A Lich's Guide to Dungeon Mastery

Body after body was reduced into motes of energy as an unending tide of power bore down on me. The only time I’d experienced more pain than this was when I’d endured a Tribulation– a rebuke from the heavens which scoured not just the body, but also the mind and soul.

Luckily, the only thing this man’s attack could do was torch my body over and over again. If he could, I was pretty sure he’d have tortured every aspect of my being for as long as possible.

It seemed like time had stopped. Every moment was stretched into hours as the agony of being repeatedly obliterated and reconstituted attempted to break my mind.

But, as General Chesty Puller once said, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” Of course, my mind and soul were also repeatedly leaving my body as it was transmuted into ash, thus negating any benefits I could possibly gain from it becoming stronger, but oh well.

I found myself wishing that I’d taken things slower, been less greedy, and tried to build up a resistance to Empyrix before diving headfirst into its realm, but hindsight was 20/20.

All I could do now was wait and hope that Icarios ran out of energy before I ran out of bodies. Losing all of my intelligent creatures’ personalities, as well as all my fancy new toys, would really suck, but if this man could outlast the many, many layers of bodies I had?

I’d need to close the portal just to keep myself alive.

After what felt like months of pain, it suddenly puttered out and came to a halt.

I rapidly examined my surroundings.

The first thing that I noted was that all of my creatures seemed to have retreated across the portal. I was initially confused by it, but it wasn’t too hard to imagine what had happened.

Most likely, Icarios had simply ignored any and all attacks launched at him, or just obliterated whatever tried to attack him, so one of my intelligent monsters, probably Fenrir, had issued an order to the others that it was time to retreat.

Some jerks would probably see that as a betrayal, but I thought that was dumb. If Icarios was as powerful as I suspected, even going so far as to launch my entire tower at him wouldn’t be enough to take him down.

The man in question, though, was glaring at a light blue chain that had snaked its way up the arm he’d been using to blast me. The chain– clearly made of Mana, when I looked more closely– had gripped onto his throat and seemed to slither around him.

The light of Empyrix lit up Icarios’ other fist, but the chain simply extended from his neck to wrap around his shoulder as well, tightening in a way that looked extremely painful.

Not as painful as being exposed to the antithesis of my being for what felt like it could have been an eternity, but painful nonetheless.

“Curse you,” Icarios muttered, his voice coming out strained.

His words caused the chains to tighten yet again, and this time the godlike being turned back to me. “This is your fault,” he spat out.

I shrugged. “I don’t see how. You’re the one with the chains on you– I had nothing to do with them.”

Icarios seethed at me for a moment, then rushed at me. He wasn’t nearly as strong as he’d been before, likely due to whatever restrictions had been placed on him, but he was still a bit stronger than me– impressive, considering how much energy was packed into every single one of my bodies.

Still, I had some tricks up my sleeves.

The ground beneath Icarios collapsed, causing him to trip and fall on his face.

The idiot hadn’t even bothered to clear my influence from the area. I was almost certain that he was capable of doing so and just didn’t. He was so focused on blasting me that he hadn’t even considered that I might get back up and cause problems for him.

The angelic jerk pushed himself back up with a sharp glare at me, then brandished his fists. His wings flapped and he rose off the ground, angled towards me, and once again started charging me.

I only had a couple of seconds, so I started sprinting towards the portal.

Normally, that would be an idiotic plan– that was where I kept all my stuff, after all, including my Repository.

I thought I had an idea about what this guy was, though, which meant that there was at least a small chance of my plan working.

“No!” Icarios shouted, doubling his speed to try and reach me again, no matter what sort of restrictions might be put on him for… well, whatever he was doing.

I was closing in on the portal, but not quite close enough, so I enacted the second half of my plan– I tripped him again. Not by moving the ground out from under his feet or making him fall over on a rock, though. That would be too predictable.

I spent a monumental amount of energy to build a wall in less than a second.

The 45th President of the United States would be proud.

Powerful though he was, Icarios had taken a human form, and that came with certain limitations. One of those was reaction speed. Energy could only travel so fast, after all.

The god smashed into the wall at blinding speeds, sending rubble in every direction and losing a bit of stability.

