A Lich's Guide to Dungeon Mastery

I’d returned to Kelemnion, this time to look for some way for me to actually attack.

I skipped past all the books about demons, eldritch entities, and other stuff that would probably kill me before it managed to do anything to my enemies.

There were two kinds of “Forbidden” offensive magic. The first was the kind that was forbidden because it was morally questionable or extremely dangerous, and the second was stuff that was so powerful that people couldn’t stand it being common knowledge.

On Earth, hydrogen bombs were something that a few countries had, but wouldn’t use because they not only killed a large number of people immediately, but also effectively salted the earth with fallout, leaving the land unusable for decades. That was a sort of firepower that I would be okay with using– at least, if I could make sure that I wasn’t randomly slaughtering civilians, but I felt that living in the Dead Belt reduced the likelihood that I’d need to use large amounts of firepower in civilian areas.

On the other hand, biological weapons were brutal. Certain kinds could spread endlessly and perpetuate themselves indefinitely, causing pain and death for a long time. The Black Plague was estimated to have killed 25 million people in just four years. If I somehow gave someone the Black Plague, I would no longer have control over that illness. It would literally walk out the door and then spread on its own.

It was an effective weapon, sure, but I couldn’t guarantee that only the people I wanted dead would die, and that was a big no-no. Instead, I’d be looking for the equivalent of hydrogen bombs or nuclear weapons– instant, wide-scale destruction that could leave an area wasted if I wanted it to. Preferably, though, I would be able to avoid giving people cancer. That just sucked.

Rendering terrain unusable was something I felt I wouldn’t have trouble doing– the Dead Belt was full of Necrosis that I could manipulate and use to force weaker mortals to stay away– but I was lacking somewhat in the instant annihilation.

Eventually, I stopped walking, sensing that Kelemnion had curated a selection of books for my desires.

I casually ran a finger over some of the novels, getting an idea of what they contained. There were a lot of options, from condensed energy bombs to lasers, but the first that caught my eye was a design for an interesting runic weapon.

I pulled that particular book from the shelf, figuring that I already had some experience with inscriptions so this would probably be a good fit.

As information flowed through the connection between my physical body and my Repository, I examined it. This idea was something I’d thought of before, but hadn’t actually done anything with because I didn’t know if it was feasible or not.

It was basically just runic cannonballs.

Well, okay, the book also covered the idea of turning them into kinetic fireballs, so there was some complexity to it. The most interesting part of the information contained in the book, though, was that it contained some ideas for runes I hadn’t thought of yet.

Obviously, if I needed runes I could just make my own now, and they would probably be better than whatever I found in the library because they would be tailor-made for me and the situation I used them in, but it was still good to find pre-existing runes.

Just because I could make runes for whatever intent I had didn’t mean that I’d considered every possible option out there.

As an example, this book contained two runes I hadn’t yet found: Emit and Discharge. Emit was a rune that was designed to steadily give off an effect as it was infused with power. If you put more in at once, then the rune would also boost the output. Discharge was a rune that basically did the opposite: it was best used to store large amounts of energy and shoot it off all at once, as a large effect.

Interestingly, one design of these weapons had an Ordinance rune that was meant to convert kinetic energy into power for the Discharge rune, but it had been scrapped because it just wasn’t efficient enough. I’d done something similar with Carnic’s club, but it had worked out a bit better because I was using an energy type that was naturally compatible with the process and I was sacrificing a magically energy-dense matter for a different kind of magical energy, not kinetic energy for a magical energy.

I could probably get this idea to work, if I created up a rune dedicated to it.

In fact… I wonder if I could create a version of this that’s efficient enough to be fueled by the Dead Belt’s ambient Necrosis?

These “Enchanted Orbs” were an interesting idea, but I wanted something more on top of that. They were a method of attack, especially if I set up versions with offensive effects on them like the book suggested, but they weren’t really the direct spellcasting damage I was looking for.

I kept looking through the shelves until I came across a book with a title that I just couldn’t resist.

Nyarleth’s Writhing Earth. It totally sounded like a D&D spell!

I opened the book and slowly processed its knowledge, and was happy to see that it had been about what I’d expected.

The spell itself was designed for people who had Nyx-related affinities, but there was no reason that other magic types couldn’t use it. The book actually contained some diagrams for what using the magic was supposed to look like, but I noticed that there were some differences in the way that the creator’s affinity behaved in comparison to my own Forbodum, so I mostly ignored those, focusing instead on the theory and function of the spell.

In essence, the caster was meant to condense cords of their own energy a beneath the ground between themselves and their target. Once the spell was completed, the user would be able to sense the vibrations of earth with their magic– that part didn’t really matter to me– and use the tendrils to tear up the earth and lash out at their foes.

The only real issue that my Occult Sovereignty had is that I couldn’t manipulate things very well in another person’s area. Subtle magic, like domains, could get ruptured or disturbed by another person’s presence, especially if that other individual had their own magic to muddle and fight with it. In fact, that was the whole reason that strong people could enter the Dead Belt while weaker ones would slowly turn into zombies.

The Dead Belt wasn’t exactly like a domain, but it definitely had some similarities. It provided a passive effect in a large area by spreading a relatively small amount of energy across it. If taken as a whole, the Dead Belt contained a truly massive amount of energy, but a Level 5 person was probably strong enough to endure it for weeks without any risk.

At least, so long as that individual didn’t run into any undead.

I could manipulate my domain pretty easily, but it would take a ton of effort to manipulate it in the immediate vicinity of someone at my own level. I probably wouldn’t be able to do schnizz to effect my landscape in the presence of Esheth.

