Chapter 66: The Season of the Minotaur (15)

Robert Flauros was dead on the ground, and the others would soon follow.

Simon felt a pang of hesitation as Tiella tried to defend her dead husband, Mel, and princess Satine from Gregory’s acid slime bombardment by raising her pavise. The projectiles ate away at her shield and slowly melted it down to nothing without giving her an opening. Simon had no idea how long his former lover could hold out against the nonstop barrage, but he could tell she would falter before Gregory ran out of ammunition.

Although she was now a stranger like Leonard had been, Simon had been very close to Tiella once. He struggled to reconcile his memory of the kind, shy girl he had befriended and bedded with the vengeful Dreadnought that she had become.

She has heard the Overlord lurked in the Darkwood, so I can’t let her leave or else everything I’ve done here today will have been for nothing, Simon thought, trying to harden his heart for the inevitable. She watched as my minions killed her husband. There’s no way she’ll back down now…

However… if they captured her alive, they could interrogate her about the Malphas conspiracy. She could provide key insight into the Oracle’s plans. It sounded like misguided mercy disguised as pragmatism, but it was worth a shot.

“Gregory–” Simon sent a telepathic message, sadly far too little, too late.

Gregory grabbed his imp companion in between two slime throws and launched him at Tiella without warning. Grimm flew across the room and bent himself in midair, slipping right past Tiella’s shrinking shield.

“Here I come!” he giggled, two poisoned daggers flashing in his hands. “At blinding speed!”

He landed on Tiella’s helmet and drove his two blades through its slits, right into her eyes.

Her howl of pain physically hurt Simon, and the images on the crystal ball soon became unbearable. Grimm leaped onto her back when she attempted to throw him off her, with the imp proceeding to stab her through the small chinks in her armor while Gregory continued to throw acid slimes at her from the front. Being blinded meant she could no longer anticipate his projectiles.

“Wait!” Simon telepathically called out to his minions. “I want that one alive if possible!”

“Uh…” Gregory halted his bombardment and looked at Tiella’s collapsed form. “Seems pretty hard to do that now, Lord Belias.”

Leonard might have been able to adapt and recover from the assault, but his sister had only wielded his Crestone for a few months. She lacked his durability or his levels, so all she could do was spasm onto the floor while bleeding out.

She’s not the Tiella I befriended, but a stranger wearing her face. Simon tried to tell himself again, even as he clutched his armrests. It’s just this reign. This one, disgusting reign. This is war.

Yet when he saw Leonard’s sister lying motionless in a puddle of her own blood mixed with acid, all of these justifications left him with a hollow feeling of guilt and shame in his chest. Tiella was dead. Murdered in his own dungeon by his forces, trying and failing to avenge the brother Simon had slain.

This can’t be all for nothing, Simon thought as he turned his divination to the other room. Alphonse and Frea had slaughtered the imps and were about to blast through the walls separating them from her allies. “Ulmos, kill the mage now!”

The ceiling above Frea and Alphonse undulated and revealed itself as a painted, camouflaged slime. Ulmos leaped onto the elven mage from above and quickly engulfed her in its gelatinous mass before she could complete her spell, causing it to fizzle out. Simon couldn’t see whether the slime was managing to dissolve its prey or not, but at least Alphonse’s attempt to free his ally without harming her by slashing at parts of Ulmos proved rather ineffective.

“Grab the princess and go upstairs,” Simon ordered Gregory and Grimm. Ulmos wouldn’t buy them much time. “There’s no time to waste.”

“What of the other?” Gregory asked, looking down on Mel.

Simon hesitated. He had no particular attachment to her compared to Tiella, and she had a Class specialized in stalking and hunting. The risk that she would wake up from the sleeping gas at the worst moment or escape any form of containment thanks to her passives was too great to compensate for whatever intel she might have. Satine likely knew more anyway.

Just this reign, Simon told himself before answering his minions. “Kill her.”

One way or another, this was a fight to the death now.

“Yes, yes!” Grimm boasted giddily as he leaped onto Mel’s back and started stabbing her to death while she was still asleep, before showering in her blood. “So sweet, like red honey!”

“No time for fun,” Gregory reminded him.

“But she’s still warm!” Grimm complained out loud. Gregory answered the imp by slapping him on the back of the head before grabbing the unconscious Satine, putting her on his shoulders, and rushing back up the stairs. “Hey, don’t leave me behind!”

