The ground shook under Cassius’s feet and the inn he had been sleeping in only minutes earlier groaned and bucked. Sydney and Julien burst into his room with the others not far behind them.
“Julien, Sidney, do either of you have any idea what is going on?”
“Not a clue we came here because we figured you would have the best idea,” Julien replied in a slightly panicked tone.
“I’m not sure. Grab your gear and meet me outside.”
The others nodded before rushing back to their rooms. Cassius walked over to the pile of plate mail in the corner. He struggled to walk at first, but it was crazy what a high enough dexterity could allow you to do. Grabbing the armor he quickly slid it on, silently thanking the enchanter who put the resizing enchantment on it.
Once they were all out of the inn Cassius began to speak. “There are a few obvious things this could be. The first is a natural earthquake-“
“It’s not,” interrupted Mya. The ranger didn’t talk much, but none of them doubted any claim she made about the natural world.
“Well, then my only guesses are either two S rank monsters fighting or the dungeon creating its second floor.”
“If the dungeon really has a crystal core like Julien claims it’s unlikely that we would even notice it creating a new floor,” Sidney replied.
“Um, regardless of what’s causing this, shouldn't we evacuate the city? I mean there’s no way that they are on land so shouldn’t we get people away from the tsunami zone.” Replied Hannah pointing towards the horizon. The rest of the party turned to look at where the small rogue was pointing. A wall of water was gradually making its way toward the shore.
“We need to get everyone on high ground,” They all said in unison.
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If Sanctus could it would be in a cold sweat. The monster at its doorstep had completely annihilated the entire army Sanctus had created.The leviathan didn’t even seem to notice the fact that anything had tried to attack it. The beast just continued to ram its head against the entrance of the dungeon causing violent tremors. Sanctus had thought that it would be able to at least annoy the leviathan, but it now realized just how wrong it had been. It looked back at its slowly reforming elites. “How on earth did you actually manage to piss that thing off?” Sanctus asked hopelessly.
“The leviathan was asleep. We thought it was a large fish,” The leeches explained sheepishly.
Sanctus was frankly in awe of the creature. It wasn’t sure if the writhing mass of bodies was the luckiest or unluckiest creature in the world. The fact that they had stolen blood from the leviathan was a plus, but the fact that it now wanted to kill them was definitely not the greatest thing.
Sanctus’s stress had subsided a bit when it discovered that the leviathan was far too large to enter the dungeon. The only problem that remained was the fact that Sanctus still had an overgrown eel ramming its head into one of the entrances to its dungeon. So Sanctus waited for the thing to get bored.
It took nearly a week for the creature to get tired of ramming it’s head into the entrance, but sadly that didn’t mean it left. Instead the leviathan had decided to wrap around the entrance and continually create mana constructs to invade the dungeon.
Sanctus had initially been ecstatic about the prospect of infinite souls, however this quickly turned from excitement to annoyance when Sanctus discovered that mana constructs didn’t have one. It groaned internally as another mana construct was killed by a swarm of rats. This whole predicament was bad. The fact that the constructs didn’t have a soul meant killing them ended up being a net loss in mana meaning the leviathan was slowly starving Sanctus. After about a day of this Sanctus finally told its generals to try and talk to the thing.
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Cet had lived for a long time and it had taken him years to actually purify his blood into something even remotely similar to that of a dragon. Then to have a lowly pest take a portion of that without any effort was an insult. It was an insult so bad that Cet would not rest until the worm was dead. Now the thing had made its way to an infant dungeon with soul prison. Cet chuckled as he created more mana constructs, all he had to do was bleed the dungeon of all its mana and he could finally have his revenge.
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Cet was broken out of his thoughts as two figures appeared in the dungeon’s entrance. A feeling of surprise flashed through him at the sight of the two S ranked beings. He had thought the dungeon a newborn, it should not have access to anything above C rank let alone S. Then it hit him, the S ranked beings in front of him were of a celestial nature.
“So this dungeon is home to the shards of gods. Is that supposed to scare me?”
“Not at all, we wish only an audience with you,” replied one of the creatures in front of him.
