The nearby forest and floor 1 were both cleared. DM’s army advanced further into floor 2. Hunting down the intruders wasn’t very difficult when the army was controlled by a person with real-time information about where every enemy was superimposed on to a detailed map.
The next group was holed up in a room with only one way in or out. In a normal dungeon, it made sense to defend against wayward monsters by guarding a choke point. Against an organized band of commando monsters, leaving an escape path would have been preferable.
This group didn’t seem to have any adventurers with it, so DM didn’t need to be as cautious. They had a healer, but the guy was clearly part of the army, not just some poor schmuck who was being forced to help them out. He was about to have a bad day. DM also switched up the formation to swap the chickbear and golem due to the enemy composition. The golem’s superior healing ability was more important than the chickbear’s agility right now.
“Monsters incoming!” the scout yelled back to the rest of his group. They sprung to action, drawing their weapons and taking up a formation. This group was fortunate to have two archers, and both were eager to loose arrows down the corridor at the approaching monsters. While they fired at will, the scout called out the enemy composition. “It’s a golem! Two minotaurs, goblins, ogres…” He lost composure as he tallied up the enemy.
“Holy shit!” a swordsman reacted, rising to his toes attempting to get a peek past his allies. “That it!?”
“I think there’s a chickbear and dragonoids in the back…?”
“What do we do!?”
The archers fell back, having done all they could before the monsters got close. The swordsman stepped forward as others moved into position. The priest seemed the calmest as he called out instructions.
“Looks can be deceiving! Unless their levels are all high, we can hold them off or defeat them outright! Remember your training—“
“Wasps!” the swordsman screamed a moment before three wasps overflew the group and dive-bombed into the healer, all attacking him relentlessly. He was slightly lower level than the wasps, and they had him outnumbered, so he went down fast, before his friends could rescue him. Not that they could; they were already engaging the monster vanguard.
After the first exchange of attacks, the goblins raised their staffs and cast healing magic on their front-line fighters. In contrast, the human combatants received no healing. Instead, they were attacked from behind by wasps.
Not needing to capture any adventurers this time, the monsters walked away almost as soon as the remaining Union soldier fell to the floor, abandoning the room. Ideally, they would comb through the enemy’s gear before it all dissolved, but there wasn’t time for that.
DM’s main focus was on keeping Vera alive. Although she wasn’t conscious, she hadn’t lost all her health yet. If DM could just wipe out these invaders, he’d launch his offensive immediately. He decided now was a good time to send word ahead to the Twin Cities.
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Kat was seated at a desk, somewhere in the Church, reading a book on magic. A choir boy entered the room on some errand and nodded at Kat before opening a drawer on some furniture. As he reached in to dig through its contents, a tentacle spawned from the floor and wrapped around his leg. Before he could pull himself out of the furniture and look down, he was charmed.
“DM?”
“…Yes. Listen carefully.”
“Okay.”
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Harold was excitedly setting up his next experiment, forcing Shiba to be his assistant. It was his first attempt to create two zombies of different types at the same time. If successful, he’d spawn a rat zombie and a zombie dog concurrently. “Put this over there.”
Harold’s instructions were often vague, but Shiba had learned to understand him despite that. She aided Harold in positioning various objects on and around the altar which would be used as the base for the zombie ritual.
“If this works, I’ll be needing many more bodies. I’ll be counting on you.” Harold was referring to animals like dead rats or dead dogs, Shiba knew. He wouldn’t mind if she actually killed them herself, but there was no way she could bring herself to a kill a dog. Or a cat for that matter. Rats were okay, at least.
She didn’t even have to hide it if she killed a rat. People would cheer and thank her for cleaning up the city. It had happened on multiple occasions already. Still, being a part-time rat hunter was getting stale. She hoped to learn something useful by helping Harold with this experiment. Although he didn’t try that hard to actually teacher her anything, she could at least pick most of it up through careful observation and occasionally getting a question answered.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
As Harold was nearly ready to begin the ritual, a tentacle popped up behind him and hooked around his leg, abruptly charming him. Shiba jumped back in surprise then calmed down.
“…Shiba.”
“DM!”
“…I need your help.”
“You do?” Shiba had trouble believing there was something DM actually needed her help with, but of course she would help out however she could. “With what?”
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“This is how it’s going to be, huh?” The Lord stood atop the city wall, observing the enemy army setting up a siege. Just about all the people who were in his office with him earlier, including Vulp, had joined him as he stepped out to see for himself what was happening.
“How are the defenses?”
