Chapter 30

ambushed

Pan had spent the week before the attack preparing his own defenses, of which, he had created many. The day before the battle, he watched as the city prepared for its own defense, a sign that his warning had been heeded, something he already knew from his spies, but was nice to confirm. He listened in on all of their meetings and was surprised to learn that they knew more than he did in some areas. Their own information network, which spanned the kingdom, had learned of the movement of large amounts of mercenary troops and mage guild members. Their conclusion was even more frightening than Pan’s. All the mages were coming, not just one.

This revelation set Pan into a flurry of further preparations, nearly draining the entirety of his mana on multiple occasions. As an apprentice in training, he knew that the best way to face mages was in a war of attrition, a war that as a dungeon he was well equipped to wage. He needed to use that to his advantage, and attempt to drain them of their mana over a long time, throwing in periodic ambushes and attacks from the rear. He already had his plans in place to force them to fight in a normal way with the fungus, and now worked on ways to fight them once they were following his rules.

The first and most obvious was to increasing the size of his floors, forcing them to fight longer. While that seemed easy for a dungeon to accomplish, his floors had already been near the maximum size he could efficiently make them, and expanding them further would take exponentially more mana. Nevertheless, he had gained a few levels since creating them, and would be able to expand most of the floors by at least twenty percent.

He did so, creating fifty new rooms on the first floor, nearly doubling its size. The massive network of caves now ended in a much more linear section, designed to string groups of attackers out, allowing him to face a larger force with a much stronger one, as well as leaving plenty of avenues for flanking attacks. A swarm of ants could prove to be incredibly deadly in the winding cave system.

For the second floor, he only increased the size of the massive chamber, since it was the most deadly portion. He wasn’t able to do much aside from increase the size, but he would be sure to come back to add more threats to the dense jungle he had created. The third floor was more of the same, and he just made it larger, able to increase the diameter of it by half a mile. The rest of his time and mana was spent on creating new defenses for his dungeon, both biological and magical.

The first big surprise came nine days after his warning to the adventurer guild. Somehow, his spies had missed a key part of their plan, and he was now watching a large group of adventurers and city guards escort around two thousand civilians into his dungeon in a long procession. They had gathered in the square outside of his entrance, drawing his attention. It seemed like the adventurers wanted to lead a group of refugees to the safe room before the third floor, hoping it would serve as a refuge. Pan had nothing against the plan, the massive number of people might just be the solution to his mana shortage problem. The issue was their plan to clear a path to his safe zone.

Not wanting to let them stroll through freely because it might give away his intelligence, he ordered the defenders to give a token resistance, but to preserve their numbers for the upcoming important battle. While they were consumed with the task of shuttling the civilians to the safe zone, Pan would prepare it for the massive influx of people. Using more of his rare and precious mana, he worked on expanding the area, as well as its facilities.

Pan could think of plenty of ways to milk these people for their precious mana, something he would need to fuel his defense against the mages. That many people would need food, water, and other supplies. All things that they could not get to the surface to receive. In Pan’s opinion, fleeing into a dungeon was foolish, as it was a place full of danger, and if the siege was lost, they’d be stuck underground for an unknown amount of time. But the prevailing sentiment was one of hopeful optimism, and the refugees seemed to think that they’d be avoiding the coming destruction. The smart ones, at least in Pan’s opinion, fled north, ready to return if word of victory came.

It was a gift, however, and he decided to not look at it too closely. Thinking of all the mana that they could give him, he found himself hoping that the mages would win, allowing him to keep them and farm them for mana. With the defenses he created, and the added support from the adventurers, he would be able to defend himself easily, and with the support of the civilians, he would be able to quickly grow large and powerful enough to not be threatened by the mages, even without the human support.

He found his priorities quickly changing as he pursued this new line of reasoning. He needed to strike a balance, and force a stalemate between the people in the dungeon, and the mages outside it. The city needed to fall, something that the leaders seemed to be sure would happen, even if they didn’t share that sentiment openly. But, he needed the attackers to be weakened enough that they wouldn’t be able to threaten him. If he could have laughed, he would have. This siege might just turn out to be the most profitable point of his life as a dungeon.

