Core Convergence

Dimensional Dungeon Cores

Book 3

Jonathan Brooks

Cover Design: Yvonne Less, Art 4 Artists

Edited by: Ellen Klowden

Copyright ©2022 Jonathan Brooks

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The following is a work of fiction.  Any names, characters, businesses, corporations, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.  Any resemblance to any actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

Cover Design Copyright ©2022 Yvonne Less, Art 4 Artists

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all my Patrons on Patreon who are supporting me through my writing endeavors, while also giving me valuable feedback on my works-in-progress!

Also, these beta-readers are awesome for helping me to fix and fine-tune my story:

Aaron Eichler

Aaron Wiley

Angel Ludwig

Brett Siegel

Brian Oles

Gevan Eldredge

Grant Harrell

James Boyles

James Hensley

Keith Mueller

Kelly Linzey

Kevin McCartney

Nate Martin

Scott Trevett

Tim Islate

TJ Zuendt

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Recap

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Author’s Note

Books by Jonathan Brooks

Foreword

Dimensional Dungeon Cores is technically a continuation of my complete Station Cores series (links to the eBook and audiobook for the Complete Box Set are at the end of this book). However, you can still thoroughly enjoy this story without having read a single word of the previous series.  Those who have experienced the awesomeness that is Milton and his Station Core will recognize many references to the series, as well as Sandra from the Dungeon Crafting series.

In addition, there are a lot of fun stats in this book that have been included in the footnotes; these stats are completely optional to look at, but those who enjoy a visual representation of different stat tables or additional information can dig into them.  Those who don’t care for stats or just want to enjoy the flow of the story without all of the distractions won’t miss anything if they choose to ignore them.

However you choose to experience this book, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Recap

Milton Frederick thought that he would be an unexpected savior when he finally left Proctus, the world where his Station Core had crash-landed, and emerged into The Collective’s space.

Suffice it to say, he was extraordinarily wrong.

Emerging from the in-between dimension used for traveling via his trans-dimensional drive, Milton’s entire fleet of ships operated by his Proctan friends was destroyed by the Heliothropes, while his own ship was barely able to escape.  After fleeing, the Station Core deduced that going back to former Collective territory was a bad idea; instead, he wanted to see what had happened to Earth while he was gone for nearly 5,000 years.  Sadly, soon after arriving in a familiar solar system, Milton discovered that the Humans on Earth had destroyed themselves many years before, though signs of habitation on Mars indicated the possibility that some Humans may have survived Earth’s destruction.

Unfortunately, there were also signs that the Heliothropes – the race of beings that had threatened The Collective to the point where the pacifistic collection of people designed Station Cores to defend themselves – had attacked the colony on Mars and either killed or captured the Humans there.  After managing to dock with an unknown space station near Jupiter, Milton and his crew, which included ALANNA (his nanite-formed AI guide), as well as Brint and Whisp (two of his oldest Proctan friends), learned from a young Mouslan named Trinket that the Heliothropes had conquered and enslaved the entire galaxy while he was gone.  Even more than that, because he had acquired some materials from the abandoned Mars colony while his ship was there, he had inadvertently alerted the vast Heliothropic empire to his presence.

Such attention was something that he wanted to avoid at all costs, especially considering that he possessed knowledge they wanted: technology created by The Collective, including the trans-dimensional drive.

On the run from Heliothropes, and with the help of Trinket, Milton and his crew eventually took over a derelict space station, which he was able to partially rebuild into a semi-functioning vessel for his Core.  To defend against attacks by the militaristic race of Heliothropes, who prefer physical combat over ship-to-ship assaults if they can help it, he designed a dungeon – of sorts – inside a very small portion of the station’s rings.

The Station Core quickly learned that the shielding that protected the Heliothropes made them as formidable as anything he had encountered on Proctus.  Only through constantly upgrading his defenses, including enlisting the help of hundreds of Proctans, was Milton able to keep the enemy from breaching the station’s inner defenses.

Nothing could’ve prepared him for what happened next.  After witnessing his space station, nicknamed Murder Station by the Proctans on board, escape time and again through a small tear in the dimensional fabric separating him from what he called the traveling dimension, the Heliothropes experimented with traveling to another dimension – though their objective wasn’t to travel faster, but to conquer.  Not only that, but their method of getting to another dimension wasn’t so much to create a tear in the dimensional fabric; rather, they blasted an ever-growing wound in the barrier separating their dimension from the one they wanted to conquer, threatening the entirety of existence in all dimensions at the same time.

To stop this from happening, and to hopefully close the wound from the other side, Milton and crew traveled to the other dimension, only to find that the growing hole was being held open by some sort of Stabilizing Anchor.  That anchor was the key to closing and healing the dimensional fabric between the two dimensions, and it had planted itself in a nearby planet, where it was siphoning the planet’s energy to keep the hole open.

This planet, however, was not barren.  On the contrary, it was full of life, including many different races, such as Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Orcs, and even Humans.  In addition to that, some of the planet’s energy was focused on Dungeon Cores, which were contracted by The Creator to design dungeons.  These dungeons needed to be periodically culled by the nearby people in order to keep those Cores from expanding and killing indiscriminately.  One of those Dungeon Cores, who was vastly different from the others, wound up agreeing to help repel the Heliothropes and destroy the Stabilizing Anchor.

Sandra, the Dungeon Core with whom Milton met, was a crafter at heart, and her Dungeon Monsters reflected that in the form of metallic constructs.  After Milton built up a base of facilities that constructed biological Combat Units and vehicles for the assault, Sandra contributed thousands of her own Dungeon Monsters to the effort, which were led by a small team of Collaboration and Mutual Protection (or CAMP) Guild members.

The assault on the Stabilizing Anchor and what was some sort of Heliothrope Breeder Ship went well at first, at least until a Commander emerged from the ship.  The 100-foot-tall, black-skinned monstrosity was extraordinarily powerful, absolutely devastating to Combat Units and Dungeon Monsters alike, as well as killing Echo, who was an Elf, a CAMP Guild member, and a personal friend of Sandra.  Thanks to a last-second decision to destroy the anchor immediately, the Commander suddenly lost the protection of his shield and was quickly taken down by the remnants of the forces that Milton commanded.

Devastated by the loss of Echo, Sandra asked Milton if he could bring her back to life using the unique method of cloning he had developed with the Proctans to make them essentially immortal, as long as he was able to provide the Biological Mass to bring them back after they died.  He agreed to try, and he succeeded in bringing her back by using two elemental Energy Orbs during the process, though she lost all of her progress in handling the Holy and Air elements.  The Station Core also discovered that he could theoretically provide access to any or all of the different elements to the people from Sandra’s “Creator” dimension, though that was something that was so far untested.

When he was finished cleaning up the debris and materials from the Breeder Ship exploding, Milton had to leave the planet to go back to his own dimension, as the Heliothropes breaking into yet another dimension was a real possibility. However, he had grown quite fond of Sandra in a way he had never really experienced before, and he hesitated to leave. Miraculously, Whisp and the Think Tank had evaluated the anchor before it was destroyed; as such, they had discovered a way to create a stable and portable hole between the two dimensions, which would allow Sandra to visit Milton’s station.

Which she certainly did at her first opportunity.

With the helpful Dungeon Core from the Creator dimension now on Murder Station, Milton and the others had a meeting about what their plans should be going forward.  Simply knowing about the danger the Heliothropes would pose to other dimensions was one thing, but they needed to figure out how to ultimately stop what happened in Sandra’s dimension from happening again.  To do this, they determined that they were going to need a lot more information about the galaxy and the Heliothropes, as well as about any weaknesses that they could exploit. Not only that, but they knew that they couldn’t stop anything if it was just themselves against trillions of conquering aliens.

Fortuitously, the Station Core, Sandra, and the Proctans on board Murder Station got their first opportunity to meet some new allies when they rescued a bunch of Raxians who had escaped from a slave mine on Obraxia Prime’s third moon, Ghael.  This led to them meeting the residents of the system’s nearby station hub, though their meeting was interrupted by the arrival of a fleet of Heliothrope ships.

With Sandra’s help, Milton redesigned his dungeon on Murder Station’s ring, creating a blended defense of technology and magic, of Combat Units and Dungeon Monsters, stronger than anything the Station Core could’ve created by himself.  When the Heliothropes attacked the new-and-improved dungeon, they were wiped out to the last one, but the invaders weren’t only targeting his station – the murderous aliens also boarded the nearby station hub and started slaughtering everyone on board because of what happened at the mines.

A large team of Proctans managed to kill the Heliothropes that boarded the hub, but in the process, the central portion of the smaller station was destroyed.  Milton and those with him determined that the only way the nearly quarter-million people on the hub could survive was to attach the hub to the bottom portion of Murder Station – so that was exactly what he did, utilizing thousands of drones to accomplish such a feat.

Afterward, using the hub as a way to gather resources, Milton created another ring on his station, where he was able to transfer all of the new transplants to brand-new residences.  With the help of the new people that volunteered to undergo genetic mutations, as well as the efforts of Milton, Sandra, and Violet – a Master Enchanter from Sandra’s dimension – they were eventually able to create a shield around the Station, as well as “Space Amulets” that would allow people to venture out into space without dying.  Not only that, but there were a number of new people who wanted to actively fight, and Milton was able to recruit them to start working with the Proctans to develop their new abilities.

The renamed “Haven Station” – a much more PR-friendly name than Murder Station – then went on the hunt for resources, and Milton found that attaching the entire structure to asteroids and mining them via thousands of drones and portable Molecular Converters was the way to acquire everything he could ever want, including the coveted Focusing Crystals.  After a week of mining and constantly accumulating resources, the station received reports of activity in a nearby system, which they quickly learned was a trap to draw Milton and his allies out in order to destroy them.

In a space battle between a number of Heliothrope ships and the 30 transport freighters that Milton had managed to build, thousands of Proctans fought against the invaders boarding their craft, sometimes to the point where they would be wiped out, forcing them to scuttle their own ships.  As far as Haven Station went, their new Stasis Field shields were able to prevent any long-range weaponry from damaging the station, but a Heliothrope Commander and thousands of smaller invaders boarded the easily accessible dungeon Milton and Sandra had waiting for them.

The defenses were hard-pressed against so many, but one after another, the Fodder, Soldiers, and Elites were killed by a combination of Milton’s Combat Units and Defensive Weaponry and Sandra’s Dungeon Monsters and traps.  That left the Commander, who eventually succumbed to an onslaught of extremely powerful and dangerous Defensive Weapons in the fifth section of their combined dungeon.

After the battle, Haven Station managed to rescue the only survivors of a farm planet the Heliothropes had been bombarding to get the attention of Milton and his allies.  Only 615 of the Fursinals, who basically looked like 20-foot-tall giant pandas, were able to be saved from the entire bombarded planet. When they recovered on the station, they were eager to join Milton, as they were tired of being slaves to the Heliothropes.

Eventually, a new alert told them that another wound had been opened in the dimensional fabric, and Milton immediately sent Haven Station to go investigate.  Moving through to a completely new dimension, they discovered that there was a “fog” around the different star systems they encountered, which only pulled back as they got closer.

After a while, they came to the system closest to the dimensional wound and found where they thought the anchor the Heliothropes sent through was located.  However, the planet they came to was unlike anything they’d seen before, and it was impossible for them to determine the exact location of the anchor due to the energy permeating the world they’d discovered.  Not only that, but Sandra felt a connection to the energy down on the surface of the planet, which she could only assume meant that there were Dungeon Cores below; not just a few, but thousands, perhaps even millions on the massive planet.

With no other choice but to go down to the surface and explore, to find the Stabilizing Anchor and destroy it, Milton prepared his team to depart….

Chapter 1

“We’re penetrating the outer layers of the atmosphere in 3… 2… 1….” Whisp advised at the control console of the shuttle they were on.  Milton was watching the viewscreen along with the others packing the inside of the small transport, and he was hoping they would finally get a better look at the planet down below.  He had attempted to send a few sensor orbs from Haven Station – which was still in orbit – down to the world below, but the energy interference making everything look a little blurry from above seemed to block many of the signals sent back from the orbs.

The “fog of war” that seemed to obscure not just the planet, but the entire solar system, tended to retreat when passing within certain distance thresholds – at least with a physical presence.  The energy that made up this fog was unlike anything anyone had seen before, so it was something they weren’t able to penetrate with normal sensors; he was just hoping that they would still be able to communicate with the Station once they passed within the atmosphere.

There was a very brief feeling of turbulence as the shuttle hit the edge of the atmosphere before the shuttle stabilized, and then they were through the edge.  Within seconds, the viewscreen before them turned from looking at the planet’s surface as if through turbulent, dirty water to the crystal clarity of pure glass.  The different-colored patchwork of the land was even more obvious now, with large sections of the landscape reflecting a definite shade in comparison to their neighbors. Whether it was the clear blue of oceans, seas, and lakes, the vibrant forests, or the lava-filled vistas scattered around, each section reflected the energy coming from the world.  Blue, green, red, white, yellow, brown, and black rivaled for the attention of the shuttle’s sensors, which had been modified to detect this energy, which normally wouldn’t be visible to the naked eye.

“Are those cities?” Brint asked, having seen something on the viewscreen that Milton had originally missed.  Now that the Proctan pointed it out, however, he couldn’t help but notice clearings in the landscape that didn’t seem to have any – or very little – of the colorful energy coming from them, and inside of those clearings were what could only be described as habitations.  Some of them were so small that they probably would’ve barely qualified as villages, but they also grew to the size of massive cities, some of which that would probably rival New York City back on Earth – or at least the Earth that he recalled as a Human.  The Earth of now was basically a destroyed hunk of rock floating in space, but he still remembered it from nearly 5,000 years before.

“I believe so, Brint.  I wonder what kind of people—?” Milton started to answer the Proctan, before the turbulence that the small transport shuttle had experienced was back, slamming into them with tremendous force, throwing everyone inside around with bone-crunching force.  The feet of Milton’s avatar left the floor of the shuttle despite the artificial gravity inside, and he impacted the ceiling awkwardly, snapping his synthetic right arm in the process.  While he “felt” the break, it was more of a registering of the pain than anything debilitating.

When he tried to move, he realized that he was still flattened against the roof of the small transport.  Moving his head around was difficult because there was resistance, but he eventually saw all but Brint and Whisp (who were in their seats) against the walls and accompanying him on the ceiling, all of them injured in some way and unable to move more than their arms and legs.

This shouldn’t be happening.  Where are the stabilizers—?

Milton suddenly understood what was happening, as the lights within the shuttle went out, leaving them completely blind inside of the small ship; none of the consoles were on, and it appeared as if the power had gone completely out – which shouldn’t have been possible.  Unless it had been completely severed from every connection, there were multiple fail-safes built into every vessel in his fleet; for it to lose power, something catastrophic had to have happened to the tiny zero-point energy reactor, which was nearly indestructible by normal means.

Then again, we don’t know anything about this planet, so this could be the result of something not “normal”.

As another note, with the power out, the life support systems on the shuttle were shut off, and it was almost as if all of the air had been vented out.  As a result, he stopped trying to breathe like a fish out of water, as he didn’t really need to breathe, even as he felt the chill from nearby space start to filter into the vessel.  Everyone had their Space Amulets on them, thankfully, so no one was going to suffocate or freeze to death.  By good fortune, Milton was still able to communicate with Whisp and Brint via the connection he had with them, which was promising; that meant that he was still technically able to access his Core on Haven Station, something that was unknown before they passed through the fog-like energy.

“What’s going on?”

It was much easier to communicate mentally with them rather than to try to shout at them, mainly because the shuttle was shaking so much that it was loud enough to hurt a normal person’s eardrums.

“For some reason, we’ve lost all power to the shuttle; it shouldn’t be possible, and without access to the reactor, I am unable to fix it,” Whisp responded using the same method of communication, as she couldn’t breathe or speak any other way.  A moment later, one of the Casters from the pair of groups that had accompanied them on the shuttle used her Power to illuminate the inside of the vessel with a bright, white light. With the light, everyone was able to see what he could, thanks to the sensitive sensors in his avatar – which was Brint and Whisp still strapped to their chairs in front of the console, which was completely dark.

Milton tried to access anything within the shuttle, to see if he could institute a restart of the reactor and systems, but it was like it was dead to him.  There was just… nothing there he could connect with.  It was very rare for him to be unable to access something that he had constructed, because normally there was either his Station Core or another large zero-point energy reactor nearby, providing universal power to his creations.  Now, however, it seemed as though whatever power was being sent out by his Core was completely blocked by the planet.

“Milton, what’s happening?  It appears as though you are in an uncontrolled freefall.”

He heard ALANNA connect with his Station Core’s consciousness, and he brought his attention back to Haven Station; more specifically, he looked at ALANNA and everyone else in the command center, who were watching everything happen on the viewscreen.  Since he didn’t have another body up on the Station, he had to speak to his AI guide through his Core.

“We lost every shred of power, somehow.  I know,” he said quickly, cutting her off before she could say anything, “that shouldn’t be possible, but it happened.  Both Whisp and I thought the same thing.”

Sandra was also there in the command center, watching the small shuttle descend toward the planet’s surface, before it started to disappear beneath the wavy distortions that seemed to hide the entire world from greater observation.  “Can’t you provide power in some way?” she asked worriedly.  The expression on the Dungeon Core’s face was concerned, but he also knew that she was aware that Milton wasn’t in any serious danger because he could just rebuild his body.

“No, not really. Even if I was able to connect with the reactor on board the shuttle, my avatar doesn’t have enough internal power to restart it.  It looks like we’re going to have to try something else.”

He turned his attention back to his avatar, and seeing that nothing much had changed, he spoke to those on board after a few moments, knowing that their vessel was getting closer and closer to the surface of the planet.

“Well, this doesn’t look so good, everyone.  Unless the power comes back on, we’re going to hit the ground with enough force to obliterate—"

The lights suddenly turned on in the middle of his speech to the Proctans around him, and he felt the stabilizers kick in, stopping the rumbling and shaking of the shuttle.  Soon enough, he felt his avatar unstick from the ceiling and abruptly fall back to the floor, as the artificial gravity reinstated.  Whisp was already at the console with her fingers flying all over it, and he felt his connection to the vessel reestablish itself.  The super-intelligent Proctan was already in the process of slowing down their uncontrolled descent, however, so he didn’t end up doing anything.  But with one look at the newly returned viewscreen he wished he could do something to speed up the process.

They were approaching the green forest underneath them faster than he’d like.

“This is going to be close,” Whisp cautioned, strain in her voice as she continued to push buttons on the console in front of her.  Milton could immediately see that was going to be an understatement, as he wasn’t even sure if they would be able to stop in time.  Regardless, he had to hope that the engines were able to counteract the gravity pulling them down to the surface.

“Everyone, brace yourselves!” he shouted to the Proctans, who had spent the last few seconds of their descent healing the few injuries they had sustained during their freefall.  As for Milton’s broken arm, he could feel the nanites in his artificial body already starting to repair the injuries, though it was going to take another few minutes for it to be fully healed.  He had probably suffered the most of all those aboard the shuttle, if only because his avatar was only slightly more powerful than an average Human body, whereas the Proctans – even Whisp, as a Master Thinker – were significantly enhanced.

The trees below were getting close enough to the vessel that Milton could see individual leaves on the viewscreen, and he did his best to brace himself against the side of the console with his one arm.  He felt Micke come up next to him for an additional way to support himself, as the Tank was extremely sturdy; even if they ended up crashing at the speed they had managed to slow down to, it was likely the powerful Proctan would survive.

The next thing he knew, there were a few bumps as the shuttle slammed through a few trees on its way down to the ground, and then he found himself falling toward the floor of the vessel, until Micke caught him before his body could be demolished by the impact.  Even the strong Tank was affected when the shuttle slammed into the surface of this new world, as he fell to his knees at the same time he was holding Milton.  As for everyone else, they weren’t quite as lucky.  Everyone but Whisp and Brint was sprawled out along the floor in different states of injury, with Helvana – one of the Healers – seemingly having broken her neck upon impact.  Hers was the only near-fatality, fortunately, though some of the injuries were quite severe in the form of horribly broken bones and a few wounds that were bleeding profusely.

Nothing a little Power from the other Healer, Trond, who ended up with only a broken wrist and ankle, couldn’t fix up, which he immediately started on.  As he was stabilizing everyone else to the point where no one would die, Milton was preoccupied in looking over the shuttle.

In short, their vessel had hit the ground so hard that it was barely fair to call it a shuttle anymore.  It was basically just a hunk of metal at this point, with just about every part of it damaged in some way.  The only thing that was entirely intact was the reactor, which was difficult to damage in the first place, and he was thankful for that; if it had been damaged, the resulting explosion would’ve killed them all and flattened the trees within 200 feet or more of its origin point.

“Well, we certainly know how to make an entrance,” Milton joked, though most of those inside the ruined shuttle just groaned at him.  He put that down to the fact that everyone was still injured, and not at his efforts to lighten the mood.

“Everyone get patched up and we’ll do a little exploring while I figure out how to fix the shuttle,” he continued.  “It’s time to let this dungeon world know that we’ve arrived.”

Chapter 2

The shuttle was an absolute disaster.  Shortly after everyone had been healed, either through their natural regenerative healing via the nanites in their bodies or from the ministrations of Trond and later Helvana, they were able to physically look outside at the vessel.  It required literally cutting a hole in the bulkhead of the ship to escape its confines, however, because the normal hatch in the back was both a mangled mess and buried in the dirt of the planet.  Thankfully, one of the pair of flying drones Milton had brought along with the “away team” was relatively undamaged and was able to provide their escape from the ship.

As for the other flying drone, it had been destroyed entirely in the crash.  The Bioconversion Lab they had on board the shuttle was damaged significantly, but with a little help from the drone and the undamaged portable Molecular Converter they had brought along, he figured it wouldn’t be long until both the Lab and the shuttle were back up and running.

“Is everyone okay, now?” Milton asked, once everyone was outside of the wrecked shuttle.  They appeared a little worse for wear from the experience, but whatever damage their bodies had undergone over the last few minutes had been undone.  Other than some bloodstains and ripped clothing, everyone appeared relatively fine.

“We’re fine, Milton.  Nothing we can’t handle,” Micke said, already peering around at the forest within which they had crash-landed.  As far as Milton could see, their descent had likely scared away any local wildlife – if there even was wildlife on the planet, which was still unknown – and nothing seemed to be nearby.

As the two newly healed groups of Proctans spread out through the nearby trees, looking for any danger, Milton looked at the shuttle along with Whisp and Brint.  Of the people on board the shuttle, those two were the least hurt by the crash as they had been strapped into the two chairs near the console, though the experience certainly wasn’t one that they’d want to repeat anytime soon.

Whisp was examining the shuttle’s small engines, which were half-buried in the dirt.  What was actually aboveground didn’t look so good, so he could only imagine what was going on down below.  “This could be bad, Milton.  I’m getting one of our undamaged sensor orbs out to see how bad it really is,” the super-intelligent Proctan said, as one of the dozen sensor orbs they had brought with them to the planet flew out of the cut-open side of the shuttle, before he directed it toward the engines.

Since the sensor orb could see under the ground, Milton patched into what it was viewing, so that he would have a better understanding of what was damaged. But there was a problem.

“I think that one was damaged somehow, Whisp.  I’m getting no feedback from it.”

She walked over to his orb, inspecting it immediately once she was close enough.  “Are you sure?  I’m not seeing any damage.”  Whisp then turned to Milton, asking him, “Is there a break in your connection to it?”

“No, not at all.  Otherwise, it wouldn’t be able to move at your – or my – command.”

“Let’s try another, then.”  In the next second, 5 more sensor orbs flew out of the shuttle, the remainder of the undamaged ones that the crew had brought with them, and they flew over toward the buried engines.

“This isn’t possible.  None of them are working.”  Just to ensure there wasn’t something wrong with their connection to his Core on the Station, which was how the sensor orbs communicated their information, he spoke to ALANNA.  He had already updated her and the rest of the command center on their condition after landing, so he knew that his connection with the Station was still intact, at least.

“We’re getting no information from your sensor orbs, Milton,” his AI guide said, confusion in her voice as she spoke inside the command center.  When he switched his focus to the Station, he could see that most of the other members of the Think Tank were all at their consoles, attempting to decipher what was going on.  “It’s like they don’t exist.  In fact, I can’t connect to anything down there, including your shuttle.  For all intents and purposes, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m talking to you now, I’d think you and anything you brought with you were utterly destroyed.”

“This energy is powerful enough to block those types of signals?”

“It appears so.  I think that the only reason you are still in contact with me is because your consciousness is basically in two places at once; if not for that, we wouldn’t be able to speak at all.”

Milton thought of the implications of being cut off from the Station Core, and something very important occurred to him.  Concentrating on the portable Molecular Converter, which the drone had managed to carry out of the wreck, he attempted to create something simple: a simple brick made of compacted dirt.  It was one of the first things that he ever created with his Station Core back when it crash-landed on Proctus, so he thought it was a fitting item to attempt.

ERROR!

Not enough available resources!

Missing: 1 Unit of Basic Earth

Uh-oh.

Milton quickly pulled up his Available Resources menu while his consciousness was still inhabiting his avatar, and he was dismayed at what he saw.[1]

It was gone.  Everything he had accumulated was gone.

When he focused his concentration back on Haven Station, centering his consciousness inside of his Station Core again, he breathed a sigh of relief to find that he was wrong.  It was all still technically there, all the millions and billions of resource units that he was able to make physical and brought to this dimension, before converting them all back to usable resources again through Molecular Converters on the Station.  Every single thing was still there, able to be used by those on the Station… yet, he was unable to access any of it in any way.

“ALANNA?  Is this even possible?” he asked, as soon as he identified the problem.

The diminutive woman made of nanites shook her head.  “It shouldn’t be,” she admitted, before adding, “though a lot of things about this planet – and this entire dimension – are proving that what we thought was impossible just isn’t true anymore.”

“Understandable.  However, I’m going to need some more resources if I’m going to be able to repair the shuttle so we can look around for the anchor.  With the sensor orbs unable to give me any view, the shuttle’s sensors are the only thing that seemed to be working – at least marginally.”

“We’ll attempt to send down a transport freighter with some supplies, then, as well as some reinforcements.”

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea, especially considering what happened to us when we passed through the edge of the atmosphere.  I guess it can’t hurt to try, though only send a single volunteer pilot if you can, as I’d rather not have many people die – just in case they crash harder than we did.”

“Will do.  Give us an hour to get a freighter loaded with supplies, and it’ll be on its way.  You’ll have to try and connect with the pilot to give them your location as soon as the vessel passes through the atmosphere, as we’ll likely lose contact with it like we did with your shuttle.”

“Gotcha.  Let me know when they’re on the way, as I’ll be focusing down here.”

With help on the way in the form of supplies, the only real thing to do was wait for it to arrive.  Looking around and sensing most of the Proctans scattered through the trees – which made him glad that his connection to them wasn’t interrupted in any way – he filled in Whisp and Brint about what was going on.  The Master Thinker also thought the situation was impossible, but there really wasn’t anything they could do to change anything.

However, as an experiment, she had Milton direct the drone they had to dig up some dirt and send it to the Molecular Converter to see if it would at least accumulate down on the surface.  When he did, the Station Core discovered that his Available Resources reflected the addition of the dirt in his menu, with a few Units of Basic Earth and Basic Gravel added to his list.  As a further experiment, he found that he could now make a compressed dirt brick like he had attempted before, and it took the materials from what his drone had dug up and shoved into the Converter.  It was almost as if being on the planet created a whole new dimensional pocket space where all of the resources were gathered, separate from the one his actual Station Core controlled.  Needless to say, it was extremely odd, but he was slowly learning about the limitations of this world.

Since they couldn’t see under the ground to determine the extent of the damage to the shuttle’s engines, Milton had his singular drone work on excavating the vessel.  Within minutes, it was obvious that what they saw above the surface was the least of the damage to the shuttle, as the back half of it had been nearly obliterated.  The engines were going to require a full reconstruction or replacement, as the back half was so damaged it was unrecognizable.  Not for the first time, he realized that they had been lucky to survive the crash in the first place, and that it was probably only due to the fact that some nearby trees had slightly broken their fall that they were still walking around.  In fact, one of the trees closest to the crash site had been completely blown apart by the impact, with splinters of what looked suspiciously like an oak tree found over 100 feet away.

“This is going to take a lot of Basic Metal Units to fix,” Whisp said, surveying the uncovered damage.  Milton nodded, before he looked up at the sky; while he couldn’t see it, he directed his gaze to where the Station and his Core were located high up above.

“I’m beginning to think this is a lost cause, and we should just use the freighter that is sent down instead of the shuttle,” Milton ventured, considering what Whisp said.  Normally, fixing something even as damaged as the shuttle was extremely easy, especially on the Station; with a plethora of resources and hundreds of drones, it would’ve been all fixed up in minutes.  Without access to either of those, however, it was a much more lengthy project.

“I would not be opposed to that idea, though the freighter doesn’t move quite as well through the atmosphere as the shuttle.  That, and you’ll be painting a much bigger target on us if we’re flying around in such a large vessel.”

While the transport freighter wasn’t, by any extent of the imagination, large, especially considering the other space vessels Haven Station could construct at his Space Transport Dock, it was probably 50 times larger than the simple shuttle.  It was designed to hold a lot of material, after all, so it needed the massive cargo hold it possessed.

“Valid point.  We’ll see if we can quickly fix this thing up first, and then we’ll decide.”

It took less than an hour for everything to come together up on the Station, and before long, one of the Station’s freighters was moving out from the Dock and headed toward the planet.

“It’s on the way with Rhiole, who volunteered to pilot it down to you,” ALANNA informed him.  Rhiole was another Master Thinker who had helped to pilot other freighters before, so he felt good with it in her hands.

Switching his focus to his Core, he connected with the pilot as she flew closer to the edge of the planet’s atmosphere.

“Be careful, Rhiole.  You might encounter the same loss of power that we did, but I’m hoping that such a power loss would last less time in the freighter.  Just be prepared to stop your freefall when it comes back.”

Milton had visual access to the freighter’s bridge, and he saw Rhiole nod, acknowledging his warning.  Looking at the cargo hold, he saw 2-dozen pallets of supplies, including condensed blocks of Organic Material and Biological Mass, with the latter a disgusting mound of unidentifiable goo.  There was also a small block of tritanium, a super-condensed metal that contained enough Basic Metal Units in it to completely rebuild the shuttle from scratch – four times.  With what he saw coming down to the surface, he wouldn’t be suffering from a lack of resources for long.

“Entering atmosphere in 3… 2… 1….”  Milton abruptly lost his connection with the Master Thinker as she was piloting the freighter, at least through his Core on Haven Station.  He abruptly focused his consciousness on his avatar down on the planet again, and within a second he had reconnected with her mind, though he was unable to access the freighter’s systems.  A second later, the reason became obvious.

“There was turbulence at first, and then my power went out,” she revealed.  “From what I can tell, the ship is in freefall, so now all I have to do is wait for the reactor to come back online.  How long did it take for the shuttle—?”

Before Rhiole could finish her question, Milton’s connection with her abruptly cut off.  Looking up, not quite overhead of their landing site, he saw an enormous explosion light up the sky.  It was a quick flash of bluish-green, followed by a smaller flash of red, and then… nothing.

“Rhiole?  Rhiole?!”

No matter what he did, he couldn’t find her mind to contact her.  He wasn’t exactly sure how it happened, but the result was unmistakable: The freighter had blown up.  This was confirmed a few seconds later by his AI guide.

“Well, that was unexpected.  As I’m sure you saw, Rhiole’s freighter blew up, and we have no idea why.  We’ll have her back at the command center soon, though, so hopefully she can shed some light on the subject.”

“Thank you, ALANNA.”

Unfortunately, even when a newly reborn Rhiole arrived at the command center, she didn’t have any explanation.

“The power went out, like I told you, and then suddenly I was falling down into a pool underneath the Bioconversion Lab just a few minutes ago,” she explained.  Thankfully, the experience of being blown up didn’t seem to affect her in any way, not that their deaths usually did; there was a component to the Neurological Control Units that dulled the emotional memories of their deaths, so that they wouldn’t be saddled with horrific memories for the rest of their lives. Considering that many of them had died hundreds, if not thousands of times during their training, most of them would’ve been insane by that point if he hadn’t implemented that feature at the very beginning.

As for the supplies that were on the freighter, they had been completely destroyed in the explosion.  The tritanium that was in the cargo hold, as dense and strong as it was, likely survived, but where it landed was a mystery.  It could’ve dropped straight down or been sent out hundreds of miles in any direction from the force of the explosion; either way, it was essentially lost to them, especially since their sensor orbs weren’t working.

Thankfully, there was another shuttle they had managed to construct on the Station in the past, so they sent that down with a different volunteer, thinking that it might have been the size of the vessel that caused the explosion.  Sadly, that one exploded at about the same point as the freighter, with no explanation.

“Well, folks, it appears as though we’re on our own until they can figure out how to get supplies to us,” Milton told the assembled Proctans on the surface after the last failure.  There were already plans to construct a few more shuttles or even use another freighter again, this time attempting to replicate the same conditions as their original “successful” descent, but the Think Tank on the Station – along with ALANNA – were going to see if they could figure out a better solution.

“So, what do you want to do?” Whisp asked.

Milton thought about it for a moment before responding.  “Well, we need resources if we’re ever going to get this shuttle back up and working.  Trying to accumulate enough by digging with my single drone could take weeks to acquire enough BMUs to make a Drone Assembly Plant, where we could ramp up the operation to dig up even more – and that would require that there are enough metal ore deposits under this ground, which isn’t a guarantee.  Meanwhile, we don’t have any food—” that got the attention of everyone, as they hadn’t yet realized it, “—so, we’d have to hunt and forage for Biological Mass and Organic Material, not to mention for water to drink.

“But there are two other options,” he continued.  “One, we find some of these dungeons and the Dungeon Cores that Sandra said she sensed were down here, and potentially find enough loot inside of them to help us – but that is no guarantee.  We don’t know what is in them, or even how strong they are, or if they even give out loot at all.

“Which brings me to the other option.  We find one of these habitations we saw from up above, like a town or a city, and see if we can get the material we need from them.  That runs the risk that they are extremely hostile, of course, and they are as likely to kill us as to help us, but we won’t know unless we try.

“So, what do you all think?”

There was a brief discussion among everyone, with a few of the most adventurous wanting to immediately check out a dungeon or two.  The majority of them were in favor of looking for some sort of town with people they could trade with, however, because they were cognizant of the fact that their priority was to fix the shuttle so that they could look for the anchor.  They were there to close the dimensional wound, after all, and while delving through a dungeon might be fun for most of them, they had a higher purpose.

Saving an entire dimension and potentially all of existence tended to overshadow the need for fun.

Current Average-term Goal: Repair, Recon, and ‘Radication

- Obtain enough BMUs to repair the shuttle 0/1,500,000

- Search around the world for evidence of the Stabilizing Anchor

- Eradicate all signs of Heliothropes and destroy the Anchor

Difficulty of Goal: Hard

Timeframe: 2 years 6 months 12 days

Rewards: Saving a different dimension from a scourge of Heliothropes, +6 to Insight/Luck, Processing Power/Intelligence, and Sensor Interpretation/Perception

Right on time.  “Thanks, ALANNA.  But 2 years, 6 months, and 12 days?”

“That’s how long we’ve calculated it will take, at the current rate of progress, for the dimensional wound to be fully stabilized,” his AI guide told him.  “It should be plenty of time, but don’t mess around.”

He thanked ALANNA again, glad to have his goal for BMUs quantified.  He explained the goal he had been given to the other Proctans and how it reflected their basic needs, which helped to solidify their choice.

“Don’t worry; if we get a chance, I’d like to check out a dungeon or two while we’re here, since we weren’t able to really see any on Sandra’s planet,” he told them all when they made their decision to look for people.  The mention of Sandra made him a little sad, because he wasn’t up there on the Station with her.  That was the problem with his synthetic bodies; he could only inhabit one at a time, because each of them was infused with a portion of his consciousness.  If he were to make another on the Station, there was a very large likelihood that he wouldn’t be able to reconnect with the one on the surface of the planet.

He could still speak with her, at least, but it wasn’t quite the same as being there with her in person.  Long-distance relationships were difficult, or so he’d heard.

Still, he was hoping that this whole separation was temporary.  There were a lot of obstacles in the way of their reunion, but it wasn’t anything they hadn’t overcome before, each in their own way.

“Don’t worry, Milton.  I’ll be here when you get back; I’m not planning on going anywhere.”

The synthetic avatar smiled and sent her a feeling of love as he joined the others, already trying to figure out how to locate the nearest habitation.

Chapter 3

The solution they came up with to find a town or a village was relatively easy and simple enough, even without the prompting by the quest that ALANNA had pushed through to him, though Milton didn’t want anything to do with participating in the process.  Not because he didn’t want to help, but because his body was entirely too fragile.

“All right, here… we… go…” Micke said as he was holding Fendle, his group’s Rogue Class, in his arms like a large basketball.  With the lightest frame and best perception of just about anyone down on the surface, Fendle was the perfect option for the scouting process.  On “go”, Micke bent his arms down momentarily and then launched Fendle straight into the air using his Boosted Strength, sending the poor Rogue more than 250 feet up.  There was a small squeak from the flying Proctan as he was launched, likely from the initial force of the toss; but soon enough, Fendle hit his arc and came back down.

Just as it appeared as if he would crash into the ground, the Rogue activated his Self-Levitation ability and started to slow down about 20 feet away from the dirt below.  By the time he was only a foot away, he was stopped completely, and then he stepped lightly down without any visible effects from being tossed like a ball high into the air.

“Off to the southwest, there is a large clearing in the trees, and I thought that I saw some houses, but I couldn’t be sure,” he informed them, pointing in the direction he mentioned.

“We can try again, if you want?” Micke asked, a smirk on his face.  “I think I might be able to toss you higher—"

Fendle shivered momentarily before he said, “Uh, no.  Once was enough for today.”

“Okay, you heard him.  Let’s head that way and see what we can find; it’s probably the best heading we’re going to get right now.”  Milton made sure to have his drone pick up the portable Molecular Converter and follow them, because there was no way he was leaving either of them behind; they were their only means of repairing the shuttle, after all – at least until those on Haven Station figured out how to get them more supplies.

Milton stayed in the middle of the two full fighting groups of Proctans with Whisp and Brint.  While Brint was more than familiar with fighting and battle, Whisp was more an inventor and thinker, so she had a much more limited experience than anyone else.  That wasn’t to say she hadn’t seen her fair share of battles, but she typically relied on animating stone golems or providing enchanted items for the war efforts – not necessarily physical combat.  Milton had absolutely no experience in personally being a part of a fight, but was more than comfortable directing his Combat Units in battles; as such, he was the weakest of everyone there by a far margin.

They traveled for a few hours at a steady pace through the densely packed forest, Fendle unerringly leading the way toward their goal.  It was only after they journeyed a mile or so out from their crash site that they saw their first denizens of this world in the form of birds in the trees, a small herd of deer that startled and ran at their approach, and something that made Milton freeze in terror at the sight.

A squirrel.

Thankfully, it fled along the treetops, jumping from branch to branch when they got close, and Milton did his best to ignore his sciurophobia.  He had thought that he’d moved past it, especially with how often he’d used Blood-thirsty Squirrels and Squirrelings as Combat Units in the past, but it was something completely different to encounter a live squirrel he didn’t control out in the wild.

He heard both ALANNA and Sandra chuckle as they followed along with his consciousness via their connection with his Station Core, and he forced himself to keep moving, not wanting to call more attention to himself than he already had.  Hey, it’s not my fault I’m scared of them; at least I’m not completely frozen by fear.

Thankfully, the frequency of squirrels that he saw was kept to a minimum, and he was able to travel much faster because of that.  Still, it took another few hours for them to finally approach the outer edge of the clearing that Fendle had noticed earlier.  As soon as Milton joined the others at the forest’s edge, he could see what appeared to be large fields and farms with buildings that appeared… normal, for lack of a better word.  They weren’t what he would consider modern by any means, but perhaps from the early 1800’s back on Earth, not the Middle Ages or before that.  There were neat, orderly rows of wheat and what looked like corn, along with a few fields of root vegetables, and there were a few orchards of fruit trees.

In those fields was something he nearly cried out in joy to see: Humans!  He had noted some from afar via sensors on Sandra’s planet in the Creator dimension, but he hadn’t had the chance to actually see any in person – something that he regretted later.  Having seen a little more of his own dimension without finding any other Humans made the lack of their presence weigh on him, so he was emotionally ecstatic to encounter some again.

Milton nearly ran out of the trees to go and talk to them, but he immediately stopped himself as he reminded himself that he and his crew were visitors on the planet.  Not only were these Humans likely to be wary of strangers – a common occurrence, he had found – but he probably couldn’t even speak their language.  He remembered how tense it had been when he was on Sandra’s world, showing up at the city above her dungeon, where he was only saved by the fact that he was quickly able to analyze and then speak their language.  Of course, it was also tense because he had looked like a Human, and Humans weren’t exactly welcome in that part of the world, but the same principle remained.

Tearing his gaze away from the fields and the Humans within them, he focused past the farm buildings – which were basically farmhouses and barns, along with paddocks filled with cow and pig-like animals, with just a slightly different look than those he remembered from Earth – and on the town past them.  They were a few miles away, but his superior perception in his synthetic eyes allowed him to see the town as clearly as if he was right there next to it all.

A 10-foot-tall, square-shaped stone wall surrounded the town on all sides, though it didn’t appear to be well-maintained; there were a few places where the top of the wall had cracked and crumbled, with no new repairs visible.  Repairs that probably occurred decades in the past were obvious; but for some reason, the upkeep had stopped at some point.  There were gates in the wall, thick, wooden logs lashed together to form the barriers. The gate facing Milton and his group must have been broken fairly recently, because its wooden doors had been detached and were propped upright against the stone wall to the left and right of the opening.  Even from a distance, he could see that there was only a single guard on the gate, who was plainly lax in their duty – he (or she, it was hard to determine) was sleeping on a stool with their chin on their chest.

Through the opening, Milton could see a number of structures that were 3 or 4 stories tall, primarily made of wood with stone foundations, though the majority of them were only 1 story.  Most of the larger buildings were near the center of the town and appeared to be either commercial businesses or other important governing locations, at least based on the signs hanging outside of them.  From his angle, he couldn’t make out what those signs depicted, but their appearance couldn’t help but remind him of Old Western shops from the 19th and early 20th centuries portrayed in movies he’d seen in the past.  Some of them even had saloon-type swinging double doors on their entrances, which was interesting to see.

While he couldn’t make out what the rest of the buildings were used for, he could only assume they were residential, which allowed him to estimate that 1,000 or more people lived in the town.  Even if he was off by a little bit, it was the largest concentration of Humans he’d been physically close to since he had been abducted from Earth all of those millennia ago.

Having come upon the clearing from the northeast section, Milton was able to see movement along a previously unnoticed dirt road coming from the eastern part of the large clearing.  A line of covered wagons that appeared right out of the old pioneering days of America was being pulled by horses – which didn’t look too different from what he remembered on Earth – as they traveled toward the town.  Since they were covered, he couldn’t tell what was in them, but he could only guess that it was valuable; the presence of armed individuals that walked along the wagons hinted that they were guards of some sort.

More than that, though, these guards were each different in their appearance, at least based on their clothing; they weren’t like a group of mercenaries, all dressed alike.  Instead, each of them seemed to wear something different, such as one of the larger men wearing chainmail and leather armor with a shield strapped to his back and a sword at his side, or a woman wearing dusty, red robes using a wooden staff as a walking stick.  There was another woman who was wearing dark leather and cloth clothing wielding a bow, and even another man who appeared to be wearing a set of high-quality clothing, including a light-blue tunic, a leather belt, and dark leggings – but he also had what appeared to be a steel mace hanging off his belt.

All of that told Milton that the guards here had specialized in some way, almost like they had adopted different Classes, but it was still too soon to tell.  The presence of the woman in the dusty, red robes and staff led him to believe that she might have some sort of magic at her disposal, based on all the games he’d played in the past; but again, it was impossible to tell at this point.  He wouldn’t be surprised if that were accurate, however, based on the energy readings that seemed to permeate the entire world.

Speaking of that energy, when he looked at the clearing through the filter in his eye sensors that displayed that mysterious force, for a moment he didn’t think there was anything present.  It was only after a brief moment that he realized that it, indeed, was there, but it was basically invisible, with no coloration at all, though he could see it almost like a heavy gas as it passed through everything.  When he looked closer at the guards near the wagons, that clear energy seemed to be sucked into them, slowly but steadily.

“What do you want to do, Milton?”

The Station Core’s avatar turned to Micke, taking in the Proctan’s outfit.  While Milton was wearing some comfortable, loose clothing that he normally wore, Micke was geared up in his Kevlar-like diamine plate armor, making him appear like a modern knight.  The diamine shield strapped to his back wasn’t too dissimilar to the ones that he saw the Human guard wearing near the wagons, though his diamine sword would probably stand out because of its razor-sharp appearance.

Milton belatedly thought that he needed Sandra to look at all their equipment to see what could be done to improve their effectiveness. While many of the Think Tank and even some Casters could enchant, it paled in comparison to what the Dungeon Core could accomplish.  Because they had worried more about protecting the entire Station than improving weapons and armor, it hadn’t been as much of a priority before; but perhaps they would have time once they saved this dimension from the Heliothropes.

Turning to the rest of the group, he realized that, in comparison to the guards and the other Humans he had seen in the fields and the town, the Proctans appeared… intimidating.  All of them had the look of trained killers, even those who specialized in healing, and they gave off a vibe that said, “Look at me the wrong way, and I’ll snap your neck.”  It wasn’t their fault, however, because they were trained to be like that through a rigorous program of delving through his training dungeon back on Proctus, and dying dozens or even hundreds of times tended to harden them over time.  Nonetheless, that didn’t mean they were bad people.  Even with everyone he’d met since becoming a Station Core, the Proctans were some of the nicest, kindest individuals he’d ever had the honor of knowing.

But try and hurt one of their own?  That was when they showed their teeth, and they had a powerful bite.  With the fact that they were on a foreign planet, where they were hunting down some of the most powerful, dimension-invading aliens one could imagine, and where danger could lurk in unexpected places, they were understandably tense and on edge.  Needless to say, they had their game faces on.

When he added in the fact that they weren’t actually Human but were, instead, very similar-looking with light purple skin, larger eyes, and ears that fanned out on the sides of their heads like an Elf’s ears on steroids, it just added to that intimidation factor.  Milton, despite looking relatively Human, had based his synthetic avatar on that of a Proctan, though he had altered its appearance to be as Human-like as possible.  He hadn’t had a Human to model it off of before, after all… but perhaps that might change in the near future.

The only ones who didn’t appear too threatening were Whisp and Brint, though the latter could certainly be a force to be reckoned with if pressed.  While Brint was wearing the Kevlar-like armor that was infused with sheets of diamine, strengthening it against attacks, he didn’t have the same killer-like look to his stance and demeanor as the others.  It probably had to do with the fact that he excelled in directing Milton’s Combat Units like a general, rather than fighting up close and personal like the others, though he could do that as well if he needed to.

Whisp was wearing a comfortable outfit similar to Milton’s own, because she hadn’t expected to be leaving the shuttle for any long periods of time.  Despite the lack of armor and visible weapons, she had many abilities that could be used in a pinch to protect herself and others, such as access to manipulating the elements or animating objects to fight for her. It was a bit limited in scale without extra preparation, but she could hold her own if it came down to it.

“I think that I’m only going to bring a few of you; otherwise, we might run into some problems,” Milton finally said to Micke and the rest of the large group.

“What kinds of problems?” Fendle asked.

He waved his hand at them all with a smirk on his face.  “You’re all pretty scary-looking and intimidating, you know that, right?”

There were some soft chuckles at that, and Milton could sense that most of them were proud of that fact. As well they should be.

“So, until I can get the lay of the land here, learn the language, and ensure they won’t run for the hills when they see all of you, I’m only going to bring three others with me.  Micke, you’re going to be our main protection, because if there is anything you can’t handle, we’re screwed, anyway.  Whisp and Brint will also come along, because I’m going to need their help figuring some things out.

“The rest of you, make camp a little way into the forest here, and try to stay out of trouble.  Hopefully, we’ll be back in a few hours with more information.  If anything dangerous attacks, feel free to defend yourselves, but if any people stumble upon you, do your best not to kill them.  We don’t need the natives to turn on us, especially before we get what we need to continue our search for the Stabilizing Anchor and the Heliothropes.”

Reminded that they were there for a higher purpose, those staying behind nodded in agreement, before taking off another 200 feet away from the forest’s border with the clearing, where they proceeded to fortify themselves in a makeshift camp.  Milton instructed his drone carrying the Molecular Converter to follow them, because he didn’t want to lose his only means of construction and deconstruction.

With them settled, he brought the three coming with him as he moved through the trees to the south and a little east.  Theoretically, they could’ve simply walked out of the trees and marched across the fields to the town, but he felt it was probably both safer and less suspicious if they found the road that the wagons had traveled upon and used that to enter.

They had gone approximately a mile to the southeast when Micke stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

Chapter 4

“I’m detecting something—or someone—up ahead.”

Milton immediately halted in his tracks with his foot still up in the air as he froze.  He hadn’t really been paying attention to his surroundings, as he typically relied on his sensors and sensor orbs to tell him everything. With only the most basic aspects of his avatar’s sensors operational, he felt like he was walking around with blinders on.  It was something he hadn’t really adjusted to yet, so it wasn’t until he really paid attention to the immediate area that he found what Micke had already noticed.

Voices.

Of course, given that they were in a different dimension and on an alien planet, none of them understood the barely audible conversation between at least a pair of people up ahead, but Milton could tell that there was some anger involved.

“Sounds like some sort of argument,” he told his smaller group around him.

“We should go around.  I don’t like the sound of them, especially this deep into the forest.”

Milton thought he had a good point.  A pair of people in the forest having an argument, being so close to the road… well, he’d played plenty of games and read more than enough books to guess who they were.  Putting two and two together, and recognizing that the guards on the wagons earlier were present for a reason, the Station Core conjectured that these two were probably robbers or thieves of some kind, there to attack unguarded wagon trains or whatnot.

Or, they might have simply been some lost townspeople arguing about the way back to the road… but he doubted it.

“You’re right, we should try and go around.  But I need to get a little bit closer to listen to their conversation; I’d feel better going into the town with the ability to speak the language already.”

“Plus, maybe they need our help?” Whisp ventured.  “If you can understand what they’re saying, then we can find out for sure.”

That was also a possibility.  Micke was against it at first, taking his role as protector quite seriously, but he gave in to Milton’s urgings because it was true what the Station Core had said.  They did need more information, and this was the perfect way to get it without too much danger.  Besides, the fully armored Proctan was fairly certain he could defend Milton and everyone else without too many problems.

If it came to a fight, Milton would simply hide behind Micke – he had no compunctions about staying safe out of sight and out of danger, because he wasn’t really a fighter.

They crept closer, picking their steps carefully through the dense undergrowth of the forest, passing by a few more trees as they approached the origin of the voices.  While his hearing – along with his visual perception – was superior to that of a normal Human or Proctan, the voices were low enough that it was difficult to make them out entirely.  When he added in the fact that the language was unfamiliar, his Communication/Charisma statistic[2] still needed to have a clear dialogue in order to start learning and translating the spoken words.

They finally approached close enough to hear the unfamiliar words clearly and succinctly, and Milton stopped, followed by his other group members.  He let them know that he was listening and attempting to translate, and for them to hold for a moment while that happened.  Since his statistic was so high, it probably wouldn’t take more than a minute or two, which was much faster than it had been in the beginning (when it had taken weeks to learn the Proctan language), but it still took some time.

After about 45 seconds of standing still, out of sight of the speakers, he started to understand 1 word out of 10, and then 2 words out of 10, and even more as time progressed.  It was impossible to put together a coherent message to the words he was hearing, however, because simple words like “and” or “the” followed by 8 or 9 unfamiliar words or phrases didn’t make sense.

Eventually, the translation fully kicked in with an inaudible *click* in his mind, and he finally understood what he was hearing.

“…now we’ll have to go back to the beorgha empty-handed, all because you were wrong about that shipment.”

