Chapter 58: Divine Blessing! Again!

He built the interior like an interactive video game lobby, creating three separate doors inside the facility.

The first door was labeled ’Inexperienced’. This was for the absolute beginners and it had three internal levels. Level one spawned exactly one unarmed goblin. Level two spawned two unarmed goblins, and level three spawned three of them.

The second door was labeled ’Novice’. It had the exact same setting as the first door, and the only difference was the weapons. The goblins behind this door spawned with rusty iron daggers.

The third door was labeled ’Soldier Training’.

It was meant for soldiers and experienced adventurers. It had ten levels in total and level one threw the challenger into a room with five armed goblins. Every time the challenger beat a level, the next level added five more goblins. Level ten ended with a brutal fifty on one fight. The people could either pick one of the floors or progressively move from one level to the other to challenge themselves even more.

He built a massive double door right next to it. ’Group Training 1-10’.

This was for squad tactics. It skipped the easy stuff entirely and level one started with twenty goblins. The difficulty scaled up by twenty for each tier. Level ten threw the squad against an army of two hundred goblins.

Adrian paused. He needed something stronger for his actual knights in the future. Regular goblins were just cannon fodder once a soldier learned how to circulate mana.

He created a heavy iron door at the end of the hall and named it ’Knight Training’. This one also had ten levels.

He opened the list of monsters he had access to. He skipped the basic goblins and looked at the upgraded variants. There were many, but he selected the Hobgoblins since they were massive, muscular, and incredibly violent.

Level one spawned a single Hobgoblin, level two spawned four and level three spawned ten. The numbers would increase exponentially as they moved up the levels.

He then built a massive boss room at the very end of the Knight hall, and placed a single Goblin General inside.

Creating all of these instances and mutating the base goblins into Hobgoblins burned through his stored mana rapidly. But he did not care since this was an investment.

Finally, Adrian built a secret hallway hidden behind the adjacent wall just like he did before and created a room. The mana crystal generator went there and the gacha wheel went back to the center of the main room.

He built one last room near the lobby. He left it completely empty and locked the door. He had a specific plan for it later.

With the layout complete, he opened the dungeon upgrade menu.

The cost to push the dungeon from F rank to E rank was exactly ten thousand mana points. That was his maximum storage capacity.

He used some of his mana crystals to fill up the mana inside the dungeon and hit the confirm button.

The mana reserves drained to zero instantly, and a he heard a loud ding as the system screen popped up in front of him.

[Please pick an additional perk for the E ranked dungeon]

Trap Dungeon Resource Dungeon

He completely ignored the option to build spike traps and pit falls. The only perk he cared about was the resource dungeon since it could be used for farming too. His E rank dungeon could now sustain plant life and grow crops internally without constantly draining the dungeon’s mana.

That was what the empty locked room was for. He had plans on turning it into a greenhouse later.

Outside, the dungeon upgrade caused a huge scene. Citizens and soldiers woke up and pointed at the sky.

"Look at the beam!" a guy yelled.

"The Goddess!" a woman screamed. "The Goddess of Prosperity blessed us again!"

Adrian smirked in his bedroom as he swiped the system interface away, and went right back to sleep.

Morning came and Adrian opened his eyes.

Aria was already awake. She was still glued to his chest. Her eyes were fixed on the bedside lamp. She was just totally zoned out.

"Morning." Adrian mumbled.

She blinked. She looked down at his face and gave a tiny smile.

Adrian rolled out of bed. He hit the showers and scrubbed a week of travel grime off his skin. He threw on clean clothes and headed to his study.

He grabbed a charcoal pencil and a stack of blank parchment. Time to work.

He scribbled down the new territory rules. The whole thing took maybe five minutes.

He walked out the back doors. The crowd was already up and chewing on cold fried bread. Claire was standing near the training dirt talking to the mercenary captain.

Adrian walked straight up to her and shoved the papers against her chest plate.

"Read these." he said. "Then announce them to the whole town."

Claire took the stack. Her eyes scanned the first page. They went wide. She flipped to the second page. Her jaw actually dropped.

She stared at him. She looked completely shocked.

A mere Baron doing something this crazy? It was unheard of. But if his divine dream excuse worked, it made perfect sense.

It was still a massive gamble.

Claire turned to the guards standing nearby.

"Hey!" Claire barked. "Get everyone to shut up and gather around! Lord Adrian has new laws for the barony!"

The soldiers shouted orders. The chatter died down instantly. Hundreds of people gathered and stood in total silence.

Claire cleared her throat. She stared at the sea of faces.

"Listen up!" Claire shouted. Her powerful voice easily carried across the field.

The murmurs died down and everyone stared at the beautiful knight in battered armor.

"Lord Adrian had a divine dream last night." Claire announced. "The Goddess of Prosperity spoke to him directly."

The crowd gasped. Whispers of pure awe ripped through the people.

"The Goddess promised to bless our people again." Claire continued. "But she warned Lord Adrian about evil forces. Greedy men who wish to steal our wealth and harm our families."