Dungeon Annihilation 28

evening guys!

Regan

I felt like the Marquis and his party along with the help of that Baroness turned the bottom five floors into a joke. At least Pride stuck it to them. I surely hadn’t been expecting that to happen when they challenged him. I guess names had more power than I originally thought. Not that it didn’t cost me. Him making a full suit of orichalcum armor expended close to twenty thousand mana.

Still I learned a lot in the four or so hours they were in the dungeon. I may have even stumbled on a secret that could get some people into a lot of trouble. I was even more thankful for my pillars now. They had detected unholy mana coming from the pair of knights, which I expected, but the man had a much denser concentration of it.

He would need to come into the dungeon a few more times to be sure it wasn’t that the spell was cast on him and that was why it was stronger in him. If he was a necromancer, I needed to plan my next couple actions. It could further my goals to make contact with them, but I could also be painting a target on my back.

As the party that was drawing all my attention left for the day, I turned to head back to the Factory floor. No sooner did my mind reach the floor did I sense unholy mana again. Wondering if the knight had come back into the dungeon for something, I turned my attention to the entrance pillar but didn’t see anything.

“Strange,” I mumbled. Was it a ghost. Plenty of people had died in the dungeon after all. They could be a thing in this monster filled world. I focused on the area that I was sensing the unholy mana. There were three spots from what I could tell. 

After maybe a minute or two, I sensed the spots start to move into the dungeon. Soon they were outside of the pillar’s sensor zone and I lost the sensation. It didn’t last long though as I soon detected the spots again when they ascended to the second floor. That’s when I ruled out ghosts. They could pass through solid floor they wouldn’t need to take the stairs.

“Looks like I have some rats,” I said.

“Rats, master?”

“We got some people that are invisible in the dungeon. Let us have some fun,” I said rubbing my mental hands together. 

They quickly reached the third floor. I could only assume they were heading for the much less explored sixth floor. If information was worth as much as it was on Earth then they would be paid handsomely for as detailed a map as they can get of the Gothic City or even what lays beyond that. 

When I lost them, I created a high-pitched sound on the floor. Treating my aura as water allowed me to quickly detect them. It was only momentary, but I was able to track and anticipate their movement. Wanting to see their goal, I allowed them to remain free. When they reached the boss room, they hesitated before going through the portal of darkness. 

Stepping through, I noticed that I couldn’t detect them when they went through the darkness. I made a note to fix that later. Pride which was back to being the first version after his transformation, he had two modes now from what I could tell, didn’t appear to notice anything out of the ordinary either. 

After a few minutes, they soon were next to the pillar on the plaza leading to the Gothic City. They were there for nearly thirty minutes before they set out. I could only assume they were creating a map or deciding where to go. 

“What do you think I should do Set. Let the rats go or teach them a lesson?” I asked mentally rubbing my chin in thought.

“They are trapezing through master’s dungeon without paying the proper toll. They should be taught a lesson,” Set said far angrier than I had ever seen her. 

I gave her a laugh. “I like it.”

I manipulated the weather over the Gothic City. The permanent sunset soon faded to darkness as clouds appeared. It wasn’t long before rain so heavily it was hard to see. In the meantime, I directed several Hunters to the invisible party’s location. They had come to a stop. It only last a few seconds as they started heading back towards the entrance.

Three hunters blocked their path when they got back down the street. The spots came to a stop. One of the hunters pointed at the spot where the rain was acting strange. It would hit something then sort of slid along the surface. The spies knew their cover was blown and dropped the invisibility.

The looked at each other then nodded. They took off in separate directions. The Hunters chose a target and charged after them. One of the spies only made it a few hundred meters before an ax spinning head over handle slammed into the man’s back. The impact caused him to slip in the rain and crash headfirst into a lamppost. 

The other two spies were more nimble but as they rain more hunters got onto their trail. It wasn’t long before one slipped up. He stumbled while trying to dodge a hunter on the street. The hunter did hesitate and brought his spear around and stabbed it through the man’s leg. With a loud yell he struggled as the other hunters bound him in rope.

