A Lich's Guide to Dungeon Mastery

For some reason I’d expected my entry to be resisted, but the plane of Forbidden Knowledge was as open to me as always.

In fact, there was already someone waiting there for me.

“You weren’t meant to progress this quickly, you know,” the gray-cloaked figure said with a smooth, conversational tone, “Not that it’s a bad thing. You’ve done well. But the expectations for you are higher, and the stakes have been raised.”

“Are you…” I trailed off.

“Yes,” the god replied simply, “Icarios has been whining ever since you destroyed his avatar, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone get quite as upset as he was when you started dismantling his islands.”

“Hey, if he wanted them to be left alone he should’ve made them larger, or given them better protectors.”

Kelemnion shook his head, turning to me slowly. Beneath the long cloak which obscured most of his form, there was a mass of solid smoke taking a humanoid shape.

“That’s not how it works, Ambrose,” the divine explained, summoning a book into his right hand and extending it towards me. As I touched it, its knowledge was transferred into my mind. Suddenly, I understood everything about the hierarchy of the Planar Gods.

“I was wondering if there was some sort of ranking system,” I said ponderously, “That makes sense. I thought it might be based on how many users of your element there have ever been, but I suppose that the amount that it’s influenced the base world makes more sense. So then, where do you fall in?”

I was expecting Kelemnion to be at the lower end of the pack, just based on the nature of Forbodum, but at the same time, the sheer amount of Forbidden Knowledge there was hidden away within the depths of the dimension contrasted that.

“I’m not the strongest, but I’m certainly above average,” the god simply replied, “With every bit of Forbidden Knowledge created, I gain a bit of power. While the mortals may crusade against those who grow my power, that’s simply a part of the impact the Forbidden has on the world, and Knowledge is never truly forgotten. Many people have turned to me in times of desperation, seeking to lash out against their oppressors or to defy the heavens.

“Not to mention,” Kelemnion said, a grin forming diagonally across where his face would have been as a human, “The amount of Forbodum you’ve pumped into the world recently has done wonders for my growth, and conquering another plane doesn’t hurt. Now, whenever Empyrix is used in the base plane, it carries an echo of your domain– the energy’s effects can change based on the state of the realm linked to it. You altered the very meaning of Empyreal with what you did.”

“That makes sense, then.” I pondered what questions I had for the god of my element, then just shrugged and asked, “What should I be doing next?”

Kelemnion got serious. “You’re easily my favorite wielder right now, so I’ll bend the rules a bit, but you already know that we gods have some strict rules. Plausibility–” like this were some sort of fantasy story, “–prevents us from influencing the outcome of mortal’s activities. It also stops us from leaving our planes, as I’m sure you’re already aware. I can only tell you so much before I need some time to recover.

“The first thing you need to know is that you’re an idiot who should have kept track of time better. There are enemies closing in on you– and I don’t just mean the one you’re aware of, who will be arriving in three months. I can guarantee that you’re not ready for him yet.”

I frowned internally. I’d expected the preparations I’d already made to be sufficient. “What am I to do, then? If this isn’t enough, then what is?”

“Reinforce your weaknesses, and focus on the aspects of your abilities that are yours alone– not granted by an affinity or a Skill,” the god said cryptically, “Other than that all I can really say is that you should level up more. Your new Boon works exactly as you expected, so that won't be an issue anymore. The Skill you use to get here won’t be a problem either. Just try to push your limits and focus on your Conceptual Control. I guarantee that you cannot outmuscle your foes with raw magical might– you have a lot, but they have more.”

“What is Esheth’s second affinity?” A faint blue chain had already formed around Kelemnion’s neck, but this was a critical piece of information that I lacked.

The god frowned, but “Can’t say, but I can tell you that nothing you have can stand up to it. Some of your creatures will perform well against him, but they won’t be able to handle him on their own.”

“Can you say which ones?”

A small, sad chuckle precluded his answer, “No. I’ve already been too specific. If I go that far it’ll take too long to recover for me to be of use to you again. Just focus on pushing your Skills to level five, then think over what I said before.”

