Museum Core Chapter 33: Jurassic Flashback

Jaclyn sighed as they began to advance into the corridor. She’d lost her gun, dropped while she’d been flung around like a ragdoll, and they hadn’t found it even after an exhaustive search. Chances were, it had wound up down a grate somewhere, or gone through a window, sadly. Explaining that she’d lost her sidearm would be … fun, but that was a problem for later.

As dangerous as the Dungeon was, the growth it provided was hard to pass up. She’d just gained another Level and thrown all points into her Body Stat, as she’d do with all points until she was able to seriously damage the creatures she fought with her bare hands, and Pugilism had also gained a level from kicking a hippopotamus to death.

It was a dangerous world out there, at least one deluded kid with superpowers was running around, and that was just the crap she knew about.

So she’d once again borrowed a sidearm but was leading the way without out, ready to use her fists. But once she was out of here, she’d pick up some kind of combat knife. If an enemy was knocked out but she didn’t have a good way of killing it with her bare hands, she either needed a good tool, or a bunch of time.

This time, there wasn’t just a giant sloth in the corridor, but also a wooly rhino that charged at her the moment she peeked around the corner.

Big, hairy, with a horn half as long as she was tall.

When she put it like that, it sounded like she was describing her first boyfriend.

But him, she’d just broken up with, she’d deal with this fucker in a more …. permanent way.

The rhino had already been aiming where she was, right next to the wall, so ducking back into cover was a thing of moments while she waved for the others to stay back, leaving the giant creature to thunder past. She’d expected it to slow down and turn around in the entrance hall, making itself vulnerable. After all, there wasn’t anything close to enough space available for it to make the wide turns required for reversing course while maintaining its speed.

Instead, it just kept on moving, exiting the entrance hall through the opposite door, right into what she thought was the marine fossil gallery.

Oh … that wasn’t good. Really not good. It could safely turn in there, and by the time she reached it, it’d already be back up to speed.

And the Giant Sloth would be coming from the opposite direction.

***

Well, that hadn’t gone according to plan. The hall of marine fossils would eventually be incorporated into whatever he turned the geology section into. It wasn’t meant to be a part of the existing Dungeon.

Thomas considered giving it new orders to fix that oversight, as that part was tougher than it should have been, and having his “first party” get squashed because he’d screwed up just wouldn’t do.

Buuuuut … having people feel like he’d intervene whenever something weird happened would only lead to trouble further down the line. And Inspector Abrams was probably not going to die to something this basic.

In this case, her countermeasure involved giving an order to the orc in the party, who was an E-Rank with some kind of summoning power. She summoned a small snake with legs and a cat face that shot off like a bottle rocket to face the rhino … and was promptly trampled.

But the rhino began to stumble soon after, and that was when Abrams shot out, slamming a strangely-formed fist into the creature’s throat, tearing through in a spray of blood … and then, the sloth’s rubbery fist slammed into her back, a wide haymaker thrown from almost twenty meters away pitching her against the toxin-soaked fur of the Dungeon monster and collapsed fully to the ground.

Shit. He’d liked her. She’d seemed like good people, played things straight with him so far, and that seemed like a particularly strong venom.

And then, she pushed herself back into a sitting position, with a confused and annoyed look on her face.

***

Bollocks! Fuck! Damn! For … ugh, her head hurt far too much to think of more ways to cuss.

Jaclyn’s body felt hot, almost feverish, while her heart was trying to beat its way out of her chest, and her skull pounded like she’d just drunk half a pub’s supply of whatever gave the worst kind of hangovers and then neglected to drink any water or find the “hair of the dog”, as it were.

Urgh, this wasn’t fun. Well, it was a fight that could get people killed, anyone who thought it was fun had something wrong with them, but this was far worse than just the regular Dungeon-diving stuff.

Gula’s summoned Caladrius alighted on her shoulder a moment later, further alleviating her discomfort.

Gunfire thundered behind her, followed by peals of thunder as the orc engaged, hopefully frying that bellend sloth to a crisp.

She’d just been thrown face-first into Tatzelwyrm blood, one of the most toxic substances she’d ever heard of, other than maybe Botulism toxin.

And she was largely fine. She felt like crap, true, but that shit killed in seconds, and she could feel herself getting better, so something had to be protecting her.

That was when she finally remembered that protection from toxins had been a part of her Honey Badger powers. Between them, and her generally enhanced physiology, she’d survived, albeit feeling truly awful.

Jaclyn began to drunkenly lurch forward, every step growing more sure while her vision stopped blurring.

She knew better than to walk into combat while largely disabled, so she just picked a pillar to hide behind until the sound of combat died down.

