A few days went by, or at least I knew they did by watching a video feed then and when which pointed outside the dungeon. Neither the abstracted dungeon map nor the dungeon floors ever changed in brightness, so they were not reliable indicators. I did have a digital clock on the display - which surprisingly told me days were only 20 hours in this world - but it was set to the wrong time until I could manually fix it.

(Can I synchronise it with something? Then again I doubt there're atomic clocks in this world... and it's probably wrong from being stopped while the Dungeon Core was out of commision.)

Mimissa and Mr. Imp had dutifully placed a bunch of trapholes in my new forest, which saved a lot of DP. Oddly enough when I came to look, I didn't know where any of them were, and-

"Czara, stooop!!!"

I almost fell into a hole - disguised to look like the forest floor - until I managed to just barely throw myself back. I still landed on my butt, but not in said hole.

Mimissa moved over to help me up, concern visible in her eyes. She told me that the holes were filled with highly acidic chocolate, just barely not too strong as to melt the material lining the bottom. Well, I doubted it could be that strong if it couldn't melt through stone or even just earth and roots and whatnot.

Our DP had gone up nicely, in part because we got around DP-fying our loot from the first battle. It roughly went like this.

"These guns are ancient, I doubt we can really use them."

"Oh truly, I assumed they were the newest type. Look? One of them is worth thiiis much."

"Huh, okay that's worrying. In several ways. What about these fur hats? They kinda feel like ushankas, although they're made for people with ears on top of their heads."

"That's fairly high quality wool, Czara. Same as the winter coats, underlining, and the boots. There's also a lot of other stuff; we got maps, writing utensils, all sorts of things to cook with, and a lot I don't even know what's what for."

The Menu helped us figure out what was what. But ultimately we didn't need much, so we kept a rifle with ammo, a compass which Anastelle wanted because it was 'sooo shiny', a fidget toy for Mr. Imp, and a bunch of smaller trinkets not worth turning into DP. These could go into treasure chests. What did Mimissa want? Cuddles and kisses. I was all too happy to provide plenty of both.

So as it went, a few days came by, as did finally the people I expected. More soldiers. A lot more soldiers. I may have underestimated the response...

~~~~~

Our group of four was in the Dungeon Core room. Mimissa and I were sitting in her chest while looking at the map screens and video feeds, now enlarged and projected onto a moveable wall. Anastelle and Mr. Imp had their own seats.

"So how do we go about this? I figured we can bait a response and gain more DP by luring people into the dungeon. I didn't expect a whole 30 people to show up at once, all armed to the teeth!"

The video feed outside promised nothing good. 30 heavily-armed soldiers had come, a mixture of roughly 2 men for every woman, but most of the more obviously decorated ones were the latter. Were women granted more advantages in this land?

"I could burn them all to cinders if you would wish me to do so."

I considered it; something told me that, whether we killed everyone here or not, if no further answer came reporting a success of the troops over the 'forsaken dungeon' - whatever that meant - the country would then stop at nothing to destroy us outright. I really wanted to kill them all, but that hunch kept my urges at bay.

"Grrr, I'd like to give you the go ahead, but it feels like a bad idea."

"Hm, Czara? How about this: we let them in, but send less rats than last time. If they throw their cocktails again..."

"Molotov cocktails."

"Those. If they use fire against the rats, have the rats flee. Only a few have to die to make it convincing. Then lure them into traps so a few of the invaders die."

"And then what would be the next step? Once the invaders are inside, Czara cannot modify the layout or place more traps."

"Guess we have to provide some incentive to let us stay alive."

I opened the Treasure menu. Over the last couple days I'd figured out an interesting tidbit: it was essentially an instant mail-order catalogue, but it was not at all restricted to the things it offered. When I thought of a samovar, a new option popped up to buy one. So as a test I bought two, and they even looked quite different from each other; one was a regular type and fairly unassuming, but the latter - bought with more DP - looked like a priceless antique.

"Alright, let's do this. We'll send out a swarm of rats to provoke a response, but let them flee if they want. Once the invaders enter, the treasure chests I'm setting right now should be found. If the items inside are to their liking, they might leave us alone for at least a while longer. And if not... it's leech time."

~~~~~

The assault went about the way we planned. Although the camp outside was obviously bigger than the mere two tents from before, the rats still advanced. I was genuinely surprised how utterly fearless they were acting. Were dungeon monsters always this drone-like? Oh, rats are actually critters, not even proper monsters per se? Go figure.

The response was immediate. Some of the soldiers went prone and started throwing their fiery bottles. Others were clearly mages since they sent actual [Fireballs] and [Firebolts] at the incoming horde. We lost around 20 ratties, then ordered the rest to disperse in all directions. The moment they left the immediate area around the dungeon they stopped being under our control.

