"I think it's about time we do something."

The four of us had waited for the DP counter to reach 1000 points, which seemed a sensible number. It didn't take too long due to the 827 points we had after everything unnecessary was refunded. Mimissa had spent the time hugging me from behind as we fiddled with the menu, trying to learn even more about it. I had also asked Anastelle to release Mr. Imp from her service, so he was free to go or stay as he pleased. He decided to wait.

"Oh? Like what?"

"Well, have a look at the map. Anastelle, you better take a look too."

As the two leaned over my shoulder, I zoomed out of the dungeon to see the surrounding area. The map screen was of course only in a pseudo-3d view (2.5d?), but it showed a group of red marks. Invaders.

"Those tossers must be some sort of watchmen, probably the same ones who brought you here. It surprises me they have not left yet, surely they noticed the quakes?"

I smirked.

"Sounds like the perfect training dummies, then. Anastelle, do you mind going outside and herding them into the dungeon? I've got some ideas."

She licked her lips.

"With pleasure."

~~~~~

The Imperial soldiers were sitting around a campfire, trying to keep warm in this environment. Since the dungeon was located at the foot of a mountain and a frozen lake was nearby, not many trees stood around to keep the chilly wind at bay. It was snowing, too, but not so much as to force them into their tents.

"Why're we even still here? It's obvious that so-called heroine screwed up royally. She's dead, I tell you."

"Shut it, Gregor! Orders are orders, so we'll stay for another five days. If she still won't come back out by then, oh well."

"I don't get you, Mikhail. But it's whatever, so just gimme some more booze, I'm freezing my ass off here."

Invader B - Mikhail - chucked Invader A - Gregor - a bottle with the supposed booze. The fact alcohol cools the body did not seem to occur to them.

Anastelle observed them from above. There were five invaders in total, one standing guard a little ways away, the two sitting by the fire, and another two in one of the tents. Of the last two, one was walking in circles while the other stood in place. Probably a commander and their underling. So to get everyone into the dungeon...

"[Fireball]!"

A sphere of flaming gas shot from Anastelle's hand and hit the empty tent straight on. Then she chucked a few more for good measure to get the snow-covered tent hot enough to catch fire. She needn't have bothered because the first shot already got the soldiers' attention.

"WE'RE UNDER ATTACK! COMMANDER!!!"

Thanks to the map view projected to her side, she saw that the supposed commander and their underling - both apparently women as far as Anastelle could tell from her position high in the air - came running out. The surprisingly well-trained soldiers dragged all sorts of things out of the burning tent before their belongings could catch on fire too.

Another barrage of fireballs followed, but then...

"Wyvern, above us! Open fire!"

*BANG, BANG, BANG*!

The soldiers started firing back. The guns were long contraptions made from wood and metal, and shot with a surprisingly high fire-rate. Of course, the bullets couldn't reach Anastelle at her height, but she assumed they would actually hurt if they did reach. The fact they insulted her by calling her something as low as a wyvern angered her, so she decided to teach them a lesson!

"Wyvern, was it!? Fine you morons, you didn't want it any other way. [Dragon Breath]!"

Anastelle inhaled, then spat out a huge cone of fire as she strafed over the small group. The snow-covered ground started steaming, then glowed hot, forcing the soldiers to jump out of the way. Unfortunately there wasn't much for them to take cover behind or under, so they were effectively sitting ducks. Anastelle kept adding to the inferno, making sure to create a massive firewall that would ultimately help to entrap the enemies.

This was of course only part 1 of the plan. Anastelle, on orders of Czara, clicked on her own map symbol and added a text to it which read "Ready, place at entrance"; this action cost a single DP but the tag would stay in place and be visible until changed again or manually removed. Since monster placing was a free action for the Dungeon Core, it made sense to do that rather than teleport on her own which cost a lot of mana outside a natural mana field - such as a dungeon.

"[Disguise], [Charm]."

Anastelle felt her body shrink slightly, the idea being that she would make herself look like Czara. The [Charm] would lower the soldiers' inhibitions, making use of their confusion to enter the dungeon even if they would otherwise refuse to do so.

Looking like Czara, she exited the dungeon, pretending to be shocked at seeing the devastation she had brought about herself.

~~~~~

"She's actually doing good work, I'm kinda jealous!"

"Well she is a dracubus, so I assumed she'd have both dragon and succubus skills. Though if that's the dragon side's power and I'd guess her powers aren't as strong as those of a regular monster, I don't wanna fight a real dragon anytime soon. I've already had enough with the succubus who did this," I gestured vaguely at myself, "to me."

"Well I'm not complaining about your looks, you're adorable!"

I blushed at that, but hesitantly nodded.

"Anyway, looks like they're all shuffling inside, so we can actually try out this camera function."

"What's that do, Czara?"

"Let me show you."

I set a camera view onto the entrance area. While only in black and white, the quality was quite decent. It showed five soldiers in thick winter coats wielding ancient Mosin–Nagant type rifles. One of the group stood out due to having slightly more ornaments, I assumed she was the commander. Another was also a woman, the rest were men.

"They're pretty disciplined, I almost feel bad about leading them into a trap."

The fake Czara was leading them to a supposed 'safe zone', a place where monsters could not enter unless they were a 'mutant species' to which the rules of a safe zone didn't apply for whatever reason. Well, I had two 'mutant species' monsters under my command, so even if that was a real thing - and, hah, it was not - I wouldn't have had any problems.

