{The Dead March} is an interesting skill, it seems to have more effects than its description says. I can see… specters? When my army moves, I can see skeletons made from pure necrotic energy appear and disappear marching along, the aura around my army itself seems heavier, not literally heavy, but it almost seems like there’s a veil of shadow hanging over my army.

The worst part is that my horde has been marching for a while now and no new enemy crabs have come, already we arrived at the opening of a cave and still no new enemies. And yes, the mouth of the cave is actually in the shape of a crab’s mouth, it looks pretty weird, I prefer my own skull shaped cavern entrance, especially now that I have finished the mercury array.

I imagine that a human would be pretty hesitant to go inside, the water is high enough to almost touch the chins of some of my skeletons, the skulldwarves are completely underwater, Irax is walking on top of it, apparently one of the abilities of his boots, he said he could even step on clouds if he wanted. Besides being flooded and dank the cave is also completely dark.

Just like my caves, pre minotaur statues, the crab caves seem to be very practical, no crab statues or anything of the sort.

I tell my skeletons to separate a little, a few of the mare walking a few steps behind, just in case the crabs have some kind of trap.

It soon proves that the crabs do not have traps, and any design at all, the cave is a straight line, no maze at all. The stone corridor does open up to a spherical room, in the middle sits a large crab surrounded by crab eggs. The eggs are all inside shed exoskeletons, it is quite a sight, the eggs look like gigantic berries flowering from dead bodies.

Wasting no time my mages start destroying the eggs, hitting them with necrotic rays and transforming the egg garden into a pool of putrid flesh and carapace. The crap in the middle flares up with mana, the water in the room moves and whirlpools around it before gaining a sapphire glow.

This time Merlin was ready, he pushed the veil of necrotic energy that hung around the army towards the waters, the rapid movement only making it easier for him to impregnate the shiny liquid with his deathly energies.

The shimmering sapphire light dimmed down, the crab became pale white in color and soon broke down into dust to be swept by the currents. The water level starts to dip noticeably, the light seeps into the crab carapaces and into the eggs.

The eggs all burst at the same time, flesh and pink chitin fuse and enlarge water is absorbed as if there was a hole in space.

Water rushes in from the outside and in the place of the eggs are now four giant mutated crabs. The monsters have weird growths all over their bodies, but they are also much bigger and more powerfully built than normal crabs. Instead of two eyestalks the beasts must have at least twelve, running down into their backs. They have six broad legs, two giant pincers that touch the ground and on their sides they have three pairs of arms. They also have flaws, the necrotic energy must have taken its toll. Nothing major, two of them have a few clearly blind eyestalks, one of them has patches of discolored carapace, one couldn’t quite form it’s arms, they look like they were melted, with places of the carapace fusing and impeding proper movement.

In a way it nails what this really was; A last ditch effort from the dungeon. Perhaps if it was an army of these they might have done something, but four are barely roadblocks now. Well at least they will be cool zombies.

My horde keeps marching and we reach it. The core room. I wasn’t really expecting anything and yet I still feel surprised. The room is again spherical and I can see a door leading to a downward flight of stairs. The crab core is blue, a riot of blues and greens of many kinds, weirdly enough I can see some bronze colorings too. And unlike me the shape is… strange, My shape is a simple rectangle, this thing seems like a sphere tried to become a rhombus, where the core meets the ground it has a round and smooth look, but the closer to the top the more angular it becomes. It is also a lot smaller than me, huh it’s about the size of a van.

“Do we just hit it? Will spells work on this?“ Merlin asks.

“Yes. And no, I do not think your spells would be effective.”

“What kind of spells would be effective then?”

“Vibration mostly, pure energy spells with no physical component are the worst at taking these out, they have a tendency to even absorb the mana. When you attack the core will also be able to attack you directly too, it will use its mana mostly, I do not think this core knows any spells.” Irax looks at it for a bit. “If you agree to give me some of it I can weaken it enough for you to deal the final blow.”

I have no idea how valuable dungeon pieces are, still I am feeling generous so I quickly create and send a quest to him, it just asks him to weaken the core enough so my army can easily destroy it and he gets half his weight of core pieces.

“Surround it” Irax says before pulling his bow and arrows out. My minions get in position.

He aims up and shoots. First an arrow with a deep gray arrowhead, black fletching and what seems to be a metal shaft, the shaft is dark gray but with lines of lighter gray forming rings around it. The arrow multiplies and in the air, and right before they touch the ceiling they curve downwards and fall.

“NOW!” Irax screams, my undead do not hesitate and attack the core. The arrows suddenly accelerate and fall faster becoming blurry lines and hitting the core before my undead can.

All the arrows hit the core and I see as they pass straight through causing cracks to appear all over the blue crystal the cracks almost look like a lightning storm within the core.

The attacks of Kaiman, Gorger and Stinger connect, the crystal shatters into pieces and everyone feels a wave of mana come from it. The weight of the mana seems to lessen now, before it felt like a clenching hand or a taut muscle now it feels... weightless, as if it couldn’t do anything on its own. I feel Irax’s quests complete along with quite a few other messages, I see some of the shards disappear and I can tell they went to Irax’s dimensional item, same with the bow actually. Something catches his attention and I imagine it must be the system prompts.

“The system considers all of my quests here completed, I will be transported out soon.” He fixes his gaze on Merlin.

“Oh.” Merlin nails his sad tone perfectly, it actually makes me feel a bit sad. Irax chuckles, which surprises Merlin, who immediately tries to chuckle back. He turns to look at the remains of the core.

“Many adventurers hate dungeons, I never did. I do not know if I will return here, but if I do I will return as an adventurer, as a challenger.”

“We will…fight then?” Merlin asks, his tone oddly lifeless this time.

“Perhaps” Irax pulls out a small witch’s hat from his dimensional item.”For you, a mage should have a hat as tall as their ego.” By the cadence of his voice I feel like Irax is quoting something here, or someone.

The hat is a simple gray witch hat, its pointy end drooping down a little. Just as Merlin puts his hat Irax vanishes, I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of… well anything actually, he just disappeared, not portal or flash of light or weird sulfur smell, just gone.

“Will I have to kill him?”

What? You mean if he actually comes back? Merlin I’m—

“I will do it” Merlin puts the hat which doesn’t quite fit in his head, the opening for the head being a little too big for his sleek crystal head.

“If he is a threat to you I will kill him.” He continues in an emotionless voice.

And if he’s not?

“I would prefer that.” Merlin answers, his voice oddly small.