"Mimissa? Why does that one very big rat act differently?"

"That's Sergeant Jerry."

'Sergeant Jerry' was a big rat, and not in the sense that he was fat. He led a group of rats along the edge of the encampment, in a much smarter way than the others which in their drone-like manner mostly picked the shortest paths possible. Who was it to program the A* movement for our rats?

In any case, the soldiers didn't bother hunting mere rats. Instead a battleworn woman stepped up, her face hard to see under her head and mask, but she had an almost stereotypical scar under her eye.

(At least it's not across the eye.)

Due to one other rat hiding nearby we could hear her commanding a squad of five to scout ahead.

"Here they come!"

The scouts went inside, careful with pistols drawn and ready. Yeah, those were professional soldiers, not the sort of useless trash guards you find in RPGs. I assumed the ones who formerly accompanied me would be the exception rather than the rule, but clearly not. Though their equipment did look a little bit more basic. Hmmm.

In any case, we held our monsters back. I did want to see if the Bulk Detonator was more than just a scary name - as anyone who played Space Dwarfs Mining would understand - but once again decided that it would be overkill. If real I'd rather leave the nukes for when we needed them.

"Entrance sector clear. Map checks out. Send next group."

Riiight. I didn't change Floor 1, and of course they would have detailed maps of the dungeon they were told to invade. I mean we found some maps among the former group's possessions, too.

Slowly the invaders entered squad by squad. One squad of 5 stayed outside to protect the tents, which meant a total of 25 invaders were slowly spreading across and conquering Floor 1.

"Treasure chest found."

The oddly neutral statement confused me, but I guess it made sense since they weren't adventurers or mercenaries or whatever; they didn't care for riches. A female soldier dressed in thicker clothes went to the chest and examined it with a strange tool that kinda resembled a big magnifying glass. It glowed for a moment.

"Safe. Opening!"

The chest was flipped open, and inside was...

"Playing cards? This doesn't match the documents."

This sort of scene repeated, with the soldiers finding more decks of cards, a total of 3 samovars, and one pink winter coat.

"I will ask the commander if I may have this one for my little sister Sasha."

(How sweet, ha ha ha.)

In any case, the soldiers were getting suspicious that we held our monsters back. As for the traps? Yeah, all useless. It turned out these tools they had let them know where the traps were and what type they would be. I could only hope those were in limited supply, because that was just downright cheating!

"I'll send the bats out, Czara! Red batties, gooo!"

I smiled as Mimissa imitated my commanding posture.

Thanks to the bats we could hear the sudden confusion. Red Bats are vampiric in nature, so the first swarm of 28 surprised the squad of five soldiers who had finally let their guard down.

"WHAT? BATS!? Shoot them down!"

The squad leader and two others went prone and fired their rifles. 6 Red Bats died, the other 22 managed to swoop in. If you think death by rat bites is awful, it bears repeating these bats are bloodsuckers; once they bite down they won't let go. Five quickly-exsanguinated corpses fell to the ground. I immediately collected them and all the spilled blood.

"Good work with the bats, Mimissa." I patted her head. "But remember, we can't kill too many right now. Anastelle, you've been oddly quiet?"

"I believe you are too nice to these invaders entering our home without permission, that is my honest opinion."

I gulped, but I would otherwise agree, so I just nodded.

"As I said before, this is for the sake of distraction. Later we can- oh?"

A squad had made their way to the staircase leading to Floor 2, and went down to take position. The snow in their bags immediately started melting, so they emptied those out. They would probably fill them with sand later.

"Floor 2 entered. No resistance encountered. Terrain features match records."

Floor 2 was not nearly as big as Floor 1, seeing how it was clearly a 'nice' floor. I still had the 3 Goblins from Floor 1 lay in ambush. Why were there only 3? I genuinely had no idea. If you think of Goblins, it should be at least 50, right?

"Goblins ahead, open fire!"

...And several shots later, the admittedly-badly-hiding goblins were already dead and done for. Well shit.

Floor 1 still had 3 squads, i.e. 15 people total, in various strategically-advantageous positions. They couldn't cover each other, but they were still quite smartly spaced about.

"Now we do have a problem... If they stay on both floors, can I still make things?"

Traps and Treasures were nominally features of the dungeon itself and thus - like Floors - could not be placed or changed if invaders were on the respective Floor. I could make them in the core room though. As for monsters...

"Anastelle, I can see you're bored. Feel free to pick off one squad on Floor 1, then please pretend to be hurt and retreat. I have an idea."

Once again she licked her lips.

"I will head out to alleviate my boredom."

And she was gone. Why she didn't wait for me to place her myself to save on mana, I could not figure out.