Toby summoned one acolyte right away and ordered him to build a [Tomb], the four remaining skeleton warriors guarding the construction. Toby read much about dungeons, but ha had failed to deduce if they were conscious beings just like him, or acted purely based on instinct, the true origin of the dungeons remaining elusive and further unspecified in all the books he had come across.

It took just a while to construct a small tomb in the tunnel, nearly blocking it in the process. Toby immediately summoned one additional acolyte and another four skeletons. It took him something over two minutes and he ordered the two acolytes to contruct another tomb in the direction of the exit.

The moment he did, he could hear noises from the distance that grew in intensity and soon, the perpetrators of the ruckus appeared. It was a mob of monsters the end of which he was unable to see in the dark tunnel. The front was led by roughly twenty satyrs, muscular men with goat-like legs, long claws growing out of their fingertips. The more repulsive were a few spiders he had already had the honor to meet. There were also several goblin-like creatures with small stature, Toby decided to call them goblins for the lack of a better term.

He ordered the eight skeleton warriors to form a line to block the tunnel and the two sides clashed soon in a ferocious fight. The tunnel was wide enough to enable the skeletons to block the mob's path, but they were pushed back fast and would surely be overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of their enemies.

The whole dungeon seemed to react to the clash, the faint lights of the vegetation growing in intesity, revealing more of the raging mob of monsters.

"This won't do." Toby understood the hopelessness of the situation, when he saw how numerous the enemies were, some of the bigger tree-like monsters slowly making their way to the front line.

He immediately ordered the acolyte carrying him to flee in the direction of the exit, and replaced the second one with another warrior that ran along as his escort.

Luckily, the troops he left behind were able to provide him with enough time to escape and he leaped through the dungeon portal before the fastest satyrs could reach him.

"Can the monsters pass through the portal?" Toby fired off a question the moment he left the dungeon. It was not a coincidence that there was no one to hear him. The party who had recently left the dungeon could be seen in the distance running like their lives depended on it, not looking back even once. Others were not here, because Toby had deliberately picked a time when there was little traffic.

However his question seemed to answer itself as there were no monsters spilling out of the dungeon for reasons unknown.

"Whatever, time to lay a siege." Toby's eyes sparkled with something not previously there, his urge to grow coming from his new identity was more intense than he himself realized.

He began to summon immediately new minions and in moments, there stood a new [Tomb] with five acolytes doing their best to build more in all directions including underground. While they were at work, Toby tried to estimate how many undead he was able to produce.

One [Tomb] needed roughly ten by twenty meters of space with height of another ten meters with walls included. He needed to add space for stairs and tunnels connecting the individual tombs, which would take by estimate ten percent of all space. That increased the volume of a single [Tomb] to two thousand and two hundred cubic meters. His sphere of influence had a volume of something around thirty three milion and a half cubic meters. Even if he cut it down to thirty milion because of inefficiency caused by the spherical shape and whatnot. he would be able to build over thirteen thousand tombs providing him with over sixty thousand skeleton warriors . . .

"Am I doing this right?" Sixty thousand was definitely much more than he had expected when he had begun his estimate. After a while he had confirmed that he would really be able to get seventy thousand skeleton warriors.

It was insane, it felt totally overpowered.

The question was how fast would it take to build. The calculation was difficult to make due to the fact that he could increase the number of acolytes who did the construction gradually. It should be the case that if the first tomb took ten minutes with five acolytes, the second would take five with ten acolytes the fourth would take two and a half minutes with twenty acolytes and the eight even half of that leaving him with . . .a headache.

"Eeeheheh . . So ten minutes to build the first, five the second one. .. .. " He found out soon that thinking this way was flawed, because he needed half a minute to summon a single minion, meaning it took him two and a half minutes to exhaust the capacity of a single [Tomb], pushing the speed of construction down significantly and causing the phenomenon where he was able to increase the capacity of his troops much faster than he was able to summon them.

Due to this, he decided to summon only thirty acolytes and switched to summoning warriors immediately after. in three hours, he was able to assemble a unit of three hundred skeleton warriors.

Moving underground to use his full range for construction, he understood it would take more than twenty days to summon the whole sixty thousand troops.

