The Shatterplate War Chapter 19 (Patreon)

"Chief!"

Halloway shot upright out of his nap when someone called out to him. It'd been a few hours more than a full day after the Mayor had left with three of the strongest members of the expedition, and everyone left behind was starting to get anxious. The Ancients had stayed outside, trapping them in the cramped confines of the few rooms they could hide in, and they'd acted exactly how Kay and Halloway had expected, circling overhead, just waiting for a foolish human to present themselves as a target. 

The person who'd called out for Halloway looked hopeful, though, and Halloway felt a similar emotion start to swell up in him.

"They made it back safely! The Dungeon leads somewhere else! We can get away!"

He restrained the relieved sigh that threatened to escape out of him. He still had an example to keep, and letting everyone know that'd he'd started to get worried wouldn't help. "That's good news." Was all he said as he pushed himself to his feet. "Let's see what they've got to say about the Dungeon itself."

The excited crowd of people parted to let Halloway through as he stepped up to Kay and held out his arm. "Good to see you again, Mister Mayor," He greeted him as they clasped arms.

"Good to see you too." Kay grinned and squeezed Halloway's arm again before letting go, "Sorry it took us as long as it did, we did some testing to make sure we knew what we needed to about the Dungeon after Lauren reminded us how dumb we were being, and then we scouted the area around the exit to make sure it was actually safe."

"Some testing? What did you need to test?"

Kay gestured at the entrance to the Dungeon, "We got split up as soon as we entered. The first time."

Halloway sucked at his teeth in a worried gesture.

"Yeah, made me nervous too. We found out on the way back that you can stick together in groups if you're physically touching each other as you pass through each door, though."

"There are multiple doors?"

Kay nodded, "Someone put up a sign on the other end at some point in the past; they called it the Many Trial Rooms. It's a bunch of rooms in a row that each have weird tests or puzzles or something to clear before you go on to the next one. It lets you pick from a number of them, all represented by some kind of symbol." Kay handed him an open notebook, "We marked down all the ones that we went into and what kind of room they were so people can be prepared."

Halloway glanced up from the book to look at the Mayor with a lifted eyebrow. "You don't think we should go all at once? It wouldn't be too hard to daisy chain everyone."

"I don't think the Dungeon will let us." Kay turned and glanced back over his shoulder at the doorway. "There was a feeling when we went in… It was like we had reached some kind of limit with the four of us…" He turned back and shrugged, "But also, it just doesn't seem like we'd get lucky enough to be able to push everyone through in one group."

Halloway snorted a short laugh. "Yeah, wouldn't doubt it. Things never seem to break the way you want to when you're in a pinch, and we're in one right now."

"That's why we need to talk about Tyuah."

"Talk about me, sir?" The woman who'd had her leg ripped off by one of the tier seven monsters that had chased them into the ruins was among the group right next to them, leaning on someone else for support. She looked at Kay with a serious expression, "What about me?"

Kay gestured at the banged stump of her leg, "You're down a leg. Even if we make you some kind of jury-rigged peg leg or something, you aren't going to at full fighting strength. So we need to decide if it's smarter to send you with a stronger group to help you, even if it means a longer run, or we stick you with a weaker group and hope you all can blitz through a smaller number of rooms?"

"Why would a stronger group mean a longer run?" Someone asked.

"Yven figured it out after we talked; all four of us went through a different number of rooms. Turns out, the number you go through is the number of total tiers you have divided by the highest tier you have. And based on our return trip, the Dungeon uses the numbers from the highest tiered person there. Or maybe from the person with the highest number of total tiers, we don't know for sure, but it used my numbers, and I'm highest in both."

Tyuah nodded as her obvious anger faded. "Okay, that makes sense."

Kay raised his voice and made sure everyone was listening to him. "Everyone, do some quick math and see how many rooms you'd end up going through if you went by yourself or ended up the determinator for a group. Once we know everyone's number of rooms, we'll start putting together teams."

As people started to disperse, doing the math and also giving the four scouts some space. Halloway stepped in close to the Mayor and murmured to him, "Sounds like you're pushing it a bit. Do we really need to go right now? You haven't even had a chance to rest."

Kay shook his head, "I'm worried. This Dungeon has been weird enough that I want to get to the other end of it as fast as possible." He turned and faced the door, staring at it unhappily. "It might just be paranoia, but something about this makes me uncomfortable. Did I tell you already that there weren't any rewards?"

"What?"

"There were no drops from the monsters, and there was no clear reward once we got through to the end in either direction." He reached up and scratched his chin thoughtfully. 

Halloway shrugged. "I don't know much about Dungeons, myself. If you say, 'let's hurry' through, then let's hurry through."

Kay looked back and nodded. "As soon as everyone knows their numbers, we'll start making teams and sending them through."

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Kay cursed as he and his current team stepped through and saw the last room they had to pass through. The first six had been easy enough, at least in comparison to the rooms Kay had to pass through by himself. They were actually comparatively similar in difficulty, but having four people in each one made them easier. This room, though…

"What is that?" Tyuah asked as she leaned forward to peer at the creature in the center of the sloping hole near the far end of the room.

