Charles
After Thing grabbed me I was inside of the Keeper's dungeon again. Well the big bone head made sure that I didn't fall far anyway, still that just leaves open his reasons for doing so to begin with, considering that we're in the middle of a warzone.
"We should move this to the war room." A figure unfamiliar to me appeared down the hallway, partly obscured by the shadows. "Thing is being considerate to you but it's hampering his own ability to deal with Leviathan's ships." And then the figure dissolved into Blue mana.
"A dungeon Avatar? Keeper?" My confusion was only mounting at this point. I ran rather than walked to the war room, already I could feel the giant pile of bones stop holding back his strikes. Entering the room I saw a man wearing clothing I didn't recognise who was looking down at a representation of the dungeon, and of the bay outside with Leviathan's ships therein.
"We need to come up with a plan if we're going to Beat Leviathan. I have a few ideas." He sounded different too.
"Are you Keeper?" The man turned around to face me and pulled his hood down, not that I could make out the details of his face, he was wearing some kind of black stained glass glasses and there was a red and black scarf over the lower half of his face.
"I would appear to be." The young Man responded while he shrugged his shoulders. "Forcing my way out of the evolution cocoon and the damage it did to my core has allowed a lot of my memories to come back to me. Something that we can talk about later. For now..." The dungeon shook again, Leviathan's attacks weren't letting up any time soon.
"Agreed. There's a time and a place to go over your memories. Any ideas on what we're going to do with Leviathan?" I looked down at the model overview that was below us. "He's hiding his weak points. Ninety Nine ships and not one of them is the one we need to get rid of him." Thing slammed down his arms and managed to take a ship out of the equation. "He's gotten used to losing ships it would seem." The first time we fought Keeper was able to stun him by taking out several of his ships at once, now however he seems to have gotten use to having his ships destroyed because instead of getting stunned he was just regenerating them instead.
"Not to mention the one he has running around in Cocytus." Keeper followed up bluntly holding my chin as I formulated my own theory. "He's been running hit and run attacks lately, Graves hasn't even been able to find the slippery bastard and he can fly."
That was a massive red flag, from what I've been hearing the Cocytus ship was easily Leviathan's largest, and that led to but one logical conclusion.
"Leviathan's hiding his core from us. Both the ship that carries the core and the one that leads directly to it are both not here." If Leviathan has seen what this lunatic can do with WMD's he may not want me anywhere near his core where he can set one of them off, well not that I want one set off in the bay either. "So what do we do to find the way to the ship that we need?" In theory, finding ship 100 is as easy as finding and making our way through Ship ninety nine.
"Don't worry, an intelligence capsule is arriving with the details on the ninety ninth ship." An extremely slow intelligence capsule, the Genmu apparently resorted to creating a frictionless surface with ice and then pushing themselves along using their snake tail. "Aside from the Wendigo Troll, this one is the one who made it the deepest into Leviathan when we entered through the other side." The Keeper sounded like he had high hopes for this one. "I'm afraid I can't tell you very much." The Turtle head stated letting his head down. "We basically stuck along long enough to laugh at the fool as he kept hurting himself on the ninety ninth floor." The snake head stated though he looked more amused than the other head. Multiple personalities, great that's all he needs. For me the news was less than stellar but Keeper had entered deep into thought.
"I hope your take away from this situation is better than mine." I didn't have high expectations. "That Troll is probably the most competent fighters among all the fighters in the tower." The Keeper stated as I cocked my brow at him. "He was even able to take out my Fire Frost Fiend when I tore up and subjugated the other dungeons."
"Yeah I remember that he's pretty hard to kill too." Fang piped up at that time. "He's a B-Rank, but unlike us who specialise in AOE attacks he has the limitless stamina of a undead with the unlimited regeneration of a dire troll." If it's something like that then he's probably still alive somewhere in that thing.
"I haven't been seeing him at the meetings with the other dungeons lately either." Keeper piped up. "So the chances that we have an inside man on Leviathan's ships are actually pretty good?" I asked and Charles nodded. "What we need to do is find a way of contacting Troll and getting him off of those ships."
"A dungeon at Leviathan's level doubtlessly has instancing active." I stated bluntly. Instancing, the number one dungeon blessing that creates the most problems and the most opportunities, the ability to divide invaders into multiple alternate versions of itself and harvest multiple versions of the same dungeon at the same time. "If we want the information that Troll has then we will have to kill him and let him respawn."
"Well that's probably not going to be necessary." Keeper stated as he started to explain to us the latest of his mad schemes.
