Hmm. Is it morning? It’s unusual that I wake on my own. Usually Laura is here to wake me up.
I get out of bed and walk up to a window. It’s still dark outside, so perhaps I woke up too early. Well, I feel rested enough so perhaps I slept enough.
(Laura? Where are you?) I called on her as she hadn’t said anything yet.
(Oh. Good morning, Master. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that I can’t hear your thoughts while I manifest myself in the Different Dimension Factory.) Laura said.
(Aah. I see. So you were there.) I realized why Laura wasn’t here to wake me up.
(It is still a bit early. You can head back to bed if you’d like.) Laura said.
(... no. It’s fine. I already woke up and I feel well rested.) I said back.
(Then would you come to the Different Dimension Factory? I’d like to show you some of the things I did during the night.) Laura said.
(Yeah. I’ll come over.) I said as I headed back to bed.
But you said you weren’t tired. I know what I said, but I need to be in a comfortable position to use Different Dimension Factory.
“Good morning, Dear.” I heard Laura say as soon as I materialized in my skill. Is that the right word? Or would it be realized? I think Laura used the word realize yesterday.
“Good morning.” I said back, as I gave her a good morning hug. It felt good to be called dear again. I don’t mind being called Master, but it does feel a bit like we are roleplaying.
I let Laura go and turned slightly to the right.
… what? What is that?
The ‘hallway’ of my factory was filled with monsters of different kinds. The first rows were taken by warriors, spellcasters and other humanoid monsters, but the further you went, the more varied the species became. There had to be at least a hundred monsters here in total. At the front row were some familiar faces, like Dark Paladin, Dark Magician, Dark Sage, Black Luster Soldier, St. Joan, Vampire Lord and others that I had put either a toploader or a sleeve on.
“GOOD MORNING, MASTER!” They all said in unison.
…
I don’t know how to react to this.
“... G… Good morning, everyone.” I said back to them.
“How long did you practice that?” I asked Laura.
“I apologize, but I don’t know. I knew they planned it, but the preparations for it were taken care of by Dark Paladin and Black Luster Soldier.” Laura said.
“Okay… I think it is excessive, but I’ll accept it.” I answered, before even realizing what had really happened. “Actually, wait a second. How are so many monsters here? At the same time?”
“Oh, that. They are because they can be.” Laura answered. “After you fell asleep, I began summoning some monsters here as a test. But then the monsters began summoning themselves here, with no input from me. I believe when I linked the skills, the collection became very close to this space and all of the monsters from there could come here whenever they felt like it. They can be ordered here with a summoning, but they can also just roam free.” Laura explained. “I can also ban unruly monsters, but I haven’t had to do that yet.”
“And what about the time limit?” I asked.
“They don’t seem to have one here.” Laura said. “Their bodies here aren’t exactly physical. They look and seem like they are, but just like you and I, they are just avatars sent by the monsters.”
“... Okay. Well, if they like it then I suppose this is good.”
As the morning greeting was over, the monsters broke away from the formation and entered different rooms in the factory. It felt somewhat like a busy train station or perhaps an airport.
I also made sure to take Dark Paladin and Black Luster Soldier to the side and told them, while I did appreciate the gesture, it would not be necessary in the future. I also asked them to be in charge of keeping the monsters in check. Breaking up major fights and so on. They were the strongest monsters I could talk to after all, so having them take care of things like that would be optimal. I just hope they can take care of problems on the level of Master of Oz. Well, they probably can if they get some help from the other humanoid monsters.
Laura then showed me the different rooms of the factory. There were forested rooms, rooms with grasslands, a room that had a colosseum (I kind of want to go take a closer look at that), a room that was just darkness. One room was filled with ocean water and I wondered how did the open door keep the water in. Also, the mermaids there wanted to take me for a swim, but I refused as I don’t have unlimited amounts of time at the moment. And I can’t breathe under water.
Anyway, as we kept going, we eventually found some rooms that were still empty, but over half of the rooms were still taken by different things.
Finally, we arrived at the big garage door at the end. As we approached the door, the door automatically opened. I wonder if Laura ordered it, or if it just has some sort of sensor.
