Chapter 38

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The Dungeon, Medea Island

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The ‘Heroes’ passed through the first floor with minimal effort. Not unexpected, given the power difference between the crabs and these elite guilders. The crabs weren’t tough, fast, or strong enough to do more than get in the way. The newly immortal Crab Knight, Sebastian the… Seventieth? I think that’s about right, but I haven’t strictly kept track of how many Knights have fallen in my defense. Either way, the Crab Knight was the most intelligent of all the crabs on the floor, and though he did last several seconds longer than he had the first time, the ‘hero’ raid passed through quickly.

You know, I think he’s due for an update. The respawn crystal means it won’t be a waste of mana to beef him up a bit. It’s something to think about for tonight.

They were mildly inconvenienced by the second floor, mainly because one long thin hallway they walked down suddenly lacked a floor, separating the group. None of them were dumb or weak enough to get caught in any of the other traps. I need to make the exit and entrance points variable. I can only put so many surprises between them, as it is. They already know the general direction they need to walk, making it far too easy.

The third floor was far more effective than it once was. The shifted flora made them forge new paths through the hot, humid jungle. The Fauna, specifically the Pheonix, made their journey far more annoying than it would have been otherwise. It took them significantly longer to make it to all the ‘trial’ sites. My Kobolds put up a decent fight. Well, as much as they could. Right now, they can fight a high-Gold delver to a standstill, one-on-one, as long as nothing unexpected is thrown into the mix.

Unfortunately, they managed to slip into the boss Arena before nightfall. I could do with a few more mini-boss locations. Maybe have some empty, but they won’t know until they check. Mushu fought valiantly; his underlings were beefier, indeed, but nowhere near strong enough to do much damage. As for Mushu himself, he was getting better with every fight. If he had the speed and strength to match his skill with that weapon, I’m sure he could have fought one of the ‘heroes’ for at least two minutes before dying.

They pushed on.

The fourth floor was… much more intense. At least in my opinion.

The waves of Ratten were never-ending, in a callback to my earlier treatment of high-level delvers on the first floor. There was no reprieve. They were hounded from their first step to their final blow against the Lightning-clan boss. Shadows clawed at their ankles; flaming Ratten dropped onto their heads. They were breathing heavily when they pushed through the manhole into the castle, glistening with sweat.

“What in the Three Hells was that?!” A red-robed fire mage cried, her face marred by more than a dozen scratches. Minor, in the end, but noteworthy. “That was nothing like last time!”

“My opinion? The dungeon doesn’t like us.” A leather-clad ‘rogue’ answered, to some chuckles.

“There was some mention of wave tactics used on its first floor, back when it was first discovered.” The very epitome of a Gallant Knight reasoned, “It gave up when those guilders started consistently making it to the third floor. Perhaps it is trying to slow us down or exhaust our resources before we can accomplish our goals, especially as we now must make our way back up without teleport crystals. Lina, the tracker?”

The woman who must be ‘Lina’ nodded and pulled the tracking device from a pouch. The three arrows spun for a few seconds, and I worried they would pierce the defenses I’d put up around my cells.

Thankfully, they pointed out the closest window.

“It seems They’re out there.” She stated, moving back and forth to watch the arrows shift. “Yes, there must be something outside the castle. Castles normally have extensive lands or gardens around them; perhaps it is the same here. They seem to be separated, though.”

As they walked off with determined strides, I watched the raid group navigate to where they had last encountered the largest door in the castle. After all, the biggest door is usually the main entrance/exit of a castle.

On the way, they encountered the monsters of the fifth floor. Last time, I wanted them off-guard. This time, there is no point. They think they know what monsters they’ll find here.

They’re quite wrong.

Well, In a way.

They’re expecting more of the shadow golems, and they’re half right. Only, It’s not just shadow golems.

With a sudden crunch of grinding stone, each of the ‘Heroes’ found their feet stuck to the ground. From the flagstones beneath their feet emerged thick stone hands. Some were quick enough to jump or slip at least one foot from the grasping hands, but three remained trapped.

Before their allies could begin attempting to break them out, Shadow Golems dropped down from the shadowed, arching ceilings to sow chaos. Now split between saving their fellow guilders and defending themselves… they did an admirable job of both. The defenders kept the shadow golems back, and the rescuers managed to free those trapped by the Earth golems by breaking the stone hands from their arms.

The Golems retreated beneath the floor, leaving the guilders standing there. They looked absolutely baffled.

“They retreated? That…” One spoke, his words trailing off when he couldn’t think of what to say.

“Let’s get out to the grounds.” The ‘Knight’ prompted. He seemed to be the least thrown by my monster’s behavior. “We already knew this dungeon is highly intelligent. It must consider those shadow monsters more valuable in some way. They retreated last time as well; perhaps it has a limited number of them?” As the group absorbed the knowledge I might be more intelligent than they previously thought, they continued on their way.

After a second ambush, using the same tactics, they were far too watchful for me to attempt it again. Outside though… well, that’s a different story.

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The Fifth Floor, the Dungeon, Medea Island

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Lina Laskiin walked at the group’s center, protected on all sides. Most of her attention was focused on operating the tracker, and after the previous ambushes, she was grateful for their vigilance. As the two guilders at the head of their group pushed open the sizeable metal-banded wood doors, most of the group’s attention was on what they would find beyond.

