Dungeon Annihilation 2 - 22 (Patreon)

Hey Guys! I hope the week wasn't too rough for anyone. I'm personally glad that the USA hasn't erupted into civil war lol

Regan/Earle

Returning to my main dungeon, I found Raven right where I left her. I was gone for only about an hour, but for anyone waiting it was still a decently long time. I was glad though that she was that patient.

“Sorry about that. Now, about that spot?” I asked.

“Master. Welcome back. I can show you the way if you’d like to go now,” Raven said bowing her head. She ears leaking shadow like on the first few days after her change. She had learned to suppress it while in the town, but she said she let it out in the dungeon as it allowed her to relax a bit.

“Sure. I’m not doing anything at the moment,” I said though I still hadn’t dealt with the necromancers after wasting most of yesterday on Yoshida. All in good time, I figured. I called for Set and Sikara to join us. While I wanted Set to see the location as well, I planned to leave Sikara there as a guard. With her skills over the shadow realm being on par with my own, she would be a great assist of deterrence.

I teleported us to a spot in the forest. With it being night, and apparently there being another large party happening we had no trouble entering the town. Raven led us around the town to the Thonaca side of the valley. A bit of a distance outside that side of town, we came to a large lot that could easily hold a mansion and have plenty of space left over.

Looking to either side of the plot, I found that areas for future development had already been marked off. From the looks of it, I would have a few nobles as neighbors. I laughed at the little countess’s play. Either she had placed me here to watch these nobles or she was trying to get in my good graces by giving me land meant for a noble.

“Do you not like it, master?” Raven asked after I finished laughing at the sight.

“No. It is perfect.” I looked around and even cast out my senses but didn’t detect anyone around us. We were a good way from the actual town. In a few months, the infrastructure might reach out this far if the town continued to grow as fast as it was, but for now we were left alone in the dark.

Striding forward toward the center of the lot, I thought about what I wanted to construct here. A simple hut would do, but I felt that would be a bit lacking for my Earle persona. I had plenty of ideas from Earth that I could pull from, but while I didn’t mind it sticking out, I wasn’t sure that was a good idea.

After expanding my aura a bit from my avatar, an annoying task but doable. I created a chair and sat down looking over the lot. I pictured a manor, mansion, castle, skyscraper, and several other buildings, but nothing really suited my needs. The closest to what I needed, the mansion to hide a place to teleport to just didn’t excite me. I wanted to cause trouble.

After some thought I snapped my fingers and Julie appeared in front of me. Even she needed to sleep and she was horizontal when she appeared falling roughly to the ground. That served to snap her awake as she flared her mana in response.

“Julie.”

At the sound of my voice, she dropped to the ground after dismissing her mana. “My lord! You summoned me?” she asked with an excited tone. “Perhaps you wish to have your way with me!?”

I chuckled at the prospect. I could essentially do whatever I wanted but that was a matter for another time. “Not right now. I wanted to ask about the god you worship. Tell me again what you know.”

“Of course. I didn’t know his name until the messenger told me, but we worshipped the Dark Celestial Cassin.”

“Not god?” I asked noticing the word change.

“Excuse me?” Julie asked confused.

“You said celestial and not god?”

“Master. As mortals reach higher levels of strength, they ascend to Celestia. At tier five they are relabeled as Celestials and gain thousands of years to their lifespan. Tier five would usually be labeled as angels, tier six would be demi-gods, tier seven gods, and if there is something after that, I nor my forebearers have learned of it,” Set explained.

“So you’re saying I can become a god?” I asked with a grin.

“If the legends are true, then yes. I appear to lack that knowledge. Forgive my incompetence,” she said bowing her head.

I reached over and lifted her face. “Trust me. That was a nice little bit of information. The drawback that I have to ask the right question to get the information is a bit annoying, but nothing that is your fault.” Set was my number one servant. She had done well in the past few months to do everything I asked and rarely questioned me. I would be a fool to mess you that type of servitude.