More than buying a bit of time, my gambit was meant to throw him off balance– he was a hand-to-hand fighter, and I wanted him to use an age-old tactic that, in the modern day, only really saw use in drunken bar fights and American football.

I needed Icarios to tackle me.

I had nearly reached the portal when I felt through my domain that Icarios was just behind me. Checking briefly, I found that he falling right into my master plan.

I, however, was not quite close enough to the portal for it to work.

I tried to trip him again, but failed.

Icarios slammed into me at full speed, knocking me flat on the ground, before pummeling me relentlessly.

With the restrictions he was under, I wasn’t dying with every punch anymore, but it didn’t really matter if it took one, or two, or even three. Body after body collapsed in on itself.

But then it took four hits to kill me. Five. Once it even took six, giving me just long enough to see that the chains were slowly tightening around his body.

One of the first things Azrael had ever told me about gods came to mind: they had rules and limits. They were beings of immense power, but they rarely interfered unless it was absolutely necessary.

This was a god.

I hadn’t known that the higher energies had gods, but clearly they did.

Icarios was a god, and he had overextended.

A few bodies later, I was given enough time to grip the fist before it had a chance to beat my skull in. The other continued onwards, but I was gaining ground.

Gaining ground over a god.

Eventually, I’d gotten a grip on both wrists and was able to hold on.

Icarios just started headbutting me repeatedly.

After that point, though, it didn’t take long for me to push him off of me. He still grabbed at my ankles as I tried to escape, but I managed to kick him off, forcing him to rise himself and chase after me.

This time, my plan worked, and a scene that looked like it was right out of a cheesy action movie took place.

Icarios tackled me and we both sailed into the portal…

Only for his body to turn into blue sparks as it passed through.

The portal quivered, and the sun that hung above the realm– which was also named Icarios, if my guess was correct– turned blood red for an instant, but nothing else happened. The god didn’t reform, and I wasn’t blasted by holy lightning.

Hesitantly, I took a single step into Icarios. Still, nothing happened.

I called my troops back through the portal and started expanding once again.

What seemed like every creature in the realm beelined for our position, but they were repelled by my minions.

Still, nothing else happened.

It appeared as though I had slain a god.

At least, for a time. I didn’t expect it to last.

Now, then, was time to make sure that never happened again.

Bathing my Repository in Empyrix was sorta like taking an ice bath. Did it suck? Yup. Could you feel yourself making any tangible growth? No, not really. But did you get better at resisting the cold over time? Yes, yes you did.

Inuring my soul to the effects of magic that countered me, I felt, was the first step towards becoming truly unstoppable.

I’d killed a god, sorta, but only because I got lucky and he was utterly incompetent. If he hadn’t expended so much of his “interference allowance” so quickly, I would have lost. Honestly, he probably could’ve just chucked me off the edge of the sky island we were on. I could sorta fly, sure, but by the time I managed it he surely would’ve found the time to close my portal.

That wasn’t what had happened, though. I had won, somehow, and now I was going to celebrate by making sure Icarios could never hurt me again.

At least, that was the hope. My line of thinking was that gaining an artificial affinity would also affect my magic, thus making it more resistant to magic of that affinity as well. That would save me a ton of time, as I wouldn’t have to reinforce all of my boss minion’s bodies every single time their physical forms died.

I slightly increased the density of Empyrix that was rubbing against my Repository. I couldn’t tell if I was just getting used to the pain or if I was genuinely becoming more resistant to it, but every time that the pain went down I cranked it back up.

Eventually, I ran out of Empyrix, by which I mean that the Wisps which were channeling it through a portal to me couldn’t send it over quickly enough to increase the difficulty any more.

My Repository had gained a couple golden flecks inside of its icosahedron shape, which I took to mean that my exposure therapy had worked.

I quickly returned to my tower’s basement, popping through the portal to Icarios to find Fenrir sitting in the grass.

Seeing that I’d returned, my creation popped up to his feet and greeted me, “Father, the attacks ceased a few hours ago, and the others went to scout out and hunt down any leftovers. Otherwise, we’ve just been waiting for you to come back and continue pressing your rule over this land.”

