Getting permission to use the Lowpeak dungeon to push to Tier Four was easier than Serenity expected. All he had to do was ask; apparently, it wasn’t normally used at full capacity anyway.
Somehow, Serenity had expected it to be full of undead, but the Lowpeak dungeon wasn’t. Its name was Animate Inanimate, and it was full of constructs; anything from animated dolls to mobile furniture or objects created specifically to fight for their owner. The final boss the first time was a golem, but it varied from run to run. He took the first run slowly and cautiously; despite the quick overview from Kalo Lichbane, Serenity wanted to see it and judge it for himself before he tried speedrunning the dungeon.
There was no plot to the dungeon; much like Central Park’s Wasp Dungeon, it was simply a place to fight a type of creature. Serenity found it a lot of fun; with no one else to worry about, he could relax into his chimera form and just fight, something he didn’t often have the chance to do. In many ways, it was similar to the training grounds in the Tutorial, except that he was predominantly using magic instead of weapons and the fights were to the destruction of the opponent.
Other than the final boss, it was an excellent place for Serenity to level his Zonal Evocation Mage Path. Most of the animated objects, even the level bosses, came with groups. It was perfect for Fireball or Cone of Lightning, once he reached its unlock. He even cast some spells he had to take the time to build; even with the Path advancement for the creative use of magic, they weren’t as efficient as simply casting Path Skills in terms of XP per time (he had Aide do the math), but they were close and variety was good for both his sanity and for maintaining his progress on his Path.
It was also a good place to play with spells he was still trying to figure out. Some were successful, while most needed more work even if they achieved the desired effect.
Serenity suspected that Kalo knew he was soloing the Tier Five final boss of the dungeon, but he never outright said it. The first time through, the boss was challenging; after that, Serenity knew how to handle it. Constructs were almost always awkward and were often slow; all of the constructs in the Lowpeak dungeon had those flaws. On top of that, it was a Tier Five “warrior” or maybe even “item” and didn’t have any sort of regenerating Shield; he could simply beat it down without having half the issues he’d had on the previous Lord of Tzintkra. His significant advancement in Tier helped, even though he wasn’t immune to the golem’s attacks.
Despite the difficulty and the multiple levels, it was a fast dungeon to run as long as Serenity kept going; it was all fighting with only a little travel time and Serenity’s ability to keep going with very little down time sped it up immensely. The first run took about four hours, but each run after that was a little faster.
By the third run, he didn’t even have to use his Quickness and Slowness spells to keep ahead of the final boss.
The fourth run, it was a wicker man. He actually used Fireball on it that time; it was the easiest run yet.
Serenity wrote letters to Rissa after every few dungeon runs. It gave him something to do and he also found himself writing out his plans for the next few runs. Her responses were far rarer than his letters, since he was writing several times a day, but she still sometimes pointed out things he’d been meaning to test or try out that he’d forgotten about when she did write. Even when she didn’t, he tried to do something new every run.
Despite the testing and training, Serenity was very, very bored on the sixth day when he finally pushed his Path completion past his Core completion. He wanted to finish them at the same time so that he wouldn’t have to explain being only partway into Tier Four, so that was when he swapped his XP allocation. It took a little fine tuning since the Path progression he was getting for spellcasting wouldn’t move over, but he figured it out.
It was another three days before he got to what he thought might be his final dungeon run; if it wasn’t, it was the second to last. By that time, he was fairly confident he could run the Lowpeak dungeon in his sleep.
This time, the final boss wasn’t the final boss when he got to the bottom. While there was a reward box and a portal to the outside, the Dungeon Core was replaced by another corridor.
The dungeon hadn’t closed to upgrade, but not all dungeons did. Staying open was especially common when the dungeon was instanced, like this one; one instance would have the old layout and then the next person that entered would see the new one. Serenity was glad the dungeon hadn’t changed anything in the earlier part of the dungeon.
Serenity considered going back, but a glance at his Status told him not to. He was within a single percentage point on both Core and Path. It wouldn’t take much to finish it off; whatever the dungeon had added should be enough to get him there. There was no reason to put himself through another run, and he wanted to see what was added anyway.
He wasn’t certain he could manage it if the dungeon had taken itself up to Tier Six, but he was relatively confident that he could at least run away. This dungeon was very generous with information; he was able to see each encounter before he took it on, so if there was a Tier Six he should know in time to retreat.
