Honestly, Elias had been right. And Thomas would never, ever, tell him that.

He couldn’t, not after how he’d reacted to the advice he’d gotten. Sure, it had been an absolutely assholish piece of advice, but “stop worrying your pretty little head about it” had been the only thing he could do.

Even if using denial as a coping strategy was just about the worst strategy for dealing with one’s emotions, and the advice had been given in an epically blunt way.

But while he’d been messing around with his Dungeon, he hadn’t really been thinking about any of the things previously weighing him down. Of course, those feelings had come straight back the moment he’d thought about how much better his mental state was.

And this would probably rinse and repeat every time he’d completed a task.

Speaking of distractions, he was currently riding along with Jan, directly steering the monkey, who was currently wearing a child-sized fanny pack Thomas had found, through the ruins of the Science Museum.

It, and the Natural History Museum were technically in the same building, with the Science Museum filling up an area made up of entirely modern construction, but the latter had not survived the merge particularly well. As in, not at all. A ton of trees had grown right underneath it, obliterating not only that particular museum but every building within a hundred meters of Thomas’ current home’s backside.

He’d tried looking a few times, of course, however, he hadn’t had monsters that he could fully control outside his realm, so the searches had been somewhat cursory. So he’d been left with the hope that he just hadn’t looked hard enough,

But maybe Jan could create a subcore and as per the System’s description of how subcores worked, he’d get appropriate defenders. In a museum that contained many of the greatest technological achievements of humanity, would that create sci-fi combat androids or just steampunk mad-science monsters?

So Thomas tried, even sending the monkey into a small hole he’d located after an hour of searching, however, all that he found was the rotten remains of the cafeteria. And even those had just been one half-crushed hamburger and a toppled-over soft drink fridge.

Neither of those was enough to let him designate the ruins as a “museum” and create a subcore.

When his hope died, so did his ability to be distracted, and the anger returned, a simmering ball of resentment and worry burning in his gut.

From that point onwards, it was almost as though he became obsessed with staying busy and distracted. As though his mind went “am I distracted” every time he wasn’t one hundred percent focused on something else, and from the realization that there was something to be distracted from, it was only a short step to remembering that particular issue.

Over and over again.

But he kept at it, kept working, constantly diving into the various patterns he had at his fingertips. Specifically, the various brochures and subway plans he’d found scattered all over.

The brochures were meant for tourists such as himself, meaning they treated the reader as though they didn’t know anything about the city, providing exact information about which subway station was closest to a given attraction, and exactly how to reach the attraction from the station.

He also had several up-to-date maps of the city’s subway. He knew that the closest station to his current location was South Kensington, on the Piccadilly Line, South-East of the main entrance

And from there, he could just send Jan along the tracks in the direction of Cockfosters until he came to Russell Square Station, and then go searching in the South-Western direction until he found either the museum, or its ruins. Or at least something that could hold the sub-core.

In theory, Thomas could have used one of the massive, old-fashioned maps of the city and a compass to navigate his way over aboveground, but the jungle was dangerous enough for little critters like Jan even when they weren’t distracted by navigation implements.

But the subway, or tube, as it was known in London, was a straight shot to where he needed to go, and hopefully, the jungle transposed onto the city had a shortage of underground critters. Hell, he just hoped that the ground under the city hadn’t been merged with the ground of the jungle and that the tunnels were still there.

There was a lot of hoping involved in this planning, but very little actual risk. It didn’t matter if Jan died, where he died, or even if he just got stuck. Thomas could always just resummon him, though that would destroy the current iteration out there, with “iteration” referring purely to the body, not the mind.

Literally, the worst thing that could happen was that the whole thing was a waste of time, and Thomas had nothing but time. He was a Dungeon Core, barely able to take actions beyond his walls, so he had to wait for problems and allies to come to him. Therefore, he was pretty free to do what he wanted as long as the things he needed to do were done.

