Lucifer strolled through the dungeon towards the army. Construction of the rafts would take several hours so he was in no rush.

He was finally taking the time to appreciate his creations from a human perspective for the first time. Occasionally he came across something that was experienced differently from how he expected, for example, the terrain on the third floor was rather flat in most places and the trees were relatively far apart, the Panthers could move around easily here, but so could the adventures. Lucifer made a mental note to increase the density of trees and hills to make it harder to traverse.

The fourth floor was as he expected, it was supposed to be a sort of rest floor that would occasionally eat someone who thought it was completely safe. So he didn't find anything of note that needed to change.

Although he couldn't tell for sure because very few adventurers have entered the fourth floor and he needed victims to test it.

The fifth floor was simply tiring to go through with his unenhanced body.

While wading through the waist-deep water he contemplated the previous battle here. There wasn't much to improve on and he knew better than to make a low floor too deadly, however, this previous body's owner showed him a slight flaw in the floor.

The trees were too close together which allowed powerful people to jump through the floor. Lucifer purposely spread the trees apart on this floor, but apparently not far enough. He only placed the trees on this floor to break up the line of sight so adventures wouldn't be able to see the exit right away.

Perhaps he could add poisonous thorns to the trees, but that idea was quickly dismissed because it wouldn't affect the people causing the problem, instead, he could have some of the trees be disguised monsters. Lucifer sorted through his monster related Earthmails and found a few creatures which could disguise themselves.

The Mimic was the most obvious one, a creature with no inherent form that takes the shape of whatever will lure its particular prey the best. Well, the adventurers aren't lumberjacks so that eliminates them from the selection.

Succubus... While interesting in its own right, he didn't want his swamp to fuck the enemy to death.

Flesher ghoul - flays the victim ali... no, that's not the type of disguise he was looking for.

Finally, after sorting through his list of monsters he found "Trent" and almost facepalmed for not finding it sooner. If you wanted something to disguise itself as a tree then why not a monster that IS a tree.

Just as he was thinking about how to get a Trent to light up when it attacks he arrived. Once he was seen several soldiers moved further into the army, probably to report "his" return. He ignored that and strode directly towards the center of the army.

Obviously, no-one tried to stop him, but once he arrived where he last saw the new leaders of the army, he was surrounded.

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Mr throat slitter moved to the front and gloated from a dozen meters away, "I'm the commander now, sadly you died heroicly in battle against Merlin the great mage".

'well, this is not going to plan' thought Lucifer. He casually asked, "oh really, when I died to Merlin, were you the only survivor amongst the soldiers of your rank". Several of the soldiers glared at Mr. Slitty after the cogs in their heads started moving. Lucifer could see the man was starting to panic slightly so he casually rubbed a new ring on his finger.

While thanking Rick's strange sense of value he flicked a small gem towards the panicked man. Mr throat slitter already had his sword drawn and when he saw movement from "Drake" he slashed the projectile.

The moment his hard sward met the brittle crystal it cracked and exploded. The man's torse vaporized, his limbs and several other chunks of him flew away or into other soldiers. Luckily the crystal Lucifer used was tiny or else he would have been caught up in the explosion too.

Once the commotion calmed down Lucifer asked with an eerie smile "is anyone else the leader now"

...

After a short silence, he continued in a cheerful tone, "good, then get those rafts you were making up onto the sixth floor"

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Several hours later the soldiers were floating on the sixth floor while Lucifer twidled his thumbs in boredom. Once everything was prepared he ordered, "PUSH OFF". Then the army set off.

Nearly half an hour later Lucifer decided that was long enough. He sent Cuddles a mental message to attack. Several uneventful moments passed while his anticipation contrasted greatly against the boredom of the soldiers.

Then one of the lead rafts suddenly rose to the ceiling which was only a meter away, the soldiers between the thick logs and the roof became several sizes smaller and much more dead instantly.

A tentacle was visible below the raft for less than a second, but a soldier yelled "SEA MONSTER". Several more rafts were forced into the roof and Lucifer bellowed "PUT THE RAFTS TOGETHER TO FORM AN ISLAND".

Soon dozens more rafts were destroyed, but there were still hundreds more and now they locked together to form a small island of rafts.

Lucifer smiled to noone in particular completely oblivious to the chaos around him while he walked to the center. Once he was roughly in the center of the manmade island he sent another message to Cuddles. Moments later the attacks stopped and the soldiers that fell off during the attack started to climb back onto the rafts.

Lucifer rubbed the ring again and a stack of crystals poured onto the floor. Just as someone was about to question their leader he placed his palm atop the closest crystal and it exploded.

The chain reaction set off the rest of the crystals and disintegrated dozens of nearby rafts, the shockwave traveled through the water creating waves that ripped apart most of the rafts, only a few of the better-constructed ones managed to survive the onslaught.

When the soldiers were struggling to swim in their armor the sea monster returned.

Lucifer now without a body observed the ensuing chaos his little plan caused. Swimming wasn't really a common past-time for people in the landlocked Grand Duchy, so the amount of soldiers that simply sank surprised Lucifer. Some of the better swimmers managed to keep afloat for a while before getting caught on the strangle kelp. Once they were tangled the plant immediately contracted pulling the soldiers to the bottom where they were easy prey for the sharks.

Cuddles was having difficulty attacking the small targets with its oversized limbs now they weren't on rafts, but it soon got the hang of skimming its tentacles across the surface of the water. Anything the tentacles hit would either be crushed form the impact or grabbed by a sucker on the tentacle, then the flexible limb would scrunch up into a ball squeezing anything inside to death.

A small proportion of soldiers managed to swim back to the land between the two floors, the rest were left with watery graves.