Ragnar spent the next three days in a state of profound frustration.
His new C-Rank Creation skill was a marvel, but his grand plan for an intelligent advisor had backfired spectacularly.
Val’sharah, the expensive and elegant Dark Elf, followed him around with silent, graceful loyalty, occasionally offering him advice in her lodic, incomprehensible language.
For all the good it did, she might as well have been reciting grocery lists.
His other new creations, the Orcs, were a much simpler story. He had spent 25 CP on one as a test. The creature that appeared was a seven-foot-tall mountain of green muscle with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp.
It was ard with a massive, crude axe and possessed the intelligence of a particularly angry hamr.
Ragnar had ntally nad him ’Smashy’. Smashy was great at hitting things, but terrible at everything else, including basic hygiene.
"I’m running a daycare for the violently stupid and the poetically unintelligible,"
Ragnar grumbled, slumped on his throne.
He was bored.
The "Farm" was running itself, with student parties arriving every six hours like a pizza delivery of experience points.
It was predictable, safe, and was driving him slowly insane.
Out of sheer ennui, he pulled out his phone and started aimlessly tapping through the Demon King System app.
He’d explored every nu a hundred tis. Stats. Creation. Alchemy. Traps.
There was nothing new. He was about to close it when his thumb brushed against a tab at the very bottom of the screen he’d never paid much attention to.
It was labeled [Domain].
He had looked at it once, back when his domain was just his apartnt. It hadn’t had much on it then.
But now, when he opened it, there was a new, brightly glowing button that pulsed with a soft, inviting light.
[Expand Domain]
[Cost: FREE]
Ragnar stared at the word ’FREE’ for a full minute. He was instantly suspicious. In his old life, ’free’ ant hidden fees, spam emails, and a virus that would steal your credit card information.
In this new life, it probably ant a trap that would summon a greater demon in his bathroom.
"What’s the catch?" he said to the empty room. "Is it going to install an eldritch horror on my True Core?"
His curiosity, however, was a more powerful force than his paranoia. He imagined a bigger dungeon, more room for traps, more space for his growing army.
With a sense of impending doom, he stood in the center of the Throne Room and pressed the button.
The effect was not the violent, reality-tearing explosion of the first transformation. It was stranger. Deeper. A low, foundational hum resonated from the very stone beneath his feet.
GRRRRRRRRROOOOAN.
The sound was like a mountain waking up from a thousand-year nap.
The far wall of the Throne Room, the one opposite the entrance, began to glow with faint purple lines.
The lines spread, forming a complex geotric pattern.
Then, with a slow, grinding shudder that vibrated through Ragnar’s bones, the wall began to move.
It didn’t break or crumble. It receded, pulling away from him, the stone flowing and reshaping itself like liquid.
The Throne Room stretched, growing larger and larger.
Then, from the center of the stone floor, a new structure began to rise. Stone steps spiraled downwards, forming a perfect, massive staircase leading into a newly created darkness below.
The entire process took less than a minute.
When the humming stopped, his dungeon was no longer a single floor. He now had a second level, a vast, dark, and empty space waiting to be filled.
"Whoa," he breathed, walking to the edge of the new staircase and peering down. The air that rose from below was cool and slled of deep earth and untapped potential.
He pulled out his phone, his mind racing.
He checked the [Domain] tab again.
A new map had appeared, showing ’Floor 1’ and a blank, unexplored ’Floor 2’. And then he saw it. A tooltip that made his cynical, gar heart sing.
[Your Domain has expanded. Maximum [Rest Area (F-Rank)] per floor: 1. Your total Domain Point (DP) Cap can now be increased.]
It all clicked into place. The Rest Area, the creepy hero-healing fountain, gave him 50 max DP. He couldn’t build more than one on the first floor.
But now... now he had a second floor.
With a speed he didn’t know he possessed, he navigated to the creation nu, selected the Facilities tab, and spent the DP to create a new Rest Area on the floor below.
A wave of power washed through the dungeon as his maximum DP jumped from 150 to 200.
"It’s a feedback loop," he whispered, a slow, wicked grin spreading across his face.
"Leveling up lets expand. Expanding lets build more hero-friendly facilities. More facilities give more DP.
More DP ans more traps and more monsters. It’s a perfect system for growth!"
The boredom vanished, replaced by a surge of creative energy. He was a ga designer again, and he had just been given a massive expansion pack to play with.
For the next eighteen hours, Ragnar was a whirlwind of activity. He barely slept.
He paced the length of his new, empty second floor, his phone in hand, drawing crude maps and planning trap placents.
"Okay, the first floor is the ’Farm’," he declared to Smashy the Orc, who was watching him with a vacant expression.
"We keep that for the low-level students. It’s our bread and butter.
But the second floor... the second floor will be the ’Gear Check’."
He was interrupted by a system notification.
[Invaders have entered the Domain. Invader Count: 12.]
"Ugh, not now," he groaned, glancing at the map.
Another party of students had entered the Goblin Playground. "Grunt!" he ntally commanded his lead kobold.
"Take your squad. Deal with them. Don’t break anything expensive." He dismissed the invasion with the wave of a hand.
It was just background noise now, the cost of doing business. He had more important things to worry about.
He returned to his planning. The second floor would be a maze. Long, winding corridors. Dead ends.
And at the heart of it, a single, large chamber guarded by his Orcs and his most elite kobolds.
The treasure would be better, too. He could finally start using his B-Rank Alchemy to craft C-Rank gear.
It would be an irresistible lure for the more ambitious, higher-level heroes.
He was no longer just a farr tending his crop. He was building a multi-stage experience.
A progressive challenge. He was creating a proper, classic, soul-crushing dungeon.
He stood at the top of the grand staircase, looking down into the darkness of his new creation.
The fear was still there, a constant companion. But now it was mixed with a thrilling sense of purpose. He was building his fortress, his empire, one monster-filled floor at a ti.
And he was getting very, very good at it.
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