While walking through the first level looking for the stairs, I was somewhat distracted. Playing with the magic settings was an addictive process that led to thousands of different combinations for each spell and became ridiculous when incorporated into multi-elemental magic. Surrounded by twenty fireballs of different colours and sizes, I almost missed the alcove containing the dark wrought-iron spiral staircase and the overly large zombie guarding it.
From a combination of experimentation and information, we discovered you could purge the zombies with light magic, but that specific magic seemed to anger the dungeon, leading to a monster wave containing any creature in the vicinity. A better option was to either burn them with fire magic, target their brains with space magic or have the princess use holy water. While they could be defeated by almost anything due to their slow speed. They had high health, high strength and physical resistance in addition to lacking vital points and being toxic to counter their detriment. The poison they carried would not turn a living person undead upon contact it would, however, make wounds to rot and cause a corpse to reanimate.
The princess had one-sidedly started a zombie-killing contest and upon spotting the large zombie declared, "That one has to be worth two points!" After noticing that I was ignoring her, she first kicked me in the shin to pull me out of my distraction before throwing a vial of slightly glowing golden liquid at the overly large zombie. As it shattered across its face the zombie began to scream silently.
The holy water was as effective as it was disturbing, causing the undead to putrefy into a black sludge in a matter of seconds while releasing an odour capable of stripping paint. We only made the mistake of using holy water in close combat once and it was not something I would even wish on an enemy. Having melted the giant guardian, we proceeded to climb the circular stairs.
Arriving on the second floor, not much changed. It was still the same blue flames lighting the same old stone walls with the same dumb zombies wandering about. Deciding to try a little experiment, I created a three-part ritual with some law commands. The first part was a simple orb of light magic to attract the zombies' aggression while the second formation was designed to absorb mana and store it in a mana crystal similar to a capacitor. The last formation was designed to activate when the zombies filled the circle and expend the absorbed mana to create a pillar of flame before resetting.
I was rather happy with my law scripted magic and it reminded me of writing programming code back on my own world.
The princess and I set one of these trap glyphs at a hallway crossroad and waited to see the reaction. The first attempt was an epic failure. The light magic orb was far too powerful, drawing such a swarm of undead that we had to retreat. It did, however, show the feasibility of our plan, confirm that the undead could not harm the non-corporeal light orb and that the medium-sized mana crystals would shatter after four charges.
The crystals breaking was to be expected since unlike the crystals used to power devices these were raw and unprocessed. It was still a net gain since almost one in every dozen zombies had a medium crystal core while the others had small crystal cores. After tweaking the trap, we tried it again, learning that the experience gained fell proportionally to the distance. We would need to be far enough of a distance away that the wave would leave us alone while remaining close enough to gain sufficient benefits.
With the zombies either trapped in or killed by our traps, we had a much easier time exploring the dungeon. Despite being mapped, the walls were objects the dungeon could move, leading to a situation where the rooms were known but the paths between them change. The sound of grinding stone would occasionally be heard as the paths changed, but the dungeon could not actively move the pathways to crush adventurers nor could it move them while people were close by. It was on our second time being turned around due to the pathway changes that the princess began complaining. “This dungeon is fucking with us!”
“Of cause it is!” I retorted, “I think it has something to do with the rate we are killing the zombies”
Looking confused the princess asked, “Why would that matter?”
After taking some mana crystals out of storage, I answered. “Undead are powered by magic. If the dungeon does not have to supply mana to the zombies because they have been killed on mass, then it can use this mana for one of two things. Recreating the zombies or moving the walls. Normally this would mean not killing as many zombies, keeping them alive as we move towards the exit. But fuck that! I want the experience and medium mana crystals so give me a minute to change the traps and we will see just how pissed off we can make this dungeon.”