The last one appeared to be a talented mage with more than one element. He was using air magic to boost his speed. He made it all the way back to the entrance managing to lose the hunters. Sadly, he had to go through the boss room to get back as he didn’t have a token.

I was actually surprised that he charged down the stairs with little or no hesitation in his step. He started to cross the bridge going faster than a normal man would be able to keep up with his eyes. He ran right passed Pride, but wasn’t faster than Pride’s new weapon. He leveled the weapon at the man’s back and pulled the trigger. 

A dozen iron slugs slammed into the man’s back sending him careening into the wall next to the entrance. Pride moved over and kicked the man’s side to flip him over. A look of terrible pain was frozen on the dead man’s face. Pride stepped back and the body was absorbed by the dungeon. 

Moving my attention back to the City, I created my avatar so I could converse with the two men. They appeared suitably terrified but whether it was an act or not was still to be seen. If they did this for a living, they probably knew a few tricks to survive being caught by the host.

“Well. Well. Well. Look what I caught,” I said as my shadow monster version avatar body walked up to the men. I started clapping slowly. “I have to hand it to you. Any other dungeon then your little trick might have worked but using dark magic in here was suicidal.”

“Please, Lord host. We were only doing our job. Is there anyway we could negotiate our release?” said one of the men as soon as I was done. I could almost see the script he must have read it from. These people must belong to a well-ordered organization. Anyone that could think ahead to future encounters was pretty decent and showed great leadership.

I waved my finger back and forth with tsking them. “All in good time my friend. I can call you my friend, right?” I asked leaning down to place my hand on his shoulder. He nodded stiffly. I had to commend his courage. Many of the other people I got this close to had already pissed themselves. “I just have a few questions for my new friends. Surely, they wouldn’t mind answering them.”

The two men looked at each other then nodded their heads in unison. I guess their survival was higher than whatever code they belonged. “We do have one problem. We physically can’t speak about how or who we work with. We took a magic oath…” I reached forward cutting him off as I grabbed the second man by the neck hefting him into the air.

“Then what need do I have for a pair of voiceless rats!?” I said making sure to channel my shadow monster side. If I still had a human body, I was sure even I would have shivered from the pure unholiness that my monster voice seemed to project. What little courage the men had vanished, and they soon soiled themselves.

I tossed the man I held to the ground with disgust. “Anything! We’ll talk about anything we can! Please don’t kill us,” the first man said with tears in his eyes.

Moving over to him, I picked him up by his neck. I wanted to see what magic I was working against. I could just see into him with my dungeon senses as long as I was touching him, but that would lack… the appeal I was going for. I placed my free hand against his chest and stabbed my finger inside making sure to avoid all the major organs. 

Yelling in pain, I could see the desire to struggle written on his face, but the fact that I had stabbed in easily with only a finger stopped him from acting on it. I grinned which Set had told me was quite terrifying in its own right. I allowed my shadows to spread out while I moved my eyes over his body to see what I was dealing with.

I found what I was looking for in interwoven into the man’s natural aura. It would be hard to notice if I wasn’t looking for it. After I read the script for a few seconds, I was surprised that I knew every word written into the curse. It was almost exact for the necromancer script I’ve compiled so far from the few undead I’ve tested and the chamber that I peered into the other week.

Pulling my mind out of the man’s aura, I grinned. “A necromancer?”

“What!? Never! I wouldn’t work with those scumbags even if you promised the keys to Thonaca castle,” the man shouted visibly taken aback.

“So you say, but I found some necromancer work in there,” I said pulling my finger free and dropping him to the ground. Knowing what to look for, I spotted the same thing in the other man in under a second. It was like a knot that leaked into various other parts of their auras. I extended my hand and changed the target of the curse to the hunter standing nearby.

With a violent scream of pain, both men lurched over and vomited as black smoke burst from their pores and flowed over to the hunter. The hunter stood there but I noticed that even he twitched and bled from his ears as the curses took hold. Once the curse had full hold of the hunter, I swung my arm the claws that made up my hand sliding through his neck with ease.

Once the dungeon absorbed the hunter, I got full knowledge of the curse over him as I made sure to focus on that section. Being a dungeon meant I could understand many things once I absorbed it, but I had to focus on certain things to get the full effect. If I didn’t know there was a curse, then I might not have gotten anything from absorbing the hunter.