“Close, my Lord,” an advisor responded. “Of course, the city guard is already fully deployed, but the rest need a little longer. They’ll be ready before the Union has time to try anything.”
“Good. What do you think their aim is?”
“It can’t be to starve us out. They must know we got word out to the entire nation before they arrived. Their forces aren’t looking sufficient to take the city, either. Unless more are on the way or the Empire somehow gets involved, I don’t see the logic behind their actions.”
“Lord Davidson, look!” Someone else pointed at the forest just a few hour’s walk from the city. The tree line was just barely visible over the hills from this height. It was tiny, but everyone could see the same thing in the direction the man pointed. Another army was emerging from the forest.
The Lord turned back to his advisor. “Are their forces still insufficient?”
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DM’s elite squad had yet to encounter any major setbacks. None of the enemy were prepared for this impressive monster group, and the Union parties had no way to communicate with one another. Contributing, DM was carefully choosing what direction to attack from and when to engage. The first true challenge lay directly ahead. A moderately large party guarded the stairs down from floor 3 to floor 4. Two other groups were well within earshot of the stairs on the lower floor. Most likely, the first group would retreat and join up with the others below them, creating a sizable force. DM didn’t think he’d lose, but it would be much tougher than anything else so far.
If only DM could lure the group away from the stairs and corner them somewhere. Ah. The morphling. It was still in the form of that adventurer mage from earlier. He had it approach the Union soldiers alone. It looked like this group was half soldiers and half adventurers, complicating things slightly.
“Who goes there!” a man shouted in the direction of footsteps.
“…It’s just me,” a mage answered as she approached them carelessly. “…My party and another joined up to fight monsters but they’re still outnumbered so they sent me to get help. Come quick.”
“Let’s go!” They dutifully followed the mage back in the direction she came from. She guided them too quickly for anyone to check their route or scout out the adjoining paths. “How far is it? I don’t hear fighting…”
The soldier’s caution arrived too late. Just after he vocalized his observation, they all noticed they were surrounded by monsters on both sides. To the right, a chickbear, two minotaurs, a goblin priest, and an ogre mage. To the left, a golem, two dragonoids, a goblin priest, and an ogre mage.
“We were just leaving!” the soldier howled at the monsters before gesturing for his group to escape back the way they came. Just as they turned to run, three wasps lowered themselves into the group’s path, blocking a quick exit. Fighting was inevitable, and the attack from both sides was extremely unfavorable.
The soldiers and adventurers of this group didn’t know that the monsters were handicapped as well. They were trying to keep roughly half of their enemy alive without getting defeated themselves. Even with DM controlling the battle, this was a tall order for monsters lacking in advanced thinking ability. Still, the mere fact that the humans didn’t know about the handicap lessened the blow by half. Further, the morphling feigned getting attacked by monsters and required “saving” by the humans, further exposing them to danger. The soldiers went down quickly, and all but one adventurer avoided serious wounds.
“W—What are they doing?” one adventurer whispered to another, wondering why the monsters backed off instead of finishing them instead. “Wait, the goblin!” They all turned to look at the goblin who was the only monster taking any action. It was casting a spell, but considering it was a priest, it must have been healing its allies, despite them being well off overall.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, the healing spell struck the wounded adventurer, reducing his wounds to a manageable level. While they checked the guy’s condition and tried to make sense of the situation, the morphling stepped over to a nearby minotaur and then turned around as though to fall in to formation.
“…You have been spared. Follow us.”
“Like hell!” one of the adventurers shouted in defiance, not accepting the offer for surrender. He actually threw his sword at the morphling, but the spinning blade was struck out of the air by a minotaur’s ax. “Damn it!”
“…You can follow us while conscious or unconscious. It doesn’t really matter to me.”
“Conscious!” another adventurer announced. The others relented and held their hands up in surrender.
The swordsman attempted to pick his sword back up.
“…Leave it. If you can’t be trusted to hold on to your weapon you can’t have it back.”
“What are you, my mom!?”
“…Yes, and I’m very disappointed in you.”
The adventurer shrugged as he followed the others down the next hallway. He had no idea how close he came to being the only adventurer victim of this invasion. DM was not feeling particularly patient recently.
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DM cleared the rest of the floors more or less the same way. He ended up with a smattering of adventurers imprisoned throughout the dungeon, but he’d have to deal with them later. For now, he needed to reorganize his army. Based on a recent indication from the dungeon, one change would prove particularly helpful.
>Dungeon has reached LVL 11.
>Dungeon Master has reached LVL 12.
>Dungeon Floor 11 now available.
>Additional creatures now available.