Museum Core Chapter 80: Fiddlesticks 

Thomas was doing one of the things he loved the most. Although, nowadays, he rarely did anything else. Being a dungeon meant that there wasn’t all that much in the way of chores, leaving him with a different issue. How to avoid ruining things for himself by doing the same task over and over until he eventually grew sick of it. 

But he’d managed to balance things out thus far. Monster creation, dungeon decoration, ruin excavation, general messing around, with the latter, in turn, covering everything from creating giant board games and playing them with Elias while using live monsters as game pieces, to designing cool traps and general creative affairs. 

Oh, and he’d also kept planning on building miniature dioramas, or getting started on that, at least, but never gotten around to it. Then again, he had time to do that later, and right now, he had a different thing he really wanted to do. 

Expand. Grow. Conquer. 

… or just dig ever deeper into the ground. Although Thomas had to admit, there were very few places in the transformed London that he couldn’t get away with claiming, the “dibs” he’d established on the Imperial War Museum and the museum ship HMS Belfast were largely pro-forma. 

A few weeks ago, he’d used his domain enhancement to claim Alaxia’s bolthole, and now, he was deciding to dig deeper beneath it, to eventually place his core beneath it while blocking off surface access to it. 

There were people who wanted him dead, after all, and it was quite likely that at least some of them had access to nuclear weaponry. Much of which would likely work even in here, since, unless he was misremembering things, nukes were deliberately kept fairly low tech to circumvent the risk of cyberattacks. 

But at the same time, there were countermeasures that could be taken. 

Digging in, for one, something he’d done. 

Then, he’d also made several changes to his structure to prevent it from funneling a blast from above right at his core, taking simple lessons from history, specifically, historical blast mining. They’d always dug a hole opposite to the powder magazine while the access corridor lay perpendicular to the pathway the potential blast would take. This meant that the shockwave would wind up funneled into the hole and get reflected back in upon itself, partially cancelling itself out before it started raging elsewhere. 

He’d done the same for every single corridor past the point normal delvers were expected to stop at, but he’d also added a table and a few chairs, to offer an explanation for why the hole was there. Though considering that setting even one foot down there was tantamount to declaring one’s intention to kill Thomas, the excuse was flimsy. But then again, how solid did it really have to be?

Now, though, he’d be actually moving his core even deeper, as deep as he could, and placing it under the treasure chamber where it would get covered in layer after layer of the best anti-shockwave armor he could make. 

Even if his would-be murderers used ground-penetrating missiles to deliver their warheads, they’d be looking in the entirely wrong place. It wasn’t like ground-penetrating radar could be brought into the current area. And even if that changed in the future, they’d be pitting unranked fissionable materials against D-, soon to be C-Rank Dungeon walls, which were perpetually amongst the most durable materials in their Rank.

Although that being said, there was very little that could actually be done with this material outside of armoring one’s dungeon, as it could only be created by a dungeon, was automatically upgraded when the outer layer of a dungeon was made, and only maintained its properties while within the confines of a dungeon. 

… Elias’ speech when Thomas had brought it up had been thorough. 

And condescending, something that supposedly came down to the fact that Thomas could have figured that out himself, but he strongly suspected that the fairy had simply been looking forward to having a laugh at his expense “for once.” 

But now that was behind them, and Thomas was able to have a lot of fun with this. 

A long, long, loooooooong corridor connected the Natural History Museum to his soon-to-be core room, one that he was trapping to the utmost. Pitfall traps that were just barely under the size where they’d be considered to be making the corridor “completely impassable.” 

Because he couldn’t do that, according to the inherent, innate, rules that governed all of dungeonkind, the core couldn’t be made inaccessible through either physical barriers or obstacles that functionally blocked the path even when there was technically a way forward. 

And unlike the “dungeons must provide challenge” rule, there was no breaking this one, and even bending was out of the question. 

So, a long pit of spikes, pots with tatzelwyrm blood in the ceiling that could break at even the slightest impact, something that could be provided by any of the myriad beasts he could spawn in and unleash from his core room. More standard arrow traps, patches of thermite covering parts of the floor, and a large mass of gunpowder would sit at the far end of the corridor, behind where the stairs to his future core room would lead. 

If and when that blew, the shockwave would be funneled down the corridor and straight at potential invaders. 

