Dungeon Enslaved

by D. R. Rosier

  She hoped in her heart they never did, her chest burned with it, fucking bastards. Of course, she didn’t share that with anyone else, nor did she pray for the selfish impulse to see them all fucking burn. She was stuck there, numb, as a storm of rage, grief, and despair swallowed her.

  She should have left and taken them with her, said fuck orders and took off. Yes, life required balance, but she could have had her family, had her power as a master, and found a different ambition for her profession and calling. Or… simply gone back in ten years when they were powerful enough to make a difference. Her interim plan of fixing things from within, legitimately, was naïve and wishful thinking, they’d never promote her. Which meant she shouldn’t have gone down there, at least not when she knew it was getting too dangerous.

  It was too late for that now.

  Sophia sobbed, and clutched at her desperately, which finally broke her. Tears ran down her face, and a deep keening sound of unbearable loss escaped her throat…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I was glad to see the adepts go, including my descendent. There were only five masters left, and they had six more levels to go including the one they were on. Things just got harder for them from there on in, and while I wasn’t feeling positive I was fairly confident the dungeon would hold them back.

  I wanted them all dead though, not just stopped and forced into retreat, all that remained were the corrupt masters of the church in Tenemin. It wouldn’t be complete revenge, I knew there were three times as many masters in the crown city. I wondered if they still called it that, since there hadn’t been a king in two thousand years. Maybe they called it the holy city? I’d have smirked if I had lips.

  Astrith stretched out, she was sitting on the bier right next to my crystal, leaning back and resting on her elbows, with her legs crossed and hanging off the side, her top leg swinging back and forth. She’d also changed again, she was wearing a more casual sundress that was red with black and white designs on it, and she had on a pair of open toed sandals. She’d painted her toe nails too, the same bright crimson.

  “Nervous?”

  I replied, “Not at all, we got this. Umm, but if we don’t, I want you to leave before they get here.”

  She frowned down at me, “I don’t want to leave you.”

  I sighed in her mind, “At least get in your home, I don’t want them seeing you.”

  She smiled, “Love you too, but do you think they’ll make it?”

  I said, “I don’t think so, but I don’t want to underestimate them. They’re blowing through the rest of level three, but that’s only master level one difficulty. If it was just the clerics I’d say no chance, the golems would tear them to pieces, but that paladin is strong, and very fast.”

  With the deaths of three more adepts, and a master, I was doing pretty well on the power side of things. The master had been worth the same amount of lifeforce as the four adepts had been, and I was about a third of the way to my lifeforce potential. Meaning, I was about where I’d started yesterday afternoon, when I’d closed the dungeon and started building in a rush. If they all died, I’d be able to finish the goblin levels in just moments, and still be flush and full of power. To the point I might even have to start another expansion, but I had no plans to do that in the moment. I had no sixth option for mobs on the next four floors.

  The paladin and four clerics appeared on the fourth elemental floor outside of the teleport alcove.

  “So, what can you tell me about that dimension.”

  She sighed, “I’m not really supposed to talk about it, magic is weak there, hardly anyone has it, and it takes a lot of effort to do even the simplest things with magic. It’s a technological realm.”

  “Why not? I mean, why can’t you talk about it?”

  She explained, “It has to do with belief. Reality is far more malleable than most humans and the other races think. Quantum reality is heavily dependent on thought. If technology spread and sparked ideas here, magic could eventually fade. That could cause an imbalance in the multi-verse, and we don’t want that. The only reason I told you about any of it is because who would you tell? It’s fairly common knowledge in the upper and lower realms, but the mid-realms and mortals shouldn’t know about it.”

  Right, and that all made very little sense to me. What the hell was a quantum?

  “Okay, it looks like they’re slowing down, and they haven’t even finished the elemental level yet.”

  They were pinned down by two fire elementals, and an earth elemental that kept shaking the ground and throwing them off balance. The latter wasn’t deadly, but it was heavily distracting and more of a trap. It wasn’t easy to cast a long spell while holding back master level fire blasts, two of them.

