When Charles talked to Keeper before about how evolution for humans he gave elves and Dwarfs as examples. They were however just that, examples, and many more variants that exist. Case in point, the Goliath. Goliath's tend to clock in at seven to eight feet and all of it is muscle. Dwarf's and Elves were mentioned specifically though because they are common, easy as far as meeting the conditions for evolution goes, a Goliath on the other hand? Max out Giant Slayer. The leader of the dungeon raid team was a mountain of a man who made it his personal business to put down things that are bigger than him, and he's pretty darn big, Jack the Giant Slayer. The Giant Slayer was covered in armour from head to toe, not a metal plate as one would usually expect to see but rather it's composition was similar to the walls, soft material layered between hard, it's just that the material was several steps above ordinary concrete and spider web.
Jack also wasn't alone, there were hundreds of individuals gathered around him as well. A dozen or so Elven mages, Demon-kin Bishops their horns golden coloured and formed a halo around their foreheads, Dragonnewt's of different shapes, sizes and elemental alignments glided overhead and landed on top of buildings, armoured centaurs trotted through the streets pulling with them carriages of unknown contents. These were just the more interesting parts of the 'raid party.' Charles looked through the contents of the blatant invasion force that were filling up his streets and tapped his fingers waiting for a fight as the so-called Giant Slayer walked up to him.
"I am Jack Johannes the Giant Slayer. Here to take custody of this Dungeon." The Giant Kin informed bluntly.
"Mm hm. So that you can destroy it?" Charles replied looking at the Giant Kin with faux disinterest.
"An official certificate from the Adventurers guild." A letter telling Charles to cooperate if he doesn't want to bring the wrath of the Guild down on his head, and whoever else who doesn't want Lucifer gaining another foot hold into the mortal plain. Charles didn't need to open it to know what it would say, instead he merely stepped aside and tilted his head for the mountain of a man to go forward.
"Try not to waste too much of the Keeper's time would you?" Charles stated as he casually let out that ominous statement.
"Secure the floors."
The Keep, as the Adventurers guild had chosen to dub it, had four floors only three of which were active at the moment due to the ongoing evolution of the second. All three of the places in question had their own entrances, inside of the Lemurian District, the mountain, and the elevator that would lead to the fourth floor.
The Centaurs went to the beach and opened their carriages, releasing water from inside and allowing the creatures inside to slip into the ocean. The Otohime, the Princesses of the Ocean, mermaid like dragon kin with the lower bodies of seahorses in lieu of fish tails, in addition to their unearthly feminine beauty there is their unrivalled power to manipulate water currents, even the people of Lemuria give them a wide berth out of sheer respect. Mind you learning that they're here to take their dungeon away went a ways of affecting their once high opinion. Negotiations proceeded, resistance was suppressed, and they made their way into the third floor of the dungeon.
At the elevator the Elves and the centaurs entered the dungeon proper through the fourth floor alongside Jack while the Demonkin and Dragon Newts flew up to the first floor.
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Well this is unexpected. Looks like the raid party is here. Just a few minutes shy of my body respawning too, and to my surprise they were on almost every floor, and most of them weren't even human, didn't even look like humans either, their mana was a lot more potent than the normal delvers. The mana flooded into my channels and pooled the still evolving monsters on the second and fourth floors as well as into the tower where the energy started to fill up the other cores. Look alive people, we have one invasion we have to fend off and another that we have to launch! Don't attack until we're attacked, let's try to be diplomatic about this.
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"So you are the 'raid team.'" Apas strolled into the room that the Flyers landed in, watching unamused as they made their way forward.
"The Sphinx mentioned in the reports. Apas was it?" The Dragon Newt leading this part of the raid team asked raising one of his eye brow ridges into the air.
"I am indeed. Though that leaves the question of who you lot are?" Apas replied as she observed the equipment the lizard's were carrying, staffs topped by nooses threaded through runic rings. She'd be avoiding those.
"Dungeon Demolitions of the Adventurer's guild." Well they were honest. She'll give them that.
"You being here is convenient for my mate, so I'll allow it, but if you attempt any demolition...!" The Dragonnewts approached Apas readying their staves for the offensive. "So be it." Apas spread her wings as power flowed through the space, all the air being pulled away from the intruders. And then the Dragonnewts let out a pulse of mana of their own, several, rhythmic, and the magic spell that Apas deployed was shattered.
