Chapter 34

Slamming his fist on the table, Faltrar roared, “the time for games is over, I’ve tried to do this as peacefully as possible, but this has gone too far.”

The council around him nodded in agreement as they glanced at him, as he ranted and paced, or the object that had set him off. They had been holding council in the large hall created for this purpose when the gift was delivered. A large box, beautifully crafted, had been delivered by a messenger from the Kingdom of Rivan. The box itself wasn’t offensive, but the severed heads of their emissaries in the velvet lined container had led to Faltrar's explosive outburst. An outburst that had spread the messenger across the marble floor of the council hall.

It seemed that the king would not accept their request for independence, and would need to learn the hard way to not mess with the mages. Faltrar, coming to a decision, stopped his angry pacing and called to the council, “it is time we stop this peaceful nonsense, the only way to secure our future seems to be with force. We need to show these mundanes that we are not to be taken lightly. Have our spies determine if they are planning an offensive action against us, and if not, we will launch one of our own.”

The council hall erupted into mutterings, but Faltrar could tell he had their approval. This insult could not go unanswered, and he would have the full might of the city bent to his will. Inwardly, he was pleased. The king’s actions had allowed him to usurp absolute authority much sooner and easier than he had anticipated. The council now saw the need for a strong leader to spearhead their advancement into the future. The first part would be stomping out the enemies beneath their feet. They had been too gentle and waited too long. The best option was, and always had been, an overwhelming attack in both numbers and firepower.

Pan watched the humans as he received a report from Golding, “creator, they are planning an all out assault on the humans within the dungeon, and will push further with hopes of killing you if the attack goes well.”

Pan had known this for a few days, as the planning had begun a while ago, but watching the humans gather over a fifteen hundred mages, nearly two thousand men, outside his entrance made it that much more real. Golding thought the attack was much more serious than Pan, but he didn’t know all of his plans. He knew what these mages had coming, and it would all work out in his favor. Everything always did when you had complete control over your domain and nearly unlimited mana to influence the outcome of any situation. The problem was he hadn’t gotten as much time as he had wanted, but the week since the last attack should be enough.

Despite his confidence, and the assurances he gave Golding, he was still nervous. This was the largest gathering of mages in perhaps a thousand years, and he was their target. He was prepared, and had every confidence in his plans, but watching them march into his dungeon with nearly three hundred warriors at the head was enough to waken the niggle of doubt he had pushed to the back of his mind.

That niggle came right back to the front when an especially tight group of mages stepped into his senses. Something was wrong with them, and it wasn't just the tight defensive formation that tipped him off. Something about him screamed at his senses, and primal instincts from the dungeon side of his mind he had thought were locked away reared up at him, demanding that he do something to annihilate all traces of the presence he felt. One man, right in the middle, well defended and cared for, was the source.

Pan pushed the feeling away, but couldn’t shake them. He took heed of the warning, however, and started coming up with ways to deal with this man other than throwing everything in the dungeon at him as instinct demanded. The mages seemed to know to this reaction dungeons had to whatever this man was, and he was heavily guarded by powerful mages, warriors, and spells. He was better defended than the Archmage, who had stayed behind to run the city while the subjugation force was out.

Something nefarious was definitely afoot, and Pan intended to stop whatever they were planning in it’s tracked before it ever progressed past this stage. Unfortunately, he needed to wait, as the first floor only had weaker creatures, and he wanted to save his stronger strikes for later when the mages were too deep to retreat quickly. To compensate, he prepared a second attack to strike at the unnerving man while the others came. The new second floor would become a graveyard for this man, as well as hundreds of mages. If all went to plan. However, he couldn’t help but think of the old adage, no plan survives contact with the enemy, any time he focused on the strange old man.

Deciding to go all out, he called to Yagaru, asking him to participate in the flanking attack he had planned to take care of this man. Deep in one of the tributaries, he hid yagaru along with a screening swarm of monsters to strike the man. Even if they cleared the smaller streams, the force would remain undetected in the cavern he had carved out for this purpose.

