“Huh?! You didn’t ignore my letter?!”

“Of course not. I’m inviting demon lords to this event, y’know. I’m not about to piss them off for no reason.”

Milim looked a bit peeved, although contented that I didn’t forget about her request.

“Wait a minute, Rimuru!” Ramiris shouted, livid about this treatment at Milim’s hands. “I’m a demon lord, too, you know! Part of the Octagram with you and Milim!”

“Oh yeah, Ramiris, I didn’t even need to send you an invite, huh? Not after you decided to just up and move here!”

“What? You moved here? Wait a second… Ramiris, are you living with Rimuru?!”

Ramiris began to a panic a bit. “Y-yes! Yes, I moved here, okay? So the invitation doesn’t even matter! I’m not alone any longer, and I’m living with Rimuru and everything, too!”

Great. Panic or not, that statement was bound to be misunderstood.

“Aw, that’s no fair! I wanna live here, too!!”

“Ha-ha! Tough luck! I’ve got a job here, remember? I’m helping out Rimuru! I’m not some overbearing, unwelcome houseguest like you!”

“What? How dare you say that! Why, I oughtta—”

Milim was ready to duke it out right now. Ramiris, despite how hopeless her chances were, refused to stand down. Me? I just watched it unfold.

Fortunately, this was just a verbal spat, limited to the two trading insults with each other. Neither had the vocabulary for this kind of contention, which made it kinda cute in a way. Ramiris occasionally accentuated her disses with a flying kick to Milim, who kept trying to grab her out of the air. It was kind of like a game of tag, and from the side, this almost looked like they were playing at recess. Apparently, they’ve known each other for a while, so perhaps this was just their way of expressing affection.

Their squabbling came to a close within moments, however—Shuna had just arrived with some sweets in tow, took one look at the two demon lords, and shot them a firm rebuke.

“No sweets for anyone who’s bickering!”

That immediately shut them both up.

A couple slices of cake later, and everything was roses. They were awfully chummy now—but more importantly, I needed to grill Milim over why she came here in the first place.

“So, Milim, what are you doing here?” I asked.

“Hee-hee! I told you! You looked like you were up to some fun stuff!”

“Um, is that really it?”

“Uh-huh. But now I’m really glad I came. This cake tastes so good, and I like what you’re doing with this labyrinth. I had no idea Ramiris could make herself so useful!”

“Ha! Sure showed you, huh? I’ve got untold powers at my disposal, you know. You just never noticed!”

You didn’t, either, Ramiris, I thought. But…man, Milim really has a keen nose for underground scheming like this. You literally can’t hide anything from her. She had two ex–demon lords in Carillon and Frey to deal with, but she still had the time and wherewithal to look into stuff all the way over here. Logic just didn’t work with her. She shouldn’t be able to get in here, but maybe it wasn’t unusual at all for Milim. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised.

“All right. We have had our dessert— How about we get back to work? You can enjoy this, too, Milim, if you stay out of the way.”

Veldora was being unusually mature and accommodating. Come to think of it, a fight between him and Milim would be a serious problem. Milim was going easy on Ramiris, I could tell, but it’d be a different story with this dragon. If they started to tangle, this whole labyrinth would fall apart. Good thing she was on Veldora’s good side for now.

“No complaint there, Master,” Ramiris said. She and Milim actually got along pretty well, in my eyes—that fight just now must’ve just been some friendly teasing.

“All right!” exclaimed an excited Milim. “I won’t get in your way. Gimme all the work you want!”

I figured I was safe in accepting that offer, but one concern remained—something I needed confirmation for.

“Well, I don’t mind if you join in, but—”

“Great! This looks like so much fun! I wish you called for me back when you were planning it!”

“Right, right. But Milim, what about the people working under you? Did you get permission from Carillon or Frey to come here?”

She was a free spirit, to be sure, but she was also a demon lord—one with two ex–demon lords in her stable and all of Clayman’s old land to rule on top of her own. Even with Carillon and Frey running things in her territory, she had to be a lot busier than before. Did she really have the time to go poking around my domain for fun?