What awaited me there were large plains surrounded by mountains. The mountains formed a U-shape around the plains, with the entrance door at the top part of the U. At the center of the plains were 10 tall towers that made a circle around something like a pedestal.
I also looked towards the mountain peaks and saw some dragons flying around. I wonder if there was a fight for what monsters would get what rooms? Or did Laura decide that this room belongs to the dragons?
This is quite amazing, but all of this does raise a question. How many cards did Laura use for all of this? And how did she do it all in one night? I guess I should ask her.
“Laura, how many cards did you use for these rooms?” I asked.
“... please wait a moment.” She answered, seemingly calculating the answer. “Four hundred and seventeen.” She said after a few seconds.
…
…
417? Do I even have that many cards?
“Do I even have that many cards?” I asked.
“Well, I did have to open some new packs. The Legend of Blue-Eyes field spells were especially popular with the monsters, so we ran out of them quite quickly.” Laura answered.
“I thought you couldn’t open packs.” I commented. If I recall correctly, Laura couldn’t open packs or summon monsters, but here, she has done both.
“I can while I am here.” Laura said.
“And where did you get the pack tokens? I should have been out of them.” I said.
“From right there.” She said and pointed at the ten towers ahead of us.
Towers? I wonder how towers make pack tokens. I quickly thought of some of the cards I have and then I remembered a combo of three cards.
No. No. No. You didn’t do it, right. Don’t tell me. Laura. You can’t do that. It’s banned. Well forbidden, but still.
I opened my Pack Opener and took a look.
[Pack Opener] |
[Collection] |
[Sleeve maker] |
[Summoning Challenge] |
[Promo Trade] |
[Instructions] |
[Set lists] |
[Open Packs] |
… Okay, everything is normal. This far. I’m a bit scared of it, but I need to see for myself.
I opened the Open Packs tab.
Daily Pack tokens: 97 |
Current Pack tokens: 714 |
Available packs : |
Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon |
Metal Raiders |
Magic Ruler |
Pharaoh’s Servant |
Labyrinth of Nightmare |
Legacy of Darkness |
Pharaonic Guardian |
Magician’s Force |
Dark Crisis |
Invasion of Chaos |
Ancient Sanctuary |
Soul of the Duelist |
Rise of Destiny |
Flaming Eternity |
Daily Reprint Tokens: 37 |
Current Reprint Tokens: 103 |
Available Reprint sets: |
Dark Beginning 1 |
Dark Revelation Volume 1 |
Dark Beginning 2 |
LAURA! WHAT DID YOU DO!?
As I got closer to the towers, I realized that they aren’t towers, but in fact libraries. Royal Magical Library to be precise. At the middle of the circle was the pedestal and two monsters sat near it. They seemed to be playing some sort of a board game, while about every twenty seconds a dagger would appear in the hand of the redhead. She then passed the dagger to the turquoise haired mermaid and the dagger would instantly vanish. They would then go back to their game.
“Hello, Guardian Elma, Guardian Kay'est. I see that you have been working hard.” I greeted the two Guardians and the suspected accomplices of Laura.
“Hello, Master. Are you here to look at the fruits of our labor?” Guardian Elma greeted.
“Our? I wouldn’t even have to be here, but you said it is too boring to do this alone and forced me to sit here with you.” Guardian Kay'est commented.
“And that is why you must be here. It is boring.” Elma said as another dagger generated in her hand. “Catch.” She tossed the dagger over to Kay’est and the dagger disappeared.
A few seconds after that, a light shot out from each of the ten towers. The lights gathered at the pedestal in the middle, each causing a system screen to pop up. Each screen said the same thing:
The effect of ‘Royal Magical Library’ activated. Gained 1 ‘pack token’. |
“Yeah. I see you two have been working hard. In fact, why don’t you take a break for now. You can keep going later, but I have enough pack tokens for now.” I said to the two guardians.
“Thank you, Master. Lady Laura was pushing us to keep going, even though we said we had been doing it for over seven hours.” Elma complained a bit, but as Laura took an authoritative glance at her, she shut right up.
