Twenty.

There were twenty giant wendigos running around Neigebleue Castle, and all of them were converging onto the courtyard. Wepwawet had no idea how tough normal wendigos were, but these ones were big enough to trouble the likes of Insupportable. Heck, a few of the ones converging towards the dragons retained enough memories of their former lives to carry weapons like maces and axes.

As much as he despised Insupportable, the fact was that he remained one of Wepwawet's Champions and the god wouldn't let him die. So he immediately came up with a plan to assist him.

"Maze Shift."

Wepwawet's Miracle seized control of the castle, but he immediately understood its limit; namely, he could only rearrange the placement of rooms, not alter the rooms themselves. He couldn't shrink the halls and crush the people inside to death.

However, Wepwawet could isolate rooms by cutting off all escape routes. He immediately did that by separating the castle's guest wing from the rest of it and managed to trap seven wendigos within. The monsters found themselves trapped in a coffin of stone without windows or doors to cross through where Wepwawet could at least contain them for a while.

Unfortunately, the other thirteen had reached the courtyard or were outside the castle's walls, so Wepwawet couldn't trap them. He instead settled on rearranging the castle's layout to give his Champions a direct line towards the location.

"I have created a safe path for you through this maze, my Champions," he told them through telepathy. "Go forth and purge this castle of the vile monsters that infest it! I shall grant you the strength to prevail!"

Buffs like Pyramid Warfare and One Pack to Bind Them All should let them damage the wendigos. Moreover, Wepwawet could afford to go all out after starting the day with a full mana reserve.

"Ice Barrier," he cast, creating a frozen ceiling right atop the courtyard to split the wendigos outside from those who had already landed within. Seven wendigos had engaged Insupportable and Soumis in battle while the others were trapped outside and were swiftly targeted by his Howl of Verglane. A ghostly head blasted the wendigos with a violent soul-boom that sent them flying back, but none of them froze in place or fled in fear.

Argh, either they are immune to Terror or count as Rank 7 Creatures, Wepwawet thought as he guided his Champions to the courtyard. Insupportable was not doing so well either. While Soumis incinerated a wendigo with his fiery breath in the salon and pinned down another away from the Mimic Princess, five of the wendigos had swarmed Insupportable.

The attack reminded Wepwawet of a pack of hyenas attacking a lion. The lion was bigger, fiercer, and would have trounced any of his attackers one-on-one… but there were just so many of them striking from all angles. Two wendigos held down the dragon's wings, another grabbed his tail, and the other two exchanged claws and punches with their overwhelmed target.

Thankfully, Jarlack's group found their way to the courtyard through the path Wepwawet opened for them. The giant charged and split a wendigo's skull with a thunderous roar. "Jaaarlack's coming!"

"Your Glorious Majesty!" Bernard shouted as he and Rickart readied their axes. "We are here!"

"Finally!" Insupportable complained after punching a wendigo across the courtyard. "Minions, attack!"

"All out offense!" Wepwawet ordered his troops as he followed through with a Power Dice and thankfully rolled a five. "I'll cover you!"

His Champions surged forward with newfound strength, with Power Dice's damage boost proving to be enough to allow Insupportable to shake off the wendigos holding him down. Rickart opened hostilities by triggering the Torc of Grand-Loup and charging at the enemy with berserk rage guided by a clear mind, leaping at a wendigo over twice his size with feline ferocity. So great was the boost in strength that his shining axe cut the monster in half in a single critical hit strike, killing it instantly. Rapoleon and Viviane soon joined in through a different pathway, the former dancing around blows with his poisoned spear and the latter supporting Bernard with arrows, their weapons glowing with holy radiance that proved about as effective as fire against the wendigos. Soumis, having incinerated one of the wendigos, tackled another out of the salon and caused the two to crash below.

Wepwawet himself continued to support the blitzkrieg in the hope of finishing this group off quickly. He cast Geyser Tribute on the wendigo Jarlack had wounded, boiling it alive and sending the corpse to splatter against a wall. This freed the giant to assist Bernard and Viviane with their own fight. Now that he didn't have to fight a whole group of them, Insupportable swiftly turned the tables against another wendigo and pummeled it onto the ground with his bare claws.

So far so good, Wepwawet thought. Insupportable and Soumis were tearing apart a wendigo each, a berserk Rickart held his own against one, and the rest of his Champions held the remaining two in check. The odds had turned in their favor. So far…

The group of wendigos he had trapped on the other side of the Ice Barrier had recovered from his earlier attack and gathered on top of the artificial ceiling. The six of them hacked at it with relentless aggression in an attempt to rejoin their allies.

Wepwawet needed to delay them long enough for his Champions to take out their own group. He analyzed the battlefield, noticing that the courtyard was sandwiched between multiple spires, and came up with a brilliant idea.