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Troll
I was continuously tapping my monster's foot as we waited for the floor boss to respawn, with perfect timing the fish monster reappeared in front of us, and no sooner than it appeared that Troll chopped his worthless head off. The monster broke down into magical energy and reformed into the form of a flint lock, one of dozens like it that we had collected by now. I wish we thought of doing this sooner! The more achievements we earn by killing these bosses the more of these blasted floors we'll be able to skip, by my estimates we'll be sent straight to the eightieth floor when we go on a raid. After we claim this bastard's core and eat his dungeon the Keeper and those other losers are next!
[Achievement Unlocked: Piranha Man Slayer: Piranha Man Schema, Fifth Floor Raid By-pass]
I had Ninety Six Key's hanging around our necks, four more and I'd be able to ditch this place and go straight for the eightieth floor during my next raid on this god forsaken fleet of ships. With that done I moved onto the next floor in question, what was this one again? Rivers? Pools? Suddenly the entire ship started to shake again, what was it now?
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Keeper
[Dungeon Keeper: God of Bad things? There's literally a god who governs 'bad things?']
[Lithilas: Chernobog is more of the 'Pretty please stay away with a cherry on top' or 'Go bother the people I don't like please!' kind of god]
[Dungeon Keeper: And you think that he's the god from the floor that Frost and Fang were talking about?]
[Lithilas: 'A god whose blessings cause misfortune to those who try to delve it's depths' with a description like that it's either him or Fortuna, and I doubt it's her]
[Dungeon Keeper: Because...?]
[Lithilas: She causes good luck, besides the Pirate Bastard's behaviour fits with Chernobog's MO]
[Lithilas: Good luck for you doesn't mean bad luck for your enemies either]
Right. Good luck could mean that adventurers keep having good luck in your dungeon so they keep coming back for more, compare and contrast this Chernobog, I can easily imagine that there are lots of people who pray to keep this loser away from them.
[Dungeon Keeper: How do we identify which ship is his?]
[Lithilas: It'll be the one where literally everything goes wrong]
Well credit where do, the pirate bastard picked an effective means of defence for what basically amounts to his last line of defence. Whatever.
"Do you have your people ready to go?" I disappeared from my core room and appeared back in front of Charles in the war-room.
"You would know better than I do." Indeed he was right of course.
"It seemed polite to ask before I began." I drew my points of awareness to the arms and hands of Thing, Adventurers had been paired up with monsters from the other Dungeons. We already tried raiding the Pirate bastard but we got a notification that he was already being raided, did we really traumatise the bastard that badly last time? No matter, we have monsters from fifty dungeons to supplement our own invasion of the Pirate's ships. "Turn heat into sound..." Muttering that, I let my voice carry in the entire dungeon. "We'll be launching an attack on Leviathan in the next few minutes. Thing will be responsible for insertion, each of you will be entering on a different ship. The chances that instancing will be in effect are quite high. Your objective is to locate and identify the floor belonging to 'Chernobog' or failing that, cause as much damage as possible and escape the ship for retrieval. The Monsters travelling with you are expendable, if necessary you can use them as meat shields to escape but it is preferable that you work together to actually hold the territory."
Thus the operation began. Through Thing's eyes I watched as the giant mass of bone and limestone in question used it's massive fingers to poke holes into each of the ships that could theoretically be Chernobog's, we eliminated obvious candidates like the mobile volcano island for instance, and release his payloads of adventurers and dungeon monsters. According to my limited experience with Dungeon demolition tactics it seems that dungeons can't alter floors that currently has delvers on, though that's not the case with fellow dungeon monsters, so that should limit the bastard's options. Additionally it seems that instancing actually has some downsides too.
The answer comes down to resource management. Lithilas describes instancing as suddenly acquiring a copy of one of your floors, which is fine if your mana production suddenly spikes with the extra floor, not so much the case if say you don't have one of my mana production facilities or your alternate dungeons aren't crammed full of people producing enough mana to be worth the up keep. So Leviathan now has to make the choice between multiple alternate versions of himself and cost efficiency. As Thing shot one of his arms forward he jammed the middle finger of his hand into one of the ships making a hole, before slamming his hand holes on top of said hole and releasing the group waiting on the other side. In my war-room I watched the ship turn yellow, soon it would either turn green for the correct floor, or red for the wrong one. Alright you Pirate bastard your move.
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Leviathan
A huge eight limbed spider reared monkey monster waded through my submersible, it's webbing creating a pocket of normalised pressure for the humans that came with it while it bore the brunt of the pressure itself with it's exoskeleton armour. As I was about to address this hole in my defence another suddenly opened, a snake woman with harpy wings was gathering all the heat together across a few different floors freezing them over and producing a fire lance attack that she was using to incinerate my monsters.
