Chapter 26 Dungeon Madness
Confronted with the oncoming tide of grotesque green monsters armed with a variety of improvised and barbaric weapons, namely sharpened sticks, stones, slings and clubs, I do my best to even the odds a little. I throw a Slime Core down the narrow hallway after pumping it full of my mana, it lands in the midst of the swarm of goblins heading our way. The mana contained within the slime core pulls on the nearby rock, drawing nearby dirt and small rocks into it's orbit and fusing onto the slime core, forming a sturdy barrier to protect the core from attack. The mere formation of a golem torso throws the goblin ranks into confusion as the golem starts to grow faster, the torso getting thicker and arms and legs coalescing from nearby rock and soil.
Michael rushed forward standing behind Felix and said in a loud voice, "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" while casting [Slow] on the closest goblins, stalling their movement for a moment. The goblins behind them crashed into the slowed goblins causing confusion and infighting to break out.
The goblins around the Slime Golem were jumping on it and screeching and stabbing it with their spears and hitting and kicking it with their bare feet. The Slime Golem did nothing to fight back, merely taking their blows without reaction.
I stepped behind Michael, placing my hand on his neck as I grabbed a mana potion and swigged it, then grabbed a Spear EMB, pumped it full of all the mana I could gather in a short time and threw it into the goblins near the Slime Golem. Michael's attention was divided as he helped to speed up the creation of the Spear Golem, weakening the power of the [Slow] letting the goblins advance faster forward.
Felix and Kered had already made use of the vital seconds that Michael had bought them with the [Slow] spell in order to swig stamina, recovery and berserk potions in quick succession, temporarily boosting their combat strength explosively. The first wave of goblins hit Felix and Kered, consisting of only three goblins standing abreast, which doesn't sound like a lot but there were several rows of goblins behind the first three, ready to take the place of the fallen immediately.
I pulled out another EMB, this one a Sword Golem and threw it behind the massed goblins in order to tear into their back line. Michael helped to speed up the development of the Sword Golem into a capable golem fighter using spatial magic to shape the stone around the EMB into a more impressive golem warrior. By the time the Sword Golem had fully formed, the immobile Slime Golem had already collapsed in on itself and the goblins had already moved on from attacking it, simply squeezing past it. I used the recently recovered mana to pump another Slime Core with mana and threw it into the middle of the pack of attacking Goblins. The resulting tremors in the earth did more to disrupt the goblins than the resulting Golem.
Meanwhile Michael, Kered and Felix were busy smacking, stabbing and slashing goblin after goblin. They had shifted into a half circle position outside and around the dungeon entrance with Michael and Kered to the left and right of Felix, with Felix in the middle and the furthest back using the long reach of his spear to slash and stab at any goblins who tried to leave the dungeon. Any goblin that got past Felix's spear were slashed or bashed by Kered or Michael, depending on which one they got closest to.
The three Golems shifted focus from us a little. The Slime Golem was merely a distraction and a way to block off the passageway for a little bit against future reinforcements. The Spear Golem and Sword Golem however were armed with a 6 foot long spear and three foot long sword respectively and were pummelling the weak goblins by the handfuls. Having two golems in play slowed my thinking quite a bit, as giving them fighting skills, required a temporary sacrifice of my Intelligence along with a bit of my wisdom, so I could only fire the occasional bolt into the goblins from behind Michael, when the way was clear.
After the goblin bodies started piling up to chest height in front of Felix and the others, the goblins fell back, scrambling over their dead kin to get further away from us. Some of the goblin corpses were already being absorbed by the dungeon and would presumably be recycled into more attackers for the next wave.
The Sword and Spear Golems had both fallen. The Sword Golem had actually been blasted by the Goblin Shaman who used [Fireball] on it, which broke it and killed a few of the goblins that had been on its back. The Spear Golem had merely succumbed to insufficient mana in it's core and gone inert. Still even in `death' it served it's purpose, leaving a pile of large rocks in the middle of the pathway obstructing goblin movement.
