Chương 65: The Season of the Minotaur (14)

The moon was full, and everything was in place. Sitting on his throne of wood with the Stone Muse watching over his shoulder, Simon stared at the black crystal ball in front of him. Specially designed to see through miasma, it could be used to observe his minions all across the Darkwood and coordinate them. Brands binding their wearers' souls to Simon had turned out to be a rather powerful divination focus.

"The Paladin has entered the woods, Beloved," the Muse said, her voice dripping with disdain.

"I can sense his foul light despoiling my shadows."

"It is time then," Simon muttered in response. Princess Satine had purged the silver dagger of its enchantments with Cursebreaker, so he couldn't personally track her party's movements. He sent out a telepathic message to all his troops to warn them of what was coming.

"The enemy has entered the forest. Ready yourself for battle." Simon had spent the weeks before the full moon reshaping his dungeon, laying traps, and preparing his troops for the operation. He was under no illusion that all of them would survive today's conflict. They were confronting a high-level party that included an elven archmage. Casualties were both unavoidable and expected. Nonetheless, he had been able to gather a few things from the enemy's previous forays.

Mel's Stalker Class was apparently a Vassal of the Ranger, not the Rogue as Simon had originally assumed, with a focus on hunting and tracking down humanoids; Robert Flauros used a spear-wielding variant of Anna's Lord Class which allowed him to buff allies and engage foes in melee; and Princess Satine's Theurge Class, a Vassal of the Cleric, mixed both offensive and healing magic. He had taken contingencies to prepare for each of them. Simon focused the crystal ball on Carrock.

The treant remained cloaked under the illusion of a normal tree as a group of a dozen cultists approached the fairy ring area with hoods over their heads, using a lantern to light the path to the site. Satine's group had likely infiltrated them after defeating and impersonating some of them.

"Some of those people are enemies, Carrock," Simon warned him.

"Proceed with the plan."

"As you wish, Lord Belias." Carrock activated one of his Illusionist Perks to manifest a false vision of Simon's Old Man of the Woods in front of the tree, with Simon ad-libbing its text through the treant's Brand.

"Welcome, children of the forest," the illusion said, its eyes gazing at the group.

"Welcome, Your Highness." It was rather easy to identify the intruders among the cultists, since one flinched and the others tightened their ranks in response.

"You may remove your hoods," the false old man said.

"We need not be enemies." The cultists removed their hoods, with the exception of five of them. After exchanging glances and realizing there was no way out of this, Frea, Robert Flauros, Alphonse, Princess Satine, and Tiella put on their Class outfits and revealed themselves. Mel was missing.

"Carrock, their Stalker lurks nearby," Simon warned Carrock as he continued to speak through the treant's illusions.

"I come to you on behalf of my mistress, the Muse of these woods. A message I bring. She wishes you nor Whispermire any harm, for all she seeks is freedom."

"That cannot be allowed to happen, demon," Frea replied sternly.

"Your cursed manatree will not bloom under my watch." Bloom? Simon was slightly surprised by her response, but moved on as if nothing had happened.

"A trade then, our Muse offers. Leave this place in peace, and she shall stick to these woods and offer any compensation you feel is appropriate."

"Can she bring back my brother from the dead?!" Tiella snapped angrily, her sword raised.

"You've murdered him, and I shall have my retribution in blood!"

"Your brother's death was an accident, Lady Flauros," the false Old Man said as it waved its staff.

"But if you fight on his behalf, then allow me to offer you a compromise." Carrock conjured a vivid, lifelike illusion of Leonard next to the false Old Man. Tiella gasped in shock at the sight, though Frea immediately called the bluff.

"That is a mere illusion," she said sternly.

"Yet you should know that souls who perish in these woods belong to the Muse," Simon replied through the Old Man.

"His spirit is bound to these lands until our Lady lets him go… or until we return him to life." Frea scowled, while Tiellia's head turned in her direction. Simon couldn't see the details through his crystal ball, but he could tell his former lover was taken aback. The elf knew of the state of Leonard's soul and yet didn't tell his sister. Interesting that she would keep something so important from her own ally...

"Leonard?" Tiella called out to the illusion.

"Brother, is that you?" Carrock manipulated Leonard's illusion to make it look as if he was trying to speak without any words coming out of his mouth. Tiella flinched at the sight, and Simon felt her resolve waver.

"Here is my Lady's offer, Lady Flauros," Simon spoke through the Old Man, hoping she would take it against all odds.