It wasn’t a perfect translation yet, as there was an unfamiliar word in there, but his mind retroactively translated it as some sort of leader.  Who or what kind of leader this was, though, was something he wasn’t sure of.

“And I told you, it’s not my fault!  The Syndicate must’ve offered its members a job guarding the shipment, which was something I couldn’t have known.”

“Well, you should’ve known, since you’re the one with all of the contacts in the DAS!”

It was fairly obvious to Milton that they were speaking about the wagon train he had seen earlier with the guards, though he had no idea what this “Syndicate” or “DAS” they had mentioned was.  It was also evident that they hadn’t wanted to simply say “hi” to the people moving this shipment, but were likely there to rob it; instead, they were going to have to go back to their leader empty-handed.

He looked at the others, who were looking at him expectantly.

“Uh… are you getting this translation?  I pushed it through to your NCUs.”

They all shook their heads, and Milton couldn’t help but shake his own.  Yet another thing that doesn’t work here.  He knew that Whisp was intelligent enough to eventually learn the language if given enough time, but without being able to push the translation “software” to her, it was going to take some effort.  Thankfully, his own translation abilities were unhampered, and he quickly passed on what he had heard.  When he was done with his conversation with them, they made to leave as quietly as they had come, when Milton realized something had changed in the conversation he was overhearing.

“Enough of this!  We’ve got some company listening in to you two changastas babbling.”

Uh-oh.

While he was in the middle of explaining what he overheard to his group, there was a sudden flurry of activity surrounding where they were all frozen in place, trying not to call attention to themselves.  Out of the trees, either from the upper branches or from around their trunks, at least 40 figures appeared from where they had been silently hiding.  He would’ve had a better count of their numbers if his sensor orbs weren’t acting up, but there really wasn’t much he could do about that at the moment.  All that mattered was that he and his group had been ambushed so completely that Milton could barely even think well enough to react; such a thing hadn’t happened to him in a long, long time.

My gaming instincts have really lapsed over the years, haven’t they?  He probably should’ve expected the ambush, but he wasn’t thinking clearly.

Half of those he saw, especially those up in the trees, were carrying bows, with their arrows locked into position and ready to fire with a quick pull of the string.  By contrast, those on the ground were wielding cheap-looking iron swords or long knives that looked very similar to machetes.  None of them had shields or much in the way of defensive wear, though they all wore a few pieces of ragged leather armor that had seen better days.  Overall, they didn’t look very formidable, though their numbers made him slightly worried.

“Let’s just see what kind of rabbits were caught in our little trap, shall we?”  The arrogant speaker walked out from behind another tree, and Milton recognized the voice as the one who had interrupted the two who had been arguing – and that it was very obviously a woman.  The arguing pair of men made an appearance behind the woman, both with angry expressions on their faces – though whether it was because they were still mad at each other or because they were mad at the presence of Milton and his group, he wasn’t sure.

The woman gave the impression that she was the leader of this particular band of thieves, if only because she was wearing a partial suit of armor that seemed to be shaped to fit her body – and all of its curves, especially the generous swell of her chest, which was either molded to fit her exact proportions or was heavily exaggerated.  Long, brown hair flowed down the sides and back of an open helmet that looked entirely unlike any helmet he had personally seen before, as it resembled a baseball cap with chainmail strips along the sides that covered the ears. Her brown eyes reflected amusement but also contained a hint of murderous intent to them; yet it was her sneer that turned her face from one that was marginally pretty to one that was instantly unattractive.

In contrast, the two arguing men were a bit more dressed down.  Both of them were better-clothed than the rest of the robbers that surrounded Milton and his group, as one of them had a set of near-pristine, dark-grey leather armor that covered him from head to toe and carried a much nicer-looking bow, while the other was wearing a black robe and held a yellowish staff… which appeared to be made of multiple leg bones that had been fused together.  Thankfully, those didn’t seem to be Human bones, but that still didn’t make its appearance any less strange.

It took Milton a few precious seconds to really comprehend what was going on, but he eventually recovered his composure and addressed the woman, who was slowly drawing a sword out of its sheath.  The longsword was about 4 feet long and was quite wide at about 10 inches, making it appear almost cartoonish in comparison to Micke’s Diamine sword, which was a little shorter and only a few inches wide.  It didn’t need to be huge, assuredly, as the Diamine made it extraordinarily strong and sharp, and it could cut through just about anything – especially with the force of a Physical Augmenter behind it.

“We were just passing through, we don’t want any trouble—”

“Trouble?  It’s no trouble at all, strange man.  I don’t know what you are, but we’re more than willing to let you go if you give us any PIBs you have, and of course all of your belongings.  My men could definitely use an upgrade to their armor, and one of them might even be able to use that puny sword your friend there is carrying.”  The smirk on the leader’s face never really wavered as she spoke, though Milton could detect a trace of confusion at the Proctans’ appearance.

Milton split his concentration between translating what was said to his group mates, while simultaneously trying to diffuse the situation.  “I apologize, but we cannot do that.  I think it would be best if you just let us go, and no one will get hurt.”  He wasn’t sure how powerful these people were, especially the leader and her two apparent lieutenants, but he would bet Micke against them any day of the week.  Of course, that didn’t mean that Milton, Brint, and Whisp would walk away unscathed, so he was trying to avoid the possibility that one of them might die – because that would be highly inconvenient.

The woman laughed, a harsh and grating sound that made him wince in response.  He saw Micke tense out of the corner of his eye, though the Proctan hadn’t moved quite yet.  Milton’s connection to him through his NCU, however, told the Station Core that he had used his Power to Boost all of his attributes, making him much stronger, faster, and better able to withstand injury.

And that was just the start of what Micke could do.

Meanwhile, under the pretense of comforting Whisp, Brint had used his Physical Boost – On Touch Suite to Boost the physical attributes of his wife, copying what Micke had done to himself, though with not quite the same amount of increase.  Then he did the same with himself, again not quite as much as Micke, but more than enough to make him much faster and stronger than normal.

Sadly, none of those would really work on Milton’s avatar, so he was the most vulnerable of them all.  He could still take a beating, as his synthetic body was fairly strong by itself, but one full slice of that woman’s sword, even if she didn’t have any enhanced strength, would be enough to cut him in half.

He just hoped that didn’t happen.

Chapter 5

“Oh, is that right?” the woman asked with a snide tone to her voice.  “You don’t want anyone to get hurt?  That’s a joke, right?  I don’t even sense an arsenfeubin on any of you, so you’re a bird that’s ripe for the plucking.  I don’t care what you think you can do, but you can’t escape from these two C-Rated,” the leader said, pointing toward her two lieutenants, “or a B-Rated like myself.”

The woman suddenly moved one step closer, shifting forward with impressive speed, before she lowered her voice and dropped her sneer.  “I’m giving you one last chance to escape with your lives.  Strip down and leave every stitch of clothing and everything of worth on the ground, and I’ll ensure no one harms you.  You’re lucky that I keep a tight rein on my men, because occasionally they deserve a taste of the more… exotic of our prisoners.”  The leader was looking right at Whisp at this, and Milton didn’t have to translate her words for both Whisp and Brint to understand the meaning behind the look.

“Sorry, everyone.  It doesn’t appear as though we’re going to be able to talk our way out of this.  We don’t know their capabilities, but I have faith that you’ll carry the day.  Be careful… and try to show mercy if some of them decide to flee.”

“Even these three?”  Micke didn’t have to point at the “three” that he was talking about, because it was obvious who he meant.

“No, I think not.  The others might have been pushed into a life of crime because of circumstance, but I think these three are making it a career.”

“Fair enough.  Leave the woman to me; it’ll be good to test myself against a worthy opponent,” Micke said with a hint of a smile on his face, and Milton passed on the instruction.  He didn’t get involved in the planning that he was sure was going through the Proctans’ heads at that moment, because they knew better what needed to be done than him.  All Milton was concerned about was not dying.

“You think this is funny, you purple freak?” the leader asked with heat, seeing the half-smile on Micke’s face.  Milton didn’t bother to translate.

“Fine, you’ve chosen your fate,” she said after a moment’s silence.  In an audible aside to her lieutenants, she instructed them to, “Leave the big one to me, but kill the rest.  Try not to damage their armor too much.”

Then, without any warning, the armored woman with the obscenely wide sword rushed toward Micke and was on him in an instant.  Milton was momentarily shocked to see a red-colored energy emerge from the back of her like some sort of light trail, but then he remembered that he hadn’t turned off his filter for the energy that permeated the environment.

What was that—?

Milton didn’t really get a chance to consider it any more than that as he watched Micke quickly whip his shield off his back and hold it up to deflect the woman’s longsword, which slammed into it with such force that it rang like a bell.  The sword rebounded off the defense, and the bandits’ leader was barely able to hold onto it as it was sent backwards, a look of shock on her face.  Milton could tell from the speed and the sound it made against Micke’s shield that if it had hit his synthetic avatar, it would’ve split him in two with barely a thought of resistance.  Against the strength of the armored Proctan, however, it didn’t even make him shift in the slightest; not only that, but if it did more than leave a very small dent in Micke’s shield, he would be very surprised.

Milton didn’t have any other time to watch that fight as an arrow slammed into his shoulder and spun him around, and he landed in a heap in the undergrowth next to the nearest tree.  It didn’t exactly hurt him, though it wasn’t pleasant having an arrow shaft sticking out of his synthetic body; looking through his systems, he was thankful that it hadn’t hit anything vital.  Then again, he would have to be completely blown apart, burnt to ash, or his vital systems utterly destroyed before his avatar would cease to work.  Anything short of that could be repaired by the nanites all through his body’s systems, though it would take a while.

Staying down in the undergrowth so as to present less of a target, and with the hope that the robbers would think him dead, he watched the fight play out with his group mates.  Whisp had decided to face off against the 40-odd thieves in the trees and on the ground, and she used her Object Animation ability to wreak havoc on them.  Their weapons suddenly turned on them. Either their swords suddenly twisted around and stabbed them in their chests through their ragged armor, or those with bows had the strings suddenly snap and then wrap around their necks, choking them out.  A few of them – including the archer who had pierced Milton’s shoulder – were able to fire at Whisp, but their arrows hit her and bounced off after only penetrating the outer layers of her skin.  Her Constitution had been Boosted high enough by Brint that other than a few bleeding marks, she wasn’t hurt; of course, if they’d had better aim and had been able to shoot her through the eye, for instance, they might have killed her.  As it was, none of them got anywhere close.

A few of the swordsmen were able to close in with her while she was dealing with the others, but she was able to blast them away with a strike of a match and an explosion of flames, thanks to her Fire Manipulation ability.  Some of them were burnt enough not to get up after being blasted away, but the others got up and ran away, not wanting to tangle with someone that could do something as devastating as that.  A few of the archers in the trees managed to free themselves from the strings choking them by cutting them with a knife attached to their belts. But their struggles typically led to them unbalancing from their perches, and most of them plummeted to the ground.  Those who survived, Whisp allowed to flee, since they weren’t really a threat with no bow with which to shoot anymore.

As for Brint, while he didn’t have a weapon with him, that didn’t mean he wasn’t formidable with just his fists.  The lieutenant wearing the grey leathers shot the Proctan with an arrow that seemed to light up with a blue fire, streaking across the short distance, but Brint was fast enough to intercept it with his fist, punching it aside, where it flew off and impacted a tree, exploding upon impact.  The look on the man’s face was almost comical as he tried it again, but Brint just did the same thing, knocking it aside – though this time it exploded near Milton, sending a few shards of tree bark into his lower legs.  While it wasn’t enough to seriously hurt him, it would make walking a little more difficult until Milton was all fixed up.

Having blocked two shots, Brint didn’t appear to want to have to mess with arrows anymore, so he quickly ran with his Boosted speed toward the man in grey, who dodged the Proctan’s attack at the last moment with his own quick movement.  As Brint moved to follow the Human in grey, a cloud of black smoke suddenly appeared around him, obscuring him from sight.  Milton could see the other lieutenant in his black robe gesturing with his bone staff in that direction with a dark energy flowing out of him, so he could only assume that it was that lieutenant who was causing the black smoke – but what it was doing to Brint was unanswered.

The man in grey ran back toward where Brint had disappeared, slinging his bow along his back and drawing two long knives from where they had been stashed behind his waist.

“Put him down quickly, the boss is in trouble,” the black-robed man said, glancing at the fight between Micke and the bandit leader.

The one he was talking to stopped just outside of the black cloud and stabbed both knives right where Brint was likely to be, but he stumbled forward when he met no resistance.  The barest part of his hands touched the black cloud, and he screamed in pain; it was only a brief touch, but even from where Milton was lying in the undergrowth, he could see black spots all over the man’s bare hands where they held the knives.  The analytical part of his mind thought he saw those spots eating away at his skin, like some sort of necrotic damage, and he worried about Brint; his worry was unfounded, however, as a foot came kicking out of the cloud to impact the screaming man underneath the chin.  The impact was so powerful that the Station Core heard the robber’s neck snap with a horrendous *crack*, before he flopped down to the forest floor in a heap.

“NO!  Harbin!” the other lieutenant screamed, and the black cloud disappeared, revealing Brint inside using his Self-Levitation.  As far as his skin went, it was a little darkened in splotches, but even those were quickly healed as the Proctan’s natural regeneration took effect, the nanites inside of his body a perfect counter against something designed to age and decay flesh.  The Proctans, thanks to those same nanites, were essentially immortal because all the cells in their bodies were constantly being replaced with new ones, meaning they wouldn’t ever age unless the nanites were specifically programmed to allow that.  They could be killed, of course, but then they would simply be brought back in essentially the same state through the Bioconversion Labs.  “You’ll pay for that!”

Another burst of dark energy flowed out from the black-robed man, aiming toward Brint, and Milton sent him a warning.  That energy never actually reached the floating Proctan, however, as it turned downward, slamming into the corpse of the dead lieutenant.  A second later, the body started to stir, and for a moment Milton thought that the thief had been healed or resurrected, but the swirling energy around the corpse told him something different.  While the body got to its feet, the dead look in its eyes and its facial expression were plain enough for Milton.

It was an animated undead.  The man with the bone staff was a necromancer.

That necromancer wasn’t done, either, as he shot out more of his dark energy at the bodies of the weaker bandits Whisp had killed, and within seconds they were up and walking around.  Milton half-expected them to start moaning, “Braaaiinss…”, but they moved silently, and nearly as quickly as they had while they lived.  As one final act, the black-robed man cast another dark-charged spell, creating a rotating circle of skeletal-looking swords around him, protecting him from anyone that might get close.

Whisp was already busy trying to re-kill those that had been animated, using different elemental manipulations to do some serious damage to them.  Blades made of air chopped off limbs or heads, dirt was ripped up from the forest floor and covered bodies before hardening, and piercing beams of the light filtering through the trees shot through them with impunity.  It was the latter that did the most damage, it would seem, as even if one of the undead was pierced through a leg or arm, it would immediately collapse in place, the dark energy dispersed by the light.

Brint was back on the defensive now, though, as the undead lieutenant immediately went after him, picking up its knives as it jumped to reach the levitating Proctan.  Canceling the ability, the man in grey shot over Brint’s head, before somehow stopping in the middle of the air and reversing his angle of attack.  It was only through a quick maneuver that the Proctan managed not to get backstabbed, though he did end up with a nasty cut on his lower forearm that glowed with green energy for a moment.  Poison?  Whether or not it was poison in the knife wound was irrelevant; the nanites, once again, were the heroes, as they could neutralize any poison within seconds.

Apparently their neutralization even worked on magical poison, because Brint wasn’t hindered in the slightest as he slammed his fist into the chest of the undead man that had just attacked him, blowing a hole in the animated corpse’s chest.  Even that didn’t stop the unnatural creation other than knocking him back a few steps; and when it recovered, it went for the Proctan once again.  Fortunately, Brint was already moving, as he ducked under an energy-infused cross-strike made by the walking corpse, punching one leg and then the other, cracking the bones underneath the still-warm skin.  The body of the lieutenant collapsed in place, its legs unable to hold it up any longer, but a wild swing when it went down carved a line down Brint’s face.  Blinded by blood, the Proctan stepped backwards even as his wounds started to close up, and he looked for a way to finish off the persistent undead.

“Micke!  I know that is probably fun, but stop playing with her.  Brint and Whisp need your help!”

With a short grunt of acknowledgment, the Proctan smiled as he looked at the woman, who blanched and stepped backwards at his look.  They had been trading blows back and forth with incredible speed the entire time everyone else was fighting, though Milton saw Micke holding back in terms of his own speed and strength, and thus far, he’d only made glancing blows with the flat of his sword rather than with its super-sharp edge.  The Station Core could see that the bandit woman knew it, too, as she was starting to get a nervous look to her face, which completely overwrote the arrogance that had filled it earlier.

“How?!  Are you A or S-Rated?”  The Ratings she was talking about were intriguing to Milton, but he didn’t get a chance to ask her because the next moment, her head went flying as Micke sped up and finally attacked with purpose.  Before the head even hit the ground, the powerful Proctan was already near the necromancer, letting the skeletal swords impact his armor with very little effect as he split the man in two, starting from the crotch.  It was a horrible way to go, but at least it was over quickly.

As the two halves of the black-robed man collapsed and then fell to opposite sides, the skeletal swords disappeared, followed quickly by the animated undead stopping in place and then falling to the forest floor in heaps of flesh and bones.

Congratulations!  Your Combat Units have defeated Unknown Bandit x32!  You gain (32x1) 32 combat experience!

Congratulations!  Your Combat Units have defeated Unknown Bandit Lieutenant x1!  You gain (1x25) 25 combat experience!

Congratulations!  Your Combat Units have defeated Harbin x1!  You gain (1x25) 25 combat experience!

Congratulations!  Your Combat Units have defeated Unknown Bandit Leader x1!  You gain (1x50) 50 combat experience!

You have unlocked an achievement:

Killing Your Own Kind

Kill any Human

Bonus: +5 to Communication/Charisma

Great.  Not an achievement I’m particularly fond of.

“Well, that was interesting,” Milton said as he picked himself up out of the undergrowth and finally yanked the arrow out of his shoulder.  Thankfully, he didn’t exactly bleed like a person, and only a yellowish goo slowly leaked out, but it wouldn’t be long until his nanites rapidly patched him up.  “Not exactly the warm welcome I was hoping for, but at least I know the language now?” he joked, and this time his friends actually chuckled a little.  At least Micke and Brint did, as Whisp appeared a little sick from all of the slaughter.  While their victims weren’t Proctans, they were close enough that it probably felt like she was killing other people like her, who wouldn’t be resurrected by a Bioconversion Lab.

Milton needed a little of the levity, because he was finding it hard to reconcile what had just happened.  It wasn’t the death of these bandits that bothered him, exactly, but that they were Human.  His first face-to-face meeting with other Humans since he had become a Station Core, and most of them ended up dead. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it, to be truthful with himself, but he knew that there really wasn’t any other outcome – other than letting them kill Micke, Whisp, and Brint and destroy his avatar.  That was always a possibility, but he wasn’t going to just let them get away with that without repercussions.

So, instead, he killed them.  Or more accurately, his “Combat Units” killed them, but that was basically the same thing.  He had an internal debate about whether what they did was right for about 5 seconds, which was an extremely long time with his quick mind, but eventually he determined that it really didn’t matter now.  It was done, and if he really felt bad about killing them, he could always bring them back at some point when the Bio Lab was up and running.

On the good side, nonetheless, they had just acquired some resources – including more than enough for a meal.  They wouldn’t technically be eating people, but when they were chopped up and sent through the Molecular Converter, the Bio Mass they were turned into could be used to create meat of just about any kind.  Not only that, but he could technically make small Combat Units with that Bio Mass and the Converter, though that wasn’t something he thought they needed right now, considering that they would be going into town soon.  Regardless, the option was now available.

Milton mentally reached out to Fendle back in the camp they had left behind, though he found it more difficult than he imagined.  It seemed as though proximity helped with communicating to their NCUs, which was a problem he hadn’t encountered since he was a new Station Core and his range hadn’t been very far.

Regardless, he had the entire extra group come to them, bringing the Converter and drone with them.  While they waited, there was something to do that was a bit gruesome but would be rewarding in its own right.

They had defeated the enemies, but now they had to loot them.  It was one of his favorite parts of RPG games back when he was on Earth, though in real life it was a bit messier than he would’ve liked.

Nevertheless, it needed to be done.

Chapter 6

Thankfully, other than the black-robed necromancer, the looting of the bodies wasn’t that bad – and it was very profitable, in terms of the items they found.  First and foremost, the metal in the basic bandits’ swords and knives, while basically trash as far as quality was concerned, would be enough to provide him with more than 500 Basic Metal Units added to his available resources.  The sword and armor on the leader’s corpse, on the other hand, was of a much better quality, and he estimated it would provide at least 5 times the amount of BMUs in comparison to all 30+ basic bandits.  All told, when all the weapons and metal armor were stripped from the bodies, including the lieutenants’, there was nearly 4,000 BMUs worth of metal.

Unfortunately, it was a small drop in the bucket of what they needed to repair the shuttle and the Bioconversion Lab on board.  But at least it was a measure of progress.

Each of the weaker bandits had a few small, round coins found on them in various pockets, which appeared to be mainly copper with a few larger silver pieces scattered in.  A few had what appeared to be a meat jerky and hardtack of some kind in a leather pouch at their waist, but half of it was moldy or partially eaten – not something they wanted to partake in.  Into the Converter it would go, to be made into something better.

Unexpectedly, the biggest surprise was the discovery of three unique pouches, one each on the two lieutenant bandits and on the leader.  These unique bags, larger than the pouches found on the basic bandits, were different, as they didn’t have an interior that the looters could see into.  Instead, looking inside of each bag was like peering into a void, as if there was nothing inside of them.

That wasn’t the case, however, because as soon as Micke cautiously pushed his hand inside of the leader’s bag, his hand was immediately pushed back out as a flood of items came pouring out.  The armored Proctan dropped the bag on the ground, but that didn’t stop almost a dozen shoddy weapons, a few suits of ragged leather armor, hunks of cheese, loaves of bread, chunks of meat jerky, and a large number of coins from spilling out of the opening, which appeared entirely too small to fit all of those things through it.  Once it was done, everyone looked down at the pile of stuff, and Milton couldn’t help but be amazed at how much had fit in the small bag, which he could only assume was some sort of magic “bag of holding” or some such item.  He was curious how it worked, because while his Molecular Converters essentially stored all of the resources in a limitless but fully contained pocket space (or so he understood), that was done with technology, not magic like this bag.

The other bags once held by the lieutenant bandits also held a few weapons and armor pieces, with a little more food and coinage, but not nearly in the same amount as the leader’s bag.  Milton could only assume that the weapons and armor were for new recruits, and the food was to feed the entire bandit band.  The coins, most likely, had been stolen from someone at one point or another, so he didn’t feel bad about acquiring them for their personal use.  They needed to be able to trade for more resources, after all, and having local currency was a good start.

He debated mass-producing the coins with his Converter, especially as he now had representations of a few gold coins the leader had in her miraculous bag, but he held off for now.  He figured that he would feed one of each type of coin to his Converter once it arrived, though, in case he decided to do so in the future.

They were just barely finishing up by the time the others arrived, and they helped the drone with the process of feeding every trace of the bandits to the portable Molecular Converter. As the first full basic bandit was fully consumed by the machine, Milton received an update to his Combat Unit options; for the first time, “Human” was added to the long list, which also meant that he could theoretically create a Human synthetic body for himself in the future.  It was something that he had hoped for since learning that he could create and inhabit a separate body apart from his Core, and he couldn’t wait to try it out.

It wasn’t until the body of one of the lieutenants was fed into the Converter that he received another notification, this one as confusing as it was welcome.

New Discovery!

After analyzing the unusual DNA of one of the sapient subjects of this planet, you have discovered an unknown genetic mutation unique to this dimension.  At the current level of your bio-dimensional knowledge, this mutation is theoretically compatible with any species from your own dimension, though its application is unknown.

New option available for Gene Mutations:

- World Energy System Access (Dungeon World dimension)

Congratulations!

You have upgraded the skill: Bio-dimensional Knowledge (Level 2)

Bio-dimensional Knowledge allows for the application of genetic mutations upon subjects of different dimensions.  Higher levels improve the compatibility of genetic mutations originating from different dimensions.

While he was glad to have improved his Bio-dimensional Knowledge, Milton wasn’t exactly sure what this “World Energy System Access” was, and it seemed as though the notification didn’t know, either.  It wasn’t exactly as clear-cut as his other genetic mutations, though he could make some guesses as to its purpose; the energy of this world seemed to be used just like the elemental energy on Sandra’s planet by the residents there, or perhaps similar to the Mana that the Dungeon Core utilized.

Regardless, it wasn’t something he wanted to play with quite yet, because it couldn’t help him down on the planet.  Up on the Station, of course, he could experiment, but until he knew more about how everything worked, and some of the “unknowns” were figured out, he didn’t want to take the risk.  For all he knew, creating the genetic mutation in one of his Combat Units could somehow extend the strange energy surrounding the world up into Haven Station, shutting all of its systems down and subsequently causing it to crash into the planet.  As much as it would probably further advance his Inter-dimensional Gene-ius quest, it wasn’t worth the risk.

Current Long-term Goal: Inter-dimensional Gene-ius

- Acquire additional samples of current-dimension DNA – 168,451/?

- Acquire additional samples of foreign-dimension DNA – 35/?

- Apply 1 dimension-specific gene to a different species – 1/1 – Complete!

- Apply 2 or more dimension-specific genes to a different species – 0/1

Difficulty of Goal: Hard

Timeframe: Unknown

Rewards: Additional Bio-dimensional Knowledge, +10 to Ingenuity/Wisdom, +5 to Insight/Luck

Milton was also amused to see that this dimension was named similarly to what he had jokingly called the “Dungeon World” when he first saw the planet from orbit, but he supposed it fit well enough.  If there were millions of dungeons in this world, then it was probably the perfect name for it.

“What now?” Fendle asked, once they had cleaned up the entire battle site.

“Our plans haven’t changed, though I suppose you could probably make this your new campsite while we go and investigate the town,” Milton said, after seeing that Whisp, Brint, Micke, and himself were all patched up and ready to go.  “But at least you have something you can eat now, thanks to all of our new resources.”

In addition to obtaining more Bio Mass in the form of the bandits’ bodies, Milton had also instructed the drone to cut down a few trees, and it then fed them into the Converter, giving them some much-needed Organic Material, along with a small amount of Pure Water.  The water wasn’t nearly enough to sustain all of them for more than a meal, but hopefully they would be able to find a stream or some other water source within the next few hours to tap into.  If worse came to worst, Pilora had the Atmokinesis ability, which allowed her to manipulate the atmospheric conditions (aka weather) in a limited area, so she could condense the moisture in the air to create a small rainstorm that would provide some additional water.

After his smaller group got their own food to take with them as they walked, they left the larger group of Proctans behind, while he checked his Available Resources.[3]  It wasn’t much, but the 6,127 BMUs from all the weapons and armor they had scavenged and the over 30,000 Biological Mass from the bodies of the bandits would help them in the long run.  Although it was still a long way until they reached their goal, that was hopefully something that they would be tackling next.

It was time to head into town, which Milton hoped would go a lot more smoothly than their first encounter had gone.

Covering the distance to the dirt road they had seen before didn’t take that long, which was probably why the thieves hiding in the trees were there in the first place – proximity to their targets.  While they hadn’t seen any evidence of a permanent encampment where they had fought their battle with the bandits, there were a few signs that it had been used – likely as a staging area – in the past.

Soon enough, they were on the wide, winding pathway through the trees, heading in the direction of the town they had seen before.  There were ruts in the road, courtesy of the wagon wheels he had seen making their way along it, but they weren’t very deep; he could only assume that they weren’t transporting anything heavy, or else the road was better made than he thought.  There were also hoofprints and footprints that clearly showed the passage of the horses and guards, though he couldn’t really tell much more about them.  Despite all of his vast, computer-based knowledge, he wasn’t exactly a tracker.

“So, needless to say, let me do all of the talking,” Milton told his group as they walked along at a steady, ground-eating pace.

“Are you sure?  That didn’t work out so well last time,” Brint joked, which prompted the others to chuckle at the Station Core’s expense.

“Ha, ha.  That was a completely different circumstance than what we’re walking into, as you can probably imagine.  Soon enough, I’m hoping that Whisp will be able to quickly learn the language and take over conversations with the natives, because she’s much better at it than I am.”

“Very true,” Micke said, with a smirk.

Milton ignored him, because they were turning around one more bend in the road, and there was the clearing in front of them, complete with the fields, the farms, and the town in the center.  There was another opening on this side of the walls. Unlike the one he had first seen from the northeast, the wooden doors were still attached, though they were pushed up against the walls on either side of the gate.  Even from their current distance, his avatar was able to make out dozens of people moving around inside of the town, including what appeared to be the guards from the earlier wagon train, or ones like them.

There was a single gate guard on this opening as well, though he appeared more alert than his comrade on the northeastern gate.  Based on its location, he realized that the other opening was probably for the farmers or others involved in working the land, as it wasn’t a major thoroughfare into the town.

Milton felt a little nervousness as they passed into the clearing, where they were stared at by some of the farmers working the fields leading up to town.  The feeling was strange, as if he didn’t want to let his first interaction with the Humans of this world go wrong – because his confrontation with the bandits didn’t really count in his mind.

As they got closer to the town, his view of the walls only confirmed what he had seen from a distance.  The stonework was impressive at one time, probably when it had been initially built, but it had barely been maintained in the recent past.  It was almost as if they had given up on its maintenance for some reason, either because of laziness, lack of funds or labor, or some other reason he was unaware of.  Regardless, it was still a formidable barrier despite its disrepair, especially for a town of this size.

The nervousness in his mind didn’t really go away until they were being stopped by the guard at the gate, when he was forced to become all business.

“Haven’t seen you around here before, stranger.  Who or what are you, and what are you doing in Deftner’s End?”  The guard’s voice had a slightly different accent than what the bandits possessed, but it was still understood well enough.  The older, Human guard was holding a simple steel spear with a wooden haft while wearing a serviceable set of leather chest armor dyed dark blue, with a strange, white symbol embroidered on it that contained three triangles arranged in a way that each of them was touching the other at two points, creating a fourth triangle in the void between them.  To Milton, it reminded him of something from a video game, but before he could delve too deeply into what it was, he knew he had to respond to the guard.

His answer was as succinct and non-threatening as possible, while at the same time, he hoped to elicit some information without seeming too ignorant.

“We’re from a long, long way from here, and we’re interested in acquiring some supplies.  Also, is there any method you can suggest that would be a good way to acquire metal?”

He thought that the explanation was simple enough, and the question innocent enough, but he was wrong.

“I’ve heard the ‘long, long way from here’ excuse before, and it didn’t work for those bandits, either,” the guard said threateningly, dropping his spear down and pointing it right at Milton, who was only a few feet from the tip of the spear.  “And you’re in the wrong part of the world to be looking for large quantities of metal, friend, so I think you should just—”

“What’s going on here, Halpern?” said a voice from behind the guard.  Looking over the Human’s shoulder, Milton saw a man dressed similarly to the bandit leader, as far as armor went, but there was a friendly smile on his face that the woman had lacked.  Yet, underneath his pleasant demeanor, there was a hint of steely authority that brooked no nonsense.  While the Station Core wasn’t sure how powerful this new man was, his first impression was that this man could probably give Micke a good workout.  He was fairly certain that the Proctan would still win, but it wouldn’t be as humiliatingly easy as it was against the bandit.

The guard whipped around at the voice at his back, and bowed low, which told Milton that his judgment about this person having authority was correct.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there, Maxis, sir.”

“You know there’s no need for that, Halpern.  Now, tell me why you were stopping these good… people?”  Maxis looked at Milton and the other Proctans with a curious expression on his face.

“Well, sir, they had a flimsy excuse and didn’t seem to know that this is one of the last places they should be looking for large amounts of metal, because of the—”

“Oh, there’s no need to go into that, my friend, but I can understand your hesitancy,” the well-armored man said, cutting off the guard.  Milton looked at the others to see if they had caught the exchange, but then he remembered they had no idea what was being said.  He mentally relayed the most important parts of the conversation to them, though he could instinctually tell that Whisp was already starting to pick up a few words here and there.

“But—”

“I’ll take it from here, Halpern.”

“Yes, sir.”

The armored man waved for them to enter, already walking further into town without waiting for them.  Milton just shrugged and told the others to follow behind, as they entered, confused and wary of what was going on with this place.

What have I gotten us into?

Chapter 7

“I’m going to assume that you’ve never been to Deftner’s End before,” the powerful man named Maxis asked them, friendly enough-sounding, but Milton could tell that the question was meant to start digging into who exactly they were.  Not only that, but there was a flash of bright white energy that seemed to emerge from Maxis that appeared to swirl around the synthetic avatar, though what exactly it was supposed to be doing, he had no idea.  Whatever it was didn’t seem to harm him, at least; nor did he experience anything abnormal.

“No, no we haven’t.  This is our first visit.”

“Visit, huh?  We don’t get many visitors here, lately.  So, what brings you here?”

Milton told him the same thing he told the gate guard, about needing supplies, but there was a flash in the light surrounding his body.  He didn’t think it was in response to what he said, but as it seemed to sink into his head, he thought it might be trying to prod him into saying more.  Is that what he’s doing?  Trying to get the truth out of me?  Having seen some of what the people of this world could do, including necromancy, he didn’t think it was out of the realm of possibility.

Thankfully, not being a “real” body and mind, it affected him not in the least.  If the man tried it against the others, well, they didn’t exactly speak the same language.

“What kind of supplies are you looking for?  You may have heard earlier, but we’re a little short of a few things out this way.”

“Metal of any kind, mostly.  We’re willing to purchase it, if that is possible.”  They had a fairly good store of coins now, which Micke had secreted under his armor.

Maxis shook his head sadly, stopping on their way deeper into the town, which Milton could see looked exactly the way he had seen it from a distance.  It was a little dirtier than he expected, but the inside of the town appeared more kept up than the walls, though there were still a few crumbling spots of stone here and there.  But anything made of wood was almost pristine in comparison, probably because all they had to do to get more was cut down a few trees surrounding the clearing.

“I’m sorry, metal is a bit scarce right now, as are any large quantities of stone.  What little we can harvest from the surrounding dungeons is already spoken for, especially since we have very few higher-rated DAS members here.  Besides, Plant dungeons are notoriously stingy on any loot that those Earth dungeons tend to specialize in, so what we tend to find is sub-par.”

Milton was trying to comprehend everything he had just been told, and it took him a second or two before he responded.  “Um, forgive me for my ignorance, but why are metal and stone scarce only right now?”

They continued walking down the street, coming upon a large building, one of the largest in the entire town if he was correct.  There was a lot of activity around it, in comparison to the rest of the town they had just walked through – which was remarkably empty of people, other than those he had spied staring out their window at the group as they passed by – and Milton could immediately see why.  The wagon train they had seen earlier was being unloaded and brought across to a different building opposite the larger one, and Milton could immediately see that the goods they carried were heavy, though scarce.  Blocks of stone and bars of what appeared to be iron were carefully sent to their destination, carried by the guards that had been tasked with protecting the convoy.  Each wagon didn’t seem to have much in it, though some of what they carried could’ve been unloaded before Milton and his group arrived.

They handled the stone and iron bars as if they were gold, however, and not relatively common resources.

“I feel as though I can trust you, my friend, as you’ve been nothing but truthful so far,” Maxis said, stopping where they had a full view of the unloading process.  Milton supposed that was true, though he was omitting a lot.  “This shipment full of iron and stone has been the first one to arrive in nearly 2 years, and that has to do with the fact that it was guarded by higher-Rated DAS members than usual.  Bandits have never been a major problem before, but now that a beorgha has somehow taken over the nearby bandit factions, they’ve been hitting our shipments whenever they go out.  As Deftner’s End is one of the last stops for these materials, being so far from the mountains to the west, we’re left with almost nothing.”

There was that word again.  “I’m sorry, I’m not sure what a beorgha is; I’m not exactly from around here.”

Maxis looked at him funnily, as if Milton had just asked what a horse was.  “How—?  No matter, things must be a lot more pleasant where you’re from.”  He sighed heavily, before explaining.  “A beorgha is an S-Rated Adventurer who has somehow figured out how to circumvent the Mana expulsion process inside of their bodies, though the process has warped their minds to the point where they aren’t quite… Human anymore.  At the same time, their strength seems to have multiplied ten-fold, which makes them more than a little dangerous; we’ve had to hunt and put down a handful of them over the last few years, before they managed to go berserk and kill thousands of people.

“This one, uniquely, seems to have retained a hold on its mind enough that it was able to band the thieves together, preying on trade like never before.  We haven’t been able to locate their hideout, if there even is one, and the Syndicate is spread thin due to losses in trying to find them.  This delivery, nevertheless, is a good sign that things might be turning around.”

Milton’s mind eventually translated beorgha into “Warped Lord”, which he thought was fitting, based on what he had heard.  Naturally, he had numerous questions about the other things mentioned, but he thought that now wasn’t the time for them.  Maxis was already moving toward the large building nearby the wagon, and Milton and the others hurried to follow; at the same time, he was mentally filling in the Proctans about what he had learned.

“I think that means that we’re out of luck here.  It would probably serve us better to head west, toward the mountains, and mine what we need from the environment there,” Whisp said in response.  Milton couldn’t help but agree, but he wanted to see if there was any more that he could learn before they made the trek out that way.  Mainly because a quick conversation with ALANNA back on the Station told him that the mountains were hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away.  It was impossible for her to pinpoint his exact location in the great forest down below, but based on their last visible sight of the shuttle, they indeed were on the wrong side of the trees to get there easily.  He was also updated with the unhelpful news that they hadn’t yet found a solution to getting supplies to him from orbit, but he hoped it was only a matter of time.

“Are you part of the DAS where you come from?” Maxis asked as soon as they passed through the saloon-type doors leading into the building.  Inside appeared to be a well-lit common room, filled with glowing magical lights that appeared attached to the walls.  Dozens of tables and accompanying chairs were spread throughout the room, though only a few were occupied by random individuals, who were dressed in ways that looked like they were right out of a fantasy-type video game.  Along the back side of the room was a very long bar that served drinks, which the few people in the room seemed to be nursing, and along the left-hand side of the room was a counter with dividers creating different access points, which reminded Milton of a bank, though there was only a single “teller” waiting there with a bored expression on her face.  Along the right-hand side of the room were stairs leading up to the other floors, where Milton could only assume was where people could stay.

“Uh, no, we’re not.  Is that required?”

“No, not necessarily, but we could always use some more help.  I asked because I didn’t see any SDIAs, but you’re quite… different, so I thought that they might be somewhere else on your body than your hands.”

Milton looked at the small bump on the back of Maxis’ right hand, which was obvious now that it had been pointed out.  He recalled seeing the same thing on the bandit leader and her lieutenants, but hadn’t put 2 and 2 together.  If my sensor Orbs had been working, they probably would’ve seen them before I had to have them pointed out to me.  Then again, if they were working, we probably wouldn’t have been in that mess in the first place.

“Let’s just say that we’re a little backwards in my land, and we don’t know much about the DAS or these SDIAs.  How do we go about acquiring them?”

Maxis pointed them to a table, where they sat down in the remarkably comfortable wooden chairs, but then the powerful Human looked at him suspiciously.  “You don’t know about the Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate?  Sub-dermal Interface Artifacts?  The next thing you’ll probably say is that you don’t know about Soulstones, Mana, Essence, and Power!” he chuckled, but when no one joined in, he stopped and looked concerned.

“You seriously don’t know—?  I didn’t think that was possible, as everyone knows about Soulstones! You know, the only thing that allows us to regain Power and delve through dungeons without them killing us all?”  The blank expressions on their faces told it all.  Of course, most of them couldn’t understand what Maxis was saying, so it wasn’t that surprising to Milton.

“No, we are completely ignorant of everything you just mentioned,” the Station Core informed their host, who was now looking completely baffled.  “Like I said, we’re from very far away, from a place where there are very, very few dungeons.”  Technically true, since my dungeon was the only one on Proctus.  “But that doesn’t mean we can’t defend ourselves.  For instance, on the way here we were attacked by bandits, and we sadly had to kill many of them before they ran away.”

He wasn’t sure why he mentioned that, but he wanted to assure this man that just because they hadn’t heard of the Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate, that didn’t mean they were helpless.  But if they learned more about these Artifacts, then perhaps they could better adapt to this world and speed up the process of repairing their shuttle.

“Oh, really?”  Maxis looked shocked.  “They must have been weak, because otherwise they probably would’ve tried to hit the wagons.”

“Well, actually….” Milton hesitated.  Do I want to reveal how powerful the Proctans are?  “Sure, yes, they were quite easy.  Just a dozen or so with flimsy bows and rusty iron swords.”

“Iron swords?  We’d be willing to buy them from you if you’re selling—oh, but you said you needed them, as well.  But you didn’t mention why you needed them, did you?  Why do you need a lot of metal?”  Another bright white light surrounded Milton, originating from Maxis; yet again, Milton felt no compulsion to speak about anything in particular.

But he still needed to answer something.  “We need it to fix our ship, actually.  We need to get back to our homeland, and our vessel was damaged.”  That was the truth, and it didn’t reveal in the slightest that they were from another dimension, had arrived on a giant space station, and had descended down to the planet in a shuttle to look for inter-dimensional beings that wanted to dominate this dimension, starting with the destruction of this planet after an anchor sucked it dry of energy to maintain the dimensional aperture.  That probably would’ve been a much longer explanation, and not one he wanted to have with anyone on this world, at least not until they were able to locate the source of the problem.

No reason to panic the entire population, when the anchor could be just about anywhere on the massive planet.

Maxis nodded, seemingly pleased with the answer.  “Sounds reasonable enough.”  He paused for a moment before he continued, smacking his hand against his forehead in what seemed to be a universal Human sign of being forgetful, which amused Milton a little.  “Where are my manners?  I haven’t properly introduced myself.  I’m Maxis, the DAS leader here in Deftner’s End, and I’m a high A-Rated Adventurer – which basically means I’m pretty powerful,” he said, winking at them all, but especially Whisp.  They just stared blankly back at him, though Milton nodded along.

“It is nice to officially meet you, Maxis.  I apologize for my companions’ lack of reaction, but they are still trying to learn your language and may not be able to understand much.  I, myself, have adapted a little quicker to the new verbal communication, which is immensely helpful.

“As for myself, I go by Milton, and my friends here are Micke, Brint, and Whisp,” he said, pointing to each of them as he said their names.  “I also have a few more companions out in the forest, who camped away from town after the long journey.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you as well, Milton.  Now, you were asking about the DAS and SDIAs?  I think I can help you there.”  Maxis pulled up a chair and started to explain everything in simple detail, hitting on all the salient points.

“First of all, the Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate was founded to….”

Milton leaned forward and listened intently, knowing that it would be important to understand what it was all about.

Chapter 8

From what Milton understood from Maxis’ instruction, the Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate was responsible for regulating Adventurers all around the world, posting jobs on the job board – which was pointed out to Milton near the bank teller counter – and assessing dungeons’ strength and dangers.  They worked similarly to the Guardian Guild back on Proctus, and even the CAMP Guild on Sandra’s planet, though this one was much more far-reaching and seemed to envelop the entire world.  Such a far-flung organization was hard to believe on a planet of this size, but Maxis didn’t seem to have any doubts that it covered the entire planet – apart from Milton’s “homeland”, apparently.  He also got the impression that there were only Humans on this world, which was why the Proctans’ appearance was so abnormal.

The Syndicate also provided the Pocket Interface Bags to its members, which were the bags of holding they had acquired from the bandits.  That also hinted that the leader and her lieutenants were likely originally part of the Syndicate, but for some reason they had joined the bands of bandits.  This was proven to be even more likely when Maxis described the Sub-dermal Interface Artifacts, or SDIAs, which allowed those in the Syndicate to access a system that sounded remarkably like a status screen, and it also helped them to access and utilize Essence from slain monsters.  Comparing what he learned about Essence with prior knowledge of video games, he could only figure it was something like Experience or XP that could be directed toward different abilities or stats, such as Power, which was similar to the Power that the Proctans could use.

A very intriguing concept.

However, a few decades ago, as far as Milton could decipher, there had been a major shift in the world.  Power would no longer automatically regenerate, and Essence gained from slain monsters was non-existent.  That was until some sort of entity created and delivered masses of Soulstones, which interacted directly with the SDIAs, which turned the regeneration of Power back on, along with the acquisition of Essence.  However, it also added another obstacle to their development: Mana.

This Mana would slowly accumulate in their bodies --- harmlessly at first, but after it passed a certain threshold, it would grow strong enough to literally explode out of their chests.  Milton could only picture an “Alien-esque” monster popping out of a chest cavity, but apparently it was more like a small bomb would go off, killing the person immediately.

The only way to discharge this Mana was to delve through a dungeon, kill as many monsters as possible, and then touch a Dungeon Core to transfer that Mana to the Core.  This expulsion of Mana from the body acted as a sort of “payment” to the dungeons, so it wasn’t just for the Adventurers’ benefit.  It sounded very strange to Milton, and he knew it would to Sandra as well, because he was used to thinking of Dungeon Cores wanting to stay out of reach of the invaders that delved through their dungeons.  At a casual mention from Maxis that Cores were basically indestructible, however, he could see that there wasn’t much danger to the Cores in that case.

The explanation also helped him to understand a little more about these “Warped Lords” that the DAS leader had mentioned.  Being able to bypass the need to discharge the Mana accumulating in their bodies probably entailed something that messed those individuals up severely, as he could only assume they were using or rerouting that energy somewhere.

“From what you’ve told me, I’m assuming that you’ve yet to have the opportunity to acquire an SDIA, am I right?  We can hook you up today; all it costs is 20 silver for the Syndicate registration fee,” Maxis said quickly.

This guy is really pushing this; I wonder why?

As if in answer to his unspoken question, the DAS leader explained sheepishly.  “We have a quota of new members that we have to meet every year, and we’re far behind.  There’s just not enough new blood coming through here, especially with the way trade has been lately, and everyone living in Deftner’s End who isn’t already part of the Syndicate either cannot afford the entrance fee or has no desire to live that life.”

That made some sense, based on what Milton was told about all of the thieves along the roads.  He probably wouldn’t travel either, especially if he wasn’t already an Adventurer; even now, with a synthetic body stronger and faster than a normal Human, he wouldn’t live long if there were bandits like the ones they had encountered in the forest.

“Are there any obligations to being part of the DAS?” he asked, after seriously considering the offer.  He figured it couldn’t hurt, and if they were able to benefit from delving through a dungeon or two, then it might be worth it.

“No, not necessarily.  We would love it if you were able to delve through some dungeons, which might help you acquire a little of what you need, but it isn’t strictly necessary at this point.  And there is usually a fee for the SDIA that needs to be paid through loot fees over the next few years, but I’ll waive that for you because you may or may not be here by the time the amount is due, correct?”

“Hopefully not.”

“Then it’s settled!  I’ll have Marilynn get the paperwork, and I’ll grab the SDIAs,” he said excitedly, already calling out for the bored-looking woman behind the bank-looking counter.

When he was gone, he spoke with Whisp in Proctan.  “What do you think?  Will this work with the NCU and the nanites?”  He also asked ALANNA onboard Haven Station, but neither of them had any idea, because they weren’t exactly sure what it was.

“Brint?  Would you mind being the Guinea Pig?”

“Guinea Pig?  What is—?  Never mind; I’m assuming you mean will I be the first one to test it?”

Milton chuckled.  “Yes, exactly.  I’m hoping it won’t be harmful and only beneficial, but I’m not positive.”

“Sure, why not?” he shrugged.  Whisp appeared as if she was going to say something, but then stopped herself.

“What?” Milton asked.

Now it was her turn to shrug.  “Nothing.  I was going to object to him risking himself, but I honestly can’t see what harm this thing will do; at least, not until I see it in action.”

The woman behind the counter, Marilynn, was over to them in less than a minute, dropping off some sheets of paper that were remarkably smooth and a pristine white, which Milton was surprised to see.  Before she left, he stopped her and quickly asked what some of the words were, as he had no frame of reference for the written language they spoke yet.  Within a minute, he had enough to go on, as it was relatively simple to make out, especially since it was a language with only 30 symbols denoting what he considered to be letters, rather than thousands of different pictograms.

The paperwork asked for simple information, such as names and ages, and while it would’ve been amusing to put his own vaunted age of more than 4,000 years, he restrained himself.  For the others, he put down the approximate age they were when they first had their NCUs installed, as they stopped aging after that.  Then it asked about some physical characteristics, which were likely to be quite different than anyone else in the world, as well as about weapon knowledge and fighting experience.  He left those mainly blank for now, only adding a few details about sword and shield work knowledge for Micke, which was the most obvious by looking at him.  Listing all of their experience in fighting might take a few hours, otherwise, and he didn’t need those kinds of questions.

Last was “Class” preference, which he was delighted to see.  He had already broken up the Proctans into separate Classes while they had been training in his dungeon, so this was a fairly easy pick – especially as they had them listed for his choosing.

- Fighter

- Scout

- Healer

- Mage

- Researcher

It was a good starting mix of Classes common to many video games, though Researcher was one that he’d never seen before.  Thankfully, he thought it worked perfectly for Whisp and himself, while Brint would probably be best as a Scout – and, of course, Micke was a Fighter.  Thinking about everyone else back at the campsite in the woods, he figured he could shoehorn them into one of the Classes associated with this SDIA thing, if it turned out to be safe and beneficial.

The last question on the paperwork was one that made him chuckle.  “Have you ever committed a crime, either knowingly or unknowingly, including, but not limited to: theft, kidnapping, or murder?”

Because he had technically done the first by stealing a derelict space station and the latter many times, even if “murder” wasn’t necessarily what he considered the same as self-defense, he wasn’t sure what to put at first.  After a moment, he figured that it was really only relating to what was done on this planet, and he didn’t think killing the bandits that attacked them was necessarily a crime.  As a result, he put “No” on all of them.

“Oh, good, it looks like you’re finished,” Maxis said abruptly, appearing with his hands full of things, which he placed on the table.  “Now, just as a formality, I need to ask: Do you swear that everything on this paper is the truth?”

A white light emerged from Maxis as everyone at the table was enveloped in the bright energy, which told Milton that he was correct: It was some sort of truth-detecting spell.  Without making out that he noticed it, Milton translated the question for the other Proctans and they nodded.

“Excellent!  Now, I just need your payment—” Maxis said as Micke handed him a gold coin, which he had pulled out of the pouch he was safekeeping.  “Last step then, I just need to run these through the codex array for accuracy, not that I doubt your word, mind you.  I have a sense of these things, you know.”

Yeah, your spells.

One after another, the papers were placed on an inscribed box, where they sat for a moment before being enveloped in a green light, which everyone could see. Whisp seemed very interested in exactly what the contraption was doing, but the entire process was over before she could investigate further. As for Milton’s part, he wasn’t sure what would happen if something on them had been inaccurate, which all of them certainly were, but he thankfully didn’t have to find out.

“Looks like everything is in order, like I knew it would be.  Here are your SDIAs,” the DAS leader said while placing a small box containing two items in front of each person, as well as some change for their application fees back to Micke.  Inside of the box was a small black square and what appeared to be a cloudy, greyish sphere, almost like a large marble.

“Now, all you need to do is touch the black square, which is the artifact; once that is absorbed into your skin, it will take its place on the back of your hand like this,” he continued as he gestured with his hand again.  “After that, just press the Soulstone against your chest, and it will initiate the process.  Be warned, however, that there is a bit of a kick to that last part, so it’s good that you’re sitting down.

“After that, I have this Class Selector here, which will allow you to select your first Class.”

This is getting more and more interesting.

“Go ahead, Brint.  Touch the black square and see what it does.”  He really didn’t think it would harm the Proctan, but there was also a good chance that it wouldn’t do anything, since they weren’t from this planet or dimension.

With only the slightest hesitation, Brint touched his finger to the black square… and nothing happened.  At first.  After a few seconds, however, the square seemed to melt into his skin after encountering a little resistance, and then it physically moved up his fingers to the back of his hand, where it settled down.

“That felt… strange.  It didn’t exactly hurt, but was slightly uncomfortable—whoa!”

