Elsewhere

Duke walked in to Baslin dancing around the lab with a tun-sized glass container, chuckling and humming to himself. He paused, trying to decide whether to interrupt the Archmage, or to enjoy the show. He decided to enjoy the show and watched as the Archmage gleefully poured what seemed to be random amounts of substances into the container before sealing the lid with some sort of incantation.

Duke decided to wait a bit longer and watched as Baslin put the container on a stack of twenty similar ones. He then noticed Duke and laughed. “Oh, Duke, I haven’t had this much fun in years! I have made so many random concoctions I can barely remember what I’ve put in them. And all but one failed – they will make great bombs for you.”

“You had one succeed?” Duke looked around the lab, marveling at the absolute messy state it was in.

“Oh yes. It was quite the surprise. We now have enough fertility tincture to start a whole nation!” Baslin beamed at Duke.

“Dear god, for the love of all that’s holy, keep that stuff locked up!” Duke exclaimed, shivering with the thought of thousands of babies, or worse yet, pregnant women all blaming him. Total nightmare fuel.

Baslin laughed. “Don’t worry, I keep everything locked up. You can take all these. They might not all explode but whomever is on the receiving end of them will have a very bad day regardless.”

“That will work. Thanks. On another note,” Duke asked as he loaded the indicated containers into his INVENTORY, “how are the Mage Corps coming along?”

“Quite well. I had them planning a tournament so they could showcase their abilities, but this whole ‘army at our door’ thing has postponed the event. Regardless, they all have gotten the initial four spells into the Initiate level with a few even close to Practiced. I have added the freeze undead Spell in as well but I doubt more than a few will get it past Novice before the undead get here.”

Baslin looked Duke up and down in assessment. “You know, Duke, I need to teach that Spell to you as well. Every caster we have should be able to cast it. I know you’re not a traditional caster and it might not work the same for you, but it couldn’t hurt to try.”

“I agree. Let’s do that tomorrow. I’m going to go give myself a reason to do a BDA and then call it a night.”

“BDA? Another idiom?” Baslin asked.

“I think the technical term is initialism. It stands for Bomb Damage Assessment.” Duke responded.

Baslin smiled broadly. “Yes, fill me in on how it goes. I am eager to see what comes of all this fun in the lab.”

Duke left Baslin to his joyful playing in the lab, making sure the door was closed tightly behind him. That madman is going to blow himself up if he…no, never mind, not even going to think it. Duke made his way outside and TELEPORTED to a spot a full three kilometers above where he left the LIGHTNING ball for the undead to stumble over. All he saw was the black cloud that was even creepier in the fading light of evening. He flew down slowly through the cloud to get in range of his DUNGEON SENSE. What he saw was a gaping crater where the road had been. It was nearly fifty meters across and there were undead making their way across and around it.

From the size of the hole, he was sure that he had blasted a bunch of them to final death with the blast but there was really no evidence. What he really found disturbing was that the undead army stretched this far back. He was unsure where the leaders of the army even were. He decided to fly back and see what he could see.

Five kilometers back, he found the rear of the army. It was filled with gigantic undead beasts, one towering over thirty meters tall. Fucking undead kaiju. You gotta be kidding me. Duke decided that this group was as good a target as any and started dropping bombs on the massive undead monsters.

The first bomb that hit produced a shockwave that knocked Duke a few meters up and nearly obliterated the undead it had landed on. Duke started a bombing run on the undead from just above the dark cloud. He released all 20 bombs on the various giant undead to varying effect. Some created noxious gas clouds that ate away at the undead while others splashed burning chemicals in a wide area. There were a few that exploded like the first. When Duke flew down below the cloud layer to see the effect with regular vision, he saw scores of the large undead down or destroyed. There were still hundreds left and he could see some faster undead looking around for the source of the attack. He decided to return home and get some rest, his short bombing mission fulfilled.

Duke crashed out in his room shortly afterwards. It had been a long day, and he was looking forward to his morning notifications which came all too soon.

*** Busy, busy, busy. Killing undead, relocating villages, preparing your new world for its own Operation Arc Light. You really have stepped things up, turning failed laboratory experiments into offensive weapons. Reduce --> Reuse --> Redeploy as Munitions. You take recycling to a new level. You gain 10,000 experience for this new escalation of warfare on this world.

You managed to kill 155 undead of various levels and tiers, earning you an additional 53,300 experience. This was enough to advance you to level 85. You now have 24 Characteristic Points to spend.

