I felt the changes as soon as I crossed the threshold of the tunnels.
My skin shivering and vibrating with the buzz of fresh magic. Raw and pure, unlike anything I'd felt or tasted before.
The deeper I descended, the more that influence could be felt.
Seeping into the walls my drones had carved out like stains on a carpet.
Yet, there was something odd about it all. I felt the roots tingling. As if there was some force trying to pry them apart. And failing.
'Is this the process of natural Dungeon forming?' I wondered. 'Is it trying to make wider halls? Or is it trying to merge all the passages into a single tunnel like that of the Dunstonberry Dungeon? What kind of force is compelling these changes? Is it aware of itself? Or is the magic following some baser instinct? Or is it merely the natural outcome of so much magic rushing at once in the same direction? Like pressurized water being released from a breaking dam?'
Too many questions. Too few answers.
I brushed them all away and kept descending. Down, down, down. Ever downwards. Past the familiar corridors my drones had been hollowing out day in and day out.
All while the magic in the air became thicker and thicker.
By the time I'd reached the third floor of my would-be imitation, the ambient magic felt like a thick, impenetrable fog that clouded most of my mundane senses, while empowering my ability to sense the life around me.
By the time I'd reached the fifth floor, that thick fog felt like a curtain of water. My body giving me the feedback of trying to run through a river neck-deep in water, instead of the actual root-covered passages I was traversing.
By the time I'd reached the seventh and last floor I'd carved out, that water felt more like honey or molasses.
My body felt dull. Heavier than before.
I'd never actually been drunk before, but I imagined this was what drunk people felt like when they were stumbling down the street.
I tried to draw in a deep breath, but the magic in the air seared my lungs from the inside out.
Yet I kept going, going, going...
Pushing past the awkwardness and the goosebumps breaking all over my skin.
Until I reached the breach where the magic was leaking through.
It looked like a circular hole where the floor had simply given way. Solid bedrock having crumbled to dust and revealing another world beneath the stone.
Inside the new aperture was another cave formation. Only with a high ceiling that left a sizable gap between it and the floor beneath.
The walls of this new biome were completely covered in brilliant amethysts. Precious stones the size of cars coming together and interlocking so that it gave the impression of an abstract painting. The scenery appearing as if every detail had been hand carved while also looking like the end result of molten gemstones being frozen in place.
In short, it was all breathtakingly beautiful. So much so that being here reminded me of the awe I'd first felt when me and my friends first explored the fourth floor and all its colorful coral growths.
As I stepped closer, I began feeling sharpened edges pricking my exposed feet.
I looked down, expecting to see loose gemstones scattered about the place. Only to realize I was looking at the remains of some crystalline golem. One that had been brutalized to the point of shattering into a thousand, thousand scattered pieces.
'Even like this, broken and disgraced, it remains beautiful.' I mused. 'I wonder if I could make something like it? Maybe. Given enough time and assuming the loon doesn't find a way to get what he wants without having to care about me or my family.'
I kept going.
Moving ever-downwards until my ears began picking up the sounds of battle.
There, a few dozen meters in front of me, was a column of the hulking sunflower brutes I'd created to push back the people farming topside. Back when I had presumed to train them while also working the farm.
Opposite them was another golem. This time garbed in aquamarine and crimson hues. In a pattern that spiraled down from a single horn perched over an empty slate. Right where a face would have been on a normal human.
Its lower body was far more alien-like too. Resembling the legs of a crab below the lower portions of the torso.
The gemstone golem charged.
The sunflower brutes countercharged.
The former trampled the latter as tank would a row of small cars. Crushing and smashing the first and second lines with all the ease of a toddler bringing down a sandcastle.
That progress stalled on the third line however. The brutes there had been mangled. Some impaled by crystalline legs and others skewered by protruding spikes found at the leg and arm joints or in the frontal sections of the torso. But others still had the strength to stand. Their thick legs digging deep into the floor so as to brace themselves against the oncoming assault.
In contrast, those on the fourth line were mostly unharmed.
"Push back!" I ordered. Suddenly overcome with rage and battle-lust from the connection I shared with my creations.
"Strike it down with all you've got!"
The remains of the third line used what strength they had left to wrap themselves around the golem's crab-like legs. Stopping the massive monster in its tracks.
Those on the fourth line began to punch. Using their thick arms filled with corded muscles to bash in the frontal sections of the golem.
