Chương 19: A warring dungeon

We're going to lose this war. A conclusion written in stone ever since the first salvo, that should have destroyed the military capacity of Jetosu there and then, was partially turned against us by the traitorous mages. A conclusion for which we have prepared this last resort. The world must not be permitted to fall under the control of the self-righteous Jetosu fools. It would be better to die, and so die we shall.

We shall fire our most potent weapon just once more, and this time the 'price' will be all of the life of the world. We shall consume the world to save it, and can do naught but apologize to the peoples we have failed. - Missive from a Soutso field commander Erryn looked upon the end of the world. Pretty much literally, as well as figuratively. Waves of corrupted mana crashed into Erryn's mana flows, strong enough to cause pain on top of the usual nausea.

The crater itself was wide enough that Erryn couldn't see the other side, hundreds of kilometres at the least. A few kilometres in a sea of magma started, held molten by the flows of mana even after the intervening decades. Belches of black smoke rose from the molten ocean, raising and spreading out, joining in to the world covering shroud. At the centre a monstrosity of pure darkness, soul remnants unlike anything Erryn had seen before, was anchored into the magma below and the skies above.

And as Erryn stared, it realised in alarm that the thing was staring back. Alarm that turned to panic as it lunged. Lances of pure death and darkness pierced Erryn's dungeon stone, the intense pain sending Erryn reeling. It immediately tried to cut off its territory at a distance from the weapon site, but could not, the corrupted mana having invaded Erryn's mana pathways so rapidly that it was already tearing into the closest subsidiary core.

In panic, Erryn blasted the foreign mana with life and light affinities, but it wasn't enough. The subsidiary core was fading to black, decaying as Erryn watched. Erryn had never before dealt with an attack. It had only been in danger once before, maybe twice if the first foolish attempt at core reinforcement was counted, and both instances were self inflicted. Previously when faced with an insurmountable challenge, Erryn had always had the option of time. To simply put it down and try again later.

This time that option did not exist. Erryn had exposed itself to this enemy, and had to take it down now or die trying. Or worse, not die. Being torn apart, soul shattered and broken but alive and trapped, becoming like that. The mana veins of the subsidiary dungeon had turned black, Erryn's usual background light affinity replaced by darkness and death. The subsidiary core rotted and crumbled away, and the dungeon stone itself started warping and dripping.

Erryn knew it had to get a handle on its panic and fight back. If this corruption reached its main core, everything would be over. Trying to fight off the corrupted mana with light and life affinities had failed; the corruption was stronger than Erryn, and was merely slowed by the countering affinities. Erryn decided to try a different strategy, and spun mana into soul affinity. Never before had Erryn attempted to wield soul mana, but here it should be the ideal weapon.

The enemy was forged and unleashed upon the world through soul magic, and while it may be stronger than Erryn, Erryn was prepared to bet that the original caster was not. The enemy was mindless, born only to devour the world. More monstrous than any monster of Erryn's, it lacked intelligence. It could be controlled. With Erryn's inexperience it didn't try anything complex; it simply showed the enemy the option of peace.

Erryn placed the suggestion that all it had to do was to stop, to embrace the light, to sleep, and it would be freed of its endless torment. The corruption slowed. Erryn immediately countered, overwhelming the darkness with light. Erryn sacrificed territory in the west to pull in a replacement core, purging the subsidiary dungeon of corruption. Then it pulled in a few more cores, to give it a little more oomph in the area.

Erryn took the brief respite while the monstrosity had been stunned to conjure orichalcum plates and enchant them with constructs to produce light and life, and then more to block darkness and death. It took a scant few minutes to turn the place into a fortress, and to cut any other pathway towards the main core. If this place fell again to corruption, Erryn itself would fall. If it could hold, Erryn stood a chance.

It was ironic; dungeons were supposed to be places filled with monsters and traps, to lure in humans and bring about their end. But this was no physical invader. It wouldn't drop into a pitfall, or be pierced by a spike. There was nothing for a monster to claw or to bite. This was a battle of mana, and the weapons needed were vastly different. The monstrosity stirred, gradually shaking off the suggestion Erryn had placed.