His abrupt cry startled Milton and Whisp, with the latter quickly getting up and going to him.  “What?  What’s wrong?”

“Oh, uh, nothing.  But you’ve got to see this, Milton.”

The next moment, there was a mental communication that came from Brint, but instead of a verbal exchange, he received something else entirely.

Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate Interface

Name: Brint

Class: Unselected

Rating: G-1st

Essence Needed to Rate-up: 0

Total Essence: 0

Available Essence to Distribute: 0

Body: 0 (0/0)

Brawn: 0 (0/0)

Mind: 0 (0/0)

Vitality: 0/0

Stamina: 0/0

Power: 0/0

Base Physical Attack: 0

Base Physical Defense: 0

Power Regen Rate: 0.0/min

(Additional stats and abilities available once Class is chosen)

Very interesting.  What’s even more interesting is that I’m almost positive that I perceive it written in English, so Brint must see it in Proctan.  It also appears to be some sort of status screen, though I’m not sure if it is very accurate with everything at 0.

“It looks like it’s harmless so far, but go ahead and try the… Soulstone?” he told Brint, sending the same thing he was sent to the others so they could see for themselves.  Apparently he had enough communication with their NCUs to do that, because they grunted as the information was pushed into their minds.

Brint proceeded to pick up the Soulstone and pressed it against his chest. Even with layers of armor and clothing between it and his skin, it still melted and seemed to disappear into a fog, before shooting into his body.  The Proctan sat there for a moment with a curious expression on his face, before his eyes rolled back in his head and he started to spasm; it took Micke holding him in his chair to keep Brint from breaking it along with the table, but Maxis didn’t seem alarmed.

“This is normal!  He should be all right in a few seconds.”

Sure enough, Brint was done spasming in short order, and he seemed to deflate in his chair, letting out a big sigh.  “Well, uh, I wasn’t expecting that.  I think something changed, though… yep, take a look.”

Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate Interface

Name: Brint

Class: Unselected

Rating: G-1st

Essence Needed to Rate-up: 0

Total Essence: 0

Available Essence to Distribute: 0

Body: 0 (0/0)

Brawn: 0 (0/0)

Mind: 0 (0/0)

Vitality: 0/0

Stamina: 0/0

Power: 0/0

Base Physical Attack: 0

Base Physical Defense: 0

Power Regen Rate: 0.0/min

Mana

Current Mana to Expel: 1/0

Elemental Affinities (Current Available Mana)

Fire: 0% Stage 1 (Fire Mana: 0)

Water: 0% Stage 1 (Water Mana: 0)

Nature: 0% Stage 1 (Nature Mana: 0)

Earth: 0% Stage 1 (Earth Mana: 0)

Dark: 0% Stage 1 (Dark Mana: 0)

Light: 0% Stage 1 (Light Mana: 0)

Air: 0% Stage 1 (Air Mana: 0)

Elemental Abilities

(None)

(Additional stats and abilities available once Class is chosen)

There certainly was a change, with the addition of the “Mana” that Maxis had mentioned before.  What was worrying, however, was the fact that the “Current Mana to Expel” was at 1 out of 0; the DAS leader had said something about Mana hitting a threshold and then exploding, so would that happen to Brint?

As if he had heard his internal question, the Proctan mentioned, “I can feel the Mana inside of my chest, but it almost feels like Power in a way.  It doesn’t feel harmful, though, more like just something that is there and in no way a potential threat; in fact, I think I can use my Power to disperse it out into the world if I….”  Brint scrunched his face up, and a small stream of multicolored light puffed out of his chest, before seeming to float away and disperse.

“That… that looks very similar to my Mana, Milton.”

The Station Core was momentarily startled to hear Sandra’s voice, but he belatedly realized that their entire command center was watching events unfold through his avatar’s senses.  It was the only real contact they had with the planet, so the information he was sending back to his Core on Haven Station was their only source.

“Really?  Do you think this could be beneficial?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but it could be.  I can’t even guarantee it is the same, but it definitely seems that way.  Once I can see it in person, I’ll be able to determine for certain.”

It was disappointing that she couldn’t come down herself, but she was unable to leave the Station because it would be too far from her dungeon through the portal to her dimension.  At least once they were back on the Station, she’d be able to see it – and Milton would be able to see and hold her, as well. Though it had only been a few hours, it already felt like way too long.

Another voice interrupted his thoughts on that subject, as seemed typical for his AI guide.  “It could also prove to be the solution in getting up and down from the planet, Milton.  We need a lot more information and to observe how it works, however.”

One part of his focus was on the Station, so he knew that they had been puzzling over the problem since their failures earlier, but they hadn’t really made any headway.  There were still a few ideas being bounced around, of course, but nothing concrete; if this “Mana”, the SDIA, and even this Soulstone thingy could help, then that seemed like the way to go.

It was either that, or spend weeks getting to the mountains, where they would spend even more time mining up the metal they needed, which would be difficult to find without the help of sensor orbs to locate large quantities.  Then, once they had enough, which could take another few days or weeks even if everything went well, they would have to travel back to the wrecked shuttle to fix it up.  In all, he estimated that it would take around 2 months at the minimum before they were up and searching for the anchor, and that was if everything worked out perfectly.

Based on experience, he knew that very little worked out perfectly.

Something tickled a memory in the back of his mind, as he remembered Maxis mentioning something about high-Rated dungeons – and how they might have the metal they might need.  Perhaps that could be an alternative?

“Well, that seemed not to be too harmful, Brint,” he said to the Proctan, thanking him for going first as a test subject.  Turning to Maxis, he asked with a smile, “Tell me, did you mention something about the higher-Rated dungeons around here having the metal we might need?”

If they couldn’t quickly dig it out of the ground, then they’d just have to earn it from the dungeons….

Chapter 9

It turned out that Maxis could do more than just tell them about some of the higher-Rated dungeons in the area; further, there was a map that was on the wall that detailed the locations and Ratings of everything within 100 miles of Deftner’s End.  He had some other maps that weren’t posted that detailed ones farther out, but Milton didn’t think that was needed; if they were going to travel further than 100 miles, then they might as well go to the mountains and get what they needed there.

The Rating system was fairly straightforward and familiar to Milton based on the many games he’d played in the past, though applying it to the real world was a different experience.  Essentially, there were ratings given to both Adventurers and dungeons based on their strength, which ranged from G to S, with each letter starting from 1 and going up to 10 before starting over at the next level.

Rating G: --> Least powerful

Rating F-A: --> Increasingly more powerful as the rating moves up a letter

Rating S: --> The most powerful

Therefore, with Maxis being an A-Rated Adventurer, he was just one step away from earning the most powerful Rating, though there were multiple levels with each letter category.  The bandit leader having been B-Rated told Milton a little about how powerful that Rating was, and with a quick estimate of his companions, he would probably classify them all firmly as S-Rated.  Some were more powerful than others in a pure combat sense, but someone with the Intelligence that Whisp possessed was probably in the higher tier of those Ratings based on her versatility.

Looking at the map, Milton was able to visually memorize it in seconds, but he also noted that there was a listing near each one that had some symbols it took an explanation from Maxis to decipher.

“Those numbers on top tell us when the last known clearance of those dungeons occurred. As you can see, many of the higher B-Rated, A-Rated, and the few S-Rated dungeons haven’t been cleared out in a while.

“The second set of symbols depict what sorts of known loot can be acquired from those dungeons, which typically include coins and natural products from the Plant dungeons at lower Ratings.  The higher-Rated ones typically drop quality armor and weapons, but other than me here in Deftner’s End, we don’t have anyone local that can delve through those safely.  Even though they aren’t as deadly as they were a few decades ago, walking into those higher-Rated dungeons without a solid team of high B-Rated, or better yet A-Rated, is just asking for a death or two.”

That sounded perfect for his own people, as they should be able to handle just about anything that was thrown at them, especially with an A-Rated or below.  He’d have to see how deadly the S-Rated dungeons were before committing to those.

“And the last symbols give an idea of the unique dangers that can be found within each location.  Now, these dungeons seem to like to change things up at random times, we’ve found.  So, they are more like cautionary warnings than a blueprint, so don’t take them as such.

“But you shouldn’t be worrying yourself too much about those higher-Rated dungeons, however, as they will be entirely too strong for you,” Maxis warned.  “You look like you’re capable people, but I would advise you to stick to G and possibly F-Rated dungeons, if you’re feeling exceptionally strong that day.  Soon enough, you’ll be able to tackle something harder, but don’t try to run before you’ve learned how to walk.”

Sound advice.  Perhaps we’ll try something weaker at first so as not to be overconfident.  There shouldn’t be any harm in that, right?

“Thank you, Maxis.  We’ll be careful, you have my word on that.”  After coming back to the table where the others were, he saw that Whisp and Micke had both installed their SDIA and Soulstone, with the latter having to lay on the floor because he might otherwise have broken some furniture during his spasms. Fortunately, each of them looked perfectly fine after their ordeals, and each of them was slowly accumulating Mana.

“Just you left, my new friend.  Why don’t you get it done and then we can move on to the Class Selector to finish up the entire process.”

Milton nodded, but he had doubts that it would work.  Having seen what it did to the Proctans, he was fairly certain that the artifact – and by extension, the Soulstone – needed a full-blooded, living being to attach itself to.  It worked on his friends because they were living beings, even if they likely wouldn’t be able to use any of the benefits without a dimension-specific genetic mutation, but Milton wasn’t technically living at all.

The only way to find out, though, was to test it.

He sat down in the chair in front of the box he had been given, and without hesitation, he placed his finger on the little black square.  For a moment, there was a ripple that flowed across the SDIA, and Milton thought that it might actually work; after the ripple, however, it settled down and didn’t move at all.

Well, that’s that, I suppose.  He didn’t feel too left out because he was used to it by now, what with the genetic mutations and everything that he could provide to his Combat Units not really applying to him.  Besides, he was just glad that he had an avatar he could move around and wasn’t stuck in his Station Core like he had been for the first century or so of his awareness.

“This is probably a good thing, Milton; if we can study it, we might be able to figure out how it works and apply it to our research,” ALANNA told him, having watched the failure through his avatar’s eyes.  She had a point, because now they could see what it looked like outside of the body as well as inside, which could be a significant difference.

Maxis, as opposed to ALANNA’s suggestions that it was a good thing that the process didn’t work, appeared worried.  “I’m so sorry, that SDIA must be defective, though I’ve never heard of the artifact not working before.  I’ll change it out and—”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, there’s no need for another. There’s a reason it doesn’t work, and it probably has to do with my unique physiology.  Do you mind if I take it with us?”

The DAS leader was obviously confused, and Milton could see that he wanted to ask more questions, but he finally just shrugged and said, “Sure; I don’t see any problem with that.”

“Perfect!  Before we go, let’s have my companions select their Class, and then I would like to have my other friends out in the forest come and obtain an SDIA as well.  I’m sure that an additional 9 people should help with your quota, am I right?”

Maxis was extraordinarily pleased at that news, and he smiled and nodded, all thoughts about the failure with Milton’s artifact dismissed.  Over the next minute or so, Brint, Whisp, and Micke touched an inscribed box that the DAS leader brought over, and each of them was able to select their Class (matching what he had previously considered for them); not that it ultimately matters, he thought, because they couldn’t really do anything with them.  Apparently, each of them was supposed to obtain an initial spell or ability once their Class was selected, but nothing of the sort was revealed on their status sheets.

Still, the accumulation of Mana alone was beneficial, if only because it allowed them to “pay” the dungeons they were going to delve through.  The future research on the Mana, the artifact, and the status system that seemed to be imparted to each person were simply bonuses.

They left the DAS building and the town a few minutes later, and it seemed to take them no time at all to arrive at the campsite.  Rather than bring the drone and Molecular Converter with them, he left Brint, Whisp, and Micke behind to guard it while he brought the others to town.  Milton could’ve called out to them from inside of the town for them to come, but this way he was able to leave someone to guard the important tools they would need to get the shuttle up and working again.

It took another few hours for everyone to get put into the Syndicate’s systems and acquire SDIAs for them, but once that was done, they left the town after making a show of purchasing food and other travel supplies, though they didn’t really need them.  The six small barrels of clean drinking water they did need, however, and they brought it back to the campsite in order to send it all through the Converter for when they required it later.  It was the easiest source of water for the moment, but he thought it should be sufficient to last them a few days until they found a stream or river they could tap into.

Once they were out of the vicinity of the town, they immediately took off toward a dungeon, the location of it imprinted into Milton’s mind.  This one wasn’t exactly easy, according to the symbols that had been on the map, but as a low B-Rated dungeon, he thought that it would be a good experiment to see how deadly the dungeons were.  It took them moving through the forest at a steady pace for about 30 minutes for them to arrive, and once they did, they set up outside of the dungeon’s entrance.  Or what he suspected was the entrance, because it appeared as though a large hunk of stone and dirt had thrust itself from the ground, forming a small hill; on one side of the hill, a large hole seemed to have been carved into it, and Milton could see with a look that it led downwards into the ground with a gradual ramp made of dirt.

If that didn’t shout, “Dungeon!”, then he didn’t know what would.

“So, Maxis said something about normal groups ranging from 4 to 5 Adventurers, so I don’t see any reason to change that much,” Milton told the Proctans gathered around him.  “I’m going to accompany Micke and his group down, making us technically a group of 6, but I won’t be participating, merely observing.  Once we’ve cleared it out, I think we can move on to something a little bit harder – assuming this isn’t already hard enough to begin with.”

No one had any objections, so Micke, Fendle, Phyra, Trond, and Pilora assembled in front of the entrance, followed by Milton, and the Proctan Tank led the group downward into the unknown.

The first surprise the Station Core received was near the bottom of the ramp, where a small alcove seemed to have been carved out.  In the alcove was a glowing sphere, more like a large, multi-faceted crystal than anything else, which illuminated the alcove with a greenish tint.  That can’t be—no way!  The Dungeon Core is at the entrance?

Milton realized that in all of his conversations with Maxis, not once did he question him about the Core’s location.  He had just assumed that the Core would be at the end of the dungeon – which was obviously not the case here.  Its current location made sense when he thought about it, though, because if a group came into the dungeon and only completed a room or two, then it would be impossible to “pay” the Core for the privilege, as well as to expel the Mana inside of their chests before it blew up.  By having the Core near the entrance, the Adventurers would progress as far as they could before retreating, and then touch the Core on the way out.

“That is definitely a Dungeon Core, Milton.  It looks remarkably similar to the ones on my world,” Sandra told him.

Milton thought that was a good thing, because then it could mean that she’d be able to make use of the Mana inside of the Proctans.  Without getting too far ahead of himself, he sent his acknowledgement to Sandra up on Haven Station, as he turned away from the curious sight of the Dungeon Core and followed Micke and the others into the room.

The cave-like room was decorated with vines crawling all over the stone and dirt walls, and the floor was covered in a short grass, which meant that the entire floor was likely all dirt as well.  The space wasn’t too large, perhaps only 40 feet wide and the same long, with 10-foot-tall ceilings, and an exit that led deeper into the dungeon was present on the far wall across from the entrance ramp.  As far as what sorts of dangerous dungeon creatures were waiting to accost them inside of the room, it was filled with half a dozen flowers.

Granted, these flowers were 6 feet tall and had leaves coming out of their stems that were long and appeared razor-sharp.  The petals and the centers of the flowers reminded Milton of sunflowers in a way, though he was fairly certain they weren’t quite the same.

Micke immediately moved to engage the flowers with his shield and sword at the ready, so he was prepared when the first plant whipped its razor-sharp leaves at him.  Intercepted by his shield, they bounced off without doing any damage, but then the flower stood up, using its roots as multiple legs like a strange octopus.  As it attempted to circle around him, the 5 other mobile flowers also uprooted themselves, swarming around Micke as if to overwhelm him.

Milton looked at Fendle, Phyra, and the others, but they stayed back near the entrance with his avatar, impassively watching the fight.  He knew what they were doing, of course, seeing how dangerous these dungeon creations were against their most durable group members and not wasting their power, but this was the first time that he had really participated in a fight inside of a dungeon on a physical level.  His avatar typically stayed behind the scenes, if only because he was much, much weaker than any of the Proctans and wasn’t good in a fight – as evidenced by his role in the battle against the bandits earlier.

There was nothing to worry about, however, because Micke wasn’t overwhelmed in the least.  Milton could tell that he had Boosted his physical attributes at the beginning of the fight, so he was both faster and stronger than the flowers and was able to nimbly avoid or block any of the razor leaves that attempted to slice into him.  There was a moment when the flowers seemed to expel a pinkish pollen from their petals, but it wafted over Micke without any visible reaction.  If it was poison or some other type of chemical agent, such as a sleeping gas, the nanites in Micke’s body neutralized it within seconds.

Milton watched as the Tank finally went on the offensive, blocking one more round of leaf strikes before thrusting with precise movements with his Diamine sword.  With each thrust and flick of his wrist, he cut through the “necks” of the flowers, severing the stems just below the petals, and they popped off, one after another, like popcorn.  Within 3 seconds of him actually attacking, all of the flowers dropped to the grass, completely bereft of whatever energy animated them.

After they collapsed, a few seconds went by before they started to melt into the ground, as if something was causing them to rapidly dissolve.  Once they had disappeared completely, three things happened simultaneously.  The first was that a few silver coins appeared a few inches above the grass, originating where the flowers had collapsed, and they fell to the floor with a few soft *clinks* when they hit each other.  Huh; easy loot system.  Nice.

The second was expected, though it was much less Combat Experience than he had hoped.  These must be much weaker than they looked.

Congratulations!  Your Combat Units have defeated Flower x6!  You gain (6x1) 6 combat experience!

The third was that a wispy, white fog came out of where the flower corpses had been, and it seemed to billow into the air for a moment, before splitting into 5 separate streams.  These streams went toward each of the Proctans, who stood there as if they couldn’t see it, and the SDIA on the back of their hands seemed to act like a magnet, sucking it in until it disappeared without a trace.

“Did anyone see that?  The white fog?” Milton asked, but he was met with pure confusion.

“I didn’t see anything,” Fendle said after a second or two.  Must be something only my avatar’s sensors can see, just like Mana.  Or perhaps the people of this world can perceive these things naturally.  “But now that you mention it, I feel as if I’ve gained something.”

Each of the Proctans opened their new status screens, but they didn’t notice anything different.  “Hold on, I think the Mana in my chest has increased a bit more than I remember it being at,” Trond mentioned.  The others said the same thing and sent their screens to Milton, and the Station Core could immediately see that he was correct.  While their Mana had been steadily increasing at a rate of about 1 per hour, it had suddenly jumped up an extra 3 points.  As for everything else, there was absolutely no change – even toward their Essence count, which was what Milton thought the white fog actually was.  At least, that was what he’d thought he’d understood from what Maxis had told him.

“It looks as though the main function of these artifacts is inaccessible to us, as it won’t be able to make us stronger,” Milton said, a little disappointed.  “But, it’s not like you need the help, anyway; nice job, by the way, Micke.”

The Proctan Tank shrugged, slipping his shield on his back while sheathing his sword on his waist.  “Too easy.  I hope this place has a challenge somewhere.”

“Oh, I’m sure of it.  Don’t let your guard down just yet.”

With that, the others helped to pick up the dropped silver – it was metal, so any little bit would help – and they made their way toward the next room.

Chapter 10

In the next room of the lower B-Rated dungeon, they encountered their first trap, the discovery of which wasn’t necessarily unexpected, though its execution was.  As soon as Micke entered the room to face off against the 4 large, grizzly-sized bears waiting for him, a tangle of vines that had been hanging from the ceiling, seemingly innocently, suddenly latched onto his arms and legs in an attempt to bind him in place.  Micke didn’t even need help to extricate himself, though, as he simply used his strength to rip the vines out from where they were connected to the ceiling.

Again, the Proctan Tank faced off against the bears that attacked him alone, with rapidly withering vines still attached to his extremities, in this instance, he didn’t waste time defending.  Instead, he immediately went on the offensive, charging toward one bear and then another, splitting their skulls in half before the bears could even attempt to swipe at him with their massive paws.

From the moment he stepped into the room, it was all over in a matter of 20 seconds.

For the second time, coinage dropped from the slain bears, and a white fog was sucked up by the artifacts embedded in the Proctans’ skin.  There was a slight increase in the number of coins compared to the previous room, but there really wasn’t too much difference from the results.

However, there was one thing that Milton noticed, thanks to the filters that were part of his avatar’s sensors.  As had the flowers in the room before, the bears seemed to glow with a green light that came from within them. That light faded when they were killed, but he could only assume that it dispersed into the air… or was absorbed by the artifacts the Proctans possessed.  Not only that, but he was fairly certain that the vines that Micke had torn out from the ceiling had glowed faintly as well, though he had been distracted by the much larger glow coming from the bears.  It was entirely possible that the trap, too, gave off a little of the white fog and he had simply missed it.

When they reached the next room, more of his suppositions were proven correct.  When they entered the room, filled with what appeared to be some sort of hedge maze of tall bushes, he spotted a number of glowing sections of the maze, as well as a section of the grassy floor in a particular location.  He didn’t say anything to the others, as he wanted them to discover everything on their own, but the sections of the maze he had seen revealed themselves to be some sort of bush creature that attempted to snag Micke with thorny branches.  The Proctan was more than able to defend himself against the ambushing strikes as he walked by, cutting the creature apart with a few quick swipes.

The glowing section on the floor turned out to be a pit trap full of sharpened wooden stakes.  Thankfully, Micke had chosen Self-Levitation as his Tier Four Ability[4] back on Proctus, so he was able to activate it before he had fallen more than a few inches.  Other than his physical Boosts, it was the first use of any ability and Power that the group had used, which was very telling as to the difficulty of the dungeon.

More coins were provided as loot by the room, as with the next, which was full of giant wasps that Micke was able to split in half when they attacked, but the room after that – which creeped Milton out because it was filled with large spiders – finally started to drop something else.

Herbs.

The Station Core was sure that they were probably rare or something, but it wasn’t something they needed.  The next room, filled with large, walking trees, dropped an array of wooden shields, swords, and very familiar-looking bows (such as the one that a certain bandit lieutenant had been using), but again, nothing they could really use.  They were well-made, as if a master craftsman had carved them, but they did him and his group no real good.

After that, the dungeon’s creatures started to increase in difficulty, though one couldn’t tell by the way Micke tore through them with ease.  They increased in size, speed, and strength, alternating between plants that attempted to kill him by trapping and strangling him, poisoning his bloodstream, or slicing him apart with razor-sharp thorns or leaves, and beasts/insects that were commonly found in forests or wooded areas, such as elk, boars, wolves, beetles, and poisonous snakes.  Traps that were encountered had similar themes, with vines, pit traps, wooden spikes that would jut out from a wall or ceiling, and poisonous gasses erupting from harmless-looking mushrooms.  There were a few times when Micke took the brunt of a triggered trap, but it was either blunted by his protective armor, or he was able to extricate himself with either his strength or an ability at his disposal.

After about 20 rooms, the loot started to change from herbs and wooden equipment to the rare appearance of gold coins and well-made leather armor pieces, especially as the difficulty ramped up.  It was only after 30 rooms – which had taken over an hour at this point, even with how quickly Micke was able to clear through them – that the loot finally began to change to something they could use.

“A steel sword?  That’s better than nothing, I suppose,” Milton said, after he saw what the plant that was the size of a large shed dropped when it was killed.  It had taken Micke almost a minute to kill it, mainly because he had to cut through the multitude of roots and vines the massive plant had employed to try and snatch the Proctan up.

Unfortunately, that was the next-to-last room in the dungeon, as the next room proved to be the final one, containing the dungeon’s boss.  It was actually quite impressive, as it was a giant wooden figure in the shape of a person, reaching over 50 feet tall, wielding a wooden sword that was a little over a dozen feet long and perhaps 3 feet wide.  The massive room was paneled in wooden planks, covering up the stone like the walls of a home from the 1960’s back on old Earth, along with the floor and the ceiling.

There were no tell-tale signs of traps anywhere in the room that Milton could see, but some of the wooden paneling along the walls glowed oddly.  It wasn’t until Micke ran toward the massive wooden giant with a smile on his face that the truth behind them was revealed.

Flowing out of the walls, as if the wooden panels were liquid instead of sturdy material, came an army of much smaller wooden figures, each armed with a sword as they marched in formation toward the embattled pair in the middle of the room.  Milton counted around 50 of them that flowed out of the walls, but they didn’t seem very strong; even the giant wooden man was being hacked up by Micke, and it crashed down a short time after its right leg had been severed.

The smaller wooden soldier creatures, instead of attacking Micke, instead ran toward the fallen giant, even as the Proctan readied himself to withstand the attack.  When they reached the larger version of themselves, a third of the woodmen seemed to melt into the massive figure, and before Milton’s eyes, it started to heal.  The leg was suddenly reattached and it picked itself up, seemingly a little larger than it had been before.

“While I can probably kill it, these adds are going to be annoying,” Micke shouted.  It was then that the other members of the group, who had been impassively watching throughout the entire dungeon, sprang into action.  Fendle disappeared from view, activating his Light Spectrum Invisibility which he had picked up at Tier Three[5] on Proctus, where he could approach the enemies unseen.  In only a second or two, he was already appearing behind the smaller wooden men, slicing through their bodies with his own diamine sword.  They were too slow to react to his presence, and indeed barely seemed to notice him, so he was able to move around with relative impunity.

Phyra whipped out a quick-strike match and lit it, using the flame it generated to kickstart her Fire Manipulation[6].  Within a few seconds, she had moved forward with two thick whips of superheated flames that she directed with her hands – while not actually holding them.  With a few flicks of her wrist, she caught 2 of the smaller wooden figures around their torsos, the flame whips wrapping around with ease, and then she deftly yanked them backwards.  The ropes of fire cut through the tough wood of the dungeon’s creatures like a hot knife through softened butter, and they fell apart in two halves on the wooden floor.

Pilora, instead of using her Flora Manipulation ability, instead used her Tier Seven ability[7], Atmokinesis, to form a dark cloud of charged energy above the battle.  Instead of rain coming from the clouds, she pumped a little more of her Power into her creation to produce arcs of lightning, directing them toward the wooden men not already engaged by the others.  Every few seconds, a bolt of lightning would strike down in an instant, hitting the wooden men and essentially blasting them apart as any moisture still in their wooden forms was instantly flash-boiled.

Lastly, Trond stayed out of the fight, looking for any ways to help when the opportunity arose.  As the group’s healer and Booster[8], his strengths worked best to either prevent injuries or heal them if they did happen, though there were abilities that he could utilize to fight with, if needed.

With the additional enemies being whittled down quickly by the trifecta of support, Micke was able to concentrate solely on the giant wooden swordsman.  When it attacked him again, sweeping its sword from the side, the Tank moved forward quickly enough that he avoided the strike entirely.  Before the sweep was even completed, he was already within range of its feet, which rose to try and stomp on him, but the Proctan bunched his legs underneath him and jumped.

With his powerful sword leading the way, he sliced into the wooden belly of the wooden man with his tremendous leap upwards, digging deep within its shell.  He managed to jump all the way up to its head, with his sword essentially splitting the dungeon’s creation in half lengthwise.  At the apex of his leap, as his sword passed through its head, there was a horrendous *crack* that reverberated through the room, and the giant figure fell apart.

But it didn’t fall in two halves, mimicking how it was cut.  Instead, it seemed to shatter into a hundred pieces – or, in this case, a hundred different smaller wooden men wielding swords that now joined their compatriots.  The battle had shifted from one against a singular, massive wooden man to one that was now without the giant, but with over a hundred smaller ones.

Thankfully, that was much easier to deal with than having a mixture of giant and smaller wooden men.  When Micke landed from his jump, he immediately went to work tearing through the new targets, accompanied by the others in his group – who had already finished off the original adds from the beginning of the battle.  In less than a minute, the fight was done, and the scattered pieces of the dungeon’s creatures disappeared.

Congratulations!  Your Combat Units have defeated Wooden Men x151!  You gain (151x1) 151 combat experience!

Just like the rest of the dungeon, Milton didn’t receive more than a single combat experience point per creature killed.  That didn’t matter too much to him, though, considering that he had tens of millions of Combat Experience to go before his next Combat Level.[9]

In the wake of the wooden men’s destruction, a scattering of silver was left as loot, as well as a steel breastplate, a steel spiked mace, and a wooden shield rimmed in steel.  Milton couldn’t help but notice that the breastplate, while not having quite the proportions, looked to have very similar construction to the one that the bandit leader had been wearing.  He assumed that hers had been altered in some way, but the overall appearance was generally the same.

“I’m hungry; when’s dinner?” Micke asked, sheathing his sword and slipping his shield onto his back almost the instant the last wooden man was cut in half.

Milton chuckled, knowing that all the fighting had likely used a lot of energy, even if it hadn’t depleted his Power all that much.  “It won’t be that much longer.  Let’s loot and get out of here, making sure to discharge your Mana with the Dungeon Core on the way out.  How does it feel, by the way?”

They instantly understood what he was asking, and Fendle spoke up for the group.  “We actually accumulated more than a thousand Mana from the entire dungeon, but it doesn’t feel like too much,” he explained.  “I think if it was too much, I would have plenty of warning.”

“Excellent,” he said, participating in the cleanup of loot around the room, with Micke taking the heavier breastplate, mace, and shield for the group and placing them in his Pocket Interface Bag, identical to the bottomless bag that they had acquired from the bandits, and provided to each of them alongside their SDIA, when they signed up with the DAS.  “Let’s get out of here and get Micke something to eat; he definitely deserves it.”

Chapter 11

Verdanthixia had rolled with the changes that had swept the world over two decades ago, though like just about every other Dungeon Core in the world, he didn’t like the changes. The absence of the ambient Nature Mana in his territory had originally freaked him out, especially after draining most of his reserves in an unsuccessful attack against one of the livestock that had grown too uppity for its own good.  Unfortunately, that uppity livestock turned out to be the Great Authority in disguise, and the powerful figure literally changed all of the Mana in the world so that no Dungeon Core could even see it, let alone absorb it from the environment.

But after being informed by the Supreme Council of the changes to the ambient Mana, Verd had calmed down… a little bit.  It was still scary to not have the natural regeneration of Mana from the environment, of course; when it was revealed that the only way to receive more Mana was from livestock, the Humans of the world, delving through their dungeons, there was originally some outrage – including his own.  There was even further outrage when the livestock had to physically touch their Cores in order to transfer the Mana that accumulated inside of their bodies, lest the fragile Humans blow up from the powerful energy that they had no business handling.  That meant that the Dungeon Cores needed to move away from their secure Core Rooms at the end of their dungeons, and be presented on display for any and all to see them.

When the day finally came that Verd, a mid-C-Rated Nature Core at the time, hosted his first livestock delving through his dungeon, he was understandably nervous.  If his Core was removed from his alcove near the entrance, his territory would collapse along with his dungeon, and it could take centuries to reestablish it to the same level it was currently – especially with the lack of ambient Mana.  Thankfully, the formidable Humans barely gave his Core a few glances when they entered, and they were able to fight their way through all his defenses, which he hadn’t altered since the Big Change.  He knew of many that had made their dungeons easier in order to entice more livestock to come visit, but he was warned away from that by their Regional Leader.  It was said that the Great Authority did something to the livestock, so that if they weren’t appropriately challenged inside of a dungeon, they wouldn’t transfer much Mana as a result.

Therefore, he hadn’t changed anything, as he was actually quite proud of his defenses, because they were already balanced to be in the appropriate challenge range.  Later on, he – along with many, many other Cores – reconfigured the loot that they provided when their defenders were killed, using long-unused blueprints for armor, weapons, and other shiny trinkets to lure in greedy livestock; that seemed to work much better, as far as seeing more visitors, than making their defenses easier.  At the time, though, when his first group of Humans arrived after the Change, he hadn’t altered any of that; most of his loot was still in the form of metal coins, which the livestock used for trading or some such thing.

When they finished off his final defender, near where his Core Room used to house his Core, he was still nervous.  Would they steal me away?  Try and destroy me, despite their ridiculously weak strength?  Those questions and more flowed through his mind at the time, despite hearing that many of the other Cores in his region had been absolutely fine during their first delve since everything had fundamentally changed.

On the way out, each of the livestock touched his Core in the little alcove near the entrance, and while he felt disgusted at their touch, the transfer of the Mana they held in their bodies made Verd completely forget that they were even there.  The influx of energy wasn’t just enough to replace all of his defenders and defenses that had been killed or triggered inside of his dungeon (if the Mana hadn’t already been returned to him after his defenders were killed), but it also was enough that he could create another whole set and still have some left over.

As Verd had been told, not only had his Mana reserve improved, but moreover, the process of transferring Mana had also increased his Core Structure, enough that it increased his Core Rating from C-5 to C-6 – all in a matter of a few hours, the time it took for the group to delve through his entire dungeon. Normally, it had required months or years to increase his Structure enough to raise it up a Rating, as he slowly layered excess Mana onto his Core.  With a bigger structure, he could do more, including creating additional rooms or using slightly stronger defenders or defenses.  In short, the act of a few livestock touching his Core had sped up his development exponentially, and it certainly wasn’t the last time.

Over the last few decades, he improved all the way to the lower B-Ratings, which was an unheard-of advancement before the Big Change.  His dungeon’s lack of easy proximity to the livestock habitation areas was the only reason – as far as he was concerned – that he hadn’t improved even more in that time, because he had heard of more than a few Cores improving even faster than he had.

But lately, over the last few years, something had slowly dried up the flow of Humans to his dungeon.  The flow wasn’t stagnant just for his own, though, but also was for the majority of higher-Rated dungeons in his Region. While there were still a few that came through and delved inside of their dungeons, delvers were becoming more and more rare as time went on.  This didn’t really bother Verd – or many of the Cores around him – because they had all been around for centuries by that point, and they knew that there were ebbs and flows to the number of livestock nearby.  The passage of time was nothing to them, as they measured it in decades rather than simple years, so they knew that this, too, would pass and work itself out.

Therefore, when a group of people entered his territory, Verdanthixia wasn’t immediately focused on them, as he wasn’t impatiently waiting for more livestock to delve through his dungeon.  When they unerringly approached his dungeon through the forest, however, he turned his attention to them and immediately noticed something different about the entire group that was heading his way.

Using his Dungeon Core senses to observe them, he immediately knew they weren’t the typical Humans he saw.  In fact, they weren’t livestock at all, but looked different in appearance, with purple skin, overly large eyes, and ears that would probably look better on the fins of a fish from a Water dungeon than on a person.

Strangest of all, his senses were telling him that these odd people were extremely weak, as if they had just started playing with the energy inside of their bodies that allowed them to use abilities, cast spells, or generally become a nuisance.  In other words, they were likely G-1st-Rated, which meant that they couldn’t possibly be there for his dungeon, because they would be annihilated almost immediately upon entering, even if there were what appeared to 13 of them.

Verd worried for a moment that the Great Authority would hear about it if he ended up killing so many in his dungeon, but he was fairly certain that he would be fine.  Only Cores that deliberately went out of their way to kill livestock in their dungeons, which gave them a higher amount of Mana than they would normally have received from the Humans, would suffer for their actions.  Killing them wasn’t forbidden by any means, because the dungeon was designed to be a dangerous challenge, but if a pattern was detected with too many deaths happening in a short period of time, then it was a problem.

However, that risk applied only when the livestock were entering into an appropriately Rated dungeon.  If a thousand G-Rated Humans decided to enter his dungeon and died, he wouldn’t be held responsible for their stupidity.  There were plenty of Dungeon Cores with appropriate dungeons for their Rating available, after all.

Verd nearly contacted his Regional Leader, using his Mana Communication ability, to warn him that some odd-looking people might die in his dungeon, but he held off from doing that for a few reasons.  The first reason was a matter of resources, because the low-B-Rated Dungeon Core was running a little low on Mana with the drought of Humans delving through his dungeon lately.  He wasn’t in danger of running out, of course, but most of his reserves had gone into improving his Core Structure, so he didn’t have a lot to spare.

The second reason was that the more he looked at these strange not-Humans, the more he was starting to question his senses.  Having seen thousands of livestock over the years, he was fairly good at identifying the strengths of individuals simply by the way they moved and held themselves.  He had seen nervousness, fear, reluctance, hesitance, acceptance, resolve, courage, and confidence in the stances of many a Human, depending on how powerful they were; these people, however, were a little different.  It might have been their strange appearance that made it so odd to see, but if he had to name the emotion they displayed, he would say that they were bored.  Not only that, but they moved with such a confidence that nothing could possibly hurt them that Verd started to grow nervous at their approach.  There was just something about them that screamed “killers”, and he wasn’t sure how to reconcile that with his senses telling him that they were so pitiful that one of his weakest defenders should be able to kill all of them with ease.

He was alarmed when it appeared as though all of them might enter his dungeon, because the unspoken rule was that only 5 people could delve at the same time.  When a little more than half of them stayed outside, he calmed down a little, even if 6 of the strange people entered his dungeon; that was because there was an outlier amongst them, who didn’t give off the same feel to his senses.  In fact, it didn’t appear as if he existed at all, and it was only the fact that Verd could visually see the almost Human-looking person that he knew he was there.

When they passed by his Core in the little alcove near the entrance, he could sense that all of them were curious at his presence, though fortunately, they didn’t seem hostile.  The one that felt relatively invisible appeared the most… intrigued at his Core, but other than a brief look that conveyed that curiosity, there were no violent or hostile actions.

His first room, filled with his weakest defenders, the Poisonous Flower Slicers, proved to the Dungeon Core that his senses with these strange people had been completely wrong.  The largest of them, a huge, light-purple-skinned man wielding a shield and a sword, absolutely devastated his Slicers.  None of the Slicers’ attacks seemed to penetrate this man’s defenses, and he picked them apart almost too fast for Verd to follow.

When they were killed, the Mana that normally floated free of his defenders to return to him, so that he could replace them for the next delve, was suddenly sucked up by these people.  Though, not all of them; the one that was invisible to his senses didn’t suck any of it up.

No, no, no!  That’s my Mana!  This is impossible!

It was then that he contacted his Regional Leader… or at least he tried to.  Despite knowing that he had enough of a Mana reserve to activate his Mana Communication ability, nothing happened.  When he looked at his reserve, the reason made sense immediately; he was lower than he remembered, at 100, which was the bare minimum of what was needed to sustain his current state as a Dungeon Core, so he couldn’t tap into it without potentially damaging his crystalline structure.

While he nearly did just that, in order to get the word out about these people, he stopped himself.  He sensed absolutely no hostility from these people, so he needed to be patient and wait to see what would happen.  Verd was just hoping that they would return that Mana when they left, because otherwise he would be crippled without a way to restock his dungeon.  Other Cores could donate some of their Mana to him, at a cost to them, but he would be forced to create something really pathetic until he built his reserve of Mana enough to replace his “normal” dungeon.

As they advanced, with just the single strange person attacking as the others watched impassively, he discovered that it wasn’t just defenders from which they stole the Mana – it was his defenses, as well.  Those defenses, which would’ve been enough to harm any C-Rated livestock or below, seemed to do absolutely nothing to the people in his dungeon, other than making them a little annoyed.

He began to despair as they continued on, all the way to the end, and all of his Mana was sucked up by them.  When they reached his boss, his Giant Woodmen and Juvenile Woodmen army, the others finally participated in the battle; despite their help, he was positive that the sword and shield-wielding individual could’ve handled it all by himself.

He must be at least high A-Rated, or even S-Rated.  How is he hiding his strength from me?

It wasn’t just the one with the shield hiding his strength, either, as the others used spells and abilities that he’d never seen before, and they didn’t quite register as spells to his senses, either.  None of what they seemed to be or what they did made any sense to him, and he didn’t really even know what to think by this point.

Verd waited with confused thoughts as they made it back through his dungeon quickly, before they stopped by his alcove.  He was halfway convinced that they would simply walk on by with his stolen Mana, so he was slightly surprised when they actually started to come up and touch his Core.

The transfer of raw Mana was like nothing he’d ever experienced before, as it was so much and at such a powerfully condensed rate that it was overwhelming.  After the second one touched him, Verd blacked out from the rush of Mana flowing into his Core, something that had never happened to him before.

When he finally came to, his Core felt strained, as if he were a closed container that had been filled with too much dirt and was threatening to explode.  At the same time, he felt as if he had grown a little, and when he pulled up his status, he was shocked to see that his Core Structure hadn’t increased just 1, but 3 times, meaning that he could now create a B-6th-Rated dungeon!

The raw Mana inside of his Core was almost painful, though, and it took a while for him to process it properly – but he didn’t really care, because he had made a spectacular advancement in his development.  In fact, by the time he felt normal again, he had nearly forgotten to contact his Regional Leader.

When he finally did, a week or so later, he discovered that he was far from the only one to have been visited by those strange Mana thieves….

Chapter 12

The removal of the Mana from the Proctans’ bodies was as straightforward as they were told, as each of them placed their hands on the Core one after another.  Upon contact, Milton could see the slightest view of the multi-colored Mana moving through their fingertips and into the Core, and the process with each person didn’t take more than a few seconds.  When they were done, Milton thought that the Core might have been slightly bigger, but it was hard to tell; regardless, he led the group out of the dungeon, where they were greeted by those they left behind.

“How was it?  Did the transfer of Mana work?  What is the approximate difficulty of this dungeon?  When can I participate?  Where are we going next?”

Whisp was full of questions as soon as they came back, which was understandable because she was always seeking knowledge.  Milton filled her in on what had happened, noting that the difficulty was what he would classify in one of the games he used to play as an “easy solo dungeon”, based on the fact that Micke had basically completed it by himself.  Other than Trond, who didn’t have as many offensive abilities as the rest of the group that had entered, he was fairly certain that any of the others probably could’ve solo’d the entire thing – though with entirely different methods than the Tank.  It probably would’ve taken longer, as well, so he was glad that Micke had been the one to test-run the dungeon.

As for where they were going, it was getting late in the day by that point, but no one seemed to want to waste any time.  After a meal at their temporary campsite outside of the low-B-Rated dungeon, they took off for the nearest A-Rated dungeon, which was to the north about 2 hours away.  From there, he planned to hit the S-Rated dungeon to the northeast, which was about 8 hours away from that, though from there it was a bit of a haul to the next one.  However, if these dungeons they were going to visit were able to provide even more loot that they needed, then it was worth it.

Already, after they had sent all that they had gained from the dungeon into the Molecular Converter, Milton could see that it had been extremely beneficial.  They’d already had around 6,000 BMUs from what they had acquired from the bandits, but now that they were able to add some more metal from the dungeon, including all their coinage (which could easily be reproduced again with the Converter if they needed some in the future), they had gone up to a little over 15,000[10].

That total, of course, was only around 1% of the 1.5 million BMUs they needed to repair the shuttle, but it was a start.  It hadn’t even been a full day on the planet, and they were well on their way, all things considered.  There was still a problem with the Station Core’s other resources, such as Bio Mass and Pure Water, which were needed to feed the extremely hungry Proctans since they required around 3 to 5 times the calories a normal Human would need.  But as they had more than enough for a few days, that was something they could address later. It might come down to purchasing food in Deftner’s End, or seeing what kind of hunting for the beasts in the forest they could manage.

Regardless, they had a goal for the rest of the daylight, and that was to reach the A-Rated dungeon to the north.  When they were all ready to go, Fendle led the way through the darkening forest, unerringly leading toward their destination despite the unfamiliar territory.  Then again, compared to the great forests filled with dangerous beasts back on Proctus, this planet was probably a walk in the park for him and the other Proctans.

They made it to the next dungeon before night fell completely, and it wasn’t long before they were inside – though not all of them.  Milton sat this one out, letting the group of Proctans that hadn’t had a turn yet have their chance.  Whisp went with them, instead, though she was there mostly as an observer, as she wanted to see the dungeon with her own eyes.  Brint stayed back at their impromptu camp, nervously pacing as his wife journeyed into the depths of the dangerous dungeon.

“Sit down, Brint.  You know they won’t let anything happen to her,” Milton finally told the distraught Proctan after about 20 minutes of his endless walking back and forth.

In reality, there really wasn’t anything to worry about, since even if she died, Whisp would simply be reborn back on Haven Station.  If they were able to accumulate enough resources to fix the Bioconversion Lab on the shuttle, she could even be reborn down on the planet.

Still, Milton couldn’t blame him for worrying, even if death wasn’t permanent.  Whisp hadn’t been killed nearly as many times as most of the other Proctans, so with her death a rarity, Brint was like a nervous father letting their kid do something mildly dangerous for the first time.  What was worse was that Brint wasn’t there with her, which probably would’ve made it a little more bearable, but Milton didn’t want to include too many people with each group going into the dungeon.  Something Maxis said about the dungeon potentially upping the difficulty based on the strength or number of people in groups delving inside was a warning not to go overboard.  Unlike Sandra, who couldn’t alter her dungeon significantly once people were inside of it, the Cores on this world had a little more leeway, apparently.

It took a lot longer for the group to return from the dungeon this time, almost 4 hours in comparison to the approximate hour and a half of the first.  When it was revealed that the group had all participated in the delve, instead of simply letting their Tank, Thodrin, solo the dungeon like Micke had done, he knew that the difficulty had ramped up at least a little.

“While the creatures within were probably a little tougher than the ones this big lug here fought,” Thodrin said as he smirked at Micke, “it was more the number of rooms that made a difference in the length of time.”

“How many rooms were there?” Milton asked him, though it was Whisp who answered.

“A total of 84, plus the boss room at the end.  More than double what the other dungeon possessed.”

Wow.  A total of 85 rooms?  That’s… that’s actually impressive.

While Milton had dozens of rooms in his various dungeons back on Proctus, as well as training facilities and living quarters for the Proctans, the thought of having nearly 100 rooms was a bit daunting to the Station Core.  Then again, these dungeons didn’t really have anything else to do but expand and populate their rooms, increasing the difficulty of the defenses as they went deeper, so he supposed it wasn’t nearly as impressive as some things on this world.

As for the loot they brought back, half of it was similar to what had been picked up in the B-Rated dungeon, such as coins, different herbs, wooden equipment, and leather armor.  The last half of the delve, by contrast, was filled with iron and steel weapons and armor, along with an unfamiliar metal he was unsure of until Sandra saw it through his eyes.

“That looks similar to the mithril-alloyed bronze that I can create in my dungeon,” she mused into his mind.  “I’m not sure what kinds of properties it has, but it’s likely extremely durable and may even contain some special attributes, such as an affinity toward one element or another.”

He was thankful for the information, though for what he needed the loot for, it wasn’t really going to matter in the long-run – because it was going into the Converter, regardless.  Milton was glad that he sent it inside, too, because it was worth nearly 10 times the amount of Basic Metal Units as simple steel.  After converting all the loot to resources, they ended up with an additional 50,000 BMUs, bringing their total to a little over 65,000.  It wasn’t an insignificant number, but they still had a way to go before they had enough to repair the shuttle.  As opposed to just after they crash-landed, Milton was feeling better and better about getting things back on track and resuming their search for the Stabilizing Anchor and the Heliothropes that were likely nearby.

It was still quite dark by that point, and after the run through the dungeon by the other group, they decided to sleep for the rest of the night there in the campsite.  Milton didn’t have to sleep, of course, so he kept watch – not that they expected anything to happen.  There didn’t seem to be overly dangerous wildlife on the planet, apart from normal beasts; the dangerous predators were instead the dungeons, which he had been told by the DAS leader could – and did – send their creatures out.

While everyone was asleep, he checked in with ALANNA, Sandra, Rhiole, and the rest of the Think Tank up on the Station.  Sadly, they hadn’t made much in the way of progress as of yet, despite a few more expensive experiments.

“It seems as though the energy blanketing this world is doing something to the reactors inside of the vessels,” ALANNA noted, after yet another failure to get through the upper layers of the atmosphere.  “We’re still attempting to identify how your shuttle was able to survive, but we think it has to do with your own presence there acting as a neutralizing influence… somehow,” she added with a shrug.

“Thanks for all the work.  As you’ve seen, we’re making fairly good progress, but it will be a little bit before we’re back up and running.  Any little bit will help, so keep trying.”

“We will.  Sandra seems to think she might have some ideas, but without a better understanding of the energy surrounding the planet, it appears as though you’re on your own for the moment.”

Sandra nodded, working with those in the command center.  “I may not know a lot about your ‘reactors’ and your technology, but I’d like to think I’m an expert on Mana and Dungeon Cores.  I’m sure there’s a solution here somewhere – I just need to find it.”

“I have faith that you will.  Take some breaks, however, because I don’t want you to overwork yourself.”

“Oh, it’s no bother, Milton.  I enjoy this kind of thing; finding the solution to a problem by using my crafting has been a bit of a pastime for me.”  Sandra smiled at the sensor orb in the command center looking at her, as she got back to work.  She was at one of the consoles, hesitatingly using it to look at various things – mostly recordings of Milton’s own viewpoint on the planet.  It was cute to watch her using the advanced technology, like watching someone unfamiliar with a computer keyboard using the “hunt-and-peck” method of typing out words, letter by letter.  What took the others of the Think Tank a few seconds to do took her a few minutes, but she was slowly learning how to use all of the systems on the station.

Nothing of note happened during the rest of the night, and Milton woke the group as soon as light started to filter under the treetops, so that they could get a start to the day.  After a brief meal, they took off to the northeast, moving quickly through the dense forest.  Along the way, a herd of deer were startled from where they had been hiding; Fendle and Porva, the other Rogue, took off after the herd with their incredible speed, each of them taking down two deer, which helped to supplement their store of Bio Mass inside of the Converters.  In addition, they stopped for 30 minutes at a small stream that was approximately 10 feet across, which wound through the trees haphazardly. It was easy enough to place the portable Molecular Converter inside and obtain thousands of units of Pure Water to add to their Available Resources, and they really didn’t have to do anything but wait.

In all, though their trip took about an hour longer than it should’ve, the additional resources would help to feed and hydrate everyone for at least another few days.  If they were able to acquire even more Bio Mass on their next journey, then he could see them being outfitted quite well for the foreseeable future.  He might even be able to create some smaller Combat Units using their extra Bio Mass, so that Brint could finally utilize his skills with his Neural Uplink ability.

“Micke, are you and your team ready for this one?” Milton asked once they arrived in the late afternoon.  “I’m not sure how long this will take, nor how difficult it will be.”

“Yes, of course we’re ready.  I’m actually hoping that it’s a difficult one, as the last one was almost a joke.”  His confidence, which would probably be a little overbearing and boastful on anyone else, was perfectly suited to the powerful Tank.  Milton had no doubt that Micke would actually appreciate the fights in the dungeon being more than a little dangerous, as then he could stretch his abilities to their fullest.

“I’m coming with you, but based on the progression of length between the last two, I’m not going to have everyone wait out here for us,” he told Micke and the others in his group, before turning to everyone else.  “I shared where that other A-Rated dungeon was located with you earlier, correct?”  At their nods, he focused on Porva, asking her, “Do you think you can find your way back here afterwards?”

“Yes, should be easy enough.  Despite the size of this forest, it’s much easier to find your way through it than the ones on Proctus,” she answered.

“Good.  Take Brint, Whisp, the drone, and the Converter with you, though we’re going to get a few supplies from the latter before we go in.  If I’m right about the timeline of this one, you should be able to get to the other dungeon, delve through it, and come back here before we’re done.  If we don’t see you within a few hours of the time we get out, we’ll come looking for you.”

At their nods, he took Whisp and Brint aside.  “I want you both to stay outside of the dungeon while they’re inside, because I need the drone and the Molecular Converter safe.  Can you do that?”

“Just sit around and twiddle our thumbs while they do all the work?” Brint asked, with a disgusted look on his face.  A second later, his face was split by a cheesy grin.  “Of course we can do that; I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Ha, then we’ll get our stuff and be on the way.”

After loading their PIBs with food, since they weren’t sure how long they were going to be, Micke and his group, along with Milton, walked down the ramp into the S-2nd-Rated dungeon.  Behind them, the other group was just leaving for the A-Rated dungeon a few hours away, taking Brint and Whisp with them.

All right; let’s see what this place has to offer.

Chapter 13

Walking into the S-Rated dungeon, there was a sense of age and vastness to it that Milton’s avatar felt like a physical presence.  When they arrived at the bottom of the ramp, he was disappointed not to see much different than what he’d seen before.  Instead of flowers with razor-sharp petals, this one had a dozen beetles with sharp-looking mandibles, but the size of the room, with vine-covered walls and a grassy floor, had a very familiar look to it.