With that, my feet started sinking into a portal out of the plane of Forbidden Knowledge, and its avatar turned away from me.

“Wait, is there anything more you can tell me?” Advice from a god was hard to come by, and any scraps I could get would be worth everything to me.

“Keep up the good work,” was all I heard before I was fully submerged in ink and teleported back to the mortal realm.

Ambrose

Ancient Seeker 5

Repository 4

Infomorph 5

Loci Server 3

Firewall 6

Multithreading 3

Mental Rapidity 0

Forbodum Manipulation 4

Esoteric Sight 7

Conceptual Control 5

Energetic Intent 6

Concept Mimicry 2

Intent Isolation 0

Occult Sovereignty 3

Encompassing Knowledge 6

Abstractive Influence 5

Physical Influence 3

Intelligent Influence 0

Kelemnion’s Gate 4

Library Pass 5

Librarian’s Favor 10

Omnipotent Reader 2

Command Whispers 0

Available Boon (Maddening Knowledge, Thought Tamer)

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

I looked over my abilities with a critical eye. The easiest way to level up was to focus on each individual Boon until it was at the level I was trying to reach. That would, in turn, level my Skills and let me get more Boons.

I thought it was funny how Kelemnion had leveled up my Librarian’s Favor, implying that he was the librarian. It made sense, in a way, but it was also a funny way to think about such a powerful being. I wondered if 10 was the cap, but intuitively knew that it wasn’t. Kelemnion had granted me the levels he had either because he felt I didn’t need any more, or he had some sort of limit to how much he could give me.

The latter made a lot of sense considering the plausibility laws he’d mentioned.

The Boon selection was honestly pretty difficult. Both seemed to build off my Command Whispers in different ways, with one causing my Forbodum energy to shed more whispers for me to use and making them more hostile to other creatures, while the other promised to make them bend to my will more easily and convey the thoughts I wanted rather than the normal chaotic knowledge that they’d spew.

I ended up going with Maddening Knowledge. Kelemnion had claimed that Command Whispers worked “exactly as I expected” and would help level my Dark Whispers Skill. Having more to control would probably make that process faster.

With that selected, I regarded the first of my Skills with an internal frown.

Powerleveling all of my Skills within only a few months would be difficult, but if I took my time and tried to understand each individual Boon before moving on, I’d level much faster than I would if I rushed.

First, I’d just try to get all of my Boons to level 5. From there, I could go down the list one Boon at a time and get all of them to 10. With that in mind, the first Boon to look at was my Loci Server.

I hadn’t really done much with my Loci Server since turning it into a rubber room and shoving some rat-shaped intent into it, which meant that it hadn’t really seen much development. Obviously, just using it to store intent wasn’t quite what it was meant for, so I’d need to figure out some other stuff to do with it.

The Loci Server was meant to be used as a place for my spirit to flee to when my bodies were destroyed. It could also store memories, which I did do, but they were sort of littered around the place haphazardly.

Entering the mental space within my Repository, I glanced around at my current creations.

While the idea was funny, and I wanted it to be included in the final design of my Server, it just wasn’t… grand enough. I wanted something more fitting of a lich who ruled over an entire dimension, small though it may be.

The first change I made was to put a door on one end of my rubber room, then step outside of it into a blank, unused space.

The original room was dropped down and covered by a layer of dead earth, forming a room of the basement in what I was building. I buried everything in skulls– for the aesthetic. Nobody else would ever see this place, but if they did, they’d probably be horrified by the sheer number of death present, no matter how fake it was.

On top of it, I constructed a palace, somewhat reminiscent of Queen Nadiya’s but with a far more gothic style. The walls were formed out of bleached bone and trimmed with silver and gold. The floor was covered by the rugs of creatures out of my imagination, and in the throne room of the castle I built a seat made of solid gold.

It was all incredibly ostentatious, but the basement was where things were really going on.

I formed a set of stairs where Kyle’s workshop would have been in the Kerenth palace, connecting it to a long hallway which ran down the entire length of the building upstairs.

