Dark Fate, Chapter 100 (Patreon)

Chapter 100 – Call of Battlefield: Medal of Honor: Siege

Rachel frowned as she looked around. “This is…”

“Yeah, I agree.” I shook my head in disgust as we finished clearing the fourth floor of the dungeon. This place had started fucky and gotten worse, fast.

Fighting our way through the dungeon was actually surprisingly easy. Unlike other dungeons, which had a logical progression from floor to floor, allowing you to face harder and harder enemies as you descended, this dungeon had apparently been molded into a training facility. Each floor was its own scenario that prospective fighters would have to go through, each with the same enemy type: human soldiers.

It was so bad that the only changes from floor to floor were the layouts and the scenery. In fact, it looked more like someone had taken one of those military shooter games set in the modern era, and let you play as the terrorists instead of the US troops. One of the scenarios actually had these terrorists, and a plan to try and infiltrate a US army base so that they could plant bombs and blow it up!

The last floor, however, had been a ‘mission’ to take out an American airport, with a TOTALLY not American spy added to the group. Because Joe Smith was completely an Arabic-sounding name. The ‘mission planner’ even said, in English, before the mission started, “No Arabic.”

It was so blatant that anyone who hadn’t literally been living under a rock for the last decade would know the reference. Even people who didn’t play video games would get it, because it had made that big a splash when the controversial game had come out. All the other floors were also copies of game levels, but this one had been especially blatant.

For that alone, it would be worth it to put this dungeon out of my misery.

“How many floors do you think this dungeon has, Master?”

I shook my head. “Hard to say. With the way it is laid out, and the level of difficulty so far? I’d be surprised if it had more than ten or twelve. It may be actually trying to kill us, now, but the dungeon’s forces are designed around training terrorists to shoot it out with the Military, and not die. These are training courses, not actual floors, and even the ‘boss fights’ are just squads with better weapons and gear. There haven’t even been any mages or magic traps, or anything like that, yet!”

“Not to mention that these mock soldiers are completely helpless when it comes to hand-to-hand combat,” Talia spat. “Do they think that American troops aren’t trained to fight when they don’t have a gun in their hand? This is pathetic!”

“Yes, I noticed that, too. It is almost like the mind creating the dungeon had no experience with actual combat, and was basing everything off propaganda and video games. Maybe they fed the dungeon a bunch of military shooter games when it first formed, so they could get the result they wanted?”

“Does it really matter, Master?” Ezraekiel shrugged. “That this dungeon is so pathetic only means we will have to cut short our sport. Doesn’t change anything else.”

“No, it doesn’t. Let’s move on. The sooner we get through these levels, the sooner we can get to the core. And then, the fun begins.”

Continuing on to the next ‘level’, we were separated into solo ‘instances’. The dungeon had done this once before, on a stealth mission, so it wasn’t all that surprising. Just annoying.

The mission was to assault Air Force One, and kill the President, without getting killed. There were staffers and reporters on the flight, as well as secret service. Another game level, and we were playing as the bad guys. But that was fine. It just meant that we were that much closer to actually finishing this shitty dungeon.

I knew all these people were fakes, created by the dungeon, so I had no reason to hold back. Even if someone managed to record this, and broadcast it, I could simply say that I knew they were dungeon creatures, not real people. They were simply NPCs in a game, and they were in my way.

I nearly stumbled mid-swing, almost needing to take a second swing to kill the air marshal riding with the reporters. Suddenly, the dungeon made a lot more sense. Oh, it was still shit, whether you were talking about dungeon standards or by real-world combat training standards. However, the video game comparisons were too spot on to miss, and that gave me the answer of why the dungeon was designed this way. It was made to condition the fighters that trained here to disregard people who weren’t on their team, reducing them to NPCs in a video game, rather than actual people.

It was a sick and twisted bit of psychology, but I’d be damned if it wasn’t effective. It had sucked me in with that thinking, without even having any trainers pushing that thinking my way. Once you viewed the enemy as not really being human, then it became a lot easier to do anything you wanted, and not have a care in the world about it. It wasn’t a new concept, of course. We had to watch out for those kinds of thoughts with people who spent too long in the simulators, after all. But, instead of shying away from the dehumanization, this dungeon doubled down on it!

Not that it was going to help the dungeon, of course. I hadn’t stopped while I considered this. My blade cut through the defenders, who were all armed with weapons that were designed not to hurt the plane. Unfortunately, that meant they also couldn’t hurt me. I barely had to give any attention at all to the lightly-armed, completely identical-looking agents as I slaughtered them.

Finally, I found the President. It was obvious he was the final boss, because he had an assault rifle in each hand, like he was the protagonist of an early nineties video game. He even had the haircut, sunglasses, and muscle shirt, showing off a Mr. Universe-level physique to go with it!

I didn’t bother listening to what he had to say. There was no way that it was going to be worth my time. Probably some trite comment that would have sounded cool to a teenager in 1996, but aged like fine milk if you listened to it today. Either way, he didn’t have anything to say that I was interested in hearing, so I cut his head off, mid-monologue.

