Chapter 71: Humanity's Salvation
It seemed like more and more each day, Prila found herself wishing Adamus was actually the God she’d always thought he was. Because even an incompetent God had to be better than the wiry old half-elf who refused to lift a finger to do anything useful—even when it fell well within the mission parameters for which this entire Orbital Monitoring Platform had even been created.
Folding her arms as she sat in her chair with Adamus standing by her side, she wondered if she would be able to make it to the end of today without taking something to calm herself down. She was now truly, fully emotionally invested into the wellbeing of Zachys Calador. She had not slept a wink since Ziragoth had spawned, as she’d been glued to her monitor watching as Zach narrowly avoided death—or came back from it—one time after the next. She never imagined someone would come along who would make her feel again. But there he was: the boy whom she desperately did not wish to see die, but whose death was bound to happen someday sooner or later with the way he kept leaping from one deadly situation to the next.
But this time, however, things were different—or at least they should have been. For once, Adamus should have been willing to interfere, as it just so happened that the very same entities that currently threatened Zachys Calador were also posing just as great a threat to the system. Right now, Queen Vayra and a squad of what she estimated to be fifty, green-cloak-wearing Elvish warriors were pursuing Zach through level B6 of the Catacombs of Yorna—and destroying it.
“You keep telling us about how important it is to uphold the system, Adamus. So please: uphold it then.”
“I am, my child,” he whispered. “I uphold it by staying impartial.”
Prila unfolded her arms and then waved them both at the viewing screen in outrage. Nearly all her coworkers also made similar gestures. Almost everyone here was united in support of helping Zach deal with his current dilemma: everyone but the figure in charge.
“There won’t be a system left if we allow Queen Vayra to destroy it,” she said, trying to reason with him.
Prila turned her head to see Adamus closing his eyes and drawing a deep breath. He did not reopen them until he’d taken a slow, calm exhale. “You do not wish me to interfere out of a concern for the structural integrity of B6. You wish me to interfere because you want to me to prioritize the life of the boy over the life of the ones pursuing him.”
“So, what if I do?” Prila asked bitterly. “It doesn’t matter either way. You’re really going to sit there and let the queen obliterate an entire dungeon floor? That would mean B6 as well as B7 will be functionally dead. Actually, it’s worse than that, because unlike B7, taking the sixth floor out of commission will make linearly progressing through the dungeon impossible for new adventurers who don’t have an elevator key or know about the B8 entrance hidden inside the bathroom.”
“It will not,” Adamus said. “There are none remaining on Galterra with the knowledge of how to destroy a dungeon floor.”
“That’s not what I’m seeing,” Prila remarked dryly.
“I understand how things may appear. Yet I assure you, the floor will not be destroyed.”
She wondered if Adamus could tell that she was losing respect for him. Or if he even cared. She no longer feared him even slightly. Any lingering awe she had from when she had believed him to be a literal God was long gone. Now, what she saw was a useless old man who had gathered together many promising, talented people to uphold a system without giving them the tools in which to do so. Why were they even here, then?
“Are we both looking at the same thing?” she asked, pointing to her screen. “She’s annihilating the entire floor.”
“It does seem that way, my child, but it is not that way.”
“How so?”
Adamus sighed. “Though it looks quite terrible, dungeon floors can reset themselves every week provided most of the core fabric is intact. And of the few living beings who know how to destroy it, the Elvish queen is not among them. Though the damage may be significant, it can be repaired. Once the PVP encounter between the two parties has either moved on or is otherwise resolved, deactivate all portals to Yorna and dispatch a maintenance team to clear out the rubble and manually reset the entire dungeon early. This way, a new adventurer won’t travel down and find themselves at a dead end until we’ve reset it.”
Prila opened her mouth to argue the case, then shut it before she had spoken a single word. Instead, she filed the required electronic paperwork required to comply with Adamus’s instructions. Keeping a neutral expression on her face, she tried to hide her excitement as an idea came to her. This could be just the opportunity she finally needed to make an actual difference in the world.
Speaking slowly, calmly, and doing her best not to appear overeager, she asked, “May I deploy with them, Adamus?”
At this, Adamus took his eyes off her screen, turned his head in her direction, and curiously raised his right eyebrow. “You wish to fly down to Galterra with the maintenance team, my child?”
She nodded. “I’ve been here for so many years. It’d be nice to get down to Galterra again. I’m also the most qualified engineer. If we need the dungeon up and running as soon as possible, I should lead the team this time around.”
Adamus stroked his chin for a moment and regarded her with an unreadable expression. She suppressed any visible display of apprehension and merely stared confidently back at him. Finally, he made a curt, nonchalant shrug and said, “That is fine. You may.”