Micke didn’t even bother waiting for the others before he sped ahead, slamming his shield into one of the beetles, cracking it apart, then slicing through another trio of them with his sword with one swipe.  The one thing he did notice was that the beetles were a bit larger than the ones he had seen in the B-Rated dungeon, and if Micke’s strength wasn’t almost off the charts, he doubted the large insects would’ve been vanquished as quickly as they had.

Milton called out to the Tank as he finished off the last of the beetles, only a few seconds after actually entering the space.  “If this is the first room, I think you’re going to get your wish, Micke.”

“What?  How so?  These things are too easy.”

“You’ll see, I’m sure of it.”

It wasn’t obvious right away.  Instead, it took about 15 rooms for the difference between this S-Rated dungeon and the one they had delved through before to make itself known.  Many of the creatures they saw were familiar, as well as the traps that were avoided or didn’t do much to Micke when he triggered them, but Milton could tell almost immediately that they were stronger – even if they still fell beneath his blade and strength like he was cutting down wheat in a field.  Eventually, though, they encountered some large walking trees, complete with their own dryads, which appeared to be wooden female figures that flowed in and out of the tree trunks like they were made of water.  When Micke went to cut through one of the trees as it attacked him with its branches, the dryad attached to it placed her hands on the trunk… and his sword bounced off, like a drumstick against a drum.

“All right, a little help here!”

With his attacks against the trees useless, Micke ended up getting a little battered around, but his Constitution was so high that even being beaten by a 3-foot-thick branch didn’t hurt him all that much.  Rather than attacking the trees, he went for the dryads, avoiding the roots they seemed to call up from the ground to entangle him, but they slipped away from his quick strikes by merging into their trees.

Micke had met his match, at least as far as being able to defend against his normal attacks with impunity.  There were a number of abilities, such as Force Blast, which he could employ to attack from a little longer range, but there was no need.

He had a group for a reason.

Switching tactics, the Tank then focused on his main role of the group, which was to take the hits so that no one else had to.  He kept the attention of every walking tree and dryad in the room as he deftly avoided many of their attacks directed toward him; those that hit him were either deflected or didn’t do more than shift him in place.  While he did that, though, the others went to work.

Fendle appeared out of nowhere to cut apart a dryad from behind, who was unable to react to his presence before she was split in half.  In fact, from Milton’s perspective, she hadn’t even detected him before a sword was sticking out of her, which just went to show how effectively sneaky Rogues could be.

In another part of the battle, a large fireball created by Phyra slammed into a walking tree.  Rather than exploding upon impact, the fire wrapped around the trunk like it was a bandage, as if the Elemental Caster was trying to fix up a wound.  Except that, after a few seconds, whatever protection the tree possessed with the dryad inside of it faded, and the 6-foot-wide bandage rapidly ate into both the tree and its dryad, killing both with a flash of superheated flames.

The best assist came in the form of Pilora, the group’s Support member.  Using Flora Manipulation for the first time since they’d been in a dungeon on this world, Pilora flexed her ability and mimed reaching out to the nearest walking tree with her hands.  There was a momentary pause as nothing happened, but then the nanites that flowed from her extended digits slammed into the tree and invaded its entire form, taking it over.  Milton was unsure whether it would actually work or not, given that the arboreal creatures were made with Mana and weren’t actual, living plants, but he was glad to see that his worry was unfounded.

With control of the massive tree, Pilora forced it to go on a rampage, making it first kill its own dryad and then hunting down the others along with Fendle.  The dryads and other trees didn’t seem to understand what had happened and didn’t react to its presence, so it was fairly easy for her enslaved tree to attack with impunity.

It was completely unfair to the dungeon’s creatures, but the Proctans weren’t going to discard a tool at their disposal just because it might be considered unfair.  When it was kill or be killed, they were going to use whatever they needed to in order to win.

When the dryads were completely taken out, the remaining trees which hadn’t been killed by Phyra with her flame bands were left relatively defenseless, and they were easily cut apart by Micke and Fendle.  Pilora’s captured tree was let off its leash just before it, too, was cut down, joining the rest of the fallen creatures on the floor of the room.

“You seem to be enjoying this a little too much, Milton,” Micke said, seeing the Station Core’s small smile.  “Don’t you dare say, ‘I told you so.’”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Milton replied, keeping himself from saying that exact thing.

From then on, the group worked as a team, fighting their way through the seemingly endless dungeon.  Creatures in different combinations and of varying toughness made themselves known, though as of yet, there wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen before. Different variations of plant-based creations, beasts, and insects made themselves known, and the traps became deadlier and stronger as they progressed.  At one point, a poison gas expelled from a mushroom was so potent that it actually dropped Micke to the ground for a moment before his nanite protection kicked in and neutralized the harmful substance in his bloodstream.  While he wasn’t harmed by it, it was an indication that his protections weren’t foolproof against everything – or at least not right away.

As far as loot went, it was exactly what they had been hoping for.  After the first 20 rooms or so, most of the herbs, wooden equipment, and leather was left behind, and only things with metallic content were rewarded to them.  Sadly, even though they were “worth” more in this world, the gold coins that became more and more common over the handfuls of copper and silver were a disappointment; Milton would much rather have the copper and silver, as they came in much larger quantities – and quantity was what he needed.

Iron, steel, and even the mithril-copper alloy were gained by the time they hit room 80, but they were still going.  By room 100, even those were surpassed as the quantity of metal-based loot was increased, before finding other alloys of even better quality.  Just after room 100, the Proctans had to take a break and eat, as they had already been in the dungeon for 8 hours; not knowing how far they had to travel to get to the end, they needed to make sure they had enough physical energy and Power to make it through.

At room 130, the loot changed again – though in a more disappointing direction.  Instead of better-quality equipment, they started to encounter fancy jewelry or other trinkets, comprised of gold, platinum, and precious gems, such as rubies and even diamonds.  While they were gorgeous and would, most likely, make someone wealthy on this world, they weren’t exactly as useful to Milton and their needs.

His assumption was that most Adventurers rarely delved this deep, even at an S-Rating themselves.  If they dared to travel this deep down into the dungeon, risking death at every step at the powerful defenses, then they deserved to gain a lot of wealth in the process.

At that point, they almost turned around and left, because the payout didn’t seem to be worth it to continue on.  All of the Proctans had been hurt multiple times by that point, though not with any serious wounds, but the fact that they were being injured meant that it was indeed becoming slightly dangerous for them.  Milton was sure that they could complete the dungeon if they wanted to, but whether it would be worth the risk was a question they had to answer.

“Let’s go to 150, and if it doesn’t end by that point, then we’ll get out of here,” Micke proposed, after they paused to talk about it.  He was eager for the challenge – all of them were, in fact – but there was a greater risk of someone dying, the further they went on.  While death didn’t mean much to them at this point, the fact that they didn’t have their Lab up and working on the surface meant that they would be gone either until they fixed it or until the smart people up on Haven Station managed to figure out a way to get them extra people or supplies.

“Fair enough; let’s go,” Milton said, agreeing with the idea.  While the gold and diamond-encrusted jewelry wasn’t exactly beneficial, it was better than nothing; he was just hoping that the loot changed again the further they progressed.

It was just after the 13-hour mark since they entered the dungeon when they arrived at room 150, after slogging their way through increasingly difficult rooms.  In the last room, Pilora had been crushed under a bear that was the size of a bus, snapping both of her legs before the others could get the massive beast off of her.  Thankfully, it only took a quick 10 minutes for her own nanites, along with those from Trond, to mend her bones enough that she could walk, but it would be another hour or so before they were completely healed so that she could walk without pain.

They decided to push on despite her injury, and Milton was glad that they did – because room 150 was a massive change from everything else.  In other words, it was the dungeon’s boss room, which had a bare, stone floor, but the perimeter was surrounded by soaring trees that stretched all the way up to the 500-foot-tall ceiling.  From that ceiling, vines of different sizes hung down 20 to 200 feet, looking like streamers at a birthday party.

In the middle of the room was an actual, full-blooded, real dragon.  How come all of these other Dungeon Cores get all of the cool stuff?  Sandra has her Seed Drake, which looks like an awesome mechanical dragon; there’s this beautiful, iridescent, green-scaled flying lizard, stretching 150 feet from head to tail; and then there’s my Quagon – which looks like a sad, reptilian airplane with its rigid wing structure.

“Yes!  Finally, a worthy challenge!” Micke shouted, a massive smile on his face.

“Whoa, wait a moment—” Pilora said, but the Tank was already rushing toward the emerald-green dragon.

A deafening roar shook the room as the dragon caught sight of Micke rushing towards it, before swiping at the Proctan with a clawed hand that was larger than he was.  The Tank was ready for it, however, and he held his sword out at an angle while he braced for the impact. A split-second before he was swiped away, his sword shifted and almost seemed to disappear as he was hit and catapulted against the far wall.  He hit it hard and bounced off, landing gracefully on his feet, his sword and shield still at the ready.

It was then that the clawed hand that he had expertly chopped off slid down the wall behind him, landing with a wet plop as greenish-red blood ran out of the detached appendage.

The green dragon seemed genuinely shocked, and it took a few seconds for it to realize what had happened.  When it finally did, it roared out even louder, before advancing awkwardly towards the one who had lopped off its hand.  Before it moved more than a couple of steps, however, its head was fully encased in a firestorm of flames, as Phyra lit a quick-strike match and used her Fire Manipulation ability to blind it.

The dragon didn’t like that, and it started thrashing about, smashing its head into the nearest wall and the floor in an effort to put out the flames.  The Proctan Caster let them fade shortly afterwards, and its head was then impaled by a half-dozen thorns created by Pilora’s thorn plant she had grown a moment ago, which had the ability to propel long, javelin-like projectiles long distances – one of which was lucky enough to have hit the dragon’s left eye.

Half-blinded, its face horribly burned, and missing a hand, the beast went crazy and started flailing around.  Its tail ended up hitting Micke – who was trying to run back to the fight – and he was sent crashing against the wall yet again; the Tank was relatively fine, but the force of the impact with the wall had bent his shield to the point where it was nearly unusable without some quick repairs. Seeing the damage, he dropped the shield and went without it as he dodged further attacks.

Fortunately, the dragon’s frenzy didn’t last long, and it stopped after about a minute.  When it did, the massive, winged lizard started to suck in its breath, like it was going to expel something – and Milton was pretty sure it wouldn’t be good.  Milton was fairly certain that the Proctans would survive even if they got covered in whatever was expelled, as their nanites would help keep them alive – but that also meant that they would probably experience some horrendous pain in the process.

The dragon was done breathing in and started to let out a blast of a green smoke-like substance – but that exhalation stopped about 10 feet away from its face, as it hit a wall of condensed air that Phyra had rapidly formed with her Air Manipulation ability.  The Elemental Caster then gathered all of the green cloud and moved it so that it enveloped the head of the dragon.

The massive creature wasn’t getting injured by the thick, green smoke, but when that noxious vapor was condensed down and covering its head, it couldn’t see through it with its one good eye – nor smell through it, either.  Completely blinded and deprived of any of the senses it used to detect the threat, it was vulnerable when Fendle and Micke took advantage to get close.  The Tank used his great strength to leap up on its back, while Fendle snuck close and deftly severed the right hand off the dragon, completely removing any possibility of it being able to attack with its front claws – along with making it lose its balance.  With most of its forward weight on its remaining foreleg, the cut hand caused it to fall forward.

As it collapsed, still blinded, Micke jumped off the dragon’s back so high that he nearly reached the lowest of the vines hanging down from the ceiling. At the apex of his jump, he used his Force Blast ability to propel himself back down at tremendous speed, holding his sword straight out in front of him with both hands on the pommel.  His high speed and weight – as well as the extremely sharp diamine sword – allowed him to hit the back of the dragon and slice his way completely through its spine and innards, before hitting the floor underneath the massive creature with a *thump*.

Cut in half, blinded, and missing its two front claws, the green dragon collapsed on the floor and soon became immobile.  It was only then that Phyra released her hold on the green cloud, which she proceeded to push upwards with her power, making it appear as if it was lighter than air.  When it reached the vines above, Milton could see them wilting away and becoming black, showing that the green cloud was something that wouldn’t have been pleasant for any of the Proctans to suffer through.  Seconds later, the dungeon’s boss dissolved, leaving behind something that made the entire delve through the S-Rated dungeon worth it.

In the dragon’s place, a large pile of alloyed weapons sat on the floor, ranging from swords to battleaxes to warhammers to tiny knives.  In total, there were just over 4 dozen of the weapons, which would add to their total haul significantly.

In addition, for the first time since they’d entered either dungeon, there was an increase in the Combat Experience given out by the death of the dragon.

Congratulations!  Your Combat Units have defeated Green Dragon x1!  You gain (5x1) 5 combat experience!

It wasn’t a huge difference, 5 Combat Experience rather than 1 like everything else, but it at least told him that the Dragon had been harder than normal.  Not enough to really be a danger, but more difficult than usual.

Micke picked himself up out of the hole he had made in the dungeon’s floor with a smile on his face, even after having the dragon momentarily collapse on top of him.  Blood ran down his face from a wound Milton hadn’t noticed before, but that didn’t seem to affect the Tank’s enthusiasm.  “Now, that’s what I’m talking about!  Can we do it again?”

Chapter 14

With the success of their delve through the slightly difficult but much longer dungeon, they left it and found the other group with Whisp and Brint waiting for them outside.  It wasn’t until Milton was able to actually see the other group that he got a flood of Combat Experience notifications, totaling 216 Combat Experience.

“Easy?” Milton asked them, happy that their group had made it back so that his group didn’t have to travel to find them.

Thodrin nodded.  “Yes, though it was a little longer than expected,” he confirmed.  “We actually just got back a few minutes ago.  All of the loot from the dungeon has been added to the Converter already.”

Milton had all of the stuff from their own delve through the S-Rated dungeon thrown into the Molecular Converter, as well, and he pulled up his Available Resources[11] when it was done.

That’s much better.

From the two delves, through the S-Rated dungeon and the A-Rated one the other group went to, they had raised their total to over 225,000 BMUs – which was about 15% of their goal – all in just over 24 hours.

They had found a viable means of procuring Basic Metal Units for their repairs, so now it was only a matter of time before they achieved their 1.5 million BMU goal.  He was just glad that he didn’t need to repair the small reactor on the shuttle, because that would’ve required Focusing Crystals, which they had found no source of thus far.

“Who’s up for exploring more dungeons?” he asked, and despite the fact that each group had just finished one, they readily agreed.  Milton pulled up his mental map and shared his plans with the others, moving through a plethora of B, A, and the few remaining S-Rated dungeons in their vicinity. He had hoped there would be more S-Rated ones, as this last one was quite lucrative, but there were plenty of B and A-Rated ones still within a few days travel.

Thodrin took his group to the east, with their Rogue, Porva, leading and with the mental map of their destinations in her head; Micke, along with Milton, Whisp, Brint, the drone, and the Molecular Converter headed west.  Over the next week, each group traveled all through the great forest and cleared one dungeon after another, using all of their abilities to their utmost to finish the delves as quickly as possible.  They slept at night for a few hours to recover their energy, but they were always up and ready to go the next morning for more – or at least Micke and his group were.  As soon as they passed about 10 miles of distance with the other group, Milton gradually lost all connection with them, so he couldn’t even communicate with them at that point.

Thankfully, he had already prepared for that. They’d planned to meet up at Deftner’s End after 7 days, where they’d be able to pool all their resources together – and he was hoping they’d have more than enough to get the job done.  He worried slightly for their safety, because the dungeons they were delving through were technically dangerous, but he needn’t have worried.  On the eighth day, as they started to approach the clearing where Deftner’s End was located, he reestablished communication with them when they were in range.

“Everything go well with you?” he asked them through their NCUs.

“Absolutely!  Haven’t had that much fun in a long time,” Thodrin responded.  “We’ve got a lot to add to the Converter, too; I think we managed to make our goal all by ourselves.”

That was amazing to hear, because Micke and his team had done just as well.  It had been a little boring for Milton waiting for them to finish each dungeon, but at least Brint and Whisp had been productive; using the Converter and a few thousand of their accumulated Bio Mass, Brint managed to create some small Combat Units to use for hunting.  With a Blood-thirsty Squirrel to scout and a half-dozen Squirrelings – much to Milton’s dislike, due to his sciurophobia – he was able to hunt down dozens of beasts around the forest, including deer, a few wolves, and even some large spiders.  The latter counted as Bio Mass, thankfully; otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten close to them. The Squirrelings had no problem killing them, thankfully, because they were very fast and their claws were amazingly sharp.

The hunted Bio Mass was needed, though, because the other group had depleted much of their Bio Mass when they took off to the east, yet now, they were easily able to feed everyone for at least another few weeks with no trouble.  He was sure the others had likely hunted as well for fresh meat, but this meant that they wouldn’t have to worry themselves over it for the near future.

“Uh-oh.  Milton!  We can hear something is attacking the town!” he heard from Porva, and the Rogue then sent a communication regarding their intent to attack whatever it was.  His perception of where they were showed that they were running toward Deftner’s End, and he let the others know, as well.

Micke and his team took off at a quick run, leaving Milton, Whisp, and Brint to travel at his avatar’s speed, which was faster than a normal Human, but not by much.  Micke and the others, however, were at least 4 times as fast, so they were gone within seconds of leaving Milton behind.

Soon enough, even Milton could hear the sounds of a fight, which was comprised of metal striking metal, explosions of one sort or another, and the *crack* of elemental spells going off.  It sounded like a real battle was going on, but he was having a hard time figuring out what was really going on just from the sound. I really wish I had access to my sensor orbs at a time like this!

Before too long, his curiosity was sated as they burst out of the trees along the edge of the large clearing where the fields surrounding Deftner’s End were located, and Milton looked to the southeast, immediately seeing where the battle was taking place.  Just outside of the walls of the town, a tall man with long, black hair down to his waist was standing on the road leading to the gate. His black robe, decorated with silver runes, appeared very similar to the necromancer they had ended up killing not too long ago.  As did the staff made of bones that he held in his hand, and he was surrounded by hundreds of zombies, all dressed in various outfits that appeared suspiciously like the Adventurers he had seen in the town before.  He didn’t immediately recognize any of them, though, so they were probably brought from somewhere else.

It was those zombie Adventurers that were causing all of the ruckus, as they flung spells at guards and non-zombie Adventurers on the walls of the town, or as they attacked those with their melee weapons as they assaulted the barrier.  Most of the spells were being intercepted by a white-colored force field that seemed to blanket at least 100 feet of the wall, and Milton could see Maxis, the DAS leader, flinching back with each impact, his hands outstretched.  Wow, is that barrier something that he’s able to maintain?  That’s remarkably powerful.

“WHERE IS SHE?  WHERE IS BONNIE’S CORPSE?!”

Some sort of spell must have projected the much-more powerful necromancer’s voice over the air, as it seemed to reverberate across the entire clearing.

“I KNOW YOU KILLED HER, AND NOW YOU’LL FACE THE WRATH OF THE BONE LORD!”

Something about the name made Milton chuckle even as he ran along with Whisp and Brint, but then he realized that his automatic translation combined a few words.  There was something in there that had to do with necromancy and beorgha, which he remembered was a “Warped Lord”, according to Maxis.  Therefore, it was entirely possible that this character was that extremely powerful S-Rated individual that had been interrupting the trade coming from the west.

Looking at the number of zombies that were, at one time, Adventurers, it seemed obvious how he had done it, too.  Every Adventurer that was killed was turned into an undead slave, and this particular necromancer seemed capable of enslaving many, many zombies.  The fact that each seemed to maintain its spells and abilities even while an animated corpse was remarkable to him, however.

Seeing Thodrin and his group approaching from the opposite side of the clearing, and Micke and his team ahead of Milton and quickly arriving at the battle, he slowed down with Whisp and Brint beside him.  He wasn’t getting in the middle of that fight, because he was too weak to do anything.

The other Proctans had no compunctions about participating, however.

“Take out the guy in the robe, and the undead will likely fall.”

His communication to the two groups was swiftly acknowledged, as all of them ignored the casting zombies arrayed in formation and went straight for the angry man in the robe.  The necromancer noticed their approach, however, and he flung out his staff at the closest group, which just happened to be Micke’s.  A massive orb of pure black shot out at them, large enough to swallow them all whole; Milton wasn’t sure what it was, but it seemed as though it was something very bad.  It didn’t look like a void, but like an inky blackness that might have been necrotic in nature; he wasn’t sure if the Proctans could withstand such a spell.  Or to be more accurate, Milton didn’t think that their nanites would be able to stay ahead of the damage to keep them alive.

Again, he needn’t have worried, because Phyra was more than ready to respond to the attack.  Before it was even halfway to them, she held out her hands toward it, projecting her nanites at rapid speed, taking control of the blackness with her Dark Affinity.  She quickly pulled it apart, flinging the attack to the sides, where it fully enveloped a half-dozen undead, eating away their flesh in a matter of seconds.

The necromancer looked surprised for a moment before he adopted an annoyed expression on his face.  Instead of a giant orb, the tip of his staff suddenly sprouted hundreds of thin tendrils, which rapidly elongated toward the approaching group.  Phyra subverted dozens of them, sending them in different directions – even back toward the necromancer, who seemed not to be affected by them in the least.  Kirben, the other group’s Caster, was finally close enough to help as they ran up, and he was able to grab onto another few dozen tendrils, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

The leading edge of the tendrils slammed into Micke, but the Tank had activated his Force Field Generation ability, and they were stopped cold in their attempt to hit him. The others behind him were hit by a few of the small tendrils and stumbled slightly in their run, but ultimately they didn’t seem to be majorly affected.

Whipping the tendrils back with his staff at their seeming ineffectiveness, the necromancer finally decided to turn his zombies to the task of defeating the interlopers.  Spells of all different kinds and elements slammed into each of the Proctans, though none of the spells did much to them.  Having seen that all of them had their Constitution and Agility Boosted by high-level abilities, even being struck by lightning or hit by a fireball didn’t do much more than char their clothing.  A few other spells were going to be a little more damaging, such as a massive boulder that was created and flung in their direction, but either Phyra or Kirben were able to use their Earth Affinity to deflect it in another direction.

“FOOLISH ADVENTURERS!  YOU CANNOT HOPE TO STOP ME!  YOUR CORPSES WILL BE ADDED TO MY GROWING ARMY AND—”

Whatever the necromancer was going to add was cut off as Fendle and Porva, the two Rogues with the groups, arrived from their invisibility behind the man and sliced into and through him with their super-sharp diamine swords.  There was more resistance than they expected, as evident by the surprise on their faces, but their Boosted Strength meant that they were still able to cut his body into three different pieces.  The necromancer literally fell apart at their feet, including his robe…

Nonetheless, the zombies were still attacking, for some reason.  Milton expected them to collapse, as the one controlling them had died, which was typically how it worked in all of the stories and games he’d played before.  So, either something was different here on this world, or—wait.  There was no notification of Combat Experience earned—

“He’s not dead!  Watch out!”

His warning was just in time as Porva and Fendle jumped away from a massive explosion of dark smoke that erupted from the cut-up corpse of the “Bone Lord”, obscuring everything within 50 feet of his location.  Phyra attempted to move the smoke out of the way with her Air Affinity, but the dark smoke stayed rooted in place like it was a giant, black rock.  It didn’t seem to want to do anything but roil around like a thunderstorm inside of a snow globe.  Rather than wait for it to do something, the Proctans immediately fell upon the undead who were still attacking them, by cutting through them with swords, elemental manipulations, and even the plants that filled the field outside of town.  There was no stopping the Proctans, who were more than willing to be hurt to kill their targets, as they eliminated everything in their way with a relentless sweep of death.

The Adventurers who had been animated into undead might have been strong at one point, but as zombies, they only followed the last order they had been given: to attack.  None of them put up any type of defense, which meant that they didn’t do anything to block an attack or mitigate it in any way, even though Milton was fairly sure that some of them could’ve done just that.  Even those wearing armor and wielding a shield seemed to forget they had them and only attacked with their weapons, but that proved to be a mistake as they were systematically killed without mercy.  Not that they needed it, being already dead, but that wasn’t really the point.

They felled the last of the zombies outside of Deftner’s End just as the black smoke started to rapidly condense, as if it was being sucked back inside of its origin point.  Less than 2 seconds after it started to condense, the necromancer was revealed to be healthy and whole, standing where he had been before he was chopped into three pieces.  His robe was in tatters, with only a thin strip still around his neck, dropping in front and behind him, protecting his modesty, Milton supposed.

“HOW DARE—”

Showing their incredible speed, which wasn’t evident to the Bone Lord earlier, Micke and Thodrin rushed up to the half-naked man in a half-second and struck out at him, but their swords simply bounced off as if they had hit some Weightonite.  A hazy, black barrier could be seen surrounding the necromancer, something that was very familiar to Milton and the other Proctans.  While it wasn’t glowing or surrounding a 6-armed alien, the way it protected the man was similar to the barrier that protected the Heliothropes they were there to find and eradicate.

With all of their practice against figures with protective shields, they knew exactly what to do.  All it required was a constant barrage of attacks, and eventually, they would get through the barrier – or that was the method with the Heliothropes, at least.

“FOOLS!  YOU CANNOT PENETRATE—”

There was one thing about this world that was different from fighting Heliothropes, though.  The use of elemental magic seemed to be a major aspect of the environment, and the Proctans were quick to take advantage of that fact.  Two massive beams of light suddenly appeared above the necromancer, courtesy of Phyra and Kirben manipulating the sunlight overhead with their Light Affinity, and the beams slammed into the man’s shield of darkness so hard that he staggered.  For a few seconds, the shield held. But just as their light manipulation gave out, the shield shattered like a pane of glass, exposing the Bone Lord to the attacks of the others.

Micke and Thodrin attacked again, though their swords were somehow blocked by some deft movements of the necromancer and his bone staff.  Fendle and Porva attempted to attack from behind again, but they were sent flying as a wave of darkness suddenly fanned out from the man, slamming into them with enough force to launch them 50 feet away.  A bolt of dark lightning arced out of the clear sky and split in two, slamming into the two Tanks, sending them rolling away from the necromancer as they were both shocked and exposed to the necrotic energy of the attack.

Courtesy of the Support members of the groups, two vines from opposite sides of the man suddenly snatched at his legs, pulling him up as they attempted to treat his limbs like a wishbone; but they quickly rotted away as the necromancer did something to them.  Landing back on the ground, he struck out with another volley of dark tendrils at the recovering Tanks, but Helvana and Trond were there to help protect them with Force Fields, as well as increasing their regeneration from the harmful necrotic spells that were cast on them.

“It’s a bit of a cheat, but I’ve had about enough of you,” Phyra suddenly called out.

Her words weren’t understood by the necromancer, but she certainly got his attention.  As he raised his staff and pointed it at her, the Elemental Caster used a large chunk of her remaining Power for one final manipulation of an effect.  It wasn’t as useful against Heliothropes because their barrier seemed to negate the effects, but Milton doubted that this man had anything that could protect him.

Using her Void Affinity, Phyra created a vertical but flat plane of pure void, centered on the necromancer’s body.  As it materialized, the man was bisected as if he had been neatly cut in half by a guillotine, his spell fizzling out at the tip of his bone staff.  As soon as he fell apart, similar to what Fendle and Porva had accomplished before as a surprise attack, Phyra canceled her void, and then Kirben created his own, though this one was more spherical in nature – while much smaller.  He centered it right on the necromancer’s corpse, and everything it touched – including most of the man’s head – disappeared as if it had never been, utterly destroyed with absolute finality.

They didn’t want to risk another dark resurrection; there was no coming back from having parts of his body being erased from existence.

Congratulations!  Your Combat Units have defeated Bone Lord Necromancer x1!  You gain (10x1) 10 combat experience!

“Nice job, everyone,” Milton said as he ran up with Whisp and Brint.  Trond and Helvana were healing the two Rogues, who had been inflicted by the nasty necrotic spell that flung them away, but it hadn’t been too bad; none of them had been in danger of being killed, though it was probably very painful and had been highly debilitating.

“Shall we go see if they need any healing over there?”

Whisp indicated the wall of Deftner’s End, which held a bevy of guards and Adventurers, including Maxis – who all appeared more than a little flabbergasted.  And perhaps a little scared, too; we did just kill that powerful Warped Lord dude, after all.  He was probably the strongest thing we’ve fought in a long time – that wasn’t a Heliothrope, of course.

“Just try not to frighten them, because they appear to have gone through a lot,” Milton warned, pasting a smile on his face as he moved toward town.  He realized that he probably had some ‘splaining to do….

Chapter 15

“What are you?”

Milton thought that was a bit rude, but he ignored it as he answered Maxis – truthfully this time, as it was a little difficult at this point to hide what they could do.

“We’re interdimensional travelers hunting a race of murderous, slave-owning aliens looking to establish a permanent connection between this dimension and our own, for the purpose of killing or enslaving every person they can find.  Our shuttle crashed upon entry through the atmosphere, and we’re trying to find enough resources to fix it up so that we can continue our search for the Stabilizing Anchor the Heliothropes – who are the murderous, slave-owning aliens – are trying to use to establish that permanent connection I mentioned earlier.”

They were in the DAS building again, after Helvana and Trond had helped to heal some of the worst injuries sustained after the battle with the necromancer.  It wasn’t as bad as Milton had feared, however, because the people of this world had their own healing abilities, which were just as good as his own; only Sandra’s Repair Drones were better and faster, but that was a special case.

Afterward, Milton had volunteered to talk to Maxis while the others helped with the cleanup, which involved the butchering and stuffing of zombies into the Molecular Converter – out of sight of the people in town, of course.  That kind of thing wasn’t exactly standard practice in most cultures, so it was better if it was done out of view.  As a result, they now had a lot more Bio Mass added to their Available Resources, which would be enough for at least a few months of meals for the Proctans, even with their increased appetite.

Maxis appeared incredulous at his statement, and he shook his head.  “I can’t even tell if you’re lying anymore.  That story is so unbelievable that I’m almost inclined to believe it.”

“It’s the truth, whether you believe it or not,” Milton responded, shrugging.  “But there’s something that I want to know, if you don’t mind my asking.  Why were you attacked in the first place?”

The change in subject caused Maxis to take a few seconds to really catch up with the conversation.  “I’m not entirely sure, but from the beorgha’s relatively incoherent speech, I believe he was looking for some of his own, which had been killed.  One woman in particular; I think Bonnie was her name?  Sounds like someone may have slaughtered some of his living ambushers, and like he was particularly fond of a certain one.  You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

Milton didn’t know for sure, but it was entirely possible that the B-Rated bandit in the steel armor with the ridiculously large sword had been Bonnie.

“No, I have no idea.  Regardless, as soon as we’re done cleaning up, we’ll be out of your hair while we go repair our shuttle.  We managed to clear out quite a few B, A, and S-Rated dungeons over the last week, which provided us with what we required.”

Milton got up from the table, leaving Maxis still sitting there with a shell-shocked expression on his face.  Before he left the Syndicate’s building, he turned to the DAS leader and said, “Oh, and if you ever see a person with 6 or more arms come to your town… run.  Do not try to fight them, because you will lose.  Even that necromancer we fought earlier would have trouble against a few Heliothropes, so I would advise you to have everyone flee before they can be cut down or captured.”

With that warning delivered, he left town and picked up the Proctans just outside of the walls, their efforts at the cleanup of bodies complete.  Checking his Available Resources, he found that not only did they have a little over 3 million BMUs – twice the amount they needed to repair the shuttle – but they had an additional 150,000 Bio Mass.  There’d been a lot of dead bodies, after all.

They left as quickly as they could, considering that it was entirely possible that they had invited the attack down on the town because of their slaying of those bandits shortly after they arrived.  While they had killed the powerful necromancer and probably freed up trade once again, a few dozen guards and lower-Rated Adventurers had been killed during the attack before Milton and the Proctans arrived.  He supposed he should feel guilty about that, and he did – a little bit – but there was no way he could’ve predicted that something like that would’ve ever happened.

Trying to do a good deed just ended up with it biting me in the butt.  It was a common theme with him, he couldn’t help but think, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try and do good deeds in the future.  I might just have to think about my actions before I take any steps like that again.  Better information would’ve also helped, but they were kind of lacking in that department right now.

With a successful battle against a powerful opponent and a Converter full of the resources they needed, it wasn’t long until they arrived at the crash site.  Seeing the damage to their vessel again was a little discouraging, but almost immediately after arriving, the drone was already on the job.  With how fast it worked, the repairs probably wouldn’t take more than a few hours, thankfully. Milton was inclined to try to create a Drone Assembly Plant using some of his excess BMUs, but he realized that he didn’t exactly have the power to operate it.  Right now, his Molecular Converter was working off the portable Power Generator that was basically attached to it, but it wasn’t strong enough to power a Plant.  Normally, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, because his Station Core on the Station had a reactor that could reach even down to a planet; with the atmosphere interrupting things the way it did, though, he didn’t think any power was reaching the surface.

He could always produce a Hemispheric Zero-point Energy Reactor to produce enough energy to power whatever he wanted, but that also cost 2 billion BMUs – an amount that was possible if he were back on the Station, but on the planet was something that would take years to accumulate via delving through dungeons.

The wait wasn’t that big of a deal, however, and it wasn’t even dark before it was complete.  It actually ended up taking a little less than 1.5 million BMUs, but only by about 45,000 – so their target goal had been fairly accurate.  Even the Bioconversion Lab on the shuttle had been fixed and was using the small amount of extra power from the shuttle’s reactor to function, so not only could anyone who died be reborn, but they could also bring additional Proctans down to the surface – though outfitting them would strain their current resources.  Until they needed to do that, Milton thought that it was probably best to use what they had at the moment.

“We’re back up and running here, everyone.  We’re going to start looking for the Stabilizing Anchor now,” he told everyone up in the command center.  “By the way, how are things coming along up there?”

Switching his focus back to the Station while Whisp operated the shuttle, taking off from where they had forcefully landed more than a week ago, he saw ALANNA, Sandra, and the rest of the Think Tank still working hard on what appeared to be different projects.

“Not as well as we’d like,” ALANNA told him.  “Anything with a power source of just about any kind that we send down will explode a few moments after entering the atmosphere.  We’ve isolated the cause, at least, which was what we already expected: the unique energy that covers the entire planet.  The outer layers of the stratosphere are apparently thicker than down on the surface, for some reason, so getting through that ‘shell’ is proving to be difficult.  Thankfully, it seems as though once you’re through the upper layers, like you are right now, everything operates normally.

“As for why you survived, we still haven’t been able to determine the exact reason; but as we’ve said before, we expect it has something to do with your presence on the shuttle.  Or it could be a fluke.  Or any number of other reasons, but so far, the first possibility is the belief we’re operating under.”

“I understand.  Keep doing what you’re doing, and thank you for all your hard work.”

He turned his attention to Sandra, who had gotten a lot more comfortable with the console she was using.  The Dungeon Core’s fingers weren’t necessarily flying over the flat plane of the console, but she wasn’t having to resort to using the hunt-and-peck technique like before.

“I’m doing good, but I could really use that artifact you have, Milton,” she said after he asked how she was doing.  “I’ve hit a wall here, as there’s only so much that I can make out when you look at it.”  Over the last week, Milton had been taking the SDIA out when they were waiting for Micke and his group to delve through a dungeon – all so that Sandra could look at it through his eyes and sensors.  However, there was only so much that could be gleaned from looking at it from a distance.

“ALANNA?  Is there any way I can get this box to you?”

The nanite-powered AI thought about it for a second or two, which meant that she really thought about it because of her insane processing speed, before she answered.  “Getting too close to the upper layers of the atmosphere could end up destroying the shuttle, despite your presence, so it would be ridiculous to risk it.  What might work is the transportation of something inert, and it might also help us get more supplies to you.  While we experimented with dropping large crates of metal from above the atmosphere down to the surface, their entire structure broke down after a half-mile past the highest layers and subsequently rained down in pieces.  It’s almost like size, rather than mass, has an upper limit to what can pass through safely – your shuttle notwithstanding.

“Given that, I think we might be able to drop a very small crate down from a freighter up above the atmosphere, connecting it to a strong but thin cable, and thus deliver some supplies to you.  After that, you could put the artifact inside, and we’ll pull it back out.”

“Worth a try, at least.  Let Whisp know what to do, and we’ll attempt it.”

“Give me about an hour to get everything set up, then we’ll see if it works.”

ALANNA communicated directly to Whisp courtesy of Milton’s proximity, giving her the height she needed to obtain to be in range of the delivery, but still low enough to stay under the upper layers of the atmosphere to prevent them from exploding.  An hour later, they were ready to try, and the super-intelligent Proctan took them high up above the surface, until everything down below looked like a patchwork of colors.  They stopped before they entered the estimated danger zone, and they had to wait while a small, metal box, approximately 1 cubic foot of space, descended to them.  When the small box finally got to them, they snatched it out of the back of the shuttle, which was extremely cold and in which the oxygen level was basically non-existent; thankfully, the Proctans all had their Space Amulets to help with that, though Milton felt his own avatar start to freeze up a little from the prolonged exposure.

The steel box had cracks all along its surface, as if it had been under extreme stress on its slow way down.  Milton had his drone fix it up until it was good as new, while also taking out what it contained: a massive block of tritanium, worth about 100 million BMUs.  It was something they could’ve used a while ago, but they probably wouldn’t have been able to get to it until now; based on the condition of the box that descended, he doubted it would’ve stayed in one easily found piece before it got to the surface.

He pulled out the box that contained the SDIA and Soulstone and placed it into the steel box before closing it back up, telling ALANNA that it was ready.  If it didn’t make it up in one piece, he’d have to see if he could obtain another set at some point.

With the massive influx of BMUs at his disposal now, Milton felt a lot better about their status.  While he didn’t have the Focusing Crystals he would need for many of his more-advanced Defensive Weapons and Facilities, there was still a lot he could do with the BMUs, and repairs would be easy to accomplish if needed.  He doubted that they would be, but who knew what would happen over the next little bit while they located the Stabilizing Anchor.  At the least, he could start bringing more Proctans down and outfit them decently.

“All right, let’s go see if we can find that blasted thing and come up with a plan to destroy it,” Milton told his current crew.  Whisp nodded and took the shuttle back down, directing it to the forested area they had just left, while they used the visual view of the shuttle’s sensors to observe the ground.  That was about the only thing these sensors could do, unfortunately, and it was little better than looking out a window.

Starting with a grid-like pattern, they meticulously scrutinized the ground, trying to see if there was any evidence of either the Stabilizing Anchor or the Heliothrope’s Breeder Ship they expected to see at some point.  The enormous size of the planet, coupled with the landscape, meant that even the massive Breeder Ship could be hiding just about anywhere and they might miss it.

I hope they figure out some way to speed this process up, because otherwise, this could take years.

Chapter 16

Sandra finally got her figurative hands on the artifact that Milton was able to provide to those on the Station, and at first she was extremely disappointed.  As soon as they cautiously opened the small box that the artifact and the so-called “Soulstone” were contained within, it was immediately obvious that the artifact wasn’t working anymore.  It appeared inert, completely unlike how it had appeared down on the surface, as if it required the strange energy of the planet in order to function, and without that, it was basically just a hunk of junk.

Except, when Milton’s powerful sensor orbs were able to look at and analyze the artifact, they revealed so much more than Sandra – or anyone else – had expected.

“That’s… incredible!  I can’t even begin to extrapolate how that is supposed to function correctly, but it’s obvious that it does,” Rhiole exclaimed once the sensor input was placed on the main viewscreen of the command center.

“What exactly do you mean?” Sandra asked, though she thought she understood it at least a tiny bit.

Using her console, Rhiole zoomed into a specific part of the Sub-dermal Interface Artifact, and as the point of view got closer, even more of the artifact’s structure was revealed.  To Sandra, it looked like a crazy mess of straight lines, swirls, and unidentifiable symbols.  Still using her console, the member of the Think Tank created a virtual red circle on the viewscreen, highlighting a small portion of the SDIA.  “This here appears to be set up like some sort of rudimentary electronic circuit board, but it’s actually a lot more complicated than that.  Instead of electricity, it’s run with the energy of the planet down there, and that energy is already unlike anything we’ve seen before.”

Zooming in even further on the lines, swirls, and symbols of the SDIA, Rhiole highlighted another section – and it looked slightly familiar to Sandra.  “Here, it appears as though the ‘circuits’ are actually—”

“Enchantments.  Those are enchantment sequences,” Sandra said, interrupting the Proctan.

Rhiole nodded, before zooming the view out again, slowly, so that Sandra and the others could take in the full effect. First, at the largest magnification, were the enchantment sequences that appeared familiar to the Dungeon Core, followed by the “circuits” where the sequences nearly disappeared as they became part of the lines and swirls.  When Rhiole reduced the magnification even further, it became evident that the circuits were actually part of a greater enchantment sequence, though it was unlike any that Sandra had seen before.

“It’s a combination of technology and ‘magic’ – for want of a better word – that I always thought could be accomplished, but never figured I’d see.  It’s… beautiful.”  Rhiole and the other members of the Think Tank appeared enraptured at the complexity of the artifact, which was so complicated that Sandra could barely wrap her head around it.

She was more than aware that she wasn’t nearly as intelligent as the others in the Station’s command center, due to the fact that they could literally make themselves smarter on command, so trying to understand the exact nature of the circuits and enchantments was probably beyond her. What she might be able to deduce was how the energy reacted with it, as well as the nature of it.

That was because the Soulstone, which was a greyish orb that swirled with an internal energy of its own, was still at least partially active.  While the others were gushing over the SDIA and were already trying to map out its different sections and components, trying to make sense of it, Sandra used her console to direct a different sensor orb to look at its companion.  She had gotten accustomed to touching the lights on the console to affect what she wanted, though quick and fast at the process she definitely was not.  Still, over the last few days, the practice she had at manipulating the controls had improved her ability to use it significantly.

The first thing that the sensor orbs revealed was that the stone was actually a condensed sphere of what appeared to be the same energy as down on the planet, contained in a clear, crystalline structure that contained even more “circuits” and enchantment sequences inscribed on its surface – so small that the Human eye couldn’t see it.  Only with the benefit of the sensor’s magnification was Sandra able to see it, though it didn’t really make any more sense to her than did the SDIA.

What was more important to her was the energy inside the sphere itself.  Even sitting halfway across the room from it, she could feel its presence, and it felt vaguely familiar.  It wasn’t exactly the same sort of Mana that she could use for her dungeon, either to create Dungeon Monsters or traps, but it was as if it was “her” Mana-adjacent.  She likened it to a scenario where she hadn’t already had access to every element, and she encountered the energy of a foreign element that was just out of reach and couldn’t be used.

When she closed her eyes and turned her entire focus on the energy, she quickly realized that it wasn’t just Mana that she felt inside of the sphere, but an amalgamation of different forces, such as an alternate form of elemental energy.  That energy was something she was very familiar with, as she had designed an enchantment to turn her Elemental Orbs into Energy Orbs, which converted normal Dungeon Core Mana into elemental energy, which could be used by people to regenerate their internal elemental energy as well as to power enchantments.

What Sandra felt from the sphere’s energy convinced her that a type of neutral elemental energy was contained within it, as well as something else she couldn’t identify at all.  The strangest thing about it was that, while she could feel the different forms of energy inside of the sphere, somehow, they were all combined together to make the whole.  An echo of a memory occurred to her at that point, where she had an epiphany back on her own world, discovering that all of the energy that operated in the world was basically the same; it was just utilized in different potencies by the people of the world and the Dungeon Cores.  It was what led to her creation of Energy Orbs and the larger Cubes, after all.

If she extrapolated her knowledge of her own world and applied it to this sphere, then what it contained was the ambient energy of this world – just combined together with an extra type thrown in with it.  Thinking about everything that Milton had learned about the SDIA and the unique information screen that the people could pull up on a whim, she concluded that this third type of energy was Essence, which was typically given off by defeated Dungeon Monsters and used to improve themselves.  Power was like the elemental energy that she was used to, and then Mana was what the Dungeon Cores could utilize for their dungeons, of course.  For some reason, the relationship through which they all worked had changed a few decades before, and she was starting to comprehend why.

Everything about this energy told her that it hadn’t always been combined together, and that it had all been separated into easily absorbable components by different people and Cores.  The original SDIA, which the Think Tank were still pouring over, had been the main component to utilizing that energy for Humans, as it allowed them to gather ambient Power and Essence easily; the same thing went with Dungeon Cores, who were able to absorb Mana from the environment – which led to the patchwork appearance of the planet making more sense, if there were higher concentrations of certain elemental Mana in different areas.

When the fundamental aspect of the world’s energy changed, however, neither the Humans nor the Dungeon Cores could absorb Power, nor Mana, from the environment anymore.  This “Soulstone” was the key to fixing that somehow, and the only way she could think of that working was if it somehow altered the SDIA to separate Power from the combined energy of the world, giving it to the Humans to use, and storing the Mana from that split-up energy inside of them.  She could only assume that the “Essence” – or the third type of energy – was contained with the Mana, as it was given out as a reward for killing Dungeon Monsters, and it all transferred to the dungeons when Humans physically touched their Cores.

It was a roundabout way of preserving the normal order of things, and whoever had come up with the solution had to have known what they were doing.  It was also possible that they had caused the change in the first place, but it was probably impossible to tell.  I wonder if they have a “Creator”-type God or Goddess in this dimension, and if so, was it them that did all of this?

Having a better understanding of the force surrounding the planet was just the first step in finding a solution, though.  She was convinced that the amalgamation of different energies was what made the atmosphere so volatile, so if she was able to figure out a way to separate them into their different components – while physically passing through the atmosphere – she thought she might be able to adapt the enchanting sequences to work as a way down to the planet.  It would take the Think Tank also analyzing the “circuits” and incorporating them along with her sequences, but she was fairly certain it could be done.

“Hey, ALANNA?  Can you come here for a moment?”

The diminutive woman, who only came up to her knee, flew over to her console, where Sandra pointed out what she was seeing and described what she was feeling with the Soulstone.  It didn’t take long for the little artificial woman to understand what she was trying to impart, but when she did, she got excited.

“Listen up, everyone!  Sandra’s analyzed this Soulstone thing and thinks she might have a solution for us.  It’s going to take a while, but if it works, then we might be able to finally get down to the planet with something more than a tiny, little box.  So, here’s what we’re going to do….”

The Think Tank listened with rapt attention, and despite the incredible amount of work it was going to require, none of them balked at the idea.  If anything, they were even more excited now that they had a solution – if it even worked, of course.

Only time will tell, I guess.

Along with the others, Sandra got started on analyzing parts of the artifact and the Soulstone, but after a few minutes she realized she might need some more help.  She resolved to call in Violet and some of the other Master Enchanters from her world that she could get a hold of, because this was going to take more than a few experts to get done.  While the Think Tank was extremely intelligent, they didn’t have quite the same expertise in Enchanting that people from her own world did; working together, though, they would see this done, one way or another.

Hold on, Milton.  We’ll get there one way or another.

Chapter 17

“Anything?  We’re running out of time, Whisp!”

“I know that, Milton, but it’s not like I can speed these things up!”

Brint was suddenly there between Milton and his wife, putting his hands up to stop them from yelling at each other.  “Whoa!  Now, that’s enough!  There’s only so much we can do to search, you know.”

Oh, I know.  Believe me, I know.

“I apologize, Whisp; I shouldn’t have snapped at you.  I’m just… frustrated.”

“It’s all right, boss,” the super-intelligent Proctan said as she turned to him in her chair, a smile on her face.  “I’m honestly surprised you haven’t yelled at someone before this.  You need to get your frustration out somehow.”

That was the understatement of the millennium.  He’d thought it would’ve been easy to find the Stabilizing Anchor, or even the Breeder Ship that was likely nearby it, after getting the shuttle repaired, but that turned out to be far from the truth.  They spent the next few months searching the surface non-stop, grid by grid, but there was absolutely no sign of the Anchor.  That it was still there was confirmed by those on the Station, so they knew it was there, and that the timeline fortunately hadn’t changed; but they were wasting time looking for a needle in a haystack.  The planet was large enough that they had only searched about a fifth of the surface after a few months of searching, and they had gotten no closer to finding what should’ve been obvious.

Thankfully, about 6 months after they started, Sandra and the Think Tank finally discovered a way to help.  By analyzing the SDIA and the Soulstone, they were able to extrapolate the way the energy blanketing the world could be split up into its different components, at least temporarily.  Another few weeks of experimentation produced a viable “tech-enchantment” – or that was what they were calling it – that they could plaster over the outer hull of a shuttle or a freighter that allowed it to pass through the upper layers of the atmosphere without harm, like an icebreaker ship back on old Earth.  The Separator tech-enchantment essentially broke up the energy within 10 feet of the hull and created a bubble of separated energy that they could passthrough easily, letting it return to normal as soon as they passed through.

Soon enough, dozens of additional vessels were helping to search, as those on Haven Station had used their large stores of resources to create more and more ships, as well as creating additional external bays on the Station’s lower column where the ships could be stored while they were being outfitted with the Separator.  It was at that time that Milton was able to head back up and visit his team in person to thank them for all of their help designing the tech-enchantment, as well as see the one person he had missed most of all.

Sandra.

The Dungeon Core had adapted well to the Think Tank team and was a major part of how they were able to come up with a solution – and she was loving it.  It was crafting on a whole new level that she hadn’t expected, or so she said, and she was full of ideas on how to apply it to further tech-enchantments.  Even the Enchanters she brought from her world were amazed at its utility in complex enchantments, and they went back with even more ideas on how to apply them to their own experiments.

In all, he spent a few days on the Station with Sandra before returning to the shuttle with Whisp, Brint, Micke, and the others to resume searching.  After another few months, there were over 150 vessels occupied by at least one group of Proctans, but there were many volunteers from their newest residents, who wanted to help to search – if not participate in any fighting.  Many of them were familiar with piloting ships and working the controls on consoles, which was a lifesaver, because it meant that they didn’t have to teach more Proctans to fly.  More and more, the decision to add the people from the station hub to Haven Station was proving to be beneficial, as they became used to their safety and looked for more ways to be useful.

So, with so many people searching, it should’ve been easy, right?  Apparently not, because even after 2 years of looking over the planet, crossing over its entirety at least a dozen times, there was still no sign of what they were seeking.  Now they were running out of time, because there were now fewer than 6 months to go before the dimensional wound was fully stabilized, and they were no closer than they were when they arrived.

The biggest problem?  The same as it was from the beginning: Sensors.  Despite efforts to apply the Separator tech-enchantment to sensors on vessels or sensor orbs, all it did was make them functional within 10 feet at first, and then up to 50 feet after some adjustments were made.  Anything further than 50 feet away was only visible as a garbled mess, so they were of limited use.  The other problem at first was that sensor orbs were only good up to a few miles away from Milton, who had the connection with them via his avatar and therefore his Station Core; after that distance, unless there was someone to actively control them with a Neural Uplink ability like Brint, they would simply stop moving and would eventually fall to the floor, completely out of power.

A Hemispheric Zero-point Energy Reactor was eventually built on an isolated island in the middle of an ocean, using 2 billion BMUs to get that done, but that huge investment turned out to provide absolutely nothing.  The same disturbance that prevented certain things from working because of the energy throughout the world prevented the power from traveling more than 50 miles away from the Reactor.  It was an improvement, but in order to blanket the entire planet, they’d have to produce hundreds of thousands of them to make it work the way Milton needed it to.

Therefore, they were basically stuck with the whole needle in a haystack problem again, though by the end of the 2 years, they had over 500 searching vessels flying over the surface, constantly looking for any evidence of the Anchor, the Breeder Ship, or a sign of even a single Heliothrope.

Nothing.  They found nothing, which was precisely why not just Milton, but almost every other searcher in the skies was frustrated.  They were running out of time and ideas, and Milton wanted to punch a wall, so great was his utter annoyance at their lack of being able to find what should’ve been easy.  Even though it will sound a little conceited with an assessment of my resources, I have so much power at my fingertips when it comes to the technology and even magic that I have access to – and I can’t even find the target to point it at!