"Sheath your sword and leave these woods in peace, and your brother's soul shall be either returned from the grave in a new vessel, or be allowed to reincarnate."

"He's lying, and he's not even there," Alphonse said, his eyes glaring at the Old Man illusion. Did he see through it?

"Don't listen to him, Lady Flauros! He's deceiving you!"

"But…" Tiella muttered, only for her husband to cut in.

"There is no spell that can revive the dead, Tiella," he said, kindly but bluntly.

"This demon's promises are as empty as his future." Simon pushed on anyway, in the hope of either inducing discord in the group or convincing Tiella to back down.

"You would call me a liar? It is your elven friend who deceives you and leads you into disa–" A flaming blade flashed in the dark, cutting through both the Old Man and Leonard illusions. The Stalker had come out of hiding from nowhere with a blazing sword and a shining dagger in hands.

"Sacrilege!" one of the hooded cultists shouted, a small sword flashing in his hand, only for Frea to easily freeze him and all the others with a wave of her staff. A cocoon of ice trapped them all in place. Tiella straightened up, her brief moment of hesitation gone with the adrenaline and rush of the fight. So much for discussion, Simon thought with annoyance.

"Carrock, proceed."

"Yes, Lord Belias." The treant chuckled to himself, relishing the thought of physical combat.

"To me, soldiers of the forest!" Still unseen, Carrock weaved an illusory mist around the clearing to disorient the group, while a small horde of mutated wolves, will-o'-the-wisps, and undead armed with poisonous, cursed weapons crawled out of the woods to strike them from all sides." Luster Sanctuary!" Princess Satine shouted, raising a golden scepter that cast a blinding flash upon the clearing.

A barrier of golden light appeared around the group, dispelling the illusory mist and causing the undead and will-o'-wisps to crash against it. The animals jumped through, however, with one lunging at the princess before being thrown back by Tiella. The warriors of the group gathered around the spellcasters, tearing through any wolf or beast with casual ease.

Princess Satine focused on keeping her defensive spell up while Frea bombarded the attackers with contagious bolts of lightning that hopped from one target to another. A wall of corpses soon began to accumulate outside the forcefield. Simon's goal was very simple: either force Frea to activate the fairy ring in a rush so they could throw themselves into the next trap, or hopefully wear them down through attrition.

Carrock chose that moment to intervene personally by having his roots erupt from inside the forcefield, right beneath the spellcasters. Frea seemed to detect the attack and dodged it in time, but Princess Satine was caught in wooden bindings that disrupted her concentration. The forcefield collapsed and allowed the surviving undead to join the fray.

"Satine!" Alphonse shouted, his sword shining with light. He hastened himself like he did against Simon and sliced through Carrock's roots in a blur. The treant roared as holy light coursed through him and cancelled out his illusions, dispelling the mist and revealing him for the monster he was. Simon watched as Alphonse caught Satine in midair while Tiella used Rampart to strengthen her husband as they tried to shield Frea from the undead. This book is hosted on another platform.

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"It's the whole damn tree!" Mel shouted, dashing past the undead in a flash of speed, leaping at the treant and then stabbing Carrock in the face with her flaming sword. This would have been a pretty good strategy against a treant, had Carrock not been equipped with a Ring of Curse Flame. Mel's sword hardly inflicted any damage, and Carrock retaliated by throwing a storm of leaves her way. The Stalker was thrown back to the ground with a dozen small cuts, more surprised than hurt. And then Frea took flight.

Simon could only stare in disbelief as the elven archmage began to levitate in the air, not thanks to wings or an enchanted horse carrying her, but through her magic's mere strength. Torrents of mana gathered in her staff, which she then pointed at Carrock with absolute contempt." Nova," she cast. Greenish particles gathered in front of Carrock, and then detonated in a cataclysmic explosion of raw mana.

Simon felt the treant's brief, yet intense flash of agony coursing through his Brand, followed by the emptiness of death. His demise cut off both the telepathic and divination connection, blinding Simon to the rest of the fight. Not that it mattered, though; the outcome was already decided. Frea had killed an ancient treant in a single spell. There was no way non-Class user minions could so much as slow her party down.

"What Tier is the Nova spell, Duchar?" Simon telepathically asked his necromancer ally.

"Tier 7, Your Majesty." Seven, which meant she was at least level sixty at the very minimum. Frea had been holding back against Belzemine. This was going to be tough.

