Dungeon Robotics (Book 7): Collapse

by Matthew Peed

  Bruce emerged from the crater with a bag that clinked as he walked. I pulled a few of the vials out, then handed the bag to her.

  “I don’t know how closely we can study it, but I’ll get it to the people who should be able to do something with it.”

  “Thank you. Any news of Lord Regan?”

  She just shook her head. “Father is still missing. Though, I don’t think he is in danger. A mana flow is growing denser as time goes on. It literally appears out of nowhere, so we can’t follow it very far.”

  “I see. Hopefully, he comes back soon,” I said, grabbing her hand to comfort her.

  Chapter 18

  Alara

  Watching the mortals challenge Regan’s dungeon made the days go by quickly. Before I knew it, a week had passed, making it two weeks since Regan had disappeared. I really missed him. The mortal in charge of the town was going out of her way to make me feel welcome, but she was no Regan.

  “Alara. Alara!”

  I blinked at the sound, coming out of my trance of watching Dungeontube. Lena was floating next to me, and I pulled her into a hug. I knew it wasn’t fair to her, but home was too much for me right now.

  “What is . . . it?”

  “Something is going on back at the dungeon. I can’t handle it on my own,” Lena said while wringing her hands.

  I couldn’t help but gulp. I thought about Regan and calmed my rapid heartbeat. He wouldn’t be afraid of his own dungeon, no matter what was going on inside. I nodded and stood up. The mortal Louella wasn’t back from whatever task she’d had to attend to today. Sometimes I wondered if she had any other capable people in her city.

  Lena and I teleported back to my core room. The dull throb of the unholy mana struck me more fully as I appeared. While I was in the valley, Regan’s aura separated me from it enough that I could put it in the back of my mind. I shook my head and followed Lena to my core.

  She waved her hand, and mana formed into several screens. “The snow has gotten so thick that nothing can move. There really wasn’t much that was ‘alive’ in the first place, but we’ve had some of the corrupted beastkin like the ones that Lord Regan rescued make their way into your aura.”

  On the screen it showed nearly two hundred of the beastkin. There were various races in the gathering, which was rare according to Regan. They usually stuck to packs made of races of the same kind. Wolves with wolves and such.

  “I thought . . . Regan’s children . . . were taking them . . . all to that . . . island in his . . . dungeon?” He had quite a few of them there.

  “Yes, normally, but Ignea is already too busy to handle integrating them. She hoped that you could house them until we hear back from Lord Regan.”

  I bit my thumb at the thought of mortals being inside my dungeon. Of course, I knew that I’d eventually have to have mortals return, but I didn’t feel ready for that. Not without Regan here. What if something went wrong?!

  I crouched and started drawing circles in the dirt. “Do we have . . . to?” I asked.

  “I think it would be good for us. We’re steadily removing the taint. Eventually, there won’t be any new mana for us to cleanse, and we’ll run out. This could be a blessing in disguise.”

  I pouted but said, “You have . . . a point.”

  Lena came over and patted my head. “Think about how happy Lord Regan will be to see you working with mortals.”

  This caused me to lift my head. She had a point. Regan had been telling me that I would have to deal with them eventually. I guessed now would be as good a time as any. They might not have been elves, but beastkin had a stronger connection with nature than humans.

  “Let’s take them . . . to the fiftieth floor. Regan’s children . . . are on the . . . forty-fifth. They should be safe . . . as will we . . . be.”

  “It’s too bad we can’t test them like Lord Regan does his mortals. They’re so saturated in unholy mana that it would be impossible to tell.”

  “We’ll set the . . . guardians to watch . . . them,” I said while waving my hand.

  Several dozen five-meter-tall treants were teleported to surround the valley I was putting them in. There was already a village in it that had been built to house slaves the necromancers liked to . . . torture. The undead had killed them all before I had a chance to tell Regan about them.

  When the beastkin appeared, they immediately started arguing among themselves about who got what. They didn’t even question how they got to the village. At least, that’s what I thought it was about. They weren’t speaking any real languages. I looked closer and saw that the larger pack had split among the different races.

  “Survival required them to work together?” Lena asked, floating around me.

  “Likely . . .” I tried to think about how Regan got the ones in his dungeon to behave. If I remembered correctly, he had a girl named Ren that was like them. I didn’t have anyone like that to help me. The noise grew louder, and I saw they were about to come to blows.

  I reached down and placed my hands on the ground. The soil moved away, and the sword that had become part of my soul moved to the surface. It gave off an aura that could chill a person to the bone. The hilt bore a skull, but I’d managed to change its makeup enough that roses now grew from the eye sockets and mouth.

  “Mother, you . . . you’re going to use that?” Lena asked.

  “Obedience or death.” I’d let Regan be the nice one.

  I teleported to the center of the village. That didn’t help the tension between the three different tribes, and the hissing and growling grew to another level. I waited for a full three seconds, one for each tribe, then slammed my blade straight down. Black tendrils of thorn vines shot out and wrapped around all three of the leaders. Rosebuds started to grow as the vines began pulling the mana from them.

