Chapter 27

Archmage Faltrar could feel success looming on the horizon. Pieces were falling into place, and even the longshot plan to capture the captain of the initial scouting party had born fruit. They had had no idea where the core was, and if what the man said was true, they would easily be able to reach it. If it wasn’t true, well there would be consequences.

With all the recent success, he felt confident in moving up the timetable a few days. They would mobilize within the week, bringing their mercenary corps to bear on the newest town. If they were successful, they would have protected mages across the kingdoms. If Faltrar was successful, there would be a major change. In his opinion, it was time for the mages to come out of hiding.

With a core of five hundred mercenaries, and a few dozen highly ranked mages, they were close to invincible. This much magical might hadn’t been brought to bear since the great war that had destroyed the magocracies of old. The fifty full battle mages, masters of their craft, along with all the novices would be a force that could make an army of thousands tremble. He smiled as he thought of the coming victory, fully confident in the outcome. It had been centuries in the making, but the mages would rule once more. And the most powerful mage would, of course, rule them.

There was a knock on his office door, pulling him from the daydreams and happy fantasies. Calling, “enter,” he removed his feet from his desk and sat up straight. 

His second, High Mage Victor, entered. Faltrar gave him a smile, and motioned for him to sit. “What brings you here,” he asked.

“I’ve come to deliver the report, sir.”

“Very well mage Victor, let’s hear it.”

The man took a deep breath and started, “Well first we have news from the City. The full scouting reports are in, but I will cover them shortly. More importantly, our mage squad failed to kill John, the man who discovered the poison, and are believed to be dead.” he paused for a moment to gauge the Archmage’s reaction, and breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t see anger. Faltrar waved away the man's concerns, “Victor, we march within the week, the man will die soon enough.”

“Ah, I didn’t realize we were leaving that soon. In that case, this scouting report will be invaluable,” Victor responded as he pulled a thick stack of papers from under his robe, placing it on the Archmage’s desk, before continuing, “these are the most up to date reports from our resources in the city, as well as those in the Duke’s employ.”

Faltrar nodded, and started reading the documents. He quickly skimmed the report, knowing that Victor would have already carefully read it all, and had even scribbled the important parts in the margins. Victor waited patiently, ready to answer any question his superior may have.

“Ten thousand residents?” was the first.

“Yes sir. The dungeon has been very profitable, and large numbers of people have moved in to support the adventurers there. Many are craftsmen or shopkeepers, but there is a significant number of family members. We estimate that there are only around a thousand possible combatants, including the city guard, the Duke’s retinue, and even adventurers.”

Faltrar smiled at the news, “it will be a bloodbath. There is no way a thousand men could stand against fifty master battle mages.”

Victor's eyes widened at that news, and he couldn't help burst out in shock, “fifty battle mages, with that, we could take a kingdom.”

Faltrar smiled at that, winking at his favorite subordinate.

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Pan had two major problems to overcome in the near future. The first, and biggest, at least in Pan’s opinion, was with Adul. Due to his position in the dungeon, he was fed a large number of adventurers every day. He was a very successful boss, and due to his success, he was increasing in strength enough to start to pose a serious threat to any adventurers. Pan didn’t want to limit his boss, but he needed to keep the fight to a reasonable difficulty. Luckily, he had a solution in mind.

He had been inspired by the enchanted stones he used for the elite ant warriors, and wanted to do more with the concept. He could put Adul’s experience and skill into the stone, and then spawn copies of him to fill in for the boss fight. Then, he could use Adul as a defense against stronger parties, or just let him do as he pleased on the lower floors.

Deciding to go with the plan, he created a large gemstone, infusing the powerful enchantment into it. He then had Adul press his head against the amethyst, copying the memories and battle experience into a matrix woven onto the enchantment. The stone was hidden behind an enchanted door that only Pan could open. It seemed that if he didn’t directly impede the way to his core, the system would let him completely lock a door, which was a relief to Pan. He had no idea what would happen if an adventurer got their hands on one, but he had no desire to find out.

Since this core was static, any boss he spawned would be able to start from the same spot, keeping the encounter uniform for all parties. The copies wouldn’t be as strong as Adul, who was able to pose a serious threat to C ranked parties, especially since the mad rush for the third floor, but that was the point. Eventually, he would have to do this for all of his bosses, but for now, he would let them gain strength for a while. Once they had replacements, he could always use them for special events or something.

The second issue was monsters. He needed more of them. He always needed more of them, but right now that issue was especially obvious. His new floor was practically barren, at least with respect to monsters, and he wanted a way to get them without spending his precious dungeon points. He needed to save up for a certain skill, and it was an expensive one. He decided that the best course of action would be to do the same thing he had done to acquire other items he deemed necessary. He would let the adventurers do the work for him.