What made it even more strange was that they saw absolutely no sign of a Heliothrope, which was very unlike them to hide away when they were normally more than willing to go out and conquer, especially if they had enough time to secure their position at the Anchor.  The theory had been put forth that their Breeder Ship had been destroyed upon entry to the planet, just as most of Milton’s early vessels had, but there hadn’t been any sign of more Ships near the wound.  If there was one thing they were sure of, the Heliothropes had a way to detect if one of their Breeder Ships was destroyed, because they would simply send another to replace it.  Since that hadn’t happened, he doubted they had gotten that lucky.

“You know what you need, Milton?” Brint asked, answering his own question before the Station Core could say anything.  “You need to get away for a few days and return fresh and ready to go again.”

“Get away where?  We were all back on the Station a few weeks ago, and while I would love to see Sandra again, I think this takes precedence, don’t you?”  He enjoyed his time with Sandra more than almost anything, but while he was on the Station for his last visit, he couldn’t help but feel time inevitably ticking away at the back of his mind.  It didn’t exactly make for a relaxing vacation, so he doubted he would return “fresh and ready to go again” once he was back down near the planet.

“Well, we could always go and visit a dungeon?” Brint proposed.

It was a possibility, and it was something that many of the Proctan groups helping to search had partaken of in order to relieve some of their frustration – after they had visited a town with Milton’s help to receive the special artifacts they needed from a local DAS location.  A quick stop of a few hours on the surface, a delve through a dungeon or two, depending on how powerful the dungeons were, and then they would return to the skies to resume searching.

But for Milton, that wasn’t exactly something that relaxed him or relieved his frustrations.  No, he needed something else, something different, a way to clear his mind so that he could come back and try to think of another solution.  He didn’t really believe that he could clear his mind entirely, but perhaps a new experience would help to give him a new perspective on things.

Suddenly, he knew what he needed to do.  It could be dangerous, and probably would be, but even if he or his companions were killed at this point, they could all be reborn or reassembled back on the Station.

“No, we need something else.  Something I think you all might appreciate, too.”

“And what is that?” Brint asked, while at the same time the bored-looking Proctan fighters in the back of the shuttle perked up at the conversation.

“We’re going to go visit a city.  The biggest city we can find nearby, in fact.”

Most of the search teams had completely avoided contact with the Humans of this world, for a couple of important reasons.  The first and foremost was that most of them couldn’t speak the language very well; the translation software that got downloaded to their NCUs on the Station was spotty when on the planet, for some reason.  That didn’t mean that some of them weren’t able to learn and adopt the language as part of their normal speech recognition; however, unless they were exposed to it constantly, it was difficult for them to speak the language, even if they could understand it.

The second was their appearance.  It was quickly revealed that there weren’t any races but Humans on the planet, so the Proctans – and their volunteer Pilots – stood out as quite different.  Monstrous, even.  To avoid any misunderstandings, the searchers simply stayed away from towns and cities.  There were a few incidents where Human Adventurers were stumbled upon – when the Proctans were delving through a dungeon in order to relieve their frustration – but they typically fled at the sight of the aliens within their midst.  Those that didn’t… well, they freaked out and attacked the Proctans.

Thankfully, this didn’t result in any deaths, because his people were able to incapacitate them with only minor injuries after a clash.  Sadly, a few Proctans were killed as a result of these confrontations, as well as some unfortunate accidents in a dungeon, but they were able to be reborn in each vessel’s Bioconversion Lab shortly thereafter.

But actually visiting another town or city?  That was just inviting trouble; but Milton felt as though he needed to stir some up to divert his attention from their current problems.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Micke asked, giving up any pretense of not listening.  He had a point, Milton surmised, because he still remembered the last time they had “interacted” with the Humans of the planet, as well as the furtively scared looks the natives gave them when the Proctans’ strength was revealed.

Whisp answered for Milton, saying exactly what he was going to say.  It seemed as though she was thinking along the same lines as soon as he mentioned visiting a city.  “It probably won’t be the safest, but it could be beneficial, nonetheless.  Getting among the populace could help us hear any rumors of the Anchor or sightings of the Heliothropes, for instance.  Overall, it couldn’t hurt to try… or rather, it could end with us all dying, but that’s not really a big deal, is it?”

“Precisely; what she said,” Milton added with a smile.

“Do you want us defensive or indifferent, then?”

Milton only considered Micke’s question for a half-second before he answered. “Indifferent.  If they attack us, don’t fight back.  If the worst happens, I can end things through your NCUs, have you reborn through the Labs, and then transfer my own consciousness to a new avatar.  No big loss, other than a few hours’ delay – and we’d gain the knowledge that it wasn’t a very good idea to begin with.  Still, it would be something different, right?”

“Will do, boss.”

It didn’t take long to arrive near the largest city nearby, which was easy to find because they had pretty much fully mapped the entire world by that point – at least from an aerial point-of-view.  It was an unusual location, though not one-of-a-kind; there were a half-dozen others or so around the entire planet, but that didn’t make it any less impressive.

The city they were heading to was located in the exact center of all 7 different types of environments that made up all of the non-Human-held world.  Over their visits with different dungeons, and from the knowledge learned from Maxis of the Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate, each of these environments (such as forests, mountains, and lava-filled fields) conformed to the different elements they were focused around: Water, Air, Fire, Earth, Dark, Light, and Nature – otherwise known as Plant by the Syndicate.  According to the elemental affinities on their status screens, however, it was really Nature; Milton assumed that the “Plant” name was a carryover from what it used to be called before the change happened a few decades before.

Regardless, it was strange to see all of the different environments butting up against each other in such an organized and obviously planned way, leaving the center completely devoid of these different element-based sections.  In the center was instead a massive, walled city, holding what was estimated to be millions of people, and it rivaled just about any city back on old Earth.  The walls were extremely tall, reaching upwards to 100 feet in places, and there was a cleared area around them as if to produce a buffer zone from the acres of farmland that seemed to fill most of the rest of the gigantic clearing.

There were a few ruins of what appeared to be elemental concentrations here and there around the farms, but other than a large, crumbling mountain in one part, they were largely unidentifiable.  Milton wasn’t sure what had precipitated the ruins, but he could only assume it was the same as most everything else: the Big Change.

“Looks like there will be a bit of a walk to the city from those forests, Milton.”

He could see what Whisp was talking about, because the clearing where the city was located was at least 100 miles wide.

“Yeah, I’m not sure I want our ride to be that far away.  Take us into the edge of that buffer zone around the walls,” Milton said, and Whisp nodded without argument.  He actually expected her to protest, so he was surprised when she didn’t.

“It’s probably good that we don’t simply walk in from outside of view. As it is, we’re going to be different enough that we might as well demonstrate that from the beginning,” she explained.

As they descended, Milton was able to see on the shuttle’s visual sensors that the giant walls were manned by what appeared to be Adventurers, but they also might simply be guards, since they were all garbed the same sort of uniform.  He half-expected them to fire spells at their vessel from a distance. Along with changing their stances from bored and inattentive, they had their hands on their weapons and looked ready to attack at any moment.  The strangest thing that Milton noticed, or didn’t notice, as it were, was that they didn’t bother to close the gate leading into the city, which was filled with common travelers, caravans very similar to what they had seen near Deftner’s End, and groups of Adventurers all waiting for their chance to get inside.

There was no panic or screaming or yelling, though the people still on the road and near the gate looked nervously at the shuttle as they slowed their descent, landing about 500 feet from the closest road and just outside of the buffer zone around the walls.  When they finally set down, Milton looked at the others and asked, “Are you ready?”

Whisp and Brint appeared eager, while Micke and the others moved as if they were excited, though they already had their indifferent expressions on their faces.  Looking at them, he could see that their confidence and indifference were perfect for what they needed now.

Stepping out of the back of the shuttle, the Proctans followed after him like an entourage, and they were assaulted by the mid-day sun high overhead.  Coming around the back side of the vessel, he got his first close look at the walls, the people on top of the wall, and the gate – which was currently undergoing a large disturbance as a group of people pushed against the incoming crowd.  Milton stopped moving as he saw 30 people emerge from the disturbance and head very swiftly in his direction.

When they were close enough to hear him, he shouted, “Good afternoon!  I hope this wasn’t a no-parking zone!”

The leading edge of the group faltered a moment at his words, causing a few of them to misstep, but they ignored him as they got closer.  They were all dressed as Adventurers rather than the guards on top of the wall, but they were also outfitted with quality equipment.  Even the DAS leader in Deftner’s End didn’t have as nice of accoutrements as these particular people did, so he could only assume that they were either high A-Rated or S-Rated, according to their way of categorizing strength on this world.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

The woman demanding the answer to those questions was dressed in a full set of skin-tight, white leather with a hood partially covering her face.  Her delicate features were marred by a scar that ran from just under her left eye to across her nose and curved down to her right upper lip.  Given what he knew about their healing spells, the scar had either been deliberately left, or it was caused by something that couldn’t be healed.  I wonder if the Labs could fix that?

On her left hip was a white leather whip with accents of red down its length, and a pair of bracers full of sharp knives were attached to her forearms for easy access.  All told, she looked like some sort of odd-but-dangerous dominatrix – but he didn’t say anything like that out loud, of course.

At her side was a beast of a man at least 7 feet tall in full plate armor sans helmet, which was made from what he recognized as an extremely strong alloy found in the S-Rated dungeons they had delved through.  Instead of a sword, like the bandit leader had possessed, this man had a warhammer that had a head the size of a small child attached to his back, though it didn’t appear to be held in place by straps or a buckle, but was instead held in place by some other means.  An enchantment, perhaps?

His red beard was neatly trimmed as it covered his entire face, but his head was as bald as an egg.  The man’s piercing gaze was focused on Micke and Thodrin, as if he figured that the biggest threats were the pair of Tanks; to him, they were probably the only ones that could match his strength.  In reality, if either Micke or Thodrin went all out with their Strength Boosts, there probably weren’t many that could match up to them.  Then again, he hadn’t actually seen any Humans from this planet that specialized in their physical aspects, as their only experience was against that powerful necromancer – so he could be wrong.

“Oh, that’s so rude of me not to introduce myself!” he responded cheerfully.  “My name is Milton, and we were looking to take a break from our tasks to peruse your city for a little bit.”

There was silence from the assembled group as they stared at each other, the Proctans for the most part looking indifferent and bored.  Only Whisp and Brint looked a little nervous, but that was probably because they didn’t want to die.  It wouldn’t be permanent, of course, but they’d probably like to avoid that if at all possible.

“Ark, they have SDIAs.  Or at least most of them do,” the woman in the white leather said in an aside to the red-bearded individual in full armor.  Milton probably wasn’t supposed to hear it, but he had exceptional senses, especially when they were so close by.

To Milton and the others, the woman said, “Where are you from, stranger?  We’ve never seen your… kind before around here.”

“That’s a bit of a long story, but suffice it to say that we don’t mean you any harm.  We’re just here for a little R&R, and then we’ll be on our way.”

At the mention of “harm”, the group of Adventurers drew their weapons and made ready to defend themselves.  As for the Proctans, they barely reacted except to relax their stances even more.

“I don’t think you understand who you’re talking to, Milton.  You’re looking at some of the strongest S-Rated Adventurers in Allroads, and it really isn’t a matter of you meaning us harm.  If we don’t want you to cause any harm, we can ensure that you don’t.”

Milton continued to smile amiably, while bowing toward the woman.  He didn’t think it could hurt, and he just hoped that they recognized it as a sign of subservience, instead of a move to control himself so that he wouldn’t chuckle at her threat.  He was sure they were quite powerful, but there was something to be said for not having that fear of death that most people had.

“Now, are you going to tell us what you’re really doing here?”

Milton sighed, knowing that there really wasn’t a way to get out of this without informing at least a few people of the reason they were there on the planet.  “Uh… take me to your leader?  I think we have some things to discuss.”

Within moments, they were being escorted into the city, surrounded by the original 30 Adventurers that had come out to confront them, but before too long that number swelled to nearly 3 times as many as when they started.

Well, I guess we got inside of the city, Milton thought wryly.  Not quite the relaxing entrance I was expecting, but we might as well roll with it.

Chapter 18

The city was crowded, with thousands of people walking the streets on one errand or another.  Not that Milton got the chance to see many of them, as their escorts pushed everyone out of the way and blocked most of his view of the shops, homes, and other buildings that they passed through.  When they were a few minutes into their journey, two dozen Adventurers stopped them, holding what appeared to be some sort of handcuffs – though they weren’t attached to each other.  Instead, they looked just like fancy bracelets; Milton could only figure that they were designed to do something like suppress the magic of this world, because otherwise, any criminal with a high-enough Rating could probably break out of custody using their abilities.

“You will consent to putting these on to suppress your use of your Power,” the red-bearded man the woman had called Ark stated as a fact rather than a question.  Ha!  I was right.  “If you don’t consent, that makes no difference to me; we’ll place them on you when you’re unconscious if we have to.”

“Don’t struggle; let them place these bracelets on your wrists – it’ll make them feel better.”

He received affirmative replies from everyone, who were – for the most part – still acting completely indifferent.

“Go ahead, we won’t resist,” Milton told the man.

As soon as the bracelets were snapped around his wrists, he saw them connect together and essentially meld into one solid piece, without any indication of a way to get them off.  They were heavy, but not heavy enough to affect him; instead, it was like wearing bands of thick gold.  The appearance of the bracelets was fairly utilitarian with a greyish sheen to them, so they certainly weren’t as fashionable as gold.

“I can still access all of my Abilities,” Whisp informed him as soon as the bracelets were on her own wrists.  Of them all, the super-intelligent Proctan was the only one who fully understood what was being said, though the others could understand enough with their basic comprehension of the language thanks to their NCUs.  The others quickly added their own confirmation that they hadn’t been affected by the strange suppression bracelets, and they continued toward the heart of the city soon afterwards.

It took more than an hour of fast-walking to reach the city’s center, even with everyone clearing out of their way.  As they passed by building after building, the Station Core was starting to realize that there might be even more people living there than they had estimated, because the buildings also seemed to descend a little into the ground, meaning that there was even more living space underground.

Finally, though, they approached what appeared to be some sort of governmental area, which was walled off from the rest of the city.  Inside the gates, which were opened just for them, most of their escort left, leaving them with only about a dozen Adventurers, including the woman (whose name he still hadn’t learned) and Ark.  They were met by a small cadre of uniformed guards, who led the way into a large, official-looking building. Milton had half-expected a palace of some sort for the ruler, but instead it was relatively utilitarian-looking, if large.

Marched inside through a set of double doors, they were quickly ushered into a large audience room that reminded him of a town hall, with important-looking people up on a dais, surrounding an otherwise empty chamber.  Their escorts surrounded them at a distance of 20 feet, staring at them as if daring them to make a move, while those on the dais looked down on them.

“Greetings.  My name is Elder Hood, and your presence here before the Allroads Council is due to what I’m being told is… what?”  The severe-looking woman at the center of the dais was looking at a sheet of paper in front of her, before she began shaking her head.  “A threat against the city?  Ark, Katrina – what is this?”

The two who had talked to them outside of the city’s walls attempted to explain.  “They said that they don’t mean any harm, but with their strange appearance and the way they descended from the sky, they’re surely agents of one Kingdom or another.  And I swear that the pale one isn’t even breathing.  We thought it prudent not to take any chances, so that’s why—”

“Ridiculous.  So what if they look different than us?  That doesn’t mean—”

Milton, tired of the exchange and wanting to get this over with, loudly cleared his throat.  It was a weird feeling, because the woman was correct; during their surveying of the planet, looking for the Anchor, he had gotten into the habit of stopping his breathing.  Sometimes it was easier to use their own eyes and his avatar’s sensors rather than using the shuttle’s, because they were much clearer; as a result, their altitude was so high at times that breathing was nearly impossible.  Therefore, in order not to suck in all of that cold air, he kept his mouth closed – which meant that it was becoming a habit not to breathe all of the time.

“You’ll speak when you’re given permission—” Ark shouted out, but Elder Hood cut him off with a hand up.

“You wish to defend yourself?  To clear up these potential misconceptions?”

Milton nodded, gesturing to the Proctans as he did.  “Yes, I do.  Like I told these lovely people, we’re not here to harm anyone.  On the contrary, our overall task is to save everyone, not cause trouble.”

There was a bit of laughter from everyone in the room, but Milton was confused.  He didn’t think that anything he said was funny.

“A bunch of G-Rated weaklings?” the armored Ark asked derisively.  “How are you supposed to save anyone, let alone everyone?  And what are you supposed to be saving us from, anyway?”

Obviously, they can see the Proctans’ Ratings according to their SDIAs, somehow.  Or maybe these bracelets impart that kind of information about them?

“Look, I’m trying to be as honest as possible here, but I’m starting to get frustrated,” Milton said, feeling more than a little exasperated – especially at the bearded man.  “I don’t care if you think you’re so much stronger than us, because it really doesn’t matter.  We’re here to help protect your world, and in fact your entire dimension, from the depredations of the Helio—”

“What do you mean by ‘think you’re so much stronger’?  It’s obvious that I am, because I’m the strongest Adventurer in Allroads.  I can even bend Magisteel by myself—”

“Can you take a punch?” Milton interrupted the big guy, since Ark had interrupted his speech about the Anchor and the Heliothropes they were looking for.

“What?  Do you think you can hurt me?  You don’t even have an SDIA.”

“Get ready to boost Micke with everything you have.  I want to make an impression on these people so that they know we’re not messing around.”

While no one could see them do it, those with Physical Boost – On Touch Suite Boosted Micke as he walked past them, stepping in front of Milton.

“Oh, no, I’m not a fighter,” the Station Core admitted.  “I’m more of a… coordinator, I guess you could say.  Now, Micke here, he’s a fighter.  Do you think you can take a punch from him?”

“He’s got some fancy armor, but I doubt he could make me shift from my defensive stance,” Ark said, standing in front of Micke, topping him by at least a few inches.  “Give it your best shot, right here on my breastplate; if you don’t break your hand, then I might consider you worthy,” he continued, banging his fist against his alloyed armor.

“Is there a healer nearby?  I don’t want you to die, after all.”

That got the entire room laughing, but there was a woman on the dais that raised her hand through her giggles.  “I can heal, but I don’t think my services are going to be needed, to be honest.  I don’t think I’ve heard of Ark being hurt in at least a few decades, and that wasn’t more than a few scratches.”

“Fair enough.”  Switching to Proctan, he said to Micke, “Go ahead; right in the breastplate – and try not to kill him.”

Micke nodded, took one step, and then slammed his bare fist into Ark’s armor so quickly that Milton didn’t even see the wind-up.  It hit the man so hard that he instantly crumpled, putting up barely any resistance to Micke’s fist as it hit his body underneath.  Ark’s body was actually much more durable, as his outer skin withstood the strike… for a nanosecond.  After that, his ribcage was nearly shattered as the fist produced a hole in his chest that just barely missed shredding his vital organs.

The force of the impact against his body took Ark off of his feet, sending him flying backwards 15 feet, where he hit the back wall of the room, cracking the thick stone blocks it was made of in the process.  Unfortunately, the man’s head hit the stone and produced a hollow noise, and Milton winced as he imagined Ark’s head being cracked open.  Thankfully, as the heavily injured man fell to the floor where he had impacted the wall, the Station Core was able to see that there was only a scrape visible on his bald noggin.

There was silence throughout the room that was only broken by the sound of dust raining down from the impact site.  Amazingly, Ark was still conscious, and he moaned in pain as he managed to turn himself over, so he wasn’t lying on his ruined chest.

“I thought I asked you to hold back a little so as to not kill him,” Milton said softly to Micke.

The Tank just shrugged.  “I did.”

Oh.  He knew that, when Boosted multiple times, Proctan Tanks could match or surpass the strength of even a Bearilla, which were crazy strong – but he hadn’t really seen it in action in a while.  It was good to know that they could still be quite devastating when they put their minds to it.

“Uh, you may want to heal him.  That looks like it hurts quite badly,” Milton said to the room.  The healer on the dais suddenly jumped up and rushed to his side, and the Station Core could see her place her hands on him.  Within seconds, he was suffused with a glowing light, and his chest appeared to inflate. All his bones were repaired to their normal state, and any internal wounds sealed up.  As for his armor, there really wasn’t much that could be done for the hole in the breastplate.

“So… are you ready to listen?”

Elder Hood spoke for the still-silent group, her tone authoritative, but Milton could hear a slight tremble to it.  “How did you do that?  What are you?”

With a sigh, Milton gave the same speech to her that he had told Maxis, about the Anchor and the Heliothropes and the danger they represented.  This time, however, the Elder seemed to take his words at face value, rather than dismissing them as those of a crazy person.  That didn’t mean she wasn’t skeptical, though.

“If what you’re saying is true, then why can’t you find them?  With how powerful you are, it seems as though it should be easy.”

He nodded.  “It should be, but there is an energy around this planet that messes with our technology.  We’ve spent years surveying every inch of the ground that we can visually see, but we can’t go past what is on the surface, nor can we analyze everything in a way that would reveal anything hidden.”

“It must be the Soulforce…” the Elder said, almost to herself.

“Soulforce?  Is that what you call this energy that is everywhere?”

The woman took a second before she answered.  “Yes, though it hasn’t always been this way.  To us, it was only Power and Essence, the former being something that would automatically regenerate our abilities and the latter acting as a way to improve ourselves.

“That was all before Fred showed up in our lives and turned our world upside down.”

“Excuse me, did you say… Fred?”  That was an unusual name, and something Milton would’ve expected from Earth.

“His full name was strange, Fredwynklemossering or something like that, but he normally went by Fred.  He was a unique fellow, a hybrid Human and Dungeon Core, and his actions called down the wrath of all of the other Dungeon Cores to the point where they attacked Allroads.  Thankfully, Fred was able to save us, though we were almost destroyed utterly.

“In the fallout of his help, however, he fundamentally changed this ‘energy’ you referred to, which apparently clumped together Power, Essence, and the Mana that the Dungeon Cores use to create their dungeons and their monsters.  Seeing as you have SDIAs, or at least most of you do, I’ll spare you the description of how that all works now with the changes.

“What I will tell you is that, at least according to Fred, Soulforce is powerful stuff.  It is something that only he can use because of his dual nature, which is probably a good thing because he can do just about anything with it.  He even used it to bring thousands of us back to life after that final battle; if there is a limit to what he can do, I don’t know about it.”

Milton was shocked.  A Human and Dungeon Core together?  Similar to Sandra and yet not, because she is actually a Dungeon Core with a facsimile of a Human body made from one of her Shapeshifter monsters.  But a true hybrid?  That’s wild.

“Where can we find this Fred?  I’m thinking he might be able to help us, especially if he’s as powerful as you claim.”

“Oh, he’s powerful, all right.  As for where he is, no one knows; his wife used to teach at our academy down below the city, but we haven’t seen her in a few months.  We don’t know where they live, but I suspect they have retreated to spend time with their son, Wynk, who I believe is of age to become an Adventurer.”

“Are you sure you don’t know where he is?”

Shaking her head, Elder Hood said, “No, I don’t.  I wish I did, especially with this news you’re dropping on us.  Interdimensional threats?  I thought it was bad enough that the Dungeon Cores wanted to wipe us out, but now this?”

“Speaking of that, have you heard any rumors of Heliothropes anywhere, even in distant lands?  Any sightings of 6-armed people with a glowing shield that prevents any damage from reaching them?”

“Not that I’ve heard.  Katrina?” she asked the woman in white leather, who was standing over Ark as he recovered from Micke’s punch.  “Katrina’s our Foreign Intelligence Lead, as we’re always on the lookout for rumors of potential threats coming from other lands,” she explained to Milton.  “Now that the situation with the dungeons is a little more stable, governments are looking to expand.”

The woman with the whip shook her head, dashing any hope that Milton might receive some pertinent information regarding the location of the Anchor or the Heliothropes.  “Nothing like that.  I’ll let you know if I hear anything, however.”  The look she gave Milton told him that she had no plans on telling him squat even if she did learn something.  I’m assuming Ark is a very good friend of hers, or perhaps a lover.  She obviously didn’t like the people who nearly killed him with a single punch.

“Thank you.”  Turning to the Elder, he nodded his head to her.  “I appreciate the information you’ve given us; if we can manage to find this powerful Fred person, he might be able to find the Anchor so we can destroy it.”

“Good luck, if you end up finding him.  For your sake, I hope you’re telling the truth.”

Hmm, that’s not threatening or anything.  “What do you mean by that?”

The Elder just smiled at him after glancing at Ark, who was finally getting to his feet, still looking a little woozy from the extreme healing.  “This little show was impressive; I’ll give you that.  But it pales in comparison to what Fred can do if you make him mad.  He retreated from the public eye after a few years because it didn’t really suit him, so if you disturb his solitude – with his family nearby – you had better not be lying about all of this.  Otherwise, whoever else you’re working with won’t find a trace of your bodies.”

That was an impressive threat.  I’m even more eager to meet this Fred, now.

“It’s not a lie, but I appreciate the warning.”  Sensing that this meeting was coming to an end, he asked, “Can we go?”

“Yes.  You may visit the city on your way out if you wish, but if you cause any trouble, you’ll be back in front of me so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

Huh.  I guess that expression is universal.

“Would you like to remove these bracelets, or shall we remove them ourselves?” he asked, holding up his hands.

“You cannot remove them; they are constructed of Magisteel and will only open to a set of keyed activation wands.  Even with your friend’s enormous strength, he’d only rip his entire hand off—”

At a signal from Phyra, Milton held his hands out in front of him while she used her Void Affinity to manipulate tiny voids at 4 different points along the bracelets, essentially cutting them in half.  As they fell to the floor, he managed to say with a straight face, “Whoops.  Looks like that one was defective.  Would you like to see if the others are defective as well?”

The Elder just shook her head slowly as she sighed.  “No, there’s no need to destroy them.  Our Artificers are going to have a fit after seeing how easy it was to escape.”

As one of the guards in uniform came around and unlocked all of the bracelets, Milton reassured the Elder.  “It’s not their fault.  I’m sure these would work for almost anyone from this world – but we’re not from here.  Our power comes from an entirely different source and relies on technology to enhance it, so there’s no reason to think it would work on us.”

They were escorted out of the town hall-looking building and sent outside of the walled compound, and into the city proper.  They weren’t completely unescorted, however, as there were 20 Adventurers who followed them wherever they went.  They started to shop through what appeared to be a merchant’s quarter, but it was uncomfortable with someone watching over them the entire time.  Milton couldn’t enjoy himself like he wanted, so the trip was already ruined.

As they walked back to the high walls surrounding the city with their shuttle as their eventual destination, Whisp interrupted his thoughts.

“It wasn’t a completely wasted trip, Milton.  We at least have someone we can hopefully find that might help us.  And if this ‘Fred’ is difficult to find, then perhaps his son might be easier to locate, given that the Elder said he might be joining the DAS.”

“That’s true, I guess.  It’s better than nothing.”

Of course, that just meant that they had something else to hunt for, and this time it was a single person somewhere in the world.

Thankfully, they got to the shuttle without any other incidents, and Milton had Whisp take off so they could resume their search – with yet another objective.  “Well, there’s no time to waste.  Let’s see if we can find this Fred dude.”

Chapter 19

“Hurry up!  We don’t want to be late!” Wynk shouted back at his party.  The notion of being late to a delve through a dungeon was a bit ridiculous, but he also wanted to be done with their delve before nightfall; trudging back to town in the pitch darkness of the Thandiline Forest wasn’t the Fighter’s idea of a fun time.

Penga was breathing hard by the time she caught up with him, followed quickly by the others.  “We’re not going to be late, oh ‘fearless leader’,” the Mage said with more than a hint of sarcasm, which caused Wynk to blush a little.

He had gotten the nickname for his penchant for rushing into fights a little too eagerly over the last month.  It was something that he knew he needed to work on, especially after he had been horribly wounded when he had run right into a small pit trap filled with long, sharp thorns in a Nature dungeon last week.  Fortunately, it hadn’t been that long of a drop, and he only hurt himself on one thorn; of course, that one sharp thorn had impaled itself entirely through his stomach and punched out of his back.  It was only through the quick thinking and frantic emptying of Penga’s Power pool to fight off all of the dungeon monsters that he had survived.

Pulled out of the pit to relative safety, Ghericah and Tralce worked to heal him before he bled out from the horrid puncture wound in his abdomen.  They were able to stabilize him enough that he was able to leave with his party; and by the time they got back to town he had been healed a few more times as their two Healers’ Power regenerated.  He was lucky that they hadn’t hit F-1st-Rating yet, because Tralce was planning on becoming a hybrid-type Squire Class with a lot less healing ability and more melee-focused attacks.  It suited him much better than being just a Healer, but if Tralce eventually wanted to become a Holy Paladin, he had to start at the bottom.  If the other man had already become a Squire when Wynk had injured himself so severely, then it was possible that Wynk might have died.

He had no idea what his parents would have said, had that happened so early in his Adventuring career.  Not that he would have been around to hear it – because he would have been dead – but he really didn’t want to disappoint them.  In fact, with this next dungeon delve, he (as well as the others in his group) was hoping to reach the next letter Rating, showing that he was indeed making progress.

“Fine, but if we’re walking through this forest when it’s dark, I’ll be using you as a shield versus all of the beasts that come out at night,” Wynk said jokingly.

“Oh really?  You’re scared of…what?  A bear or a wolf attacking us in the dark?  You do know that I have a spell that will light up the area almost as bright as mid-day?” Penga joked back, a subtle jab at his “fearless leader” nickname.

“Stop messing around, you two – I think we’re here.”  Ghericah’s soft voice was accompanied by her pointing ahead, showing exactly what Wynk was hoping to see: the dungeon entrance, just past the edge of the forest and in a whole different environment filled with small mountains, pockmarked cliff sides, and spanning stone bridges between airy vistas.  The dungeon entrance looked like every other one that he had seen, though, with a large rock formation thrusting out of the ground and an entranceway along one side.  Apart from every other dungeon he had visited in his short career as a Dungeon Adventurer, he knew the inside of this one would be quite different.

“What have you heard about this dungeon, Wynk?” Roland asked, their Scout keeping an eye out for any dangers outside the dungeon itself.  It wasn’t likely that anything would attack them, but Roland tended to like staying as alert as possible when they weren’t safely inside a town’s walls.

“Not too terribly much, actually.  All I know is that this G-4th-Rated Air Dungeon appeared not that long ago – only a year or so – and no one has been able to map it, for some reason.  I’ve heard that it changes things around every time a Syndicate party delves through, so it is hard to predict what things will be.  Even the monster assortment that we might face changes frequently, so there is no help there, either.”

Truth be told, the lack of information didn’t really bother Wynk too much.  They had gone in completely blind to a few of the dungeons they had faced over the last month, though it was a rarity; most of the lower-Rated dungeons were mapped-out by stronger Syndicate members so that they were ensured to be appropriate for those just starting out.  It was only the fact that Wynk had been pressuring his group to visit one of each type of dungeon out there that they had visited so many; sometimes as many as 2 or 3 a day, in fact.

He was quite aware that it was a bit selfish, but none of them had objected; in actuality, they seemed to relish the challenge and unique experiences delving through so many different variations.  First they had started with Water, moved on to Earth, then Fire, Dark, Nature, and – just recently – Light.  With each type of dungeon, Wynk managed to unlock a brand-new Elemental Ability… after acquiring enough Elemental Affinity to unlock Stage 2, that is.  Though, to be fair, he didn’t necessarily need to visit the Earth dungeons, but it helped to improve his Affinity. As a bonus, Penga actually acquired the Earth Affinity after fighting long enough inside the dungeons.  Her Affinity % increased quite slowly; actually, everyone’s Elemental Affinities increased quite slowly even when they had them unlocked – at least compared to his own, for some reason.

Once Wynk achieved Stage 2, his own progress slowed considerably.  He was told by some Syndicate veterans that it was because he needed to be challenged with some higher-Rated dungeons in order to increase the Affinity % significantly again, which he guessed made sense.[12]

Now, as he walked up to the Air dungeon’s entrance, he was excited to get started acquiring some more Affinity in the last element he hadn’t brought to Stage 2.  Most of the other Abilities he had gained had been useful during the last few weeks, and he was sure the Air-based one would be useful as well.  As time went on, he was told that they would even expand from there, developing into even more powerful benefits to him and his group; that last part was the most important to him, after all.  He was the one who was there to protect his group, to go toe-to-toe with the dungeon monsters they battled against, and to sacrifice his Vitality so that the others had a better chance at surviving.

That being said, he really didn’t want to die – so anything that could help prevent that from happening was essential.  Even if it required traveling around the continent they were on, seeking out dungeons of every single element.

“Are you just going to stand there?” a voice from behind him asked, amusement in her voice.  Wynk turned around to see Ghericah smiling at him, and he blushed as he realized he was now staring at her like he was just staring at the dungeon entrance.

“Uh…no.  Let’s…uh…go.”  He wasn’t sure what it was about the small Healer that seemed to fluster him so much, but he found himself a bit tongue-tied whenever he had to talk to her.  It’s probably because she’s had her hands all over you so much.

That sounded a lot more fun in his head than the reality of the situation.  As their primary “tank” for the group, Wynk took a lot more damage and suffered more injuries than anyone else; as their primary Healer (as Tralce acted as their backup Healer and backup Tank), Ghericah frequently had to heal his wounds.  Her most efficient healing spell required touching the area in need of healing, so as a result… well, she had pretty much had her hands on nearly every part of his body.  Luckily, he hadn’t taken many wounds to his more sensitive areas; when he did, she used her distance-based healing spell to fix him up, albeit that it was more expensive, Power-wise, and less efficient.  To preserve “proper decorum”, she said, or something like that.

Rather than make the scene even more awkward by hesitating anymore, Wynk led the group inside the dungeon entrance.  As soon as he entered, the Fighter could hear what sounded like rushing wind, and moments later he felt a soft gust of air flow past him and up the entrance tunnel.  This should be interesting.

Looking to his left, he saw the small room where the Air Dungeon Core was located, floating with a yellowish glow in the middle of the small space.  When they left, they would visit the Core and discharge their accumulated Mana, gaining some Elemental Affinity in return.  Wynk looked at his current Mana and saw that it was only at 54 – not too bad, all things considered.  It was extremely easy to get rid of Mana, even if you didn’t want to delve through a dungeon; all you had to do was discharge it at the Core without any danger to yourself, and that was it.  Most waited until they were done with their delve, simply so they wouldn’t have to do it again later.  Thankfully, there were only a few instances in the past in which he had heard of someone exceeding their limit and not being able to discharge in time; the result was reportedly not very pretty, but most of the time no one really worried about it.

The chance of being overloaded with Mana was so low, compared to dying from monsters or traps inside of a dungeon, that it was rarely considered.  Before his time, Wynk was told that the dangers inside a dungeon had been so significant that death was a normal part of the delving experience.  Nowadays, there was still a risk, and deaths certainly did occur; but fortunately, death from a monster or trap was almost as much of a rarity as exploding due to Mana buildup.

Roland, their Scout, gently pushed past him so that he was the first one into the room.  Ha!  Looks like he doesn’t want to take the chance that I’ll just go barging into the room without looking for any traps.  It was a valid concern, because he had done just that in the past through his incredible eagerness to fight, but he had mellowed out a bit after his near-death experience with that large thorn impaled through his stomach.

“I don’t sense any traps,” Roland said, which was all the permission Wynk needed to enter and engage any monsters inside.  That there weren’t any traps present in the first room was almost standard by now, as they had yet to encounter any dungeons that had those kinds of defenses in place right away.  It paid off to be careful, however, so their Scout always checked – just in case.

Wynk cautiously walked inside, a large shield raised in defense on his left arm and his shortsword in his right, ready to strike whatever monsters approached.  At first, he didn’t see anything and nearly thought the room was empty – but a noise nearby alerted him to the danger, at the last moment.  This is an Air Dungeon, you numbskull!  He hadn’t ever fought anything that flew before, and he made the one mistake he thought he never would: He forgot to look up.

“Look out!” he heard Ghericah shout from behind him.  Wynk raised his shield above his head a second too late, and a strange, blue-greyish bird with a weirdly long, serrated beak snuck by in a full-on dive, slamming into his breastplate. Even for such a relatively small monster, it hit him hard enough to knock him back a step.  The momentary startlement caused him to drop his shield a few inches, and two more of the birds shot above his defense even as he felt a few others impact his shield.  One hit his iron helmet so hard that Wynk briefly saw stars, though he was able to see enough of the action around him that he realized the bird had killed itself upon impact, breaking its neck.

The second bird struck a little lower, and since he was looking upwards, it easily crashed into the thin, bronze gorget around his neck.  The metal was almost immediately shredded by the strong, serrated beak of the bird, and the Fighter felt something pierce his skin and impale itself inside of Wynk’s upper body, right next to his collarbone.  Unfortunately, this bird didn’t kill itself upon impact as it thrashed around, either trying to free itself or cause more damage; regardless of the reason, it was all Wynk could do to hold his shield up and start slicing upwards at the other dungeon monsters trying to break through his defenses.  He didn’t dare try to remove the thrashing bird, because he was almost certain the other dozen that he saw were waiting for precisely that.  He looked at it with the strange-but-welcome special ability he had to assess exactly what was hurting him so much.

Serrated Swallow (Level 4)

Vitality: 20

Attack: 10 (Diving Impact)

Defense: 3

Great, I’m getting shredded by a bird.  If I delved into the dungeons by myself, I probably would’ve been dead a long time ago.

Luckily, Wynk wasn’t alone – he had an awesome group of fellow Adventurers with him.

The Fighter heard the snap of a bowstring, once, twice, and then three times in quick succession. Three *thunks* were heard soon afterward, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a trio of the birds hit the ground.  Roland sent out a fourth accurate arrow shot just as a flashy spell was released by Penga.  “Eyes closed!”

Her spell wasn’t flashy in the sense of being done to show off, but rather, in the sense that it caused an explosion above Wynk’s head, where the flock of birds trying to get to the Fighter was centralized.  Wynk closed his eyes just in time to block out the bright light that accompanied the explosion – which caused the birds to squawk in surprise as they were momentarily blinded.

If he was hoping they would somehow fly into a wall or crash into the ground because of their lack of sight, he was sorely disappointed.  Instead, all they did was flap their wings to maintain their current position in the air, remaining stationary while they were blind – though that made them easy enough to pick off.

Roland went to work, easily shooting down the highest in elevation, while Wynk and Tralce used their weapons – and a little prodigious jumping – to slice through the Serrated Swallows in the air.  As soon as they were all dead, the Fighter finally concentrated on the bird still stuck in his skin and collarbone; he had done his best to ignore it and the pain it was causing so that he could help to eliminate the other threats, because the Swallows’ blindness would only last so long.

Wynk dropped his sword and gripped the bird with his right hand, ripping it out of his body with a spray of blood.  Whoops!  Looks like it did a bit more damage than I thought.  As he crushed the bird with his fist and threw it against the far wall in angry response to his pain, he started to feel a little woozy.

“Whoa!  Sit down for a moment, Wynk.”  The Fighter could absently feel Ghericah’s hands on his chest, sending healing energy through his body.  His knees gave out due to an unexpected weakness, and he obeyed the Healer involuntarily; luckily, all he ended up doing was kneeling on the ground – and he somehow managed to keep himself from falling over.

“Wh-what happened?  Were th-those birds poisonous?” Wynk asked, confused why he felt so weak.

“No, I don’t believe so.  I think that bird managed to wiggle its way into your chest far enough that its beak tore into your heart.”

That’s…not good.  He was having trouble thinking at the moment, but he knew he was in danger.  Despite Ghericah and now Tralce healing him with everything they had, the damage inside of him to his heart was apparently quite bad; even worse than when he was impaled by a sharp thorn.  I will not die to a stinking bird.

It took him a moment to concentrate enough to do it, distracted by the plainly worried faces of his friends, but the dying Fighter reached inside of himself and activated the newest of his Elemental Abilities: Healing Surge.  He had acquired it from reaching Level 2 in his Light Affinity, though he hadn’t used it yet.  Thankfully, he did have a vague understanding of what it did: it would heal him… somehow.  Experimenting with it hadn’t really been a priority before now, because it required all 15 of his available Light Mana and had a 5-day Cooldown.  Since they weren’t close to the nearest Light dungeon to help recharge that Mana, and with the long Cooldown, it wasn’t worth testing it in the absence of an emergency.

He supposed this counted as an emergency.

Wynk felt the Light Mana flow out of his central self, though it didn’t go very far.  Instead of leaving his body, which his other Elemental Abilities did in one form or another, it stayed inside and did something odd.  The Light Mana seemed to infuse his entire body, and it felt like his skin and muscles were on fire!  An enormous shock ran through his frame, which didn’t really help with his wound, and it also knocked Ghericah and Tralce’s hands off of him.

“Wynk!  What’s going on?”

He couldn’t answer the smaller Healer, because it felt like he was frozen in time; the world seemed to stop around him, and while he could see both Healers trying to get their hands back on him, they weren’t moving.  What is going on?  His thoughts echoed the Healer’s words, even as the burning sensation throughout his skin and muscles faded away, replaced by a gentle warmth that he immediately recognized as “healing”.  By that point, he had been healed enough that it was unmistakable.  Maybe this will work after all—

Then it all changed.

The warmth became a painful burning again, though this time it was concentrated in his lower chest.  Not necessarily near the wound that had been caused by that darn bird, but just below it, almost in the center of his torso.  It became so painful that he blacked out for a while; when his vision came back into focus, he could see that his friends were still frozen, and he continued not being able to move.  However, one thing had changed – the pain was gone.

With the same mental focus that he used to look at the stats of the monsters he fought, Wynk searched inside himself to figure out what had happened.  He was ecstatic to see that the wound on his collarbone and heart had been healed and he didn’t feel any pain; the weakness he had been experiencing lingered on a little bit, but he instinctively knew it would fade after a few minutes.

Moreover, he discovered that, inside his chest, just below his heart – where all that pain had seemed to originate – there was something different.  It took him a few frozen moments to determine what it was, exactly, but when he did, it didn’t make any sense.  What is a Light Dungeon Core doing in my chest?

Now, he didn’t know for sure that was what it was, especially since it was practically miniscule compared to the Dungeon Cores he had seen.  However, it had the same inner glow, the same spherical shape, and the same… feel… to it.  Wynk had always thought it was a strange quirk of his that allowed him to somehow sense when he was near the entrance where the Dungeon Core was located, especially when he had felt that all of his life; it honestly wasn’t anything special, and he thought that everyone else felt the same thing.  He quickly found out that wasn’t the case when he was younger, but he also never mentioned it specifically to anyone.

Regardless of it being a quirk or not, he was quite convinced that there was now a Dungeon Core in his chest.

Suddenly, Wynk’s vision twitched, which made him a little dizzy.  When his head settled down, he could see Ghericah and Tralce starting to move; slowly, but moving, nonetheless.  Before they could move more than an inch, though, the Fighter felt a build-up in what he thought was the Mana inside of him.  It wasn’t painful, thankfully, but it made him a little worried; after a few seconds, he felt like he was going to explode like the Magiburst spell Penga had cast earlier against the Serrated Swallows.

It kept building and building, making him more and more uncomfortable; he wanted to scream in frustration, but he was still frozen in place, despite the fact that the others were starting to move faster.  The Mana buildup reached a crescendo just as the diminutive Healer touched his shoulder, and a blast of Light exploded out of his body, propelling outward with such speed that it was hard for him to even see it as it disappeared through the walls of the dungeon.

It could be felt, however.  The release of so much Mana at once slammed into his friends, sending them backwards and visibly knocking them unconscious in mid-flight.  As for Wynk, he was able to move again just as soon as the shockwave of explosive Light faded from his senses… and then he passed out.

Chapter 20

The next month was a stressful time for everyone involved in the search for the Stabilizing Anchor and the Heliothropes, as the clock was ticking down closer to what was more and more looking like an inevitability.  With just about 5 months left – at the end of that month of searching – before the dimensional wound could become stabilized enough to send fleets’ and fleets’ worth of Heliothrope ships flooding into this dimension, everyone was starting to feel the pressure.

After their visit to the city of Allroads, Milton had developed a feeling opposite of everyone else’s.  For a reason that didn’t make sense to him, he had relaxed his incessant drive to find the Heliothropes and stopped stressing about it every second of every day and night.  It was something Sandra had told him when they left Elder Hood and the Humans down below, when he was still quite frustrated.

“You can only do so much, just the same as the rest of us.  I know that you put a lot of responsibility on your figurative shoulders, but you’re already doing everything you can.  Unless something else is discovered to help you search more thoroughly, you’ve already hit the wall.”

“I know that, but it feels like I should be doing more, nonetheless.”

“You’re already doing more than anyone else, even if it doesn’t look like it to you.  You care about these people as much as you care about your own people, which is what makes you the way you are – but it will also make it harder for you to relax, too.  I know that saving an entire dimension can’t compare to my own experiences, but I found that when some things are out of your control, you just have to go with the flow and do what you can, instead of looking for an answer that might not even exist.”

She was absolutely right, because if some of the smartest people in just about any dimension couldn’t figure out a solution, then Milton had to simply accept the fact that there might not be a solution.  Therefore, over the next few weeks, he let go of the stress and just “went with the flow”, hoping that they might get lucky and find something they had previously missed – or just happened to find this mysterious Fred character.

Then, out of the blue, Milton got the call he had been waiting for – though not exactly the way he expected.

“Milton?  I’m feeling a disturbance in the energy down there; there’s a spike in the energy levels in one area that I’ve never felt before.”

The Station Core’s focus moved from his avatar on the shuttle near the planet’s surface to the command center on Haven Station in an instant.  Any change on the planet was good, because it had all been basically the same since they arrived.

“Thank you, Sandra.  Where is it?”

The Dungeon Core closed her eyes for a moment before opening them and pointing at a view of the planet on her console.  She moved the view a little bit, before circling a section of forest right next to an area that had small mountains, sheer cliffs, and stone bridges with her finger.  “It’s right in here… somewhere.  I can’t be more specific, because the energy spike has faded.”

“Very good.  I think we can work with that.  We’re nearly on the other side of the world, unfortunately, but we’ll be there as soon as possible.”

Back on the shuttle, he let Whisp know what was happening.  “…and so we need to get there as soon as possible.  If it was a reaction from a Dungeon Core because of the Anchor, we need to know.  If it’s something else, then perhaps it will help us achieve our objective.”

“Is there anyone closer?” Whisp asked, and Milton checked from up on the Station.  While their sensors couldn’t get an accurate read on the vessels’ locations, there was a plan that had most of the vessels sweeping over certain sections of the planet every day.  According to the schedule, there was one freighter that was perhaps a few minutes closer, but not by enough to make a difference.

“Not really; looks like it’s up to us.”

They traveled as fast as they could through the air, pushing the shuttle’s speed to the limit, which unfortunately wasn’t very fast compared to the distance they needed to travel.  Theoretically, leaving the atmosphere could allow them to travel more than the 800 miles per hour at which they moved near the planet, but their shuttle hadn’t been outfitted with the new Separator tech-enchantment.  It had been down near the surface for years without leaving, as it didn’t have any reason to be retrofitted – since it had already made it through the atmosphere “safely”, despite the crash.

It was a long 4 hours of constant traveling before they finally arrived at the area where Sandra had felt the surge of energy even from all the way up in orbit.  He was expecting some sort of sign of an enormous explosion, but the land under the shuttle as they slowly surveyed the surface appeared relatively normal.  Getting lower, there was no sign of the Anchor, nor did they see any sign of Heliothropes; in fact, there wasn’t any wildlife of note, either.  Not seeing anything in the forest, they moved past the tree line and into the mountainous cliff areas, which they knew from personal experience were the home of Air-based dungeons, filled with all sorts of flying monsters.  They were actually some of the more difficult dungeons to delve through, if only because the Proctans weren’t as used to flying targets as ground-based ones.

They were still able to kill them well enough; it just took a little longer, that was all.

They still didn’t see anything anywhere, but they continued to search for signs of the energy disturbance even as the planet rotated and night fell over the surface, making their job even more difficult.  Most of the night went by without spotting anything, and it was only when the sun was nearly up that Whisp finally spotted something.

“I’m detecting a fading light.  Looks like the remnants of a fire of some sort.”

Milton saw it as soon as she pointed it out, and he had her hover over the area for a few minutes while they tried to see what was going on.  From what they could determine, there was a dying campfire located outside of an Air dungeon entrance, but it was difficult to tell who or what was around the fire from their distance and overhead view.

“Take us down, but be careful; park near the tree line if possible.  I’m not sure if this is what we’re looking for, but I’m betting whoever is down there might know something about it.”

“Descending now.”

Let’s just see what we have here.

*         *         *

Wynk woke up an indeterminate amount of time later, thoroughly confused at why he was lying on a cold, stone floor.  Opening his eyes, he found himself on his side, looking at a cave wall in front of him.  There was a pile of clothes near the wall that looked very familiar… that’s not a pile of clothes!  Ghericah!  He pushed himself to his feet and rushed over to her side in a panic.  After a few moments of inspection, he found that she was breathing steadily and seemed largely unhurt from the outside; she was simply sleeping soundly with a barely audible snore.

He shook her gently, trying to wake her up, but she was fully asleep and unconscious.  Looking around the cave room, he saw the other members of his group scattered around; a quick check on them showed that they were also asleep without too much in the way of injury, though Penga had a bad scrape along one arm that was already scabbed over.  How long was I out?  And what happened—

Thinking about it caused his memories to flood back: his injury, the activation of his Light-based Elemental Ability to heal himself, the intense pain in his chest, the strange thing in his body, and then the explosion.  Quickly taking stock of his body, Wynk realized he was feeling surprisingly good considering something just exploded out of his chest.  Everything seemed as normal as it could be, with not even a scar where he had been impaled by that darn Serrated Swallow.  Yes, normal – except for the tiny, glowing, spherical object inside of his torso, of course.

“Oh, thank my Core, one of the Humans is awake.  I was beginning to think they were all going to die here – and it wasn’t even my fault!”

“What?  Who said that?”  There was silence for a few moments, before Wynk heard the voice again.

“Can this Human hear me?  That’s impossible…unless this is the Great Authority in disguise?  No, I doubt that; why would he be visiting my dungeon.  I haven’t done anything wrong… at least nothing that I know about….”

The Fighter frantically looked around the room in confusion, unable to pinpoint where the voice was coming from.  What was even stranger than the possibility of some sort of invisible enemy nearby was the fact that the voice seemed to be inside of his mind.  Am I losing my mind?  Did that explosion addle my wits?

“No, it didn’t addle your wits – but now I think it addled mine.  How is it possible that I can communicate with you?”

Wynk froze when the voice echoed exactly what he had been thinking.  It didn’t take him long to realize that the entire conversation had been inside of his head, as if it was part of some sort of mental communication.

“Not necessarily ‘mental’ communication; what you’re using – somehow – is Mana Communication, a skill that only Dungeon Cores are known to possess.  At least, until now.”

“Dungeon Cores…?” he whispered.  Everything suddenly made a little more sense, though how it had come about was something else entirely.  Are you a…Dungeon Core?

“Precisely.  Who did you think was talking to you this entire time?”

“I had no idea—”

“I can’t understand your language very well, yet; I’m still relatively young when it comes to Dungeon Cores.  Just speak in your mind and I can communicate with you much better that way.”

Uh… like this?  The thought of communicating with his thoughts was strange to Wynk, but it wasn’t the only strange thing that had happened that day – if it even is the same day.

“Yes, that’s it.  And the answer is technically a yes to your other question as well, to whether or not this is the same day; you all entered my dungeon approximately 6 hours ago.”

That probably explained why he was hungry but not starving.  He was usually famished after each dungeon delve, and he ate quite heavily multiple times through the day.  Granted, there hadn’t been very much delving that day, but that didn’t matter too much to his appetite.

Do you know what happened to me?  Did you do this?  Are my friends going to be okay?  He was confused, but as the major changes in his life over the last few hours seemed to be related to Dungeon Cores, Wynk angrily accused the voice in his head.

“Whoa!  I have no clue what happened.  You’re the one that exploded and shook my Core so much that I thought I was going to shatter.”

I…did that?  If the explosion that had come from his chest was that powerful, then it was quite possible that he had done more damage to his friends than he at first assumed.

“Yes, but don’t worry about it.  There was no harm done, and even my defenders in the other rooms were only knocked off their feet or perches momentarily.  Though, I’m told that the explosion was felt by other Cores a long way off – hundreds of miles, at least.”

