Lucifer watch the army take the city and was rather unimpressed with this worlds methods, he could think of dozens of better ways to utilize magic to attack the city or even with physical means, he could think of a few ways to use the enhanced strength the soldiers posses, although he would have to attribute his knowledge to the rich heritage of the western world, The people of this world probably never advanced their war tactics because the stronger mage simply wiped out the enemy's, as evidenced by Merlins ability to wipe out a third of the enemys force in one fell swoop.
Merlins use of magic, however, was excellent, it was a simple use of brute force by overwhelming the enemy with his magic power, but he used the terrain to his advantage and washed the enemy down rocky cliffs amplifying the damage immeasurably. If he had used any other element to attack like fire, for example, the energy he used would only be enough to kill a tenth of what he did because there was nothing to burn to keep the fire going.
And the main thing that impressed Lucifer was that Merlin didn't use magic to create the water for the attack, instead, he opened a portal to somewhere with an abundance of water and gravity attacked for him.
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Inside the adventurer guild, Drake set in the guild leaders office sipping the unnamed alcohol he found in the cabinet, his expression was grim, a group of soldiers removed several courses from the building that were foaming at the mouth.
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Once they occupied the city the used the guild as the headquarters because of its convenient location and large size, but some of the soldiers thought it was amusing that a small blue frog was kept in such a strong box, with the words "sir-hugs-alot" written on the box.
One of the men released it joking "oh it's so scary"
and another man joked back "It's just a frog, what's it do nibble your bum"
Sir-hugs-alot jumped onto everybody while they laughed at the people who it jumped on, but, after half a minute people started dropping to the floor foaming at the mouth.
Drake heard the commotion and entered the main reception room and found a group of dead soldiers and a small blue frog, it lept at him and by instinct, he drew his sword in a flash then cut it in two.
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While Drake was still brooding and trying to figure out how to defeat the Swadian army that was inevitably going to come, a man entered the room unannounced. Drake recognized this man as the Kings aid, he didn't know why he was here but he had a feeling he was about to find out.
The Aid pulled a piece of parchment with a wax seal out of his pocket and handed it to Drake, the parchment had the Kings seal which surprised Drake, 'apparently, he is here on official business instead of honor seeking' thought Dake as he opened the parchment.
His brows furrowed and his eyes narrowed, the letter gave command of himself to the Kings aid and said to follow his commands to the letter, normally generals could only be commanded by the King and he didn't like the idea of a servant telling him what to do, even if this person was the Kings servant.
He dryly asked, "So is this the part where you tell me what we are really here for".
The aid replied, "Sir Drake, his majesty would like you to forget about the city and instead acquire the dungeon core, then return with it to the capital".
Drake rebutted "I know we don't have a dungeon in the dutchy, but to so openly declare an all-out war with Swadia for one seems ridiculous, we are only evenly matched with Swadia at best and the only thing stopping us from being stronger is the lack of a dungeon, do you think Swadia will allow us to acquire one so easily, why do you think elite troops were guarding this city, for fun?"
The aid simply replied "its the Kings order sir" before turning around and leaving.
Drake grunted and slammed his fist on the table shattering it into splinters.
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Lucifer re-entered the dungeon after the battle and started his plans, with a mental command the dungeon began to change, Lucifer thought 'if this isn't a bad omen for invaders I don't know what is'.
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Drake had his army prepare outside the dungeon entrance. Although he found being commanded by a servant quite distasteful, he did like the idea of clearing a young dungeon and quickly returning, instead of fighting Merlin again because next time he probably wouldn't be alone.
Suddenly a red mist started spewing out the dungeon entrance and several soldiers exclaimed when the river turned a deep crimson. Drake could smell the familiar scent of blood from the mist and he imagined the river would be the same.
He looked towards the aid and said "are you still set on coming with us, it seems the dungeon is not very friendly today"
The aid looked towards the swirling mists and retreated a step back, after a moment he calmed himself and replied: "I have no such orders to enter the dungeon with you, just bring out the dungeon core quickly so we can leave."
Drake sneered at the man's cowardice and motioned for this army to march into the dungeon. The aid decided to wait inside the guild with the others who were tasked with guarding the escape route for the army.
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The small entrance which was now only one cart wide slowed the army from entering, it took several hours before the whole army was inside with their equipment.
Drake found the atmosphere eerie, red mist swirled around the air limiting vision and spread its nauseating stench everywhere, he asked one of his mage advisors if the mist was poisonous and the other party tested the mist and found nothing dangerous so he ignored it.
The scout parties should have returned while the rest of the army finished entering the dungeon and Drake didn't have time to wait, it was only a matter of time before Merlin returned with an army and if his men were trapped inside the dungeon, it would be impossible to fight their way out.
He ordered everyone to spread out and search the floor, with this many men searching the entire floor will be easy.
The soldiers began to spread out and search for the next floor when some of them found the scouts, they were all gruesomely murdered in various ways and seeing the aftermath sent chills down the soldiers spines, they were used to seeing the dead, but these people were mangled beyond recognition which wasn't something a human would do, only a few groups of scouts were cut cleanly in half which seemed like a mercy if compared to what happened the other scouts.
