As their forge was filled with hammering, I began the next part of my plan. I placed the three bosses we had gathered so far into strategic places in the dungeon. After that, I found Terra and explained to her my plan. We chose our location to be the room with the plant. I had given up a lot of my soul world’s vitality to quickly heal the plant, also using waters of life to feed it. It ended up growing substantially, and despite only just being placed in the room it already looked like it had been there for weeks.

My soul world was now brown and dying, and the once luscious location was barely better a wasteland than I had seen in the visions of Twilight. It would take some time to restore the life and energy pulled from it, but I believed that what I was about to do would be worth it. We picked a side room and then barricaded it off.

“Here are some powerful metals, I want to control the path completely. Can you work with it without a blacksmith?” I asked.

“A blacksmith’s work would be better, and I wouldn’t be able to refine things to the level of a blade, but if it’s just armor plating, I can create something durable.”

“Are we sure we want to do this, Master?” Alysia asked. “We don’t know what will happen.”

“It’s a risk, but we have to try something. We won’t have the strength to defend against Twilight in just a few days without this. We may have spread out the range by three territories, but it’s requiring a lot of mana and I’ve already used my reserves. If I could connect with my surface dungeon down here, I would have already done so. This is the most important thing right now.”

“I… understand.”

“Can you make the change again?”

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“Y-yes…”

I pulled out Alysia, but her form changed once again, this time turning back into the drill I had used to first get here. Terra looked at the item as I started drilling up.

“That’s very interesting, Master.”

“Th-thank you,” Alysia responded.

Terra had always had an interest in contraptions. Compared to Sapphire, who specifically enjoyed metalwork, her interests included any mechanical contraption of any type, magically run or with physics. After going to my world, I had bought her several physics toys I thought she might enjoy, but I hadn’t found a time to give them to her yet. Once we were out of this, I would show her some of the engineering marvels from my world.

Speaking of contraptions, that was exactly what we were building. We ended up building a pit with a thirty-foot drop. At the bottom of the pit was a series of jagged spikes made of powerful alloy. There was an adjacent door that led into the room of the plant monster, who was already starting to send vines into the pit trap.

While Terra was lining the sides with metal far more valuable than what we were wasting it on, we drilled a long path. In this hallway, I used mana from my dungeon to create a series of traps, all aimed at causing damage. By the time we were done, Terra finished reinforcing the bit, and we had come out into a small alcove situated at the very edge of our domain. If the lore left to me by King Diorite were correct, we should be in the right spot.

“Are we ready?” I asked.

The two of us prepared ourselves. I started to drill up, and then I struck something hard. I exploded up with all of my force, using a Create Step to try to force myself through.

“Can you make it?” I asked.

“I’ll do it!”

Terra rose to the ground, giving my feet someplace to land, but then she began to force the rock up, shoving me into the ceiling. With the barrier on one side and Terra’s raising platform on the other, the only choice was to break through or be squashed. My entire body turned red, and I pushed as powerfully as I could, and ever so slowly we began to breakthrough.

Finally, the barrier gave way and we rose into an inferno.

{You have entered the dungeon, Infernal Hell. Destroy the lore to break the curse, or complete the lore for extra dungeon points and a blessing!}