Chapter 14

Damian was enraged. This was supposed to be an easy mission, but his party had lost both their mage and healer to a D ranked dungeon. Hell, when they had set out the latest news was that a dungeon with only a single floor had recently been found, but when they arrived, the news was spreading that a second floor had just formed. They had learned that there were a few dangers, such as the massive cats, as well as some new traps, but they hadn’t feared the dungeon. Each of them had passed through every other dungeon in the kingdom, and a few outside it, and always had been able to get four or five floors deep before their lives were truly endangered. They had been given this mission because their guild master had been jealous, and feared that this dungeon would cause the Silver Eagles to completely eclipse them in the region, and drive their guild into obscurity. As it was, they were a viable guild, and people still flocked to their recruitment officers, despite the Silver Eagles being known as the most powerful guild in the region.

Actually, he blamed Fren for all of their current troubles. That uncouth bastard just had to shout about claiming the core, and somehow, the dungeon heard and understood his words. Since then, the dungeon had become a lot more dangerous, and their most valuable members died. Now it was just him and Fren, and he was feeling inclined to kill the man and claim the dungeon core alone. There weren’t many C ranked adventurers in the guild, and although this party was made from the best in each class, they had still fared poorly once the dungeon realized they were an actual threat. But he needed the man, at least for now. Maybe he’d kill him once the core was secured. He wanted to get out of this gods-forsaken dungeon and get back to adventuring on his own. It was rare for a party to retain all of its members through to the C rank, and Damian had been the sole survivor of his original group.

For now, the two of them patched themselves up as much as they could without a real healer, and turned to walk deeper into the cavern. Fren was the healthier of the two, with only a damaged back. He may not be able to fully utilize his bow, but he should still be able to kill the monsters in this damn jungle. Damian on the other hand, was suffering from multiple crippling injuries. He had to return his greatsword to the spacial ring in favor of a smaller sword he could wield with one arm, due to the other being useless until he got to a proper healer. His maximum health was decreased by fifty points, since that damn massive cat had afflicted him with a five-point malus to his vitality. He needed to get the core, get out, and get patched up fast. Hopefully, once they got the core, nobody would notice until the ambient mana of the dungeon dissipated and the caves started crumbling. Honestly, the higher than average ambient mana should have tipped him off to the potential strength of the dungeon, but he had made assumptions, assumptions that nearly got him killed. Now he was done assuming, and he vowed to take this dungeon seriously.

If all went according to plan, and why should it, nothing had gone according to plan so far, they would change back to D ranked gear, put their enchanted amulets back on, and leave the developing city before anything was noticed. They had all assumed the hardest part would be sneaking past the local guild, not facing a young and therefore weak dungeon. So he trudged onward with his hated companion, and pulled his items of last resort from the spacial ring. He suspected he wouldn’t need them, since that massive cat was obviously the floor boss, but since he was done assuming, he prepared anyway. These were meant to hold off the guild if their ruse was uncovered, not face the dungeon.

After nearly ten more minutes of walking, they came to the edge of a clearing against the back wall of the cavern. It was surrounded by the biggest trees on the whole area, and the undergrowth was especially thick in the area. They held up outside the clearing, deciding to check for any threats. Fren slunk around the outside of the clearing, but signed that it was empty, confirming Damian's suspicions that the massive cat had been the floor boss, and not just a random monster. He sighed in relief, the cave entrance just ahead should lead to the dungeon core, and the exit to the dungeon. He entered the cave ahead of Fren, since he was still the tank, and he led them through the passage. When they reached the first corner, about twenty feet in, Damian stopped dead. There wasn’t the expected core, but more importantly, and disturbingly, there was a massive armored bug, gleaming in the light.

