"Tsk tsk, I've never seen such a shabby dungeon before."

"There's only a piece of tattered Lock Armor in the chest! Can it get any poorer?!"

"Not even a few Magic Crystals... sigh, we wasted our time, we can't even earn back the travel expenses!"

The four adventurers kept complaining. They had just finished clearing a dungeon, defeating the boss, and were now looting for treasures.

Lying near the wall was a young man struggling to breathe.

Our protagonist, Lorne.

Yes, he was the boss who got defeated, the owner of this poor dungeon. He was now lying on the ground, severely injured and unable to move, watching the adventurers ransacking everything.

His two henchmen were not doing much better.

One was the lowest of the low, a skeleton soldier. After being struck by the adventurers' heavy hammer, his bones scattered throughout the room.

The other was a petite, disheveled female zombie with obvious stitches on her face and arms. As soon as enemies approached, she wisely fell to the ground and played dead.

Half an hour later, the adventurers finally left grumbling.

Only then did Lorne turn his head to the female zombie, using his last bit of strength to say, "Helena, I need you to..."

Helena, the name of the zombie, slowly stood up, pushing aside the withered white hair covering her face, revealing a blood-red eye. "Understood, my lord, I will give you a satisfying end."

With that, she made an OK gesture and pulled out a dagger from beneath her white gown. Taking aim at Lorne's heart, she pierced it with a "pu-chi" sound.

"Hmm, you've become more skilled with your technique..." Before taking his last breath, Lorne couldn't help but sigh.

Then, his body turned into countless firefly-like glowing dots, dissipating into the air.

A few hours later.

The firefly-like glowing dots reappeared, scattered throughout the entire dungeon. Gradually, they converged and reshaped into Lorne's body.

The resurrected Lorne opened his eyes.

"Phew, finally respawned. Those adventurers just now were really no fun, couldn't they go a little easier on me? Geez, they left me half-dead and in so much pain..."

He stretched his joints, surveying the devastated dungeon, and sighed heavily.

"Sigh, my home has been turned upside down again."

This was the third time already.

Being the wicked dungeon lord is quite frustrating, isn't it?

Can't things ever go well?!

...

Lorne had no idea what went wrong.

After being hit by a truck and crossing into a different world, he inexplicably transformed into a "high-ranking demon" and his soul became bound to a dungeon, becoming its lord.

Since he was now a high-ranking demon, he was naturally different from ordinary humans.

Every time he died, Lorne would respawn inside his dungeon. In other words, just like a boss in an online game, he would refresh and respawn.

But that wasn't too special either.

Other high-ranking demons possessed the same ability, and besides, they were all highly skilled in magic, had numerous subordinates, and owned large-scale dungeons...

But what about Lorne?

His personal combat strength was nothing to speak of.

His two subordinates were just low-level creatures.

The dungeon's area was small and had even partially collapsed.

All in all, he could be considered harmless.

Even his appearance was different from other high-ranking demons. Those guys either had demon-like horns or pale skin with vampire-like fangs, somewhat different from humans. But Lorne looked completely human, if placed in a street, he would just be an ordinary villager.

It was unheard of for such a useless high-ranking demon like him.

With Lorne being so weak, of course, he couldn't stop the adventurers who came to raid his dungeon.

Although his dungeon had been assessed by the authoritative magazine "Adventurer Monthly" as "Danger Level F" and "Profit Level F," and received comments like "not worthy of anyone's time."

But some people just didn't want to believe the authorities.Lorne and zombie Helena gathered the bones of the poor skeleton soldier into a pile. Fortunately, he was just knocked apart, and the bones themselves were not shattered, so they could be reassembled. They had done this many times before and were quite skilled at it. However, it still took quite some time.

"I'm hungry, Lord Mayor. Let's finish assembling later," Helena said weakly, only halfway through.

For some unknown reason, zombies and skeletons also needed to eat. Even if they couldn't starve to death, they still needed a source of energy and had the desire to eat. Lorne's stomach growled as well, so he nodded.

"That's fine. Let's cook first."

The skeleton soldier named Aze protested. He only had his upper body at the moment. But since he had no tongue or vocal cords, he could only make his upper and lower teeth clash, making some "clack, clack, clack" sounds.

Lorne decided to pretend not to understand.

With Helena's help, he made a fire, set up a pot, and then went to the cupboard where the food was stored.

"Tsk, they even took the smoked meat? These bastards!" Lorne couldn't help but feel resentful as he looked at the almost empty cupboard. "Only these purple mushrooms are left..."

It seemed that they would have to drink some poisonous mushroom soup tonight. Luckily, none of the three of them would be killed by poison. However, they might get diarrhea.

To add some flavor to the bland mushroom soup, Lorne picked up a leg bone from the ground and threw it into the pot, ignoring Aze's fierce objections of "clack, clack, clack."

...

