Dungeon Calamity (The Divine Dungeon Book 3)

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Dungeon Calamity (The Divine Dungeon Book 3) Page 33

by Dakota Krout


  A Mage had flown down to scout quite a while ago, looking for survivors or defenders. She had just returned, bringing news that someone else had apparently already collected anyone living and hauled them to a holding area on the outskirts of the capitol. From the look of the rotting guards, their stay wouldn’t end up being a pleasant one. Or a long one, for that matter. Dale flinched as a huge pack of Cloud Cats sprinted past him, jumping off the wall and gliding toward the city a mile below. While they couldn’t survive outside of the dungeon for any real length of time, if they made it back within a day there wouldn’t be too many detrimental effects. Especially if they were well fed, and the sad truth was that there was plenty of meat below.

  Tom strolled up to Dale, golden armor gleaming in the weak sunlight that diffused through the choking smoke. The unit’s armor had arrived, the rush order being completed in record time by a very happy Dwarf. After being processed, the scales from the Manticore had taken a golden shine, and the leather was a soft golden brown. Dale was happy to see Tom using both hands to carry his oversized Warhammer, and he waved at the barbarian as he walked up.

  “Looks to be a good day for battle, Baron Dale.” Tom was very somber today, his green eyes looking down at the burned husk of a city that used to contain his least favorite people.

  “It does, indeed. Outside of the smoke, it’s a beautiful day.” Dale tore his eyes away from the minor explosions and waves of darkness erupting on the distant ground. Rarely the screaming roar of the cloud Cats would drift up to them and cause him to shiver. “Are you going to be okay doing this, Tom? We are trying to rescue Amazons.”

  Tom leaned on the wall, body posture relaxed in a way Dale couldn’t match when he was this tense. “We are saving their people, their man-slaves. If I understand correctly, the first action that would have been taken is to kill the leadership of the nation. If so, this means that my family has been avenged. Now, there is no place in my soul that holds anger toward the desperate people below. I will fight to the best of my abilities.”

  “That’s good, Tom. I’m glad to hear it.” Dale reached over and grabbed his new helmet, slowly pulling it on. A perfect fit, as expected of Dwarven work. “Let’s get to it.” They walked over to their team, and Hans struck a heroic pose at them. Now that they were in matching armor, they really looked like a team. Of course, Adam was still wearing his brilliantly white robe. Instead of detracting from the uniform, the robe instead highlighted the armor he now wore underneath. Dale looked at each of them and felt that he had done all he could to protect them. He rolled his arms to relax his stress-clenched muscles and took a deep breath.

  “Are we ready for this?” Rose looked at the pale faces surrounding her, receiving shakes of their head ‘no’ from all of them. “Oh, good. I thought it was just me.” She looked out over the sea of people waiting to attack, but her attention was caught and held by the portal Mages. They were doing… something together, and their voices were rising and falling in an intricate chant. Mana was intertwining and accumulating above them, forming a rift in the air above the city.

  “Are we certain the city is populated only with the dead or necromancers?” Frank called to the scouts. They nodded, eyes wide and staring. They had seen horrors today. “Bring it out, then.” A ball of tungsten was rolled in front of the waiting army, pushed by four straining Mages. The ball was set into an indentation on the stone floor, waiting to be used. At first glance, it was just a lump of metal, but Dale could feel the dungeon’s work at play and decided to look closer. As tall as a man–roughly six feet–the ball was so heavy that it left a furrow in the ground it rolled over. What made Dale catch the breath in his throat were the Runes engraved on the ball: extra weight, force, and demon banishing. What was happening?

  Tyler was glaring at the ball. “Six feet in diameter, nineteen point three grams per cubic centimeter… that is two hundred and four thousand, six hundred and eighty-five pounds of Inscribed tungsten we are throwing away.”

  “We aren’t throwing it away, Tyler.” Chandra stepped toward them as she decided to take a moment to explain what was happening. “I’m not sure you will understand the significance, but there is a Tomb Lord down there.”

