Chapter 36
We knew which floor was which flaw because the very first room at the top of the stairs displayed it prominently in elegant, elaborate script:
Each floor seemed designed to instill those emotions in us as we crawled.
Despair, for example, depicted horrific scenes of innocents being slain in the form of paintings and sculptures.
The elderly, women, children–it all seemed designed to evoke a feeling of hopelessness, like the world was doomed to be this awful for the rest of time.
The floor of covetous buffed Invia regularly while debuffing the rest of us. Enemies avoided attacking her and targeted other party members instead. I got the impression we were supposed to be jealous of her and to begin resenting her for being the floor favorite.
Wrong made us do awful things to open locked doors, like stabbing a dungeon-generated baby or inflicting pain on an old woman, having to reach a certain extreme for the passageway to unlock.
And on and on the themed obstacles went through all 10 of these floors.
In between those emotional challenges were humanoids with smooth bodies and blank faces.
They reminded me of the class-specific battles we fought on an earlier set of floors, but instead of mobbing us with all of one type of class, we faced relatively balanced parties instead.
The composition varied from encounter to encounter, so one group might have two tanks and then archers, while the next party would have a makeup similar to ours: fighter, barbarian, rogue, white mage, black mage.
The floor of indifference was the plainest of them all. Every room was devoid of furniture or decorations, empty save for more faceless humanoids. The next battle always added another mob, so the rooms grew progressively more chaotic and difficult as we went.
The boss room for that floor was 20 faceless mobs, which I estimated were each around level 35.
We thrashed them all. I grew weary of the tedium of the tower climb and was impatient to move my plans forward, so I let my stats carry us. Solara’s spells or Podni’s bomb cleaned up anything I missed. With that approach, we jogged through those 10 floors in less than 6 days.
Floors 61 and 62 had obvious individual themes, but we struggled to identify the larger collection they fit within. Floor 61 was all yellow–the walls, the floors, the ceiling, and the monsters.
The tower didn’t convert a monster to a yellow version but rather spawned monsters that naturally embodied those colors, so the yellow floor had a number of golden enemies–like lizards or living statues–as well as plant monsters with yellow petals or flame creatures that burned yellow.
Floor 62 was the same but all yellow-green. When we saw that floor 63 was all green, Solara hypothesized that we were fighting through the color wheel. If she was right, the next floor would be all blue-green.
And she was. We concluded that floor, confirmed that floor 64 was blue, and warped back to Sanctuary to sleep in our own beds before continuing the climb.
We returned to total chaos.
+39 Progress to your fall.
Progress to Your Fall: 82 / 100 (Abaddon, King of the Abyss)
“Master!” Abby shouted, appearing in my bedroom moments after we teleported out of the tower.
She had scorch marks and scrapes all over her void-black skin.
“The Swamp Temple and Water Temple were attacked,” she continued. “I am so sorry, Master. I failed you.”
My stomach dropped. “Slow down. Who attacked? How bad is it?”
“The King of the Abyss. There is nothing left of either Temple, Master. They came out of the swamps in Grubiit and from the ocean in Zaglis. They smashed through the wards. They were struck simultaneously and fell within minutes. 37 of our followers, 17 pleasure girls, as well as Drae and Stacey, were killed or taken. We do not know their true fates.”
“We have to go help!” Invia said, moving to leave for the statue garden.
Abby shook her head. “They destroyed my shielding wards but not my detection wards. Neither Temple has any survivors.”
“We still need to check.”
“The teleporters to those Temples were destroyed,” Abby reported. “The nooses in Sanctuary no longer connect to anything on the other side. I had to flee to the Grubiit dungeon to return home.”
I used Ruler’s Voice to speak to all of my followers at once, saying, “My treasures. We are under attack. Wherever you are, dungeon or town, return to Sanctuary immediately. If you are in Grubiit, go to the dungeon. If you are in Zaglis, shelter in town until we can come get you.”
“Where is Ashley?” I asked Abby.
“She is in Sanctuary, Master.”
