The Hundred Reigns 262: King of Spiders (4) (Patreon)

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Simon had seen less peaceful Dungeons.

True to their intel, the upper levels of the Royal Mausoleum were almost entirely safe. The gardens surrounding the building housed the tombs and funerary urns of House Vepar’s lesser scions, alongside ponds full of intangible spirit fish, shrines, and majestic, pink-leaved trees with white fruits surrounded by a pleasant smell. 

Too pleasant, in fact.

Mind-affecting effect negated by Indomitable Crown.

“Don’t approach the lotus trees,” Renal warned the group. “They’re good for clearing the mind… until one forgets themselves. Their fruits dull the will of those who consume them with mindless pleasure.”

“They make for excellent alcohol when properly brewed,” Voltobauta mused.

“Interesting,” Simon replied as he stored a few of them in his Inventory for further study. “I take it that a demiplane connected to the Worldsoul provides them with plenty of nourishment?”

“They probably help stabilize the structure somehow.” Voltobauta stared at the mists surrounding the Mausoleum with genuine fascination. “I bet the Worldsoul would have already consumed this place without these trees serving as a bulwark.”

“I wonder who built this place,” Renal said. “Fablan’s former imperial family is the oldest royal lineage in the world. It goes all the way back to the Noble Heroes’ era.”

“I don’t think anybody built this demiplane,” Voltobauta replied. “Human hands raised the Mausoleum, but I couldn't detect any foundational spell in the structure besides the gates. I think it simply arose naturally from all the accumulated faith focused on this place.” 

This aroused Simon’s curiosity. “You spoke of a plane of the Light called the Empyrean earlier. How does it connect to the Worldsoul?”

“The same way the Abyss connects to Hell, I think.” 

“You think? You aren’t sure?” Simon raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been investigating the Worldsoul for a while, and many in the Church of the Light believe it and the Mana Goddess are emanations of the Light, but this is the first time I’ve heard of any ‘Empyrean.’”

“It’s because I came up with the name.” Voltobauta chuckled at Simon’s confusion. “The one who first discovered it came up with names like ‘Memento’ or ‘Akashic Records,’ after himself. Empyrean sounded better to me. You know, Abyss being the deepest place, Empyrean the highest…”

“Akashic Records…” The name seemed to jog Renal’s memory. “You speak of the guru Akasha.”

“Who?” Simon inquired. 

“A Necromancer from Fablan who was active during the Doom’s aftermath. He founded a sect in the wake of its devastation, saying that one could escape the reincarnation cycle and achieve enlightenment by freeing oneself of desire, attachment, and even their sense of self.” Renal sounded rather dismissive. “I heard he meditated himself to death.”

“He self-mummified and eventually abandoned the material plane,” Voltobauta corrected him. “Have some respect.”

“Same thing. Guy checked out on life because he couldn’t be bothered to walk.”

“I’ve never heard of him before,” Simon admitted.

“His followers are a fringe group in Fablan today,” Renal replied with a shrug. “A handful of monks meditating in monasteries in the mountains and keeping to themselves. Your Church of the Light and eidolon cults are far more popular.”

“Akasha regularly delved into the Worldsoul with a Tier IX variant of the Astral Projection spell,” Voltobauta explained. “He went deeper than anybody before and swore it was connected to another plane. He likened the Worldsoul to an apple, a growing fruit connected to something much bigger by a stem, which he believed to be the Worldtree.”

“A plane of the Light,” Simon muttered. The more he considered the idea, the more it sounded plausible to him. Duchar had voiced his belief that the Light was a cosmic force equal to the Dark beyond human comprehension in past reigns, so there was no way it would be limited to Brimir alone. “Dragons believe their progenitor came from the stars, and an elf friend of mine could also contact cosmic consciousnesses with Astromancy. He called them ‘a radiance that answers.’”

Voltobauta squinted at him. “An elf friend?”

“An acquaintance,” Simon corrected himself upon realizing he might have made a mistake. He missed Anaximander’s inquisitive spirit. “You’ll find no weakness to exploit there.”

“Only a lonely man would consider a friend a weakness,” Voltobauta replied before changing the subject. “Anyway, Summoners often call things from deep space. Squishy critters unlike anything on Brimir.”

“There might be more to the Light than this planet alone,” Simon guessed. Abraxas too had to come from somewhere. “Still, I wonder why this isn’t more well-known, especially among the Church of the Light. I would have expected them to advertise the fact that their deity is greater than the Worldsoul more aggressively.”

“Haven’t you heard of willful ignorance, oh great and mighty Overlord?” Voltobauta chuckled to himself. “Think about it. The world’s first religions were either Mana Goddess or eidolon cults, and those focused on studying the Worldsoul first and foremost. Pharis’ own holy texts never mention the Empyrean, because she likely never learned about it.”

