Chapter 45: Dungeon Network

It took Zion several attempts to get back onto the throne.

Standing had turned out to be much more difficult than moving his arms. His new body felt strangely light, but without muscles or skin to tell him how much weight he was putting on each leg, even something as simple as taking a step required more concentration than he expected.

Eventually, he managed to steady himself by keeping one hand against the side of the throne while carefully placing each foot beneath him.

By the time he lowered himself back into the seat, Zion had already decided that walking could wait.

There was something else he wanted to see.

The Dungeon Network icon still sat in the corner of his system interface, exactly where it had appeared after Floor 3 activated.

Zion selected it, and a new panel expanded across his awareness, larger and busier than most of the menus he had used so far.

[Welcome to the Dungeon Network.]

[Beginner Dungeon access confirmed.]

[Please select a public Dungeon Lord username.]

Zion stared at the prompt.

"A username?"

Of all the things he had expected from an ancient magical dungeon system, choosing a screen name had not been one of them.

A blank field appeared beneath the message. For a few seconds, Zion considered simply using his name, but that seemed boring.

DungeonLordZion was slightly better, though not by much.

Then he looked down at himself. He was currently sitting on a throne as a skeleton. That made the decision much easier.

[SkeletonLordZion]

1

[Username available.]

He looked over the name once more before confirming it. It was simple, accurate, and just ridiculous enough that he liked it.

[Welcome, SkeletonLordZion.]

The Network opened.

Zion immediately understood why the interface had needed so much space.

A ranking panel occupied one side of the screen, while discussion threads continuously updated through the center. Smaller windows displayed regional dungeon activity, recent achievements, active users, and something labeled Current Network Trends.

Most surprising of all were the usernames.

Zion had expected Dungeon Lords to use grand titles, and some of them clearly did.

[The Rock]

1

[Lord of Ash]

[Your Nightmare]

[Grave King]

Those were more or less what he had imagined.

Then he kept reading.

[Fight Me]

[Down Bad]

1

[Hoes Mad]

His attention slowed. Farther down the active-user list, another name appeared.

[DefinitelyNotEvil]

Then:

[TaxEvasion]

Zion leaned back against the throne.

Apparently, becoming a Dungeon Lord did not automatically make someone dignified. That was useful information.

He opened the discussion board next. Hundreds of active threads moved through the list, some receiving replies quickly enough that the titles shifted position while he was still reading them.

[Best Undead Unit Below Rank D?]

[Is Poison Still Worth Building Around After Floor 20?]

[Anyone Else Getting Too Many Paladins?]

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[How Many Mimics Is Too Many Mimics?]

[SELLING UNUSED SWAMP TERRAIN — CHEAP]

Zion slowed as he read.

"This is incredible."

The first thread he opened was already several hundred replies deep.

[HELLFIRE PITS VS. ICE TOMB — SETTLE THIS.]

[BurnThemAll]:

Hellfire. Not even close. Better passive damage, better intimidation, better synergy with demon units.

[FrozenSolid]:

Until you get a fire-resistant party and your entire floor becomes decorative lighting.

[BurnThemAll]:

Skill issue.

[FrozenSolid]:

You run three fire floors in a row.

[BurnThemAll]:

Because fire works.

[ColdBastard]:

Ice Tomb scales better and anyone saying otherwise has never built past Floor 40.

[BurnThemAll]:

Who invited you?

Zion continued reading for several more replies, though the argument became less useful almost immediately.

Someone accused another Dungeon Lord of lying about their clear rate. Another started posting kill statistics. Two others somehow ended up arguing about whether frozen corpses counted as terrain decoration.

Eventually, Zion closed the thread. He was curious about one thing, though. Hellfire Pits and Ice Tombs both sounded much more advanced than anything he currently had access to.

Zion opened the dungeon store and searched for them.

[Hellfire Pit Terrain]

20,000 Essence

[Ice Tomb Terrain]

20,000 Essence

He looked at the prices, then at his own balance.

"Never mind."