On the left side of this hallway, I split my rubber room into many, extending it on all sides and putting bars over the doors to make it look like it was truly meant for criminals and madmen. On the right, I constructed a single door that led to a huge server room– literally the purpose of the Loci Server Boon, if I wasn’t mistaken.

On these servers, I carefully flipped through every tiny portion of my memories, storing them all into files that could be sorted chronologically or by category at will. This took a good bit of time, but it was good to dig through my history. I got to cringe at the awkward moments and smile at all of my victories.

Seeing my family was a weird one. This new world was much better for the kind of person I was, and I’d found success here, but losing two decades of relationships sucked. Before now, I hadn’t really taken a moment to process it– my undead nature had deadened my emotions enough that it had never been a priority. It felt good to unpack those feelings, though.

Refreshed, I decided to set up a little computer in the center of the room, not because I needed it but because it was nostalgic and reminded me of my past. With that in mind, I created a Minesweeper app. I’d never play it, but it was funny to me anyway.

With my server room finished up, I returned to my rubber rooms. Currently, only one of them had any intent stored in it at all, so I quickly decided on a method of sorting them: offensive magic on the left, defensive magic on the right, and utility at the back. From there, things would be sorted based on whether their nature was physical or ephemeral in nature.

I left it at that for now, figuring that I could always make more rooms.

The final, finishing touch that I wanted to make was to have the Conceptium rats move around.

To do this, I tried to maintain the compression on the energy to keep it in roughly the same shape, but loosen it slightly wherever I felt like it needed to bend a bit.

I ended up needing to split the rats into several pieces to figure out how to make joints and movement work, but I did eventually figure it out. For the most part, I just needed to keep the parts independent, but also connected.

Since I was literally in my own head, it honestly wasn’t that hard to make work. In the outside world, getting Conceptium to move like a rat would be difficult, but here…

Each rat had a slightly different personality, based on the kind of intent used to create it. The offensive rats were playful, chasing one another around and wrestling, whereas the defensive rats were pretty chill and the utility ones kept crawling on top of eachother for some reason.

With all that done, I considered my Loci Server to be good enough for now.

Ambrose

Ancient Seeker 5

Repository 4

Infomorph 5

Loci Server 7

Firewall 6

Multithreading 3

Mental Rapidity 1

Forbodum Manipulation 4

Esoteric Sight 7

Conceptual Control 5

Energetic Intent 6

Concept Mimicry 2

Intent Isolation 0

Occult Sovereignty 3

Encompassing Knowledge 6

Abstractive Influence 5

Physical Influence 3

Intelligent Influence 0

Kelemnion’s Gate 4

Library Pass 5

Librarian’s Favor 10

Omnipotent Reader 2

Command Whispers 0

Maddening Knowledge 0

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

Back in my skeletal form, I let out a tired sigh.

This was going to take a while.

To speed up my training time, I decided that it would be best to use them together. The next few Boons I needed to level were Multithreading, Mental Rapidity, Concept Mimicry, and Intent Isolation.

Multithreading was relatively simple, and I figured I could just force that to create a flow of Forbodum with intent, then strip the intent from it with Intent Isolation. The split intent would then be copied by the original thread and mixed into the same spell.

The trouble with this method was that I had generated both the spell and its intent, so it was all mine. Trying to get a thread to fight against me didn’t work since it lacked the finesse and force that I could apply, so I didn’t end up gaining much.

There was also just something about the intent being familiar with me that made manipulating it much easier. I almost went to Fenrir and asked for his help, but all of his energy originated from me as well. All of my intelligent creations had gained their own energy pools at some point, but they were identical to my own in every way except in scale, and some of their energy was still drawn from me when they started running low.

Eventually, I decided that I needed an outside source to train against, so I teleported my way to Kerenth and arrived a few dozen feet away from the royal guards with my hands raised. Luckily, they seemed to recognize me, or at least understand that there was an undead who spontaneously showed up at the palace to talk to the queen.

