We entered the dungeon and encountered the same weaklings that I had in the other dungeons. The king stayed back and watched the battles for the first few floors. At first it seemed the enemies were beneath us all, and everyone stood back hoping to observe. So I figured I would volunteer to dispatch the trivial enemies.
Somewhere around the 7th floor Luretcia must have been getting bored because she began casting defensive spells on me, maybe she was just practising. I think Dash helped clear up the 9th room, but it was so quick I wasn’t sure who had obliterated half of the gremlins we had encountered on that floor.
The first boss battle on the 10th floor was a treant, pretty much like a tree golem. As I glanced over my party hoping to get a cue from them, the king let loose a volley of fireballs, entirely engulfing our foe. It did not die right away, but was defenceless when Dash Lady Darkrose and myself overwhelmed it with our bladed weapons.
We quickly moved on from the first lobby and entered the 11th floor. Woulfgang must have known I had made it to the 20th floor of one of the royal dungeons (probably because I had the ability to link my ring to a soul-home), because he asked how far I had made it beyond the 20th floor. So I explained that I had stopped at the 20th floor because I was only asked to reach as far as that by the dwarf king. I left out the part about getting a concussion from a golem or gargoyle or whatever it was on the 19th floor.
Again we were met with more powerful but still trivial creatures. I fought strange undead creatures wrapped like mummies. Then small demonic beasts. Finally on the 13th floor When encountering some non-corporeal entities, seemed like regular ghosts; Lady Darkrose lifted her arm equipped with her recently recovered armband and released a blast of energy. It was less powerful than the attacks unleashed by the slain necromancer, and felt like a pure demonstration of her essence unlike his attacks. Her attack cleared the entities, causing treasure to fall from the locations where they had been hovering.
I encountered many fleshy beasts and it wasn't until we reached the 17th floor that it seemed a little assistance would not go to waste. Although Lucretcia had been supporting the group with her protective magic, Dash now joined in on the 17th floor as well as in each of the subsequent battles.
Floor 17 was populated by fishlike humanoids, mermen or merlocks of some sort. Some of them wore armour and they brandished weapons that appeared to be high quality. Still, our skill, might, and equipment made quick work of them. Next we encountered wererats, then slimes. It seemed the high-elf king was familiar with their combat-behaviour, because he and Lady Darkrose joined in obliterating them before they were given the chance to merge into a more dangerous form.
The boss on the 20th floor was obscured from our vision. Although it seemed everyone present was capable of detecting the beast's location using non-visual means, because all five of us immediately began to rain destruction onto the creature. After the battle we tried to identify the invisible monster based on its size and movements, but the best we could guess was that it was maybe a giant lion before it exploded into a pile of treasures.
In the 2nd lobby on floor 20 we began to rummage through the loot we had collected and found some impressive pieces for our party. Lilith spotted some kind of a whip that she wanted me to put aside for her, which was a little unsettling but I obliged. Lucretcia had a sword she had been using, but decided to use a mace, or more like a sceptre that seemed to compliment her spell casting. She also found a low quality shield to wield in her offhand; Wouldfang then recommended that she wield a crystal ball in her off-hand when she is able to procure one.
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We moved onto the next levels and prepared for some real battles. It was still a few more floors before Lady Darkrose began to join in on the battles and Lucretcia started to assist in the assaults. By the 29th floor Woulfgang was also unleashing attack magic to reduce the risk of injury to members of the party.
We had been faced with fairies and wreaths, ghosts, goblins, and ghouls (not really but the alliteration sure makes it sound convincing). We had battled the invisible, the incorporeal, and the inconceivable. And we were about to add “eight foot tall armour plated killing machines” to that list.
The 30th dungeon floor was inhabited by a suit of armour. Presumably something, some entity rested within the full plate figure, but the armour itself was impenetrable to our magical and spiritual detection abilities. It brandished a very large, comically oversized… Halberd? Sort of like an axe-spear, but this one had been modified with a scythe added to it, so more like a scythe-axe-spear.
The suit of armour moved slowly, which was rather misleading because when it swung its giant weapon, it did so with frightening speed. The first of these attacks nearly took Dash’s head clean off as far as I’m concerned. We moved in on our target taking advantage of its sluggish footwork and did our best to limit the area in which it had to swing its weapon. This room was square unlike some of the other boss rooms, so we forced the thing into a corner and bashed it into submission. As we landed crushing blow after crushing blow we began to be able to sense within the armour, and it was empty. The magics which animated this lifeless suit of armour were beginning to fade. After a few more smacks the armour crumbled and a growing mass of loot poured from the location. It was a lot of treasure to handle but not too much for us to carry.
The rest area after the boss contained writings of the prophecy, but nothing new to any of us. There was an altar in the room so I waved the hand on which I wore my royal ring over the pedestal and my ring began to manifest into a new form, a pocket watch. Dash and I met eyes and she almost seemed to reach for the object. “Don’t!” She exclaimed, further explaining the effect it could have on the current mass of people within the pocket dimension.
The elf king put Dash at ease when he described the nature of my newfound control over Sanctuary. He explained how accelerating the space-time would generally result in people rapidly exiting from my soul-home. Typically if the universe was inhabited, people in the space would grow curious about the amount of time that had passed in the world outside of Sanctuary; And therefore leave from the one way exit located back in my hometown.
Lucretcia and Dash began formulating plans and ideas involving booting everyone of the mortals from the dimension and accelerating ourselves for many years, or even using it as a sort of time capsule. Preserving mortals far into the future, or skipping large quantities of time by decelerating ourselves. They could have kept crafting new ideas for hours so we decided to return to the task at hand.
Murgil revealed that he had reached floor 42 with a party of his own, and the 40th floor granted him the ability to open a two way portal at his soul-home. I should have known he had planned to entice me with something to motivate me as far as he could into this ancient magical labyrinth.
Next we began to encounter packs of enemies, first there were banshees. Yet another form of spectral entity. Woulfgang and lady darkrose seemed to have the easiest time clearing them out of the way, each unleashing their own unique projectile attacks which seemed to take out the entities with little effort. Then were savage dire wolves. Strange chamarras like gryphons and hippogryphs. Finally these foes began to make use of Lucretcia’s protection spells. We fought poisonous and venomous creatures, insect-like humanoids and some more disembodied spirits of the dead.
The highest floors in the 30’s began to benefit from actually strategizing a tiny bit. After clearing the giant shadow spiders on the 39th floor King Woulfgang revealed that he has been as far as the 42nd floor. I revealed my mentor Chance had been as far as the 47th floor and postulated that the 50th floor could be as far as the dungeons go. But Lady Darkrose destroyed that t theory when she revealed that she had seen records showing her people, well not “her people” but the people of the 4th kingdom, the 2nd kingdom of man, had reached as far as the 73rd floor during the age of the dragons.