…Huh? Me, you ask? Hey, I got talented people working under me, so I got time for projects like this, yeah. I’d just get in their way if I bothered them. Besides, I had a fully valid motive for this plan—a desire to attract more visitors to Tempest. This wasn’t playtime for me, I promise.

But who cares about me? Milim was the issue right now, and my question had just caught her out.

“Well…y’know. I’m really smart and stuff, so… Not like I ran away from my place ’cause I don’t like studying or anything!”

…Aha. Frey must’ve been researching the state of Milim’s domain and teaching her about it. That must’ve bored her so badly that she fled her own country.

“Wait, no!” she blurted out before I could even answer. “Don’t say it! I’m staying here and helping you, and that’s that!”

Sharp as a tack, that girl. I should really contact Carillon or Frey about this, but…ah, who cares? Not like they’ll get angry at me. I’ll just pretend I didn’t know any better.

But back to what she said earlier…

“All right! That’s your mess to clean up, as far as I’m concerned. You’re the one who’s gonna get yelled at, not me,” I said to her. “But what about those dragons you mentioned? You said you could bring them over and tame them? Is that really possible?”

“Huh?! Y-you really think they’ll be angry at me? Um… Eh, whatever. It’s not an adventure without a little danger, as they always say!”

She was acting like a child willing to do anything to avoid doing their homework. But that was the path she’d decided to take, and I suppose it was my job to watch over her. She may’ve been conflicted over it, but she elected to goof off anyway.

“But dragons, huh? Sure, you can tame ’em. I can do it for ya, if you want!”

Now her mind was entirely on our project, talking about taming dragons like it was catching butterflies with a net. I couldn’t ask for anything better.

“You’ll do that for me? So what types of dragons are there? Will they be anything like Veldora, or…?”

Hey, if she’s offering, then I’m happy to take her up on it. I kept my questions pretty casual as a result, but Milim and Veldora were quick to respond almost in unison.

“Um, Rimuru, those are two completely different things.”

“Very different,” Veldora intoned. “I will not allow you to bunch me in with those lizards the way Luminus does!”

They both had strong objections that then segued into an equally intense explanation of the nitty-gritty of dragonkind.

“The draconic species of this world is nothing more than monsters created from broken-down elements in the body of Veldanava—my elder brother, the Star-King Dragon, and the most powerful of our kind,” Veldora began.

Basically, the difference between regular dragons and Veldora’s kind involved the difference between a material life-form and a spiritual one. Regular dragons, as monsters, have a physical presence in the world. They were called dragons since they resembled the ones of myth and legend, but in essence, they were closer to dinosaurs—big, mean lizards.

There were only four True Dragons in the history of the world, three of which currently existed. The Star-King Dragon Veldanava—Veldora’s older brother and Milim’s father—perished following certain unspecified events, and he hadn’t shown any signs of reviving ever since. Dragons had eternal life, so something really serious must’ve gone down with that guy…but that was outside the scope of this conversation.

Veldanava was the origin of the monsters known as dragons—or to be exact, the Spirit Dragon that he gave Milim as a pet. With what I heard from Elen before, I suppose this Spirit Dragon died and subsequently became a Chaos Dragon, and then the essence of its body spread far and wide. The remnants of this essence were still birthing Lesser Dragons to this day in areas with high magicule concentrations; if you had enough bits from the Spirit Dragon to work with, they could even create Arch Dragons.

The most powerful among these Arch Dragons were called Dragon Lords, which came in four types depending on the element it was affiliated with. These Dragon Lords, who boasted human-level wisdom, had spent several centuries as Arch Dragons before making the evolution, and with their strength, they could tap into some of the powers of the original Spirit Dragon. With their extended life spans, Dragon Lords were a step closer to spiritual life-forms, although they couldn’t resurrect themselves from death the way Veldora and his ilk could.

The Sky Dragon I defeated a while back was one of these Arch Dragons, classified as a Calamity-level threat. A Dragon Lord would be even stronger than that, maybe up to a demon lord’s powers—about as strong as Clayman or a high-level spirit. That level of magicule energy should be more than enough to wrangle the floor effects I wanted for this labyrinth of mine.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Milim interjected. “I may be incredible, but not even I can tame a Dragon Lord!”

