The battle was ferocious. In all his life, Kervantes had never seen such a thing. Not that this life had existed for long. Still, new experiences were supposed to be cherished to a certain extent. Even terrible ones had some sort of valuable lesson one could learn from.
Or so the Core was fond of saying.
That memory made all the gears within him slow down a little. He recognized the part-mechanical, part- physiological reaction as what the mortals called sadness. A strange feeling, no doubt. But upon observation, not an illogical one.
After all, he quite dearly regretted what had become of the Core. Of what had become of the most important being in his life.
But the good thing was that with the battle raging so ferociously all over the chamber, Kervantes was free to go about his own business. Namely, reaching the Core and helping it out of the precarious situation it had landed itself in.
Thanks to his murderer—who had proceeded to commit another atrocity upon his fellow guardians of the gigantic variant—Kervantes was now free to sneak where he wished. The landing from the hole in the chamber’s roof would have been debilitating, but he had regenerated himself thanks to the dungeon’s powers and the new trick he had obtained.
This allowed him to safely lower himself to the chamber floor with the use of his Core Pulse. Then, he sneaked around the closest battle at hand—the most powerful of those in the area throwing all their ferocity at each other.
Kervantes took a moment to appreciate the sight. Such power. Such strength! Had he possessed even a fraction of such might, think of all the changes he could have enacted.
Shaking his head, he moved on. The strongest being in the room—the Abyssal with all the webs—had sought to protect the Dungeon Core by erecting a strange barricade around it. A spire of steely webs swung up from the ground to rise high into the air, the strongest of the mortal invaders trapped against it near its peak. More threads kept the man in place, strange crimson energy spiking into him.
Kervantes did not know what the Abyssal was truly intending with such a setup. He also had no idea if he could break through that barricade. With his comparatively meagre strength, it was unlikely.
However, what mattered for him was the distance between him and the Dungeon Core. Now that he was nearly close enough, nothing could truly separate him and his cherished one.
“Kervantes,” the Core said, the suddenness of its voice halting him in his tracks. “You have come? Still? After all that has happened? After all that I have done and said? You are still here?”
His pausing position was rather troubling, considering that the combatants of the nearest fray could spot him easily if they chose to look. Fortunately, they were too busy trying to kill each other. Kervantes continued sneaking until he had made his way to the other side of the spire, which afforded him some obscurity against his would-be spotters, before replying.
“Of course, my Core,” he said, keeping his voice low. They weren’t even communicating verbally, not truly, so he didn’t even need to speak. However, uttering the words out loud, even if it was only quietly, allowed him to make it feel real.
For a mechanical construct who wasn’t even supposed to be dealing with those pesky emotions that plagued mortals all the time, Kervantes strangely had too many of them. Thanks to the Core, of course.
“Why?” it asked.
“What else am I to do, my Core?” Kervantes asked back. “Leave you to rot at the hands of the Abyssals? I could never let that happen.”
“Is that why you are here? To free me?”
“Do you wish to be stuck in…” Kervantes stared up the spire. “In whatever that is?”
“I am a Dungeon Core, Kervantes. Being stuck in some place physically is all I can ever do.”
The Core sounded old and very weary when it spoke. An affectation. Kervantes had little trouble looking past it for he knew that the Core wasn’t much older than him.
“Leave here, Kervantes,” the Core said. “Take those you can and—”
“I cannot, my Core.”
“Why? I cannot be freed.”
“You can. And I will take you with me. As you know, I cannot stray beyond the bounds of the dungeon lest I lose my life and my will.”
“And you know that you are quite capable of doing so. I have seen you making friends and allies with the invaders. Convince one of them to grant you even a fraction of their Essence, and you and all the other automatons can leave this place. It will be to your greatest benefit.”
Kervantes was silent for a moment. “I used to believe you were working for our greatest benefit,” he said quietly, like a child who has discovered that the parent isn’t as perfect as once assumed.
“I used to think so too.” The Core seemed to diminish in the eye of Kervantes’s mind. “We have come so far, yet lost so much…”
Kervantes held no illusions about the Dungeon Core. He knew it didn’t wish harm upon any of the automatons, and not even on any of the humans, unless they intended to invade the dungeon to plunder all it held.
All it had hoped, by allying with the Abyssals, was to gain the same rights the monsters sought for themselves.
The same world the Abyssals sought to obtain.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“It might not be too late,” Kervantes said. “That is why I am here. If we work together one more time, I am confident that we will be able to find a way to salvage this.”
The Core’s brilliance flashed and dimmed in rapid succession over and over, as though it was laughing. “Can we truly? I think not. I believe that all we have worked towards has now fallen off. The only hope lies in seeing this through to the end, no matter what. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Abyssals will be our salvation.”
“They cannot be, my Core.”
“They can. After all, they seek nothing more than a better home. A better world to live in.” The Core’s sudden vehemence didn’t take Kervantes by surprise. They’d had this argument before. “You have not seen the Abyss, Kervantes. You have not plumbed its true depths, discovered its true horrors, or stared in despair at its truth. If you knew…”
“If I knew, I would allow them to invade our world and destroy everything to remake it in the image of the Abyss they wish for?”
“They want the same thing we want. Trapped in a dungeon, forced to undergo the same cycle of invasion by mortals and rebuilding over and over, we are stagnating. I will not stand for it. If we need the help of the Abyssals to turn things around and upend the fate forced upon us, then so be it.”
“But so you see, my Core. You think you are working solely for the goal you believe in, misguided though it might be, in hopes that it will help us all. The great many automatons who called the dungeon their home could call the whole world their playground. But what good is the world when it is torn asunder, nothing but a vista of devastation from horizon to horizon?”
