Trash Mountain Dungeon

Fucking greebles, that was all Ed had been able to think for the past week. Greebles are small natural monsters known for their love of mana and incredible ability to squirm their way in just about any place they want to be, they're a nuisance most of the time but they also went by another name, dungeon mites. The reason is two-fold, much like mites they tend to infest anyplace that catches their fancy, and they suck resources from it ravenously, harming a dungeon and the people that depend on them. That is why when the ogre clansmen told him of a greeble stampede making its way through the other side of the mountain he knew that he wouldn't be able to get a good night's rest for a while. Thankfully he had conveniently acquired two new subordinates to help him.

The team's former leader was a boy named Felix, an adventurer and former squire, while the girl was an academy graduate who joined the guild for money. Together with two other friends, an aspiring woodsman and a novice alchemist who both died during the attack, they set out on their path to glory and riches, hoping they could make it with their collective skills and knowledge. Though that didn't work out as well as they had hoped, they lacked the funds to buy their membership with the guild, meaning that they needed to come up with enough coin to get their career started, which is where their intrusion into Nightingale lands begins. What they had done was they had posed as mercenaries in Tulpestadt, the smallest of the three cities under the families' control, and stole a contract for ogre marrow which is a rather niche but useful alchemical ingredient part of the stipulations the ogres had was that the Nightingales would prevent the acquisition and sale of their marrow within the territory, making what they did a crime on multiple levels. When I asked them just what the hell they were thinking, the two of them were less than enthused to answer. But my irritation towards failed poachers had to be put aside, the Greebles were still a problem and still heading for the dungeon.

After some hiking the three of us managed to find the main horde, a host of roughly a couple thousand I'd say, at most four or five individuals, with a confirmed sighting of the king and prince. Normally fighting anything number of things at these numbers would be suicidal, but greebles are one of the weakest creatures there is so with the right preparation it would be no problem. Situated in a small mountain valley, the Greeble host was establishing their ramshackle homes from mud and sticks, already showing signs of building spawning pits and storage spaces. Smart or not the dungeon would have little chance against these numbers, we had to do something about it.

"Woah, woah, wait, have you seen their numbers, are you insane!?"

The downside of having subordinates, thankfully it was just Felix who was complaining.

"Insane or not we don't have a choice, I was assigned to clear out this area and last I check neither of you are in any place to argue, or did you forget just what will happen if you are caught by this land's soldiers?"

"But, but."

"But nothing Felix, you will follow my lead until I've decided you've paid for your crimes, now, what we need to do is figure out a plan to deal with these pests."

From there Liy and I began to swap ideas, and the boy kept silent throughout all of it. Greebles are weak to heat, and easily begin infighting if their leader is killed, if we could take out the king and prince fast enough, Lily and I would be able to use what fire magic we had between the two of us to destroy the rest of the horde, to draw them out we had decided that Felix himself would be the bait, distracting them with a challenge to draw out the leaders, greebles couldn't resist challengers. But for today we rested and prepared, Lily and I swapped notes on past lectures and even a story or two about shared professors before we all turned in for the night, although I was rather curious about Felix's apparent change in attitude, he went from whiny and reluctant, to evasive and strangely paranoid, not that I would blame him though, I wouldn't want to be bait for a horde of thousands either.

The next day we began to set our plan into motion, and just in time as well, the prince was already gathering his war party for some excursion, gathering a couple hundred warrior caste members to make their way toward their target. Hiding on a hill a way outside of the main camp, we watched and waited as Felix slowly walked up to the camp, which is when the plan began to fall apart. Rather than distracting them with a challenge like we had agreed he would, we instead saw him point in our direction.

Fuck, that little traitor sold us out!

"What is he doing, why is he pointing at us, Edward?!"

"Your little shit of a friend there just sold us out, now get ready to run."

She looked on with disbelief, as far as I knew they had known each other for quite a long time, having grown up in the same village, so her shock at her friend's betrayal was understandable.

Sprinting toward us with the war party, Felix approached our position is a confident smirk.

"That's them over there, now keep up your side of the-"

The prince jumped onto his back and stabbed his head and neck several times, brutally killing him despite whatever deal they had worked out. After Felix died, they turned their attention back to us, steadily advancing toward our position. Pinching her out of her shock, I pulled us further up the hill, giving us a better position to fight back. Discarding my promise to avoid using my main magics, I began to rain hell onto them.

[Hellfire]!

Sticking out my hand, a gout of red and green fire sprang from my hand, covering the front row in an infernal fire.

Rocks and other crude projectiles came at us from those that stayed further back, giving me a few cuts and bruises. While incredibly useful [curse of vitality] only really worked against targets that had much in the way of vitality, something small creatures such as Greebles lacked. Joining the effort, Lily began using her magic.

