Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler :

Voice gained a cool set of skills that amounted to ‘mind control’ and extreme sense motive enhancer. He also spent a few days killing the random players that entered his dungeon. At the end of that time, just a few days before the end of the trial, EDI entered the dungeon.

Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment!

“Well well well. I guess it’s time to test some of my new toys then. Eh Kretchof?”

Ancestor was the one that answered though. I guess Ancestor somehow managed to locate the entrance, or communicated with Kretchof. Either way a reply instantly resounded in my mind. “Voice, beware. She is leading a large group of people into the dungeon. At least forty. It might even be the rest of the people in your trial.”

Oh for fuck’s sake. I could have at least gotten one break!

It wasn’t an impossible task, but her being with a large group made things a bit trickier. “Also it should be noted that the mana signature of BigBadWolf is with her.”

A despondent sigh escaped me. Really? Why did this kind of crap have to happen right now?

“Fine! Kretchof, go greet our guests if you would. They seem to have taken offense to my fairies bothering them for so long. That just makes things quicker. Make sure to leave your ‘dead bodies’ remaining dead until I give the signal.”

I smiled a devious smile. Some things that I’ve left out talking about the dungeon:

1. The stench.

The smell of decay permeated the air. The rotten fish especially made the entire complex repugnant. With my wind mana cycling the smell away, it wasn’t much of a bother for me.

2. The darkness.

There was almost no light whatsoever. With my light mana, and the dungeon map, I didn’t even need any to begin with.

3. The webs.

I had Kretchof stop making the silk clothes he said he had producing. Instead the webs were taken down and transported to places that Kretchof made off limits to the spiders. That way they didn’t attack them.

Of course I knew the exact path that didn’t have any of the near invisible sticky threads. I also could just slowly make my way through the walls and ceiling if need be.

4. The terrain.

The entire cave system was filled with slopes and jagged rocks. Courtesy of Kretchof’s mobile tunneling team. Of course the walls, ceiling, and floor was smooth as marble, but so were the intentionally left rocks.

It was almost as if someone dug out the tunnels, and then another group smoothed everything left.

5. The girl.

Kretchof told me he had gotten a necromancer girl. At first I was quite miffed that another player was in my dungeon, but she was beholden to Kretchof. I was going to use her. I hadn’t actually met her though.

From the information Kretchof gave me, she was the one responsible for all but the spiders and undead in the maze. A good thing for a lackey to have. I gave him specific instructions to make sure to play her up as the owner of the dungeon.

6. Trap rooms.

I had Kretchof modify several rooms, with the help of my fairies, to benefit me in the upcoming battles. Most people didn’t even make it past the fire chamber, but some did. I used them to perfect a killing labyrinth.

Those things coupled with the large amount of fake corpses, would prove to be the undoing of the group.

I would hate to have to explain the whole ‘I’m Mar’s chosen, but I had a Davros dungeon’ thing.

I made my way as quickly as possible to the group. I had learned quite a few little tricks since my time with EDI. I was going to make sure she regretted betraying me. I was going to sink my blade into her heart myself.

I had a few days before the end of the trial. I was going to use them to the best of my ability. Even if they did manage to get past my many planned traps, they still had my biggest surprise waiting in the boss room.

Let’s just say my knowledge gained over the last few days proved useful.

I made my way about ten feet away from the wall. Of course I was inside the earthen tunnel that filled itself in as I walked. When I finally got close enough to the group that I could sense all of their individual mana signatures, I was surprised to say the least.

Wolf and EDI were leading a group of forty others. The tunnels were wide enough here to actually allow five people to walk abreast with no problem. That was exactly what they were doing. Almost as if they had actually had military training.

There were eight lines of five people each. In two of the lines were people with auras, obviously mages. Two mages in forty was supposedly a high number. Bloody mages.

There were at least two archers in every line, with five in the rear line and none in the first. There were five warrior types in the first line, and at least two in every line but the last. This formation was well thought out.

I watched as an undead approached the group. Wolf gave a signal, and It was instantly showered in arrows. A total of 34 arrows struck every part of the zombie. It managed to just ‘live’ through the barrage. As soon as it hit the first wall of warriors, it was torn to shreds in holy light coming from Wolf’s trident.

EDI was composed, and didn’t even blink as the fetid meat hit her. She merely wiped herself off with a black towel she produced from her inventory.

Alright. That was great. Now all I know is that they are highly trained, and Wolf-man over there has some sort of holy sword ability.

I decided on one of my oldest magical tactics. I began to dry out the area in the tunnel they had to go through. Tear helped by absorbing all water mana from it. Drake was filling the area with fire mana. EDI had never actually seen me use the magic, so hopefully the group wouldn’t know a way around it.