Small cracks appeared wherever the fists landed. Faint white spiderwebs that blossomed over the otherwise pristine surface of the golem.
Yet the real damage came from the strikes that landed on its joints.
The cavern was soon filled with the sounds of rapturous cracking and snapping as legs were separated from column-like thighs and thighs were separated from the central structure of the monster.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Until it was reduced to a legless, armless hunk of pretty rock formations laying helplessly on the floor.
"Out of my way!" I ordered. Now rushing forwards with all the gusto of a butcher presented with a fresh carcass.
I leapt through the air at the last second and brought down my full weight on the monster with both my fists clenched tightly together.
THOOOM!
The torso's surface exploded with fresh cracks.
I raised my fists and brought them down as one once more.
THOOOM!
The cracks deepened. Even as new ones came into being.
I raised my fists again.
THOOOM!
And again.
THOOOM!!
And again.
THOOOOM!!!
"I will not be weak anymore!" I shouted at the thing.
THOOOOM!!!
THOOOOM!!!
THOOOOM!!!
"I will not let creeps like you push me around!"
THOOOOM!!!
THOOOOM!!!
THOOOOM!!!
"Just you wait! I'll get stronger!"
THOOOOM!!!!
THOOOOOM!!!!
THOOOOOOM!!!!
"Stronger than anyone else you've ever seen! I'll save my family! I'll save them myself! I'll save everyone else! From the monsters! From starvation!"
THOOOOOOOM!!!!!
THOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!
THOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!
"And from you!"
THOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!
The torso gave way then. Shattering into hundreds of thousands of tiny pieces and flying in every direction.
I raised my arms in front of me.
Looking at the shredded ribbons of bloody meat they had become and staring as the pain gave way to relief. The wounds closing together before my very eyes.
'Not enough.' I thought sourly. 'Coach Russell wouldn't' have been bothered by this much. Nor that loon.'
I clenched my bloodied fists. Not flinching from the flaring pain.
I closed my eyes and remembered what it had felt like.
Carlyle Robertson's magic.
It had been overwhelming. Like a rushing tsunami. And then it had been suffocating. Making me feel as if I'd been drowning. And after that, it had been inescapable. Inevitable. Like the full weight of an entire ocean bearing down on me from every direction at once.
It had made me feel so weak.
So scared.
So small.
"But not anymore. I will never allow myself to feel that way again." I clenched my teeth and gnashed them together until I feared they might crack and snap.
"Never again."
My ears pricked up then. My senses noting other amethyst golems coming from the deeper corners of the cavern.
I looked down at the lines of sunflower brutes that had been crushed earlier. Feeling their pain. Their own helplessness. The way my magic and their own lifeforce faded.
"Heal." I commanded.
"Grow." I demanded.
"Surround me like armor. Let us become strong."
I felt them obeying at once. Vines coating me like layers upo9n layers of cloth, even as I forced my own body to grow as far as it would go. Plates of bone growing from the outer layers of my skin as all my muscles tripled or even quadrupled in size.
"And the rest of you." I called out to all the remaining drones, rose goblins and tulip lamias I had in the tunnels behind us.
"Copy the drone's weapons. Meld yourselves together in new forms. Follow me."
----------------------------------------
The eight floor. Or the second floor of the actual Dungeon, was filled with thinner, more agile golems. They had eyes this time. Tiny pools of glowing magma that retained their shape despite being in a semi-liquid state.
When threatened, these thinner golems danced around attacks and shot out beams of concentrated lava at whatever they were facing.
These attacks only lasted a second or two at most, but the heat was potent enough to burn right through tens of bunched up monsters at once.
At first I ignored them and ordered my horde to crash into them and draw their fire. With my armored mass following close behind and taking down each monster with a well-timed swing.
It worked, for a time. But I soon realized that I was spending far too much magic reconstituting my forces after each engagement and that I was having to go back to the normal-ish soil and stone of my own pseudo-Dungeon now and again in order to grow entirely new legions.
To put it bluntly, it was a massive waste of three hours.
Which is why I changed our approach. Taking another hour to experiment with the patterns I already had.
I took the drones that had green-bean gun-like mechanisms attached to them and made them two heads taller. So that they retained all their legs and their agility while being more humanoid in shape.
Then I allowed my magic to flow into all of them. Trying out separate patterns.