Getting an intelligent being like a Dragon Lord to cooperate with us would be pretty fruitless, now that she mentioned it. Maybe we could get one to agree to the job if we asked them nicely, but it wasn’t that worth it to try, I thought.

“Guess not, huh? So what’d you mean when you said you could catch one?”

“Well, there are some Arch Dragons with elemental attributes to ’em, even if they aren’t quite Dragon Lords. If we catch some and let them run free in this dungeon, they’ll eat up the magicules and change the landscape around them, I think.”

I see. Dragons were in the habit of creating nests for themselves, so wherever they decided to set up shop, they’d transform the local environment for us. We had tons of magicules for them to chow down on, so no issues there. Let’s go with Milim’s offer.

“All right. Can you do that for me?”

“You got it! I’ll grab you one from each type, right on the cusp of becoming a Dragon Lord.”

As she explained, dragons derived from that original Spirit Dragon came in just four types. At the top of the pyramid, you had your earth, water, fire, and wind Dragon Lords, with the element-infused dragons below them. They also came in four types, known as Earth Dragons, Frost Dragons, Fire Dragons, and Wind Dragons, respectively. The Sky Dragon I tangled with was a rarer case, a would-be evolution into a Wind Dragon that missed the mark for some reason. There was no sky type to these guys, unlike with elemental spirits, although there were other variations and special types—little things that occasionally made the resulting dragon unique, kind of like with humans.

This sounded like the perfect engine for giving our labyrinth some nature-based spice. Let’s put those dragons in the deeper floors once Milim picks them up. These element-infused dragons, by the way, were stronger than offshoots like the Sky Dragon, maybe a Special A in terms of ranking—not a match for Charybdis, but still packing a big punch. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I supposed one of those rarer offshoots would be a good, even match for six paladins. Upgrade that to an element-infused one, and you’d need a whole Crusader platoon to stand a chance, apparently… But hey, this is my dungeon, and I get to decide what goes in there.

With spirits, the five elemental attributes work like this: Earth is strong against sky, sky against wind, wind against water, water against fire, and fire against earth. This, however, didn’t apply to dragons. Battle experience was more important than elemental attributes—in essence, older dragons were stronger than younger ones.

As a result, I decided to order the elemental floors like so:

Floor 99: Fiery Hellscape

The final challenge, encased in raging flames. Fire-resistant equipment is a must. What could be waiting beyond…?!

Floor 98: Icy Grave

Keep moving or die instantly. Will your cold-resistant equipment be able to save you from this?

Floor 97: Electric Skies

Lightning rains down from above. Only luck can decide whether you’ll survive or get singed!

Floor 96: Raging Earth

A punishing quake sorely tests anyone who makes it this far down. Behold the blind rage of the dragon!

These four element-themed floors would serve as the last challenge before the final boss, Veldora himself. It was perfect. I saw absolutely no way anyone could beat it.

“Not bad, Rimuru!”

“Heh-heh-heh… Placing those half-breeds ahead of me, eh? I imagine you’re trying to put adventurers off their guard with those also-rans before encountering my full might!”

“Aw, why does Veldora get the coolest part? You oughtta put me in as that final boss thing from time to time!”

All three seemed to like the concept. Good to see—but we still needed to get those dragons worked out for it. Flattering Milim ought to ensure she’ll get the job done.

“You’ve already got a vital role in this, Milim. If it wasn’t for you, this final set of traps never would’ve existed.”

“!”

“He’s right, Milim!” exclaimed Ramiris, probably picking up on my intention. “I really hope you can get some strong, mean-looking dragons for us!”

“No problem, guys!”

She looked motivated enough. That was good. If I had the dragons, I had the traps I wanted—and the way Milim described it, the dragons would do all the interior decoration work for me.

Not long after, Milim set off to capture the dragons, the latest members of Ramiris’s rapidly expanding band of underlings.

A few days after Milim’s sudden visit, I had the traps set up across all the floors. The only thing left to do was wait for Milim to come back with those dragons.

“Man. Beretta and Treyni, you guys did a hell of a job.”

“Oh, no,” Beretta said, taking a step back and being modest as usual. “This is all for you and Lady Ramiris.”