I just need to calculate the right angle… Wepwawet quickly found the perfect location and cast his Miracle. "Wolf House."

He summoned an ice tower horizontally between the two spires, and with the wendigos caught right in the middle.

The building grew out of the Dungeon like a piston, its roof slamming into all monsters unfortunate enough to be in its way, which proved to be all of them. The ice tower hit and then pushed them straight into the opposing wall, crushing their bones already weakened by the Howl of Verglane. They hit obstacle after obstacle as the tower continued to grow through a good fourth of the castle's length, killing them in the process.

The living castle seemed to shudder in quiet annoyance at the damage inflicted upon it, but walls could be repaired. Wepwawet's Champions were on the verge of victory when one of the creatures pushed back Rickart and attempted to impale him on its antlers. Wepwawet quickly cast Oath of Spring before the attack could connect, coating the werelion in a thick hide of hardwood and healing his wounds in an instant. Rickart survived the blow and quickly countered by beheading the wendigo with a final swing.

Within a minute's time, Wepwawet's victorious Champions stood surrounded by corpses, the wendigos maimed and the Champions whole.

"I think that was the last of them," Viviane said after shooting one dead wendigo in the eye, just to be sure. "That went much better than our last battle."

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"Indeed," Rickart said with a roar of triumph when his bark-skin returned to normal. "Lord Wepwawet granted us the strength to prevail!"

Rapoleon nodded as he studied his shining spear. "So this is the weight of a god's full attention…"

Wepwawet allowed himself a smile. What a contrast it had been from his first battle against Jasper's raiders. Wepwawet had had to booby-trap his entire capital to give his Champions a shadow of a chance; now he had both the high-quality troops and the Miracles to empower them.

It also helped that he could cast any of them rather than being forced with a limited hand like during a Godly Battle, and that he could focus his buffs on a few units. These were his Champions performing at their best.

"You all did a great job," Wepwawet said through telepathy. None of his Champions had ranked up from the experience—probably because they had reached a relatively high rank after surviving the Incursion—but he was happy that they hadn't suffered any casualties.

"We have slain these creatures in time to resume Your Glorious Majesty's claw-clipping time," Bernard said. He seemed strangely relieved to be reunited with his dragon overlord for a reason that Wepwawet couldn't fathom. "Shall we begin now?"

Insupportable didn't answer immediately. The frost dragon stared at the hacked apart remains of a wendigo with a strange, almost forlorn expression on his reptilian face.

Bernard clearly couldn't handle the unexpected silence. "Your Glorious Majesty?"

"Another time, Wereling Bernard," Insupportable replied quietly, which took his chief of staff and Wepwawet aback.

Come to think of it, the dragon hadn't boasted about his victory either, nor claimed the credit as Wepwawet would have expected him to. If anything, he almost seemed… thoughtful.

Nah, no way. Self-reflection would give that dragon an aneurysm.

"Where's the loot?" Jarlack complained upon checking the wendigo corpses and finding little of value on them. "They can't be former countrymen of mine without a purse or two!"

The mention of loot awoke Insupportable from his torpor. "Where is Princess Treasure?! Is she safe?!"

"Soumis protected her!" Soumis boasted, with Insupportable letting out a sigh of relief upon noticing the mimic looking down on them from the salon on the upper floor. "Soumis saved the princess!"

"I Princess Treasure!" the mimic said, who didn't sound too concerned about the dragons threatening to fight over her. "I have a castle!"

"I must say, you have acted passably dragonly for once…" Insupportable told Soumis before turning to his chief of staff. "Wereling Bernard! Bring out the Tea Set of Reconciliation!"

"The Tea Set of Reconciliation?" The yeti choked in surprise. "It hasn't left storage in years!"

"Then polish it!" Insupportable replied as he faced Soumis. "We shall settle the question of Princess Treasure's custody as dragons of wealth and taste!"

"Are they fighting over a chest in a dress?" Viviane commented upon seeing the mimic princess.

"I've given up on trying to understand these creatures," Rapoleon replied wisely, with Rickart nodding vigorously.

Wepwawet thought it was quite the wise approach considering a dragon's ego had proved enough to fry an alien's hivemind. Nonetheless, he noticed that the mimic had the potential to become a Champion, and that opened a few opportunities to tame both of them…

"Boss?" Jarlack muttered under his breath, which Wepwawet guessed he was trying to tell him something without the dragons overhearing it. "Boss, did you locate the treasure room? Now's our chance to take the loot while the lizards are busy!"

For once, he had a point. The castle contained a few interesting magical objects worth keeping away from dragon hoards.

"Alright," Wepwawet said. "Let's clean up."