“It hurts!”

“Make it stop!”

I looked back to the pleading men with understanding. Given how the curse had exited their bodies, I beat it felt like they were burning right now. I grabbed the first man that said they couldn’t speak and numbed his nerves while I touched him. “Tell me about your organization.”

Relief swept over his face like a blanket. “I’ll talk! We’re of the Shadow Guild. We dive dungeons to gather their secrets for the Adventurer’s Guild. That I know of, we have no connection with the necromancers, but I am low on ladder of the guild. Out leader would know more than me. He had more access to magic, so he was chosen to control this dive,” the man said talking a mile a minute.

“Who made you swear the oath?” I asked.

“Guild Elders! Said it was part of joining the guild. They recruited me due to my control over dark mana. I was the best in my town! Said the invisibility magic required a high-level connection with the dark. They offered, well, a lot of gold and women, but I never thought I was working with necromancers.”

I looked at the groaning man still on the ground. “Same story for you?” I had to give him props for managing to nod in the agonizing pain he was in. “Very well. You both have earned your right to survival, but I can’t exactly let you run back to the town so you can wag your mouth about me. So, you’re going to be taking a bit of vacation time.” 

“Thank you! Thank you!”

“What is your name?”

“Ennio and his is Reed.”

“Do you want to someday see the light again, Ennio?” I asked with a grin.

“Yes…” he replied nervously.

“Then I want you to train one of my minions. She has a great affinity with the dark,” I replied repairing the damage to his body while setting him down. He stood with surprise that I had actually healed him. It wasn’t that hard. With the proper knowledge, light mana is converted to life mana and heals cells and the such.

“I’ll do it. Of course, I will!” he replied with gusto.

“Good. Good. Just to add a little incentive,” I said patting his shoulder. I swung my hand next to him. A spray of blood shot up from his partner being sliced in half covering his face. Horror replaced the relief. “Take my advice. Do not try to escape. It just wouldn’t end well for all the people involved. Besides, in the long run. You’ll want to work for me anyways.” I patted his shoulder again.

“Yes. I will place your words next to my heart,” Ennio said bowing his head. 

“Good. Take him to Cell Five. I don’t want him getting any funny ideas,” I ordered the hunters next to us. The saluted then grabbed him and moved down the street. I looked at the puddle of blood that was seeping into the ground just as the dungeon absorbed it. “Today was a good day.” 

“Yes, master,” Set replied with a smile herself. I thought I was starting to rub off on her. 

~~

With that situation dealt with, I finally moved back to the Factory room. Nazir had been hard at work and was mastering his craft quickly. As I suspected, his red skin was due to his fire aspect. It would greatly aid him in forging and crafting. 

“Nazir. Let me see your latest work,” I called to alert the hyper focused oni I was here. 

“At once, Kami.” He kept working on his current project until he came to a good stopping point. Placing the metal back into the forge, he moved over to a rack that held several weapons of various types. I was impressed as I counted nearly ten works. That was quite a feat considering he’d only been working for a few hours.

He grabbed a silver sword that looked almost mundane until you looked at it with mana sense. That’s when you saw that it practically glowed with the untapped potential. He held it out to me as he kneeled. I was still in my avatar and was able to physically take it. The balance and sharpness were a warrior’s wet dream. It would also be any lightning users wet dream. 

“You have out done yourself already.” I handed the sword back to him. “You may call yourself the sin of Envy until someone takes it from you.”

“As you command, lord Kami.” 

With Nazir working out so well for the floor, I decided to stick with this race for the main force here. I checked my mana ocean and sighed with how low it had gotten. I could barely summon more than twenty of them right now. I was hesitant to invest that much mana but remembering the marquis’s party’s weapons slicing through my hunter’s ultimately made my decision.

I waved my hand and twenty of the oni appeared. Ten were the three horned red skinned crafters, while the other ten were four horned workers. While assigned them to help the red skinned oni, if they were able to surpass them then I had no issue with them being a crafter. 

