Chapter 40: Reclaiming the Dungeon, Part 1
The man practically turned to ash as he collapsed, leaving his sword impaled in Vera’s torso as she fell too. A blast of air struck the group, throwing the rest off-balance.
“It’s an enemy attack!” the Commander yelled, turning back to his nearby soldiers. As if it wasn’t obvious.
Just as the soldiers regained their footing from the air blast, two more T3 fireballs struck from other directions, killing one man and seriously injuring a second.
“What’s attacking us!?” one soldier yelled, not being able to keep up with the battle.
“I saw a tentacle!” shouted one of the few remaining uninjured soldiers.
“A what?” The Commander’s voice was drowned out by the sound of two lightning bolts striking his men. Both targets staggered and collapsed to their knees, still alive. Only three remained standing, including the Commander.
That changed quickly. Two tentacles rose from the ground behind the remaining younger soldiers, smacking each in the head with a tentacle slap, leaving them unconscious if not dead.
The Commander turned to run into the forest. “I should have kept stronger guards with me!” he shouted to nobody in particular. Before he could get far, he staggered as a tentacle sprouted from the ground and hooked his ankle. While he struggled to correct his posture and stand back up, a second tentacle wormed its way around his other leg. Then the touch abilities began.
First the Commander collapsed due to the application of paralysis. He was still awake and even had his sense of touch, so he noticed as soon as one tentacle applied pain touch and the other applied mana touch. He screamed in anguish until his mana was depleted, after which the tentacles applied health touch and poison touch, mercifully bringing the pain to an end soon after.
Several soldiers had survived the battle so far but hadn’t had a chance to recover or escape. One tried dragging his body over to Vera, but a tentacle grabbed him by the neck before he could get there and lifted him off the ground. One after another, each had the life sucked out of them, literally, using health touch.
As the last remaining soldier lifelessly fell to the ground, a fresh tentacle spawned adjacent to Vera and attempted to heal her. The chest wound was extremely serious, but the sword had missed her heart and not instantly killed her. Likely, the soldier who stabbed her was not careful in his haste.
After a minute or so of effort, DM realized that he could keep Vera alive but probably couldn’t restore her to full health, or at least not on his own. Right now, if he pulled out the sword, she’d die too quickly for him to save her with healing magic. He also remembered what had happened to some of Sasha’s party members. Even with healing, they were left hurt after the battle with the wyvern and wouldn’t gain their full strength again. In serious situations like this, low-tier healing magic wasn’t the panacea DM wanted.
While healing magic was keeping Vera alive, DM noticed his MP was starting to run low. All those T3 fireballs and other spells took their toll. He had kind of gone berserk there so he wasn’t worrying about conserving his MP at the time. Well, his dungeon was filled with enemies he needed to defeat, and many were mages with generous mana pools, so he’d kill two birds with one stone. He had an idea for how to save Vera, but he’d need to clear his dungeon of enemies quickly before he could proceed with it.
“…Damn, I should have kept that Commander guy alive and charmed him… Shouldn’t I?”
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By this point, small groups of intruders had spread to nearly every floor of the dungeon. The boss chamber was still untouched, and DM wasn’t going to wait for anyone to reach him now. He assembled the army from the Upper Gordu Dungeon to defend the staircase down to this boss chamber while he focused on conquering his own dungeon from the top down.
The dungeon had been designed to make descent relatively easy and ascent difficult. Anticipating this situation, DM had positioned a strike force in a hidden room on the top floor. With a command, they stepped out of their hiding place and into the first floor lobby, right near the dungeon’s exit, blocking the escape of the nearby soldiers. The soldiers briefly brandished their weapons, then thought better of it and decided to flee down to the next level.
DM’s small army followed them down the stairs in a tight formation. It was quite a group, actually. Lead by a LVL 10 chickbear flanked on either side by LVL 10 minotaurs, the front line wouldn’t be easy to break—doubly true when you considered the two LVL 10 goblin priests in tow. The chickbear and goblin priests were even T2 monsters due to their high levels, having differing appearances and higher intelligence compared to their T1 counterparts.
Following close behind were two LVL 10 ogre mages, two LVL 10 succubi, and three LVL 10 wasps hovering overhead. Taking up the rear guard was a golem and two dragonoids, all LVL 10. This group used up half of DM’s available monster levels and would dominate most of the intruders without difficulty.
To support this strike force, DM created a morphling as well as a second group of LVL 9 kobold champions to serve as runners. Although most enemies would be annihilated, DM intended to spare the adventurers. Defeated adventurers would be captured and then imprisoned within the dungeon, for now. Each floor had a small room hidden in the corner for locking up bound prisoners, modeled after the jail cells DM originally built back when he was preparing to imprison Kat’s party if they needed a cover story for why they were in the dungeon. For the most part, the adventurers hired, or perhaps conscripted by the Union, stood out compared to the soldiers due to differences in armor and clothing. The first group of enemies that fled down the stairs actually had one adventurer mage with them, likely serving as an advisor.
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“Just what in the hell was THAT!?” one soldier screamed as the group descended the stairs to floor 2.
“Do monsters group up like that!?” another shouted as he turned to the adventurer, a LVL 9 black mage.
“N—Not in dungeons. They team up in the forest, but not such different types…” she trailed off.
