Dungeon Novel: Chapter Fourteen (Patreon)

“I can create another floor now.” Unbound said simply to his void fairy.

“You can.” She replied, with an eerie calmness.

“Lat time I scared you, how would I stop that?” Unbound asked plaintively. He did not enjoy scaring her, he could feel the bond between the two. The bond was strong enough that death might not sever it completely with how thick it was and how much mana passed along.

“This time.” Elvinia said slowly. “You will be able to draw on your affinity mana. That mana pool will be small for now and thus the floor will not be as large as the second one.” Unbound thought about that for a moment, if he shifted the entrance portals so that the second floor became the third, he could make a smaller floor for the second.

He pulled on the new mana pool hesitantly, it was far more powerful than the normal mana, and he could feel how it flowed more easily to his will. He pushed it towards opening another floor, tearing open a space in reality.

He felt the new floor form and felt as the open void widened into the connection he made. He quickly started filling the space with matter. An idea occurred to him, one of his most adaptable creatures was ants which lived in large underground warrens.

He filled up nearly all of the space, leaving a small top from where the ants would naturally collect food from. He then started a tunnel network out of stone and dirt, he didn’t create much, a large chamber for the Queen and smaller storage chambers. He made four twisting tunnel networks but left the rest as dirt and stone for the ants to dig through.

Then was the next course of action, due to the fact any traps may hurt the ants as well he had to make them more deadly. He pulled up several of his variant ant defenders before slowly pumping in a mix of normal mana and his affinity mana, he pushed it all in with a focus on lethality and size. Large ants to focus the attacker’s attention and smaller ants with more deadly venom, mandibles and crushing power.

He didn’t place the void ants within the nest, saving them for another floor with their deadly abilities. He placed nearly all other variants he had created otherwise, even the aquatic variant within a small, flooded tunnel area he created.

Finally, he had a new second floor and rerouted the portals so that the First floor entered the second floor and the second entered the third. He then could place the hardest challenge on the second floor, not the thousands of swarming ants or the difficult to navigate tunnels, the boss, the Queen ant.

He took the queen already within the chamber and designated her as the boss, pushing into the Queen and tying her as a defence of the colony, to rebuild and defend it no matter what. Unbound then watched as he fed more mana into the writhing body.

The front limbs became larger, with thick axe like tops that seemed to glimmer lightly with a small void-based edge. The abdomen became far more heavily armoured, practically cocooned in thick plated chitin, the egg producing organs became more robust and the Queen could create all ant variants apart from void developed ones and other queens.

The most profound change was the magical abilities in their infancy. Weak earth manipulation and buffing powers allowed the Queen to hit at a distance and strengthen herself to hit harder and toughen up.

And there Unbound was satisfied, the Queen was far tougher than the Spider Boss, but he didn’t know the combat abilities of the earthen elemental to compare enough so that boss may be empowered slightly later.

The floor was nearly finished, Unbound had to push out spreads of bushes with a light stone for sunlight, before spawning several rabbits and similar creatures for the ants to consume and work naturally. Having creatures upon the surface would also make a number of ants come to the surface naturally and not bunching them all up in the tunnels for invaders to fight.

“What do you think?” He asked his fairy, knowing she knew far more on building dungeons than him, even with his instincts to help him.

“It seems ok.” Elvinia replied. “I am glad you placed no traps; with the tight tunnels and multitude of ants any invader will struggle immensely anyway.” That followed Unbound’s own thoughts and he was glad to see it returned.

Before he could move to increase the difficulty of the third floor the familiar feel of invaders rang through his mind, only it wasn’t undead this time.

Several men dressed in badly repaired armour and leather piled in, they were covered in dirt and blood and were dragging three women with them. The three women seemed far cleaner than the men, two wearing armour far better quality and the other wearing similar robes to the priest.

They were unconscious and appeared to be there unwillingly, by the drag marks on their garments and the blood on them that matched what was on the men. From what Unbound could tell they seemed like bandits, but no normal bandit would operate in some undead territory because they were massively cowardly and only really attacked those who couldn’t fight back.

Elvinia seemed to dislike them as well and that too was a good reason for Unbound to kill them.

“They are scum.” She stated. “And no dungeon gets a good reputation when they have been used as a bandit den, better we kill them quickly.” With reasons piling up for their deaths Unbound watched and waited as they encountered the denizens of his dungeon.