniture and shredded fabrics were littered throughout. There was even a disused fireplace with some old charcoal sitting in it. It gave her the feeling of an ancient, ruined castle that hadn’t had any visitors for centuries.

“Cool” Frost was just as amazed as Maya, even the walls looked old and dilapidated. He didn’t know what kind of usefulness the items in this section would provide but it certainly looked cool. He felt like this design was screaming treasure hunt. An old castle’s bound to have some hidden treasure somewhere within it. Of course, only if he puts it there, but others won’t know that.

“This is just the first room and it’s already so interesting.” Frost moved around touching all the broken furniture and damaged items, all of which seemed to be beyond repair and of little to no scrap value. Broken chairs with the wood crumbling, cracked iron candle sticks covered in rust and pieces of torn paintings were just a few of the items within the room.

‘It’s actually kind of spooky.’ Frost felt that way once he realised there were no sounds apart from the ones he and Maya were making, a silent abandoned castle. Frost audibly gulped as his mind was quickly filled with the images of ghosts and other spooky monsters.

‘They’d probably fit in well with this environment.’ Unfortunately, Frost didn’t have access to any undead monsters like ghosts and skeletons otherwise he would have definitely added some, even if he found them to be scary.

Frost shook his head trying to remove that image from his mind, turns out he’s not a fan of spooky stuff given the goose bumps that appeared on his arms. He moved over to Maya hoping to move onto another room where there’d be some of his monsters to liven the mood.

“Are you done with this room?” He asked calmly but his hands were fidgeting. Maya turned towards him unaware of his current mindset, she smiled before replying.

“Yeah, pretty much, what about you?” Maya had been checking out the state of some of the materials, especially any metal to see if it could be reused in anyway but unfortunately it was too badly corroded plus the room would look rather bare if all the items were removed. Unlike with the plants and trees in the first two rooms, items that weren’t natural e.g., man-made wouldn’t be replaced for free so if some of the iron candle sticks were removed and melted down Frost would need to use DP to buy new ones.

“I’m good to move on, shall we?” Frost presented his arm for Maya to hook around while they walked.

‘I’m just being polite, polite.’ Frost convinced himself of that instead of admitting he was quite nervous and spooked by the castle’s atmosphere. He didn’t have anything to be scared of in the first place considering everything within the dungeon was under his control, including any undead monsters but that point was irrelevant at this time.

Maya didn’t suspect a thing and gratefully linked arms with him.

The first room opened up into a narrow hallway which eventually split into 3 different directions. The castle’s arrangement wasn’t that complicated since it wasn’t classed as a maze. Each path would instead lead to different areas in the castle interior such as kitchen areas, bedrooms, and reception rooms.

All of the monsters in this section were in the reception areas straight ahead since that direction led to the sections exit. There were a few winding hallways and small rooms before encountering the first reception room all in a similar style to the first room.

The first reception room was fairly large at least 30 metres in each direction, it looked similar to what an old-fashioned ball room might be like, considering the layout and damaged piano in the corner. The ceiling was much higher as well and decorated with some precarious looking chandeliers.

“Awooo” a frost wolf howled once it noticed their entrance. This room was guarded by a frost wolf and 3 frost goblins, a fairly strong defence force for such a small area but it’s the last section so it needed to be tougher.

“Garu” The frost goblins grunted in response to the wolf’s howl and as expected they all came rushing over to greet their master. Seeing his monsters running with smiles on their faces erased all his anxiety, if his monsters weren’t afraid, then how could he be. He needed to set an example since he was the master.

Viewing the rest of the final section didn’t take very long, after exchanging pleasantries with the monsters they quickly carried on. Less monsters meant fewer interruptions plus since the last section was smaller, they reached the end in under an hour.

“Growl” in the last room before coming across the core room was the D-rank polar bear. The strongest monster he could summon would of course be at the very end of the dungeon. It was easily 2 metres tall when still on all four legs, an absolute monster, much stronger than the E-rank wolves.

‘Wow the difference between E and D rank is huge, no wonder there’s such a price difference.’ This polar bear could easily squash one of the wolves or frost dwarfs with a single stomp, it also had less weaknesses such as the wolves poor defence or the dwarves poor agility. Frost stood at the entrance of the final room admiring the bear’s beautiful white fur.

‘Wait if he acts like the others and runs into me, I’ll be squished.’ The polar bear had noticed Frost and Maya and was quickly moving towards them albeit slightly differently than the other monsters. Maya picked up on this and raised her brow in recognition.

‘So, he’s roughly at that level.’ Maya internally thought as she gazed at the bear’s expression. The bear was now right in front of Frost peering down at him, Frost was just glad that he didn’t get squished and failed to notice the difference in attitude given off by the polar bear.

Unlike the other monsters it didn’t have that infatuation or over excitement when standing before its master but was calm and rather cold. It stared silently towards Frost inspecting him unsure on how to react.

‘Weird the others didn’t react like this?’ Frost was puzzled with the situation, while he didn’t feel any danger from the bear it didn’t exactly feel pleasant.

Eventually after a long standstill the polar bear bowed its head making it lower than Frost, showing its allegiance. Frost smiled before reaching out his hand to pet the bear’s head completing this so-called inauguration or test. After being petted the bear became much more amicable, rubbing up against Frost for attention like a big fluffy dog.