Its silver carapace took up the entirety of the cave, and there would be no way past the gargantuan defender. Damian had nowhere to go but forward, since he needed to create enough space to allow Fren to be effective. With a shout, he charged the shining sentinel, sword first, while his ruined arm fumbled at his belt. He struck with his sword, but he wasn't even able to do more than scratch the surface of its armor. He leaped back, and an arrow whizzed past his head, having even less of an effect than his sword. He narrowly dodged a swipe of its massive front arms, and landed hard on his back. But he had been successful in removing an item from his belt.

He pulled up a small crystal, one of the few he had, and dropped his sword as he passed it to his other hand. He could feel the violent energy of the crystal, wanted to be released. He rolled to his feet, and sprinted away, pushing Fren back around the corner. Once in position, he tossed the shard back at the monster, and took cover behind the corner. There was a loud explosion, and a cloud of dust erupted from around the corner. He was dismayed to hear screams of pain and rage, and Damian had no idea how the creature survived. Retrieving another sword from his special ring, he chugged down a potion and felt strength fill his limbs.

As he emerged from the corner once more, he was nearly blinded by the dust and other particulates in the air. He could just make out the shape of the beast, missing its front legs, but otherwise no less effective, scrambling towards him. It seemed that the beast was nearly too large for the passage, and had trouble moving, but it was still dangerous, since there was no way to attack anything but its heavily armored front. Even its damaged legs were tucked away under its massive shield of a head, hiding the exposed flesh from attack.

Suddenly the seemingly slow-moving guardian gave a surprising burst of speed, launching its massive body towards Damian. He charged it as well, leading with his sword point, but when they collided, the creature wasn’t even slowed. His sword imbedded its tip in the beast's armor, but there was no noticeable damage. It picked him up with its massive shielded head, slamming him into the wall behind him, crushing his armor, and breaking a few ribs. The sword stuck in its head didn’t push through as Damian had expected, but bent and shattered from the force of its impact against the wall. Damian coughed up a mouthful of blood, and the creature continued to push against the wall, seeming intent on grinding him to death against the wall. He could feel his armor counting to bow in, and a few more ribs screamed in agony. He bellowed in pain as a few more cracked, and he felt one shatter, puncturing a lung. The wound would be fatal if he didn’t receive attention soon.

The pressure was released when an arrow drove itself into the monsters now exposed eye, followed by another that bounced harmlessly away. It screeched and turned its attention to the archer, letting Damian's nearly lifeless body collapse to the ground. He strained to move as it charged after his companion, and released the clasps on his armor, letting it fall to the ground. He drank a health potion, relieving some of the pain, but doing nothing for his nearly shattered ribcage. Dammit, if they still had the healer he could be patched up in an hour or so, and made whole enough in a few minutes to continue fighting. But the dungeon was intelligent, and their healer was the first to die, before they even knew how deep the shit they were in truly was.

He stumbled forward, away from the battle, intent on finishing the mission. Let Fren serve as a distraction for the beast, it was the least he could do after compromising the whole mission. Damian needed to secure the core, and get out of this cave. He would have to receive healing in the town, but he should still be able to slip out before the theft was noticed. Besides, the core would be undetectable once he hid it away in the spacial ring. He picked up the first sword he dropped as he passed it, and couldn’t help but smile when he imagined Fren getting ground to a paste by the massive metal bug.

He passed a few more turns before he started to wonder why the core hadn’t shown up yet. He was delirious from pain, as well as the side effects of the potions he had taken, otherwise, he would have noticed much sooner. He stumbled along the passages, and wondered if he had taken a wrong turn, of if the cave they had entered hadn’t actually been the final exit. He was growing weary, and the effects of the lessened vitality, as well as the massive injuries, were taking their toll. The potions were wearing off, and he could feel himself crashing as the energy was leached from his cramping muscles. His labored breathing grew ragged, as shards of bone worked their way through his lungs, shredding the vital organs. He drank another health potion, alleviating some of the damage, but the shards remained. He would need to get them removed or else they would continue to tear through his lungs.

