Alex was ready for the attack on his dungeon, and he even managed to see a familiar face. One of the wooden beast things was attacking him again, this one was a bit more stockier than the last one.

The other monsters were new. One was a large fox or wolf that seemed to have a connection to darkness or shadow magic. The other looked like an undead, though there was a sense of vitality to it. The vitality of it was strange though, the only word he could describe it was hellish but without any devilish feeling. The monster’s vitality still felt wrong or demonic, even if not devilish.

He felt wary of the ghoul-looking monster, he had no idea if the blood rot could eat the thing. He assumed so, but there might be a chance in the near future that he would need to handle inanimate monsters like golems. More projects for him to do.

Returning back to the attack, he needed a strategy to attack them. He wasn’t surprised that multiple monsters were attacking him - it was the only reasonable escalation of threat. From what the dungeon fairy told him, this world didn’t want him alive. Until he dies, things will keep attacking him, though there will be a certain point where his dungeon becomes too big to kill by anything other than a demigod.

Letting the monsters get too close to the dungeon core was a bad idea without knowing what their abilities were, if they had any abilities. As if answering his thoughts, the wolf with completely dark fur seemed to melt into the shadow of the wooden beast. He wasn’t sure what the strategy was, but it would be hard for any of his creatures to attack a monster that could melt into a shadow.

More than that, the darkness of his cave made it near impossible for any of his animals to see it. None of them needed to see the wolf though, not with him. He used the tunnels to put one of his rotten rats near the wooden beast and the other near the shadow wolf. The shadow wolf had gotten much faster in the dark, so he needed to time this property.

At the right moment, his rotten rat jumped out and managed to bite the wolf along with another rat with neurotoxin. He ensured to pull the neurotoxic rat’s mouth away from the wolf to avoid contamination and forced both to flee into the tunnels as the wolf writhed.

With the wooden beast, he only used a rotten rat, all other rats were to deal with the tall ghoul. The wooden beast was a formidable foe, but his last encounter revealed this species’s tricks. It was tanky and slow, while the rotten rat was much more nimble. There was flesh soft enough to infect on that face and the vine tendrils, but crawling onto the thing's face was a good way to open the rat to an attack.

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The beast lacked any clairvoyance, and so with enough irritation it pulled out its vines, which the rotten rat attacked. One bite was enough. The wooden beast lacked the perception of the many-eyed monster, and didn’t realize the danger of his bioweapon until after it was too late.

The monster tried to reach and bite off its infected vine, but Alex commanded his rotten rat to continue to attack more tendrils and even a few bites to the face. The rat managed to do so without any debilitating injuries and the rotten rat was able to retreat into the small tunnels.

Two of the monsters were handled, now the problem was the last monster. There were no misdirections in its appearance, while it wasn’t undead and was alive, the ghoul was alive in a way that was strange. He tried to use neurotoxin to weaken it, but either it had high resistance or high vitality as nothing was working. His rats were actually running out of poison for the first time.

The ghoul continued its slow march. His rotten rats caught up to it and infected it, but for the first time his infection was being resisted. Small patches of red bloomed on its skin yet it did little to hinder it.

He left one rat to chew the thing’s ankles, hoping to sever a tendon while the other rotten rat went to the shadow wolf. He didn’t understand the thing’s power fully - it was shadow-based but also seemed to be part illusion. By melting into the darkness, it slowed the rate of its infection, but it didn’t seem to be able fully drive it out.

A worry of his was that the wolf’s dissolution powers would allow it to avoid the blood rot, but that wasn’t the case. Due to the fungus’s ability to consume life force and, by extension, mana - the wolf’s abilities were hindered. It couldn’t dissipate the infected parts of its body to lose the infection, but it could dissipate the rest of its body and slow its infection.

His rotten rat waited for it, infecting it and wearing it down when its shadow abilities strained it. The wooden beast was infected and blooming with mushrooms, the wolf was severely slowed and dying, and the tall ghoul was hampered as its wax-like body was torn apart at its ankles.

Many of his rats were severely injured though by the ghoul’s claws. Its resilience was really something that he didn’t have a good counter for. However, there was no regenerative factor combined with its vitality to counter his rats’ slow chipping away of its body. The ghoul lost its ability to walk and fell over, then he used his rats to attack its shoulders. He didn’t use his rotten rats to avoid contamination.

After a stressful few minutes, the threat to his dungeon was neutralized and all he needed to do was wait for some sweet soul points to be made. A single monster used to cause him a lot of grief, now he can handle multiple at the same time. It wouldn’t be like this for long though. His charm period over his rats was ending soon.