Simon winced when he noticed Tiella’s, Mel’s, and Robert Flauros’ corpses rising up on their own, their Class outfits dispelled from their soulless carcasses. Tiella’s face was a horrifying mass of blood with holes where the eyes should have been, and her husband was an acid-disfigured skeleton. His Dungeon had automatically animated their remains as undead monsters, while their souls would mindlessly haunt the Halls of the Minotaur until the Muse achieved freedom.

And the worst part?

Simon could feel he was gaining some experience from this; that he was being rewarded for crafting traps which had led to the death of heroes inside his demesne.

It’s just this reign, Simon kept telling himself. Extraordinary circumstances.

Ulmos’ death rippled through his mind and drew him out of his thoughts. The wall separating Frea and Alphonse from the rest of their party soon exploded. Stones and pieces of slime flew across the room, likely due to the same telekinetic wave Frea used to defend herself against the wraiths earlier. Ulmos had at least managed to leave blistering burns on her skin and damage her clothes, so her defenses had failed with Tiella’s death.

No sooner had the hole opened up that the three corpses lunged at Alphonse, as if infuriated by the Paladin’s holiness. He winced and wavered for a second, but his combat instincts swiftly took over. He exorcized all three undead with a swift swing of his sword.

“They will pay for this…” Alphonse cursed with grief and sorrow after cutting down the corpses of his former comrades, before noticing an awful detail. “Where is Satine?” he asked, his voice wavering when he spotted the empty stairs. “They took her!”

“Wait,” Frea said, her hand searching a small backpack for a manalith and potions. “I need a refresh.”

“But we have no time to waste!”

“Us exhausting ourselves is exactly what the Overlord wants, Alphonse.” Frea looked up at the ceiling. “You’re watching us, aren’t you? I can feel your foul gaze staring down upon us. Does it amuse you to watch your slaves kill our friends?”

Simon wouldn’t have answered even if he could. He had given them the opportunity to turn back already, and the losses on both sides had crushed any hope of a peaceful settlement.

It was a fight to the death now.

“If you were strong, you would have confronted us ourselves rather than throw fool after fool at us. You think you cannot defeat us, young and green as you are.” Frea clutched her staff. “And you are right. Once we find you, you will die.”

Do your worst, Simon thought as he checked on his forces. Gregory and Greg had delivered their sleeping captive to some cultists and taken position alongside Duchar and Hector at the next ambush point. Simon ordered his other followers to take Satine to a specifically prepared cell after confiscating her Crestone.

He then checked on Alphonse and Frea. The latter had recharged her mana reserves with a manalith and healed her wounds with a healing potion. They had wisely taken supplies with them on their doomed expedition.

“Sanctify!” Alphonse attempted to purge the Dungeon, and failed. “The core is too far away.”

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“Upstairs,” Frea replied, “the Dungeon’s miasma crystal and the Overlord will both be hiding in the sanctum.”

So that Perk can only destroy my Dungeon if the crystal is within reach, Simon gathered. Good to know.

The thought of teleporting away to warn the world of the Overlord’s presence in the Darkwood didn’t seem to have crossed their minds. Simon had Duchar add anti-teleportation wards across the Dungeon on top of the defenses afforded by his own Lord of the Castle Perk, teleportation gems should have failed outright anyway. Frea might have been able to flee, but that would mean abandoning the Paladin and the princess to their doom.

But then again, why would they run? They had torn through half of Simon’s minions so far. They could credibly finish the job and rescue their remaining ally.

I’ve kept the best for last, at least, Simon thought before giving orders to his remaining followers. “Gregory, switch to alchemical fire. Duchar, Hector, here’s a rundown of the spells I’ve seen the elf cast so far…”

Simon proceeded to share all the information he had gathered with his allies as Frea and Alphonse climbed up the stairs. They landed in an art gallery whose Pictomancer paintings actually contained sealed plant monsters, but Frea simply burned them to ashes with a fireball. Alphonse then spotted spike traps hidden beneath the floor, which they skillfully avoided.

Simon was starting to wonder if exhausting her mana was truly the best solution. Frea had only been forced to recharge after casting multiple Tier 7 and down spells in a row. If she had another manalith…

Most spellcasters suffer from a bad match-up against close-combat fighting or rogue Class types, and the wounds Frea suffered against Ulmos was proof of it, Simon thought as he analyzed the past fights. She’s frail without Tiella covering her.