After letting the two of them figure out the control permissions for the Gloom City Ruins on their own, I started working on arranging the section of the ruins under my own jurisdiction.
Since points had been confirmed as an important strategic resource, I had to start from there—how to earn as many as possible while making sure the players gained none.
The key point was exactly what I had told Evin and Cecilia earlier: I couldn’t rely on monsters alone to hold them back.
So naturally, I thought of terrain.
“The Constanterna Empire players probably haven’t tasted the power of Shadow Swamp yet, have they?”
My eyes lit up.
After all, in normal dungeon runs, fire mages were always one of the most welcome damage dealers in any party.
On top of that, the explosion effect from Shadow Swamp wasn’t fixed—it scaled with the power of the fire mage’s skill.
Even at the current mainstream levels of seventeen or eighteen, the damage was more than enough.
And there was the built-in 30% increased fire damage effect on top of that.
Shadow Swamp didn’t only explode, either.
It also came with two nasty traits: poison and blindness.
Especially the blindness.
Combined with the already dim lighting inside the Gloom City Ruins, players who entered—even with glowstone lanterns—could easily get lost if they weren’t careful.
Changing the terrain also required points, of course.
Alice had probably guessed I would do this, because the point cost wasn’t cheap.
Even so, after a brief hesitation I spent most of my starting points to completely fill the front and middle sections of the central area I controlled on the first floor with Shadow Swamp.
After setting up the terrain, the next thing to consider was how to pair it with suitable monsters.
This time Alice had been kind enough to leave me full selection rights for every monster from level 10 to 30—more than enough for this siege battle event.
“Let me think… the first floor can only use monsters from level 10 to 20…”
I stared at the restrictions and carefully recalled the more famous monsters from my previous life, especially the ones players never wanted to meet.
Even with all my past-life experience, most of it was from after second or third class advancement.
I didn’t know much about the monsters in the Constanterna Empire, especially the early-level ones around ten.
Pairing them with Shadow Swamp’s explosion effect was proving difficult…
“Wait…”
The moment I thought about explosions, something flashed in my mind.
“That’s it—Explosive Mother-Child Tree!”
The Explosive Mother-Child Tree was a monster that appeared in a level-fifteen dungeon inside the Constanterna Empire.
In my previous life I had only come across it by chance in a forum thread on the Alwyn Empire section.
The poster had described how his elf-kingdom friend had been tormented by the dungeon, and the monster’s unique trait had stuck in my memory.
Yes, the Explosive Mother-Child Tree was special.
It consisted of a mother tree and its child trees.
The mother tree could connect to the child trees through underground roots.
As long as the mother tree lived, child trees could regrow anywhere within a 25-yard radius around it.
More importantly, both child trees and the mother tree would explode on death, dealing massive fire damage.
Child-tree explosions had a smaller range, while the mother tree’s was larger.
Fortunately the designers seemed to understand how painful this thing was for players and limited the mother tree to growing only one child tree at a time.
Even so, plenty of players had been driven crazy by that dungeon and flooded the forums with complaints.
If the original version could already torment so many players in the elf kingdoms, then strengthening it with points and adding Shadow Swamp’s own effects would probably drive the Constanterna Empire players completely insane.
The thought made me look forward to it.
I quickly searched the selectable monsters and sure enough found a pair of oddly shaped trees, one large and one small.
Explosive Mother-Child Tree, Level 18.
Perfect.
Once I had the monster, I immediately placed them throughout the Shadow Swamp according to regional density, making sure players would have no safe path through the densely packed group.
Then again, with Shadow Swamp’s blindness effect plus the dim environment of the Gloom City Ruins, safely passing without aggroing monsters was already impossible.
I checked my remaining points, silently prayed in my heart, and hoped I could roll something useful.
I could strengthen up to three times.
After all, the point cost to strengthen the same monster kept rising.
If any of the first few rolls gave me a strong effect, that would be ideal.
While a certain amount of randomness was the fun of roguelike games, you still needed to give people the motivation to keep playing.
However, my prayer didn’t seem to work very well.
None of the three ability options that appeared after strengthening the Explosive Mother-Child Tree looked particularly good—
Iron Wall: Explosive Mother-Child Tree’s defense +20%. For every 3% HP lost, damage taken is reduced by 1%.
Gigantification: Explosive Mother-Child Tree’s size increases by 30%. All attack ranges increase by 20%.
Sturdy Root System: Explosive Mother-Child Tree’s child trees can grow up to 80% farther away.
The first strengthened defense, but not dramatically.
The second clearly leaned toward an attack-specialization route, and I wasn’t sure my remaining points could support it.
Staring at the third option, some instinct told me this ability would be extremely useful later.
At most it would let me place child trees farther out, but if players simply ignored the child trees and walked around, wouldn’t the ability be wasted?
I was about to pick the first option to move on, but I shook my head.
As for the last one, I honestly had no idea what use it had.
“Whatever. Even if it’s a loss, I’ll just test the effect. Worst case I can spend points to reset it later.”
I sighed, selected the third ability, and used more points to strengthen it once again.
This time it was the same—no powerful abilities appeared.
One increased attack damage, and the other applied a burn effect to players after attacking.
Clearly the second skill could pair with the earlier Gigantification trait, which made me a little regretful I hadn’t chosen it.
And if the burn could trigger Shadow Swamp’s explosion, I would have picked it instantly.
But obviously a simple burn debuff wasn’t that broken, so I gave up on both and chose the third ability instead—one that gave no real stat boost yet was especially nasty for players.
Nihilism: After the Explosive Mother-Child Tree dies, players who participate in the kill from outside a certain range receive only 50% of the point reward.
Normally players would want to stay as far away as possible from the explosion, but doing so meant they would lose half the kill reward.
If they tanked the explosion instead, I would still gain some point bonus, so it wasn’t a total loss.
The third strengthening finally gave me a truly excellent ability: Tree-like Division—child tree summon count +1.
I could already picture the players’ suffering when they ran into two endlessly regenerating child trees.
Rolling a strong ability felt like winning the lottery, and I couldn’t help feeling eager to try again.
After thinking it over, I went ahead and reclaimed some of the Shadow Swamp area I had already placed, then scraped together just enough remaining points for a fourth strengthening.
What I didn’t expect was that this time three genuinely outstanding abilities appeared at once.