Thinking of ways to put his new plan into action, Pan realized that depending on the number of enemies, he wouldn’t have to do much to force the resolution he desired. He knew, from the adventurer’s intel, that the mages were bringing around five hundred mercenary troops and an unknown amount of magical support. If what they were saying was true, Pan figured that the arcane support would be significant. If the defenders could bloody the mages enough, then retreat into his dungeon, they would be wary of pursuing such tenacious opponents into the advantageous terrain of the dungeon. Yes, this could work out perfectly in Pan’s favor. With a little battlefield manipulation, he was certain he could win this.

The next day, he sensed the coming army. His flies could only travel five miles from his entrance before the connection became too tenuous to work properly. Anything past that, and he risked severing the connection, forcing the fly to return to space under his direct influence to reconnect with him. Still, some of his furthest observers noted a cloud of dust rising from the road off in the distance. Due to the size of it, he could reasonably assume it was the coming army, and the town seemed to think so as well, lining their archers along the battlements over the road.

The opening of the battle was violent and relatively bloodless. The mages were behind sturdy shields, and the defenders had solid fortifications. A few died when the gate was destroyed, but it wasn’t significant. Following the opening salvo, things heated up and dozens died on each side as they worked to counter their opponent’s defenses. The mages, while powerful individually, obviously lacked the discipline and tactical knowledge to fight in a large group, something the Pan was sure they’d learn if given enough time. Their uncontrolled fire at individual targets on the city walls led to more survivors than would be expected from such a powerful barrage. Pan hoped to use this hot-headedness to thin the herd a bit before the final retreat.

Despite the flaws in the mage army, the strength could not be understated, and the defenders were forced to retreat from the wall, even as they had some success with their defense. The mages, once in the city, spread out to secure their hold on the lower section. It was now that Pan decided to step in and do his part. Whenever a mage pushed too far from the front lines, and was swallowed up by the enemy formation, Pan had a hornet there to meet them. The little insects could easily pass through the shields, not stopped by the magical barriers. Once there, they would hide in the mage’s robes, ready to strike at an opportune time.

Inevitably, the mages would run across a pocket of defenders and prepare an attack. The adventurers, knowing that their only path to survival hinged on killing the mage, would concentrate fire on them, hoping to overwhelm the shields. Imagine their surprise when the mage had no shields, and spent his final moments swatting at some place in his robes. In this way, Pan was able to remove dozens of mages, along with their mundane defenders who were relying on the magical defenses for safety.

Despite the success of the tactic, Pan was hesitant to attempt the same on mages in large groups, careful to not overplay his hand. His interference should never even be suspected by the mages, otherwise, no amount of adventurers defending him would protect him from their wrath, no matter the cost.

He watched as the battle reached the final stages. The defenders were nearing a full retreat, their numbers thinned by around two-thirds, and the survivors fatigued from the vicious fighting. The artillery strike on the fortress had put the cap on their defeat, and now they simply fought to cover their retreat, and attempt to thin out as many of the remaining mages tomorrow. Despite the defeat, they had done an exemplary job of defending against a vastly superior force, somewhat due to Pan’s influence, but mostly due to their ability to match themselves well against their enemy's weaknesses. They had lost, but they would live to fight another day, protected in the depths of Pan’s dungeon.

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Pan knew that the next few days would be important, and would decide the tenuous fate of the survivors he sheltered. For now, he planned to gather intelligence, hopefully figuring out the reason behind the attack. It was beginning to get a bit tiresome looking after all his spies, and despite his massively improved thought speed and multitasking abilities, he was starting to feel his thoughts slow from his constant connection to ever increasing numbers of vigilant flies. What he needed was a minion to take care of all the spies for him. Maybe even a network of minions.

