Chapter 37: Flash Sale

For the next several hours, Zion watched adventurers move through the dungeon without much interest.

Most of the people still entering seemed to be newer adventurers who had heard about the dungeon after the stronger parties had already arrived. Several struggled badly enough against the sheep that Zion found himself wondering whether they had ever fought anything before.

One young man spent nearly five minutes trying to corner a sheep against the fence before it slipped between his legs and knocked him into the grass, while another party somehow managed to anger three of them at once and ended up being chased halfway across the pasture.

Floor 1 was still working exactly as intended.

Enough groups eventually defeated the Horned Ram to keep Floor 2 active, though the difference became obvious almost immediately once they entered the sulfur field.

The rumors spreading through town had clearly started helping.

More adventurers checked the ceiling now, and several groups brought torches or fire spells specifically for the slimes. One especially cautious party even used a long wooden pole to test suspicious sections of wall before moving past them.

They were painfully slow, but they made it farther than most.

A handful of parties even reached the basilisk.

One group lasted longer than Zion expected. Their tank handled the water jets well, and they had enough ranged attacks to threaten the boss whenever it surfaced, but no one ever figured out how to track it beneath the sulfur pools.

By the time they finally started adjusting to its movement, their healer had already spent most of her mana. The basilisk caught their mage during one of its jumps, and once he disappeared in a flash of protective light, the rest followed soon after.

Another party did even better. For a few minutes, Zion genuinely thought they might win.

Their archer noticed that firing toward the ripples in the sulfur pools occasionally forced the basilisk to surface early, while the others managed to damage one of its legs badly enough to make its jumps less controlled.

They still lost in the end, but not by much.

Zion collected the essence and watched their instance close. He should have been pleased.Instead, he was bored.

The first attempts at Floor 2 had been fascinating because every party taught him something. Now he could usually guess where a group would fail within the first few minutes.

Parties without ranged attacks struggled with the slimes. Parties that relied too heavily on fire burned through mana around the crystals. Balanced groups usually reached the basilisk, and after that the fight depended mostly on how quickly they understood the pools.

The floor was doing its job.

Zion wanted to build something new. He opened the dungeon store and let the familiar categories spread across his awareness while he considered what Floor 3 should become.

His attention drifted toward the monster section first. Skeletons appeared almost immediately.

Zion stopped scrolling. There they were again.

My beauties.

Basic Skeletons.

Skeleton Archers.

Skeleton Soldiers.

A slightly more expensive Skeleton Guard.

He had wanted skeletons since the beginning. Sheep and slimes had both turned out better than he expected, but neither looked anything like the dungeon he had originally imagined when he woke up on the throne.

Skeletons did.

He could already picture cold stone corridors, old graves, flickering torches, and bones scattered between half-collapsed walls. Maybe it was finally time.

He opened the terrain category. "If I’m going to do skeletons, I should do it properly."

He had waited too long to throw them into a plain hallway now. Several graveyard environments appeared near the top of the list, and Zion immediately slowed down.

[Abandoned Graveyard]

[Ruined Cemetery]

[Forgotten Ossuary]

[Moonlit Burial Grounds]

The Abandoned Graveyard came with crooked headstones, patches of dead grass, a few small mausoleums, and a basic fog effect.

Zion opened the preview and rotated it slowly, already imagining skeletons appearing between the graves or archers hiding behind the low stone walls.

Then he noticed the Ruined Cemetery. That one had partially collapsed crypts. He opened it next.

Several narrow paths twisted between broken statues and old burial chambers, with enough height changes to hide monsters behind damaged walls.

It looked better than the first one.

Then he opened the Forgotten Ossuary. Rows of bones had been built directly into the stone walls.

Zion stared at it.

"Oh."

The terrain cost considerably more than the others, but it also included several enclosed chambers and a passive bonus to undead-type monsters.

He rotated the preview again.

"No. That’s really good."

Unfortunately, so was the Moonlit Burial Grounds.

He switched back. Then returned to the cemetery. Then the ossuary.

The longer he looked, the worse the decision became. Every terrain gave him a different idea.

The cemetery would be perfect for archers hidden between gravestones. The ossuary could use narrow corridors with shield-bearing skeletons blocking the path. The burial grounds had enough open space for larger undead if he expanded the floor later.

Maybe he could combine parts of—

A bright red banner suddenly appeared across the center of the store interface.

Zion stopped.

[FLASH SALE]

[Dungeon Hazard Event]

[ALL TRAPS 40% OFF]

He stared at the message for less than a second before abandoning the terrain menu entirely. The trap category opened in front of him. Rows of mechanisms filled the store, and every single one had a thick red line cutting through the original cost.