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He changed back into his D rank disguise, along with the amulet that hid his level, and continued his trek. A few minutes later he was shocked to see that he was passing by the first-floor exit. There was no way he could have missed the core, so it had to be somewhere else. Deciding to press onward, he shambled into the first floor, knowing that even in his wounded state, he could kill the weak ants on this floor. He had enough health potions to hold out for the rest of the day, and if he hadn’t found the gem by then, he would need to leave for healing and try again the next day. He was afraid to leave the cave, since every moment outside the cave was another moment he was risking detection by the guild. In his weakened state, they wouldn’ have any trouble killing him, or even worse, capturing him.

When he entered the boss room, he was glad to see the boss hadn’t respawned yet. He could probably take it in his current state, but he wasn’t sure. He started poking around the room, and was surprised when he quickly found more tunnels, hidden by foliage leading away from the chamber. They had easily missed it on their first pass, since they were not expecting the dungeon to hide its heart, since they were usually well defended at the end of the dungeon. The worst part was having to crawl through the tunnel, since his ribs were causing him an incredible amount of pain. In the end, he had to roll onto his back and push himself through to avoid putting more stress on his chest.

At the end of the tunnel, was another massive cavern, although smaller than the other one on the second floor. He pushed to his feet, and took another health potion to recover from the damaged caused by his crawl. He was burning through them, but luckily the guild was picking up the tab for the expensive consumables. Damian started towards the other end of the cavern, where he expected the crystal to be. He was sure that he would be able to succeed, since there had been nothing more than a few ants to oppose him. The dungeon seemed to have run out of powerful monsters, and he was looking forward to completing his mission. It was quite a clever trick by the dungeon to hide its core, and wear the group down through attrition. But that ruse had met its end, and he was sure he was nearing the completion of his mission.

The first seeds of doubt were planted when he saw a few of the armored centipedes that had guarded the first floor, but he had no trouble dealing with them one at a time. When two came for him, he received a massive gash to his calf before he could finish them off. Unable to wield his favored greatsword, he had some difficulty splitting the carapace of the monsters, but he managed. The gash was quickly healed by a healing potion, unfortunately cutting into his supplies, bust since he was close to completing his mission, he drank it anyway. But he was still unnerved by the stronger creatures being present in this area, as he had hoped he wouldn’t have to contend with anything too strong.

Finally, he came around a dense cluster of trees, and saw the end of his journey. There was a brilliant crystal, hovering a few hundred yards across a clearing above a carved stone pedestal, but between him and the crystal was a seething mass of black ants. Before he could turn to flee, the ocean of ants surged forward, reaching him in seconds. He tried to fight them back, but the weight of their numbers immobilized him. He didn’t even have the chance to pull another explosive crystal from his belt. But they didn’t kill him, instead, the larger ones grabbed him by his limbs and carried him towards a small cave off to the side of the clearing. He tried to fight back, but in his weakened state they easily controlled him, and after a particularly violent fit of thrashing, they crushed the bones in his arms with a simple bite. He screamed in pain, but he did stop his thrashing.

They carried him through a few tunnels, and eventually, he was brought to a large chamber, full of ants carrying eggs around. In the center was a much larger ant, attended by workers who carried off the eggs she laid the moment they emerged. His captors deposited him on the ground in front of her, and before he could make a move, she struck him with a bolt of dark magic, dissolving the flesh on his chest. He screamed again in pain, his voice growing hoarse as the world faded from his view, and he slipped into the comforting embrace of death.

Pan was surprised by the turn of events. It seemed that the individual members of the party had no love for each other, and had made it all the easier to deal with them. His queen had decided that she wanted the killing blow on one of the invaders, and she had increased her strength by a significant amount by absorbing energy from his death, since he had been a much stronger enemy. Her personal strength had been quickly bypassed by the other named monsters in the dungeon, with Adul reigning as the strongest member of the dungeon.

