Chapter 269 - Unscheduled Arrival

Note : Chapter 272 has been written and added to the queue !

Hot damn this streak has been just insane. With this chapter, there has been a new chapter put on patreon, every day, for three weeks straight. Damn. Like, seriously, hot fucking damn. I even technically did the writeathon challenge but pure accident ! Though I didn't sign up for it.

Chapter 269

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Command Center

The stealth golem physically recoiled as the alarms slammed in, and Alexandra tried to control both it and her avatar.

The ship pinged her, and without time to answer properly, she simply pushed EFSN combat codes, signifying that she was under attack, would interrupt communications, and automatically generated an all clear code so the AI on the other side would know she hadn't been captured.

Normally her implants would have done that, but she had been trained to do it on her own if necessary, and she had AI subroutines and actual AIs to help.

Alexandra tore her attention away from the stealth golem, and looked around in the command center as the screens around her came alive.

Updates began streaming in, and then she felt it. The shiver as the hyperspace shield washed over her.

Yet…this was different. Very different. When one had done enough hyperspace jumps, you could feel the difference between the older drives and the newer ones.

And this one felt almost like the Dawnstar's own drive, the bleeding edge at the time, while previous teleports had felt…primitive, like for the ship she'd first left Sol in.

"Status Report!" She called out, and information began streaming in.

Not that she really needed it. The main screen showed the teleport redirect room, and it told her everything she needed to know.

*****

Helmgor knew something had gone wrong before the teleport was even over. He was a baron of Sunrise, the duchy proprietor of one of the few true large scale teleporters in existence outside of the Eris Empire. He had lost count of the number of times he'd teleported across the world thanks to it. He was intimately familiar with the spell by now.

And despite not being even remotely near Emylris' level, he was a paladin. He knew magic.

He felt the spell twist, and then suddenly, they were somewhere else.

The baron shrugged the sensation of being put back together with the ease of long practice…and almost went flying as fifty field guns opened fire.

Fortunately, they were loaded with cannister shot, and his barrier, conjured by reflex more than preparation at this point, intercepted it, the small metal spheres ricocheting and screaming off into the room.

The rifle and machinegun rounds were equally impotent against his power.

But not the rockets.

He grunted, and was driven back as two dozen high explosive rockets smashed into his shield. But by the time they did, his people were already responding.

Nairi began loosing arrows so quickly she disappeared in afterimages, and the rocketeers dropped like flies. Olroi was twirling like a dancer, throwing daggers as fast as he could get them into his hands, and the machineguns fell silent.

Emylris…the archmage took a second to recover from the teleport, and then she threw her power across the room.

A lash of frost struck across the artillery, and both cannons and crews exploded under the thermal shock.

Then one of the flying pieces of metal struck another, and the spark hit an powder stockpile, blowing an entire section of…wherever the hell they were to kingdom come. A kind of fortress, except turned inside out, it seemed.

Both of his knights leapt out, and began reaping a rich harvest amongst the golems who had discarded their small arms, and were attempting to bring more rockets to bear.

It was over in less than a minute, everyone panting in shock.

Then the ceiling shook as explosive charges detonated.

Helmgor didn't think, he acted. He gathered his power and threw his entire party across the room, towards the only exit he could see.

They went sailing into the hallway…right as the ceiling of the room they were in came down in a single, massive pillar.

A pillar covered in runes. And quickly turning red hot as it began to melt.

"Holy shit." Said Kimitar, the knight clearly shocked beyond his capacity to keep peasant words out of his mouth.

"Emylris, what the hell just happened?" Asked Helmgor.

"The dungeon core, she...she redirected our teleport!" The archmage looked at the rapidly melting pillar in awe. "This is...this is magnificent! This is genius!"

"Admire our enemy later! We have to kill her!"

"We must find out how she did it, and take it back with us! You do not understand the significance, it-"

"If you don't do your fucking job none of us are leaving alive. Where's the damned core? Where are we?"

Emylris took the hint, and closed her eyes as she muttered incantations, runes burned into the air around her. She frowned.

"I can't…I can't find it!"

"...What?"

"The core. It's…diffuse. Dispersed. Hidden. Hidden with arcana I've never seen before."

"How is that possible?"

"I have no idea. But you shouldn't be able to redirect a teleport either. And she certainly did." Emylris sounded admiring. Again.

"How do we find it?"

"I can't locate the core precisely, but I can pinpoint its rough location."

"Shit. Alright, activate the influence disruptor."

The archmage nodded, and clicked the strange device she had been carrying.

This one wasn't supposed to exist. Because influence disruptors had been standardized and mass produced during the United Dungeon Wars.

And this wasn't one of them. This was a more advanced version.

Helmgor had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't of mortal origin.

The device whirred…and beeped. A red light began blinking. The archmage's face fell.

"It can't shut down the dungeon core's power."

"...What?"

"There has to be influence stabilizers somewhere. A lot of them."

Helmgor's face twisted. The dungeon core shouldn't have had any of those to begin with.

But this, and the teleport redirect…it explained why the Republic's commandos had been annihilated so easily. He had met colonel Orzal Vek once, and unlike Emylris, he wasn't dismissive of his, or his men's, capacity.

"Crap. Alright, well, our interference auras will already shut down the area around us. Everyone form up, let's move!"

Everyone nodded, and formed up as discussed. Amida with him, and Kimitar guarding the archmage at the rear, while the two commoners assembled in the middle.

They advanced through the empty hallway, and Helmgor shivered. Something was wrong.