I rubbed my hands. Epic puns? My campaign would be an epic slaughter.

~~~~~

"Area secured. Commander Anastasiya, your orders?"

Anastasiya, despite orders from her superiors not to enter the dungeon until the heroine from the otherworld would return, had made to do exactly that. Technically she did as commanded since the heroine had returned, but just after entering the safe zone, or "safe zone" rather, she had disappeared again.

"Stay inside the safe zone. With the provisions we managed to save, we should be able to survive at least two days. By then the fire will have died out and I doubt the wyvern will stay around that long. We'll retreat to the next-closest village and requisition some horses to replace the ones that bolted on us."

(This is a disaster! Why does a small-time squad like us have to protect one of these so-called heroes? Why does everyone put so much faith in them!? They just started showing up 50 years ago and nothing's been the same since. With the country on the brink of war with-)

*KABOOM*!!!

An explosion rocked the place, making the five soldiers scramble into positions. Bags of snow had been piled up as a small barrier, behind which they lined up to have a defensive view down the two corridors connecting to the safe zone room. The explosion sound came from the left corridor.

"Be ready to fire! Take aim!"

A cloud of smoke started wafting down the corridor, then a strange sound of a thousand tiny feet scratching on stone came closer. From both corridors.

There were rats. Easily over 300 hundred of them.

~~~~~

"Rat swarm deployed! Go, ratties, eat your fill!"

We watched as the screen filled with a sea of green, making it hard to discern where one ally symbol ended and the next began. The red invader symbols stayed in place momentarily, then we saw on the camera view that they started retaliating.

"Oh, fire spells? They were better prepared than expected, Czara."

"I think those are actually Molotov cocktails."

"They're... cocktails?"

"Nah, they're just called that. Basically a breakable glass bottle full of flammable liquid. You put an alcohol-soaked tissue or cloth into it, light it on fire, and throw. The bottle breaks, spreading the flammable liquid all over the place."

Small gaps in the sea of green opened up, and the rats were smart enough to keep those gaps. On the video feed we confirmed they were actively evading the fire and otherwise fearlessly marching, homing in on the enemies.

"...Maybe this was a little overkill."

I tapped on the screen to open the Monster section, rechecking the price. One group of 10 rats cost 1DP, so our DP counter was currently at 877. There weren't quite 300 rats in truth, I just made them jump at random intervals so they looked like more than there actually were. In any case, the soldiers were now properly panicking. I would too if faced with over 250 rats out for my blood.

The scene was gruesome, a little like what I saw just before I died. The rats mercilessly jumped and gnawed at the soldiers, who desperately tried to get them off. Their bayonet knives were detached and they wildly swung them around, getting many of the rats cut - and some even sliced in half - but that didn't help them much because ultimately there were just far too many for five people to fight off, no matter their skill.

~~~~~

"AAAARGGGGHHHH!!! GET THEM OFF ME!!!"

Gregor was flailing, bent down under the sheer weight of rats. Neither he nor the others knew where this giant mischief of rats came from, but the situation was how it was. In a word, horrible. The multitude of painful bites tore at his willpower, and eventually he couldn't do anything but fall to the ground. He was as good as dead already. Nobody was screaming anymore as they were all getting eaten alive. At least until...

"Verminbane!"

A feminine voice came from nowhere, and suddenly all the rats had stilled. He dared not look up for a few moments, thinking his dying mind was playing tricks on him, but eventually he got the courage to look up. Indeed, all the rats were dead but, unfortunately, so were his compatriots.

Before him stood a mature-looking woman wrapped in an ethereal glow. His immediate reaction was to prostrate himself before her, for she was as perfect as a goddess in his hour of need. Without a doubt he knew she was the one who'd saved him. But then tears ran down his face as the realisation kicked in - everyone but him was dead. He would have to report on this. The dungeon was infested, possibly forsaken even.

"Go, oh soldier of Smirnov. Your people need thee."

He didn't say anything, he just grabbed what he could and ran towards the exit. The laughter he heard was surely just an illusion.

~~~~~

"Three corpses get."

I collected the dead bodies for a total of 350DP, more than making back the amount spent on the ratvalanche's rats that had actually died. The rest were obviously just playing dead after hearing the code phrase 'Verminbane', which I doubted was even a real spell.

"Three corpses? Aren't there four- oh, one of them is still alive, Czara."

"Mhm, based on video footage that should be the commander. She's tough, tougher than I expected even. Hmhm, now what to do with her?"

I changed Anastelle's tag to stop her [Glow] spell and grab the woman. We could collect the stuff they left behind once she was pulled far enough away. My guess was that corpses were ownerless and thus always free to absorb, but items would belong to someone unless 'left behind'; otherwise a dungeon could just 'collect' equipment off of a person at the drop of a hat. Video game balance? Video game balance.

"Hey hey, Czara, we should make a prison for her or she'll probably try to run away."

I nodded.

"Well, we got some nice juicy DP out of this, so I think we can make a small prison complex on Floor 2 for this."

We got to work on this project, but first...

"Let's grab their stuff first. Collect this, and this, and aaaaall of this. Also, rats, you can go on Floor 2 and bask in the sun. I'll give you all some cheese."

The rats all woke up at once and jumped in joy at the news. Cheese tasted so much better than sweaty wool and skin, after all.