Dungeon of Pride, Laplace

Chapter 45: Dungeon War (2)

Opening the door revealed a wide set of stairs that led downwards. With the commands given by Mike and Berd, the monsters started charging downstairs. Soon after a dimly lit maze came into view.

The floor was a few hundred meters wide and thick walls crisscrossed in every corner, the passageway was quite narrow and only allowed a few monsters to pass through together at once. Gelgar tried punching through the wall and realized that the walls were further reinforced with manas, which made it rather difficult to break them. Even with his strength, he could only make a small crack that disappeared in an instant as the walls mended themselves whenever they were damaged.

“Tsk. I want all of you to quickly find the entrance to the next floor” realising that he couldn’t just brute force his way, he clicked his tongue in annoyance and with an irritated tone he gave the command. Following his orders, the monsters soon spread towards all corners of the floor and started searching for the entrance to the next floor.

“Cheap tricks that is only good to buy time” Gelgar spat as he looked around the dim floor and couldn’t help but comment when he couldn’t detect anything other than traps. There was no trace of monsters that were supposed to be guarding the dungeon.

“I guess that demon didn’t have enough DP to spawn monsters to guard all the floors of his dungeon” Mike added after Gelgar sensing that there were no monsters nearby.

But they all failed to notice that in some corners of the floor a faint pinkish smoke was rising from the walls smeared with some pink fluids. The monster that passed by or inhaled some of the pinkish smoke, had a dazed look in their eyes as they fell in the traps laid for the intruders and quickly becoming the nourishment for the dungeon.

Whenever a foreign entity that wasn’t recognised or born in the dungeon dies inside, they would become the nourishment for the growth of the dungeon and converted into DP for the dungeon master.

The first floor wasn’t big and only a few hundred meters wide. After the monsters spread all over the floor, even when the walls and routes changed periodically, they swiftly found the entrance.

In only an hour they found the entrance to the next floor and immediately started marching in. Gelgar who was a little irritated that they had to spend so long in the maze to find the entrance failed to notice their slowly declining numbers. A dimly lit path led towards a dark cavern that made the forward march of the monsters slow down quite a bit. After coming down to the second floor, everyone felt their vision declining by a significant amount. That was because there was no source of light.

Though there was no source of light, Gelgar didn’t feel any discomfort even he did not have the skill [Night Vision].

Mike and Berd immediately started ordering commands as they used fire magic to light up their surroundings. The monsters that innately have the ability to see in the dark such as the Corpse Mummies marched unhindered. Those that did not, had to rely on fire magic cast by their top commanders.

Though there was no source of light, Gelgar didn’t feel any discomfort as he had the skill [Night Vision] which allowed him to see just fine even in the dark.

Since Mike and Berd didn’t have a convenient skill to see in the dark such as the [Night Vision], they were using fire magic to light up their surroundings and surveyed the floor. A wide cavernous terrain lay in front of them, many twisting paths interlocked and crisscrossed around each other, many tall and wide rocks protruded from the ceiling and floors. From these rocks, water seeped down making the floor quite wet and made a continuous splashing sound as the monsters marched over it.

in one part of the cavern, a group of twenty Sandworms that are individually five meters in length were frantically crawling and searching for the entrance to the next floor as per their orders. Their slithery bodies were drenched with liquids from the small puddles on the floor, as they crawled forward more and more of those liquids latched onto their bodies. though the sticking to their bodies was a little unusual, they paid it no mind as it didn’t threaten their life.

After making a turn and coming to new a area, the sandworms started scouting for the entrance. Hundreds of small rocks protruded from the ceiling as droplets of water seeped from them and crashed below. However, when these droplets of water fell on the liquid drenched bodies of the Sandworms, they ignited into a burst of flames.

SHRIEEEEEKKK….all the sandworms that entered the area, ignited one after the other as the water droplets dropped on their bodies. Their shriek of pain resounded over the area, as they desperately thumped their bodies into the ground in an attempt to snuff the flames on their bodies but to no avail. The more they thumped onto the ground the more water dropped onto them and increased the intensity of the flames burning them. Their shriek of pain lasted for a long while before all twenty of them succumbed to the flames.

It was not only the Sandworms but many other monsters similarly burst into flames in some corners of the cavern. It would be only after they reach the third floor when Gelgar and his subordinates realise the dwindling numbers of their monster army. But for now, they had no way of knowing what had transpired in these wide twisting caverns.