I felt extremely disappointed in myself as the cult neared the Boss on the 25th Floor.

No more members of my family had died since deputy Tiarsus Liquidambar had, which was a relief - one of the feelings I actually possessed as a Dungeon Core -, but only four cultists had died the last 10 Floors!

But luckily - or maybe not considering the Rules of my Dungeon - two of the four cultists in question had been some of the last among them capable of mind controlling people, leaving only the two cardinals.

Still, with only three and a half Floors left, four deaths in 10 Floors was a scary small number.

And I couldn't even really rely on the mind control breaking to save me!

My 19th Floor had been built with the only purpose of delaying people. It took people with karma levels of 75% or higher who knew the Floor about 20 minutes to complete it, whereas it in comparison took them 10 minutes to finish the previous Floor.

All the puzzles on the 19th Floor were Challenge Rooms with timers. The length of those timers got longer the lower the lowest karma level of the participants were, starting from 74%.

With 0% karma, a 5 minute timer would become an 80 minute timer.

And of course the first of these puzzle timers would reset if the button on the pedestal in the middle of the otherwise empty room was pushed. The fact that the exit got blocked the moment they entered combined with the ominous countdown timer on the wall, made it very tempting to press everytime the countdown was almost done.

The first press would create a copy of a random creature from my 1st Floor. The second, a creature from my 1st and second Floors. And so on till they let the timer run out.

At which point the room would open up and the puzzle would be completed.

But with Zina there - even if only acting as an example due to ‘Earning One's Own Paycheck’ - puzzles like that weren't as effective as they could have been.

No one pushed the button. With Zina there I hadn't expected them to. And even if she hadn't been there, the ram riders, the Sheriff, and most of the deputies had been through the puzzle before and knew better than to press the button as well.

It was still a bit disappointing.

But the 19th Floor still did exactly as I had wanted it to: Delaying the cult long enough that all the mind control would disappear.

Unfortunately I hadn't thought to separate the cultists, which allowed the two cardinals to simply reapply the mind control one by one as people were freed. They even Brainwashed each other!

It did seem like Brainwashing took more mana than Hypnosis or Enthrall did, as they didn't simply cast the more powerful skill on everyone.

No one was Charmed though. So, either their collective mana pool was big enough to not have to rely on the weakest of the mind control skills, or their mana regeneration were high due to each pause before someone new was freed from mind control.

Huh… I got EXP from redeeming each freed person and it wasn't then taken away when they near immediately were re-mind controlled. It even counted towards my tier up!

Because I don't have anything to do with them being mind controlled again? Or because I can't do anything to stop it? Maybe both?

The System didn't feel the need to specify.

The EXP wasn't really needed at the moment and while helpful in getting me closer to my tier up, the group would have to be freed and re-mind controlled about 20 times before I could tier up again.

With all of that in mind, my goal was to gain enough mana to give my deepest Floors a Dungeon Rule banning the casting of mind control.

And seeing as I most likely had to kill the two cardinals before I could have my peace, I had informed the Tribe+ to move whatever Floor was before the one the cult currently was on, to be ready to attack at the end when they were the most exhausted.

Some of the Tribe+ had felt the Dungeon temporarily to escort the now ex-cultists - none of whom volunteered to help fight - outside the Dungeon and settle them in with some civilian volunteers.

The 20th Floor was tundra themed and contained my 4th Boss, a dragon cyclops.

Besides the Boss the 20th Floor contained plenty of ‘elemental drakes - Ice’, which had an ice breath attack and would explode into ice shards upon death, reminiscent of my Heat slimes. Owldragons with the head, feathers and silent flying of a snowy owl. A pack of wolfdrakes with both draconic and canine features covered in white fur. Lastly the ‘young elemental wyrm - Ice’ could become one with the frozen Environment to both hide and deflect damage, before appearing under someone to swallow them whole.

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Unfortunately, only one of them actually managed to do that last part before Zina covered the snow covered ground in a net of plants, trapping the Ice wyrms underneath.

Despite the name, the dragon cyclops was actually shaped like a centaur, but with the bottom half of a wingless drake - and not a typical dragon - and the upper half of a one eyed cyclops. The 5 meter tall creature therefore had hands which meant it could use tools.

It wasn't smart enough to make them, though, which meant the System hadn't immediately supplied it with one, like it had my kobolds.

But I had kobolds, who could and had made it a weapon. A big machete style one.