I gave each pair a factory to work out of and told them to get to work. Right now, they were make weapons that would be used eventually in the dungeon. Once that was done, I turned back to Nazir. “I want you to recreate this.” I formed an image of various rifles and guns. 

The one thing I knew almost as well as robotics was weapons. Swords and magic were well and nice, but I wasn’t going to rely on something that was so easily influenced. I cleared my idle thoughts and turned my attention back to Nazir. He was studying the images with great intensity.

“Given some time to experiment I should be able to recreate these weapons, but I feel like some improvements could be made. How would you like me to proceed Kami?”

“Make an original of them first then do your improvements.”

“As you command,” Nazir said doing the oni salute then moving back to his own factory. I saw him start to brief his assistant on the job and they got right to work.

“Now if only Raven would return with the plants,” I mumbled looking through the dungeon. I hadn’t checked on the prisoners in a while and I would hate for them to think I forgot about them. I moved to the only section of the dungeon that required a special token to reach. With a flash of light, I appeared on the platform of the penal colony that was its own world inside the dungeon.

Completely sealed in a bubble of stone that was close to thirty meters thick. The only indication of passing time was the light spell at the top of the dome. A village was set up to give the prisoners some privacy, but the dungeon still labeled them as my captives thus I was able to pull more mana from their auras. 

Vice versa, they were able to cultivate nearly all day long down here. If I used mana suppressing cuffs, then they wouldn’t produce much mana for me to absorb. It was an interesting balancing act. One that I controlled by limiting food and water. Couldn’t concentrate on an empty stomach. 

I clapped my hands to issue a sound throughout the entire colony. People started to stream to my location. After the last party I added to the location, it was close to a hundred and fifty or so mortals. There had been a bit of a battle and the adventurers ended up killing all the goblins. 

“People of Pandora’s Box. I hope you have been enjoying your stay,” I said once everyone had gathered. 

The faces ranged from rage to defeat. Truly just about every emotion was on display in the gathering. I shifted my eyes to mana sense and noticed that several women had become pregnant. I suppose that was bound to happen when there was basically nothing to do all day. The women shifted nervously when they realized I had focused on them. 

“Because you have all been well behaved, I have decided to increase the food rations for the next two days. Also, I have learned a new magic. If anyone is willing to test it, then I will allow them to leave,” I said throwing my arms out as if I was a generous host. My words gave me the desired effect. Everyone started whispering and growing agitated. I clapped my hands and a pillar formed in the middle of the teleport platform. “Those that wish to hear the terms only need press their hand against the surface of the pillar and they will be brought to me when I deem it so.” 

I turned and started walking back to said platform when a man rushed forward and feel to his knees. “Lord Host!” I paused mid step. “I must implore you to give the women that are with child more food!” Finishing my step, I turned back to the man.

“If they require more food, why not give them yours?”

“Even if we did such a thing we could only feed them a bit more for a few days until we died. Surely, you would be distressed if so many of your prisoners perished.” I really focused on the man speaking. He was an elf, but wasn’t off the charts with his beauty like most of the elves I’d seen so far were. A woman moved over to him and was trying to pull him back to the gathering. 

“You are rather bold or stupid to be challenging me,” I said my voice dropping to the evil tone it took at times. The man started to shiver but held his ground even as the woman withdrew in fear.

He noticed his eyes steeled and he looked me right in the eyes, not an easy task given my current form. “I thought of this place as a curse. Until I met Cara. Now. Now, I don’t care where I am as long as I’m with her! I could live here until the day I die of old age, as long as I’m with her.”

I glanced at the woman who had tears streaming down her face but was still smiling. This man had quite the pair on him. I had no doubt that he was definitely getting some tonight. I thought it through, I was going to destroy this planet in the long run. No reason to make people suffer that I have little reason to make suffer.

“What is your name?”

“Joseph, lord host.”

“Very well Joseph. While I might look it, I’m not actually evil. I will increase the food given to the women with child. If I find that men are eating it to increase their strength, all rations will be cut in half. Also, you must volunteer for the magic within a fortnight.”

“As you command lord host.”

I finished stepping up on the platform. With a flash of light, I was gone from the colony and back in the core room. I could teleport without it, but I liked for them to think it was required for everyone, even me.