Lucifer dug tunnels through the ground and poked holes to the surface wherever living beings didn’t interfere with his magic. He pumped mana out of these holes like a geyser and rode the waves with his consciousness getting a bird's eye view.

He was paying particular attention to the army that was digging underground, this forced Lucifer to send his ants to dig which was slower than himself because they required room to dig.

Almost half of the army was now underground and would have to be “removed” if Lucifer wanted to finish his tunnel network.

Giant ants attacked the stones with their over-sized mandibles crushing them into small pebbles and powder, the smaller ants picked up the debris and maneuvered between the larger ants legs to another place. Any ants that became too tired to work or damaged their mandibles would quickly be liquidated by its fellow diggers, when an ant fell it would vanish amongst a sea of black for a moment before vanishing into the stomachs of its brethren. Then the ants would get back to their work.

Meanwhile, even more soldiers filed into their own tunnels under orders of their superiours leaving only 20% for defending the exit.

Somewhere in a side tunnel made to confuse the enemy earth mages of their objective dust started falling from the ceiling, then small stones and soon boulders caved in the mall tunnel. After a few minutes, these stones shook and broke revealing something large and black between the cracks.

Lucifer's giant ants finally broke into the enemies tunnel network, he immediately had the ants retreat as far away from the opening as possible, then flooded the tunnel network with miasma effectively claiming it as his domain.

He shot through the tunnels with his consciousness eager to get a closer look at his enemies and quickly found them. Most were obviously malnourished and were doing simple gruntwork, they used their thin mana enhanced frames to lug huge buckets of earth and stone towards the exit.

Further into the tunnel Lucifer found earth mages busying themselves with extending their work and a few people reading maps and issuing orders. He looked over a man's shoulders and looked at the map, a poorly drawn thing. Apparently they were attempting to make ambush tunnels of their own, for use against their allies Lucifer bet.

Bored with that he flew towards the exit. Or at least followed the bucket line to wherever it went. It didn’t take long for his domain to extend to the exit and he found the entrance by correctly following the workers.

Lucifer looked around the tunnel system with his senses looking for something. A few moments later along with the spread of his miasma he found what he was looking for, an empty tunnel. He didn’t know why that made this particular tunnel and he didn’t care, he just needed somewhere his powers would work unimpeded by others.

Soon he was alone and cutting large swaths of rock away into nothingness. Then suddenly as a large swath of rock was done away with the area in front of him was empty, he had linked up with his other tunnel and his army was already in sight.

Lucifer let loose a slight chuckle as he commanded the undead and ants forward. The undead shambled on the tunnel floor while the ants took the less common route, the roof, and walls. Mixed in the group was the occasional bat that flew past.

Commander Ezra shuffled his pick to a more comfortable position and fingered along the scars on his face. A habit that often showed itself when he was thinking.

Several men each carrying their own picks like the commander circled around while they waited for their leader's word, they were ahead or two taller than an average man and had thick muscles used to long hours going through the ground, each had a thick beard. Probably more to keep the dust out of their mouths than a statement of any sort. And most notably most had more than a few grey hairs, an impressive feat for a duchy soldier.

Ezra mumbled to himself as he ran the calculations through his head as he had done countless times before. Then grinned looked up and said, “good work, at this pace the other duchies will have a mighty hard game of molerat tag”

The surrounding men cheered and pushed their broad chest forward, “now get back to--”

Ezra’s command was cut short when a thin man wearing leather burst into the room, “sir we are being attacked by undead”

Grips on picks tightened, “did we hit a crypt” Ezra questioned the panicked man.

“no sir, I came from the main shaft” replied the man. A stillness gripped the room. The main shaft was the men's way of referring to the entrance of the tunnel, which meant they had been boxed in underground by a flank, Ezra ignored his men's pailing faces and bellowed at the man, “well what kind of undead are they how many are there, REPORT”

The man started, “there are skeletons--” the room erupted into laughter drowning out the messenger. A particularly burly man joked, “skeletons, you had us going for a bit there”

“yea we thought we were being ambushed by the enemy, but they are just skeletons”

“commander I volunteer to get off the rock and clear out these ‘skeletons’”

Ezra decisively commanded, “fine but I want frequent reports”

The volunteer laughed as he started down a tunnel, “WAIT!” called the messenger, “these aren’t normal skeletons” the volunteer stopped, “they have duchy armor on and they tore Sargent Gosswald apart in seconds”

Ezra and the rest of the room drew in a cold breath of air, they knew how strong this particular Sargent was and no normal skeleton would pose a threat to him. Ezra’s brows drew together, he yelled, “GO AND BLOCK THEM OFF, CAVE IN THE ROOF IF YOU HAVE TO MOVE NOW!!”, the messenger turned around and sprinted along a tunnel assisted by magic.

Ezra bunches his fist together and coldly added, “I want each of you to tell the earth mages to prepare escape tunnels”

“what, the enemy earth mages will detect us if we dig so close to the surface”

Ezra oddly smiled, “we are “cowards” remember, so of course, we will have an escape route”

an older man lightly slapped the back of the questioners head, “don’t question our commander, each of us owes our grey to him and his plans”

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them Lucifer was floating above them and saw everything they did. He quite liked this commander who isn’t blind to anything but the “big picture”, however, he was Lucifers enemy and would die just like the rest.

Lucifer had already moved his chess pieces into place to counter the commanders attempted escape.

Along the tunnel system, men carrying heavy buckets noticed an increase in messengers running through the tunnels, and the more astute noticed the grave expressions each messenger wore. Suddenly they heard strange noises.

“is that a bird”

“we are underground dumbass, why would a bird be here”

Before they could react several bats flew through the winding tunnel past them and out of sight, most of them simply shrugged it off.

“I think they were carrying some sort of crystal,” remarked someone.

“I think you’ve been underground too much, seein animals carrying stone too”

Further along the tunnel.

An earth mage popped open a mana flask and downed the foul drink only slightly grimacing at the taste. He closed his eyes for a moment to center himself then took a deep breath and started imagining all the components he would need for his next spell. This took only a moment because it was practically the only spell he knew and was also the spell he has used countless times before.

He mumbled strange incantations while keeping the imagery fresh in his mind, careful to not let any outside disturbances interrupt the spell. Strange sounds started behind him which weren't the digging or hitting of stone, the faint image of a bird flashed past his mind, but he quickly dismissed the thought as an unwelcome distraction.

He was a sapper mage, his only job was to be a magical digging machine. Thinking about strange noises was not this machine's job and could be left the earth movers.

His hands lit up as the spell was nearing completion, the rock wall ahead of him glowed as cracks started crisscrossing across its surface. Then unexpectedly the man was impacted in the back of the head knocking him over.

It felt like someone had thrown a small animal at the back of his head by the heat and feeling of fur. He pushed off the ground and turned. Large black beady eyes caught him by surprise, but that wasn’t what had his attention.

Just below the thing was a decent sized mana crystal. Something that a mage would find immensely useful which is why it had his rapt attention. The problem was that crystal was wrapped in a strangely large claw for something a bat would have.

Clink, a soft cracking noise akin to crushing glass sounded. The room with rock walls expanded and burned hotter than earthen fire for an instant. Then just as suddenly, the room contracted until what misty remains of the rooms previous occupants was left, vanished under tonnes of stone.

In other tunnels, similar scenes played out. Some fared slightly better than others, in one particular tunnel a group of soldiers spotted the intruders early and tried to stop them, however, their swipes and slashes only met empty air as the bats agility maneuvered around them meeting their target.

“they have wind magic under their win--” was the last thing said in that tunnel.