It was a cruel thing to do, but Zack ordered his mobs to eject Enza from his influence. As an armament core, she was unable to produce an influence of her own, which meant she struggled to talk within Zack's mana. He didn't harbor any illusions that Snow would leave them be once he had his wife back, but it was still worth attempting. If they were lucky, he would take his Enza and leave.

Zack wasn't about to count on being lucky, though. Luck was a fickle bitch and he knew better than to think it was ever on his side. No, if he was going to survive Snow's inevitable rampage through his dungeon, he needed to prepare. That meant spinning up as many mobs as he could.

"You guys should leave," Zack said to his friends as he started working. "When Snow gets here, he's not going to come quietly. We didn't just steal from him, we stole his wife. There's no telling how destructive he might be…"

Chandra, Greg, and Salazar reluctantly agreed with Zack. All three of them wanted to stick it out to help protect them, but they harboured no illusions about what they could do against someone with Snow's capabilties. The man was a monster in human form, with more power than a single person should reasonably be able to wield. Such was a qualification for the archmage title. Not even Salazar with his higher levels would be able to hold Snow off.

"I'm not leaving you," Alex said, as the others reluctantly packed up their things and said their goodbyes.

"Alex…"

"No, Zack. I lost you to one magical disaster before. I'm not about to lose you to another. And before you say anything, I know I'm powerless. I can't fight Snow. But what I can do is keep you topped up," Alex assured him, crossing his arms obstinately. "I can feed you aether to make sure you've got enough mana to keep going."

Zack wanted to insist Alex leave with the others, but he knew his friend too well. Alex would just wait outside Zack's influence for Snow to come by and get himself killed in the process. At least this way Alex could keep a close eye on his best friend, keep him safe.

"Fine, but you're staying with me in my core room, okay?" Zack said. "And I'm sorry if it's claustrophobic…"

Zack made some quick adjustments to his new core room so that Alex wouldn't be too uncomfortable. Mostly he widened and reinforced the walls so that it would take some serious power to break through them. Then, he made the space bigger, so that Alex would have space to move and fight. Finally, he added a chair and bed so Alex could rest if he needed it.

With that dealt with, Zack set to rearranging the layout of his dungeon once more. He didn't think he had time to fully move everything into a new configuration, but what he could do was move their entrances.

As a rule, dungeon rooms had to contain an entrance and exit to, at the minimum, allow mana to properly flow from his core room to his front doors. If Zack tried to fully isolate a room, it would quickly lose mana as his influence weakened. Normally, his irregular configuration with multiple wings that could be accessed at the same time was a boon to this. He could keep all his rooms sufficiently charged with mana without worrying about one over another.

With Snow on the potential warpath, that just wasn't an option anymore. He needed to slow the man down, no matter what it took. Zack quickly sealed the entrances to each wing, save for the manor, and created a new path that led from one wing to another. Ideally, with the manor being the hardest wing, that might slow Snow down or at the very least burn through his mana reserves.

"Except he'll be fighting dungeon mobs, and absorbing their mana as they die," Zack grumbled. "He won't run out of mana. Plus, he'll have Enza with him, and she'll undoubtedly be cycling his own aether back to him as mana."

There was nothing for it. Zack needed all hands on deck, and that meant every boss in his dungeon working at peak efficiency and power. He poured as much mana into recreating each boss to make sure they were ready to go, and even went so far as to redesign their boss rooms. For the Chorus, he added spawners to the room to constantly create additional arachnitoads while she fought. For the Shaman of the Skin, he disabled the commands that normally caused it to weaken—he even assigned it a proper boss flag.

For Thumper, he gave his first boss as much of a bump in power as he could. New spell nodes, an affinity for the fire element—thank you, Ember—even Archie's improved stealth abilities. Zack even poured as much mana into Archie as he could afford, bumping his personal bodyguard all the way up to level twenty in the process.

"It's a little weird having you be a higher level than me," Zack admitted. "This is as high as I can take you before the system starts preventing me from doing more. Something about difficulty scaling, I guess."

Archie didn't argue. Already he was dressed in his new armoured coat and pants—courtesy of Ember the Draconid. He had a pair of enchanted daggers at his side, though Zack wasn't entirely sure what they would do. He simply picked an enchantment that sounded cool from the list and slapped it on the weapons. Still, they were a strict power upgrade over Archie's previous level. It was better than nothing.

