[Hello dungeon! I am interested in taking control of this dungeon, but first I have a request.] I told the core, my mind reaching out and weaving together a rudimentary link that synced us together as I composed the message.
I felt the core's confusion through the mental link we now shared and grinned. I shouldn't keep it waiting, I guess. I thought as I readied my first salvo of questions.
[I want to take control of the dungeon, but I have reasons for hesitating. I want to do this as stealthily as possible, so I want to seize control of the dungeon in a way that doesn't alert whoever has control of it. Is that possible?] I asked, worried that it wasn't because it seemed like such an unusual request. The core was silent for a moment, no doubt making sense of what I had just asked it. And then it spoke.
[If aided by you, and perhaps by the domain of trickery then it should be possible to pass control from the current owner of the prison, to you without alerting the current owner. Additionally, once you take control of the dungeon you will be granted knowledge of this place's inhabitants and an assortment of other things. Any questions you may have would likely be answered while you are given knowledge of this place.] I was alerted by the core, much to my surprise.
I immediately set about messaging my acquaintance, the domain of trickery.
I reached into the eerie space in my mind in which the domains lurked. It was there where they watched my actions from, and possibly also observed the rest of the multiverse through me, a potent deity who has the ability to alert reality. In that dark space, I directed my thoughts towards a domain I had had a friendly exchange with the trickery domain.
[Hello! Would you like to pull a... prank with me?] I asked, my voice echoing in my mind as I reached inward to contact the odd, immaterial entity I was in the process of communicating with.
[Oh? A prank? Why... yes. Yes, I would.] The voice responded almost immediately. It was a rough, but manic voice that seemed to enjoy the thought of pranking someone. It belonged to the entity I once stood up too, the domain of trickery. I grinned at its response and began to briefly explain what I hoped to achieve.
[I know you know where I am. It seems like you've been watching me for a while now. I want your help in subtly taking over this dungeon. I need your help to deceive the current owner into thinking that they still control the dungeon.] I explained, grinning all the while.
[Is that all? That's easy! I thought you would come to me with something more difficult than that. But... it was fun watching you infiltrate this place.] The domain told me, evidently able and willing to help. I smiled and politely listened to its remarks while composing a message to the core.
[Hello, the trickery domain is on board with this. I will now take control of the dungeon. The rest of my questions can wait. Please, grant me control of the dungeon and collaborate with the domain so as to do so without alerting the dungeon's former owner.] I told the core.
A second later I felt magical energy and authority flowing out of the core and into me. The darkness that surrounded the obsidian ball close to me surged outward and flew into me, colliding with me and then settling somewhere in my form.
[The ownership switch has been initiated. Transferring both control and knowledge of the dungeon over to you, Althos.] It informed me. I felt my mind expand greatly and almost fell to my knees for a moment while I felt both power and awareness flow into me. My radar and minimap expanded, now covering all of the few hundred floors of the dungeon.
[Control over the dungeon has been taken from the desert-giant named Ural Overforge. He is not aware of this, and is currently out of Namira.] The system informed me, which made me smiled relievedly. Seconds later I received a new notification.
[The History of the Onyx Obelisk:
The Onyx Obelisk has a storied history, that begins before it was created. Long before the thing towered over and protected the ancient city of Namira, a deal was struck between two mighty tyrants. One of those tyrants was the true-devil Paimon, and the other was a desert titan sultan whose name was lost to history but not to the system. This figure was named Abad-Al-Shalltear, and he was a desert sultan who ruled over the city in the unspeakably ancient past.
The two of them struck a deal, one that resulted in the erection of a tiny onyx obelisk, the original iteration of the monolithic Onyx Obelisk that looms over the city today. At the time, most of the facility was actually underground.
Overtime this thing became bigger and bigger and served as a landmark with which to recognize the city. It has been centuries since a soul was sacrificed atop its massive roof, and nowadays the thing is used differently by the two factions who control it.
The giants use it to maintain their control over the barrier that protects their city. The barrier is the reason why they can maintain a city as large as they can, and it is the principal reason behind why their drug cultivation program is so successful. The devils use the prison to store prisoners who have some value in being left alive.