Badly wrong.

Every instinct he had told him there should be enemies rushing in to respond to the breach. They had appeared in a killbox, there was no way there wasn't any follow-up. Hell, the intelligence they'd gained about the dungeon told them just penetrating outside public parts should have sent entire security squads rushing to contain them.

Yet…nothing.

He flicked a glance back at his team, and found Olroi looking even more put off than everyone else.

"What is it, assassin?"

"There's…my lord, this entire hallway is trapped to hell and back. But they're not triggering."

"They're cutting off our retreat." Said Amida, and the baron grunted.

"To what? There's nothing back there." The pillar had stopped heating up, and was now gently starting to cool. The room under it had to be completely obliterated.

The knight shrugged. Before long they arrived before another room, and Helmgor came to a halt.

There was a massive door, receded into the ceiling. The so called 'blast door' more technologically advanced nations like the pricks at the Tark Hegemony used.

He realized with a start that there had been one in the room they'd fought in as well.

The dungeon core…hadn't activated them.

It might be thanks to their interference aura, or the influence disruptor, but he doubted it. The pillar had activated after all, and someone had to have shut down the defences in the hallways. He wasn't willing to entertain Crystal having such a glaring hole in her defences.

He looked at his archmage, and jerked his head towards the ceiling. Emylris looked up, and nodded. A few incantations later, and the door was irrevocably melted into the rock.

They stepped into the room…and found nothing.

Nothing but signs of a hasty withdrawl, including large amounts of artillery being dragged out. The blast door on the other side of the room was closed this time, but it seemed to be more to buy the golems time to get out of the way than containing them.

Not that it mattered. Emylris ripped it out of the wall with a huff, and tossed it across the room.

Helmgor tensed…and once again, nothing. No sacrificial rear guard, no booby trapped guns.

It worried him more than ten thousand golems attacking him. It meant the dungeon had a full contingency plan, and was implementing it.

Furthermore…the golems were retreating. And if they were, that meant they were gathering into a single kill zone.

But that hypothesis vanished as they went deeper and deeper in. They found tracks, inevitable when moving such heavy equipment in a hurry. The golems…they went up. Opposite where the dungeon core was. What? Why? Were they afraid of a surface assault? That just didn't make any sense!

He exchanged a look with Emylris, and the archmage was as rattled as he was. She might not have his finely honed military instincts screaming that something was deeply, deeply wrong, but even she was starting to be shaken by the sheer absence of foes.

"Where…the hell is everybody?" Asked Kimitar, creeped out of his professional silence.

"Maybe they're afraid? Running away?" Offered Amida.

"Golems don't feel fear." Olroi was clinical, professional, but even he couldn't keep the tension out of his voice.

Helmgor stopped, and everyone did half a second later.

"She's right." Muttered the baron.

"My lord?" Olroi looked confused, and Helmgor met his gaze.

"She's right. They're afraid and running away. But not the golems. The dungeon core."

"You'd think she threw everything she had at us." The assassin was frowning.

"She would…if she was afraid of us. She's afraid of losing her resources." He looked at the deserted checkpoint they were nearing, with even some of the emplaced mines having been taken as the golems left. "The dungeon core is saving her breath. Because she doesn't need to engage us otherwise."

"...Fuck." Was all the assassin could say. And who could blame him?

It was a terrifying thought. The dungeon core was more afraid of losing some weapons and golems than she was of them.

But if that was the case…what in all the hells was waiting for them down there?

They started walking again, this time with the gait of men advancing towards the gallows, not elite soldiers towards their prey. If the dungeon core was playing mind games, she was succeeding.

"The Old World." Said the archmage, and Helmgor shot a glance over his shoulder as they passed through what looked like a train tunnel. Not far now.

"What?"

"The only thing the dungeon core could have better than what she has thrown at us…is things from the Old World."

"Her golems are from the Old World."

"I mean weapons."

"Dungeon cores can't replicate those. Everyone knows that."

"They can't. But those were Old World ruins, weren't they? Think about it. If she found weapons with the golems she absorbed…her dodging capture against overwhelming odds time and time again starts making a lot more sense, doesn't it?"

Helgmor really, really didn't want to agree with his archmage.

But it fit in too neatly. Far too neatly.

"What if she got even more stuff from the ruins? They opened on their own, after all. They're not subject to the edicts." Kamitar's voice was starting to rise in pitch. "And the Old World armada? Do we truly-"

"Can it." Said the baron, harshly. "We know nothing for certain. And we're close. Let's go."

His team nodded, and before long, they were in front of a set of blast doors unlike any they'd seen so far.

They didn't look like metal. They looked…Helmgor had no clue what they looked like. Whatever it was, it wasn't natural.

Emylris gestured over Kimitar's shoulder, the knight between her and the door.

Nothing happened.

The archmage gritted her teeth, and slowly, so slowly, the door began to budge. This time she couldn't simply rip it off, and she began focusing her power in a tight blade of energy, slicing the middle, and then tearing the entire thing apart.

She screamed under the effort, but at last, the door failed.

The archmage looked up, and-

Helgmor threw himself aside as Kimitar simply ceased to exist. Emylris went flying as both of their wards vanished, but her flesh held.

The knight, however, was gone. Turned into a fine, overheated mist, vaporized by the impact of thirty railgun slugs, even the best of Sunrise's arcane wards and his powerful, essence infused flesh impotent before such firepower.

They had found the dungeon's defenders at last.