When dungeons grow, they like mana. They also enjoy eating things with mana, which is why they always did great in the thickets. The thickets were cored and huge, which meant there was a good bit of mana for them to consume as they grew.

So whenever I used the dungeon seeds, the dungeons would race right up to level three, sometimes level five, almost from the start. Dungeons also grow when mana is used in them. It’s just part of how they become better training facilities.

The manager’s shield also liked mana. It wanted to capture all the mana in the area and convert it into a shield. I wasn’t sure if his shield could do both physical energy and mana conversion. When we had attacked the shield with physical attacks, they seemed to do nothing.

So when the dungeon seed was triggered, it looked for the largest source of free mana it could find. Items that people carried, or in my case, the throne, wouldn’t give up their mana. However, in the first push turning the dungeon seed from a seed to a dungeon, things like the manager’s shield and my shield were both drained.

I was mostly expecting it and knew I only had a few moments before he regained his shield. The dungeon mapped the room out in under a second as all of the free mana got sucked into it. If undead hadn’t counted at this point as equipment, then they would have been turned into growth fuel.

So when the shield dropped, I fired my stone sphere and commanded all the undead to shoot simultaneously. The sphere was enough as he was fully a mage. He crumpled under the damage of my bowling ball-sized magical attack. However, all my undead mages and archers got off two attacks before we stopped.

Before he knew what was happening, the Manager was fried, burned, and turned into a pin cushion. Now, Renfry, Kasidy, and Blink understood that I was creating a dungeon and didn’t freak out when they got the entrance message. That didn’t mean the hundred fifty or so prisoners and former guild members did. There was a good bit of screaming from the people sitting in the middle. After that, it was mostly fear, with a few threats.

Renfry came limping over to me with a smile and said. “I didn’t expect that my charge would get stopped like that. Thanks for the assist.”

I smiled and nodded. “No problem. But I need to see if I can still pull the Manager’s soul.”

Renfry’s eyes got big as he nodded. “Right, then he could tell you everything he knows.”

I nodded to Renfry as I was carried into range. Since we showed up in the old city, this whole fight had been a mess. It went from one form of disaster to another. In fact, we started having problems right when we left the town. If Blink hadn’t been captured, I might have bypassed this whole mess.

When I got in range, I sighed and activated the throne’s ability to act as a soul anchor. Then I watched as yet another soul fought not to be yanked into it. If anyone deserved what was being done to them, surely it was someone who had been in charge of the kidnapping and slave ring.

Once the Manager was fully in the throne, I brought his wraith back out. “Manager, so good of you to join me. Never lie to me from this point forward. What is your name?”

The wraith that used to be the Manager tried to spit, but nothing happened since it was just a spirit. I gave him a smile as I waited for him to answer the question that I asked. I needed to wait so that he would feel the pain of not answering so that he would learn what was going on.

For about the hundredth time, I wished I wasn’t doing what I was doing. But, while I understood better what was happening, I still didn’t like it. Messing with bodies was one thing, but the spirit was another thing altogether. I knew what this world thought about it, but I still was sold that I wasn’t turning into the thing I hated.

Finally, the Manager hissed out. “My name is Troashk Gruxxotzozk.”

I nodded. “I’m going to call you Tro because your name is just too long. Now tell me, Tro, can I shut down all the portals from here so the other side can’t open them?”

Troashk fought with answering before he simply said. “Yes.”

I smiled. “Good, now walk me through how to turn these things off step by step.”

As the Wraith started to move off I sighed. “Renfry, lead up getting people sworn to me or removed.”

My champion slammed his fist onto his left shoulder. “Yes, my lord.” Then he turned and headed off to the largest group.

I had my throne follow Tro as he crossed the hub. Then, we moved up a set of stairs to a platform overlooking the whole place. As we went, I took in what a great location our battle had just been in.

We were in a cave that had to be at least a few hundred feet tall and wider than I could see easily. We moved up the stairs to the platform, and I saw the place stretched out for a good mile in all directions. If we hadn’t just beaten their response team, trying to fight our way through this place would have been a pain.

