Lucifer waited for the group to walk over to Drake with the “panther cubs” in their arms with a shit eating grin plastered on his face, however once Drake saw what his men were carrying back he imminently ordered the baby panthers to be shoved into a sack and left here to pick up later, unbeknownst to him Lucifer was silently shouting whatever insults he could think of into his ear, “LOOK AT THOSE LITTLE PAWS @)$( LOOK AT THEM, AT LEAST PICK THEM UP OR PLAY WITH THEM YOU @*% %*@^&! !$*(&&^&*)*^&, THEN THEY WILL @[email protected] YOUR @!^^ SO HARD THAT @%% (*@$ $(&@@($”, however, since Lucifer was not actively making his dungeon voice audible Drake was oblivious to the abuse.

After the Panther attack, Drake was confident that the trap was triggered and the water was safe now, since he wanted this mission to be over as soon as possible and the longer he waited around the more soldiers deserted, he had to move on soon so he had larger groups get water to speed things up.

Although the circumstances were not ideal Lucifer began his plan and sent a mental message.

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A group of soldiers near the edge of the army heard leaves rustling nearby and immediately prepared for battle, the commotion caught the attention of more groups of men which also prepared for action, leaves of a bush rustled once more and out stepped a small figure. At first most of the soldiers were confused, a little girl just wandered through the dungeon, then the confusion turned to horror when they noticed what she was holding, the little girl stood there with a tilted head staring at the soldiers holding a human arm with small bites in it, one of the soldiers pointed "that's our uniform" causing others to recognise the small bit of cloth still clinging to the severed limb.

someone yelled "its a demon" startling the little girl, she dropped the arm turned around and vanished back into the darkness before anyone could stop her. the soldiers looked around at each other as if someone was supposed to chase her, but after the mention of demons, no one wanted to be the one to give chase.

A short while later the group who saw the little girl heard exclamations from different areas in the army. Drake started to receive reports that the demons on "the door" and a few others had started appearing nearby, so far the demons seem content to stay in the darkness however, a few brave souls dared to chase after the demons when they appeared and haven't been heard from since, his man said that the moment the soldiers stepped into the darkness they vanished without a trace.

Meanwhile at the lake soldiers were filling their canteens when they heard a particularly large commotion and turned around to see what is happening, it was at this moment when the water surface shimmered with movement unnoticed until suddenly, massive jaws with rows of razor-sharp teeth burst from the water and grabbed someone before slipping back into the water.

Those who were grabbed didn't even make a sound as all of their bones were crushed before they could even scream, the soldiers backed away from the water and picked up their equipment, one man asked: "what was it that got em!".

another replied "I dono, all I could see was a big mouth filled with teeth on an armored lizard, I've never heard of that monster"

The leader of this particular group said "lets move back and see what the commander wants before we do anything"

Another soldier gave a sigh of relief and replied "we have just been getting water from the streams that go through the place, so there is no need for us to die for a little water"

The leader responded "that works for small groups like us former adventurers who are used to scavenging whatever we need while we move, but that doesn't work for an army because there are too many people to do that, if everyone tried to fill their canteens at one of those little canteens we would be there for days"

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Drake received another report that the water had some sort of aquatic armored lizards in it and he sighed deeply, he thought 'this is just like the battle of Graiglief when I had a spy amongst my generals, every move I make is countered as if the enemy heard my orders themselves'.

He asked one of the group leaders "do we still have the nets from the adventurers guild"

Someone replied "yes Sir we do still have them, they were being carried by the rearguard during the massacre in the ant's nest so they are still fine, you don't intend to fight the giant lizards are you because we can find other water"

Drake almost facepalmed, he knew that this was a covert operation so he couldn't take all his famous generals with him, but these people were just incompetant, but he still explained to them because he knew that having leaders carry out orders without knowing the reason why, tended to end rather poorly, "The men are not golems they are humans, as such they need rest and water to keep up their strength during an operation, so if we miss this opportunity to get water we may not get another and this is also a rest period, so we are killing two birds with one stone"

After making sure that the temporary leaders understood he ordered "use the nets on the water surface to bind up their movements then kill them at range with spears"

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Now almost half of the remaining army armed themselves with nets and slowly moved towards the water surface. as they were progressing a 5 meter red giant with hoves for feet and horns covering its body appeared near the group on standby causing a commotion, the soldiers yells caught the attention of some of the people using nets, but most of the soldiers holding nets were there during the first attack and wouldn't fall for the same trick twice. Once the commotion happened the scaled beasts burst out of the water towards the group.

Some soldiers were distracted or simply didn't react in time and failed to throw their nets out, these people were grabbed and in one quick chomp were reduced to meat paste, those whos nets landed perfectly didn't fare much better, the nets caught onto the beats and tangled them up, however, a ton of scaled muscle was still launching towards them, scales met armor and armor gave way into flesh then bones giving under the stress came not too long after.

Soldiers scrambled to get their spears into the bound crocodiles and net the free ones on a rampage. A particularly well-built soldier thrust his spear from full sprint and you could hear a faint whistle from the blade, however, once the blade made contact with the scales it only penetrated a few centimetres before becoming stuck, this only served to piss off the giant nope and it swung its spiked tail and tore off the mans legs below the knees.

Along the lakeshore, similar scenes played out where soldiers were having trouble even harming the monsters, while the giant reptiles used their powerful tails as armored clubs full of pure muscle to crush and cut anyone who got too close.

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meanwhile Lucifer was muttering to himself with his consiousness half outside his body as he observed from above, "You didn't expect a 5th floor monster on the 3rd floor sucks to be you assholes Im a leet haxor, if you think I'm supposed to send 1 monster I will send 10, if you think there will be one boss there will be 3, if you think there is going to be weak monsters you will find godzilla mother fucka, if you think there will be no traps by god there will be traps for days, AND IF YOU THINK A TRAP IS GOING TO KILL YOU IT WILL DROP OUT A PINK FLOPPY DILDO WITH A NOTE TELLING YOU TO GO FUCK [email protected]$%" during his rant he body coughed voilently bringing his consiousness back, he suddenly realized how crazy he was acting while in dungeon form and that was when he was still nearly half human, if he continued getting worse he would probably force the spirits to go crazy too and that would probably kill the intruders, but also himself in the process.

The intruders would have to wait he had more important matters to attend to, Lucifer got up and started moving towards the cells where the scouts he captured were held, as he was passing a rock wall he suddenly remembered about the crystal Ahri had given him, he made a slight detour and used his dungeon powers to reveal the crystal that was buried in the wall, then he continued to the cells.

Once he arrived he eyed the frightened prisoners, one man was tall and lanky without a single muscle apparent on his body, the other was a short stocky man who wore several times as much armor as any scout should, apparently he was a half-dwarf or something he wasn't really paying attention to their stories when he asked them.

he sighed at having so little to chose from and just picked the tall one because it would feel closer to his current body. with a wave of his hand, he sent the mans soul to go dough-nut diving and pushed his own consciousness into the falling shell.

A few moments later his vision returned and the first thing he noticed was there were far fewer colors, it was like someone took a blunt instrument to the saturation meter in the man's eyes. Apparently, Lucifer had chosen to take over the one colorblind scout in existence.

He didn't have the sort of mana required to make any major modifications to the body, he only beefed up its ability to hold mana so his consciousness wouldn't cause the body to explode. Once that was done he started inspecting the library he retrieved from his old bodies palm, hopefully there would be something useful in here for him to use, although the moment he peeked inside with his mana sense he realized that there was truly a library inside here, and the chances were low that he would find something useful in here quickly enough.