Dungeon Novel 2: Chapter One

The lich stared out across his forces passively, the arrayed Undead a marvel to behold. It had not been out of it’s chambers for many years now since the heroes fought against it, testing and experimenting and researching.

It had come so close to finishing the kingdoms last time it had fought them, their armies vanquished, and their land lost. It had only been the hero’s arrival that had pushed the Undead onto the back foot, even when younger and weaker any skill they used, imbued with their affinity, could kill scores of the lich’s forces.

Heroes had managed to push the war into the favor of the sentient kingdoms and were driving the lich’s forces back into the ‘Deadlands’ when they attacked it.

Now it was prepared again, able to counter any new heroes and counter the kingdoms and church's greatest weapons as a by-product. The various nations would fall to it’s forces, and it would win once and for all.

It stared out at the sight of it’s Undead cutting down men, women, and children in the village and the lich’s burning globes crackled with glee.

Unbound was putting the final touches on his fifth floor. It had taken several days to create the floor as he liked it because he had bought several different plants, environments, and traps to form the floor.

He had built the Undead-themed floor he had wished to build with his array of Undead defenders, the sheer number of different patterns he had gained from the multitude of Undead incursions he had sustained.

He had created an Undead themed counterpart to his forest-themed third floor, with dead trees and a gloomy fog draped across the woods like a veil. Dispersed throughout the trees were several gravestones and burial sites bought from the shop to empower the Undead created within.

He had also bought certain dens for some of the defenders he had to increase their reproduction rate in the other floors. As Unbound watched the den form, plus the knowledge the pattern gave him, it was clear that the ‘dens’ connected to the defender’s minds and bodies in a way, currently unknown to him, to safely increase the reproduction rate.

It had boosted the floor's independence and allowed Unbound more mana to play at creating the fifth floor in which he wished to create a floor that would be versatile enough to somewhat counter all invaders.

The Undead were a serious threat on their own, the heroic variants intermixed would be a threat to those who specialized in taking out Undead with various affinity types and the various traps should be able to take anything else. He had specially put several traps down with Purge Undead sigils to trap and take out enemy Undead without killing his own.

The defenders were purely of the skeletal types, Bone-Plated animals, and skeletons. There was also one of his… Experiments. It was a ball of various smaller bones, finger and toe bones, that had formed up into a strangely smooth ball that rolled around and could become spiky at will.

It was one of the most bizarre results from Unbound’s fighting chambers and he had no idea how the Crumbling Skeleton had managed to change itself so much. Elvinia had seen it and told him that it should not have been possible to create such a wildly different defender without the use of the creature-altering skills. The skills she said he should only purchase when he had the ability granted along with his tenth floor. Unbound had called it, rather practically, Shifting Bone Boulder on account that it could subtly shift its form.

Unbound was currently forming the Boss area, unlike the third floor he was not creating a cavern for the boss to hide in but rather the opposite. A small mountainous structure with a path winding around the side for people to reach the top where an arena was laid out.

It was completely flat, with no obstacles or trenches, and anyone thrown off would likely die at the height unless they were strong enough. The only outcrop was a small podium where the boss sat when unchallenged.

For the boss, Unbound used one of the newer Undead defenders, the rarer type that Beda, a female necromancer residing in the Dungeon, had brought with her when she wished to speak with Unbound. It was a Bone Abomination: Spike Variant.

The only Bone Abomination Unbound had currently and was similar to the Shifting Bone Boulder in that its main body was made of a multitude of bones. The difference was that the Bone Abomination was in a humanoid shape with spikes constantly on display and used its body in a different way.

It could form weapons from them, daggers, swords, hammers, and various projectiles to use in combat. Little changed when it became a Boss defender, it became slightly tougher, but the larger change was in how it fought, using several of the sentient races fighting methods. Knight, Rogue, Archer, Swordsman, Spearman, and many others, only unable to copy mage type fighters like Battlemages and Priests.

It fit with what had happened to Unbound’s surrounding territory, a challenge to the sentient races.

Outside of the Dungeon, the many Adventurers had set up an outpost to enter the Dungeon regularly. From what Unbound had gathered it had been set up by the Church, despite Unbound’s relatively young age being immersed in the Deadlands meant that he should have ways to combat Undead and able to hand out loot to help with that end.

They had set up a small outpost with many mages to keep an illusion that nothing was there, it was a large risk to be within the Deadlands as a war raged but various higher members of the Church had pointed out the many Purge Undead enchantments could be a turning point in the war.

So Unbound did, he assigned loot and followed his instincts call, to create a world onto itself to challenge and fight all Adventurers who entered it.