“Exactly,” said a beaming Treyni. “It is a joy to work for the sake of my master.”

Ramiris herself was sitting on Treyni’s shoulder, and Treyni looked ready to carry out nearly any order she gave her.

That wrapped up the bulk of the work—

“By the way, Sir Rimuru, I still have these with me…”

—but then Beretta took out a Unique-class weapon and armor set.

“Those?”

“I received them from a golem in the service of Clayman. I was unable to give them to you earlier, but I thought, perhaps, they would make good loot for a treasure chest or two…”

Oh, right. Clayman’s greatest masterpiece, or whatever it was? Viola, I think was the name. Beretta stripped all the weapons from it, and he meant to present them to me, but I turned them down. He wanted to pay me off with that stuff so they could move here, after all, and I wasn’t up for that.

“Weren’t you going to offer that stuff to Ramiris?”

“Ha-ha!” Ramiris said, butting in. “There’s no way I could use it right, and I don’t really care about it anyway. I think it’s a pretty fancy piece of weaponry, but that’s about it—not much else you can do with it. So I talked to Beretta to see if we could make better use of it!”

“Are you sure about this? Because it’d be worth a lot if you sold it.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine! All part of my job! And I’m gonna make a ton of money before long, so why quibble over the little stuff? Besides, we finally have somewhere to live!”

So the weapon and armor were mine—and thus, I decided to put them to work for me.

It was time to put the treasure chests in place and see how the labyrinth was shaping up.

From Floor 1 on down, we checked our work. That topmost floor was kind of a demo of things to come. I made it so even beginners could proceed without too much hassle; the chamber and its hallways were broad, wide, and hard to get lost in.

Still, eight hundred feet to a side was big. I worried that people would spend all afternoon mapping out every nook and cranny, only to be rewarded with nothing. That might cause people to start dissing the maze, but with all the weak monsters prowling around, I figured there’d be enough excitement for everyone—the magic crystals and other useful stuff they dropped would make it worth novice adventurers’ time.

I intended to buy this loot from those adventurers. There wasn’t a Free Guild post in Tempest, so the nearest one would be Blumund’s. Going all the way there could be a tall order for some people, so I thought we could function as a pseudo-Guild, accepting their loot for discount prices and pocketing the difference to cover expenses. Or could I talk with Yuuki about building an official Guild post here? Maybe, but until that came up, we’d kind of function as them with this labyrinth.

This was the basic scheme of things up to Floor 5; the mazes gradually got trickier, but otherwise, no difference. Floor 6, though, is where things got tough. The traps would make their debut here, although nothing truly vicious up to Floor 9, so nobody would die from them (probably). A seasoned adventurer would cruise past them. If I made things too hard too fast, it’d discourage repeat traffic, and that was out of the question. I wanted to be kind with the first nine floors’ design.

That all changed with Floor 10. Here, I placed a single monster who was, shall we say, kind of strong. In other words, this was a boss room. Defeat it, and a door would open to the floors below.

“What kind of monster did you go with, Rimuru?” asked Ramiris.

“I’ll decide on that once I see how these guys are spawning, but… We haven’t seen any so far, have we?”

No, we had yet to encounter a single monster, all the way down to Floor 10. Veldora released his aura a week and a half ago, but it still hadn’t resulted in any baddies.

Understood. Even with his aura hidden, monsters can still detect the presence of the subject Veldora. Few would want to approach him.

Oh. I see.

“I guess monsters born from the magicules you released can pick up on his presence. They’re too scared to go near him.”

“What?! So that’s why!” said Veldora, convinced. “No wonder I never saw many in my presence inside the cave I was sealed in.”

I think it’s more like the weaker monsters literally couldn’t take the heat from him. But regardless:

“Well, I’ll figure something out. One way or another, I want just a kinda strong monster in here, ranked B or thereabouts.”

“Hmm… All right,” said Ramiris. “I don’t want any unintelligent beings among my lackeys, but if you find the right monster, bring it in here and put this collar on it!”

I accepted the collar, which apparently let the wearer be resurrected even if they hadn’t forged a formal pact with Ramiris. That helped a lot. It meant I didn’t have to find a replacement every time someone killed the guy.