"Grab her." The men came in with their staffs, the loops widening as the rings on the inside glowed with magic symbols while Apas slowly backed away, looking for a opening to attack, instinctively knowing that she absolutely does not want to be caught in those loops. And then the entire room tilted back while Thing shoved two boney fingers into the dungeon trying to claw the intruders out.
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The group of Otohime was initially surprised by how much the third floor looked like a town. The Lemurian district had the expected centralised dome that was divided and sublet into several different floors and districts but this 'Atlantis?' It was much more like what you would expect to see looking at a human village, complete with the castle made entirely out of coral, which sadly is exactly where they had to go if they wanted to secure the local boss. The mishmash of different creatures that still came out looking like a mermaid like figure appeared to have been busy at the moment, manipulating currents of water to make the winged shark creatures she was feeding float and enable them to breath, the menu included cuddle fish, crabs, and salmon.
"Are those your pets?" The Otohime leader asked looking at the Bark's with a stupefied face.
"The master has tasked me with 'raising them into something useful.'" The boss looked severely unamused as she threw another cuddle fish into the mouth of the waiting shark things, as if radiating a aura of 'this is so far beneath me that it is simply not funny.' The Otohime just shook her head as she commanded the water in the dungeon to act. "Oh so that's going to be how it is?" Out in the ocean, with no other real contenders for the role, the Otohime's are the most powerful Hydrokineticists you will ever see. In here though, where the water was part of Levi's body? Where she was backed by the blessing of Oceanus? Fish food. "Oh you're attempting to take my floor out from under me are you?" If it was a matter of pure power the Otohime could likely wrest control of the floor away from her after some struggle. However this was Oceanus's domain, the god that all who dwell in the sea know and fear, challenging his authority here means that life is going to get pretty darn rough for you out at sea. And they've already offended him. "If you want me to put in a good word with Oceanus, jump in." Levi stated while indicating the gaping Shark Bat jaws that she had prepared off to the side. "Rest will have you right as rain again in a few moments." And in the mean time there will be some extra points contributing to the accelerated evolution of this damned Bark.
The group of Mermaid Sea dragons looked at the awaiting Bark nervously, they felt even worse when Oceanus's power started creeping up their spines. Suicide with revival was better than staying out here for a single moment longer.
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The Centaur's trotted through the halls of the fourth floor their armoured hooves tapping against the floor of the dungeon while they observed what was going on around them. Clockworks, a place that turns passive mana in the air into kinetic motion, which the dungeon was now harvesting through the use of these gears for even more mana. Jack has heard that some metalurgists have cracked energy production using the reaction between certain metals, still it was a wonder where the core was getting the power to do this from, or where it was putting that same energy. It wasn't into the evolving tree that had eaten the second floor, at least not all of it, and it didn't appear that it was going into the few gears that were still in the midst of their evolution. That was another red flag, the gears were possessed, most likely poltergeists that were in the middle of evolving into a stronger form, that would be dangerous.
And more dangerous than that, the familiar ringing of metal on metal, the roar of the flames, this dungeon had a forge, which means that they had their own custom weapons, possibly using monster materials to give them unique effects, or worst turning them into poltergeists or weapon spirits. Jack raised his hand stopping the advance of his group as he peaked into the room. Cyclop's, three of them and rather young too, two of them were hammering away on different parts of what looked to be a gauntlet, a third was cutting apart a length of metal that was being woven into a spring and then hooked together into a ring mail in the process.
"Don't look like combatants, what do we do with them?" One of the Centaurs asked looking at the three of them with suspicion.
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"Check what they're working on." Jack replied as one of the Elven mages stepped forward and waved their staff at the item the three of them had been working on.
The Elf tapped into the dungeon's mana as the information about the gauntlet came to light, and she backed away in horror.
"What is it Triss? What do you see?" Jack asked as he prepared the weapon that he had been carrying on his back.
"It's the boss!" The gauntlet rose up, the ring that had been welded onto its ring finger glowing as mana was drawn from every inch of the floor while the three cyclops dove for cover.
"Behind me!"
Jack shouted and the Elf in question wasted no time in diving back behind the giant kin, the Gauntlet, Leonidas as the Elf had learned before she understood the horror of it's existence, fired a bolt of lightning at them striking Jack's body directly. Jack's armour was closer to rubber than metal, a mixture of silk from a particularly nasty species of giant spider bred with multiple elementals until it had a combination of stretchyness and durability that made it suitable for soaking up strikes and the wax from a giant species of bee which was hard enough to repel piercing attacks and excellent at repelling mana. In short, every inch of Jack's body was covered in inches of insulation against the magical electricity. Jack stepped forward, electricity washing off of his back like water off a duck, mace drawn as the lightning was drawn towards it's metal like bees to flowers.
