Infinite Mana - Chapter 210: The City Below (Patreon)

Sieghart remained hidden near the elevated entrance for several minutes, watching the city below while trying to decide exactly what he was supposed to do with a dungeon that had unexpectedly transformed into an underground settlement.

The goblins clearly lived here, but they did not occupy every building or street. Large sections of the ancient city remained dark and abandoned, while inhabited districts appeared clustered around several fortified areas scattered throughout the enormous cavern.

That made the situation slightly easier. He was not looking at one enormous army standing shoulder to shoulder across the chamber. The population was divided into neighborhoods, patrols, work groups, defensive positions, and whatever passed for goblin communities.

Unfortunately, separation did not mean isolation. The streets connected almost everything, watch posts overlooked several major routes, and Sieghart occasionally saw armed groups moving from one district toward another with enough organization to make accidental discovery dangerous.

A noisy battle would probably attract attention very quickly. Fireballs exploding between buildings or Giant Fireballs shaking the cavern would turn one manageable patrol into several hundred angry goblins before Sieghart finished deciding which direction provided the best escape route.

That meant his usual approach of overwhelming whatever stood nearby with an unreasonable amount of mana would be particularly stupid. Infinite Mana could keep him fighting for a long time, but it did not make thousands of weapons harmless.

Sieghart was not here to train the way the young adventurers apparently did either. Waiting inside the upper corridors until isolated goblins wandered far enough from the city sounded safe, controlled, and painfully inefficient. Those teenagers probably used the upper passages because they wanted predictable fights, enough room to retreat, and very little chance of accidentally provoking whatever stronger goblins controlled the settlement below.

Sieghart wanted something different.

This place offered an opportunity to improve skills he had neglected precisely because brute magical output usually solved his problems faster. Sneaking into hostile territory, choosing isolated targets, controlling noise, hiding bodies, and escaping before reinforcements arrived all required different habits.

Ambushing enemies sounded simple until the enemies possessed enough intelligence to communicate. A failed first strike could become an alarm, an alarm could become pursuit, and pursuit through an unfamiliar underground city could become an extremely educational disaster.

That made it useful training.

The population also promised considerably better Experience than waiting for individual goblins to wander through distant hallways. Thousands lived below, and even targeting only armed patrols could provide more fights than Sieghart reasonably needed.

He had no intention of charging through residential streets killing everything that moved. Aside from the obvious problems with that idea, Sieghart had already seen smaller unarmed goblins behaving more like children than dungeon monsters waiting patiently to become Experience.

Armed patrols were another matter. Anyone carrying weapons through controlled territory and reacting aggressively to an intruder represented a much cleaner target, especially if Sieghart could isolate them away from civilians and larger groups.

He continued studying the layout through Magic Vision, memorizing occupied zones, abandoned structures, elevated walkways, and streets narrow enough that pursuing groups might struggle to surround him. The city contained more useful terrain than he initially realized.

Several districts near the outer edge appeared almost deserted. Buildings there had collapsed roofs, broken walls, and streets partially buried beneath centuries of debris, creating countless places where Sieghart could hide or prepare an ambush.

The deeper inhabited areas became progressively denser. Fires burned inside workshops, armed goblins guarded intersections, and several larger buildings appeared to function as barracks judging from the constant movement of weapon-carrying figures entering and leaving them.

Sieghart found himself smiling faintly.

If he handled this correctly, he could spend days here without fighting more enemies at one time than he wanted. The challenge would be making sure nobody realized a predator was systematically removing patrols around the city. That sounded considerably more entertaining than smashing another hundred golems.

While preparing his descent, another question continued bothering him. Everything he had learned about dungeons suggested they created monsters, reconstructed creatures after death, and manipulated matter using enormous concentrations of organized mana. The goblin city did not fit comfortably into that understanding.

Sieghart could not detect any signs of corruption anywhere nearby. There were no red currents moving through the air, no twisted mana patterns inside the surrounding stone, and nothing resembling what he had seen inside the golem dungeon.

Corruption therefore did not explain the unusual sophistication below. That left several possibilities, none of which Sieghart particularly liked.

Perhaps the dungeon had created goblins intelligent enough to organize themselves, construct buildings, raise children, patrol territory, develop tools, and gradually transform an empty underground chamber into something resembling an actual civilization.

That possibility would mean dungeon monsters were capable of becoming far more independent than most humans seemed willing to consider. It would also make the casual practice of repeatedly clearing them considerably more complicated.

There was another explanation. Maybe the dungeon had not created the city at all.

Sieghart looked carefully at the distant architecture again. The oldest buildings appeared far more elaborate than the structures goblins currently maintained, particularly the enormous towers and central fortress-like complex dominating the cavern. Some walls contained carvings far above goblin height. Several streets were wide enough for large wagons or creatures considerably bigger than ordinary goblins, while enormous pillars supported architecture whose proportions did not match the current inhabitants particularly well.

