Chapter 77: Clash
Friday, April 28th, 3:15 PM
Dungeon Ciara
Alex kept behind cover where he could, rushing forward as their only solo attacker toward the enemy’s walled compound. The muted, screaming roar of fighter jets rolled in from the ocean, and he spotted a pair of planes climbing away from the distant carrier.
Anxiety struck despite years of handling domestic dispute calls for the Chicago Police Department. Dealing with distraught couples and families was one thing. Rushing in to eliminate crowds of people—that was something else entirely.
Focus, Alex. The fighters are just doing their normal patrols.
He glared at the walls that were several hundred meters away and Alex’s mouth tightened as he continued forward.
They’ve already shown how vicious they are by wiping out our entire Scotts Valley crew.
Then again, he knew they probably didn’t know or didn’t believe that the Order’s breeding program to help repopulate the planet was an opt-in thing.
Even so, there are sure to be cases where people will abuse that. No organization is free from corruption… so it’s possible. Most people suck. That’s human nature.
A dire feeling that he was being watched made Alex freeze in place. But so far, all was quiet.
I need to calm down. The enemy has no idea what’s coming.
Alex knew from experience that Dungeons could only hear what was going on inside their walls.
I have to.
Alex sprinted forward when a cloud blocked the afternoon sun, casting a useful shadow across the area ahead of him.
Drawing close to the wall, Alex spotted a pair of faces that were visible through slits near the top of the structure.
Shit. That’s new.
He rolled behind a pile of debris, then dashed forward and ducked into a crouch inside a washed-out area behind a building’s foundation that was half destroyed. There was a sickening squish, followed by crackling sounds.
Aw, son of a bitch…
Alex had stepped in a massive pile of rotting fish and seaweed. The stench of salt and decayed oceanic life was so thick and heavy in the cold, humid air, it made his eyes water.
Despite his brave words to the others as they stood miles away from the walls and the fact that he’d reincarnated once before, a pang of fear made Alex feel queasy.
We can do it. He told himself. If we hit them hard enough, we can end this.
A huge black and yellow spider crawled over some rubble to his right, and Alex slammed his hands against the stone to work his magic. But everything responded too slowly—he was unable to make the rubble swallow and crush the arachnid. To Alex’s dismay, it disappeared behind the pile.
With his backside puckered, Alex strained against the local Dungeon’s influence until he realized something that made his heart sink.
Fuck. The stone’s enchanted!
Alex clenched his fists and did his best to calm his breathing.
Get a hold of yourself. This Dungeon can’t see or feel anything outside its own walls—just like you. Stop being paranoid.
There was more than one way to kill a spider, after all. He laid a hand across the pistol at his side. But his vision was partly obscured by condensation from his heavy breathing.
Annoying.
Alex took a moment to pull his helmet off while he was hidden, to clean the fogged-up visor. He heard the flutter of tiny wings too late.
A dozen agonizing points of fire erupted across the back of his neck, his ears, and the top of his head.
Alex stifled a scream as he dropped his helmet and writhed, swatting with both hands to kill whatever was attacking him and failing as he received another dozen stings for his trouble.
He found them but Alex’s hands felt like they had caught fire upon touching the horrible insects. He lost his balance, then found himself rooted to the spot beside the pile of rotting fish. One of his fingers was sliced by something thin and tough.
To his horror, Alex realized he’d been wrapped up and glued down by the spider.
Shit!
A stinging insect landed on Alex’s nose. The massive, hornet-like creature stung his cheek with its feet just before its cruel abdomen lanced a much stronger dose of venom directly into the stiff but tender cartilage at tip of his nose. The pain was excruciating.
Alex lost control and he screamed, higher and louder than he ever had. He panicked and rubbed his arms over his head for a few seconds, trying to scrape the insects off. And he succeeded. But when he reached for his helmet, they assaulted him a second time. He nearly went into shock when stingers lanced directly into both of his eyeballs. More stings came—over the top of his head, the tender bits of his ears, and around his entire neck. The insects pumped their white-hot liquid in all at once before they released Alex and flew away.
Alex managed to catch and smash two of them into paste, but he knew it must have been dozens that stung him all at once.
His vision was yellow, with red-rimmed holes that slowly expanded to obscure patches of his sight while his field of view narrowed at a disturbing pace.
With his whole body in agony, Alex rushed toward the wall, dropped to one knee, and willed with his entire being for the stone inside those sentry holes to explode.
