Her finger still trained on the man who saw her, Zaria cackled. He screamed as bites appeared along his form, dropping the horn in the process, and Zaria charged in.

Her mind worked furiously as the man - only a Tin Mage with no healers. He wouldn’t last long under a spell focused on him from the Babamorph - collapsed and convulsed from the bites. They’d taken out a good portion of the camp with the floodwaters. From what Zaria could see, about twenty Copper members had survived, with probably three dozen Tin Tiers alongside them. If Zaria had charged in here directly, she would have never survived. Now, however? The odds were much more in her favor.

It helped that the enraged tentacle horses had fully entered the camp. Now that the water had retreated enough for both man and beast to walk, the horse’s larger size and lack of exhaustion meant they were free to turn on the people inside. A man’s skull was crushed under a massive hoof as another was lifted into the air by tentacles. The horse holding him slammed him up and down against walls and the ground, and another horse ran up to grab onto the man and pull him another direction.

The crate mimics and Maw were doing their work as well, setting upon the Tin tiers they could find and - per Zaria’s orders - attacking until they were nearly dead before moving onto the next target.

Her orders had been specific to all mob groups. Besides the normal orders to return at given times, she’d also told them the following: To Broil and Maw she’d added, She had some hopes the monstrous chimera would drown before leaving the legacy dungeon, but wasn’t inclined to leave that to chance.

The man atop the tower collapsed, dead. Except it was more than two hours after dawn. Ysdrah had moved into the dominant position. His body twitched. Hair erupted along his arms and legs, and his mouth elongated into a lupine snout - before it split open along the horizontal again, and two long tentacles erupted. Fur covered his arms and legs, as well as the top of his head and down his spine in a mane, but the rest was covered in the slimy skin of a slug or octopus.

The man raised his head and let out a bloodcurdling, gurgling howl, and the air around him darkened under the power of the Ysdrah-dominant lycanthrope before he leapt from the tower, descending like a falling star onto one of his former companions below.

All this chaos, and only now did Zaria burst into the camp properly. she commanded, before nodding to Vysala. The witch unbuckled herself and ran to the rope on the edge of the tower, grabbing on with both hands and rappelling down. Rav and the other crossbow mimics opened fire as the two squads of candlemen leapt from Zaria’s trap door to plunge into the chaos. Broil followed a moment later. His heavy frame sank into the water - now barely shin high - and mud that covered the ground, but he was more than strong enough to pull himself free.

Zaria stomped on a Tin tier that was nearby, then turned her cackle onto one of the ones the mimics had left near death earlier. It only took seconds for the man to die and arise as a Lycanthrope a moment later, before Zaria could turn to the next floating, near death Tin and cackle again. She kept a careful eye on her mana. She wanted to preserve enough to dominate one of these lycanthropes, as she had ideas for future use, but right now, her priority had to be on winning the fight in front of her.

They could hunt down any escaped werewolves later if needed.

The momentary shock of Zaria’s assault and the chaos of mimics, lycanthropes and tentacle horses erupting throughout the camp had set things into a fresh round of chaos, and the Tins were dropping like flies. The Coppers, however, were made of sturdier stuff. Although one died screaming to Maw, another was caught in an incendiary wave from Broil, and a third became the first person in history to be drawn and quartered because the horses wanted to tear him apart -

Congratulations, you have advanced to Copper 5!

- the rest, their numbers down to a dozen, were rallying in one of the stone ruins, only firing off spells and arrows at any monster that approached them. Someone inside shouted an unintelligible command, and a new wave of spellfire and arrows erupted from within.

Except they were targeting their own half dead Tin Tiers. They’d put together that Zaria was making werewolves from them, and apparently decided their own lives outweighed trying to save their own members.

On the downside, less Lycanthropes for Zaria, but her mana was running low anyway, and she already had five ravaging the survivors she couldn’t control. And every one the coppers killed for her granted her experience.

Not all the Tins died. Several made it into the shelter as well. But their numbers were so few already that they’d barely make a difference in what happened next.

Broil sent another wave of embers into the building. With everything half drowned, nothing caught on fire, but they did release clouds of steam and smoke, before laying into the already damaged stone with his stovepipes. The structure wouldn’t last long against the onslaught, although inside Tanks were already moving to reinforce the parts Broil was damaging as mages used Air based spells to force some of the smoke out.

Outside, the lycanthropes and horse monsters were helping Maw and the Crate mimics finish off the remaining Tin survivors. Well, ‘help’ was a strong word. The creatures weren’t under her direct control, and were more just focused on attacking every Sapient they could see with mindless abandon. The combined effects of the lycanthropes Darkening effect had plunged the entire camp into twilight, but Zaria and her mobs could see through it with ease. Thankfully, as she had hoped, they ignored the candlemen, and right now those were standing in a circle around Vysala, hiding the human from their attention. Zaria got one more lycanthrope out of the onslaught, but it wasn’t long before the last of the Tin tiers fell.

Then the monsters Zaria had spawned turned their attention to the building that hid the coppers while she held her mimics back.

A voice rang out from inside of the building, loud and clear. “Dungeon! You have made a terrible mistake! We will hunt you to the ends of the continent for this attack!”