They would take about five minutes at their current rate to reach that section. I planted two of my undead summoning rocks to stall them. My fairies could easily complete it in five minutes, but the longer the range of fire mana, and lack of water mana, the more gradual the change would seem.

The more gradual the change seemed, the less likely they were to notice it.

The smell was already getting to the group. One of the archers gagged after the putrid zombie was slain. After his comrades helped him compose himself, they continued on. They even walked over the corpses like it was nothing.

The mages were each forced to summon up a light orb to see into the tunnels, else they would have no light to go on. The two orbs seemed to follow the group. One trailed right behind Lycan-man, the other was in front of the group of mages.

They were quickly met by two skeletal warriors climbing out of the ceiling, and falling in the middle of the group. I had poured in the required amount of mana for the first summoning each, myself.

The havoc caused by the two unexpected guests was entertaining. One of the mages was instantly attacked. The swordsmen around him went on the offensive even before Wolfy knew what was happening. Who the hell trained these guys!? They’re like fucking soldiers!

There was zero chance of a random group having this much discipline and focus. Not to mention the massive amount of teamwork they showed when encountering both enemy encounters.

They mage coated himself with light, which helped push the undead away, but did not stop it completely. The other mage was roughly pushed out of the way of the other skeleton. He must have noticed his mana dropping at an alarming rate.

He began to look around frantically, and informed the group: “Something’s stealing my magic!” he shout reverberated through the tunnel, even louder than the clash of metal on bone.

The archers near him began looking for any sign of something that would be able to cause this. Unfortunately they couldn’t see through solid rock. The two holes in the ceiling had already been patched up before the skeletons even hit the floor.

As one skeleton was struck down, a second group was clawing their way out of the ceiling. The ceiling of course closed as they fell. After that I moved the stones to the ground under the group. Turning them off for a moment was worth the change in location.

Just as I thought the archers and two mages began attacking the roof to destroy whatever was causing the summoning. It was the last day the stones could work anyway. The fighter’s quickly dealt with the skeletons, but not quick enough. They killed each skeleton in about six seconds.

Having so many people tightly packed only hindered the hardened warriors. After two skeletons started rising up from the ground I disabled the stones, and went to the area that would show an explosively good time to my guests.

Wolf made short work of the four skeletons left. A single swipe of his trident took care of an undead. That guy is OP as fuck.

It made me wonder why I was leading the scoreboard with most attainable points. Fido (BigBadWolf) obviously had better commanding and combat skills.

They allowed the mage’s to heal the group, then continued on. I was a little disappointed to see that both mages had healing spells. That made things even harder.

Just as the group made it to the edge of the area that had been drying, Fido called for the group to halt. He called the mages forth, and they began to examine the area. After a quickly conversation, judging from the gestures made by the mana signatures, they decided to continue on.

Just as planned. They had no choice but to go through the trap if they wanted to continue on. The mages started casting water spells to cover the group. You’re kidding me. My look at that time could only be described as an adult that is trying to explain something to a child that wants to start a fight.

I had Tear suck away the water mana from the group. As soon as the fairy started, the mages let Fido know. Tattle tales. I planted one of the summon rocks in a wall near the mages.

With two things sucking mana away at once, they had a hard time keeping the water up. I had Eli raise the two walls I had helped make beforehand.

One was at the front edge of the area, the other was behind the group. Luckily I had planned for an even bigger group than this when I made the trap.

With a speed boost from SparrowHawk, the stone walls quickly rose. They cut off all advancement and retreat.

The undead from the beginning of the dungeon rose as soon as the walls were up. To give them enough time to get here I didn’t activate the fire for a solid minute after trapping the group.

If not for the massive amount of time and mana put in to forge these doors a few days ago, they would have easily fallen from Fido’s onslaught.

After the walls began to look as though they might still break, I cast the fire. There was so much fire mana in the air that the earth walls began to melt, if only slightly.

Tear continued to suck away all water mana from the group, they were producing it even in the solid oven I had made. The trick was the metal plate in the middle.

It accumulated the heat that would have otherwise escaped the stone walls. It would radiate heat even after the initial fire ball was done.

I continued to pour the fire mana into the chamber, until I was out of my pure mana and fire mana. After that I helped speed up the zombies and rotted corpses.

It took four minutes for the fire to die down. If they tried to escape, that would mean destroying their precious water barrier. Then they’d be roasted alive. So they sat there in fetal position.

It must have been grueling to teach the group about everything they might need to expect. I mean how many people would think of teaching their minions to decrease surface area as much as possible to prevent most of the damage from a giant fire orb?

