Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 166

Lucas

Carly Iru, [Omniscient Librarian], stepped away so silently that I wouldn’t even have noticed she was in the same room if it weren’t for my dungeon senses.

I typed a message to Iris talking about it as I made my way towards the returned adventurers. It took a little longer than I would’ve liked to transport myself across the much expanded dungeon now that it was large enough to be an urban metropolis, but that gave me time to talk.

She was incredibly on top of things, apparently, because she replied before I made it to the Pallbearers.

[ARI - new message received!]

#

I had wondered why my [Threads of Fate] felt active again. The spell impression is nowhere near maximum power in large part due to my overuse of it against the king. Evidently, it did not work, so that power was wasted, but we cannot cry over a broken vase.

Carly Iru is a valuable resource. She is also incredibly lethal. I would advise you not to let her get too close to your existence.

Ascension is a possibility I had not considered. It is possible to ascend at levels lower than 20. I believe you may be able to use [Intertwine] on a powerful enough spell and send the otherworlders above en masse.

We will arrive within a week, but we are experiencing issues of our own. Despite Starfall’s constant watch, otherworlders are vanishing. It is almost certainly the king’s work.

Stay safe. Stay vigilant. Survive.

- Iris

#

“It’s great to see you again,” I said earnestly.

After I’d met the Pallbearers up on the surface, I’d sent us underground immediately. Some otherworlders had decided not to risk delving the dungeon—it hadn’t helped that I’d encouraged some of them, especially the sickly-looking ones and the children, to stay back.

I had given them the supplies to make camp above the surface, and they were surviving just fine, but I didn’t want them to see the dungeon’s [Tour Guide] walking along with four rather powerful adventurers.

Said adventurers had a more subdued response than one would assume they would have to returning to safety, but in fairness, the Pallbearers had just lost their fourth party member.

Also, we were in a dark, rapidly moving gap in the dungeon, which couldn’t help.

[Intertwine] was almost always active now. Since there were so many people in the dungeon now, there was usually someone who’d just finished a section of it. That meant I had access to a load of spells that I otherwise wouldn’t.

I cast a level 1’s [Light] on each corner of our little pseudo-cart, then [Replicate]d some hot food and water for them.

“We can—” I paused, waiting as all four of them tore into the offerings I’d given them. “Actually, I think it can wait. Let’s get you all rested up. I can take these off your hands for now.”

They didn’t seem to be listening, but K’lon gave me a thumbs up, so I sent the crate of Dungeon Cores elsewhere.

That was promising, but I could handle it in a bit.

There were still more people getting themselves into trouble, but nothing was immediately necessary now. Anton had floated the idea of getting the ex-Kingsguard to heal the hurt adventurers, and I’d started implementing that, but they weren’t fully ready yet, and I worried that the otherworlders would attack them on sight.

Once the Pallbearers plus Nora had a proper meal, a hot shower, and a change of clothes, I reassembled us back in the same meeting room where we’d been. Carly was gone already, though I’d made sure to check in on where she was going before she left. The [Omniscient Library] had headed to the surface, ostensibly to “get some fresh air.”

I highly doubted that was what she wanted to do, but so long as she wasn’t plotting my destruction, I didn’t much care. She was still within my radius, anyway.

“Nora,” I said. “You brought a lot of Dungeon Cores back. What happened?”  She explained it to me. To her credit, she was both patient and willing to elaborate on the points I questioned her on. Nora had a shockingly good memory of what had happened.

The [Alchemist] didn’t seem very happy, which made sense when Ashley told me that they’d explained Tuyu’s situation to her on the path here. I was thankful that Alice, Anderson, and Alex all still seemed to be alive, because I couldn’t imagine how she’d feel if she was gone for a while and came back to learn that her friends were dead.

“I don’t know what he’s doing,” she concluded. “I just know that the tower had to have produced tens of thousands of these things.”

“Anderson reported encountering a tower, too” I said. “Do you think there’s any relation?”

“I read the ARI messages,” Nora said. She shrugged. “I dunno. He wasn’t very eloquent with his description. He mentioned there being spheres, so I sent him a direct message telling him they were probably Dungeon Cores. I don’t know if he got it or not. My interface was off for a while, so it’s possible his is, too.”

I winced. “I hope he’s alright.”

#

Anderson

This situation was absolutely not alright.

He had expected the tower to provide some resistance—any sane person should have. This amount, though? There was no reason an inanimate building should do this much.

Anderson had to select new spells just to stay alive. He’d gained levels from killing a load of monsters right before the Cataclysm, but he hadn’t picked new spells for fear of locking himself into a suboptimal build.

He didn’t have much of a choice, now. The tower’s scream was still going, and the land under his feet was turning against him. Monsters both familiar and unknown to him burst from the tower, and throughout it all, the people within never stopped screaming.

Anderson could take on maybe a couple maw-mouths with his [Arcane Autocannon], but a dozen of them? Alongside [Death Dragon]s, [Fire Elemental]s, and [Hydra]s? Absolutely not. His only hope was to get his ass moving and out of range of the Dungeon Cores powering the spire.