“And the one who came up with the concept in the first place is a foreign heretic,” Simon realized. Incorporating Akasha’s beliefs meant that Pharis’ teachings were either incomplete or incorrect. It introduced a worrying contradiction. “And eidolons are formed from the wishes and beliefs of people. They can’t conceptualize what their worshipers didn’t come up with first.” 

“No one has actually managed to return from the place to tell what it’s like, either,” Voltobauta added. “We know the Abyss exists because demons and other critters told Diabolists about it, and a handful of fools survived a dive, but I’ve never heard of anybody calling forth a creature from the Empyrean before… if it’s inhabited at all. Akasha never came back from his last astral trip either.” 

“You’re rather knowledgeable about religion and cosmology for a faithless pirate,” Renal mused. 

“I do take my Necromancer role seriously.” Voltobauta glared at the Mausoleum’s doors. “Which is why I find this whole mission demeaning.”

“Quiet,” Silk replied, as she and Chrom Cruak finished disabling two tombstone-golem guards protecting the Mausoleum’s entrance. She then pushed the doors open without issue, and no trap triggered to intercept them. “Done.”

Simon had to admit having a Rogue and an Archeologist on the same team considerably eased Dungeon exploration. Those two had disabled all the traps and alarms meant to inform authorities of a break-in without any issue.

The Mausoleum housed multiple chambers filled with urns of gold, silver, and porcelain arrayed on marble shelves; Simon assumed they held the ashes of previous members of House Vepar, since the Fablanese usually burned their dead. Enchanted bowls of ghost incense filled the air with a sweet smell. 

“Such spiritual power,” Voltobauta noted with a note of respect in his voice. He waved his hand at one of the urns, and a regal, well-dressed ghost in a kimono manifested over it. “Anyone with minor psychic talents could contact past emperors here even without my Speaker of the Dead Perk.”

“Who cares about the ashes?” Renal asked, his gaze lingering on the gold surrounding the urn, much to the Necromancer’s disgust. “Look at all the loot.”

Various offerings were stacked on shrines spread across the building. Ornate suits of armor that once belonged to fallen emperors, curved swords on their pedestals, jade statues, even ornate scrolls… the wealth of a dynasty laid bare before them. 

One treasure put all the others to shame, however: a smooth, ornate blue orb the size of a human skull sitting on a pedestal. The sheer quantity of mana held within it would rival a manatree’s root. 

“Behold the Orb of Lungwang, one of Fablan’s three great treasures,” Renal said with a whistle. “They say it was shaped from a many-headed dragon’s heart.”

“It’s a dracolith?” Simon glanced at the pedestal. His Dark Visionary senses detected the faint trace of miasma coming from the depths below its pedestal. “It appears to serve as a seal on the Dungeon below.”

“Ingenious,” Voltobauta mused. “Dracoliths never let go of anything they capture. It must absorb all the excessive miasma and prevent it from seeping into the upper mausoleum.” 

“We’ll have to remove this lock to access the Dungeon then.” Simon glanced at Silk. “Is it safe to touch?”

“Should be.” Silk grabbed her dagger before chiding Renal as he greedily eyed one of the curved swords. “We can wait after we’ve claimed the true prize below to rob this place blind. The treasures will weigh us down.”

“I can store a handful of items in my Inventory easily enough,” Simon retorted as he touched the orb. It was warm to the touch, like a volcanic stone, and immediately reacted to his Devour Crestone Perk.

Consume this dracolith? 

Simon already had an inkling that he could consume dracoliths like Crestones, and this confirmed his suspicions. However, while he was vaguely tempted for a second, the utter lack of information about what would happen stopped him. He couldn’t afford to waste his single remaining slot on random chance. 

The Ur-Dragon’s dracolith might be buried in Scaland too, Simon thought as he stored the orb in his Inventory for future study. If I had to choose, I would rather feast on a god’s heart. 

Removing the dracolith immediately caused the pedestal and the slab it stood on to move to the side with a grinding noise, revealing a spiraling, heavily damaged staircase leading down a dark chasm in the earth. The miasma pouring out of it reminded Simon of the secret chamber in the kish palace, and whispers soon reached his ears; a voice akin to a diseased goat’s rattle.

“Come unto me, and life undying know…” It promised. “Come bind thy blood to my hunger… let us feast on souls…”

“You hear it too,” Chrom Cruak told Simon. Being a potential host meant he could hear Hashtur’s empty promises. “The Ram’s call.”

“It will go unanswered,” Simon replied as he fearlessly stepped down into the depths. “Renal, Silk, put on your anti-Instadeath rings.”

