Museum Core Chapter 96: Future Problems Don’t Stay in the Future

Alright, now, what did this thing do?

Thomas absorbed the Hunger’s heart and began to look through its stats.

It had, in fact, been an absurdly powerful monster, but the dungeon core portion of the gaol beast had apparently been destroyed when it had died, leaving him with just the powers of the Komodo Dragon, which were so varied that he was pretty certain he was looking at the result of a dungeon core merging with a champion and winding up in control of the whole affair, rather than the other way around.

He’d briefly considered trying something similar but chosen against it. Despite the limits and remaining strangeness of his new form, he absolutely loved it and wouldn’t trade his powers in for an actual body.

Elias’ “yes, its possible but will probably end badly” speech had been late and entirely superfluous, but the worry on clear display had been appreciated.

So, The Hunger’s powers were much like he’d expected.

Titan’s Physique and Lacerate, powers he’d already had, the gravity pull and eat attack was called Singularity Maw, and its final and most annoying power had been simply called Bloodlust.

It had allowed the monster to put a sort of “tag” on anyone who managed to dodge or heavily mitigate the damage from one of its blows, with every tag making follow-up attacks more accurate until one struck cleanly, at which point its attack power would be massively increased based on the number of active tags.

The monster had also been able to tag up to a hundred people at once, and the tags would only decay after twenty-seven hours, but as Müller had figured out, once the power was used against any single power, it reset for everyone.

Thomas decided to bookmark it as Dexter’s C-Rank power, his massive range meant he could punch against targets too distant for him to be accurate against. It used to be a waste of time … but not with this power in play. And even in the worst-case scenario, when all long-range attacks missed, the giant sloth would still have earned himself a massive, one-time damage bonus against whoever he’d been targeting that would last even if he hit someone else, as long as he’d only gone after one foe.

All in all, an amazing power, but ultimately, he hadn’t done this just for a new set of tools he could hand out to his creatures, irrespective of how awesome said tools might have been.

No, he’d done it for the heart of the monster, which had somehow crystallized during the journey back and was now being recreated in the second chamber of the vortex controller.

It came to life with a soft hum, and further portions of the machine lit up, but it could still clearly not actually do much of anything yet.

Three chambers empty, six months left. It would be a race against time now, but at least he’d made progress, and things should be going faster now.

That’s when Thomas noticed that he had a visitor.

Director Frye had been looking less and less tired as time passed, a combination of his lessened need for sleep and a smoother bureaucratic machine making it easier for him to get the necessary rest.

Up until now.

Because right now, the man was looking absolutely shattered, as though the last time his head had touched a pillow had been a month ago, yet he seemed happy too. And worried to boot … just what was up?

***

Rowan Frye slowly marched into what used to be the Natural History Museum. Even though he wouldn’t be fighting anything, part of him still felt like he was walking towards his execution.

Well, not his execution, it wouldn’t go that bad unless he’d terminally misread Daedalus, but he was still feeling highly uncomfortable about the entire affair.

This information would change a lot, and might entice the dungeon core to do something dangerous, reckless, or incediary, yet keeping it to himself wasn’t an option either. Because this wasn’t the kind of info that could be left to gather dust on a shelf somewhere, only to be revealed once everyone involved was long dead, this was something that needed to be acted on and would therefore most likely come to light far earlier than anyone was comfortable with.

At which point it would become blatantly obvious that they’d known, and that would cost them his trust.

Daedalus had loved to throw around the “I’m immortal, if I damage my integrity, it’ll haunt me forever” card because it was so damn effective. After all, “we’re both reasonable people, let’s come to a reasonable compromise” worked damn well when everyone involved both appeared to be and was, well, reasonable.

But that cut both ways. If Frye did something to break trust with the dungeon core, a being that was immortal until killed, with a memory to match, it would haunt not just him but every successor he’d have for several generations at the very least.

And it was hard to understand just how valuable their relationship was. Daedalus wasn’t merely the only dungeon known to exist, on Earth, but he was even willing to actively make deals with people, which was utterly invaluable.

So, ultimately, he couldn’t keep this from the core, telling him was the optimal choice, now he just had to hope that he could also prevent a rash and destructive response, no matter how understandable that would have been.

“… We now know for certain who was responsible for trying to kill you. We have proof. Please don’t start World War 3.”

*******************************************************************************
End of Book 3. 

I'll be taking a short break as always, finishing the Apocalypse Redux Short Story collection, writing and publishing the start of Museum Core 4 because I've already gotten a lot of that written, and then either finish that book, or write Outrage of the Ancients 3, I still haven't decided. 

I hope you enjoyed, and see you around. 

Yours sincerely, 

Jakob H. Greif