Lucid was both surprised and happy to hear that Lefty had fled. With that, they were one step closer to peace in the cavern. Unfortunately, the insect dungeon and the Grove ratkin dungeon seemed to take that as a direct threat against their survival. While neither seemed to consider fleeing an option, they had stopped fighting each other and were instead actively growing their own domains. While this resulted in an uncomfortable tension between the two dungeons as their territories collided, neither one acted upon it. According to Damian and Subsonar, they were building up their own forces slowly. Owyn theorized that the dungeons expansion was an attempt to starve each other out.
The insect dungeon was weaving giant spider webs that messed with the bats echolocation, confusing them enough that none of the flyers wanted to get close to it. They’d already seen a few stray bats die to those webs. The Grove on the other hand, was entirely self-sustaining, with its own growing food sources, not to mention its monopoly on wood resources.
By relative comparison, it outwardly appeared that Lucid’s dungeon thrived on conquest. If the open space in the center of the cavern disappeared, no new dungeons would appear, and Lucid would suffer because of it. Less wild dungeons meant less hunting grounds for food, and Lucid’s numbers were beyond the point where they could just sit and wait for food to grow.
Of course, then Lucid brought in his own news.
The guppies of the upper caves were no longer guppies, having evolved to the point where they needed to go hunting for food of their own. Which, of course, they took from the surface. Upon hearing this, many of the citizens of Setterton were upset, but Lucid told them of his excursion onto the surface. While the church did stop him from leaving the camp area and risk being seen by the citizens outside the fort, they did not stop them from taking food, weapons, and animals from within the walls. This disturbed the citizens somewhat. It probably just further cemented the church’s betrayal. Well, that was all assuming they believed Lucid of course.
But Owyn trusted Lucid. It also helped explain Arianna and Tyler’s recent transformations. Over the past few hours, they’d been unexpectedly growing wings from their backs. Tyler’s dark elf wings were akin to bat wings, but Arianna’s wings were closer to a white bird’s. Neither of them could fly yet, but eventually.
In the meantime, Lucid would see what he could do about making the path to the surface more accessible to humans. Damian had complained enough about flying people up and down, and besides, Lucid had the mana to spare. A staircase would go a long way to help everyone bring down the new horses and chickens, all of which Lucid was planning on enthralling. The horses were for Lucid’s own uses, but the chickens were supposed to be for their eggs, which many of the villagers could appreciate.
After that news though, Lucid informed them about what he’d learned from the church.
Felecia Bellamy spoke as Lucid’s voice, with no small amount of surprise at the words she was made to say. “The church, at least as far as cardinal Garroway claims, serve a dungeon core they’ve named the God Core. He’s wanting Lucid’s assistance in fighting against the Goddess above. Lucid presumes, that since the surface is a dungeon, that it’s the Goddess’ dungeon!?”
Many voices cried out in anger.
“The surface isn’t a dungeon!”
“The Goddess protects us!”
“It’s bullshit! He’s lying!”
From the Baroness’ reaction to the cries, it seemed like Lucid was mildly surprised by the outcry. Mr. Vernant leaned in close to Owyn to ask a question. An obvious motion, given his new giant size. “Is the surface really a dungeon?”
“No!” Owyn shouted. “Obviously not!”
Mr. Vernant frowned. “Thought so. But Lucid is adamant that the surface is a dungeon.”
Owyn shook his head. “No, there’d be evidence. We can magically detect dungeons, and the outside has been confirmed to be free. I mean, walking from the outside into the caves, we would be able to feel the difference between entering and exiting a dungeon. Mana sense doesn’t pick it up- nothing indicates that the surface is a dungeon!”
“The Goddess herself then?” Mr. Vernant muttered.
“What, like the Goddess herself is the surface, and is therefore different from a dungeon? How’s that possible?”
Mr. Vernant shrugged, tilting his head to listen to Lucid. “Regardless, Lucid senses that the surface is an impassable barrier for him. Presuming this ‘God Core’ is feeling the same thing he’s feeling, he can understand why a dungeon would want to wage war against it. He doesn’t like it either.”
Owyn quieted, digesting this new information.
The Baroness had mostly quieted the gathered crowd by that point, and began speaking again. “It doesn’t matter the specifics of it all!” She cried out over the voices. “What matters are the facts! The surface is a source of hatred for dungeons, and somewhere, somehow, a powerful dungeon that’s dubbed itself as the God Core has tricked the cardinal and the knights outside that they need to work with it! Do you hear me! The church serves a dungeon!”
“So do you!” Shouted a villager.
“We’re basically being forced to do the same here!”
“AND WHO DO YOU THINK IS FORCING THE CHURCH!” The Baroness shouted above all the noise, quieting it in an instant.
