Chapter Nine

The gem was roused from its experimentation when it heard a loud crash coming from the back of its territory. At first it wasn’t sure what was happening, and then it remembered the traps that were placed in its second valley. It called for all the drybolds to start arming themselves, and told them to gather some blood river flowers. Then it shifted its focus to see what was happening. Nearly twenty men were rushing into its territory despite the trap having gone off. It had roused the birds that were placed in the valley. They valiantly went to attack the invaders, but only caused a few scratches before they were killed. The invaders kept their guard up for a while to see if anything else was coming out. After the silence lasted for a minute they started to slowly walk towards the main valley. They were just about there when they got their first casualty. One invader stopped under the shade of a tree while waiting for the rest of the invaders to catch up. Once his back was turned the weeping willow he was next to struck. Its branches whipped down and wrapped around the man; pinning his arms to his side. Then he was quickly dragged towards the opening in the trunk. Before anyone could help him the invader had his head dunked in acid and went limp.

That prompted the rest of the invaders to destroy the weeping willow. The gem was extra careful to absorb as much information from its death as possible and to examine how the ground around it was being corrupted after its death. When that was done its attention shifted back to the invaders to find them already in its main valley. They were at one of the entrances to the canopy and discussing what to do next.

“Shouldn’t we just go up? Following the normal path is pretty much always the easiest in any dungeon.” one man said

“We just need to plow straight through the underbrush. The dungeon knows we aren’t here for normal reasons since we have so many men. Were going to have to deal with its best defenses either way so we might as well stay on the ground.” Another man argued

After a few minutes one man who had been off to the side thinking said “Be quiet. We have to split up and send some men down both paths since we don’t know where the dungeon core is anyway. The upper pathways look small so send five people who can use wind as their secondary up there. Everyone else will stay on the ground.” He must have been in charge because the invaders immediately started to divide themselves up according to his orders. Soon there was a small group walking among the canopy and a smaller group whacking their way through the jungle.

The smaller group was the first to encounter resistance. Once they were well on to the vine pathways Venti and the birds struck. The birds gathered on one side and prepared to attack all at once. While the invaders were busy paying attention to them Venti gathered the strongest burst of wind possible and knocked one of them off the platform. He managed to grab his wind rune and slow his fall enough that he landed with a nasty thump instead of the splat Venti wanted. The other invaders quickly grabbed their runes off of their belts and started to channel the wind around them so Venti wasn’t able to hit another of them with wind blasts. That was when the birds struck. They swooped down and clawed all of the invaders. One of the birds of prey even managed to take out one of the invaders' eyes.

After that the fight started to turn back in the invaders favor. They were able to use their blood runes to stop their bleeding, they were protected from blasts of wind, and they were ready for the birds now. They started to shoot at the birds with blasts of air similar to what they were hit with earlier. Venti was able to block most of the blasts, but enough got through that a significant number of birds started to drop. Venti directed a powerful blast of air through the hallucinogenic flowers to try and turn the tables back around, but when they deflected the airblast they deflected the pollen as well. Soon there weren't enough birds to pose a serious threat so Venti had them retreat.

Then she let the invaders continue forward uncontested for a while. Once their guard was slightly lower she started to blow her hallucinogenic pollen at them again. This time she did it with bursts of air that were barely stronger than natural gusts of wind. At first there was no effect. Then, as they were getting close to the other side of the walkway, they started to show signs of the pollen working. All of them were walking less steadily than before. One of them was even wasting mana shooting at imaginary phantoms. Seeing that they were weakened Venti called the birds back up and launched one more offensive.

This time the birds struck first and managed to give all four remaining mages serious gashes. Then while they were busy trying to differentiate between the phantoms caused by the pollen and the birds that were trying to peck their eyes out Venti struck. She focused all her effort and produced the largest blast of wind she had ever made and succeeded in pushing three of them off the walkway. The birds that were still attacking them in midair combined with the effects of the pollen made it so none of them managed to slow their falls and all three of them landed with the splat that Venti had been disappointed to miss out on earlier. That left only one invader left in the canopy. She was too tired to make another gust of wind to blow off the pathway, so Venti called all the remaining birds and had them mob him.

After a minute of trying to fight off the birds he gave up and started sprinting forward on the canopy. He made it to the ladder and started to climb down as fast as possible, but the birds were still mobbing him. An eagle dove at him and clutched his hands with enough force to pull them off the ladder. He fell to the ground and broke both his legs before being pecked to death.

Venti looked down at the last body and smiled to herself while thinking that the boss would have to give her good rewards after doing so well beating up invaders. Then she went to rest.

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Unfortunately for the gem, it was not going that well everywhere. The main group of invaders had managed to fight off all defensive measures so far with relatively few injuries. The ticks weren’t able to slowly sap their strength. As soon as they started drawing any blood the mages would notice them immediately, grab their runes, and kill them with a pop. The plants were only causing minor wounds, and all the invaders were blood mages so they didn’t have to worry much about bleeding, and the group was too big for the drybolds to confront directly. They managed to cause a few serious wounds by throwing spears and getting lucky shots with their bows, but none of them were fatal. The end result of that was a group of fifteen invaders arriving at the entrance to its tunnels still very dangerous.