  “You . . . will behave . . . or you . . . will die!”

  The hissing from the cat beastkins and the growling from the wolf and dog beastkins stopped. What I assumed were the mates of the leaders rushed forward to help them, but they only suffered the same result as their mana started to drain when they touched the vines.

  They released the vines and turned to me. They were crying and bowing with their heads to the ground. I waited for a few more seconds, then pulled the blade out of the ground. The vines withered into dust, and the leaders fell to the ground with blood leaking out of the hundreds of tiny pricks they’d sustained.

  I waved my hand and healed all three of them. “Behave.” With that, I moved back to my core room and took a deep breath, then fell to the ground. I quickly released the sword back into the soil, where it sank several meters. “Lena, do you think . . . I was too . . . mean?”

  “I think they got the message. Which is what we need them to get right now,” she replied as she motioned to the images. The three tribes were getting along much better. They were still acting like animals, but animals that knew something was here that could end them at any second.

  “I hope . . . Regan agrees,” I said, wrapping my arms around my legs.

  “I think as long as you’re safe and the fact that you attempted to help them will be enough for him. Lord Regan seems rather pragmatic about mortals. He did crush forty-five of your floors with a weapon that would wipe most cities off the map . . . and that was while trying to rescue you.”

  Just the memory of that thing made my body ache. I’d never known such pain. The only thing that came close to it was when I’d tried to disobey the necromancers. “Ouch.”

  Lena crossed her arms and grew upset. “I have to question his intelligence using that thing on you!”

  “It is . . . ok,” I said, pulling her into my arms. She took a deep breath and calmed down. “I’d rather be . . . dead, then serve . . . the necromancers . . . anymore.”

  “If you die, then so will I. I don’t want you to die.” Lena buried her head in my chest.

  I could feel a few tears running down her cheeks. “We don’t have . . . to worry. Regan saved us.”
>
  I held her until she calmed down. While I was captive to the necromancers, I could only feel her presence to know she was alright. I wasn’t able to interact with her at all for nearly a century and dreaded the thought of what would happen if she were ever caught. Thankfully, that day never came.

  I was glad to see that she was mostly the same as when she was first born. Lena had been my first child to be born from my dungeon and was also the only one remaining from that time. That only made her more precious to me.

  I was watching the images when I noticed something interesting. A singular beastkin was off on her own. I realized that she appeared to be a completely different race than the others. Looking closely, I saw that she was a fox.

  She was in a ruined field, channeling her mana into a dead berry bush. After a few moments, it brightened, and berries quickly grew to large sizes. She grabbed several and proceeded to shove them into her mouth, eating them as fast as she could.

  “That one . . . is interesting,” I mumbled.

  “For a corrupted, she’s got a pretty good grasp of nature mana,” Lena said, looking closely at the images.

  I teleported us near the girl. Up close, I could feel an even stronger connection to the nature mana. The girl was in bliss as she ate her fill. When we moved up to her, I found she was roughly the same size as me. She was dirty, but I could see the orangish-yellow fur of her tail and ears poking through the dirt covering her.

  “Girl . . .” I started to say even though I didn’t know what I wanted from her.

  She jumped, then dropped to all fours and growled at me with her hair raised. That lasted all of two seconds until, I assumed, she realized who I was and started to cower. I considered what to do for a moment, then moved over to another of the bushes. I held my hand out, and the entire field returned to life with a subtle and soft green light.

  She stopped cowering as she stared wide-eyed at the field. “Tha-than-thank . . . you . . .”

  After that she shot off the into field, making a crying sound. I wondered if Regan would find it cute, while considering if I should make the same noise when I next saw him. Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea to let these mortals in, after all.

  Chapter 19

  Louella

  In the week since the strange creature attacked the barracks area, there had been two more. Luckily, only one resulted in casualties. Ten people died, but I was able to respond in time to deal with it before anyone else was eaten. Each of the creatures was completely different from the last.

  I was able to handle them, but no one else under my direct command could. Mana was almost completely ineffective on them. In fact, it made them grow larger in all three cases. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were some type of demon that had been sealed away during the demon war and were escaping due to whatever was happening to Regan.

  According to Regan, mana had little effect on the demon generals. I found it hard to believe that those could be popping up left and right in my little valley. It was more comforting to believe these creatures had to be related to the time illusions that were appearing at random.

  On another note, Alara seemed to have found something to occupy her time. She’d only popped into my office twice over the last week. Each time she was only there for a few minutes. I almost felt like she was checking on me. I had to grit my teeth and remember that she was over a century old, and while she looked a few years younger than me, she wasn’t actually that young.

  “What to do?” I mumbled while reading the reports on my glass tablet. I exhaled, then jumped up. It would be best if I investigated the cause of these beasts myself. That meant I needed to go near the source. While I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, I assumed the only thing with the power to affect the world around us on this scale was Regan’s dungeon.

