Reud stood still, quietly watching Lilia and Bo make short work of the latest pack of spiders.
The deeper into the dungeon they’d travelled, the more these monsters had tried to ambush them. First, they’d only been attacked by those that randomly stumbled upon them, the spiders seeming more focused on feeding on the glowing plants than trying to kill them. Now, however, the attacks had become more intelligent. Coordinated ambushes and attempts to flank them whilst they are occupied with attacks from the front.
As if they were being controlled.
The more they fought, the more the mind directing the spiders seemed to learn, experimenting with new tactics. Not that it made any difference. Even though the mind was adapting, Reud and Lilia had seen it all before, and they were adapting faster. Any new trick thrown their way was quickly countered, the combination of Lilia and the undead slaughtering the attacking arachnids with brutal efficiency.
“Reud, duck!” Lilia shouted.
Instantly, Reud reacted, dropping to the ground just before a shard of ice shot over his head. Behind him, a hissing screech told him the spell had hit its target. Spinning, he found a spider pinned to the wall by the ice shard, its long legs scrabbling at its slick surface. Yellow ichor oozed out around the wound, squeezed out by the arachnids frantic movements. Its movements slowed, its screeches fading to wet gurgling, until finally it stopped.
Absent-mindedly, Reud raised a hand, stepping towards it. It was only at the last moment he stopped himself from trying to raise it. The mind was still connected to the spiders, even after their death. He didn’t want a repeat explosion shredding his clothing further. Any attempts to raise the creatures, even as mere temporary zombies, would have to wait until after the mind was dealt with.
Instead, Reud turned to Lec, pulling her from the fight to instead watch their rear. Lilia shouldn’t have to be the only one keeping an eye out in all directions.
A pulse of mana flooded through the air, and suddenly the spiders turned and fled back into the darkness. Kin went to chase, but Reud stopped him with a thought. There was no way they’d be able to catch the spiders once they were away from the open passageway.
“Must be getting close now.” Lilia said, gesturing with her sword at a wall. The stone was mottled with greenish-silver flecks, glittering in the lantern-light.
“The mana is strong down here.” Reud said, running his hands over the wall. The walls were rich with the mana-warped metal, more than enough for their purposes. All they had to do was mine it.
Once the dungeon boss was dead, of course.
Every now and again, in the depths of dungeons dense with magic, a powerful creature would emerge. Warped and enhanced by mana to monstrous heights, blessed by Vistol to a far greater degree than their brethren, these creatures would rise to rule their particular domain.
These bosses came in two main groups. Those with a brood, and those that lived alone. Chimeras that often lived in isolation became singularly powerful killing machines, a true force of destruction, every last bit of the mana saturating the dungeon going to enhance them to almost unstoppable heights. On the other hand, those that lived in groups often formed a sort of collective intelligence, the brood controlled by the elevated chimera in their midst. Fighting these held a different kind of risk. The individual threat of each chimera was lower, but what they lacked in danger they often made up for in numbers. Whichever kind of boss lurked at the heart of a dungeon, it was a great risk to take it on, a risk that claimed many an overconfident adventurer’s life.
But, with greater risk came greater reward. The body of a dungeon boss was a treasure in and of itself. Its mana-enhanced skin, carapace, shell, or scales were the perfect ingredient for crafting enchanted weapons and armour. Its blood, flesh, organs, and other viscera were perfect for brewing all forms of potions and concoctions. Killing a dungeon boss could set an adventurer up for life, and as such there was often no end of people willing to brave the dangers of facing one.
Now that the supply of adventurers had dried up, the dungeons had largely been left untouched, and the dungeon bosses along with them. There was no knowing how powerful the creatures had grown unchecked. Luckily, the chimeras did not venture from the depths of their home, their mana-bloated forms unable to survive for long outside the dense mana of the dungeon.
Which was likely the only reason they hadn’t entirely destroyed Rudase by now.
Reud looked around at the group. The undead were looking good, really good. Their bones were shiny and smooth, all the imperfections marring the surface having slowly vanished over the last few hours. Evidently, the intense mana of the dungeon was beneficial to them. Reud scratched his chin, thinking hard. Maybe once the dungeon was secured, this would be a good place to send the undead regularly to keep them in top condition. It would certainly save him having to pump so much of his own mana into the task of repairing the everyday wear and tear that they faced.
A sort of skeleton holiday.
Lilia was carefully cleaning off her blade, her brow furrowed as she focused on her task. Her ice magic was impressive, especially given how new she was to the affinity. She had the experience of her other affinity to draw on, but still. It was some impressive improvements.