The Gauntlet switched tactics, as if recognising the material that Jack's armour had been made out of the lightning lashed out and pulled together several of the poltergeists. A legion, even if only a small one then. Looks like Jack has another giant to slay. The priests that were on the first floor were dealing with something a lot more troublesome than the mere low ranking undead that you would expect from a dungeon that was less than a year old. When the Gashadokuro concluded that it couldn't reach inside of itself to pull the people who had walked inside of it out it called on another of the undead to help fend them off, a Walpurgis. But they weren't the only strong ones here.
"AZIRAPHALE!" Holy is the natural enemy of undead, fire the natural antithesis to the cold of Hel and Lucifer, so naturally the angel of Fire and guardian of the gates of Eden was their natural enemy. "SEAL!"
A rival domain expanded around the priestess, holy fire coming into contact with the cold aura of undeath. The giant of bones twitched and then collapsed, falling limp as Archie walked in from the next room over, new power entering his body.
"Earth absorbs fire, and I already have holy power!" Archie began absorbing the clashing powers of the domains into himself. His body started shaking as the conflicting energies attempted to repel themselves inside of him.
"What madness is this!" The Priests were slowly backing away.
If anyone tried to take such an unstable mixture of energies into themselves then the only logical course of action is that they would self destruct, and Archie was no exception, then only thing he had on most others was that he was an undead and a dungeon monster on top of that he would be put back together again by the Keeper once everything was said and done. Filled to the brim with explosive energy Archie charged forward directly into the group of invaders, his tackle was intercepted by one of the Dragon Newts, and then the cave was consumed in a explosion as the invaders were forced back. Hel's domain was weakened but her blessing would be intact, in theory.
For now though the Theoreticals didn't matter as much as the very real and very angry Sphinx that was flying right at them under the force of a wind shield spell stripping her of friction and pouncing on the enemy forces. The Dragon Newts were ready, their Noose staffs quickly wrapping around Apas's limbs and neck, tightening up and the runic rings woven into the ropes glowing with raw energy as the built in debuff's went into effect, strength quickly being sapped from Apas's body. One down.
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If the next attack that they launched into Levi's body was to not fail it would have to be done in a way that involved not putting themselves at risk of being subjected to Oceanus's domain again, which meant killing it from the inside. Luckily though Levi had a very clear weakness: her status as a living being that unlike the first floor's undead giant or fourth floor's army of possessed weapons meant that she would be killed if something like a massive amount of poison was dumped into her body. So that is exactly what they did. Lots of magic had come about from closely studying magic and reverse engineering it's effects, this includes creation of materials, and among the materials that they had learned how to recreate was a especially toxic metal that was discovered miles beneath the planet's surface, Poisonous to even get near as if it exuded the essence of death itself, the Dwarfs who found it named it in honour of the god of Underground things and Death Pluto.
The Magic to create Plutonium was simple enough if not mana heavy, even drawing on the Dungeon's reserves the amount they could produce on the spot like this was relatively small but luckily even that much would be fatal to a being of even Levi's size, and as a magically created metal it would absorb the water element that pervaded the third floor and grow in potency even as it spread out. It must have been stronger than they thought because soon the entire floor went dead, the massive creature having been killed. Two down.
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This Legion was smaller than most of the ones that Jack has had to put down over the years but it was better in close quarters than most were, zooming and zipping around his blows like some species of bird he's fought against. The mace wasn't doing much here, so instead Jack switched over to another set of weapons, tonfa, faster, shorter reach only slightly better then fighting bare handed but it's hard to argue that the armoured gauntlet was doing less. Jack swung his weapons faster, so he was getting more hits in against the gauntlet by sheer virtue of the number of blows that he was throwing but what was really needed was area of effect strikes. Luckily the Mages came prepared, while the three giant kin huddled in the corner the entire room was suddenly covered in a layer of frost as all the moisture in the air was sucked out and turned into frost and ice. That wasn't nearly concerning as the ball of fire that gathered in the middle of room, with the 'Giant Slayer' blocking the way out, though it was of lower concern the ice was making the Gauntlet brittle as the ball of flames turned into pure kinetic force. The dull boom threw Jack back, partly because he had jumped, the high quality impact absorbing properties of his armour soaked up the blow as he stood back up.
