by Lucas Dunn
Regening my mana, I walked up the were it died to see what it dropped. There were two items on the floor both of them dagger made from the teeth of the crocodile. Even though they were great quality and did some decent damage, I handed to Grimm knowing he would use them way more than I did.
After we recuperated we went on the next floor to face lizards that looked like komodo dragons, but with much tougher scales. To put our group skill to work, Jake would taunt the beast and draw agro with the first attack. After Jake got the beast’s attention, Grimm would sneak attack it and normally get a critical hit killing it instantly. If Grimm didn’t get the critical or was detected, then I would step in and act like the healer and mage. This continued until Jake and Grimm both made it to level 19 and we reached the boss’s door. Recuperating once more we entered the next bosses room.
The room was solid grey stone and the center of the room held a 10-foot tall lizard standing on two legs unlike the others. Its level showed twenty-five, and it had huge claws sprouting from its hand and thick brown scaled armor. Thinking this through I buffed Jake and Grimm with a mana shield regening my points each time. Sadly, I couldn’t keep piling mana onto a shield, but I understood it would be a cheat ability to have and infinitely strong shield.
Jake darted toward the lizard with a roar drawing its attention and engaging it in a melee fight. This gave Grimm good enough cover to sneak around it and hit it with a critical, sadly only taking away a third of the creature’s life. The Lizard spun around and slammed its claws into the mana shield I had placed around him, sending him flying back into the wall and completely using up the HP of my shield. Before it could close in on Grimm for the kill I blasted the lizard in the face with a lightning bolt stunning him while Jake used his longsword to split its skull in two. The loot was just four lesser health potions, but it was still cool to see something new. We split them equally and decided to give the extra one to Jake since he was our tank basically. They only healed 50 health but you never knew when that would be lifesaving.
The next room turned out to be kobolds which caught me off guard and when one attempted to stab me I realized that the differences between the two dungeons was something I was really going to have to look in to. It appeared everything was hostile no matter your standing with the race in this type of dungeon. We continued killing group after group of Kobolds while receiving minimal wounds before we finally made it to the boss room.
Inside was another surprise. There was one Kobold that was muscled and just as tall if not taller than me. Surrounding him were five other Kobolds one of which wore a robe and was clearly a mage. Another held a staff that appeared to be a healer and the other three held short swords. Grinning at our luck, I discussed my plan with Jake and Grimm and we instantly agreed on it.
Jake rushed into the room with a roar drawing the attention of everyone except for the two charmed kobolds in the back. Ordering the healer and mage Kobold to assist Jake while Grimm and I took out the guards, I them blasted all three melee kobolds with lighting wave and paralyzed them while Grimm quickly stabbed their necks.
Turning to Jake we saw him struggling against the opponent that was level twenty-nine, but with the help of the mage and Healer kobold, was slowly whittling him down. I looked at Grimm and we both sat down grinning and watching the show of Jake getting stabbed repeatedly only to be healed back to full health by the Kobold. Finally, after fifteen minutes Jake was able to kill the large kobold. Turning to us glaring he picked up the Kobolds clearly great longsword and said angrily that he was taking all the loot. I grinned at Grimm since we wouldn’t be able to use the longsword anyway. Realizing it Jake just snorted angrily and we continued on to the next level.
My bag being so small was almost completely full. The first slot was taken by my gems, the second by the slime potion the third by all of the bones I collected and the fourth by the health potion. After checking all of our stuff we decided to head back after this if we were full on space.
The floor we were on was similar the one above except all of the Kobolds were level twenty-five and walked in groups of three making it a little bit more difficult to take them on. Still with charming two Kobolds early on it was easy enough and I quickly leveled up once while Jake and Grimm did twice putting them at level twenty-one and me at level 28. Again making it to the boss floor.
Sadly, I couldn’t take my charmed mobs through the floors or into the boss room which would have really helped with our next opponent who definitely had a class. In front of us stood an armored kobold at ten feet tall. In one hand was an axe and in the other it held an iron studded shield. Behind it stood a chest which marked the first official loot of the dungeon. This also meant from here on out we would be getting a lot richer.
We formulated the best plan we could and started our attack. For the first time I summoned a Golem. It took two thousand mana but at least it looked cool. Shadows rushed from every corner of the room quickly forming what looked to be a shadow warrior. As we rushed the Kobold, the Golem did too. The first strike the Kobold made was with its axe which passed right through my golem. After which my golem attacked with its shadow sword. Though the Kobold tried to block it could do nothing as the blade passed through its shield and directly into the Kobold. The attack did no physical damage but what it did do was far more amazing. I could see a thin line go straight from the wound and into the golem from the kobold clearly weakening the Kobold and bolstering the golems strength turning it into and even darker shadow able to do damage. We all took a step back amazed as we watched the power of the shadow golem. It was truly a level eight dark magic attack. The Kobold had no defense against the shadow and even after using its multiple warrior skills, it could not seem to harm the golem. Finally, it collapsed, its body looked like a mummified husk after the now pitch black golem sucked the life out of him.