Briefly dipping into her character sheet showed she’d gained another Level, and threw all points into Spirit to boost her venom resistance. It was a Stat she’d been meaning to boost for a while and would make a big difference right now.

Her feeling fine again coincided nicely with the death of the giant sloth, so she came back out of cover to find the sloth dead and everyone else fine.

“What the hell just happened? Are you ok?” Smith asked, sounding torn between worry and fury, as if not sure how to feel, whether she’d panicked and deserved a dressing-down, or been injured and was in need of help. “One moment, you’re punching monsters, and the next, you’re running?”

“That fucking sloth threw me into a pool of toxic blood,” she shot back, gesturing at the large stain on her shirt. “If you touched that, you’d drop dead. I’m … not fully immune.”

“But resistant enough to shrug off a dose that would kill a normal person a hundred times over,” Granger sighed. “Damn, I want a Class.”

Jaclyn snorted. Somehow, she felt completely fine again, and that put her in a surprisingly good mood. But she just couldn’t picture him with a Class like hers. A mage Class would be perfect, if they could find one.

But this fight was over and won. The real problem would be finding a place to get clean after all this was done, she couldn’t get into the jeep covered in lethal contact poison.

As if she were checking whether or not a casserole dish was still hot enough to burn her, she began to cautiously tap at the stain on her shirt, first briefly brushing against it, then jerking her hand back as though she’d been burnt before she even felt any feedback. Other than a slight red-purple stain on her finger, nothing happened.

The remains still on her shirt weren’t affecting her anymore, but that could have just as easily been the result of some kind of supernatural immune response concentrated around the area where the blood was soaking into her skin. This at least seemed to prove that she’d grown resistant to the toxin, though she didn’t know whether the effect was temporary or permanent.

She poked at it again, a few times, until she finally rested her palm against it. Still nothing. That settled it.

Jaclyn marched over to where the rhino’s corpse had been, knelt down next to the pool of remaining blood, and, grimacing, dragged the back of her left hand through it.

Gross as it might be, it would also be a lethal weapon against whatever was in the next room.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Granger asked.

“It’s not a bad one,” Jaclyn shrugged. If wearing clothes literally soaked in this stuff weren’t a problem, getting more on her hand wouldn’t be either.

“But you should stay outside for this next part.”

Granger didn’t have a Class yet, though he’d have gotten one if he’d asked. He’d already made all sorts of promises to the Worldstrider Tribe, saying that he’d champion their cause if push came to shove, but there was no Class he actually wanted.

But the orcs did like him, as far as she could tell, somehow, he’d endeared himself with his endless curiosity, though she assumed that at least part of that was them seeing him as an adorable little puppy, stumbling through the world with wide eyes.

That being said, there was a plan in place, namely, for him to make his own Class. Apparently, it was possible to preternaturally train up to two Skills before picking up a Class, and he was trying to learn Mana Control and General Magic to get something useable.

An older person would have gotten other high-level Skills that would color the Class creation process, like how her “personal Class” had tried to combine martial arts, being a police officer, and childrearing into a single Frankenstein package.

But Granger was barely twenty, he’d privately admitted that the Levels of his job-related Skills were abysmal, and his best Skills were all related to learning and multitasking, which actually explained a lot when she thought about it.

All that being said, though, he was mostly here because she wanted him to see the real world before he started building his ivory tower, and the next room was likely going to be too dangerous for him to be in without a Class, a gun, or useable magic.

“I have a spell to clean you when you are ready,” Gula told her, causing Jaclyn to turn around and raise an eyebrow.

“I thought your powers were linked to spirit summoning?” she asked.

“It is, but if I have enough mana left, there are a few utility spells I can cast,” Gula said, explaining nothing … until Jaclny remembered an old conversation about what happened when you advanced a rank.

You’d get the equivalent of a full Level’s worth of points added to each Stat, which meant that you’d eventually get access to mana no matter what, even as a Class that didn’t otherwise get any use out of it.

As such, the orcs had long ago figured out that mana control and magic were Skills and how to learn basic spells that weren’t linked to one’s Class. The issue was that such spells were vastly inferior to Class abilities, so anyone with a magic-focussed Class never really used spells where powers could do the trick.

Jaclyn had just never realized that Gula had learned utility spells, since the offense part of her arsenal, as well as healing, were neatly covered by her spirit summoning.

And if she had a way to fully get clean …

She knelt back down and smeared more of the Taztelwyrm’s blood on her right hand too.

By that point, the body of the rhino had fully dissapeared, revealing the loot.

