"Bloodless? You've killed 59 of my men!"
Raising his arms in frustration and rolling his eyes, Degritone said, "I haven't killed anyone yet. They're just unconscious. I basically implanted them with an image that imparts great pain on them. I did the same to you, so I'm surprised you have yet to also fall unconscious." He squinted before saying, "Oh, yeah, Endurance helps with pain, I think."
"I will avenge-"
"LISTEN to me, you idiot. You have done literally zero damage to me. We could sit here all day and I will not die." Another stab hit him and he noted exactly how much Health he lost and how long it took to regenerate. "Literally almost 200 of you could hit me over and over and over all day and I wouldn't die. So calm," he grabbed his opponent's dagger arm, "down," and yanked them forward to smash his knee into their face.
With that, he rapidly manipulated his armor's Mana to capture the halfling. They struggled for a while, but couldn't break free. "Ok, so, anyone who rats out a rapist gets leniency," he said to the crowd. It wasn't long until he'd rounded up all the rapists, knocked them all out or caged the ones he couldn't, and began interrogating them one by one, finding which of them had a loli that cared about them without asking in a direct way so as to not immediately make it an obvious way to escape punishment.
The ones who did not have a loli that cared and did not rat out another of the rapists had the painful image activate in full, actually crunching their bones and forcing them to experience brutal, visceral pain until the damage done by their bone fragments killed them. The ones that ratted out another of their kind were killed with Omen of Famine, the least painful of Degritone's kill options.
The 19 who did have a loli that cared were left alive until he could confirm their claims, with the plan to simply release those who weren't lying, slowly so they would at the very least take time to form a group of rapists. Overall, it wasn't enough for a single level.
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"So, how did you guys get levels? I've noticed a distinct lack of monsters on the surface and the village dungeons are locked down tight."
"W-w-we have access to an-an abandoned vil-illage dungeon, sir," a scared man answered.
"I'm not going to kill any of you. You made some lolis sad, yes, but you didn't participate in the rapes. Also... nevermind, I thought it through and it makes the most sense to continue using 'sir.' Anyway, what level is the dungeon, and do we have access to the village spirit to make another dungeon?"
"Lev-evel ten, s-sir. I d-do not believe w-we have access-s-s to make more, sir."
"Sad. I'd hardly get any levels off a level 30 enemy. Anyway, we should begin going through the dungeon a lot to get you guys up to level. I'll take some of you once or twice just so you can have some smaller," pause, "group isn't the word I wanted, but group leaders that can take others through the dungeon while I'm gone. It won't be enough to get me up to level, but I'll get like 5 of you up to level 20 so you can lead groups of 9 to 10 others through the dungeon.
"That should take maybe a day of real time. After that, I'll let you guys do that until everyone is at least level 30 while taking a small group about 3 days southish to the show you how serious I am about saving the lolis. Elect group leaders you like, you can't vote for yourself."
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Inside the dungeon, Degritone stood alongside 3 halfling and 2 human men. Around them was a jail cell with very, very small gaps between the bars. A very small window showed that the surroundings were that of a small town with completely alien architecture. Odd, 10-legged, 2-armed creatures with skin like an earth worm went about their daily lives. "So, what's the boss for this dungeon? It looks like it might be the warden or something based on the fact we started in a jail cell."
"Yes. We need to escape the cell and go up 2 floors to get to the boss. I don't think we'd be able to take it on without you. We're only level 6."
Degritone nodded and said, "Feel free to kill whatever we come across on the way to the boss. I'm pretty sure level 10 things won't give me experience. I think waiting around for a few seconds each time shouldn't be bad. For each monster, I mean. Depending on how long it takes to kill the boss, it could even be a net gain in experience per hour."
Degritone made quick work of the jail cell's bars, which alerted the guards. "Don't worry about getting hit. I'm giving you over three million Health regeneration and can heal you back up more directly if you need it."
They nodded and pulled out various weapons, knives, daggers, a sword and shield, and 2 bows. The guards moved unnaturally, from Degritone's initial point of view. After a few seconds, he recognized them as being able to squash and stretch their bodies, the same way as a worm can. It made for a very unusual looking fight.
It was around 20 guards, only 3 of which could reach the party at any given time, against an effectively invincible group of 5 halflings and humans. Each swing of their swords that landed on Degritone's group was met by a spurt of blood and a yelp of pain before the wound quickly turned into scar tissue, then returned to normal skin.
With all of the guards being melee, they didn't have a good answer to the two ranged allies. The guards in the back were slowly whittled down by a barrage of arrows and the sword and board human kept the swarm of weird worm things distracted, the two very short range halflings in the front with him carving their way through whoever happened to be closest.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It took roughly a second and a half to kill one individual guard with three melee people. The two ranged attackers managed to kill one of the guards in the back before the swarm was whittled down to just 3 worm things, each with a few arrows sticking out of them. These last 3 took less than a second to fell overall.
"Well, you could have definitely gotten hit less, but we'll work on that next time. You'll need to be able to get your groups through the dungeon without a death on your own, without my effective invincibility aura. Maybe you should train them in combat so they don't die in here before actually bringing them through. I guess that'll be up to you guys, but any deaths on your watch will be punished. Not by death, I don't know what by yet, but I'll figure it out. Anyway, to the next floor."
