Chapter 10

After spending a while longer examining his newest creation Steve went back to work. Now that he was finished with the layout, traps and minions, it was time for the loot. Since the boss on the first floor was still equipped with Celestial gear, and having to replace those items could get expensive if he is killed often, he decided to limit the amount of Celestial items he would provide in the future. Taking a moment to redistribute the quartz already growing on the first floor, he shifted a little down to the second floor and decided to create some good old fashioned treasure chests.

He decided to add a treasure chest to each of the ‘final’ rooms on the second floor. In the core room chest he created a square cut Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald and infused each with Celestial Energy. The rest he created small sacks made from cloth and filled them with copper and silver coins as well as including a weapon in each chest enchanted with the same element as the mage from that room. As any magic users would be able to retrieve the wands used by the mages, he decided to create various swords, daggers and bows. Finally he added a smattering of sage and just a couple of moonglow flowers throughout the second floor spending almost all of his remaining Animus.

Finished with his work for the moment Steve returned to the Core Room with the others to await the next visitor to his dungeon, be it beast or man.

-As yet unnamed dungeon outpost-

A large crowd of people number sixty or so were milling around obviously waiting for something based on many of their glances towards the newly constructed Adventurers Guild. Many had arrived more than a week ago but most had only just arrived in the past couple of days. Like they did each morning they awaited word from the Adventurers Guild representative on whether they would be allowing people to enter the dungeon.

Most of the crowd were newbies looking for a start to their adventure with dreams of fame, gold and glory. Almost all of the rest were those who had a bit of experience and were shaking their heads at the over enthusiastic newbies with wistful smiles on their faces. The rest were more seasoned adventurers who generally stuck together and didn’t take part in the gossip and guessing about the new dungeon.

Eventually the door to the Adventurers Guild opened and a young looking female dwarf stepped out. Like the rest of her kind she was small and wide with dark hair and eyes. After looking out over the mob before her she opened her mouth to speak to them.

“The dungeon is now open for business. Please form an orderly line so we…”

Before she could finish, as expected, there was a surge in the crowd as the newbies moved forwards wanting to be the first in the dungeon. Shaking her head the dwarf spread her arms wide to either side before holding them for a moment. With a sudden swing the brought her hands together with a devastating boom!

A wave of force leapt forth away from her and into the oncoming crowd, knocking them back and into each other causing the majority of them to collapse or stagger and halting them all. The more experienced adventurers, anticipating something like this were stood further back with their hands over their ears laughing at the flailing newbies before them.

Smiling with satisfaction the dwarf took a breath before continuing.

“Please form an orderly line so we can organise parties. Those already in a party please have your identification ready and form a line over there.” So saying she pointed off to her left where a human with a clipboard was standing. “The rest of you, once we have your details we will arrange a suitable party and organise a slot for your entry into the dungeon. As this is a newly formed dungeon it only has a single floor and does not have any instances, meaning that only one party can be present at a time and we must allow 30 minutes between runs for the monsters and loot within to regenerate. For those who want to purchase information on the dungeon you can do so at the guild store. If you discover something new, please report it and you will be compensated.”

The dwarf then paused for several second before continuing.

“The monsters within this dungeon are undead.” There were several gasps from the milling crowd, mostly from the more experienced adventurers while the rest obviously didn’t understand what the big deal was. “As you may or may not know, normally undead are to be hunted down and eradicated on sight due to the threat they pose, not just to life, but to the very souls of their victims. However in this particular case there is present a Celestial within the dungeon to prevent just such a thing happening. Those of you who make it to the boss room will likely encounter this creature. I can not stress this enough.” Once again she paused while making eye contact with as many present as possible. “You are recommended to ignore him as unless you attack him or the dungeon core itself, he will in no way interfere with your dungeon run. If you have any further questions, please direct them to a guild representative.”

With the explanation over the dwarf turned around and strode back inside sighing to herself.

It’s going to be a loooong day…

-Dungeon-

“I can’t decide if we got lucky or not being the first team into the dungeon.” Francis said.

The speaker was a human in his 30’s wearing tough looking, brown leather armour while carrying a mace in one hand and a small round wooden shield in the other. He had black hair and dark eyes and was leading a party of 4 others down the long sloping corridor into the dungeon.

Clanking along next to him was a clockwork golem primarily made from iron and bronze. It was slightly shorter than the human at around 5ft 10”, with short legs and a body that was segmented into three parts allowing them to bend, spin and flex. It had two long arms coming out from the sides of the top segment which reached down almost to the ground one of which had a spiked metal ball on the end while the other ended in a crescent shaped blade. It had no discernible head but according to Sardel, the gnome who built it, it could sense its surrounding using something called echo location which is why it made that annoying beeping sound every 3 seconds.