The only problem was that a monster needed to be alive when it entered the dungeon, which meant he couldn't purchase corpses. He would install a cage in the first room, large enough to hold anything they could get through the door. The massive door to the cage was made of a fine metal mesh, enchanted to hold back stronger monsters and reinforced with steel bars. The door would unlock when he allowed it, and the whole face could swing open to allow larger monsters in. He didn’t expect anything massive, but it was always good to be prepared. There were a few smaller doors that could be used to give smaller creatures, or even plants.

Next was explaining the rules of the animal cage. He needed to give sufficiently enticing rewards, especially for rarer creatures. With items, it was easy. The system gave him a way to determine the value of items, he assumed as a way to keep dungeons from over rewarding adventurers, at least while they were young, but he had no way to determine the value of animals. Luckily, the dungeon store valued creatures by their strength, size, rarity, and distance from the dungeon, so he had a way to give a reasonable price. The rules stated that the amount of gold given would be based on those four factors, and he would let the adventurers puzzle out the rest. He would remember to reward the first user highly, to get the word out.

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Unsurprisingly, the new cage caused quite a stir the next morning, and there were plenty of people puzzling over the newest addition to the “store.” It only took one man to break the ice, a regular dungeoneer who was used to Pan’s peculiarities. He ran outside immediately, and returned minutes later with his horse. He brought the trusting animal to the cage and swung open the door, leading the gentle beast into the room behind. He left, closing the door after him, waiting expectantly for his reward. A token fell into a slot next to him, landing on the dispensing tray with a loud clack. He broke into a smile seeing it was valued at five gold, ten times the original value of the horse.

His smile faltered when Pan activated the enchantments in the room. Instantly, the area behind the door turned into a furnace, incinerating the horse before it could squeal in pain. The enchantments woven into the metal mesh prevented heat from escaping into the room, but even then everyone shied away from the bright blue flames. As their attention was elsewhere, the man looked at the token once more, returning the smile to his face, before he secreted it away and disappeared into the crowd. He had seen the greedy looks on people's faces, and it would be a good idea to make himself scarce for a few days.

Pan was excited to get a horse. At first, he had been annoyed, but the more he thought, the more inspired he got. There was plenty of ways to make a horse into a deadly monster, and Pan couldn’t wait to start. He immediately summoned a few in his experimentation rooms to start, but before as he started playing around with magical horses, he noticed something strange.

There was a mage only party on his first floor. That was a little surprising on its own, but there had been a recent uptick in the mage population of the city recently, so it wasn’t a complete shock. But this group looked suspicious. They were poking around the first-floor boss room, even after quickly wiping the boss. Then, one found one of the tunnels, and gave a shout to the party. They gathered around the hole, and played a game of air water fire to decide who went first. The finder played water against fire, and was forced to break trail, grumbling about claustrophobia.

Pan was annoyed, people never went back there. It was known to be full of monsters, and there were no drops. Some alchemists ventured there for ingredients, but they avoided conflict as much as possible. This was a four person squad of mages, not a peaceful resource collection crew. He warned the creatures in the cavern to be on alert, as he sensed something off about the party.

Sure enough, the group immediately set off for the other end of the cave, where his core used to be. They weren’t here to gather ingredients, they were here for something else. Unfortunately, nothing on the floor was strong enough to take them, except maybe Adul who had retired to the cavern after being replaced. The only problem was the lack of trees, and his ambush tactics would be limited by the environment. Instead, Pan sent Adul back to the caves they entered through, cutting off their escape. It was unlikely that he could contain them, but he could try.

The group reached the area where he had previously hidden his core. They seemed angry when they didn’t find it, and they even probed into the ant's nest in search of it. When they regrouped, Pan listened in on their conversation, and what he heard sent a stab of fear into his heart. One of the men had complained, telling the leader, “I wish the core had been here, we could have ended this much easier. Now we have to resort to brute force.”

The leader had tried to silence the man, but the damage had been done, and Pan was warned. These mages wanted to kill him, and from the look of it, they were part of a larger group. Now he absolutely couldn’t let them live, but he had no resources that were close enough to stop them all. With a mental command, he ordered the entire cavern to strike, maybe sheer numbers could wear them down.

The first thing to alert the group was the scratching of moving carapace as the hundreds of stone centipedes moved in on their position. The eerie noise caused their leader to look around nervously, before ordering a retreat. They turned and started a quick jog back to the caves leading to the first floor, trying to conserve their limited stamina.