“Then I’ll just make sure to leave none alive to tattle,” Zaria shot back, taking the pause in the battle to recharge her mana. She had enough, but the battle was far from over. Would it be worth it to-

Before she could finish the question in her mind, one of the werewolves pulled stone directly from the wall itself. She’d only turned Tins. Coppers were too dangerous to play games with. Yet this one had the power of a Copper, and she dared to hope she knew the reason. A Copper with the power of a werewolf. That resolved the question in Zaria’s mind - this one would be useful to keep alive.

She cast dominate lycanthrope. The creature didn’t let up its attack, but she could feel it slide under her control, and ordered it back to her mobs, at the same time lighting one of the new Ovens and assigning it to her command.

New Mob Unlocked! Lesser Ysdrahian Lycanthrope Mage (10 Command Points).

To her shock, the lycanthrope froze in place when she assigned it to herself. Moments later, the normal visual of mob summoning took hold, and a brand new one appeared, following the last order Zaria had given the living one a moment ago and joining the line of candlemen. The one that Zaria had copied, now free of Zaria's service, turned back to where it knew humans were, and lunged at the defenders.

Vysala looked up at Zaria. “It kept the original around?”

“Apparently!” Zaria cried back, thrilled it had worked better than she’d hoped. The spell said it would create a copy, not enslave a living lycanthrope. She’d thought that meant the original would just die or vanish, but the spell hadn’t said what happened to the one Zaria controlled And now she could summon more if the fight demanded that of her. This new one had none of the injuries the one she’d copied had sustained from the defender’s counterattack. And it had the Mage abilities it had in life.

She did a quick experiment and commanded it to fire a spell at the defender. Unlike a normal mob, the effects of Dominate Lycanthrope meant she could still control it for now while it was outside her area of influence. It opened its mouth and unfurled its tentacles before letting loose one of the signature mage spells - Arcane Beam. The attack didn’t have an elemental type, but it did considerable damage where it struck stone.

The Coppers weren’t counterattacking right now. Just trying to defend themselves. It was the right call in a normal fight - they were trying to outlast the benefits of any buff spells Zaria had cast. But Zaria hadn’t used buffs that would expire that quickly. The horses had several more minutes of slaughter ahead of them, and the Lycanthropes were mindless monsters until the effects of the first transformation ended.

Right now, Zaria only benefited from delays as her Cauldron mana ticked back up.

She added the same commands she’d given the Candlemen, then made new armor for the beast inside her dungeon. As soon as there was time, she’d equip her newest monster.

“We wish to negotiate!” someone shouted from inside the building. “If you surrender, we will spare you.”

Zaria cackled. Not the spell. Just a normal cackle that erupted from her lips in unbidden shock. “I have a counteroffer,” she said. “The first person to promise to tell me everything they know about the Reclaimers will be set free.”

“And the rest?” someone else shouted.

“Perish,” Zaria said. It was a gamble, but she’d just seen them cut down their own members for a tactical advantage. This was not a group that seemed overly prone to loyalty.

Zaria stepped forward, fully intent on joining Broil in breeching the walls. Not two steps later, however, and the ground she’d just stood on erupted. Clumps of water and mud went flying in all directions, splashing Zaria’s mimics, as something massive emerged from a tunnel underground.

This new creature was nearly tall enough to rest its chin on Zaria’s porch. It had a vaguely feline build, as she’d seen before. Now, however, it stood upright, raising strong forelimbs that ended in the foreclaws of a mole. Its tail, long and ending in the bony knots of one of the glyptodons of the southern plains, lashed the air. Its back was covered in quills like a porcupine, and it blinked at Zaria with three pairs of shocked eyes attached to three heads. The central one was froglike, the left was more akin to that of a goat, and the right was the powerful jaws of an alligator on a long neck.

“It’s been a long time since I beat a Dungeon into submission,” the creature growled, looking at Zaria. “And you’re an interesting one. Rejoice, Mutant! You’ll live to be enslaved by my Master, and that honor is too great to be ignored. Surrender and you may be allowed to keep your mind.”

The appearance of the beast wasn’t what had Zaria speechless. Nor was the speech. It was the creature’s nameplate.

Name: Suderah, the Harvester

Tier: Bronze

Heart Type: Boss

Elemental Affinities (Unknown, observe creature to discover Affinities)

That third line. Heart Type.

This wasn’t just a Servitor. From what Zaria knew, those could only normally be made from regular mobs. This must have been some special upgrade Lidivah had selected. Probably even the secret for how it had overpowered the Citadel core. As a single being, it was five times stronger than Broil. Twenty-Five times stronger than a Copper adventurer.

That put it roughly on par with Zaria’s full power.

As Suderah turned to charge her, the walls of the ruins collapsed, and the Coppers burst forth. Six of the surviving dozen now had demons in tow. There were no chains connecting the demons to the Coppers, just collars and bracelets that were linked by a blood red glow.

Zaria tuned that out. Her focus had to entirely be on the monster in front of her. She had to trust Vysala and her mimics could handle the demon-bonded Reclaimers without Maw and Broil.

Otherwise this was going to go south very quickly.