“Ready to move on?” Reud asked her.
“Just a bit more,” Lilia said. “Unlike you and Bo, I need a break every now and again.” She sat back against the wall, resting her head back against the stone.
Walking over to her, Reud pulled a waterskin from the pack on his back and offered it to her. Lilia gratefully accepted it and drank deeply.
“How much deeper do we need to go, do you remember?” She asked.
Reud shook his head. “The tunnels have changed too much over the years, I don’t know.” Putting his hand on the wall, he sent a little pulse of mana into the stone, letting it run out from the metal. “It’s hard to feel anything, given how dense the mana is. The passageway leads on a ways until...”
Then he felt something further on down the passage. A vast amount of the mana-sensitive metal stretched out in a large, hollow sphere. A cavern? The mana in the centre was especially rich, a swirling, chaotic nexus of the energy pulsing all throughout the dungeon.
“Actually, I think we may be even closer than we think,” Reud said. “A few minutes that way is a large cavern, with the highest concentration of mana we’ve encountered yet. If I had to guess, that's the boss's lair.”
Lilia sprang back to her feet, her face lighting up. “Finally! I’ve been getting bored of fighting the same spiders over and over again.” She tossed the waterskin back to Reud. “What sort of creature do you think this one will be?”
Reud shrugged. “Hard to say, could be anything. Down here though, maybe another spider, or a cave scorpion. Maybe even some form of bat?”
“My money is on the spider.” Lilia said. “How about you, Bo?”
Bo stared back at her in perfect silence, then gestured with one hand, his digits curling and wiggling in a wave.
Lilia looked to Reud. “What did he say?”
“Spider, I think.” Reud said.
“Don’t you know?”
Reud shrugged. “Not exactly. As his soul matures it becomes harder and harder to read unless I really dig deep, and that risks damaging him. But that gesture is like a spider running, don’t you think?”
Bo nodded.
“We are really going to need to get a way for Bo to speak. It gets a little tedious when every conversation is one-sided.” Lilia grumbled.
Reud smiled. “I’ll do my best. Now, dungeon boss?”
Lilia nodded. “Let’s finish this thing.”
—
“I knew it!” Lilia whispered, elbowing Reud. “See, spider boss.”
Reud peered over her shoulder. Ahead of them, the passageway opened up to a vast cavern. Long stalagmites and stalactites dotted the room, making the walls look like they were bristling with spikes. Every surface glistened with the greenish-silver metal, almost none of the original stone remaining.
In the centre of the room squatted a vast figure. A spider, as large as a house. Eight long, blade-like legs supported a bulbous torso. Pale blue light shimmered from its exoskeleton, the same as the strange plants found all throughout the dungeon. Beneath its grotesque torso hung a large sack, filled with eggs. As the spider moved, the sack swung back and forth, revealing the curled up figures of hundreds of tiny spiders within. As it turned, its face came into sight. A mass of tiny eyes sat in the centre of a swollen face, vicious mandibles extending out beneath it, and from within each eye shone a purple light.
“That sure looks like the dungeon boss.” Reud said.
“I really wish it wasn’t,” Lilia said. “That thing is disgusting.”
Reud squeezed her shoulder. “Lucky for us, it doesn’t seem to have noticed us yet.”
“That won’t be for long, one of its little servants could stumble across us any moment.”
“Then let’s do this. Are you ready?” Reud said, feeling out to all the trio of undead, strengthening his link to them.
Lilia nodded, raising her sword and shield. “Bo and I will go left, Kin and Lec can go right. We’ll hit it from both sides.”
“Be careful, don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
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Lilia smiled back at him. “You know I won’t. Now, go!”
With a thought, Reud spurred the undead into motion. As one, they sprang forward, charging into the cavern. The Kin and Lec ran along the wall to the right, the clink of bone on metal filling the air. It took but a moment for the intruders to draw the giant spider’s attention.
An ear-splitting screech split the air, loud enough to send lancing pain through Reud’s head. Its legs crashed against the ground as it span its bulbous body towards the skeletons running around its domain, the blade-like limbs shattering shards of stone from the floor. A shiver ran through its body, powerful enough to dislodge several eggs from the sack swaying beneath it, a pulse of blue light from its torso flashing after them and bursting the eggs open. Four new spiders, still glistening with some vile fluid, skittered forth straight towards the undead.
“Right, Bo, it’s our turn.” Lilia said. Hefting her sword and shield, she darted into the room, running along the wall towards the left. Bo clanked into motion behind her, the crash of his armoured feet echoing through the cavern.