What absurdity is...?
Another hole, a swarm of flying skeleton birds accompanied by a young man dressed in a necromancer's robes flooding against my monsters, only stopping to suck the life and mana out of them and using that to supplement the young man's reservoirs.
Are you...!?
Another hole, the Turtle snake from before now!
Stop!
A overgrown Lion Topiary.
Doing!
A Mershark that turned into a swarm of Bats.
THAT! That Blasted Skeleton!
Stolen story; please report.
Each hole it punches into my ships brings with it a new creature each of them more strange and bizarre than the last, which might not be so concerning if it weren't for the fact that the humans they were protecting limited my access to my floors! Everything was a relatively even exchange, creatures with high defensive power like the Spider Monkey and the Turtle Snake they acted as meat shields while humans with high fire power and support magic worked to eliminate the offending monsters. High Offensive powered ones like the Harpy snake and some kind of werewolf with a flying severed skull on the other hand wiped out wave after wave of my monsters while Humans in heavy armour and shields screened attacks for them and provided buffs. Most concerning though were the support types, the Skeleton Birds and the Topiary seemed to provide a limitless supply of mana for their casters to bunker down and cast AOE type magic. What was worse was the sheer scale of the magic was spreading between floors!
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Keeper
Professor Phalanges has made his way to the war-room, I would prefer that I have my fire power experts down fighting Leviathan in his dungeon but it seems that the good professor had made a few tweaks to my original plan. Well not that I can really disapprove.
"My students are wearing magical accessories that allows me to track their specific mana signatures, not only their exact location but also where they have been casting and what it did." The Professor explained as he waved a staff over the war table.
"Handy." I stated as we watched the matter proceed with bated breath.
"The issue is that over time Leviathan will absorb the mana into his own disguising the mana in question until we cannot recognise it." Different coloured mana was slowly expanding from the yellow ships dying the yellow a extra layer of colour as if filling in veins with mystery fluids, spreading and connecting with each other as they jumped between ships. Okay so we have a map of Leviathan's dungeon starting to take shape now. "How will they know when they've got the wrong floor?" I asked Charles who to my knowledge was coordinating the mixture of Adventurers and mages.
"Most of the groups have Clerics doing healing, they're also checking the blessings of the god you're looking for, Chernobog right?" Well I guess it would be obvious. "The plan is that if they can identify the god then they give a signal flare." As Charles said that some of the ships were turning red. "Looks like the first groups are ready for retrieval." Nodding my head I sent the command to Thing to pick up the groups of individuals as he gets ready to send more groups down. The next group of monsters have been cooking for a while, and all I really got to say about this is Archie, where do you keep these things?
"They are quite fond of the void of the tower Master." Archie failed to grasp my displeasure at him holding out on me.
[B Rank Monster Deathgaze: A creature from the void turned into a undead monster, it's potent psi-manipulating abilities are paired with a variety of eye abilities to petrify, vaporise, charm and the like]
[C Rank Bone Spider: Not a true spider, but rather an undead construct made in the image of one, it is capable of quick and devastating attacks with it's sharp legs]
To give the other monsters access to the XP bonuses of Giant Killer I had Archie seal Animated Skulls and Hands into marble boulders and... basically forgot about them. Archie didn't forget about them though. A quarter of the Points that were harvested by dropping by rocks on Solarus went into said rocks, enough to go from F to B three times over, this came out as a result, I don't know what Archie shoved into these things for cores either.
"I haven't yet master, Ones of this size requires significant resources, and with your core in the state that it is in you cannot produce the required resources. On the other hand the lack of a core creates a lack of weak spots for the enemy to take advantage of. So long as they are not completely destroyed they will keep putting themselves back together again." Archie's explanation was accompanied by the latest groups being funnelled into the latest hole.
Well upgrades can wait until later I guess. The Taraboon and her group were some of the first to return from the enemy dungeon, the priest with them was able to confirm that the blessing came from Dagon, which going off of last time made that the first floor. I waved my arm over the display, numbers appearing in the air above the ships indicating floors.
"What are you basing that off of?" Professor Phalanges asked looking at the display suspiciously.
"Dagon was first floor last time, plus there's only one other ship he's connecting to." I chose to show my work instead of just giving the answer.
"Implying that he's on the very far end of Leviathan's order, certainly not the end so the beginning." The Professor agreed with my logic it would seem. "A clear idea of where the ships are set are probably for the best." So the floor numbers stayed in place. "The Question now is has Leviathan found your little surprise yet?"
"Oh he definitely knows that they're there, what they are on the other hand is another story." I smirked evily at the thought of part B going into action.
