Dungeon of Pride, Laplace

The result of his Analysis showed him the race, level and skills of the being.

"It looks like it jumped quite a few levels, though its rank is still [D]. What happened to the others?" Simon observed the Fire demonic Ape and asked.

"Reporting to Lord Simon, out of the five demon ape, only this one survived the mutation, about the rest… uh, it ate all of them" the one to report was Maya, who had a dreadful expression in her eyes whenever she glanced at the monster down below.

When Simon heard what it did, he frowned and glanced at the last two skills that the being had, [Cannibalism] and [Taboo]. There was no need to ask how it got that skill. After it successfully mutated and woke up from its slumber it ate the other members of its species that failed.

Simon did not know why it did that but he could tell that its aggression and behaviour was probably influenced by the mutation crystal.

Yes, the reason the forty-fifth floor was empty because Simon was conducting an experiment on the [D] rank Demon Ape that he summoned not from the [Spawn] but from his [Ga??????] on one of his daily draws.

It was around the day before yesterday when Simon was tired from creating the floors and listening to all of the reports from his subordinates, he tried to use a little bit of his DP on the [Ga??????]. It was a routine of some sort for Simon to use the option every day since he believed that as long as he was being persistent, something good was bound to appear.

Although, he did end up drawing something far from the usual socks and junks, it was not something great too. It was the second time after Bloodthorn demonic warhorse that he had drawn a living entity out of it.

However, unlike the former, the Demon Ape was only a [D] rank and was another quip that he and his former team members inserted in the [Gacha] while creating the game Laplace.

The Demon Apes compared to the one in front of him, was much smaller about half the height of an average human and did not look as intimidating as the Fire Demon Ape. It could be seen from this mutation alone how powerful the mutation crystals were.

While it is true that the crystal used on the Demon Ape was a Grade [1] Rank [C] crimson mutation crystal, its effects were still powerful. Out of the five crystals used on the five demon apes, only one survived the mutation.

Since the pond was in its development stage and did not have an unlimited supply of these crystals, five crystals was still a lot. Nevertheless, Simon never shied away when experimenting and as a result, the Fire Demon Ape was born.

From this week of constant experimentation with the mutation crystals, Simon made quite a few discoveries and felt like he was approaching closer towards increasing the success rate of the mutation.

The mutation crystals can be assimilated with the monster in various ways and the success rate varies depending on that.

The first way to induce a mutation in a monster was very simple and direct and that was to give it the crystal to consume. Just like what he had done with the Stormwolf previously. However, as could be seen this method had a lot of risks and the success rate was also very low.

The Storm wolf that consumed it ended up dying.

The second method was by diluting the effect of the crystal. Although this method drastically reduces the power of the mutated monster; nonetheless, it showed the highest rate of success.

Simon thought of this way when he saw how the fanged mouse that were supposed to be the prey of the Stormwolves on the fifteen floor mutated after biting into the flesh of the dead Stormwolf that consumed the crystal.

The second method was the most surefire method to induce mutation in a large colony of monsters. However, just like everything had its own flaws, the second method too showed its shortcomings when used on the Pirodiles and Lizardmen.

The aforementioned monsters were much stronger and higher in the food chain than the likes of monsters such as fanged mouse and thus the second method which dilutes the effect of the mutation crystal was not very effective and was nowhere enough to induce mutation in the whole colony.

So what did Simon do to tackle this issue?

He divided their population and made separate feeding grounds where he brought in the flesh of monsters higher ranked than them that died from the mutation and commanded the lizardmen and pirodiles to feed on it.

Although the number of monsters that mutated this way made a slight improvement, it was nowhere near enough to induce alteration to the entire colony.

Simon believed the reason for no change was the grade of the crystal. He believed that higher grades of crystals were needed to induce a mutation on monsters such as lizardmen and pirodiles using the second method.

As for inducing a mutation with the first method, forget pirodiles and lizardmen, even monsters higher up in the food chain than them aren't able to handle the powerful effects of the crystals even if it was just a grade [1] rank [C].

The third method that Simon discovered that can induce mutation was through breeding. Like the fanged mouse, the reproduction rate of the lizardmen and priodiles was also high thus it made quite a sense to use the method of breeding to try and see if the offspring born were mutated or not.

The result was fifty-fifty when a mutated monster reproduced with a non-mutated one, and a hundred percent when both the parent monsters are mutated ones.

Since the failure rate of the first method was just too much, Simon used the second and third methods to populate his new floors with mutated monsters.

Another thing of note was that the success rate fluctuated depending on what attribute of the mutation crystal was used on which monsters. Monsters with an affinity for a particular attribute, will have far less success rate of mutation when assimilating with a different attribute of crystal.

For example, the priodiles and lizardmen, since they were aquatic monsters they had more affinity with cerulean mutation crystal than crimson and viridescent crystal. Though they had an affinity with it, it didn't mean that an individual from their species can assimilate with a crystal alone and survive.

Simon thought that he would be able to induce different elemental mutations from the same species of monsters by commanding them into assimilating with different kinds of crystal. But it seemed like his hope of creating fire attribute lizardmen and wind attribute lizardmen was a pipe dream for now.

Even though he had wasted a lot of DP spawning and destroying colonies of monsters like that, it was still not enough to daunt Simon. He firmly believed that as long as he kept on researching, there will be a time when multiple elemental monsters mutated from the same species would be roaming his floor one day.

Although Simon did not notice it, he looked just like a mad scientist conducting research that would be seen as unethical and frowned upon had it been in his former world.

The research on the Demon Apes he was doing on the forty-fifth floor was also on mutation. The five demon apes that were summoned by the [Ga??????] option, were each introduced to a different attribute of crystals.

Simon used the first method of direct consumption to try and see if the race of Demon Ape was capable of handling the powerful effects of the mutation crystals.

The result that he got, was astonishing to say no less. Out of every monster that can be currently spawned by his dungeon, the demon ape showed the most resistance and willpower to survive than all the other monsters.

In fact, just a day prior, all of the five demon apes were frantically trying to control and assimilate with the berserk effect of the mutation crystal in their body.

The demon ape which mostly did not have much attack power and only had their uncanny experience points which they provided to the players when defeated going for them, was the monster that showed the most resilience and flexibility.

It was a pity that he only had five of them to experiment with or else Simon would have liked to experiment with more of them.

In any case, it looked like out of the five demon apes one had successfully managed to mutate. Though even Simon didn't expect it to eat the members of its own race right after waking up.

What's more, even though Simon was looking at it and had registered it to the dungeon, the being was strangely glaring and resisting his control. Amazed, Simon tried to exert his control on it a few more times only to find it that it was impossible to bring the being under his control.

What was going on? He was the master of this dungeon and according to that rule, every being registered in this dungeon shouldn't be able to resist his control. His authority was absolute and should extend towards every monster that was spawned in his dungeon, whether it be the old or mutated species.

How come the one in front of him still glared at him as if he was its enemy?

A being that was somehow able to resist the authority of the dungeon master, what sort of concept was this?

Was there some kind of glitch, did the merger of the two options also tempered with the effects of the other functions too?

Concerned, Simon used the [Spawn] option to spawn a random monster only to find the creature submit to him unconditionally which meant that the function was not the problem.

What was going on?