“Good. Don’t let anyone leave. I’m going to look at the damage in Grubiit.”
“We’re coming with you,” Invia said.
I shook my head. “No. We aren’t throwing any more lives away today.”
“At least take Cici to protect you,” Purity suggested with a hint of desperate begging in her voice.
“Fine. I’ll take Cici. I want all of you to secure Sanctuary South.
Deploy extra silk soldiers to the gate island, increase guard numbers at the crystal towers, and put more silk soldiers in and around the castle.
Do not use Byron bots. Those are still unknown to our enemy, so we should save the element of surprise there. ”
“If they took Drae and Stacey,” Solara began, “they likely looted all of their materials and projects.”
Damn it. I should have relocated the demon sisters to Sanctuary South long before this.
For how important they were, leaving their workshops in Zaglis was an embarrassingly shortsighted misstep.
Abaddon probably knew all about the Byron bots by now.
He might even be forcing Drae to build similar constructs for him.
Surely Abaddon would see the value in the Gol-Gol slime armor tech and want to use it for himself.
“Get Sanctuary South secured,” I commanded. “I’ll be back soon.”
With the dungeon core, I could warp Cici and me from Penny’s Bar directly to the dungeon entrance.
I ignored the gasps and shouts of the guards when we emerged on the surface.
I jumped in the direction of the Swamp Temple and used Silk Walk to run the rest of the way through the air.
Cici didn’t have the ability to faux-fly the way I did, but she was plenty fast and kept up on foot.
The Swamp Temple and the adjoining mansion, where most of my prostitutes lived, were bloody craters. Black smoke billowed from the wreckage, and white smoke joined it wherever swamp water flowed into fire. By the end of the day, the swamp water would reclaim the land entirely.
The destruction was total. The debris left behind didn’t look like enough to have belonged to two mansions, and I didn’t see bodies or personal items anywhere. Abaddon had struck hard enough that they were vaporized. Just poof. Erased from existence in an instant.
I could still feel the magic that had been used here and knew immediately that I would not have survived the attack if I had been present. The power unleashed was well beyond me, like I was the ant and Abaddon held the magnifying glass.
“A Cici is sorry, Master,” the angeli next to me said, looking across the ruins of my Temple.
“I am too. Come on. Let’s get back. There’s nothing that we can do here.”
I didn’t have an easy way to travel to Zaglis now that the teleporter in our temple had been destroyed. I should have thought to hide teleporters elsewhere in the cities where we had Temples for a scenario just like this one. Abby’s wards made me cocky, and now my followers paid the price.
That first invasion of Zaglis, when Cici and I mowed down a small demon army, was sent purely to assess our strength and to evaluate our wards.
When Abaddon’s soldiers returned, they were fully prepared to overcome what now looked like pitiful defenses.
My Temples and my followers hadn’t stood a chance.
Abby theorized that Abaddon’s soldiers entered the material plane through a dungeon, likely Lopav or the Capital, given what we knew about those fuckface Dungeon Lords, and then used Gate spells to swiftly move units to and from their targets.
Transportation magic, whether that be static teleporters, permanent gates, or summoned gates, could only move a person elsewhere on the same plane. Abaddon couldn’t cast a Gate spell from the abyssal plane and pop out in Grubiit. The same was true of the more permanent versions of the same concept.
Abaddon’s forces had to cross planes via the dungeons first and then Gate travel.
That mattered because it still meant he was limited by logistics at least somewhat.
To invade the material plane, he had to move his army from the abyssal plane to the infernal plane and then to hell before finally entering the material plane.
If he could warp his force from the abyssal plane directly to my doorstep, my plight would have been even more hopeless.
By the next morning, more than half of the demons who visited or owned property in Sanctuary South were gone. Neutral zone or not, they didn’t want to be there when Abaddon showed up again. They knew how that was going to end, after all.
With the demon population declining, it was only a matter of time before human merchants lost interest or had the same realization the demons had. With Stacey and Drae taken from me, our manufacturing business was gutted. We couldn’t make weapons, constructs, or sex toys.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
Purity stepped timidly into my room, finding me pacing the length of my windows.
