Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 174 (Patreon)

Lucas

The next ten hours were some of the most tense I’d ever spent.

We had planned on using the ARI to communicate with each other, but that didn’t entirely work out. Iris had accounted for the possibility of the hundreds of towers also blocking our ability to communicate with each other, but that left me without any way to tell if the people I’d sent out were doing well or even surviving.

I had a load of preparation to do myself. There wasn’t an easy way around it—there were hundreds of thousands of people in my dungeon, a king getting ready to attack it, and less than twelve hours to put it all together.

Potentially even less than twelve, depending on when the king decided to make his move.

There were so many potential vectors of attack. I assumed the final battle would involve the towers emerging within my dungeon, but that wasn’t the only thing he could try.

So I prepared, and I prepared. The list of spells and monsters at my fingertip were beyond vast now that my [Dungeon Core] class was level 22, and I intended to cover every single way the king could make his way in.

The issue with defensive planning, especially when there were so many people to protect, was that no matter what I shielded us with, it only took one obscure power to break through it all and render our efforts useless.

All that meant was that I had to prepare for everything.

It had been a while since I had to actively fight inside the dungeon, and since our time with the Omen, I had gained a lot of tools.

[Intertwine] shared not only skills and mana but also experiences. With so many otherworlders, it was a near guarantee that I could peek into someone’s memories and find recollections of a monster I needed to create.

A middle-aged businesswoman with a [Shielder] class finally finished battering a [Fake Hydra] to death with her shield, collecting a reward of [Health Potion]s and food at the checkpoint just beyond. Although she was only on the fifth floor, that fight still marked the completion of a segment of the dungeon.

In her memories, she protected her friends as the forest around them was set afire.

Through those memories, I could [Identify] the species that had trapped them there.

[New species [Fire Elemental] discovered!]

With [Species Wheel], a level 20 dungeon spell, every new monster was worth double. Each unlock now allowed me to also add an additional monster of the same type.

[New species [Air Elemental] discovered!]

Nora and Iris, both backline players who had chosen to go to the front, had left an absolute treasure trove of items for me to play with.

I targeted an instance of the wispy, invisible monster alongside a [Status Cleanser] potion and activated [Combine]—one of my favorite spells. Once upon a time, it had been difficult to muster up the mana necessary to use it, but now, with two hundred thousand people and the absorbed Dungeon Cores constantly supplying me, it was easy.

[New species [Antiviral Elemental] discovered!]

If the king wanted to use plague, I would stop the spread within instants.

[New species [Earth Ooze] discovered!]

Combining a [Devouring Ooze] with an [Earth Construct] created a gooey, passive monster that could substitute for the ground if the king chose to break it.

I created contingency after contingency after contingency. With the heightened power and high level I now had, every new creation I made off of [Combine] was automatically available for me to [Spawn].

For attack from the air, I borrowed memories of [Gravity Beast]s, hundred-foot-long creatures that had grounded and nearly killed a [Sky Sorcerer] who was now on my 12th floor.

For manipulation of my dungeon barrier, I strengthened [Assimilate], increasing my proficiency with it.

For every possible angle of attack, I created or trained a spell that could defeat it.

I wasn’t foolish enough to think that I could cover the eventualities myself, of course. Once I was out of ideas, I asked Anton.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You want me to figure out what the king might throw at you?”

“Or the other two otherworlders, but I feel like you have a better idea. How are they doing, by the way?”

“Aren’t you able to tell?”

I shrugged. “I don’t spend time watching people that I’m not particularly close to. Looks like they’re doing fine, though. Surprisingly nonviolent.”

“They’re pretty nice,” Anton agreed. “Riley really likes the tomatoes.”

I snorted. “Fair enough. We got lucky with the people you came here with. It would’ve been real awkward if they tried to kill me.”

“They’re worried,” Anton said. “They still see the quest, you know?”

I sighed. “We’re working on it. There should be a viable solution by tonight.”

“I believe you,” he said seriously.

“As I was saying, though,” I said, trying to get back on track, “any ideas?”

