Dungeon Robotics 9 - 3

Good almost evening everyone! I hope the weekend treated everyone well. 

Regan

I was pleased that Ezal’s child was delivered safely. Even with the magic available to them. Childbirth was one of the more dangerous pursuits among the mortals much like back in the history of humans on Earth. Each of the races had their unique complications here on Murgin, but in the end, the most dangerous was the risk of infection.

When you had magic that healed what ailed you, it was hard to understand that there were microscopic organisms that could make one sick. Even the Gnomes only had a rudimentary understanding of this fact. What was likely a callback to a more enlightened time, the fact that people needed to wash their hands and boil water had been engrained in society reducing the overall death rate of the weaker mortals that failed to achieve cultivation.

“I have to admit, that was a bit more… dramatic than I remember,” Louella said glancing back to Ezal’s room.

“I’ve also been amazed by woman’s ability to have children,” I replied with a smile. “In my old world, there was a… legend that it was due to a mistake on the woman’s part that caused them to have pain in childbirth. I think its more alone the lines that bring life into the world is a tremendous task and the pain at the beginning is to remind women not to take it lightly.”

“What was the mistake?”

I couldn’t help laughing. “She ate an apple.”

“Why was that such a bad thing?”

“God had told her not to. Simple as that. It was the apple of good and evil, but if you asked me. The fact that it was ‘evil’ to eat the apple meant that we already possessed the ability for good and evil before we even had the knowledge of it and that the God merely wanted to test us. Why else would he place such temptation in an otherwise perfect world?”

“I’m not sure about your world, but we’ve already found that our gods are just mortals that have ascended to the point of ultimate power. Maybe something similar happened in yours?”

“Maybe,” I sighed and shook my head. “It really doesn’t matter anymore.” Correcting Alara’s position in my arms. I turned to take Louella in. “What do you plan for the rest of the day?”

“Ezal and Valamar kept the city running while I was gone, but there are a few issues that I need to address soon. I plan to take care of those.” The sun spirits were spinning around her like they were orbiting the sun. They had mostly calmed down now after spending most of the night with Louella.

“I see. Then I shall leave you to it.” I gave her a bow before I teleported to my main core room. I wanted to check the state of my dungeon and sub-cores and this was the best place to do so. With the quantum links connected here, I could peer into the other dungeons with less effort than it would require anywhere else.

Adding in my transponders had strengthened the links further. It was still an immense challenge to form any sort of portal for large transfers, but I could teleport single entities with much more ease than before. The lack of portals was more a hit for the mortals, but I had Izora handling that task.

“Regan?”

“Good morning, sleeping beauty.”

“The baby!?” she asked excitedly then realized we weren’t in Ezal’s room anymore.

“Slept through it. A healthy baby boy.”

I was surprised by the pout that she displayed. “Why didn’t you wake me!?”

“I didn’t think you were that interested in the mortal child. Surely you’ve seen plenty over your years?”

“That’s true, but she is one of your mortals.” She crossed her arms and fumed as she looked away from me.

“I’m sorry. I should have known better,” I replied trying my best not to laugh. Alara was quite adorable when even when she was upset. I reached out and took her hand bringing it to my lips. “I’ll make sure to check with you from now on with these things before I assume, but for now.” I waved my hand and an image of the baby formed in front of us.

“Is he glowing?” she asked catching me by surprise.

Looking, I found that the child was indeed glowing slightly. I mentally measured the temperature in the room and found it close to thirty-five degrees. That was similar to a hot summer day. “He is running a bit of a temperature,” I replied with a chuckle. At least it appeared the increased heat wasn’t adversely affecting the child’s health for the moment, and Ezal was well equipped to handle the heat.

I let Alara watch the baby for a few more minutes before I felt we were invading Ezal’s privacy once she started to feed Azar. As a dungeon core covering a town, I had witnessed much more intimate scenes completely on accident, but I tried to turn away when I realized what was going on. As a pure dungeon core, Alara didn’t quite see it as an invasion of privacy, but her age allowed her to understand my point.

I got back to the task at hand. My dungeons were operating without issues. None of the interdimensional beasts that were breaking through had made an appearance since I had created the inhibitor, but the mana drain was getting harsher by the day. That more than anything told me that whatever was coming was getting closer.