Not wasting any more time, he ordered his unit to enter the dungeon and clashed with the mob of monsters that was already waiting for him.

Then he began to bathe in the pleasant experience of his experience points changing value, but he was about to learn that not always was it for the better.

[You have lost experience -100 , stolen through conquest by The Wicked Garden]

"Impossible!" He immediately focused more on the battle, realizing that farming dungeons could be a double edged sword. At the same time he found out more on what he had not felt right about all along.

Why were not the dungeons stronger? Many adventurers had to die in them and still, the dungeon in front of him was not as strong as a dungeon with its fame should be. The answer seemed to be, the experience could be lost too. If adventurers of comparable levels or weaker killed dungeon mobs, the dungeon was probably losing experience points to them, weakening.

The question remaining was, if it was considered killing or conquest. If killing was considered conquest in case of dungeons in general, it would mean Toby's restrictions on gaining experience was void, but if it was not . . .it would mean he could not gain experience by killing adventurers, but could lose it if they killed his minions.

That would have been a disaster!

"I need those ranged units, attacking from afar will be important in the light of recent events." Toby had thought that he was able to summon thousands of skeletons and throwing them around like sand was the right path, but losing an army of one thousand skeletons would mean losing one hundred thousand experience, as one advanced undead awarded as much.

That was more than he had in total! It would have made him level zero!

This all made him watch the battle against the satyrs with more respect for the casualties. Fortunately, skeleton warriors were quite good in fighting in a formation and Toby was able to reduce his casualties by immediately withdrawing any that were not in a perfect condition to fight.

The battle raged for hours until Toby noticed the kills were giving him no more experience points, meaning that he had stolen enough levels from the enemy dungeon to be far above it. Fighting further could only cost him and he decided to withdraw.

He could have pushed forward and kill the core, but for what purpose?

When the last skeleton warrior disappeared in a wide opening in the ground in front of the dungeon portal, Toby left the place quickly, most of his skeletons falling apart as soon as he left his tombs behind.

With glee, Toby looked at his gains.

Lich Toby Rhazan

Level 18 Mystic Elven Dungeon Core of the Dead

[Experience 100/1800]

[SP 4]

Unique Bonus Abilities -

[Selfless Saviour] - You do not like killing, you care for lives of even little kittens. You won't receive any experience for killing, but you now receive experience for saving lives of all creatures. The amount depends on the level of threat prevented and the level of the saved creature.

[Impress The Elderly] - Nothing warms your heart more than impressing your grandpa with your heroic deeds when he is watching you! Your experience gain is trippled, when you manage to impress the elderly with your deed.

Opening his skills, he pondered about his choices as due to the new reality of large masses of summoned skeletons posing a great danger for his experience points, it might not be the greatest idea to continue in his swarm strategy.

He needed elites and special means whether he liked it or not. After he looked at his options, he decided that the four points he had was nothing much and he should farm some more, thus opening his map of dungeons instead of his list of skills he could buy.

"Who will be my next target?" Toby thought about all the places he could possibly go, he could pick a place at his leisure, all of them were to the east, allowing him to just pick one while his acolytes were moving him underground.

* * * *

"If the experience points are stolen from dungeon monsters, not created, then the dungeons that are not killing anyone will eventually dry up, as the only true source are fresh kills are non-dugeon creatures." It was a conclusion made based on the data Toby currently had. He was again impersonating his acolyte, while travelling on the surface, becuase of a little nuisance that happened a while ago, the thing was. . .

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

. .. the rocky ground here was so fucking hard! Toby did not know what kind of ore it was, but it took his acolytes ages to dig through it. A dungeon like him probably did not age, but he could not bear to wait hours just to advance a single meter. He was moving along the road that ran at the edge of the forest, east of the border between the elven lands in the north and Durkan in the south.

The next dungeon he chose was The Depths of Zaraturk Ibn Fahlan

* * * *

Tonka Seiko drew out a sword and its blade glittered in the morning light. It blinded him for a second, but he ignored it and kept looking at it.

"Hoy! This is something else!" He was apparently overjoyed to hold some quality equipment for the first time in his life in his hands. "Look Kiki, swords, shields, bows, rations, everything is top quality."