“Hmmm… I mean, given what you’ve told me so far, I think you’ve covered a lot of ground already. Oh! There was one thing, though.”

“Go on.”

“How many of us Earthlings did you say there were?”

“Counting you and me, just under 225,000,” I said. “They’re coming in at about three thousand an hour, so, by the end of this all, maybe 250,000.”

“That’s a lot of firepower, isn’t it?” Anton asked. “Even if we were all level 1, which we’re not, that’s a lot.”

He wasn’t wrong. Anton had had the benefit of training with others that were explicitly trying to increase his power as much as they could in as short a time as possible, but the other otherworlders had the dungeon, and they had me guiding them through it.

Anton had upgraded his [Fire Novice] class to [Fire Mage] at level 5—the same class the late Jonathan of Inquisition had possessed prior to his upgrade to [Pyromancer]—and now my Earth friend was level 6.

“It is,” I said. “If you all coordinated, you could probably level a nation. I think I see where you’re going with this.”

“You always used to love big mind control battles,” Anton said. “Like, an army turning against us. I remember combat taking forever for those final battles, but it was fun as hell.”

“But that’s neither here nor there,” I said.

“Yeah. The point is, what are you going to do if the king decides to send all 250,000 of us straight at you? I think it’s going to happen, especially once everyone else realizes that they’re not going to make it to the bottom.”

“I can take them all,” I said. I tilted my head. “That makes it sound like I’m going to kill everyone, doesn’t it?”

“Kind of does. I’m not planning on hitting your core, and even I’m a little concerned.”

“I can contain everyone,” I said. “If the king decides to use mind control, it’ll take me less than half a minute to stick every last person here into a steel cage.”

“That’s not horrifying at all,” Anton deadpanned. “But what if it’s not mind control? What if they’re just, like, there?”

“Then they’re going to attack me,” I said. “That seems pretty obvious. The quest is going to be telling them that they have very little time left to live. I assume the king is going to come very, very late.”

There was every possibility that the king would attack earlier, but I suspected he wanted to wait for the maximum number of otherworlders to be in my dungeon. If he hadn’t attacked while I was in suspended animation, that explanation made complete sense.

As to why he’d waited so long, I had no idea. Maybe he needed at least a quarter million to carry out his plan? We still didn’t know what the end goal of the whole “turn everybody into a mockery of Centerpoint Dungeon” thing was, but at the scale he was operating at, it was safe to assume that it wasn’t going to be good for any of us.

“What if they didn’t attack you, though?” Anton asked. “What if you could get them to attack the king? I think that would take a lot of pressure off your shoulders, especially since a ton of these people have movement spells and the like now. Hell, watch me.”

He poofed away, vanishing in a gout of flame that I saw was a [Flame Jaunt], and he reappeared ten feet away.

“Yeah, a steel cage probably wouldn’t be enough to contain that,” I conceded.

“Then it’s like I said. You should figure out how to get them on your side.”

“That would be ideal, but they literally have a quest to kill Centerpoint. I don’t think that’s very conducive to turning them to my side.”

“You can figure something out,” Anton said. “You were always a great sweet talker.”

“What?” Of all the outlandish things he’d said to me since we reunited, that had to be up there. “No, I wasn’t. Where did you get that impression?”

“From watching you, dumbass. You think way too little of yourself. Hell, look at what you’re doing here! You’re basically a god-king from one of your games, and you’re just like, ‘yeah, this is my job.’ Come on, man! Have some pride!”

I blinked.

“You’re not the first person to tell me that,” I said, thinking of Anderson.

“See? I’m not alone!” Anton crowed triumphantly. “We’ll think of a way to fool the otherworlders into fighting for you, alright? But if you can’t come up with one, I’m going to make you use my plan.”

I shuddered. “Your plans are horrible.”

“Exactly.”

#

Inquisition — 6 miles away from Centerpoint Dungeon

Nora was entirely fed up with death.

First, it had been Jonathan. He’d been the backbone of her party, and with him gone, Inquisition had damn near fallen apart. It had been Anderson who’d brought them back—and then the world had fallen apart.

