Dungeon Annihilation 2 (Patreon)

Hey guys! Yes, I know I owe you an Azaria, but End of the month is the worst time for me at work. I meant to get it done earlier but life you know. Anyways, since there was such a good reception on this, I'm going ahead and dropping chapter 2. Hopefully it will hold you over until tomorrow when a regular DR drops. 

Chapter 2

Regan

We had traveled through most of the night looking for a decent place to set up my dungeon. I wanted to get started building my dungeon before the sun came up. I didn’t know much about the people living in this world. That would be one of the first tasks I decided. It wasn’t smart to fight a war without information. 

“How is it Set?” I asked as we came to a clearing. I had found quickly that we could communicate via telepathy early on which allowed her to scout much further ahead. 

“No monsters, master. It is safe,” Set sent back. 

I directed Zombie ahead and we emerged on foot of the valley walls. We were towards the north where the two mountain chains had merged when I was falling through the sky. I had wondered if there were sites of increased magical concentration and Set had confirmed for me. There were things called Lay Lines. If I could tap into one of those, I could have as much mana as I could ever need.

“I don’t suppose we can reach the peak?” I asked more to myself than my companions.

“It would be unlikely. Zombie will perish come the morning light and I won’t fare much better. I won’t die, but it will hurt considerably.”

“Very well. Zombie. Head to the highest point you can reach before the morning sun.”

Zombie quickly devoured the mountain. Unhindered by more human limits, she could cross sections of cliff face that would be straight impossible for a regular human. After about half an hour, we reach several hundred meters up the mountain side. A small ledge made for the perfect staging spot for me to work from. 

“So, how do I declare that I want to create a tower dungeon?”

“Pretty simple. Just concentrate on it.”

Zombie placed me in the center of the ledge and I did as Set instructed. Nothing happened for several minutes until I finally felt a wave of mana wash out around me. The rock was pulverized and pulled into my core until a kilometer radius had been cleared. A decent chunk of the mountain had been pulled into my core. 

Knowledge flowed into my head about how to create a floor and how to grow my tower. As a tier one level one dungeon core, I could have five floors. The knowledge was clearly imprinted in my head. For now, I created a circular wall at the very edge of my aura and topped it with a stone ceiling. 

As soon as the ceiling was added, I felt an energy rush in from all around the dungeon. I watched as something in the mana wrote on my walls. Th words soon faded from sight, but I made sure to memorize them before they vanished. It helped that the phrase was repeated nearly a thousand times around the circular area of the dungeon.

I felt some knowledge enter my mind like when I summoned Set or even before when the would be necromancer was absorbed by my soul. The meanings of the magical words entered my mind and I found it strikingly similar to a computer code. 

The phrase I learned was strengthen and expand. I looked around and found that my first floor had indeed gained much more space then should be inside it. The one kilometer had dilated to five. It was still empty but I could already think of plenty to stick in here to kill any adventurers as Set called them.

“Never thought I would actually be in one of those other world novels I read just to kill time,” I mumbled with a depriving chuckle. 

“Very good Master. We’ve got our first floor now. You need to decide on the layout out and add creatures to challenge the adventurers,” Set said flying near my core.

“What I wouldn’t give for some machine guns. That would make everyone think twice before they opened those doors,” I mused aloud. 

“Machine guns?” Set asked with a tilt of her head.

“No worries. You’ll find out eventually. Right, building and summoning,” I said looking over the floor. 

While I had no intentions of hiding in this world. It would be prudent not to push my luck to early on. Just from the little magic I’d done so far, I knew there must be people out there much stronger than me. I didn’t need to give them reason to hunt me down. Yet.

I played with over a dozen different ideas, but couldn’t decide on one. Taking another approach, I looked at my mental list of monsters I could summon. I couldn’t tell if I had some interesting choices or not. There was Goblin, Slime, Kobold, Rakshasas, Undead, and Automata. 

“I played with robots in my last life. Let’s hold off on them for now,” I mumbled thinking over the list. I still had a bitter taste to the fact they betrayed me. “Set. Tell me about these races.” 

“Goblins are currently the weakest race. Slimes have a variety of forms but peak at tier two. Kobold are rumored to be quite powerful but in my dungeon memory they are about equal to Goblins. I have never heard of Rakshasas before. Forgive me, master,” Set explained then bowed her horned head at the last race. “Undead are loathed by all mortals. I would not recommend summoning them.”

“It’s fine. I’ll summon a few goblins for now. Is there anything I need to be aware of? I would hate for them to attack me as soon as they were created.”

“You can influence the creation of the creature during the spell. To instill absolute loyalty, concentrate on that part of the spell. It will raise the mana cost.”

“That’s fine.”

I moved to the center of the room and concentrated on summoning a goblin. Two images superimposed before the rougher and uglier version won out. I narrowed my eyes at the issue, but given this was only my second time summoning something I ignored it. 

Ten mana and about thirty seconds later, one of the nastiest creature’s I’d ever seen stood in front of me. It would have only cost five mana but the damn loyalty took a whole five mana to instill in the little bastard. When the summoning circle vanished, it dropped to the ground then immediately stuck its finger in its nose.

