Dungeon Annihilation 18

Regan

Well. That was disappointing. It looked like the effectiveness of Pride had worn off. Wrath should be a bit more difficult for them. He did take nearly three times the amount of mana that Pride had required. I would be pissed is he didn’t perform.

“Set.”

She appeared in a cloud of shadows and bowed to me. “Yes, master?” 

“What are the limitations to changes made to my boss monsters?”

I saw as her eyes closed, the inherited memories flowing into her like a google search from Earth. It lasted made close to three minutes before she came out of it. “Your hands are very tied. The boss itself must evolve then you can create a new boss to take its place as the evolved boss is generally stronger than what is was intended for.”

“Can give the boss’s new weapons or change their environments?” While I didn’t plan to right now, I was considering upgrading Pride’s equipment. I wouldn’t give him a full-fledged gun though. It was too risky if a party defeated him. I’d already lost one of the bone rifles. 

“I can’t find anything saying you can’t,” Set replied after looking through her memories again.

“Well I’ll put a pin on that for now.”

I moved up to the sixteenth floor to work on some more mana generating projects when my vision went black. A first since I came to this world. I didn’t feel any disorientation or discomfort from the change, so I waited to see what was happening. After a few seconds my vision returned but I was in an entirely different place.

A core floated in the center of the room I found myself. It was much larger than mine with a green and pink coloration. Blood red chains wrapped around the core that had thousands of runes engraved onto them. I found that I could move and did so to get a closer look. I raised an eyebrow when I saw that many of the runes were similar to the magic that I’d inadvertently learned from the necromancer. Even with that hint, it was the most complicated rune work I had seen so far.

I copied everything down in my mental notebook before I looked around the black room to find out why exactly I was pulled her. I couldn’t see my own body thus it must be some sort of astral projection. If that was what it was called in this world. I noticed a man in black robes working some magic but couldn’t hear what they were chanting. I didn’t risk getting closer to them incase they could somehow sense me.

I tapped my chin as I considered what to do. Figuring I might as well try, I sent my senses out around me to see if I could find anything. I found three rooms not including the one I was in. A classic torture chamber with a few people chained up. They were giving the dungeon bare scarps from how close to death they were. 

A room that was likely for meetings of the would-be demon lords sat empty to the side of the torture room. Next there was a treasure vault. A lot of the items there were glowing with the telltale signs of mana. I sent my senses out one more time and found there was a room under the room. 

With a smirk at the thought that people always hid the real treasure under mundane treasure. I moved down to check it to see if there was anything interesting. Feeling like a ghost, I entered the room from the ceiling. “What’s down the rabbit hole?” I hummed.

This was just poor craftsmanship. The hidden room had a completely different theme than the ones I’d checked first. A small grove with flowers and trees glowed with a soft light. In the center of the room, there was a chair that had what could easily pass for a doll on Earth. 

I moved over to her and something inside recognized her as the host of the dungeon. The girl looked to be in her late teens, but it was like her growth had stopped. She would probably stand at one hundred forty-nine centimeters with long reddish-pink hair that cascaded down her back. A black iron crown with rough spikes coming out every two or so centimeters all the way around the crown. Her right arm wore a gauntlet of the same black metal and looked quite powerful. Her skin was pale, and her eyes that were gazing into nothing were an orange-crimson. There was a sword with a skull as the cross guard and a wicked black and red blade that seemed to be just barely a meter long lying across her legs.

She was quite the beauty even by Earth standards that had taken the pursuit of beauty to an entire new level. I had my pick of girls before the machines turned on me, but even I was amazed by what I was seeing. Not that I would let that sway me. 

I felt something restrain my speech but put a little mana into and sound finally came out. “Well. Well. Well.” I crouched down in front of her. “Would be the Undead Queen I’ve heard so much about?” I mumbled. Crouched down, I saw a black collar partially hidden by her cloths. I reached forward but stopped short when her eyes snapped open. She was about to speak when I placed a finger to my lips. “Shhh.”

Her mouth snapped shut but I could tell she wanted to say something. I pointed at her head then mine and moved my head to the side. She stared at me for a second before she comprehended what I wanted and copied the motion. I stood up and studied the collar. If Ivan hadn’t just entered my dungeon and I had the partial necromancer knowledge it would be gibberish to me, but I was able to comprehend quite a bit of it. After having her move this way and that, I was able to get most of the collar. 

I moved back in front of her and crouched down again. “Want me to save you? Just nod if you do,” I said with a small grin. She nodded with almost enough force to make her fall forward. The runes around her collar sparked but died down when she went back to being motionless. “You have to serve me. I do not help out of the goodness of my heart. I will say that you can get revenge on the people causing this. Nod if you understand.”

