Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 171

Centerpoint Dungeon was a mess. I had been gone for two minutes, at most, but the amount of time that had passed here had definitely been more than that.

Had the goddess kept me in suspended animation for a full two weeks? No, that couldn’t be right—I checked on the farms I’d helped start, and they definitely hadn’t seen two weeks of growth.

Nothing was where I remembered it, though. Some adventurers had made it down past the tenth floor of the dungeon, which was where I’d started putting real opposition for even well-prepared parties. The ex-Kingsguard healing squads were working in tandem with the Pallbearers to keep adventurers from getting themselves killed.

They hadn’t entirely succeeded.

Shit.

I closed my eyes, trying to regain my bearings. The goddess hadn’t returned me to the same position I’d been in—no, I was in the same room as my Dungeon Core now, deep, deep beneath the 15th floor.

A number of otherworlders had died—not more than a few dozen, thankfully, but their deaths were on my hands. The dungeon’s hands, really, but we were one and the same, and there was no point in pretending otherwise.

It was too late to bring any of them back. None of us here had strong resurrection spells, and given how much the goddess had shoved her way into things and broken every large-scale plan we had, I could assume that even a [True Resurrection] wouldn’t be able to bring the bodies back.

I absorbed them all, creating a small headstone for each. I didn’t know their names, but I could at least ensure that they were remembered in some way.

Everyone affiliated with me was still alive, thankfully—the Pallbearers, the two surviving Land Pirates, the [Steelbrand] Austin, the Duelists, and Minus One.

Wait, Minus One?

When had they returned?

I opened my ARI and was immediately deluged by messages.

It took me a few minutes to sort through them, and through them, I built a general idea of what had happened.

Almost six days had passed without me. Centerpoint Dungeon had continued running itself on autopilot, and the adventurers here had grown increasingly worried over my disappearance. That answered one question, at least—the dungeon was, in fact, capable of functioning without me.

Unfortunately, we still didn’t know if the opposite was true.

Thorn, Troy, and Iris had done independent magical research and concluded that I wasn’t dead—which was nice, because that had stopped the flow of eulogies for me.

The king had taken action the moment I disappeared. That worried me the most.

Anderson, Alice, and Alex had all survived, with the latter experiencing a class evolution from [Zen Archer] to [Master of Arrows], which apparently diverged from the emotional balance path he’d been on to favor a less stable mental state. I could sympathize.

Iris had also survived with the help of Starfall and Lisa, who had managed fine as well. That meant that in the last three days, exactly zero of my adventurers had died.

Otherworlders, on the other hand…

Very few of them were actually dying in the dungeon, but I had been handling their food and drink. Though there were sources of water here and there, there were a few thousand otherworlders who hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in days. With their magic, they were hardier than they had been on Earth, but they were nearing the point of body shutdown.

I [Replicate]d food and water aplenty, practically showering the dungeon’s residents in the necessities of life. They would survive.

Outside of the dungeon, on the other hand, it was a massacre. Iris had estimated the king as having around forty towers, but based on the frequency that they were appearing and the accuracy with which they targeted large groups of travelers, there had to be more than that.

Every time they appeared, they took swathes of otherworlders. The Starfall-Alder group and Anderson’s group had both lost hundreds of their number already, and they stated that they continued to find small patches of survivors who reported that their large packs had been decimated in the same fashion.

I could guess what the king ultimately planned on doing. If each of those dead otherworlders was another monstrous hybrid—that was a lot of power.

Starfall and Anderson were both only hours away, though, so there was that to look forward to. Both groups claimed to be carrying cargo.

The messages from Minus One carried real potential. I made a mental note to meet up with them. Their experiment—and by extension, the last potentially viable plan we had—had proven to be successful.

We didn’t have much time left, though.

Less than an hour ago—a couple seconds ago, from my point of view—the day count had abruptly dropped from thirteen to just over one, which was where we were at now.

There was a lot more to unpack, but that was the bulk of it. Nobody had a proper, overarching plan, but the pieces were falling into place.