She composed herself. “Look. We all may be trapped by Lucid right now, but it’s the church’s fault for our predicament. A church, mind you, that willingly and unenthralled, obey a dungeon by their own admission. Once we’re safe, Lucid has given his word that we’ll all be free to go.” She raised her arm, showing off a yellowish band tied around her bicep. “And if you want proof of Lucid keeping his word, look at me! I have requested to never evolve, and Lucid has kept his promise! Everyone else has evolved only after Lucid has gotten their permission! Lucid is not a normal dungeon, and in a good way! So while we’re all trapped together with him, I expect that working together would be in all of our best interests!”
Owyn took a half step forward, raising his voice. “So what’s the plan then? What’s our response to the insect and Grove dungeons?”
“Our food situation will dwindle without immediate action. While the chickens we’ll be getting will help, it’s not a permanent solution. Our best bet would be to take out the Grove. By far, its resources will help us the most. Farmland, wood, and whatever else we can find, they’ll all be a great help. And with wood, we’ll be able to build fires to fight the insect dungeon far easier since we can just light their new webs on fire. Doing so will be difficult, but the sooner we do it, the less time the other dungeons will have to prepare.”
“Can’t we just talk to them?”
All heads turned to the young boy that just talked. Owyn recognized him as one of the ex-adventurers of the town. Their group, the Greater Slayers, was dissolved by each kid's respective parents when they finally got down to the cavern.
“Talk to… the other dungeons?”
The young boy nodded. “Yeah?”
Nobody laughed at him, but Lucid’s thralls had taken on a peculiar look. One of vacant disdain.
The boy's father shook his head, speaking for everyone. “You can’t negotiate with dungeons. It’s kill, or be killed.”
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The boy went to argue, probably to point out the hypocrisy of the statement versus the situation they were in. “But-”
“No.” The Baroness said, hard. “There will be no negotiation. And this time, there’s not even going to be a fight if we can help it. Grove has a simplistic, if effective defense. As far as Subsonar can make out, it’s similar to us. Walls, buildings, hidden rooms, the works. They have a proper kingdom brewing over there. That makes it weak to aerial attacks, but for a proper siege we’ll still have to go in on foot. The most important factor will be information. Owyn.”
Owyn perked up. “Yes?”
“That necklace. How close do you have to be for it to work?”
Owyn shrugged. “It gets more accurate the closer I get. General direction is about… from one of these walls to the other? It gets pretty accurate at about half that though.”
The Baroness nodded. “Good to know. The Grove’s kingdom is about ten times the size of ours, and teeming with ratkin. So here’s the plan-”
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Owyn hung rather uncomfortably in Arianna’s grip. Tyler, the dark elf, flew nearby.
“This is so stupid.” Owyn muttered, looking down at the battlefield.
True to Lucid’s words, the ratkin kingdom was literally teeming with rats. Regular sized rats scattered like a flowing blanket, disappearing into the cracks in buildings, and out into the forest surrounding the city. Regular ratkin ran among them, seemingly of a standardized design. It wasn’t impossible that this dungeon had evolved them to be so identical to encourage ratkin breeding, forgoing the evolution of regular rats. In fact, it was a rather common occurrence that dungeons created their own specialized species for their personal use.
Owyn’s adventurer spirit burned to wipe them off the face of the earth. It was an adventurer's duty after all, to ensure that no more monsters grew their breeding populations to the point where they could enter the wider world.
There were other ratkin of course, each with their own purposes. In particular, a whole troop of them had evolved wings for flight, and were currently in conflict with Lucid’s bombadier bats.
So much for air superiority.
Damian seemed to take that personally. After all, he was the one bragging about it all the time. He was so enraged that he even disregarded his given mission to attack the mini-bosses of the dungeon. Instead, he was zipping around the sky, slaughtering his way through the flying enemies.
“Shouldn’t we help them?” Tyler asked.
“Nope.” Owyn said. Uncomfortable as he was, being held high in the sky by a girl nearly six years younger than him, it was a far more favorable position than being down in the fight. Especially considering he didn’t have any weapons.
All of Lucid’s flyers were here, fighting to regain air superiority over the Grove’s kingdom. The only exception was Subsonar, who wasn’t really built for fighting. Silver was here though, seemingly enjoying the opportunity to bite chunks out of flying rats.
Unlike flying rats though, the bats had much more experience flying. One on one, they’d win every single fight, so long as they preemptively lost their payloads. Two on one made for a much trickier situation though, meaning Lucid lost quite a number of thralls in the fight.
“They’re taken out enough.” Arianna decided.
“Wait, no-”
It was too late though. Arianna dove, forcing Tyler to follow behind her. Owyn’s heart leapt into his throat with the dive, blocking off whatever cries of surprise or worry he wanted to scream out. They passed through an opening in the airborn fights, swooping in over the ratkin kingdom.
Almost immediately, rocks, spears, and what appeared to be primitive arrows shot at them. Luckily, only the blunt objects ever hit Owyn.
“BASTARD!” Owyn shouted when Arianna slowed down enough for him to speak again. His leg was hit with a fast moving rock.