It was a massive pain in the ass to work with the interface while actively running, but he slammed himself into gear anyway.

His options were pretty wide, but the monsters chasing him were faster than him. He stopped a couple times to fire his [Arcane Autocannon] off, not bothering to check if he was even hurting anything chasing him.

It was keeping him alive for now, but he could only run so fast, and he only had so much mana.

There were a few mobility options, but none of them seemed like they were good enough. Anderson didn’t have time to debate the choices past their names—[Bullet Boost], [Misty Step], and [Recoil Redirection] were the first three he saw—but Anderson had a few open slots.

He took the latter spell first.

[Recoil Redirection]

Proficiency: F

Effect: While this spell is active, rather than nullifying the recoil of your gunshots, you can redirect it into moving you in the opposite direction of your shot.

Okay, that was actually quite solid.

He activated [Bottomless Magazine] and [Recoil Redirection] with what little mana he had remaining, and he dumped ammunition downrange, checking only to ensure that no hapless civilians had wandered into his line of fire.

You might hit the people in the tower, a voice inside his head said.

He ignored it. Anderson cared more about people now than he did a year ago, but he wasn’t an idiot. Anyone in there was well and truly fucked already. A chance bullet to the head might be a mercy for them.

A moment later, Anderson wasn’t thinking about that anymore, because [Recoil Redirection] canceled out every last one of his anti-recoil spells, and he practically flew. It was a wonder his body didn’t tear apart.

I suppose I have the level-ups to thank for that, he thought.

The [Gunslinger] outpaced the monsters behind him with ease, soaring through the skies until he was well beyond the tower’s radius.

Great. Step one was complete.

Now he had an entirely different problem.

The ground was rather far away, but it was rapidly growing closer.

This was the second time this week that he’d fallen from the sky. He really needed to stop making a habit of that.

Last time, Alice had thought fast with her monstrosities from [Domain of Night], and she’d caught all three of them with a misshapen skeletal bat of some kind, loweirng them to the ground with no harm done except to Alex’s vocal chords.

This time? No such luck.

Anderson sorted through his available upgrades, looking for any spell that might help slow his descent, but while a lot of them were really good for starting, none of them were great at stopping.

“Fantastic,” he complained. He couldn’t even hear his own voice—the wind tore it away.

This was going to be rough.

He’d aimed for height over distance, guessing that the tower wasn’t going to be able to spawn many monsters midair, since they’d all come from the ground, and so far, he seemed to be right.

At the height he was now, even the tower was a speck on the ground. He’d fired a lot of rather powerful bullets, he realized. Anderson hadn’t stopped until he’d been a hundred percent sure that nothing was chasing him anymore.

Aaaaand he couldn’t use [Recoil Redirection] while shooting downwards anymore because he couldn’t risk hitting the otherworlders he was in charge of. Damn it.

He skimmed through the spell list with increasing desperation as he fell, wind whistling through his ears, and found one that he’d discarded a while ago for being entirely useless—[Blank Shot].

It did exactly what it said on the tin. When he had the spell active, every part of the gunshot would happen excepot for the part where a bullet came out.

In every other situation, it was going to be entirely useless, but it was exactly what he needed right now.

[New spell [Blank Shot] gained!]

He fired with his twin hand cannons, using [Recoil Direction] as he did.

It worked like charm.

Anderson was almost out of mana when he hit the ground, but he’d survived.

Now to regroup with his squad and tell everyone about what he’d learned.

#

Anderson reporting for duty! I just wasted two spell slots on [Recoil Redirection] and [Blank Shot]. It’s a long story. I’ll explain later.

I explored the spire I was talking about earlier. Now that we know he’s doing something weird with Dungeon Cores, I’m almost a hundred percent sure it’s the king’s.

There were people in there. They weren’t wearing otherworlder clothes, so I have to assume they were natives. I didn’t get a close enough look to see what was happening before the tower started to defend itself, though. It put out almost as many monsters as Centerpoint could in, like, 10 seconds.

Defensive profile of the tower: there’s a jamming ward on it that stretches about a quarter mile out. It’s resistant or immune to focused damage, I think, but a ton of rebounding shots did enough damage to open its sides. I think it was healing already, then.

I ran for my life before I could tell what was really going on. Sorry I couldn’t find anything more useful. I’m fresh out of mana and stamina, but I found my squad. We’re maybe four days out, to give you a general frame of how far the towers are from Centerpoint. Fifty miles, if I had to guess.

This is Anderson, signing off.

#

Rose

“Interesting,” Rose said, reading the message Anderson had sent over. “What do you make of this, Troy? Mom?”

“My [Threads of Fate] do seem to cut off in the area around the dungeon,” Iris said. “This provides an explanation as to why.”

“I do not know why they harvested people,” Troy said. He frowned. “The amount of magical energy you can extract from a human body is nowhere close to what you need to create a Dungeon Core, if my studies were correct.”

