The king entered the dungeon a couple of seconds before the timer reached zero.

  It looked completely exotic and alien, much more than any other animal Jacob had seen. The head of it looked like a deer with a large rack of antlers that looked to be made of fossilized wood. Its neck was long like a giraffe but had the flexibility of a snake. Much of it was covered in dirt, stones, and moss that made it look like an ancient idol or statue that had come to life. Underneath it all was silver and azure fur and scales that stuck out sometimes on its six legs.

  The aura from it was massive, almost divine, yet it felt rusted. Like the king monster was a god slowly dying to old age. The aura was profound enough to cause ripples in the world that he could feel.

  After the third wave he had felt a rhythmic beat in his soul. He understood what this was, as it was one of the few things from the game that had lore about it. At least, one of the few lore tidbits that he remembered. It was a visual and auditory cue to signal the approaching boss, though it was much more intense than he expected.

  As the beast king entered the dungeon, everything began to shake. Jacob looked around in confusion before turning back to the boss. Underneath its feet, silver grass started to grow out of the hard stone and spread like a plague. Jacob’s eyes narrowed as he realized the type of monster that he was dealing with.

  Domain-type monsters were rare and difficult monsters to deal with as they could literally rip up parts of the dungeon and turn it into their own territory. They weren’t the worst, but they were close. The domains frequently had buffs and debuffs for allies and enemies respectively, but the worst part of it was that it interfered with collecting soul points.

  Soul points could only be collected if the animals or entities died on dungeon territory. Normally, that wouldn’t be an issue. Except in cases like this.

  With the boss there were seven other magic beasts, all strong and powerful with different types of magic. Unlike in the past where the animals with their different abilities and attributes were relatively random, these monsters seemed to be intentionally picked. Though perhaps Jacob was seeing something that wasn’t there.

  He looked through them and most of them weren’t ones that he was worried about. Whether the magic beasts were intentionally selected or not, most of them weren’t particularly good for the dungeon. There were two earth magic users, but since he had replaced most of his dungeon with air and empty chasms, there wasn’t much earth magic could do.

  There was a single bird that had stereotypical wind magic. He was curious how the boss would use the only flying monster when they reached the first massive abyss. Would it use the bird to scout ahead and put it at risk? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure how he was going to whittle down the boss or its other minions either.

  He waited and watched, keeping his dungeon fairy and small army at the ready. The invaders were slow, staying within the conquered territory where they had the advantage. It took them much longer than he wanted for them to finally reach the first chasm.

  It was right when the boss found out that there was a massive hole between them and their goal and paused. The king-level monster was clearly intelligent and seemed to be trying to come up with a plan to get across. While it was intelligent, it seemed to struggle with coming up with a plan to get across.

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  It tried using earth magic to get across, but every bridge they made broke before it reached close to the middle of the chasm. The king used its magic, which looked to be a variant of plant magic, to create a bridge, but it was only slightly stronger than dungeon stone. It became far too fragile before it reached any of the tunnels across the pit.

  The invaders tried to combine their other magics, like ice magic, with the earth magic and strange plant magic to make the bridge but any improvements were minor. Their attack on the dungeon had already been thwarted, but Jacob didn’t gain much of an advantage.

  He couldn’t really attack them anymore than they could attack him. If he sent his dungeon fairy there, it would be completely destroyed. Even at full health, it wouldn’t stand a chance. He didn’t have long range minions either. This was a stalemate, and Jacob had no idea who gained the most from a battle of attrition.

  He had to be patient. They were the ones attacking, not him. He just needed for the beasts to make a mistake, and take advantage of it.

  The bird was sent down into the chasm to reveal the depth and what was at the bottom. The king looked down at the revealed depth and the flat floor at the bottom, seeming to think to itself. It then issued a silent command to the earth magic beasts to begin trying to carve a path to the bottom.

  The sheer cliff was perilous though, and stronger magic beasts tended to become much larger than their weaker kin. None of these animals were engineers and could only slowly find the right shape to make the footholds. Just for the two animals with earth it was dangerous, and it didn’t require much luck for one of them to fall down.

  The earth magic beast was a lot like a crab, covered in a thick shell made of earth that glittered with slowly growing gemstones. It fell the distance of a four or five floor building and hit the ground so hard it formed a small crater.

  The magic beast had obviously high defenses and managed to endure the impact better than expected. However, it was still injured from it, but how injured it was didn’t matter to Jacob.

  He had thought hard about how to handle this fifth and somewhat final wave. While he did have ants, the bear, and the deer; in a straight fight he would lose. He couldn’t use traps and natural defenses weren’t nearly as viable as they were before. The chasm would slow down the invaders, but how could he use it to his biggest advantage?

  Seeing the opportunity, he pounced and commanded his dungeon fairy who waited patiently at the bottom of the hole. It attacked the earth magic beast with its slow, weak magic blasts that dealt damage ignoring the hardy shell, while gaining aggro.

  The king monster roared but it couldn’t do anything, because the dungeon fairy was underneath them. The invaders were on an outcropping that created a blindspot as it reached over the edge. None of them could attack directly unless they wanted to destroy their one foothold over the hole and fall down.

  The boss sent out the bird, but that didn’t matter to him. He micromanaged the dungeon fairy and started to attack the bird instead of the earth crustacean. With the distance increasing, the king started to lose control over the bird. And the magic attack from the dungeon fairy made the magic bird aggressively focused on it.

  He led the bird through the dungeon fairy out of the pit and into the tunnels while trying to make it seem like the fairy was trying to continue attacking the crab. This was enough to deceive the king and led the bird into the tunnels on the other side of the hole, where the bear and deer were waiting for it.

  Realizing that it had made a mistake, the king cried out as if to bring the bird back, but it was too late. The bird was cornered and quickly killed.

  The crab had become sluggish from its injuries and the dungeon fairy started to attack it again, leading it to the blindspot. Once it was there and weakened enough, the dungeon fairy then wrapped around it and transported it to the room where he kept the ants.

  The dungeon fairy had gained a lot of injuries and had lost over a quarter of its health, but it didn’t matter.

  Two down, only six more to go.