“Could someone please pick that up?” Jaclyn asked, holding up her toxin-smeared hands by way of explanation as to why she couldn’t do that.

Granger hurried over to pick up what looked like the severed horn of a wholly rhino, alongside a note that he read out loud.

“I wonder how much a wholly rhino horn would sell for? Just for the sake of being clear, I’m not asking you to sell this for me, I’m just curious.

“And in case you need it for legal purposes or the like, this horn is explicitly meant for those who looted it, consider it a gift if that is what is required to have it not locked up in an evidence locker.

“If you do manage to sell it, please do tell me, it’d be interesting to know, Daedalus.”

The paper smelled faintly of blackberries to Jaclyn’s sensitive nose, though it seemed that Daedalus’ fingerpainting skills were far superior to his ability to write legibly with a pen.

“Interesting,” Jaclyn commented while Gula packed it into her spatial bag.

It really was curious. The Dungeon was … smart, knowing a lot about the world. Sure, the fact that rhino horns sold for a lot was functionally guaranteed to be written down somewhere in this museum, so it made sense that it’d know about it, but it was interesting that it’d made the leap … he’d made the leap?

Daedalus was a decidedly male name, sure, but the monkey avatar seemed to have been female, and the name seemed to have been a reference to the mythical figure as a maze builder, rather than a declaration of his gender.

Their gender?

She was rapidly confusing herself, so she cut off that line of thought. Not that she’d been in a position to keep turning the topic over in her head, considering that she’d just reached the entrance of the dinosaur section and was about to go in.

Jaclyn stepped around the corner and was promptly met with a thunderous roar, followed by a titanic creature charging at her.

T-rex. The Dungeon had a T-rex. Oh hell.

The two smaller ankylosaurus-lookalikes were still there, but they’d been reinforced by the undisputedly most famous dinosaur in history. And while some distant memories of reading dinosaur books to Eve reminded her that there were bigger and stronger dinos out there, it wasn’t many.

Jaws big enough to encircle her entire torso, a tail that could probably flip a car with a single strike, and feet that could likely crush that same car with a single stomp.

It might have had a few more feathers than its depiction in Jurrasic Park, but its appearance was still enough to send her lizard brain into the depths of terror, especially after having watched that damn movie just last week.

And with every step it took, the ground trembled, forcing her to move more carefully than she really wanted to with that thing bearing down on her.

But the biggest problem was how the quaking floor was fouling the aim of the people behind her. Playing Matador while everyone else gunned down the monster might have worked normally, but not against this bugger.

Jaclyn dove to the side as giant jaws snapped shut beside her, then slightly opened her fist and dragged her fingernails across its eye. Not deep enough to destroy it, but eye injuries were nauseatingly painful well before they grew dangerous, and the toxic blood covering her would further do a hell of a lot of damage.

She slipped under the bulk of the t-rex’s body, glad that this thing had no arms worth speaking of. If she’d been up against something like a spinosaurus, this wouldn’t have been a safe place, but against this thing …

Jaclyn punched upwards, right into the creature’s stomach. She didn’t manage to tear through the skin, but it caved inwards and she could feel something rupture beneath her knuckles. The t-rex decided to just keep charging, forcing her to get out from under it before she got trampled, only to have to throw herself to the ground to avoid having her head caved in by a bone club.

Did those little tail-club beasts have the same power as the sauropod in the entrance hall?

No, they didn’t seem to have the same range, but that bone club made it a far more dangerous attack.

The dinosaur had just lobbed the mass of bone over its head and reeled it back the moment it had become clear the attack had failed, while the second one whipped its weapon around the side, forcing Jaclyn to roll to her feet, moving backwards and thankfully allowing her to get beyond her attacker’s range. Two meters ahead of the dino’s snout seemed to be the limit.

But by that time, the first dino was swinging its club again in almost the same motion, over its head.

This time, though, she was more prepared, brushing it to the side while she dodged the other way, allowing her to avoid the impact with a minimum of required motion. And then, she realized something.

While it was elongating, the bones and muscles of its tail were soft, barely tougher than a wet noodle, their only purpose being delivering the bone club attached to its end to its destination. Which made pushing the club surprisingly easy, as long as she was careful to hit it on the side. And because this thing had a range limit, she could grab it without fear of it using the same trick as that bellend in the entrance hall.

Rubber muscles had real trouble exerting their full strength, but she needed to finish this before the other one managed to attack again.

Leaving one hand at the base of the club, she reached forward with the other and dug her fingers into the tail there with enough force to compress it to half its width. Sure, half of that was down to the rubbery properties of the tail, but the other half was a pretty clear showcase of her raw strength.

