Who Designed This Underworld Dungeon?

The types of Available Monsters in the Dungeon are determined by the City Lord's knowledge.

But Gong Qiying didn't expect that even monsters from fantasy works on Earth could be recreated.

A rough glance revealed familiar works—Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, Monster Hunter, Ancient Scrolls, Final Fantasy... and even the uniquely styled Plants vs. Zombies and Pokemon!

Not just games, anime works like Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, Akame ga Kill!, Jujutsu Kaisen, One Punch Man, and others were also present!

"This is a cheat only available to me as a transmigrator,"

After the initial excitement, Gong Qiying carefully checked and found that each fantasy work's monsters were only unlocked in a few types, with the rest shown as greyed out and unlocked, with unlock conditions even noted.

[Hero Guda Unlock Conditions: Level 3 City Lord Authority]

[Heaven and Earth Shining Dragon Unlock Conditions: Level 5 City Lord Authority]

[Arceus Unlock Conditions: ???]

Gong Qiying checked and found that to upgrade to Level 3 City Lord Authority, the required spiritual power soared to 50,000, for Level 4 it needed 500,000, and Level 5 simply showed a string of question marks.

A long and arduous journey lies ahead.

Upon delving deeper, he felt somewhat depressed to realize that many monsters overlapped in positioning and were thus redundant.

For example, the goblins native to this world and the Bokoblins from Zelda were almost identical in positioning, both being dim-witted foot soldiers, with specific data shown as follows:

[Goblin]

[Spiritual Power Required per Unit: 1]

[Life: F, Strength: E, Intelligence: F, Endurance: E+, Speed: F, Overall Combat Ability: F]

[The average data for a normal adult human in all aspects is E]

[Bokoblin]

[Spiritual Power Required per Unit: 3]

[Life: F, Strength: E+, Intelligence: G, Endurance: F, Speed: F, Overall Combat Ability: F]

With similar overall combat capability, the monsters from fantasy works often require much more spiritual power than native Monsters, sometimes more than double!

"The cost-effectiveness is lacking,"

Realizing the higher cost of monsters from fantasy works, Gong Qiying's excitement was greatly diminished.

"I am still in the initial accumulation phase. I have to be very careful with every point of spiritual power. Except for special circumstances, the Dungeon's monsters should mainly be native monsters."

[Available Building] also had a new batch updated, and without a doubt, it also brought forth buildings from fantasy works. Gong Qiying immediately spotted his favorite, Fran Fort and Sick Village.

Taking another look at the cost... he suddenly wasn't so fond of them.

Additionally, he could use items from fantasy works as rewards from Sain Dungeon, but the required spiritual power still made it hard to bear.

Perhaps when spiritual power is more abundant, adventurers could find a cancelable Straight Sword, a red-and-white Elf Ball, or Johnny Silver Hand's arm in Sain Dungeon.

"End of the brainstorm,"

Gong Qiying refocused his attention on the Crystal Ball in front of him, with a notebook beside it, noting down areas requiring improvement in real-time.

Time ticked away, and as moonlight fell upon the land, there were only two hours left until the Dungeon's closure.

After two hours, the Dungeon entrance will close, allowing exit but not entry, and adventurers left behind will be forced teleported out after half an hour.

Midnight to three in the morning, this is the rest period granted to the dungeon by the heavens.

"Nearly three hundred people died,"

The number took him by surprise, but then he thought that this was also the effect of "First-time Kill."

In a few days, when the word spreads about the anomalies in the Sain Dungeon and the difficulty spike, he estimated that the influx of people would wane, much like how online games always have the highest player traffic at launch.

What Gong Qiying needed to consider was how to retain the adventurers.

Piling on the difficulties could boost spiritual power substantially in the short term, but what he wanted was sustainable development, a steady trickle.

"We need to consider increasing the rewards,"

Gong Qiying pondered for a while, then sighed.

"But with insufficient spiritual power, just repairing the damaged buildings and traps, replenishing the dead Monsters, and fixing vulnerabilities, not to mention revising the map routes—increasing the rewards could be..."

"No, we must prioritize collecting spiritual power in the short term,"

An unfortunate reality was that even though he identified the problem, it could not be changed quickly.

"If only thousands of people would come here to die,"

As he looked at the Crystal Ball again, his eyebrows raised suddenly, as if he saw something astonishing.

"Can't be! Has someone really almost made it through?"

The Crystal Ball showed an Elf girl with pointy ears, who was pulling her longbow and shot an arrow through the Minotaur's head, officially entering the lower tier mines of the Dungeon!

She was the first to arrive unscathed—at least she appeared unscathed—on the lower levels of the adventurers, aside from her, those who made it down were all triggered by teleportation traps.

"She's strong, but," Gong Qiying fixed his gaze on the miniature model of the Dungeon, "you can't be allowed to clear it."

The reason for that was because the final boss was himself!

As the Dungeon City Lord, Gong Qiying/Gedwin bore the responsibility of being the final boss and facing challenges!

Should he die, a substantial amount of spiritual power would be consumed for resurrection, requiring at least a thousand; if there was not enough spiritual power, he would die for good, and have to hand over the position of the City Lord!

That weakling Gedwin, why was he still the City Lord? Someone should have taken him down by now.

Because he hid the City Lord's room extremely well!

One would need to go through eighteen consecutive teleportation mechanisms to get there, as well as several unrelated puzzles; in fact, no one has ever found him. He had created a fake final boss to take on challengers.

According to memory, all Dungeon Lords did this.

As for Gong Qiying... to save on expenses, he reduced the number of teleportation mechanisms to just two, and the fake boss was symbolically guarded by a few skeleton monsters and Blood Mosquitoes, considerably increasing the possibility of being discovered.

He had virtually recreated a Dungeon overnight, a workload that was inhumanely large.

Oversights were inevitable.

"I hadn't anticipated the presence of experts among the masses, that was my oversight,"

He pinched the bridge of his nose and began to select from the Available Monsters.

He had to snuff out the Elf girl before she reached his door, but the spent spiritual power couldn't exceed the amount needed for his own resurrection if killed; otherwise, it would be a loss.

When he saw a particular figure among the Available Monsters, he suddenly chuckled.

"It's decided, it's going to be you. Get going, Molten Professor!"

[Molten Furnace Knight (axe-shaped helmet)]

[Spiritual power required per unit: 800]

[Health: C, Strength: C+, Intelligence: C, Endurance: C, Speed: C, Overall Combat Power: C]