Dungeon Robotics (Book 7): Collapse

by Matthew Peed

  He continued with a speech about how they were better and how everything on the planet should serve them. It reminded me of a dictator from back in Earth’s history. I had to write it off as a result of being trapped in the darkness of the moon for a millennium. It had driven him insane.

  He had the same face as before, but his body was now pillar-like with stone tubes leading away from him. I was surprised when I saw a core that had to have come from a dungeon embedded in the center of his chest. I knew that he wasn’t a dungeon core host, though. It was an instinct thing.

  “I think I’ve had about enough out of you. Keep this up and I will reduce your little ship into a pebble,” I said, truly getting angry about the situation. I wanted to go check on Alara and my main dungeon. I didn’t have time to deal with this broken computer of a golem.

  I knew they wouldn’t listen without a demonstration, so I pulled some of my adherent mana and created an ultra dense point in space at the top of their ship. My control over space and time magic had reached a new level from being trapped in that temporal dimension. With them being in my aura, I could place the spell anywhere in their ship. All the more so since my dungeon sense didn’t register them. I could literally have placed one next to Kurnezal if I’d wanted to.

  Instead, I placed it directly at the top of their ship. The top five meters were pulled into a spot barely larger than a centimeter in width and vanished. Kurnezal instantly stopped griping.

  “Behave for a while please.” I killed the communication and looked around to see what we were dealing with as well as try to figure out where the hell we were.

  Chapter 22

  Regan

  With the constructs dealt with for the moment, I turned my attention back to my main dungeon. I could sense it, but I wasn’t able to reach it. I could tell that it was due to the pathways being formed between the cores. I started to form a portal to move my avatar over to my main core, but something affected the spell, causing it to fail.

  I created another portal just to the plateau, and it worked, though I could sense something wearing at its edges. I stepped through and found that the plateau had suffered quite a bit of damage due to our battle. I flew into the air to see if there was anything of interest in the area.

  Almost immediately I spotted a village that looked like it’d been sliced in half. There was a smoldering husk of a tree in the village center that was giving me some interesting vibes. I flew toward it and reached it in only a few seconds. Landing in front of the tree, I placed my hand on it. The spot cracked and turned to ash from my touch.

  “You possessed some serious magic, didn’t you?” I said, studying the tree with my dungeon sense. Unfortunately, it was very much dead. There didn’t seem to be anything I could do for it. I removed my hand, and the spot crumbled to dust. An acorn fell to the ground in front of me.

  “I see. I know a good home for you. I’ll make sure your will is carried on,” I said. There was a soul here at one point. All that remained was more of a memory, but I knew Alara would be able to work with it.

  “Monster! What are you doing in our village!”

  I turned at the sound and saw a boy who had to have been fifteen or sixteen pointing at me accusingly. If I had to describe him, I would say his appearance was similar to Earth’s Chinese people. He was shaking so much that I knew he was scared, but I had to give him credit for his bravery. Not to brag, but I was quite intimidating in my current form.

  Looking around, I did notice signs that this village had been recently lived in. Likely, one of the beams from our ship battle had struck the village when it rebounded off one of our barriers. I dropped into a sitting position on the ground, causing the boy to jump. Even like this, I was still taller than him by a few centimeters.

  “This is your village? I can guess what happened. Did anyone perish?” I asked.

  “Eh. Ah. No,” said the boy, apparently startled by my laidback questions.

  “That’s good. Buildings can be repaired and replaced. That is a lot harder to do for mortals,” I said, leaning back to look at the darkening sky.

  “What? Aren’t you taking this a little too lightly?” the boy asked.

  “Lightly? No one died, right?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. I lifted my hand and momentarily spread my aura. The village returned to a pristine shape right before our eyes. I didn’t have many basics of their culture, so I held off on any upgrades. Wouldn’t want to cause any more of an uproar than I already had.

  The boy spun around as he tried to lay his eyes on everything at once. After about two minutes, everything was back to how I figured it would have looked. Though, now everything was likely newer since I had re-created it all from mana. Roughly ninety percent had been ash, but I’d taken advantage of my new time mana and briefly looked at an image of the past.

  “I’m sorry! I called you a monster, but you’ve repaired our village. That was disrespectful of me!” The boy dropped to the ground with his head bowed.

  I laughed and waved my hand. “You are a child. Plus, this is really my fault.” I laid a hand on the tree next to me. “I can’t heal this though.”

  “You can’t . . .” The boy was obviously saddened by the news. “It is the village treasure. It has protected us for centuries.”

  “Then I apologize. I’m Regan by the way, a dungeon core.”

  “A dungeon core?”

  “It is hard to explain. I’m something that has transcended being mortal.”

  “A god?!” shouted the boy as if that would make everything make sense.

  “Well . . . something similar. Where are the rest of your people?” I asked, deciding to shift the topic.

  During the whole conversation, I was keeping an eye on the mana pathways between my cores, but it was going to take a while before I could move between them. The other option would have been to take a scout vessel and do a low-orbit or high-orbit insertion. In fact, I could have gotten to space and connected with my space station even easier.

