Museum Core Chapter 123: A Cornered Beast

Of course, Thomas had prepared for this eventuality, and the plan was quite an elegant one, in his own mind.

It was, well, … run like hell while screaming for help.

Or just, you know, telepathically inform Elias that Thomas temporarily needed someone else to play matador because he needed reassess and reload.

Because his strategy hadn’t been entirely bad, it had worked some, but at the same time, there were also improvements to be made, improvements he knew, improvements he could easily put into practice if only he got far enough from the monster to regain his ability to create matter and monsters. Perhaps even multiple times, considering he couldn’t overload the Belfast with spare torpedoes like before.

Pulling the sub around, Thomas fired one final salvo while the bow was still properly aligned, then took off for the hills while his creations engaged the anchor beast.

He really should have built the Belfast with some stern-facing torpedo tubes … but then again, any weapons that pointed backwards would have taken away from his forward-facing firepower and weakened his original alpha strike.

***

The Kronosaurus hurled itself forward, all four fins flashing through the water so quickly they practially blurred, and its jaws opened, the Aquatic Void Maw charging deep within its gullet, ready to tear a huge chunk out of that metal and glass mess it had for a face … and then the anchor beast’s head suddenly shifted sideways, pushed anlong not by muscle power but mental effort alone, currenty visible in the still-murky waters allowing it to evade to the right then duck down.

Of course, the dungeon monster went after it, but the moment it was coming from the point its enemy was moving away from, it was getting pushed back by the streams of water. It fought against the currents, trying to get through them, until eventually, before it even knew what was happening, the anchor beast had curled around in a huge ring, water blasting down from every side while the guardian held itself in place with its sheer physical strength and the pressure mounted …

***

In the distance, the leading Kronosaurus imploded, and the guardian suddenly snapped its body straight again, somehow holding its rear end in place using its power while pushing its head through the water with sheer force alone, combining the might of its muscles with its movement ability to close the distance in seconds.

The wave-front its motion unleashed was already enough to throw the dungeon monster formation into complete and utter chaos. That was when it unleashed the electricity it had been storing this entire time, and the ocean boiled.

Mostly.

That much energy unleashed at that short a range should have killed the entirety of Thomas’ force, but while he hadn’t planned for this exact situation, this attack that had been charged for god only knows how long and hit like Zeus’ own thunderbolt, he’d still prepared for the electric wave.

All throughout the mess of a “formation” that Thomas had unleashed lay some very specific catsharks.

Normal looking. Unremarkable. No offensive power save for the Void Bite he’d given to all of them.

But it did have the ability “Electric Conversion.” Draw in electricity, store it, and unleash it upon contact with the enemy. In theory.

What actually happened was the power overloading in an instant, the electricity getting drawn into them, superheating their flesh until they detonated as though they were bombs, rather than living beings.

Yet even as the ash they had been reduced to began to disperse in the water, the flaw in the guardian’s plan had been revealed.

Yes, that electric wave at point-blank range was far more powerful, but at the same time, anything that survived the attack would be right fucking there.

And the dungeon swarm took full advantage.

A massive chunk of the anchor beast’s side outright vanished as the flesh was drawn into the maw of the second Kronosaurus.

A mako who’d dropped back to gain more space to accelerate in launched itself forward at the speed of sound … the speed of sound in water, that was. And when it hammered into the anchor beast’s head, the massive glass plate actually cracked. Just cracked, but it was more damage the monster’s mechanical parts had taken thus far.

And just when it had seemed as though the monster was already operating at full power, it proved just how wrong that had been.

Several cracks might have been shooting through the lens, but when white, scratch-like lines began to cover it, there was no mistaking that for anything other than magical runes.

Yet when the spell discharged, the effect wasn’t immediately obvious … until suddenly everything the light touched curled up and died, shriveling up like raisins, like corpses left out in the desert for years …

After five seconds, the beam shut off, and all that was left were corpses and one very, very angry anchor beast that continued to glare at the graveyard ahead, unmoving, seemingly exhausted.