Sardel herself was wearing lighter looking leather armour with a few shiny metal plates bolted on almost at random. She had a shiny new burn across one cheek and slightly singed but otherwise spiky white hair. As usual she was carrying her patented semi automatic reinforced dual electric launcher, or confusingly for her colleagues, SARDEL for short. A weapon of her own devising, her colleagues were understandably wary of the device as it was still in the ‘testing phase’, as it had been for the last several years. A mixture of wood, metal and lightning infused crystals, the terrifying contraption could spit out metal ball bearings at incredible speeds but had a nasty tendency to go off for like, no reason.

“Just think of all the loot that were gonna get! You read the info we got from the guild, Celestial infused quartz and gear? We're gonna make a fortune!” Sardel replied obviously excited.

The last two party members following, but at a safeish distance, were the twin brother and sister, Zask and Zeza. Zeza was around 6 and a half feet tall with dark green scales. She was wearing an even darker green set scaled leather armour and carrying a 7 foot long spear in her hands. Like all lizardkin she did not have any hair, however she did have a set of small sharp spikes running from the base of her neck to the tip of her prehensile tail. Her reverse jointed legs allowed for powerful jumps and bursts of speed however she often became slower the longer a fight went on.

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Her brother Zask had bright yellow scales but was otherwise almost identical in appearance sharing the same height and spike pattern. Unlike his sister however he was wearing a traditional mage's robe so as more heavy armour would interfere with the use of his magic. In his hands was a grey staff with runes carved along its length. He was wearing a belt with several more pouches than anybody else as he also carried a variety of useful herbs and potions upon his person.

“I still can’t believe they would let an undead dungeon continue to exist.” Zask responded while frowning to himself. “It’s all well and good saying there is a Celestial present to prevent the dungeon from corrupting the souls of the fallen, but from everything I have ever read on the undead, they have the nasty habit of spiralling out of control at an alarming rate.”

“I’m inclined to agree little brother.” Zask rolled his eyes at the ‘little brother’ remark. Just because Zeza hatched a few seconds before him didn’t mean anything! Not that she seemed to agree no matter how many times he explained it to her. Grinning at her brother's reaction Zeza continued. “If the dungeon is allowed to grow in power and something were to happen to this Celestial...I shudder to think what horrors might be unleashed.”

Sardel snorted at this. “Please. Who is going to push through an entire dungeon and attack and defeat one of the Celestials? More to the point, why would anybody bother? So long as this dungeon is here everybody's going to make a fortune from it!”

“And if the Hool Empire were to learn of the dungeon, you don’t think it would be beyond them to infiltrate the dungeon and kill the Celestial?” Francis asked with a grim tone. “I hear the war effort isn’t going as well as the propaganda claims, can you even imagine what would happen were undead to start pouring out of a dungeon so close to the capital?”

“Can’t you guys just look on the bright side and be optimistic for once in your lives?” Sardel asked, apparently ignoring Francis’ question.

“Look sharp.” Zeza said before the conversation could go further. “I can see the end of the tunnel approaching, prepare yourselves.”

With much shoulder rolling and neck stretching the group neared the bottom of the ramp leading to the first room. They paused around 10 metres from the door so they could finish their preparations. After a 30 second incantation and a gesture from Zask, a glowing semi transparent bubble to appear around each of the party for a second, except for the golem, before disappearing again. The protection spell was one of the light mages buffs used whenever the group would go into battle. It would help to mitigate a small portion of damage for the next 10 minutes. While not particularly useful in the middle of combat due to the lengthy cast time, it was incredibly helpful if you knew you were about to get into a fight.

Thanks to the information purchased from the Adventurers Guild they knew that there should be a group of basic skeletons in the first room hidden to either side of the door. Having already discussed their tactics beforehand Francis and the clockwork golem Hunk (or Junk depending on who you asked) were the first to step in turning to either side of the door to confront the enemies there. Next Sardel quickly moved to the centre of the room where she could provide long range sniping support with mini SARDEL. Finally the lizardkin twins entered each splitting off left and right to assist.

Moving a little faster than the golem, Francis engaged the skeletons on his side of the room first. As expected they were human looking skeletons wielding copper swords. According to the information from the guild, it’s likely that they have already reached their maximum level for the first floor of a dungeon, however Francis wasn’t worried as basic minions like these shouldn’t pose any serious issue for his group.