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Leviathan
One of the wretched groups of invaders had already retreated, and I without the pleasure of killing them and eating their mana as compensation for all the trouble that they had caused me. Annoying. Incredibly annoying in fact. Worst of all though was this little box that they had left behind. An entirely ordinary looking chest, I thought they were mocking me at first, I would be content to ignore it but leaving someone known to weaponise bags of holding to leave junk lying around my dungeon was a bad move. The fact that it resisted me when I tried to break it down into mana was alarming.
[E Rank Chest Poltergeist-]
Tch! All of you get down here and break open this damned box!
The first of my monsters to arrive was the Tide caller, who prepared a water blade to slash down the wretched box and break it open only for his target to dodge to the side as a living being would do.
Because of course the wretched box could move by itself!
The Keeper was making a show of withdrawing more of his forces, but leaving behind more of these wretched boxes behind!
I want them out of my dungeon!
Right now I had a choice, have my ally cancel their raid on me blocking this bloody dungeon from doing that wretched teleporting attack again or do I have to come up with another plan! No no I don't need to raid the enemy dungeon to break into it, after all the fools brought the dungeon to me!
I fired my anchor chains directly at the biggest target that I have available, the Bone Giant. The Coral of the Traitor is annoyingly potent when it comes to deflecting and dissolving my projectiles, the tree's roots and branches keep disappearing, so I would directly invade the first floor, and through that tear into the breach leading into Helheim where I will rip the Keeper and his pet dungeons out of their foundation and make them suffer for the Humiliation I have faced! Several of my ships circled around the battlefield, each of them firing their hooks to pierce the limbs of the giant while ice worked to freeze the water around it up to its hips. In the mean time the hooked limbs of the Bone Giant was being pulled in multiple directions, my monsters and I had used magic to seize control of the water in the bay and was now pulling the entire thing in multiple directions. I felt something cut through the mana like a hot knife through butter, or rather a blade made of Flail Snail Coral! Cut from the bonds of the bay my ship was flailed about through the air as the skeleton prepared to bring it down on another of my ships. The Ship rapidly reeled itself along it's chain, water was being pulled up from the bay, despite the Traitor's attempts to knife the water back into the bay, afterwards the water formed around the skeletal hand and created a pathway into the skeleton.
[Your Territory has crossed over with The Dungeon Keeper]
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Keeper
[Your Territory has crossed over with Pirate Fleet Leviathan]
Lovely, that's exactly what we needed.
"We have intruders." I stated bluntly. "From the limb that just iced over right now." We watched through the display as Thing slammed the mass of ice down onto another ship, and watched as the ship that was just destroyed reappeared in the ice between Thing's legs, paths soon forming to Thing's legs and from there into the dungeon proper. More notifications appeared in my face as more and more paths were being formed. "Should we send personnel down to deal with them?"
I let my consciousness drift, I watched as the animated skulls I positioned down there skewered various monsters with spears of marbled bone giving both me and them a nice flood of Points.
Sadly it wasn't long until the skulls were wrapped in the cocoon of evolution, I'd keep going with the Death Gazers for the time being, partly because they seem like the best option, but mostly because I see them fitting into the same rolls I already had them in as skulls, their main job before was to stop people that I don't want getting into the dungeon from getting in, now they'll have all kinds of status effect magic to do it with.
"No. Send reinforcements to the tower." I instructed to the confusion of the others. "If we put up barriers then they're going to think that there's something to hide behind them, barriers that they can probably break through. If we put them on a different path though..."
"Then we'll leave you exposed. Or do I have to remind you that the whole reason Leviathan has launched this attack is because you were left vulnerable when you exited Cocytus?" Charles scolded angrily.
"No. Leave dealing with the invaders to us. We need Leviathan dead tonight."
"Then you will be somewhat disappointed, as the last time the ass was killed he came back to haunt us from another realm." I stated shrugging my not really there shoulders. "My plan is to make the coward squirm enough that he does the same thing he did last time, evacuate himself into another dimension. I just need to figure out where the loser is hiding his core."
"And when he does?" Charles asked and I smirked as we finally picked up on another mana signature. One of the Mages had finally managed to breach into Leviathan's core ship. "I show him how you really eat a dungeon!"
