Inside the core.
Suddenly the prime dungeon screamed, his body split apart and flung off into five separate beings.
Lucifer sighed in relief, “finally”. With the added breathing room he took a moment, ‘I was saying we the entire time’ he thought.
If it dragged on for any longer or he didn’t bait the enemy into showing off then he would be dead, or merged with the enemy which was far worse for someone functionally immortal like him. He had no way to tell how ‘interested’ that magic nut would be in a reincarnater.
Lucifer calmed down and looked around to the 5 copies in the distance, they looked wrong and broken. Hopefully, this would make them easier to defeat because 1 had spotted him and was coming over.
He could vaguely hear sounds from it, but they weren't words or a spell. It was just mad ramblings as far as he could tell.
It shot off a large blast of energy, however, it had no structure and could even be considered worse than Lucifers initial attempts. It wasn’t dense, a mix between a cloud and a physical ball, it moved too slow and was shot from too far away.
Lucifer took several seconds to leisurely create a softly angled energy shield and pushed it as far away from him as possible. The energy blast hit the shield, smashed it easily and only deflected a couple of degrees, but several degrees of deflection over a long distance adds up causing the attack to sail harmlessly past Lucifer.
It attacked again and strained with all that it had. Another energy ball flew out and its existence faded a little. This attack was fired closer so Lucifer had less time and fired an angled shield forward. The shield lost its shape slightly when it left Lucifer's control, but the momentum more than made up for it.
The energy ball easily shattered the shield like last time and again it sailed past Lucifer harmlessly.
It got angry and its ramblings became even more nonsensical, they were just sounds at this point. It tried to fire another shot, but it simply faded out of existence instead.
In the core room.
Selenia saw one of the remaining black strands in the core fade away and felt a tinge of excitement. Several minutes later all the black tendrils were gone leaving a beautifully glowing core floating in the room.
“Thank you for acting so quickly” came a deep voice from nowhere and everywhere causing Selenia to feel immense relief along with Kuro, who got up from her pouncing posture and licked Selenia's hand.
Lucifer asked, “how is the defense going”
Selenia answered, “you would know better than I do after a look, I left the moment something went wrong”
Lucifer moved his attention to his dungeon sense and felt the situation. There was a large and irritating barrier in his dungeon, but it was wavering under his tank golems assault.
Lucifer thought it was raining on the second floor for a moment before he realized the fire system had activated. Curiously he checked how it activated because only he could turn it on, however, he only became confused when he noticed the large crack going along the central tunnel. what a strange way of opening the reservoir.
He checked the reservoir and it was only a third empty so the fun had yet to begin.
Inside the barrier.
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“the barrier isn’t going to hold against those absurd weapons, and the longer we keep it up the larger the drain on our army”
One of the oldest mages said, “Once the barrier goes down we are going to be attacked again, and we haven’t solved that problem yet”
Suddenly drops of green liquid passed through the barrier and screaming started.
The mages reacted quickly, commands were issued and the barrier took on a yellowish tinge and the liquid no longer passed through.
“get me a sample of that poison,” said one of the mages. Soon he came up with a spell specifically to counter this poison and had his group of support mages cast it on the whole army.
“the longer we stay here the more problems pop up”
“I have a plan,” one of the leaders said, “first we need to solve the problem of the box weapons, there are too many of them so we should send the army back to the first floor and block up the entrances for the box weapons--”
“what about the warrior” someone interrupted.
The man continued, “we will take the best mages we have and use invisibility to get to the lower floors. This dungeon has to get narrower at some point and that is where we will be able to defeat the Swadian king, if he is smart enough to find us that is”
A few minutes later Lucifer saw large movements in the barrier, then just as suddenly as it was created the barrier dissipated. The army scrambled towards the first floor, unblocking the entrance on the way, all the while under heavy tank golem fire.
Earthen ramparts were hastily erected with what little earth they could scrounge from dungeon stone. Lucifer had removed most of the earth, but he hadn’t known how useful it would be to his enemies, so he didn’t get rid of it all.
As time went on the casulties piled up, but the ramparts became stronger and thicker preventing further deaths. The golem tanks chased their targets over the ramparts where their cannons had made ramps from the rubble, however, they were slow and couldn’t aim down, so most of them were blown up before they could come down the other side.