Some of their notable prisoners include a solitary desert giant noblewoman whose political acumen nearly led a successful revolt against the line of succession in the age before Mahmud's reign, a rust hag, a tribe of ogres whose raw strength exceeds that of any non-devilish inhabitants of the layer, a few demons who were sent into the layer to serve as emissaries to Paimon but who displeased him and were imprisoned as a result, and a tribe of feral goblins all of whom possess magical blood.
The current overseer of the prison and former owner of the dungeon core is Ural Overforge, a desert giant lieutenant whose soul is Paimon's property. He is a loyal minion of the dark devil and relishes the power and authority he's been given, including over the handful of devils who oversee the more exotic prisoners. He has been the overseer of the prison for centuries.]
I read through and then willed away the notification with a smile on my face. So many new... servants. I thought, eager to meet the figures imprisoned within this place. And to do so speedily, I retreated into my mind and began to weave together a handful of custom spell-effects.
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In the depths of my mind, I called on the endless mystical energy that flowed through me. I willed it into action, spurring it on like a chariot rider spurred on their horses.
I will target... every guard in this place. Each of them shall be petrified, following in the path of their colleague, Thunderfist. I told myself, smiling sinisterly as I did so. The magic in my veins listened to it and then, once it had been told what my objective was, it surged out of me.
The magic raced out of my form, turning the air it touched once it escaped my body a sickening shade of gray. I didn't leave the depths of my mind just yet though. I still had one more thing to do.
I want to be done with this place soon. So I will create... numerous copies of me, to pay a visit to the assorted, interesting inhabitants of this place. This way I can make various offers to escape this place at once. I thought, and watched as a number of shadows emerged from me.
The entities were not exact copies of me. Instead, they were stylized representations of me, shadows who had my interests at heart but took on different forms to better represent my interests. For instance, one of them was an armored warrior whose fists were clothed in thick, metal gloves, meant to represent the vision of me as a "Dark Lord" which is how I've been worshiped by orcs.
The shadows spread out in the room and then melted into the floor. I stood still and began to study the things on my radar.
They rapidly descended through the dungeon's floors, searching for specific prisoners to interact with and make offers of freedom too. My mind and attention fractured, splitting up to follow each of the shadows I had created.
The first copy of me to reach the place it decided to go after was my "Dark Lord" illusion, and I studied the thing as it rapidly threw itself through the dungeon's floors.
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The Dark Lord version of myself first appeared in the quiet floor that contained the ogres by appearing in the center of the hallway where the guards had previously done their rounds. This eerie shadow monster had melted through the floors by rendering itself incorporeal and then falling through the floors until right before it hit the ground of the floor it intended to land in.
The thing dropped from the floor's ceiling onto the floor in the middle of the hallway, right in front of the prison cell that served as the entrance to where the ogres were contained according to my newly updated radar. I grinned as I watched the thing reform itself in front of the cell.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
When it crashed onto the floor of the hallway it collided with the ground and become a several meter long pool of inky darkness. It remained in that form for a few moments, before beginning to compress itself, shrinking its size considerably.
Seconds after it compressed down to a smaller size, the thing roared as it began the process of forming a humanoid looking body. The body wasn't visible, but I could sense the magic working to fulfill my whims, and I grinned as it set about artistically forming ornate shadow armor, and taking on a humanoid form for which to fit in the armor it was crafting itself.
After about a minute passed, a form began to emerge from the shadow-pool. It comically struggled to pull itself out of the shadows, but when it first succeeded its attempts to grip onto something which it could use to pull itself out of the pool, it speedily began to pull itself up and out of the crater it created.
In a matter of seconds, the figure was out of the pool of darkness and not long after that the pool itself began to seemingly evaporate, fading back into nothingness. The illusion looked around, interested in its surroundings, mostly to satisfy my own curiosity rather than its own.
It looked around and noticed the statues of the pair of guards who had been assigned to this floor. They had been caught off-guard by the magic that had penetrated this dungeon and thus were caught in the middle of their rounds. They were giant guards, and had been working with hyenas, predatory creatures who walked on all fours. The hyenas stared cautiously at the illusion, who itself looked back at them, before turning its attention to the prison cell.
