Chapter 9
Tom clutched the Core Stone, grateful for its reassuring presence as he felt the buzzing presences moving throughout his dungeon. Sevin, Sevin was a traitor. Why had he ever liked the older boy to begin with? The memories of all the pranks Sevin had played on him through the years flowed through his mind, and it became clear to him that Sevin was never truly his friend.
More than that, Sevin had slain his minions, weakening Tom’s power. But that was alright. With the Core generating so much Mana, Tom could Spawn as many replacements as he’d like.
The second floor of the dungeon he’d created was an expansive room, and he filled it with Burrowers and Rock Spiders. More than a hundred of each. He sent twenty after the intruders to his demesne. He rubbed the core stone lovingly. He’d see how Sevin did against those numbers without Tom’s minions to support him!
With Customize, he was trying to cut off the second floor from the entrance, while at the same time trapping his prey in the dungeon with him, but it was proving frustratingly difficult. The dungeon had no compunction about moving tunnels and closing off rooms, but every time he blocked off one method of egress, a new one would open up somewhere else. At least he had plenty of Mana to play with. The rate at which the core generated it was refreshingly rapid.
But Sevin and the girl were minor concerns. For the last twenty minutes, he could sense something coming. Something from outside. Something dangerous, something that his low level Burrowers and Rock Spiders might not be able to drive off. He needed more Enforcers, so he began evolving his Burrowers and sending the new lumbering beasts out into the dungeon. The Dungeon might not allow him to close off the way into or out of the dungeon, but it had no problem with him establishing choke points and filling them with Burrower Enforcers or Rock Spider Queens.
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While the entire valley was engulfed in dungeon mana, courtesy of the captured Core Stone in the village center, the wild dungeon gave off a different flavor of mana which clashed with the rest of the valley. It was obvious to those who were sensitive to that sort of thing, and Antoine had developed his mana sense keenly. Antoine left his guides the moment he could feel the Dungeon, dashing ahead at a speed that few could manage. Faster than any Olympian, he was certain.
Sprinting past the remains of a campfire, Antoine came to the Dungeon entrance, just in time to see it close off, the rock sliding shut, flowing like an unnatural liquid. He cursed and cast out his senses. Dungeons, like any living thing, needed to breathe, and it wasn’t possible to simply seal one off. Close one entrance, and the dungeon would force open another. The problem would be finding it.
The mana in the air shifted, and he sprinted off in the direction of the confluence, arriving at the new entrance moments later. A longsword in his left hand – he’d always been a southpaw – he slowed down and began carefully examining every step along the way for traps and hidden enemies. It would be humiliating to be killed by a rookie controller in a low-level dungeon because he stepped on a poorly hidden trap.
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They were trapped. Jessica cursed at her current helplessness, but there was little she could do to help Sevin fight. She wasn’t even wearing pants! And she’d never touched any weapon larger than a meat-cleaver before dying and being summoned to this world. Only to, apparently, die again at the hands of her summoner’s minions.
The shifting Dungeon had closed off a hallway right as they were halfway down it, and the skittering creatures had finally caught up to them. Jessica waited in the back, trying to be out of the way as Sevin fought them off. Whatever else could be said, the Warrior was both fast and strong, and the Burrowers and Rock Spiders seemed to be content to trap them for now, rather than rush forward to meet their end on Sevin’s spear.
She still couldn’t believe that she’d been Isekai’d. She hadn’t actually expected any sort of afterlife, although she had held out some hope for something better than she’d been dealt the first time around. At least this current body didn’t have the weakness of her old one. In fact, she felt quite strong. And there was a certain sort of energy she was unfamiliar with coursing through her body.
In the stories she’d read on earth, the main characters always got some sort of cheat superpower to offset the inconvenience of being sent to a new world, and she could do with something like that right now. She focused on the strange sensation in her limbs, willing it to do something. Magic? Maybe? She could do with some magic right now.
Sevin, meanwhile, harried the monsters trapping them. Fortunately the hallway formed a natural choke-point, and he was able to keep them from getting behind him, but there were too many for him to wade through. The best he could do was score a few hits here and there with his spear, but the wounded creatures would just retreat to the back, and the swarm would replace them within moments. Sevin wasn’t particularly chivalrous, but he knew that he had to protect the poor girl who had been trapped in this situation with him somehow--
A roar of light and fury erupted to his side, and he recoiled at the heat that he felt. A wave of liquid flames shot out from Jessica’s outstretched hands and engulfed half of the enemies. The Rock Spiders exploded, their insides super-heating into steam. The Burrowers practically melted. The fire lasted for just a few seconds, but it burned through half of their besiegers. The other half turned and fled, leaving the hallway clear except for a few charred corpses.
“You’re a Mage?” Sevin asked, dumbfounded at the sudden rescue. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“I don’t know what I am in this world. Isekai, remember? But it seems I’ve got some powers after all. Even if I don’t know how to access my status, it seems I don’t need it to use magic,” Jessica explained.