Simon used Darkflight to descend into the chasm rather than walk down the damaged stairs. Voltobauta and Chrom Cruak followed after him the same way, the former with his vampiric flight, the latter by summoning eight, long metal planks covered in ancient runes that attached themselves to his back like flapping wings. Silk and Renal simply crawled down the walls like spiders. Simon heard the sound of running water growing stronger the deeper they went, alongside the distant clash of blades. 

It didn’t take him long to see that the stairway ended up inside a vast cavern housing a lake flowing further down in toxic cascades. The corpse of a giant carp leaked poison into the waters, tainting them until they became purple. 

Two sides were fighting on the shores. On the left were dozens of fiendish abominations, from slimes with faces to bloated demonic boars and spiders the size of small elephants; on the right were screaming ghosts, desiccated corpses in armor, and masked ninjas that resembled living shadows wearing faceless, porcelain masks. Two very different kinds of evils were battling for supremacy over their prison. 

Simon interrupted the battle by cancelling his Darkflight and letting himself drop to the well’s bottom, his armored feet crashing onto the battleground in between the two groups. The impact blew dust in all directions and caused a brief end to the fighting. 

His Dreadful Aura flared in oppressive waves of malevolence that dwarfed all of these undead and demons combined, dispelling some of the shadow ninjas, killing a handful of the living, and striking terror into the survivors. Both sides raised their weapons at him, their enmity briefly forgotten in the wake of a new and deadly interloper. 

Simon didn’t utter a word in response. He simply glared at the survivors, his hellfire eyes lighting up the cavern like twin stars in the dark. 

They all bowed without a word. 

“Wise choice,” Simon said as his allies rejoined him. “Welcome to the Overlord’s army.”

—-------------

Simon claimed control of the Dungeon without crushing a single skull.

The Ram’s crystal proved so potent that its miasma not only gave rise to many lesser fiends, but also corrupted unquiet spirits and woke them up as undead horrors. After realizing neither could escape, the two groups had warred over their limited territory for the better part of several centuries. 

The caverns would have been a challenging environment for a level 50 party, but all the locals could instinctively feel Simon could wipe them out without effort and surrendered to him without a fight. Unquestionable Ruler bent most of the Mausoleum’s denizens to the Lord of Dark’s will and compelled them to deliver tributes to him. Jewelry, blackened scrolls holding baleful knowledge, even demonic masks said to compel shadows to obey the wielder… it would take Simon days to study all of today’s gifts. If only all of his enemies would behave so kindly. 

However, it bothered Simon that Viceroy Koryu never brought these treasures and weapons to Endymion back when the empire found itself confronting existential threats like Helel’s army and the White Unicorn’s coalition. He couldn’t tell whether they would have made any difference or not, but their absence raised his suspicions. 

The Monk isn’t entirely loyal to Endymion. Was he holding out on weapons and other resources to manage the goblinoid threat to the north, or was he biding his time in case Fablan could reclaim its independence in the future? I don’t think he’s a foe at least; just not a friend. 

After entrusting Silk and Renal to loot the upper levels and allowing Voltobauta to put some of the most unruly undead to rest, Simon and Chrom Cruak focused on securing the Ram. They found it in the Dungeon’s deepest level. The Zodiac Fiend’s silvery crystal was locked in a shrine protected by many interwoven layers of paper talismans whose symbols shone with power. It astonished Simon that this ancient seal had withstood the test of time.  

“A deceiver’s smell I sense… mingling with rotten souls,” the voice within whispered hatefully when it sensed Simon and Chrom Cruak approaching it. “Come to mock me again, have you?”

“I am not Mardok,” Simon deigned to reply. “Although I do find a thrall of Helel such as you beneath me.”

“What can I say… I am an easy one to please…” Hasthur the Ram let out a low, sinister cackle. “The souls of the faithful make for the tastiest of meals, when seasoned with betrayal…”

“The Shepherd of Famine’s gullet is never full,” Chrom Cruak noted as he studied the seal. “It hungers for the flesh of the living and the souls of the dead… the latter of which he finds delectable when filled with faith.”

And Helel would never run out of those. Simon guessed a handful of betrayed worshipers was a cheap price to pay to secure a Zodiac Fiend’s loyalty, though he still found it pathetic. “Don’t tell me you intend to share a body with this vermin?”

“I do not exclude it, should its strength prove necessary.” Chrom Cruak brought out a large ankh of gold half the size of his arm. The empty slot in its center and the enchantments woven in its structure reminded Simon of Lotan’s prison. “For now, its energies will fuel my pyramid… let it fly without exhausting precious reserves.”

“I suspected as much.” Simon crossed his arms. “I have held up my end of our bargain.”

“For which I am grateful.” Chrom Cruak’s ankh shone upon approaching the Ram’s silver crystal, which it absorbed alongside the rest of the seal. The symbols on the paper talismans vanished and moved onto the artifact’s surface, while the Zodiac Fiend’s core slotted itself in the center. “Chrom Cruak is not an ingrate. I shall meet your price.”

