I floated in the tunnel, waiting patiently for the my enemies to come, while estimating how much longer my mana reserves would hold out. In some ways it was a battle against time more than anything. If I ran out of mana, then everything I had deployed up to this point would become useless. However, I wasn't worried. I had pulled off this same plan a half a dozen times already.

Honestly, I wasn't even sure how many days I had been preoccupied with this drawn out struggle, and how many of the bastards had died. The tunnel around me had at least been rebuilt for the 10th... no the 11th time. Sometimes, I had been ambushed building it, destroying all my hard work up until then. Other times, the bastards had stayed quiet no matter how close I got to the solid mana wall from before, unless I attacked them first. Thankfully, their swarming behavior had a few set patterns, and I had figured out how to judge what I was facing.

Like this time, they did not plan on attacking the interloper nearing their territory. So, I had to stir the hornet's nest a little bit. Further up ahead in the tunnel, I had one of my ghost summons enter the mana wall. The ghost's floating blob like shape, which was born from a soul of a mana spore, phased through the solid wall heading into the space beyond. From previous explorations, I already knew what to expect.

After a bit, I could sense the ghost had stabilized, and I began receiving images in my mind of the open space beyond the mana wall. The first time I had seen the images, I was shocked as the space had literally been a duplicate of the hallways running through the fortress. In many places, it seemed like the stone and metal used to build the fortress no longer existed, instead having literally been turned into solidified mana.

While the whole thing was bizarre, the familiar layout of everything made it easier for me to give my ghost summons its orders. The ghost had a couple basic directives: find the enemy, draw its attention, and then run back to me. It was almost like a game of tag, except in this case with a bunch of homicidal, magical gnats.

Suddenly, I felt mana fluctuations in the ghost, and images of it attacking a mana spore with a before retreating flashed through my mind. I began slowly propelling my self backwards, using the [Float] spell that I had cast on myself earlier. It didn't take long for the ghost to show back up, as it dragged itself out the wall and began racing towards me. Unfortunately, it only got a few meters before Mana Spores flooded the tunnel, casting Mana Bolts at it.

Even as I watched it get shredded and felt its soul dissipate, I poured mana into my [Float] spell, sending me rapidly gliding backwards inside the tunnel. “!” I shot a single Dark Arrow, hitting the lead Mana Spore, causing it to burst in a small blast that scattered its companions. However, that was enough, as the swarming pests quickly noticed me, and I heard the increase in the pitch of their buzzing as they flashed brightly before beginning their chase.

Mana Bolts flew my way as the swarm clogged up the tunnel like it had done before. My Nether Armor was strong enough that any Mana Bolt that hit me dissipated enough that my body didn't take much damage. However, I had to constantly send some mana to the Nether Armor to repair any damage to the spell. Thankfully, the narrowness of the tunnel meant that the Mana Spores could only hit me with a handful of Mana Bolts each time, so the damage I was taking never increased beyond a certain threshold. Unfortunately, their threat had never been their spells but their numbers, which is why I had planned the next steps carefully.

Around me, the tunnel finally gave way to what I had been waiting for. So, just as the Mana Spores entered the new stretch of tunnel, I finally attacked. “ x 10!” The attacks flew true, ripping apart a handful of Mana Spores, causing them to explode with bright flashes. Boooom! Almost like a chain reaction, more of them died affected by the spreading blasts. However, it only made the swarm angry, as their buzzing intensified and they sped up chasing me.

Unlike before, the tunnel didn't collapse this time, as I had spent a long time reinforcing the sturdiness of the tunnel walls to the point that it could withstand such limited blasts. There was more of course, and as I felt myself nearing some of my ghost summons that had been waiting, I began the next stage of the battle. As I flew past them, the ghosts entered the main tunnel from two side tunnels, where they had been waiting. Each of the shadowy blobs fired off a Mana Bolt of their own at the oncoming Mana Spore Swarm before they immediately retreated back down the side tunnels.

The swarm instinctively split its numbers, some going down the two side tunnels, while a large number continued their angry, blind pursuit of me. Booom! Crummmp! Blaaammm! Sudden explosions echoed through the main tunnel, and I smiled inside knowing what the dumb shits had finally run into in the side tunnels.

Any tunnel warfare required traps, and magic was fortunately perfect for creating said traps. [Flame Blast Trap], [Lightning Strike Trap], and [Frost Burst Trap] were all low level spells I had gotten from the spell books, but they were more than enough to deal with some pests. Enchanted into various magical metals, the magical traps only required contact to trigger. While my ghosts had been taught to avoid them, unfortunately for the Mana Spores, their insistence on filling the tunnels ceiling to the floor was their undoing.

I cast a few more Dark Arrows, enough to kill a few of the bastards still following me, as I continued my retreat down the main tunnel. There was one more set of side tunnels that I used to split up the swarm and kill them off like before. However, the further we got from the mana stone deposits, the more likely I knew it was for the swarm to retreat. Thankfully, just as I saw them slowing down, I reached the end of the main tunnel.

Floating out of the exit, I found all my summons ready and waiting in the armory/barracks, just as I had expected them to be. The open space was large enough, so that fifty ghost summons formed two staggered walls of battle centered on Slith, who was floating in the middle of the formation. Canceling my [Float Spell], I skid to a stop near Bas, who was at the bottom of the formation. “Fire on my Command!” The order was kind of superfluous, but it still felt cool to say. And even though I had done this a half a dozen times, it wasn't getting old any time soon.

So, as the Mana Spore swarm rushed out, flying towards their hated enemy, who was yours truly, I let them have a dose of their own medicine. “Fire!” 25 Mana Bolts along with 10 of my Dark Arrows blasted the first few dozen Mana Spores, causing them to explode brightly. Boooommm!

“Fire!” Then, the second wall of ghosts fired their Mana Bolts keeping pace with 10 more of my Dark Arrows, killing the next few dozen Mana Spores that were barely exiting the tunnel. Boooomm!

Even as the next wave began to appear, 10 of my now low on mana ghosts were already charging the tunnel entrance through the thick layer of smoke and mana fallout. The ghosts, who were being shredded by Mana Bolts as they closed on their chosen targets, went kamikaze on them. Almost immediately, the rammed Mana Spores blew up, taking some of their surrounding fellows along the ride to death. Boooom!

Each of my ghosts was gifted with my 'lineage' spell . It was a low level spell capable of damaging the body structure of any creature touched by the caster. While most creatures wouldn't die immediately, they had a good chance of being hurt while infested with death tainted mana. Fortunately, Mana Spores were essentially masses of mana, with a body structure that was weak to such contact type damage. So, they pretty much took critical damage immediately, when the ghosts rammed them while casting that spell.

So, I repeatedly sent four more waves of ghosts, letting them slaughter the Mana Spores, and just as I thought I would have to have Slith and Bas fight this time as well, the Mana Spores stopped appearing.

“Eaaaaaat?”

“Diieeee!”

“Sigh, I know... Rinse and repeat....”