Back in the safe zone, he could see the survivors running around in near-panic. Some scouts had seen the mages advance, and although they had no idea of how many they were up against, they knew it was the big push they had been dreading. The flurry of activity was punctuated by calls for order and men arming themselves to launch a desperate defense. The plan seemed to be to buy time and grab attention, giving the noncombatants time to flee or hide. Some hoped to run through the side tunnels and make a break for the dungeon entrance to disappear into the city. Of course, the entrance was guarded by a few mages and some warriors with swords. It would take more than a little luck to escape.

A few plunged deeper into the dungeon, hoping they could hide or find somewhere that the mages either wouldn’t go, or wouldn’t reach. Pan thought it was a pointless hope. If the mages got that far, even he would have trouble stopping them. He would be throwing a lot at them soon, and a failure there, as unlikely as it was, would mean that the mages would have a pretty clear path straight through to the safe room. Defenses would be pretty relaxed past the safe room until his last line of defense on the fifth floor.

It took time for the opposing forces to get into position, and it appeared that they would meet on the second floor. The mages had not yet lost a man, and those injured were quickly healed and returned to the front. They continued on in this manner, which was fine with Pan as he was not yet ready to unleash a cloud of spores across the mage army. That would come later when they were too tied up in combat to do anything.

It appeared that the adventurers could only muster around four hundred defenders, and they hid in the dense foliage that abutted the river near the end of the floor. They seemed to be planning for an ambush, but Pan did not think it would go well for them.

The mages soon reached the second floor, and just as Pan had hoped, they didn’t bother clearing the tributaries, just the main path along the river. The enemies were quickly dealt with by the melee fighters in the front, and any coming from the sides were blasted away with a barrage of spells. They were rather inefficient with their magic, but it hardly mattered with how many of them there were.

He watched, growing more and more nervous as they approached the area he designated as the kill zone, where his ambush would be sprung. He had moved his creatures around so that his attack would coincide with the adventurer ambush, maximizing confusion and surprise. The two thousand man strong army was strung out along half a mile of river bank, meaning they were less able to apply force locally than Pan. An advantage that he wished to maximize.

He watched the column gradually creep inexorably closer to the ambush prepared by his humans, and the coming attack. When they reached the point, the middle of their army was surrounding the massive turtle boss blocking the river, repositioned for just this purpose.

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The first mages had just reached the exit of floor two, and the staircase down to the third When combat truly started. A stinging volley of arrows lashed out at them from the cover of the foliage. Dozens of mages fell as coordinated groups targeted single mages to overwhelm the shields. Rapidly, much faster than expected, the mages pulled themselves into defensive formations, grouping around a mage or two who shielded a knot of others. The arrow volleys continued, a group of archers would select a target and fire on it, hoping to overwhelm their defenses with massed fire. It worked well on single targets, but against a group of mages all supporting each other, it was nearly ineffective.

Seeing this, a few signals were sounded, and multiple groups focused on one enemy formation. This did manage to break through, and they often targeted the one holding the shield, leaving the group momentarily defenseless against follow up shots from other groups. There was a drawback to this, as their overall rate of fire dropped severely, and many other groups were no longer under the suppressive fire, letting them focus harder on offense.

And focus on offense they did. They had been far from motionless during this, and now a steady stream of elemental attacks was blasting into the forest, tearing down everything in their path. Like a thousand lumberjacks, the magic cleared the forest along the river, and the people hiding in it were quickly forced to retreat or die. Of the two hundred men along the bank, barely fifty managed to escape from the forest during the minute long magical barrage. But this was all going to plan.

From across the river, another volley of arrows arced through the air, picking off the mages selected as the most dangerous. In mere seconds, the three hundred arrows cut down ten of the best battle mages in the front. The second surprise attack was followed by another volley seconds later, but by then the shields had been strengthened once more, and even fewer men were caught by arrows. The mages launched more magical attacks across the river, but the longer range benefited the archers, as they could be more accurate over the distance. Nevertheless, the insane firepower brought by the mages took it’s toll, and the defenders knew that if they didn’t run, they would soon all be dead.