"Yeah, it is unbelievable." Kiki answered, sharing Tonka's enthusiasm when she swung her brand new sabre, listening to the swishing air and nearly cutting off her long black hair with it.

"Hmph." The third member of their group just growled when he saw their childish behaviour and inspected his own equipment.

Kiki knew she was acting a little bit silly, but how could she not be happy? They, three scrawny street dogs had just been hired for a job! The army officer said a nearby dungeon, The Depths of Zaraturk Ibn Fahlan was acting up and they needed some muscle not bound by the laws of the empire. The army had even provided gear and everything for the mission and promised to give them a decent sum of money after the misison had been taken care of. Kiki knew nothing about politics, but knew from time to time there were problems that had to be solved using mercenaries rather than an army and thanks to a stroke of luck, they seemed to be just at the right place to earn some quick buck.

The two of them had new swords, while Zawir was a bowmaster.

Alright, he saw himself as one, but she had to admit that his skills with a bow were not bad. Zawir was their friend, but he was rarely proud of it as Kiki Seiko and Tonka Seiko were a notorious thieving duo, the last two of the infamous Seiko family.

People said they were criminals, but that was not true, they were just redistributing wealth in a righteous way, because the money system of redistributing resources was obviously totally flawed!

"Hey, why are we heading to that place anyway? Let's just sell the stuff and make a fortune!" Tonka doubted their approach, flailing around with his long black and dirty hair.

Kiki just scrunched her nose.

"Your hair look like a dog's tail and I mean the inner side that is touching shit when it walks." She barked at her brother.

"Aha, acting like you have not just pulled yours out of your bug infested vagi .. "

"Come on guys! Can we just pretend to be some experienced adventurers and finish the job?" Zawir interrupted their bickering. "Just mingle ok? Mingle with the real tough guys, stay low at the back and get our money at the end. Simple!"

"And you both are washing at the next river crossing!" Zawir commanded and surprisingly the siblings just grumbled something under their breath with no further complaints.

Alright the keyword was mingle. Soon after Kiki washed her hair and turned herself into a somewhat attractive young lady.

"The curves are real, the adventurers will eat from the palm of my hand." She giggled, aware of her good figure.

"More like you eat their semen for a bit of money." Tonka could not help himself but correct her delusions.

"Of course that is nothing bad my beautiful sister, every penny counts." He gave her a friendly slap hurriedly, her willingness to work was commendable.

Their merry afternoon was suddenly interrupted by a coming person who was about to pass their party, going in the same direction. He carried a spear and looked like an experienced adventurer.

Meaning he looked like the three of them, but Kiki knew all the scumbags from the village nearby, the man had to be a real adventurer as he was unfamiliar to her.

"My adventuring party greets a valiant spearman, are you perhaps in the same direction heading? Conquering The Depths of Zaraturk Ibn Fahlan our goal is!" Zawir tried to act as their party leader before Kiki and her brother could protest.

Kiki had to nearly hold her hand down in order not to facepalm. Zawir was not a thief, but not for the lack of trying, he was simply totally useless in that department and had his head in clouds, usually ending up as the cheapest labour you could find in town.

"I am Percy, a professional adventurer. I am an expert in fighting from a distance." The man said, not deterred by Zawir and slammed the dull end of his spear against the ground. Giving the spear a second look, it was strangely long, it was more of a pike than a spear.

Was it smart to fight with a long pike when he was just a single fighter? Kiki had a feeling these kind of weapons excelled in group fights.

Well, maybe the guy was a real pro with it.

"I am Kiki, a sabremaster and this is my brother Tonka, a swordmaster!" Kiki made some flashy moves with her sabre to introduce herself and accidentally cut off the side of her right shoe. She immediately made a posture with her left side facing the newcomer to hide the results of her exquisite skill and returned the weapon back into its scabbard.

When he saw her actions, Tonka just nodded his head with a haughty expression, not drawing his weapon at all.

"Our leader's Zawir named is, you perhaps to the The Depths of Zaraturk Ibn Fahlan heading are?" Kiki smiled and smirked at Zawir, whose face gained a nice red tinge to its natural color.

* * * *

"Yes, I am heading that way. We can form a party to make a short work of the dungeon." Percy could not believe what he saw, he just briefly looked back where they had left a part of the sabermaster's shoe. These three were just clowns, but with his new long weapon, he needed just some fodder to put in front of him, or as a distraction when he would be running away.