Elma then grabbed Guardian Kay'est into her arms before walking into the main hub area with her. I guess we don’t really accommodate monsters like mermaids that can’t move that well outside of water. Need to work on that at some point.
“Now then. Do you want to explain this little operation?” I asked Laura.
“It is quite simple really.” Laura answered. “I summoned the Royal Magical Library. It has an effect to gain a Spell Counters each time a spell card is activated close by. Then I activated Rod of Silence - Kay'est and held it in my hand. Then I used Butterfly Dagger - Elma, but as I was holding the Rod of Silence - Kay'est, Butterfly Dagger - Elma was immediately destroyed. But because of its effect, it came back into the collection after about 15 seconds. Then I just took it out again and activated it again. Every three activations, Royal Magical Library would have maximum counters and I could get a pack token from it.”
“Then I just tried how many Royal Magical Libraries can gain a token from one spell card activation and the limit seemed to be ten, so I made them into this circular formation. I then learned that monsters can activate their own unique spell cards and I got Guardian Elma to take my place activating Butterfly Dagger - Elma. And as she quickly got bored of doing it alone, she forced Guardian Kay'est into sitting here with her.” Laura explained.
“... yeah. I knew that part. I know how the combo works. I knew it probably could be done, I just didn’t want to do it. My question is, why did you do it?” I asked Laura in a cold voice.
“M … Master? Did I do something I shouldn’t have done?” Laura carefully asked.
“... no. You really didn’t. I just didn’t want to do this.” I said.
“Getting more pack tokens? But Master always does it. Isn’t that why we were using cards like Lighten the Load?” Laura asked.
“Well yes, but also no. There is a certain beauty in managing the cards I get and using them to the maximum efficiency. But this isn’t it. This is just breaking the system and calling it your bitch. And I don’t want to do that.” I said.
“... then should I take it down?” Laura asked.
“No. Let it be. It doesn’t matter any more.” I said. “When something is already broken to this point, there is no reason to fix it. Just make sure you don’t keep Elma and Kay’est here for too long per day.”
I mean, even if I take this operation down, it won’t change the fact that I have 97 daily pack tokens and 37 daily reprint tokens.
I escaped from the Different Dimension Factory because I didn’t want to look at the mass production facility of pack tokens any longer. I guess I did use Dark Factory of Mass Production for it, but I didn’t expect that. I just laid in bed until a maid came to wake me up. Well, I was already awake, but she would have woken me up if I wasn’t.
Laura did say to me that I should at least activate my Upstart Goblins, as that can’t be done in the Different Dimension Factory. Well it could be done, but I couldn’t get the money from it if it was.
But of course because of said factory, I now had 14 copies of Upstart Goblin. And they were all in toploaders. I guess the good news about having unlimited pack tokens is having unlimited sleeves and toploaders. From the 14 Upstarts, I got a total of 28 gold coins, 22 large silver coins and 20 silver coins.
I also had a bit of time, so I took out the notebook and pen that Christina paid for. I wrote a simple summary of most things that happened on our way here and in the days after we got here. I didn’t include anything about the Tye incident, as I don’t want her having bad blood towards Saber Fang if that team ever dives into my dungeon. Having the dungeon master hate you probably isn’t a good thing. I also added in a bit about the rising monster and miasma levels in the dungeon, asking if I should come over and clear out some monsters. It all depends on when adventurers start going into there. Diamond Sword should be able to deal with anything in the dungeon, except anomalies like the lava golem and the sword-horn bull.
When my message to Christina was ready, I shoved the entire notebook through the exchange slot on my founder’s terminal. I also added in 2 more copies of Amazoness Tiger that I had (in toploaders, of course), 2 Amazoness Swordswomen, as well as 13 toploaders, that she could put on the sleeved cards she has. Now that I have basically as many toploaders as I need, no reason to not use them. (Yes, I added an instruction on how to use them.)
“Good morning, Brian.” Alice said to me as we met in the hallway. I had gotten dressed up and was on my way to the dining room for breakfast.