That was Pan’s cue to launch his assault. With the violent and flashy fighting up front, the rest of the mages had stopped to observe. The undisciplined mass was not paying any attention to their surroundings, and most men were focused on doing whatever they could to change the outcome of the battle up front. Their focus was quickly redirected when a massive roar came from the middle of their army, and a harmless looking boulder moved to reveal it had been a tortoise of terrifying size all along.

The massive beast crashed into the unexpecting mages next to it, tossing the bodies around as if they were grass clippings. Fireballs and lightning splashed off its shell, and even rock shard or icicles only chipped pieced from its massive stony defenses. As it rampaged through their army, focus was once again redirected where Pan wanted it, and the mages had turned to launch their attacks onto the enraged tortoise.

The massed attacks quickly took their toll on the beast, and hundreds of spells managed to wound it in some ways. A leg was injured, slowing it. An eye was missing, taken by a lucky icicle strike. Shell was nearly cracked off in some areas, and others had melted, turning into a flow of lava down its shell. But that was when Pan’s next attack came. The noise of hundreds of mages screaming, chanting, and shouting had drowned out the sounds of the coming swarm until it was too late.

A seething tide of monsters burst forth from the underbrush, catching the army completely off guard. Just as they struck, Pan cut the mana to the lights, casting the entire battle into darkness. Spots were lit as mages deployed light spells, but the momentary confusion was more than enough to kill many of them. From each tributary river along their formation’s length, creatures charged into their masses. Many were cut down in the moments that the mages had to target them, but it was not enough. They dove into their formations, too close for most spells to be effective, and they kept coming. Spells couldn't be cast for fear of friendly fire, and all that could be done was hold a powerful shield to defend themselves.

The mass confusion spread, allowing Pan to punish them much more than he should have been able to. The smart mages grouped up, reinforcing each other by shunting more and more power to a collective shield. The inexperienced mages were either caught on their own and cut down by overwhelming numbers, or followed their more experienced comrades and survived. The once two thousand strong army was now down to eight hundred in a matter of minutes, but those eight hundred were the best combat mages the city had to offer.

The tide began to swing back as the shield maintenance stabilized, and mages were able to disengage from supporting the channeled spell. With defense taken care of, they launched an offense of their own, and it was blistering. Waves of fire launched out from the clusters of survivors, hot enough to set the forest ablaze. Chitinous bodies exploded as body fluids turned into steam, and the screams and hissing drowned out all else. A deep red glow was cast across the river, and the only light was from the fires of spells and burning trees. The acrid black smoke choked many monsters, but the shields kept the worst of it from the mages.

That was Yagaru’s hint, and he burst from the burning remnants of the forest with a massive roar and burst of lightning. The massive bolt cut right through the shield, exploding in the middle of the cluster. Nearly two dozen men were tossed around, and the momentary drop in shield coverage allowed monsters to burst through and attack the mages once more.

But something was wrong. That one mage Pan had been wary of was casting a spell, and the feeling of it made his nonexistent skin crawl. It felt as if thousands of insects were crawling around his soul, burrowing into it, and moving around. It didn’t hurt him, but it scared him on a deep and base level. Suddenly, he got it. He understood, and the fear magnified.

RUN YAGARU, he shouted through his mental link with the beast, but it was too late. The soul mage released his spell. An ephemeral bolt, made of the soul energy Pan used for enchanting, launched itself towards Yagaru. It traveled faster than anything Pan had ever seen, and struck him square in the chest. Immediately He dropped, writing on the ground. The energy grasped onto the link between them, causing Pan a massive amount of mental pain as well.

It was like an acid, and it crawled towards Pan through the link, dissolving whatever it touched as it traveled ever closer to him. The closer it got, the more Pan hurt, and the more fear he felt. He could barely feel Yagaru at this point, but one more message came through.

Sever the link.