“Tell me, do I speak with demons or angels? It has been a long time since I last spoke to a god-shard.”
“One of each baby,” Replied the other.
“Is that so?” Now that Cet had been told he could easily distinguish them. It bothered him however that in all of Cet’s life he had never seen a dungeon with shards of two natures.
“That is indeed correct,” responded the demon.
“So I suppose this means the dungeon wishes to beg for its life?” The two beings flinched, but ultimately nodded. “Now the problem we run into is that your dungeon has something that belongs to me.”
“Yes, the blood.” The demon produced a vial containing red liquid. “We can return all that was stolen”
“Foolish demon, that is the problem. Your dungeon has the blueprint for my blood in the form of those leeches. No, if your dungeon wants to live it must prove itself worthy of my blood,” Cet would not have ordinarily given this option however the dungeon intrigued him.
“How can we accomplish that?” Asked the demon.
“Figure it out, and I would urge you not to take your time lest I regret my decision,” He said mimicking a human smile while baring his tree sized teeth.
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Prove itself worthy? What was that supposed to mean? At least he wasn’t being attacked anymore, instead the leviathan had just decided to plug the hole that was the dungeon's water entrance. “Stupid overweight fish,” Sanctus grumbled internally as it began repairing the damage on its first floor.
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The city was all but destroyed. Three and a half days of tsunamis tended to do that to a place. Julien scowled as he looked up toward the slowly descending air ships. They had finally gotten here, the ship’s came with a small army of builders. Julien stretched, a small smile flicked on his mouth when he thought about warm beds and hot food. Cassius walked up to him.
“Go fly up to the airships and help them dock,” Cassius ordered.
“Why me? Can’t you make Sidney do it?”
“Julien, you're the only one of us with the ability to fly.”
“So?” Julien grumbled as he rose into the air.
It took nearly an hour for the ships to dock and another week for them to finish building a few basic necessities. Julien and the rest of the party had helped when they could but ultimately not been much of a help. Apparently the builders had no use for “you dirty lot of destructive blow heads.” The “plus side” of the tsunamis had apparently been the fact that the city could be built closer to the dungeon.
Julien chuckled and then poked Hanna, “Cassius said we could go to the dungeon today.”
Hanna smirked before poking Mya and saying the same thing. Mya poked Sidney, but before she could say anything Sidney gave her a glare, “yes I know we have to go to that infernal dungeon.”
Julien smirked and poked Hanna, “Sombodys grumpy.”
Laughing, Hanna turned to Mya only to find a grumpy Sidney standing in front of her. Cassius coughed to cover up a laugh, “Well, should we go?” Cassius asked.
The others nodded and they started off. Julien was excited to return to the dungeon. It would be fun to blow off some steam. Plus he could finally use his brand again.
It was a relatively short walk to the dungeon with Cassius blabbing about responsibility and “objectives” while Sidney complained and Hanna juggled knives. When they finally got to the entrance of the dungeon Cassius finished his speech with a final, “got it?”
“Mmhm,” Julien instinctively responded and they stepped into the dungeon.
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Sanctus watched as the adventurers cautiously entered its depths. It confused Sanctus why any creature would purposely invade the death trap that was a dungeon. However a quick chat with Markus explained some things. Apparently there were two main reasons: the first was levels and ranking. The consideration of mana in a dungeon was high enough that souls could leave imprints on people who killed them, enlightened races called this experience. The second reason was loot. Markus had said that most of the monsters in dungeons had some kind of value. Also higher ranked dungeons were expected to produce treasure and weapons. Sanctus wanted to be considered a high ranked dungeon and therefore created a few chests around its dungeon placing coins, metal trinkets or weapons in them. With an internal chuckle Sanctus had a great idea next to every chest it put a second oneeach containing a trap or something undesirable such as a severed human head. Sanctus then wove mana around the two chests and they merged together. If the adventurers didn’t manage to pick the lock correctly or dispel the magic they would lose out on the treasure and get a nasty surprise instead. Sancus couldn’t wait to see the human’s reactions.