The illusion didn't try to open the cell, instead it just walked towards it and then through it and found itself facing the ogres who I had first heard of minutes ago, when I was first exploring this dungeon.
[Hello. Please grant me access to the knowledge entry on ogres.] I asked the system, as the illusionary copy of myself stared at the ogres, who were not yet aware of the thing that watched them, studying them.
The creatures who stood inside of the cell ranged in height from 3 meters to 5 meters, and there were over two dozen of them. Their bodies were as wide as they were tall, and the creatures had misshapen bodies, with lumps, bumps, rashes, and bruises everywhere.
My illusionary self was able to see their faces, crude things that were covered in purplish scars and cuts, no doubt due to their warmongering and brutish ways. It was while both my illusion and myself were studying the ogres that my mind picked up the familiar voice of the system.
[New Species Knowledge Gained: Ogres
Ogres are a brutish, warmongering species. These massive warriors are highly unintelligent, but are incredibly cruel, obedient to those stronger than them, and prized as warriors, slaves, and gladiators.
Ogres are a fierce species whose culture hinges on the strong subjugating the weak. They, like orcs, are a species of warriors, who possess surprising flexibility and whose own folkloric tales conjure images of being mighty, respected participants in empires of darkness, led by their own so-called "dark lords".
The truth is that orcs and ogres share a history and often subjugate each other or more rarely; rely on each other in a multiverse that tends to rightfully view both species as brutal warmongers who endanger other species and civilizations in close proximity to them.
Ogres can evolve into oni, dangerous extraplanar beings who possess an ogre's looks and eerie mystical powers including the ability to steal and feed on souls.]
There's a shared history between orcs and ogres? That's not very surprising. I suppose it's not a bad idea to see if these fellows could get along with Ranthor and his allies... And I should go ahead and command them to move shouldn't I? Especially if I want to send these creatures plus say... the goblins to them. I thought, before going ahead and relaying that information to Ranthor himself.
My illusionary copy finished studying the ogres right as I commenced messaging my orcish worshiper and the head of my cult among the belligerent humanoids back in the world of my birth. Before I could send my message, the copy began to approach the ogres, who had only just noticed the strange shadow who had silently snuck into their cell. They turned as one to stare at it, their eyes various colors but each of them was filled with fury and malice.
That only lasted until my illusion walked over to one of the ogres, the one closest to it, and punched the fellow in the face, sending the thing hurtling into the ground. It collided with the ground with a gruesome sounding thud, and then my illusion began to speak.
"Welcome to the army of the dark lord. If you don't want to join, you can die." The thing said, as it rose an illusionary fist to the ogres, blood dripping down its obsidian-gloved knuckles. Its voice suggested that despite its illusionary nature, the pain it could inflict on them was anything but fake. Not that the ogres could tell that it was an illusion anyway., since it had just dropped one of their friends with a single blow.
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The second shadow to reach its intended target behaved similarly to the shadowy dark lord, just falling at a more relaxed pace than its sibling.
Its target was the rust hag, a creature whose cell was unguarded from the outside but who was trapped within a floor-wide cell that sapped her of physical might and of mystical power. The shadow was unaffected by the strange magic, due to the fact that I controlled the dungeon. Something I learned the instant the shadow appeared in front of the hag.
This shadow was far more intelligent-seeming than the other one was and when it reached its target floor the thing didn't collide with the floor but instead made the decision to slow down and land on the floor. To say that shocked the hag was an understatement. I could hear her gasp from where the illusion had landed and turned my vision to lay my eyes on her.
She had been idly wandering her cell when she saw a shape in the rough silhouette of a person, but since the illusion landed out of her sight she must have been deeply confused as to who it was who had just entered her normally lonely cell.
I saw her and studied her. She was a vile looking creature, with skin the color and texture of raisins. She stood just under two meters tall and had old, leathery features. She looked at the shadow that had infiltrated her prison and began to approach it. She was either fearless or tired of being in this prison. Either way, judging from the look in her catlike eyes as she neared my illusion, she was probably someone I could use.
"What are you?" She asked, her voice like blood-curdling screams, but quiet and unsettling.