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After an hour of small scale trials, I finally had the new trap working. It required an additional law magic script cobbled together from several other rituals. The end result acted exactly the same as the original except had a one-way barrier that would allow the dungeons controlled mana to enter but not leave. this barrier would then collapse into a pearl as the medium mana crystal powering the trap shattered, permanently separating the mana from the dungeon. It meant we could not grind the floors as the zombies would not respawn and it would take days for the dungeon to refine enough natural mana to replace what was stolen. But it would allow us to advance at a vastly superior rate.
Continuing our journey upwards we repeatedly exploited the undead's trap vulnerability until the fourth floor where the narrow blue fire lit stone pathways and small cellar-like rooms opened into polished corridors and moderately sized storerooms. From our first step into the fourth layer, it was akin to walking into a different building. The rough-cut stone bricks gave way to smoothly finished walls and the boring empty rooms started to contain shelves and boxes.
The blue flame torches we had become accustomed to also changed, the rooms now lit by obsidian scions with the flames deepening into an almost purple hue. The new light slightly distorted distance and gave a suffocating feeling akin to being underwater. The other noticeable change was the disappearance of the stupid shambling zombies, in their place was the evolved zombie soldiers.
These monsters were stronger, patchwork armoured and had enough intelligence or instinct to use teamwork. Upon encountering traps they would still try to attack the light orb but due to spreading out in a search of the living as opposed to their lesser brethren who would try to force their way through, not as many would be caught. Those who escaped had enough intelligence to not enter the traps area a second-time and forced us to personally eliminate them.
Fighting the straggler soldiers was not overly difficult since they were still slow but their cobbled together armour disrupted magic meaning you needed to avoid targeting it. The undead arseholes also lacked the courtesy to drop said armour, dissolving it with them when they died. I could not even collect this useful material if I stripped it from them before they died as it would meet its end when they did. The princess also ran out of holy water forcing us to find a safe room in order to prepare some more.
Safe rooms were nothing new and had existed even on the first floor. Guarded by a slightly buffed monster, they were system implemented areas monsters could not enter. This did not make them perfectly safe, however, since they often contained traps such as poisoned food or water and monsters gathered in front of the doors as you waited within. Killing the better armoured zombie soldier guarding the entrance, we entered into the room.
Four stone beds lay beside the walls and a poisoned water well was positioned in the centre of the room. While the princess started making the holy water, I decided to call it a day and get some sleep. The recipe for holy water was easy and simply involved adding silver dust, light moss, rock salt and powdered mana crystal to water before blessing it with healing affinity and that shit could wait till morning. It had been a long day, I had dealt with a lot of problems and we had climbed further than a party of ten normally would. Summoning my bed, because who knows what the dungeon did to the stone ones, I wished the princess a good night before counting sheep.
The next morning I groggily woke to the smell of bacon and eggs. Wondering why my food tasted bland and tough, I recovered from my stupor before realising I was attempting to eat my sheet. The smell, however, was real as the princess had withdrawn the hot meal from her storage space. Looking over at the happy girl I complained, “where’s mine?” Only to be greeted by a middle finger, something she had picked up from me. Withdrawing my own hearty breakfast from the immaterial void I continued, “should we force our way higher using more powerful traps or continue slowly?”
Almost choking on her food she replied, “Slowly? We are moving faster than a raid party! We even passed the students who laughed at you yesterday.”
wincing at the memory of that encounter, I sarcastically countered, “Yeah, but you are the legendary genius princess. Surpassing mere mortal students should be the norm.”
With an eye roll and a sigh, the princess pointed to the potion vials in the corner, “Just finish those and we can continue 'normally', no need to blow up the whole floor with a giant overpowered ritual. Plus we will need the combat experience for what is to come.”
Opening the door we were greeted by a swarming mass of zombie soldiers and I must admit I found it funny watching them struggle to reach us through the invisible barrier. The princess tossed a few vials of the newly finished holy at them only to realise her mistake. While the zombies could not enter, the horrible smelling gas could. We were trapped in the room with no way out and spent the next in a small magical air bubble waiting for the danger to pass lest we throw up what we just scoffed down.