Lewd Dungeon, Chapter 365

Chapter 365 – Review

I chuckled as I watched the Crimson Claws finish their fight against the Pharaoh, and moved on to the sixteenth floor, making them the first ones to actually see the new floor. While they got used to the fact that they were now in a series of caves underground, rather than in the desert, I went back over the logs of the fight. It was important to make sure to go over a fight’s mechanics the first few times people saw it, to make sure that I was maintaining a ‘tough but fair’ approach, even when stepping up the difficulty.

The fight had not been as one-sided as it seemed. There were several points where the group was one or two mistakes from everything going very differently. The fact that they had a warlock on the team meant that disarming the Pharaoh was an option that wasn’t available to most groups. Hence, their getting a piece of bonus loot in the reduced-power version of the scepter. And if they hadn’t focused on using their different abilities to knock the healer and other key individuals off the platform, then the [Dark Tide] spell would have wrecked them. So, no worries there.

I had made adjustments from the original configuration for the boss fight. [Dark Tide] was too powerful without a counter, but if the priest could just pop back up onto the platform so easily, then that would be aggravating, rather than challenging. So, I’d changed the rules for Normal mode, letting the curse tiles affect the Pharaoh and the minions on the platform, but not the summoned adds. On higher difficulties, all the dungeon creatures were immune to the curse tiles, of course. That gave the groups on Normal a bit of a break. Perhaps too much of one.

However, I couldn’t really tune the fight on the platform that much higher, without causing trouble. I wanted this to be challenging, not impossible, after all. Which meant I needed to look at things outside the barrier, most likely. Something to make teams force more of their attention outside, leaving the fight on the platform a bit more hectic.

Why not copy the adventurers for this? They liked to have their ranged attacker outside the barrier, firing in with near impunity, when they weren’t dealing with ads. I could do the same.

With a thought, I created a high platform on one wall, with a low crenelated wall around it, giving anyone up there some cover from attackers below, while allowing them to shoot downwards without exposing too much of themselves to return fire. Then, I moved the Archer from the platform, to there. He wouldn’t have any access to healing, true, but that was a secondary thought. With that simple move, I added more room for the battle on the platform to open up, and made a threat that only someone outside the barrier could deal with, so they wouldn’t be able to support those inside until they managed to outshoot the undead marksman in a prepared position.

We were almost there. Just needed a little more fine-tuning, to distract adventurers from the platform fight a bit more. Adds had been spawning in groups of five, every thirty seconds. I decided to change that, making them groups of six, every twenty-five seconds. It was a small change, sure, but, combined with the archer being able to harass whoever stayed outside the barrier more consistently, without a melee fighter getting in their face? That would put much more pressure on the ranged attackers, so that they couldn’t simply just post up on a wall somewhere and safely plink away at people with their bows.

I didn’t mind the ways people found to straight-up avoid the curse tiles, like the Air Walk spell, or using magic to stick to the walls, instead of walking on the floor. Those kinds of things either needed special skills, or they required MP, worn items, or consumables in order to work. All those things were resources that adventurers could have put into something else, more directly focused on beating the bosses. Yes, they could trivialize certain mechanics, but, to do that, they had to give up on things that might have helped them more in other parts of the dungeon.

That ought to be good, for now. I would wait to see how groups adjusted to the new form of the fight before adding or changing anything more. I wanted to make incremental changes, not wildly swing back and forth in difficulty by overcorrecting each time. That would hardly get prospective adventurers into my halls, after all.

Checking back on my pioneers, I saw that they were moving slowly in the darkness, with the Archivist using a [Light] spell to give them something to see by. However, it only produced light equivalent to a torch, so they weren’t able to see too far ahead of them. Even so, they’d made it to the fake pitfall trap I’d installed.

“There looks to be a skeleton in the pit, Master,” said the ranked-up Rogue and little sister of their leader. Their titles clearly implied that they had been degenerates before taking up my faith. Not that I minded. I hadn’t exactly been a pure soul before I became a dungeon, and began marching on the path to godhood, after all.

“Sluttybitch, fly down and get that pack. The dungeon doesn’t leave random corpses with gear around. There has to be something in there.”

I nodded approvingly to myself as Tyrone sent his little warlock succubus to fly down into the pit. She was the obvious choice, since there was no need for her to actually risk climbing down into the pit. However, no sooner did she get to the skeleton in the pit then slimy tentacles whipped out from the side surprising and paralyzing her. Captain Hentai’s little cousin drew her in, and she couldn’t even scream. Though the look on her face said she probably wasn’t entirely unhappy with that turn of events. Her Master had trained her well.

“Fuckpuppet, kill the slime once it is done with Sluttybitch,” her Master said, unconcerned. Not unwarranted, honestly. The Lewd Slime Lord wasn’t terribly dangerous to someone of their level, especially since they could just take a cleansing potion to deal with the breeding afterwards. If you didn’t care about rescuing the victim from their violation, it was much more efficient to simply let them get bred by the slime, and use ranged attacks once they were clear to kill it.

“As you wish, Master,” the Dark Sage said, a hint of bitterness in his voice. Well, considering his titles, the name he was called, and the fact that both his wife and daughter were fawning over their shared Master, I’d have been shocked if he wasn’t bitter about a few things. Considering he was also the source of their light down in these depths, and some of the other things I had in store in the caves, I had high hopes for some entertainment from this group.