The last boss in need of an upgrade was the secret boss in the manor wing. Normally, Zack was against letting his surprises out of the bag so early. Nobody had encountered this boss yet, though two groups got close once they discovered the colour coded keys. Now was not a time for playing, though. Now was a time for action.

[Bloody Mary]

[Level 20, Undead]

Zack's strongest boss looked like a skeleton woman dressed in a long flowing gown. She carried her disembodied head by the hair in one hand, and a large butcher cleaver in the other. Despite her human proportions, she stood at least nine feet tall—a height Zack chose in order to give a full party the chance to properly surround her.

Like the Shaman of the Skin boss, Bloody Mary had numerous mechanics built into her fight, most of them predicated on the mirrors strewn about the boss room that would reflect magical attacks from her head. Zack wanted to move her into the Shaman of the Skin's room, but doing so would distrupt the boss flags. The system warned him that two boss flagged mobs couldn't exist within the same room, or else they would turn on each other in an attempt to gain dominance.

Seeing as how neither of the manor's bosses had intelligence on a level like Chorus, let alone like Archie, Zack decided it best to fight one after another. Start with the Shaman, then move on to Bloody Mary. Hopefully a gauntlet of his most powerful bosses would slow Snow down, but Zack wasn't about to bank his survival on it. Bloody Mary's room was already hidden in the Shaman's room anyway, so it was easy to go from one straight into the other.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

From Mary's room, Zack created a path that led straight to the spider warren, and another from Chorus's room to the meadow. It wasn't an ideal layout, but it at least ensured that Snow would have to clear the entire dungeon in one go if he wanted to get anywhere close to Zack's core room.

Assuming he even found the entrance at the end of Thumper's room that led down to the burrow.

"I think that's as ready as I can be," Zack lamented, as he finished putting the last touches on the meadow in anticipation of Snow's arrival. He was cranking every single mob to as high a level as he could get them, giving them new abilities in the process. "Carnations will now inject deadly venom into anyone they slap, and the stooltoad spores are more infectious than ever before."

"Are you really sure you should be making everything this deadly?" Alex asked, worriedly.

"I can set it all back to normal when we survive this," Zack assured him.

"When? Not if?"

"I have no intention of dying to Cornelius Snow. Could you imagine how embarassing that would be, dying to someone named Cornelius?" Zack snorted a laugh, but even he could tell it sounded forced. "I'm trying to think positive, okay? We both know I can't afford to dwell on the negatives, not if we want any hope of surviving the coming storm. The coming Snow storm, even."

Alex stared blankly at Zack's core.

"Oh come on, that was hilarious."

"No it wasn't."

"Yeah, no, it really wasn't. I'm trying, though, okay?" Zack let out a long, frustrated sigh. "I'm a level fifteen dungeon, and a level fifty archmage is about to storm through me with killing intent. I'm doing the best I can to prepare, but the reality is that there likely isn't much I can do to stop him."

"Zack…"

"Alex, let me finish. Please." Zack made a noise like taking a deep breath. "If Snow makes it to my core room, please don't get in his way. I know you stayed to protect me, but I don't want you dying for nothing. We can't beat him, Alex. Not in a fair fight."

"Then don't fight fair!" Alex blurted. "Set traps! Use every cheap trick from every bad game you can think of! Ambushes, instant kill pit falls, pools of acid he has to wade through that guarantees a horrible debuff. Don't go easy on him just because you're scared."

Zack considered that for a moment, and chuckled. "Heh, a poison swamp is a pretty good idea, actually. I think I have some kind of acid or toxic fluid. Let me go add that to spider warren real fast."

"That's exactly what I mean. You're thinking about this in terms of fairness, when the reality is that it will be anything but fair. Cornelius Snow will come at us with everything he's got. We can't afford to do anything less." Alex was fervent now. "Archie should start the fight without any lights, for example."

"I heard that," Archie called, through the tiny tunnel that led from the core room to his boss chamber. "I agree with Alex, and will be doing just that. He's right about traps, too. Thusfar, Zack, you have been reluctant to use traps of any kind. Your goal has been to give delvers a safe and controlled environment to learn and practice magic. This is no longer an option. Snow is not an average delver, and therefore does not need a safe or controlled place to practice."

Zack grunted in affirmation, and quickly despawned every single Medibold in the dungeon. He had nearly forgotten about them, and disabled their spawners to keep them from coming back, too. That freed up enough mana for him to start adding traps to every room.

