Chapter 44: Give Me Back my Dungeon
Kat and Shiba assessed Vera’s condition. DM had not pulled out the sword from her chest wound. Although his healing magic had kept her alive so far, he couldn’t keep it up. She could only be healed so much with a foreign object in her body before the wound’s side-effects would become deadly anyway.
As soon as the sword was removed, Vera would bleed out and die. Kat confirmed her healing magic, including what she had learned from the Church, was unlikely to fix this type of wound, or at least not in time to prevent death. DM recounted his memories of the past few conversations between Shiba and Harold about using a combination of necromancy techniques and white mage magic to save someone. The two girls nodded at the theory and started discussing how they might turn words into action.
While Kat and Shiba got to work on helping Vera, DM turned his attention to his marching army. Since they weren’t stopping to take breaks and no forest monsters dared slow them down, it wouldn’t actually take that long for them to reach the Upper Gordu Dungeon. So far, DM didn’t think the soldiers guarding that dungeon were likely to learn of the pending monster arrival ahead of time. No messengers from the Lower Gordu Dungeon invasion party had escaped.
Most likely, the Union’s army was already sending a few runners into the forest to try and make contact with their allies at both dungeons, but that wouldn’t happen quickly enough to get in DM’s way. He was going to recover his new dungeon, geographic and political inconveniences be damned. If the Union didn’t like that, they shouldn’t have stabbed DM’s student right before his eyes. Whether he truly considered the Union an enemy or not would depend on Vera’s fate, but for now he only considered the army actively messing with both his dungeons and the Twin Cities as opponents.
And this army was an opponent. DM wouldn’t abandon the Twin Cities. Not only did he have several friends living there, but he was on good terms with the Guild. Also, one of his girls was quickly moving up the city hierarchy in an unusual rags-to-riches story.
DM suspected rumors about Vulp were making the rounds ever since Lord Davidson decided to have her adopted into a branch family. That was apparently quite unusual for beast-kin, even in a nation like the Holy State which was generally welcoming to all peoples. Then, earlier today, she was present for the Lord’s meeting with the representative of an invading army. When the idiot drew his sword in a breach of parley, she make quick work of him in front of the entire city guard and who knows who else.
DM overheard a couple of people in the background referring to her by a new moniker already: Valorous Vulp. Davidson must have been licking his chops at the prospect of this now-popular and capable girl marrying his son in the future, although that wasn’t likely to happen. Regardless, DM didn’t want to squander this opportunity for one of his spies to achieve great influence in the nearest city by watching it get razed by a crazed army. He wasn’t using his monster army as support, but he had another highly-effective method for sowing chaos among the enemy, and he had plenty of captive mages left to borrow MP from. Heck, the first one he capture had even recovered some of her MP since several hours prior.
DM just needed to time things so he wouldn’t be engaging the battalion in the Upper Gordu Dungeon at the same time as the main conflict at the Twin Cities was unfolding.
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Night fell, forcing the Union to wait another day before advancing on the Twin Cities. Holy State reinforcements wouldn’t arrive after waiting just one more day, so the circumstances hadn’t changed much.
On the other hand, night was the perfect time for DM to slaughter a dungeon full of intruders. Except for the adventurers. He’d keep them alive until the war was over, then figure the rest out.
His monster army held position two kilometers south of the Upper Gordu Dungeon. Using an infected bat to scout, he found a small party camping outside the entrance. He needed to make sure they were dealt with before the monster army came within earshot.
About thirty seconds and several tentacles later, they were dealt with. None of them had the appearance of adventurers, so none were spared. This violence was a tad less justifiable than how DM handled his other dungeon since he was now in Union territory. Had the Union been civil, he would have used a softer hand when dealing with the Upper Gordu Dungeon. Since they’d occupied this dungeon, they’d plunged a sword into Vera’s chest and swung a separate sword at Vulp’s neck. The tentacle-gloves were off.
His army of monsters advanced on the dungeon. According to what he could see from the infected bat’s perspective, nobody had stepped out of the dungeon since he eliminated the party monitoring the entrance. Perfect.
DM expected this liberation to go more smoothly than the last, not that he had much difficulty reclaiming the Lower Gordu Dungeon either. He elected to send his entire army this time. If circumstances were to change, such as if a portion of the Union’s army attempted to storm the Lower Gordu Dungeon, he could always dismiss the bulk of the army and start spawning monsters near him instead. The one thing he couldn’t do is teleport Upper Gordu Dungeon monsters to his location using the transfer feature since he didn’t have control of the other end yet. That would change soon.
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DM sent his army down the stairs to the first floor, where they encountered a snoozing party. All of them were dressed like soldiers, so once again, DM didn’t see a need to spare them. He didn’t. Perhaps they were lucky they all went in their sleep, an ironic result of their poor vigilance.
