Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 42 (Patreon)

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I was already manipulating the earth around us as the Kingsguard dashed in. Without the massive numbers advantage that I’d maintained against the [Astral Monk], just delaying and surviving wasn’t a viable tactic. Furthermore, I doubted that he was under mind control—a cursory examination told me that none of the items on his body had the same magic signature as the ring that had influenced Sarah the [Astral Monk].

Besides, logic said that they wouldn’t send a second person under the influence if the first one had been taken out of the equation. On top of all of that, the [Divine Assassin] seemed to actively take pleasure in the hunt, which Sarah had never demonstrated. All signs pointed to him not being under control.

In short, the tactics that had won me the last lopsided battle weren’t going to work. I had to be active in this fight.

I felt the formation of the second [Darkness] spell even as he dashed in.

Think fast. My dungeon perception meant that my thoughts moved fast enough to process the situation before everything properly played out, but there still was little time to be had.

The seed of darkness was opening already, placed right in the middle of the three of us adventurers. If I had to guess, the Kingsguard was probably trying to engage his stealth skill again and [Assassinate] us with the assistance of the stealth skill powerful enough to shake my dungeon’s eyes.

That meant that him entering the darkness was my soft loss condition. It wouldn’t be completely over if he made it in, obviously, but preventing him from doing so had to be my number one priority—that, or getting us out of the darkness first. Preventing him from striking at us in the dark would make this fight significantly easier.

With a thought, I had rock shooting up in front of us. The [Divine Assassin] wasn’t moving fast enough to smash through six inches of solid stone, but he started running on the side of the wall, defying gravity with a [Wallrun]. Continuing to form a wall wasn’t going to stop him, especially as he started running up the stone extension faster than I could create it.

“Back!” I shouted, helping the [Shieldbearer] move away from the rapidly ballooning spell. It would envelop us before we could get out of its range, but that was fine as long as I could keep the Kingsguard from making it in.

He was getting close to the ceiling, having chosen to continue racing my [Reshape] with raw speed and his [Wallrun]. He’d beat me, clambering over the wall even as the three of us sprinted through a rapidly darkening room, but I’d accounted for that.

I opened an air vent in the ceiling, compressing it far more than I usually did. Whereas I’d normally create an opening around the width of my forearm, I made it no wider than my finger. As a result, the blast was less a sudden rush of wind and more a needle made of air.

It didn’t kill him, but it did achieve its intended purpose. The full force of hundreds of gallons of air compressed into an area the size of a fist blasted the Kingsguardin the face, forcing him to drop his mobility spell to defensively cast [Personal Shield]. Though the blast didn’t make it all the way through, the raw force of it sent him tumbling backward, falling head over heels off the impromptu wall I’d formed.

I’d bought us enough time to make it through the thirty feet of darkness, using my dungeon senses to guide the three of us around the monsters I’d placed in this room.

We came out the other side without sustaining a single injury. With a command to my monsters to avoid the people inside the darkness, they hadn’t provided any issue to us.

Alright. I’d prevented us from getting into the worst possible combat situation. Now I had to capitalize on that.

Just to be safe, I continued forming more walls out of stone just inside the darkness, walling it off from entry, but it looked like the [Divine Assassin] no longer had an interest in getting into it.

I sent my monsters at him. For a second, I cursed myself for not experimenting to make the earth constructs faster, but that wasn’t something I could change so I ignored it. They were numerous enough to largely block the path to us, anyway, especially when in combination with the now walled-off sphere in the center of the room where the [Darkness] was already fading, its caster no longer interested in maintaining it.

“The dungeon is moving,” Jackson said, disbelieving. “The hell? How rare is that?”

“Happens,” Ed said. “Jus’ be happy it ain’t tryin’ to end us with it.”

“I have to get Farrell in on this,” Jackson muttered. “She’ll go wild.”

“Eyes on the fight, fellas,” I said, closing my own and observing my enemy with the dungeon. “We’ve still got an assassin after us.”

Still, this was good. The tempo favored us now that we’d retreated from the initial barrage of blows, and the fact that they were feeling comfortable enough to make small talk about the nature of my dungeon was proof to that.

