CH.278 A Carriage of my own

CH.278 A Carriage of my own

“So, Agunan, how did your fight with the Gate Guardian go?” I asked the dragon, as we regrouped in the core room of HomeBase. I asked him to test fight the new Dark Guardian improved version of the last boss of the dungeon.

“That monster combination is quite strong.” Agunan answered. “At first, they don’t seem all that strong, but they work together extremely well. The water walls preventing my attacks, the wind to hasten their movements, and the lightning attacks are a dangerous combination, but nothing I cannot deal with. But then coming back after death and combining like that, now that form is something. And their combined attack is somewhat dangerous, and could deal major damage if it hits. But still for me, the worst part is those water walls they use, because they just block most of my ranged attacks, so I have to fight up close. And then they turn into that dark being, and it just doesn’t die, no matter how much I punch it. I had to retreat after I ran out of mana, but I think I might have won if I had more mana.”

Oh? So the Sanga, Kazejin, Suijin into Gate Guardian into Dark Guardian was able to make Agunan retreat, just because he ran out of mana. Not bad. Not bad at all.

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I was honestly a bit doubtful if it really could stop a dragon, because when I tested the fight in the factory, I set Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon against the boss, and Ultimate won, even taking down Dark Guardian. And that wasn’t under Mountain of Light or anything, so it should have been relatively fair. Sure Agunan has never beaten any of the Ultimate Dragons, but they always fight under the Mountain of Light, so I thought that was why.

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Maybe I’ll ask Agunan to fight the Gate Guardian boss in the factory. I can set peoples mana to unlimited in the factory, so he might be able to win there. That will give me an idea about how probable it is that someone prepared with mana potions can take down the Gate Guardian boss.

But still, maybe I should make an additional custom boss here. Just what to use? The Wicked Avatar would be interesting, as it will always be stronger than whatever invades this place, but if they bring some unexpected tool, he might not be all that great. Though its effect should prevent them from using any strange tools for some time at the start of the fight.

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I’m also not sure how I feel about using something like the Wicked monsters for this. Just in case they try to revolt or something. Maybe I should use something a bit more ... normal.

... I could use Skull Servants, I think... a full floor of just Skull Servants, with the boss being a King of the Skull Servants. Because Skull Servants being quite weak, the invader would likely just run all over them, and then a super powered up King would destroy them.

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... but King of the Skull Servants has no protection and has 0 defense, so any lucky attack could take it down. Maybe if I had The Lady in Wight to protect the King? But I can’t get one yet, so let’s reconsider this after I get the Lady, because a Skeleton King boss that gets stronger the more skeletons on the floor you defeated, while also being nearly immortal while Lady is alive, would be quite the floor boss.

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Now. The other thing I came in here for. My carriage. After traveling in one of Mariina’s/Sage’s tower’s golem carriages for two days, I felt like having my own. Not because they are bad, but because I think I can make a better one. I already designed one during the trip anyway, so why not?

It came with a handful of cool features, most of which I cannot actually yet use. For one, it has a full suspension system with shock absorbers and everything, so it should be nice to ride in. It does also have a secondary shock mitigation system, where the entire passenger cabin can raise up to float above the chassis, but that takes some amount of mana to use, so I still need to develop a powersource for that. It could currently be used, if I inserted a Pitch-Black Power Stone into a slot, but those stones will only power the levitator the two hours they stay out, so using the levitation thing is not something I’ll be doing for now.

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It also has a space magic tool, which can be used to make the inside larger than it could normally be, but again, it takes mana. I designed it using some of the dungeon tech, which allows the dungeon to change its internal size. And yes, it can be powered with Pitch-Black Power Stones. Just like the levitator, the two hour time limit for the stone was a problem, so I would need some other power source.