Oh yes, you also relocated an entire village into your stronghold along with their Guardian Spirit. For saving them from the advancing army and restoring their entire village, you receive an additional 10,000 experience.

Your Abilities continue to improve through these efforts.

TELEPORTATION has increased to Adept 54

AURA CONCEALMENT has increased to Initiate 3

LASTING DISGUISE has increased to Novice 10

LIGHTNING has increased to Initiate 25

OVERCHANNEL has increased to Practiced 17

ICE has increased to Initiate 22

CLEANSE has increased to Initiate 21

RESTORE has increased to Master 28 for rebuilding and entire village from its wreckage

IDENTIFY has increased to Initiate 15

SENSE MAGIC has increased to Novice 9

INVENTORY has increased to Initiate 36 for moving an entire village through the Ability

FLIGHT has increased to Initiate 33

DUNGEON SENSE has increased to Adept 25

You are preparing well for the battle to come, but, as you have now seen, you are hopelessly outnumbered. You had better come up with some qualitative improvements quickly because your numbers aren’t exactly growing. Then again, maybe you can bomb your way to parity. Who knows? ***

Duke took careful stock of his improvements and was satisfied, particularly with the few large jumps in Abilities. He considered where to spend his 24 Characteristic points and decided that his magic was going to be the key to the upcoming fights. He placed all 24 points into Psyche bringing his score above 500 before the 10% boost his Title gave him. It was a boost to his Mana and his Mana regen, but he didn’t think it was enough. He decided that he needed to kill more undead today. But first, breakfast!

He hurried down to the command table to see that he was the first there for, well, the first time. Calen came over to him with a concerned look on his face.

“Good morning, Your Grace. You know it’s terribly early in the morning, right? You weren’t expecting others to be here waiting for you like usual, were you?”

“Actually, I had no idea what time it was. I just figured that since I was awake, I could get my day started.” Duke activated a 100,000 Mana CLEANSE and the Inn brightened up.

“Thanks for the hit, Duke.” Sam appeared and greeted Duke.

“You’re welcome. How goes the growth?” Duke replied.

“Quite well, I must say. I am growing near my former peak rate and that is still accelerating. Having so many in the dungeon almost continuously is making things go far faster than I expected. In fact, I have been able to add enchanted weapons to the loot list. It’s still less than a one percent drop rate, but at the rate your troops cut through my creatures, there should be somewhere around one hundred of them dropping every day.”

“That is great news. I was wondering if you could create a dungeon entrance and have the exit come out somewhere really far away?” Duke asked.

“With enough Mana, I could possibly do that. Why do you ask?” Sam seemed intrigued by the question.

“We have a massive army of undead headed our way. Our defenses are strong and getting stronger, but I have no illusions about being able to keep them from eventually breaching our walls. I would love to have them pour through the breach and into a dungeon level that is just an absolute killing machine. If anything does make it through the level, they exit several kilometers away so that they will have to take a long trip to get back to us. Is that something you could do?”

Sam looked at Duke with wonder. “You want me to make a level that has a sole purpose of killing everything that comes into it without any puzzles? Without any chance for those entering it to leave? Without any warning or mercy?”

“Yes, that is what I am asking for in this one, specialized level that will only be used for this one scenario and will never be connected to any other levels.” Duke clarified.

Sam face slowly grew into a full grin. “Oh, yes. I can do that. But it’s going to take a lot of Mana to put together. Somewhere on the order of two hundred million Mana to make it as deadly as possible.”

“That’s a lot of Mana.” Duke responded, wondering how such an amount could be transferred to the dungeon.”

Sam responded. “It is and at the same time, it isn’t. If you spent an entire day in the dungeon, that much Mana would be generated.”

Duke stared back at Sam, stunned. He pulled up his sheet and did some calculations. His Mana regen had gotten extreme, almost 3,000 a second. Extrapolating the math out, he realized that Sam was right. His Mana regen was astounding. “I guess I’m going to have to spend a lot more time inside the dungeon. How deadly can you make this level?”

Sam grinned. “The level will kill just about everything below tier five. But there might be some volume limits. I can’t reset traps and creatures when there are delvers close to their reset and respawn points. If the level gets full, there’s no way I can stop them all like you want.”

Duke nodded. “It still will be a good trump card to have. Get working on it as soon as you can but don’t open the level until it is time. I want to surprise these undead bastards, but I don’t want anyone wandering in there that shouldn’t be.”

Duke spent a few more hours going over plans and ideas of his own in preparation for the coming battles. Eventually, others started showing up and he was able to discuss what he saw was their roles in his plans. He didn’t mention the new dungeon level just yet.