Dungeon Annihilation 6 (Patreon)

Might as well fill the weekend for the few times I've missed an upload over the last few weeks. Here you guys go. I'm about out of my backlog of these lol. 

Chapter 6

Regan

I looked at the three dead adventurers and the four that were still barely alive. I had wanted to capture all of them, but the two ladies at the back of the party had bolted. I almost had them at the end, but alas fate wasn’t with me. I made sure to give them a scare with my new entrance. 

“That was fun, wasn’t it, Set?” I asked my trusty fairy. Her shadow magic was what made it possible to ambush the party as they reached the second floor. 

“Yes, master,” Set replied with a floating bow. 

“Did you guys have fun?” I asked the gathered goblins. They roared and made nonsensical noise. “I’ll take that as a yes. Still, I was surprised I could understand those people’s language.”

“Dungeon magic lets you understand most languages,” Set replied.

“Too bad it doesn’t work on the goblins,” I muttered. Shaking my head from the idle thoughts, I created a new room for the three humans and one elf that had been captured. 

This was probably the best I could do for a while as humans tended to get anal about things taking members of their race. I would have to pick off a few here and there to grow my stock. Definitely would have to wait until more people are coming into the dungeon. Those two girls escaped, but we were in the middle of nowhere, I should have time to build up the tower before anyone comes knocking.

My goblins threw the humans and elf into the cell. Some of the feral goblins reached through the bars and gave roars as they tried to get at them. The noise soon reached a level I was getting annoyed at. I moved over to the bars and copied what the woman with red eyes did forming a spell on the bars. Some mana and a moment later, over fifteen goblins were blasted across the cell colliding with the wall and bars across the room.

Even as dumb as they were, they learned not to touch the bars with that one warning. I ordered a goblin to stand guard at each corner and two on each door. I wouldn’t have anyone escaping my cells easily. I left the escape key the same. I wanted to see how intelligent the other races were on this world as well as the dungeon magic controlling the escape phrase.

“Set, come get me when one of the humans or elf recover. I want to ask them some questions.” 

“Yes, Master.”

I moved up to the next floor. With Zombie carving away under the tower, I had plenty of stone to work with. With some chemical reorganizing, I can make quite a degree of materials to build with. The tower as it was currently, was a white rough stone. It made the structure look like a ruin from the outside. Some dungeon cores might be happy with that, but I was not. 

First, I altered some of the stone, so it took a smooth black marble appearance. Then I went ahead and raised it to my max limit. At Tier one Level three, that was fifteen floors. In the blink of an eye, my tower rose a hundred and thirty meters. A decent height for any building even back in my old world. 

I outlined the top and bottom of each floor on the outside wall with a blue glass that I found on one of the adventurers. I was appalled by the mana cost and could only do the first five floors. I then poured mercury gas also something I got from the adventurers, they were a nice treasure trove, into the tubes. 

I created a simple light spell and poured it through the gas. They blazed to life glowing a deep blue. I only turned on the sections that people had reached. I planned to make it a public marker for anyone coming into the dungeon to know where their predecessors had fallen.

The levels were automatically separated by stone floor of the same material. What was interesting was the floor’s size. The first five floors all had five kilometers. The next five had ten, then the last five had fifteen. I was worried about the future, according to Set there were ten levels were tier. It was easily to calculate if the trend stayed the same, I would have fifty kilometers a floor. 

“You can merge floors to make one large floor. Environments usually take up more than a fifty kilometer stretch of land after all,” Set said cutting into my musings. I must have mumbled something out loud. I was prone to do that when I was working on a project.

“Interesting. I could already think up plenty of ways to use that to my advantage,” I sent back. I remembered the hundreds of thousands of movies and science fiction that existed on Earth. From the infromation in my head, I knew I could use most of them with a few modifications. If I had a mouth, it would have an evil grin as I imagined a void for the adventurers to fall through forever.

“Master. One of them are awake,” Set sent to me drawing me from my musings.

“Roger.” I flashed my focus over to the cells. An elf woman was awake and was checking on her fellows. “Greetings. I am Regan. Your belevant host,” I said to the woman. She jerked her head up and looked at where my voice had come from.

“Dungeon host! I request that we be released,” she said bowing her head to the ground.

“And why should I do that?” I asked impressed that she was keeping her cool in the situation.

“We can trade! We have plenty of ways that we can help you for our safety,” she said not raising her head from the ground. 

“I appreciate the offer, but right now you’re helping more than you could know,” I replied with a snicker. The adventurers were giving me twice the amount of mana than the goblins were. I would go up another step soon if I stopped working on projects around the dungeon.

“Please! At least release Aris! She has a sister that is dying and needed the gold to pay the priest to heal her! That is the only reason she was with us,” the woman explained while tears ran down her face. 

“From what I understand this is part of the danger when diving into a dungeon. Should I release every bug that comes inside me?” I asked with some sarcasm.

“Please…” she said still not raising her head.

I went silent for a few minutes. Not because I wanted or needed to think about it, but because I wanted her to stew. After nearly ten minutes had passed, I replied with one word. “No.”

She suddenly flew towards the bars likely to plead but ended up being blasted back several meters to collided with the wall of the cell. The impacted caused her to lose her breath and she collapsed twitching until she passed into unconsciousness. I just shook my head at the foolishness of it.

