Cat Core 3, Chapter 6.

Chapter 6.

“Uh, hello there, young man, I suppose you’ve come back to apologize?” Florence asked, stalling for time. Her mana was gone, and the regeneration rate was too slow for her liking. She only had four points and it would take twenty-five to summon another kitty. If she could get the enemies to group up, the cooldown had expired on Instant Dungeon, and she could use that to help even the odds.

“We ain’t here for apologies, nope, this here is our town and our dungeon. We’s here to settle the score. You don’t hurt none of our clan and get away with it,” the man threatened. More of the hillbillies walked from the tree line, they were encircled by over twenty of the yahoos. They closed in and Fizz started cranking on the wheel on his contraption, but it seemed to be broken and instead of electricity, it only produced a metallic grinding sound. Doug was a bit battered from holding back the dungeon mobs, his health down to 67%.

“Oh, now I see why this place has the reputation it does, if you lot are the local’s running things. Are you the one in charge buster, or is there someone else I need to talk to?” Florence asked.

The mouthy one with the magic spear didn’t respond and instead leveled his weapon at Florence, a goofy, rotten-toothed grin plastered on his face. Some kerfuffle back at the dungeon entrance caught his attention and the grin turned into a look of surprise as shouts of pain and bestial roars announced that them there dungeon mobs were on a good, old-fashioned rampage. Florence spared a quick glance behind her, and the armored gorilla champion was laying into the hillbillies with powerful blows of his giant fists.

Two of the locals were down, but the others were responding to the attack, swarming the dungeon champion, hoping to bury it in numbers. More of the dungeon creatures emerged, a pair of them spikey tusked pigs and four of the chimps with glowing hands. Arrows streaked in from the tree line as archers the locals had hidden in the forest joined the fight. One of them must have had his sights locked onto Florence instead of the dungeon creatures and an arrow slammed into her shoulder. It sure did hurt, but like before, there wasn’t any blood, just a wooden shaft sticking out of her.

“That’s elder abuse, I’m going to see that the lot of you are arrested for this!” Florence shouted as Doug charged into the tree line, heading toward her attacker. Fizz pulled out pieces of sheet metal from his pack erecting a makeshift shield for the two of them to hide behind. It was a good thing that Florence’s new body was a good one since she had to crouch down to have at least some cover from the shield. Her knees would have never been able to crouch like that before. Fizz looked at the arrow sticking out of her shoulder and yanked it out.

“Consarnit! That hurt Fizz,” Florence shouted, the pain spiking as the barbed head of the arrow was removed.

“Sorry, but there might have been poison or something nasty on that arrow, couldn’t take the chance of leaving it in there for long,” Fizz said. Well, she was still mad at him, but the little guy was right, though these folks likely didn’t need poison given how dirty they were, just having one of them touch the arrowhead was likely enough to do you in if you weren’t a core shard like she was. From what Florence knew, she couldn’t be poisoned or get sick.

“Well, thank you for that, just warn me next time,” Florence said. Fizz continued to work, pulling junk from his oversized pack as the shield grew from a small handheld deal into a short wall. These gnome critters sure could work fast when they was a mind to.

“At least poor dental hygiene guy and his spear are too busy to bother with us,” Florence said. Indeed, most of the locals seemed fixated on the creatures emerging from the dungeon, Florence was almost forgotten in the chaos.

Of course, being almost forgotten in the chaos wasn’t the same as being completely forgotten. Two of the slack-jawed yokels were charging toward her, one with a chipped and cracked hand axe, and the other with a wooden club that had nails hammered through it. These two were coming at them from behind, Fizz had wisely built his makeshift barricade between them and the dungeon, leaving a few of the locals behind them. Most ran off to stab and swat at the monkeys and pigs, but these two must have thought a gnome and an old lady were easier pickings. They were wrong.

“I got the club guy, you take the one with the axe,” Florence said, standing up and readying her cane as the distance closed.

Her cane was almost always with her in life, but other than shaking it at someone to let them know she was displeased, it was nothing but a tool to help her move about. After her transformation, she instinctively knew how to use it as a weapon. She wasn’t some professional fighter and all that, but she could lay down the hurt well enough on some untrained hooligans that were rude enough to attack an elderly woman.

The guy with the club raised his weapon to strike, the dummy. A thrust was much quicker than a big overhead swing and Florence did exactly that, thrusting the handle of her cane into the guy’s oversized gut. Fat jiggled with the strike, but Florence could also feel and hear something important crack inside her target. The man dropped to the ground, groaning, and out of the fight, at least for now.

“Nice work Fizz, let’s head to the trees and get out of sight, your little wall here is a bit too conspicuous,” Florence said. Fizz had somehow walloped his attacker on the top of his head with the oversized wrench he used as a weapon. She wasn’t exactly sure how that had happened, the attacker was close to six feet tall, and Fizz topped out around four feet. Whatever he did, Florence wasn’t going to stand out in open to talk about, and instead, the pair ran for the trees, heading toward the point where Doug had gone in to chase after the archer. Their brief sprint caught someone’s attention and a couple of arrows slashed by them, but the shooters weren’t very good, and only one grazed Florence’s leg.