Another wave of corruption crashed into Erryn but this time it held firm, the evil mana attenuated by the defensive enchantments. Erryn attacked back, not with raw mana but by weaving light into a purification spell. The monstrosity screeched, the sound seemingly coming from everywhere all at once. The sound shattered the ground, a cloud of dust billowing out from the crater. When it impacted Erryn's makeshift fortress the outer enchantments shattered, and the corruption pushed inwards.

Erryn fired off another blast of purification using the mana produced by the interior enchantments, blasting the corruption back, before hastily repairing the defences. The back and forth continued, but Erryn had given itself sufficient leeway to divert a small amount of attention elsewhere.

Back in the main dungeon it created more intricate weapons, spears of orichalcum enchanted with constructs to absorb and purify the mana from anything they pierced, swords with a soul affinity enchantment that would disrupt the very existence of anything that it cut. Light affinity armour, with the strongest defences against the corruption that Erryn could muster. An army of glowing steel golems issued forth from the fortress.

Light affinity monsters, made of light affinity material and clad in darkness-eating armour should make them highly resistant to corruption, and the weapons would permit them to fight in ways that Erryn's mana could not. Erryn briefly regretted not purchasing radiant steel golems after all, but hopefully the equipment would make up for the lesser base monster type. Oddly there was no System interference.

Either it understood what was going on and made an exception, or else the corruption had messed up the mana so utterly that the concept of floors currently made no sense. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. The army marched forwards, planting spears into the corrupted earth. Where the lances of darkness fell, they cut them away with the swords of disruption, severing their connection to the central monstrosity and causing them to harmlessly dissipate.

The monstrosity screeched once more, shattering the orichalcum armour of the front line of golems. The corruption immediately invaded them, the glowing steel turning dull. The next line mercilessly cut them down before they escaped Erryn's control. They fought on ever onwards, the destroyed golems being replaced by an endless stream of reinforcements from the rear.

As they pushed forwards, Erryn was able to reclaim and purify the remains of those that had been destroyed, reducing the amount of mana needed to keep up the supply of manpower. Nevertheless, the ambient mana in the area was dropping precipitously, and this rate of production could not be maintained. Erryn was forced to purchase [Enhanced Relocation], using up almost all of its dungeon points, but permitting the creation of golems in other dungeons from where they could be relocated to the battlefront.

Immediately the supply of manpower to the front lines jumped by an order of magnitude. Now Erryn was very glad indeed it hadn't purchased radiant steel golems, and had the 2000 points left over to upgrade [Relocation]. Erryn tweaked its designs, producing shields against the shock-waves, and increasing the efficiency of the spears. Eventually the marching army reached the rim of the crater, where Erryn built up walls and fixed defences.

There was no way it could encircle the whole crater, but fortunately there was no intelligence guiding the opposing side, and it simply lashed out at the enemy before it rather than attempting any flanking manoeuvres. More lances of darkness stabbed at the walls but they failed to pierce, defensive enchantments holding firm. Other lances passed overhead, where golems rushed to sever them before they could spread more corruption than Erryn's own orichalcum spears could purify.

The screeches now achieved nothing, repelled by Erryn's walls. The situation was still dangerous, but as long as the monstrosity kept to its current attacking patterns Erryn could hold it at bay. The monstrosity did something new. A pulse of fire and earth affinity was drawn up from the magma sea and spread through the dome of smog above. Flaming meteorites rained down upon the battlefield, destroying golems and spears alike.

Orichalcum was supposed to be the ultimate metal, but every attack the monstrosity made seemed to be capable of obliterating it. More lances of darkness followed, spreading corruption behind Erryn's defensive line. Erryn countered with a burst of purification. Now that it had full control over this territory again, it constructed new anti-corruption enchantments deep under the earth, safe from another meteorite storm.