“I have more news you should know,” she said grimly.
“Go ahead.”
“Lala and Lili were on the beach in Zaglis when the Temple was attacked. We don’t believe they survived.”
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, breathing deeply. I quite liked the twins.
“I’m sorry,” Purity added.
“All the time we spent preparing was just him watching and observing. He knew we were aware of his threat, so he let us build up to our absolute best, tested it with a small attack, and then came back to thoroughly annihilate us.”
“Why did he stop at those two temples?”
“I’m so far out of my element here that my only answer is he wants to play with his food before he eats it.”
“We can rebuild.”
“Wouldn’t make a difference. He is so much stronger than us in every way. I thought I understood that before, but my human mind fell well short of comprehending what we’re up against.”
“Do we really have no options?” Purity asked.
“My plan to defeat him is still viable,” I answered.
“Pulling it off will be harder, and we don’t know how much time he’ll give us, but it can still work.
First, none of our people are going into dungeons for the foreseeable future.
Move all of the leveling to the tower where we know it’s only us.
Second, gather up as much of the inventory for the Byron and Penny toys as you can.
With Drae not around to make them, we have to get creative in producing more.
I’d like to have 100 of each at least. If you get desperate, collect used ones. ”
“Yes, Master,” Purity replied, bowed, and touched a teleporter to leave and begin her work.
“Abby,” I called.
She materialized.
“With your wards, can you make a shell out of objects? I want a solid shroud that can be moved as one piece but can be dispelled in an instant to reveal what’s inside.”
“Like an overturned glass that shatters easily when we wish it to.”
“Exactly.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Come with me.”
We ventured to the Grubiit dungeon and went to the room where the repurposed Gol-Gol golem guarded my dungeon core. I placed a gate to connect that core room with the one in Flowst.
Since the Flowst core had far more DP to spend, I needed to do this there.
I used the dungeon core to summon a few dozen sheets of iron.
Abby’s wards bound them together to encase the golem completely, and we confirmed that the golem could pick it up from the inside and move if necessary.
Next, we lashed every Byron’s Blessing, Byron’s Bliss, and Penny’s Blessing to the shell as we could, using long chains to encircle the whole of the structure.
When we were done, the chains looked like metal vines that had somehow grown dildos.
I bought Basic Soldier Intelligence and then Improved Soldier Intelligence, for a total expense of 7.5 million DP. Then I spent another 2.5 million to add the Gol-Gol golem and its sex toy outerwear to the Flowst dungeon core spawn menu.
Shit. These were expensive. They cost 2,000 DP apiece to spawn, but they were also exceptionally powerful. This was said to be the strongest construct ever created. It had been the body for the legendary Gol-Gol brothers, after all.
I spent another 2 million DP to spawn 1,000 of them.
For each golem we spawned, we stripped all of the sex toys off the shell and set them aside to sell later.
Then, we inundated Sanctuary South with the mega-golems. Because of their shells, no one knew what we had hidden beneath.
If we were attacked, the golem would dispel the ward and leap into action to defend my kingdom.
Until then, they sat inside the shroud, looking like large, abstract decorations to outsiders.
Gol-Gol tech should stand a chance against Abaddon’s forces, but my confidence in thoughts like those had been destroyed along with two of my Temples. It was clear I had no actual concept of how powerful Abaddon was.
I just needed to buy time.
With the Gol-Gol shells moving into position, I was about to head back to my room for more planning when a system notification appeared:
A summoner on the plane of cherubim invites you for an audience. You cannot receive or deliver harm for as long as you remain within the summoning circle, and you may return to your home plane at will. These rules cannot be broken or cheated by either party.
Do you accept the invitation?
Yes / No
That was the second-highest celestial plane, right below seraphim. Arcturus was from a lower plane, so this offer hadn’t come from him.
Getting that invitation now couldn’t have been a coincidence, and there wasn’t a chance it was anything but bad news.