I realized most people would have at least one light attack for the golem or some other magical attack but it was still amazing to see how strong it was. The benefit was I could keep the golem with me as long as I wanted in the outside world as well as the dungeon since it was a summoned creature and I couldn’t lose control over it like and elemental. While elementals started out strong, Golems were the opposite and had to absorb strength through other means like what I just saw.
Jake claimed the axe and shield while Grimm and I went to see what was in the chest. Six platina and a ring with plus three dexterity was in the chest. Striking a deal with Grimm, He gave me all the Platina and I let him have the quite valuable ring. Happy, we made our way back out of the dungeon. We stored our treasure in the Forts vault/command center that was protected by and solid iron door and decided to meet back in the dungeon once we had finished our lunches and taken a small break.
While they logged off I went to the courtyard and hired 12 more NPC’s, none of them fighters. Two were carpenters to help Jorgen repair the town, two were tanners to help Haden take care of all of the hide, two were smiths to help Gannon, one was a clothes maker/stitcher, and the other five were basic laborers/guards I would use to gather materials that would benefit the carpenters. Satisfied, I gave them all commands on who to report and listen to while specially directing the Stitcher to make me more bags. After which I sent them away and laid out all of my bones. Still limited on what I could do, the options did open up a little more though. I had the choice to create regular skeletons or keep the old form of the original mob. I changed all the kobolds skeletons, lizards, and bats to regular skeletons since they were weak. It cost two kobold skeletons for one regular skeleton but it was worth it. I did keep the alligator which looked even fiercer than before. As soon as I finished with the alligator I received a prompt I was waiting for.
Congratulations! You are now level two in necromancy. Your skeletons can now transform their appendages to fit their task.
This was going to be useful for manual labor as well as combat! Staring at the thirty skeletons in front of me I sent all of them except for the alligator to the wall
with orders to stand guard. As they left I sent the alligator to guard the gate in case there was a breach. With around sixty skeletons on the wall, I knew it wasn’t a huge amount, but it did look terribly foreboding from a distance. After I sent my small army away I logged off to eat.
Chapter 28
After I had eaten, I logged on to a glorious sight. In front of me stood my army of NPC’s all unloading bones into the courtyard. Almost tearing up I looked across all the squads and noticed them all at level 9 or above which got me truly excited. Walking up to Elif I praised her and told her to send them to the dungeon once everyone had eaten and rested.
Walking up to the bones I realized there was enough to create over a hundred skeletons if I kept them in their original bodies! And at least 80 if I made regular skeletons. 80 skeletons later, I was able to send 40 to the wall filling up all of the posts, and I sent the other half with directions they listen to the carpenter. They had to destroy the rotten homes and rebuild from the ground up which was going to take forever, but now that I had all of the skeletons the carpenters were going to have to rush to keep up.
Pleased with my progress, I decided to start my next plan. It was another way to bolster my forces. Calling my mages to me, I retrieved the very first magic book I got and used mana copy to make exactly enough for each of my mage NPC’s.
“What I am about to show you is for your eyes only. In order for me to show this to you, you must make an oath to the dark one that you will not share what you are about be given with anyone.” I knew from the forums that oaths to the gods would result in a death if broken so I was more than happy to share my knowledge of magic, but I did not want it getting out to other players yet.
Nodding in consent they all gave the oath and I gave each of the NPC’s a book. “Read this as soon as possible, but under no circumstance should you take this out of the compound. It is to stay locked in your chest at the barracks unless you are reading it.” Getting nods of consent, they all rushed to the barracks to read what their lord had given them. Happy with my choice I saw Jake and Grimm finally flash into the world and we quickly set of towards the dungeon.
The ninth floor of the dungeon was a long field filled with graves all over the place. We cautiously made our way to the first grave when the first enemy appeared. With a screech a level 28 shadow ghoul launched itself from the ground straight at Jake raking its talons against his chest. Ordering my golem to attack we all converged on the creature while I healed Jake whose health was down halfway. Grimm tried to stab the creature but only did twenty-five percent of the normal damage letting us know the creature was highly resistant to physical attacks like my golem. Cursing I told my golem to hold him of while I quickly formed a light beam spell with runes in my mind.
Spell created: Light Beam: Pure superheated light. Damage: 100. Mana Cost 200.
Focusing back on the Ghoul I launched my attack and got no damage modifier like I was expecting. Frowning, I became aware that light could harm them but not do critical damage like I thought which made sense once I thought about it. In this world, Light and dark were equals. Taking out the golem I was pleasantly surprised when it dropped a common grade soul gem that was full. I had long since filled all of my other common gems excluding the flawless ones. The reason I wanted to get my hands on as many gems as possible was that when I leveled up I would be able to give my skeletons these stone. So instead of only taking orders, they would be raised to NPC level intelligence, and great souls or above would be capable of magic. As I stooped down to pick up the gem, my golem got there first and completely absorbed it. Frowning I looked at the golem and saw it increase in power and heal its wounds from the previous battle. Sighing at its greediness, we continued on.