That was the end of all the monsters around the anchor beast. All monsters outside it. But any of the countless little sharks that had gone into wounds and began biting and ripping and tearing at its insides … well, those were all fine, all okay, and there were further reinforcements already incoming from above.

***

Jaclyn slowed down her descent for a couple of seconds to let Elias flash past, then began to drink potions while she watched her only ally down here get to work.

Technically, there were a whole lot of people around who could operate underwater, but not well, even with the various items available that helped with that.

Operating beneath the waves with things the way they were was hard, especially at the higher levels, water resistance was a real pain in the ass, and most people had spent a lot more time learning to take advantage of their strength when running, and very little optimizing their swimming. Even if they were down here, they’d just get crushed by that monster.

For others, operating beneath the waves was actively dangerous, such as Henderson’s phoenix-derived regeneration, which wouldn’t function when he was actively soaking in water, and a lot of the ranged magic the BPA had was less than useful when fired through water rather than air. And then there were a whole lot of others who, in their full loadouts, weren’t even buoyant. Or people like Harjaz, who was a good thirty percent steel when transformed, and sank like a stone.

And while the American portion of the flotilla overhead was more than willing to help kill the anchor beast before this one, too decided to leave and go on a rampage, Washington had nixed any notion of supporting any action taken by Daedalus. Someone over there was still quite pissed …

Down below, Elias plunged through the clouds of blood, immediately “cleaning” the water as he forged the crimson liquid into the arsenal that would slay the anchor beast. Or at least badly wound it.

Countless bloody blades hammered into the monster’s side, immediately “refilling” the ocean with Elias’ future munitions.

And then the next salvo hit. And the third one, tearing open a gash large enough for him to actually slip inside.

Which, surprisingly enough, left the monster chasing its tail for a good thirty seconds as it tried to figure out where he’d gone.

She let that happen, merely resigning herself to watch and wait until it needed to be distracted again.

But soon enough, it did straighten out again, its spotlight of a head pointed straight ahead, into the murk where she could hear the Belfast’s engines chugging along.

Jaclyn pulled out another one of the edible potion shells and crunched down on it, then manifested her serpent’s tail around herself and accelerated straight at the enemy.

Now, the big question was: would it actually pay attention to her? Could she hit this absolute monster, in every possible sense of the word, divert its focus from the submarine that had brought it near-death?

Jaclyn cocked back her right fist and slammed it dead into the center of the monster’s gigantic, slightly cracked lens.

The projected badger’s claws shattered like glass, blood burst from her knuckles as they slammed into the nearly-unmoving wall of crystal, and all that earned her was a tiny sliver of lens falling off and drifting through the water in front of her.

Yet as minimal as the damage had been, the anchor beast took notice, very obviously so, as the spotlight it had for an eye flared even brighter, a glow so blinding Jaclyn had to look away even as the water around her instantly went from “freezing” to “lukewarm” from the waste heat alone.

Yes, that had been the entire point of this stunt … but Jaclyn still shivered as she realized she had the full attention of this ancient monster.

With a sound like nails on a chalkboard, arcane symbols began to scratch themselves into the crystal before her.

That could, in absolutely no way, shape, or form, be a good thing.

Jaclyn began to flee, parallel to the flat side of the monster’s face, fully aware of how stupid fleeing in any other direction would have been. The monster would only have to move its head a tiny fraction of a degree to keep her in the proverbial crosshairs.

If she moved parallel to its face, instead, and slipped by it, then it would have the devil’s time keeping its eye on her; it was simply too big to curl in on itself like that.

At least in theory. What happened instead was that a tremendous force she only belatedly realized was a current appearing out of nowhere picked her up and hurled her clear of the beast, the massive beam of light beginning to narrow down on her like a spotlight, growing slimmer and slimmer even as the water caught up in it began to boil.