Wynk didn’t even know what to say to that.  Well, then, what do you think is wrong with my group?  He was told that the Dungeon Cores didn’t really have sympathy for the Adventurers delving through their dungeons; then again, they also weren’t as bloodthirsty as they used to be when everything changed before he was born.  That didn’t necessarily mean they actually cared about him and his friends, though.

“I have no idea.  Humans aren’t really my expertise, after all.  I’ve informed my supervisors about what happened, and none of them can explain it, either.  Now that you’re up, though, could I ask you to leave?  While you’re here, it’s hard for me to do just about anything in my dungeon.  Not to mention that there probably won’t be any other groups of Humans stopping by with you already here.”

It sounded as if this Dungeon Core considered him and his friends a bit of an inconvenience.  Based on what he knew about the uniqueness of the dungeon and its penchant for rearranging what was in each room, he could understand that somewhat – but he was also worried about the health of Ghericah and the others.  Still, the Core had a point; it was probably safer waiting outside of the dungeon for them to wake up rather than staying inside of a dungeon for an unknown amount of time.

As unsympathetic as the Core was, it didn’t seem like it was trying to hurt them any more than what had already been done; perhaps he could get some more answers.  Are you sure you don’t know what happened?  And why does there seem to be some sort of Core inside of me?

“A Core inside of you?  I highly doubt that.  I don’t really sense anything different about you, as far as I can tell.  Maybe I was wrong – that explosion probably did addle your wits.”

Wynk didn’t think it was prudent to push the assertion that he had a Core inside of him, so he left it alone.  Instead, the Fighter started picking up his friends one-by-one, easily carrying them up the tunnel leading outside, and then placing them safely near the entrance.  It was dark outside, but that didn’t worry him overly much; in his experience, natural beasts rarely approached dungeon entrances except in extreme circumstances.  He was more than confident that he could handle anything that did approach, so it really wasn’t an issue.

On reflex, as he deposited Tralce as the last of his friends outside, he stopped by the Dungeon Core Room, intending to expel his extraneous Mana.  Except, when he brought up his Interface, he was shocked at seeing something different.

Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate Interface

---------

---------

Mana

Current Mana to Expel: 0/0

Available Light Mana: 6/30

Elemental Affinities (Current Available Mana)

Fire: 3% Stage 2 (Fire Mana: 15)

Water: 2% Stage 2 (Water Mana: 15)

Nature: 4% Stage 2 (Nature Mana: 15)

Earth: 14% Stage 2 (Earth Mana: 16)

Dark: 2% Stage 2 (Dark Mana: 15)

Light: 1% Stage 2

Air: 10% Stage 1 (Air Mana: 2)

Not only did he not have any Mana to expel anymore, but it seemed as though the Mana he accumulated normally was now being slotted into a separate option in his Mana section.  He now had “Available Light Mana” that was twice the maximum it had been before, though his Light Affinity seemed relatively unchanged other than that.

“Are you going to give me your Mana?  Or are you going to just stand there?”

“Uh… hmm.”  I think it all somehow disappeared when I exploded, so I don’t have any.  I’ll bring the others by when they wake up, however.

“See that you do; it wasn’t a lot of Mana that you all absorbed from my first room, but every little bit makes a difference.”

The Core’s tone was a bit annoyed, which Wynk could understand; for them to be there for over 6 hours with no real advancement wasn’t beneficial for either party.  That really wasn’t the Fighter’s main concern, however; the status of his friends was what he was worried about.

Wynk went back out the entrance, pulling a few extra blankets for his group from his PIB.  Thank goodness I like to be prepared in case we need to camp outside.  He decided not to set up any tents, as the night air wasn’t cold enough to warrant that; besides, despite feeling okay from the explosive experience, he was slowly running out of energy.  He did end up making a fire in the middle of their impromptu camp to help keep any beasts away (not that he expected any to bother them), and he ate a healthy meal of dried biscuits and smoked meat jerky.  It wasn’t a gourmet feast, but it was thoroughly filling.

When he was done, he checked on the others to see if they were ready to wake up yet, but there still wasn’t any sign that they would arise anytime soon.  The whole situation was starting to worry him; they didn’t appear to be obviously hurt, and he couldn’t see how or why they were unconscious in the first place.

Giving them as much comfort as he could provide, with small pillows under their heads made from some of his rolled-up clothes, he sat with his back against the entrance of the dungeon and stared out at the night’s sky.  Inevitably, with the darkness, the comfortable warmth from the fire, and his full belly inside of a suddenly exhausted body, Wynk fell asleep.

Chapter 21

The shuttle was getting a little crowded by the time they landed, because Brint had queued up some help to bring along with them as they investigated.  As Bio Mass wasn’t as big of a problem since having regular access to the Station, the Proctan had gone back to his roots to create some of his favorite helpers, including a Qwizard, a Quank, a 4-armed, D-Ranged Monkey holding some Weightonite javelins created by the Molecular Converter, a Quassassin (which was a large, dark-furred cat that could stealth near-invisibly), and a flock of Big Yellow Birds, which were designed to confuse and fascinate anyone who saw them with their greater Charisma.

It was a team that he had used extensively on Proctus to travel around and kill nearby beasts that encroached close to Milton’s dungeon, and he had become adept at using them as a group of his own.  While Micke and the others on the shuttle were part of well-meshed groups, Brint had almost always been in charge of directing Milton’s Combat Units, so it was almost as if they had an additional group with them as they exited shortly after they set down.

“Spread out a little and surround our destination; I don’t know what we’ll find, and I don’t want to run into a trap,” Milton let the others know, even as he climbed up on the back of the Quank, while Brint did the same with the Qwizard.  Mounted on their rides, Brint directed all of the Combat Units forward with him, staying at the pace of the Quank, who was the slowest of them all because of its durable and not-quite-as-flexible exterior.

Within a minute or so, they arrived at their destination, which was the campfire that was burning just outside of the Air dungeon’s entrance.  Around it were 5 Humans, 4 of whom appeared to have been delicately placed equidistantly around the fire to keep them warm, with some rolled-up clothing shoved under their heads for padding.  From their appearance, he could see that they were likely a group of Adventurers, at least based on their clothing, armor, and weapons.

The fifth man was sitting with his back against the rocky entrance of the dungeon as if he had been watching over his group mates; with his chin against his chest, he had obviously fallen asleep at some point during his watch.  All of the Humans stayed asleep as the Proctans approached. While Milton and Brint got off their mounts a few feet away from the sleeping Adventurers, Micke and his team ventured around the area, looking for any other threats that might be nearby.

Milton accidentally stepped on a pebble that flew out and *pinged* against the rocky entrance of the dungeon, which was all that was needed to wake the man sleeping in the sitting position.  In a matter of a second, the Adventurer was on his feet with his sword in his hand, and he struck out at the Qwizard near him—but the Combat Unit moved fast enough that the sword hit nothing.  The man stumbled after his attack was unsuccessful, falling to his knees, but then Milton saw the Human hold the sword up in a defensive position, as if he was ready to block an attack.

“Put the sword away, young man.  We’re not here to hurt you.”

Milton’s words seemed to freeze the man in place, who appeared quite young now that he could get a full view of him.  He had short, light brown hair with a few streaks of blond in it, though it was matted and messy because of the helmet that he probably normally wore, which was near where he had been sleeping earlier.  He had some basic iron and bronze armor, likely suitable for his Rating, though it was dented in places; there was a crumpled mess of bronze where the young man’s gorget around his neck had been shredded, and it appeared as though he had been injured at some point because of all the blood that stained the wound near his collarbone.  Whatever wound had been there was now gone, however, as it appeared to have been healed – Milton thought it was probably through some spell or other effect.

“Milton!  I’m almost positive that man is the source of what I felt before!”

Sandra’s voice in his mind broke his concentration, but he looked closer at the young Adventurer.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.  I feel the same way I do when you look at a Dungeon Core inside one of the dungeons, for some reason.”

Milton thought about that for a moment.  Does that mean he has a Dungeon Core inside of him?  Or is he a half-Human and half-Dungeon Core?  Is this Fred, the one we’ve been looking for?

He immediately dismissed the thought that this was Fred, because he appeared entirely too young to be the most powerful being on the planet.  That, and he had obviously been delving with this group when something happened, so that could only mean—

“Wha—?” the man started to say, before he started coughing.

“There’s no time for that,” Milton responded, stepping forward with his hands empty and open, hopefully showing that he wasn’t there to hurt the young man.  “Are you… Wynk?”

It was a logical guess, given what he’d learned about Fred and his son being of age to become an Adventurer.  If this was indeed Wynk, that meant that he might know where his father was; it still didn’t explain what had happened to all of these people, or to the young man to cause such an explosion of energy that even Sandra detected it on the Station.  If this did turn out to be Wynk, Milton (as well as Sandra, once she heard his thoughts) had a suspicion that the explosion of energy or Mana was due to some latent abilities manifesting in the Adventurer, given who his father was.

Milton saw the young Adventurer slowly nod his head and he reflexively sighed in relief.

“We found Wynk, everyone; hopefully he’ll be able to lead us to his father, and then Fred will be able to pinpoint the location of the Anchor.”

Looking at the other Adventurers around the campfire, each of whom appeared to have escaped dire injury, he saw that they hadn’t even stirred at all the commotion.  “It looks like your friends there might need some help waking up.”  Sensing around him, he found that Helvana was the closest Proctan that would probably be able to help.  “I can’t tell precisely what happened to them, but Helvana here is an excellent healer.  She’ll get them back up in no time.”

Helvana quickly shot forward and knelt by the side of a small, blonde-haired woman, before placing her hands on the prone figure.  The young man appeared ready to protest, but he held his tongue when the sleeping woman started to stir.  Helvana went from the woman, who was groggily waking up, to the others and healed whatever was ailing them, as well.  Meanwhile, Milton walked up to the young man and gestured for him to get up from where he was still kneeling on the ground.

“We don’t have a lot of time, Wynk.”

It seemed as though something just occurred to the confused man.  “H-how do you know my name?”

“Again, there’s no time to talk about that.  Suffice it to say that we’ve been looking for you for a while now.”  Not exactly him, but it has been a long time we’ve been searching.

“Why?”

“Because we need your help.”  Again, not necessarily his help, but his father’s.

“What?  How can I possibly help?”

“It’s not you that we need, precisely, though we’re probably going to need as much help as we can get once we find what we’re looking for.  No, it’s not you… it’s your father that we need.”

Instead of responding to that, the young Adventurer went to get up to go to the blonde woman’s side, but Milton caught his arm and stopped him before he could move away.

“They’ll be fine; don’t worry.  I need you to take us to your father, Fredwynklemossering.”

All Milton got was a shake of a head.  “I think you have the wrong person.  My father’s name is Fred, and not that… other name.  As callous as it sounds, he’s nothing special.”

Milton chuckled.  “No, I’m pretty sure we have the right man.  We’ve been looking for something for years, but we can’t seem to pinpoint its location.  We need to get to Fred as soon as possible so that he can help us find it.”

“Well… it’s at least a 2-week journey back home.  We’ve been constantly on the move since we left, and going that distance is going to take a while.”  The young man appeared nervous, as if he didn’t trust Milton and the other people around him, which the Station Core thought was reasonable.  But now that the solution was in sight, Milton was eager to get to the one person on the planet who could tell them where the Stabilizing Anchor was located; the entire dimension didn’t have a lot of time for being delicate and reasonable.

“It won’t take nearly that long, fortunately,” Milton said, gesturing to the shuttle in the distance.

“Okay… as long as my friends are fine.  And we’re all coming with you.”

That works for me.  Milton smiled.  “That’s fine; the more, the merrier, I say.”

“If I may ask, how did you find me?”

“We detected a curious explosion of energy, or perhaps Mana, originating from this area, and we thought that it was either your father doing something, or it was you waking up to your latent abilities.”  Not the entire truth, but it was accurate enough for now.

Milton directed the young man to gather up his group mates, who were finally coming out of their unconsciousness thanks to Helvana’s ministrations.  The Station Core thanked Helvana and turned to Wynk.

“Get them ready to go; we’re running out of time.”

Milton turned back to Thodrin, Brint, and Micke – who was just coming back with his group – and told them to start heading back to the shuttle.

“When you’re ready, head over to the shuttle, and we’ll leave right away.”

The young Adventurer hesitated, before he asked, “We’ll come with you… but who exactly are you all, and where did you come from?”

“That’s a bit of an explanation, which I told you we don’t have time for.”

“Fine.  But do you at least have a name?”

The Station Core smiled as he jogged toward the shuttle in the distance, forgoing his mount so as to encourage Wynk to hurry.  “The name’s Milton,” he shouted behind him.  “Now get a move on!  We literally don’t have all day.”

That wasn’t too much of an exaggeration, either, as they needed to get moving.  There was only so much time before the Anchor stabilized the wound, and who knew how long it was going to take to find it – and then destroy it.

It wasn’t too long before Wynk and his disoriented group mates struggled their way toward the transport, with everyone – including Fred’s son – appearing confused by everything.  Finally, once they were inside, Milton closed the hatch and turned toward Wynk, who was protectively standing over his group mates sitting on the deck of the shuttle, who appeared exhausted despite their healing – or because of it.

“Okay, Wynk.  Where to?”

Chapter 22

“You’re not going to hurt my father, are you?”

Milton chuckled slightly at the question before answering.  “No, we’re not.  Based on what I’ve heard about Fred, I don’t believe anyone here could hurt him if he didn’t want them to.”

The young man didn’t appear to share that opinion, and the Station Core could only assume that he hadn’t been previously informed about his father’s nature.  Or it could be that Fred really wasn’t as powerful as Milton had been informed.

Milton had a momentary spike of doubt about Wynk, Fred, and Fred’s ability to help them find the Stabilizing Anchor.  He pushed those concerns aside, however, as at that point it didn’t really matter; this Fred person could either help them or not, and there wasn’t really much he could do to influence that outcome.

“I’m not really sure where my home is, especially from this view,” Wynk said uncertainly, looking at the small viewscreen at the front of the shuttle depicting what they could see below them.

Milton could tell Wynk was delaying, and the reason was obvious.

“Look, young man; we’re not here to hurt you or anyone in your family.  In fact, we’re here to help save all of you, whether you believe me or not,” he said, putting his hands on the shoulders of Fred’s son while looking him right in the eyes.  “We come from a different dimension, hunting a race of murderous aliens who are here to conquer and enslave every planet in your dimension.”

Even though he had explained himself a few times to the people of this planet, it still sounded like an entirely made-up excuse to his own ears.  It was also so outlandish that it was hard to believe that anyone would make that kind of thing up, so most of the time it was believed.

“That’s… I don’t even know what to think,” Wynk responded slowly, his face showing his obvious disbelief and confusion.

“I know exactly what you mean.  Sometimes, I can’t believe half of the things that have occurred in my life, but this is where we’re at.  Now, where exactly does Fred live?” Milton asked again.

“Juniton.  Most of us live near Jun—”

Wynk turned around and quickly shushed the smaller blonde woman from his group, who had spoken up from where she was sitting against the inner wall of the shuttle.  She still looked a bit weak, like she was coming off a long convalescence, even though she had been healed by Helvana earlier.

“Juniton, huh?” Milton smiled, nodding toward the woman in thanks.  “And where is this Juniton, Wynk?  I’m fairly certain you probably know how to read a map, since they should have them in all of the DAS buildings, or so I’ve been told.  I would think this would be a simple matter of identifying landmarks and extrapolating your location from there.”

Wynk hesitated with clear reluctance, but fortunately the same blonde woman – who had the demeanor and clothing of a healer, as far as Milton could tell – helped Milton out.  “Oh, just tell him, Wynk,” she sternly ordered, or at least she tried to.  Her physical weakness made her voice a little hoarse, but the intent behind it was obvious.  “If they wanted to hurt us, they would’ve done it already.”

“But my parents—”

“They’ll be fine, Wynk,” she said, with an exasperated tone.  “You can’t tell me that you never asked them about all the rumors.”  At the young man’s confused expression, the short healer barked out a sharp laugh.  “You can’t be serious.  You’ve never heard—”

She cut herself off, before turning toward Milton, who was watching the exchange with a small amount of amusement.  “Wynk doesn’t have any clue who his parents are.”

“Oh, and you do?” Milton asked.  “That’s quite interesting.”

“I don’t officially, but I suspect enough about them to know that if you really did mean us or his father harm, you won’t live to regret it.”

The Station Core couldn’t help it – he chuckled at the seriousness in her tone.  “I’m sorry, that sounded like some sort of speech out of an action movie.”  He waved off her perplexed expression.  “Don’t worry about it; that’s just something from a long time ago.  By the way, what’s your name?”

“Ghericah.”

“That’s a pretty name, Ghericah.  So, since it seems as though Wynk is reluctant to share the information, do you think you could point out our destination?”

Wynk, who had been quiet during the exchange, went to try and discourage her from approaching the viewscreen near the cockpit of the shuttle, but Micke held him back.  “Now, now, there’s no need to worry, young man.  Once we get what we need, you’re all free to go.”

“Speaking of movies, you’re beginning to sound like some sort of evil villain, Milton.”

The Station Core thought about what he had done and said over the last few minutes, and he mentally rolled his eyes at ALANNA’s words.

“Whatever.  We aren’t going to hurt anyone, so it’s not the same.”

The AI guide just laughed maniacally at him like the evil mastermind she was trying to compare him to, and he somehow managed to keep from chuckling along with her.

“It’s… here, I believe.  I’ve never seen the world from this high up before, so I can’t be certain at this distance.  When we get closer, I can point you in the right direction.”

The way that Wynk struggled in Micke’s grip told Milton that Ghericah had pinpointed the location fairly accurately, and Whisp directed the shuttle to head for their destination.  It took a little less than 5 minutes to get there. While it wasn’t that far away, it definitely was not a place they would’ve been able to locate without help.  Looking down on a small town, the Station Core didn’t see much that made it stand out compared to every other habitation they had mapped over the last few years.  It was actually a little smaller than Deftner’s End, the first town they had encountered upon reaching the surface.

“Most of us live there, but there’s a small village where Wynk and his family live, just to the north about 10 miles away.”  They pinpointed it easily enough, and Whisp sent them in that direction.  The village was only about 20 buildings, spread out in a clearing less than a mile wide.  Ghericah directed them just off to the east, approximately 500 feet from the clearing.  The small clearing there held a modest, brown stone house, which was very out of place considering that there weren’t any nearby mountains or quarries.

“Down there is where Wynk’s family lives,” the woman stated.  Wynk had gone still as he realized he couldn’t break out of the strong grip of Micke, but he looked at Ghericah as if she had just stabbed him in his heart.

“Thank you so much for your help,” Milton said, even as Whisp put the shuttle down at the edge of the small clearing, away from the house.  “If there’s anything I can provide you in return for your assistance, you just let me know.”

“Just don’t hurt anyone.”

Milton shook his head in exasperation.  “Why does everyone think we’re here to hurt people?  All we want to do is destroy the Anchor and move on from here.”

“I don’t exactly know what you mean by that, but for your sake, I hope you’re telling the truth.”

All I’ve heard about this Fred person is that he’s not one to cross.  I can only hope that he’s as powerful as everyone says.

“It’s the truth, I swear on anything you want that it is.”  Turning to Wynk as they landed and the back hatch opened, he asked, “Are you going to behave yourself?  You aren’t going to try and attack us if Micke lets you go?”

“No!  You’re here to hurt my father for some reason, and I won’t let you even if I have to give my life to stop you!”

Suddenly, Wynk’s skin turned to stone, prompting Micke’s hands to lose their grip, even as a darkness fell over the inside of the shuttle.  Milton could see through it, thankfully, and so could the Proctans. Micke blocked a blow from the young man’s sword with his shield, but it was a feint.  Before anyone could react, Wynk had turned to the Qwizard and drove his sword deep into its neck, cutting with a slice that practically decapitated the Combat Unit.  As he turned to attack Brint, who was nearby, Trond ran to his side and placed his hand on Wynk’s neck.  The transfer of nanites through his stone skin was so quick that the young man barely had a chance to wrench himself away from Trond’s hand before he stumbled to his knees.

Micke managed to grab Wynk before he ended up falling on his sword, carrying him on his shoulder like the man weighed no more than a scarf.

“What did you do to him?!” Ghericah asked hysterically, even as the other members of her group made ready to defend themselves.

“Don’t worry about Wynk, Trond just put him in a healing sleep,” Milton explained.  “Like I said, we’re not here to hurt anyone, so we really didn’t want him to hurt himself while he was trying to hurt us.”

While he was talking, Milton’s drones – 4 of which he now had aboard the shuttle – chopped up and carried pieces of the slain Qwizard to the Molecular Converter, where the body of the Combat Unit was recycled into Bio Mass.  The Humans appeared appalled at the efficiency of the butchering and disposal and looked a little sick at the process.

“Now, shall we go out and see Fred?”

Leading the way, Milton walked out of the back of the shuttle, followed by Whisp, Brint, Micke holding the sleeping Wynk, the quartet of Humans who stumbled weakly out of the vessel, and the rest of the Proctans thereafter.  All of the Combat Units that Brint had previously used when looking for Wynk were left in the shuttle.

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY SON?!”

Milton was momentarily startled as the question washed over him like a physical force, and he looked over to see an attractive woman with long, black hair, wearing a brown dress that hugged her curves, striding toward him.  As he looked at her, the woman’s skin seemed to turn to stone very similar to what Wynk had done not too long ago. Her transformation was more than just stone-like skin, however, as she grew in size and shape, until she was barely recognizable.  With a gesture of her hands, a massive, crystal-like scorpion appeared out of nowhere next to her, followed by what appeared to be a gold-plated sphinx of all things, and a tall humanoid figure that appeared to be made of iron.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding—” Milton started to say, but then a large boulder appeared in the middle of the air, where it shattered into hundreds of sharp pieces.  Milton fell back a step as the shattered pieces of stone shot right toward him, but thankfully Thodrin was there in a flash, holding up his shield to block the projectiles.

The stone woman wasn’t done, though, as another large boulder appeared above Milton, where it shattered and shot straight down toward him.  Thodrin knocked him out of the way and the Station Core fell onto his back, even as the Proctan blocked the attack again, though he was impaled slightly by a few shards that made it through his defense.  They didn’t penetrate very deep, thankfully, and Thodrin was able to pull them out in a flash; with a spray of blood at the initial removal, the wounds started to heal due to the Tank’s Self-Regeneration ability.

“Stop!  Please, we just want to talk—”

A third boulder was shattered, but the shards were frozen in the middle of the air.  Milton looked at Phyra and Kirben, and he could see that Kirben had control of the deadly projectiles with his Earth Affinity; Phyra, meanwhile, had her sights set on the scorpion, the sphinx, and the iron person.  With a large usage of her Power, the Elemental Caster wrenched apart the trio of creatures, and they fell apart as if whatever had been holding them together was suddenly removed.

As soon as that was done, Kirben directed the stone shards away, and they flew through the air behind the Proctans, where they wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone.  Then the stone woman, who appeared ready to create some more boulders or creatures, was suddenly frozen in place by Kirben’s Power, as his own ability to manipulate earth warred with the woman’s.

“LET ME GO!  YOU WILL DIE IF YOU’VE DONE ANYTHING TO MY SON!”

Her gravelly voice promised violence toward them, which was the last thing that Milton wanted.  “Hold on! Your son is simply asleep and we brought him here because we need some help.  Helvana, please wake him up to show his mother that he’s just fine.”

The healing Proctan walked up to Micke and placed her hand on the head of his burden, before she nodded toward the Tank.  Micke put Wynk down just in time for the man to wake up.  The young adventurer opened his eyes as soon as he was upright, though he swayed in place at the sudden change in his circumstances.

“Wha—?  What’s going on?”

“Oh, Wynk!  You’re alright!  Your father went to look for you after he felt—”

“Who is that?  What are you?”

The stone woman suddenly seemed to shrink in on herself, and her rocky exterior disappeared.  In a matter of a few seconds, she was back to her Human figure.

“Mother?  What happened to you?  Is father—?”  As if he had suddenly realized where he was, he looked around at Milton and the Proctans, and he shouted at the Station Core, “You!  What did you do to my mother?!”  He even pointed threateningly toward Milton, who couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

“Wynk, are you alright? Who are these people?”

“I’m… fine, I think,” he said slowly, turning back to his mother.  “But something happened to me in the dungeon that I need to talk to you about, because I’m not sure what it means.  I think I have a Dungeon Core inside of my body—”

Suddenly, there was a whistle, like a missile coming in for a landing. Everyone looked up to see a man descending rapidly to the ground like some sort of flying superhero.  Milton observed the man as he landed gently on the ground, seeing that he was fairly ordinary-looking, with shoulder-length, brown hair with a touch of silver at the temples.  He was wearing a serviceable outfit that wouldn’t have been out of place on some of the farmers he’d seen at Deftner’s End, and while his muscles were well-toned, he didn’t appear physically strong.

As soon as he landed, the man’s face twisted up in anger and he shouted, “HOW DARE YOU TOUCH MY SON!  STAY AWAY FROM HIM!”

With a wave of the man’s hand, Milton’s entire concept of power and strength was turned on its head.  The Station Core heard some thumps from behind him, and he quickly turned around to look.  When he did, Milton saw all the Proctans were on the ground, obviously dead and not unconscious or sleeping.  He also felt a wave of something pass through his avatar, but nothing seemed to happen.

Turning back to the man, who was stomping toward him with anger suffusing his face, he said with an unconscious gulp in his throat, “You must be Fred.  Very nice to meet you, sir.”

Chapter 23

“How are you not dead?  I ripped the souls out of your friends there – how did you resist my modified Soulforce?”

Fredwynklemossering was seething with anger, though more at himself than anything.  He had felt the explosion of Mana to the east, and at first, he had ignored it because he had tried to distance himself from his duties watching over all the Dungeon Cores of the world.  Since he had confronted the Supreme Council of Dungeon Cores, healed the wounds that had plagued the world for tens of thousands of years, and fixed the energy coming out of the center of the planet so that it was only Soulforce instead of split into Mana, Power, and Essence, his life had been consumed with ensuring that the Cores adapted properly to the changes.

He'd had to intervene hundreds of times over the first few years of what people now called the “Big Change”, though only a few times did they end up with the complete destruction of a Core.  Most had been able to be “rehabilitated” and shown the error of their ways through the draining of all their Mana reserves, but a few had been so opposed to the new changes – even though the changes benefited them – that they had gone on killing sprees of Humans, or “livestock” as most of the Dungeon Cores called them.  Over time, with the help of his actions and the information that the cowed Supreme Council passed on, word had spread as to who was really in charge now, as Fred had the ability to reach across the entire world, by Shaping the modified Soulforce he had access to and punish those Cores that misbehaved.

Most now called Fred the “Great Authority”, though he had heard all manner of unflattering nicknames, as well.  He ignored them, thankfully for their sakes, because he didn’t really care; his entire focus was to ensure that Humans and Dungeon Cores got along in a symbiotic relationship, rather than as predator and prey like it was before.

If he was any judge of his own efforts, he’d have to say that he’d succeeded.  While there were a few issues that popped up now and again, he had gotten to the point where he hadn’t needed to manage anything serious in at least a decade.  The situation had stabilized all over the world, and though there were still some malcontents out there, they weren’t making trouble.

He was thoroughly glad of that, too, because over the last 18 years, he had been consumed with something else: his family.  Fred never thought that it could be possible to love anyone as much as he now knew he loved Eisa, his wife and an Earth Shard that he had inadvertently created when she had been killed, but he was wrong.  His son, Wynk, claimed just as much or more of the love in his heart as anyone else, and he wasn’t ashamed to say that he had been a bit overprotective of the boy when he was younger.  When he came of age to join the Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate, Eisa managed to convince Fred to let go and allow Wynk to live the life he wanted, even if it was dangerous.

Granted, it was less dangerous than if his son had joined a few decades ago, but it was still hazardous to his health, nonetheless.

It was one of the best moments of his life when Wynk went off to join the Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate, because it was something that was deeply tied to his and Eisa’s relationship.  He had first met his wife when she had agreed to help him join the Syndicate shortly after he had learned about it, as well as to delve through his first dungeon – for a personal fee, of course.  From there, it had spiraled into an adventure that spanned thousands of miles, involved the most powerful Dungeon Cores in the world, and revealed the nature of his birth and unique abilities.

Those unique abilities, however, might not be so unique anymore.  As soon as he really thought about what that explosion of Mana had been, he had recognized it as familiar – as in, he had felt something very like it when he had first discovered his dual Dungeon Core and Human nature.  He had seen signs of that potential dual nature in Wynk, but nothing had manifested that had confirmed his son might be the same. It wasn’t until he really thought about it for a night that he decided that the explosion might have been the result of his boy finally unlocking that potential.

When he created a Shaping, using the modified Soulforce that he pulled in from the environment and fed through his internal Core, to view the area where he felt the upwelling of Mana, he had seen Wynk sleeping outside of an Air dungeon, with his group mates nearby, unconscious but alive.  When he had looked closer at his son, he had immediately identified the tiny, white Light Core inside of Wynk’s chest.  It wasn’t the exact sort of thing that had happened with Fred, as he had started with Water and Fire, but the fact that anything was there had told him that it was possible for his son to become more than what he was right now.

But Wynk would need someone to help him through that transition, unlike Fred’s own experience, which had been a nightmare of trial-and-error.  Mostly errors, but he had eventually made it through with the help of some good friends – and a lot of determination, sprinkled generously with luck.

Which was why he had used another Shaping to propel himself through the air a short time after his long-distance view of Wynk, intending to help his son figure out how to deal with his sudden changes.  As well as finally explaining who Fredwynklemossering and Eisa Howells the Earth Shard really were.  At first, they had just kept their true nature a secret in order to give their son a relatively normal childhood. But now that he was old enough to know the truth, they had decided that it really wouldn’t benefit Wynk to learn it.  In fact, it might even do him some harm, especially if any Dungeon Cores that had a grudge with the Great Authority found out about his son.

When Fred had arrived at the Air dungeon after a relatively short flight, Wynk had been gone! The concerned father had looked around the area for any sign of his son’s whereabouts, even using a Shaping to look a few miles away in case he and his team had been on the move, but he hadn’t been able to find him.  It was a few minutes later when he felt something wrong coming from Eisa’s direction that he had taken off once again, moving even faster than he had before, and he had come upon a scene that had sent anger shooting through his mind like never before.  Not even when he confronted his first Dungeon Core, asking about the murder of his parents, was he this angry, and it had caused him to strike out with his deadly abilities.

Eisa was somehow being held in place by a crowd of people he didn’t recognize; in fact, they didn’t even appear to be Human.  Wynk was also there, being restrained by those same people, as well as the rest of his DAS group.  It was then that Fred lost it, shouting, “HOW DARE YOU TOUCH MY SON!  STAY AWAY FROM HIM!” as soon as he landed.

Seeing the floating Mana that Eisa had used to create some Defenders, which had somehow been destroyed, Fred had pulled that Mana into his Core, converted it into modified Soulforce, and used it for a Shaping on the strange people with only a thought, which had pulled their souls from their bodies in an instant.  As they fell to the ground, he had realized that one of the strange people hadn’t been affected for some reason, which had caused a streak of curiosity to cut through his anger; something like that hadn’t ever happened before.  He was used to being able to manipulate Soulforce in different Shapings to do just about anything he wanted, though he had never used it to kill any Humans before.  He’d used this relatively new power to bring them back to life, shoving their free-floating souls back into their bodies to fix and resuscitate the dead, but never to take a life of a non-Dungeon Core.

In his anger and worry about his son, he hadn’t even thought about it for more than a moment before he’d done the deed.  Wynk had appeared to be in danger, and it had appeared as though these strange people had learned who he was and knew who Fred was; he wasn’t going to play their games.  When he had first been revealed to the world, there had been those who had wanted him to use his power for personal gain or revenge, which was one of the reasons he’d left the world of Humans – or at least moved far enough away from where they knew who he was that he was basically invisible.  But now, it had seemed to Fred that his location had been found, and that someone was trying to use threats against his son to leverage him to act.

Act he had, but not in a way they had expected.

But still, the fact that his Soulforce, even modified so he could use it properly though his internal Core, hadn’t done anything to this remaining person had made him curious.  Not fearful, because he couldn’t sense any personal power inside of this individual, but curious because he couldn’t seem to get a read on him at all.  It was like he wasn’t even alive, that he didn’t have a soul.

The strange man stepped forward, an awkward smile on his face, his hand stretched ahead of him as if he were looking for a handshake.  “Oh, well, that’s easily explainable. But first, my name is Milton, and I’m here to ask for your help.”

“What did you do to my son?  Wynk, are you all right?” Fred asked, because his son appeared to be injured in some way.  Wynk abruptly sat down, all color leaving his face as he stared at his father.

“I’m assuming he’s in shock, though it wasn’t anything we did; it’s probably because he’s really seeing his parents for the first time.”

Oh.  Oh, crap.  This was definitely not the way I wanted to tell him about Eisa and I.

“Father?  What is going on?  I don’t understand.”

Before Fred could respond, Ghericah interrupted.  “See, I told you, Wynk.  The rumors about him are true.”

Rumors?  Have they reached this far, already?

Wynk turned his head toward the Healer.  “I… didn’t believe you.  I thought they were trying to use me so that they could hurt him, but I guess I was wrong.  I was wrong about a lot of things, apparently.”  He looked back at his father, and it broke Fred’s heart to see the sense of betrayal evident on his son’s face.  “You killed them with a wave of your hand.  I… don’t even know who you are, anymore.”

“Son, I know this must be a little confusing, but—” Fred stopped when Wynk turned away, refusing to look at him anymore; nor would he look at his mother.

“It seems as though there are things that you all need to talk about here, but I’m afraid I can’t wait,” the strange man named Milton said, and Fred suddenly wanted to destroy him for causing such strife between his son and himself.  He held off after a second’s reflection, because he knew it wasn’t necessarily this person’s fault that Fred had lost control and revealed his power in such a way.  In fact….

It took a little bit more modified Soulforce to accomplish it, but by gathering up the free-floating energy that comprised the souls of the strange people he had just killed and applying a Shaping upon their corpses, he was able to bring them back.  It was something that he had done before, of course, though this time it nearly didn’t work; with a quick look at their physiology, he recognized for the first time that they really weren’t Human, and that therefore, he had to alter his original Shaping to fit their different biology.  In all, it only took a few seconds, because he had the knowledge of a master Shaper in his head, but it was yet another intriguing thing about these people that piqued his interest.

“Thanks,” Milton said, after seeing his people come back to life, stirring on the ground.  What was interesting about the strange non-man’s reaction to the entire thing was that he didn’t seem to care that they had died in the first place.  “I could recreate them, but this is much faster and takes up less resources.”

That’s something I wasn’t expecting.  Are they like Defenders?

“What are you?  Where did you come from?” he asked in response.  Now that it seemed as though Wynk and his groupmates were fine, even if a little shaken at Fred and Eisa’s revelation of their abilities, he figured he might as well find out why these newcomers had decided to disrupt his family.

“That’s a long story, but the short of it is that we’re from a different dimension, hunting dangerous aliens that want to conquer this dimension and enslave everyone.  And we need your help.”

Of all the things he expected to be told, that was right up there at the top of the “unexpected” list.  It also made very little sense to him, what with talk of dimensions and whatnot.

“Well, you might as well come inside and we can talk about whatever foolishness this is,” Fred finally said, walking over to Eisa and placing his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.  She had been quiet ever since Fred had arrived, and he could feel that she was a little unsettled at his use of Soulforce to rip out the souls of these people.  It wasn’t something he had ever done before, and it probably scared her a little; he felt her relax when he put his arm around her, however, which was likely due to the fact that he had just as easily resurrected them.

Eisa was just as protective about her son as he was, so he was pretty sure that she understood his reaction.

He led them inside of their small home, which was going to be a little crowded with everyone squished together; thankfully, it seemed as though this Milton fellow had recognized that.  All but 2 of the light-purple-skinned people stayed outside, leaving Fred and Eisa to host Milton, a pair of the strange people, his son’s Adventurer group, and an understandably broody Wynk.

They had a modest front room with some wooden chairs that Fred had constructed himself over the years, and it was just enough for everyone to find a seat.  They didn’t normally need that many, of course, but his years trying to stay out of the administration of all the Dungeon Cores in the world had given him plenty of time to practice his woodcraft.  The last few he made were even constructed without the use of his Shaping skills, which he was proud of himself for accomplishing.

“How did you even find me?” he finally asked, once they were all settled.

“Elder Hood, in a strange city called Allroads. She mentioned that you might be able to help us save your planet, as well as your entire dimension.”

“Allroads, huh?  That’s quite a distance away from here,” Eisa commented, sitting on the edge of Fred’s chair.  Normally, she’d be doting on Wynk and trying to assuage his hurt at finding out about his parents the way he did, but she knew better than to push the boy too much right now.  He was still in shock, as were his groupmates – who sat there quietly as they listened to the others talk. They would be able to talk later, as a family, when they had more time to explain themselves.  Preferably whenever these crazy people got what they wanted and were sent on their way.

“Yes, it was in the center of 7 different element-based lands, where all of the Dungeon Cores seemed to be pushed back by the city for some reason.  Anyway—”

“It was called a convergence, and the territories of the different factions weren’t pushed back by the city, but by mutual consent,” Fred explained.  “You see, the energy from this world had been damaged a long time ago, creating these wounds where the elements spewed forth in massive concentrations.  These areas were very valuable to Dungeon Cores, and many a war had been fought over them for control. After a few were destroyed, the Supreme Council dictated that these convergences be off-limits to any faction – up to a certain distance.  It used to be that the closer the Dungeon Core was to the convergence, the faster they would improve, but that has all changed since I fixed all of the wounds around the world – including these concentrated convergences.  They probably still haven’t altered the rules since before the changes were implemented, so I imagine it looks very similar to what it did when I was last there.”

Theoretically, Fred could create a Shaping to see it for himself, but he had no desire to do that right now.  He was more focused on what these people wanted from him.

“That seems to align with what we’ve learned since arriving, but you said you fixed all of these ‘wounds’?  How exactly did you do that?”

“It’s a bit of a complicated process, but I essentially had to search for the wounds using a long-distance Shaping, and then fill in the cracked channels leading from the center of the planet to the surface, which were spilling all the Mana, Essence, and Power in a disorganized mess.  Soulforce is the natural energy that the world produces in abundance, but no one in thousands of years could manipulate it – until I came along,” he explained.

“Does that mean you can see wherever you want inside the planet?”

That’s a strange question.  “Well, yes, I believe that’s what I just said.”

Milton had a feral smile on his face, which took Fred aback – just a little.  “Perfect!  That’s exactly what we need to find what we’ve been searching for these last two years.”

“What are you searching for?  But before you tell me, I believe you owe us some explanations.”

The strange non-man nodded.  “Now that I know what you can do, I believe we have time to explain who we are, where we come from, and why we’re here.  It’ll take a little bit of time, but I’ll try to make it as concise as possible.

“First, I originally came from a world named Earth, but that planet wasn’t anywhere near here.  In fact, it wasn’t in this dimension at all….”

Chapter 24

“That’s a wild story, Milton.  How do we know you’re telling the truth about any of it?” the woman named Eisa asked, her facial expressions written with doubt.  On Fred’s face, however, the Station Core could see that the powerful man believed him enough that he was willing to help, at least in some capacity.

“It’s not a story, unfortunately,” Whisp spoke up for the first time since they arrived.  The super-intelligent Proctan had learned the language over the years they had been searching, and she could speak it nearly as well as Milton could now.  “We’ve seen firsthand how dangerous the Heliothropes can be, simply because they don’t see any species other than themselves as anything but targets to conquer or enslave.  For instance, not long ago, they bombed an entire planet, killing millions of enslaved people and turning the land into a hellscape – simply to send a message.  If they manage to stabilize the dimensional wound, they will be able to bring millions of ships through and conquer everything they set their sights on.”

“We can fight them off.  I can fight them off, if it comes to that,” Fred said, sure of himself.  Seeing what the man could do with just a thought, Milton thought that he had reason to be cocky – but Fred didn’t know what he’d be going up against.

“That might be true, and I truly hope that it is.  That would mean that, when you find them, you’ll be able to wipe them out immediately.  Sadly, I don’t believe it will be that easy,” Milton said.

Fred shrugged, putting his hand on the woman’s leg as if to reassure her.  “Well, we won’t know unless I try, I guess.  Eisa, this may or may not be a trick; but at this point, it can’t hurt to at least help.  I’m reserving judgment for now.”

“Fine with me; just don’t get yourself in trouble,” Eisa remarked, smiling back at her husband.

“What exactly do you need, then?  How exactly can I help?”

Milton pointed toward Whisp, as she was better able to explain what they needed.  “We’ve been searching over the surface of this entire planet for more than two years without any success, so we can only assume that the Stabilizing Anchor is located under the surface somewhere.  We’re not sure where it could be, because our sensors are almost useless here, as they cannot operate through this… Soulforce, I think you said it was called?  Anyway, we can detect that the Anchor is still here, but not its location.”

“Under the ground?  There’s a lot of land to survey down there.  Can you give me any other clues to narrow the search?”

Milton thought about it for a moment before responding.  “It is most likely that a Breeder Ship accompanied the Stabilizing Anchor, so it would have to be a large enough space to hold the vessel.  Based on the ones we’ve seen before, this ship is probably larger than the entire city of Allroads, though it’s rectangular in shape instead of circular.”

“I think something like that arriving from above would’ve made an impact on either the Humans or the Dungeon Core population, as it would be difficult to hide,” Fred commented skeptically.  “How long ago did you say this ship would’ve arrived?”

“A little over 2 years ago.  You haven’t heard anything about it?”

He shook his head.  “It is possible that it arrived far to the north or south, which are very sparsely populated, but even then I believe I would’ve sensed them entering the air above the world.”

“Have you sensed us flying around for the last 2 years?  We’ve been over your house at least a half-dozen times.”

Fred shook his head again.  “No, I had no idea you were even here until I saw you outside.”

“Then it’s possible that the Heliothropes slipped through, as well.”

Eisa suddenly asked, “How do you know they are underground, then?”

“Because they haven’t attacked anyone,” Milton explained.  “The only explanation we can come up with is that they buried themselves where no one could easily detect them, but at the same time, they are unable to move away from their hiding place.”

That was the only reason they could come up with, because otherwise, as soon as they had established proper defenses around the Anchor, they would’ve been all over the planet.

“Fair enough.  I’ll start by looking for cavities underground that could support a vessel such as you’ve described; there cannot be many that would fit something of that size.”

With a simple wave of his hand, there was suddenly a 4-foot-wide, flat, oval-shaped window suspended in the air in front of the assembled people inside Fred’s house.  When Milton looked at the window, he could see a view of the surface around just outside, including the house they were currently inside, as well as the shuttle on the edge of the clearing.  Suddenly, the view shot straight down, appearing as if it would slam right into the ground, but instead it flowed through the dirt.  When it was under the surface, instead of a wall of earth and stone, the view was like looking through a very fine mist, where the crust of the planet was largely translucent.  It was like his sensor orbs, though on a much greater level.

The mist seemed to swirl around in currents and eddies, as if it was alive.  Fred explained while he sped the window’s vision along, finding a few caverns nearby that were probably the size of a football field, their presence like dark voids in the translucent nature of the dirt and stone.  “What you’re seeing is my perception of the Soulforce that infuses the entire world, welling up from the center.  It is this Soulforce that I can utilize to do this kind of Shaping, along with many other things.  From what I’ve been told, the only limit to what it can do is one’s imagination.”

Sounds very useful.

They were searching for hours, and during that time, Wynk and his group mates had passed out from exhaustion, sleeping in their chairs.  They hadn’t spoken at all throughout Milton’s explanation or the subsequent negotiation for help from Fred, and the night and day finally caught up with them.  Just before he fell asleep, Wynk’s anger and confusion seemed to slowly dissipate, which was a good sign that he’d come around to all the changes in his world.

There were a few cavities under the ground that they found that seemed large enough to hold a Breeder Ship, but all of them were empty of anything dangerous.  It wasn’t until night was falling outside that something finally caught Fred’s attention.

After the viewing window flickered for a moment, Milton thought that the man was simply getting tired. On the contrary, the flicker seemed to confuse and alert Fred at the same time.

“That shouldn’t have happened.  Something’s wrong.”

Fred backed up the view in his window, backtracking to where it had momentarily flickered.  The window faded a little when he reached a spot, though it didn’t disappear completely.  Moving it around, Milton saw it at the same time as everyone else still watching.

“Something’s pulling on the Soulforce.”  Indeed, it was flowing in a single direction, which was something that the Station Core hadn’t seen thus far in the viewing window.

The source of the pulling was quickly found, and it wasn’t what they were expecting to find.  Instead of a large cavity in the ground, there was a relatively small one, only about 1,500 feet in width.  There was, indeed, a Breeder Ship there, but it only filled about half of the cavern; most of it was buried in stone, almost as if it had somehow materialized 100 feet below the surface.  Looking above, Milton could see that it was under the edge of a mountain, which didn’t make any sense to him.

“This… this shouldn’t be here.  I don’t even know how it got this far down without being seen from the surface,” Fred said, trying to get closer to the Breeder Ship.  As far as Milton could tell, the Soulforce being sucked in was going straight into the vessel, as he didn’t see any sign of the Anchor outside its hull. When Fred moved his viewing window a little closer, it nearly disappeared, but a strain on the man’s face told the Station Core that he was keeping it together through his force of will.  “It’s trying to pull apart my Shaping, but I’m—what is that?!”

The closer they got, the clearer the cavity was.  Inside of the cavity was an army of Heliothropes in shades of blue, purple, red… and black.  It was impossible to count the mass of homicidal conquerors, but he plainly saw not just 1 but 3 Commanders, as well as more than 100 Elites, all squished together with thousands of Soldiers and Fodder.  Even more concerning was the fact that these ones appeared to be overflowing from the Ship, as the large door on the side where they had originated from was stuffed with more Heliothropes, who seemed to fill the rest of the space they were able to see inside.

Unfortunately, other than another Commander just inside the entrance to the Ship, they weren’t really able to see much more than that.  Fred’s viewing window was starting to unravel the closer he got to the Anchor, and there was a point where he couldn’t move any further lest it disappear completely.

“Where exactly is this?” Milton asked.

Fred backed up his view and shot the window upwards, so that he was looking down on the surface of the planet from about a mile above.  Milton recognized it immediately, as he had the knowledge of every part of the land easily accessible in his systems.  It was an area halfway across the planet, though its location didn’t stick out to him as unusual at all.

“This is strange.”

“How so, Fred?”

The view zoomed out a little more, and suddenly there was a different kind of mist he was looking at – this one like what they would see from orbit.  “There are no Dungeon Core territories around this area, which is very unusual.  Typically, every inch of land is claimed by Cores, except for the extreme north and south of the world, where the ambient Mana is too low to support a Core.  At least, that’s the way it used to be, but now all of the Cores are sustained by Humans.

“But this area is completely devoid of a territory, where there should be one.  The only places I’ve seen like that are where Humans live, convergences like I mentioned earlier, and… dead zones.  These dead zones were areas where the ambient mana was so low as to be nonexistent, so that the Dungeon Cores didn’t even include them in their territory.  From what I can feel, the territories of the nearby Cores have been the way they are for decades, if not centuries.  Hold on, I’m going to ask.”

Fred moved the view in the window toward one of the territories nearby, and it dived into the hilly landscape, stopping shortly thereafter when it was looking right at a brown-colored Dungeon Core.  Milton watched Fred’s face go from concern to confusion over the next moment, before the viewpoint moved away from the Core.

“Basalerinashistar says that he’s had his territory right up against this dead zone for the last 389 years, which means that it’s likely been there even longer,” Fred said, looking at Milton with his head tilted to the side in confusion.  “The thing is, he said, after I healed the wounds to the world and brought Soulforce back, one of the others nearby acted immediately to try and claim the territory; instead, she found that not only was it still a dead zone, but it additionally absorbed the Mana she tried to infuse into the area to claim it as a territory.”

“Nearly 400 years?  That can’t be right, can it?  They only got here a little over 2 years ago—hold on, I’m getting a communication from the Station.”

“Visual analysis of the rock formations above and around the Breeder Ship place them around 10,000 to 30,000 years old, after what was likely an earthquake of some kind.  Unless the Ship materialized in the rock itself, which doesn’t appear to be the case, then they’ve been there a long, long time.”

Milton explained to everyone what ALANNA told him, and he looked at Whisp for clarification.  She just shrugged.

“Hold on, did you say 10,000 to 30,000 years?”

Milton nodded at Fred’s question.

“That sounds like it was around the time when things had been quite chaotic around the world, when Human and Dungeon Core populations were both more sparse and warred against each other frequently.  If this ship of theirs landed around that time, it is possible that no one saw it arrive.”

“What are you saying, Fred?  That they’ve been here for millennia?”  That was hard to believe, considering that they only opened the dimensional wound less than 3 years ago.

“I don’t know, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.  You’re the ones that know more about these people than I do.”

They were all silent for a moment, before Whisp spoke up.  “What if time progresses differently in this dimension?”

“What do you mean?”

The smart Proctan sat up a little straighter as she answered.  “Well, we’ve seen dimensions that are different size-wise than your dimension, seen dimensions where magic is used, and where divine beings are real – such as our own – so why not a difference in the way time flows?  If this is true, then just by arriving a few weeks earlier in this dimension, the Heliothropes may have arrived tens of thousands of years ago.  It happens with black holes, after all, where one minute could be the equivalent to a few days or years elsewhere in the universe, so why not an entire dimension like that?”

“So, you’re saying that the Heliothropes got here a long time ago?  How is it that they haven’t stabilized the dimensional wound, if they’ve had millennia in which to do so?”

Whisp waved toward Fred after a second’s consideration.  “It was Fred.”  At his angry reaction, she held her hands up placatingly.  “I didn’t mean it to sound like I was blaming you specifically for this, but it’s what you did to fix the Soulforce that caused this.”

“How so?”

“Well, when the Heliothropes arrived, they came to a world where the energy that flowed up from the center of the planet was broken and fragmented – basically unusable.  My guess is that the Stabilizing Anchor was able to absorb just enough of this energy to maintain the dimensional wound, but not to expand it during that time.  Essentially, it was dormant – until someone fixed the energy so that it was whole and subsequently woke it up a few decades ago.”

Fred looked horrified and shook his head in denial.  “No, that can’t be!  I was simply trying to fix a wrong and to keep Humans and Dungeon Cores from killing each other to extinction.”

“What you did was good for the people and Cores on this world,” Milton said consolingly.  “This was just an unfortunate side effect.”  Turning to Whisp, he asked, “So how come it’s taken longer than in Sandra’s dimension?  And what about the Heliothropes, themselves?  Why didn’t they simply invade and conquer the world after arriving?”

Whisp shrugged.  “Best guess?  The energy is more complex and powerful than the Anchor can easily process, so it takes longer.  It’s like trying to eat a whole Picow with a small spoon; eventually you’ll get it done, but it’s going to take a while.

“As for the Heliothropes, it’s possible that their Ship’s energy is somehow tied to the Anchor, and it couldn’t initiate their breeding program without it.  Or that the Ship was damaged when they landed so long ago, which is why it was inactive while it was covered up by the landscape and what was likely an earthquake that ended up burying them.  Or any of a hundred other reasons.  There’s no way to tell without more information.”

“That makes sense, I suppose,” Milton said.  “But if that means that they’ve had decades to breed, then that entire Ship could be filled with Heliothropes.  The one on Sandra’s planet only had a month or so to breed the number we faced there, and we barely succeeded.  Even if we were able to get to them under the ground, how are we supposed to kill that many?”

Milton tried to imagine fighting in such close quarters, and it was a nightmare scenario.  There was the potential for somehow getting a large quantity of Plasma Bombs down there and setting them off, but with how hard it was to affect things from a distance because of the Soulforce everywhere, he would have to be very close to set them off. Not even Brint could control his Defensive Weapons well enough on the planet to operate them successfully from a distance – he knew, because they had attempted it during their experiments in trying to find a more effective way to search for the Anchor.