We decided to set up camp near the entrance of the dungeon to prevent them from swarming up and making use of their superior numbers to overwhelm us if they attacked again with a second wave. While there was a lull in the fighting, Felix and Kered got to work carving up the goblins outside the dungeon, to see if they have magic cores and to collect the ears of the `naturals' for payment by the Guild. Only a few of the goblins have magic cores which is a little worrisome.
The battle had left us all thoroughly exhausted, though Michael & Kered seemed particularly pleased as they had both gained a lot of experience to their sub classes. Kered got up to level 10 as an assassin, since he had a lot of single hit kills making use of Felix attracting all the 'aggro' to kill preoccupied goblins. Michael got two levels to spatial mage, bringing his total level to 32, his use of spatial magic in combat, gaining him a combination of Class & combat experience. I only gained a single level from the battle as the most effective golems namely the Spear & Sword golems were assisted more by Michael's spatial magic than my Alchemist Class. Class experience could be a pain, I still got some combat experience though from the battle. Felix got no levels from the slaughter, being at too high a level for low level goblins to increase any of his classes significantly despite the amount of goblins that had died under his attacks.
Michael and I stood watch over Kered and Felix who were both exhausted from the battle and the after effects of the berserk potions. I treated their many wounds, Kered in particular had a litany of scrapes, scratches and stab wounds all over his body as he didn't wear chain mail since it would slow his movements too much. The downside of an agility/dexterity build was that armour would undermine the strong points of Kered's Classes. In exchange for speed and accuracy he lost out on the benefits of armour, namely reducing the likelihood of minor to serious injuries.
Felix had less damage to his body as he wore chain mail over his shirt, most of his wounds were on his legs as the filthy goblins had sliced and stabbed at his less well defended legs. The most important part was cleaning out the wounds as the goblins used dirty spears to improve their odds of causing festering wounds. As a high level warrior Felix was unlikely to fall to such petty tactics but it didn't hurt to make sure. Even high level Adventurers could fall to poison if a poison was strong enough or untreated long enough.
They'd need a few hours before they would be able to use any more potions, as they had drunk quite a few potions recently and there was a sort of cool down that one had to pay attention to before using more. Otherwise everyone would drink half a dozen potions before every major battle and during to remain `topped up' with alchemical boosts. Swigging down too many potions could result in serious consequences, namely alchemical poisoning. Depending on how many potions absorbed and the general constitution of the person involved effects could range from mild headache and nausea to death.
I didn't really have to worry about such things as the Alchemist Perk I had picked reduced the risk of alchemical poisoning significantly. Resistance not only reduced the negative effects of excess potion use, it also reduced the effect of many negative status conditions.
Michael was unscathed from the battle as his [Slow] spell & his [Spatial Awareness] Perk made it near impossible for low level goblins to hit him with mere rocks and sharp sticks, the Mage robe, chain mail shirt and rune word staff didn't hurt either. As for me I didn't suffer any injuries as I was behind the three, firing bolts at random, I'm not sure if I even hit any goblins as the rush of events with lowered Intelligence & Wisdom made it hard to keep track of everything that had happened during the heat of battle.
The goblins seemed disinclined to attack again any time soon, which was good and bad news. The good news was that this allowed us to recover from the last battle and catch our breath. The bad news was that it gave the dungeon more time to produce more ugly goblins that we'd have to fight.
It left us with a difficult decision to make. Choice one we could leave the dungeon behind us and risk being ambushed out in the wilds by unknown amounts of goblins. Choice two was to advance quickly through the untamed and unknown Dungeon that would most likely swarm us with low level goblins until it ran out of divine mana to use or we died.
Neither option was greatly appealing but going forward seemed the least terrible of the options. Kered was in favour of it at least as it would advance his thief levels the fastest as detecting and disarming traps, especially new ones would gain him the best experience gain. That and one hit killing goblins would also help to advance his Assassin class faster.