  Jacen finished his spell, and a blast of white light banished a fire elemental. Ceran cast a second one moments later taking out the second, and the ground settled and stopped shaking. The five of them looked around warily, but the earth elemental was concealed, or at least out of reach for the moment.

  They moved forward and found another teleport room.

  Nabon sighed, “I’d been hoping this was the last one. That… was rough.”

  They moved forward, activated it, and appeared on the first golem level, though they didn’t know that yet. The corridors on the elemental levels were crude and roughly carved, almost natural looking tunnels like in a mountain cave system. This level was blatantly something new and different. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the tunnel were perfectly smooth, all at ninety degree angles like a room in a house, and the walls glowed red, blue, and white with enchantments. It amounted to good but soft lighting.

  Jacen walked over and examined the glyphs of one of them.

  “Air and fire enchantments. The latter for creating the light, instead of torches.”

  Michael said, “No dust at all, from the walls. Everything looks polished, hell it looks better than some of our temple walls, there aren’t even small seams.”

  Jacen looked over in annoyance, but he didn’t comment.

  Nabon said, “I wonder why, that must be costing him a lot of magic.”

  Jacen frowned, and he started to cast detection spells. The others relaxed slightly, and a few grabbed something to eat. It took at least ten minutes before Jacen was done.

  He said, “This is the last four levels, it was hard to tell earlier because the floors are out of physical order, which is probably why he has teleport alcoves. I can feel the dungeon crystal about eighty feet down, I suspect there’s at least four levels of whatever we find in here. I also discovered the enchantments are not just carved out, they aren’t costing him a thing. They’re coated with mana crystals so small the eye can’t see them, but so many of them that they can power the enchantments with ambient magic alone. It’s actually brilliant, two thousand years trapped in his own mind hasn’t dulled it.”

  Ceran asked, “Any idea what we’re facing?”

  Jacen shook his head, “There are a ton of enchantments, and I didn’t detect any life.”

  Michael said, “Fuck!”

  Jacen raised an eyebrow.

  Michael sighed, “Enchanted traps, I won’t be able to discern them from the air and lighting enchantments. Not if they’re all over the damned place, on the ceiling and walls.”

  I’d have smirked smugly if I’d had a mouth. I hadn’t had Michael in mind of course, but that was part of the design, I wanted to make it harder to locate the traps, none of which were physically tripped or easily seen. Honestly, all four levels were pretty deadly, and designed to be so. Mostly because I didn’t want to die.

  Nabon said, “Golems maybe? What else could all those enchantments you detected be, unless it’s just lighting and traps, but that doesn’t sound very likely, does it?”

  Jacen grunted, “Maybe, but stay alert for other possibilities. Considering the last level, these four have to range from master level three to level five, which means it will take focus and all our abilities to stop him and put h
im back under thrall.”

  Doran said, “Maybe we should contact the highest, we might have a better chance with double our numbers, and Michael is our only paladin.”

  Jacen frowned, and shook his head, “No, not unless you want us all to be executed for fucking up so badly. The highest isn’t known for tolerating mistakes of this magnitude. Our only chance to avoid serious censure is to regain control ourselves.”

  I said, “Well, that was good news. I was half afraid they’d retreat at some point.”

  Astrith snickered, “Bloodthirsty much?”

  “Not even a little bit, bloodthirst is a desire for random violence and death, these assholes earned their deaths, specifically.”

  Astrith giggled, “Fair enough.”

  Jacen said, “Let’s head out. Michael in the lead, Doran have a heal ready, the rest of us will have offensive spells ready.”

  He followed his own order and readied a master level light bolt, as he followed Michael slowly down the corridor. He looked tense, but in control, and I wanted to see fear replace it.