Even if he were able to set off the equivalent to a nuclear bomb or two near the Breeder Ship, there was no guarantee it would do enough damage to kill every Heliothrope nearby – especially the Commanders, and possibly even the Elites.  Their protective barriers, especially at full strength, were powerful enough that they could probably survive half the planet being blown up – though they would be thoroughly messed up afterwards.  It was only sustained damage that had proved to be successful against them in the past, and a bunch of bombs that all exploded at once just wasn’t the correct solution.

“I can see if I might be able to crush them under the weight of the mountain above them?” Fred volunteered.

Whoa—what?

“You can do that?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t see why not,” the man explained matter-of-factly.  “The Shaping of Soulforce, or even the modified Soulforce that I have access to, is all about visualization.  Like I said, if I can imagine it, there shouldn’t be any reason why it can’t be done.  This is powerful stuff.”

“I’d definitely say so.”

“Do you want me to try it now?”

Milton nodded, and Whisp clarified.  “Yes, please.  There’s only a little over five months left before the dimensional wound is stabilized, so the sooner, the better.”

Fred left the viewing window open as he worked, moving its perspective underground and far enough away from the pull of Soulforce so that he didn’t have to constantly struggle to keep it open.  The man had a look of intense concentration on his face, before he put his hands forward like he was attempting to grasp something from above and pull it down. As Fred’s arms began to shake from the strain, he yelled out in frustration, and there was a very faint rumble and shaking that could be seen and heard from the viewing window.  After a few seconds, it stopped. The powerful man slumped down in his chair, and the viewing window disappeared.

“Are you all right, my love?” Eisa asked, jumping off the arm of his chair and lifting his head up with her hands, peering worriedly into his exhausted-looking face.  To Milton, it looked like he had just run a few miles up a steep hill, before carrying a massive boulder back down in his arms.  He didn’t just look tired, he looked drained.

“I’m… I’m fine,” he finally said after a moment.  “That… whatever it is, was like nothing I’ve ever encountered before.  At first, I just felt it absorbing some of my modified Soulforce. But after I started to shift some of the stone above, it was almost like it was sucking it out directly from me,” he continued, shock clear in every fiber of his body.  “I pushed through it as far as I could, but the more I tried to affect the area around this Anchor thing, the worse it got.  I’m sorry, I failed.”

“That’s not the only thing, Milton.  There was a sudden surge in the energy being pumped out to the dimensional wound when Fred did that; new estimates put the final stabilization at just over 4 months.  I would advise not doing that again.”

Milton told the others, who had varying reactions.  Fred and Eisa looked worried, but Whisp’s and Brint’s faces were full of horror.  The Station Core couldn’t blame them, because in just that short amount of time, they had shortened their time left by an entire month.  Whisp and Brint had seen firsthand what the Heliothropes could do to a people once they were in control, and it wasn’t something that they ever wanted visited upon others.

“So, you’re saying that I’m useless?  I went from being the most powerful person in the world to being of less use than a Flower Tripper in a Nature dungeon?”

Milton wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but he got the gist.  “Not at all, but it means that we’ll have to try something different.  You did enough by finding them in the first place; now we just have to figure out how to go from here.  We have many tools at our disposal on the Station, and I’m sure we’ll be able to figure something out.”

Fred shook his head.  “No, we need to help, as well.  We aren’t defenseless, you know.  We can fight.”

“You haven’t seen what these people can do, though,” Milton warned.  “They are powerful. Not just because of their size and deadly weapons, but because they have a protective shield that blocks everything we’ve thrown at it, though it can be worn down with enough steady damage to it.  Only then are they vulnerable, but even their weakest individuals are a match for a group of E- or possibly D-Rated Adventurers from your world. The Commanders, of which I saw at least four, would wipe out hundreds of your S-Rated Adventurers before its shield was in danger of being worn down.”

Fred was silent for a moment.  “That might all be true, but there aren’t just Adventurers on this world.  We have another resource that we can tap into.”

“You’re talking about the Dungeon Cores?” Milton guessed.

“Exactly.  They can field an army of Defenders – what the Humans call monsters – bigger than any you’ve seen before.”

“Will they fight, though?”

“They will if the ‘Great Authority’ tells them to.”

Wynk had woken up at some point during their conversation, and he looked at his father.  “Wait, you’re the ‘Great Authority’ that Dungeon Core was talking about?”

“Ha, you spoke to that Air Core?  We definitely have a lot to talk about, my son.”

“I heard what you were saying and I—no, we—are going to help,” Wynk continued, gesturing to his group, who had also woken up and were staring defiantly at Fred and even Milton.  “If the world is at stake, then we have a right to—”

“Well, of course you’re going to help.  At this point, we’re going to need all the help we can get, if what Milton says is true.”

Milton nodded, indicating his veracity.  “We have recordings we can show to you and anyone else that needs to see them, detailing exactly how dangerous the Heliothropes are – and what we’ve done to stop them in the past.”

“That will be useful, because it would be best if we knew what we’re up against.”

Fred turned to Eisa, taking her hand in his.  “Eisa, my love?”

“Yes?”

“Are you ready to save the world again?”

Milton saw that she pretended to think about it for a moment, before she grinned mischievously.  “Absolutely.  I was getting a little bored of lounging around the house, anyway.”

Turning back to Milton, still with his wife’s hand in his own, Fred asked, “Sounds like my better half approves; now, what do you need to get this done?”

I have a feeling that this is either going to be the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen, or a calamity of enormous proportions.

“Well, first, we need to….”

Chapter 25

“Are you sure you’re up to it, Echo?” Sandra asked the Elf.

The Dungeon Core had personally met with her friend in the upper workshop of her dungeon, which was the easiest location they could both get to without too much trouble.  While speaking directly to the Elf’s mind was more than possible, for something like this Sandra wanted to do it in person.

“Absolutely.”  Echo nodded, accompanied by the rest of the Elf’s CAMP Guild group.  All 5 of the others were there, all veterans of the last time they had to face the Heliothropes.  While Gerold, Hazel, Serafira, Owchet, and Belta had survived, Echo had not; it took Milton’s miraculous Bioconversion Laboratory to bring her back to life, though she’d had to start at the beginning with her expertise in her elemental energy.

It's amazing that words like “Bioconversion Laboratory” are now a normal part of my vocabulary.  What crazy times we’re living in, huh?

“And you’ve recovered enough since… before?”

Sandra already knew the answer to that, because she had been following Echo’s recovery since she had been “reborn” – but she wanted to hear it from the Elf’s lips.  “Yes, I have.  Of course, I’ve been left in the dust by everyone else,” she said while pointing her thumb at the rest of her group, “but not as badly as I had feared.  By throwing myself into culling dungeons over the last couple of years, I’d say that I’m probably more advanced than I was when I died.”

The Dungeon Core was glad to see that Echo had gotten over the experience, especially with how traumatic it had been.  Strangely enough, it seemed as though she wore the fact that she had died and been reborn as a badge of honor, rather than as something to have been ashamed of.

“Well, other than the Proctans, you six have a better understanding of what these Heliothropes can do than anyone.  Those from this world you’ll be visiting will need your help and experience to drive these dangerous beings from their dimension.  It… will be a lot more than last time, but we’ll also have a lot of other help, as well.”

That was the understatement of the century – in both respects.  When Sandra first saw the thousands of Heliothropes in the cavern through Milton’s senses, all of them standing perfectly still as if they were simply waiting for something to attack, no little bit of fear had washed over her.  She couldn’t help but think that if Milton hadn’t arrived when he did at her own world, and the Heliothropes had managed to amass even a fraction of their numbers inside of this Breeder Ship, then there was no doubt that she (along with all of the other Dungeon Cores) would’ve been destroyed and the people of the world enslaved.

Thankfully, the valiant Station Core had been there in their time of need, and with his help they had succeeded.  This planet, which was full of more Dungeon Cores in one of the dozens of continents than in Sandra’s entire world, was going to be another type of challenge entirely.

“We will do our best, Sandra.”

“That is all I ask.  I also want to thank all of you for volunteering, because this will be a very dangerous mission.”

Gerold laughed, shrugging in his special armor that was tied to his elemental energy.  Sandra could craft those special suits of armor, as well as the shields and weapons that the Dwarves primarily used for their Shieldmen, but there were numerous Dwarven blacksmiths that worked the metal nearby now that the secret of their manufacture had been revealed.  “Well, if we die, we can just come back, like Echo.”

Sandra smiled sadly, thinking back on the day the Elf had perished at the hands of a Heliothrope Commander.  “That is true, though try not to get yourselves killed, please.  You’ll have to start all over, after all.”  She hesitated for a moment, debating about something that she’d had on her mind since Milton had told her about it.  “As a reward for volunteering—”

“There’s no need for a reward, Sandra,” Echo interrupted the Dungeon Core, putting her hands up to stop Sandra from speaking.  “We would do this anyway, because we don’t want anyone to have to suffer from those things like what we’ve heard happened in Milton’s dimension.”

“I appreciate that, I do, but traveling to another dimension to help the Humans there defend against the Heliothropes with a significant chance of death?  I’d say that deserves something, don’t you?”  Sandra winked at them, chuckling at their expressions.  She could tell that they agreed, though they wouldn’t have said anything about it, either.

“What do you have in mind?” Gerold asked, hefting the battleaxe by his side.  “We already have everything we could need.”

“You’re right; there isn’t anything that I can really offer to you that you don’t already have access to.  Milton, though, has something that he could share with you; call it a bonus, rather than a reward, if you wish.”

“And what is that?”

“Oh, just a little thing like giving you access to additional elemental energies, that’s all.”

“What?  That’s impossible.”

Some of her closest friends, including Violet and Echo’s group, knew about the way Milton had been able to impart the ability to access elemental energy to many of the people now living on the Station, but the way they understood it, the process was only possible because they had been basically blank slates.  None of them were aware that giving those people access to a single element was only temporary, at least until they learned to fully utilize and understand that element.

“Not at all.  We held off on mentioning it before, because the addition of another element that is unfamiliar could be dangerous to those that don’t know what they’re doing, but you are all experienced enough to handle it.  So, what do you say?  Would you like access to another element – or even more in the future?  You would be an experiment of sorts, to see how well it works, but it is something that could be useful for others in the CAMP Guild if it came down to it.”

Sandra had been thinking about it for a while, actually, because the Humans far to the east were starting to move a little more frequently toward the Orcish and Elvish lands, though there hadn’t been any full-scale invasion as of yet.  It was only a matter of time before it happened, though, and she wanted her friends to be ready.

“That would be incredible,” Echo effused, a grin on her face as she looked at the others, who all nodded without hesitation.  “I guess that means we better win, right?”

“Yes, though not for your sakes.  If we lose, then there is a lot more at stake than just your lives.”

Fortunately, there was a lot going in their favor.  The number of Heliothropes they had to face was overshadowed by what was being brought to bear against them.  Milton was going to provide more of his high-tech defenses, of course, but he was also going to be creating quite a few of his Combat Units.  Fred was somehow going to convince all of the Dungeon Cores on his planet to contribute their monsters, something that would be impossible on her planet – considering that all of the Cores were essentially insane by design.  It was only a bond between her Core and theirs, as well as the prodigious culling of their dungeons, that prevented them from sending their Dungeon Monsters swarming over the land like they used to do before Sandra and the Camp guild started to regulate them.

As for Sandra, with Echo, Gerold, and their group volunteering for the dangerous mission, she was free to start the production of her own contributions.  The first and foremost of those was to create a whole heap of constructs and other Dungeon Monsters, which Echo and the others could direct in a battle against the Heliothropes.  Thankfully, over the last couple of years, she hadn’t needed to spend her constantly refilling Mana on anything but shoring up her reserves of Energy Orbs and Cubes in her treasury.  In fact, she’d actually had to expand her treasury multiple times as she filled boxes and boxes of the stored Mana.

Granted, when she absorbed them, she only received half of the Mana that she used to create the Orbs and Cubes in the first place, but it was the best use of the large amounts of Mana she accumulated every minute.  These stores of her important resource weren’t the only thing she used her Mana for, as she had also applied it in the creation of Monster Seeds.  To create a construct, or any other Dungeon Monster, required a Monster Seed of appropriate size and quality, depending on what it was; for some of her most powerful options, they required something rare and expensive, such as precious gemstones, Dragon Glass, or even mithril.

As a result, she also had stone boxes full of the most expensive Monster Seeds she could utilize, in terms of Mana Cost and Raw Materials, a veritable treasure trove of materials had anyone but Sandra seen it.  In terms of “wealth” to the people of her world, such as the Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Orcs, and even the Humans, it was probably more than could be found anywhere across the land—combined.  Yet, to her, these Seeds were simply a means to an end, and she would be using a large portion of them on an assault against Heliothropes, on a world that wasn’t her own, in a dimension that was somewhat like her own but fundamentally different.

The former merchant balked at the usage of such a store of wealth, and she could only imagine what her parents would say.  However, what good was having all the money in the world if she couldn’t use it for a righteous cause?  It wasn’t like she needed it for anything else.

Along with all the hundreds of thousands of Orbs, Cubes, and Seeds she had saved up, Sandra had also spent a bit of time crafting.  Once they had figured out the tech-enchantment that allowed their ships to descend to the surface of the planet in the other dimension, she had taken some time away from the Station and crafted in her workshops, trying to apply what she had learned.  Most of her attempts were unsuccessful, mainly because she still wasn’t as familiar with the intricate “tech” part that the Proctans seemed to instinctively know about, just like she was better with the “enchantment” part.  Together, they had been able to piece together the solution, but on her own she was a novice when it came to combining the two.

So, Sandra practiced. After a string of failures, the Dungeon Core was finally successful. She had focused her crafting and experimentation around ways to defeat the Heliothropes with more efficiency. Thus far, other than some traps in the Station’s dungeon and the Dungeon Monsters she had created, the only real contribution she had made, as far as crafting went, was her magnetic launchers.  The rapidly propelled bars of metal packed a punch and could collapse a Fodder’s shield with one hit, or nearly so; though against Soldiers, they weren’t quite as effective, and against Elites and Commanders, they were barely noticeable.  The problem with them was that they hit hard once and that was it – the projectiles didn’t provide persistent damage.

Thoughts of different enchantments on the metal bars were short-lived, because she found that normal enchantments were warped and broke when passing through the launchers themselves.  Even if they had worked, most of the enchantments she knew of were flashy and destructive, but were still typically one-and-done; they might make the initial hit more powerful, but they didn’t provide persistent damage.

It wasn’t until she applied her fledgling knowledge of the tech-enchantments that she was finally able to get a few things to work.  Discovering that the reason the normal enchantments broke during their passage through the launcher was the magnetic force literally snapping the carefully constructed rune sequences, she found that the circuit-like structure of the tech-enchantment was much more durable and could withstand the magnetic force without breaking apart.

It took a little over a year during her free time to come up with a few interesting solutions.  The first one was a variation of the Fireburst enchantment she normally placed on bolts shot out by the bows she could craft, which created a fiery explosion upon impact.  A Tiny Fire/Spirit Energy Orb was contained within the metal bar, which powered the tech-enchantment and would subsequently produce a much larger explosion than normal. Coupled with the impact of the bar traveling at high speeds, it was designed to simply do more damage.  One of those hitting a blue-skinned Fodder was almost guaranteed to kill it, or else damage it severely.

There were a couple of other tech-enchantments that she had created, all designed like the first to do more damage in one way or another, but they didn’t solve the problem with persistent damage.  The solution for that came from the Sub-dermal Interface Artifact that Milton had brought back from the surface of the planet they were hovering over.  There was one section of the Artifact that interested her the most, and it had to do with how the little black square seemed to melt and then move within the skin of the person it was implanting itself within.  Strangely enough, that was the easiest part of the Artifact to understand, though applying it to her projectiles was anything but.

With a little help from the Think Tank, Sandra was able to figure it out.  With a Tiny Earth/Fire/Spirit Energy Orb inside of the bar, she was able to turn the projectile into a persistent damage weapon – and a very unique one at that.  Upon impact, the bar would slam into a Heliothrope’s glowing protective barrier, doing damage it normally did, but then the front two-thirds of the bar would seem to melt like it had hit its melting point in a forge.  The melted parts of the iron bar would then break apart into a dozen pieces, skittering around the protective barrier like drops of water on a heated pan.  The final third of the bar contained the Orb and the controlling parts of the enchantment and would attach itself to the barrier. From her observations of the Heliothropes, Sandra estimated that it would only last up to 10 seconds before the shield would eat away at the enchantments as well as the bar, but it was still a lot longer time than an initial impact or explosion.

The Dungeon Core hadn’t had a lot of time to stockpile the Fireburst bars or these new Melted Iron bars since she had discovered the enchantment, but there was another source of help that could assist with making more.  It was time to see if the Think Tank could help make another one of their “instructional videos” for the people on the Station.  It would likely require those who volunteered to help with enchanting to acquire another element or two, but from what she’d heard, they were definitely eager to expand what they could do.  It was also a good experiment to see if they could handle another element before Echo and the others of her group got their bonuses.

So much to do and so little time….

Chapter 26

Fred remembered having trouble keeping both his wonder and his disbelief off his face as he witnessed the scenes playing out in front of him.  Milton had made good on his promise to show him the power of these Heliothropes, bringing some sort of contraption with a window very similar to his long-distance Shapings – but it was anything but the same.  Instead, this window didn’t show what was happening at the moment but showed what had happened in the past.

Eisa, their son, and Wynk’s Adventurer group had all joined him as they had watched scene after scene of fights against these multi-armed people in different locales, from a metal corridor he was told was located in the space above a planet, to fighting on an entirely different world than his own, and even within a dungeon of sorts that was located on a giant “space station” that was even now floating above his world.

He had thought that Milton had been exaggerating the strength and power of the Heliothropes, but after witnessing the scenes on the “viewscreen” he had been shown, there was no denying that they were a force that would be difficult to defeat.  If it was just them, multiple arms and strong weapons, he wouldn’t have been very worried; with their protective shields that surrounded them, preventing anything from reaching their bodies, it was a whole different story.

Which was what led Fred to what he had been working on for the last few days.  Using his ability to communicate long distances using his Shapings, he had visited one DAS building after another, starting with those that were on the other side of the world from where the Heliothropes were hiding under the surface.  Though, hiding probably isn’t the right word; they’re protecting this “Anchor” thingy.

In each city and town large enough to have a Syndicate building, he said the same thing to everyone inside before moving on to the next.

“Danger has arrived in our world from the great beyond.  The help of every Adventurer is needed to combat this threat, or else every person in this world is in danger of being killed or enslaved.  Transport will arrive at some point within the coming days and weeks to transport you to where a battle unlike anything you’ve seen before will take place.  Be ready.”

That was it.  He stayed behind a few times to see the reactions of the Syndicate members inside of the building, which ranged from frightened to excited to complete disbelief.  He knew that he wasn’t going to be able to get every Adventurer in the world to come help, but he was hoping that many of them would volunteer for the dangerous defense.

Thankfully, once Milton’s special flying “ships” started to visit the places Fred had passed his message on to, there were always people hanging around that were eager to jump aboard for an adventure.  That’s what they were, after all – Adventurers.  The arrival of these freighters also spurred the curiosity of those that had been on the fence about joining; once they saw that it was relatively real, they joined up to help.  Thousands flocked to their staging area, which Milton was in charge of building, and Fred continued to communicate with as many Syndicate centers as possible. Soon enough, word spread faster than he could visit them, thanks to the communication arrays that the Syndicate operated, so he wasn’t needed to see to every single one.

After that, he had to do something that he disliked doing, but it was necessary – so he sucked it up for the sake of the world’s survival.  He called together a meeting of the Supreme Council of Dungeon Cores.

While it was ridiculous meeting in the relatively small cave that the Council had met within for thousands of years – buried under the ground and nearly impossible to find without knowing its location – the Council was a bit set in its ways.  It wasn’t something that Fred had the energy or even a reason to change, so he thought it was best that he leave it alone.

“It is pleasant to see you, Fred,” the Supreme of Air said as soon as everyone arrived.  Though, “arrived” was a bit of a misnomer, because all the Dungeon Cores essentially did was spend a bit of their Mana to create an avatar, not unlike what he was doing inside of the chamber.  It was actually very similar to what Milton did with his body, or so he understood, though the Station Core actually constructed his fake body using real materials instead of creating one with Mana.

“Thank you, Air.”  The Supreme of Air was the closest thing he had to an ally within the Supreme Council, due to the help she had provided decades ago.

“Why are we here, Cursedborn?”

Fred shook his head, knowing that the Supreme of Dark—the new Supreme of Dark, considering that Fred had destroyed the previous one during the Big Change because of… reasons he didn’t want to think about right now—was taunting him.  I hate that name, and these Cores just can’t let it go.  A part of him knew that they couldn’t help it, given that most of them had been in charge of every Dungeon Core on the planet for thousands of years, but he was frankly tired of fighting and threatening them to do what needed to be done.

“I’m going to ignore that, Dark, because I come to you today needing your help.”

“Oh, you need our help?  Where were you when—?”

“Enough, Dark!  We’ve had just about enough of your yammering, you ridiculous fool,” the Supreme of Nature interrupted, and Fred could sense the exasperation in her tone and bearing.  Not having any faces to speak of, it was difficult to determine how Dungeon Cores were feeling, so he had to rely on his senses of their Cores and their vocal tones.  Thankfully, he’d had plenty of experience with that over the years.

“How dare you speak to—”

“STOP!” Fred shouted, and he could feel the indignation in the Supreme of Dark’s Core shift to fear.  It wasn’t necessarily an emotion he liked to elicit, but sometimes these Cores simply wouldn’t listen otherwise.

“Is this about those strange people we’ve had visiting our dungeons?” Air asked after a moment of silence.  “They’ve been a great boon wherever they go, despite their strangeness.”

Fred nodded.  “In a way.”  He paused for a moment before going on.  “This is going to sound like a farce, but I can personally guarantee that it is true.”  He took a heavy illusionary breath, considering that his avatar wasn’t actually there in the cave.  “The Proctans, the strange people you mentioned, are from a different world, and are in fact from a different dimension.  They came here to stop a race of beings from opening a permanent portal into our own dimension, with the objective to conquer and enslave everyone they can get their hands on.  If they can’t enslave them, they kill them; with the way Dungeon Cores are, my guess is that they will choose the latter for every Core in the world.”

There was silence for a moment before the cavern erupted in laughter that came from everyone but Air.

“You have got to be kidding, Cursedborn.  I spent all that Mana for this nonsense—”

Fred flexed his Shaping and pulled all but the barest amount of Mana from Dark’s avatar construct, which was a hefty investment for the Dungeon Core; while the actual process didn’t use a ton of Mana, a large reserve of their Mana was tied up in the avatar until it was dissolved.

“Hey!  What—”

“You can have this back as soon as you STOP TALKING!” he screamed at the Supreme of Dark, his anger getting the better of him for a moment.  He took a few illusionary breaths, calming himself down as the cavern quieted.

This is exactly why I stopped involving myself in these matters over the years, because I can barely restrain myself from their stupidity anymore.  While they all had, out of necessity, adapted to the changes he had implemented, they still had the same arrogant attitudes as they did before Fred was around.  He wished he could replace them with other Cores, but that was something that wasn’t really within his jurisdiction. There was an uneasy balance between him and the Council, one which he didn’t want to alter unless it was necessary.

They could make life annoying for him and the Humans if they chose to do so, though they would hurt themselves in the process. All they would have to do was make their Cores harder or impossible to reach, and any Adventurer with a Soulstone would have extreme difficulty discharging their Mana.  As a result, millions of people could die, and while the development and growth of the Dungeon Cores would cease, there wouldn’t be any lasting harm to them.  But asking a Dungeon Core to stop growing and developing is like asking a highly sociable Human not to talk; they could do it, but they really, really wouldn’t like it.

The Supreme of Dark stopped talking for almost a minute while Fred held the black-colored Mana in his control, and when he was tired of trying to teach the Core a lesson, he shoved it back inside of Dark.  “Now that I have your attention, I want to show you something.”  Fred created another Shaping in the center of the cavern, large enough that all the entire Supreme Council could see it from all directions.  It was a viewing of the land where the Heliothropes were located, from a top-down perspective.

“That looks familiar; I think one of my faction was mentioning something going on around there, but I haven’t had a chance to look into it, yet,” the Supreme of Earth said.

“That is absolutely correct.  I spoke with a few of them nearby, and this place has been a dead zone for as long as any of them can remember.  It was only since I fixed the wounds on the planet to allow Soulforce to emerge again that it has changed.”  Fred moved the view in his Shaping down toward the surface, before sinking down a mile or so from the large cave where the Heliothropes were located.  He could easily get that close before his control started to waver, but it was close enough that he could zoom his perception of what he was looking at enough that the Supremes could see them too.

“What are those?  They’re unlike anything I’ve seen before,” Nature said, the first hints of curiosity rather than disdain that he’d heard thus far in his visit with the Council.

“They are Heliothropes, and there are different sizes of them, as you can see.  Each of them is a strong, agile, and deadly fighter by themselves, but that’s not what is the most dangerous about them.”  Fred went on to describe the protective barrier around them, creating yet another Shaping that fed back to where his body was located, where a viewscreen was depicting a scene where the Proctans were fighting the multi-armed people.

“Where did they come from, again?”

“An entirely different dimension.  That is also where these strange individuals named Proctans are from, as far as I can tell, and they are here to destroy them.  However, they were unable to locate these invaders for a long time, so there are many more of these Heliothropes than they can handle – so they need our help.  This entire structure,” he explained, moving his Shaping so that he was looking at what Milton had called the Breeder Ship, “is reportedly full of these people, and if they get loose, they will ravage across the land without stopping.”

“It looks like they are trapped down there, however, so let us just leave them alone and they won’t hurt anyone,” Nature proposed.

Fred shook his head.  “We could, but in a few months an Anchor that is absorbing Soulforce from our world will complete its process and stabilize the portal linking our dimension with the one they came from.”  Fred asked Milton to change what was being shown on the viewscreen to one of space – which he still didn’t fully comprehend well – with a view of hundreds of Heliothrope ships sailing through what looked like a star-filled void.  “If that happens, then millions of these ships can come through, containing billions of Heliothropes that will overrun the planet.  I’ve spoken with Milton, the leader of these Proctans, and he’s shown me enough to convince me that he’s telling the truth.”

“What exactly do you want us to do?” Air asked after a few seconds of silence.

“I need Defenders, many, many Defenders.  While I can create some myself, I won’t be able to make nearly enough to help with the defense.  That, and I’ll be creating one of the largest dungeons on the planet in a matter of a month or so, and I won’t have the time or strength to create more than a few by the time we attack them.”

“For as many as I think you want, that is a hefty investment of Mana.  While our reserves have been replenished over the last couple of decades, you’re asking us to basically deplete ourselves again.”  Fred knew what she was referring to, because many Dungeon Cores had used every scrap of Mana in their attack against him at Allroads.

“That is true, but this is about the survival of everyone, not just Humans and a few Cores.  If they break out, our world could be doomed.” Only Air seemed to agree with him, though even she was a bit tentative in her agreement.

Greedy fools.

“Fine,” he conceded, with a scowl of disgust that he could feel on his face. “After this is all done, I will personally spend some time replenishing all the Mana that was spent during this defense, giving it to each of you, and then you can divvy it up with your subordinates.”  He raised a warning finger.  “If I find that you kept more than your fair share, then I will take it back—from your entire faction.  Does that seem reasonable?”

It didn’t take long after that to have an agreement, and he worked out the details with each elemental faction.  The Cores that were further away from the Heliothrope location could send their Mana – at a cost – to another Core that was closer to the upcoming battle, and those would be the ones that would churn out Defender after Defender.  Once they were all created, each with a charge of extra Mana that maintained their forms when they left the dungeon’s territory, they would then travel overland to reach the site where the defenses would be set up.

Thankfully, Fred wasn’t planning on establishing a territory to house his dungeon. If he did, then as soon as the Defenders from the other factions entered it, they would lose all control of them, and then they’d have berserk Defenders on their hands attacking anything and everything.  Without a territory, it wouldn’t be an “official” dungeon, but it didn’t have to be official; what it needed to be was effective – and he was planning on it being highly effective.

“Excellent.  I think we have a plan; thank you for your assistance,” he finally said once all the plans were finalized.  With a sigh of relief, he left the Supreme Council to get back to work on things where he didn’t have to threaten and bribe Dungeon Cores to do the right thing.

A dungeon wasn’t going to build itself, after all.

Chapter 27

The logistics of an attack on the Heliothropes and the Stabilizing Anchor were beyond what Milton and Fred could handle alone.  Thankfully, Milton had a whole team in his Think Tank that could organize everything – and they were good at it.  It took some time to get to that point, but once things were going, the rest came along quite smoothly.

The first thing that Milton did was call all the search teams together.  Thankfully, despite the difficulty in technological things working on the planet without Milton around, his Station Core was still able to communicate with their NCUs on a limited basis when they were inside of the tech-enchanted vessels; that was how they had been able to search over the entire planet with any type of organization.  Simple communication with them was about the limit, however, as anything more was blocked by what they had recently learned was Soulforce, a powerful energy that disrupted many of Milton’s toys.

Milton had them meet in an area 60 miles from the “dead zone” where the Heliothropes were located, at which they started to set up a base.  Fred had to ask for permission – or demand, Milton wasn’t sure which – from the local Earth Dungeon Cores to set up a massive camp to hold their assault force.  With hundreds of drones and a few more shipments of large quantities of BMUs from Haven Station, Milton was able to construct a Hemispheric Zero-point Energy Reactor, which was able to provide power to everything he was going to need.

First, Milton went on a building spree, both on the planet and on the Station.  ALANNA and the Think Tank handled Haven Station, where another Space Transport Dock was created, in addition to the two they already had. When that Dock was built, it joined the existing ones in creating more freighters, crucial to the transport of goods, people, and possibly even the “Defenders” that were supposedly going to be created later by Dungeon Cores.  In addition, tens of thousands more of the useful drones were created, either to help with the creation of freighters on the Station or transported down to the planet for Milton’s use.

Along with the drones, the Station had a lot of excess resources; billions of Basic Metal and Bio Mass Units, along with millions of Focusing Crystals, were transported down to the planet, where Milton could make use of them.  With those on hand, the Station Core ramped up the production of facilities,[13] making use of the Energy Reactor nearby to start producing the components needed for their upcoming plan.

The first of these was a pair of Drone Assembly Plants to add to the number of drones he had on the planet.  Even with some coming from Haven Station, the more he had access to, the quicker he could accomplish what needed to get done.

The second set of facilities he built were 10 Defensive Weaponry Factories, which allowed him to create all of the Defensive Weapons he would need to go along with the assault against the Heliothropes.  Unlike the attack on Sandra’s planet, Milton now had a lot more Focusing Crystals to play with, so his options were extensively expanded.

After that, he constructed 150 Bioconversion Labs, along with another 30 Upgraded Bioconversion Labs, which would allow him to create larger Combat Units.  With the Bio Mass he was acquiring from the Station, these would allow him to contribute thousands of additional Units to accompany the eventual assault.

Next, his drones constructed a Rapid Coalification Facility, a Destructive Distillery, and then a Cybernetic/Synthetic Organism Factory[14], which would allow the Proctans that came to fight a way to improve their battle prowess, using cybernetic parts. Those weren’t something they normally utilized, because it required additional time and resources to equip them properly.  That, and with some of the components, Boosts wouldn’t work properly.  If there were any time when they needed the cybernetic parts, though, it was for this battle.

From there, he also created a few Vehicle Assembly Plants, to help with transportation around the area, and to the spot where the attack would take place.  They would also be able to transport supplies to the front lines, as well as providing mounts for powerful Defensive Weapons, and transporting Adventurers that were coming to help from nearby towns and cities.

Next came the PPPPPP[15], something he hadn’t yet had to build because he had a large supply of Tiny Portable Packs up on the Station, but it would be useful for the upcoming confrontation.  There were many uses for the Portable Power-Providing-Pack Production Plant (PPPPPP), but the most useful would be the Mobile Providers, which were basically ground-based drones with a portable Power Generator that enhanced the Power regeneration of Combat Units within 100 feet by up to 20X, depending on proximity to the Provider.  This would allow the Proctans to continually use their Power for much longer than usual, which was going to be needed desperately in the future.

While those facilities were built, Milton spent weeks creating living spaces to hold the thousands of Proctans and the newest recruits that were coming down from the Station, along with the Adventurers that were streaming in from the surrounding lands.  Fred hadn’t been idle during all the construction Milton was completing, but had worked to get the word out that help was needed – along with many other things.

With the proximity of the Energy Reactor, as well as Milton’s presence in the form of his avatar, he was able to set up touch-based viewscreens near Molecular Converters, which allowed for the easy production of food and drinks for anyone who used them.  A menu containing thousands of different items was at their convenience, which was what he had available up on the Station – but now it was available to those on the planet, as well.  It required some extra shipments from his stores on the Station to maintain enough to keep everyone fed, but thankfully the farms in the residence ring were more than up to the task.

Of course, Milton hadn’t done all of this himself.  Whisp and the Think Tank on the Station had coordinated to map out the proper order of everything, utilizing a complex schedule to ensure everything got done as efficiently and quickly as possible when the resources were available.  In a matter of only 3 weeks, all of the different facilities were up and running, pumping out different components of Milton’s contribution to the plan.  A further 3 weeks was going to be necessary to create everything for the assault, but his part was right on schedule.

Sandra also participated in the preparations, though she couldn’t travel down to the planet; she needed to stay near the portal opening to her dimension on Haven Station because it was connected to her dungeon. What she could do, however, was provide constructs and other Dungeon Monsters by the hundreds, thanks to all the Mana she had saved up over the last few years.  She hadn’t been simply experimenting with enchantments, but had been accumulating hundreds of thousands of Energy Orbs back in her dungeon, which she used to great effect to create her Dungeon Monsters.

She needed someone to control them, however, which is why she asked her friends back on her world to help her.  Gerold, Hazel, Serafira, Owchet, Belta, and Echo volunteered to lead the Dungeon Monsters on an entirely different planet.  Having died and been brought back to life by Milton’s Bio Lab, Echo had dedicated the last few years to bring her elemental energy skills back up to nearly the levels where they were before her death.  While they didn’t automatically refill their elemental energy, the Energy Orbs embedded in Sandra’s volunteers’ bodies worked very similarly to the Tiny Portable Packs that Milton’s Proctans used to replenish their own Power.

In addition to the Dungeon Monsters, Sandra also had some other surprises with her magnetic launchers that Milton was eager to see in action.  The launchers would have to be manned by Adventurers instead of the normal Goblin Crafters she had used in the past, mainly because it was going to be too difficult for Echo and her group to control them and all of the other Dungeon Monsters that were participating.

Speaking of the Dungeon Core, there was some confusion and discussion concerning the time differential between Sandra’s dimension and this current one, because they had determined that time flowed differently in their current dimension.  Whisp thought that the connective portal somehow equalized the flow of time in a large area of space, which included the Station and the planet.  Other members of the Think Tank disagreed, saying that the perception of time simply changed between the two dimensions, and that they were actually running at different speeds.  Still others concluded that they may have been wrong in their original assumption that the flow of time was different in this dimension, despite the evidence to the contrary.  It was a debate that was ongoing, but it was sidelined until they were able to devote more time to figuring it out.

As for Fred, while he had gotten the word out to Adventurers the world over that he needed their help, he was also responsible for the biggest and most important part of their plan.  It all came down to how they were planning on assaulting the Heliothropes, for which there were three main ideas.

The first idea, which was quickly shot down, was the one Milton had proposed in his mind when he had seen that many Heliothropes down beneath the surface. Somehow smuggling or dropping hundreds of Plasma Bombs or other destructive Defensive Weapons into the middle of the cavern was definitely a thought, but it had a few downsides that couldn’t be ignored.  The first downside was that it was possible that, no matter how much they were able to send into the cavern where they were located, it wouldn’t be enough to kill even one of the Commanders, whose full-strength protective barriers were extremely powerful.  He’d seen such a barrier endure 4 Large Plasma Bombs in his dungeon aboard Haven Station; all the Bombs had really done was annoy the massive, black-skinned Heliothrope.

Granted, 100 Plasma Bombs or more might hurt it excessively, but there was no guarantee.  In addition, the Bombs didn’t necessarily increase the yield of their explosion by having more than one of them; they might end up doing more damage, but it wasn’t an exponential increase by any means.  There were other options, such as the Unstable Void, which had been used by Milton and Sandra when defending against a Commander on the Station; but even then, they had to reduce the Heliothrope’s shield with a barrage of Particle Accelerators for it to work.

There was a limit to how far Milton could create the Unstable Void away from the apparatus, so he’d have to have it inside of the cavity for it to be effective.  Creating more than 1 of them would be dangerous, because creating 2 voids in one area could lead to dangerous results; when voids were combined by Proctans, the results were catastrophic not only to anything nearby, but to the Proctans, as well.  He didn’t want to experiment with 2 Unstable Voids touching through the use of his Defensive Weaponry, because they were even more dangerous; it was possible it could blow a massive hole in the planet, or even tear a hole in the fabric of reality, creating a chain reaction that could wipe out the entire dimension by itself.

At least, that was the warning ALANNA gave, so it was something they wanted to avoid.

With that off the table except as a last resort, the next idea was to simply dig a tunnel down to the cavern and send in wave after wave of Proctans, Adventurers, Combat Units, Dungeon Monsters, and Defenders to eventually wear down the Heliothropes one after another.  This plan, while it might have a chance of working, would lead to the deaths of many, many people; though Milton – and Fred, using his special Soulforce – could bring them back to life, it required a bit of time and resources to do that.

Not only that, but while Milton could simply resurrect them through his Bioconversion Labs, Fred would have to insert the slain souls of the Adventurers into their corpses, which would be right in the middle of the fight down below.  The powerful Human/Dungeon Core hybrid informed him that the process wasn’t a quick one for those that were heavily injured before their deaths, and it took a little while for them to have enough strength to stand up again, let alone fight.  When he had killed Micke and the other Proctans outside of his home, their bodies hadn’t actually been injured and they weren’t “dead” for long; when he put their souls back and brought them back to life, the recovery period had been subsequently short.  To someone who had been stabbed, crushed, or was missing limbs, it could take hours to days before they were fully functioning again.  In addition, Fred wouldn’t be able to revive them from a distance down in the cavern, because the Stabilizing Anchor seemed to suck in his Soulforce when it was used that close to it, so that was already out of the question.

All of that meant that idea number three was the one they were going to be able to apply toward their plan to rid the dimension of the Heliothropes.  It was this that Fred was initially responsible for, since he could do it much more easily and faster than anyone else – though his drones would help once all of Milton’s construction was done.  In short, they were going to make a dungeon that the Heliothropes would be forced to invade.

But not a normal dungeon, with individual rooms, nor even like the one on the Station with a more “open” feel to it.  Instead, if he had to compare it to anything, it was going to be a gauntlet of death that was similar to the Fortress he had created on Proctus.  Back then, he had created a massive fortification made of Weightonite, which only had one entrance; inside, he had Proctan members of the Guardian Guild safely set up along the inner perimeter that could attack the enemy – which at that time were the powerful Bearillas – along with Defensive Weaponry set up in a killing field.

They were going to do something similar here, but on a much larger scale.

It was Fred’s job to create it, as he could use his modified Soulforce to carve into the landscape and construct a massive space below ground where all of the defenses could be set up appropriately.  Even though it approached the Stabilizing Anchor, which had absorbed everything he had attempted to affect with his power before, the half-Human/half-Dungeon Core found that if he utilized it when he was physically nearby, it would be used up how he wanted before it could be sucked away.  Attempts to utilize it from afar ended up with some of it being siphoned off, with more of it being pulled away the further the distance he was.

In addition to the creation of the defensive dungeon, Fred had also leveraged his authority to convince Dungeon Cores from around the world to lend their aid. Milton wasn’t exactly sure what was threatened or promised, but apparently it was enough to get most, if not all, of the Cores in the world on board with participating in one way or another.

All that was left was simply putting it all together and managing the influx of participants, which was easier said than done.  Most of that was managed by Whisp and the Think Tank, who coordinated with Milton, Sandra, and Fred to the point where everything was accomplished, and it ran smoothly like clockwork.  It was an amazing feat of organization…

…and Milton just hoped that it was enough.

Chapter 28

Wynk checked his equipment for the hundredth time over the last few hours and had to stop himself from doing it again right away.  The concept of nervousness was barely able to convey what he felt at the moment, because participating in the endeavor that was about to begin in a few hours was unprecedented.

The early morning sun beat down on him as he was walking around the camp that had been constructed with such speed that it boggled his mind, in a land he’d never been to before, and within 60 miles of the most dangerous enemy ever to threaten the world – at least according to those who had been around for a while.  His father certainly thought so, and it had been Fred that had taken on the entire world full of Dungeon Cores essentially by himself… and came out ahead.  It seemed impossible and improbable that his normal-seeming parent had been hiding such a monumental secret, but it was true.

So much had happened over the last month and a half that the special nature of his father couldn’t be denied any longer.

Wynk had been extremely angry at both of his parents after it had been revealed that they were some of the most powerful people in the world. His father was apparently a hybrid of a Human and a Dungeon Core, which was something he was just beginning to learn about himself.  Unfortunately, Fred hadn’t been able to speak much with Wynk about the changes going on with his body, other than to say that it was likely normal and wouldn’t be the last of the changes he’d experience.  Normally, he would’ve been even angrier if his father hadn’t spent more time to explain everything to him, but having seen what kinds of stress his parents were undergoing over the last 6 weeks, all of that anger had flowed away.

Instead, that resentment had turned into awe as he witnessed his father doing things that should’ve been impossible, but were so simple to Fred.  Hollowing out a massive complex of defenses below the ground was just the latest of the wonders that were achieved, with communicating long-distance with Adventurers and even Dungeon Cores the world over added to that list.  Thankfully, he had Wynk’s mother, Eisa, to help with his efforts, and it was her that he was somehow more amazed about.  She had been killed and resurrected before Fred had ever unlocked the ability to utilize Soulforce and bring people back to life, though it took having the shard of a destroyed Dungeon Core impaling her body to make that happen.

Now, his mother was what was called a Shard, and her element of specialty was Earth.  She could summon Earth-based monsters or other effects at will, using the unique Mana inside of her body, just like a Dungeon Core; she could also fight and utilize abilities like an Adventurer – the best of both worlds.  Unlike Wynk’s father, however, she was a lot more limited in her selection of Shard abilities because they were only Earth-based. Moreover, while she was powerful, the Mana she used to create monsters or other effects was the same as her Vitality.  If she spent too much and was then injured, she could die.  It wasn’t something he wanted to think about for any length of time.

The wondrous and miraculous abilities of his father only fascinated Wynk for a short time, however, as other impossibilities made themselves known.  First, traveling in what he quickly learned was a freighter – a large vessel that could fly through the air and transport more than 100 caravans’ worth of people or materials – was an amazing feat, as it allowed them to cover a distance that would’ve taken months or years of travel over the ground in mere minutes or hours.  He hadn’t really understood how quickly they could move when he rode in the smaller vessel called a “shuttle” when he first met Milton, but now he was amazed at just how fast they were.  If my group had access to these things, we could hit multiple dungeons every day, even if they were weeks of normal travel apart!

Granted, they were focused on trying to save the world right now and not delving through dungeons, but afterward… well, that was something to consider at another time.

When he had seen the camp that had been constructed halfway across the world from his home, he had been further entranced by such unfamiliar sights.  There were massive buildings made of stone and metal that were essentially large complexes where people could live, complete with eating facilities where one could magically summon food with a few touches on a colorful window.  Viewscreen, that’s what they are called.

Past those, there were the complex mechanical buildings that Milton called “facilities”, which produced all manner of different things that boggled his mind.  Giant vats of liquid were capable of creating the same sorts of creatures he had first seen Milton with, such as those giant lizards, as well as ones that were much bigger.

Then there were the ones that created powered conveyances that could move on their own, others that produced all manner of deadly weapons that reminded him of traps inside of a dungeon, and even others that constructed more of the strange, insect-like “drones” that created all the facilities.

“Whoa! Look out, young one,” he heard from nearby, and Wynk startled to a stop as he saw something moving in his peripheral vision.  He took a step back as one of the Proctans ran by him, but it wasn’t just a normal Proctan; this particular woman was wearing a mechanical suit that made her seem twice as large as she normally was.  The contraption was wrapped around her body and moved like it was an extension of her limbs.

When he had asked about the strange suit some of the Proctans were wearing after seeing it for the first time, he was told it was a “Powered Cybernetic Exoskeleton”.  It was used by the Proctans’ Fighters or Tanks, as it increased their Strength and Constitution, though it decreased their Agility; apparently, the Proctans utilized different statistics to quantify their advancement instead of the Brawn, Body, and Mind statistics that Adventurers used – or so he was told.  The Exoskeleton was created in a different facility, which was apparently called the Cybernetic/Synthetic Organism Factory when he inquired about where it came from.

Wynk, of course, was interested in acquiring something like that for himself, because it seemed like the Exoskeleton would help him be even stronger and able to withstand more damage.  Milton was the one that actually told him that while it was possible, it also required the implantation of something called a Cybernetic Brain, which would basically replace his own with something artificial.  Needless to say, that was something he didn’t want to mess with, especially since it would be making him part machine.  With the fact that he appeared to have some sort of Dungeon Core inside of his body, he wasn’t sure if it would be wise being part machine, part Human, and part Core.

As the Proctan passed by without running into him, Wynk continued his walk around the massive camp, passing by the last of the buildings that held millions of Adventurers that had come from the world over.  There were currently large gatherings of those same Adventurers wandering around very similarly to Wynk, or else congregating together outside for one reason or another. The biggest draw, or so he had been told, was the various small structures where multiple viewscreens were set up, constantly displaying scenes of the Heliothropes they would be facing.  The Adventurers were learning about their enemy as much as they could before they got into the fight, which Wynk thought was a very smart idea.

There was also a constant stream of them heading off to the south, where a dungeon was located less than a mile away; his father told him that, as part of the permission to use this part of its territory, the Dungeon Core would be constantly receiving Adventurers who needed to discharge their Mana.

From what he understood, having millions of people donating their Mana would make that Core one of the most powerful in the world.  It was apparently “spreading the wealth,” as Milton had commented, dispersing the Mana around to many others, as well as contributing to the buildup of monsters that would be sent to help.  Originally, the thought of a dungeon’s monsters being on their side had been difficult to understand; but over the last few weeks, it became no longer that strange.  The reason for that was coming up next in his walk, once he passed by where all of the Adventurers were gathered, waiting for the signal to move out.

A gigantic, open-sided structure that was essentially just supports and a roof took up a large part of the relatively flat valley where the camp was located.  Inside this structure was the scariest combination of monsters he’d ever seen before, though he had been told they weren’t all called monsters by the various sources they came from.  The first were actually called Dungeon Monsters, and he was told they came from a Dungeon Core with a Human form that had to stay up on the space station that was orbiting their planet.  That latter is a concept I haven’t exactly wrapped my head around quite yet.

These Dungeon Monsters were a wide variety of types, but the most prevalent of them were what he found out were called “constructs”.  Made of different types of metal, the constructs came in a variety of shapes, from beasts to strange cubes to humanoid figures that appeared entirely alien compared to anything he’d seen before.  Some of them were relatively small, tinier than Ghericah, even; others were giant, topping out at over 100 feet tall, though there were plenty between those two extremes.  The largest of them all, however, were the metal dragons, which he had seen flying around but were still massive, even when they were on the ground doing nothing.

But that wasn’t all that came from Sandra, the Dungeon Core helping Milton and the Proctans up on their space station.  There were also non-construct Dungeon Monsters in the forms of giant birds, flying beings of light, pure-white flying horses, and even large feline lizard beasts that seemed to like to slip into the shadows whenever they were nearby.  The most interesting addition to the Dungeon Monsters wasn’t what he considered a monster at all, but was in fact something that looked like a tall Human with pointy ears and long hair, which he was told was called an “Elf”.

They were all identical in appearance, dressed completely the same in a tight-fitting brown leather vest, leather bracers, and brown cloth pants, and they wielded odd-looking bows that didn’t have a string for some reason.  At last count, they were at least 200 of them, and they all stood underneath the structure in an unmoving formation of lines.  It was eerie looking at them with their soulless eyes, which appeared vacant of any thought.

What was even eerier was the fact that there was an Elf that had come along with all of these Dungeon Monsters that looked exactly like the soulless ones.  She had come along with some even more different people, the most interesting of which was a pair large humanoids with green skin, and tusks along their mouths that reminded Wynk of a boar; they wielded their weapons like they knew how to use them quite effectively, and he was fairly certain they were powerful Fighters.  Then there was a smaller Human-looking person who was wearing a full suit of bluish-black armor, carrying a shield and wielding a battleaxe that left Wynk feeling a considerable amount of envy at his equipment.  It appeared stronger than just about anything he’d seen before, including all of the A and S-Rated Adventurers that had come to answer the call for help.

There was also another Elf along with the group, but she was wearing a shapely robe with different accent colors, so Wynk figured she was some sort of Mage.  Lastly, there was a very small person, probably half of Wynk’s height, who snuck around so easily she seemed to blend into the background. He wasn’t exactly sure what she could do, but she looked and acted like some sort of Scout.

These 6 individuals, he was told, were responsible for the entire contingent of Dungeon Monsters from Sandra the Dungeon Core.  How they were supposed to lead an army like that was beyond his comprehension, but they seemed up to the task.

It took him about a half hour to pass the structure that held all the constructs and Dungeon Monsters, before he came to another one that was just as large.  This one held Milton’s contributions, which were equally as impressive as the Dungeon Monsters.  The Station Core remarked that his “monsters” were called Combat Units, and they certainly did appear ready for combat.  There were more of the large lizards he had seen before, but they were barely a portion of all that were present.

Additionally, he saw 20-foot-tall, furry gorilla-bears; massive, elephant-looking beasts; small flying lizards with wickedly sharp claws; powerful monkeys with 4 arms; and even what appeared to be large squirrels.  The largest of the Combat Units, of sorts, were actually some humanoid-looking, black-and-white-flecked stone figures that were controlled by a single person riding on their backs, and they weighed a lot.  Whenever they walked, they nearly cracked the ground underneath them, so he couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to be hit by one of them.

It was a very diverse group, but the most numerous component of these Combat Units were the Proctans – though they primarily stayed in all the buildings where the Adventurers stayed.  The Proctans were nearly 25,000-strong by themselves, and most of them were as powerful as the ones that had accompanied Milton when they first met.  A small group of them could apparently complete an S-Rated dungeon without too much difficulty.

Overall, other than the Proctans, Milton’s Combat Units didn’t look as powerful as Sandra’s, but they were apparently quite strong.  Seeing how much the stone golems weighed, he could definitely see the potential.  It wasn’t these Combat Units that Milton supplied that were the biggest threat to the Heliothropes, however, as another structure was nearby the one that held the Units.  This one was relatively empty right now, as it had been a bit of a storage and staging area for Milton’s Defensive Weapons, or traps as Wynk thought of them, and they were powerful.  Wynk had seen some in action in his first days at the camp, and they were powerful enough to actually frighten him with their deadliness.  The way that one of them shot a beam of energy at a boulder and basically punched a 2-foot-wide hole through it in an instant was terrifying.

The fact that a weapon like that could be resisted by the protective barrier of the Heliothropes made them even more dangerous than he previously considered.

A ringing bell echoed through the camp, and Wynk turned around immediately, heading toward where the rest of his group was located near the living quarters.  There was a mad scramble as people ran around everywhere, and it was only through luck that he was able to get through without running around.  Before he arrived, he looked to the north to see something that made his breath catch in his throat.

Monsters.  Thousands of monsters.  He recognized some through descriptions of dungeons that were much more powerful than he’d ever visited, but others were completely unknown.  The most important part about it was that they were almost all quite large and were of different elements, and unmistakably part of his world, rather than coming from an entirely different dimension.

The Dungeon Cores of the world had come through and delivered.

They were the last component of the attack to arrive, mainly because – as his father had explained – the “Defenders” had to be infused with extra Mana to maintain their form after they left their respective territories.  Unlike the ones that Sandra and Milton had created, these monsters were only around for a limited time, so they weren’t able to arrive earlier and sit around while everything else was put together.  They would also be entering first, by themselves, as they were a little bit more volatile and prone to attacking nearby allies if the Cores lost control of them for any reason, so it was best that they be the first ones into the fray.