Michael seemed remarkably in good spirits considering our brush with death, spending his time post battle talking about what I should name the slime core technique. He insisted that I rename my slime core golems, golem grenades as calling my golems made from slime cores, Slime Golems made it sound more like the golems were made out of slimes, rather than made from Slime Cores, I guess I could call them Slime Core Golems but that would be a mouthful, I could shorten it to SCG's perhaps. Michael had a point and golem grenades did have a kind of pleasing resonance to it, as it was shorter and rolled off the tongue easier, even if I didn't understand the terminology so I went with that, at least for the moment. I'd have to put more thought into the names of my tools later, when it was less likely that we could get killed by goblins. The pointless conversation did help to relax my mind and body after a mentally draining battle.
Once we had re-equipped and had made our necessary mental preparations, we advanced agonisingly slowly through a labyrinthine series of large and small rooms marked by short and long corridors. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason other than to be confusing. Some of the rooms had no goblins, while others would have one or a dozen goblins lying in wait. The rooms without goblins usually had mana enhanced plants, like Mage's Bounty, Warrior's Boon & Maiden's Tears, all of which I collected while the others secured the entrances and exits. There was also large fruit bearing plants like the Plesh, which had a peculiar taste that was like eating uncooked meat slathered in berry juice, it was an acquired taste, that's for sure. It's known for its unusual flavor and hardiness, its fruit is bright pink, the size of my fist with a red juicy interior make it a very distinct and common meal for those with little coin to their names, it's a good crop as it requires little maintenance to produce large yields and that's why half the farms on Respite grow it. It has little medicinal value though, so I don't collect it, I prefer monster meat anyway for my meals.
Ten minutes into our exploration of the Dungeon, we hit a snag, while Kered was scouting one passage it turned out to be an intersection of three rooms filled with goblins and he ended up running for his life from a small swarm of goblins numbering in the high twenties in our direction. This forced Felix to go all out to kill the goblins as Michael used [Slow] on them, while Kered got his revenge for the scare, using his daggers on the blasted buggers and I used my sword to help ease the pressure on the others. Afterwards the area around was littered by chopped up body parts, which would slowly disappear as they were absorbed by the dungeon, which made counting their actual numbers difficult.
After patching up Kered again, we decided it might be smarter not to let Kered take the lead and risk being swarmed again, it was decided to let my disposable EMB's be used instead. It would lower Kered's experience gain but it would ensure that we didn't run into anything we couldn't handle. We didn't need Kered to pull yet another monster train in our direction, once was more than enough. The sword or spear golems would only last ten minutes at a time, presuming they weren't destroyed by a trap or goblin shaman's spell before the mana within ran out.
The forward progress through the dungeon used up most of my `golem grenades' and quite a few of my EMB's. After an hour of searching and slaughtering goblins and several wasted EMB's and golems we finally made it to the core room, guarded by the hobgoblin warrior and the Goblin shaman who had retreated earlier without engaging us in a fight.
Felix attacked the hobgoblin warrior while Michael and Kered combined attacks on the goblin shaman. I stood in the back with my crossbow ready to fire if given the opportunity. My assistance proved unnecessary for the battle.
Felix only dodged a few strikes by the dagger wielding hobgoblin before impaling it in the heart with his spear. The hobgoblin simply wasn't Felix's match, while the hobgoblin was the evolved version of a goblin, it was still only 5 feet tall and had about twice the strength and speed than it's dimunitive kin, which was of little use of a veteran Adventurer like Felix . Hobgoblins typically meant that a goblin tribe had gone from troublesome to dangerous as it indicated that it was more likely that hobgoblin would lead the goblins more effectively than a goblin chieftain or shaman. Hobgoblins were smarter, stronger and faster than a goblin. Hobgoblins were considered the equivalent of an assassin, speedy and good for single hit kills of enemies. They weren't that good for one on one fights with a superior foe that was alert and ready for them.