Reud stepped in after them and pressed himself against the wall, between a pair of stalagmites. Hopefully, there he wouldn’t get bothered by any spiders, allowing him to focus on bolstering his minions.
Reud sent a pulse of mana into the skeletons to the right, and they skidded to a stop, turning to face the spiders racing towards them. Raising his weapon, Kin sprang forward to stand in front of Lec, the other skeleton raising a hand and summoning crackling sparks to cover it, barely even needing an instruction from Reud.
Just how proper combat-trained undead should be.
Then, the two groups crashed together. Sheathed in white light, Kin sprang forward to smash the newborn spiders into the ground, their complete lack of armour letting him use his morningstar to devastating effect, sending chunks of exoskeleton and globs of ichor spraying out in all directions. A flash of lightning shot from Lec, sending another of the spiders screeching to the ground, its legs smoking and curling up.
The spider boss screeched as its children died mere moments after being spawned. It shook its body again, scattering eggs out over the surrounding ground, its myriad of eyes focused on the flashing forms of the undead.
A pulse of freezing air washed over Reud’s face as Lilia unleashed her magic. A long blade of ice wrapped around her sword, over doubling its length. Spinning on her heel, she swung it across to crash into the exoskeleton of the giant spider. The ice blade shattered into a thousand tiny shards on impact, leaving behind a shimmering cloud of white. Through that cloud burst Bo, an armoured juggernaut of metal, his blade extended before him. He slammed into the spot that Lilia had struck with pinpoint precision. With a resounding crack, the blade pierced the spider’s exoskeleton, digging deep within.
The spider screeched once again, spinning its grotesque torso around to the source of the new threat, tearing the blade from Bo’s grasp. Dozens of eggs dropped from the sack beneath it as it did, joining the others already scattered over the ground. It snapped out with its mandibles, just barely missing Bo as he sprang back. The spider went to follow, only to be stopped when a row of spikes of ice burst from the ground before it. It hissed and locked its eyes on Lilia.
Reud raised a hand to his skeletons, commanding them to take advantage of the spider’s distraction. Kin launched himself towards the spider’s splayed legs, morningstar arcing around to screech across the blade-like limb. A bolt of lighting followed it up, flickering along the limb's metallic coating.
The spider barely even seemed to notice.
Reud frowned, commanding Kin to run beneath the spider’s legs towards where Bo’s blade still hung from its side, lodged into its exoskeleton. Maybe he’d have better luck at that weakened point.
Glowing with the mana Reud was pumping into him, Kin skidded below the spider's abdomen and smashed his morningstar into the pommel of the blade protruding from its side.
That, finally, seemed to have an effect.
With a sickening crack, a foot-long rent split open the spider's carapace, sending a spray of yellow ichor bursting forth. The spider staggered to one side, unleashing another ear-piercing screech.
Right into Lilia’s blade.
Its edge lined with white light, the sword cut through one of the spider’s back legs at the joint, sending the limb crashing to the ground. More ichor gushed out as the spider flailed in agony, its body pulsing with light. Lilia sprang away, barely avoiding being impaled by the crashing of the spider’s blade-legs.
The eggs beneath it burst open, unleashing dozens of the spider’s arachnid brood. They surged out towards the closest threat, Kin, forcing him back before he could press his advantage, forming a living wall between the attackers and their mother.
The giant spider staggered back, swinging its body from Lilia and Bo to Kin and Lec, seemingly unable to decide what was the bigger threat. A stalagmite shattered under its bulk, the sound briefly drowning out the skittering sound of the spider horde.
Then, it stopped.
The chaotic mana in the air stilled for a moment. Then, it began rushing into the dungeon boss, sucked into its body in an almighty surge.
“Lilia, it’s building some sort of magic!” Reud shouted to her.
“I got that by the fact it’s started glowing!” She shouted back.
The spider’s eyes blazed with purple light as bands of cyan radiance webbed out along its back, building brighter and brighter in pulsing waves. It arched up, lifting its forelegs above its bulbous head.
“Get back!” Reud shouted to Lilia.
She looked at him, then at the spider, then turned and dived behind a stalagmite, ducking and placing her shield over her head, Bo following an instant after.
Not a moment too soon.
The spider slammed its legs down into the ground, bracing itself as the radiance drained from its body, the light sucked into a floating orb just before its face.
Everything went still for a moment, the mana stilling, the spiders stopping. Only a dull hum from the orb remaining.
Then it unleashed.
