Chapter 110: New Species?! Mages?! And a Gift from the System?!

[ Spend 10,000 mana points to raise the Buildings category to level 6? ]

"Yes!"

[ You have unlocked three new buildings! ]

[ Mage Hall — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 5,000 mana ] Home of the TetraGorillas. Allows them to sleep, eat, and gather in a shared living space. Requires a regular supply of food to function.

[ Mage Tower — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 7,500 mana ] Place of study for the TetraGorilla Arcanists. Allows them to theorise magic in all its forms, study arcane law, analyse quantimana flows, and design new spells. Requires 15 mana points per day.

[ Mage Casting Grounds — Level 1 (0/1) — Cost: 7,500 mana ] Training centre for the TetraGorilla Battle Mages. Offers a wide range of exercise configurations to master and put into practice the spells developed in the Mage Tower. Requires 15 mana points per day.

[ Building count increased! ]

[ Storage Vault: limit raised to 4 buildings. ]

[ Adjustment! In light of the world quest launched against you, and to balance things out, the system is offering you an exclusive building! ]

[ The system hopes you make it through this dark stretch! Good luck! ]

[ Chimera Forge — Exclusive — Cost: 10,000 mana ] Allows chimeras to be forged from bodies and quantimanas. The stronger the body or bodies provided, the stronger the forged chimera. Requires The Chimera King, as well as a mana cost for each creation, depending on its power.

"JACKPOT!"

The shout rang through the entire core chamber and bounced off the vaulted ceiling Mei had sculpted with her own hands.

The chamber had changed a great deal since its early days. With the Mycfox’s help, Mei had lowered the entire floor around the throne so that only it remained raised, reached by a flight of steps at the end of a path lined with pillars carved all the way up to the vault.

All along the upper walls stretched Anubia’s hive, its translucent cells letting the light through like the crystal stained glass of a church.

And behind the throne, sheltered, floated the core, multicoloured, with a multitude of quantimanas turning endlessly inside it.

Freya had just leapt up onto that throne, standing tall like a winner, one arm thrust toward the ceiling.

An arm which, despite herself, looked absolutely delicious to another resident of the dungeon, who happened to be passing by at the wrong moment, or rather the perfect one.

She shot toward it like a bloodthirsty shark and sank in without the slightest hesitation.

Bzzz~~~ Bzzz~~

But Freya was used to it by now. And above all, she was far too excited about what she had just unlocked to pay any attention to what was happening on her forearm.

She focused entirely on the windows floating in front of her, all lit up at once in the golden dimness of the chamber.

"A new species~~? TetraGorillas? Mages? And on top of that, an exclusive building just for me?!"

Her eyes couldn’t settle on a single line long enough to read its description. They jumped from one building name to the next, went back to the first, shot to the last, the excitement going straight to her head.

She ended up clutching her cheeks with both hands and wriggling on the spot, balanced on the throne, letting out a squeal that sounded in every way like a fifteen-year-old girl in love.

"Kyaaaaaah~~!"

The Mycfox crossing the chamber at that moment stopped for an instant. They looked up at the sight of their mistress squirming on her throne with a bee stuck in her arm, then simply carried on their way.

They weren’t used to Anubia’s stings. But they had long since grown used to their mistress’s madness and her fits.

It still took Freya a few more seconds to calm down, climb off the throne and sit back on it properly. Only then could she finally analyse her new buildings with a shred of seriousness.

First of all, as she had said earlier, she had finally unlocked a new species.

TetraGorillas, a name so specific it had to mean gorillas with four of something, whether four arms, four legs or even four eyes. She had no idea for now, but she was certain there was a four in there somewhere.

And apparently, they were mages.

Which surprised her quite a bit. Why were her little Mycfox, with their mushroom caps and big eyes, close-combat warriors, while gorillas ended up doing magic? Where was the logic in any of it?

She genuinely thought about it for a moment, chin in her hand. Then she concluded there wasn’t much point looking for logic when she herself had been reincarnated into a fantasy world as its Calamity.

And with that, she picked her analysis back up where she had left it.

First there was the Mage Hall, about which there wasn’t much to say, other than that it was where the TetraGorillas would live, sleep and eat. But the next two buildings were far more interesting.

The first was the Mage Tower, the kind every fantasy fan knew by heart, with its floors of libraries and study rooms perched up high.

Here, it allowed scholars, apparently called TetraGorilla Arcanists, to theorise magic, study its laws, and create new spells.

A proper wizard’s tower~~!

But once again she couldn’t help picturing gorillas shut away in that tower. Hunched over desks far too small for them, solving magical equations and writing theses by candlelight.

No! No! No! Those are just preconceptions, Freya! In this world anything is possible, you know that perfectly well!

She shook her head to clear the image, and her eyes slid on their own to the next building, which was perhaps even more telling than the tower.

It was reserved for the Battle Mages, who had to be the species’ magical fighters. The ones who would learn the magic developed in the tower and who would form Freya’s magical strike force.

For that they had their own training ground, the Mage Casting Grounds, which completed the short chain of mage buildings.

But once again, she pictured apes lined up behind a battlefield, casting spells from a distance like little magical artillerymen. An image instantly replaced by another, far more convincing one, of gorillas charging into close combat, their arms wrapped in reinforcement magic.

"Ooooh~~ Suddenly that makes a lot more sense!"

And on that happy conclusion, she still took a moment to look at the logistics of it all.

The Mage Hall, for example, needed food to function, and this level didn’t offer any farm the TetraGorillas could run themselves. She concluded the Mycfox would be the ones to handle it.

And she thought the same might go for upgrading these new buildings. After all, it made sense that the Mycfox researchers could improve these ones just as they already improved the others.

Well, I’ll see~~!

Now it was time to move on to what had interested her most from the start.

The Chimera Forge.

The building the system was offering to make up for the fact that she now stood alone against the entire world and every other Dungeon Lord, with that quest launched against her.

It allowed the Chimera King to create, or rather forge, apparently, chimeras for her dungeon.

And that was exactly what she needed right now. Striking power that came from her dungeon itself, not borrowed from outside.

Because she wasn’t going to, and above all didn’t want to, send her Mycfox or her Silkweavers into battle, or even Anubia and her bees.

They were simply too important to the dungeon and its day-to-day running. And above all, they weren’t strong enough for what was coming.

Well, not counting the museum’s guardian.

She still remembered that night she had toured the dungeon alone, to check that everything was fine and that the work was progressing as planned.

She had gone into the Cabinet of Wonders, between display cases still half empty, to look at what she had already started putting on show.

And she had seen him, right at the back of the room, motionless in the dimness, staring at her coldly.

Yes! Me, his own mother!

Thrown out of her own museum by her own child, she had understood that day that it was best not to disturb that rank S Mycfox. Not during a night at the museum, anyway.

She shivered, shook off the memory of that look, the look of her rebellious child, and came back to her original train of thought.

"Well, that’s about it! Apart from the new Storage Vault! Shall we move on?"

She was already reaching out to close the windows and move on when her mind suddenly remembered one small detail.

"But before that! Did you think I’d forgotten about you, System?! What do you mean, offering me a building to balance things out, and then making me pay 10,000 mana points for it?! Do you even know what offering means?!"

This time she was standing on her throne again, arm thrust out. Not to celebrate anymore, but to protest the injustice she had fallen victim to.

[ ... ]