Michael on the other hand had simply used [Slow] on it's maximum setting to stall the goblin shaman for a couple seconds. This gave Kered more than enough time to circle around behind it and slash it's throat open, stopping it from casting any spells as it bled out. Several seconds later it dropped to it's knees gurgling out it's last breath before falling face first onto the ground lifelessly. The `boss battle' had been less trouble than the swarming of the lower end basic goblins within and outside the dungeon. It was kind of anticlimatic to be honest. I expected something more dramatic.
"Now what?" Michael asked gesturing at the fist size diamond that glowed with energy which was the Dungeon's Core, disregarding the two bodies on the ground entirely.
"We can smash it and maybe get some achievement, we can steal it and sell it to a Mage so they can get an artifact made from it." I said.
"I choose that one." Michael said raising his hand with the staff up in the air, indicating his desire for an upgrade in his mage equipment.
"Or we can try and claim the dungeon as ours but there could be some issues with that. What do you think we should do?" Felix asked, looking at me.
Before I could say anything in response a glittery man with tiny little wings appeared "Please don't break or take the core. You'll kill me."
Michael, Kered and I pointed our weapons at the thing while Felix merely glanced at it then at me as if still waiting for me to respond to his earlier question. "It's a dungeon fairy, its opinion is meaningless."
"Oh, wait, this is a single floor dungeon, does that mean this is a sentient dungeon?" I asked.
"Um yes, the core is intelligent, you could make a deal with it, please don't kill us." the fairy pleaded.
"Sending out creatures past the domain of the dungeon is a violation of normal practices and marks it as an aberration worthy of extermination." I said.
"I KNOW but he wouldn't listen to me." The glittery dungeon fairy was frantic and on the edge of tears. I had read about dungeon fairies but only in the abstract sense that when dungeons grow big enough and absorb enough souls they become sentient and capable of making deals with magical creatures. A dungeon fairy being involved in a single floor dungeon that was sentient meant we were dealing with another Champion. Fucking Michael, fucking Champions, two in the same era spelled fucking disaster. One of them being a dungeon core meant things were going to get real bad sometime soon.
"Fine. I'm going to have a little chat with the dungeon core." I said.
"I'm lost, can someone fill me in?" Michael asked.
"Me too." Kered said.
I placed my hand on the dungeon core, it was hard, yet warm, filled with divine mana, or what people called divine mana, in reality, it was simply the purest mana, refined from the affinity polluted mana that commonly floated about.
A system prompt popped into my head.
[You have cleared 80% of the dungeon and have defeated the Core's guardians. You have three options, you can choose to destroy the core and receive a random skill or blessing, steal the core or capture the dungeon core and have your own dungeon. Please choose now.]
I was distracted by the voice screaming in my head. "Yeah fucking kill me already, fucking do it already, I want out."
I replied by establishing a mental link with it, using a multitude of skills, [Mana drain] to empower me and weaken it while using [Infusion] to pump my mana into it and [Core command] to use my mana within it to better influence it. A Dungeon Core was a more powerful and profitable version of a Magic Core, while it was capable of far more magic than most Magic Cores, it still followed the same basic principles. An unhelpful Dungeon Core could be harvested and used by Royalty to create an artefact of immense power. Sometimes they were the central reason for disputes between kingdoms.
"I'm not going to kill you, what I want are some answers."
"FUCK YOU! KILL ME ALREADY, you backwater peasant. I Want fucking out!"
I used [Mana Drain] more, draining more refined mana into myself, it hurt me quite a bit, my mind, body and soul straining to contain the pure mana and keep the mental link open at the same time. "You will listen to me and Obey me."
"FUCK you! FUCKing asshole. I won't, just fucking do it, fucking kill me, I don't want to be a fucking rock forever."
"BE QUIET!" I shouted, channelling all of my mana into a mental command. It eased off its diatribe. "Now answer my questions. What is your name?" I asked, channelling my powers of persuasion into my mental voice.
"Paul."
"Now tell me what happened." I commanded using everything within me to compel his obedience.