I gave him a nod of approval and did exactly what he’d been expecting.

It seemed that with the embodiment of the realm dissipated, the ambient energies fought my influence much less. I swiftly took all the land in sight, expanding up and down as far as I could. After a while, all I was finding was air, but I continued onwards for some hours to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.

Eventually I just shrugged. “Small world. Literally. There were only a few chains of islands, and I couldn’t find anything else. If there’s more, it’s too far out to be worth the effort.”

I waved my hand and formed a small army of Wisps, mentally instructing them to go fetch the cores of the golems my force had slain and bring them through the portal. Before this point I’d been concerned that these creatures would be popped like balloons by the Empyrix, but with what may well be the entire plane under my command? I wasn’t worried.

“Well then, I suppose all that’s left is to strip this world of all its resources and do some experiments, right Fenrir?”

My creation nodded. “Those golem things seemed interesting. I wonder how they work? And having a new energy type to work with in my runes is exciting.”

Fenrir was somewhere between an overly obedient son and a nerdy brother to me. Luckily for him, I was nerdy too. “I know, did you see them get corrupted by Forbodum? I wonder if we could use them to create our own golems.”

It took less than a week to harvest the entirety of Icarios. From apples made out of solid gold to rainbow water that magically teleported back to the largest mass of itself whenever it got too far away, the world was full of weird stuff– very much not for undead.

The humans, on the other hand, went absolutely nuts for the stuff.

For mortals, the golden apples apparently gave them a slight, permanent boost to their physical capabilities, which was multiplicative with system Reinforcements, as tested by Kyle. It wasn’t too noticeable on weaker humans, but for individuals who threw everything into their physical strength? It was enough to get a good measure of the effects.

The water tasted good, apparently, but was otherwise unremarkable. Its unique properties even activated once it passed through the throat, teleporting it away as though it had never been drank. In other words, it did absolutely nothing to satiate the consumer’s thirst.

As for the golem cores, careful study with the help of Kyle helped us find out that they were carefully crafted runic formations that sent instructions into the golem’s bodies. It was remarkably complex, but equally delicate. They’d been designed with the assumption that the only energy entering the core would be Empyrix, so introducing alternative powers instantly started decaying the rune structures and made the cores highly unstable.

It was disappointing that we wouldn’t be able to just change the power source to get our own golems, but we still learnt a lot. New runes entered our catalogs, and one of Kyle’s Skills along with my own Concept Mimicry helped us figure out the intents that they used. With that, we were able to completely reverse engineer the process.

While I didn’t exactly need to make golems, I still thought they were cool, and Fenrir shared my interest as a fellow nerd.

Kyle, though, was ecstatic, and kicked us out of his workshop within a few minutes of completing our dissection, excited to try and make his own golem from scratch.

I understood the feeling. Creating your own minions and monsters was pretty fun.

We found a few other things in Icarios, but they were mostly slight alterations of otherwise mundane things, such as the white stone that the golems were made of. While it was slightly better at channeling Lux-aligned energy, and especially Empyrix, it was otherwise unremarkable and we didn’t have many uses for it.

We ended up with bulk quantities of slightly magical stone, wood, and ores to sell off to the caraveneers once they started swinging by the dungeon town.

As for the golden apples and the magical water, the former went to the townswomen. I tried to convince myself that it was an apology for being neglectful and forcing them to live off the land so much, but the truth was that I still wanted to cultivate a society of buff, Amazonian, warrior women.

It wasn’t really for any purpose as much as it was for my own amusement.

The rainbow liquid was all set aside to be gifted to Queen Nadiya directly. I stored it all in a specially-crafted spatial ring with an inscription that would allow her to effectively open a faucet from which to pour the stuff. The dimensional separation severed the connection between the main body of water and what was poured out, so I figured it would be used as an interesting gimmick at parties. Not that I cared what she used it for, mind you, that’s just what I thought of when I decided to give it to her.

Finally, we kept about half of the golem cores and donated the rest to the kingdom’s researcher for study, making sure that Kyle was clear that they were to be distributed to other crafters to make sure that he didn’t just hoard them all like a greedy dragon. He was a bit disappointed by that, but nodded nonetheless.

