Dungeon Annihilation 2 - 9

Evening everyone. Sorry for not uploading yesterday. I was out on the town and completely forgot by the time I made it back to the house. 

Regan

“What is this master?”

I glanced back at Set then finished making the last adjustments to the magic system I was working on, before closing the panel and stepping back. Having a body that can produce as my tendrils to work on machines was a mechanics dream. It allowed me to create things much faster by hand than I could have possibly achieved back on Earth.

“A rocket. It should allow me to get over the mountain in record time.”

“A rock… et, you say. Judging by the wings on the side, it is meant to fly, but reaching the peak of the mountain would cause you to hit the Dragon line of the lay lines. Anything magical is bound to go wild.”

“True, but that doesn’t matter. It just has to reach the peak. Once over it, gravity can take care of the rest.”

I went to work sealing the rest of the panels around the rocket. It was roughly the size of a three-story building. A pod at the front was the only thing reinforced to be able to withstand any sort of impact on the other side of the mountain. The rest was a storage tank for liquid hydrogen, the engine, and a small magic system that I mainly wanted to test to see if it would work.

The system would act like a pseudo dungeon core and convert mana into more fuel for the rocket. If it worked, interplanetary travel would be much easier to achieve when I reached that point in my conquest. Everything else was good old technology from Earth and should have little trouble crossing the mountains with the duel on board.

I moved to the last panel on the pod and inserted my first sub-core. I planned to place two more to the east and west of the valley in the future, but those would have much higher chances of coming in contact with mortals. Over the mountain was basically a no-man’s land. That meant it was up for grabs and I didn’t have to hold back on my more… destructive ideas.

“How will you activate the core once it gets to the other side of the mountain?” Set asked taking in the vehicle with wide eyes.

I pointed at a spot in the panel next to the core. It was roughly the size of a man if he was hunched over. With my shadow form, I needed even less space than that to fit. “I’m going for a ride,” I answered with a loud laugh.

“Master, is that safe!?”

“Should be, but I’m not being stupid about this. If I feel any real danger, I will dismiss my avatar.”

“I understand. I shall do my best to make sure nothing happens in the few hours you’re gone.”

“I know you’ll do fine.” I looked at the sky which was turning pink from the setting sun. With a grin I hopped into the rocket, fitting in perfectly like a component. “Bon voyagea.” I started the sequence to launch. It was roughly point and shot approach since I had no particular targets or goals for the other side.

With a spray of white smoke, the engine began to pour out flames from the back. Cold spells around the top of the roof kept the temperature down, but I just absorbed it as mana once it reached excessive levels. Like a junky, a grin split my face as the rocket blasted off.

In a matter of seconds, the rocket was going speeds I wasn’t sure that this world had ever seen. I broke the sound barrier and kept gaining even more speed. The side of the mountain passing by me. This thing dwarfed anything found on Earth, and I wondered how it could be a natural occurrence, but in a world with magic, who was to say.

After two minutes, I finally cleared the mountain. A felt was could only be described as a river of mana crash into me a few seconds after that. The mechanical system adjust the course and blasted me towards the northlands and burned the last of the prepared fuel to give me some acceleration in that direction.

The magic system kicked in and began creating fuel for the rocket. I was pleased that it worked without any hiccups. I thought I could make it to space without any issues if I tried. There was a strike of mana against the side of the rocket and the magic system began to overcharge. The g-forces on me suddenly tripled in a second as the system exploded.

I streaked through the sky as the rocket began to drop from the wind shear. I was well into the north at this point. I watched as a large tree appeared in the distance, the rocket heading straight for it. The bark was blackened as if it had been burned, but I could tell it was alive… sort of, from the fact there were still leaves on the branches. Cages hung from limbs that held skeletons, as well as many not so dead creatures.

The rocket crashed through the limbs burning them from the heat it had gathered. The vehicle came to a stop about half way through the tree, actively caught by the branches that moved with a will of their own. I kicked the panel off, and stepped out onto the hull of the rocket.

A hiss drew my attention as a girl with ebony skin with elven features growled at me. She was half embedded in the which made me realize I had just crashed into a dryad or something similar. She made a gesture and all the branches around me shot at me like lances. They prieced through my shadow body without causing any damage.

“I know I was the rude one by crashing in your,” I glanced around then snapped my fingers, “hair, but you shouldn’t attack on sight.” I wrapped my tendrils around the branches and realized there was a ton of unholy mana inside her. I grinned devilishly. “I think I just made a new friend.”

I could still feel my main core even from this distance which boggled me given the nature of energy in the universe. I actually hoped there was some energy loss, or I wasn’t sure how I would feel about my idea of physics being broken. One issue at a time, I supposed.

I grabbed the core from the rocket and made my way to the center of the dryad’s canopy. A small city could have fit up here and there still be some room, if you built it horizontal and vertical. Once I made it to the center of the canopy and the middle of the trunk, I placed the core down and let it start to draw in mana.

After some careful discussion with Set, I had decided to go with a field dungeon for this. It was the least limited on what you could do but had the least amount of space manipulation. Its aura would spread like a wave to encompass everything around it rather than fold in on itself like the tower, or flood down like an underground complex type.

The dryad continued to hiss at me, obviously aware that I wasn’t up to any good. With a rush, the initial construction of the core’s aura took place, the aura snapping around it like a rubber band. In a second, it rushed out and covered most of the dryad. It flashed through the first six levels of tier one in seconds.

The dryad screamed as the unholy mana was literally ripped from her in places. I decided that some insurance was probably safer than killing her, so I quickly formed one of the control collars from the gathering mana. Snaking a tendril of shadow toward the dryad, she back away. When she started to sink into the bark, I shot forward and snapped the collar around her neck.

With an all new scream, the entire tree shook from her rage. I looked back to the core when I felt some tinges of pain and saw that it had started to crack. I moved to make sure it wasn’t caused by the thrashing of the dryad but found it was caused by the concentration of unholy mana being absorbed.

I forcibly stopped the core from absorbing anything other than natural mana and it dropped to a trickle and almost stopped altogether. I mentally glanced at my main core, and saw while minor, so small that I didn’t even notice until I realized what to look for that it had some as well. There was also corruption from natural mana as well.

“That can’t be good for my mind.”

I sat on the trunk and thought about the situation, not one I expected to run into out here. The rumble of the ground drew my attention to around the dryad. Giant trees had begun moving toward us. “Friends of yours?” I asked the comatose dryad that was twitching a few meters from me. “Deal with them.”

Her eyes snapped back into focus against her will as tears streaked down her cheeks. Green flames began appearing around us which then rained down on the horde of trees. The sound and smell of burning wood surrounded us for the next few minutes before the treants stopped trying to get at us. The dryad whimpered then moved off in what I assumed was an attempt to hide from me.

I watched the bonfire as I worked out the equations in my head to create something to deal with the corruption. My mind as a dungeon core knew most of the attributes for anything I’ve absorbed. It was just a matter of working them into a construct. The night was enjoyable to say the least.

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