I composed a reply to everyone.

#

This is Lucas. Just caught up on the last three days of messages. I’m alive.

Thanks for keeping the lights on, everyone. I know you didn’t really have another choice, but I appreciate it. We’re going to be alright. I hope.

Minus One, Thorn, meet me ASAP. I’m on my way to your position—remove yourself from danger.

Anderson, Alice, Alex, Starfall, Lisa, Iris—if you can, please hurry. This is looking dicey. I don’t want to tell you to abandon your otherworlders, but if they’re slowing you down too much, this takes priority. They’re dead either way if we don’t figure this out.

Everyone: we can do this.

#

Rose had put in a lot of work healing. As the only person with dedicated healing spells, she’d spent a lot of time going around and restoring injured otherworlders. At least, that was what the messages said.

When I saw her now, as beautiful as she’d ever been, she didn’t say a single word. Instead, she sprinted forward at frankly inhuman speeds and tackled me to the ground, wrapping her arms around me so tightly that I could barely breathe.

“You asshole,” she whispered into my ear. The [Soloist] kissed me, but all too soon, we were back on our feet. “I love you.”

“I know,” I replied, smiling so wide it hurt. “I missed you, too.”

Ryan coughed. “Uh, are you two done?”

“Ryan,” I said, “I know everything that happens in the dungeon. Everything. You can let us have this.”

I didn’t see it with my human eyes, but I saw his face redden. “Oh.”

“You didn’t have to say that,” Rose said, her elated grin belying her words.

“You’ve been doing some great work,” I told her. “Are you all alright?”

“I don’t think any of us are alright,” Troy said. “We have been managing.”

“That’s about as good as I could ask for,” I said. “Where’s Thorn?”

“Here,” the [Wizard] said, flashing into existence. “[Teleport] works within the bounds of the dungeon, by the by.”

“Fantastic,” I said. “Do you have what we need?”

Troy winced. “It’s a little more complex than that.”

#

109 miles from Centerpoint Dungeon, 6 days ago

Rose sang, but against this enemy, it wasn’t entirely necessary.

Thorn and Troy both had a menagerie of electricity spells. Hell, even Ryan’s entire class was centered around electricity. They were the natural enemy of anythingt that lived in the water.

Rose had every song, though, so she wasn’t useless.

[Sirensong] worked again any single target, and though she wasn’t going to be charming a [True Kraken], she could weaken its ability to defend itself.

It was a foregone conclusion from the beginning. Thorn was level 20. Rose was level 15. Troy and Ryan were both level 16.

Though it took them nearly half an hour, they wore the [True Kraken] down while Ryan and Thorn kept any of them from taking any significant hits, and when it was done, there wasn’t much more the dungeon had to offer that actually posed a threat.

Rose checked the ARI. Still down.

The four of them entered the dungeon in a [Force Bubble] Troy produced. It was no more pleasant than the last one of its kind, and it made Rose cringe just to be here, but it was necessary.

This would totally violate the Geneva Convention, she thought. Wasn’t there something about human experimentation in there?

They didn’t have any other options, though, and she was pretty sure that no matter what they did, they couldn’t inflict any kind of suffering worse than what the king had already done.

“Troy,” Thorn said. “What do you make of this?”

“Thorn,” the [Protean Mage] replied in kind. “We don’t know how much longer this dungeon is going to survive, so we should get on it fast.”

Rose didn’t understand the magical logic behind what they were doing, but she knew what their goal was.

Transfer of a consciousness.

Theoretically, Thorn had explained, it was possible for one dungeon to possess multiple cores. It wasn’t without precedent. There were megadungeons with dozens of Dungeon Cores within thim that remained functional even when a new one was added or an old one was lost.

The question, as it stood, was whether it was possible for one dungeon to transfer itself from one core to another.

It was very, very likely that they were going to permanently kill the unfortunate native who’d been turned into this abomination.

“We’ll defend you,” Rose said. “Ryan, let’s go. You two, start up your ritual or whatever. Go for it.”