“Let me know when they wake up,” I said to Set then moved back to the next floor. 

~~~

I had… a lot of space to fill up. I liked that I got five kilometers per floor but thinking of things to actually put in them was a hassle, more for the fact as I could think of some many things to put in them. For the first five floors, I decided to keep the same pattern going and filled them with pillars. I added a larger variety of traps to them to with the fifth floor having a few boulder traps that could cause problems through the entire floor if a party were to trigger one of them.

I also moved the cages up to the sixth floor. That took some work. I found while working that I could teleport my creatures around the dungeon. That was not true for monsters or mortals that were there against their will. Thankfully, I decided to do it while the adventurers were still out cold.

The goblins put up a fight. They knew we were moving them and were crowded towards the back of the cage not allowing us to separate them. The big guy was smarter than he let on. Eventually, I had to gas them unconscious. It wasn’t sleeping gas. I just poured enough carbon dioxide in there to chock them. I loved the environmental control I had over everything in my own dungeon. 

I was also studying the magic behind how I truly effected things. Like I initially thought, it reminded me more and more of a computer language. The more words I learned, the more complicated I could get. I to summon a few more goblins to replace the five I lost while the adventurers were here anyway, I took advantage of it and took a mental picture of the summoning circle by carving it on a pillar.

“I can understand this with a glance, but can’t understand the guttural roars of the goblins,” I mumbled shaking my head. My dungeon magic let me translate the words in the magic almost instantly as long as I had a spot to work from. Once I had Set draw the word for summoning, the rest unfolded like a flower in the sun.

“Master. When are you going to make a boss for the fifth floor?” Set sent to me while I was looking over the circle.

“I should get to that, shouldn’t I?” I sent back.

“It is a good form of defense and protection for your core,” she replied.

“Alright. Come to the fifth floor,” I sent then moved to the center of the fifth floor. Set joined me after a few seconds. She landed on one of thousands of little pedestals I had embedded in on the pillars. That would give her plenty of places to land and talk to me. 

I looked around. This would be the first true challenge to proceed further into the dungeon. I thought about what the floor should look like. I decided to go with a wide bridge over a drop that was magically enchanted. That way even though there was only fifty meters worth of a drop, enough to kill a human from earth, but not quite for sure here, it would act like it was close to three or four hundred meters. 

The magic washed over the floor, and a gothic bridge at sunset formed in front of me. I whistled as I glanced over the edge and saw the bottom was covered in a fog, how the spell to extend the drop appeared to outside viewers. I went ahead and made the wall of the floor into a gothic city as well, purely for aesthetics. A zigzagging stair led to the next floor. With this I got several ideas for the next theme.

Finished with that, I turned to Set. “Alright, give me the run down.” 

“As a general rule. The boss monster is usually similar to the monsters before it or a weaker version of the monsters after it. The boss will be permanent. From what I understand, it is very hard to change afterwards. Make sure that you will be comfortable with your choice,” Set explained. “The monster will pull in several times the amount of mana as a normal summoning. You want to make sure you have enough to fuel the spell.”

“Got it,” I said then looked at my choices. I hadn’t decided what to do for the next floors, but I was using goblins for the first five floors. My modified ones were a good candidate for becoming a boss. With a bit more modification, I felt I could make it a bit intelligent. 

I created the summoning circle, then concentrated on making it a boss monster. Since I wanted a modified goblin, I needed to have a skeleton included. There was an adventurer that was close to death. While the mana from his death would be a decent addition to my tank, I felt it was better to use him to make my boss stronger. 

Two of my bone goblins dragged the nearly dead fire mage into the center of the summoning circle. I levitated the done dagger above the man’s heart. Since it was a monster I would be creating, I wanted to ‘do’ the deed myself. With a bit of mental force, the dagger shot straight down and plunged through the man’s heart.

A moment later, the complexity of the circle nearly tripled. I didn’t miss a beat and carved it on the wall for later examination. I would be an idiot to miss that knowledge. Shadows formed in the room as the summoning circle turned three different colors. Red, green, and black mixed to make an evil looking spell construct.

Finally, a figure formed in the circle. It was a male as tall as a human coming in at just short of two hundred centimeters. I expected him to be gnarled like the other goblins, but he had smooth dark green skin. A hairless head and eyes that leaked shadow formed his head. Long ears with points that looked like something had taken a bite out of them framed his head. 

A trench coat that looked like it was made from bone was draped around him. In one hand, he had a long scimitar with a bone handle. In the other, a rifle that also appeared to be made from bone. Runes related to fire were engraved on the side. 

After a few more moments, the magic vanished, and he dropped to the ground. With deft movements, he sheathed the weapons and bowed towards me. “Master. Thank you for bringing me into the world.”

“I expect you to work hard for me. Anyone that wants to pass by you had better kill you three times over,” I said looking the goblin over. 

“So, you will it,” he bowed his head even further. 

“I think I’ll call you Pride. You will yield only to those worthy,” I said looking him over. I watched as I felt the magic that made him up shifted a little. It was like his mind was filling out more. 

He exposed his fangs which were wickedly sharp. “I can’t wait.”