"Carrock is down," Simon warned his forces as he turned his crystal ball towards scrying a special room inside his Dungeon. He had wisely used his Lord of the Demon Castle to move the other fairy ring into the deeper caverns beneath the Halls of the Minotaur.

"Sisters, prepare for interception."

"My dear and faithful Carrock," the Muse lamented with genuine sorrow.

"A thousand curses upon those blasphemers! Vengeance I demand!"

"And you shall have it," Simon replied as he watched the fairy ring in the cavern begin to glow.

"Here they come." Frea used the fairy ring to teleport her group into the Dungeon, only to find themselves inside a stone dome without doors or windows, with its painted ceiling flashing with glimmering Pictomancer runes and surrounded by potion basins releasing fumes into the air. There was no escape.

"Sleeping gas!" Mel shouted, apparently recognizing the smell in the air. She moved to cover her mouth when she spotted the shimmering symbols on the walls, her eyes widening with fascination.

"Sleeping… gas…" The Pictomancer drawings were designed to inflict the Fascination ailment on anyone looking at them, preventing them from focusing on anything except the runes. It seemed to ensnare both Mel and Tiella… for a second until Robert Flauros stomped the ground with his spear.

"Fight on!" he shouted in between fits of coughing. Whatever Perk he used freed his allies from the Fascination effect, but did nothing to protect them from the sleeping gas. All of them began to cough except for Tiella and Alphonse, who probably had so many defensive Perks that they could shrug off all ailments.

"The ring no longer works," Frea warned after a failed attempt to teleport her group to safety.

"It has been sabotaged from the other side."

"They knew… we were coming," Mel guessed in between coughs.

"Then stay back!" Frea warned as she turned her staff towards a wall.

"I'll blast us a path–" Her words turned into a scream when a Courtesan wraith emerged from the ground beneath her to grab her in its ghastly embrace. Her spectral hands began to drain the elf's mana and lifeforce thanks to a mix of her own natural abilities and the Brand of Lust. Frea's skin turned pale with weakness. Two more wraiths phased into the dome before the rest of the party could react. The Songstress of the two began to sing a haunting, debuffing melody. And as for the other, the Orator? She shrieked.

A terrible wail spread screaming souls and malevolence through the air, resonating inside the doom and causing Mel, Robert Flauros, and Princess Satine to cover their ears in horrible pain. Tiella's sword went through the ghosts without effect, while Alphonse's buffs were instantly dispelled." Luster Sanctuary!" Princess Satine tried to cast in a doomed attempt to repel the specters, only for her spell to fizzle out.

"What the…" Simon's Lord of the Demon Castle let him cancel out all Prayer and holy effects within his Dungeon, so long as the user was of a lower level than him. Princess Satine was clearly included in that number, and a Theurge unable to spellcast was helpless. Unfortunately, Alphonse picked up the slack. He swung his sword at the wraith ensnaring Frea and struck it in spite of her intangibility, smiting the ghost with his radiance. The sister shrieked as she was forced to let go of her prey.

Seems my power only cancels out spells or passive effects, but not Perks, Simon noted in annoyance. The Paladin's smiting ability remained undisturbed.

"Kill the elven mage," Simon ordered the three wraiths.

"Kill the mage at all costs!" The Courtesan wraith attempted to fulfill the command by flying straight at Frea, but the elven mage had recovered. She dodged the wraith by flying up in the air, which allowed Alphonse to smite the specter once more and annihilate it. Frea then unleashed some kind of telekinetic pulse that repelled the two remaining sisters to the edge of the dome, and followed it up with a second Nova spell.

The powerful blast pulverized an entire part of the dome and wiped out the two remaining specters. Some of the gas escaped through the hole, but not quickly enough to save the entire group.

"Quick, follow me!" Frea ordered her allies as she flew through the new opening. Princess Satine and Mel were both knocked out from a combination of the sleeping gas, debuffs, and shrieks, forcing Tiella and Robert Flauros to grab them on their way outside. Unfortunately for them, they had stepped into a narrow cavern whose only exit was guarded by a small group of cultists hiding behind barricades.

They immediately welcomed the intruders by throwing flasks filled with sleeping gas at them, only for Frea to prove quicker on the draw." Gigagust!" A mighty tornado erupted from her staff, dispelling the gas, throwing back the flasks at their senders, and pulverizing the barricades. The classless cultists were thrown across the room and flung against the stone wall. The luckiest among them were simply knocked unconscious. The rest snapped their necks or were splattered against the wall in a bloody shower.