  They reached the first room on the level, and walked into a room with eight alcoves, two on each wall, all containing statues. Michael’s eyes moved quickly around the room, and I could see the frustrated look on his face. I even understood it, no one like a surprise, and he didn’t like not knowing what they were facing yet.

  As the group reached the center of the room, bars dropped from the ceiling splitting the room into four quarters. Michael and Jacen were in one, and the other three were in two others. More than that, I was fairly sure the bars dropping had hit Ceran and broken a bone and his spell misfired.

  Then the statues came to life, and they attacked.

  Two of the golems were with Nabon, the other younger master, and he fired off his light bolt. The golem slowed down a little, but not by much, and was just slightly behind the other one. They were fast, and the one in the lead shot a combination of fire and earth from its palm. Nabon’s shield absorbed it, but he staggered back and was thrown into the bars. By the time he recovered from the physical blow of it, the golem was right there, and the golem’s fist slammed into his chest. Bone splintered and flesh was crushed, as he was slammed into the bars again.

  Nabon felt Doran’s heal spell hit his back through the bars, but it was wasted as the second golem knocked him out with a punch to the face which broke his jaw and cheek bones, and the first golem finished him off by crushing his chest.

  His lifeforce fled, and I absorbed it. It was the equivalent of five days of absorption, similar to the other masters that died, and he was the last of the weaker ones. The other four masters were far more powerful.

  At the same time, Ceran’s light bolt was far more effective in the other partitioned cage, and he took one of their two golems down. Doran had released his heal into Nabon, then and started to work on a light bolt. It was a fast spell, but the golem was a master level fighter threat and closed the distance with a crushing punch that cracked his sternum and sent him flying back.

  That however, gave Ceran time for a second light bolt, and he took down the second golem and then worked on healing Doran.

  The other two faced the same thing, but as I’d feared, Michael was a total badass, and this was just the first level of golems. Neither of them even took a hit, as the most powerful master in the room, Jacen, easily blasted the first golem, while at the same time Michael moved even faster than his opponent, taking the second golem’s arms first, and then its head.

  The bars rose up at that point, freeing the last two golems who were caught alone in their quarter of the room, and they attacked.

  Ceran didn’t even notice, still healing the massive damage done to Doran, but Michael and Jacen handled the second two just as easily as they did the first pair.

  I took the time to read Nabon’s body, he had a few powerful enchantments on him, but nothing I couldn’t have already created already.

  They’d just gotten started, and five was now four.

  Jacen, Michael, Ceran, and Doran took the time to loot. Even Jacen didn’t quibble over the value of doing so. The only reward on those final four levels were the mana stones in the golems. Mana stones were quite valuable, but also a required component in golems, so it seemed a fair trade. They could power enchanted weapons, or even work to supplement a mage’s power. Of course, not for the clerics, since none of the crystals were light magic mana crystals.

  Of course, the golem’s shielding was dark magic, so I’d used more of those microscopic crystals for that and covered their skin in it, that was too valuable to just give away, and worthless to try and loot. But, the earth and fire crystals that powered their movement and magical weapons were claimed by my enemies.

  Three masters down, four to go…

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They stuck closer together and avoided the center of the rooms after that first one, but I wasn’t sure if that was to their benefit or not. The bars would also lower the amount of enemies they needed to face at once. They got in one free hit, and took down the two golems on the opposite wall when walking in. Even without tripping the trap, that made the other six activate and rush to attack. The three clerics would take out three, and Michael was a demon with a sword protecting them.

  Sure, one, sometimes two of them took a single hit, but they were fighting through the first floor. I estimated the last four were at least master level three, and equal to the danger, but I wasn’t too worried yet. That was just the beginning.

  Really, they should have retreated at that point, but they were more afraid of the highest than they were of me.

  Their mistake.

  Halfway through they hit the sixteenth room, which started the second half of the level and was where things changed.