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Leviathan
One of the accursed boxes falls victim to the spear of one of my monsters at long last. And Not a moment too soon, there's at least one of the possessed boxes for almost every floor that the adventurers were on, and the mana creep from the mages has already breached the ninety ninth and into the hundredth where my core is located, despite my own best efforts to dissolve the intrusive mana and expel it's influence. I looked to the sea, to the waves that were rolling on the horizon thanks to the surplus of Maride hybrids that had been released into the sea. The Keeper's sea monsters have cut off my retreat here, and his bosses are blocking my advance into the mainland. I could use water manipulation magic to create a tidal wave and flood the coast, but that wouldn't get me my revenge on the Keeper, nor with his various mobile dungeon floors would it slow him down for long. So I will have to take a third option then, and breach, but on which floor? I can't go with one of my water floors, too much of a risk that Oceanus will be able to get to me, jackass still mad that I took over his ocean. The Demonic Floors were probably out too. Bastard was probably cozying up to them all as we speak after they double crossed Lucifer. So my options are pretty damn narrow at this point. And what are inside of those damned boxes!?
[C Rank Schema Bottle Squid-A heavily mutated hybrid of multiple species of monster, though small it's stomach contains an enormous amount of space that can swallow most dungeons whole and trap them inside of itself]
That's all that I'm able to get before the boxes break open and release a massive quantity of slime into my ships taking them over in the process, worst yet, I can't even disconnect them at this point either! The Slime flooded my halls and took over until my ships were filled with nothing but slime, then it immediately got worse. After the slime absorbed my ships they proceeded to shrink down, the space inside of them being compressed with my ships inside of them. Several of the ships were already consumed! Including the ninety ninth! I can't even cut off the infection at this point!
Stall the spread of the slime!
Then more bad news was coming along, the Sphinx had tracked down my hundredth floor and was now flying above me, various attacks being intercepted by the flying weapons and the use of wind magic that surrounded her as she prepared to deliver another of those accursed boxes! I don't have time to be picky at this point, nor do I have the luxury of picking and choosing which realm I arrive at, most of the Bottles were already triggered. Fine we'll go with that one! Reality began to shake as I initiated the breach. Unlike Keeper I wasn't some lesser dungeon struggling to manipulate divine power! I can breach into another realm as easily as I suck on mana! The Bay shook as the ship I chose at random broke through to the realm of one of my patrons. We will meet again Keeper! I lost my consciousness as my core room was sucked away into another realm.
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Charles
I watched as One Hundred of the Keeper's so called bottle squids swam into the docks, being gathered together in a chest. At Keeper's instructions I had the bottles escorted into the dungeon proper onto the second floor, where a pond had been prepared and the bottles were being deposited to swim freely.
"You're sure that he'll stay down this time?" Charles was looking at me suspiciously.
"His floors are no longer under his control." The Keeper's avatar stated looking at the bottles in amusement. "He can't disconnect from them anymore. Even if he could he's in a whole ass other realm now. Even as we speak Graves is hunting the ship in Cocytus. In the mean time this bastard and his hundred gods blessing will keep supplying me with all the mana I could ever want. And even if he wanted to come back to this realm he's going to just stuck in his bottles again. The threat to us that he represents has been neutered."
"And if he should break through the Squids?" To my question the Keeper kept himself from bursting out laughing as he put his hand on one of the bottles and I watched it be broken apart as it approached. "These bottles neutralise and repel mana, that bastard can't break through them. No he better just get ready to obediently hand all of his mana over to me, cause these guys are gonna be spitting it out for all eternity."
All of Leviathan's mana was being pushed out through the opening on the bottles.
"Do we know what realm he's connected to at least?" I wasn't fond of pushing our problems onto someone else, especially considering how much I want the bastard to suffer. "I can answer that."
Professor Phalanges was examining each bottle as he plucked them from the water of the bay, one had gained his rapt attention.
"This is the bottle with the breach inside of it." If Leviathan chose which floor he breached through at random then there was a one in three chance that he'd end up in a water floor, looks like he lost that bet. "That might be difficult. The sea is Leviathan's domain after all, he will likely use this situation as an opportunity to build up power for when he returns." I was already thinking about what kinds of creatures these bottle squids might become in the future.
"Oh he won't find it that easy." Keeper has a nasty smile on his face. "Remember how Hel and Lucifer share a realm?" As the Keeper was talking about that he suddenly got a notification. "Got yah you sneaky bastard!"
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Leviathan
After arriving in Dagon's realm I quickly remade the floor into another submarine, I only barely had enough time to finish building it before I came under attack from a huge whale like sea monster!
KEEEEEEPPPEEERRR!
[I'd run if I was you, Oceanus is really mad at us!]
One submarine vs a full blown Sea monster! The hell is that thing anyway?
[S Rank Monster Leviathan-One of the three Great Beasts of the Apocalypse, Leviathan is said to be the ruler of all water in the world, to challenge him is to fight against the very vital fluids inside of your body!]
Oh Damnit!