Museum Core Chapter 12: Unfriendly Visitors

“I have a confession to make …”

Thomas immediately stiffened up as he heard Elias speak. An opening like that was never followed by something pleasant. Well, almost never. Maybe Elias was going to confess that he’d been a huge ass before? They were both currently dancing around that topic and avoiding trouble by just not talking about it, but resolving it would be nice.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“… We forgot to add loot.”

“No, you forgot to mention that was even a thing,” Thomas replied tersely.

“I mentioned that was how people drew delvers in,” Elias pointed out.

“If you did, it was a one-off comment in a flood of information,” Thomas said, mentally tacking “motormouth” onto the end of that sentence. “You need to tell me stuff like that, you can’t just forget about it for hours.”

Elias sighed. “Fine. But now you know, so how about you get started, hm?”

“Do I just pile stuff in front of my core?” Thomas asked.

Elias just facepalmed.

“What. Do. I. With. The. Loot.” Thomas growled.

In the end, it turned out to be just as simple as all the other Dungeon stuff had been. Find out about an ability and make it happen.

In this situation, “it” turned out to be Thomas’ heretofore-unknown ability to make monster corpses transform into materials upon death. As per usual, the ability had been completely straightforward once he found out he had it.

All it took was connecting to his summoned creatures and taking a new order onto their patterns, namely, what they were to transform into. Apparently, there were some limits,

So he couldn’t turn them into bombs, undead versions of themselves, or even non-animated forms that would then somehow be animated by him. That last one had been heavily empathized by Elias, and there was likely a story there, but not one he needed to look into just yet.

Thankfully, there were some tricks he could use. Apparently, neatly harvested body parts for use in crafting or alchemy were a decent reward for Dungeons that didn’t yet have treasure. But nowhere did it say that liquid components needed to be in a proper container.

So while he attached a whole bunch of cool loot to his regular defenders, ranging from elephant ivory to pelts, there were quite a few nasty tricks to his tropical birds.

They weren’t a part of his regular group of defenders, but useful as a “in case of emergency, break glass” kind of deal.

Making them drop uncontained stomach acid and the like apparently broke the “no weapons” rule, but whale blubber or blood did work. They weren’t outright weaponry, but would make the ground incredibly slippery upon death, and if they died right in someone’s face, they might even blind an invader.

Of course, Cheshire held the lion’s share of the loot, including a thick pelt identical to hers and its spiderweb coating, two ivory fangs that would be perfect to be turned into daggers, which would hopefully be enough of a bribe to keep him alive in case delvers got that far.

And if that didn’t do the trick, it was a case for the birds and the jaguar he had as his last line of defense.

He’d carved a nook out of the wall behind his core, and placed his core off to the side so that no one would be able to see him without being inside, and anyone who entered would come face to face with his final defenders.

Divebombing birds that would explode into vision-obscuring blood and footing-ruining whale fat, and then, there was the big cat on a ledge above the door, in the perfect position to drop onto a blinded and unsteady invader’s back.

Hopefully, it would never get that far, but it would be good to have them.

***

“By the way, what’s up with the fire on the roof?” Elias asked.

“I’m trying to guide people here to a safe haven,” Thomas told him, causing the fairy to wince. Why … oh, right, the whole “don’t become a slaughterhouse” thing. Luring in refugees would be a good way to rack up some quick kills. That wasn’t what he was doing, of course, but Elias didn’t exactly trust his intentions. Probably best not to pick a fight about that unless Elias did something egregious.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Thomas asked, but Elias did something that looked like a suppressed snigger and fluttered off to find a new perch.

Thomas supposed he could put a little more effort into the beacon, but what was he supposed to do? He didn’t know Native American smoke signals or Morse Code. And, quite frankly, even if he had known either one, no one else would be able to understand his messages.

He knew SOS, obviously, but he was offering help, not granting it.

Then again, everyone else knew SOS too. It was a message that would be understood. Maybe …

Honestly, at this point, having the duiker stationed permanently next to the core to smack it the next time he did something stupid didn’t sound half-bad.

Signaling SOS would show people that there were other survivors around, and hopefully draw people in. And when someone did show up to rescue the “survivors”, he’d hopefully have some actual people to hand over. Otherwise, that could be embarrassing.

Which then presented the issue of actually signaling SOS. Thomas’ initial attempt involved two jaguars and a piece of carpet, but ended with one cat traumatized and the other glaring daggers at his core after said carpet caught fire.

So it was time to have the duiker smack the core again. Not because of the initial fuck-up, mind you, but because there’d been a far more obvious solution.

Wyverns were largely fireproof, and Thomas probably should have summoned one on the roof anyway, to use it as an early interceptor of powerful opponents. Cheshire was far more powerful than any normal F-Rank beast was and could probably fight a wyvern on an even footing in the cramped confines of the museum, but out there, those creatures would be a terror.