“Good morning.” I said back.
“Is something wrong?” Alice immediately asked, probably hearing that my voice didn’t quite have the usual energy. “Did something bad happen with the thing we did last night?”
Thing? Last night? Oh yeah. She is referring to the install. Word choice my girl.
“You could say that.” I answered.
“Was it useless?” Alice asked.
“No!” I instantly said. “No, it really isn’t. The problem is kind of the opposite. It is too good.”
“Too good? How can a skill be too good?” Alice asked.
“I’ll show you. One day.” I said. I don’t even know if I can bring her into my skill, but it should be possible.
After breakfast, I was saying temporary goodbyes to everyone. I didn’t forget that I promised to go to a dhampir village with Lua today. And as I didn’t know how many days our job there would take, I was saying temporary goodbyes.
I also gave Alice a few cards. Now that I had no shortage of packs and Laura could open them for me, I could go a bit overboard. I gave her 4 copies of Level Up!, all in toploaders. (They are the ones I used on the two of us last evening, so they are at the moment unusable, but they will be usable in the evening.) I did say she could only use two on herself and the other two were to be used on Paulina, if Paulina wanted.
I also set a bunch of traps on her. Draining Shield and Mirror Force to protect her from incoming spells. Mirror Force would only activate if Draining Shield had already been used. Btw, Laura had gotten 1 copy of Mirror Force during the night.
I also added Threatening Roar and Sakuretsu Armor with the conditions that they activate if attacked with the intent to harm or kill. And like with mine, Sakuretsu Armor would only activate it Threatening Roar had already activated. The one that I didn’t have on myself was Dust Tornado. I added it with a condition that it will destroy any binding spell that might be used on Alice. I was going to add Nutrient Z as well, but I couldn’t set any more than 5 cards onto a single person. So I guess that is up to 5 installs and 5 set cards for a total of 10.
“Take care of yourself and if you go hunting, make sure to take Paulina with you.” I said to Alice before I left.
“Yes. You as well. I know you are used to Lucia, but most dhampirs can’t control themselves, so you’d better be careful.” Alice reminded me.
“Yes. I will. Thank you. See you later.” I said to Alice. “And Paulina, please make sure Alice doesn’t overdose on Level Ups while I’m away.”
“I will. Come back soon.” Paulina said.
I walked out of the house and summoned Overdrive.
(Laura, I hope you are here because I need my GPS.) I said to Laura, just in case she was still in the Different Dimension Factory.
(Yes. I’m here for you, Dear.) Laura responded.
… It feels different hearing it from her lips versus hearing it in my head.
Son of a...gun...the power creep is real her...You know, with all these packs and stuff, there is no reason to not make other "banned" combos, I don't have knowledge of which ones exist, but wants to stop him from blowing his own stats to a "godly" level, become "one punch" himself...I have conflicting feelings about this overall honestly...>_<
And with this, there should be no reason he could make a "scouting" party of monsters to find things, AKA un-founded/developing dungeons, since thoses will upgrade his "system", of heck, scout for "s" rank monsters for a "s rank core" to us on the dungeons, and since it's show the higher the core the better the dungeon, and he can make even larger then normal dungeons with Labyrinth and other cards...I sense a new title on the horizon, something like "Master of Dungeons" or "Immortal Dungeoneer"...cause wasn't there an effect that "founders" would have extended life spans...?
And my questions from last chapter still stand with all this new BS that the MC's and System are pulling...power creep...WTF...
I didn't really want to touch on your question about books, researchers, smiths, etc. because it is something that I will go over at some point in the series. Yes, they can work in the skill and improve their skills, but as it stands at the moment, things made in the skill cannot be taken out. But what can be done is something like having Iron Blacksmith Kotetsu learn how to forge mithril in DDF (they can get mithril into there with the linked Dungeon Founder skill) and then Brian summons him in the real world and he can forge mithril there.
