I landed pretty badly and rolled a little, then some monster landed next to me and immediately after something hit my Mana Shield. Then it hit again. The sand slid off the spell and eventually I noticed a humungous spiked mace was trying to bash my Mana Shield away.

The attacks were relentless, and I knew if I stayed in that position, the Mana Shield would eventually break; not because my mana was exhausted, but because the shield had a limit to how much damage it could take within a period of time. There was a much better variation of it that laid within the master category, but I cast Fireball instead and set the monster on flames for a few seconds. It panicked and I used that opportunity to teleport away a little.

I stood on a partially sand-submerged wall from the old ruin for a good view. Wow! What I saw was a creature from the movies, a malformed half-man, half-scorpion hybrid with a bad attitude. His exoskeleton was darker than the blackest nights. Certain parts of his torso still showed flesh, including a portion of his face. His left pincer was disproportionately huge, almost the size of his torso, though he moved it around as if it was as light as a feather. I had no doubt he could effortlessly crush his victims to death with that thing.

His other pincer was smaller, and looked like it suited the general size of his body, but even the blindest fool could see the edge of it was razor sharp. It was pointed as well, so impaling his victims was fair game. His jet-black arachnid legs were much the same, getting stepped on would mean death; if not by impalement, then by blood loss, but that was assuming you even got the chance to retreat.

In the back of his scorpion half were two tails – the one he attacked me with was much too long for his body; it wasn’t normal. Well, nothing in this world was normal, I suppose. He could wrap it around his entire body a few times well, and that spiked-mace finish at the tip was pretty dangerous considering how heavy his blows with it were. They spikes were slightly curved, so when his tail bludgeoned his unfortunate victims, it would see to it that flesh, muscle, and worse, arteries, would be skewered from their meager bones.

His other tail, I wasn’t very sure about. Everything about it looked like a normal scorpion’s stinger, except that at the very end of the tail, the tip was not curved, but straight.

He brushed off an adept spell… I was sure that there was a master spell that could take good care of him. But something about the creature beckoned me to rely on my undead minions; I was a lich, after all.

I sent forth a menacing undead knight. It got a few strikes in but that impenetrable exoskeleton proved an insurmountable defense. The long tail wrecked my summon effortlessly, then the boss, Venomknight as he so proudly declared himself, jumped like a damn spider at me. With fumbling reflexes, I barely managed to push him off course with Telekinesis.

It was time to now test an undead revenant; the floating skulls’ paralysis ability was quite the thing. The revenant rose up and blocked the tail with its shield, then had the skulls do their thing. Venomknight got caught and appeared frozen from paralysis, but he gained control over himself much earlier than I expected and blocked the undead revenant’s strike at his legs with the bulwark of a pincer. It then went for the kill by hitting the summon with its smaller pincer, but that hit was blocked. The quick-witted Venomknight came from the next side with its wild tail and got a full, flush hit in, and what’s worse, the tail lit up a little, so I knew he used a skill.

The undead revenant had no chance.

His fettering, beady eyes tried to lock on to me, but I long since used Camouflage. With the desert’s natural heatwaves in the background, spotting me was impossible. But he somehow knew my general direction, like the instinct from the beast within him was sharper than his bladed pincer. He crawled a bit closer and hissed “Kill me” softly.

I flinched. My metaphorical eyebrows were climbing insurmountable ranges and exploring the deepest depts of the unexplored ocean at the same time.

Suddenly, the other tail spread open, and a puff of dark green lightweight smog fizzled out, then another, and another. It went everywhere, including where I was, dissipating and whoring itself throughout the air around us. Once it halfway enveloped me, Venomknight glared in my exact direction; the bastard was onto me. His tail reverted to normal and shot out a thin spurt of seemingly harmless liquid. My Mana Shield defended against it, but the acid was doing some serious damage at a rather fast pace.

Shit! I blew the green smoke away with a lifestyle spell that generated a bit of harmless breeze after taking to the skies on Dreadhoof, much higher than where he jumped to catch me the first time. I contemplated just finishing him off, like he asked, but somewhere deep inside me wanted to experiment and test my spells properly. This dungeon provided that opportunity to do so without care for my surroundings. I could do all the dumb experiments I wanted to do.

Next on my agenda was the undead berserker. Unlike the knight and revenant that were apprentice and adept spells respectively, the berserker was expert. Without a second to spare, it went in for the kill and its two-handed axe lit up with the power from a skill. Venomknight’s attacking tail was severed the second it got too close to my undead berserker; the thing really seemed maddened and enraged. It deftly avoided the monster’s tail and happily took it away.

It didn’t wait for its opponent to properly cry out and swung at its small pincer, but the bigger one protected it. The berserker willingly placed its arm into the big pincer and was thrashed about like a ragdoll, but it was strong enough to endure. The moment an opportunity arose, it struck down on the arm of the big pincer, halfway taking it off. The other chop, which didn’t land in the same place, had much of the same effect, like a butcher with a dull chopper trying to make his way through some tough venison.

Venomknight released my undead berserker and began to flee, but the unliving madman threw its axe over a shoulder and began pursuit. A soft light enveloped its body and it leaped, landing close enough to grip onto the normal tail. Of course, that tail was gone in a matter of seconds. Clear goo oozed out as did Venomknight’s horrid screech that attempted to melt my non-existent ears.

I could hardly believe my eyes. Not only was the berserker physically capable, it seemed to be good at strategizing on the go, and employing proper tactics even if that meant slowly chipping away at its enemy. In other words, it wasn’t a dumbass like the others. I found that the undead revenant showed more wits than the knights, archers, and wizards, which made me realize that the stronger the summoning spell was, the more intelligent and versatile the summon was.

Now atop a screeching Venomknight’s back, it chopped down multiple times, without using skills, to really grind the effect of killing its enemy through the once diamond-reminiscent carapace. After a couple hits, the exoskeleton cracked. A few hits after that and the undead berserker’s great axe plunged into the juicy bits inside, foraged through the defenseless organs and masterfully incised the underbelly to seek the scalding desert sands below.

Venomknight was suffering through it, and even I didn’t have the heart to let it continue, so I stopped the berserker from opening yet another hole for the arachnid’s entrails to grace the ground and teleported before the monster.

I breathed deeply. If I was wrong, then I’d kill Venomknight and be done with it. I cast Greater Heal to stop him from dying. “You don’t have to die. Become my thrall.”