“This is why we wait!” Owyn shouted at her. “Go up! UP!”
Arainna struggled to gain altitude. Tyler caught up with them, wielding a large shield that had been stolen from the church. He stopped lower than them, blocking off the projectiles.
“Sorry!” Arianna said. “I thought we could make it.”
Owyn growled. This was an ongoing problem with her, he remembered. All three of the Dungeon Rats took risks they really didn’t have to, possibly a result of their orphan upbringing. “Now we’ve got the ranged attacks below, and the flying rats above. Watch out.”
Arainna’s eyes trailed up above them, where Damian and Silver continued rescuing the bombardier bats. Owyn saw that too and sighed.
“Fine, focus. Sweeping path, like Lucid said. Start at the back. Look out for attacks that Tyler doesn’t catch.”
Thankfully, Arianna flew around a little more cautiously. Tyler, while more comfortable with a spear as Owyn knew him, seemed competent with the shield. Not like it was hard to use in this circumstance. Most of the attacks barely had any power behind them by the time they got this high, so he had plenty of time to react to them to protect Owyn and Arianna.
The airborne battle above them quieted down after a while. Only two bombardier bats had survived the counter assault. They flew back to Lucid together while Damian and Silver sought out large, singular targets to pick off on the ground. Owyn didn’t pay attention to them, instead trusting his life entirely to his teammates so he can focus on his necklace. It wasn’t glowing quite yet.
The plan should have been simple. Do a couple of flyovers of the kingdom, find the core, and retreat. That’s it. But noooo, the Grove just had to evolve some flying ratkin. Whatever, at least they wouldn’t be able to recover by the time the real assault started.
Owyn’s necklace glowed over one of the larger stone buildings. Go figure.
“Right. Got it. Let’s go.”
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The Grove
What were the humans doing? First, they send out their flying troops in a fruitless attack. Now, neither dungeon had much in the way of flyers. No matter, more could be made to combat the remainder of the human dungeon’s flyers. But what was this? Why were they all gathered out at the edges of the border? Were they getting ready to charge into the forest? They even brought the giant crab!
It didn’t look like they were planning to attack. The smaller troops all seemed to be surrounding one small crab in particular, the one with the tube on its back. It had shoved its legs into the stone ground, gripping the earth with its claws. Clearly, it wasn’t planning on moving anywhere.
Well, if they didn’t want to attack, that was fine! The stupid humans scattered throughout the army could just sit out there and provide mana!
The dragon took flight, carrying that one human with the necklace again. Only this time, he was holding a… stone pipe? Why? The pipe had some magic cores in it, but they clearly were too far away for them to be useful. The demon took flight as well, guarding the dragon. But still, they remained at a distance. What’s going on?
The ratkin remained in the village. They were an investment that needed to be kept safe. The rest of the rats however, those could go into the forest! The largest, the smallest, the ones that could hide so well, all of them! They would show to the humans the might of the dungeon! They would prove why they were the strongest! Nobody had EVER-
BANG!
A shiver through the ground. Like a tremor. A great magic was released, feeding the dungeon. The crab with the tube on its back.
Oh no…
A stone shot through the humans, zipping through a precise gap that the dungeon hadn’t noticed. It flew straight with a speed that no living thing could react to, aimed straight for the core.
The dungeon cried out, but it was too late. The stone projectile crashed through the wooden wall surrounding the village, not slowing down in any way. It went precisely through the buildings, as if it was intentionally aimed to miss every single obstacle on its way to hit the fortress that contained the core.
With a great crash, the walls collapsed, stopping the projectile. The building fell all around the core.
But this was something the ratkin could react to. The royal guards dove for the core, hiding it with their large, muscular bodies. The building fell on top of them, burying them deep under the stone. But just as soon as it started, it was over. The royal guards stood, glaring through the trees in the direction of the standing army.
HA! You miss-
Bang!
----------------------------------------
Owyn lowered the gun, shaking his hand. The heavy stone barrel had shattered in his hand, save for the bit at the very end where his steadying hand had held it. He watched from his raised perch how every single rat in the forest screeched as one, crying out in rage after their dungeon had just been shot. With the exception of the smallest, most normal rats, the thralls raged at the fact that they no longer served a dungeon. The regular rats just scattered, not willing to be eaten by the larger ones.
However, as Owyn had told Lucid, if they didn’t claim the core within a day, the dungeon would return. History showed that most of the thralls, particularly the evolved ones, would eventually seek it out to connect their wills with it, reviving the thing. Kind of the opposite of how humans awoke the dungeons in order to convert them to magic cores.
That was assuming, of course, that the thralls now rampaging out of control were still alive to make that happen.
Damian chuckled. “They’ve reverted to simple animals. Uncoordinated. How barbaric.”
Owyn nodded, giving him permission to leave. “Happy hunting.”
The demon just grinned as Lucids army prepared to receive the first wild monsters.