"[Protection from arrows], [force bolt], [wave of irritation]."

Beginner spells, but they would be plenty so long as she could keep them up. As we threw spell after spell at them, I could tell that something else was amiss and received clarity when I was able to stop and see the prince splitting off with a different group of fighters in the direction of the dungeon, the king in the meantime was the one directing the others to attack us. Their numbers were limited yes, but neither of us had the stamina nor magic to deal with thousands of them, so while Lily was desperately throwing her six years of academy training into the encroaching monsters, I used one of my most powerful spells.

"[Pandemonium Breach]!"

At the middle point between us and the king opened up a sickly yellow eye, it looked around with a quick and cruel look as it searched for some unseen target before it came to a stop, and it opened its eye to reveal a large gaping mouth. From it came out packs of hellhounds, swarms of infernal bats, and a menagerie of indescribable beasts, leading them was my familiar Hestra, a mid-rank demon,

"My oh my Ed, you hardly ever summon me anymore, I was beginning to think you didn't like me anymore."

As a succubus, every part of her form was molded to attract the gazes and desires of men and women alike and was the result of a much younger and more stupid and naive Edward being egged on by his peers to summon the infamous sex demons for a dorm party. Safe to say everyone involved spent months trying to cover things up while both the many men and women in the party researched how to undo having had sex with a demon. Not his proudest moment, but the hush money more than made up for the near execution by the local church.

"Hmm, I'm excited to be in the mortal realm again, and to see you, but did you need me to deal with these rats, you could deal with them perfectly by yourself and I am far above stepping on rats."

"I can explain later, for now, I need you to lead your forces against the greebles while I battle the king."

"I expect something after this for all the trouble, and maybe the girl there could join us perhaps."

Lily quickly went from stark white to a deep crimson, unsure if she should be screaming heresy or her undying love for Hestra.

"Stop teasing my subordinate, you have a battle to help with."

Hestra gave a little huff, something that could make others swoon for her but after years of dealing with her, it was nothing he hadn't already gotten used to.

As the infernal horde finished pouring from the rift the two sides began to fight each other once again, hellhounds gobbling up greebles, the various avians pecking and burrowing into eye sockets and bellies, the few low-ranking demons under her control throwing bolts of flame at the slingers in the back. Deciding to at least have a small amount of fun, Hestra jumped over the main battle line and quickly summoned her weapon, a great sword forged from infernal iron, cutting a dozen in half in one direction, and skewering another dozen in another direction.

While they were busy with the main bulk, I hopped and evaded my way to the king, using my infernals as a distraction for those who stayed behind with him. Greeble kings were slightly different than their lesser subjects, they were larger, faster, and smarter, being capable of some instinctive magic which when combined with the other factors made them very dangerous, almost more than ogres. But the problem was that if they were alone, and greebles are never alone, from the camp came more defenders ready to fight me.

I ripped one off my back as I quickly avoided the king's hammer, throwing the one in my hand into the crowds as I used my weapon to cleave another. Reaching for the king, I placed the [curse of immolation] on his forehead before getting hit square in the chest by his hammer, getting thrown a small distance before one of the hounds dragged me back to Hestra. Shakily getting to my feet, I was still trying to recover my breath as I activated the command phrase for my curse.

"Burn!"

The king's head exploded into a gory mess as more fire was thrown out from what used to be his head, causing the other Greebles to begin to panic and bump into one another. This bumbling rapidly turned into a violent brawl as both helbeasts and greebles fought anything they could get their hands on before moving to the next if they were still alive. But even with the king dead the problem was still there, the greebles would inevitably make a new king if we couldn't keep the chaos going, and that strike had knocked the wind out of my sails, Lily was no better either having been forced to use a discarded club to defend herself as they got too close for her to properly cast magic. I recalled Hestra to me and regained my breath, ready to face the rest of the horde.

But before I could make a glorious final stand against one of the world's most annoying monsters, I became distracted by the thundering of hooves, and entering the valley from all sides came a calvary charge from Nightingale soldiers.

"Chin up little brother, there is little glory in dying to these vermin."

Arthur always was a smug idiot if he found me in embarrassing situations.

"Arthur, I need to you deal with the main horde, a splinter group with the prince broke off and is heading for the dungeon, if not already there, I don't know if it can handle it just yet so I'm going to head over now."

"Wait Ed, you're still-!"

As I ignored him, I began channeling another of my more potent spells.

[Infernal Transformation]

Not letting the spell finish, I grabbed Lily and shot into the sky, bat-like wings beating as hard as they could before we roughly landed on the metal contraption just outside of the dungeon, ready to face off against the war party.