Dungeon Novel: Chapter Twenty-Six (Patreon)

Unbound purchased several different things with his shop points. He bought the patterns for wolves and boars for more diversity in any natural-based floors and two water-based predatory animals to strengthen any aquatic defenses.

He also bought another trap, a set of barbed fishhooks handing from near-invisible wires from the ceiling. It was a nasty trap, designed to tear at an invader's eyes and rip them out with the barbed hooks. If a hook got caught within someone’s eye it would require powerful healing abilities for the person to keep their sight.

Unbound placed some within the corridors of the fourth floor and as he placed them with Elvinia watching she shivered and pronounced she was to be told everywhere they were placed so she didn’t fly into them. She shuddered when Unbound tested them by spawning a skeleton and forcing it to walk through, hooks caught the jawbone and eye sockets and Elvinia refused to watch.

Satisfied with his new trap Unbound bought several natural metals and plants, he hadn’t yet got to the point of magical plants, but he had several herbs, bushes, trees, and aquatic plants. It would provide a massive boost to the regeneration of shop points and mana when they reproduced naturally.

He had an idea on what he should create as a fifth floor, he had ideas for what he should link as a theme that could work for it. Eventually, he would rework the order and strength of the floors so they had a progression and idea link between them but first he would have to survive the current threats.

To create the floor that he wanted he set up several chambers with several different defenders being constantly bombarded by waves and waves of Undead defenders. Hopefully, he would gain various types of Undead specific hunters. He had shifted the environments as well so that it wasn’t just a barren arena.

Hot stone, craggy cliffs, underwater, waterfalls, tight corridors, forest, open plains, and flooded caverns. He wanted a solution to every threat he could realistically face and more besides, trying to create as many different options as possible for him to fight them with was his current best option.

That was all he could do currently; he was an extremely young Dungeon without many options he could pursue without invaders to fight and new defenders to discover. Elvinia had promised when he was stronger that there would be skills and abilities that can help with boredom and waiting times.

She had described skills such as a boost to his private dimension like a leisure area he could stay with himself and his contacted partners. Skills to help with experimentation and invention with the knowledge that a Dungeon gains.

Apparently, a large part of being a Dungeon was linked to being in contracts, part of the grey area that he was both technically immortal and partially mortal. The power as a Dungeon had to be split out to not shatter what his mind could handle.

One of his possible contractors at the moment was the necromancer, Beda, who had taken to the resources he could provide with gusto, constantly changing and experimenting with her abilities and the Undead she could make.

Unbound could create a normal skeleton, as a result of absorbing a skeleton as a defender, and she could reanimate them as a normal corpse. She had been able to provide several variations of a normal skeletal Undead for him as defenders. Spiny, poisoned, armored, and his own personal favorite an explosive skeleton.

He had thoughts to make the explosive skeleton as a boss for his fourth floor as a final resort kill room. If he could empower the explosive power, radius, and lethality of the explosion it could be a good way to take out a horde of Undead.

It would require the room the boss in to be large enough for a group of Undead and the boss would have to be able to survive the initial assault before it could explode.

Unbound started reshaping a boss room on the fourth floor, trying various layouts to get as many intruders in as possible before detonation. He would test it several times before he committed to the skeleton as a boss.  He would also talk to Elvinia before he locked in the Boss to get a second opinion.

He waited for so long, with only evolving his defenders to fill his time, for several hours. He actually wished for another set of necromancers to attack so he could test his defense against their assault. He had conversed with Elvinia and made minute changes to his Dungeon entrance but eventually, his mind relaxed into a hazy state that barely registered the time passing.

His mind didn’t wake until many days later, with Elvinia sleeping in her own home, as the next wave of assaulting Undead marched into the Dungeon. This time both the Undead and the necromancers were covered in quality armor that glinted with malicious promise.

They marched in rows; the necromancers separate with several Undead around each. Twelve necromancers in total combined with twelve Undead controlled by each necromancer. Unbound made a note to ask Beda about a control limit for necromancers as each group of twelve showed minute differences in the way they moved.

The necromancers didn’t slow down as they entered the Dungeon, apparently deciding that trying to research the Dungeon would only lead to their deaths, and they tore through the feeble resistance of the first floor.

The first-floor boss didn’t provide any resistance to the large group of Undead that swarmed it, hacking and slashing with endless stamina, and brought down the hapless spider. After conquering the first floor the invaders streamed into the second floor, where all the free Undead were halted.