He would be naturally fighting from the back that was the whole reason for his long pike. It was obvious he had been forced to leave the previous party, too humiliated by his last dungeon dive attempt.

"The officer said this dungeon was a walk in the park." Percy thought as he planned to regain his confidence and money soon.

He just hoped there would be no webs this time. He hated webs.

* * * *

Kiki was happy their recruitment went well. After the expert with a pike, they had stumbled upon a huge figure,

A Summoner! They had a magic wielder now! She could not believe it was this easy to form a decent party.

She was a little bit worried about their pike expert though, he had run off to shit roughly at the same time the summoner joined the party and was kind of scrouched since then.

Why had he not used the rations from the army? They were superb! No, she had to focus on what mattered. The summoner could use magic! He had showed them the skeletons he was able to summon and the monsters scared the shit out of her. It was decided, she had to get into his pants! She was all wet just thinking about magic and how strong the man was.

He was surely a real man with a stern face who let actions spoke for him! She wanted to suck him!

* * * *

Percy finally managed to get into the monster's blindspot. It was the party killer from before and he was very lucky to be able to hide from him so far. He had to kill him, it was inevitable, the moment he summoned more of the skeletons would be the time of their death. In his mind he thanked the slut of a party member several times, she was trying to cling to him at every occasion, allowing Percy to better hide his face and to now finally manage to sneak up on the party killer from behind.

Percy did not want to waste a good opportunity when Kiki whispered something to the man's ear and stabbed the man vigorously with a dagger he had been hiding under his cloak. The weapon went right through the black robed man and to his surprise, the one hit was able to kill him instantly.

Wasn't he too weak for a party killer?

"Darling?!"

"Fucking hell??"

"God's penis."

The trio expressed their surprise each in their own way, watching the dead body on the ground.

But their surprise lasted just a few seconds.

"I have the gem, it is so sparkle sparkly and big!" Kiki shouted and moved the necklace hanging around the dead man's neck to her own, a large purple gem dangling against the white skin of her breasts.

"Greedy bitch, the gem is bigger than your tits! I have his pockets!" Shouted another party member who was carrying a sword.

Percy could not believe their attitude, they might be even more greedy than him.

"Man you say in advance should. Come people, the path yet long is." Said the leader and continued to walk in the direction of the dungeon.

Percy was not sure how wise his choice of comrades was . . .

* * * *

"Preposterous!" Toby fumed inside of his crystaline mind.

They just killed him! Looting his body like nothing of importance happened!

He had joined the party of four people, mainly because he felt that if they had walked in the same direction all the way to the dungeon, it would have seemed that he was following them, planning to rob them or something. He had gone out of his way to prevent these scenarios and they had killed him instead!

Of course they had killed just his acolyte, but they could not know he was inside the necklace. From the conversation that followed, Toby found out that his killer was in fact Percy, the little nudist who had barely escaped the spider he had fought off in the previous dungeon. He seemed to have some lingering fear of spiders judging from the long pike he was carrying around, which should propably serve the purpose of keeping all melee atackers at a distance.

"Hey, have the body disappeared?" Tonka Seiko shouted in alarm, the group was in general quite rowdy, Toby should have noticed sooner that veteran adventurers were surely less noisy and undisciplined.

"No." Zawir stated confidently.

"How come? The man is not fucking there anymore!" Kiki began to argue with Zawir.

"It was a joke." Zawir smiled, but was the only one.

"He teleported! He escaped! He will hunt me down!" Percy began to panic and waved his long pike around, causing the others to make some distance from him. The Seiko siblings looked at each other and formulated their strategy in a second.

"Run!" Both of them began to sprint in the direction of the dungeon. Zawir followed suit and Percy was the last, as he had reacted slower and running with an extra long pike was not as easy as he had imagined.

Toby watched them amused by their panic, he considered it a payment for their bad behaviour. The band had quite the stamina and managed to ran all the way, until they reached the dungeon that was encircled by a palisade made of wood that had been erected by local army, the soldiers visible on the two watch towers spotted them immediately and one of them climbed half way down to check on them.