  I glanced at the Grand Titan, now locked permanently in place. My only worry was that I couldn’t get back there quickly if something happened. I could tell something was happening back at my main dungeon, but it appeared to be under control for now. I pulled myself out of my thoughts when I realized that the boy was talking.

  “They are camped on the other side of the plateau. I snuck away,” he said while looking away. I realized that he’d told me his name, but I’d missed it due to my musings.

  “What was your name again?”

  “Yo’ei Meng.”

  I heard the sound of charging feet and looked up from Yo’ei to see several dozen men making their way toward us with their weapons bared. They ran in front of the boy and blocked him.

  “Yo’ei! What are you doing out here?!”

  “I’m sorry, Larick. I couldn’t stop myself from coming back to the village,” Yo’ei said, bowing to the man in the center.

  The man looked at the boy with understanding, then turned to me. “What are you doing in our village? No outsiders are allowed.”

  I stood before I answered so I loomed nearly two meters taller than all of them. “That’s not a very nice thing to say to the person who returned your village back to normal,” I said while stretching my arms out wide.

  “Don’t play dumb! We know you and that other object caused the destruction in the first place! Do you think cleaning up your own mess will earn our respect?!” he demanded while thrusting his spear at me at several points during his speech.

  I had to give the mortal credit for not shrinking in fear of me. I don’t want to brag, but I was putting off an aura of a god right then. No pun intended.

  “Well. It is better than me coming over here and reducing this entire plateau to ash to match the village,” I said, pointing my hand to the side. With a burst of mana, a beam emerged from my palm and bored a hole all the way to the cliff face nearly ten kilometers away.

  “Larick! He returned the village to this state in minutes
! He’s not someone we can fight!” Yo’ei said, grabbing the man’s shoulder.

  For a kid, he had a decent head on his shoulders. It was one thing if I had been attacking the village, but I was there to fix what I’d messed up. If no one had died, there was no reason to cause the situation to escalate more. Though, mortals were known for their emotional and irrational decisions. Maybe I’d been a dungeon core for too long.

  “While I don’t want to belittle your loss, if you come to me, I will replace everything that was destroyed. I mean this with all sincerity. We are going to be neighbors from now on. I would like to get on nonhostile standing with you and your people.”

  “That will be decided by the elders.”

  “Very well. I would like to meet your elders, then,” I said, falling back to the ground. Normally, I would have created a throne for myself, but I didn’t want to push these people too hard at the beginning. I already had enough enemies that needed to be dealt with. I wanted to hold off making more with these folks for a bit.

  “No worries. We’re right here,” a fatigued voice called calmly from behind the soldiers. Three elderly people moved to the front. They were all decently powerful, but the middle man was powerful in a different sort of way. “Well, well. A dungeon host. We haven’t seen one since before the village’s founding.”

  “Oh, I’m glad you can recognize what I am.”

  “Indeed. There are ten dungeons on this continent, but they all have monster hosts. They only seek death. The first elders created this plateau to divide them. I began to fear when the clouds lifted. With your arrival, there can be no doubt. They are about to awaken.”

  “Awaken? And why would my arrival have anything to do with that?” I asked. I’d been a core for almost a year now. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept willingly. Thus, these cores would have had to have been sealed by some powerful force.

  “Our world possesses a tremendous number of secrets. I can tell you’ve exposed quite a few and in such a short amount of time. With the Alrain Tree no more, the lock has been undone. It won’t be long before this place is no longer safe. Tell me, how much mana would you have if you slept for a millennium?”

  “Quite a bit. Though, I don’t think I would still be on this plane,” I answered.

  “Exactly. You have intelligence and thus can ascend to tier five. These monster cores cannot. They only think of devouring.”

  “Very well. I will tame them since I was partially the cause of this.”

  “They should remain dormant for a few months longer. The magic will last at least that long.” The elder glanced toward my ship and the constructs’. “Have you managed to restrain them? We saw that they fired first.”

  “Yes. They are under control for the moment.” I looked around, then created an automaton that could access the mana of my dungeon core nearby. “This guy will create anything you need within reason. Feel free to name him. I apparently have quite a bit of work ahead of me, so if you’ll excuse me,” I said, standing up.

  I was about to leave when I noticed the elder breathing heavily. Walking and even standing must have been hard for someone his age. I thought for a second, then created a wheelchair out of materials they wouldn’t be too surprised about.

  “What is this?” he asked when it formed next to him.

  “I can see walking is quite difficult for you. I would hate for the leader of the people I just met to die from exhaustion. Feel free to use that.” With that, I teleported back to Grand Titan.

  I went to my core room, as that was the best place for the task I wanted to complete. Placing my hands on either side of the core, I focused outward. While I could have dismissed my avatar body at any time, the god materials increased my magic to another level. Plus, I hated the thought of re-creating the thing when I had to summon my avatar again. I shook my head to clear my idle thoughts.

  Sending my mind out around me, I felt for other cores in the area. I didn’t find anything within five hundred kilometers, but when I pushed a little harder, I got a ping. There were three other cores almost exactly a thousand kilometers from me in most of the cardinal direction. I made sure not to actually interact with any of them, but they were definitely unconscious.

