In a high throne room in an impregnable castle lay a high lord. Notos granted an audience to a young soldier who had accompanied the search party he had sent to find any sign of the lich of Muoninsk. The only survivor recounted his tale.

"When we entered the dark cave. described we started searching cavern after cavern for Lumous or the lich but all we found was an enormous swarm of ravenous bats. They chased us through the caverns it was Sir Ronn who lead us to safety in the confines of a dwarven ruin. But that temporary safety harbored dangers even more vile. in those confusing systems of hallways and corridors held weird high-class mana beasts which resembled dragons yes I think one of them was a dragon. It was as tall as the room we are in right now and as large as a house. That is what ki- killed sir Ronn. He was the reason I survived... He was a good man."

The stoic lord didn't bat an eye and dismissed the young soldier.

"You did well soldier you may leave."

After the gates were closed the lord sunk into his throne and asked his court mage

"What do you think?"

Next to him was an old man dressed in a beige robe with countless sapphires adorning his every person.

"The 'dragons' he speaks of are probably some form of drake. If the lich truly retreated into that dwarven fortress those drakes probably belong to him and since those drakes are alive... Well, that probably means the lich is too."

The lord sighed

"I thought so as well. So what do you think the best course of action is here Perlicus?"

Thinking for a moment the mage said

"There are no longer any people here that are strong enough to defeat the lich. The church's paladins are gone and you know how hard it is to ask them to replenish our forces. The armies of the kingdom are busy trying to invade that Sea of Night. I suggest employing some adventurers ones capable of combating a city-class monster and above should suffice."

The king sighed again

"This will drain our coffers of a significant amount of gold."

The court mage nodded

"True but it would be more costly to allow the lich to rally its forces once again and complete his siege of the city."

The lord stood up

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"500 gold coins should suffice right?"

The mage nodded

"That is more than enough"

Dungeon POV

Waiting for the bats to bring back the creatures to inhabit my dark river. I start carving out the underground river's route. As rivers tend to meander and move through the path of least resistance, I enforced the banks of the river, making it very difficult to erode. I wanted the river to stay where it was and not move at all. The river would curve and flow through around fifteen kilometers of rock and stone.

After I had excavated the path the river would flow down, I would need to create the enchantment that would regulate the flow of water. So I took some mercury that I had extracted from the ground and started to create a line of mercury that would stretch through the entirety of the river. After it had solidified, I enchanted it with water mana with the intent of creating a continuous flow from the entrance to the exit.

But the enchantment didn't seem to work when I introduced some water harvested from the air and creeks that encompassed my territory, and it flowed to the end of the stream but didn't seem to flow back. Disheartened by my failure, I analyzed where I went wrong here. After a few minutes of pondering, I realized that the water couldn't flow in two directions at once in the same stream. To solve this, I would need to create a closed loop that would continuously flow in one direction. And that would require me to carve another 15 kilometers of river, which I did. It took a couple days, but once completed, the water would flow perfectly from the entrance to the exit.

But now it was time to deal with the water itself. The rock and stones I had collected from excavating the river would be more than enough to leech into the water. So I treated the water with copper and started to enhance it with darkness mana. As I imbued it, it became darker and murkier until the water didn't even reflect light. Satisfied with the outcome, I poured it all into the river. A river of darkness flowed through the fifth and would hopefully be inhabited by horrible monsters that would lurk in the murky depths.

But now it was time to add some finishing touches. Since this river was inspired by the river Styx, I wanted to make it as foreboding as possible, so on the walls, I carved out faces in torment. I depicted men, women, and children screaming and crying. These carvings lined the entirety of the river, so the sight of suffering would haunt the minds of all who would travel through its dark waters. At the end of the floor, I began to carve out the boss room.

I'm not quite sure what the boss will be yet, so I only carved out a basic room I could change at a later date. But while I was carving the boss room out, the surveillance bats I had sent out to the dark sea had returned frog in tow. Making a shallow pond of water for the frog to regurgitate the fish it had caught. The four different types of creatures that were barfed out looked quite bizarre. One of them was a pair of eel-like creatures with razor-sharp teeth and three eyes. It constantly secreted sticky black mucus, which seemed to have a high affinity for darkness mana.

Another pair of fish looked like a pure black piranha with extremely strong and fast fins, which could propel it a meter above the water's surface. It was extremely fast for its size and seemed to work together fairly well. As for the last two species, the most common one was a weird, tiny, tadpole-like swarm that occupied most of the frog's innards. It seemed to be some kind of parasite that infected the frog. How strange. As for the last one that was something truly alien, it was a pair of dark purple octopi that had thirteen tentacles instead of eight. After further testing, their beaks were capable of tearing iron as though it were cloth. These aquatic creatures will make the perfect base for the monsters that will inhabit the dark river.