They immediately ran into a roadblock. Twenty centipedes had managed to get between them and their goal, forcing them to stop and cast spells. Right then, Pan ordered all of the small, noncombatant creatures into action, and the droning of wings nearly drowned out the spell chants. Some were cut off when thousands of insects converged on the group, stinging and biting any exposed skin they could reach. But the leader gritted his teeth and launched a wave of fire at the centipedes, cooking them inside their shells.

The giant bugs screamed, and shells exploded as the steam inside found a way out. The powerful fire spell took out half the centipedes, cutting a hole through their lines and allowing the mages to make an escape. He shouted for them to move forward, spitting bugs out of his mouth as they attacked the soft area. The wind mage, who had finally gotten over the shock of bug bites and magical backlash, cast a gust spell on the group, knocking most of the bugs off of them, but slowing their forward momentum. Nevertheless, it was effective, and they were able to move much faster when not besieged by biting insects.

Now in a full rout, they sprinted for the back wall, casting a few spells behind them in an effort to keep the swarms off them. Pan groaned in annoyance, he had nothing fast enough to catch them, and his only hope was that their desperate run weakened them enough that they would fall to any remaining centipede that could cut them off. Unfortunately, they had worked out the weakness to fire, and the leader would use basic spells that he could cast while running to clear the way ahead. But they were growing fatigued, and would soon be out of mana or stamina. Then, their healer said something to the leader, who called a quick halt.

They formed a circle around him, and Pan could feel the large amount of mana the man was drawing on as he chanted. They defended him from everything that came near, and after fifteen seconds, he released the spell. It was a high-level healing circle, doing more than closing the wounds. All of the bites were healed, and any poison was purged from their veins. All of their stamina returned, and they received a buff to mana and stamina regen.

With the morale boost, the group set off, able to run at full speed once more, and with the powerful buff, they were only winded when they reached the far wall, not heaving like they had been earlier. They sighed in relief, and dove into the presumed safety of the cave, feeling that their ordeal was over. The healer, pulling up the rear due to the exhaustion from casting the powerful spell, was the last to enter the caves. He was a powerful support caster, and Pan wanted him to be removed from the coming conflict. Sending a signal to Adul, who was hiding in the dark passages, he ordered the man's death.

The silent hunter moved in on his prey, and when he was inches away, he struck. His massive fangs pierced the base of the crawling man’s skull, killing him instantly. Adul left the body where it was, and crawled forward once more. The next in line was the air mage, and it was a race to see if he would reach the tunnel before Adul reached him. A race the man didn’t know he was a part of. The man lost.

The leader was the first to exit the caves, and he turned to help pull the other fire mage out of the hole. The man stood and dusted himself off, but when he turned to help the air mage, who had been right behind him, there was no hand to grasp. He chuckled nervously, and looked at his leader, assuring him that the man had been right behind him. After a minute, they both looked disturbed, and were listening carefully for any evidence of their comrades. Slowly, they backed away from the hole, and then turned and bolted. The unassuming passage, which they had thought of as safety, had been a death trap.

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Archmage Faltrar was waiting on the reports from the final scouting party before he committed his forces to an all-out assault on the dungeon. If they had found the core, they would have destroyed or captured it. It was a long shot, but one he hoped succeeded. Despite the power of their forces, he still had a nerve-wracking decision to make. Would he commit the guilds to a war, and unveil their conspiracy to the world. He feared that he had no choice in the matter, but as the strongest mage in the kingdoms, and therefore the de jure head of the guilds, he had to make the best of it.

The report came, and it was disturbing. Fully half of the party had been destroyed, and even worse, the newest member had said something that may have clued the dungeon in on their plans. They had lost a master healer, along with a very skilled air mage, to an enemy that hadn’t even been seen. The men simply disappeared.

Sighing, he asked himself how it had come to this, but secretly, he was looking forward to the coming weeks. The next ten days would determine the place of mages in the world, and it was up to him to ensure the future of them all. They would live or die by his decisions.

“Victor,” he called, “sound the horns, we march on the morrow.”

Dungeon Menu

Level: 12

Type: Sentient Dungeon

Name: N/A

Titles: N/A

Mana: 34,185/100,000  (+1000)

Soul Energy: 13.6/500

Rooms: 130

Floors: 4

Animals: 100,000+

Plants: 100,000+

Monsters: 34,912

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], [Dungeon Soul Trap], [Alchemy: Lvl 45], [Enchanting: Lvl 41], [Dungeon Ore Vein], [Mental Communication]

Dungeon Points: 372

Achievements: Evolver, Legend Slayer, Boundless