“Definitely not a genius,” I said.

“Goblins and Kobolds are severely… lacking in that department, master,” Set replied.

I checked my pool and found after building my dungeon and summoning the goblin I was running on about half a tank. I knew I gained mana from absorbing things, as well as, pulling it in from the environment around me. I needed something more sustainable.

“Set, what other ways are there for me to gain mana?” I asked.

“Death would be main way a dungeon gains mana. However, the change of property of elements generates mana. The burning of a tree for example,” Set explained from Zombie’s shoulder. From what I could tell she was teasing the thing by dangling her leg in front of its mouth then phasing it to shadow as it bit at it.

“If I can get some Zinc, I can make some solar panels.”

“Solar panels, master?”

“They let me absorb energy from the sun.”

“I see. Do you want me to try and find some of this zinc?” Set asked hopping off Zombie.

“No. I have another plan for now,” I replied then moved to the center of the room. I created an opening both on the floor and the ceiling. The hieght of the room was about ten meters so I used a spiral staircase to get to next floor. With that done, I created a door with a simple pressure system so that you had to enter a certain combination before it would open.

I focused on the ground exposed in the opening and tried to push my aura down instead of up. If I had a body, I might have gotten a nosebleed. Finally, I managed to push it down just over five meters. 

“What is this for?” Set asked peering into the hole.

“I’m going to have Zombie mine a tunnel down at an angle towards the mountain and absorb the materials she brings back.”

“Brilliant! You get mana and materials without too much trouble. One of the biggest issue’s tower dungeons have starting out is gathering materials.”

If I had a face, I would have glared at her. That was something you were supposed to tell a guy before he set his course of action. I made sure to add punishing Set for that slip up to my list of things to do. 

I used a bit more of my mana to create a piece of crap pick that Zombie could use to dig with. If she were a mortal, she would have likely broken her hand after the first or second swing. Unfortunately, that was the best I could do at the moment. 

~~~

Three hours later I was Tier one Level three. I was displeased when Set told me that every time I elevated a level, the main contributor to my mana would give me half as much. It was a setback, but I would get past it. 

At least my first floor was taking shape. I decided to keep it simple with hundreds of pillars spaced throughout the floor. Pressure plates tied to arrow traps were the only trap I put on the floor. I did have two dozen goblins now but I was fully disappointed with them. The sat in a corner because I just couldn’t stand them.

I was looking from the knowledge I’d gained from the necromancer, but there wasn’t much to it. If the magic was level based, then he would have likely been level one. I did find some interesting things in what I was calling my digital storage. Anything I absorbed gained a mana representation there with a cost to recreate it. For the most part it was one for one, unless the quality was just too degradation then it cost more to recreate it.

“Why is it always a bone knife, Set?” I asked my dungeon fairy as I levitated the knife in front of me.

“Bone is supposedly good at withstanding mana. If you’re using it to sacrifice someone then quite a bit of mana will be flooded through it.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I said then ordered one of my goblins in front of me. “Set. Do the honors.”

She grabbed the knife that was almost half her size. I ordered the goblin to lay on the ground and she dropped from the air aiming for its heart. There was a spray of blood then nothing. I didn’t get any mana or anything else. There was only a dead body in the middle of my floor.

“Pity,” I mumbled.

“I think that would have been too easy, Master,” Set said phasing to shadow to allow the blood coating her to fall to the ground.

I concentrated on the corpse and used a different spell from the necromancer. A few seconds later the body exploded, and a skeleton emerged. I could tell it was about the same as my reworked Zombie, but it was mindless. At least at this level. 

I ordered another goblin over and had them stand next to each other. Comparing them, I decided the skeleton was the more powerful of the two hands down. The problem then, was I would be hunted by the Church according to Set if I kept playing with this darker magic. Unless I could camouflage the undead signature.

“Wrap yourself around the living one,” I ordered the skeleton. It moved behind the goblin then widened its bones as it clamped down on the creature. After a few seconds, the various types of mana coming off the two creatures covered up the mana that was always present on the undead. “Set. What is this mana called?”

“Unholy, Master.”

“Its remarkably similar to dark mana.”

“I do not know the answer to that, master,” Set said with a bow of her head.

“No worries. I’ll leave it at this one for now. I don’t want to pursue a path that won’t give me results.” 

I moved up to the second floor and raised the walls. My core that had been in the center of the first floor vanished and reappeared on the new floor. Even without a ceiling, it was already recognized as a new floor. Something to remember as I grew, wouldn’t want to raise a floor while under attack from the sky.

A full day had passed, and nothing had bothered me yet. I was actually wanting something to enter my tower. It would be fun to experiment a little. I starred at the setting sun and noticed a large group of silhouettes emerging from the trees. I blinked wondering if my goblins had escaped then realized these were much uglier. 

“Wild goblins?” I asked aloud then mentally grinned. The universe provides. I would have to thank Destruction.