The pool of acid was easy enough to add to the spider warren, since those mobs could easily stay out of its way. He lowered the ground a bit and filled it to the brim with a bubbling, hissing green liquid. It filled the air with a smell like burning batteries, which wouldn't bother the spiders but would surely affect Snow.

He added more carnations to the meadow, since they were by far the most dangerous mob to be found within. Their razor sharp petals and venomous vines made them deadlier even than Thumper. Zack added a few of them to Thumper's boss room, just for good measure, too. He didn't bother with spawners, since he doubted he'd ever want to use this configuration again.

As for ambushes, he stuck the manor slimes to the ceilings, in shadowy nooks where they would be difficult to spot. If anything passed under them, they were to drop down and begin devouring. He doubted it would do any real damage to Snow, but it was the best he could think of in short notice.

Already the sun was beginning to rise. Zack could feel the warmth as it bore down upon his dungeon walls. It couldn't be earlier than seven in the morning, but he knew their time was running out. Snow didn't come during the night, but it was guaranteed he was on his way now.

"More time. I need more time," Zack grumbled, shooting his awareness into his lobby.

Ember the Draconid was standing by her forge, hammer in hand. Zack quickly spun up five more draconids, dropping his mana dangerously low in the process. They were one of the strongest mob types in his dungeon simply because of their physical composition. Stone flesh made them resistant to most elemental attacks, while their superior size and strength made them fantastic melee fighters.

Zack had plans for a dungeon wing that would make good use of these mobs, but for now he needed to populate the one undefended area of his dungeon. The few remaining kobolds populating the lobby would be of no real help in the fight ahead, so he despawned all of them save Jean-Claude. The waxy green kobold was Zack's majordomo, his mouth piece to potential threats.

Jean-Claude would give Snow a warning, and then step out of the way. If he survived the day, Zack would consider a miracle, but harboured no illusions about the fate of his favorite emote button.

"I could continue spinning up traps and mobs, but I'm not sure how much mana I can safely spare," Zack mumbled, as he gave his dungeon a once over again. "Everyone is in their place, now it's just a matter of waiting. I'm going to check on Iris and Glitch, make sure they're safe and out of the way."

Alex said something in reply, but Zack's awareness was already shooting out of his core room. He flew through the dungeon, following his new path, until he made it to the manor. Iris was in a library, one of the secret rooms hidden off the beaten path. He slipped into it and felt a pressure as he was met with her influence.

"Oh, Zack. Sorry about that," Iris said, relaxing her mana to allow him entrance. "I'm used to vainly pushing back against anything choking me. I… I'm not accustomed to having my own space like this."

While technically part of his dungeon, Zack was going through great lengths to ensure that Iris had her own space. That meant he kept his influence inside the library as thin as possible, just barely enough that he could spin up a kobold to assist her or spawn a wisp to talk with her. As they were both cores, neither of them actually needed a physical body to communicate. Still, for Zack a wisp was just a thing of propriety.

Zack explained what he had done in preparation of Snow's arrival. Iris lamented that her taste of freedom was to be so short lived. She didn't doubt that once Snow had finished with Zack, he would turn his attention on her.

"I just got comfortable, too. I've created copies of every book in my archive and organized them on the shelves," Iris sighed, gesturing with a thread of mana at the shelves in question. "Oh well."

Zack was surprised by the sheer quantity of books, but remembered that Iris was a different core type than him. While he was better at storing and creating creatures, she excelled at storing information. For her, spawning books would be as easy as it was for him to spawn a rabbit.

"I hope I'll have time to read them," Zack sighed. "I'm going to leave some mobs in here to protect you, but I can't guarantee they'll do much. They'll obey your commands. If you feel unsafe, order them to do whatever you think is right."

Zack didn't need to say order them to shatter you. He had known Iris for only a few minutes, really, but already he could tell that she was the kind of core who would rather break than go back with Snow.

Done there, Zack shot his awareness down a floor and into the lab. Glitch was situated on a table, making humming noises to themselves. Zack spun up a wisp to inform them of his presence, and both of the portal core's halves fell silent. Like with Iris, Zack quickly explained what was happening, and provided them with some mobs for protection. Neither half of the portal core commented or offered thanks, and Zack decided against wasting more time than was necessary.

Now all that was left was to wait for Snow to arrive.