The dungeon entrance has a slight slope upwards blocking my vision from seeing further. One thing I can see is that as it goes upwards the HF mithril disappears, it seems this… weird vein is going downwards? Looking around with my miners I see that it is going diagonally downward. I can feel the way it just… rejects my necrotic aura and domain, I could absorb it but I know it will take a lot of mana to do so. So even though actually mining and storing this is kind of like a wicker puppet, living in a wood house, storing lava in its bedroom I also should not just leave this laying around.

At the end of the day if you have a house made of flammable material it is better to have fire hazards in your possession, instead of your enemies having it. Plus there are a few things that I could use it for.

I push a bit again and try to enter the dungeon and immediately feel resistance. I can feel the intelligence, or will, of this dungeon repelling me. This does pose a bit of a problem, what if this dungeon has created weapons of HF mithril? I look around my dungeon, and my minions, and none of them would fare that well against it. I particularly pause at my demon skeleton, who would be very screwed against it.

I call Merlin and a few flying skulls, they are going in to take a look. He is probably the one better suited for this, with his new ice skin he has a minor degree of better protection than the rest of my dungeon. If the weapons were actual mithril he would be fucked either way.

The mana slimes would be pretty okay against HF mithril, that is, if they could actually seriously fight. Merlin arrives and I quickly create a talking array.

“You should focus on creating pure ice mana, just in case” Merlin turns to look at the array. “I shall also solidify the frost layers on my necrotic crystal.” He says while nodding to the array.

I wonder, should I also make some kind of projection to go with the voice? Eh, whatever, dungeon exploration first!

The team enters, three floating skulls first, then Merlin and right behind him four floating skulls. Merlin stops.

“The mana here…”

“Can you feel it?” I say, while also making the voice array bigger.

“Yes, it’s…lacking? In undeath.” Well yes, that’s one way to put it.

“It’s pretty neutral, though it’s also slightly trending towards life-aligned. Is there anything else?”

“The life mana is weak.” Merlin palms light up in a dark purple fire, burning up whatever little attunement the mana around had with life energy. The team hears a sound, a weird sploshing noise? Actually Multiple sloshing noises.

From deeper in the cavern comes a dozen monsters of red flesh. These monsters have no skin on their bodies, no head or legs either, only a weird mass of flesh in the general shape of a torso with two arms coming out of it, ending in large and thick ribbons of bloody flesh. I see them crawling and slithering on the ground, using one of their arms to help them move. These beings are large enough that if they were standing they would tower a full head over any normal man, but I see they do not have a full skeleton, so instead these things crawl on the ground. A weird amalgam of muscle and tendons I can see they have a few ribs and some bones on… one of their arms, they also leave a trail of blood whenever they pass by.

The thing that truly grabs my attention is the malformed spike of Half silver mithril each of them ‘carry’ in their good arm, which is fused with an arm bone and corded with tendons. There is another weird thing about them, Which Merlin finds out as soon as he sends his necrotic fire towards them.

“They are resistant to necrotic mana?” He asks loudly, still throwing fire on the group. The group which also shows no signs of pain, though that is not that weird, I wonder if they even have a brain.

“Yep! Their flesh is already Life-attuned and it also seems to be naturally resistant to necrotic energy. Also you should take care of the weapons first.”

”I will.” Merlin nods and then activates {Black Shroud}, creating a large cowl of dark energy around him, using {Burst Shell} he breaks parts of his crystal skin and imbues its shards in the shroud. The dark and sparkly shroud moves up his arm and he activates {Reave}, all the crystal pieces move faster and combine becoming the edge of the claws. Merlin stops for a second and takes aim, which is not that difficult since the monsters are pretty slow. I quickly take a peak on the monsters, I do feel the flesh dungeon try to stop me, but unlike the lizard dungeon I smash through.

Fleshing

A mass of flesh and blood living through extreme vitality.

Merlin’s claws explode and fly off, slicing through the fleshlings, three cut through the arms of a few and the other two cut into the torso and get stuck there. The monsters keep slithering ignoring the damage, and the fallen weapons. Suddenly a few of them, the ones that lost their arms, stop and try to pick up the spikes again, while the other ones keep going forwards. The flying skulls send a few necrotic rays, focus firing on the remaining fleshlings. The monsters start clearly rotting, they do have a resistance to necrotic but it’s not that insane.