For scouting and things like that, sure Brian can do it, but is limited. Unlike some people believe, Laura cannot see what the monsters see. (I hope I haven't contradicted this in the series.) Her ability to see is limited to the area around Brian. So Brian would have to send out monsters that he can understand and have them come back to tell him about it. With the time limit of 2 hours, that is one hour flying away from where they were summoned and one more to fly back. (If they don't come back there will be negative effects on them.) Then just trade information with them in the factory. But this isn't some God level scouting ability.
And in terms of power creep, yes, he did just power creep a ton of cards. But it doesn't really matter that much. Brian's power was growing stupidly fast to begin with. At the moment between his daily tokens and the tokens he gets from 2 copies of Lighten the Load, he was already up to 30 packs per day. And as the growth of the skill is exponential, it honestly was just a matter of time until Brian would just get too many pack tokens per day. But with DDF I have a reason to not show the pack openings, while also not making Laura seem like she is overstepping her authority.
@nro_8 mmmm, I see I see, so in the future, there is only a reason to show cards that Brain might be excited for, or that Laura draws attention to, which means he needs to complete more questions/level up the "Card" skill to open "newer" packs, which leaves a question of decks and Tins, if they will make an appearance, while decks will always have specific cards, it's a guarantee of specific cards for one, or it's a one time reward with other effects, like a title or maybe a unique skill...and tins, well, a once a month token? 2 weeks? If you wanted to increase the power creep even more, hehehe
Anyways, knowledge seems to greatly improve the monsters in general, so I would view it worth while since he could basically train some of the "blacksmith" monsters to work with higher rank material, which then allow for more costum armor and weapons for himself and non-card teammates, plus if this is about power creep, magic weapons with OP abilities that he can product himself would be a way to increase power in a bunch of different ways, selfishly, monetarily, politically, to name a few.
...but his power is limited almost, sure he can summon a blue-eye and blast enemies to heaven, but it's a single dragon on a 2 hour timer, the work around is to summon multiple blue-eyes in 12 hours, if a combat scenario last that long...and that's a big IF!! That aside, if I was Brian, I would almost find this 2 hour limitation tedious, and would work to address is quickly, si he can have summons out as long as he wants...bleeeh! I guess this is something that would get address later, but this with so much power, the "2-hour" hard cap, and the MC doesn't seem to be doing anything about it yet, or figuring out how to improve it, bugs me some what.
But I'm still enjoying the story, I look forward to more chapters!! ^_^
@Zerburos The entire time limit thing is something I will touch on soon. It just falls into one of those things that I didn't want Brian to learn in a day and on a day-by-day series, doing any sort of fast forward or time skip is difficult. That again leads us back to what I did with Different Dimension Factory. It is my cheat to not having to write in more pack opening chapters.
And of course there is the advantage of Brian being able to just cycle two toploader copies of monsters. (as they have a cooldown equal to summoning time.) But that's exactly it. Brian could already do it. Sure, now he can summon 5 Blue-Eyes, have them for 2 hours and trade them for another set of 5 Blue-Eyes.
“Well yes, but also no. There is a certain beauty in managing the cards I get and using them to the maximum efficiency. But this isn’t it. This is just breaking the system and calling it your bit*h. And I don’t want to do that.” I said.
In a real life scenario, that'd be the most ret*rded decision a dude could ever make, especially when he's already experienced a near death experience.
From a writing standpoint, I get why you did that. It's like writing a fic on Minecraft and having the MC gain access to creative mode. All of the struggles are gone and it's hard to find it engaging unless you turn it into a comedic power fantasy.
Overall, it ain't that bad for the MC to avoid doing exploits as much as possible. If the power creep ever gets too bad you could always take a step back and develop the characters. (Kill Alice , there can only be one best girl and the scales weigh heavily in Lauras favor)
Realistically, he didn't really need more power, so he waited. Had he ran into a situation where he would have needed more copies of Monster Reborn for example, he would have been on the Elma abuse.
Also, I don't need to kill Alice to write her out of the series. Just get her to marry some random prince, because she happened to kill a behemoth.