The pause lasted for nearly two minutes before I got a very slow nod. I grinned and stood up. “Until next time my dear.” The scene broke up around me and I was back on the sixteenth floor of my own dungeon. I looked around but found everything as I left it. “Well, that was fun.”

“Master?” Set asked.

“Just paid a visit to that dungeon everyone is complaining about. I think anyways,” I replied with a chuckle.

“Undead Queen Alara? We should be too far for any sort of dungeon telepathy to work,” Set said spinning around me in the air.

I thought about Destruction. She would easily be able to make something like this happen. I pulled my magic notebook out and quickly transcribed all the magic I saw while I was there. Much of it made little sense, but I could work at it to figure it out. It helped that I could understand parts of it. 

I returned my attention to Set. “Looks like someone is controlling her. Given the information we’ve learned from the adventurers, it’s likely the necromancers. I’d love to get my hands on a few of them.”

“We know what unholy mana feels like. We should know when one enters the dungeon.”

“If they’ve managed to take control of another dungeon. I don’t know how I feel about one of them walking into my midst.” I recalled the collar around the host I just saw. They likely captured her host then took over the dungeon. I would need to be careful heading into town in my avatar.

Deciding to take some early precautions, I created a pillar near all the entrances. Using my magic script, I inscribed a spell that would detect the unholy mana. I based it off the sensation that Zombie gave me. Each pillar cost close to ten thousand mana, a steep price for me right now, but it would serve me well in case any parties had necromancers with them.

I spent a hundred and fifty thousand mana placing five in the first floors then five in various plaza in the gothic city. At tier one level six, that left me with just over thirty thousand mana. My… collection had grown since the parties had started entering, but it would take a while to recoup the cost.

That led me back to my original goal for the day. Increasing my mana production. I was already using water turbines. Wind turbines wouldn’t be a bad path to go, but I gain more mana by the number of transformations the matter goes through. It wouldn’t be much of increase compared to my water turbines.

I had gravity magic, so theoretically I should be able to create a fusion reactor. I just had a feeling the mana cost wouldn’t be offset by the gain. I would have to contain a several million degrees plasma ball. Maybe when I had more materials to work with, I could play with that idea again.

I had recently gained the materials need to create solar panels. They wouldn’t be very efficient until I got platinum, but they would do. With a mental nod, I decided to go with that. I moved to the top of my tower and realized a problem. Due to the water going down the sides of the tower, a near constant gathering of storm clouds had formed.

That meant I would either think up a new plan or build the panels offsite. Offsite came with its own risks. Particularly, monster attack. I wouldn’t be able to monitor it as easily. If a problem happened, I would be in rough place to fix it.

“Hey Set. I need to gain more mana. What are my options?”

“We could tap into the ley-line. I’m not sure where the nearest one is from our location though.”

“Ley-line?”

“Bands of mana that lattice around the planet. A few people in the past have managed to tap into them that’s why I have memories of them.”

“Interesting. Is it unlimited?” I almost began to salivate at the idea of having unlimited mana. It would push many of my plans and projects way ahead of schedule.

“I believe it is similar to a well. If you pull slowly you would never run out, but if you keep taking, you risk drying it up.”

“Figures,” I said with a sigh.

Given the little amount of information we had to work with, I needed to play with it over the next few weeks. Maybe going like Benjamin and send a kite up and hope to get struck my something. That thought gave me an idea. I moved outside the top of my tower. 

The clouds had gathered for quite a distance but they had reached the point of creating a sustainable source of lightning. Even with being this far up the side of the mountain, we were a bit low for the moisture inside to freeze. I decided that’s how I would get part of my mana. 

I created rods around the top of my tower with a spell that would draw the mana from the heat from the moisture from around the tower. There was instant change as everything in the top of my aura started to freeze into ice pellets and snow. Everything outside my aura was still warm and wet moving down while the lighter ice and snow moved up.

The mixture of the two caused the storm to start to electrify. I created a few more pillars made from iron. A few minutes later, I had my first lightning strike. I grinned at the amount of mana it created. As many parts of the process were created outside my dungeon the yield was even greater than had I done it all internally.

I mentally rubbed my hands together as I was getting close to five hundred mana per strike. I would recoup the cost of creating the unholy mana detectors in no time. It was also calming to watch the forces of nature interact on a level that scientists from Earth would have paid their soul to see.

“It is amazing, master,” Set said as we watched the show.

“It really is,” I replied with a chuckle.

We watched for a while when Set raised her voice. “I think the storm is growing master.”

I looked at the storm and had to agree with her. The changes I made were indeed causing the storm to grow. Winds from the mountains were also adding fuel to the storm. Generally, storms are caused by an imbalance, with me constantly unbalancing the system the storm cannot fix the cause.

“Let’s watch it for a while. I want to see what happens.”