A much smaller number sat beside it.

Zion felt excitement rise immediately.

[Wall Dart Mechanism]

50 Essence

30 Essence

[Pressure Plate Trigger]

20 Essence

12 Essence

[Spike Pit]

75 Essence

45 Essence

[Tripwire Trigger]

15 Essence

9 Essence

[Pendulum Blade]

90 Essence

54 Essence

[Collapsing Floor Section]

100 Essence

60 Essence

Those prices were ridiculous.

Zion bought the Wall Dart Mechanism first, followed by two pressure plates before he had even decided where either of them would go.

A tripwire cost only nine essence, so he bought two of those too. The Spike Pit was almost half the normal price, which made leaving it behind feel wasteful.

He bought that too.

Then a Pendulum Blade. Then the Falling Boulder Trigger caught his attention. Zion paused long enough to picture an adventurer turning around and seeing a massive rock rolling toward them.

Purchased.

A Flame Jet Trap appeared beneath it, followed by a Crushing Wall Mechanism.

The crushing walls were still expensive even after the discount, but Zion stared at the reduced price for several seconds before deciding that forty percent off was forty percent off.

He bought one.

From there, his careful planning deteriorated quickly.

Poison darts, weighted nets, hidden blades, false floor panels, collapsing stairs, spring-loaded spears, and several mechanisms he didn’t completely understand began filling his inventory.

He kept telling himself he could decide how to use everything later. Right now, the important thing was buying them while they were cheap.

The purchase notifications stacked faster than he bothered reading them.

For most of his time as a Dungeon Lord, Zion had treated every point of essence like it might be his last. He compared prices, checked descriptions, and tried to squeeze as much value as possible out of everything he bought.

This was different. Everything was on sale. Spending essence under those circumstances felt less like wasting it and more like taking advantage of an opportunity.

Zion bought another pressure plate. Then he happened to look at his remaining balance.

His excitement lessened. The number was lower than he expected.

Not dangerously low, but enough that Zion stopped browsing and stared at it for a moment. Most of the traps had been cheap, especially with the discount, and he didn’t remember spending enough to account for that much missing essence.

He mentally went back through the recent purchases.

Thirty for the dart mechanism.

Twelve for each pressure plate.

Forty-five for the spike pit.

Fifty-four for the pendulum blade.

There were several others, but none of them explained the difference. Maybe Floor 2 had charged him for something automatically.

No, that didn’t seem likely. Repairs were handled by the dungeon and monster respawns were already accounted for.

Zion continued staring at the balance until another purchase surfaced in his memory.

Silver. Black crystals. Lilith.

"Oh."

He reopened the store and searched for the bracelet.

The Silver Nightglass Bracelet appeared immediately, looking just as delicate and expensive as it had when he first saw it.

His attention moved straight to the price this time.

225 Essence.

Zion went completely still. "Two hundred and twenty-five?"

That was more essence than he had spent on the Pendant of Lesser Sanctuary. The same pendant that had caused half the town to lose its mind over Floor 1.

Zion looked at the bracelet again, then back at the price as if the number might change the second time.

It didn’t. He had spent 225 essence on jewelry...without checking.

For an adventurer. A pretty one.

Zion slowly closed the item details. "That was expensive."

He should probably regret it. Two hundred essence could buy several monsters. It could cover a large section of terrain. At the current sale prices, it could purchase an uncomfortable number of traps.

For a moment, Zion tried to calculate everything else he could have done with it.

Then Lilith’s face came back to him instead. He remembered the way her hands trembled when she lifted the bracelet from the chest and how she had stared at it for so long that he thought he had made a mistake.

He remembered the tears that followed. And the small smile that appeared only after she fastened it around her wrist.

It’s beautiful.

Zion looked at his remaining essence again. Two hundred and twenty-five was still a lot.

Maybe too much. But the thought of taking the bracelet back somehow felt worse than the missing essence.

He considered that for another moment before giving up.

"...It was worth it."

At the very least, he didn’t regret buying it. Lilith had liked it, and apparently that mattered enough to make two hundred and twenty-five essence feel less painful than it should have.

Zion closed the bracelet listing and returned to the trap menu. The red sale banner was still waiting at the top of the store.

His attention drifted briefly toward the graveyard terrains he had been studying before the interruption. He really had wanted skeletons.

He had already started imagining the floor. Then he looked at the inventory full of traps he had just purchased.

Zion considered the graveyard for another few seconds before the discounted prices pulled his attention back toward the hazard menu. The decision became much easier.

"The skeletons can wait until Floor 4."

He opened the Floor Expansion menu.