That didn’t mean we could let our guard down, though. My monsters were advancing forward, snakes riding the earth constructs marching around the walled-off section.

My two [Displacer Snake]s were among their number, I realized, popping here and there and taking chunks of earth with them. Notably, none of them were accidentally killing their fellow snakes or chipping the earth constructs—maybe the [Displace] didn’t affect other living creatures? That would make sense, given the fact that they were way smaller. I wondered what their spells would amount to.

An answer would come soon. The [Divine Assassin] had chosen to avoid the bulk of the earth constructs by simply running over the sphere I’d made to block off his [Darkness].

That wasn’t going to be enough, though. He was flanked on either side by constructs, and while they weren’t going to be able to reach him with their limited range, they didn’t exist in a vacuum.

I opened air vents under the feet of three constructs where they walked over them, pushing them upwards at an angle that would see them falling on or near the [Divine Assassin].

The constructs themselves were still too slow to deal any significant damage to the Kingsguard, but they weren’t alone. As they fell, snakes slithered off them at speed, including both [Displacer Snake]s.

While the forces I was throwing at him were designed to challenge adventurers of a level far lower than him, these were being controlled by my intelligence, and the dungeon was actively changing to assist them.

As the [Divine Assassin] took another step forward, I collapsed the stone underneath him.

To his credit, he was able to catch himself after stumbling for only a half-second, but even that was enough to capitalize on.

A [Displacer Snake] tore itself out of space, and the air around the [Divine Assassin] warped.

It marked him.

Even as the Kingsguard ran, more mindful of me putting traps and releasing air vents in his way, he started casting another [Darkness]. This time, he cast it just in front of him, and after a second or two of running—during which two earth constructs took a swing at him, both utterly ineffective misses—he entered the spell again, disappearing nearly instantly, dodging the obstructions I raised.

A heartbeat later, a snake appeared in the midst of the spell, and my heart skipped a beat.

The mark beats the stealth spell.

“In the darkness!” I shouted. “Left side! Do something!”

The two guards finally started making their move, shaking themselves out of their reverie as they realized that the dungeon itself wasn’t going to be enough to fight them off.

This time, Jackson got into a more offensive stance, preparing mana in his shield and charging forward.

Ed started shooting into the darkness, blindly firing [Dispel Magic] arrows into it. His first one went wide—whether it was nerves or something else, I couldn’t tell—but his second one took out a fair chunk of it. It wasn’t enough to totally annihilate it or even enough to reveal the [Divine Assassin], but it limited his cover even as the darkness kept spreading.

A snake reappeared.

“Follow my finger!” I shouted at Ed, pointing directly at where it was. “I have a bead on him!”

“Gotcha,” the [Arcane Archer] said, readjusting his aim. “Thanks.”

He loosed an [Explosive Arrow], breathing hard.

It didn’t quite hit his mark, but I could perceive the detonation even through the darkness.

I felt my [Displacer Snake] die. Fuck.

And then I could see a stumbling figure sprinting through the dark. He’d used the assistance of my snake to attack—killing the snake in the process, which was a bit of a shame— and he’d revealed the Kingsguard.

I grew rock in front of him, then grew more behind him. Going into stealth had made him more lax, lowered his guard because he’d thought that nothing could hit him, and so he wasn’t quite able to dodge out of the way as an angled wall sprouted from the ground ahead of him.

He didn’t slam into the wall either, but stopping himself took all the momentum he’d had away. I wouldn’t have had time to continue using [Reshape] around him if he’d simply run, but the time that the [Arcane Archer] had bought me was proving to be invaluable. Ed kept shooting, keeping the [Divine Assassin] on his toes and crucially stopping him from realizing that the ground around him was starting to encase him.

“You can stop shooting,” I told Ed. “The dungeon’s working.”

“Got it,” he said. “Jack! Gonna do somethin’?”

“I’m not going into the darkness,” the [Shieldbearer] replied. “The enemy is far too strong inside there.”

Might not be a problem in another moment.