Keeping his shield forward and mace out to the side ready to strike he stepped within range of the first skeleton. As expected it immediately swung at him with no real coordination and not particularly aiming for any vital areas. As such it was easy for Francis to knock the sword to the side with his shield and follow up with a solid hit from his mace, shattering the skeletons arm causing it to drop its weapon. As these creatures were nothing more than bone animated by magic they were particularly susceptible to blunt force attacks.

On the other side of the room things were not going quite as anticipated. Hunk (or Junk) had moved forwards to engage the enemies waiting to the right of the doorway as ordered and was currently trading blows with a skeletal warrior. Its crescent bladed arm didn’t seem to be doing too much damage but its mace arm was breaking bones with every strike. The skeleton, not particularly concerned with defending itself was slashing over and over with its copper sword, however the damage it was inflicting was minimal due to the tough metal exterior of its opponent. Things took a turn for the worse however as not long after engaging its opponent a blueish skeleton made a gesture causing a small puddle of water to form under the golem before freezing into a slick surface of ice. The golem, completely unaware of the change in surface then slipped and fell forward with a loud clanging sound, crushing its former opponent.

By this time the rest of the party had entered the room and begun to attack opponents, but all turned with surprise at the sound of the golem crashing to the floor. Unfortunately for them the skeletons did not stop to see what had happened, mostly because none of them were intelligent enough to care, and carried on attacking the now distracted adventurers. With a hiss Francis jumped back with a long wound down his arm holding his shield giving the other skeleton he was facing time to pick up its dropped sword with its other hand. Now concentrating on their opponents once again Francis moved forwards once again to draw the attention of the skeletons while Zeza used the longer length of her spear to attack the skeletons. Unfortunately the spear was proving to be largely ineffective as it would commonly pass through the ribs of the skeletons inflicting no damage and hits to the bones would mostly glance off leaving nothing but scratches behind. Seeing this Zeza flipped the spear around so she could use it more like a long staff and began swinging it at her enemies. With Zeza’s staff having more effect now being swung as a blunt instrument, she and Francis were soon able to dismantle their skeletons.

Seeing her beloved creation fall to the floor Sardel began targeting the skeletal mage in the corner of the room. The high velocity ball bearings could be heard even over the rest of the battle as they were fired with a loud *fwip* only to crunch into the skeletons skull, cracking. After several more shots the skull reached its limit and shattered causing the rest of the bones to lose cohesion and fall apart. Zask, trying to protect the fallen golem from the other skeleton warrior that was swinging at the downed Hunk o’ Junk gave a shout and with a gesture of his scaled hands a beam of pure light surged from his hands before impacting on the skeleton. Less than a second after hitting the skeleton in the centre of its rib cage the skeleton toppled into two equal parts with a quiet hissing sound. Taking a few steps forward Zask reached the now immobilised skeleton before crushing its skull with a sharp downward strike of his staff.

Once the last of the enemies had falled, Sardel hurried towards her fallen clockwork construct so she could do a thorough inspection to make sure it wasn’t too damaged. Francis inspected his wounded arm before deciding that the cut he had taken wasn’t serious enough to waste a healing potion or use up Zask’s limited mana on.

“Zask, would you mind bandaging up my arm, it’s a bit awkward for me to do it one handed.” Francis asked his scaly friend.

“Of course.” Zask stepped forward to examine the wound himself, deciding that Francis was correct in that it wasn’t serious enough to warrant magical healing he withdrew a bandage from his pouch before getting to work.

With nothing better to do Zeza decided to loot the room. As noted in the information they purchased from the Adventurers Guild there was some quartz growing in the room, however unlike the notes it did not appear to be infused with Celestial energy. Frowning at this change she gathered it up before placing it into her pack.

Satisfied that her Hunk o’ Junk had not suffered any serious damage she commanded it to stand back up before turning to the rest of the group. “Why was there a magic user in here!? The information we got from the guild said it was only basic skeletons until you got to the boss.”

“The quartz growing in here was also not infused with Celestial energy as we were led to believe.” Zeza added.

“I guess the dungeon made some changes since the survey team was here.” Francis said with a frown on his face. “It is still quite new so I suppose it’s not too surprising it would make some changes, though the addition of magic users on the first floor is a little surprising.”

Zask finished with his bandaging before speaking. “Do you think we should leave now and report the changes or continue on to see what else has changed?”

Shaking his head Francis said. “No, leaving now would be premature. Now we know there are some skeletal mages we can plan accordingly. Besides, with the 30 minute gap between groups, we should be able to report the changes once we leave so the other guys waiting up top will know what they are getting in too.”

Nodding in agreement the others did a quick sweep to make sure they did not miss anything before continuing deeper into the Dungeon of the Dead.