Chapter 93 - Enter The Labyrinth (Patreon)

Note : Chapters 23 and 24 of The Dragon Realm have been written and added to the queue !

Chapter 93

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.

Dungeon Factory, Command Center.

"Is everything ready?" Asked Emilia as she took a seat on one of the command center's stools.

"Yep." Said Alexandra as she gazed at the myriad of screens. "Tested the crane a few more times to make sure there would be no accidents with rearranging the labyrinths, and had a few golems go around poking the various traps to make sure they worked. Everything is ready to go."

"Time for the grand opening then."

"Yep!" Alexandra closed her eyes, and quickly jumped into the golem she had stationed at the new entrance, the one reserved for the steps.

She looked around at the group of adventurers forming the cordon protecting the entrance, and made a beeline of the attendant-manned checkpoint. Attendants who were currently chatting with a group of adventurers as they checked their equipment, obviously preparing for a delve.

One of the attendants stopped mid sentence, and got up so fast his chair fell to the ground.

"Holy- I mean greetings, uh, lady Crystal is it?"

"Yes it is." Alexandra smiled to put the attendant at ease, before sighing internally. One day she'd either give her golems faces or she'd remember they don't have any. Or maybe she could make some 'ambassadors' and put screens on their heads to project a face. Not that it would be super creepy or anything. "Relax, I don't bite…much."

The attendant chuckled nervously, although it was definitely forced. Which…was fair, he probably saw the state the adventuring groups came out in, so her promise of 'not biting much' probably didn't hold much sway.

"R-Right, of course." He took a deep breath, and rallied. "In any case, what can I do for you lady Crystal? Is something wrong?"

"Oh no, nothing is wrong. Quite the opposite as a matter of fact. Would you be so kind as to dispatch a messenger to the baroness that my, ah, surprise is ready? I'd use one of my own golems but I unfortunately don't really have the time to micromanage it, I am too busy, hence why I would also like to keep this brief."

"Oh, of course! Ah, what surprise, if I might enquire?"

"Well, to put it simply the third of my 'steps' is ready and online, the 'labyrinth'." She turned the golem's head towards the adventurers who were doing everything in their power to look inconspicuous and not like they were drinking every single syllable of the entire conversation like the sweetest of honey. "It looks like you fellows are in luck…if you're willing to take the chance."

The steel ranked adventurers -a bit high for the iron steps, but she didn't enforce rank limits, and the guild was willing to be flexible-, looked at each others, and smiled.

"I believe we'll take it, lady dungeon." Said the leader, before a hint of uncertainty passed his face, and he turned towards the attendants. "If the guild will allow it of course?"

The attendant sighed.

"Usually we try to make it so the assault guild has a first run at everything, but that clearly won't be possible here. Just…be careful alright? And do make yourself available to guild leader Artok when you're back. Hopefully in one piece."

"Oh don't worry about it Jack! We're the picture of carefulness!"

The attendant's face clearly showed he wasn't convinced, but he nodded nonetheless.

"Excellent then!" Said Alexandra, clapping her hands and making everyone wince at the miniature gong sound. "Now that this is decided, I'll step away, as I said I am very busy. Have a nice day gentlemen! And ladies, of course." She nodded towards the second attendant.

"Have a nice day!" Everyone chorused back, or at least variations of it, and Alexandra ordered her golem back to its station as she stepped back into her avatar.

"Alright, done." She said. "We should be seeing the first group come in momentarily."

"Excellent!" Said Emilia, before offering Alexandra a piece of brownie, which Alexandra took with a chuckle, before popping it into her mouth.

Some days, she was really, really grateful for her avatar. Without something like this to make her feel grounded, to make her feel human, she'd probably have gone insane by now!

Well, if one thought she was sane to begin with, which was another debate entirely.

She looked at the screens as she carefully propped up her feet on the command console -she'd rather not accidentally trigger an alarm-, and watched the video feeds. She hadn't technically lied to the attendants, she was very busy…except that 'busy' in this case meant spending some relaxation time with her advisor watching pretty much the only live entertainment available to them: dungeon delves. Plus, it was work, in a way, after all they needed to evaluate how the adventurers did and felt about new parts of the dungeon, and the first delve was always the most telling, when all of it came to the adventurers cold, as a new discovery.

Alexandra smiled as the adventurer party walked into the entrance. Showtime.

*****

"Alright, keep an eye out and a tight formation."

"Yeah yeah. We get it Mark, we're not clay ranks anymore."

The party leader, Mark, chuckled as he looked at his team.

"Fair enough. I do get a bit fussy. Still." His face became grim. "We're entering unknown territory here. Better to be safe than sorry."

All of his fellow party members -his friends-, nodded back. There might be only 3 of them, but they were a tight knit group. They'd had each other's back ever since they'd first signed up into the guild and been assembled together as a rag tag team to try to take out a group of mad wolf.

They'd gone a long way since then. And Gods willing, they'd get even further!

"Alright, let's go." He said as they passed through the third set of door in the central hub of the 'steps'. Well, for them it might as well be the main dungeon, as they'd never experienced it, but still. The inscription above the doors, 'The Labyrinth', was quite ominous, to say the least.

They walked in combat formation down the long corridor, before coming up in front of another set of doors, these ones wide open as well, leading into some kind of hall, with yet another set of damned doors beyond it.