Lucifer ordered the tanks into the hatches to the first floor, however, very few made it through in time before the holes were filled. Merlin's attacks had made the almost invisible hatches on the first floor into gaping holes, which were easily filled or used as ambush points.
The reservoir was almost half empty and was proving ineffective. When the barrier went down and the army was drenched, nothing happened, however, that was mostly the heavier liquid, so Lucifer opened up the gates to the first floor so it would “rain” there too.
Half a minute later, when the army was savoring their first win since entering the dungeon, the rain started again. Most ignored it because of its harmlessness after the buff spell cast on them. Instead, they focused on ambushing those weapon boxes.
The moment one drove out a hole a group would blow it up before it had a chance to turn its cannons. Then the screaming started, at first from several directions, “MY EYES” “BURNS” “HELP”, then from everywhere.
No one could tell what was being said anymore, the collective screams of thousands drowned out any coherence, but they knew it was caused by the rain. Ambush teams ran into the tunnels to get shelter. Only for their limbs to fly back out.
The tank golems didn’t have to spend time turning their cannons if you ran straight at them, and the fleeing men made for easy targets.
Lucifer told the golems to hold the position in the tunnels for the moment.
Meanwhile, some of the smarter mages set up barriers around themselves. Because all the powerful mages had left they couldn’t set a large barrier quickly enough, so the screaming continued as people melted. Anyone who could still move fought for space inside a competent mages barrier.
On the second floor.
Lucifer found Arthus and Merlin walking to the third floor and said, “you’ve noticed the invisible people too”
They both looked around and Arthus replied, “yes we noticed them--”
Merlin corrected, “I noticed them”
“anyway” Arthus continued, “what happened to you”
Lucifer thought for a moment before summing up what happened, “since my birth I have been receiving information packets from the earth, it turns out they were parts of the original dungeons consciousness and he tried to possess my core”
Merlin was surprised and asked, “and you managed to defeat the original dungeon, he was even more powerful than me, even relatively, if you include the lost magic he has he would be nearly invincible”
Lucifer chuckled, “perhaps, but here, I’m god”… “anyway move towards the wall on your left, I’ll take care of those mages”
…
The group of mages consisted of the 24 most powerful mages, most with a unique specialization, some were good at combat, others specialized in bombardment or support. They had cast an invisibility spell on the group and a few other buffs to avoid notice.
Occasionally one of them would discreetly cast a spell to check if they were being followed, they felt a few life signs at the start, but they said that whatever it was was gone now and they weren’t being followed.
Soon they made it to the entrance of the third floor. “that's not on the map”, said one of them”
“none of anything is on the map, forget the map”
“shh… muffle doesn’t quiet your voice, Zor, check for traps”
A man stepped in front of the group and went through a dozen spells, he said, there aren’t any traps of physical or magical, although there is a massive amount of mana coming from that direction”
“its a dungeon of course it has high mana levels, besides unleavened mana can’t be dangerous and only helps us so let's continue”
They stepped into the third floor and into a cylindrical tunnel with strange ridges spiraling along the tunnel interior. One of the mages said, “I’ve just checked ahead, there is a small doorway on the left wall we can exit through”
“how far does this spiral tunnel go after that door,” someone asked.
“a few feet after the door is blocked” answered the same man.
“blocked by what”
“I can’t tell what it is from my spells, it is cone-shaped and fills the entire tunnel, other than that I don’t know” the man answered.
A deep voice answered, “its a shell”
“shell? Of what?”
The deep voice chuckled, “your men call them box weapons, well those weapons are called cannons, and you are currently standing in one, so I bid you farewell and have a good day sir”
Suddenly someone shouted, “ITS THE DUNGEON, WAIT!--”
The deep voice roared, “I SAID GOOD DAY SIR!”
Mana crystals exploded in chain reaction which shot the ‘shell’ through the tunnel where the mages stood at several times the speed of sound. The mages were reduced to something even Lucifer couldn’t find and the dungeon shook violently as shell hit the dungeon wall, which shattered for dozens of meters.
Lucifer checked for any survivors even though he knew it was unnecessary, then went back to find the speechless Arthus and Merlin. “is that a good enough warning to not mess with me” said Lucifer.