And he had finished everything. He’d created a place for his unranked creatures to evolve, he’d created two different difficulty areas as well as the hellish run on the panacea, and after considering things for a long moment, he’d even added changing rooms and showers to the entrance hall, just to the left of the main door. A few creature comforts should make his relationship with his delvers just that tiny bit less terrible.

But enough about his past “achievements”, he was on an adventure!

Finding South Kensington station was pretty easy, especially when Elias mentioned that he’d found a place with a whole lot of snacks down there. Snacks that Thomas remembered as having been available when he’d left the subway station. The fairy had led Jan to his now-empty snack bar, and from there, digging out the staircase was as simple as sending out a giant sloth to rip up a few trees, revealing a dark but largely intact staircase.

Sure, there was the occasional crack in the wall, and a single solitary chunk of concrete lay on the ground, but all in all, it wasn’t a complete disaster zone.

And then, the creepy part began.

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Humans were no longer used to complete darkness, outside of being in the middle of nowhere in the desert somewhere, or perhaps out in the ocean, far from shore, there were always sources of light somewhere, even in the darkest parts of the night. Streetlamps, usually, but also cars’ headlamps and so on.

Hell, in his old apartment, Thomas had outright not bothered to switch on his light when going to the toilet at night, the light falling in through the windows had been more than enough.

But down there lay absolute blackness, the kind of oppressive lack of illumination normally only found in deep caves or abandoned mine shafts, where the only possible source of light was the explorers themselves, and if they weren’t casting their flashlight or lantern on something in particular, it might as well not exist.

And he could see that at the bottom of the escalator shaft, that kind of blackness began.

Even though he wasn’t even there in person, nor in any kind of danger, the thought of going down there was terrifying.

Thomas had figured out a while ago that basic flashlights still worked, so he’d packed several of those, as well as a few temporary summoning tokens for draconic velociraptors. But even that seemed like a fragile shield against what he was about to enter.

The first thing he used was one of the tokens, though. A tiny velociraptor appeared, then it opened its jaws, as directed by Thomas via Jan, and began to bring forth a flame. It didn’t breathe fire, though, just held the flame in the back of its throat, casting a low glow in front of it.

Both of his creatures had a little difficulty navigating the stairs, which were obviously not sized for them, so the whole ordeal turned into something truly worthy of a slapstick comedy shtick, hopping down every stair while trying to sufficiently keep their balance to not topple forwards, but they didn’t always manage it.

Of course, the critters were more than capable of absorbing the damage of tumbling down the stairs, so he felt secure in being able to laugh without feeling like an awful person.

And then they finally reached the bottom. Finding directions proved rather difficult without the usual glowing red signs explaining which direction contained what direction, but between the flashlight and firelight, he eventually found the relevant track. The one leading to the end station of Cockfosters. It was juvenile as fuck, but that name made Thomas laugh every time.

From there, Jan led the way to the track … leaving Thomas with a bit of a problem. Which way did the subway run? Left to right, or right to left, looking at the track from the platform?

He was pretty sure there was a correct answer, something that was true for the entire network outside of a few exceptions, but he didn’t know it. So, left, or right?

Or rather, should he just pick one and keep going until he reached the next station, at which point he’d know whether or not he’d gone the right way? It was an option, and probably wouldn’t even be that big of a waste of time, but it just felt wrong. He wanted to figure this out.

He was sure he’d realized which direction the trains came from at some point, but promptly filed that piece of information away as useless and forgotten it.

The trains he was used to came from the right side, but that didn’t necessarily mean that the trains here did the same. Then again, back home, people also drove on the right side of the road. The British drove on the left side of the road, however, could he make a claim about this “transferring” onto the subway, somehow?

Honestly, he might have kept going for quite a while on this weird train of thought until he noticed the flashlight glinting of something in the distance. Upon closer observation, that turned out to be a signal akin to a traffic light which let the train driver know whether the tracks were clear for them.