“You could begin by telling me more about the Genie,” Simon suggested. “Are they as powerful as I’ve been told?”

“Yes… and no,” Chrom Cruak admitted, much to Simon’s surprise. “The Genie remains an eidolon of the Worldsoul. Their wishcraft requires mana they must accumulate over time, and matters of the Dark elude them… when I first sought to return my love to life as she was, I found the request beyond their grasp.”

“Because reviving the dead means turning them into undead?” Simon guessed, with the ancient king nodding. He wondered if a Dark Eidolon Pact would allow it to bypass that limitation… 

“None has uttered a wish since my time, so it should command vast reserves of mana… enough to fulfill many desires.” 

“And where is it now?” Simon asked. He hadn’t bound any eidolon since the Sanctuary, and widening his collection would help greatly; besides sparing him the need to corrupt an old friend every time he needed extra muscle in a fight. 

Although Chrom Cruak’s bandages covered his mouth, Simon could have sworn he saw the outline of a vicious smirk beneath them. “My treacherous kin bound the Genie to a bottle, over which they kept watch… Until one of your predecessors came along on jet black wings, to burn to cinders the lands of my kingdom which had yet to turn to sand.”

“You speak of the Deadlands between Cocagne and Navarre.” Simon scowled angrily. This didn’t bode well. “Gargauth. Gargauth had the bottle.”

“I am told he failed to open the bottle… it slumbers in his hoard to this day.” Chrom Cruak met Simon’s gaze, the same idea having crossed both of their minds. “I can succeed where he failed. My old thrall is still compelled to answer my commands.”

Simon wasn’t particularly eager to entrust such a powerful eidolon to a resentful mummy, but Dark Eidolon Pacts endured through the reigns. He would only need to form a contract once for him to wield the power forever, and the Genie having been sealed for a long time meant Simon could call on them without alerting other powerful factions.

“Gargauth’s hoard is held in a pocket dimension full of dangerous traps and guardians far more terrifying than this place,” Simon said. He still doubted he had the power to delve deep into the Chest of Worlds safely. “I doubt its current owner will let us access it without a fight, either.”

“The so-called dragon queen will be no match for us,” Chrom Cruak rasped. Of course he had done his research. Simon would bet he and Valravn had always plotted to eventually seize the Chest of Worlds from Vouivre. “Her arrogance will beckon her to her doom.”

Simon dismissed the idea. “Vouivre is too important for my plans to dispose of right now.”

“I have waited centuries… I can wait a little longer.” Chrom Cruak glanced at the nearby shadows. “Are you done listening to us?”

“I didn’t wish to interrupt.” Silk appeared out of thin air, as Simon expected her to. He had sensed her eavesdropping on the conversation a while back. “We’ve looted everything of value and are ready to depart, which leaves the question of the new recruits.”

“I can take them to my pyramid.” Chrom Cruak raised his ankh, its baleful glow providing neither warmth nor comfort. “I need workers to restore it.” 

“No.” Simon joined his hands behind his back and met Silk’s gaze. “You, Renal, and Voltobauta are going to line up, and then slaughter them after I add you to my Party.”

Silk immediately tensed up. “No way I’m letting you see my stats.”

“I already know your level, Silk, alongside your current Perks,” Simon replied. “I won’t force you to join my Party, but you’ll be losing out on a lot of experience if you don’t.” 

“Why?” Silk asked suspiciously while Chrom Cruak watched on. “Why would you allow us to gain easy experience?”

“The three of you are nowhere near as strong as I need you to be.” Simon had learned his lesson from his battles in the Sanctuary and against Helel: a single high-level fighter was worth hundreds of low-level ones. “We’ll be confronting tough opponents in the future, and I need stronger allies.”

“You’d be a fool to empower someone you don’t control.”

“Why? Because I would fear you upstaging me?” Simon shrugged his shoulders. “I told you from the start I wanted a partnership. A degree of trust is warranted.”

“Trust is for the fools and the dead,” Silk replied coldly. “I’ll take their lives, but I won’t accept your gift.” 

“Suit yourself.” Her paranoia would cost her again, but Simon would have long lists of targets to provide should she change her mind. “Now hurry. Let’s be done within the hour.”

Silk nodded and vanished into the shadows, with the previously silent Chrom Cruak watching her with a steely gaze. “Valravn once told me… all the boldness went to the other. The two together would make the perfect Rogue.”

Which was likely why Valravn split them up in the first place, Simon thought. He would bring Velvet with him to Rhapta and see if she was as skittish as her sister. I’ve just one last loose end to tie before that trip. 

Louis would soon make his hopefully final move, and Simon would be there to see it.

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