[New Species Knowledge Notification: Rust Hags.
Rust Hags are the weakest of Hag-Kind. Hags are a species of almost human-like magical creatures of malice and misanthropy.
Rust Hags are the smallest but physically strongest of their kind. These vile creatures have razor-sharp fingers and cruelly barbed bodies that allow even the most gentle of embraces to be cruel weapons that inflict both emotional and physical despair.
These evil women use their faint mystical powers and their cruel physical abilities to spread misery and foment hatred. They form covens with their more mystically powerful cousins and they use deception and temptation to tempt the weak into deals that only advance the cause of evil and of heartlessness.
Rust hags have skin tones that range from rust-colored to the color of raisins and they range in height from 2 meters tall to about 6 meters tall. They have animalistic looking talons and fang-filled maws. They are capable of spreading diseases with a kiss, or with a shallow slice of their brutal claws.
Rust hags don't evolve naturally, but if exposed to sufficiently powerful magic, or if altered through a mutation, they can become stronger members of their species such as illusionary hags, enchantresses, or night-sisters.]
The illusion was silent, a shadowy mass that hauntingly watched her with a featureless face and only a loosely humanoid form. When this illusion refused to speak, I decided to.
"I am Althos. A god. And an archdevil. I am either your salvation and your new master, or this cell will be where you die, years from now, of starvation and boredom. Make your choice." I commanded, my voice coming out of the shadowy figure that stood before her. I figured that with these sorts of entities it was best to make it clear right away who was in charge, treating her not unlike I would have treated one of the orcs.
She looked at the illusion and continued to study it for a moment before deciding to question me herself. "Why should I serve you?" She asked, directing her question towards the strange shadow in front of her, which in all honesty was a fair question.
I considered how to answer it for just a second before responding. But the answer came easily. And before I began to speak to her, I activated my faith-based powers, weakening her ability to resist me or question me.
"For three reasons: firstly I am a god and can give you your desires in exchange for your service. Second, I can free you from this prison, which is probably the most important and direct reason for you to serve me. And third, because I wouldn't judge you for doing what your kind are known for: spreading misery, and hatred. In fact, I'd value you for it." I told her, all while using my faith powers on her. The familiar blue mist surrounded her, and she inhaled some of it while focusing on my illusion.
She once again fell silent while considering my words, but I could sense that there was little hesitation in her. [Come.] I whispered into her mind, disguising my voice to closely resemble her own.
[There are no alternatives. Submit.] I told her, half-heartedly attempting to deceive her, well aware that I was likely only speeding the inevitable. And at this point I decided to reveal some of what I was considering doing with her to her, in the hopes that it would sway her to stop playing this weak-hearted game of cat and mouse.
"I am assembling an army in a world on the mortal plane. If you come with me, you'll not just be free of this place, you'll be among other dark-hearted warriors who obey me and who raid and pillage in my name. If you worship me faithfully and aid my army, I may even grant you more magic than is at your disposal." I told her.
I'm not sure what did it but it was probably that I suggested that in serving me she may just get more magic. She pretended to be considering her choices for another moment, so as to not appear overeager, but her hammering heart gave it away. When she spoke it was to accept my offer.
"Althos... I will join your dark army. Please free me from this place so that I may live and spread misery." She said, her voice eager for the first time since she began to speak to me.
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I was in the prison for another hour. I had spent the time recruiting more and more servants, and shipping them to Ranthor before I left the eerie place. I wasn't done with it just yet, but for the time being I had done what I needed to do.
I left the prison, a far more barren place than it had been when I first arrived in it. The only notable inhabitants left in the strange place by the time I departed from its obsidian walls were the ambitious desert-giant woman, and the demons.
With the demons... I'd like to approach them with Raverangos so as to show them that I'm nondiscriminate. And with the noble-woman, I suspect that my overtures to her would be smoother if I were a more well-known warrior in this place, than if I were a stranger who had just seized a prison with no reputation and no known giant allies. I thought to myself, reflecting on why I had left those creatures behind, for now, as I teleported back to the khan and joined my sleeping servants.
And with that, my days of adventuring in Namira began with a bang.