  Tyler shrugged at her. “You’re right, I don’t understand.”

  “There is a hierarchy of undead summons. There are basic versions like zombie and wraiths, a mid-tier like abominations and minor demons, and a higher tier that contains beings like standard demons. These are all things you have seen before and are the usual things summoned by Mage-rank necromancers. Then there are beings summoned exclusively by A-ranks and higher. The weakest of these is a Behemoth, which is twice the size of an abomination and armored.”

  Chandra took a deep breath and continued, “One of the strongest in the A-ranks is the Tomb Lord. This is a heavily armored being that commands armies of the undead. They are puppets of demon lords in that they are inhabited and controlled by them. This means that they not only have all the power of the dead but the infernal powers of the abyss as well. Fast, intelligent, powerful. Nearly impossible to kill with conventional weaponry. Thus, we have that.” She pointed at the ball the portal Mages were surrounding.

  The second in command of the portal Mages, Justin, started a secondary chant that created a harmony to the first. Next to the ball, a portal slowly opened on the ground. Ten feet above it, another portal opened simultaneously. As it widened, Justin’s face became more and more strained. “Now!” He gasped as his strength began to wane.

  The attending Mages shoved the ball, and it ponderously began to move. Ever so slowly, it tipped over the edge of the portal and fell. And fell. And fell. The wind began to shimmer as the ball dropped from the air above, only to drop into the waiting portal and appear in the air again. The friction in the air was causing the ball to heat up, and in seconds it was glowing a bright cherry-red. Now falling so fast that the air began to catch on fire around it, the ball was now almost impossible for people to look at directly. A huge amount of Essence began to be generated as wind Essence was torn apart and created fire and lightning Essence. James tried to let the ball ‘fall’ for as long as he could maintain the portal; just as he was about to collapse, Amber hijacked the portal on the ground and connected it with a different hole in the world.

  Impossibly fast, the ball of tungsten entered the portal on the ground and exited the portal high in the air, aimed at the city below. Specifically, it was aimed at an armored form that towered over the highest of the buildings still standing. With meteoric speed the ball impacted the form that was standing in the center of the largest wave of undead, causing a shockwave that forced the floating dungeon higher on a blast of air. The ground collapsed in all directions, and the earth of the dead city rose into the air as debris. The dust reached the edge of the dungeon’s influence and was absorbed, protecting the people waiting to attack whatever survived. Optimistically looking at the power of the artillery, they all hoped there would be nothing left to fight at this point.

  It took a few minutes for the air to clear enough to see the ground below, and the view confused many. The Tomb Lord was still standing, though everything else had been annihilated by the shockwave. It looked at its hand and seemed to laugh as it tried to toss away the ball it had caught. It seemed confused that the ball wouldn’t leave its hand. It violently shook its appendage, and a furious screech left its mouth. The ball glowed brighter for a long moment, then it and the Tomb Lord vanished with a faint *pop*.

  “Banished. Thank goodness.” Justin collapsed, lying on his back and breathing deeply.

  “Good God!” Tyler whispered as he looked at Chandra with wide eyes. “You would have had to fight that thing?”

  She nodded. “It would have been very difficult. It had the power of the Mage who summoned it as well as the demon’s strength. It was essentially two A-ranked Mages working together in perfect harmony. If it hadn’t tried to show off by catching the ball, we would have needed to retreat.”

  W
hile their conversation continued, the scouts were making reports on the city below. There had been quite a bit of damage but the city center remained completely intact. The Amazons cleared up the confusion generated by this revelation. “The Queen’s circle. There were powerful protections in place, powerful enough to slow S-ranked attacks. Though this was a potent blow against weak creatures, that ball was not infused with Mana. It was just moving quickly. Obviously the protections designed by Amazonians were enough to stop that mediocre damage from spreading.”

 

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