Prila bowed her head in thanks, then redirected her attention back to her terminal. Butterflies took over her stomach as she realized she was actually going to be able to do the one thing she had now decided she needed to do above all. No matter what—even if it cost Prila her life—she needed to find and speak with Angelica. She had to get to that inn somehow, and she knew there was a secret entrance on B4. All she’d have to do is sneak past a few skeleton archers and she could finally visit the famous inn for herself. It would be easier, of course, if she deactivated the mobs on B4 ahead of time, but deactivating the mob spawns on any level other than B6 would raise too much suspicion. As a level-1 human, it would pose an incredible risk to her life. But she was tired of watching everything unfold from the sidelines. Galterra needed her: even if it didn’t know it yet. Galterra needed Zach, too, which was why he damn well better survive this.
Just keep running, kid, she thought. Keep going!
*****
The world shook, the walls began to crumble, and dust, along with loose rocks began to leak down from the ceiling as an explosion hit B6 that was so powerful Zach feared it might cause the entire tunnel to cave in. If not for his amplified dexterity, he probably would have been knocked off his feet, and if not for Kolona and Olivir rushing to steady Rian and Lienne, the two of them might’ve fallen over as well, which in this context, would nearly certainly mean being captured or killed. Put simply, things right now were not good: not at all.
Zach, together with Rian, Lienne, Olivir, Grundor, Kolona, and Fluffles, continued to dash frantically down the miles-long tunnel in a desperate attempt to escape from Queen Vayra, who if not for Olivir’s frantic summoning, would have reached them by now. One after the next, he called forth Fundead Roller Ghasts and Fundead Shockers, and then he imbued each one of them with a flashing, dark-purple orb that served as a sort of time bomb. The zombies would then skate directly at the front-most Elf and explode, doing very little damage but succeeding in slowing them down.
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It's so weird to see them on my side for once, Zach thought, unintentionally tensing up each time one of the mobs popped into existence next to him. The mob would skate alongside them, keeping pace, until Olivir imbued it with a bomb, and then it would halt, turn around, and make a beeline to the Elvish warriors charging after them.
How are we even still alive?
Zach was no longer willing to look back. He’d learned his lesson after the last few times. They all had. The sheer number of things that had either almost—or were currently about to—kill them was so unnerving that even just seeing it made Zach want to flee at full speed. But since Rian and Lienne could not keep up, it would mean leaving them behind, which he simply would not do. It was for this reason he needed to gather all his courage and force himself to keep pace with them.
Less than a minute earlier, Fylwen had nearly succeeded in drowning them all to death. The woman had actually summoned a fucking tidal wave with enough water to completely fill a large section of the tunnel. Right now, half of B6 and all of B5 were underwater. Distantly, Zach wondered if Moldark, in his NPC form, would still be standing there in the wedding room robotically gargling out his lines while submerged in water.
“Why’re you grinning all of a sudden?” Rian asked, panting heavily as he struggled to keep up.
“It’s nothing,” Zach said. “Tell you later.”
With less than two minutes left on Unleashed Phase, there was no chance whatsoever that Zach would have enough time left to use Phase Rescue and pull Olivir through the exit. Luckily, however, it was looking like he might not have to due to something they’d discovered as a result of “warping” Olivir into the dungeon. In fact, the entire reason Fylwen had managed to catch up to them so fast in the first place had everything to do with bringing Olivir here. It had cost them thirty-five precious seconds of time: an exact number that he knew only because he’d been watching it tick down.
Immediately after entering B4, Kolona had hurried Fluffles, Grundor, Rian, and Lienne inside, then held the door so that Zach could maintain a visual line of sight to Olivir, who claimed he could not even see the door that they’d all just walked through. Each time one of them entered, he would remark that, to his eyes, they looked like they were vanishing into thin air.
Just as they’d planned, Zach had wasted no time in activating Boundless and Phase Rescue. Immediately, a blueish orb had surrounded Olivir exactly as Zach had expected, which meant that he’d been right and his ability would, in fact, work. But rather than collapse in on itself as it always did—before reappearing by Zach’s side—it instead blasted off straight upwards and into the sky, leaving behind a blue, comet-like trail in its wake. Within the shortest of instants, it then disappeared, and it had been at this point that Zach, as well as Kolona, had become very worried.
Where had he gone? Why hadn’t he reappeared? These were the things that Zach had asked himself when, after five seconds of waiting around anxiously, Olivir did not reappear. The following thirty seconds after that had been some of the longest thirty seconds of his life, during which Zach had been forced to confront several horrifying questions such as: what if Zach had been wrong and he had just killed Olivir somehow? What if he never showed up? Should they leave without him? How long was he supposed to wait?
Finally, however, on the thirty-fifth second, Olivir at least reappeared on the heels of a blue orb that lit up the stairwell somewhere behind him.
“Are you okay?” both Zach and Kolona had asked him at the same time. “What happened?”