So, obviously, that was the way the train usually drove, from left to right.

He directed both critters to hop down onto the track and advance.

Thomas briefly thought about it, and then had Jan try and ride the raptor. He was very big compared to his ride, admittedly, but still, the raptor was quite a bit stronger than it would be in non-magical nature.

So it worked. The large monkey was teetering on the raptor that weighed barely as much as it did, but it worked. And off they went, not even needing a flashlight.

… at least until the raptor mount began to sag, looking more than a little exhausted, so Jan summoned a second raptor to play gas lamp and replacement ride, and when that wasn’t enough, he walked for a bit with a flashlight.

The darkness grew even stronger down here as even the most distant bit of sunlight had long since faded away, prompting Thomas to have a proverbial heart attack when he saw something in the distance. Jan moving only a single step closer revealed that it was a stalled train car.

He sighed in relief … until he remembered that there should have been people inside when the change had hit.

Carefully, Thomas had Jan clamber up to the window and stare inside, revealing an empty car. Well, they were probably dead, in that case. They couldn’t have made their way out alive. And yet, could they have survived down here, in the dark, for so long?

It wasn’t something he could do anything about, though. So he sent his creatures onwards, carefully clambering past and almost managed to put the mess out of his mind … that’s when he found the body. It was half-eaten by rats or the like, as far as he could tell, but Thomas could still tell what had happened. The woman had tripped or been pushed, then hit her head, and that had been the end, especially in this situation.

Fuck.

Once again, though, nothing he could do. Perhaps he could come back later, retrieve the ID card or another form of identification, and burn the corpse? He sure as hell couldn’t do that now, though, smoke in an enclosed space was a bad idea.

Continuing onwards, the stench of rot grew stronger and stronger, showing more bodies. There was no big cluster of dead, but the further people had gotten, the more exhausted they’d been, and the more mistakes had been made. A broken leg or even just a twisted ankle was a death sentence down here, and things were far too dark to let people even help each other properly.

Shortly after finding the tenth body, his creatures reached Knightsbridge station, letting him know that he was definitely on the correct path. But for obvious reasons, he didn’t feel much like celebrating that fact, not with the current situation.

This scene repeated itself twice more before he reached Russell Square, with empty train cars having died on the track, people trying to escape in the dark, and some having failed.

Even putting the gruesome images of rot and rat feedings aside, it was quite fucked up.

But eventually, he did reach his target, and sent his critters to the surface. From there, it was a simple matter of Jan whipping out a compass and beginning his short march to the target.

Here, trees were also towering overhead, and buildings had been cracked or broken where greenery had sprouted straight through them. More jungle, and one with quite a few more critters than around his home base.

Then, Thomas had Jan facepalm and then sent the monkey back up into the foliage. After all, he was a monkey, built for swinging around the jungle in ways that Tarzan could only dream of.

That made Jan move quite a bit faster until he spotted a building with a green roof and a dome in the middle of said roof. That had to be it, right? Thomas had never seen the British museum from above, but that had to be it, right, since he knew there were mostly residential buildings around it.

It was stupidly simple to get inside, all Jan had to do was drop onto the roof, then scamper to the center of the roof and drop down there. After all, Thomas remembered a large circular window around the dome from when he’d been in the museum and those windows had been busted at some point during the merge.

And then, he sent Jan right towards the central reading room, under the dome, which he knew to be perfect as a core room.

From there, things were as simple as mentally flicking a switch. A ball of energy appeared between Jan’s hands, growing brighter and brighter until it was blinding to look at, so the monkey closed his eyes, but even that wasn’t enough soon, so he had to turn away.

For a few seconds, Thomas even missed the end of the process, it was completely sudden, and yet, the state afterwards felt completely normal and natural. Jan was holding a crystal sphere, and Thomas’ available domain had just doubled. Mission accomplished.

But what creatures had he gotten for the new Museum?