Dungeon Novel: Chapter Seventeen (Patreon)

“Yes, what is it for, you suggested it?” Unbound asked suspiciously.

“It is to make a contract between you and someone else,” Elvinia said.

“Why?”

“BecauseDungeonsareknowntogoinsaneanddestroyeverythingwithoutenoughcompany.” She spat out in a blur.

“Are you able to repeat that and slower?” Unbound queried.

“It is because even with their fairy dungeons eventually go insane and destroy anything if they don’t have people to have as company.” She said shyly. “And fairies tend to follow unless they get the same.”

“So why is that instability present in every dungeon core?” Unbound could help but ask a question. “Surely it would eventually change.”

“To change it, the Core requires a lack of thought and feeling. It doesn’t work because without thought or feeling the result is the same. The dungeon starts obliterating reality around them.”

Unbound gave his agreement to the reasoning before purchasing all the options she said about leaving him only 35 shop points for any other purchases. The knowledge about the skills immediately took root within his mind.

How to infuse his normal mana into a material to make its properties far beyond anything he currently had. A pebble, able to hold the weight of an entire castle, very doable. A sword, able to slice through steel with all the resistance of a blade of grass.

With the Contracting skill came the knowledge of how to tie himself to another. How to empower them with his own power and how they can share the burden of an immortal existence. How his bond with Elvinia affected them, what it might evolve too.

The third ‘skill’ didn’t do anything, he felt nothing happen. The Extra Entrance didn’t seem to magically create anything and based on what Elvinia said before it may be something he had to delve through the Void for. To place an entrance upon another world he would have to find another one first.

“Would I not have to search through the Void to find somewhere else where I could place another entrance?” He asked the Void fairy. She looked at his core for a moment before rubbing her head sheepishly.

“Yes, you would, and we can’t do that until… Ahh. We wasted the points then.” She smacked her face slightly with anger. “Sorry Unbound.” He gave a sign of dismissal it didn’t matter really, and he liked to see the fairy flustered when she didn’t think about something. It was funny and very different to her usually knowledgeable demeanour.

After ribbing the fairy for her mistake slightly Unbound moved onto to using Material Reinforcement, he didn’t want anyone to just cut through and ignore where he had placed traps and ambushing defenders.

He reinforced every wall in the cavern apart from where he had placed the copper ore vein and it took a very long time. Each small piece of stone required truly massive amounts of mana to strengthen it to a degree where it couldn’t be broken easily.

He had to fend off several undead invasions before he even covered half of the first floor. Several of the strange skeletons invaded and when he absorbed more of them the name unlocked more.

Skeleton Hybrid: Weakest Heroes Variant

“Ahh. I think I know some more now Unbound.” Elvinia said once she saw the name. “The Heroes and the Necromancer and everyone thought that they had mutually killed each other but if this is anything to go by then something else happened.”

Unbound felt far worse with having an entrance within the Deadlands and felt eager to strengthen himself more and faster. He felt less stable with his current strength and pumped more mana into the defenders within the chambers where he was trying to evolve some defenders further.

Currently, he was simultaneously having battles between the Bone Plated Undead and deer to hopefully create better, stronger versions of both. He was trying with the boar variant due to having more knowledge about that pattern.

Loud scrapes and clacks sounded out from the room with the Bone Plated Undead, several boars were clashing together to try and create a unit which could fight several other fighters at once. One boar had survived two battles sported tougher armour and scythe-like tusks.

Unbound kept working upon the new defenders within the fighting chambers when Elvinia, who was keeping watch over the women, told him they had woken up. And they were angry.

The two armour wearing women stood within weapons in hands and were guarding the women with the priest robes. One of the women wore a steel plate and held a large longsword and a kite-shaped shield. Her helm was missing, and a large head of blonde hair flowed over a pair of pointed ears.

The other women were armoured in black leather that held tightly t0 her figure and wielded a pair of daggers. She wore a small mask and had dark blue almost black hair were two fluffy cat ears poked out.

The final member was the guarded lady dressed in the pure white priest robes and holding onto a small book. She had strawberry blonde hair and a regal expression upon her face, high cheekbones and thin lips twisted into a frown.

Unbound left them there, for now, he wanted to spawn several elementals and a Void elemental in case they were hostile to himself or Elvinia before he asked her to speak to them. He created six earth elementals around the house and eight wind elementals in case that tried to outrun their slower earthen comrades.

He also made fire elementals for the first time for extra destructive potential. He set up two water elementals in case the fire elementals set the forest alight. He set all the elementals in a ring around the room before sending Elvinia towards the room.

Elvinia sat upon the higher branches of a close-by tree as Unbound opened a small doorway in the holding cell. As the doorway opened the women inside tensed and raised weapons higher in the air. As they slowly walked out of the room and saw the elementals they flinched slightly as if expecting an attack.

When none came the Priestess looked around before saying something aloud.

“Greetings Dungeon, are you the new dungeon from the Deadlands?”