“If that is what we must reduce it to, then so be it. We are of the dungeon, yes? We know what it is to rebuild. If needed, we will expand our efforts to the whole world once we are free.”
Kervantes realized that further argument was going to be futile. The Dungeon Core wasn’t about to be convinced by his words. That was alright. He hadn’t come here to win his argument.
He had come here to free the Dungeon Core itself.
“My Core, give me a moment,” he said.
He was asked what he was doing, but Kervantes only replied by showing. A quick use of the cannon in his right arm sent a pulse of violet aura into the webbed spire. It shook a little.
As he had been afraid, the disturbance alerted the nearest Abyssal. The battle with its foes had progressed to the point where it had nearly defeated the trio before it. Strong though the humans were, with their black thorns and dark flames and strange flowers, they couldn’t stand before the A-Grade Abyssal’s might.
But Kervantes had timed it just right. Even as the monster’s attention veered towards him, a new threat appeared before it, dragging its attention back to the battle.
His murderer had arrived.
Kervantes didn’t recognize her by her looks. She had clearly changed. But automatons such as him placed little in store by physical appearances, and instead, looked straight at the Essence signature.
There was something strange there, no doubt about it. Her power was immense, nothing like what he had seen before in either this timeline or the previous.
It held the same flavour as it had before. There was no doubt about it. This was Rieren Vallorne. Different, but still same. Kervantes did not know how she might have acquired such might in such short notice, but there was no doubting the veracity of its existence.
The combatants were separating at her approach Beaten down and nearing the verge of their defeat, they surely had to be glad for the reprieve that the new warrior’s appearance had granted them, though their faces didn’t betray it. But the fact that they were withdrawing proved the fact that they could sense much the same thing Kervantes could.
Their apparent saviour far outstripped them when it came to strength.
“You!” the Abyssal said, its voice sounding like nothing less than a hundred beings speaking through a thousand metal tubes. “You cannot be. This is impossible.”
The monster had no trouble recognizing its new enemy’s power either. How could it? The air around Rieren twisted and turned on its own in her presence, and the ground hummed with minute vibration. The world itself was bending to her will.
Had Kervantes possessed a mortal’s senses, he no doubt would have felt the strength of her aura even more severely.
“Your time has come to an end, Abyssal,” Rieren said in reply. “I will spare you if you chose to answer my questions and leave in peace.”
It was a testament to her strength that the Abyssal actually considered her proposition. Just for a moment, it seemed as though the monster prioritized its life enough to seek an alternate means to end their confrontation, even if it meant subserviently answering all that it was asked.
Thanks to the momentary lull in the battle, courtesy of Rieren’s arrival, Kervantes had finally been able to observe the monster. It was a hulking figure made of steely webs and crimson energy. A misshapen head and a barrel-wide body were framed with too many limbs.
Long arms for reach, shorter and thicker ones for power, long legs for faster movement, and thick ones to hold its ground. A few too many of those, if Kervantes was being honest.
At least, that was what his mechanical brain suggested. He would have perhaps added some more streamlining if he had designed the Abyssal. It looked a little top-heavy to him. Make it taller and a little less stubby. That would surely improve its movement capabilities.
The Abyssal’s rippling form cut off such thoughts. “You overestimate yourself. Whatever trick you used to raise your pathetic self higher, you are still nothing to me. Now die!”
With that tiniest of warnings, the Abyssal attacked.
Perhaps there had been some underestimating going on. With the seemingly overwhelming ferocity that the monster attacked Rieren with, for a moment, it seemed as though she might be defeated faster than he—and likely all the others in the chamber—had hoped.
He was, fortunately, proven quite wrong.
Kervantes didn’t know a great deal about cultivators and their little tricks. However, he was proficient in some of the jargon.
For one, the flood of water bursting outwards from Rieren’s location was her Domain. The liquid shone bright aquamarine, virulent and stormy energy bounding hither and thither just under its surface.
It seemed to slow down the onrushing Abyssal by a fraction, but more importantly, it had magnified Rieren’s speed a great deal. Despite the forest of limbs falling upon her like a barrage, she was able to evade most of the monster’s blows. Those she couldn’t dodge, she made sure to deflect. Had her sword increased in power with her to withstand such blows? Who knew.
The Abyssal’s ferocity was what had at first made Kervantes think that he had judged Rieren too quickly. He had. Just not in the right direction.
Not a single one of the monster’s blows landed on his murderer. Instead, at certain points, Rieren was able to land her own slashes and slices against the monster. The steely webs making up its body were slowly but surely giving way to her blows.
The Abyssal countered with a quick step backwards before launching a storm of its webs at her. They were empowered by its brilliant scarlet energy, flashing as red as a dying sun.
His murderer, it would appear, had an apt response. She stomped one foot into the floodwater, making an entire section of it rise up in a powerful geyser. All the energy thrumming under the surf now boiled to a furious point, making the entire column of rising liquid glow like a river lit by drowning fireflies.
The explosion made the chamber shake so viciously, even Kervantes’s faith in its stolidity was struck hard. It also reminded him that he wasn’t supposed to be gawking at the furious battle.
He turned his attention back to the spire. “My Core, it is time I took you to safety, away from those who would claim you for themselves and leave nothing but ruins of our home.”
The Core’s belligerence against his intentions was aptly clear, but Kervantes didn’t care. He had a job to do—making sure the one true being of worth in this dastardly place survived. But just as he was about to reach forward, the Abyssal was slammed through the spire, making the entire webbed edifice collapse upon Kervantes.