And he did.

He cut the link that bound Yagura's soul to him, and the pain immediately stopped. But Yagura's didn’t. He could see it, eating away at the majestic beast as it writhed around in pain on the ground. He could see his energies unknitting. The bonds that held Yagaru to his body were fraying, and there was nothing Pan could do.

With a defiant roar, Yagaru gathered his remaining energy, and with a force of sheer will, directed it back at the man who had killed him. Pan watched, seemingly in slow motion, as the bolt of electricity traveled through the air. It broke the shield as soon as it struck, shattering the dome as if it was made of glass. Men collapsed as the backlash shattered their minds, the energy released was so great. The bolt continued, streaking through to the knot of men surrounding the now collapsed soul mage. The bolt collided with a man at the front, locking every muscle in his body up in pain before jumping to the next man, and then the next.

In less than a second, Yagura's last attack annihilated the men around the soul mage, and everything within twenty feet. The blacked bodies around still gave off sparks of electricity, and the sand had turned to glass.

But none of it mattered, at least not to Pan. Yagaru had died. He felt something within him bubble up, something he thought his transition as a dungeon had expunged from his psyche. Rage. Pure, unfiltered rage. In that moment, everything broke down inside pan. All of his rationality, all of his careful planning, everything. It all gave way to the rampant, unstoppable tsunami of emotion. These men would die, they had to die. He would ensure that they would die.

He called upon all the power at his disposal, the insane amount of mana he had saved up with help from the survivors, and set it to the task of expunging these pests from existence. Creatures knit themselves from the energy in the air, right in front of the mages. A stampede of monster was coming from the lower floors, and as if they could sense it, the remaining mages broke into a hasty retreat.

That run turned into a sprint as they witnessed the monsters forming from the corpses of slain creatures around them. That sprint turned into a full speed rout as they heard the monsters draw breath, as they heard the pounding of feet come from behind them. They sucked ragged breaths full as they pelted down the path, trying to reach the exit. But they were too slow.

Each breath sucked down a cloud of parasitic spores, and the effects were first seen in the weaker members. They screamed in pain as their bodies were petrified from the inside, falling to the ground as fungi sprouted from every orifice. Their mana fueled the explosive growth, leaving a forest of mushroom covered bodies in the wake of the retreating army.

They ran through the first floor, those in the rear being dragged down by the monsters that pursued them. The fear in the air was almost a physical force, pushing them to run harder, faster, and longer. They finally reached the exit, only three hundred strong, and ran toward the city, towards safety.

But they were wrong. The horde pursued them even there, the power behind them enforcing its will on their chasers, forcing its influence to follow them.

When Pan came to, he was greeted by a cloud of blinking icons and message screens, telling him about his rage filled exploits. He didn’t remember everything that had happened, but he knew the broad strokes. The first notification only confirmed his hazy memories.

New Title: Corrupted Dungeon

A corrupted dungeon is on that has sent its hordes out of its caves with the purpose of killing humans. What’s more, it has exerted its will on the outside world in pursuit of this endeavor, corrupting the world with its influence. All sentients consider corrupted dungeons an affront to the world, and will do everything in their power to cleanse the land of their blight.

Effects:

-Can claim the surface

-is hated by almost every faction on the surface

Dungeon Menu

Level: 14

Type: Sentient Dungeon

Name: Pending

Titles: Corrupted Dungeon

Mana: 128,970/500,000  (+1000)

Mana Regeneration:10,000/day (+23,000 from people, approximately)

Soul Energy: 1.1/500

Rooms: 181

Floors: 5

Animals: 100,000+

Plants: 100,000+

Monsters: 42,002

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 52], [Enchanting: Lvl 44], [Dungeon Ore Vein], [Mental Communication]

Dungeon Points:472

Achievements: Evolver, Legend Slayer, Boundless, Adept Dungeon

Perks:

Alchemy: 5 points

Improved Potions III: Potions are 15% stronger

Improved Rank I: 2.5% chance to increase potion quality