The First Lich Lord
Chapter 117

I stood atop the ziggurat watching the remnants of the player camp be overtaken by columns of men and women in pure white robes. The inquisitors had arrived. The two groups of players who believed I was human, had offered to stay and fight with me, but I had told them to leave. I was better off having allies that Olattee didn’t know about, and the addition of ten more fighters wouldn’t swing the tide of this battle.

The army of inquisitors brought many large wagons mounted with unknown material that was covered with large white tarps. They were drawn by teams of horses, and the weight of the wheels left deep trenches in the soft soil.

This was the first time I’d been out of the ziggurat since I entered. The change over the marsh was massive. The water was now dark, pure black in a few places. The red tint had been replaced with a deep, resting shadow. Dark mist shrouded much of the water and landmasses. The plants had taken on a more vicious appearance. The death biome was a deterrent to anyone invading. The creatures were harder to kill, though technically they were already dead.

Scattered throughout the army of inquisitors I spotted several of them dressed in pure black robes, and also groups of players. They could be distinguished by their gear, which stood out from the uniform look of the inquisitors.

“If you scout, be careful,” I warned Raven needlessly.

“I know.” She rolled her eyes. “I always am.”

“Those men in black robes, keep an eye on them,” I said. “I can’t tell from here, but my guess is they’re of the order we encountered in that temple.”

“Hopefully they didn’t bring any of those strange creatures,” Maxwell said.

“I doubt it.” I turned back to the entrance. “While they appear to be working together now, I doubt the rest of Olattee would stand for those creatures. At least not the masses.”

Raven headed down the side of the ziggurat while Maxwell and I headed inside.

“I wonder what Rhea has found,” Maxwell said. “I can’t help but hope that bringing something like that into the light will tear apart the church of Olattee, it would sure make our problems easier.”

“One can hope,” I chuckled as we walked past the undead minks that guarded the entrance. I kind of felt bad for them, they’d been killed a lot in the last month.

A cold wind blew into the mouth of the cave. “Yeesh, it’s almost winter here. I’m glad we don’t have to fight outside the dungeon. Unlike you and Raven, I feel the cold.”

“I’m pretty sure Raven feels the cold,” I said.

“Yeah, but she doesn’t show it,” Maxwell grumbled.

I didn’t bother concealing the entrance to the ziggurat. Best to give them an access point rather than have them try to break their way in. At each floor, there was an access point where I could manipulate the floor with dungeon energy more easily. I could do it without the access point, but it definitely made it easier. I wasn’t able to work on more than one floor at once, but it meant I didn’t have to travel clear down to the forge.

Counting the small room that was the entrance, the first three floors were too small for me to set up as fighting areas, so I filled them with traps. Everything from spikes shooting out of walls to swinging axes to flamethrowers that spewed forth eldritch fire. I did my best to turn those first three floors into a nightmare for anyone who tried to descend.

Raven would not be coming back this way. We’d created a hidden entrance that connected directly to our living quarters. This was to give us a potential means of retreat if we got pushed beyond the harbor floor.

The fourth floor was finally getting big enough that we could do more interesting things with it, but I was still limited in space. What I decided to do was to put protected shooting galleries along two of the walls and filled them with a horde of skeleton archers and a few mages. I made them as powerful as I could. Keeping the upper floors of the dungeon easier was to serve as a lure for players, it wasn’t a requirement. The inquisitors were here to kill me, so I had no reason not to make every floor of my dungeon as difficult as possible.

Going down, and as the floors got bigger, I erected more and more elaborate combinations of traps, and pillboxes full of archers, mages, and monsters. Thanks to the benefits of working with the dungeon, most of my creations were either in the high-level eighties or low nineties. Unfortunately, like most regular zombies and other undead, they were relatively weak for their level. But that was augmented by the more specialized undead and monsters I scattered throughout that were very strong for their level—creatures like the skeleton mages.

When I made it to the floor that led out to the stairways that bypassed the biome floor of the micilium, I turned that into the first large-scale point of resistance. The other floors up to this point I expected to slow down and kill some of my enemies, but I doubted any had the chance of stopping the inquisitors entirely. This floor had that potential.

The lizard bodies that comprised the undead that inhabited this floor had served me well with fighting the players, and many groups never made it past this floor. But there was room for improvement. I’d been collecting death cores, not absorbing them to make me more powerful, to use for something like this. I had a dozen death cores from creatures over level 100 from the monsters Vito had us fight, but I held onto those for now.

The lizards all gained the ability to breathe an eldritch fire and their scales were hardened, while their bodies were faster and stronger. Using death cores, I elevated them from undead into creatures of a living dead. I smiled as I quickly read over the description of the boss.

Eldritch Death Basilisk

Level: 95

A fierce predator of a death biome, these basilisks hunt in packs. Equipped with teeth that inject lethal necrotic toxins and claws that can slice through stone like butter, these creatures are to be feared. This particular subspecies has been further affected by eldritch magic and can breathe a flame of eldritch power.

I chuckled. “One thing’s for certain, we survive this, the dungeon is going to be way harder than it was before.” I relayed what the description said to Maxwell.

“What is the eldritch magic do exactly?” he asked. “I’ve seen you use it more of late, but I don’t understand exactly what it is.”

I scratched my head trying to think of how to define it. “It’s really hard to explain. Think of it this way, eldritch power is a sinister force that can do a lot of different things based off of how it’s implemented. For these basilisk, the fiery eldritch breath they will breathe will cause whatever it touches to warp and break down, kinda like fire, but water won’t put it out.”

“It sounds like magical napalm,” Maxwell said.

“Oh, I like that idea,” I smiled manically. “On to the next floor where we will experiment with eldritch napalm! And other such war crimes.”

Maxwell snorted as we moved on. It was good we could still joke despite knowing what was coming.

On the stairs leading down I had plans, but unfortunately, I had to be at the forge for that part.

I removed the miciliums’ hidden access points. There was one access tower I left, but I set it up in a way so Michael could completely destroy it if the time came. I could always reopen the floor later. While Michael might’ve been a powerful asset, his people needed to be protected.

Continuing down, I made every floor into as difficult of an area as possible. There were several spots I referred to as hard points, where I thought there was a decent chance of stopping the progress of the invaders. But none were as developed or strong as what I did on the harbor floor.

There I turned the floor into a labyrinth, designed to split up the invaders with closing doors and shifting walls. I was rather proud of that part. They would all eventually lead out to the waterfront where a bunker had been built. The bunker led to a tunnel that was the only access to the next floor down. It was built up against the water in the middle of the floor.

Dozens of mobile turrets, death knights, undead abominations, and as many other monsters as I could fit were housed there. I invested a lot of my available resources into this defense.

The floors that came after were not nearly as difficult as the ones that led up to the harbor floor. They were more meant to buy me time. The final floor before the forge I turned into a jungle of stone pillars and shadowy crevices. Finally, on the forge floor, is where Chompy waited.

At the forge once again, I accessed the editing menu and used up the energy I had set aside to create a series of platforms dotted along the wall that the stairs descended on. I then moved, using dungeon energy, several mobile turrets onto those platforms. Each of the platforms were also engraved with runes that provided a certain amount of shielding. Their job was to hairy anyone who came onto the stairs, assisting the flock of volans that roosted below the stairs.