Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 173

Lucas

It took some time for me to think up something that was worth announcing to the ex-Kingsguard.

There were around twelve thousand of them. I didn’t know what the total population of the Omen’s kingdom had been, but I hoped it wasn’t far off that. I didn’t want to think about what had certainly happened to the remaining people there after the Cataclysm.

Twelve thousand civilians was less useful than it initially seemed, which was why I had mostly dismissed Rose’s suggestion out of hand at first, but she was right.

I didn’t have much of a choice. Their lives weren’t at stake from the quest itself, but only a moron would think that the king’s ultimate plan was going to spare anybody within Centerpoint.

The ex-Kingsguard were also the safest human resource I could tap into.

I’d told Rose that there was no way I could get the otherworlders to do my bidding, but that wasn’t entirely true. It would be pretty simple, actually—all I had to do was spawn a monster that required a level 20 party to take down in front of every single person and then tell them that they stood no chance if they didn’t follow my orders.

If it came down to the wire, that was what I would do, but my reasoning for not doing so was twofold.

One: if I succeeded in foiling the king here, I assumed we were going to clash eventually. Assuming I won, I would then be the only source of civilization remaining in this plane of reality. I didn’t want the remaining people to shun me and get themselves killed by wandering monsters.

Two: this was a more practical concern. While the otherworlders were in the dungeon, I could [Intertwine] with their power and borrow it for myself. With over two hundred thousand targets, many of whom were actively continuing to make progress throughout the dungeon floors I’d set up, that was a lot of mana to be borrowing.

So that was that. For the time being, I only had one group to utilize.

There were less than nineteen hours left. I’d sent all the adventurers a notice to take a break and prepare for one last push.

Now, I had to notify everyone else.

Deep breaths, Lucas. I had taken a couple of years of public speaking courses back on Earth, and I’d made hasty speeches to motivate my adventurers before, but to order this many people to march to their potential deaths… that was a much tougher proposition.

But we were running out of time, and thanks to my unique power, I was the only one who could take charge.

Inhale. Exhale. I could do this.

“Attention, citizens of Centerpoint Dungeon,” my voice said into twelve thousand ears. “Attention. This is Lucas, your [Tour Guide] and the one behind the Centerpoint Dungeon Core.”

The former Kingsguard stopped what they were doing. Healing squads retreated from their assignments. Food burned, left alone on the stove. People dropped books, closed doors, paused conversations.

“All of you receiving this message have endured hardship,” I said. “You were born and raised in a kingdom of darkness underneath a lord that didn’t care if you lived or died. Even after we killed the Omen, even after you gained a new home, you have all seen pain, fighting, and death, and you left your lives behind in the underground.

"So when I ask you for your assistance, I do not expect you all to accept. I do not expect anything out of any of you unless it is freely given.

“In just over eighteen hours, over a million people will die. Otherworlders, all of them, but we’ve uncovered enough of our enemy’s plans to infer what his plans are for the rest of us. None of the otherworlders will survive the day. None of us will survive the week.

“That is, unless we do something about it. Even as we speak, twenty-one of the most powerful adventurers this world has ever seen are preparing to venture back out into the wider world. Two of our best mages have determined a ritual that may be able to stop the king from carrying out his plan.

“In order to execute said spell, we need power.”

I spent some time elucidating the exact details of what I needed them to do. It wasn’t anything super special, so I tried to keep it to a few paragraphs. Ultimately, they just needed to break in, steal cores, and survive.

“I’m not going to lie to you and say that this is going to be an easy journey. There are monsters beyond the borders, and the towers themselves are lethal weapons of war. Anyone who agrees to join this expedition deserves to know the full dangers of what they are signing up for.

“That said, we need help. Twenty-one people cannot do the work of an army alone. If you want to help us save the world, please verbally confirm your intent. That is all.”

None of the citizens said anything for a painfully long pause. They continued to do nothing, caught in the middle of their routine.

“Thank god you didn’t tell them to kill you,” Rose said. “That would’ve been stupid.”

“Not swearing by the goddess?” I asked, acknowledging her jab with a smile.

“I figure she doesn’t deserve it anymore.”

I had to be honest with myself—I wasn’t presenting them all the options. If I was the person I was a few years ago, I might’ve given them the option to make their way to me and destroy my Dungeon Core, but my time in this world had taught me lessons.

My enemies wouldn’t stay down until they were dead, and so I couldn’t die until there was nothing left in our way.

It still felt a little bad.

Then again, I wasn’t sure how effective that little speech had been. The silence stretched on and on. For almost a minute, none of them said a single word.

And then, almost as if they had come to a silent consensus, they spoke.

It started with a single voice, but within moments, there were so many that I could barely track down the first one in the commotion.

Hundreds of people responded. Thousands.

I felt like a dam had broken, and I wasn’t ready for the wave. People laughed, cried, spoke.

“You saved us. I will return the favor.”

“Can’t be worse than life before.”

“C’mon, you could’ve stopped at assistance.”

“You got me, I guess.”

The responses swarmed my senses.

They weren’t all affirming, of course. There were loads of them under level 5, and there were quite a few children that weren’t of fighting age yet.

There were so many people who did, though. Almost everyone who was physically capable of leaving the dungeon volunteered.

Nine thousand, six hundred and seventy-four former Kingsguard dedicated themselves to my cause.

“Well, shit,” I said. “I guess we’re in business.”

#

I hadn’t gotten much better at managing wars since this entire shitshow had begun, but this time, I had Iris.

We’d had only a matter of hours to come up with an attack plan, but Iris was one of the best planners I’d ever had the pleasure of working with. She barely wasted time on acknowledging that we were each happy for the other’s survival before moving on to figuring out what we were doing next.

