"Come along folks, we need to make tracks if we want any of you to catch a minotaur by the end of the day." I called as I lead the newbies and Haruhime through the dungeon entrance.
"This feels rather rushed though. I understand the need for increased strength with the dragons return on the horizon but are we ready for this?" Alucard asked worriedly.
"Honestly? No. But so long as i'm around you won't die and we need all of you as strong as possible when the dragon arrives. Maybe not as combatants but to help move the city into the dungeon." I said calmly.
Yeah the plan was to pack up most of the cities important resources and move them into the dungeon the moment the dragon was first seen approaching. Civilians, lower leveled adventurers and even the gods despite the risk that posed. The idea was that all of them would hole up on the first "safe" floor until the dragon was either dead or gone again. A trait all escaped monsters had was that none of them wanted to return to the dungeon and everyone was banking on the dragon being the same and thus not willing to chase them in.-
Moving that many people and objects took serious effort though so any adventurer below level four save a few VERY important ones like Haruhime would be used for this purpose. The situation was so dire that even adventurers who had retired but held a certain level of strength were coming out of retirement to fight. Mama Mia was among them as a high level six and Ex-captain of the Freya familia. Even among the level fours and fives a few were also chosen to serve as protectors of the group heading into the dungeon in case the dungeon throws a fit about it. -
This was something both Ouranos and I were trying to convince the dungeon NOT to do. Ouranos with his godly authority and me with basically sweet talking the dungeon with special cursed items that made some of it's functions easier in the items area of effect. In any other situation I'd get in an assload of trouble for strengthening the dungeon but even after learning about it Ouranos turned a blind eye since it helped make things smoother.-
"I want to fight though!" Jin complained.
"Oh I know but you just aren't ready for that kind of battle. To be honest I don't know if even I am ready for it either. If the worst come to pass I fully expect you to protect everyone since I can't anymore." I said patting his head with a resigned sigh.
The others had stern expressions at that as even if it wasn't openly said very few believed we could beat the dragon. This trip to get them qualified to level up was only one part of my preparations for the upcoming trouble. Another was working to isolate an area in the safe floor for the gods to openly live without aggravating the dungeon. -
This would be accomplished by creating a barrier around that zone fueled by the gods themselves. It was well known that even while in their sealed state in the mortal realm the gods released small amounts of their divine energy around them, especially during high emotional moments. With them all grouped up I could set up a cursed siphon array that would take this excess energy and use it to fuel a barrier isolating the gods influence from the dungeon.-
Obviously the dungeon will know they are there since it'll likely peg them in such numbers almost immediately. But so long as they stick to their designated area the dungeon should ignore them, hopefully. The trick is getting the area set up to begin with. For that I needed divine blood, a lot of it. Ouranos has already collected a barrel full from various gods after explaining it's purpose. I had that barrel in my bag at the moment. Technically I'd need a lot of blood in general for this but a good portion could be taken from monsters instead. I just needed enough divine blood to tie the barrier and siphon to their energy in particular.-
Anyways I lead the group through the first fifteen floors of the dungeon Killing every monster along the way personally to save time and their energy. Once we got to the sixteenth floor I set up an arena of sorts but rather small before finding a group of minotaurs and capturing them. I purposefully atrophied the beasts muscles a bit to lower their hitting power and speed to level one doable standards before putting one in the arena and sending in the newbies.-
Haruhime had the easiest kill with her toxic throwing needles. Not the Knuckelavee ones but still toxic all the same. It was technically a dishonorable victory since she just poisoned it and ran till it flopped helpless to the poison before finishing it off but a win was a win. Sasha won the next fight with her magic but that was hardly a surprise as she had learned concurrent chanting from day one. Evrain and Gion both got beaten half to death before sliding out a kill on a weakened minotaur. Alucard had to be pulled as he slipped up and got inches from death. -
His minotaur was then finished off by Jin making him feel some kind of way since he'd literally been shown up by a kid. I fixed his body and when he was ready got him another fight that he pulled off by the skin of his teeth. The fact he was scraped up enough to resemble ground beef was not great but he won so I fixed him up good as new.