Even an opponent as powerful as this one had their weaknesses—in this case, apparently, the [Divine Assassin] was a lot less powerful when he was the one on the defensive. He’d not managed to figure out what was going on until the very last second, and then it was already too late.

He was trapped.

This was… really convenient, huh? I hadn’t considered this option as much before. Well, to be fair, the last time I’d had to fight off a Kingsguard, it’d been against a mind-controlled [Astral Monk] who’d punched through solid rock like it was little more than wet paper, so it hadn’t really been a viable solution then, but I had to acknowledge that my [Reshape] was rather extremely useful against lower level enemies with less explosive power.

What could he even do about it? He was surrounded on all sides by stone, and—

The presence inside the impromptu prison I’d made disappeared.

Ah.

It wasn’t a disappearance in the same way as the stealth skill he’d used earlier—maybe he was out of those, I didn’t know and couldn’t tell—but he was no longer in the cage nonetheless.

A moment later, he rematerialized outside the cage, strands of darkness coalescing into a human form. If I read the skill correctly, that was a [Shadow Step].

This wasn’t over yet, but if I had my way, it would be soon.

I activated [Spawn Monster], creating an earth construct right next to him. When the [Divine Assassin] stumbled away from that, I cast it again, once again spawning a monster within a single foot of him.

For someone whose entire gimmick relied on surprising the enemy, he wasn’t very good at dealing with surprise himself.

One wrong step saw him sprinting away from a monster straight into an air vent, and I let the compressed air rip free with a grim satisfaction.

The [Divine Assassin] was sent fully flying into the air, and then the second [Displacer Snake] struck, popping into existence at his neck.

A single snakebite wouldn’t kill him, but it was the first actual damage I’d dealt to him this entire time. With the sudden jolt of damage while he was in midair combined with the venom starting to take effect…

All at once, the [Darkness] dropped and light returned to the room.

“His concentration broke!” I shouted.

“I got it,” Jackson said.

The [Shieldbearer] finally made a move himself, activating the mana that he’d been building up to [Shield Bash] his way forward.

It was a fairly powerful skill, I’d give him that. With the amount of mana invested, he could get himself to a speed and power high enough to simulate a freight train.

That freight train of force closed the distance between himself and our mutual enemy in a single second, and when he struck, I could swear I feel the floor shake beneath my feet.

One blow was all it took. The [Shield Bash] was a little unassuming at first, but with the weight of several hundred pounds of armor and shield behind it, it was nothing short of a knockout.

The [Divine Assassin] practically flew as he was hit, slamming into one of the domes of stone I’d raised up during the fight. He impacted it with a sickening crunch, and when he slid down bonelessly, he left a trail of blood on the rock.

He must’ve had defensive spells mitigating the damage to some extent, since he was still alive, but he was well and truly unconscious.

“Well done,” I said, making my way over to the downed Kingsguard. “Thank you for your assistance.”

“The Kingsguard threat is real,” Jackson said. “I hadn’t thought that they would be back.”

“I ‘ppreciate your saving his life,” Ed said, placing a hand over his heart. “You ‘ave my respect and my thanks.”

“Not a problem,” I said, tossing a [Spare the Dying] at the downed Kingsguard. It wouldn’t do for him to die on my watch, even if he was an enemy.

“You were a lot more helpful than I thought you would be,” Jackson admitted. “But the dungeon…”

I glanced across the room, following his gaze. There were at least two and a half domes peppering the area where I’d tried to trap our enemy, and the monsters I’d summoned were still lumbering about, not attacking my guards because of the orders I’d given them.

“The dungeon’s rather active in defending me,” I said. “Perks of being a dungeonbound.”

“Noted,” Jackson said, nodding. “I’ll have to keep that in mind. That’s far more active than any dungeon I’ve delved before… is this a new category?”

“Ah, don’t get him started,” Ed said, walking over and slapping me on the back, a wide smile painted on his face. “He’ll talk your ear off with his theories if you let him.”

“Noted,” I replied in kind.

“Anyway,” Jackson said, pulling himself off his tangent. “Let’s kill this Kingsguard, shall we?”

Wait, what?