Olivir had an expression on his face of pure wonder; it was an expression unlike any Zach had seen before. “I…I saw everything,” he’d said, speaking first at a whisper. Then, with a giddy sort of excitement, he’d said, “I flew straight into space, right through the middle of a gas giant in this solar system, and then I traveled at gate-speed two-hundred light years to Galterra. Oh! I know where we are, too, dude. I was moving so fast, but I still saw it. We’re in the far east: on Zatrakhar.”
Olivir had explained to them that they were many miles below the surface of Galterra, specifically beneath the Orc-run continent of Zatrakhar, which was a good thirteen-thousand miles away from North Bastia. If not for the fact that their lives had depended on them immediately continuing on their way, Zach would have liked to stop and ask Olivir a billion follow-up questions about what had just happened to him and what he’d seen. Instead, the only vital point of discussion revolved around a claim that Olivir had made, in which he’d stated that he could now see the door that was invisible to him before. Therefore, Olivir had surmised that the barrier preventing travel was only active on entrances and not exits—which in turn meant that Zach would not have to use Phase Rescue again when they got to B7.
Assuming Zach understood things correctly, then theoretically, he would have to use it again if they had been intending to go to B8. This was because, despite technically being “floors” in the dungeon, the doors leading to B2, B3, and B7 were “exit” points that were not fully part of the core dungeon. It was more accurate to say that these floors ran through the dungeon, or parallel with it. For this reason, it was impossible for someone to be trapped inside the dungeon if for some reason they lost their buff—or in this case, if they never had it in the first place. They could end up stuck on a foreign planet, but not inside a floor like B6.
I hope that’s the case, because there’s no way I’ll have enough time left on Unleashed Phase to pull Olivir through the door.
As the sound of shouting grew louder behind him, Zach wondered if he should just scoop up Rian and Lienne and carry them through the final stretch. Humiliating or not, the Elves were getting closer, and there was still a bit of ground to cover. Given their current speed and their difficulty in slowing the enemy, it was now entirely possible they wouldn’t even make it to the beach, let alone stand any chance of surviving once they got there. Zach gripped his hands into fists and prayed to the Gods that they all made it through this.
They were so close now.
*****
If not for one boy’s heroic actions, an egregiously incompetent former Chief Censor at the IMA, and a chance discovery deep below Shadowfall Coast, Sir Alistair Morrison was certain that the legendary Guild of Gentlemen would soon be no more. Yet down here, deep in this hidden laboratory, they had discovered a new cause for hope: a weapon that was far more powerful than anything that had come before it. It was a weapon that no level was high enough to tank, no magic was powerful enough to thwart, and no ability was dexterous enough to evade. It was called an ICBM, and attached to it was a nuclear warhead that, should it be required, would reduce an enemy’s city to ashes. All of it. It would end the war in a single instant. It would put a stop to their losses and allow them to retake all they had lost.
And yet, Peter Brayspark, their leader—the man they trusted above all and the son of the last true king—had actually ordered Alistair to destroy it and never speak of it again. Well, he had no intention of following that order. For the sake of Peter as well as all of humanity, the Guild of Gentlemen could not be allowed to fall. If the Royal Roses chose to attack this city using conventional warfare, and if the defense force of Shadowfall Coast was not able to repel the invasion, Alistair was prepared to do whatever it took to defend his people.
But for now, he wanted to use every last second of his time. Time was now the most important resource in the world to him. Until this situation with the dragon was resolved, the attack on Shadowfall Coast would not commence. Hopefully, Ziragoth would occupy the world’s attention for at least a short while longer. His scientists needed just a little more time: precious moments required to figure out how to build more of these weapons, as one alone might not be enough. If these weapons were truly as powerful as his chief scientist, Iris Roduncrest, had claimed, then merely the threat of being attacked by one would be enough to make the world fall in line and bow down before King Peter Brayspark the Fifth—even if the man did not himself understand the importance of it. Iris had never led him astray before, and she had promised him that this weapon would deliver.
Thinking of the old woman, Alistair placed his hand on his heart and closed his eyes in memory of his dear friend and trusted confidant. The weapon had proven far more dangerous than they’d originally anticipated. Even using the cancer-healing rejuvenation stones, his top physicians had been unable to cure her, and she had died several days prior from exposure to this “atomic bomb.” Even though she had worn a protective suit that was supposed to defend her from radiation, it had not proven sufficient. Yet that did not deter the other brave men and women who had replaced her, several of whom had passed away since work on this had begun. It was a death sentence: but it was for the sake of humanity. And Alistair was so proud of their bravery. With this weapon, they would reestablish the monarchy and once again guide humanity on a path of righteousness. And all thanks to a man named “Moldark,” who centuries ago had been wise enough to know that this day might come.
All of humanity owed him their thanks. When this war was over, Sir Alistair Morrison would order a statue be erected in his name. He was, truly, their savior.