Almost pure darkness seemed to swallow the light breaking past the door only a few yards. They could see nothing. The mages summoned a couple of sprites to light the way, though they were barely any better. Slowly, they moved away from the door and into the black.

“The Ice Mage, Blace, is that way,” Lina pointed ahead and to the right. The group quietly adjusted their course.

They didn’t speak as they approached their first destination. Being in this darkness raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She glanced back, and as expected, she saw no sign of the castle they had just left. She made a mental note that any guilders that reached this floor would need to bring a compass or tracker. Lina felt that it would be very easy to lose all sense of direction in this all-encompassing darkness.

After a minute or two, something loomed out of the dark. Weapons were raised… unnecessarily. The looming shape was no monster but a massive mushroom. The stalk was double the height of a tall man, and the wide cap would likely shelter their entire group. As they progressed, more and more fungi began appearing before them. Lina would have called it a Mushroom Forest. Large stalks rose far beyond the reach of their sprite’s light, down to tiny red and white spotted caps surrounding the bases of larger specimens. She could see dozens of different, colorful species in the lit space around them, even if she couldn’t see one among them she recognized.

Lina wasn’t exactly an expert on fungi, but she knew which ones were poisonous or edible. None of these held a familiar collection of traits. The ground beneath their feet became a fungus. A veritable carpet of purple, squishy fungus. A small bulb she would have called edible was a bright yellow, striped with red and white lines from the center down to the edges of the caps. No doubt poisonous. Every single one of them was likely poisonous.

Some were also actively hostile. One particularly spiny species that grew onto the side of the ‘tree’ ‘shrooms ejected its spines whenever someone approached. One ‘mace-like’ shroom swung at anyone who drew close; though not too dangerous, it was incredibly dense and would likely knock out lesser guilders if allowed to connect.

As they walked deeper into the Mushroom Forest, the stalks became thicker. The spaces between were likewise smaller. She felt they were being led to a dead end. However, before she could speak up, a humanoid shape emerged from the dark.

It was… Horrifying.

The human skeleton was infested with a brown, ruffled fungus. The mushroom’s flesh started from a large protrusion jutting out of the skull, down thin muscle-like fibers that extended to the end of its limbs. Its walk was a jarring, stumbling thing. It made no noise as it approached; the soft squishy ground absorbed any noise its steps might have created. Which just made it more terrifying. If it had attacked when they weren’t looking, they would have been entirely unaware.

Hallmark, the Knight, cut Its head off. The head fell to the ground with a quiet thump, though the body remained standing. After removing all its limbs, Lina approached the monster.

Blace’s arrow pointed directly at it.

“Cut open the chest,” She ordered. “If it has a human core… I’m afraid we’ve found Blace.”

It did. She held it and moved it around. The tracker pointed right at the faintly glowing core. The guilders around her murmured uneasily. They followed the other two arrows and found another two shambling, mushroom-infested skeletons. The cores were placed within Lina’s pack. The group’s mood had moved past grief and straight to rage.

The Dungeon had desecrated their allies. The Ice Mage Blace, The Swordsman Titon, and the Axe-wielding Dorin. All lost, their corpses used and twisted to create those shambling monstrosities.

The Dungeon will pay… Oh, will it pay.

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The Dungeon, Medea Island

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After collecting the cores they believed to belong to their allies, the ‘hero’ raid made the journey back up through the dungeon. Their first hurdle was getting back to the castle. After a few hours of stumbling through the mushroom forest, they eventually worked out which part was denser and which was thinner. They returned to the castle in the cavern’s center and made their way back to the sewer grate that led to the fourth floor. Though nothing was strong enough to stop them, the time it took them to figure out how to get back was an added annoyance.

After they emerged from my entrance, I allowed myself a mental ‘pat on the back.’ They had taken the bait; hook, line and sinker.

They also seemed… very angry. Well, if they didn’t already want me dead for the bounty, they certainly want to see me dead now.

The next step is to fill the forest with ‘fake’ Mushroom Zombies I had prepared. Bipedal, humanoid mushrooms supported by a denser and more rigid kind of flesh that you could equate to bones. These didn’t look human at all; their limbs were purposefully disproportionate and asymmetrical. Some ended in blade-like appendages, and others in large mace-like growths. Did you know that fungus, as a cell type, is remarkably similar to nerve cells? These new monsters didn’t have any central brain. Too vulnerable. Instead, I gave them a thicker nervous system than any human possessed and had ‘nodes’ at specific points. Such as joints.

My creations must have passed a threshold at some point since all the mana I was dumping into them was suddenly tied up in forming a core.

I’m pretty proud of them, to be honest. They’re horrible monstrosities out of a child’s nightmare, but they’re my monstrosities. So there they were. My fungal zombies. They shuffled and gurgled appropriately, but I still felt something was missing…

Ah! Yes. A hive-mind!

I quickly formed a ‘Brain Shroom’ out of one of the zombies in the densest part of the forest. It was mostly ‘nerve’ tissue and well-rooted in the ground. I formed a ‘mana-bond’ between it and all the wandering zombies, and suddenly they were much more coordinated.

Yes… Perfect. Hehehe.

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