"Somehow I died, I was having a totally normal day, I had a little bit of pot and some ice and then I was front of this guy who said I'd be vital to save a world from a Undying God and I said fuck no. Then he shafted me and lumped me with a single starter race as a dungeon, stuck with some annoying fairy who wouldn't shut up about fucking rules." Dungeon Paul said.
Fuck, a God was directly involved with this one, Michael had said when I finally got around to asking him about it that he hadn't been told anything by any God, he'd simply fallen asleep one day in his body and woken up in someone else's. This reeked of destiny and the forces of Chaos and Order and major players in the Grand Game, arranging their pieces for a major offensive. All of which boded poorly for my future as a companion of Michael. "Can you form a monster pact?"
"Yeah, I did that with some of the goblins you killed, it was the only way to burn off all the dumb mana and collect experience from their kills. All this time and you're the first adventurers to come around, I was hoping to be put out of my misery."
"How'd you get so many goblins anyway?" I asked, ignoring his suicidal obsession for the moment to find out the answer to why there had been so many natural goblins in a dungeon. Some could be explained as the resulting spawn of the poor village girl that had been captured but there were far too many for that explanation to fit what I'd seen.
"I upgraded some of my goblins so they could collect things for me and they found a girl and brought her back to breed. She popped out some goblin babies including a female one and after some trials and errors I got me some female goblins and stashed them in their own room to be bred by the strongest and or smartest goblins to get more of the goblins to roam about. I was hoping if I had enough of them, some adventurers would be attracted here and kill me."
"Why do you want to die so badly?"
"I don't want to be trapped as a rock forever."
"Didn't your dungeon fairy tell you can have an avatar, you can claim any of your denizens and possess their bodies."
"I don't want to be a goblin either, I tried that with the hobgoblin and it was just fucking weird. I want a nice human body, with a nice normal dick, not a weird twisted goblin dick."
"How about you and me make a deal. You help me out with what I want and I'll help you get something even better than a human body."
"Like what?"
"Like an incubi body, you'd be able to look like the best version of yourself and attract the best looking girls or guys your way."
"That sounds too good to be true, what's the catch?"
"Well it could take some time due to the restrictions placed on beginner dungeons but there's a way to speed things up."
"How?"
"You bind me with a monster pact and you should get access to the demonic line, which should get things started."
"What's in this for you?"
"You'll provide me with a boost to my stats, like with your mini bosses, the hobgoblin and the shaman and I'll provide with a portion of my experience gain from now on. Then you'll allow yourself to be captured by my friend Michael, he's also a Champion, so you might have things to talk about."
"What's a Champion?"
"A Champion is one of the names for those brought from another world to serve the interests of the Gods, the most popular are from places on Earth."
"Wait you know about Earth? Do you know how to get me home?"
"Sorry no, but if you talk to Michael, he might be able to help, he's from there too, he's got spatial magic, if you two worked together, you might find a way to get back home."
"OK, I'll try your plan, your body looks nice enough for a joy ride. Spill some blood on my core and I'll try the monster pact on you. Shall we do the binding now?" Dungeon Paul asked, sounding a lot more excited than before, his formerly grating metallic voice (think the sound of metal scraping stone) into a voice that sounded faintly like the echoing of the noon bells, melodic and inhuman.
"Here goes nothing." I spilled some blood on the core. "With this blood I offer myself, mind, body and soul to this Dungeon in exchange for it's protection of my mind, body and soul. I grant it a portion of my soul, skills and services in exchange for new knowledge, the refinement of my body and enshrinement of my soul."
It was a risky gamble, binding myself to a Champion's Dungeon Core but it came with some significant benefits, namely conditional immortality. As long as the core remained intact, I could be killed in the outside world and be `respawned' repeatedly within the dungeon. While demons were essentially immortal and effectively immune to the ravages of time and diseases, they're not invincible, they can be killed like any other thing made of flesh, their bodies hacked into and body parts torn off. I wanted some kind of safety net for if things got out of hand.
A link built between us and I could feel the power of the dungeon growing inside me...
[Dungeon Monster Pact has been enacted]
Then I screamed as a flood of mana flowed through me and I was reborn in fire and suffering.