The Boss was assisted by one of these Ice wyrms - which Zina was quick to neutralize -, a unicorn, and an amaru.

The Ice wyrm's job was meant to be to distract and be on the offensive, while diving for cover by temporarily becoming a part of the snow to take as few hits itself as possible.

The unicorn was partly meant as a distraction too, but also had the task of creating force fields to stop attacks from hitting the Boss. People were meant to think it was the dedicated healer and thus go after it first.

But unicorns didn't actually do all that well in a snowy environment, even without actual snowfall in the Boss Room. The snow on the ground was enough to cause it trouble.

No, the actual healing was meant to come from the amaru. A creature which couldn't use Healing magic.

The llama-headed, fish-tailed, bird-winged amphiptere would instead fly into the air and summon a small localized thunderstorm right above the dragon cyclops. The lightning from the storm would threaten to hit my opponents, making it dangerous to get close to the Boss. But some of the time the lightning would hit my Boss who did nothing to avoid getting hit.

Because to dragon cyclops, electricity would both heal and empower.

It took them a deliciously long time before they realized what the lightning was doing to the Boss. It was only made more amusing due to the fact that Zina's preferred form of attack was Lightning magic.

She was a Lightning Mage, after all!

But in the end it mostly just served to delay them and have them expend their resources.

A skill-powered arrow took down the amaru hiding in the storm clouds once they realized how big a problem it was.

Here we go!

The cult had just reached the Boss Room on the 25th Floor, and I was hoping it would do better than its predecessors. If for no other reason than its higher level of 50.

The ‘mature elemental amphiptere - Light’ was specialized in hunting in the blistering desert daylight. Its long serpentine body made it fast on the desert sand while its strong featherless wings allowed it to take flight. And while hunting in the air it would turn its body into pure Light, imitating the blinding light of the sun and preventing its prey from looking directly at it.

However, this ability to blind its opponents couldn't be directed, which decreased the number of possible useful assistants I could give it. And while I considered both my Heat slimes, which see purely with heat vision, and those of my creatures, which were karmic even outside of my Dungeon and could thus target their opponents because of their Karma Aura.

But in the end I picked not one but three death wyrms. Despite the name, a death wyrm didn't hatch as a deadly creature. But at level 50, like these ones were, the poisonous and acidic liquid their body naturally exude to help them burrow in the desert sand was strong enough to kill any who touched it in seconds if their Toughness was 10 or lower. Which was the standard for a level 1 sapient.

Anyone with a Toughness of 20 would be able to survive touching a death wyrm without medical treatment, but would sweat and vomit uncontrollably for a couple of hours. Anyone with a Toughness between 10 and 20 would have between half a minute to about an hour to receive medical assistance before their death would be inevitable.

It's a bit weird that death wyrms can be that deadly and yet they aren't even predators. They feed on the minerals and nutrients in the desert sand and need the acidity of their poison… sweat - for a lack of a better word - to reach the moisture of much deeper sand, which is where they get their much needed water.

The deadliness is more an afterthought to the search for water in the desert.

But more importantly for their corroboration with my blinding fourth Boss: They were already blind and navigated entirely through tremors in the sand.

As such, their combined force was something I was excited to see the result of!

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Chaos.

That was the only way to describe what had just happened.

Anyone capable of a ranged attack had done their best to hit a flying, moving target they couldn't look at, while the melee fighters were ordered to look for the assistants.

They were not prepared for three simultaneous attacks from below.

And while the poison aspect of the death wyrms only came into effect with skin contact, its acidic nature allowed it to somewhat quickly - in a minute or so depending on thickness - destroy any leather it came into contact with. Metals weren't safe either, though that took considerably more time.

Nonetheless to say, the three death wyrms took more lives than the Boss did. And the Light amphiptere had an impressive four to its death count. Which was a much higher number than it had been for any individual creature since all the lowest leveled people had been killed off on the earliest Floors.

The three assistants, however, had a collective nine for their death count. Just over double that of the Boss, but less if divided between the three.

But the death count itself wasn't what I was the most excited about:

One of the death wyrms had touched and subsequently killed the human cardinal! Part of her sleeve had been ripped off in an earlier fight, leaving the area exposed. And naturally the Brainwashed and Brainwashing cardinal didn't have a high Toughness Score despite her high level.

Yes! That's one of the biggest threats!

Only one cardinal left to go!