Jaclyn flinched. The sheer amount of energy that had to be taken was mindboggling, terrifying, already somewhere in the same realm of a small nuke and still building.

The beam continued to sweep through the water like a gigantic blade as she tried to dodge left and right … only for the light to grow even brighter.

Glancing back, Jaclyn saw that the monster had decided to chase her after all, perhaps even realizing that there was a very real risk that she’d get out of the range of that “death ray.” Piss-poor weapon for an underwater creature anyway …

Jaclyn flipped herself in the water and launched herself straight back at the monster. Perhaps this time, she might even be able to get past it this time around.

For the briefest of moments, she crossed the beam, which was currently about as wide as a subway car. Yet even that tiniest of instants was enough.

Jaclyn managed to close her eyes and turn away, but her skin still took the full brunt of the heat and light, and when she opened her eyes again, she realized every exposed bit of skin was as red as a boiled lobster, and even what was beneath her clothing and save from the light itself likely looked truly awful.

Yet the beam was coming back around, and Jaclyn did her best to speed up, to keep going forward, because when the next beam struck her, she’d likely die … or “just” have her eyeballs outright boiled within her skull.

No current came in to sweep her away, however. Whether that meant the monster was using all its mana to power the attack or just didn’t feel the need to use the power just yet … the reason would decide whether she lived or died, but there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to check, or change the outcome even if she somehow came to know the information by some other means.

Around her, the world seemed to blur, to become indistinct, hidden behind a pale cerulean glow she would only later realize was an expansion of her manifestation as the serpent body was spreading across her, allowing her to further speed up even as she crashed through an area of near-boiling water where the beam had passed mere seconds ago …

And then she was suddenly flashing past the monster’s head, its face turning to chase her with the now pencil-thin beam that was all but invisible amidst the steam it produced, short-lived before it was once again “cooled down” by the immensity of the ocean.

A literal death ray, in literally the absolute worst possible environment for that.

And even though it was very difficult for the monster to aim that thing at her, if it did, she’d be dead.

So Jaclyn went to the one place the monster couldn’t hit her. Inside it.

It was weirdly reassuring to have the light of the glowstick attached to her vest start reflecting off actual walls, rather than dispersing into the void, even if the walls in question were made of ragged, torn, monster flesh.

And what was she to do, now that she was in here, than start punching it?

Jaclyn lashed out at the nearest fleshy thing that seemed even remotely important, and it burst like a gore-filed balloon, then manifested claws on both her hands and feet and began to tear her way throughout the anchor beast’s body, the “better digging” portion of her Honey Badger bond coming into play for the very first time as blood flowed and fragments of cartilage flew. A flash of pain curved across her forearm as she caught it on a metallic, cybernetic component she’d only seen far too late … yet that was fine. It just meant that she was bleeding too, that her blood was leaking into the surroundings, even the places she hadn’t carved up personally starting to blacken and die, yet she wasn’t around to witness that as she continued her way deeper, her entire world shrinking down to just three things.

Rip.

Tear.

Eviscerate.

Until this thing was dead.

Something grabbed her shoulder, and Jaclyn spun around, fist raised, claws manifested, when she realized it was just Elias.

“Things are about to start back up again,” he warned. “We need to go.”

Jaclyn shook her head, simultaneously realizing that there was no way for him to have heard that message with all that was going on, but choosing to ignore that, considering the circumstances.

“How powerful are the weapons?” she asked, gesturing down at the shark gnawing at the anchor beast’s flesh at her feet. “Is Daedalus really going to kill these things for some surface-level damage? And I’m tougher than them.”

Elias frowned at her for a moment, an expression of immense focus flashing across his face, then he nodded.

“This is insane … but also a good point. I’ll tell Daedalus to target the other beacon first, but later, we will have to go.”

And until then, she would continue to tear this thing apart from the inside.

