In a labyrinth deep inside the earth a minotaur with long claws stalks a group of humanoids, in another part of the same labyrinth a similar minotaur is digging down into the stone and yet in another corner the minotaur is coming out of the stone walls, claws poised ready for whatever is in front of him stone dwarves right behind him.

Although all statues and other artistic endeavors are minotaurs I must say that there is quite a bit of variation around. It is a bit rough, most of the statues and reliefs are, but still, some of them are pretty creative. I see a group of skull dwarves all sculpted from stone with bone tools on their hands, in front of them an unfinished relief of a minotaur on the wall. One of them created a hole in the wall and made statues inside digging away from the maze.

Overall there is quite a nice collection of statues. Now I give all of them an oval piece of steel, these are created by the black crucible, they are basic light magic items, pretty much flashlights, my dungeon is completely dark so even if there were beings here they would not see the statues, as such the only lightning in the dungeon will be around them. I tell them to experiment with angles of light and leave them. At the back of my mind I keep creating a few magic circles, I test them to see how well they are functioning and move on.

There have been a few engagements since I’ve been paying attention to renovation, my army has actually grown, full of crab undead and a lot of bonebeasts. Quite a lot of them look frightening like a crab centipede, others look a bit… well they certainly are not killing machines, there is one that is just a big crab with an absurd number of arms. The poor bonebeast has zero ability to use all of them at once, mostly just grabbing enemies and holding them until someone else deals the blow. I also notice a few differences, mostly just simple things like armor and weapons change, I see that Stinger’s group has a few more people, even one of the mages, I also see a few skulldwarves here and there, they are the ones that didn’t want to become miners I sent them to this raid to see if they would start evolving, sadly they are gaining levels a lot slower than expected, along with everybody else.

I am pretty sure the reason is Irax and when asked by Merlin he did say that was likely, the system calculates your level ups by how much danger you overcame, with Irax here the danger is a lot lower, since he can just kill pretty much all my enemies.

The terrain now is full of water, with some of my skeletons being half submerged, just as I am thinking this would be a good time to attack my drones see three big life signals coming straight to my army.

In an explosion of mud and water three giant silver shrimps appear, they all look like mantis shrimp, though silverish… actually it looks like their shells are… wait, that's not silver, it's mercury. I tell the drones to shoot the shrimp, and then see how ineffective the death rays are and watch the way the mana flows through the shrimp’s carapace, yep it’s probably mercury all alright.

The coloration, or rather material around their bodies, is not the only difference, they are also huge, as big as a bull. They have large eyes and spear claws, similar to a praying mantis. My forces split, Kaiman and Gorger attack one, Merlin and a portion of the army attack the other, and the rest engage the last one with Stinger.

Now Merlin, you saw that attacking the body of these is not effective.

“Yes” He answers, out loud.

That is because of the metal on their bodies, meaning the parts without metal are vulnerable.

Merlin gets my meaning and passes it along to the others. He also actually says out loud “Attack the eyes!”.

His face lights up with necrotic energy and a beam of death shoots out hitting the left eye of the shrimp, the other mages also do the same and destroy the right eye. I find the image of skeletons using lasers from their eyes to destroy actual eyes to be quite entertaining. The shrimp does not agree and starts trashing its arms wildly.

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Ah, now you have blinded it, but how are you going to finish it off Merlin?

Merlin immediately turns back to Irax.

“How do I finish it off?” He really just went for it, how shameless. Right in front of me, he didn’t even try to think about it himself.

“There is only a thin layer of mercury, if you can punch through that or remove it the carapace underneath has no magical resistance” Irax. who by the way is walking on the water’s surface, says. Merlin groups start trying that.

Kaiman and Gorger are having an easy time, the fight started badly with the shrimp spearing both Kaiman and Gorger, Gorger tried his only known defense: trying to eat the attack, which surprisingly did not actually work. Yes, Gorger cannot easily eat mercury, at least not in the quantity that he is trying to eat. Mercury is one of the best metals for magic, it simply absorbs all types of mana with extreme ease, which is why Gorger is having a hard time eating it, the mercury is absorbing the necrotic energy from his body and acid and strengthening itself.