Of course, the wyvern also ate massively into his monster limit as it was at the same Rank as the Dungeon Core he’d merged with, but having it up there should do some good work.

Elias eventually noticed but decided not to comment. He probably felt he’d shot himself in the foot enough when he’d first commented on the bonfire.

Normally, this would have been the part where he stuck his tongue out at the fairy. A little immature for a twenty-year-old, sure, but it had felt appropriate.

But he couldn’t. Because he was stuck as a crystal.

Sure, he could outright taunt the fairy verbally, but that felt like an escalation. Too much of one.

He had to be honest with himself, his new existence wasn’t all bad, despite how badly it had fucked up his life. Once he started gaining proper control over his manifestations, he could reshape this Musem into whatever he wanted, and almost certainly make himself an avatar, a humanoid monster to directly control and regain his autonomy.

That being said, though, he’d probably be able to get a passable substitute far sooner, once he found the museum archives. They had to have monkeys or something in there, right? A great ape would also work, but it would probably be too big to really play around with in his little core nook.

But he hadn’t found them yet. There was a “no entry” door within sight of a wolverine if it peeked out of the mammal gallery, around thirty meters from the edge of his domain, as the crow flew. Well, there was a wall in the way, so maybe “as the earthworm burrows” would be more appropriate?

Not being able to increase his domain was just plain annoying. Before, he’d been able to walk around wherever he was allowed to be, and anywhere he wasn’t allowed was usually blocked off by a door or a wall or something.

But now, he could “go” literally anywhere in the museum he pleased, without obstacles, and yet, he was locked inside a set perimeter, unable to get out no matter how hard he worked.

It was tempting to just send some of his creatures to tear open those doors and start exploring, but with how his control started fraying as they went outside his domain, he didn’t want to risk it.

“Go kill something” was a simple order where not much could really go wrong, which was why he was fine with sending out the wyverns if need be. But “carefully examine the archives and find me the following exhibits” wouldn’t fly.

Or maybe …

“Elias, could you find me some things in the archives and have some creatures carry them out?”

“If you tell them to listen to me, maybe,” the fairy shrugged. “Some stuff is definitely going to break, though.”

Yeah, that wasn’t optimal. Depending on what exactly was in the archives, and how it was stored, they could be looking at everything from taxidermied exhibits to individually stored bones.

Thomas could get a pattern from small pieces, so tearing chunks from stuffed animals and getting them back to his domain would work. But if the chunks were too small, or small-ish samples were accidentally swallowed, it wouldn’t.

With chunks, they could obviously try again, but depending on the content and organization of the archives, some things might be lost irreparably.

Maybe a mirror would work, so Thomas could directly look into the archives? He could see through the eyes of his creatures, but the feed wouldn’t necessarily be good enough to read labels outside his domain.

Or he could start busting down the wall?

There were plenty of ideas that had already been discarded for one reason or other, but he’d had plenty more. And those might not work either, but then he’d come up with new ones, or something else would come along and try to kill him, die in the Dungeon, and give him more power to try new things with. It would suck if he had to wait, but that was life. And more time to think of ways to get back at Elias for, well, everything.

So what if he … oh thank God, something was invading. Something he’d probably feel too bad about killing. There’d been that one lizardman he’d killed, the one that might have been human before, but that was something he was successfully ignoring … right? He was pretty sure he was managing it … yeah, let’s look at the visitors, focus on the new magical creatures over there, don’t think about anything else …

The “invaders” were balls of hair the size of a shetland pony, a dozen in all.

Oh, God, please don’t let them be cute.

Thomas was pretty sure he could kill cute things, and probably would have to considering that they were monsters invading his Dungeon, but he’d probably feel shitty about it.

Come to think of it, there was probably some psycho out there weaponizing kittens, wasn’t there? Making weapons of mass destruction that looked adorable as all get out, choosing the aesthetic purely to fuck with their enemies.

Ugh, just thinking about it made him angry.

A brief mental command was all it took to send the wyvern plunging off the roof like a bolt of lightning, each foot landing on an invader, crushing them into paste and its jaws tore a third apart. And then it froze, a low, irritated, whine escaping its throat as it was forced to stay back by Thomas’ order.

The wyvern had obviously been a little overpowered for these foes, but it had dispatched them with such ease that Thomas wasn’t worried about his latter defenses.

And he really couldn’t afford to let all that advancement energy go to waste by killing them outside his Dungeon, or let his strongest creatures hog all the creature-specific advancement. The wyverns were already good, and they were almost useless in an indoor environment, he really needed to boost everything else.

It was strangely terrifying to have the invaders vanish from the wyvern’s field of view and thereby removing themselves from his ability to detect.

He moved his point of view out as far as he could in an attempt to scout out his foes but didn’t spot anything. Nor hear anything, for a long moment. And then, the snuffling began.