The airplane faded around me, just as it had done after the end of each ‘mission’, once the final boss was killed. After a brief period in the blackness between levels, I found myself standing in a… concrete bunker. Like, World War 2, middle of Berlin, Allies closing in on all sides, THAT kind of bunker.

But this was different from the other floors. There was no ’mission planner’ character, for one thing. There were also two doors, clearly marked. One was labeled as an exit, and the other said ‘New Game+’. Apparently, this was the final part of the dungeon, and you could choose to leave, or start the process all over again, perhaps with higher difficulty?

Too bad for the dungeon that, since this was, actually, the last room in the dungeon, its core was here. It wasn’t even trying to hide! There was just a shield up between me and it. Perhaps the dungeon hadn’t had time, or the knowledge, to set up proper defenses yet. Either way, that wasn’t my problem. I knew what I was going to do next.

“Well, little dungeon core, let us see how strong you are when put up against a real demon, not just someone you hate.” I chuckled as I conjured hellfire in either hand, the green-black flames casting an eerie glow across the bunker. For a moment, I let the core admire the flames, before I brought both hands in front of me, and began channeling a constant stream of hellfire into its shield.

The dungeon began to quake as the hellfire burned away the mana sustaining the shield. There was a reason why most dungeons didn’t rely on just a simple energy shield to defend their core, after all! An energy shield would stop my hellfire, temporarily, but the corrupting influence that burnt the soul as well as the flesh would start to seep through, consuming more mana than it should to keep the shield up.

“Oh, Master, you started without us!”

Looking over my shoulder, I saw that my pets had made it out of the final mission. Rachel looked like she had put her healing magic to work healing up a couple shots that had gotten through her defenses, but the others looked unscathed. Though it was hard to tell with Ezraekiel and Zoe, since they had apparently decided to go for the ‘up close and personal’ method, and were covered in enough blood that it had to be two or three people’s worth. Either way, all the girls looked ready to go.

“Ah, girls. Glad you could join me. I was just giving our little dungeon core here a taste of hell. Would you ladies like to chip in?”

Hibari bowed, and said, “With pleasure, Master.”

As one, they began pumping their attacks and skills into the shield, keeping up constant pressure. Together, we began pushing the shield back, inch by inch, until it was just barely keeping the attacks off the core. It was only a matter of time.

I felt a twist in the mana. “Stop! I give up! I’ll do anything, just stop!” At the far side of the room, by the ‘New Game+’ door, was another one of the identical soldiers, unarmed, and carrying a white flag.

I smiled wickedly at the soldier, and did not let up the assault on the core. I recognized it for what it was, the Dungeon talking through one of its creatures. “Oh, I don’t think so, little dungeon core. A core like you, that caters to terrorists, isn’t needed around here. I would ask you how and why you came to be what you are, but I don’t actually care. You made what should have been a glorious romp through a terrorist training camp, slaughtering pieces of shit that no one would miss into a boring slog through second-rate Chinese knock-offs of games that were repetitive and generic when they originally came out! No, I’m thinking I’ll just shatter your core, and burn your soul to the point where not even a resurrection spell will bring you back.”

“No! Don’t you know what happens when you shatter a core? The soldiers will spawn without end! And no one will control them!”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll find some poor, downtrodden people and give them some freedom in the form of high-velocity lead. That is the idiotic stereotype you based them on, right? Hope no one around here has any oil!”

The soldier grit his teeth, the core obviously frustrated. Suddenly, the soldier shifted. Before, he had been in a simple uniform. Now, he had on a suicide vest. “Then, if I cannot stop you, I will at least take some of you out with me! Allahu akbar!”

Nothing happened. Or, to be precise, no explosion happened. The shadows behind the dungeon soldier stirred, and Hibari stepped out of them. “Foolish dungeon. How will you set off explosives, if your explosives are all in pieces?”

Red lines began to spread across the soldier’s skin, in many criss-crossing slashes, before the body, explosives, and everything fell into pieces no larger than the ninja’s fist. With a flick of her blades, Hibari cast off what blood had managed to land on them, and she bowed to me. “I am sorry for acting out of turn, Master, but I could not allow him to endanger the others.”

“No, it is perfectly fine, Hibari. If I wanted mindless drones, incapable of thinking for themselves, I would have become a Necromancer or Golemancer, not a Slave Master. Excellent use of your skills, by the way. [Thousand Cuts] and [Cutting Plane], right? With a [Shadow Step]?”

Hibari nodded. “Yes, Master, you read it perfectly.”

The dungeon screamed in pain, as the final shield began to run out of mana. It flickered, for only a moment, but that was enough for my hellfire to rush through, and engulf the crystal. Soon, it was over.

Notice

You   have destroyed a Level 30 Dungeon Core. Dungeon Foe advances to rank   2.

Dungeon   Foe 2

+10%   Damage vs Dungeon creatures per core enslaved or destroyed.

All   Dungeon creatures deal 30% more damage to you.

WARNING!

Warning! Improper destruction   of dungeon detected. Mana flows becoming unstable. Bounded space becoming   unstable. Ten minutes until complete destabilization and detonation. Minimum   safe distance from blast: 20 kilometers.

Looking at the blue box, I frowned. “Ah. Everybody? Run.”