They walked into the mountain side and then they made a choice that made the gem the happiest it had ever been. Instead of continuing straight at the entrance to the underground, the leader called for a stop and said.

“This path is leading down. Let’s follow it.”

Another man chimed up “Are we splitting up again to search for the core?”

“I still haven’t heard from the other group. Since we didn’t encounter much resistance I think the dungeon must have focused on them. Let’s all stay together so we can’t get picked off.” the leader said

Then they all started to go downwards. When they got down to the first floor they stopped and called their mages who could use water and fire forward. Normally the headbutting fish would have already been launching themselves at the invaders by now, but the gem was holding them back. Since they hadn’t explored anywhere else and their first raiding party didn’t have any survivors it was hoping the fish would be able to catch them by surprise.

Then the invaders started to enter the water. They seemed surprised to find the water cool and hesitated for a bit before one of them decided to fully enter the water. He made it a few steps before the plants on the edge struck. Their metal like leaves scraped, sounding like metal on metal when they hit his armor, and left nasty gashes where they hit flesh. The man jumped back deeper into the water to try and get away from the plants and then he started to scream. He had jumped past the protective areas created by the fire attribute cores and was now fully engulfed in nearly boiling water. He screamed in agony and tried to go back to land. After a few seconds his allies rushed in and pulled him out, many of them getting gashes of their own as they dashed through the razor sharp plants. They brought him back to shore and tried to give him a potion, but his entire body was covered with burns and it wasn’t able to save him.

The leader looked down at him and said “Move into groups. Every group needs a water and a fire mage. Everyone else should protect them from whatever other creatures are in here while they protect us from the environment.”

Then they started to proceed deeper. Once they were nearly through the first floor and as far from the edge of the water as possible the gem let the headbutting fish strike. All of the fish on the floor attacked the mages protecting one group at the same time. The torrent of nearly fifty fish managed to knock both targets unconscious. Then they and the two others they were protecting were burned by the water before slowly drifting under to a watery grave.

After that the fish regrouped and struck again. They managed to injure a few more invaders, but weren’t able to take out any more groups even with multiple rounds of attacks. While doing that they suffered heavy casualties so the gem called for them to retreat and let the invaders go down another floor.

Since the last attack had been at the very end of the floor, the gem had its ants attack them as soon as they entered the next floor to try and avoid being predictable. They dropped from the ceiling and landed on the invaders heads. Then they bit everything they could reach and held on as long as they could. While flailing trying to get the ants off of his face one of the invaders backed into a stone pillar and dropped a ton of rocks down on his head. The other invaders tried to pull him free from the stones without success. Then they moved deeper into the dungeon.

Now that they were familiar with the traps and creatures the lower floors had to offer they managed to move downwards without any more serious casualties. Each floor they went through they destroyed all the blood river flowers they saw and killed as many defenders as they could. Before too long they made it down to the lowest floor of the territory. There was a small alcove shaded so that what was in it couldn’t be seen, and in front of it were two tusked defenders.

When they saw the Invaders they both charged and tried to impale them on their tusks. The invaders dodged and started to counter attack. Everytime they charged they were slashed with swords and axes. The wounds weren’t large compared to their bodies, but they bled incessantly since the defenders had eaten blood river flowers to defend themselves from blood magic. This continued for a few rounds before the tusked defenders changed tactics. One of them faked a charge, and then instead of trying to impale the invader on its tusks it dodged sideways and whipped one of the invaders with its flippers. That invader was knocked into the wall and crumpled to the ground, but in exchange the tusked defender took a large swing from an axe. The tusked defenders kept fighting. They had managed to take out two more of the invaders when one of them was struck a decisive blow. A thrust from a sword went straight into its eye and it dropped to the ground. After that the last tusked defender was slowly whittled down. It collapsed without touching the invaders again. With the defenders done the leader grabbed his sword and stalked towards the alcove. He stepped in with his sword raised and then saw an empty pedestal. He grimaced and then started to give instructions to his remaining men.

“I think we fell for the dungeons trick, but search every inch of this place to make sure that its core isn’t hiding somewhere. Then we’ll have to get out of here.”

Once they were done searching he said “ Grab all your gear and get ready to head out.”

They fought their way through the floors back up and then stepped out of the mountain back into the sunlight. When they got there half of the drybold army was there waiting for them.

The leader turned to his men and said “Don’t focus on killing them. Just try and break through and get out of the dungeon.” and then he charged forward. He cut straight through the drybold lines and came out the back with his men close behind. All but one of them got through and dashed out into the second valley. There were no defenses there so the gem just watched as they left and thought

“Now that they know my core isn’t down there I’m in even more danger. I need to prepare even more defenses.”