Soon, I was before Nadiya. Since she’d actually been given time to prepare this time, she looked far less disheveled than the other times we’d spoken.

“I’m surprised, Ambrose, I didn’t think you had the capacity for manners,” the queen commented with a pleased smirk.

“Well I’ve gotta keep you on your toes, don’t I?” I smirked at her, tossing the rainbow water ring to her. “I’m sure Kyle explained to you how this stuff works. Use it as you see fit.”

The queen put the ring on and tried it out, surprised as a small amount of water sprayed her in the face.

I cackled in amusement as she spluttered, glaring at me before watching in amazement as her face and dress rapidly dried, and the liquid regathered itself into a wet spot on the carpet.

I decided to give her a bit of help. “If you hold the ring upwards and manage to pour a tiny bit of the stuff back into the portal, the rest will reconnect and follow suit.”

Taking my advice, the queen rose from her throne and dropped into a kneeling position, dabbing her index finger into the rainbow water before rapidly shoving it into the portal. As promised, the liquid all teleported out of the carpet, leaving it perfectly dry.

“It’s perfectly sterile and fit for consumption, by the way. Only the water teleports– all the dirt and sickness is left behind,” I elaborated.

“Thank you,” Nadiya acknowledged, rising back and seating herself in the too-large throne once more. “But surely that’s not the only reason you’re here?”

“No.” I shook my head. “No, it’s not. I was hoping you could help me with something, actually.”

The queen raised an eyebrow. “And what might that be?”

“Don’t worry overly much; I just need someone to throw some spells at me.” The other eyebrow raised as well, so I continued, “One of my Skills only works on other people’s magic. It shouldn’t physically hurt them, but it might feel weird and possibly cause their spells to destabilize, so they should be someone who has a strong mental fortitude and experience with their spells collapsing.”

Queen Sharjiil gave me an understanding nod. “I understand why you came to me for this. Kyle is an incredible magical researcher, and he knows more about magic than almost anyone in the kingdom– and certainly anyone who falls into our traditional hierarchy. With that said, his combat abilities are lacking unless he’s prepared with rune magic.”

The queen turned to the same guard who had fetched Kyle for her when I’d initially met him. “Shomar, would you please bring in Bomira?” The man in question gave her a respectful nod, then made a beeline for the front door.

Nadiya turned back to me and explained, “Bomira is our elemental magic specialist. She prefers the use of Fire magic, but uses Elementix.”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Elementix was the only advanced energy type that used four affinities, involving each of the natural elements– Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. While mortal levels and monster levels weren’t quite the same, a mortal wielding Elementix would need to be at least level 15, which was certainly nothing to scoff at, even for me.

If this Bomira had poured all of her Enhancements into Willpower, then she’d probably have an even stronger mental grip over her magic than I did.

That was good. It meant I would grow faster to meet the challenge.

A few long moments of waiting passed by, and I was eventually brought into a sideroom so that Nadiya could return to hearing from and dealing with the local nobility.

After perhaps an hour or so– I’m not sure, since I don’t really pay all that much attention to the passing of time– a woman, presumably Bomira, was let into the room with me.

The overly fit mage was dressed more like a martial artist than a spellcaster, but I could sense that she was powerful so I figured that she probably wouldn’t try to throw me around.

There was a little tickle in the back of my brain, and I was reminded of the main characters of numerous films– mostly bad sequels, if I was being honest. I pushed that thought aside, though, and greeted her.

“Bomira, I presume? I am Ambrose, and–”

“Courtyard,” she cut me off with a slight, unfamiliar accent, turning and speedwalking away from me.

Confused and slightly offended, I followed the woman out of the building and onto what reminded me of an extra large basketball court.

As soon as Bomira had reached the opposite end of the platform, she turned on her heels and pointed a finger at me. “Three seconds,” she announced, holding up her fingers.

“Huh?” Seriously, if she’d just take a moment to–

“Two.”

I rushed to align myself with her position in the arena.

“Good,” Bomira smirked, holding up one last finger before firing a jet of flame at my face.