Once the largest group of wendigos had been dealt with, destroying the seven survivors trapped in the guest wing proved much easier. They had already started fighting and eating each other when Wepwawet teleported in wererat sappers from Narc and had them drop alchemical fire bottles on them through the secret passages. A burning inferno soon consumed the isolated section for hours and cooked the wendigos alive.

Wepwawet would rather have Soumis light the fire rather than waste precious supplies on the monsters, but the red dragon and Insupportable had spent the last few hours arguing over everything from ownership over the castle to 'Princess Custody' over tea. Poor Bernard had been forced to tend to their needs and then practice a 'dance of appeasement' whenever the two reptiles started shouting at each other, a fate he seemed strangely content with.

At least Wepwawet wouldn't have to deal with dragons for a time.

He sensed a pressure immediately lifting once the last of the wendigos perished. The vile curse that had befallen the castle finally cleared, allowing the god to fully claim it for himself.

Quest: Mortal Wonder of the World I, completed! You have gained the Rank 11 Neigebleue Castle Animism!

Neigebleue Castle

Rank 11 Animism

Unique Mortal Wonder. Summons the Neigebleue Castle and all that it contains at a designated point. This Dungeon acts as a Rank 11 Artifact-Creature under your control.

Quest: The Cursed Castle, completed! You have earned the Rank 7 Anima Spirit Ritual.

Anima Spirit

Rank 7 Ritual

You can imbue an object, such as an item or building, with a soul of pure mana and humanlike sentience. The entity is free-willed and not compelled to obey you, but it is always considered to be within your realm of Influence, like a priest or artifact of your faith.

Oh… Wepwawet couldn't suppress a slight sense of disappointment. Those were good Miracles, but he had hoped the ritual would grant him a way to revive his dead Champions.

He guessed that made sense. Miss Athena warned him that the rewards of Quests matched their themes, and Neigebleue Castle had turned out to be a scam rather than an actual haunted castle.

The ability to teleport the castle and all that it contained nonetheless opened fantastic tactical options, as did awakening constructs that could spread his Influence. He might even be able to trade the latter to Axomamma for a better Miracle one day, considering her interests.

Wepwawet proceeded to replace his old Miracles with the new ones. Protect Champion was an easy choice to discard considering its outdated effectiveness, but Wepwawet hesitated a bit longer between removing either Smite or Sacred Food.

In the end, Wepwawet elected to remove Smite. The likes of Howl of Verglane and Geyser Tribute already provided much better offensive options, and Sacred Food remained situationally useful for attrition warfare. He recalled Lord Odin's story of struggling with logistics as he fought a years-long Titan Incursion all too well. His dad would probably complain about switching out an offensive Miracle just to keep one that only benefited his Champions, but Wepwawet had faith in his followers.

I'm only one Miracle away from replacing my entire beginner deck, Wepwawet thought. Once he had done so, he could start considering trading Miracles to other gods in order to refine card synergies and optimize his strategy.

A System message suddenly appeared in Wepwawet's logs, signed by Miss Athena herself. Wepwawet suppressed a sigh of annoyance upon reading it and then manifested his spirit in the castle's control room, where the kobold engineers still waited. He confirmed none of his Champions were in the area—considering the subject matter—and then laid down the law.

"Alright, my superior confirmed that recruiting extraplanar mercenary Champions from companies like your Furiland is prohibited until the barrier around Elphion solidifies," Wepwawet informed them. Besides the fact that it would count as cheating, it would also free the Titans to recruit their own killers for hire, and that could only end in disaster. "So you're out."

"Out?" the kneecapped kobold leader asked, though he probably knew the answer already. "What do you mean by out?"

"You'll leave Elphion the same way you crawled in," Wepwawet replied coldly. "You may take everything you can carry with you, after which you'll be barred from this world."

"But what about the Dungeon?" the kobold leader complained. "We grew it ourselves!"

"The Dungeon stays, as will the monsters you bred and all the money you took from killing the adventurers you lured to this place." True to his agreement with Jarlack, Wepwawet had split some of the collected treasure among his Champions, and the rest would go to the families of the castle's victims. "Everything you'll leave shall remain behind forever."

"That's expropriation! It's theft, theft–"

"You're lucky I'm not smiting you where you stand for setting up a giant for-profit death trap in my territory!" Wepwawet's Influence had let him check the number of corpses buried under the place, and the number infuriated him. So many people had been lured to their demise because of these kobolds' greed, and they were lucky the monsters this place accumulated hadn't spilled over into the countryside! "That was my plan before my superior forbade it!"

The kobold leader finally got the message and learned his place. "We'll pack our things, Your Beautiful and Merciful Godliness."

"You have until twilight," Wepwawet warned them. The kobolds wisely spread to take all they could carry back with them away from Elphion, which would spare him any more headaches.

Nonetheless, the absence of kobolds opened up a new issue.

Namely, who would he leave in charge of this place?

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