As it turned out, Serenity’s worry was overstated even though it was limited. The first room was one of the bosses he’d seen before with a small group of related weaker allies. So was the second, and the trend continued until he’d worked his way through all of the major variations he’d seen in the dungeon and even a couple of ones he’d guessed existed because he’d seen the lesser forms before, but which he hadn’t happened to fight as a boss.
After the first three, Serenity was able to relax; he knew exactly what he was facing. It was a challenge floor, a floor type that was well-known and relatively common for pure fighting themed dungeons like the Lowpeak dungeon. It served as a sort of a gauntlet to ensure that you hadn’t gotten by simply by beating a particular boss variant you or your group were strong against. Sometimes there would be an even more powerful boss at the end of the challenge floor, but most of the time there wasn’t one.
It was often placed directly before a theme change; Serenity doubted the new theme was present yet, but he kind of hoped he was wrong. He was looking forward to fighting something different, even if it turned out to be demons on his way to Marnmot.
Most of the bosses he hadn’t faced the first time were simply a variation on things he’d seen before for their fights, but some were surprising and different. The animated broom boss was especially fun. It was one of the few that actually could keep up with him, and the small whisk brooms it was surrounded with were excellent at tripping him.
Serenity was chased all over the room as he cast spell after spell, picking up quite a few bruises when he wasn’t quite fast enough. The broom never quite hit hard enough to break a bone, but Serenity knew that was because he was robbing it of some of its force with each hit; his reactions were just enough faster than its movements that even when it caught up he was able to prevent it from getting a clean hit, avoiding or interfering with each smack. Even with that, the padding of his armor-self was necessary to reduce the damage.
The whisks took a few Fireballs, but that only turned the main broom into a scorched staff, still able to fly and whack Serenity. His recently unlocked Spot Nullification spell worked on it, but it took some time for a Nullification to hit a weakened spot on the staff. The resulting explosion when the spell didn’t have enough material to destroy snapped the animated object in half, ending the fight.
Level 75 - Spot Nullification - Use Nihility to destroy what you can see. Roughly shapeable. Potentially explosive.
There were several dozen rooms before he finished the challenge floor; notices for both his Core and his Path had appeared while he was still making his way through the sequence of challenge bosses, but Serenity decided not to worry about it. He wanted to Tier up only after the floor was completely clear, just in case.
There was no final boss for the challenge floor; the series of rooms simply ended in another room that held only the dungeon core and a portal outside. A few of the challenge bosses did drop items, but it was clear that rewards weren’t the main reason to take on the sequence of bosses.
Serenity now had a reasonable number of mana potions at a Tier that actually mattered to him. The potions wouldn’t even be safe to give to a low-Tier human, but even though they were over Serenity’s Tier, his enlarged mana pool meant that they’d be fine for him; he had more mana than many at Tier Five.
He also had a collection of stamina-refreshing potions, but those really didn’t matter to Serenity since his body recovered stamina at an increased rate. The healing potions might matter, but only if Serenity was very badly injured; even then, he might need to apply them at least partially externally, the way they’d be given to anyone who was under-Tier for them.
Other than that, most of what he picked up was going directly to the Lowpeaks along with all of the stamina potions; the only thing he planned to keep from the week and a half of dungeon runs was a ring. It had an object animation spell in it, usable once every three days as long as mana was supplied. The ring itself wasn’t very useful, but Serenity could think of all sorts of things he could do if he learned the spell. Unlike most animation-type spells, it didn’t depend on the Solid Affinity or one of its relatives; it seemed to have some sort of changeable Affinity and that was extremely interesting in its own right.
Serenity had spoken to the dungeon core of the Animate Inanimate dungeon a number of times, but while it was relatively friendly it was also very stolid and calm. It preferred to talk through its core instead of pulling Serenity into its dungeon-space, so Serenity set his hand against the core and projected his thoughts. He was happy to have finally figured out how to do it with his hand instead of needing his horns. :Thank you for the run and the new area; that was fun. I particularly liked the broom boss.:
:It’s one of the rare bosses. I try to keep the hard ones rare.: The dungeon sounded pleased but didn’t leave much of an opening for a follow-up question.
Serenity was used to that. This dungeon wasn’t a very good conversationalist. :This will be my last run for a while; I’m going to Tier up then leave. Thanks again and I hope to see you again!:
There was a positive feeling from the dungeon, but it didn’t answer in words. Serenity gave it another moment to say something before he removed his hand.
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