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Meanwhile, Lucifer worked together with his people to kill the intruders. He used his vision as a dungeon to see what was going on and found them spreading out to search the dungeon, this suited him perfectly, he ordered Salenia to mount Kuro and attack small groups without raising the alarm.
Kuro now had her own set of armor and saddle now, the armor was an abyss black plated armor and blended into the shadows as well as she did, it was made from shadowsteel Rick created just for this armor set, the steel absorbed the darkness attribute from mana in the air and allowed Kuro to use it.
Selenia also had new armor made of a similar material which allowed her to blend in while on Kuro, the enchantments were similar albeit stronger, however, the hood had been replaced with a helmet and the cape removed for combat purposes.
And lastly Lucifer now wore armor, but his was something cheap that he created because Rick didn't have the materials to make a suit of armor for someone as big as Lucifer. Instead, he used the remaining metal to create an axe, the weapon was almost as tall as him and the head of the axe was a larger than a human head, the handle had a handguard that ran the length of the weapon and was as sharp as Selenia's sword, the bottom of the shaft was spiked giving multiple attacking options. Although the weapon was heavy it was perfect for someone Lucifers size.
Several of the scout parties were felled by this weapon, some were crushed under its blade inside their armor and others were hacked in two with the handguard. Kuro and Selenia formed a team to maul and slice their enemies to death, while their matching armor could complement the each other, Salenia could now use her shield over both her and Kuro while they wore their new armor.
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Kuro jumped through the shadows with Salenia on her back as she looked for easy prey, normally she liked going after the stronger ones because they were more entertaining and struggled more, however, her master had told her to work with Selenia to kill as many as possible silently.
She saw a smaller group of 2 soldiers walking by themselves with her night vision and pounced towards them from the shadows. They didn't even have time to react before her maw wrapped around the first man's neck and severed the spinal cord with her teeth, the second man was decapitated by Selenias long sword from Kuro's back. Jumping from the shadow world allowed them to do all their movement where sound wouldn't transmit from their armor, then they simply sailed through the air and tore their enemies apart.
They continued to dash through the shadows together and silently dispatched all the small groups they came across.
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Lucifer, on the other hand, was having trouble, even with dungeon senses giving him perfect situational awareness, he found it difficult to finish his opponents silently, with his size and armor he was about a silent as a tree falling down and several times he had alerted other groups.
Once he did so he had to escape quickly, this, however, was easy, as long as no living enemy was nearby he could use his dungeon powers, so he removed the ground beneath him and tunneled away along with the bodies.
After the third time he alerted other groups he changed his tactics, now he used his dungeon senses to figure out where the enemies were going and would hide behind something, once the enemies came close enough he would step out and swing, the last person he was aiming for would be hit by the axe head and be both crushed and cut, while the people between Lucifer and the last person would be cut in half by the handguard.
This seemed to work quite well even if the sound it made alerted half the floor, he would just disappear and bury the bodies while he was at it before anyone could find him.
Once in a while, a group member would be too far away to hit in one swing, but Lucifer could create whatever weapon he wished before the engagement so he created throwing weapons beforehand, so he could still kill the group quickly enough.
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She had qualms about killing people for the dungeon, but these people were enemies of both Merlin and Lucifer so she also fought, She wore a mixture of dark blue leather and cloth tightly wrapped around her for protection, occasionally a rune would shimmer into existence on the clothing's surface before disappearing again.
Lucifer saw her earlier and referred to her as a "ninja" to her surprise and he seemed quite familiar with the techniques she was taught.
Once she found a group of 5 or so people she would silently walk in front of them for a minute spreading airborne poison, then she silently cast a sound muting spell and waited to activate it, once the group noticed something was wrong she would activate the sound muting spell around the group, then she would methodically slit the throats of the weakened group while invisible and making sure they didn't make a sound to the others.
Some groups fell over and collapsed simply from her poisons, others noticed something was wrong with them and started to chug down antidots to no effect, very few ever noticed someone was hunting them before they died.
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Selenia and Kuro quickly moved over the battlefield killing small groups, Lucifer got into perfect positions to take out groups of 3 or 4 people instantly then disappeared underground, but Ahri was the one who was Killing the most which surprised Lucifer when he checked in on his people.
However, even with the quick rate they were killing there was almost no effect on the entire army, Drake received reports of soldiers going missing at the location of loud thumps, and other soldiers were found poisoned and cut up, while a few smaller groups were found decapitated and mauled. He found the idea that the first floor was empty rather strange, he expected some sort of monster to attack and found nothing, but it turns out that the monsters were simply hiding.
Soon he received a report of a strange door with demonic markings in the middle of the floor, before the doorway to the next floor with no floor guardian protecting it was discovered.
He decided to visit this "door" on the way to the next floor, so he had a soldier blow a magically infused horn which allerted all the people on the floor to regroup.
The army reformed around the core group that stayed with Drake in front of "the door", the core group consisted of all the remaining mages and healers, along with most of the elite troops under his command.