“Tier seven or not, I already see my lord as a god!” Julie exclaimed with her regular fanaticism. I was about to ignore it when I struck on an idea. Back on Earth, gods and goddess normally drew their power from their followers. That might hold true in this world. It just so happened that there were hundreds of thousands of people being oppressed as slaves.

That was it. I knew what I was going to build. Lelune? I’ll show you what a modern mind that has seen centuries of information used to twist the truth can do. I’ll steal her entire clergy, and when I cause Armageddon when I grew bored of this world, the people would only have themselves to blame for giving me the power.

I couldn’t help myself as I slowly started to laugh, and it grew to the maniacal level of the other day when I forced the dryad to destroy the forest around her tree. It lasted about five minutes with the ladies just looking on. Julie seemed to enjoy my enjoyment while the others were straight faced. With a deep breath, I forced the moment to pass.

I stood up and strode to a good place. To be extra safe, I cloaked the area in a darkness so that no one could see anything. It was the birth of a religion, I didn’t want any eavesdroppers. I would have to give the countess a reward. Since she gave me so much land, I would be able to create something truly remarkable.

Cracking my knuckles, I spread my aura out. Dropping the ground in front of several hundred meters, I created a large chasm that separated the land from the rest of the valley. The chasm went all the way to the mountain wall behind the piece of land. Altering the stone and soil, I created a grand bridge that spanned the divide. Moving my aura as we walked, I created a grand parade grounds that led to a magnificent building.

While I was tempted to make it black, since the goddess I planned to create would be of the shadows, I knew the sheer wickedness of it would keep many of the more faint of heart people from coming to the halls. Plus, it would paint an even bigger target on my back for the church.

Thus, I went with something similar to my dungeon. A dark blue stone that appeared gentle. I went with another tower that rose close to four hundred meters tall. It was a bit overkill, but I had a plan for how to write it off if anyone asked. There were enough rooms that thousands of people could be comfortable.

I pulled my aura back once I finished the structure. I had poured a bit more mana that I had wanted into the construction but felt it would serve its purpose. Motioning for the others to follow me, we moved into the building. The doors that were large enough that a giant could walk through them with room to spare opening on their own.

“This… this is amazing!” Julie shouted and the others nodded. Set was the least affected, but even she looked around wide eyed. I moved to a side room and pressed a rune once the ladies were on the platform. We teleported to the topmost floor. A small chapel that would be intended for only the most devout in the future.

“Sit and enjoy,” I said pointing at the pews. They nodded and I moved up to the alter. Reaching into my dimension, I pulled out one of my dungeon shards. I had made a few in preparation for spreading them over the continent once I had run a few more tests on them.

Placing it behind the alter, I allowed it to start to draw in mana while focusing on it becoming a field dungeon. It’s aura rippled out as I felt my mind take a new hold over the area. Feeding it mana from the other two dungeons, its aura quickly covered all the grounds nearby stopping just short of ten or so kilometers.

I could only afford enough mana to get it to tier one level nine. It would be better for it to ascend on its own afterwards. The crystal of the core took a shadowy glow as it grew. Focusing on the spot, I created a statue of a beautiful female elf. I actually used Raven for some inspiration. I made it appear as if the goddess was holding the core in an outstretched hand.

Turning back to the others, I altered my avatar to take the goddess’ form. As I expected being in a female form was a bit… odd. No matter what my body looked like, my mind or even my very soul identified as male. “What do you think?” I asked then snickered at my now higher pitched voice.

I had long black hair that had pinpoints of light glittering among the strands. My figure was average. I wanted to project a beauty that anyone might reach, though as a man, I couldn’t be sure I succeeded. A black dress that highlighted my figure took the place of my suit.

“You look beautiful by every standard of the word,” Set and Sikara both said.

I nodded then looked at the outsiders of the dungeon. “Well?”

“It is a bit disconcerting, but I’m sure I can get used to it. You’re living shadows,” Raven said after some thought.