  I grabbed Helios and made for the dungeon. My portal dropped me at Goblin City, but I’d tried to go all the way to his core room. I was about to try again when there was an explosion that ripped the building across the street apart. One of the creatures that had tormented my town emerged, rising up as debris fell off its hide. It was over six meters tall and looked to be three ogres fused together. Not in a seamless way either. The parts were all over the place. The only ones in their relatively correct place were the legs.

  I jumped into the air to avoid the debris that made it all the way over to me from the force of the blast. As I watched, a force of mechs came around the corner. The weapons that made Regan’s forces so terrifying were unloaded on the twisted creature. Rounds flew so rapidly that they formed continuous streaks between the mechs and the creature.

  They appeared to be having a decent effect, but the twisted ogre’s hide was too thick for the rounds to easily pierce. The ogre raised its hand, and a whirlpool of light formed before the building it was pointing at exploded and mana of different types flooded the area.

  I rushed forward, arriving in front of one of the ogre’s heads. I swung Helios without holding back and slammed the head in. There was a boom as the head collapsed into the rest of the body. It finished sinking into the body, and I was about to strike it again when an arm appeared from the same spot.

  It impacted me in the stomach with a closed fist that covered most of my torso, sending me smashing through a wall of a nearby building. I came to a stop halfway in the wall and coughed as I pulled myself out of the debris and stood up. That hurt.

  I raised my hand, and Helios flew over to me. This was going to be difficult. I would need to take a slicing approach and remove parts from the body. I moved to the hole and was about to take off when I coughed again, covering my hand with specks of blood. I guess he’d managed to do more damage than I had actually felt.

  I braced myself and channeled more mana throughout my body. I’d gotten better at internal use of mana during the fights with these creatures. I shot back into the air as the goblins fired rods that crossed the distance in a blink of an eye. The rods were at least a meter long with wicked points at the end. They dug into the ogre, causing blood to spray all over the street.

  From a nearby building, a goblin with a large cigar in his mouth shouted, “Girl! Get out of the blasted way!”

  More of the rods fired from mechs on top of nearby buildings. The ogre was starting to look like a pincushion. I flew back and landed next to the goblin, who appeared to be in charge.

  “What is going on?” I asked.

  “These blasted things started appearing a few weeks ago. Lady Ignea has sealed the core room for both her and the boss’s protection. These things are definitely trying to get at the core.” The goblin had a strange accent, which made it hard to understand what he was saying at times.

  “How many have you defeated so far?”

  “Probably around thirty. The rate they’re appearing has been increasing. Mana has little effect on them, making them a right pain in the ass to deal with.” He pulled a drag from his cigar. “Ah, the name’s Tony, the boss of Goblin City.”

  “Tony, then. Is Ignea alright?” I asked, worried about the little fairy.

  “She is for now. The boss has a lot of defenses in place in case another Celestial bitch attacks. Thankfully, they work quite well against these monsters. The only problem is we can’t put more up without the boss,” Tony explained while we watched the fight.

  The goblin mechs had nearly finished turning every available spot on the massive ogre into a pincushion. Some of the goblins were setting up devices on the streets and tops of buildings surrounding the creature. There was a surge of mana, then chains formed between the spikes and the devices around the creature.

  “Of course not. Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked. If something happened to Regan’s dungeon, I didn’t even want to think about what that would mean for the rest of us basically living on his back. I felt like death would be the least of our problems.

  Tony lifted his arm, and something that looked like my glass tablet slid from inside. Now that I really took a second to look him over, I noticed he
had several large patches of metal covering his body.

  “Not here. We got this fellow under control. I believe there is one back on the ocean floor that is giving trouble to the forces there.”

  “Ocean floor? When did Reg—” Tony gave me a heavy glare at my informal use of Regan, making me revise my sentence. “Boss Regan create an ocean floor?”

  “A few weeks ago. Shortly after he redid the entrance floors.” He tapped in a sequence on his arm, and a portal opened next to him. “If you could take care of it, that would be a major help.”

  “Got it. I want to help since I’m afraid of the consequences of letting these things run wild in here.” Dungeons feed off the things inside of them, after all. Who knows what Regan was gaining from these creatures roaming his dungeon?

  With a nod from Tony, I walked through the portal and found myself in one of the most beautiful places I’d ever been. I’d exited on a small island that consisted mostly of white sand and a few trees, a type I recognized from the southernmost beaches in the Lecazar Empire. One of the few trips my father took me on that I actually remember enjoying. Clear blue water formed gentle waves that could lull someone to sleep if they paid too much attention to it. The sun was high in the sky and completed the picture.

  In the distance, half a dozen sailing ships were cruising in circles around a spot. Figuring that was my target, I shot into the air and quickly crossed the distance to the ships. I was trying to decide which was the one in charge when there was an explosion of water. A creature, easily two dozen meters long and dwarfing the ogre, broke through the surface, and the sailing ship it was obviously aiming for barely managed to avoid it as it crashed back into the water.

  The creature vanished, and calm returned to the pristine picture. Watching the waves, I noticed one of the captains waving at me. I flew over and landed on the large ship. He reminded me of the automaton that Regan had made explore the space around his station.