  They walked into the room carefully, which had one giant golem in it, and two of the wolf golems. The wolves circled Michael in a blur to come at their party from behind, while the giant golem closed the distance to Michael. It rapid fired four physical bolts from its shoulder weapon, similar to a crossbow bolt, and then sent a blast of fire from the weapon that rested on its forearm.

  Michael dodged all of it, except for one bolt, and then met the giant golems strike with a sword strike of his own. Michael’s sword clanged on the right arm guard, not even scratching it, while the golems other hand backhanded him hard. Michael’s head snapped back as he went flying backwards. Four more rapid bolts were fired, and this time the golem didn’t miss, since he was stuck with his flying trajectory and couldn’t change it.

  At the same time that was going on, the wolves dodged the light bolts of the clerics, and dove in to ravage Ceran’s and Doran’s legs. Both were bleeding from their legs freely as the wolves who had no magical attacks, went on their back legs and lunged for their throats in sync.

  Michael’s sword came out of nowhere as he rolled out of a backwards fall, and saved Doran’s life as he took the head of a wolf despite the five bolts stuck in his body.

  Michael screamed, “The large golem!”

  The second wolf dug his teeth into Ceran’s throat, and then ripped it out.

  I gratefully drank in his lifeforce.

  Jacen instinctively obeyed the warrior’s command, and he turned to release his light bolt at the giant. The giant wasn’t put down, but it was damaged.

  The wolf spat out half of Ceran’s throat, and then leaped at Jacen’s back. Before he could get there however, Michael’s sword met him in the air and took its head, before the paladin collapsed to the ground and focused on directing his life force to stop the bleeding.

  Doran fired off a light bolt at the giant, and a second one from Jacen quickly followed. The giant golem died, and then tipped over.

  Michael was breathless, “We fucked up, that giant is a fucking tank. You guys need to focus on taking it with magic, and I’ll protect you from the wolves. I should’ve known when the wolves circled me, we fought them the way they wanted us to, like a couple of empty-headed initiates.”
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  Jacen grunted, and he helped heal the paladin as Michael pulled the bolts out of his body, while Doran healed his own leg.

  Four down, three to go.

  They followed Michael’s suggested tactics for the rest of golem level one, and they made it to level two. They still almost died anyway, most fights they took a bolt or two before the two remaining clerics could take it down, and Michael was mauled more than once by the wolves. They decided to stop for a moment, rest, eat, and recover before continuing on.

  Ceran had been a lot more powerful, and worth over a week’s worth of mana absorption. I went ahead and sped up the goblin levels, and I gave serious consideration to adding a level of each, and in having five groupings of five levels instead of five of four. I had no other unique ideas for levels, but I held off at that point. Instead of doing that, I wound up using the extra lifeforce to grow my potential directly.

  A dungeon grew in relation to its level growth and the amount of creatures it had, but it could also enlarge itself directly, make it’s crystal grow larger in size to hold more lifeforce. Eventually, a dungeon had enough levels to cover everything, yet they could still grow and learn. I was sure I’d expand the dungeon again one day, but I didn’t want to get lazy about it, and wind up having twenty levels of the same monotonous thing times five. I’d wait for something new, four levels of any one thing was more than enough, to my way of thinking.

  When I was ready, I’d already be big enough to support it.

  The first half of that second level of golems appeared identical to the last half of the first floor.

  But of course, it wasn’t identical at all.

  The three of them entered the first room, and the clerics fired two light bolts at the giant golem as usual. The golem fired bolts back at the clerics, two each, and Doran took on in the leg, and one in the stomach, while Jacen had managed to dive out of the way. When Jacen came back to his feet, he was pretty spry for an ancient wrinkly asshole, he released a second bolt that finished off the guard.

  Jacen turned toward Michael while Doran started to heal himself. Michael was having trouble closing with the wolves, they were darting in and snapping at him, but retreating from his sword swings. All three were incredibly fast, and Jacen was trying to figure out how to support Michael, he doubted he could hit one of the wolves with a light bolt.