Chapter 1321
It wasn’t just the mana became thicker, but the farther we went the enemies began to decrease. Normally, most mana creatures would be attracted to the place with the highest concentrations of mana. This is part of the reason mana springs were considered too dangerous. They had many advantages, but they also drew the eyes of those that might cause danger. I had been lucky that we had a dungeon built right on top of the mana spring, eating off of it and preventing it from showing up clearly.
That changed recently, and I had heard that the wildlife had started getting bolder. However, this was happening concurrently with the Osterians reclaiming the forest and slaughtering anything that stood in their way. It was hard to say if that wasn’t causing the wildlife to act up too. In time, I would need to take care of the remaining dungeons and finally reclaim the wilderness for Aberis, but there were always more important things to do. Even Lord Reign, a clear enemy, was left alone for months, although I didn’t know how much autonomy he had left after Aberis was removed.
Anyway, the fact that the undead avoided a mana-rich area suggested there was something that kept them from doing so. Just as the Osterians were holding back the wilderness, the boss of this area had to be keeping back the undead. This wasn’t a dungeon, so it wasn’t like the undead were all under the control of a boss. They were free-roaming creatures with their own goals. Like creatures traveled together, sure, but I was certain this boss wouldn’t hesitate to destroy any undead that got out of line. Ultimately, that was the only command structure down here.
After walking for some time, we came to a mysterious set of large double doors. The walls were still that of tunnels and dirt, not some brick hallway, which made such a room especially suspicious.
“The boss must be behind this door,” I concluded. “It likely knows we’re coming.”
“I’m ready.” Alysia declared.
“I’m not!” Pait growled.
I ignored Pait and then moved up to the door. It had a large handle on it and seemed to open out, not into the room. I found the doors difficult to budge, so I put all of my strength into it. With a great heave, the door started to make a grinding sound. Ever so slowly it started to open, scraping across the ground loudly as it went. Even if the boss didn’t have some way of detecting me coming, he’d know I was here after listening to such a loud scraping noise.
Once the door had opened a large enough crack, I stepped through into the room beyond, only to find thousands of eyes staring back at me. I was standing in a room filled from head to toe with zombies. Before this, I had encounter packs of 3-5. The largest was ten. Yet, crowded in this small space the size of a boss room was a literal horde of undead, and they were all staring right at me.
The problem wasn’t being able to kill all of the zombies. The problem was that I was here to tame the dungeon boss. I was certain they were in this room, but when I used Detect Undead it detected only one massive signature. That was right, all of the undead were considered the same creature! A zombie horde moving with one mind. So much for the other zombies remaining distant from the boss. This fight was going to be tricky!