The plan wasn’t simple, but with Iris’ assistance, it was workable. We split the ex-Kingsguard up by what they could do, cordoning them off into relatively standardized units, and we sent each of them with one of our redistributed parties.

After the tumultuous events of the last two months, a lot had changed. People had died. Adventurers had started to gel with each other.

As such, we had different parties now, each with different specialties and manners of attack. Our final plan looked something like:

Inquisition: Nora, [Alchemist], level 15. Alice, [Nightmare], level 14. Alex, [Master of Arrows], level 13. Anderson, [Gunslinger], level 18. 1,833 ex-Kingsguard.

Starfall: Sarah, [Astral Monk], level 26. Charles, [Storm Sniper], level 23. Kira, [Life Cleric], level 23. Lisa, [Spellblade], level 17. 341 ex-Kingsguard.

Heretics: Ashley, [Flame Knight], level 20. Thorn, [Wizard], level 20. K’lon, [Champion], level 19. 2,000 ex-Kingsguard.

Homefront: Abraham [Pirate Monk], level 14. Eliza, [Winter Cleric], level 15. Austin, [Steelbrand], level 13. Arthur, [Swashbuckler], level 15. Jess, [Arcane Archer], level 15. Erik, [Moon Cleric], level 15. 2,500 ex-Kingsguard.

Minus One: Rose, [Soloist], level 15. Troy, [Protean Mage], level 16. Ryan, [Thunderblade], level 16. Iris, [Tactician], level 18. 2,000 ex-Kingsguard.

Even with Iris’ [Tactician] class guiding her and my dungeon propelling people to the different jumping-off points we’d prepared for them, it took a while. Teleportation worked within the dungeon since the king’s wards weren’t stronger than I was, which made it easier, but that only made it marginally easier.

When we had everyone sorted into their groups, there were twelve hours remaining.

“Good luck, everybody,” I said. “May we live to fight another day.”

One by one, the groups left. Five armies departed in different directions, each of them with at least one group of pathfinders to identify likely locations for the king’s tower to emerge.

I could only hope they would succeed.

#

I wasn’t idle while the regiments we’d formed ventured forth to harvest dungeons from the land. There was still much to do here and now.

The otherworlders were still fighting their way through the dungeon. With only twelve hours remaining, they were getting increasingly desperate.

Some of them had lost it. Rather than even attempt to dive further into the dungeon, they turned on their own party members, clawing at people that should have been on their side in an attempt to exert control over what little they could still hold onto in their lives.

I blocked each and every one of them. The ground rose to stop otherworlder-on-otherworlders incidents, trapping the offender in a cage.

I didn’t bother figuring out what to do with them for the time being. Ideally, we would work out a solution that didn’t involve killing them, but I didn’t have time to have an ethical discussion with anybody.

Anton was, however, still in the dungeon, so I sought him out as I worked.

“Christ, we’re getting into the shits now, aren’t we?” he said.

“We really are,” I replied. “You have anything to say to me?”

“No, not really,” he said. “I’m… kind of overwhelmed, honestly.”

“Understandable,” I said. “We’re going to get through this, alright?”

“I don’t know why, but I believe you,” he said. “You always were good at selling lies.”

“I hope that wasn’t a lie.” I shrugged. “We’re going to stop the quest. I’m sure of it.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but I had faith in Troy and Thorn’s ritual, and I had faith in everyone we’d sent into the wilds.

The goddess had remained oddly silent, but I was sure she would intervene at an inopportune time. If her end goal was just entertainment, though, I was mostly sure that she wouldn’t sabotage our last plan.

After all, if she just wanted to kill everyone, she could have just put her foot down and ended their lives anyway.

“That’s not all you’re preparing for,” Anton said. “Is it? All of… All of this?”

Right now, this meant rapidly spawning monsters with all the excess mana I had. I created all manner of beasts; there were enough of them to overwhelm an entire country if I set them loose in one, but there were no countries left to overwhelm.

None except the king’s, and his kingdom was unassailable for reasons beyond the mundane.

“Of course not,” I said. “Once we break the quest, the king will be waiting with a knife in hand.

“I plan on making sure that knife ends up in his back, not ours.”

#

The King

The preparations were almost complete.

He did not know why Centerpoint had sent some of its strongest members out into the wild, but he did not care. The king presumed they sought to annihilate his towers before it was too late; what they lacked the knowledge to realize that it was already too late.

He had millions upon millions of Dungeon Cores prepared already. A few lost towers made no difference.

The king inscribed his ritual circle, bit by bit. It was the grandest working he had ever created, stretching miles and miles; it rivaled the magic he had used to draw so many otherworlders into this plane.

In twelve hours, the quest the goddess had enabled him to saddle every otherworlder with would count down to zero.

Thirty minutes before it triggered, during their darkest hour, the king would appear and make it even darker.

Despite himself, the king was excited. It had been so long since it had been granted the opportunity to hunt.

Twelve more hours, and he would revel in the blood and power of hundreds of thousands.

The final battle was upon him.

His victims were clueless to the hands that would cause their demise.

Slowly, the king smiled.

#

The goddess looked upon what the dungeon and the king had wrought, and she found herself unsatisfied.

It was a dark mirror of that which had once occurred already. Enemies on all fronts, invading the dungeon with the intent to kill every last member within it.

She realized, far too late, that she had played too heavy a hand. Mortals interested her because they could tell their own stories, but she could only ever create the same ones.

Leading up to this had been positively delicious. Heroes and villains alike died left and right, presented by impossible choices. There was despair, and there was hope, and there was excitement.

This did not bear those marks.

The goddess sighed in disappointment.

The king’s ambition was inspiring, at the very least, and the dungeon was more proactive than it had ever been before. There was enough of a change for her not to lose all hope.

Perhaps one of them would manage to spark her interest.

Twelve hours, and she would find out.