The group nodded and continued onward. On their way to the boss, they were only stopped by 6 other guards that hadn't heard their escape or fight. They reached what the group said was the boss room and Degritone opened the door. Inside was an office-like space, designed for a creature with their body, and a very well armored worm thing was sitting behind a desk. Upon seeing them, it shot up and grabbed a sword and shield.
Final trial!
Defeat the Warden and escape the prison to complete this Dungeon!
"Everyone get one hit in before I kill it. It may take me a while because I am very much not geared toward offense."
A dagger, a knife, and two arrows flew at the Warden as it charged at them. Degritone stopped it in its tracks with his Knockback Resistance combined with Vital Presence slowing it. It launched a relatively slow slash at Degritone's neck and he just let it bounce off his armor. Seeing this, the Warden bashed Degritone's chest with its shield and his armor disappeared before another, much faster attack was launched at Degritone.
This one was intercepted by his ally's sword before they retreated, giving Degritone enough time to put his armor back on. The Warden tried to get another shield bash off, but Degritone blocked it with his sword, which disappeared from the impact, whereupon he brought out his condensed sword to stop the continued, but much slower, shield bash.
The Warden gurgled something and retracted its sword arm before launching it straight at Degritone, coated in a blue glow. With all his buffs active, he was able to barely intercept the attack, but only as a deflection instead of as a block. He cast each of his Omens and they began tearing into the Warden as it puffed up slightly, sending out a shock wave that sent his ghouls into the walls and flung his group out of the room.
Degritone took a full power stab to the cheek as he turned and looked to make sure his allies hadn't taken any meaningful damage. They hadn't and Degritone took another stab to the chest while turning back to the Warden. He slashed at it, but was blocked by its shield. It puffed up again, sending out another shock wave at the right time to keep the ghouls from hitting it.
Degritone cast his Omens again and the Warden immediately sent out its shock wave. So no cooldown, he thought before grabbing its shield with one hand and yanking it to the side, losing his armor in the process. Another slash was blocked by new armor that left that one hand open, and Degritone then sent an unblocked up right slash into the Warden, drawing blood.
The Warden dropped its shield and held its grasper out toward Degritone, where chains appeared and started to wrap around him. He backed off, but the chains followed him, so he ran around the Warden, trying to outrun the chains, and slashed at them once he got close again. The chains wrapped around his sword arm and tried to yank him to the ground, but his Knockback Resistance prevented it.
He could not move that arm, however, and soon his entire body was wrapped in just enough chains to keep him still. So, he resorted to casting his Omens as fast as possible while the Warden slowly whittled away at Degritone's Health, only barely outstripping his Regeneration, doing no threatening amount of damage. It took almost a full minute of this before the Warden died.
With its death, the chains disappeared and Degritone said, "Well, that's a really annoying attack. I assume we can just jump out a window to 'escape the prison' or something."
And so they did before being teleported back out to the entrance of the dungeon, down in one of the rooms of their hideout.
Dungeon cleared!
For your first time clearing a Level 10 Dungeon, you gain
100 SP
10000 experience
10 Free Stats per Level
It took them 13 more delves into the Dungeon to get the group leaders to Level 20. For the last 5, they hadn't been hit at all by the initial swarm and they took on the boss alone for the last 3, only needing Degritone's interference for the first of their tries.
Once they got out, they did decide to work on the average member's combat ability before taking them through on their own, just so they wouldn't die to the initial swarm without Degritone's help. During this time, Degritone spent his Free Stats and watched, slowly seething that he couldn't get higher Level here and that he had such a small group helping. He was hoping for a max Level Village Dungeon, or at least Level 15 so he could gain some actual Levels.
Degritone also publicly amended his plan so he would stay until everyone was Level 30 or higher in case anyone needed assistance. He'd go into the Dungeon with them, but only intervene if someone were about to die, not even if they were about to get majorly injured.
And so a day passed with Degritone tagging along, not taking any experience from the Dungeon clears. The groups rotated as to avoid Dungeon sickness, even though it was entirely unnecessary.
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Finally, Degritone took a small group of scouts with him to go back to the village he had created for the halflings. Having to stay at a slower pace than he was used to, it took them 4 days to reach the village. When they arrived, the halflings weren't immediately visible. They had to get around one house to finally see the blood strewn about everywhere.
"No," Degritone said. He saw half of one of the lolis lying on the ground. "NO!"
He fell to his knees. "Run."
"What happened here?" One of his entourage asked.
"I said run! Get back to the hideout. I won't be stable for much longer."
The group looked at each other with concern, but nodded and began running away. As soon as they were out of vision, Degritone scooted over to the nearest top half of a loli, bringing many more into view, and just stared. His eyes watered, his body felt heavy. He tensed up his entire body. "Hhhhhnnn." He realized he'd caused this by freeing them and giving them a little village to live in, and his muscles tensed as far as they could.
"RrrrrrrrrrrrRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA," he reared back his head and roared in pain and anger. It soon became a wail of pure despair and sorrow as his calming image descended over the land. For miles, a storm raged. Eventually, Degritone's voice gave out and he sat on his knees, silently looking up, tears rolling off his face.
And in the center of the storm, for the first time, Degritone felt the touch of rain on his skin.