If there was one thing Mark had learned from his previous delve, it was that the dungeon core loved her doors. Doors to prevent you from falling back, doors to close of rooms being used, doors everywhere. Very heavily reinforced doors at that! Although, given what had happened to her, and those that had tried to kidnap her, he guessed it made sense to just fortify everything.

His team entered into what a more advance civilization would have called an airlock, and shared a look as they saw the only feature in the room, a red button with the symbol of a hand emblazoned on it, on top of a pedestal.

Mark shrugged, and pressed the button. Instantly, the doors behind them slammed shut…and the ones before them opened.

To reveal…nothing.

They stepped cautiously into the room, and Mark blinked. There wasn't quite 'nothing' actually. The room had three doors. Well, four, counting the one they just went through, each leading into a cardinal direction. But the one directly in front had some kind of red light above it, while the others had green ones. If this was a labyrinth…the green ones had to be the open ways, and they might have to find something to unlock the third door eventually, assuming they ever made it that far!

Mark shook his head, and refocused on the room. The other two doors were still closed, despite the green lights, meaning there was probably something to do in this room before they could move further in.

"Hey, you know…this room reminds me of the stuff the veterans talked about, you know, the dungeon's second floor?"

Mark nodded as his ranger spoke up again. He was right, the room's corners were occupied by pile of sands, and the interior of the room looked like it was a dilapidated ruin, with sandy piles of debris and crumbling stonework.

He was inspecting said stonework, admiring the artistry in making something he knew was purely artificial seemingly into an actual ancient ruin, when he spotted something stirring within the rubble. Something metallic.

"Watch out! From the rubble piles!"

His warning came in the nick of time as the rubble erupted, and metallic spiders the size of his hand flew out.

He instinctively brought his shield up, and grunted as the spiders impacted it. Damn those things hit hard! They were almost like projectiles in their own right!

A few bounced off his shield and fell at his feet, and he immediately stomped on them, trusting his heavily reinforced, armored boots to crush them, while he focused on the much more immediate problem of the ones that had managed to hold on, and were currently busy trying to climb over his shield.

He started to try and bring his sword to rake his shield, before remembering that the simpler solutions were often the best, and simply toppled forward, crashing his shield into the ground with his full weight behind it.

The crushed spiders crackled and popped with electricity for a second, before laying dormant forever as he got back up and looked at his teammates.

"We're good!" Called out the ranger as he tossed the last spider to the ground, his sword having almost cleaved it in half. "Most of them jumped at you, thank the Gods."

Mark nodded. It was, after all, his role to take the hits, and he surveyed the room, just as he hear a loud 'click', and the two green doors opened.

"Well…At least we know we're safe." He winced as he saw the golems in both of the rooms waiting for them. "For now. Which way do you think boys?"

"I'd personally take right, if it's all the same to you." Answered the mage as he rubbed his chin, with its neatly cut beard. "I don't know about you but a few unarmed golems is a hell of a lot more appealing than ones with, oh, shields and javelins at the ready."

Mark chuckled.

"Can't fault you for that. Alright, onwards!"

*****

Alexandra popped another piece of fruit cake into her mouth -they'd finally run out of brownie, over thirty minute into the delve, and while she could have conjured up another, she'd rather have some diversity-, and chewed pensively, before swallowing and turning towards her advisor.

"You know, I'm amazed they've lasted this long. These guys are way more coherent than steel ranked adventurers usually are."

Emilia nodded.

"It happens from time to time. A lot of people seem to think that the adventurers' best allies are their power and armaments, but my books insist that it's more common sense and cohesion. Or trust, although they go hand in hand."

"Right, yeah. Like a shield wall or a phalanx, if you trust your fellow soldiers and can maintain cohesion with them, you'll last a hell of a lot longer than just a mob of individually stronger idiots."

"Exactly. And adventurers being adventurers, that kind of relationship is hard to come by."

"My old party used to have that, I think…" Alexandra sighed and shook her head, dispelling the sudden surge of rage and sadness. "Regardless, that's not the point here. Do you think they'll pull out soon, or that they'll overextend themselves?"

"Normally, with a new discovery like this I'd say they'd be likely to overextend, but with this group I don't think so."

"Yeah, same." Alexandra shrugged. "Oh well."

"At least we'll have daily 'discovery' delves like this, so a lot more chances to surprise people and take them out."

"True, but the assault guild will counter a lot of that."

"They only have a handful of copper level adventurers, and some of the rooms you've put in are going to wear them down, fast. Besides, copper or not, they'll pull back if they detonate one of your mines. They might be the old type 'betties', but they still pack a punch. So I doubt they'll be able to explore all 100 rooms, and you know that some parties will push past what the assault guild had explored, regardless of the danger, and when that happens…"

Alexandra met Emilia's wolfish smile with her own. The vampire girl could get surprisingly vicious when it came to taking out adventurers.

"Alright, I suppose that's more than fair. We'll just have to see." She looked at the screen. "And it looks like they've finally had enough. No fatalities, too."

"Yep. And look." Emilia pointed at another screen, and Alexandra nodded as she saw the vision from the golem at the new entrance.

"Our good friends from the assault guild have arrived. This should be fun."