His face, head, and neck were aflame with agonizing pain from being stung.
If I’m gonna die, I’m taking some of the enemy with me.
But Alex only managed to slightly deform parts of the wall before he lost focus as his pain spiked. He fell onto his side and lightly touched a hand against the stone.
Why?
He spread out his perception and felt his way across the surface, trying different locations with basaltic bedrock, sandstone, and concrete. But nothing behaved as it should. And the pain from his stings was getting worse.
Everywhere, the stone and soil had been enchanted, and it resisted his call.
This can’t be happening. The amount of mana it would take—no-one could possibly…
Through his blurred vision, Alex beheld a scowling brunette with a fiery sheen to her hair. That enormous spider dangled from her neck as she stalked forward with a vial of something in her hand.
The stone responded too slowly for Alex to damage her. She swatted a spike of bedrock he’d shaped with contemptuous ease, sending it more than a hundred meters away in several pieces. She grabbed Alex and hauled him to a sitting position.
“You stupid piece of shit,” the girl spat as she continued to maneuver his aching body. Her voice sounded much more hurt than angry, which was confusing. But her hands were ruthless as they pulled his behind his back and he felt something sticky being attached.
Recognizing that it was hopeless, he shut his eyes and prepared for the worst.
Liquid splashed against Alex’s face, and there was a cooling sensation as his head went numb.
What?
Alex tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t listen.
This isn’t… how it was… suppo—
Darkness took him.
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Karen glared as she peeked over the boulder they’d hidden behind. The Dungeon’s massive harbor gate stood ahead of her and Tony.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“It’s taller than before,” said Tony.
“I thought the tsunami was supposed to destroy this place?” Karen shook her head.
“Hawaii failed, and the President’s been compromised along with the rest of the government.”
“Pure evil,” said Karen. “Those damned unnatural animals… I tried to tell them. We both did our best to stop the bastards from messing with the President.”
“I told you. Next time, don’t complain if I eliminate a group of traitors in costumes.” Tony raised his eyebrows and quirked his mouth as the ominous sound of fighter jets rolled across the area.
Karen shook her head. She didn’t have a good response to that. Marchant had seemed downright demonic to her when he slaughtered those kids on their first attempt to reach the core, and she’d been mad at him. But now, she wasn’t so sure his actions had been wrong.
Moreover, she’d been chasing her own advancement instead of devoting her entire focus to killing or enslaving the enemy Dungeon.
I was greedy. I have to stick to the plan. There’ll be plenty of time to play after we save Earth from these psychos.
Shots rang out from behind the wall as they ran with Tony’s expanded ability to bewitch the mind focused ahead of them. The trouble was, while it sounded like he’d managed to stir things up, there was no easy way to get over the barrier.
As they ran to take advantage of the distraction, Karen’s thoughts turned to President Thomas, who was an old friend.
We’ll save you, Aron. The Order could use another good leader.
The screaming and gunfire behind the gate stopped, and Tony accelerated beside Karen. They shared an uncomfortable glance and rushed forward as fast as their D-Rank legs could carry them.
Both leaped to clear the gate and were several meters above the street inside the Dungeon’s compound when something struck Karen’s abdomen, and her breath caught. Tony’s eyes bulged as he clutched at his chest. Something struck and wounded each of Karen’s legs, just before she heard rifle fire.
Unable to right herself in the air, Karen slammed face-first onto the smooth stone of the street, and everything went black.
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Rhonda, Kevin, and Roy walked three abreast, not bothering to hide as they approached the Santa Cruz Dungeon’s eastern wall.
A series of tall perforations in the upper part of the wall caught Rhonda’s eye. She noticed movement behind three of them and smiled as she created a series of flame arrows.
Her projectiles streaked forward, gaining speed as they moved before blasting into the wall. Two of her shots missed the mark but the one on the right passed through the arrow slit.
“Rhonda, what the fuck?” Kevin started rushing forward as Rhonda wove another set of flame arrows.
A crack like thunder rushed past them as Rhonda’s fire magic streaked away. Something pushed hard at Rhonda, then pulled, making her stagger as Kevin seemed to disappear. Dark-red liquid coated Rhonda’s helmet visor, obscuring her sight. The coppery odor of fresh blood assailed her as she took off her helmet to find Kevin’s legs near her feet.
A bad chill ran through Rhonda when she realized the rest of Kevin was… everywhere.