Kit was gone now, too. There was a tiny chance that her brother was still alive, somewhere, but she had long since quashed that nascent spark of hope. After so long of the world being so utterly screwed, it was kinder to wish that he was dead.

She had given herself a day to grieve, back in the dungeon, but she had to focus. The pain of loss was a vise clamped around her heart, but she wasn’t going to let that slow her down. She couldn’t.

Everyone was counting on her.

And yet, people kept dying.

They’d encountered their tower with suspicious speed, as if it had been waiting for them.

Alice, Alex, and Anderson were thankfully still alive, though Alex had come to the brink multiple times already. Against the seemingly unending wave of monsters and magical effects that the king’s tower produced, they were suffering.

The ex-Kingsguard that had come with them were dying in droves. Dozens died every time the tower churned out another blast of pure power that cleaved through reality itself, and dozens more perished every passing second under the effects of the dungeons.

Unlike what she’d seen previously, this tower wasn’t only fighting with monsters. It sent out its dungeon-hybrids, levitating them in midair. When people stumbled into the radius of one, spikes impaled them, dungeon monsters swarmed them, and the very air was stolen from the space around their bodies.

Alex had fallen into one once, and it was only with the combined efforts of Nora’s [Potion of Preservation] and Alice’s [Domain of Night] that he’d survived.

Even as they died, though, her people continued to charge forwards, shaken but not broken.

Her heart swelled with equal parts horror and pride. They were running into a meat grinder, and yet they wouldn’t stop.

These people who had only been graced with a few weeks outside the hellish domain of the Omen were already willing to give up everything to defend it.

She had to be the same.

Nora put her life’s work into the battle. She used every potion, every dirty trick, every unrecoverable resource she had.

Her effort wasn’t the only one.

And bit by bit, they wore the dungeons down. Bit by bit, they made their way through the tower’s defenses.

Bit by bit, they won.

#

Starfall — 31 miles from Centerpoint Dungeon

It was a good thing that they had requested only higher-level citizens, Kira thought.

At first, she had worried that Sarah was going to take issue with their temporary teammates, but she needn’t have worried. After all, the [Astral Monk] had once been an orphan of the Omen’s kingdom, just like many of the people they fought alongside now.

What she worried about now was that they were fighting at a level that the ex-Kingsguard couldn’t safely approach. With Kira’s [Bonded Protection] keeping her from suffering the effects of any of her teammates, it was no issue for her to be around her party when they unleashed a [Planar Cannon] or a [Hurricane] or an [Infinite Blade], but each of those attacks devastated the countryside that they fought in.

Normal people—even those at level 5—definitely wouldn’t be able to keep up.

They had specifically requested the highest level ex-Kingsguard for exactly that reason, but even when most of them were at or just under level 10, it was a struggle to keep everybody alive.

Kira was working overtime, using [Aura of Life] stacked with [Healing Amplification] at all times in addition to targeted healing spells to bring back allies from the edge of death.

Their contingent of weaklings wasn’t useless, thankfully. The tower they fought against defied the rules of spatial continuity, it seemed, doing so in a way that made Sarah’s strongest attacks falter against it.

If it had been the three surviving members of Starfall alone—even if they added Lisa—then there was every possibility that they might not have been able to take this tower down alone.

With the concentrated firepower of a 300-strong militia, their health and mana topped off by Kira’s efforts, they were well on their way to defeating this first tower.

Just you wait, Lucas, she thought. You’re not ready for how much power we’re bringing back.

#

Heretics — 17 miles from Centerpoint Dungeon

K'lon swung his sword through a Dungeon Core, shattering it.

He knew that they needed to harvest as many as they could, but they’d been given authorization to kill the ones that were active, and this one had quite nearly shoved a spear through his chest.

It had been hard to mobilize everyone, but once they’d gotten into the swing of things, Thorn had been able to mass transport the group. K’lon had been reluctant to get onto another magical creation, especially when the last one they’d ridden on had resulted in the death of Starfall’s [Sorlockadin Ranger], but it appeared that the king was no longer in the business of manipulating mountains to stop them.