"State your business, this is a camp of the imperial army!" The soldier commanded, but he was visibly fighting off laughter when he saw Percy on his last legs running with his pike.

"We are mercenaries hired to conquer the dungeon." Kiki was in the best shape after the long run and became their spokesperson.

"Whlehueue . ." Zawir began to speak and that was something Kiki needed to sabotage considering his leadership skills. Therefore, she had stuck her fingers into his mouth to interrupt him.

It might have had just the same effect as if she had allowed him to speak.

The officer breathed out slowly and composed himself just to take in the show with straight face.

"I see, I will lead you inside. Open the gate!" He said and shouted at some other soldiers who immediately opened a gap in the palisade.

"Come, you should be briefed on the mission by the officer who recruited you." He walked in a quick pace towards a walled-off center of the camp. This wall was made of stone and was higher than the palisade by two meters. It had obviously been constructed to hold something inside.

"Will there be payment after we have completed the misison?" Kiki was mainly interested in money as was natural for a thief.

"Of course, have you heard of someone who has not been paid fairly after doing their duty? We are the imperial army, not a local warlord." The soldier said and Kiki seemed to be persuaded by his words.

"Prepare to open the inner gate!" The soldier shouted and Toby understood he was probably not an ordinary soldier or officer, but some sort of a commander. There were lines of soldiers beginning to form in front of the sturdy steel gate, the only passage in the wall.

"Open the inner gate!" The officer commanded and the bulky gate lifted up by some mechanism that could not be seen as it was inside the thick stone wall.

The officer ushered them in and the group had no reason to refuse and they walked further inside.

"We have to close the gate, it is the protocol. Knock on it thrice and we will open up again." With these last words, the closing gate obstructed their view, shutting them inside.

Toby could tell the spine of his stonebearer was tingling with an unpleasant sensation, but everything had probably gone according to the plan, as the four people were yet to break into panic.

Toby thought they should, because he had already recognized what was going on.

* * * *

Duran Khali, whom none called by his own name, as he had earned the nickname of Storm stood in front of the army camp at The Depths of Zaraturk Ibn Fahlan

He liked the place as the roads around here were solid and he was able to really enjoy the power he had between his legs.

"Anything urgent?" He asked nonchalantly the near soldiers.

"Yes, sir!" A soldier immediately took out an envelope and handed it to Storm. It was the sole purpose of them standing here to wait for the messenger as Storm had no time for diddling around, he had a strict schedule.

The behaviour of the soldiers was partly caused by Storm's military rank. When they looked at his uniform, it was the flashy uniform of the royal guard, meaning no one had the authority to command him under any circumstances except the emperor himself.

The reason for all this?

A low growl came from under Storm as the soldier came closer and handed the envelope.

"Here, sir!" He gave it to him and quickly distanced himself from the beast.

"Have a nice day guys." Storm placed his hand at the side of the animal below, coming in contact with its soft fur. He should show these poor bored to death guys some storm right?

"Boru, charge!" He barked and at that moment all the hell broke loose

The one he was sitting on was Boru, a blackstorm tiger. The beast was black as night with strips of gold, its eyes having the same golden color. It was a bit bigger than an ordinary tiger, but that was where all the similarity ended. The battle prowess of the beast was extreme with its most characteristic trait being speed. Blackstorm tigers were imported from abroad and their cost was sky high, but there was no faster land animal available, their top speeds breaking past two hundred miles per hour in ideal terrain.

The tiger tensed and almost flew forward, leaving a small sandstorm in its wake. Storm had to have some rare abilities himself to be even able to handle the beast at high speeds. If it came to worst, the tiger would be able to react with instincts of his own, as he was a high level magical creature.

The soldiers in the camp roared in cheers, quickly disappearing in the distance along with the whole camp.

A message for the emperor could never be too fast. There were other means of communication, but this was the most secure method and was usually used for messages that were top secret for varying reasons. After some time, the emperor would be reading the message held securely in Storm's chest pocket.

"Traces of etherium of blue grade present at the site after moderate feeding. Possible purple grade. Feeding on hold."

There was no need for names and locations as the messenger knew the location.

A few days later a reply had arrived by other means. There was no need for secrecy as none would have been the wiser even after reading it.

"Continue."