There were five seconds left till the third wave came. It had only been a few minutes since the dungeon fairy had finished the final renovation, compacting the stone of his boulder. The weight of it had become too much more than the stone underneath to handle, causing it to crack. That didn’t matter though, it only needed to hold out for a little longer.

  Jacob watched the enemies from the entrance and realized that his unorthodox plan was, in reality, one of the few solutions to this problem. While there were many different and novel strategies that a dungeon lord could use, the same applied to his enemies in this game-turned-reality.

  While stronger magic beasts in the game were destructive, they were ultimately just AI. Here, these creatures showed themselves to be much more creative and unpredictable with their powers. The only way forward for him was to become more creative and resourceful.

  The timer reached zero, and whatever barrier had been preventing the animals and Overworld monsters from attacking had disappeared. There were ordinary animals, the weaker magic beasts, and then there were the generals. Despite having similarly exotic appearances to the rest of the invaders, these more elite monsters had much stronger auras of mana.

  They also behaved differently. There wasn’t any spark of sentience in their eyes, but these superior magic beasts observed the foreign environment they were in and began to create primitive strategies. All of them cried in the sounds of their representative species, and all other animals were suppressed and organized.

  They marched in a simple army down the only path they had. Sitting in front of the entrance was a large bowl that they struggled to go down for a little bit, but none of the creatures were injured from this. The flying creatures didn’t venture out like they normally did, instead staying close.

  This wasn’t anything like the past waves or the game. Still, it didn’t matter. They had only one path to go, and the walls of this tunnel were thickened to be more hardy. While they could dig through his walls, especially if they had decent earth magic, dungeon stone was resistant to magic. It would take them too long, and with there being no barriers or defenses blocking them, there was no reason.

  Unfortunately for him, one of the generals did have earth magic. It occasionally sensed the abandoned, sealed off parts of the dungeon, but it only bothered to dig shallow holes before giving up. What bothered him was that the other generals were holding that specific strong magic beast in check.

  Whenever it tried to dig, the army would stop its march and the other generals would growl. If the earth magic general didn’t stop, then they would nip or claw it and force it to continue to push into the dungeon.

  This level of thinking and strategy both showed the increase in intelligence and the obvious flaws in thinking. If he was an adventurer going through this dungeon…well, first it would be obvious that a smooth tunnel with no branching tunnels was a trap. Beyond that though, if someone sensed a cavity behind stone, he would want to know what is there.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Creating alternative paths in a place where there is only one way forward was also an obvious strategy. These animals didn’t think like him though. All that they were there for was to find the dungeon core and destroy it. Then return to the surface and live out their lives like animals in princess stories, no doubt.

  Jacob waited until he was sure that no other animals were coming before he gave the command to the dungeon fairy. The dungeon fairy then started to carve away the boulder of reinforced stone at the end of this long tunnel. It didn’t need to remove much before the large, dark rock ripped itself out.

  Immediately there was a problem. The large chunks that still cling to it caused it to begin jumping as it tumbled down the tunnel. This caused craters and caused the dungeon to shake and rumble.

  The invaders reacted to the sound and knew that this was connected to some sort of danger. However, none of them knew how to deal with it. The grip the generals had on the minds of the rest of this army weakened and panic consumed them all.

  All magic beasts used their powers to create primitive walls and defenses in anticipation for what the earth-shaking threat was. They didn’t need to wait long.

  While the boulder lost energy by smashing into the sides of the large tunnel, it was still a big-ass boulder. It kept tumbling and eventually it stopped jumping and started to gain momentum.

  When the animals saw the massive dark stone sphere rushing towards them, none of them had any means to prevent it. Wind magic was used to try to slow it down, earth magic was used to try and control it, and the other types of magic were even more useless.

  Not even the generals with their stronger magic spells and excess mana could do anything against sheer brute force.

  It took only a moment for the boulder to crash through the hastily made defenses and pulverize the invaders. All that was left of most of them were crushed flesh and blood stains mixed with bone fragments.

  Crashing into the animals caused the boulder to begin jumping again before crashing into the bowl he made at the end of the tunnel to catch it. It buried itself into the stone and almost blocked off the entrance to the dungeon. Thankfully he had the foresight to keep the dungeon entrance tunnel as wide as possible to avoid blockage.

  Despite what he expected, not all the animals were killed. Some managed to survive by being in a lucky spot, others relied on their unique anatomies to survive. None of them survived whole though. Most of the survivors were barely clinging on to life or were crippled from the attack.

  None of them could protect themselves or flee when the dungeon fairy appeared and started to execute them. Jacob hadn’t completely changed since becoming a dungeon lord, the misery of the survivors was hard for him to stomach. Though he admitted it was hypocritical when he had used spike traps in the past.

  Once all of them were dead, he waited to see how many soul points he would get from this. Since the path to the dungeon core hadn’t been totally obstructed by the boulder, he should be getting the maximum amount.

  He had gained almost 200 soul points from this wave.