***

Five minutes earlier

Behind Thomas, the world seemed to explode into an orgy of violence, but he’d already stopped paying attention to it.

Because now, while the monster was more focused on hunting his creatures and allies than fighting him, Thomas began to refill the Belfast’s munitions storage.

With new weapons, custom-designed to work with the creatures he was sending in.

And unlike when a tech company brought out a new design while promising the sun, the moon, and the stars, this stuff worked, mostly because he hadn’t tried to cram in every single feature possible, perfectly in line with the old joke of “if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.”

It was all very simple in the end. These weapons all shared the exact same type of “warhead,” a pure lance of kinetic force to be discharged upon contact, while most the sharks he’d sent burrowing into the monster’s flesh had been given the power “Overpressure Immunity” for C-Rank, designed to tank the impact of the weapons once it hit them, dispersed across the flesh behind the point of impact.

Of course, far from all of his monsters were the variants designed to deal with this, but in the end, the others didn’t matter. Some would survive and devour the anchor beast from the inside out.

Torpedoes manifested in the ship’s tubes and the rooms immediately behind them by the hundreds, some smoothly appearing and immediately slotting into place, others landing with heavy clanks after manifesting in a slightly less perfect position.

And once he was properly loaded up, he poured all his remaining energy into creating catsharks, not even leaving the tiniest drop for emergencies, save for whatever would have regenerated by the time he dipped back out of the anchor beast’s zone of interference, making sure to warn Elias and telling him to get the hell out of there … only for his friend to immediately reply that those two luniatics would be staying to maximize the damage they could do until he had to switch to shooting at he second beacon, the one Elias had just planted.

Another beam of dessicating energy washed out, this one carving a huge hole into the swarm of creaters he’d just summoned, but doing precisely nothing to the Belfast.

Thomas stuck his tongue out at the monster.

Well, he had one of the raptors aboard let its tongue loll out in the general direction of his opponent, but it was the thought that counted.

Thomas drove the Belfast forward, at the anchor beast, moving into range and then unleashing everything.

Hundreds of torpedoes flashed out into the ocean, then he turned hard to port and began to circle around, waiting to see what the initial salvo did. After all, never let it be said that Thomas was incapable of learning from his mistakes, especially ones as recent as his opening strike.

Yet this time around, with how madly the anchor beast was ducking and weaving, twisting and twirling to get away from his swarm of hungry little sharks, that it was unable to spare the attention needed to avoid his weapons.

And what weapons these were.

Sure, they didn’t blow up into pretty little fireworks, but they sure as shit hit like goddamned sledgehammers. Ones dropped from orbit.

Flesh cratered, blood and pulped tissue blew out of any nearby openings in its body, continuously and seemingly without end.

The spectacle might be gory, but it was also glorious!

Now if only this thing would just fucking die …

***

Somewhere in the distance, the monster’s flesh began to ripple, the impact of magical weapons shaking it, but she didn’t particularly mind.

In fact, it barely even registered amidst the violence she was inflicting upon the monster that surrounded her.

Flesh flew like confetti, the odd bit of cartilage barely survived longer than that, and any bit of damage she took, self-inflicted or done by a sharp fragment of something inside the monster, just inflicted that much more damage.

Hack, slash, do her best to avoid swallowing anything, though she had sadly been less effective than she’d wished on that last part.

And the bloody monster couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

While her body moved on autopilot, her mind was free to wander, to the point where she realized something: this thing was a battleship, in concept at least. Powerful, ridiculously so, also incredibly durable, and just in general the kind of asset that single-handedly put a nation on the map in terms of military power.

Yet at the same time, it had its weaknesses, and many of those were easily exploitable by small fry that should have been caught by escorts or minions, which did not exist in the current day and age, lucky for the- …

Something slammed into her from the side, hurling her into the opposite wall before she could even blink, ears ringing, ribs aching, and the left side of her face was just plain numb while her the left side of her vision was covered in a green cloud she only belatedly realized was in her eye, a blood vessel carrying the blood of the Lernean Hydra having burst within.