A beam of light lanced out from the orb, filling the air with a ferocious roar, smashing into the wall behind where Lilia dove. Chunks of metal and rock exploded out, filling the air with dust. The spider swung its body around, the beam turning with it, destroying everything in its path. Stalagmites and stalactites alike exploded as the beam scythed through them. Reud ducked down as the beam passed overhead, his arms raised to shield his face from the spray of debris kicked out in its wake.
His skeletons, however, were less lucky.
Kin simply vanished as the beam washed over him, his already-weakened bones blasted into such tiny fragments that the animating spell instantly collapsed, tearing the soul within it to pieces. Reud gripped his chest as pain lanced through him, the mana he’d been pouring into the undead rebounding back. Lec too collapsed under the onslaught, resisting destruction but instead being flung against the wall to scatter across the floor.
Finally, the beam winked out of existence, leaving dancing after-images in its wake. The crash of falling rock replaced the roar of the magic, the cavern trembling from the destruction visited upon it.
“Lilia, are you okay!?” Reud shouted, wiping dust from his eyes. The place where she had hid was now nothing but a pile of rubble.
The rubble shifted, falling away to reveal Bo’s armoured figure, hunched over and encased in a sphere of ice. With a creak, he stood, shattering the ice into glittering fragments.
“Never. Been. Better.” Lilia grunted as she rolled out from beneath him, glaring at the spider boss. “I’m going to kill that bug.”
“We can’t let it do one of those again, it’ll bring the whole cavern down,” Reud shouted to her, raising his hand towards Bo. “Keep it distracted, Bo will finish this.”
Lilia nodded, her eyes lighting with an amethyst radiance, a white glow encasing her body once more. She surged forward, each swing of her sword cutting apart one of the newly hatched spiders skittering forth from below their exhausted mother. Reud commanded Lec to reform and join her in attacking, before turning his attention to Bo.
This arachnid wasn’t the only one that could harness the dense mana in the air. Reud had spent centuries channelling all the magic his mind could handle, centuries of wielding vaster and vaster quantities of the chaotic magic-fuel. On top of that, he had the entire output of a dungeon powering his phylactery, pushing his mana capacity to even greater heights.
And he was going to use every last piece of it on his greatest undead.
Bo stiffened as Reud connected his mana to him. First, a trickle of mana flowed along the link, bolstering the undead’s strength and speed to many times that of even the strongest man. Then a stream, enhancing him till he matched that of the strongest warrior-mages.
Then a torrent.
An iridescent light began to blaze from within Bo’s armour, shining out of the helmet and from each joint. Wisps of mana floated off from his body, twisting and distorting the air, giving him a hazy, ethereal look.
Bo turned his head to look at the spiders skittering around the room, their mandibles gnashing as they searched for an opening to attack the glowing woman slaughtering their brethren.
Then, Bo exploded into motion.
Shooting forward, he crashed down on one of the closest spiders, crushing its body beneath his armoured boots. He kicked out, sending its ruined corpse sailing through the air, before grabbing one of its companions and ripping it in two.
“Reud! Hurry it up back there!” Lilia shouted, pointing her sword at the dungeon boss. The giant spider had backed up even further, squeezing itself between the stalagmites, its body pulsing with energy once again.
Reud’s eyes settled on the spider’s severed blade-limb, lying discarded on the ground like the blade of some colossal sword.
The perfect weapon to end this fight.
Bo turned at his mental command, tossing away another ruined spider-body, before running towards the limb. Chunks of rock and pieces of spider carapace crunched under his bulky form as he charged towards his goal.
Leaping forward, he grabbed the blade-limb and hefted it into the air as if it were as light as a feather. Turning towards the giant spider, he gripped it at one end like a javelin, pointing the other arm towards the boss’s bulbous face.
Then his arm flashed forward.
The blade-limb shot through the air, looking like nothing more than a giant flying sword. In a flash, it slammed into the spider’s face, lifting the creature from its feet and sending it crashing back into the wall behind it. The spider’s limbs went rigid, then began to shake, tearing the walls and ground around it to shreds.
The light along its back surged, flickering in erratic waves, building as mana continued to rush into it. The spider screeched its ear-piercing screech, but this time it was tinged with a mortal desperation.
Suddenly, the light over the spider's back drained, sucked into an orb just barely visible within the spider's ruined head.
Then it exploded.
The spider’s face and the front half of its body blasted apart in a vile shower of yellow gore, the rest of its body slamming back into the wall behind it. A cascade of rock crashed down around it, crushing what remained of the dungeon boss’s body until nothing was left but its seven blade-limbs poking out from the rubble.
The spider horde filling the room stopped at the death of their mother. Then, they skittered away in all directions, squeezing into cracks and crevices all around the walls, until the cavern was silent.