The mortals were still diving my main dungeon and were well on their way to reaching the fortieth floor. The snow floor had forced them to work together, but the Chaos party had become well established and were coordinating the efforts to dive deeper. The members of that party were still as crazy as usually, but all of them were into tier three now and quite frankly more powerful than most other tier threes.

It would still be while before any mortals can reach the depths without my help, but with knowledge from the libraries and training. They were clearly getting more powerful than before my arrival. I ultimately decided this was a good thing considering Murgin would need every ounce of strength it could muster for the coming challenges.

Steel Spire, Tearfalls Spire, Floating City Alpha, and my now bound cores, of the Lich and Wraith were all in good shape. The Lich and the Wraith, as I was calling the two undead cores from the north were arguably better of being destroyed, but I needed their power for the moment. If they could prove they wouldn’t be a danger to the world around them afterward they might just get to remain.

The fact of the matter was that I was more worried about the Wraith core, Kenia. Her only reason for living was revenge. That drive had a tendency to pull everything around it into a swirling vortex. As for Tzulxuc, he had realized that his path was a twisted road that led to the destruction of everything. I couldn’t say he should be forgiven, but he would likely be able at least become a normal dungeon core afterwards.

Peering through the links, I found that Kenia was close to her destination. Since having three cores in the same location defeated the purpose, and since her core was capable of moving, I was having her reposition her core to the west. It was further south of General Gersa, the goblin dungeon in the west. Once she was in place, I felt confident I could protect most of the northern continent.

Looking to Tzulxuc, I found the lich almost sulking near his core. Much like my avatar body, his old mortal body was bound to exist alongside his core. It was a strange piece of magic that I hadn’t had time to study. Around him were the undead version of all the former necromancer masters. He had killed and reanimated them when he when crazy after learning about Cassin’s betrayal. Couldn’t say that I blamed him.

“Now if only Orina would be willing to speak to us, we would have the entire north covered,” I commented as I starched my chin more out of habit.

Alara suddenly latched onto my arm. “I’m planning on talking to her later. She can ignore me, but if I use the dungeon link then she’ll have little choice but to listen. Hopefully, she’ll understand that you went so far as to shatter my core to rescue me.”

“It would be nice.” Alara mentioning her shattered core reminded me of another dungeon core. I reached out and pulled the shard from Vlad’s core that I had taken back from the demon general I defeated before. With the undead Scar appearing, there hadn’t been time to check on his dungeon. It might be time for that.

~~

Appearing with a flash, I took in the town under the tower. Tearfalls had managed to avoid the brink with my timely intervention. Puppet and his gangs’ intervention really. If not for them this city might be an undead ruin. They were in the middle of scouting the Beneath for me. Not only the Seal, but the High Dwarves needed to be located to ascertain what their situation.

I turned my gaze to Alara and smirked. “Hold on!” Leaping into the air, I shot towards the mountain in the distance. Vlad’s dungeon entrance was only a few hundred kilometers from the city. It was what allowed the city to grow to prominence in the first place. It didn’t take long before I felt something almost sickening.

“How horrible.” I had to agree with Alara. A dungeon aura still existed in the area, but it was… torn to shreds. If any of my auras had looked like this, I could only imagine the pain that I would be feeling.

I lowered us to the ground in front of the entrance. There had been a grand doorway here at one time, but now it was just a crater. Debris surrounding the blasted doors showed the explosion came from inside. The general had likely done it on his way out to show just how vicious he was.

I set Alara down then held out my hand pulling a staff from my sub-dimension. I had to make a new one after changing the moon, and it lacked the god-metal. Still it was tremendously cheaper and easier to remake if it came to it. Considering how I had treated the last staff, it might be better if I could replace it easier.

Alara crouched and placed her hand the ground. Over the next couple seconds, two tree rapidly grew until they were the same height as her. She gripped the bottom of each, and they broke off as the bottoms regrew roots around her hands. After that the trunks sharpened into wicked blades.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Yes.”

We made our way into the destitute dungeon. I wasn’t sure what the case would be since his core was completely destroyed, and the only shard was in my possession. The first few floors while showing signs of an intense battle, were empty. Vlad had likely absorbed all the corpses to gain what little mana he could before the general reached him.