Jaclyn glared around, trying to figure out what had hit her, until she realized that perhaps, just maybe, she’d accidentally burrowed her way into the area that was currently being fired at by Daedalus … it was certainly as though the “wall” of her “tunnel” smashed into her as though violently impacted by something striking it from the other side …

It was then that Jaclyn could feel a strange kind of warmth emanating from the left side of her hip, which instantly put her on edge, until she realized the green liquid spilling forth from beneath her jacket was an entirely different color than her blood.

Bloody hell.

Yes, the bottle of healing potion bursting was fixing her, and it would be a lot less effective on a higher-ranking monster than on her … but the absolute last place she wanted to be while a monster’s wound was healing was in the freaking wound.

Jaclyn was already running when she manifested her claws and dragged them across her wrist, hoping the blood that burst forth would do as much damage as the potion fixed.

Though looking back, it seemed like the needn’t have bothered, the wound tunnel didn’t seem to be closing, though the time to run had most likely already passed.

So …

She ran. Well, swam, but that was distinction without a difference, until she finally burst free from the monster, just in time to see the constant stream of torpedoes end.

Was it dea- …

The anchor beast entirely unfurled at that point, launching itself forward in pursuit of what had to be the Belfast, which she could hear retreating into the distance.

Even though the monster had more injuries than a zombie movie extra, it was still capable of fighting.

***

That fucking thing was still going.

He’d dropped hundreds of tons of depth-charges on its head, unleashed the Belfast’s entire interior volume of torpedoes at it, reloaded, and done it all again, all while Abrams, Elias, and approximately a hundred sharks tearing apart its insides … yet the anchor beast was still not dead.

This was a problem. A big one.

Because while the monster may not be aware of it, there was an easy way to get rid of all the “parasites” gnawing at its insides. Killing him, or rather, the Belfast.

Equipping his creatures with self-destruct mechanisms to avoid unleashing superpowered monsters onto the rest of the world had seemed like such a good idea previously … but now there was one big problem.

If the Belfast died before the anchor beast, all of his monsters would go with it. And he’d have no way to guarantee he’d have done enough damage by then to ensure its demise.

… Damnit.

That being said, there was a solution, ignoble as it was: run like hell until the monster dropped dead.

Blood continued to stream out of the monster’s body as though it were a bag of chum, or perhaps some kind of bizarrely fucked up, long-lasting, bath bomb.

Thomas mentally facepalmed.

The mind could go to strange, strange places under stressful circumstances.

Because there was only so much he could do, just keep accelerating in a straight line, and pray the monster wouldn’t catch up. There were limits as to how creative he could be, here.

There were times for creativity, there were times for trickery, there were times when there was nothing he could do but hope that all the preparations that he had made up to that moment would suffice.

This was one of those moments … and Thomas absolutely hated it.

Just keep going, keep gunning the engines until they were screaming, until he was afraid that they might explode at any second, yet … yet the ship was fine. For now. The shift from “fine” to “fucked” might come at any moment and be over in an instant, but all the while, the guardian of Atlantis was actively dying, leaving behind enough blood that it likely looked like an oil well had exploded on the surface, assuming the liquid had made its way up there.

Yet the monster was slowly catching up …

When it did die, weirdly enough, it kept going, sheer momentum pushing aside the mass of the whole freaking ocean to the point where it took nearly thirty seconds for it to stop … but Thomas was still informed of the fact that he’d won immediately.

Dungeon Core (Museum Subtype), you have reached B-Rank and gained an extra slot for champions, as well as three more subcores.

Furthermore, you have gained the ability to directly raise your creatures’ ranks, as well as create ranked material, up to two ranks below your own, using magic alone.

Would you like to view a detailed explanation?

No, that seemed pretty self-explanatory, Thomas thought to himself, grinning.