Museum Core Chapter 30: Ancient Power

Dinosaurs had an undeniable coolness factor, they were big and powerful beasts of ancient times that inspired fear and awe millions of years after their deaths.

Even so, they weren’t nearly as dominant as Thomas felt they should have been. The scutellosaurses and the camarasaurus in particular.

They were big, hit hard, and were sufficiently tanky to take a few hits and still remain able to dish out damage.

But their main offensive power stemmed from their tails, which massively limited the areas they could strike in. Which he could fix … once these invaders were out of his Dungeon. Unfortunately, he currently had so many creatures invading it that he couldn’t currently make any changes. Not did he want to take his attention off the fight for long enough to mess with the patterns.

However, he already knew exactly how he’d upgrade them, granting each of them a version of the Landwyrm’s rubber physiology power, something to not only increase the striking range of their tails, but allowing them to reach past their own heads even and finally tacking on something to enhance their damage if possible.

Speaking of upgrades, he’d also have to create a new generation of wolverines. The old ones had been cool and everything, but those jungle cats and their warped gravity had been absurdly strong.

Another cat, this one even larger than a tiger, but with antlers on its head, reached the dinosaur section and charged, electricity arcing between the various tips of bone to form a crown of lightning.   

Arcs bulged outwards to put one of the scutellosaurs in the path of the circuit and fried it in an instant, but that action had put it underneath the jaws of a t-rex. It bent down in an almost disinterested manner, opened its jaws, and crunched down on the cat as though it were a bit of candy. Extremely bloody candy to be sure, but still …

Gore dripping from its fangs, an intestine loosely dangling from its bottom jaw, the tyrannosaurus stared at the invaders and growled.

For the first time, they hesitated. These weren’t scavengers and prey animals that scurried around the feet of the larger animals, surviving only because nothing bothered to pay attention to them.

They were at least somewhat intelligent, and had enough life experience to realize that no matter how dangerous the apex predators waiting outside were, the monsters standing before them were no joke.

So, what were they to do?

Thomas briefly took over a monkey just to make it bare its teeth in a vicious grin.

A human delving party would be working together here and now, or at the very least, coordinating. And they had the option of running if shit really hit the fan.

These creatures, though, the monsters, they might have headed towards the Dungeon to gain power, but right now, part of what was driving them was fear of what was waiting outside.

Then, the t-rexes charged, giant feet hammering into the ground with a sound like thunder, heads that practically brushed the ceiling being well outside the attack range of most invaders, and came down like the claws of some demented grabber arm game, picking up invaders, biting down on them with enough force to tear all the way through their bodies, and spitting out whatever hadn’t already fallen off.

And any pitiable invaders that managed to not only survive that treatment but also not bleed out soon after were trampled to death, bones and organs crushed under the prehistoric titans’ feet.

The smaller dinosaurs followed suit, trampling tiny invaders underfoot as they dove into the densest groups of enemies, tails tipped with bone clubs swinging side to side with deadly force.

It didn’t last, of course, these were still mundane creatures going up against highly magical monsters hurling around elemental energies, empowering specific parts of their bodies or overall wrecking shit.

But even so, at the end of the day, a single tyrannosaurus rex survived and began to charge out into the hallway, the tyrant lizard king back to conquer the Earth once more. Bloody footprints trailed behind it, guts hung from its jaws, and only a handful of wounds marred its body, having survived the previous slaughter far better than any of its compatriots.

Two steps into the entrance hall it collapsed to the ground, blood streaming from a ruined throat.

It took Thomas a few seconds to realize what had happened.

The source of the attack had been a monitor lizard-thing that clung to the wall like a gecko who’d snapped its jaws towards the dinosaur’s neck and a spectral copy of its teeth had torn out the throat of Thomas’ creature.

That little fucker!

It just scampered deeper inside, seemingly without a care in the world.

And by the entrance, things really were changing as vines made their way inside.

An undersized, forest-green chimp marched in, the first E-Rank to show its ugly mug.

Thomas was halfway aware of Cheshire tearing the jaw-projection lizard apart with her own projected natural weapons, but his main focus was on the newcomer.

Vines shot through the air and wrapped around columns, which the monkey could then grab a hold of and launch itself forward.

And there were two more coming in just behind it, moving at a more measured pace.

Those would be trouble, especially since they could neatly bypass the defenses of the next room that was still “manned”.

Thomas rapidly sent instructions to Cheshire and then … then he waited. Damnit, this was torture!

Just waiting for invaders to show up, taking their sweet time … but even though the twenty seconds it took for the first monkey to reach the boss room, it was just twenty seconds.

Normally, an enemy swinging itself through the air with preternatural grace on vines that it could control would have been a serious threat to Cheshire, but the counter to that trick had been pretty obvious.

A flick of the big cat’s paw projected razor-sharp lines of power through the air and severed the vines at just the right moment. Or the wrong moment, from the perspective of the monkey.

One moment, it had been flying through the air on its own personal jungle gym, the next, it was falling through the air and impacted the ground with not insignificant force.

And sure, an E-Rank beast was capable of surviving a hit like that, and it had a power related to balance or agility in some manner, but this impact was a threat because of so much more than mere kinetic energy.

The monster hit the ground and slid along it like something straight out of a cartoon, cannonballing into the far wall at speeds comparable to a car accident. Thomas could hear bones break and teeth shatter, though he knew it was still alive … for the next two seconds.

That was when the Landwyrm in the room behind Cheshire’s poked its head it, spat acid all over the creature, and that was that.

The second monkey launched itself straight at Cheshire’s head, shielding its vines from the cat, who promptly dodged.

That left the monkey still hitting the floor and continuing onwards on the world’s deadliest slip and slide, but it had lined things up perfectly to go into the next room.

Ah … fuck. These things were smart.

And then, it went straight for the Landwyrm, dancing around and ripping into it.

The final monkey, meanwhile, had managed to grow a complex network of vines on the surface of the boss room and was dancing around up there, only occasionally lashing out at Cheshire.

Claws shredded foliage, fingernails tore across fur and parted skin, back and forth, without doing much real damage.

Until suddenly, the tiger launched itself at a wall, kicked off it, and finally managed to lay her jaws around the annoying pest. The monkey struggled furiously, doing as much damage as it could possibly do until it died, but eventually, it fell limp after having utterly shredded Cheshire’s face and neck.

Things would have been fine at that point, except all the foliage on the ceiling dropped down, entangling her perfectly for the last surviving monkey to launch itself off the corpse of the Landwyrm.

She … she didn’t last long, sadly, but neither did the monkey, which wound up dragging itself towards the exit with both legs torn off, where an invader took the time to kill and eat it.

Wow.

“Does this happen a lot?” Thomas asked. “A bunch of creatures invading like that?”

“It’s pretty rare,” Elias informed him. “Normally, you get a trickle of creatures as they smell the Dungeon and go after it, but whenever you drop a mid-level Dungeon into a heavily populated area, or the area around an existing Dungeon gains a lot of population, you get simultaneous invasions.”

Thomas winced, but the fairy continued.

“But once everything’s cleared out, it’ll take a while before we see any more monsters invading.”

Ok, that was good, but they still had quite a bit left out there, even if they were starting to tear each other apart, and what was left was the strongest of the lot.