“Wow, convenient. That’ll save us a lot of trouble.”

“Right? Remember, in this labyrinth, what I say goes!”

It probably did, too. Her skill let her change the effects of pretty much any item in here. I realized once again how much of a pity it was that I couldn’t learn it for myself.

That took care of the boss issue. The boss room formed the entirety of Floor 10, making it perfectly safe after the battle was over. Beyond the room lay a save point and a simple stairway down. And let’s not forget about the treasure chest! The one in the boss room had no trap installed, but I did carefully adjust the rates at which you’d find certain weapons or armor inside. In subsequent floors, however, there’d be both hidden chambers and chest traps.

Mimics would debut in Floor 20 and below—pretty diabolical, but that’s the thrill of a labyrinth like this. Being able to experience something like this in real life was something I thought I deserved praise for.

But it wasn’t all threatening stuff. With abundant magicules all over the labyrinth, the swords and lances found inside could start to get a bit magical themselves. Getting your hands on stuff like that was worth risking your neck a little, I thought. With a Resurrection Bracelet, nobody was going to die, so I figured revving up the difficulty would make it more fun and exciting. I couldn’t wait to see how the adventurers would react to all this.

Finally, we wrapped up our inspection of the first ten floors. “Well, now what? Should we set up someplace on this floor where you can sell the stuff you found or put it in storage for safekeeping?”

“Oh? Do we really need that? Because then we wouldn’t be able to sell any return whistles.”

Ah. Right. Ramiris actually had a great point. She was always sharp with issues related to money, I guess.

“True. Not much point putting ones up in floors with save points. How about safe zones starting in the middle dungeons, say one every five levels?”

“Oooh, that could work!”

We could offer storage for items found, sell healing potions at marked-up prices, and offer some simple fare to eat. The labyrinth could have doors at regular levels that connected to a single zone, so we wouldn’t need to construct separate zones all across the maze. It wouldn’t be that much work to implement. Would more people opt to go outside when they needed a break, though? It’d depend, I suppose. Return whistles were meant as insurance, after all, so maybe we could price them on the higher side. I decided to reconsider that once this labyrinth made its debut.

As we chatted about this or that labyrinth-related issue, we continued to inspect each floor—and as we checked out all the little details, the labyrinth slowly approached completion.

Finally, we were done with the hundredth floor, generally satisfied with ourselves. To be frank, the complete labyrinth ventured far beyond mere viciousness.

…Based on the skills of the average adventurer, low-level monsters and a labyrinth would provide enough of a difficulty level. Adding crafty traps and a legion of upper-level monsters, the term vicious seems rather tepid a description.

Sorry? I didn’t hear that. Raphael sounded a bit exasperated with me, but I’m sure, of course, that I was just imagining it.

I’d learn not much later that I definitely wasn’t imagining it. Between working out monster placement and boss setups, I suddenly realized that the labyrinth was now full of monsters. Tons of them.

“Wh-what in the…?!”

Well, too late now. This difficulty-balancing work wound up biting me in the ass, which I suppose I deserved. But no worries. It’s important to leave little mistakes like this behind you.

There was still plenty left to do, but I decided to leave the rest to Veldora and Ramiris, who were now even further motivated. Milim was kind enough to fetch those dragons she offered to bring in, and we released them on the appropriate floors, adjusting the atmospheric magicule count as needed. The dragons helped cull the excessive numbers of monsters being generated, too. We still only had our bosses worked out down to Floor 30, but that would do for now.

The coliseum up top was still under construction, but the framework was getting completed at speeds I couldn’t believe. It should be done in time for the Founder’s Festival, once the snow thawed. The labyrinth below, meanwhile, was turning into a more splendid attraction than I had guessed. You needed to buy a Resurrection Bracelet to enter, but once you got one, I was sure you’d be addicted. Hopefully it would remain one of our city’s main draws as long as I hoped.

There were still a lot of ideas left to implement, but for now, this was fine. I flashed an evil grin at the others, sharing a nod with them. We had our labyrinth all prepped and ready.

Before long, our town started to see some new faces. The snow was melting away, and once it did, we began to see visitors from all over traveling to the Forest of Jura.

The Founder’s Festival was near.