Thomas knew he was currently intangible and undetectable, beyond even Elias’ ability to reliably spot, but it still freaked him the fuck out and before he knew it, he’d “retreated” all the way to the far end of the Mammal Gallery, staring into the darkness.

More snuffling.

The wolverines hidden in the display cases weren’t visible from where he was sitting, but he knew they were there, he could feel them.

And then, the first creature came into view. It looked like the bastard lovechild of a cactus and a mop wreathing a smaller, dog-sized creature with burning red eyes and a pair of vicious tusks that stuck up from a mouth so filled with teeth it could barely close.

Oh, thank God, they weren’t cute.

Thomas told the wolverines to act on their own judgement but to take advantage of their stealth as much as possible, which they did. Within his domain, his orders were absolute as long as they were physically possible.

The first invader went down in a split-second as a wolverine’s jaws clamped around its neck and closed them with crushing force. The monster’s hair flickered for a split-second but before it could actually do anything, it died.

The second invader had a split-second of warning, though, as the wolverine targeting had a hair further to travel, and that time turned out to be decisive.

Apparently, the strange hair had a purpose as it suddenly stood up on end as though the monster had just chomped down on a high-voltage wire and then, the fibers turned razor-sharp.

The wolverine jerked back with its face slashed to ribbons and most of the other invaders also threw up the defenses, the last creature seemed to be a bit of a dunce and, well, didn’t. And then, it died in the jaws of the wolverine closest to the entrance.

In the back of Thomas’ mind, he could feel himself receive a new pattern, along with the information packet. Well, it was the Null-core “power” he was reading, but same difference.

He took his main focus off the battle for a brief moment and looked it over.

These things were called “Steelfur Rippers” and they were a mess, generally speaking. Their ability to wrap themselves in an armored coat any cactus would envy was good, sure, and it carried them through life, but it carried them. Beyond that power, they weren’t all that good.

Slapping that power onto one of his creatures would do him far more good than summoning those things as defenders later.

But that was the full extent of the attention he could spare. He knew the creatures’ strengths and weaknesses, and could direct the wolverines, but he needed to pay attention to do so.

The plan was simple. At the end of the day, these things were really just super-porcupines and what did wolverines hunt? Porcupines.

He ordered the injured porcupine to charge and knock over the first ripper, knocking it over at the cost of severe damage to its own body, granting a second wolverine a clear shot at its stomach.

Now bleeding horrifically, the wolverine bowled over the second ripper before expiring, though the ripper joined it in death shortly after.

At the same time, the last two rippers spun and took down the sole wolverine at the end of the gallery, shredding it.

Thomas grimaced. Their mouths had expanded to the point where they practically doubled in size, chomped down, and began to shake their heads, literally reducing their victim to a pile of bloody flesh and viscera.

He took direct control of one of the intact wolverines to try and have it flip over another ripper and tear out its throat, but that didn’t work. At all.

The ripper lowered its head and charged, headbutting the controlled Dungeon creature and flipping it into the air. When the creature fell, it fell straight onto the deadly buch on the ripper’s back.

Thomas’ mind burned as he withdrew it, echoes of the pain the wolverine was currently experiencing as it was slowly being disemboweled sticking with him.

Well, the world had gone to hell and was overrun with monsters, starting a collection of memories that would give him nightmares for years to come was practically unavoidable, wasn’t it?

After several more bloody exchanges, the whirl of teeth and claws in the middle of the corridor separated, leaving two wolverines facing off against a trio of rippers. And then, the ripper’s magic timed out.

One moment, they’d been a collection of deadly blades that put an industrial grinder to shame. The next, they looked like wet poodles, all tiny and covered in hair that seemed to have lost all structural integrity.

Yeah, get fucked!

The rippers weren’t entirely useless without their skill, but this was a fight between near-apex predators facing off against middle of the food chain grunts that had lost their trump cards.

It was a messy battle with no survivors, but the wolverines would be resurrected in a few minutes, and the blood and guts currently making the floor look like something out of a horror movie would be gone soon too.

Dungeon powers for the win … yay.

Thomas sighed. That had been … messy. Disgustingly messy.

As much as he hated the limitations of being a rock, not being able to feel nauseous or throw up was being real useful right about now.

He needed to clean the Dungeon, reset the defenses, and then, then, he could start to upgrade his wolverines. After all, they’d gathered enough energy to ascend to F-Rank.

Ranking up his creatures was fun, a chance to get creative and make some really cool things happen.

But as Thomas was in the middle of absorbing the viscera … and subsequently replacing the floor he’d accidentally eaten as well, his ability to manipulate the Dungeon suddenly shut off. A new invader?

He hadn’t seen anything with the creatures on the roof, but the wyvern was busy with the smoke signals and the jaguar was patrolling, so it was possible it had missed something.

So when a massive, Cheshire-sized Steelfur Ripper charged down Mamal gallery, Thomas just about peed his metaphorical pants.