Sadly, since we didn’t have Jackson to buff us with a light bonus or our weapon, we wouldn’t be able to do much physical damage. This meant most of the floors consisted of me and my golem taking care of everything. However, I was able to notice that fire had a 2x modifier to the damage, which I capitalized on. Throughout the floor, I continued to stockpile common soul gems as much as possible. Once we got to the boss’s door we knew we were taking a risk but continued anyway.
Inside consisted of a huge tomb, knowing what was to come I ordered my golem forward and watched as a Ghoul just as dark as my golem rose from the tomb. Before the two could meet I launched a fireball only to see the ghoul turn transparent and have the fireball go straight through the ghoul before it solidified again. Disappointed I waited for a good shot as the two shadows engaged.
My golem clearly tried its best but for some reason was at a disadvantage and was losing health a lot quicker that the ghoul. As my golem started to almost completely disappear I ordered it to retreat and gave it one of my now numerous common soul gems. Quickly the damage was repaired and once again he entered the fight with his shadows sword cutting deep holes in the ghoul. This process repeated 15 more times bringing me down to 50 common soul gems, but up to level 29. Not only that, but once the ghoul died it dropped a flawless quality soul which showed just how much of a gap there was in-between the types of gems. From what I knew the gems and soul quality went like this; Trash, flawed, common, flawless, splendid, exquisite, god. From what I had just seen, each level was about 15x stronger than the one before it but the higher the level the more that factor increases by a substantial amount. We pushed the cover off the tomb and looked inside to see if there was any treasure but only saw bones which I gladly grabbed.
Entering the next floor there were goblins. In a huge expanse of land. The looking over the fields each goblin was only level 14 but roamed in group of ten or fifteen. This was going to be a lot harder than before but a lot more lucrative. I almost started salivating at the thought of how many bones I could get, not to mention the small coin pouches each one carried. Grinning greedily, we made our way to the first group.
As Jake taunted, I hit them with shockwave and we plowed into their force slaughtering as many as we could before the paralysis wore off. I cast soul steal as many times as possible and allowed my golem to suck them up since I didn’t have any gems to hold them anyway. We continued slaughtering every single goblin on the plain collecting their bones and money allowing for Jake and Grimm both to reach level 23.
Entering the boss room, we all stopped dead in our tracks. A hundred goblins stood in front of us as an army as an orc carried a huge oak chest in the middle of the group.
“I think we should go back and get help from the others” Jake said with a concerned frown.
Looking at him like he was a child I patted his head and said “Watch and learn”.
I walked forward I heard Grimm say something about getting everyone killed but I just ignored him and focused on my spell. After five seconds I released the most powerful spell I had and then quickly cast soul steal telling my golem to have a field day. Even though they are all trash level souls, 100 souls are still a lot. After this the golems level should be equal to the flawless ghoul on the previous floor.
I watched as the tornado tore through the troops at an unprecedented speed. No one had a chance, especially in their tightly packed formation. I watched as group after group was launched into the air and smacked back into the ground killed instantly. By the time the tornado passed no one was left standing, not even the orc.
“How did you get an NPC to teach you that?!” Grimm shouted excitedly “That’s makes me seriously consider not being a rogue”
Looking at him with regret in my eyes I spoke “Sorry, it was in a dusty old book I found at the fort and you know how spell books are only one-time use”
I felt bad about lying, but I didn’t want them to know my secret just yet. Turning back around I ran to collect the hundreds of bones. Once I had collected everything we walked up to the oak chest smashing the lock and forcing open the lid. Platina gold and silver filled the chest to the brim.
“This has got to be one of the rarest drops” Jake said with his eyes wide.
Laughing out loud
I quickly split up the treasure three ways which came out to be a hefty sum of 24 platina, 120 gold, and 200 silver all for me.
Moving to the next floor we all had to leave quickly after almost being killed. Lava pools littered the floor that spouted lava hounds. Seeing as I had no counter magic and their physical damage was too much for Jake, we barely managed to retreat after I used all my mana on a wall.
Back outside, I could see flashes and rumbles of all kinds of different magic on the plains letting me know my NPC’s were putting their knowledge to good use. With plenty of time left in the day Jake and Grimm went off to grind in the plains. Now that they reached level twenty-five in the dungeons they should be able to face most things in the plains. I was over 75% to my next level but I decided to go to the courtyard and see about hiring more NPC’s and continuing to build my skeleton army.
Looking through the que, I decided it was time to add some infrastructure so I used 20 platina to hire guards which were basic units that came at level 5 with a sword and shield. They would have to be trained but that was a small price to pay. Finally, I used the rest of my platina on 4 woodworkers to help speed up the process of rebuilding the town and 4 NPC’s that specialized in clothing and other accessories. I gave the guards a rundown of the situation and told them to get situated in the town until I sent Elif’s squad to train them. The others I sent to their respective places.