Well at least Brian has many more resources at his disposal, this isn’t how he wanted things to go but he’ll make the most of it. Can’t wait to see him open those new packs.
the gods are gonna nerf the sh*t out of this in the next patch notes xD
Well, there is a reason Elma is banned. Infinite loops for the win.
So does he have all the Exodia pieces now? That Library combo was originally meant to summon Exodia in matches. I remember having my little 12 yr old butt kicked by a 30 yr old man with that combo in a tournament years ago.
I have not said it in the series yet, but officially he doesn't yet have Left Arm of the Forbidden One so no Exodia yet. (it is going to be mentioned in CH.157)
And now they only need Spell Absorption to have infinite HP and have infinite attack with Magical Magionette.
Almost like there are more than one reason that Butterfly Dagger - Elma was banned. It breaks spell counters.
(Well, that is the reason, but there are multiple cards that can abuse it. Royal Magical Library into Exodia just happened to be the easiest.)
@nro_8 Btw Butterfly Dagger Elma is one of the card that i think can get limited and noone will use it. Dimension shifter will banish it the moment it GY so it can't return to your hand. They can even errata so that it has hard once per turn and becomes useless. Konami just don't care so it stuck in jail now.
Also any though on anime/manga/game exclusive cards as rewards for quest?
Depends on the card. I might add some of them (New Order) if I like them, but I have no idea of all of the anime exclusive archetypes. And I don't mean the ones that are different in the anime vs the card game, but the ones that were never printed.
I went ahead and checked a top 10 anime only archetypes and out of them, most are not that interesting for use. Clear World (it has some cards but others are exclusive), Armatos Legio (used by Lightning in Vrains) and Hydradrive (used by Bohman in Vrains) might be something I'll add at some point.
Ps. I know Hydradrives suck. But I like their visual design.
Meatbun Delivery~
Thank you for the chapter ( ●w●)
Laura turned yugioh into an idle game...
It wont be surprising if brian has an army of blue eyes and a few exodia in a week
I will miss those days when he actually wanted to open card packs. A moment of silence
thanks for the chapter. seeing he has practicaly unlimited (power) cards now, has Laura adquired all the cards from the promo trade or do he has to obtain those himself?
Well technically she can as it is part of Pack Opener which is linked.
@Ruiso You are correct, Laura can do the promo trades. She can use all of pack opener when inside DDF.
@cunes No, not yet. Just not enough packs (and time) for that in one night. Considering that it takes about 15-20 seconds per activation of Butterfly Dagger - Elma, Brian will get ten pack tokens (as there are 10 Royal Magical Libraries) every minute. That is 600 packs per hour and Guardian Elma said they had been doing it for 7 hours. That is 4200 packs, plus the ones Laura got herself before getting the Guardians involved. It just isn't enough to get every card from every set, especially as a lot of the tokens were used on LOB to get more field spells. (and Flaming Eternity to get more Good Goblin Housekeeping for the reprint tokens.)
This will lead to an operation where Laura will collect (at least) 3 toploader copies of every card that Brian has access to, but that isn't a one night operation.
@nro_8 wait is his Pack Opener Skill leveling up? Like Brian, more like Laura but who is counting, opened 4,200+ packs. He can also use level ups to get all his skills pretty high and gain some levels daily to prevent Level fever. Also with this much power unlocking Starter Decks and Structure Decks isn't even broken. Also will he also collect a set of the useless cards?
@Ruiso The skill will level up when it levels up. Technically, Laura is just using the skill as intended.
I will also open the structure decks soon, as they no longer matter. No worries with unrestricted access to Pot of Greed. (They do matter because they have some exclusive cards, but they I don't have to fear them as the pot of greed problem is no more.)
And remember, Brian is a collector. He wants to have all cards, not just useful cards. So three of Everything and more of the good stuff.
@nro_8 then he can start the first card shop. Is the DDF leveling then?
@Ruiso Yes. DDF is gaining skill exp as Brian installs more cards into it and will soon level up to level 2. It basically gains exp whenever either Laura or Brian are actively in it or when they install cards into it to improve it. When DDF levels up, it gains more rooms and its time dilation improves.
@nro_8 that is really nice.