Overall, conquering Icarios was worth the time I’d invested into it, but perhaps not as much as I’d hoped.

Kelemnion, and the Aethenium as a whole, seemed to be much grander than Icarios had been. Similarly, everything I’d read about the Far Realm described it as a pretty big place. Maybe there was some sort of ranking between the different planes, with some being stronger than others?

It was an interesting train of thought, but I had no way of testing it.

Something I did have a way of testing, though, was something the avatar of Icarios mentioned.

Kelemnion brags about you.

If the Empyreal realm had an avatar, then there was no reason that the plane of Forbidden Knowledge wouldn’t.

Before I used Kelemnion’s Gate, though, I had some things to look over.

Seif Ambrose

Ancient Seeker 5

Repository 4

Infomorph 5

Loci Server 3

Firewall 6

Multithreading 3

Available Boon (Parallel Minds, Mental Rapidity)

Forbodum Manipulation 4

Esoteric Sight 7

Conceptual Control 5

Energetic Intent 6

Concept Mimicry 2

Available Boon (Intent Isolation, Enhanced Focus)

Occult Sovereignty 3

Encompassing Knowledge 6

Abstractive Influence 5

Physical Influence 3

Intelligent Influence 0

Kelemnion’s Gate 3

Library Pass 4

Librarian’s Favor 4

Omnipotent Reader 2

Available Boon (Forbidden Potency, Command Whispers)

Dark Whispers 2

Ancient Mutterings 3

Inspiration 3

Tutoring 0

Enhancements: Willpower x6, Reinforcement x1, Purity x1

Named Belongings: Antigo, Arachnomicon, Drachma’Uban, Fenrir, Caerbalope, Carnic

It wasn’t the first time I’d been offered another brain, and I still wasn’t interested. I liked Multithreading because it specifically didn’t think. I didn’t want to have to deal with another version of myself.

I did like Mental Rapidity, though. It promised to help me carry out certain processes that I had experience with faster, such as converting terrain. It didn’t increase potency, only my ability to transfer from one thought to another– in the time that I could currently transmute a rock into gold, I’d be able to transmute two rocks into gold, going from one to the other more quickly.

It reminded me of how I’d rushed the process of raising that wall to throw Icarios off, but without the massively reduced efficiency that came with rushing the process. Also, Mental Rapidity paired with Multithreading pretty well.

Overall, it was the correct decision, so I picked it up without a second thought, processing the abilities it granted me for later review before moving along.

The next pair of Boons on offer were better, but the second one was a bit similar to Mental Rapidity.

Intent Isolation was a Boon version of how I could split the intent from a spell. It was clearly meant to be used with Concept Mimicry to help study different Conceptium.

I could already sort of do what this Boon was offering, but it wasn’t perfect, so I was still somewhat interested.

Enhanced Focus was like Mental Rapidity, but replaced the speed for raw power. It would make everything I did carry more power, and not just my normal spells either. In essence, anything I did that involved anything magical– which was everything, since I was literally made of energy– would be more potent.

Taking a bit of a gamble, I went with Intent Isolation. The ability to strip intent from magic was incredibly useful, and using it offensively would be incredibly useful.

The last set of abilities were from Kelemnion’s Gate. Forbidden Potency was, coincidentally, pretty similar to the Boon I’d just passed on. It would make my magic stronger, but only while within Kelemnion.

Instead, I was more interested in Command Whispers. This ability would let me accurately control the strange flows of information that Forbodum sometimes gave off.

My hopes for this Boon were twofold: Firstly, it was pretty obvious that it would help me pull information from the books in Kelemnion without needing to physically interact with them and without being crushed under a storm of whispers.

This was good partly because it would help me work faster, but also because I now knew that some of the knowledge was actively harmful. I was not mentally prepared to face another Tribulation.

Secondly, I was hoping that it would let me control and level my last Skill, Dark Whispers. It was falling behind all my other Skills and was also the most dangerous of them, so getting a bit more control over it would be welcome.

With my new Boons picked out, I breathed deeply and used my Library Pass to drop into a portal of black ink.

It was time to talk to Kelemnion.