Like a child Gorger is actually ignoring the fight and just trying to eat mercury, instead of the fleshy parts of the shrimp he already uncovered. Meanwhile Kaiman is playing mechanical bull with the shrimp, once he was speared he simply separated from the impaled part and attacked the eyes, now he is biting through the mercury and the shrimp is trying it’s best to knock him off.

On the other side and with the last mercury shrimp we have Stinger, the shrimp tries to spear her. Half of her body is under the water, Stinger uses both of her palms and slaps the water’s surface; she launches herself out of the water dodging the claw with a flip. The shrimp attacks with the other claw but Stinger simply spins and slaps it, both actions look almost effortless as she continues her trajectory into its eyes. With a single attack the shrimp's eye burst and she continues to its body. I had wondered how she was going to deal with the mercury armor, but Stinger had a pretty easy plan and how to deal with it.

Her skills flare and she starts slapping the mercury away, the other skeletons pick this time and start attacking the shrimp trying to pull attention to them and away from Stinger. She wallops the mercury away and as soon as she sees the shrimp underneath the armor she starts attacking it even faster. After three blows the exoskeleton breaks and after eight seconds the monster falls, it’s insides mush, it cannot stand after the ravages of Stinger, the skeletons around close in and finish it off.

Merlin was watching it, he saw Stinger kill the shrimp.

“Which area is the most damaged?” The skeletons answer.

Merlin moves to the left side of the shrimp, he can see it limp a bit, a skeleton scored a nasty blow on it earlier.

He activates {Reave} and five blades grow from his fingers, “Hold it’s attention” he says, and then he attacks the leg with his claws, in a single hit he can feel his skill weakening, it’s magic being sapped away by the mercury. The shrimp turns, rather tries to turn, the other skeletons mob it and spear it and the shrimp must defend itself from them. Merlin sends more mana to {Reave} his dark cloak billows out and his arm shines as he reinforces himself to his peak. He attacks again and this time he is able to score a blow to the true body, a leg falls, severed completely and Merlin shoves his entire arm, with the claws of {Reave} into it, he focuses and necrotic energy explodes from his arm into the inside of the shrimp.

I see that Kaiman and Gorger killed their shrimp already, so all of them are dead, with the drones I see movement, but going away from me.

Gorger is sitting on the ground, he looks like a man in a midlife crisis, the fact that mercury is so difficult to eat is gnawing at him, he is even wondering if there are things out there he cannot eat.

Gorger, there are more things that you can eat, plus if there is something you cannot eat, just get stronger! Then you can eat it, it is that simple.

Gorger immediately perks up. Well that was easy. I send a few commands to Merlin and he approaches Irax.

“We could use your dimensional item, could you store these and them once we return to our domain and give them back?”

“I can relocate them to your territory right now if you wish, I want one of them as payment though.” He stares at Gorger, “Also I will add these pancakes and their recipes.” I see Gorger looking up.

“Wait for the quest.”

That’s my cue, I focus a bit, it’s pretty easy to do. Soon enough I can visualize it.

Unnamed Quest

Relocate two mercury shrimp corpses and pancake ingredients to the domain of the dungeon and give blood pancakes to Gorger and their recipe to Merlin.

Rewards: One Mercury Shrimp corpse.

And… sent. I can feel that he accepted it. He gives the pancakes to Gorger, and shows the recipe to Merlin. They are not the pancakes I was expecting, in fact they are blood pancakes. They are pretty easy to make though.

Irax approaches each corpse, and they all disappear, he turns and a bow and arrow appear on his hands. The bow is the same as before but the arrow is different, this time the arrow has a black wood shaft and the arrow head has a weird crystal circle in the middle. He takes a second and then shoots the arrow. Through my drones I watch it sailing the fake dome skies and then hitting my territory.

Then two shrimp corpses along with a lot of ingredients appear around the arrow, before it suddenly teleports itself back to Irax. I feel the quest is complete. Irax did tell Merlin that he has a lot of stuff with him but I really didn’t expect him to actually carry eggs, can I hatch these? I will try later.

“What was that arrow?”

“Supply arrow, it was created for fast resupplies in places where normal teleportation is being blocked.“