Those with the longest rifle-organs were called Sniperlings. Those with shorter, thicker organs were called Shotgunlings. Those with more standardized organs I called Riflelings.
I enhanced all of them and further separated them from the standard drones by making them grow carapaces reminiscent of the sequoias and oak trees I had become so familiar with over the previous weeks.
Then I merged newly-grown rose goblins with the standard Sniperlings. Coupling the aspects that worked with two feline eyes that captured more light and compounded, dragonfly-esque eyes that better sensed movement and trajectories. Creating a breed that was far deadlier and hard to hit due to their agility, proprioception, dexterity and overall perception.
When I saw how well they handled themselves and how well they could perceive me without relying on our connection, I decided to add these same eye patterns to all my creations moving forward.
The already existing rose goblins were mutated to grow even longer, sharper digits and I concentrated my magic so as to make then even thinner and quicker by condensing their muscles even further. Then I added organs that secreted the same venom as the scorpions from the second floor of the Dunstonberry Dungeon.
Part of me hesitated when I suddenly recalled how to grow those things, as I didn't recall examining them prior to that point, but I chalked it off as lingering memories from the time I blacked out.
Those new creations were called Venomlings.
The standard Riflelings were re-enforced with the tulips' patterns of behavior and given an additional set of arms, while I merged the Shotgunlings with the remaining sunflower brutes. Making them grow even taller and more muscular than the other breeds.
In a moment of inspiration, I'd also selected a few groups and merged them together so that their new combined mass towered at 3 meters. With three layers of bark carapace. each of which were separated by more layers of muscles composed of plant matter.
To these few units, I gave six arms on their right side. All shaped to normal green-bean shotguns. On their left sides, I fashioned a single, interwoven arm that was coated in additional layers of bark carapace. One that could fire pellets as big as a human chest.
These, I called Cannonlings.
When at last we returned to the thin golems, a single shot from one of these hulking beasts took out a monster from several hundred meters away. The projectile retaining most of its kinetic force despite being fired from well outside the golem's own range.
I smiled a predatory smile and kept moving forwards.
The ninth floor was filled with many-legged golems that resembled house centipedes, but also with giant grogs with stony outer skins, bats with three sets of wings whose eyes glowed a baleful green and bipedal mixtures between cows and crocodiles with long, spiked tails that they swung like swords.
Five volleys from a three firing lines culled half the gargantuan chamber.
Two more volleys took care of the rest. Then we descended.
The tenth floor showed a change in biome. With far more diverse forms of life meandering about and preying on each other in a more vibrant imitation of a real ecosystem.
The floor here was composed of fine grains of sand, with half a meter of clear water on top. So that normal humans would have to wade through a beach-like terrain in order to advance.
The ceiling in this place was filled with brilliant diamonds the size of dogs. Criss-crossed with upside-down rivers of blue lava that flowed gently between the protruding gemstones. In that liquid, viscous soup swam half humanoid ammonites. Who bore a simian face that peeked out from within spiraling gem-encrusted shells.
Those who glowed red took occasional potshots at my legions. Spurting torrents of white fire in wide arcs that sputtered and died before reaching us. Those who glowed a dark blue intermixed with purple crackled with bouncing arcs of electricity.
The Sniperlings made short work of them. Their bodies losing their grip and falling down towards the floor after their shells were penetrated by the Dum-Dum rounds and their encased seeds sprouted from within.
The rest were handled easily enough by a charge of Shotgunlings whose advanced was covered by cannon and rifle fire.
The complete extermination of the tenth took less than 30 minutes once all was said and done.
I spent another ten gathering up bits and pieces of fallen monsters. Trying to replicate their magics by re-animating body parts or grafting them unto my existing troops.
In the end, I found the most success with a mixed approach. Bringing to life the body parts that produced gouts of flame or arcs of lightning and encasing them in specially made pockets within my creatures. Usually within the arms themselves, in vacuous chambers adjacent to the firing organs.
To make sure the creatures could handle such powers correctly, I endowed them with two more sets of eyes and enlarged skulls to house larger, more complex brains. All of them connected to thicker, more complete central nervous systems and an added central brain near the stomachs to boot.
Something about those particular additions made my spine tingle, but I couldn't put a finger on the cause.
Regardless, I'd just created two new kinds of plant lamias. The Torchers and the Shockers.
And together, we descended once more.