He would start from the top, and work his way down from there. What he needed was a lord of the flies, someone or something that could take in all the information gathered by the underlings, filter out the junk, and forward the important bits to Pan. Flies made the ideal spies, but making a fly into something to handle the takes he wanted it to do would take a lot of work and mana.

With the whole night to create his minion, he set to work. The most important part of this creation would be intelligence and memory, something Pan felt well equipped to endow. Using a large horse fly as his base, Pan began the process of sculpting the creature into something useable. An enormous fly would work, but would look ridiculous. He had no desire for a horse sized horse fly, so he changed it’s body, mirroring what he did with Elaria.

The distorted fly continued to twist and turn as Pan molded and sculpted the carapace, finding an aesthetically pleasing way to fit all of its organs and limbs in place. What he ended up with was bordering on horrifying. His new master of spies was a six-foot tall fly, with a long slender body. It’s rear legs looked like a grasshopper’s, stretching out behind him as support. The front too worked to stabilize him, planting just in front of his now enormous head. He had created a massive head, ensuring he had plenty of room to make a brain capable of coordinating large numbers of minions.

The natural iridescence of the carapace was enhanced further, making him shine blue and gold in the right conditions. His now useless wings, too small to lift him, were transformed into a much tougher, heavier, still transparent material. Pan used some magical imbuements to allow the wings, which now hung around as a robe, to hide the spymaster, like an invisibility cloak. They would bend the light around him while simultaneously drawing shadows close, rendering him invisible in dark places.

Pan’s next focus was on the inflated bulb that would serve as the brain case. The largely spherical protrusion would need to house the brain, as well as a few special pieces Pan had devised for this creature's future role. As he worked on expanding the brain, a difficult and expensive process, he worked to make it very efficient when creating new connections and accessing memories. This brain would need to filter through the observations of thousands of spies, so Pan made sure to go all out in processing power. Once done, he had a few more spaces left in the head of the fly.

In one, a central space in the middle of the forehead, he created a small diamond. From the diamond, he ran a vein of silver, terminating at the back of the head. This would be the mechanism through which it would be able to see what the flies were seeing. The crystal worked as a decoding device for the signals, enchanted for the purpose. The silver worked as an antenna, capturing the magical connection signal Pan used to connect with his creatures. The whole thing was based on a complicated soul enchantment that hijacked the connection between Pan and his fly minions. And only his fly minions.

The other empty spaces were taken up by large mana stones, two storing mana to give the spy master ample reserves if he ever needed it, since the enchantments required quite a bit in upkeep, and the last at the back of the head working as an advanced memory storage device. The spymaster could place important bits of information into the matrix enchanted into the crystal, the same as he used for his bosses and elite ants, for Pan to access. This way, Pan could get the important bits while the fly was busy.

Now all Pan needed was a name for his new lord of the spies, and the iridescent gold gave him the perfect idea. Golding. As he said the name, he felt the mana leave him, bestowing the name. Finally satisfied, he placed the important information that allowed for quicker personality creation into the crystals embedded in its head, laying the foundations of the traits he wanted the new minion to have, and woke him up. It moved a bit, getting used to its new body before looking around, and speaking to Pan’s mind, Thank you, master.

After a quick conversation confirming that Golding had assimilated the information and understood his role, Pan activated the enchantment in his head. Instantly, Pan felt the connection to all his flies disappear, even taking away the mana they provided him upon their death. Golding stiffened as the flood of information burst through the enchantment, crowding his mind. Pan had kept a mental connection with him for this part, as he had experience with sifting through all the information himself. He helped guide Golding’s frozen mind, allowing him to think better as he showed him how to process the information.

It took hours for Golding’s mind to adapt to the flood, a feat which Pan found impressive. That much information flowing into a person’s mind would probably drive them crazy in seconds as they struggled to make any sense of it. His spymaster was still far below his own abilities with it, but he knew that with time, Golding very well may surpass his ability to track the observations of thousands of individuals at once. For now, Pan had him focus on the important members of the mage forces in the city, not bothering with following crafters to gain insight into their techniques.