What if the city already existed? What if the dungeon appeared inside an abandoned settlement? That raised considerably more troublesome possibilities.

Dungeons might not simply create environments from nothing. They might take over existing places, alter them, populate them with monsters, and gradually weave dungeon mana through structures that originally belonged to someone else.

If that happened here, what had this place been before the goblins arrived? An underground human city seemed unlikely this deep beneath the earth, although Sieghart had already encountered enough impossible magic to avoid ruling out anything solely because the architecture looked inconvenient.

Another species could have built it. The civilization might have disappeared centuries before the dungeon formed. Or perhaps whatever happened to the original inhabitants was directly connected to the dungeon appearing here in the first place.

That possibility bothered him most.

Sieghart had assumed dungeons appeared and monsters came afterward. If some dungeons instead formed around destroyed settlements, battlefields, magical disasters, or places saturated by something specific, then their locations might not be random at all. The Lost Lands immediately returned to his thoughts.

If ruined cities, dead civilizations, or old magical catastrophes could become dungeons, then abandoned territories beyond human control might contain far more unusual examples than anything surviving inside the protected regions.

Sieghart forced himself to stop there.

He had already spent enough time standing above one mystery while mentally planning expeditions toward five others. The underground city directly below him deserved attention before he started imagining what might exist hundreds of kilometers away. He adjusted Phantom Image.

Rather than maintaining his usual fifteen-year-old appearance, Sieghart bent the illusion around his body until colors from the surrounding stone passed across his outline. His coat, hair, skin, and equipment gradually became transparent.

The effect was not true invisibility. Anyone with strong ocular magic or excellent mana perception could probably notice the distorted layer surrounding him, and maintaining the illusion required continuous concentration whenever his surroundings changed. Against ordinary eyes, however, Sieghart became exceedingly difficult to notice.

He descended from the elevated entrance using a narrow staircase carved along the cavern wall. Each step carried him farther beneath the upper corridors while the lights and noise of the city became gradually clearer.

The smell reached him next.

Smoke.

Cooked food.

Animals.

Unwashed bodies.

Metalworking.

Waste.

Enough different scents mixed together that Enhanced Smell would probably become more punishment than advantage if Sieghart activated it carelessly inside the populated districts.

He wisely left it alone.

The staircase eventually connected to an abandoned street along the outer edge of the city. Broken stone houses stood on either side, their doors missing and roofs partially collapsed beneath centuries of neglect.

Sieghart stepped into the shadows even while invisible, because relying entirely on one spell was exactly how people eventually discovered that their opponent possessed a counter. Voices echoed somewhere ahead. He stopped.

They were rough, quick, and completely incomprehensible. Sieghart had no magical translation currently active for goblin speech, though the cadence alone sounded far more conversational than animalistic.

Several sets of footsteps followed. Sieghart moved behind the remains of a stone wall and waited. Five goblins entered the street. Each one carried an actual weapon. Two possessed short spears, another carried a curved sword with several chips along the edge, and the remaining pair held compact bows already strung for immediate use.

Their equipment was crude compared with human craftsmanship, but nothing about the group looked improvised. Leather armor protected their torsos, small metal plates covered vulnerable joints, and each carried pouches attached to simple belts.

A patrol.

Exactly what Sieghart needed.

He watched them move.

The spear users walked ahead while the swordsman remained slightly behind them. The archers maintained several meters of separation, positioned far enough back that an enemy attacking the front line would not immediately reach them.

That formation alone proved these goblins understood basic combat tactics. Sieghart became considerably more interested. One spear user stopped near an intersection and inspected the surrounding buildings before making a short gesture. The other goblins responded immediately, splitting their attention toward different approaches rather than bunching together.

They were alert too.

Good.

Sieghart wanted practice against enemies capable of noticing mistakes.

He remained motionless while the patrol passed within several meters of his position. None reacted to Phantom Image, suggesting ordinary goblins could not automatically detect the mana distortion surrounding his invisible body.

Sieghart considered simply following them until they entered an isolated section before attacking.

Then he noticed something else. Their equipment. More specifically, their arrangement. Patrols probably followed established routes. If one group disappeared, someone might eventually notice. If an unfamiliar intruder appeared, alarms would spread. But the goblins themselves moved freely through the city.

Sieghart looked at the swordsman’s height. Then at the armor. Then at the goblin’s face. Phantom Image could alter apparent proportions, clothing, skin color, facial structure, and even species well enough to deceive ordinary sight if Sieghart understood what he needed to reproduce.

A slow smile appeared on his invisible face. The patrol continued down the street without noticing him. Sieghart followed silently from behind. He had just gotten a much better idea.