"Everyone okay!?" Jack asked as he watched the mages who performed the area of effect fire-frost blast. In the centre of the destroyed forge, a single ring laid in the middle of the room with a letter A on it which Jack picked up.
"Looks like the drop from the boss." Three down. The dungeon shook with energy, a B Rank monster had just been spawned on the first floor, and Jack knew exactly who it was. "Secure those three and make sure that they don't manufacture anything else!" Jack shouted indicated the three cyclopes with his mace. "You five with me!"
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Ho oh oh oh! I'll have to apologise to Jewel later, I think I now know what it's like to have your bosses killed in front of your eyes now. And boy was I pissed!
"Do you lot like to bully my bosses?" I was eating away at the blessing of Azir-whatever, he made things hotter and Hel likes it cold. Don't you know that it's rude to break into someone's house and redecorate without their permission? "I would suggest that you release my boss." I took aim at the group who had taken Apas captive, restrained her with the kinds of tools that you might expect common dog poachers to use on strays. The fire from the bastard's own blessing was gathering at my finger tip as I prepared to dump a extra special surprise on there heads. Let's see how they like their own fire-!
"I would stop what you're doing right now! Your Sphinx will respawn but I can't say the same for the unborn spawn in her womb!" I clenched my fist and the ball of fire was crushed in my hand.
"Excuse me!?"
"Yeah. You didn't realise that did you? And from what I heard I bet you can guess who the dad is." While the Dragon Newt explained Apas blushed as she looked away. So you were pregnant and you didn't tell me!?
"This is not how I would like to know about these things Apas!" While we were having that argument the mages who looked like they were wearing crowns moved around me with their staffs standing up in front of them, chanting some kind of magic.
"Fine. Kill me off. Let's see how that works out for you." As soon as I was back in dungeon mode I was going to shove so much stuff into the tower that these punks were going to wish that they were never-!
"We're not killing you, we're nullifying the summoning that's keeping that body here."
Say what? The four staves glowed, a familiar magic circle appeared around me, and then shattered. The familiar sensation of being forcibly yanked out of my dungeon hit me once more as I soon found myself in a land of fire. I don't mean to say that everything was on fire, I meant that the land, the plants and even the animals were all made out of fire. What the hell has happened here? And more importantly what was the fastest way that I can kill myself and return to my dungeon so that I can go ahead and knock some heads together?
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A pillar of Mana spewed out of the Dungeon, casting the Fire Frost Fiend from this realm back to its home realm from when it was an ordinary Ifrit. I was wondering what kind of method they were going to use to try and expel Keeper's consciousness from his dungeon, so this was it then eh?
"The Elemental managed to bypass the usual process for a Dungeon to get an avatar but it appears to have created a weakness as a by-product." Professor Barnabus stated as he stroked his goatee. "Fascinating really."
"Can we get him back?" I asked as I looked at the mage under my employ.
"Of course I can. We're practically bathing in the Keeper's mana after all." Barnabus replied as if it was obvious. "I can lock onto his coordinates as easily as I snap my fingers. From there it's a standard summoning ritual of which I have dozens of scrolls pre-prepared inside of our stock of scrolls. Shall I?"
"Better that we do it before Jack figures out his screw up." I replied back, better to remind the Keeper of whom his allies were after all.
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Ouroboros got a message from the Keeper.
[Dungeon Keeper: I'm going to be busy for a while, I don't have much from the other dungeons but here's everything we have so far]
Shortly after that fifty dungeons all announced their raids against the Ouroboros. There were few, far too few of them. Most of the hybrids that the fifty cores had sent over died from health complications, of those that remained suffered from complications that made them ill-suited for combat, not even possessing proper support type abilities, even among the ones left only very few would actually stand a chance against one of Lucifer's dungeons. Before I could get more information on what was going on something intruded on My domain in the Keeper's first floor, an active raid was going on. Ouroboros chimed in with his concern.
"No we're not going back to investigate." I stated and not just because I was being callous, Keeper himself has anticipated the raid and told her that he can handle it, and even if the fools can somehow smash his core? They were going to be in for a bad time. Instead the Dragon corpse that they were using as transport landed on one of the enemy dungeons and stuck his head inside the hole that was the entrance.
[You have crossed over with the Domain of 'Wolf's Den']
"Let's see how much Keeper has been busy!"