Apparently, that was the last straw, and the dinosaur charged at her, snapping at her leg with its beak-like mount, but she jerked her leg back, leaving the attack to snap shut in midair, and then, drove her knee into its jaw.

As the dino reeled, she let go of the tail, lunged forward, grabbed the creature’s throat, and tore it out. And even if that kind of damage hadn’t been lethal, the toxins covering her fingers would have been, serving to hasten its demise.

She had to once again dodge a club strike as the second anky-thing got into range, but this time, she was just a hair too slow, getting clipped in the side by the weapon. It hurt, sure, and would leave her with a bruise come morning, but it was hardly the bone-crushing, organ-popping impact she’d feared.

And it let her repeat the grappling maneuver, holding fast onto the elongated limb, reaching the now largely unarmed dinosaur, and going for its throat.

A loud roar quaked the air, heralding the return of the t-rex, which had apparently decided that the people with guns and the lightning-slinging orc were too annoying to go after.

As it got closer, the floor grew increasingly more unsteady, becoming far worse than the earthquake simulator she’d once visited in the geology section of the museum.

Of course, the dinosaur tried to bite her again, she dodged, and punched it in the eye, bursting the organ like a water balloon and pouring toxic blood into it. The massive dino might have been big and tough and capable of surviving the small amount of toxin her first attack had imparted, but this volume this close to the brain should at least do some damage.

The rex turned its head and tried to bite her again, but she once again dove under its stomach and punched it again. Once more, the dinosaur tried to trample her, but she ran out under its tail, ducking down to avoid catching a tail to the skull.

And then, the dinosaur wheeled around and tried again, but this time, it was lurching forward drunkenly, bloody foam dripping from its mouth. Jaclyn wasn’t entirely sure whether that was down to internal organ damage from her punches or the toxin, but the monster was clearly hurt.

This time, she didn’t even bother counterattacking, she just got well-clear of the attack and on the next turn, the dino just dropped to the ground.

It lay there for a minute, two minutes, sides laboriously rising and falling. Shit. It was too badly hurt to keep moving, but not yet dead. At this point, it was just cruel.

Jaclyn sighed and moved around to its back, carefully avoiding its legs, tail, and jaws, until she got into a position to hit its throat. And then, she started punching until the creature’s body vanished, replaced by several large, white, teeth that would likely make them a mint if they sold them.

And if she ever learned that cleaning spell, she’d be able to pull strategies like this on the regular. Lethal toxins that could be absorbed through the skin covering whatever parts of her body she used to hit her opponent with, ones that wouldn’t hurt her beyond initial discomfort, and once she was done, she could just magically wipe it away.

At least she hoped that was how the spell worked, because if Gula had oversold it … this Museum better have working showers or she’d have to walk home.

Jaclyn glanced back at the boss room she’d been warned not to enter as the boss had been upgraded beyond her ability to handle.

It just sat there, right before the door, an oversized sabertooth tiger with fangs as long as her lower arm. Somehow, it reminded her of Felix, it was just a little bigger.

Had it been her imagination, or had it been sitting in a different spot every time the door had entered her field of view, as her memories told her? As if the creature had been able to shift its location in the amount of time it took her to blink?

***

So, that just happened.

Sure, part of that was due to a venom created by the E-Ranked orc being used in a deadly strategy but still … sheesh, that lady was terrifying.

He’d also have to fix the t-rex, its bite was too easy to dodge. Maybe some kind of shockwave when its jaws snapped together, or a roar that unleashed a powerful shockwave? He’d have to think about it.

However, he definitely knew what he’d upgrade his hippo with once it finally crossed the threshold. The blood of the creature the orc had projected, some kind of nasty poison dragon. Anyone other than the insptector punched one of those, they’d be in for one hell of a surprise.

The orc approached Abrams and, with a wave of her hand, slowly began to disintegrate the purple-red blood into nothingness. Cool.

Though based on how she kept throwing glances towards Cheshire, having the tiger keep moving whenever she wasn’t looking had been noticed. Part warning, part shenanigans for his amusement.

And finally, he reproduced the gun he’d absorbed when Inspector Abrams had dropped it, placing it next to the door with a monkey avatar to present it. The small Glock was a peashooter compared to what else existed out in the world and the magic he already had access to, but it was still a gun. What kinds of shenanigans could he come up using it, not to mention the pattern for bullets and even modern gunpowder?

Thomas was waiting on the delvers to return, dreaming about what he could do with his new stuff, when a new person arrived at the door.

A young man, a kid, really, with vines winding around his body and a wooden sword strapped to his back.

Was that the cultivator he’d heard about?