Once the slime lord released the succubus, the sage killed it with a blast of fire, while the High Priestess cast a weak paralysis cure on her, followed by a cleansing spell. For her part, the succubus paused only to adjust her clothes before grabbing the half-rotten backpack from the skeleton, and flying back to her Master. Her reward, however, was a backhand across the face and a warning not to mess up next time. Tellingly, the girl looked torn between smarting at the pain, and gushing from her masochist nature. Unlike most of the people I saw with the title, though, she’d already had it the first time the Claws came to my dungeon.

In fact, the only titles any of them had picked up since they started diving the dungeon was their leader and their priestess picking up the Devoted titles. All the other titles they’d picked up, they’d had before they came to the dungeon, back when they were barely level 15 in Tier 1. Most people at that level would have one or two titles, maximum. For all of them to have three to five titles, that early on, was very much outside the ordinary, which is one of the reasons I’d kept watch on the Crimson Claws as they gained power. Also, Tyrone dominating his team in my name helped enhance that aspect of my divinity, keeping me from moving too far to one of my other aspects.

Of course, Tyrone was not a patient sort, so he just tossed the torch and rations to the High Priestess, while handing the journal and map to the Dark Sage. He didn’t care about what the journal said, since that could wait for when they were in a Safe Room, but he did make the Dark Sage go over the map, and see whether there was anything interesting nearby. When he heard that there was treasure on the map, he stopped caring about anything else.

Blinded by their Master’s greed or not, the Darksoul Bulwark and his pets were still strong, and made short work of the normal skeletons and zombies they met. Even the first Jolly Skeleton they found was no issue for them. Of course, frying the skeleton from range with fire killed the Jolly Shrooms growing on it, in addition to killing the skeleton, so the secret of what made them dangerous was still safe, for now. But one of my other new additions was about to get its first trial run. After all, the closest treasure room to the entrance this time required them to go past the Dark Bargainer.

Up to this point, there hadn’t been many subtle mental effects in the dungeon. The closest you got, generally, were the different lust-inducing effects of the different aphrodisiacs at play or the natural gifts of the succubi in different parts of the dungeon. The vampires had some active mind control abilities as well, but that was basically the tipping point into the overt mental effects.

So, I wasn’t entirely surprised when the party didn’t notice the Dark Bargainer’s psychic lure when they got in range. It was a subtle thing, getting stronger as one approached. And I had made it so that people would want to approach, as this area had some bioluminescent fungus that softly lit the room. It was a little dimmer than candlelight, but in the absolute darkness outside the Dark Sage’s [Light] spell, it was like a beacon.

Five of the six fell under the sway of the tree immediately, but all six dutifully walked towards the soft glow of the fungus. The Dark Sage, though, muttered something under his breath, too soft for the others to hear, but my dungeon senses caught it plainly. He cast the [Mind Shield] spell on himself, protecting him from mental influence, but he didn’t protect anyone else in the party, or even mention what he did. That was when I knew I was in for a treat.

As they grew closer, the tree’s lure grew stronger. It changed from a cloying call to a demand, commanding those who saw it to come, and touch the trunk. But the change was so gradual that most people wouldn’t notice, not until it was too late. Fortunately, if someone managed to shake off the lure at the start, then simple protections kept it out, even as you got closer. But you had to be aware of the threat to protect against it.

When the party entered the tree’s room, the Dark Sage stopped, but the others all kept moving forward. A loyal teammate or devoted slave would take this moment to put defenses on the others, or at least call out to warn them. They might even decide to launch a spell attack against the tree. Instead, the Dark Sage cast the [Silence] spell on himself.

I had to smile at that. The Dark Sage had figured out one of the loopholes in the magics of a [Slave Brand], or the [Slave Collar]. Namely, a Slave has to obey all the orders their Master gives them, but they don’t have to do anything they aren’t ordered to do, and if they aren’t consciously aware of an order, such as being inside the area of a [Silence] spell when their Master tries to order them with their voice, then that order simply didn’t happen.

In this case, the Dark Sage had not been ordered to protect the party. He also hadn’t been ordered not to protect himself, and there was no order keeping him from silencing an area to prevent any new orders from being given. So, he was, technically, obeying the letter of his orders. Too bad Tyrone didn’t think ahead.

The five enthralled party members touched the trunk of the great tree, and didn’t react as the vines wrapped about them, pulling them close to the bark. They didn’t even react at the sap oozing from the trunk, at first. Once it began eating their flesh, however, the pain broke the psychic lure’s hold on them. Unfortunately, they were in a bad position, bound tight against the tree with vines and held by the adhesive sap. Even the strongest didn’t have the strength to break free through brute force, and their weapons and spells were useless in their current condition.

Tyrone yelled for the Dark Sage, ordering him to help. The bastard just smiled, back at his Master, and cupped a hand by his ear, miming that he couldn’t hear him. He stood there, watching his entire party get slowly eaten alive by the tree, their bodies melting under the digestive sap. And two of them were his own wife and daughter, begging him for help. Though, considering how those two had acted before now, any familial love between them was likely long gone.

And, when it was done, five fruits, which looked much like apples, grew from the tree, four red, and one silver.