  “This is going to be interesting,” I said with a wicked grin.

  Chapter 23

  Louella

  “Time for round two!”

  I spun my staff-turned-spear and faced the monster. I found it ironic I was fighting a monster that wasn’t actually part of the dungeon in said dungeon. Regan better pay me back later, I thought. I tracked the path of the monster, then with a pulse, I sent myself flying to intercept it.

  With a bubbling yell, I came up and sliced clean through one of its fins. Blue blood exploded into the water and left a trail as the monster swam at a slight slant away. I was beginning to wonder if it only had ramming attacks when I felt the water constrict around me. I had to force more mana into my curtain spell to stop from being crushed.

  So, the damn thing had control over water. Too bad water conducts electricity. I supercharged my skin so that the current that would hit the monster would be natural and not mana-based. The field quickly spread and met with the monster. It was the first time I’d heard a monster scream underwater.

  The water constricting me vanished, and I quickly flew through it, spear point leading. I slammed full on into its head, colliding with enough force that about a meter around me sank in by a few centimeters, not to mention my blade sinking up to the guard. Twisting the blade, I did the most damage I could.

  The paralysis wore off, and the beast started flailing, sending me flying off. I corrected my path and charged back in. It wasn’t letting me get close again, though. The game of cat-and-mouse continued for nearly twenty minutes. I’d managed to take another three fins, as well as cause some other damage.

  I wasn’t damage-free myself. I got caught by the constricting water, and my left foot was currently a crippled mess. If I hadn’t been underwater right then, it would have been quite dangerous. Thankfully, I wasn’t bleeding, as the skin wasn’t punctured.

  I used the injury to play defenseless, and the creature took the bait. It turned and charged at me with its mouth wide open. It was easily large enough to swallow half of one of the sailing ships above us. The creature closed its mouth around me, and I found myself sliding down its massive throat.

  I aimed for where I thought the creature’s brain would be and channeled my mana to start flying. I sliced through the flesh and made it to the brain in moments. It was a lot easier from the inside. I could feel the creature thrashing around me, but I was able to resist it with my dense body.

  After its brain was mush, the creature came to a stop. I carved my way through to the outside, then flew up until I reached the surface. Landing on a nearby ship, I fell in a heap. I was completely spent mana-wise, and my ankle was killing me. A pirate with a white cape moved forward and started healing my injuries.

  “Thank you.” I turned my head to the captain. “I killed the beast.” As if on cue, the body floated to the surface. Only a few seconds later, the monster faded from sight as its body returned to wherever it came from.

  “Thank you for your assistance, Selected. This would have been nearly impossible given our loadout. Floor Boss Tony reported that there are currently no more of the abnormal monsters in the dungeon. You should return to recover.”

  “I agree. I’ll leave you for now.”

  I stood on my injured ankle gingerly, but it was completely healed. Helios had returned to normal as well, so I was good to go. I created a portal to my private room and found that the portal edges felt a bit frayed. Carefully, I put my hand in the opening and found it was safe, so I stepped completely through. The portal vanished a moment later.

  I released Helios, then looked at myself. While the ocean water on the floor cleaned me for the most part, there were still patches of blood on my person. While I wanted nothing more than to fall asleep with how tired I wa
s, I didn’t want to make my bed filthy. I quickly made my way to the bathroom and cleaned up.

  ~~~

  “Your Highness! Your Highness!”

  I came to as someone called for me. Blinking away the sleep, I saw Wrakras standing next to a maid as they tried to wake me.

  “What? What is it?”

  “I apologize, Your Highness. There has been an incident at the border fort,” Wrakras said with a small bow.

  I snapped fully awake and flipped the covers off me. Jumping out of bed, I held my hand out for Helios, which sprang across the room into my grip. With a snap of my fingers, my night clothes shifted to my normal armored dress. It was something I’d had Regan add when I’d burned up a few sets due to slacking control while asleep.

  “What’s the situation?”

  “It’d be best to hear it from the major,” Wrakras said, shaking his head.

  I nodded, then quickly opened a portal to the border fort. The gateway room came into view as the portal opened. My eyes narrowed. The portal was having a bit of difficulty fully opening. Walking through, I found the guards for the gateway room had their weapons drawn, but they lowered them when they saw it was me.

  One of the guards rushed over and saluted. “Your Highness! The major is at the central tower!”

  “Thank you. Return to your post,” I said, giving him a smile before nodding to Wrakras and rushing from the room. I tried to see the situation from the windows, but we were on the opposite side of the fort and could only see the calm forest that led to Vaihdetta. I would have flown, but without knowing what was going on, I could have caused more problems.

  Soldiers rushed to-and-fro as we made our way to the tower. It took us maybe five minutes to reach our destination on foot. The major stood with most of his commanders, looking out the window.

  “Major, report!” I said as we came up to a table in the room.

  The major spun around, as did everyone else. All present gave a salute, and the sound in the room vanished. I could still hear something and moved up next to the major to look out the window. What I saw made me grit my teeth in anger and annoyance.