“We can look around to find one,” Ryan suggested. “We have Starfall to guide our otherworlders, and I’m fast enough.”

“How do you suggest we find one?” Troy asked. “[Locate] won’t work on them.”

“Find blind spots,” Rose said, completing Ryan’s thoughts. “The blinder, the better. If you can’t find where your enemy is, just look where he doesn’t want you to look.”

She fiddled with her hair as they walked, her [Soloist] class enabling her to talk normally while her conjured instruments played a [Melody of Stamina] to keep their thousands of otherworlders moving. They’d complained at first, but she was good enough at what she did to keep them going.

Lucas would be proud of her, she figured. Sacrificing her time and power to help a bunch of innocents—that sounded like something he’d do.

Rose didn’t want that, though. She wanted him. They’d talked over the ARI, but it really just wasn’t enough. She craved his touch, his voice, and a thousand tiny things about him. The way his eyes lit up with excitement every time he came up with a new plan. The—

“Hey, Rose,” Ryan said. “Stop daydreaming. Do we wanna run it or not?”

The [Soloist]’s cheeks reddened. “Run it by me one more time.”

Ryan smirked. “Sure thing, princess. I spent a few seconds talking to Starfall, and they seem to think they can handle any issues going on here. Your mom says there’s a chunk of land she can’t see about ten miles ahead. We’re all over level 15 now, right?”

“Exactly fifteen,” Rose said. Her class had always been slower to level, but the recent Cataclysm and associated monster horde had given her ample opportunity to level up. Plus, the goddess keeps handing me freebies, she thought. That hadn’t let up at any point.

“Sixteen,” Troy confirmed.

“I figure the three of us put together have a better shot at taking a tower down than Anderson did alone,” Ryan said. “Want to give it a shot?”

“Can’t hurt,” Rose shrugged. Maybe, if their findings were good enough, they could just report directly back to Lucas—er, to the dungeon. Starfall could handle the otherworlders on their own, couldn’t they? “Take us.”

Ryan didn’t even wait for Troy to confirm before taking the two of them into his [Flashdrive] and sending their trio screaming off at supersonic speeds.

The countryside blazed past them in a hazy blur. From what little glimpses she could catch of it, Rose wasn’t missing much. It was more of the same. Ruins, derelict villages, monsters, and corpses. Looking for too long just made her sad.

Sure, her… unique relationship with the goddess made her less attached to this world in general, but she’d watched too many good people die. Seeing even more just senselessly perish for no reason really, really sucked. The goddess had gone largely silent other than to assist her with her magic, which hadn’t helped at all.

They spent an uncomfortably long time searching, though Rose never complained. Everyone else had it so much worse. She had no right to complain.

An hour passed, then two. They made small talk, though there wasn’t much small talk to be made when everything that casual conversation might be made about had been so thoroughly obliterated.

And eventually, they found a tower.

This one was located in a forest that Rose was reasonably sure she’d had a history lesson or three about. Rather than wood, the trees and shrubbery that populated the temperate forest were made of shimmering, transparent crystal.

Their usual rainbow shimmer was muted by the burnt rusty red of dried blood, which put a damper on things, and it was further ruined by the structure at the center.

Anderson and Nora had both reported seeing different towers, and it was looking like Minus One was going to see the same.

“Wait,” Rose said out loud as Ryan ended his [Flashdrive]. “Is that even a tower?”

It was a structure of some kind, yes, but it was rounded and stout. It looked more like an oversized igloo than a tower, to be honest. It didn’t have the same ritual circles that the other ones had apparently had, either.

“We’re jammed,” Ryan said. “I just tried to send a message through the ARI. Didn’t work. I assume this is the right place.”

“I do not think this is a tower,” Troy said. He frowned. “The others said that theirs had a lot of defense systems on them. I don’t sense anything on or around it. Should we take a closer look?”

Rose was about to say it can’t hurt, but she knew that it definitely could. Instead, she said, “Yeah, let’s do it.”

They advanced together.

Troy’s observation was eerily true. It felt wrong to get up so close to something that was supposed to be attacking them.

For a while, Rose wanted to chalk it up to her being one of the goddess’ favorite children again. The three of them made it all the way to the walls of the structure without encountering trouble.

The walls of this structure were more clearly magical. Crimson lines traced their way through crystalline metal that was only a few shades darker than the forest around it. It reminded her of blood.

“This is definitely not the same kind of structure as the others that they mentioned,” Troy said. “This is much smaller. A hundred feet in diameter, if that. If I had to guess… this is likely the product, not the producer.”

“That’s helpful, isn’t it?” Rose said eagerly. “We can collect a sample of this or destroy it and analyze it later?”

“I believe so. Shall we?”

Minus One turned to enter the strange structure.

And then an eye opened on the wall facing them.

A human eye.

The structure rumbled, and crystal screeched against crystal, producing a horrid keening sound.

A deep chill ran through Rose’s spine when she realized that the ear-piercing wail was forming words.

“Help me,” the structure said.

[You are not favored.]

[Not anymore.]