Dakota Krout - Dungeon Born (The Divine Dungeon Book 1)

“Your job now is to try to purify all the Essence you can accumulate back to its cleanest state, within your center. Now you understand? Any more questions? No? Good. We’re going to take care the mess you have right now, don’t worry. After that, it is up to you, and your hard work.” Craig finished, ignoring the fact that Dale actually was trying to ask more questions.

They began their descent into the darkness below.

awe-soome .> I nearly sang, enthusiasm dancing in my mental voice.

The group approached my entrance, moved into formation and started their workday. Now that I had semi-intelligent creatures under my influence, I could move into my Mobs’ minds and directly control their movement. I was only good enough at this to do it one at a time, but was assured (by Dani of course) that with practice I could control a squad of monsters at the same time. The rabbits were hidden in the thick vegetation, so the room had no significant difference from the original mushroom-Mob appearance. This would be fun!

The men walked in and began slashing at the Shroomishes, quickly targeting the ranged Banes. When their attention was focused on a particularly thick grouping of mushrooms, I sent into the minds of the hidden rabbits. Taking direct control of the largest, I launched my new body at the back of someone's knee. A direct hit in the tender pressure point, and the man fell. The attacks on the other humans had varying degrees of success, with a few landing decent hits against legs, some bouncing off armor, and one even being knocked away by a shield that moved when the guy wasn’t even looking! He must be really aware of his surroundings.

The dozens of rabbits were almost entirely silent, but when they hit armor it sounded like metal being beaten, or as Dani told me, a ‘gong’ or hail falling on tin. The man who had fallen was being pummeled, but his thick armor allowed him to quickly regain his footing. One man stepped on a spike filled shroom, which had to hurt as he twisted his ankle, but even the underside of his boot was armored enough to stop the spike from entering his flesh.

The men had been taken by surprise, but were an efficient team and quickly turned the tides against me. A sword dropped down, slaying some Bashers, but most of my creatures were nimble enough to avoid it. A few of the fighters used weapons that required less skill, such as a staff, while another struck with his fists, and these quickly decimated my ranks. Sounding a retreat, I directed the Bashers into a bolt hole which made it impossible to attack them without magic.

“Did they just run away? I’ve never seen Mobs run away before.” One of the men sounded suspicious of my motives. Good.

An answering grunt came in reply, then resolved into words, “Ugh. Just keep an eye out, we don’t want to be ambushed again. These aren’t magical Beasts, right? Just weird looking mutated rabbits?”

“Looks that way.” A few answering grunts showed the other’s agreement.

They moved further in, ignoring the other plants. Entering my first tunnel, I really wanted to hit them from behind, but they were too wary. I didn’t want to lose more creatures, though I captured the energy they released upon death, which was enough for me to bring a new one back to roughly the same stage of life. If I made them young instead and let them grow unaided at an accelerated rate, I gained much more Essence than I had invested in their progenitors, actually a nice way to gain Essence quickly.

Skillfully avoiding traps, the group rested just before entering my second room. When they had finished catching their breath, and with looks of determination, they moved to attack the denizens of the second room. A similar situation developed, and by the time they had killed half of the prolific Bashers, their legs had to be in great pain. Take that! Minor inconveniences! Even with the armor, each hit was as strong as a decent mace blow landing, and must have been doing some damage. The only one I couldn’t seem to hit was wearing almost no armor whatsoever, just some kind of cloth, and I was nervous that he would be casting spells soon.

Sounding the retreat once more, I watched as they inspected the loot I dropped for each death, usually just a couple copper, but if they managed to take out the one I was inhabiting I gave them a bit extra. Nothing major, usually extra coins or a boot if I felt I could get away with it. So far they had found three left boots. Maybe I am evil.

I really was getting frustrated. Why did I have such high level groups? I studied them as they entered the next tunnel, and could see that most of them were C-ranked, but the one with the shield was F-ranked! I decided to focus on him as my most likely meal.

When they entered the third room, I waited until they had cleared about half the room before the Bashers attacked, and I had most of them charge at the shielded one. Right before they jumped, a Bane hiding on the ceiling fired a thorn directly at his head, and he blocked it! This did open him up for attack from the Bashers, and sensing victory they pounced as hard as they could, pummeling his shiny armor from multiple sides.

He dropped to the ground! Redoubling their efforts, they slammed against him, trying to crack his metal shell. He weakly counterattacked, but the Bashers easily dodged. They continued throwing themselves at him, then I realized I was down to only two in the room. I had gotten too focused and forgot to retreat, dang it. The group finished the remaining two off, and tried to gather their collective breaths.

“What the hell?” Gasped the one I had been beating on.

“They must have decided you were the weak link and gone for the kill. They seemed to frenzy a bit there, none of em ran this time.” The unarmored one verbalized. “You ok to continue?”

“Yeah,” Dale spit out a bit of blood, weakly finishing with, “Try not to let em hit your chest, guys.”

“Duly noted.”

“And why are there so many boots down here?!” That got a chuckle from his team, and from me.

They limped toward the final room, preparing to meet the Boss. Peeking at him from around the corner, they decided on their battle plan. Too bad for them I could hear every word, of course. I adjusted my plan accordingly, and got ready for their charge. None of them had ranged weapons, an obvious lack, which would put them in the best range of the Bloody Bane. Since he had no real intelligence, I could not directly control him, but the hidden Bashers were ready for my hostile takeover. I watched the group countdown to zero on their fingers, then silently charge the Boss.

I thought maliciously.

The F-ranked man had stayed near the entrance, so when the Bloody Bane released a cloud of poisonous spores he was outside of it. These men were so strong that the poison was really only enough to deal a little damage, make them cough and whatnot. The poison would have been far more effective on the weak one in the now-not-so-shiny armor. Ah well, such is life. Time to go with plan B. The carpet of moss constricted, grabbing the weak one’s foot. A Basher hitting him from behind convinced the youngster to fall flat on his face into the moss as it dragged him as fast as possible to the Bane. The other members were finishing off the Boss when the lightly armored one noticed his predicament and came to his aid.

Drat, I had nearly maneuvered around that armor! I let a holy symbol drop as a token of my appreciation for the good fight, and would make sure to talk to Dani later about ways to improve my tactics. They got very excited by the holy symbol for some reason, probably the etched Inscription that came pre-made on it, so I decided to make that more… rare, in the future.