As for the autopilot, well, it doesn’t have one. I could make one by installing any of my machine monsters into the carriage, but that would turn the carriage into a living being, so I could no longer take it into Storage. It is interesting that a golem counts as a living being, because I thought a beating heart was the limiting factor, but there must be something like that in a golem as well. It might be an active golem core, or something. Anyway, because of that, I cannot actually make a full autopilot, but at the end of the day, does that really matter? I can just summon some of my monsters to drive the carriage for me, so that is my autopilot. You don’t need autopilot, if you can just summon pilots.

And last, I think this is the last thing, the carriage had full defensive capabilities. It could produce different kinds of magic barriers to protect whoever was inside the carriage. I made the defenses with a mix of a few cards like Mirror Force, Negate Attack and Draining Shield.

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“... well, not quite. It does still consume mana super quick when active, so you’d have to be spamming tons of spells at the barrier, with the barrier in 100% absorption mode, for it to have a chance to stay active permanently.”

“I see. That makes more sense.” Lua told me. “But still, it is impressive.”

“Let’s go inside. I’ll show you the two other cool parts.” I told the girls as I opened the door for them.

I quickly showed them both the levitator and the space expander, before then explaining that they cannot currently be used because of the mana cost. But even without the space expansion, the carriage can comfortably seat six people, so it is fine for us.

Next was our test drive. At first, I sat on the driver’s seat, using the mana propulsion to move the carriage. After a bit like that, I stopped the carriage.

Then I summoned Lesser Dragon and attached it to the front, so it could pull the carriage.

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The carriage could be attached to a handful of different monsters I could summon, like Lesser Dragon, Rare Metal Dragon, Dark Zebra, Gazelle the King of Mythical Beasts and so on.

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It could even be drawn by Chiron the Mage or Mystic Horseman. And while Horseman was willing, Chiron said he’d only pull it when I need someone of high class pulling my carriage. Don’t tell him, but in my opinion, having a mithril coated dragon pulling my carriage is way more classy than a sassy centaur mage doing it.

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After our successful test drive, I set out a picnic for us at the lakeshore, some ways away from town. It probably isn’t something the locals do, because while this area doesn’t have a lot of high ranking monsters, even weaker monsters could cause some problems for low leveled people. But for us, a few intruders won’t be a problem.

For the picnic, I had made a few things in the dungeon with Kitchen Dragonmaid. Nothing crazy, I just made a few simple snacks, while she baked a few sweets. I could have made them with the dungeon, but it is somewhat cheaper to get raw materials and process them yourself, compared to getting ready made items. Also, because I can make excellent quality raw materials with the dungeon, take them into Storage, use the Material Quality Increase to upgrade them to flawless and then we can use them to make flawless sweets with reasonable price. If I used the dungeon to make flawless sweets, it’d cost around 17 times more than the excellent quality ingredients.

The only problem I had with this picnic date was the location. Lakeside picnics are usually amazing, but this lake it... well, it leaves a bit to be desired. You know, when you think of isekai lakes, they are usually crystal clear and all of that. Why did the first one I ran into have to be muddy like this?

“Thanks, Brian. This is really good.” Alice said, as she took a bit out of a chicken sandwich I made.

Yes, I did make it. Don’t question my cooking skills. I do have some. I can deep fry a chicken breast coated in breading. ... not that we are eating chicken. The meat actually comes from different bird monsters from the dungeon, like flare birds and dark birds. The flare birds were cooked up nice and spicy, as their natural flavor went well with spice, while I tried to do a bit more complicated spice blend with the dark birds... but it didn’t come out quite as I wanted. It was still good... just not as good as I hoped. I should have let Kitchen Dragonmaid help me more with that.

As we were moving from the chicken sandwiches to the sweets, I heard some sounds from the direction of the lake and turned to look. Has some water monster come to annoy us?

“Excuse me? Mister blessed person?” I heard a female voice call for me from the lake.

A somewhat familiar looking mer...folk girl was, well she isn’t sitting, so swimming? there. Why is she back here? We sent her home, right?