Whatever kind of dungeons the people in that thread were running, they were operating on a very different budget.

He closed the store and returned to the Network, this time browsing without opening every thread that caught his attention.

One discussion was entirely devoted to whether treasure rooms should have obvious traps or hidden ones. Another asked for advice on dealing with adventurers who refused to split up.

Someone had written a long complaint about rogues disabling every lock on their floor and demanded to know whether there was a way to make a door lock into a trap itself.

Zion opened that one. Apparently, there was not. Several people had offered suggestions anyway.

The longer he browsed, the more obvious it became that Dungeon Lords approached their dungeons in completely different ways.

Some cared almost entirely about rankings, while others seemed more interested in aesthetics than efficiency.

A surprising number treated adventurers like test subjects and posted detailed breakdowns of what worked against specific classes.

Then one thread title caught Zion’s attention.

[Best Ways to Kill Adventurers Efficiently]

He hesitated for only a moment before opening it. The usernames inside immediately stood out from the rest of the Network.

[BloodSaint]

[CorpseMaker]

[FinalBreath]

[NoMercy]

[Widowmaker]

Zion scrolled through the replies.

The discussion was much more practical than he expected.

One Dungeon Lord recommended combining immobilization traps with sustained poison damage, while another argued that instant-death mechanics became unreliable against higher-level adventurers and that layered attrition worked better.

Several people discussed sealing exits. Someone else suggested separating healers from the rest of the party before activating lethal terrain.

Zion kept reading. He had expected the thread to sound more emotional somehow.

More bloodthirsty.

Instead, most of them talked about killing adventurers the same way he talked about trap placement or monster synergy. That was somehow worse.

Then one reply mentioned something Zion had not seen before.

[CorpseMaker]:

If you care about rank, kill efficiency matters more than raw floor difficulty. Check your Kills stat before rebuilding. If your average is low, your layout probably sucks.

Zion frowned.

"Kills stat?"

He opened his Dungeon profile. A much more detailed information page appeared.

[Dungeon: Unnamed]

[Dungeon Lord: SkeletonLordZion]

[Classification: Beginner Dungeon]

[Active Floors: 3]

[Adventurer Entries: —]

[Floor Clears: —]

[Adventurer Defeats: —]

[Kills: 0]

Zion’s attention settled on the final number. There was a kill counter.

He selected it, and another panel opened.

[Adventurer Kill Count]

Tracks confirmed adventurer deaths caused directly or indirectly by your dungeon.

[Regional Kill Ranking available.]

He opened the ranking. The numbers near the top were absurd.

Thousands. Tens of thousands. One dungeon had a kill count high enough that Zion checked the number twice before accepting that he had read it correctly.

He returned to the discussion thread and found several users comparing their positions on the kill leaderboard as though it were a competitive sport.

Zion leaned back into the throne. He had been human. That probably should have made this feel worse than it did.

Instead, he mostly found himself confused. It wasn’t that he wanted adventurers dead. He didn’t.

But even setting that aside, deliberately killing them seemed inefficient.

"That doesn’t make any sense."

He looked at the kill counter again. Adventurers generated essence when they entered the dungeon. They generated more when they fought through the floors, more when they cleared them, and even more through repeated attempts.

If they survived, they could come back. They could bring friends. They could spread rumors.

They could hear about the Glittering Treasure Chest and decide they wanted another chance at whatever was inside.

A dead adventurer could do none of those things.

From Zion’s perspective, killing one on purpose felt like destroying a machine after it had already produced one coin.

Apparently, many Dungeon Lords disagreed.

He scrolled through several more replies before returning to the leaderboard.

The discussion was still active, with new posts appearing every few seconds, but Zion found himself paying less attention to the advice and more to what the thread revealed.

He had opened the Dungeon Network expecting to learn how other people built their floors. Instead, he had learned something more important. Other Dungeon Lords did not necessarily want the same things he did.

He returned to his own profile and looked at the final line again.

[Kills: 0]

For now, he was perfectly fine leaving it that way.