When they entered the tree line, Doug was there waving them over to a large shrub that he was hiding behind. A broken bow and what looked like a crumpled figure were partially hidden behind a nearby tree, telling her that Doug had found and bested his target. Her kitty companion was even kind enough to hide the gross stuff from her, a surprisingly thoughtful act from the uppity Doug.

“There are only three archers out here, but I think they’re a bit busy now to bother hunting us. Perhaps we should watch the show, there’s no reason to join the fight if our enemies are attacking each other,” Doug suggested.

“I think, you’re right, Doug, especially since I’m about out of mana, and would really like to save Instant Dungeon for when we face the final champion of this dungeon,” Florence said.

Back in the clearing, the locals were holding their own. The archers had shifted their fire to the champion, and Florence could see several arrows sticking out of the oversized, armored gorilla. Two of the smaller chimps were also down, but the fight was still up for grabs. At least a half dozen locals had been killed and the spear guy must have caught a blow from one of the dungeon creatures since Florence could see he held his spear awkwardly in one hand, the other arm hanging limp at his side. Another pair of arrows slammed into the champion, who roared in anger, beating his chest with his fists, like them gorillas at the zoo do sometimes.

A squeal and a shout of pain told her where the pigs had gone, they were out hunting the archers, which was a fine use of their time as far as Florence was concerned. Neither side seemed willing to break off the fight and were really going at it. Florence didn’t think them hillbilly locals had it in them to keep fighting, given how they ran away like chickens during the fight she had with them the day before. Maybe it was because they were close to their home and didn’t want no dungeon creeps rampaging through their town or whatnot.

“I think the lack of mana for the mobs is starting to take effect. The damage accelerates the longer they are outside the area of the core’s influence,” Doug said. Florence had never tried to send her little babies outside her home, Doug had described the effect on one of the kitties like a starvation of sorts. The same thing would happen if you stuffed too many in the same room for too long, there wasn’t going to be enough ambient core mana to sustain them. Looking close, Florence could see that the biggen, that champion gorilla guy, had what looked like burn marks beginning to form over his body. It was kind of gross, but she supposed it was better than seeing blood squirt out or something along those lines.

“That looks a lot worse, and a lot more painful than starving, Doug,” Florence muttered, a little miffed that her companion hadn’t given her an accurate description of what would happen to her kitties outside the home.

“It was a similar enough description for the process, and I just wanted to save you the less than pleasant visual details of what would happen to our cats,” Doug replied. She nodded in agreement, Doug hadn’t been trying to be deceitful, and once again had tried to spare her the worst aspects of life as a core.

A second round of squeals and screams sounded from the position of the last archer, but the pigs never showed back up. No arrows were coming in either, and hopefully, the archer and the pigs had done each other in. The blows from the remaining dungeon creatures began to lose their power, and the locals took down everything but the champion, who was still powerful enough to smash spear guy into the ground. Seven locals were still standing, and they made a final charge on the champion, their makeshift weapons seeking vulnerable areas on the monster’s thick hide.

“Dumb, they should have just backed off and let the champion wilt away,” Florence said.

“Yep, the champion might even be called back to the dungeon now that we’re not in view. I don’t think we’re dealing with tactical geniuses though, I doubt anyone has ever accused this lot of being smart,” Fizz added. The champion was really coming apart now, the corrosion of its body accelerating as the enemy weapons slammed home. It wasn’t going to go without a fight, though, and the champion managed to grab onto a pair of attackers and crush them in his fists before succumbing to his damage.

They tried to keep quiet and out of sight as the survivors began to check on the fallen. At first, Florence thought they were trying to render aid, but instead, it looked like they were just going through their pockets looking for loose change. One snagged the magic spear and that almost started a fight among the survivors. They didn’t venture into the tree line to check on the archers, and Florence figured they were worried about the pigs that might still be lurking out there. Once their pilfering was done, the survivors fled down the path toward the town, Leaving Florence and the others alone in the woods.

“Now, this here dungeon likely emptied itself to send all them critters out here. Let’s get in there and deal with the core,” Florence said.

“Agreed, this might be our best opportunity, given the time it would take for the core to restock the dungeon. Of course, I expect the ones sent out here and the ones we destroyed inside are not the sum total of this core’s retinue. The larger fellow was likely a floor champion and I suspect the dungeon champion remains to be dealt with,” Doug said.

“I’ve got Instant Dungeon ready to go and before we find the final champion I should have enough mana for a spell or two,” Florence said. Time was of the essence, the longer they waited, the more time the dungeon would have to restock its mobs. Fizz did delay them for a minute as he disassembled his shield and stored all the parts. Something was wrong with this spark gun thing as well, but he said he could tinker with it as they walked. Mana recharged more quickly when out of combat, so Florence felt they had a decent chance of pulling this off. If not, well, she’d been dead before, but to be perfectly honest, she was a might worried about what would happen if she croaked again, given the warnings that Michael had given her.