Unfortunately, Behemoth had not been able to catch the archer when the man fled into the jungle. He was wounded and had returned to the exit cave in case the man decided to loop back around. The man instead seemed dead set on returning through the dungeon, instead of challenging the metal guardian. But pan had other ideas for the man, and there was still one named monster the group had not faced. Alarin was already moving to intercept the man, and if it all went well, the man wouldn’t suspect a thing until it was too late.

As the man was jogging through the jungle, looking everywhere for a sign of one of the massive cats, Alarin struck. He had gone unseen, his magic protecting him, and seemed to appear out of nowhere to the archer. The man’s eyes widened in shock, and he drew the arrow back an inch, but he was far too slow to contend with the blazing fast blur of white that was the white stag. He was impaled on the perfect antlers, which then tore massive gaping wounds in his body as his body was unable to hold together as he accelerated with the beautiful creature. He was thrown a dozen feet through the air when it stopped and flung him away. He crashed into a tree, falling to the ground, nearly lifeless. A few moment later, he gave one last shuddering breath as his heart stopped pumping his blood out of the massive tears in his body. The now red stag pranced away, looking for a place to clean its bloodstained fur, and return it to its illustrious appearance.

With the attack taken care of, Pan could start sorting through the spoils. He had gotten fire magic from the mage, but he shuddered at the thought of having any fire based monsters in his jungles. Even the one mage had caused a large amount of damage with his spells, and Pan had no intention of letting something with that sort of ability in his dungeon. At least not yet. The most exciting loot was the leader's spacial ring, and the amulets they wore to hide their power. As an aspiring apprentice, Pan had never dreamed of ever even touching one of the expensive devices, but now, he potentially had the chance to make his own. He injected his mana in the way he had seen the man do to access the storage space, and removed all of the contents. He did not want to risk losing anything when he absorbed the ring. There were a few assorted potions, which excited him, as well as a few of the explosive stones, some equipment, the amulets, and a bunch of other miscellaneous items.

Pan began absorbing the ring, studying the intricacies of the magical device. As he did so, a large amount of information flooded his mind. This was by far the most advanced object he had ever absorbed. Even creating monsters wasn’t as complex as this item, mostly because a dungeon had an instinctive and intuitive grasp over the process. This was something different. The ring pinched off a bubble of space, creating a separate dimension that could only be accessed through a single point. The creator then put restrictions on who could access it through an enchantment controlling that point. When mana was inserted, the space opened up, and items could be stored or removed. There was even a sort of key, or code needed to open the storage dimension. Luckily those sorts of restriction were nothing to Pan since as a dungeon he was able to copy the code perfectly from his observations.

He thought he might be able to create his own, but he would need to increase his knowledge of enchanting first. He could make an exact replica with the dungeon creation skill, but then it would have the same code as the original, and he wanted full control of the items properties. It was still an exciting prospect, since the possible applications of the concepts were enormous. He was already thinking of dozens of possible uses for the principles learned through the absorption. He just needed more time to experiment and learn. Luckily the group had some enchanted items that he could use to get a start on the path, and he was excited to start his research into enchanting, as well as further his knowledge of alchemy. He was ready to delve into the secrets of creating arcane items, and he could feel that if he learned enough, he may even be able to apply the ideas to his living creations.

Dungeon Menu

Level: 10

Type: Sentient Dungeon

Name: N/A

Titles: N/A

Mana: 16,322/25,000  (+1000)

Rooms: 122

Floors: 2

Animals: 100,000+

Plants: 100,000+

Monsters: 7,592

Skills: [Dungeon Menu], [Dungeon Manipulation], [Dungeon Absorption], [Dungeon Creation: Level 12], [Dungeon Expansion], [Dungeon Summon], [Targeted Evolution], [Monster Imbuement], [Dungeon Map], [Name Bestowal], [Drop Assignment], [Floor Creation], [Environmental Manipulation], [Alchemy: Lvl 15]

Dungeon Points: 715

Achievements: Evolver, Legend Slayer, Boundless