“No matter what form you take, I can see the death behind you,” Julie said squirming a little.

“Good. Not that I plan to take this form very often,” I said. Spreading my arms wide, I grinned. “Say hello to the Goddess Nyx, Goddess of the night!”

Changing back to my Earle form. It might be good to create a clone of sorts in case I’m too busy. It would be difficult to take multiple forms if I was in the middle of something draining. The only thing I feared was that the clone might end up taking the belief over me. That was the main reason, until I learned more, I would manually take the form if needed.

With a wave of magic, I lite up the new district sized area on the edge of the town that I made. Lights glowing with a soft blue color illuminated the area from sleek lanterns. I had seen a few magic lights, so I knew that they weren’t too uncommon a thing and that I could use them in my little neighborhood.

Turning Sikara, I looked her over. She clearly resembled the oni on the Envy floors. I would need to make some changes to allow her to operate around the temple without drawing any unwanted attention. Plus, I wanted to make some ‘followers’ that people would interact with. Maybe I could even create a facility part of the temple that allowed parties to take a priest or priestess with them into the dungeon for healing services.

I looked at the ladies in front of me. There were plenty of races that I could focus on for the temple caretakers. Elves were rare but there were quite a few in the town due to Ioa’s influence. They might make a good base for the race since their beauty was attractive to most people. Then there was beastkin like what Set and I took for our regular forms.

As a dragonkin we were rarer than rare. If I made the caretakers in that form it would attract some attention, but it might be hard to explain where all of them came from to such interested parties. I was already going to have to teleport all the people I was going to create and have them come into the valley through legitimate means.

Thinking it over for a while, I settled on a hybrid dragonkin-oni. I was sure I could come up with something if pressed, or I could just play stupid. For now, I settled on creating two dozen. I was already pushing my mana to the limit with all the work I’d done today. Even with the unholy taint storm around my core in the north and the mortals in the main dungeon, I had nearly exhausted my expendable mana for the next couple days.

With another surge of mana putting me under ten percent of my total across the three cores, two dozen figures formed on the pews behind the ladies. Evenly split between men and women, the race had features from both dragon-kin and oni. They possessed a mix of horns that either protruded straight like the oni or curved back like mine and Set’s. Patches of scales covered parts of their bodies while skin covered the rest. There was a mix dark and light skin since I’d set just about everything to random.

The new devout looked at their new bodies then each other. I had set their personalities to random and only made sure to make their loyalty maxed. Of course, I included the knowledge of everything that I was trying to accomplish, even though Set claimed I didn’t need to bother with such things. Them knowing how I planned to use the False goddess made things easier in case a sudden discovery caused them to go crazy.

I retook the goddess form I planned to use. The bell like voice washing through the chapel. “Welcome my acolytes. Acolytes of Nyx!”

Clarity washed through the acolytes and they all stood and bowed their head. Lelune had some crazy levels of ceremony that her followers had to go through, but I was going to forgo that for the most part. For now, I just had them pray like on Earth. I would add some other things to the religion as they became necessary.

More as something to mark the occasion, I summoned Sikara up to the altar. Placing my hand on her head, I altered her body to be a bit closer to the others in the chapel. Mainly just adding scales to her body in a few places.

“Sikara will be in charge for now until I have seen what each of you are capable of. We will teleport outside the town tomorrow and walk in like the mortals of this world. This is for your safety. My other form,” I switched to Earle, “will be the one with you then. For tonight. Sleep or explore. This temple is your place to grow and play as you see fit.”

The acolytes bowed after placing their hands together then made their way out of the chapel. Once they teleported out of here, they wouldn’t be able to return with a summoning from me. This was as much a security measure as it was a sham. If one of them got captured, they couldn’t lead people to my core easily.

Once all the acolytes left, I turned to the remaining ladies. “Raven, you’ve waited, but it finally time for you to get your revenge.”

“Master?” she asked excitedly, hope in her eyes.

“That’s right. I no longer have a need of Ivan, so we can finally get rid of him.”

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