Then they stop moving and start profusely bleeding, the group then smash into each other and I watch as their blood mixes and their flesh starts to intertwine transforming into five much larger fleshlings.

“”Merlin! Focus on their vitality!” I shout from my array. I also tell the floating skulls to cut off the spikes from the monsters.

Five necrotic claws grow from his hand and I feel the amount of focus coming from him, the closest fleshling has fully fused, becoming an even bigger mound of corded flesh. Merlin throws two of the claws, both gaining a dark green luster, both sink lightly in the monsters and then the green color gets brighter. My floating skulls focus fire and weaken the wrist holding the HF mithril spike. The blades explode into a bleak green flame, and quickly gain color, becoming brighter, all the nearby fleshlings start to move away from the flaming one. Merlin then uses his death ray and cuts the weakened wrist, causing the spike to fall to the ground.

The fleshing starts to wildly beat its own chest, desperately trying to extinguish the fire, the same monsters that before completely ignored the necrotic blade cutting its body. The fire spreads from its torso to the hands beating on it and quickly starts engulfing the rest of the body, Merlin starts to throw more blades to the other monsters as they start advancing.

{Shade Mantle : Jack o’ frost}, {Ice Pillar}, Merlin uses all the ice mana he has and creates a 1 meter pillar right in front of one of the fleshlings, stopping it for a moment, the rest of the fleshlings move around the small pillar and Merlin takes this chance to throw the blades at the grouping. The following explosion catches three of them, and again cuts off their arms holding the blades then goes back to shooting more blades.

I take a quick look and see that the first one is in the back, it didn’t move and seems to be well on its way to dying. The ones that just got a taste of the flame are also not moving. I mean they are moving, just not forwards. At this point all of them are burning with the green fire.

They seem to be panicking? Which is kind of interesting, they are all trying to put the fire off and not moving, which will never happen, the fire Merlin used is a rot flame, which burns vitality and life, pretty good against these monsters. They could use the HF silver to actually put them out, or at least weaken them, thankfully they don’t seem that smart.

I watch the flame kill them off and see a few interesting things.

All of them are slightly different in a lot of small ways, mostly from their muscles and bones, all of them had a different number of ribs, also their ‘spine’ was in fact, not a spine, but a weird grouping of ribs all tied up with tendons, their arms were actually made of two upper arm bones, meaning no radius and una, and also not actually connected to the ribs. They also did not have other bones, like the sternum, clavicle or scapula, there were also no organs inside the ribs, just more muscle.

I also noticed that the blood seems to be even more resistant to necrotic energies than the muscles or bones. It’s pretty interesting, these monsters would probably be considered flesh golems I imagine? Flesh golems do tend to enter a somewhat gray area, they could be animated with Necrotic mana, but also like these fleshlings they could be animated with pure vitality. Really they are not all that different from necrotic undead.

I call a few more undead to come and soon Stinger, Asterion and three more mages come. The plan is pretty simple, Stinger and Asterion are here to stop enemies from advancing, the rest are here to murder the enemies, the three mages can also use rot flame, and the demon skeleton can also throw fire around. Asterion should be pretty safe with his {Steel Skin} and {Rock body}, Stinger is agile and fast, so she can dodge and fall back if she needs to. I take a quick look around and call five Skulldwarves, all of them have {Rock Skin} and axes. I concentrate a bit and push, but this time I really put my back on it. Necrotic mana rushes into the entrance of the dungeon and I feel for a second the will of the dungeon trying to stop me, but I’m stronger, my mana is purer, the domain of the enemy dungeon is pushed back and mine forwards and now the cave entrance is mine.

Right, I guess dealing with the Lizards gets postponed for a little while, at least I feel like I should deal with this first, since a bunch of necrotic resistant flesh golems with Half silver mithril weapons, right by my doorstep, sounds pretty dangerous. Plus that little clash of wills we just had felt… weak? It certainly felt weaker than the crab dungeon, or rather its mana, its domain felt weaker.

Besides, I can’t say I am not interested in seeing what else is inside this dungeon.