Kay glanced down at her leg, checking on the prosthesis he'd made for her out of blood. It was… workable. Part of Kay was happy with the fact that he'd managed to make something stable enough to work at all, but the rest of him was disappointed that he wasn't able to do better. The false limb resembled a foot, but only barely and was only slightly better than a peg leg. It could slightly shift to match Tyuah's positioning, and she was walking on it better than Kay could have expected with what little practice they'd managed to fit in for her.

He'd also felt a little of that Title-driven intuition into his Class Line, but he'd come back to that later. There was a giant… thing to kill.

…Or not?

"This Dungeon doesn't seem to be about combat that much." Kay mused as they stared at the monster from the platform they'd entered onto. "There's been fighting, but it wasn't about the fighting each time. So there's probably some kind of trick here too."

The creature twisted its atrocious-looking head around, obviously aware that someone was in its domain but unwilling or unable to leave the depression it sat in. It was a gross, twisted creature that looked like nothing else Kay had seen before. Its head was made of three grotesque human-like heads fused together just above their eyebrows in a triangular shape. Gaunt, with sunken cheeks and sharp cheekbones, each of the open, snarling mouths dripped saliva from the pointed sharks' teeth that protruded at various angles from the greenish gums. It had three pig noses sunken into the flesh of the faces that made up its head that it sniffed the air with. Its orange eyes swept around the room over and over again as it twisted its head in a spiral, its long and multi-jointed neck swept back and forth as it searched for the intruders it knew were there.

"… I don't think it's able to see us up here," Lauren commented as they watched it survey the area unceasingly.

"Might be part of the room design," Kay agreed.

"Whatever it is, that is one nasty fucking thing." Halloway spat on the ground to one side.

They'd decided the send Tyuah with the three strongest people, which had ended up being worthwhile. Kay couldn't comment on whether it would have been alright to send her with a weaker group to make sure she had fewer rooms to face, but they'd made it this far without any major injuries.

"I guess we have time to look around from here and figure out a plan." Kay pointed at the two other windows on the balcony. "Someone go look out of each of those and tell me everything you see."

Lauren stuck with him, and they started scanning. Eventually, with everyone looking around and sharing information, they had a general idea of what the room looked like.

"It's a giant inverted pyramid with a flat top," Halloway said after the group had gathered again. "And over there." He pointed at the ceiling, directly above the monster. "Is a big-ass spike."

"There are levers everywhere too." Lauren added, "Well, not everywhere, but there are about eight of them spread around."

"The wonky pyramid has eight layers too!" Tyuah counted them out. "The flat part where that monster is is the eighth one."

Kay turned and stared at the monster. "Okay, I have two theories for what the idea for this room is. They're basically the same, with one minor difference. We pull the levers, and the pyramid shifts upward. Pull all eight, we drive the monster into the giant spike and kill it."

"What's the other one?"

"I don't think the monster can move." Kay pointed at its lower body, "I can't tell from here, but I think it's melded into the stone below its waist. If it can move, we need to make sure it stays in place while we pull the last lever, so it gets impaled."

Halloway dug into a pouch at his side and pulled out one of the spyglasses they'd brought. He tossed it to Kay. "Here."

"Oh, nice!" Kay looked closer at the monster. With better magnification, it was even nastier to look at. Its milk-white body was entirely hairless, and it seemed to be emaciated. It had a humanoid torso under its strange elongated neck, but it had long insect-like arms coming out of its shoulders, three on each side. The hands were a mix between fingers and mandibles, with pale gray chitin covering the digits with sharp barbs. There were strange lumps all over its body as if something was bulging just beneath the skin.

"Okay, it is fused with the ground. So we just have to avoid whatever attacks it makes while we go for the levers." Kay glanced behind and looked at his three companions. "Tyauh, you stick with me just in case, Lauren and Halloway, you each go for a lever. Any questions?"

The three of them shook their heads.

"We all ready, then?"

There was only one path leading to the ground, which turned back and forth along the back wall underneath the platform. They say when they go to the bottom that there was a small area behind a colored line that was about the same size as the platform before the inverted pyramid started. 

"Safe zone, maybe?" Kay ventured a guess.

"Since the thing still can't seem to see us, I'd say probably."

They stepped over the line at the same time, and the creature whipped its neck around, the joints curling in on themselves and making a golden ratio type shape as its head spun circles around some kind of joint at the end of its neck. Its six eyes narrowed as more spittle started to drip past its teeth. Kay noticed for the first time that its pupils were odd disjointed shapes, none of them the same as far as he could tell.

It opened its mouths, and instead of a roar or a screech, a low, deep moan reverberated through the room.

"This is going to suck," Kay muttered as they dashed apart in different directions.

******

Sorry about the cliffhanger for those of you who hate them, the fight against this thing is long and I decided to split the chapter here. 

Also, just a heads up type fyi, there's a time skip coming up soonish. A chapter or two after they get home, since we'll be moving on to a new part of the story for Book 2.