After the fire died out, the dog man began to slash at the door again. All of the zombies in that area were wiped out by the fire.

Before he could completely destroy the walls, I had Eli lower them. I had used up most of my earth mana keeping the stone from falling off by trident attack.

The group gave a collect sigh of relief as the walls lowered. Only to be attacked from both directions not even a second later. The undead crawled over the piping hot walls of earth and metal to get to the group. Of course the group was looking forward, and so missed the attack from the rear.

The archers notched their arrows, took aim, and were promptly attack from behind. The slow moving zombies had made it to the group as the walls just made it beneath the ground. I gave instructions for Kretchof to make them focus on the archers, namely the bows the archers had.

If I could break those it would be a much simpler task of taking the group out. I could just do it with a well placed burst of fire or wind, but that would most likely give away that I was directly interfering. I couldn’t underestimate how much information EDI had gotten from Editor.

The attack took out two bows before the group of five archers even realized their was an attack from the back. The zombies crawling over the walls was kinda creepy THB.

The battle that took place was quick. Wolf and EDI struck at the front. The front portion of the army was helping them, while the back half of the group turned their attention to the archers.

With the army divided in half, they cleaned up my trap fairly quickly. I managed to reanimate several corpses while the battle went on, but not enough to make a noticeable difference.

Kretchof did implant several of them with a ‘surprise’ though. About one in twenty zombie minions were coupled with a ‘miasma’ bomb. It poisoned the unwary, he had apparently used this method to deal with the supposed army that was following me.

I needed to hurry the group through all of my traps. They only had a day until the maze was scheduled to change. After that my traps would revert into nothingness. It would be a lot less fun for me if that happened.

The archers with broken bows threw them away, and equipped a new set. This is going to take a while.

I resigned myself to the idea of many of my traps would revert, but I was still going to try to get them pushed through as many as possible.

After they got through the fire chamber they continued on through the empty hallway. After a few minutes they made it to the lake room. This was the first puzzle. The room was about a hundred feet long and forty feet high. Well thirty five feet was nothing but water. There was only enough room for a boat and a half to cross at once.

This room was next to one that shot out many fish and other aquatic monsters. The water wouldn’t seem to leave past a certain area, so I had Tear absorb as much as possible, then transfer it to the almost empty cavernous room Eli had helped to make.

I then had Moro gather wood and make a few small boats. Really they were just large tree trunks that was hollowed out over an entire day.

It was durable, and someone enchanted it to push water out of itself. That way even if it sank it would just shoot back to the top. The boats had to be beached since there wasn’t enough room to put them in the water.

The groups were obviously cautious. There were no oars, nor anything that would give them an easy time to make it across the water. Wolf did a quick count, and made a decision.

“Alright men, this is the plan so listen up! If we cram in enough we won’t need one of these boats. So you three” he pointed out three seemingly random people “are in charge of deconstructing that boat to be used for oars. Snap to!”

I had to admit. I was surprised and impressed by his ability to think through situations. He was probably the one to instruct the mages to cast the water.

After they deconstructed the boat, they began to cross over. One boat at a time. The mages were in different boats, as were EDI and Wolfy. Cursing my bad luck, I decided to take what I could get.

The first mage was about four fifths of the way there, when the second mage’s group started. It was then that I decided to act.

Using Tear’s assistance, we covered both boats with an orb of water. After three minutes, and nearly all of my water and pure mana, I was forced to drink one of the few mana potions I had made. I had been experimenting with the seeds and plant info left to me by the crazy scientist guy.

I had three mana potions, but had not perfected them. Still the most powerful one healed me for four hundred mana! That was considerable to say the least.

After a solid five minutes total, I capsized both boats with SparrowHawk’s help. My fairies and I were in a small cavern I created for us. Tear and I were in the water, protected by multiple stone bars placed very close together. SparrowHawk was just above us in the only part that had air in it.

Once the boats capsized, the monster’s took effect. A large number of monstrous fish, and a few large aquatic beasts, littered the watery depths. When the boats turned over, they began to feast.

Kretchof didn’t have much control over the fish, and practically none over the bigger monsters, but he had just enough to make them not attack until I was ready. Of course that meant releasing his control on most of his other subordinate species, but the necro girl was there for a reason.

The water turned red as blood poured from the poor sods that had been dragged under. Quickly the water turned back to pure blue. There were several species of monster fish that fed purely on blood. Kinda creepy, but it was beneficial to me.

On the other end the group was pulling something out of the water. Oh come on! Are you serious!? One of the mages had managed to live through all of that!? Her robes soaked, and her body bloody, she laid coughing up water on the bank.