Deeper into the floor, his army encountered a less oblivious group, including a couple of adventurers. This posed a bit of a challenge since the Upper Gordu Dungeon didn’t currently have any jail cells built into the floors. DM decided to just bring the defeated adventurers along as prisoners alongside the rest of his monster army. He didn’t like treating people like a chain gang, but this was just until he gained access to the boss chamber again. After that, he could teleport them over to his dungeon and lock them up properly.
This group was the first one to notice an army descending on them and take up arms. The previous party died in their sleep, and the party camping above ground was defeated by spawned tentacles. Now, as the numerous monsters approached in lock-step, the soldiers and adventurers paled.
One of the keys to fighting monsters, as humans, was to outnumber them. Even the weakest monsters became dangerous if they gained a numbers advantage on adventurers or soldiers. The Guild drilled this into everyone it could, and that was despite the fact that monsters didn’t generally work together except in limited cases. What this group saw was various monsters working together just like a trained army. Monsters with superior physiques to humans, standing shoulder to shoulder to minimize their exposure, were the last thing anyone wanted to see in a dungeon. The echoing footsteps of dozens, if not hundreds, of monsters further behind the lead monsters was equally demoralizing.
In the final moments before the clash, everyone reacted differently. One adventurer shouted out suggestions, but everyone else knew the ideas wouldn’t actually save anyone. Another collapsed to his knees in defeat. One soldier charged at the line of monsters all by himself. Another ran to the far corner of the chamber to keep himself as far away from the enemy as possible. Yet another soldier just froze in place, paralyzed into inaction.
The final soldier’s behavior was most interesting to DM. He begged the monsters to spare him. So far, most of the people DM’s monsters encountered considered negotiation impossible, as was the conventional wisdom. How could you communicate with a monster who couldn’t speak? The more intelligent monsters might at least recognize when a person is trying not to be violent, but everybody knew that monsters weren’t kind in such situations. If a monster wanted to kill you, it killed you, unless you could prevent it with force. If a monster wanted to eat you, it ate you, along the same lines. A human’s only choices were to outrun it, defeat it, or scare it away, although the latter didn’t work with many types of monsters.
DM hesitated about how to handle the soldier begging for his life. Initially, he instructed the monsters to take down all the other soldiers. They dutifully followed his orders. Then the monsters surrounded the two adventurers and the one begging soldier. The minions remained motionless, waiting for the command to kill or capture.
While DM tried to make up his mind, one of the adventurers started pleading as well. They announced that all three were surrendering. Since the adventurer, who DM planned to spare, was requesting the final soldier be spared as well, he relented. The soldier would be taken into custody alongside the adventurers, for now. Perhaps having a soldier as a prisoner would come in handy later, such as releasing him with a message to deliver. DM couldn’t afford to take all these soldiers prisoner, but one or two likely wouldn’t be a problem. Probably, if DM asked about it, it would turn out this soldier had some tragic backstory which necessitated him serving in the army. He wouldn’t ask, though.
The three prisoners were disarmed, partially bound, and forced to march along with the monsters. They were obviously terrified but at least remained cooperative. DM considered using the prisoners to demoralize the remaining parties in the dungeon, such as by parading them at the front of the column or even using them as hostages, not that he would actually kill them now. He decided against it. The Geneva Convention didn’t apply here, but he’d at least avoid doing awful things unnecessarily.
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As the army progressed through several floors, taking full advantage of DM’s real-time knowledge of who was where, they defeated several more parties and captured a bunch more adventurers. A few tried to chat or negotiate with the nearest monsters, but the monsters ignored them other than to continue dragging them along, of course. DM noticed one adventurer was surprisingly cheerful. She seemed convinced that their futures were bright despite being captured by monsters and forced to march with them as the monsters continued slaughtering Union soldiers. Perhaps the adventurers were even less keen on being used by the Union than DM realized. That still didn’t explain why she seemed almost delighted by the situation, but he supposed there were all kinds of people in the world. Those elves clearly didn’t have a total distaste for monsters, after all…
One sneaky soldier managed to circle around all the monsters as he made a mad dash for the surface. DM was impressed he pulled it off, but all that was waiting for him was a spawned tentacle just before the dungeon exit. He even managed to cut the tentacle off of him before it could apply any status effects or do damage, but the second tentacle which spawned from behind him was successful.
As DM expected, the dungeon was conquered in less time than the previous one. Not only was it smaller, but he had a much larger army. It was only to be expected. The Union hadn’t left behind many strong fighters, likely because of how focused they were on the Twin Cities.
Once the boss chamber was secured, he set up the transfer system as he teleported adventurers a few at a time over to his current location. Dawn hadn’t broken yet, so he still had time to prepare for the Union’s assault on the Twin Cities, not that there was much to do.