As my body was stretched and pulled and poked and prodded and dug into, my mind was undergoing a similarly brutal process. A part of my soul was taken from me, bound and tucked into the dungeon. A wave of fatigue washed over me and my mind became detached as I experienced massive changes to my mind, body and soul.
Memories of alchemy became blurry and indistinct while unusual thoughts and memories flooded through me. Knowledge of geology, anatomy and biology pumped into my brain to fill in empty spaces. My skill levels dropped across the board, while new skills and masteries were added to my system via a litany of system announcements.
My body meanwhile boiled, becoming tempered by the fires of dungeon recreation, bones becoming denser, eye sight sharpening, tendons lengthening and become more corded and capable. My skin toughened, becoming like old leather, to better protect from piercing damage and blunt force impacts. My muscles became more pronounced, capable of bursting forth with additional strength. My organs were optimised, some removed entirely while others were enlarged and surrounded by a cushion of specialised cartilage. My ribs were connected and covered by even more flexible but pierce resistant cartilage. My knuckles and middle phalanges of both hands were lined with a thin but durable layer of iron and so were my knee caps.
My soul stretched and changed, becoming darker and more in tune with my demonic half, my Abilities and Affinities deepening through the Dungeon's connection to extra dimensional planes of existences, seldom used. The unending symphony of blood and bloodshed from the Nine Hells echoed through my essence filling me with a brief but potent bloodlust, the desire for death and domination momentarily overwhelming in its unexpected intensity.
My brain opened up, becoming bigger somehow on the inside without changing size and the words `quantum computing' entered my thoughts along with so much new knowledge and an increased capacity to remember.
For a moment Dungeon Paul and I were one... and something within my mind shattered and I Remembered everything that had happened to me, including the stuff that had been buried deep within. Everything happening simultaneously and concurrently in my mind, body and soul overwhelmed me and I blacked out.
I woke some time later to my friends around me, Felix glaring at the Dungeon Fairy with barely restrained rage.
"What the hell did you do?" Felix asked.
I was overwhelmed with physical, psychological and paranormal changes so I didn't really think before speaking, "I entered a pact with the dungeon."
"That's impossible, humans are protected from the predation of dungeons and cannot be bound."
I glanced at Michael who simply shrugged and said, "I'm not human, I'm part incubi, I'm forsaken."
If I was thinking more clearly, I wouldn't have confessed such a thing in such a precarious position but I was reeling from memories gained from the broken mental command and alien memories from Dungeon Paul. The increase of stats across the board (minus wisdom and luck) might have had something to do with it too. I had gained around thirty five additional points to my various attributes, making me harder, stronger, faster and more durable but not particularly wise.
I regretted it immediately at the looks on Felix's and Kered's faces.
Fuck. The Dungeon had infected me with a portion of it's apathy and recklessness. Confession may be good for the soul but the truth can be dangerous when blurted out so thoughtlessly.
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Author's note: Well this chapter was a bit of a chore, part of me felt compelled to detail the entire dungeon exploration and the conversations between Lucius and the gang while the rest of me thought... Fuck that nonsense, I don't want to be bogged down with such inane details right now when we're getting to the real juicy stuff. So now Lucius has become a vassal of a Champion's Dungeon Core and has essentially become a mini boss of the Dungeon and has revealed to Felix and Kered his deep dark secret. Woops.
A random addendum.
Just for clarity sake, in chapter 17 while in the woods Lucius chose Multimixing as his first free skill and Resistance as the Perk. It wasn't really well explained in that chapter.
Multimixing Skill: Mix multiple potions at once with less risk of error 10% correction at each level.
Resistance Perk: Resistance to negative status effects 20% per milestone.
Next Chapter is an interlude: Mind Fuckery; where we get a flashback to an earlier scene I wrote weeks ago, where bad things happen to Lucius and he 'forgets'...
I think this is the first chapter with no sex so far in the story, I guess dungeon delving is not a good place or time for sex. Who'd have thunk it?