“This didn’t happen in the other dungeon!”
“Could this have all been a trap?”
“Where the hell are we running?”
The group of half-a-dozen including the mage stopped to catch their breath and look around. The noncommissioned officer in charge finally spoke up. “We need to meet up with the closest group, although I’m not sure where they are.”
“I hear footsteps from the stairs!” A soldier pointed at the stairs they had just descended moments ago.
“Th—This way!” the leader instructed as he randomly chose a hallway to run down. He avoided choosing the obvious one, thinking it must be a trap but that decision soon backfired. After thirty seconds they turned a corner and reached a dead end.
“Oh no…”
“H—Hurry, get back to—“
As they feared, the enemy footsteps were getting louder, indicating that they were boxed in.
“Form up!” the leader commanded. “We don’t go down without a fight!” He looked over his shoulder at the adventurer in the back. “What are we dealing with?”
She was staring at the approaching monsters wide-eyed, then shook her head and answered the leader’s question. “That’s definitely a chickbear in the front plus two minotaurs. I see goblins behind them but I’m not sure if they’re black or white mages from here. Those are wasp-types buzzing over their heads, and there are more in the back I can’t see.”
“Any suggestions?”
Before the mage could respond, the monsters stopped their advance about a dozen meters away. Each minotaur sidestepped closer to the walls, creating a slight gap in the formation. Two beautiful women poked their heads through the gaps and gestured toward the soldiers.
“Gah!” the leader exclaimed, although he managed to resist whatever the monsters had attempted.
The women shrugged and each pointed at two of the other soldiers. The two soldiers lowered their weapons. As the women gestured with their fingers for the soldiers to approach, the two men sheathed their weapons and started walking towards the monsters.
“What are you doing!? Get back here!” The leader and another soldier grabbed the affected men and pulled them back towards the group. The enchanted men squirmed and tried to break free but didn’t actually attack their allies. “What’s going on!?” the leader bellowed at the adventurer while restraining one of his soldiers.
“I—I don’t know!”
As the adventurer readied an attack spell, unsure if she should even loose it, the monsters resumed their march towards the group. Aside from her, only one soldier was currently available to fight. Two were acting strange and the other two were busy restraining them.
“Just release him,” the leader instructed the other soldier as they let the two men walk towards the monsters. “Weapons ready! Launch your spell on my mark!”
It was now four against a whole bunch of monsters, with two men, perhaps charmed, in the middle. However, as the two men neared the monsters, the beautiful women stepped back and the minotaurs took their place again. Each minotaur brought an axe down into the skull of an approaching man. They hadn’t even attempted to defend themselves so the damage was fatal.
The surviving group of four all succumbed to fear as they realized there was no way out of this situation. The mage, to her credit, released a T2 ice shot at the chickbear, dealing considerable damage. The goblins immediately healed the chickbear, and dread overcame her.
Her three allies released battle cries and charged at the monsters, fighting one-on-one with the chickbear and two minotaurs in the lead. The leader held his own but the other two were quickly overwhelmed and killed, unused to single combat with minotaurs. The chickbear received more healing as the minotaurs moved to surround the leader.
As the noncommissioned officer in charge, he hated to see his men die before him. He only hoped that poor mage behind him wouldn’t suffer. Mustering the last of his courage, he swung his sword. As it dug into the chickbear, he noticed a new monster hop on top of the chickbear. It was an ogre of some kind, except it must have been a spellcaster, because it released an ice spear directly into his face. As he staggered from the unexpected damage, axes descended into his neck from either side, bringing his struggle to an end.
As her final defender fell lifelessly to the floor, the mage collapsed on the spot, legs folded under her as tears streamed down her face. Realizing she wouldn’t be able to take down more than, at best, one enemy in this situation, she released her staff, and it fell to the floor, slowly sizzling as discarded weapons did when not recovered from a dungeon.
As she waited for death, the monsters failed to approach. Raising her head in confusion, she saw them turn around and start walking away.
“W—What?”
Emerging from the departing monsters, a person stepped over to her. The person actually looked exactly like her, oddly enough, and it spoke. Must have been a morphling, although she hadn’t heard of them speaking before. “…Follow us.” The morphling also turned and started walking away.
Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t follow them right now. Her legs wouldn’t cooperate, and she couldn’t stand. She wasn’t sure if she actually wanted to follow them, but it hardly mattered. She was obviously at their mercy. She couldn’t understand why they didn’t simply kill her, and she shivered as some ideas popped into her mind.
The morphling paused and looked over its shoulder at her. Noticing the mage wasn’t following, it waited, and moments later a kobold, no, a kobold champion, stepped over.
As the kobold champion reached down towards her, the mage shielded her face with her arms, instinctively and turned away. Undeterred, the kobold champion lifted her up in a princess carry and resumed its departure from the dead-end hallway.
“…Don’t resist and you won’t be harmed,” the morphling explained. “…Well, even if you resist I still may not harm you. Oh, may I borrow some MP?”
“B—Borrow?”
The kobold champion stopped walking and shifted his grip on the mage so that her legs would dangle close to the floor. A tentacle rose from that spot on the floor and looped around her ankle, sucking the mana out of her. After a few moments, it seemed satisfied and released her.
“…I need to detain you, for now.”