From then on they only traveled one boat at a time. I decided to let them be. One, I might give myself away otherwise, and two, I didn’t have the mana to do that again.

After the group had crossed Wolf did a head count. Five people per boat, one and 4/5ths boats killed off. They were down to 31 people not including Wolf and EDI.

At least they only have one mage now. If I can kill her off it will make my other traps much more beneficial. The one mage had to handle all of the light the group required. That would cost a lot more mana for her than before.

For a while there were only the occasional monster attacks. Nothing too major. Then the path began to split. Wolf and EDI talked it over, and they decided to take different routes in the first fork.

Let me say this kiddies. Never separate. Haven’t they ever watched horror movies? I mean seriously, that’s like rule number two on who to get killed. Number one is to be the main love interest to the main character.

I decided to solely focus on BadWolf’s group. Something made me decide killing off EDI’s group would be the harder choice.

BBW took fifteen people, and left sixteen for EDI. He took the mage, and gave several torches, and some small enchanted rock, to EDI. If you had those why did you make the mage do all that work? People would always take advantage of others.

I came up with a pretty good plan actually. Drake was low on mana, so I thought up a way to fix that. I summoned out Sol and gave an interesting task.

“Sol I want you to absorb the light mana the mage casts. Keep absorbing it as soon as another come’s out. It is maintained by a stream of mana, so it must be a mass of light mana just following them.”

Sol got to work right away. When the first light was absorbed, the group readied themselves for battle. When nothing happened, the mage girl made another orb, and they continued. Sol again absorbed the ball of mana.

After four times the mage girl began to speak to the wolf. My enhanced hearing, and wind mana only worked so well. All I heard was the word torch.

After a few moments the pup lit one up. Of course this was my plan from the beginning. As soon as the spark left the flint, Drake absorbed it. After a few tries at that I decided it would be better to let them light it first.

The floating lights of fire mana didn’t respond negatively so that’s what we did. Wolf continued to kneel down to light the torch. After another two tries, he finally got it working. That’s when Drake absorbed the fire mana.

They couldn’t go without a light, but they didn’t have a light to go with. After lighting a few more torches to make sure, he got the idea. He pulled out a replica of the enchanted rock that he gave to EDI.

I had Sol try to absorb it, “Master, I can’t! It seems to be a Mana Crystal shard! Not even Eli will be able to take the mana out!” The quick talking fairy had failed me. Not that I had high expectations of it anyway.

I sent out Drake and Sol to go do the same thing with EDI. That way at least they wouldn’t be able to notice the next set of traps both groups were going to encounter.

After a few dozen more steps, the wolf activated the trap. So much for military precision! He had fallen for one of the oldest traps in history. A piece of silk tied to two bombs. As soon as his foot tugged at the string, the two bombs fell from their spots.

Hidden behind little ‘bumps’ in the ground were placed my entire allotment of bombs I had bought from Susan. That was the next set of traps. No doubt EDI would fare better though. She was always better at this agility based stuff.

The bombs caused minor damage to Wolf, and none to the rest of the group. They continued to explore the complex. At their current rate it would take at least a day and a half to reach the first miniboss room.

Wolf began to notice the traps after the first one. He had his troops walk single file, to avoid causing the bombs to drop. Just for fun I used earth mana to trip one of the troops, and caused the bombs to go off anyway.

He didn’t die, but it made the mage use more mana. I didn’t know the regen rate of an average mage type, but if it was the same as mine, then each healing would take at least four seconds to work off. If I piled them up it would be rewarding.

I even placed several of my undead summoning rocks along the passage ways for BBW. The random number of undead they faced, didn’t seem to perturb them. It was kind of upsetting.

I had Kretchof start using more than just undead. Now a large number of insects crawled through the halls as well.

The first round with the insects took the group by surprise, but Wolf got over it quickly. That guy was a major pain in my ass. Each of the insects only dropped basic items, but they did decent damage to the group as a whole.

Of course the mage made sure to patch them all up. I had to do something about her if I planned on winning. She seemed capable of doing at least two, maybe more, types of magic. Her death would be a detriment to the group.

As for EDI’s group, I was sure that Kretchof could take care of her. I made sure to never focus too closely on the mage. Most of my attention went to Wolf, then the archers, then the mage, then the fighters. If the mage was last it would also raise suspicion.

By casting the occasion blade of wind mana, I managed to cut dozens of bow-strings. They had a spool of it though. Even when I went for the bows themselves, they seemed to have an indefinite supply of those.

I did have a bit of fun when I roasted one of the warriors in Wolf’s army in his armor. His screams rang out as the bombs fell on him, aided by a massive amount of fire mana.

That was the only death I had made since the water room, at least until they made it to the first miniboss room.