Chapter 91 The devil’s luck

The royal chamber was scarred with battle damage. Hundreds of lizardmen, mostly the higher rank ones, littered the ground. Piles on piles of them, but they were just the tip of the iceberg. This dungeon's boss wasn’t a singular thing; no, it appeared to be a council of the strongest monster humanoids the dungeon had access to.

An Orc King, Ogre Champion, Hobgoblin Battlemaster, Bugbear Druid, Frost Troll, two Goblin mages, one healer, one damage, Gnoll Kennelmaster, and four Kobold assassins. All were dead, but that wasn’t the scary part; they were all wearing enchanted equipment. Every single one was covered head to toe in enchanted equipment. Even the other, more experienced members of the group couldn’t hold back their shock at the equipment.

Thousands of mithril worth of gear lay on the ground, completely ignored. Once again, that wasn’t the scary part… The caustic flesh dragons weren’t the berserk dungeon’s boss, no. The gigantic behemoth draconic lizardman that died in the center of this room most likely was. The berserk dungeon had a clash here, with both forces essentially causing each other mutual destruction. What we fought so far were the remnants of that army.

I couldn’t help but gulp as it sank in how lucky we got. I doubted this dungeon would have been stopped until it reached the capital. Even then, half the city might have died before the dungeon finally ran out of troops. The only thing that saved us from being overwhelmed was that the dungeon was too stupid to drag these corpses back to the dungeon to reabsorb and make more troops.

If it had done that, waiting until it was ready again, then there would have been nothing to stop it. We decided to split the loot up in a round-robin style. It meant that every person picked a piece of enchanted equipment until we ran out of choices.

I chose the healing mage's staff and robes. Robes worked similarly to an entire set, so as long as I wore it, the farming set I wore would deactivate, but I’d get the bonus mana, mana regen, mana cost reduction, and mana amplification of the wand and robe. I also picked a ring I’d need to get checked once we came back from the Orc King, and one of the several smaller bags of holding that the monster council had.

After everything was done and over with, we were now far better equipped to handle what came next. I thought about fighting this council and shuddered. We might have stood a chance, but it would have come at a steep cost I wasn’t willing to pay. Many of our group would have died, and I doubt even my luck would have ensured that none of my wives did.

Marcus chimed in with what we were all thinking. “We need to hurry. Who knows how long this happened, if that giant… Thing gets created again and protects the core, well… I don’t even want to think about it. Sir Braxton, I hope you’ll be able to carry the third prince while we rush, because we can’t waste time today when every second might count.”

Even the prince didn’t say anything; he knew how lucky we were. The behemoth lizardman was easily the size of a giant, and it had wings. If it didn’t have to fight inside this enclosed room, possibly with its body scrunched over, unable to move properly, I’d hate to see what the boss would do out in the open. Everyone moved at a jog in the direction of the corrupted dungeon. We quickly made it to the border, and once we passed it, I felt the immediate shift as I felt sick to my stomach from the feeling the dungeon gave me.

The dungeon area was old, maze-like ruins. It would have been a problem finding the correct path, but there were many holes in the walls forming the dungeon, and I could already see a castle in the center. In between us and the castle were hundreds of lizardmen, all making their way toward us now that the dungeon felt us enter.

They were weak; only the ones at the back of the crowd were the stronger lizardmen. I would have breathed a sigh of relief seeing a normal dungeon again after the centaurs who fought us the entire way through the dungeon, the mini-boss desert, and the eerily quiet monster kingdom, but I knew if that raid boss behemoth was made, we’d be in trouble.

Wave after wave crashed into us as we finally got back to fighting our way through a dungeon. I could tell everyone else was relieved as well at the return of a normal dungeon. I had reached level twenty-five already, and now that we were leveling again, I decided to pick up the next skill. I had already decided, so it was just opening up the menu and selecting it.

Resource manager- Gain a very small portion of the dungeon's resources to use.

I smirked at the idea of what a ‘small portion’ really meant. When a dungeon has a stockpile of decades, if not centuries, of materials, those materials add up. I created a four cubic foot brick in front of us to let people climb up the wall more easily, as we took the high ground on the maze. Cherry was the only one far enough back to notice what I did. “What was that?”

“New skill. You like it? I can use some of the dungeon's resources.” Everyone except the prince and the ones at the front, who couldn’t hear me, all collectively turned to look at me once I said that. The shock on their faces was a clear sign of how OP the skill was, which I just now realized I probably shouldn’t have said out loud. Damn my need to impress my wives!

Another block of wood came down, blocking off a side path, stopping a huge group of lizardmen from flanking us. I could tell that the larger the resources I pulled, the higher the drain on my stamina and mana. Summoning that giant block was probably a mistake, especially if the fighting takes hours, like the initial time we fought the lizardmen.

That wouldn’t be the case; we were cleaving through them like a hot knife through butter. Every minute we were that much closer to the castle, and I was hoping that was where the dungeon's core was, but it was hard to tell. I could only tell that this dungeon had been abandoned for so long that it was completely broken. Unlike a normal dungeon, where it was just low efficiency, no, it felt negative, or broken.

The goal of this class had to be to get the most efficiency out of dungeons, but there was nothing I could do to fix this one; unfortunately, we had to destroy it. Instead of summoning another block to let us get up in another spot, I summoned a ramp, which took significantly less energy. I could see the entrance to the castle from up this high now, and I could see the monsters pouring out of it.

It wasn’t one hundred percent that the dungeon core was inside, but I had the feeling that it was indeed in there; we just had to find out where.