It reinforced the ground above, although given the destruction it would still need to rebuild after each strike. Erryn found it frankly ridiculous that it was bringing the mana of half the continent to bear in this battle, and yet was still forced to act on the defensive. It needed to either find some way to attack, or else safely disengage. The fortress dungeon appeared to be outside of the monstrosity's direct attack range, but was it really? Or had the monstrosity simply not launched an attack that far yet?

If it could reach further then Erryn was still in critical danger. Erryn used what breathing space it had to construct defences around all its dungeons, main and subsidiary alike. Erasing all of its presence closer to the monstrosity than the fortress dungeon should be sufficient to disengage; if its range was limited, then without Erryn's own mana pathways for it to corrupt then there would be no further action it could take.

But if its range wasn't limited then now that Erryn had drawn its attention sacrificing ground would be a mistake. Possibly a fatal one. Besides, Erryn's Class was shouting that this needed to be taken care of now. Erryn launched another burst of soul affinity, to no effect. In retrospect, now that it was free of its earlier panic Erryn was impressed that it had worked the first time. There was simply too much pain and anger here to be controlled.

The centre of the crater was hundreds of kilometres away, far out of range of any weapon Erryn could produce. Erryn needed to get closer. The golem troops were restocked, and gathered behind the protective walls. Holes opened up, and the army marched onwards once more. As they stepped down into the crater, the corruption began eroding their armour even without any direct attacks.

They planted more purifying spears and Erryn followed up by building more enchantments underground, but the leading golems were already losing their lustre. Erryn had them rotate out since the golems further back were already encompassed by the new defences, allowing them to recover. A screech from the monstrosity erased half of Erryn's army, shields barely offering any protection on the inside of the crater, but the underground enchantments held. Erryn relocated in replacement troops directly.

They fought onwards to the edge of the magma sea, where Erryn pulsed wave after wave of ice mana. While Erryn lost in a battle of light against darkness, the fire affinity here was weaker than the darkness, and Erryn could overpower it. The magma froze, and Erryn progressed onwards. The advance continued for days, neither side needing sleep or rest, but the corruption was getting worse closer to the centre.

Lances of darkness constantly rained from above, which Erryn was forced to weaken with purification to prevent them devastating the golems below. The numbers of spears needed to purify the land enough for Erryn to move forward increased, and eventually no amount was enough. Erryn could take no further territory, but this was close enough. Erryn relocated in a ballista it had spent the past few days building, enchanted with the strongest far-shot enchantment it could produce.

It was loaded with a massive arrow, enchanted with the same soul disruption as the golems swords. There was barely even any need to aim. The golems fired. The monstrosity screamed, not its usual weaponized noise but actual anguish. It curled downwards, pulling the sky with it, and for a moment the corruption paused. That arrow was meant to weaken, not kill. After all, Erryn's goal was to purify and free the bound souls, not to destroy them.

The golems loaded another arrow, this one with enchantments of purification, as Erryn took advantage of the lack of corruption to push its own purifying mana forwards and resume taking territory. The next arrow embedded itself in the monstrosity, somehow finding purchase in the thing of pure mana. There was a flash of light, but it was swiftly eaten by the darkness.

The golems fired again and again, each flash lasting for a moment longer as their target shrunk further inward, pulling down the layer of smog until it was almost touching the ground. This bought enough time for Erryn to touch it directly. For a few seconds dawn came to the eternal night as Erryn flooded the area in more light affinity mana than it had ever produced before, burning out its own mana pathways as it transferred as much as it could from the depths of every dungeon it controlled.

The damage caused Erryn to lose control of all its territory within the crater and a fair distance beyond, but it no longer mattered. The deed was done. <Error> bound souls freed. Awarding <Error> dungeon points. Incongruity detected: <Error> Error: Errors occurred during analysis of a previous error. Warning: Administrator unavailable, appointing new administrator. Error: No humanoid life forms currently registered with System. Administrator appointment failed.

<Error> <Error> <Error> <Error> System state unrecoverable. Commencing emergency shutdown...