Each of the portals were built in a fort facing in with control gates on the outside wide enough to let wagons through from two directions. We should have fought through a huge mess when we came through. The only thing that kept us from losing was that the place was mostly unguarded when we showed up.

The whole landscape was odd. First, the portal floor was huge and flat. Then above it were platforms that were raised and floating. My guess was each one of the platforms was balanced for what was on it and made with the strange floating rocks that Cloudia had.

I smiled and commanded. “Tro, tell me as we go, how did this place work?”

The wraith fought answering for just a moment. Then when he answered, he started to give me all the details that didn’t mean much. I didn’t understand the magical theory, but that was where he began with how the gates worked. Then he jumped over to how stairs let you move up and down.

I sighed. I could tell he would be one of those wraiths that either get locked up and forgotten or dismissed just because I couldn’t stand him. He was far too intelligent to deal with as he was complying with my question but still not helping me, which meant I needed to force him back into just showing me what I needed.

As we got to the top of the platform, I commanded again. “Tro, show me the step-by-step instructions for controlling the portals.”

The wraith fought again but slowly started to comply, taking me over to the table. “This table has each portal crystal placed in it. By removing a crystal, the portal shuts down.”

I nodded and was about to have a skeleton remove one of the crystals when Kasidy asked. “Will the gate start back up if we put the crystal in?”

Tro didn’t say anything, so I commanded him again. “Tro, if Kasidy asks you anything or tells you to do anything that doesn’t go against anything I have told you to do, then you will treat her requests and commands like mine.”

The wraith didn’t like that at all. He started to writhe on the ground. Slowly his tormented soul started to float and contort. Then he said. “Yes, Master.”

Kasidy asked again. “So Tro, if we remove the crystals here, what do we have to do to get the gate to open back up?”

After a bit of pain and screaming, he said. “If you remove the crystals from here, then to start up the portal, you must re-sync the portal crystals from both sides. So you would have to bring the other side here and key them again.”

The wraith dropped his floating by just a few inches. As he fell, I smiled. It seemed like he was still trying to screw me over, which meant that I needed to get away from needing him.

I asked. “So, how do we go about controlling access?”

Tro shook back and forth and then said. “We did it with the forts. If you close a gate, it is always closed. But to use them, they have to be available. So you can guard them, but people can always come through.”

I wasn’t a big fan of that, but I could understand how it would work. This wasn’t a controlled storage room. This was the central transportation hub. At least, I thought it was “the” hub.

I gave one more command. “Show me the documents outlining where each one of these gates goes.”

A few minutes later and we came to a large platform. It floated higher than any others and could only be accessed by one set of stairs. When we got up to the platform, it was clear that it functioned as both Tro’s bedroom and office.

The platform was about twenty feet by sixty feet, with a low four-foot wall running along the whole edge. The inner area was divided into two sections. One was an office with several movable walls that appeared to have slates on them for writing. It had a giant desk with paperwork and a single bookshelf. The other section that was only about a third of the total space was his bedroom.

He had a wardrobe on one side with a mirror and a large bed of sand in the middle. It looked like it was heated sand from the slight distortion I saw coming from it. Then just because he was a messed up man and this whole organization was messed up, there was a man tied to a whipping post.

The poor guy was stripped down to his small clothes, his back was a crisscross of cuts, and his ribs were battered and bruised. However, the worst or perhaps best thing was that he was dead, which meant he didn’t have to try to deal with the mental issues of that level of abuse.

Tro showed me the bookshelf and said. “All you seek is there.”

I wanted to curse. This guy complied, yet I couldn’t read the books to learn the details. This was all a mess for me to deal with. I hated not reading.

I glanced at Kasidy and smiled as I saw she was already moving over to look on the shelf. As she went, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I yanked my head over to see that Lilac had moved to let the dead man down from his station.

The girl was crying as she held the man, shaking her head. I just could make out her saying, “Why did you have to die?”

I thought that was a good question myself, so I asked Tro. “Why did you whip that man to death.”

For the first time, there wasn’t any delay in answering. “Because it was fun. Not every day, you get to whip a royal bodyguard to death.”

* * *