Leaving him to learn on the job, Pan could feel the relief from unburdening his mind of the spies. He still kept his bees and used them to keep watch over Golding, at least until he felt confident in his abilities.

With his night’s work done, and the pressure alleviated, at least until the mages made their next move, Pan looked to see how the refugees were doing. They all seemed shocked, many were crying. Although the news of the defeat in the city had come hours before, the realization that they were trapped in the dungeon distressed many of the refugees, some to the point of attempting to flee.

The majority of the noncombatants had very little to fear from the mages, and had only fled to avoid the coming destruction. Nearly eight hundred had left through the tunnel in the morning, being welcomed with open arms by the conquerors. A city runs on its citizens, and the skilled workers and artisans were a necessity for the rebuilding. The only people who were not safe were guild affiliated crafters, and the few that left were cut down when their allegiance was discovered. The only people remaining in the safe room were adventurers, guild crafters, and family members of both. They risked being executed as political enemies if they attempted to leave.

The remaining eighteen hundred settled into the grim reality of their new life, knowing that the rest of their lives might be spent trapped in a dungeon. Of course, plans were already being made to retake the city, but the optimism was scoffed at by most, even if the hope it brought was much needed. The people forced to remain looked at the deserters with distaste, even if they understood those that could leave making the choice to do so. A few were even killed when a particularly angry group of adventurers took their return to the city as a personal offense.

Most of the trapped people, however, accepted it, wishing that they could do the same. They spent their time sharpening their blades and preparing to defend themselves against any coming attacks, which were sure to be launched. Something Pan found funny, as he could see both sides, and the mages planned to let the dungeon soften up the “trapped rats” before exterminating the infestation. Even in a dungeon as lush as Pan’s, feeding two thousand people would be a monumental undertaking, and the attrition from such a dangerous take would leave them vulnerable.

Pan had no desire to let the mages know that he was perfectly willing to feed the refugees, at the cost of mana of course, so he had waited for the last of the people who wished to leave to do so before unveiling his improved safe zone. From now on, anyone attempting to leave would be considered an enemy by Pan, as they could let the information out, and would be hunted down to the best of his abilities.

Stone walls slid open, revealing the expanded areas Pan had created in preparation for the coming flood of survivors. There were housing and sanitation facilities for everyone, along with new additions. He had a row of mana crystals, each embedded in a box. When the proper amount of mana was paid, he would create different food items in the boxes, such as flour, salt, sugar, honey, and a variety of vegetables and fruits. For meat, they would have to hunt. He wouldn’t do the cooking for them, they had to pay for an oven or use a fire pit to do that.

There were more crafting stations, enough for each skilled individual to ply their trade. For materials, they would have to use the actual dungeon, as spawning ingots, ores, or other raw materials could get expensive. People just couldn’t get enough mana for him to get a reasonable return. The ore veins regenerated passively, costing him much less, so they would have to use those to cover their metal needs. Miners would be highly valued as the new internal economy developed.

The people stood in awe of the newly revealed area, and Pan could sense the morale of the defeated army improve. The facilities were in many cases better than what they had access to on the surface. Pan felt gleeful as he watched their reaction. Soon, they would be utterly dependent on him, flooding him with mana as they got used to what he had to offer. They seemed to think spending fifty mana for enough flour to bake a few loaves of bread was a good deal, especially as it cost no money. If they knew what Pan could do with that fifty mana, they would think twice about spending it.

Pan waited through the day, watching as they settled in and figured out their new place in the dungeon. They even sent out a few parties to gather resources from the third floor below them, forcing Pan to pull back the newly created forces that were prepared to oppose any attack launched by the mages. He wanted to save them for later, as revealing his new creations too soon might blunt their initial effectiveness. Surprise was his sharpest weapon after all.

Dungeon Menu

Level: 12

Type: Sentient Dungeon

Name: N/A

Titles: N/A

Mana: 1,034/100,000  (+1000)

Soul Energy: 1.1/500

Rooms: 130

Floors: 4

Animals: 100,000+

Plants: 100,000+

Monsters: 35,152

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