Five minions down for a Tier 5 spell, Simon noted bitterly. And that might have been a good trade." Purge," Alphonse tried to cast on the unconscious Mel. His hand glowed with light that swiftly fizzled out.

"Something is canceling my Prayer spells."

"But the only creature that can outright negate Prayers within a Dungeon is–" Frea's eyes widened with fear and understanding.

"Oh no." No, Simon pleaded. Please don't say it.

"Which one, Lady Frea?" Robert Flauros asked.

"The Overlord," Frea replied, her voice dying in her throat and her expression turning into one of absolute terror.

"The Overlord is here." And now you've condemned them all, Simon thought grimly. He had hoped he could at least convince Tiella and her husband to walk away from this, but he couldn't allow word of his presence to leave the Dungeon. You leave me no choice.

"The Overlord?!" Alphonse's grip tightened on his sword, while the Flauros couple looked utterly incredulous.

"So that bastard is plotting to release–" Their foolish banter opened up a window of opportunity that Simon didn't waste." Lord of the Demon Castle." Simon closed his eyes and visualized the entire Dungeon's layout, every room and hiding hole. For a brief instant, the Halls of the Minotaur became his body, his soul given form." Shift." The Dungeon answered his order and reshaped itself. A major limit of Simon's Perk was that he couldn't actually move people inside a given room, nor change its contents.

He couldn't cause the ceiling to crash on everyone caught inside a given hall, or the floor to open up beneath them. However, he could cause rooms to rotate and move next to new ones.

The corridor in which Frea and the others had escaped was actually two smaller caverns linked together to form a larger one, and the adventurers had the terrible luck of standing in the middle. Simon caused one of them to rotate in an instant, closing the hallway with a thick stone wall. Alphonse and Frea were trapped on one side before they could realize what had happened, with the rest of the group stranded on the other.

Alphonse and Frea found themselves in a cavernous corridor opening onto a small platform atop which a group of imps waited with poisoned blowguns and crossbows. On the other side was an acid-filled cube, which now had an opening. A tide of poison spilled into the corridor, and the imps opened fire, with the duo of adventurers right in the middle. Frea barely managed to raise a wall of earth with a spell to block the tide of poison while Alphonse protected her back with his shield.

He wasn't fast enough, however, and a bolt struck the elf on the shoulder only to bounce off an invisible shield of some sort. Simon guessed it was Tiella's Dreadnought ability redirecting the damage to herself. However, they were the lucky ones. Robert Flauros, Tiella, and their unconscious allies found themselves in a walled-off part of the cave with a single exit with stairs leading up to the upper levels.

A clownish gargoyle with half a dozen belt-pouches walked down the steps, his hands effortlessly juggling a dozen tiny green slimes.

"It's Greg and Grimm, the demonic duo!" Grimm the imp gloated from atop the gargoyle's head.

"Prepare for trouble!"

"And make it bubble!" Gregory joked as he threw one of his slimes at Robert Flauros, who was carrying Mel on his back. The projectile flew so fast that Simon's eyes struggled to follow its movement. Robert Flauros raised his spear to intercept the slime, and he might have succeeded had he not been carrying one of his unconscious allies. Yet he missed, and the projectile hit him head-on. The slime popped off like a bubble on impact and splattered Robert's eyes with acid.

His horrifying scream of pure, agonizing pain sent shivers down Simon's spine. It thankfully didn't last long as a second and third acidic slime hit his jaw and throat, turning the shriek into a gargle. Now that he was observing them, Simon finally realized how Gregory had killed so many adventurers. A Juggler was only good for one thing: spinning and throwing small objects really, really fast.

Which meant that Gregory was pelting dozens of acidic projectiles at his target per minute at immense speed and with lethal precision. One of his hands effortlessly pulled out more slimes from his bag while the other threw them at his target in the blink of an eye, and worst of all, he always nailed his headshots.

"Robert!" Tiella moved in front of her husband with her shield raised to intercept the devastating barrage, and those that passed her guard stopped inflicting any damage on her husband as she began to take them upon herself with her Dreadnought's Perk. As Simon suspected, she wasn't high-level enough to cover more than a handful of people, and she had probably opted to protect the weaker mages rather than the sturdier Lord Flauros. Her valiant act came too late.

Robert collapsed onto the ground with his skull exposed beneath his melted face, his blood pouring out of his empty eye sockets. The first of the invading adventurers had fallen, and he wouldn't be the last.