This ability got around those limitations in a few ways.

First off, the Writhing Earth began under the ground, where a person’s natural aura usually had a bit more trouble penetrating. The tendrils of energy also were meant to start at your position, giving them a direct connection to you, their source of power, and they were also quite dense.

All these factors combined to make this spell an effective tool for bypassing the disruption that a person would normally give off simply by existing within other spells.

It could also be used for surprise attacks, and was pretty strong on its own. One image within the book showed the creator summoning huge tentacles from underneath a small army to toss them into the air and bury a number of them beneath displaced dirt and stone. As shown in another image, those that escaped the initial wave of violence were quickly caught and strangled to death, or simply beaten into the ground by the larger tentacles.

The spell had a lot of versatility, too. A person could lay the tentacles horizontally and really capitalize on the ambush aspect. It could be used to form barriers, or be used in multiple directions at once. You didn’t have to put it beneath the earth, either– you could just let the cords come straight from your body. Even if you did decide to hide it, it didn’t need to be beneath the floor. Ceilings and walls were available, too.

In the end, I was pretty satisfied with what I’d gotten out of this trip, so I portaled back to my tower and immediately got to experimenting.

Honestly, the Writhing Earth spell was pretty simple, to the point where just about anyone would be able to figure it out. The most likely reason for it to be forbidden is that it was used by a powerful mage to suddenly crush large numbers of foes quickly, leaving no survivors.

Actually, I found it likely that most mages probably wouldn’t be able to cast this spell. I had a lot of things going for me in the Mentum department, from my pool being increased by my natural lichdom and Repository, to having five WIllpower enhancements, to even doing my own internal manipulation to keep my supplies filled up. Even with all of that, casting the spell at the level performed by Nyarleth would be resource-intensive. It was mostly a one-and-done spell, though– once I set it up, I’d only need to spend a bit of Mentum to keep manipulating it, unless I needed to increase the size for some reason.

As an initial test, I shaped some Forbodum into ropes coming out of my hand and brought them into the physical world by increasing their density. Just as I’d seen in the book, the tendrils moved according to my will. I was, after all, still in contact with the magic, so it wasn’t like I was trying to redirect a projectile made of Forbodum that had no connection to me whatsoever.

Of course, I could still probably do that, because everything in my domain was touched by my magic, but that connection was a bit weaker.

Anyways, with that tested out, I could focus on the other weapon I’d found.

Enchanted Orbs. The name didn’t really fit my intentions for them, so I’d have to come up with something else.

I formed a ball out of Tungsten– not Conflict Tungsten, just the normal stuff– and tapped the bone quill I’d been using to make inscriptions.

The original Enchanted Balls had one big flaw: there was no firing mechanism included. The author of the book had suggested that one use actual cannons to fire them off, or create smaller versions and hand them to warriors strong enough to chuck them, effectively turning them into grenades, but that just wasn’t elegant enough for me.

Instead of getting to work on the ball of Tungsten, I started forming Conceptium.

I would need a few different kinds to create all the different runes I wanted to use, but first off was the control: a Mental Link rune.

The name was a bit of a misnomer, though. The intent I gathered was actually more like a transfer of information, allowing me to send intent into one rune and communicate it to another, but I decided to call it that because I thought it was cooler.

My current plan for my Enchanted Orbs 2.0 was that they’d be able to accept my mental commands and fire themselves at something I told them to kill. When they hit that something, they’d explode. Easy as pie.

Except for the fact that I would need this Mental Link rune, some sort of movement rune, a dedicated Explosion rune– like Discharge, but more specialized– and then I’d also want to make another connection rune that would allow energy to pass remotely from one to another.

Eventually, I managed to make enough Energetic Mental Connection Intent to put over a plate of gold and allow to do its work. At that point, I started working on some Motion intent.

I wasn’t exactly sure how I wanted this movement to work, so I just tried to make it vague and imagine something moving quickly and with great precision. It worked as an intent, so I harvested some of it and began the process of using it to make another rune.

The Explosion rune was pretty simple. All I had to do was picture all the different kinds of explosions I’d ever seen– either personally or on video– and turn it into some Energetic Intent.

Once that was put onto a plate, all I had left to do was replicate the whole process, but this time with an Intent that would send magical energy from one place to another.

I had previously used carefully-designed cords of Mentum to pass energy between energy cells and runes, so I knew how to link things together. That was something I’d been able to include in my Intent for the runes, though I had merely presented that as one way to transfer energy between two locations, which would allow me to be a bit more flexible with how I used this rune.

While I could design a brand-new rune every single time I needed one, I felt like that was a wasteful use of my time when I only had a bit over two hundred and fifty days left before someone categorically stronger than myself would be coming to end me.

Wasting time only increased the likelihood that I would fail to defend myself when the time ran out.

I would lose.

I would die.

And dying… Well, dying is for losers.

Speaking of unproductive uses of my time, I took a break while waiting for the Energetic Intent to do its work on those sheets of gold and spent some time with Azrael.

She was acting pretty weird though.

“Are you alright?” I asked after she suddenly jerked her head to the right for the thirteenth time since we’d started talking.

“Hmm?” She hummed as she turned back to me. “Yup. Everything’s perfect. I’m definitely not going crazy.”

I stared at her. “If you say so…”

I checked her over with all of my senses and couldn’t find anything wrong with her, inside or out, so I had no real reason to keep digging.

“Anyways, keep telling me about your time in the Watchers.”

She smiled and got back to telling me her story about a time when she got so frustrated with one of her companions that she’d used her full suite of stealth abilities to steal all of his clothes and dump them in the river.