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“You keep using that word. Ish ah kai. What does it mean?” Tom asked.
“It doesn’t matter right now. We need to get out and get help, remember?” Jessica said, charging past him. Wading through the vanquished creatures, she tried not to let her sudden weakness show. She had put her everything into that bit of magic. While she had summoned the wave of fire easily thanks to this new body’s magical instincts, she could tell that she didn’t have another attack like that left in the tank.
A part of her couldn’t get over the fact that she was, apparently, a Sorceress now. But she pushed her excitement down, she could bask in her newfound powers later. First, they needed to escape the Dungeon. She marched ahead, with Sevin quickly catching up beside her.
As they marched through the twisting and shifting Dungeon, the side of one hall suddenly opened, and from the other side came a shadow. It moved swiftly, far faster than their eyes could follow, and before he could react, Sevin was disarmed and pinned against the wall. The spear clattered to the ground, and Sevin stared into the silver eyes of a man he’d never met before.
“Are you Tom Weaver?” the man said, his voice empty and cold, his fingers of his free hand wrapped around Sevin’s throat, the other hand holding a sword menacingly.
“Sevin Wells,” Sevin said, struggling against the man’s iron grip. “Who the devil are you?”
“The king sent me. Where is the Controller?” the stranger asked urgently.
“What are you going to do to him?” Sevin asked, his loyalty to his friend not diminished at all by Tom’s sudden madness. “If you’re going to hurt him--”
“I plan on taking his toy away from him,” the stranger answered. “Come on. You’re partly responsible for this mess, you might as well help me clean it up.”
The man released Sevin, kicking the spear up into the air and catching it before handing it back to its owner. He turned to Jessica, and surprised them all by giving her a bow.
"Bienvenue, mademoiselle, dans ce nouveau monde. Je m'appelle Antoine,” the man said.
“Is that French?” Jessica asked, surprised to be hearing a language from her old world in the new one.
“Ah. I suppose it was too much to hope to have someone to talk with in my native tongue,” Antoine said, speaking in the tongue that had been downloaded into her head this time. “My name is Antoine. Welcome to Welsius, young lady.”
“You’re from Earth as well?” she asked. “Are there a lot of us in this world?”
“Not a lot, no,” Antoine said. “We’ll speak of the old world later. First we must find the young fool before he makes a bad situation worse. Do you know where the Controller is hiding?”
“It’s a room where there’s a fake sun in the ceiling,” she answered. “We were with him for a while, but he went crazy or something and started summoning these monsters left and right. He wouldn’t listen to reason, and the monsters chased us out.”
“And he’ll continue to do so until someone puts a stop to it,” Antoine said, sighing. “Show me the way, if you would.”
“You’re not going to hurt him, are you?” Sevin challenged, still rubbing his throat. The man hadn’t choked him, exactly, but the man’s grip had been like cold steel.
“I’m here to save him from himself,” Antoine answered. Which was neither a yes or a no, but it was the only answer he was willing to give. Depending on how deep into the madness the boy was, a swift end might be the kindest way of fulfilling that promise. He wasn’t about to say as much to the boy’s best friend and the girl. American, he thought, although he couldn’t be certain. Fortunately, before they could discuss the matter further, they were interrupted by another wave of monsters.
“Ah, one second,” Antoine said, and he turned to deal with the problem. With his naked blade, he blurred forward, and in mere seconds, the horde was no more.
Jessica had been impressed by Sevin’s skills, but Antoine was on an entirely different level, moving at superhuman speeds with confidence and skill. He didn’t even get any gore on his leather armor. She was certainly glad that he wasn’t some murderhobo, as she’d initial feared. If Antoine had decided to simply kill them, then she doubted she could bring her magic to bear in time to stop him, and Sevin was obviously helpless compared to the far more experienced warrior. Even the Burrower Enforcer of the group was slain easily, its head separated from its body before it could react.
When the last monster had been slain, Antoine paused to clean his blade on a cloth. He turned back to them. “Come along, quickly. We must track the monsters back before the hallways shift again.”
“Right,” she agreed, wondering exactly what would happen when they confronted Tom again.
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“No. No no no no no,” Tom muttered, feeling the death of his minions at the hand of the latest intruder. Whoever it was, they had slain an Enforcer in an instant, and Tom knew that sort of strength meant that his other defenses were likewise useless against the newcomer. There were the Rock Spider Queens yet, and he held out hope that they would be enough, sending them out with an escort of Burrower Enforcers to confront the stranger, but he had little hope that they would overcome this latest unwelcome obstacle.
He clutched the Core Stone in his hand, staring at it, waiting for its Mana to regenerate. He doubted that either the Burrower line of monsters, nor the Rock Spiders, would be able to chase off this new intruder. He needed more options, and he didn’t have too much time.
With five thousand Mana, he took a risk, and he Evolved the Core once more.