Besides, Thorn had said that he was better at stopping them, now.

K’lon continued on, wading through battle. He did not look behind him. People were dying, he was sure. What was important was that Ashley, himself, and Thorn were still alive.

But not Tuyu. They had changed their name because the backstabbing traitor of a teammate had been the one to call them the Pallbearers first, and it felt wrong to continue her legacy.

He shook his head grimly and continued forward.

This was bloody work. He killed monsters and twisted Dungeon Cores that looked like they had people within them.

This was what K’lon was built for. His [Immunity] and [Divine Sharpness] created a deadly combo. Nothing the Dungeon Cores did worked against him. Nothing they built could survive his attack.

He continued to advance.

Soon enough, the tower would fall.

#

Homefront — 5 miles from Centerpoint Dungeon

Austin had not fought a true battle in some time, but he reveled in it now.

His [Steelbrand] shone bright, showering his entire body with power, durability, and speed. It was his signature, though he had never quite had the same level of raw talent that the rest of the A-Team had.

It hurt to think about them. They were all gone, now. He’d loved them as a family, and maybe even more than that.

He was stronger than any of them had ever been, now, but it had cost him everything.

Austin channeled the rage and the pain and the hatred into his spell, and he continued forward.

Or, at least, he tried.

They’d run into a roadblock.

The people who had come with him were powerful together, yes, but the tower they were facing right now had a filtering effect of some kind. They just weren’t capable of getting through its defenses.

The tides were turning on them. Even as his blood sang with his sword, Austin could see the people around him getting cut down by the dozen.

This was unacceptable.

Austin had lost everything, which meant that he had nothing left to lose.

If nobody else was willing to carve a path, he would do it himself.

“Austin, stop!” Erik, the [Moon Cleric] imbuing him with his [Moonlit Clarity] shouted. “We should retreat!”

Retreat? Austin refused to stand by idly and fail once more. He refused to let the sacrifice of hundreds be for naught.

He was tired. Tired of being useless. Tired of losing. Tired of losing other people.

Austin poured his life into his [Steelbrand].

He thought he could hear his family—his team—calling out to him.

I won’t let you down this time.

#

Austin’s death marked the end of the group once known as the A-Team, and it did, in fact, clear a path.

Homefront captured their first tower less than ten minutes after his sacrifice.

#

Minus One, 10 miles from Centerpoint Dungeon

“We have three towers,” Iris said. “At full production rates, we can assume in excess of a hundred thousand Dungeon Cores.”

“That might still not be enough,” Troy grimaced. “But it’ll have to be enough.”

“Time is running out,” Rose said. “I’m worried that the king will make his move if we don’t start moving back soon. All the Dungeon Cores in the world won’t make a difference if we can’t start the ritual.”

“Good point,” Ryan said. “Troy, can you bring us back?”

The [Protean Mage] grimaced. “It’ll be the last of my mana, but I can bring us back in an hour, maybe?”

“Then do it,” Iris said. “The ARI is nonfunctional, thanks to the king, but if the plan allows it, anyone who has successfully captured a tower should be returning soon.”

There had been significant casualties—312, to be exact—but the bulk of their force had survived and seemed to be in high spirits.

All was going according to plan.

As Troy and Rose accelerated their pace, Iris prepared for it to all go wrong.

#

Centerpoint Dungeon

There were two hours left on the quest clock when the groups started returning.

They had all taken hits, that was clear, but not one of the armies we’d sent out came back empty-handed.

Each of them transported the Dungeon Cores differently—Homefront, for instance, had a massive net that they were dragging several hundred crates on, while Starfall had K’lon simply carrying a broken half of a tower.

But they had all returned with their bounties.

“Troy, Thorn, Iris, to me,” I used [Guide] to say. “Let’s get this ritual done ASAP.”

This was going to work.

[You should not tempt fate.]

So of course that was when the king attacked.