No! Not again…
The memory of the giant cat’s teeth crushing and stabbing into her face made Rhonda go stiff. Her helmet slipped from her grasp.
Roy shouted, “Take cover!” He raced ahead, but Rhonda’s legs wouldn’t move.
All she could do was watch in horror as Roy ran with superhuman speed. But then his head spun end over end above where his body used to be.
Another loud crack sounded and Rhonda felt it in her chest. Roy’s left arm sailed through the air and slammed into Rhonda’s neck, knocking her onto her butt. She choked for a few seconds, but she was unable to scream as a man’s form landed outside the wall and then blurred. Something struck the side of Rhonda’s head and she lost consciousness.
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Two days later, Mike frowned at the unassuming, dull-gray metal collar in his gloved hands. The slightly-luminous material lining the inside somehow darkened the space between.
The latching mechanism was devilishly clever, causing the collar’s hard exterior to fuse into a single piece, and the safety measures were diabolical. If anyone other than the one whose mana had locked the collar tried to open it, a spike of mightbane—an alloy-matrix of enchanted diamond, gallium, radium, and lead—would lance outward, directly at the one trying to open it.
Just being touched by that material could block a person’s ability to access mana for over an hour. If it became embedded in the skin, the effect would persist until an hour after the spike was removed.
Crafting mightbane was an arduous and temperamental process. It took more than fifty tries and a few minor explosions before he’d got it right. Even then, it took an hour to produce a single kilogram.
The collar was designed to rest against a prisoner’s skin, and the entire inner surface was composed of mightbane. Mike’s class held knowledge of how to make more than a hundred different slave collars, most of them for locking down species he’d never even heard of.
“These things are fucked. Who the hell designed them?”
They had a solution to the problem of keeping their four D-Rank prisoners, but the implications were dire.
Sven raised a reptilian eyebrow at Mike. “Until you locate and take possession of the Dungeon they are bound to, you have little choice. Slave collars are an unfortunate reality across much of the Universe. They are much more common than your atomic weapons.”
“Still, this feels wrong.”
Sven raised his eyebrows. “Balance, Mike. Kindness and cruelty exist in equal measure.” He raised a clawed finger. “Mortals tend to seek their own version of utopia—something that cannot be sustained even if it is achieved. There will always be another opportunity, and likewise, another threat.”
Mike sighed. “At least the bastards won’t be able to hurt anyone else while they’re bound with these.”
“That is precisely the point. You must broaden your perspective. Learn what you can while retaining the lessons you’ve learned—including those from before the arrival of Dungeons on your world. You’ve already seen what these people are willing to do in the name of their cause.”
Sven disappeared.
[Since they can’t be killed, keeping them out of this fight needs to be our priority.]
Mike’s jaw clenched as the faces of the dead flashed through his mind.
Thirty-one marines, five airmen, and seven civilians.
But we captured four of the bastards.
If we keep them contained, they can’t revive to do this again.
“I get it, and I’ll do it.”
[Thanks. Until we find their Dungeon and deal with that, we don’t have much choice.]
Mike grunted in reply. He set the collar aside and sighed wearily. One collar had taken him almost four hours to craft, and he had three more to make.
While gathering the necessary materials, he muttered, “Time to put in the work.”
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Tony winced as he awoke in an upright position. His head was pounding and his eyes ached. He tried to open them, but they were crusted shut. He reached up to rub his face, then groaned in frustration when his hands wouldn’t move. After a brief struggle to shift his position failed, Tony realized that his hands and feet were bound.
Voices reached Tony’s ears, echoing through what sounded like a long stone hallway, but none of them were familiar, and he couldn’t understand what was being said.
Shit.
Reaching out with his ability, Tony searched for anyone who could free him. All he had to do was lay the suggestion down and let them do the rest.
But despite the voices, he couldn’t sense anyone—at all.
What the fuck?
Tony focused inward, searching for his mana, but there was nothing there.
No…
A grim realization hit him. He was imprisoned, and his powers were cut off somehow.
Something cold and heavy hung around Tony’s neck. He wanted to scream, but showing weakness would only encourage his enemies to torture him—after all, that was exactly how he determined who to put pressure on when the roles were reversed.
Despite his situation, Tony held one ray of hope that hinged on whether Karen had also been captured. She was soft enough to show mercy, and that meant she would be their target instead of him.
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Floors: 9
Minions: 747/1260
Residents: 12/28
Denizens: 8.08M
Traps: 25/45