“We have your backs,” Ryan said.

They exited the dungeon together.

Twenty minutes later, the remainder of the dungeon simply melted, blood and water and all.

In its place were Troy and Thorn, both of them floating with some spell or another. Between the two of them were two Dungeon Cores. One was breaking, and the red energy that Rose recognized as the representation of the hybrid’s life flowed from it into the other, previously empty one.

The second core shattered.

“Within expected bounds!” Thorn shouted from a hundred feet in the air. “One core lost! Nine to go!”

“We need to find another one,” Troy said, descending. His expression was grim.

It took them all ten cores before they figured out how to make it work.

For a certain value of “work,” that was. They had learned a lot, but not enough.

Their final target had been a relatively weak dungeon, and though they had managed to use all five of their remaining Dungeon Cores to transfer it, the core itself had broken when the monsters it’d produced had turned against it.

Whether that was because of an inherent property of the consciousness transfer or the influence of the king was yet to be seen.

The ARI was online by the end of it, though, and through it, they learned that Centerpoint was in trouble.

Rose wished they had more time, and the goddess granted the exact opposite.

#

Centerpoint Dungeon, now

“So you’re saying that you need a load of Dungeon Cores in order to transfer one?” I asked. “You weren’t able to test more?”

“We thought we had more time,” Rose said. “Thorn seemed pretty set on saying that you would be back and that it was only a matter of time before you returned, so we figured we could wait a few more days.”

I grimaced. “And now we have one day left, and we don’t know if it actually works.”

“It does work,” Thorn said. “We just don’t know how many Dungeon Cores we need. My theory is that it scales in accordance to the power of the dungeon. Given the raw strength of Centerpoint… we may need a lot.”

“I have a thousand or so left over,” I said. “Can we use those?”

“We should be able to,” Troy said, “but I would like to be absolutely sure that it will work.”

“Where are we getting more Dungeon Cores from, though?” I asked.

“What do you think is taking my mom so long?” Rose asked, grinning.

“Now that’s what I like to hear,” I said. “Do we have a status update on the king?”

“We don’t know,” Rose said, sobering. “I think we can guess, though. The goddess has been completely silent for the last few days—like, after that message, there was basically nothing except for the interface.”

“I think she had her hands full with me,” I said. “And Carly.”

“What happened to her?” Rose asked, frowning. “I don’t know much about her, but I remember seeing the ARI messages about her.”

“She got thrown two planes up,” I said. “If I had to guess, she’s either dead or having a very bad time right now.”

“Christ,” Rose muttered. “The goddess?”

“Who else?”

“Fuck me, why’d we have to roll a goddess that gets off on misery,” Rose said. “I hope she never sticks her grubby little fingers into our lives again.”

“If I had to guess, this might be the last time,” I said, recounting what the goddess had said to me. “This is our last chance, she said.”

“Then let’s show her what we’re made of and sic her somewhere else,” Rose said.

“Hear, hear,” Ryan cheered drily. “Never thought I’d live to see the day where I’d fight for a dungeon over the goddess.”

I opened my mouth to reply, then felt a new sensation.

Movement at the borders.

Anderson. Alice. Alex. Six hundred otherworlders.

And, crucially the bounty of a broken tower. Crates upon crates of Dungeon Cores. Thousands of them.

The end was in sight. We had twenty-three and a half hours remaining. In less than a day, the king was going to make his final play. Our last hope of a plan was almost ready to go.

The goddess would watch over it all, doing nothing. Bored, like she always was.

“I’d say goddess help us, but we know how little that means,” I said. “Anderson’s group just arrived. We’re running out of time, so I’d like to redirect our focus. Iris has the last of the Dungeon Cores we can add, so while I manage the dungeon, I’d like everyone who’s able to protect her and get those cores to me.”

“You got it, boss,” Ryan said.

The goddess remained silent. I hadn’t been entirely forthcoming about her intentions for me, but she seemed to not want to butt in, for once.

“It’s up to us to save what’s left of the world,” I said. “Let’s get it done.”