Vlad had been a tier three dungeon according to the adventurer’s guild. While that likely was completely accurate, it gave me an estimate on the number of floors that we’d need to descend. The fact that his aura remained even after all this time gave me some hope that he wouldn’t have to start from the beginning, but it remained to be seen.

After about two hours, we made it to the halfway point. There still hadn’t been any monsters, but Vlad had used mazes for nearly every inch of his dungeon. Even with the destruction it taken us some time to traverse. At the point, there was a town, or rather a ruin of a town. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

“Destruction personified,” I mumbled as I checked inside a building.

Alara ran her hand over a dead bush that had barely managed to hold its shape after being burnt. “This was only a single general. How many are going to come if an entire fleet is on its way?”

“According to Quin, Generals were on the rare side, but still numbered in the thousands. They were essentially their nobles.” Alara shuddered and I placed my hand on her shoulder. “I’ll protect you and everyone else.”

“I know you defeated one before, but didn’t even this body suffer some damage?”

“Trust me. I learn from my mistakes.”

We didn’t waste any more time in the ruined town and kept going. When we on the eightieth or ninetieth floor, we finally started encountering monsters. There were giant bats and wolves that clearly echoed the word vampire. I used rays of intense light to burn the bats out of the air, while Alara handled the wolves that sought to attack us on the ground.

There weren’t many and we handled them with ease, but what do you expect from two dungeon core avatars. Another few hours put us on the bottom floors. The aura around the area was dense but still in tatters. Alara was in obvious displeasure and even I was feeling slightly sickened by the area.

The floor was populated with man bats. That was the easiest way to describe them. They were bats that were shaped like men. They were still no match for my lasers once I increased the power a bit. The wolves also had started to take on traits of men and women. It looked to me that Vlad was trying to reach werewolves and vampires of the sort from Earth. Unlike the beastkin their power would be high due to their lack of intelligence if he could prefect them.

“Regan.”

Looking toward Alara, she pointed to a crater in the wall. We moved over and I saw a pedestal with shattered crystal surrounded it. This was it, the core room. The general likely killed all the bosses and they couldn’t respawn without the core, while the lesser creatures either were leftovers or had reproduce naturally.

“I just hope he can recover.”

Moving to the pedestal, I placed the shard down before I started feeding it mana. Being away from my dungeon, I had a limited supply of mana, but it was still in the millions. Plenty to put him back in the first tier if he could be recovered. The shards that surrounded the pedestal rose into the air and I thought we might succeed, but before I could stop them. The shards turned into dust.

A face, that of the demon general formed in the dust laughing. “Foolish! I keep what I take. Nothing will change that.” The recording burst and I felt the shard that I was feeding mana to started to crack even further.

“Oh no you don’t!” I reached out and wrapped my hand around the shard. Cocooning it in mana. “Alara! Feed the shard mana while I focus on fighting the spell!”

“Yes!” She reached out and placed her hand over mine. The next few minutes was a game of cat and mouse as I headed off the spell as it tried to facture the barely remaining structure integrity of the crystal shard that was barely larger than a thumb nail. I never thought magic had a personality more than at this moment as I could almost feel the spell getting frustrated as I defeated it at every route.

Finally, much like a computer virus, I rerouted the spell into a nearby stone after causing it to mimic the structure of the crystal. When it dived it and instantly realized that it had been fooled, as another barrier wrapped around it, the spell suddenly went into overdrive causing the stone to glow red. I reinforced the barrier and kicked it out of the core room just as it exploded putting a decent sized crater outside.

There was a sudden snap of the aura around us as the core reformed. I removed my hand with a nod to Alara. She sighed but had a smile. Her mana was much more precious to her. Every drop of it being an upward battle to reclaim right now. The mortals in her dungeon were making it a bit easier lately.

“Vlad?” Alara called looking around. He was a grouchy old man last time I saw him.

“Old man?” I added.

There was a swirl of red in front of us then a boy that couldn’t have been more than eight or nine appeared in front of us. He looked back and forth between us then down at himself. “Who are you two? Are you my parents?” he asked though his voice sounded off. Like that of an old man trapped in a younger body. He looked down at himself again. “Who am I?”

“Well… That is unexpected,” I said rubbing my temple.

Next:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/44285023

Previous:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/44153767