"Tomorrow, I'll go out and see if I can find some odd jobs to earn a living," Lorne said during dinner, sipping the mysteriously delicious mushroom soup.

Yes.

As an evil Dungeon Lord, Lorne now needed to go out and work.

"How about this time, I go?" Helena, with disheveled hair, thought for a moment and enthusiastically proposed, "I can disguise myself as a normal girl and perform in a few shows! I will definitely earn more than you!"

In her previous life, Helena was known as "Lady Nightingale Helena" and was a somewhat famous opera singer.

"A zombie idol? I think not," Lorne smiled bitterly and shook his head. "If the people in town recognize you as a zombie and call in the priests, it would be dangerous...Besides, where would we get the makeup?"

"Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack!"

Aze, the upper body skeleton soldier, agreed.

It meant: Lord Mayor is right, Helena, don't do something dangerous!

Helena drooped her head in disappointment, and her right eye rolled out of its socket, nearly falling into the pot. She picked up the eyeball, flicked off the dust, and then pushed it back into her eye socket.

"Oh, by the way, Lord Mayor. When will the next batch of Magic Crystals grow?" she asked again.

Magic Crystals.

They were precious minerals that only grew in Dungeons, and adventurers went through all the trouble of clearing Dungeons mainly to obtain them.

Lorne's Dungeon also produced them regularly, but in pitiful quantities. Taking the Magic Crystals out to exchange for money was his main source of income.

"In about ten days," Lorne estimated in his mind and answered.

"Though we won't starve, I don't want to wait that long. We need to buy food, traps, and repair the furniture those damn adventurers broke..."

Lorne calculated various expenses in his mind, like a shrewd housewife.

To be honest, Lorne could leave the Dungeon and become a farmer, a merchant, and live a normal life. He had indeed considered this option.

But what about Helena and Aze if he left?

They were both outcasts, rejected by society.

Zombies and skeletons were the weakest and lowest-level monsters, with even weaker fighting abilities than Lorne. They couldn't even go out to sell Magic Crystals by themselves. Once they went outside, they would be purified by the priests from the church in no time.For Helena and Aze, the Dungeon was their only sanctuary.

Fortunately, Lorne's Dungeon didn't have much fame and was not frequently visited by adventurers.

And zombies and skeletons were undead creatures. Unless using special methods like holy water or holy words, it was difficult to completely eliminate them.

Ordinary adventurers were lazy and preferred to just cut them down, temporarily disabling them. After all, holy water was expensive, why waste it on mere zombies and skeletons?

...So, the outside world was actually more dangerous.

Although Helena and Aze might look intimidating, after spending time with them, Lorne had developed feelings for them. Protecting his subordinates was his responsibility as a Dungeon Lord.

Unfortunately, Lorne was just a weak and insignificant lord.

...

"Hmm, this is not a big deal. My house gets ransacked every other day. How can I have fun like this?"

Lying on his bed, Lorne sighed heavily.

His bedroom was located in the deepest part of the Dungeon, spacious and empty. It was clear that it used to be a grand hall, but now, half of the room was buried under collapsed rubble.

"Well, the key is the 'System'... If I could fully unlock the functions of the 'System,' things might be different."

Lorne stared at the ceiling, talking to himself.

That's right.

Lorne was actually a person with his own System.

"Activate System."

As soon as he said that, a semi-transparent interface appeared before his eyes.

The overall structure was similar to common simulation management games. In the top right corner of the screen, there was a string of numbers representing the "Evil Points" Lorne currently possessed – 34 points.

Hmm, when I threw Aze's leg bone into the pot earlier, I got 2 Evil Points.

However, Lorne had no idea what these "Evil Points" were used for. Almost all the buttons in the System were grayed out and unresponsive, and the texts on them were blurred.

The only button that was shining was the "Dungeon Overview."

After clicking it, he could browse through various data about the Dungeon –

[Dungeon Name]: ???

[Dungeon Level]: 1

[Current Lord]: Temporary User #2583

[Number of Residents]: 2

[Overall Condition]: Partially collapsed

[Construction Progress]: -70

[Military Power]: 26

[Magic Crystal Production]: 6/month

... Quite a heartbreaking data.

As usual, there was a blinking plus sign behind the "Dungeon Level" column. Lorne reached out and tapped on it, and a popup window appeared in the center of the interface:

"Temporary User #2583, you have met the conditions for Dungeon upgrade. Do you want to proceed with the upgrade?"

The content was as expected.

Lorne chose "Yes."

"Upgrade failed. Please complete the registration process to unlock this feature." Another popup window appeared, with a big red cross on it.

Lorne sighed lightly, "As expected, it's still not possible... Damn it, completing the registration, this user experience is too poor."

Where should I register? How do I register?

Can you at least give me a link?!

It had been six months since Lorne was transported to this new world, and he still couldn't figure it out.