The whole thing could be cleared, but it would require gratuitous firepower to sweep the entire corridor clear of anything and everything within. Anyone who went in taking it lightly would not be coming back out again. 

He’d finished the corridor, and he’d tested to make sure the explosive trap was done; now all that was left to do was drill down as far as he could. 

So he expended the last of his “potential” … and stopped dead, so shocked that Elias noticed something was wrong even before Thomas said anything. 

“What?” the fairy asked, concerned. 

“There’s a whole other room down here!” Thomas sent along with a “grin.” 

“Oh …” Elias said in obvious relief. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Thomas shot his fairy a “glare.” 

“How, exactly?” 

“I mean, this place is supposed to be some kind of fallback bunker, right? That’s why we found everything from foundation-building elixirs to the armor of the imperial guard, which no one would be able to use for years at a bare minimum. She wanted to grow it into her new center of power, and what kind of palace doesn’t have a secret bolthole?” 

“There’s no entrance,” Thomas pointed out. 

“It’s probably another teleporter that she carried on her person, but it must have gotten wrecked before she died,” Elias shrugged, unbothered. “So, what did you find?” 

“Uh … not sure. I found it just now,” Thomas admitted, then finally decided to actually start looking around. 

It was largely, well, a bolthole. A closet with simple clothing, made of incredibly durable and almost certainly expensive fabrics, prioritizing utility and permanence over appearance, a “medicine cabinet” filled with dragon-specific potions, a handful of weapons on a wall-mounted rack, a crate of glass bottles of water and ration bars, and a simple, small, “bed.” 

Or so Thomas assumed. It was more like a doggy bed than something meant for a humanoid being to use, but far too small for the dragon Alaxia had turned into, in the end. But perhaps she’d had the ability to sufficiently shrink down that she could use it, who knew? 

Elias, probably, so Thomas asked and was rewarded with the affirmation that his assumption had been correct.

He might be getting good at this, the whole deducing what magic was out there. And as useless as that skill was, considering how easily he could get the same information by asking, it still made him happy. 

Unlike the room, which gave off a depressing vibe to him. It was all so … drab. Soul-crushing. He could already picture it now, some terrified monarch hiding out down here, in the bowels of the earth, far from the light or anyone to talk to. A refuge that would soon become a cell instead. 

The room truly was only going to be used as a last resort by anyone even remotely normal. 

But that was only the top floor, perhaps there was more on the next floor down?

… yeah, no. Whatever that was, it certainly wasn’t an entertainment system. More like … it looked like quite a mess. Wires and girders all over the place, connecting roughly cut gemstones and metal orbs to form the bastard lovechild of a gyroscope and a model of the solar system. 

If it hadn’t been for the glowing script drifting about the place, he’d have assumed this were some kind of art piece made from scrap or the like. 

But the script was there, and what it spelled out wasn’t just a simple status report, or login screen. 

No, it was a deadline, emphasis on the “dead.”

“Dimensional Cracks detected. Imminent Dimensional Incursions detected in eight spots.”

“Foreign invasion imminent, Vortex Controller required.”

“Time remaining: 1.147 local years.”

… Oh. 

That was a lot worse than he’d expected. 

A lot worse than he ever could have even imagined. 

“Fiddlesticks!” Thomas swore, his mental shout echoing across the dungeon, startling critters and causing the larger monsters to shift uncomfortably. In fact, there was only one sapient being in the dungeon other than himself whose reaction wasn’t alarm.

“You know, I still don’t know your language, but I can’t even put into words how stupid that sounded,” Elias burst out, laughing so hard he actually fell out of the sky and landed on the marble beneath Thomas’ core, where he continued to roll around, still roaring with laughter. 

Well, there went the idea of using “local” curse words. It had felt appropriate before, but apparently wasn’t. 

Thomas quickly relayed the information to Elias once the winged jackass had finally calmed down. 

“So … I’d say that settles it then, doesn’t it?” the fairy finally said, once that was done. “Kill anchor monsters, build the vortex controller, and greet anyhting you don’t like the look of with a fireball in hand.”

Now Thomas just needed to figure out how to kill the powerful monsters located well outside of anywhere he could reasonably extend his domain, and he needed to do so, fast.