With their arrival, it was time for Wynk to get ready to go, as well.  He checked his equipment one more time as he spotted his group, smiling at them as he prepared to move out for the biggest fight of his life – and likely the biggest fight of everyone else’s lives, too.

Chapter 29

“Are you all ready?” Wynk asked his group, seeing that they appeared just as nervous as he did.  He didn’t blame them, of course, because this was going to be a scary adventure, and there was no telling who would live to tell any stories about it.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Ghericah said, turning away and bending over with the sounds of retching coming from her throat.  Wynk was just barely able to hold his breakfast in himself at the sound, but fortunately he was distracted by a Proctan appearing as if out of nowhere.  He recognized her immediately as Porva, one of the Classes that Milton called a Rogue.  Her dark clothing, accompanied by her light stance and ease of movement, practically shouted “quick” and “dangerous”, and he knew that she was more than capable of proving that those terms described her perfectly.

“We’re heading out soon,” she said in a light accent that all of the Proctans other than Milton seemed to possess.  It made the language Wynk spoke sound exotic and halfway foreign, but it wasn’t so unfamiliar that he couldn’t understand them.  From what he had learned, they were somehow magically fed the language to their minds, but it took some effort for them to know it enough to speak fluently.  There were some Proctans that he met who spoke haltingly, as if they had to deliberately search for the right words to use; but others, such as Milton, Whisp, Porva, et al., were fluent enough that it wasn’t noticeable.  “Your parents are waiting for you at the dungeon.”

Wynk figured his father would be awaiting him at the dungeon, as Fred had spent most of his time there lately.  It was a surprise to him that his mother was there, though, but he supposed that she was going to be an integral part of the plan, as well.

Porva beckoned them toward the assembly field, which was located just past the living quarters, in the opposite direction from all the facilities.  They joined the millions of other Adventurers streaming toward the field, as well, which was so wide that Wynk couldn’t see the end of it.  It was for that reason, and the fact that there were thousands of vehicles and freighters parked in the field, that he couldn’t see further than a half-mile.

It took them about a half-hour to arrive at their destination, which was a large, heavily armored vehicle that looked like a massive beetle with wheels.  On the top of the vehicle were some of those weapons he had seen firing through a boulder without resistance, along with some that he wasn’t familiar with; regardless, this was one of the most protected conveyances that were on the field – but it wasn’t the only one.  Wynk hadn’t been privy to the exact numbers, but he heard that there were at least 100 of these armored monstrosities.

They were in the minority on the field, because the rest of it was filled with hundreds of freighters, which were currently being filled with thousands of Adventurers.  Humans weren’t the only ones entering the freighters, though, as he also saw Sandra’s Dungeon Monsters and Milton’s Combat Units filling them up, as well, at least those that couldn’t move quickly over the land; the rest would make the trek to their destination on their own.

Most of the Adventurers, however, weren’t filing into the freighters, but were instead heading toward thousands of metal boxes set up on a hundred different little metal tracks running over the ground.  These tracks led off into the distance and ended right near the dungeon, and would be able to transport everyone quickly to where they were headed.  Milton described these boxes as “Front-line Transports,”[16] and each of them could hold up to 60 people at once.  As a result, there were literally thousands of them that were quickly being filled with Adventurers, being packed in to ensure that the maximum number could travel.

Even then, it was likely going to take multiple trips to move everyone to the dungeon.  Fortunately, the Front-line Transports were apparently quite quick, so it shouldn’t take very long.

As for the Proctans, if they weren’t inside of the heavily armored vehicles, they were accompanying the freighters or were on a “Multiple Combat Unit Transport”, which was an 8-wheeled vehicle that could hold a dozen of them at once.  It didn’t have the same kinds of defenses as the one Wynk and his group were going to travel in – but the Proctans were defense enough.

Wynk filed into the vehicle and settled on the metal bench located along one of the walls, with Ghericah plopping down beside him with her face still looking pale from earlier retching.  “Are you going to be alright?” he asked her softly as everyone else got inside.

“I… I think so.  This is just so crazy.”

“I know what you mean.  I can hardly believe we’re doing something like this.”

The wait seemed both to take forever and to be over in seconds; eventually, they started moving.  There were a few large slits along the walls of the vehicle which allowed him to look outside as they traveled.  The sounds coming in from outside were nearly deafening, as thousands of vehicles and the freighters overhead traveled to the dungeon over 50 miles into the distance. While individually, each one didn’t make a whole lot of noise, collectively, with all the wheels rolling over the ground and the sounds of the freighters’ noisy engines overhead, the cacophony was incredible.  Despite that, Wynk still looked outside at their progress, as they traveled over the rocky landscape and headed up a gentle slope.  The dungeon and the Heliothropes were located on a plateau of sorts, where supposedly an earthquake had leveled a mountain, tens of thousands of years ago, though the land had smoothed out since then.  Milton and his drones had smoothed out their path even further, so it wasn’t as bumpy as it could’ve been.

Everyone in the vehicle was silent as they stared, wide-eyed, out at the progression, even as they were outpaced by the Front-line transports, which zipped by with incredible speed.  From what he knew of the plan, they would arrive before Wynk and the rest of the vehicles, where they would be able to unload before they went back for more.

In the distance, Wynk could see the Defenders sent by the nearby Dungeon Cores starting to disappear as they entered a massive hole in the plateau.  If they timed everything correctly, those monsters would be inside before they arrived, so that there wouldn’t be any accidental conflict with the Adventurers or Proctans.

Wynk must have been lost in thought for the rest of the ride, because the next thing he knew, the vehicle was stopping.  Porva opened the hatch on the side and beckoned them outside.  With a deep breath, Wynk got up and led the rest of his group out of the vehicle, his legs a bit wobbly at first after their ride.  When they were out, he looked around to see the last of the impressively giant Defenders entering the dungeon’s entrance ahead of them.  Aside from them, the area was basically in chaos as Adventurers disembarked from the freighters, joining the ones that had exited the Front-line Transports before they arrived, and they streamed toward the entrance of the dungeon, as well.

Wynk stumbled forward as something slapped him on the back hard enough to hurt, and he saw Porva come around his side, saying, “Sorry about that.  Follow me.”

Regaining his balance, he felt a tingle go through his back as Ghericah wordlessly cast a healing spell on him, and the bruise that was likely forming on his back from the casual slap disappeared.  He quickly caught up with Porva, navigating her way easily through the nearly silent crowd, his group behind him the entire way.  It took about 15 minutes of walking before they finally arrived near the entrance of the dungeon and Wynk saw his father, with his mother by his side.

Around him was a collection of people that were vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place them right away.  They had a feel about them that was very similar to his mother, for some reason, though why was beyond his comprehension.

“Son!  It appears as though you made it here safely,” his father shouted, and Wynk could see the strain on Fred’s face even though he was trying to hide it.  “Here, I want you to meet some friends of mine, who have come to help.”

Friends?  Since when does my father have friends?

It wasn’t like his father was nonsocial, but they lived so far from a lot of people that most of those nearby were merely acquaintances.  Wait… that must mean they are from the old days, and if that’s the case, then…

“Are they Shards, like mother?” he asked when he was close enough to really get a feel for these individuals.  There was a very large man with a trimmed but thick, black beard, and he was wearing dark grey and black armor that used enough leather for two normal people.  He had a large axe strapped to his back, though there was also an unstrung bow right next to it.

Next to him, standing close enough that he was fairly certain that she was in a relationship with the large man in grey and black, was a woman with short brown hair and a severe face, with thin cheeks, sharp angles, and a pointed nose.  She had a sense of authority around her that Wynk could detect even from a distance.  Her light armor was a combination of leather and what appeared to be small steel plates, and there were accents of different shades of green on every piece.

Past her was another large man, though not as large as the first, and he was wearing what Wynk would classify as Paladin armor.  White was the prominent color in his full plate armor, and he was carrying a sword that was polished to a mirror shine; there were also accents on his armor that seemed to be made of clear crystals that reflected the sunlight, which made looking at him a little difficult.

Next to him, though not close enough that she appeared to be in a relationship with the Paladin-looking man, was a woman with long, jet-black hair, wearing a set of dark-colored leathers that strangely had accents of pale yellow to them.  She was standing so lightly on her feet that she almost seemed to be floating, and he could’ve sworn that her feet weren’t even touching the ground – though it was hard to be certain.

Lastly, walking around from behind his parents, was what could only be a Dire Wolf, though he’d never actually seen one before.  It stood chest-height to most of the others and had a dark, greyish fur that had tints of blue and red to it when the sun hit it the right way.

The instant Wynk looked at the Wolf, he was overcome with a memory of his very young childhood, playing with a wolf puppy that had been nearly the same size as him.  He couldn’t remember what had happened to that puppy, but now he thought he knew.

“Wait… Deecy?”

*Hello, Wynk.  I haven’t seen you since you were small enough that I could swallow you in one bite.*

Wynk stopped and stared at the Dire Wolf, overcome with emotion.  “Is that really you?”

*Of course it’s me.  We can catch up later, but for now I think your father is trying to talk to you.*

Looking at his father, he realized that Fred had been talking to him and he had been ignoring it.  “—so they’ll be accompanying us, keeping me safe so that I can do what needs to be done.”

Thinking about what he must have missed, he was fairly certain that these people – and Deecy – were Shards.  There was a quick confirmation of that fact from Deecy in his mind, similar to the communication he had with that Dungeon Core before, and then Wynk finally registered what he did hear.

“Wait… we, as in myself and my group, are going to be accompanying you and your friends?  Are you telling me that these are, what, guardians to keep us safe?”

His parents looked at each other for a brief moment, and Wynk knew that he had gotten it right.  “Well,” his father began to say, before his mother cut him off.

“Yes,” she said succinctly.  “We want you to participate in the fight, but your father and I won’t be able to concentrate if you’re in the thick of things.”

“But—”

“There’s no discussion on this; it is the way it has to be,” his mother continued over his objection.  “Don’t worry: I have a feeling you’ll be seeing some action, but for your sake I hope it isn’t too much.”

Great.  We’re going to be participating in the most exciting battle this world has ever seen, only we’ll be hiding behind our babysitters.

The nervousness that he had been feeling all day was gone, replaced by annoyance.  One look at his father, though, was enough to turn at least a portion of that annoyance into acceptance, because Fred was already stressed enough with everything going on as it was.

“Fine.  It’ll be safer for us, I suppose.”

“Excellent,” his father said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together in satisfaction.  “Now, let me make some introductions.  The big guy here is Regnark, the Shard of Dark, accompanied by his wife, Chareese – who is the Shard of Nature.  Next to Chareese is her brother Roady, who is the Shard of Light, and then there’s Ravenne, the Shard of Air.  I think you already recognized Deecy, who is basically the Shard of Water and Fire, as well as the keeper of the memory remnants of your grandparents, Pyrannelstencia and Aquelsterico – both Supreme-Rated Dungeon Cores in their respective factions.”

That was a lot for Wynk to take in, not the least that his grandparents had been Dungeon Cores.  While deep down he knew that it was true after learning about who his father really was, it hadn’t really crystallized as a reality in his mind before this.

“It’s very nice to meet you all.”

“Oh, you’ve met them all before, but you were very, very young.  They came to visit after you were born, son, but they have been living their own lives.  Only Deecy stuck around a little longer, but even she left to hunt in the wilds after a while.”

So that’s why they look familiar.

“Then I guess it’s good to see you all again,” he said, before he introduced the rest of his group to them.  After the introductions, he asked, “So, what’s the plan, then?”

“We’re going inside in just a moment, where we’ve set up a bit of a command center.  It’s there that we’ll be able to coordinate everything within the dungeon.”

Wynk nodded at his father and mentally told his body to relax, as it was still keyed up from his nervous pacing earlier.  Despite the lack of danger to them, or because of that lack, he saw that Ghericah appeared a bit better, with her color coming back to her face, and she wasn’t nervously adjusting her robe like before.  I may not be in the thick of things, but at least the rest of my group won’t be, either.  I suppose that’s my job, to keep the danger away from them, so I guess this works just as well as anything.

It wasn’t exactly what he meant when he told his father that he wanted to help, but at least he hadn’t been told to stay home.  He’d still be there, even if he was kept in a safer position than most of the others descending into the dungeon.

“Alright, time to move,” his father finally said, and Wynk followed him and the other Shards toward the giant hole in the ground, which – now that he got a better look at it – was at least 400 feet wide at its narrowest.  Walking over the edge of the gradual ramp that led underneath the rocky terrain, he was reminded of the slope that led down into the dungeons that he and his group had frequented, though this was on a much bigger scale.

I almost can’t believe that my father did most of this by himself.

It took approximately 20 minutes to travel down far enough to reach the bottom of the ramp, and Wynk got his first partial look at the dungeon.  From his vantage point, it appeared to simply be a large, square tunnel that shot off into the distance, though most of his view was blocked by people, Dungeon Monsters, Combat Units, and Defenders still getting into position.  Off to the right of the ramp was an elevated platform with short walls along the edges where his father was leading the group, with a set of stairs that wound up the nearby wall to reach it.

It only took another few more minutes for them to reach the top, where he found Milton already there with a small group of Proctans, as well as the unique group that had accompanied Sandra’s constructs and Dungeon Monsters.

Milton turned to them with a smile on his face.  “Welcome!  I trust that your rides were satisfactory?” he asked, looking first at the Elf that somehow had clones of herself among the Dungeon Monsters, before looking at Fred and Wynk.  At their nods, he turned back to the dungeon and raised his arms out to his side.

“Excellent!  It’s about time to get this party started, don’t you think?”

Chapter 30

Everything was set up as closely as possible according to the plan Milton, Fred, and Sandra had designed, using the strengths and weaknesses of their respective contributions.  It was one of the most ambitious strategies Milton had ever put into action, if only because there were so many different components that it was almost mind-boggling.  While it wasn’t necessarily the largest he’d participated in, in terms of individual people or Combat Units – the battle under the Quizard Mountains back on Proctus took that honor – this upcoming battle was, hopefully, going to be even more impressive due to the unprecedented cooperation between not just two Cores, but three.

It was also going to be the most straightforward of dungeons that had been created, if only because of the sheer quantity of combatants.  Anything more complex than what they had could end up with unnecessary loss of life, which was something they wanted to avoid – especially in the case of the Adventurers from this world.  The Proctans were used to dying repeatedly and being resurrected via Bioconversion Labs, but that wasn’t the same for the Humans of this world.  If all 5.8 million Adventurers who’d answered the call for help were to die, and Fred wasn’t able to bring them back for some reason, that would put a huge dent in the Adventurer population that would take decades to recover from – not even counting the pure loss of life.

Of course, Milton could technically resurrect them, but they would probably start over from scratch. As many of those who’d come to help were higher-Rated, that could be devastating.  Then again, if the Heliothropes were allowed to take over this dimension and this planet, starting over would be the very least of their problems.

All of that meant that their dungeon design considered the relative safety of both the Adventurers and the Proctans, as well as Echo and her group from Sandra’s world.  That didn’t mean that they wouldn’t be in the thick of things, only that there were some precautions put in place with the entire design.

Milton peered down the long dungeon room, though it would be more accurate to call it a gigantic corridor of death.  It was square in shape, with each side reaching 600 feet wide, and it extended almost the entire way down to where the Heliothropes were located – a distance of a whopping 15,000 feet.  Milton had needed to personally oversee the last 300 feet or so with his drones after Fred had carved the rest out of stone, because the absorption of his Soulforce by the Stabilizing Anchor was too great to overcome by that point.

But it wasn’t just a simple square corridor with 600-foot-wide sides, floor, and ceiling reaching nearly 3 miles.  There was a lot more to it than that, as the sides and ceiling were filled with murder holes where both Adventurers and Proctans could lie in wait and attack from range.  Starting near the entrance ramp of the Corridor Dungeon, as they had taken to calling it, there was an opening in the wall that contained a staircase that led up to 6 different hallways that ran the entire length of the corridor at different heights.  The first hallway was actually at ground level, and it had small, square openings that were 7 feet tall and only 4 feet wide that led into the larger corridor – the same size as the hallway itself.  They were designed to be just large enough that a Fodder or a Soldier could fit through, if they ducked down and squeezed themselves through.

These openings weren’t just cut into the outer wall of the corridor, but actually led perpendicular to the main thoroughfare and further into the wall, where it opened into a larger room that could hold up to 4 groups of 5 Adventurers.  The idea behind those was to lure the smaller Fodder and Soldiers inside of the openings and into the rooms, where they would be attacked by 20 capable Adventurers waiting for them.  While they weren’t necessarily as powerful as a Proctan by themselves, Milton had seen that they were more than capable of taking down some of the weaker Heliothropes if they worked as a team to overcome their protective barriers and take them out.

Against the Elites or the Commanders, they wouldn’t be quite as effective.  Even the Proctans weren’t very effective against the red- and black-skinned Heliothropes by themselves, so it wasn’t a failing on their part.

To help with protection against the Heliothropes simply bashing their way into these rooms and allowing more than a single-file line to enter – or even make them large enough that an Elite could enter – Milton worked with Fred to create a special metal and stone barrier along the outside that was nigh-impenetrable.  Even against the deadly weapons that the Heliothropes wielded, which could cut through nearly anything with the glowing barrier surrounding them, the Station Core was fairly certain they wouldn’t be able to easily destroy it.

Starting with a metal that Fred said was called Magisteel, which was far stronger than anything Milton – or Sandra – had seen before, Fred made a grid-like lattice in the shape of large blocks.  From these, Milton had his drones add in Weightonite, which he had already seen could withstand at least a little abuse from the Heliothropes’ weapons, treating the Magisteel lattice as a frame, where it strengthened it like rebar in concrete.  The two of them combined, the Maginite (as Milton started calling it, rather than Magisteel-Weightonite) was far stronger than anything he’d seen before.  Unfortunately, neither his Molecular Converter nor an absorption of the Magisteel by Sandra allowed it to be reproduced, but the Dungeon Core stuck up on the Station had some ideas of how she could get close.

The next hallway up the walls on either side of the corridor was located 10 feet above the rooms down below.  This hallway had a series of windows which were 10 feet long and 20 inches tall, allowing those inside to cast spells, shoot bows, or utilize any other long-range attacks on anything flowing through the larger corridor.  These windows, and in fact all of the hallways stretching down to the end, were protected by the Maginite blocks that were fused together by Milton’s drones, making them nearly impenetrable.  Or he at least hoped they would be, though against a Commander’s larger, more-powerful weapons, it was possible that even Magisteel wouldn’t be able to withstand a few blows before crumbling apart.

That hallway was designed for the many Adventurers to use, as well as the two additional hallways above it spaced 10 feet away from each other.  With nearly 6 million Adventurers, almost two-thirds of them filled the hallways and the rooms below; with how long the Corridor Dungeon was and the space that they had to fill, there was room for all of them.

More Adventurers joined some Proctans stationed on the fifth hallway up along the walls, though they weren’t necessarily there to cast spells or fire bows down on the Heliothropes in the corridor.  Instead, they were there to man the many Defensive Weapons that had been set up in specially designed alcoves, which had Maginite surrounding them just enough that they would be largely protected from outside weapons, but also allowed freedom of movement for their Weapons.

In total, there were 20 Particle Accelerators, 10 on each side; he would’ve had more, but the expense in Focusing Crystals was so great – over 2,000 Focusing Crystals just to create one, as well as 200 Crystals for each recharge after an hour – that it was a bit prohibitive.  He did have more on some Heavy Armor Defense Vehicles, but they would be used later.  The Proctans were the only ones allowed to fire the dangerous Accelerators, mainly because they were powerful enough that anyone unfamiliar with their use could do massive amounts of damage if they weren’t careful.

Next, up in that fifth hallway were 500 Laser Cannon Emplacements, which were great for sustained damage of up to 15 seconds every minute.  Adventurers were able to use these, as they had been given instructions and practiced their use up in the camp, and Milton was glad that they had both the ability and the eagerness to fire the deadly Defensive Weapons.

Adventurers were also manning the 1,000 Railgun Penetrators, which could fire out their charged tritanium slivers every 30 seconds.  They only had a range of about 400 feet where they were effective, but that was more than enough to reach most Heliothropes that were nearby their weapon alcoves.

In the sixth and final hallway, located nearly 120 feet above the floor of the Corridor Dungeon, was something that Sandra had made.  Operated entirely by Adventurers, the magnetic launchers that the Dungeon Core had crafted with the help of her Enchanter friends on her planet lined the hallways on either side of the corridor.  With a total of 600 launchers, there were fewer of the weapons than on the fifth floor with the Railguns, Laser Cannons, and Particle Accelerators, but these ones packed a punch that more than made up for the lack of numbers.  Along with normal steel bars that could be inserted in the launchers, there were now two types of “special” bars with tech-enchantments and energy orbs inserted into them.

One of them created an intense explosion upon impact, doing further damage than simply hitting a target with a bar of metal launched at supersonic speeds.  The other was able to somehow melt upon impact and caused persistent damage that would eat into the protective barriers it impacted against for up to 10 seconds.  Both of them would be extremely valuable, though they had to be used relatively sparingly.

Despite Sandra commandeering the volunteers in Haven Station, where they had successfully added access to additional elements to them thanks to Milton’s Biological Recombinator, they were only able to learn the much more complicated tech-enchantment after a month of study, so they were only able to complete 6,000 of each special bar.  That sounded like a lot, but when split between them all, there were only 10 of each bar per launcher.  Thankfully, normal iron bars were super simple to create with Milton’s Molecular Converters, so each also had hundreds of other projectiles to sustain them.

That was it for the walls… but that was just the start of the defenses.

The stairway leading up to the different hallways also led all the way to the ceiling, where there was a large cavity that stretched the entire distance of the corridor.  This space was large enough for Adventurers to walk upright comfortably, but not much else; it was more of a pocket protected by Maginite, similar to the walls down below; but in this case, there were square holes a foot wide that made the ceiling look like a cheese grater from a distance.  These holes were designed to allow the Adventurers, and even some Proctans, to cast spells or even fire bows, straight down onto the Heliothropes.

Their main purpose, however, was for Milton to have access to the eyes of a Proctan to see the corridor from further away, since he was stationed at the observation platform near the entrance.  Normally, sensor orbs were the best for that sort of thing; but accessing them had been spotty since coming to the planet. Not only that, but if the Heliothropes had those metal tubes that tended to block out his technological communications, he knew from personal experience that he could still connect to the NCUs in the Proctans to receive a better view of the fight.

These holes were also going to be useful for dropping a few choice things down below.  The first such thing was Weightonite, slivers of it that were set up next to each hole, and which could be maneuvered into being pushed over the edge of the holes.  Weightonite was extremely heavy, so even if it was only a half-inch thick piece the size of a notecard, it weighed hundreds of pounds.  When dropped onto a Fodder down below, it would slam into them like a boulder, despite its size.

Also up in the ceiling were thousands of Small Plasma Bombs, positioned in different places and near where the Proctans were stationed.  When one of his Combat Units – in other words, the Proctans – activated it and dropped it down the hole, it would explode within 10 seconds, which was plenty of time for it to reach the floor.  A 40-foot-wide detonation was a great addition to the damage already being dealt by other sources.

That was it for the ceiling, but that was all that really was needed.  The additional vector of attack was suggested by Fred, who had done something similar in one of his own dungeons back when he was defending Allroads from the different factions, and Milton thought it was an excellent idea.

Ideally, Milton would’ve loved to entirely fill the floor of the corridor with more Defensive Weapons. Some, such as the Molecular Disruptor and Unstable Void, were extremely destructive and would be highly effective.  However, given that they were expensive, single-use Weapons, it was determined that they just weren’t worth using.

Well, it was that reason plus the fact that there are going to be allies on the floor of the corridor that I don’t want to accidentally kill.

That thought was a bit of an understatement, considering the army of Combat Units, Dungeon Monsters, and Defenders they had assembled.  They filled the floor of the Corridor Dungeon from the front almost all the way to the ramp in the back, and they were going to be the main fighting force arrayed against the Heliothropes.  In fact, once most of the Adventurers and his Proctans were in place, he found that it was time to start the defense against the Heliothropes – there was no reason to wait, and plenty of reasons not to.  Fred mentioned that the Defenders sent by the Dungeon Cores were a bit sketchy when around Humans or even anything else they considered a threat, so the longer they were allowed to wander around, the more danger everyone was in.  Thankfully, they were at the front of the pack and would take the brunt of the initial attacks.

When they were 1,500 feet away from the end of the Corridor Dungeon, and apparently reaching near the limit of control by the nearby Dungeon Cores, Milton let the others on the observation platform know he was starting it all off.  Best of all, it was going to start off with a bang.

There was only a relatively thin, 5-foot-thick wall separating the long corridor from the Heliothropes’ cavern, and Milton looked through the eyes of Fendle, the only Proctan that was stationed near that wall.  When everything looked like it was in place, he let the Rogue know to begin.

“Do it and get out of there.”

Fendle immediately squatted and then superhero-jumped up and placed his hand against the Unstable Void device that was placed on a small platform 80 feet above the ground, before angling his descent back down to the ground.  The brief touch was all that Milton needed to send a command to the Unstable Void to activate 5 seconds later; he couldn’t interface with it directly from his position due to the Soulforce that still permeated everything, so he needed someone that he could piggyback the communication through.

As soon as Fendle hit the ground, he ran for the left-hand wall, where he could slip into one of the ground-floor openings and make his way to his new position.  Just as the super-quick Rogue reached that opening, the Unstable Void Defensive Weapon activated, and a black, 10-foot sphere took its place.

The stone wall within 50 feet of the void immediately started to break apart and was sucked into the subatomic implosion, feeding the sphere as it grew bigger and bigger.  After about 45 seconds, the void had grown to 30 feet in diameter and was pulling stone from 80 feet away from its center, widening the circular hole it was creating so that it was 160 feet wide.

After a full minute, the void disappeared, collapsing in on itself until there was no trace of it left.  In its place was a cavern full of Heliothropes that had apparently lost a hundred or two Fodder and Soldiers that had been sucked into the void as well, but that was just a drop in the bucket compared to what was still inside, unscathed.

The fight to save the dimension had begun.

Chapter 31

Despite more than a hundred Heliothropes being sucked up into a void, they didn’t rush out and attack like Milton expected.  In fact, they didn’t even react at first, as if they were frozen in place.  It required the Station Core to instruct one of the nearest Proctans operating a Particle Accelerator to fire into the crowded Heliothropes, sweeping the beam for 30 seconds over Fodder, Soldiers, Elites, and finally the nearest Commander to finally get a response. Dozens more Fodder and Soldiers were killed in the process of the powerful Defensive Weapon firing, though it wasn’t until it made the protective barrier of the Commander start to glow that there was any actual response.

ROOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRR!

Milton could hear the roar of anger all the way at the observation platform nearly 3 miles away, as it echoed down the corridor.  Looking through the eyes of a few Proctans nearby, the Station Core could see that the barrier on the Commander had dropped about 5% from the last of the Particle Accelerator hitting it for a few seconds; the damage to its barrier also started the flood of Heliothropes, as they immediately started to run out of the opening that Milton’s Unstable Void created in the wall.  They didn’t steadily march ahead in ordered rows like he had seen them do before, but practically sprinted in their effort to attack – a stark difference from what he expected.  Despite that, he had finally gotten the response he had wanted, as the Heliothropes were running toward the defenses.

Out of the small openings on either side of the mass of Heliothropes running through, Adventurers shot out a variety of long-range spells or loosed arrows at the Fodder and Soldiers that ran out ahead of the other Heliothropes.  When they were hit, their protective barriers flared in response, and they turned toward what had hit them without missing a beat.  Others behind them followed their path with what appeared to be eagerness, though he hadn’t seen much emotion portrayed by Fodder before.

It's almost like they were bored staying inside of that cavern without anything to fight; now that they’ve been unleashed, they’re ready for battle.

Dozens of streams filled with running Fodder and Soldiers went toward those Adventurers that had fired at them, and Milton could see that many of the Humans who were baiting them flinched in response to 8-foot-tall beings with 6 arms wielding melee weapons turning toward them in a blue- and purple-skinned tide of flesh.  Thankfully, none of them were frozen in place, as they ran back inside the wall to join the others waiting for the Heliothropes to arrive in their small rooms.  From what he could see, the small openings certainly slowed down the Fodder and Soldiers as they had to crouch down and pull their weapons close to their bodies, but those behind followed immediately.

He couldn’t see inside, unfortunately, because he didn’t have any eyes or sensor orbs to look through, but Fred handled the update.  “Those up near the entry point are primarily A- and S-Rated teams, so they’re handling the blue-skinned ones well enough; their overwhelming spellpower is absolutely devastating those protective shields as soon as they enter, and without that, they’re being absolutely annihilated.  A few of the purple-skinned Heliothropes are living longer, allowing those behind them to push through and enter the room, but overall our teams are handling it pretty well.”

Milton thought that was good to hear, though he knew there would be casualties eventually.  It was inevitable that the Adventurers would get tired or run out of the Power they used to fuel their spells and abilities, though there wasn’t any sign of that yet.

Looking inside of the void-opened entrance to the cavern, Milton could see the first dozen Elites starting to move out into the corridor, followed by the same Commander that had roared earlier.  Behind them, the Station Core could see thousands more Heliothropes pouring out of the massive side hatch of the Breeder Ship, a tide of bodies that seemed endless.

“You know, the last time I saw all of these giant Defenders, they were attacking Allroads while I did my best to defend it with the help of the Adventurers,” Fred said, looking through a Shaping that was situated just outside of the range where he’d start to lose control of it.  It was looking at the front edge of the Heliothropes as they raced outside of their cavern, as well as the Defenders from the world’s Dungeon Cores.  The Elites and the Commander had their sights set on the approaching Defenders, leaving their lesser brethren to stream toward the Adventurers, luring them into the side rooms.

“Wait, you’re saying that these are the exact same ones?” Milton asked.

Fred nodded.  “Yes, for the most part.  I think it’s a not-so-subtle way the Cores are reminding me that they nearly killed me before and they don’t like what I forced them into doing.  They did end up killing thousands of Adventurers during that attack, though I was able to bring them back later.”

Milton looked at the Defenders again, seeing them with new eyes.  He had seen them when they were approaching and moving down into the Corridor Dungeon, but he hadn’t really looked at them too much until now.  As he asked about each one, Fred gave him their names so he could easily identify them.

The entire Defender army was divided into seven distinct groups, all separated by an obvious distance that set them apart.  Out front, and the first to challenge the Heliothropes, were entities clearly from the Fire Cores around the world.  The first kind of Fire Defender he saw was a massive, dog-shaped figure that was at least 80 feet tall, and it appeared to be made entirely of lava that constantly dripped off of its form.  The strange thing was that the molten lava seemed to disappear shortly after it hit the ground, as if it was only dripping as an effect rather than as something permanent.  There were a total of 5 of these Lava Hounds, and they raced out ahead of the others when they saw their prey ahead.

They reached the Elites first and immediately attacked, attempting to bite the “smaller” Heliothropes that were only a quarter of their height.  Most of the Elites were too fast to be caught by a lava-filled bite as they dodged out of the way, striking out at the Hounds with their weapons; one was clipped by a molten bite and was sent staggering backwards from the force of the hit.  One portion of its protective barrier was immediately covered in lava that dripped down it, doing persistent damage to the shield.  Milton saw its percentage rapidly diminish from the impact, dropping from 98% to just under 50% in just a few seconds.

Along the walls and in the ceiling, Adventurers and Proctans saw this and took advantage of the lava-covered Elite, dropping Weightonite from above or hitting it with long-range spells from safety.  The barrage of damage quickly diminished its protective barrier even further, though the lava disappeared after no more than 10 seconds of damage.  Even without the barrier, though, the Elite wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

The sheer proximity of molten rock wasn’t without its benefits, however, as the area heated up enough that it was constantly doing damage to the Elite, preventing its barrier from recharging quickly.  Meanwhile, even as it threw itself at the Hound that had hit it, the other Elites were retaliating – with various degrees of success.  Their weapons sliced easily through the lava that the Hounds were composed of, though that didn’t necessarily do any visible damage; instead, any cut or stab or smash of lava disappeared as if it had never happened.

“Oh, they’re being hurt, but it will take more than that to kill the Hounds,” Fred commented, watching the fight along with everyone else.

The Elite that had its protective barrier depleted got a portion of it back for a few seconds before it was caught again, and this time the barrier didn’t last long enough to save it from the lava that poured down its side.  Within a second of its protection disappearing, its left arms practically melted off of its body, though that only seemed to infuriate the Heliothrope.  It attacked again, doing more non-visible damage to the Hound, before stumbling because of its unbalanced figure.  The Hound used its paw to smack the stumbling Elite away, where it flew toward the left-hand wall right where a hallway was located.  Screams from inside the hallway rang out as a few Adventurers that were inside were splashed with lava, killing one of them when they were hit in the face.

“Wow.  How are those things normally defended against?” Milton asked.

“Fire Resistance, Ice Shields, Status Cures – any number of abilities can help against being burned.  It’s the impacts that are the hardest to defend against, as well as—well, see for yourself.”

The Lava Hounds, tired of not being able to hit the rest of the quick Elites, suddenly brought back their heads and spewed out a stream of lava from their mouths that sprayed in an arc of semi-liquid death, coating the Elites that were unable to dodge.  As soon as they were starting to take persistent damage, those along the walls and in the ceiling unleashed their attacks again, hitting the red-skinned Heliothropes who were without a chance to dodge the attacks.  Most of it did superficial damage, but with the lava still hurting them and the barrage of hundreds of long-range attacks, the Elites quickly fell.

“Those Lava Hounds sure are strong,” Milton commented toward Fred.  “I have to admit that there is very little I have in my repertoire that can take them down that quickly.”

Fred shrugged.  “Well, the additional damage from everything else has definitely helped to take them out, but we’ll see how they hold up to this ‘Commander’ person.”

It didn’t take long to find out, either, as the Commander was at the Hounds a few seconds after the last of the Elites fell.  Whipping out its chain knife, which Milton had seen used to great effect, the deadly weapon flew straight at one of the Lava Hounds from 200 feet away before embedding itself in its body.  The impact seemed to pain the massive Hound, but the lava closed over the knife regardless of it being inside of the Hound.

That was a mistake, as with a yank of the now-glowing chain, the semi-liquid Defender was ripped apart in an explosion that reminded Milton of a volcano erupting, sending burning body parts everywhere.  Thankfully, it didn’t reach more than a few hundred feet in every direction, landing on some Fodder and Soldiers still attempting to reach the Adventurers through the openings in the walls.

The remaining burning-hot Hounds paused for no more than a second before they raced forward, using their speed to reach the Commander quickly.  At over 120 feet tall, the 80-foot-tall Defenders just looked like large dogs in comparison, rather than towering over the Elites like they had before.  Unfortunately, the size comparison also applied to the Heliothrope’s weapons, which were large enough to cut through one of the Hounds with a solitary slice, or pound it into the ground with a singular wallop.  Before that happened, though, Milton knew it was about time to utilize some other defenses.

“Team 2, fire at will.”

The Proctan in charge of the Particle Accelerator nearest the Commander opened fire and hit the massive Heliothrope with a surprise burst of deadly, molecule-tearing subatomic particles.  The black-skinned figure shifted a little at the impact of the beam, showing that it had enough force to affect the Heliothrope despite the protective barrier around it, but a single Particle Accelerator wasn’t enough to drop the glowing shield more than 10 or 15 percent even at the end of its 30-second firing limit.

Thankfully, the firing of the Accelerator was also a signal for many of the other Adventurers and Proctans biding their time.  Railguns fired their charged tritanium slivers, which exploded upon contact with the barrier; Laser Cannons fired their beams for 15 seconds before shutting off to prevent overheating; and Sandra’s magnetic launchers poured supersonic bars of iron into the glowing shield at a rate of 1 every 5 seconds.  With over a hundred different Defensive Weapons within range firing at the same time, the damage to the Commander’s barrier was overwhelming, and it fell just as the last of the Particle Accelerators shut down.

Before that happened, despite the barrage from multiple sides, the massive Heliothrope still fought against the Lava Hounds that approached it.  One of the Hounds was split in half by a battleaxe that slammed into it with an overhead chop, while another was impaled by a spear and then ripped apart as it was violently pulled out.  A third Hound was stabbed by a giant longsword, and when it was pulled out, the Defender “bled” lava from the wound, shrinking its size down by a third before the wound sealed itself up.  The fourth and final one managed to avoid a trident to its face, but it was on the defensive immediately.  With no way to attack the Heliothrope head-on, it attempted to work its way around the Commander, but it unknowingly stepped on a crowd of Fodder and Soldiers that were streaming around their leader.

Even though they were much smaller, and their protective barriers couldn’t hold up to being covered in lava very well, they were still quite deadly in proper numbers.  Dozens of them swarmed around the Hound like ants over a kicked-over anthill, and the Defender was cut and battered down to size even as it killed many of the blue- and purple-skinned Heliothrope attackers in return. It only survived long enough to try to bite another Elite that was making its way toward the Hound, but it missed and collapsed into a pile of cooling lava before dissipating soon afterward.

The final Lava Hound, having been “deflated” by the puncture wound, didn’t survive the next hit by a different sword wielded by another arm – but neither did the Commander live much longer.  When its protective barrier fell, the large Heliothrope was left vulnerable to the Railgun Penetrators, which had cooled down for long enough to fire again, and of course the magnetic launchers were still operational.  The bars of iron shot by the magnetic launchers hit the Commander so hard that they punched a hole into its body, regardless of its durable exterior.  Milton didn’t see any emerge from the other side, so they ended up being stopped inside by something, but black blood emerged from the wounds, signaling that they had done some damage.

The slivers shot out by the Railguns did even more damage, exploding upon contact and tearing off chunks of flesh in the process.  Plasma Bombs dropped from the ceiling exploded around the Commander’s feet, crippling it so that it collapsed to its knees, and Weightonite slivers slammed into its head and arms with enough force to leave large dents.

That was bad enough, but that was when the Adventurers and Proctans along the walls unleashed some of their strongest spells or fired specially amplified arrows at the Heliothrope.  Fireballs as big as a car slammed into it, accompanied by boulders, shards of ice, windblades, bolts of darkness, flashes of burning light, orbs of glowing acid, and even some spears of what appeared to be metal.  There was so much constant damage that the Commander couldn’t do anything but roar out in pain as its protective barrier didn’t have a chance to recharge, and it was practically torn apart in the process.

One down, who knows how many more to go?

Chapter 32

“Depending on how many more of those there are, I’m not sure if that was a good trade or not,” Fred said to the people on the observation platform.  Seeing all 5 Lava Hounds out front killed by a blow or two from the powerful Commander-type Heliothrope, he finally got a chance to see how dangerous the enemy really was.  Even the smaller ones could be a problem if there were many of them nearby, as he had seen, but it was the much larger, 12-armed individuals that would cause the most problems.  Knowing how difficult those Lava Hounds could be, as they were essentially high S-Rated Fire dungeon bosses that had been enlarged and strengthened with additional Levels, he worried whether they had enough defenses to kill everything that came out of their cavern.

When the Lava Hounds were killed, massive blobs of Fire Mana were expelled from their bodies; normally, this Fire Mana was reabsorbed by a Dungeon Core, but without the one controlling it nearby, it had nowhere to go.  Unfortunately, as soon as that Fire Mana came out of the deceased Hounds, the Stabilizing Anchor – or whatever it was that seemed to suck up all the Soulforce around the area – started pulling it slowly toward the Heliothrope cavern.  Not having any of that, Fred strained and exerted his will and snagged the Mana before it could be swallowed up.  With a great effort that he was just barely able to maintain, Fred was able to bring it back out of the Corridor Dungeon; as soon as it was a certain distance away, he sent it toward the nearest Fire territory, where it had originated in the first place.

Fred mentioned to the Core there to make some more of the Lava Hounds, even if it took a few hours for each one to be done.  While he wasn’t sure if they were going to be needed, he’d rather have some extra as backup just in case.

As more of the blue-, purple-, and red-skinned Heliothropes continued to pour out of the cavern they had been trapped within, with another Commander slowly stomping its way forward after them, he moved his Shaping to peer at the smaller rooms on the ground floor of the walls.  Fred could see that they were still being inundated by the “Fodder” and “Soldiers” – strange names that Milton had told him about – and that even more Adventurers were being engaged further down the wall.  There were thousands of the weaker, blue-skinned Heliothropes, possibly tens of thousands, already in the corridor that he had helped to build into a powerfully defensive dungeon, and they were crashing like a wave against the walls, spreading out until even more Adventurers were engaged.  Arrows and other projectiles were being shot out at them from further up the walls in the hallways where millions of Humans and Milton’s Proctans were safely ensconced, doing little to no damage, but the protective shields constantly glowed from their efforts.  Power was being reserved for when the bigger threats were near, so anything that didn’t require the Adventurers’ limited magical resources was fair game.

The flood of smaller Heliothropes was so great, in fact, that not all of them went toward the walls.  Almost as if they were pushed from behind, a large wave of them strode quickly forward in measured lines, unlike the pure chaos they had possessed when first unleashed from their cave.  He was starting to see the organization he had seen in the past “recordings” that Milton had shown of these Heliothropes, and it was a startling change.  They weren’t just a mob of deadly invaders now, but a powerful army marching toward a challenge they had no intention of backing down from.  Just like Defenders found in dungeons, they didn’t seem to have any particular sense of self-preservation; they marched to their doom as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

Case in point, the Ruby Dragons that were next up after the Lava Hounds had been killed.  The last time he had seen their like, they had been attacking Allroads, flying over the city and spraying everyone and everything they could with powerful breaths of fire that were hot enough to crack the stone of which most of the city was constructed.  These ones were walking instead of flying, due to the limited space inside of the Corridor Dungeon, but that didn’t make them any less deadly. As soon as the marching army of Heliothropes was close enough, the 5 Ruby Dragons, each around 150 feet in length, with deep red scales that seemed to glitter in the artificial lights that Milton had installed throughout the dungeon, unleashed their fiery breath attack.

All of the breath attacks seemed to merge together in a tidal wave of burning flames, washing over the Heliothropes in their assembled ranks.  The heat from the flames was so hot that Fred saw many of the Adventurers along the walls and even in the ceiling move away from the openings as it washed over them, but the effect on the Heliothropes was even more dramatic.  Hundreds of the weaker Heliothropes were bathed in the sustained fire, and he could see their glowing barriers collapse within seconds, charring their bodies into ash a few seconds later.  Even their powerful melee weapons started to melt and collapse into piles of unrecognizable material, which wasn’t exactly metal as far as he could tell, though it had some similar qualities.

Their breath attack lasted for 10 full seconds before it stopped, leaving nearly 1,000 blue- and purple-skinned Heliothropes dead, and slightly affecting the glowing shields of the Elites that arrived after them.  Walking forward over the ashes of the Heliothropes they burnt to a crisp, the Ruby Dragons surged toward the Elites, who were already running to attack the Dragons.  Two of the Defenders leapt into the air, using their wings and the heat coming off their bodies to waft great billows of desert-like, heated air toward the Heliothropes, doing constant damage with the heat as well as pushing them backwards with the wind.  Or at least that was what was supposed to happen, but the Elites weren’t having any of that; they seemed to ignore all of that with a simple glowing of their barriers, and they moved as if there was nothing impeding them.

“I’m not sure that is a good matchup there,” Milton remarked, and Fred couldn’t help but agree.  As the Dragons on the ground and the Elites clashed, he could see that these Defenders had a distinct disadvantage over the Lava Hounds that came before: namely, that they were flesh and blood.  While the scales of a Ruby Dragon were as hard as or harder than stone, the weapons of the Elites were quite capable of piercing through their exterior.  Within seconds of their clash, one of the ground-based Dragons was decapitated, while the others had been stabbed and sliced up enough that burning blood cascaded down their bodies.  They gave as good as they took, however, as powerful, snake-quick bites, scratches, and tail whips took out more than half of the 10 Elites that attacked them.  The remaining 4 Elites still had their protective barriers, but they wouldn’t last long.

The Adventurers and Proctans along the walls and the ceiling were already helping out.  Spells and other projectiles slammed into the remaining quartet of Elites even as they rushed to finish off the remaining pair of Dragons on the ground, and their shields were quickly drained by the barrage; when those shields disappeared, the Elites were pushed back by the incessant boiling-hot wind buffeting them from the 2 Dragons in the air, leaving them vulnerable to additional strikes by the injured ones on the ground.

The last of the Elites were eventually killed, but it wasn’t long before the toll was obvious; a second Dragon succumbed to its wounds, just as another force of Heliothropes came into range.  Instead of marching quickly yet steadily, these ones were running full out, keeping pace with each other, and they rushed the flying fire lizards before they could fully recover from the previous batch.  Thankfully, it appeared as though they were ready to breathe out the great barrage of flames again, though it was diminished in size; still, the attack from above and from the remaining Dragon below was enough to push through hundreds of protective barriers and char them to ash.

It wasn’t enough.

The remaining Fodder and Soldiers rushed all the Dragons, including the ones in the air, flying up to them as if they were floating.  Hundreds more of the six-armed Heliothropes were shredded or ripped apart by fangs and claws, but they took some nasty wounds in return.  One of them had its wing shredded, sending it crashing into the ground, where it flattened another dozen Fodder, and it was quickly overwhelmed and died a death of a thousand cuts.  The other two lasted a little longer, managing to kill the rest of the Fodder and Soldiers that attacked them from this group, but the Elites finished them off in but a few seconds.

They didn’t even survive until the next Commander.  That’s not good.

With the organization they were showing, it was easy enough to see how the Heliothropes’ forces were arranged.  There were blocks of 1,000 Fodder, 100 Soldiers, and 10 Elites that traveled together, though it had been a bit of a chaotic mess right after opening the cave where they were previously waiting.  After 10 of these blocks, which were still emerging and either breaking off for the walls to join those still attempting to get at the Adventurers inside the small side rooms or marching straight ahead, another Commander would follow them.  At the moment, he could still see 4 that were either nearly about to emerge into the Corridor Dungeon or move out from the Breeder Ship, though there was only so much he could see inside.  His Shaping couldn’t penetrate into the Ship, so he had no idea how many more there were, but a rough estimate of the number of Heliothropes he could see that still needed to be killed was over 40,000 – and more seemed to be joining every moment from elsewhere in the massive Ship.

Fred made sure to gather up the Fire Mana that the Anchor was attempting to suck away from the corridor, automatically sending it back to the same Dungeon Core he had spoken to earlier.  There was no conversation this time, because the Core already knew what needed to be done.

“Looks like the first of the Adventurers are dying,” Milton abruptly said, pointing at his Shaping.  Fred looked on with sadness as he saw that the Station Core was correct, and that a few of the rooms closest to the Heliothropes’ cavern had some bodies in it that weren’t blue or purple.  It didn’t take more than a second to see that they had been overwhelmed at one point and someone had sacrificed themselves to hold off the influx of bodies into their room.  That wasn’t the biggest problem, however, because the Heliothropes were starting to push the bodies of their kind further into the room as they entered, creating an unintentional barrier that was making holding off their incursion more difficult by the minute.  Eventually it would get so bad that they would be drowning in dead flesh and blood, but at least Milton had thought about that.

In each of the rooms, a device was set into one of the walls, which was basically an open portal to… somewhere.  Fred didn’t really understand it, but apparently this Molecular Converter could take whatever was shoved into it and make it disappear, where it could be recycled into something new – including flesh.  It was how the Station Core could produce so many of his Combat Units, in fact, though the whole process was still a bit strange and foreign to Fred.

A few Adventurers in the rooms were already dragging corpses away from the piles and butchering them before they were shoved inside.  It was grisly work, and Fred was glad he wasn’t the one doing it, as the sight alone made him slightly nauseous.  Many of the rooms were getting behind in their butchering, however, which snowballed into a nightmare scenario for them.  With piled-up corpses getting underfoot and making fighting all that much harder, he was starting to see some buckle under the pressure.

Given that these were A- and S-Rated groups, many with powerful abilities, he dreaded to see how the weaker groups closer to the entrance of the Corridor Dungeon would fare.

Unfortunately, there was nothing anyone could do for the Adventurers in those rooms, as there were other problems to take care of.  Namely, the continuing blocks of Heliothropes moving down the corridor.  Thankfully, the last of the Fire Defenders was up next, and the Blaze Elementals that seemed to float above the ground were powerful – and they didn’t have flesh-and-blood bodies that could be cut apart with ease.  They were essentially 75-foot-tall embodiments of flames, and they had relatively insubstantial bodies with even fewer vulnerabilities than the Lava Hounds.

As soon as they were close enough to the incoming hordes of Heliothropes, they tossed out fireballs that exploded upon impact with the glowing shields, doing minimal damage at first.  The lingering flames ate at the protective barriers as they moved around like liquid fire, coating anything they touched.

“Dang, that looks like napalm,” Milton murmured, but Fred ignored him and the unfamiliar word.

It was quite effective, as it ate through the barriers quickly and into the flesh beneath, though none of the blue-skinned Fodder seemed to notice it – or at least they didn’t react to being burned alive.  Instead, they simply ran forward in their formations as one after another of their number dropped from suffering too much damage.  It wasn’t as quick as the Ruby Dragons’ fire-breathing attack, but it was just as effective.  What was even better was that they weren’t restricted to only tossing them out every once in a while, but were able to toss another giant fireball out a few seconds after the first.

It was pure carnage as the entire block of Heliothropes was set on fire with a volley of 5 fireballs hitting them over and over, though the red-skinned Elites were more resilient.  While their protective barriers suffered from the liquid fire, they never dropped completely – and were free to jump over the next volley, avoiding it entirely as they flew through the air to attack the Elementals.  As their weapons passed through the Defenders with the barest of resistance, there was a brief fading of the Elementals, before they came back relatively unharmed – if slightly smaller as a result of the attack.

They counterattacked immediately, sending out whipping tendrils of flame as they blazed hotter, heating up the air so much that the barriers of any of the nearby Fodder and Soldiers that weren’t engaged in the fight started to glow, and a few of them even died as they were scorched like they were standing too close to a sun.  Fred looked at the nearest walls and saw that many of the Adventurers and Proctans had to fall back from the heat, with a few of them even being killed as a result, but most of them survived the blaze attack thanks to being further away and not in the direct line of fire.

The Elites, however, being so close to them, couldn’t withstand the pure heat and staggered as their barriers gave way, allowing the whips of flame that caught hold of them to cut through their arms and legs like they were nothing.  Even as their shields attempted to reestablish themselves, it wasn’t enough against the brutal heat and other attacks, and they were all killed within a matter of seconds.

The Blaze Elementals moved forward after defeating their foe, as they met the next block of Heliothropes.

“Crud.  They’re learning, aren’t they?” Fred asked, after seeing the new set of Heliothropes spread out and break their formation, scattering to put some distance between themselves.

“They’re brutal, merciless, and relentless – but they aren’t necessarily stupid,” Milton confirmed.  “At least their leaders aren’t; the Elites, and in some cases the Soldiers, seem to be able to direct the Fodder to mix up their tactics on the fly.”

The tactic the Heliothropes were using was a lot more effective than the tight formation they had used before, because once the Elementals started flinging fireballs, they wound up only hitting a few dozen, rather than hundreds.  As a result, more and more of them were getting through the barrage largely unscathed, reaching the Elementals to attack.  Being that close to the flames that comprised the Blaze Elementals was damaging to their protective barriers, even if they weren’t using their blaze attack, and the Fodder didn’t last long against the extreme heat.  Despite that, they were able to do some damage to the Defenders, making them shrink as parts of their fire were stolen away with each hit, but it was ultimately futile; fire whips struck out at the fodder like an octopus having a spasm, killing the weaker Fodder and Soldiers wherever they hit.

The Elites that followed up the Fodder and Soldier attack managed to survive longer, but even then they weren’t able to take down a single Elemental – especially when they used their blaze attack again, cooking everything within range.  Despite winning, each of them had shrunk to approximately two-thirds of their original size, which wasn’t a good sign.

The next block of Heliothropes used a similar tactic of spreading out, but they also intermixed the Elites with the Fodder and Soldiers, something they hadn’t done as yet.  Identifying the greater threats, the Elementals threw their fireballs at the Elites, hitting most of them but ultimately not doing as much damage as they could have if they had thrown them at the Fodder, and they suffered as a result.  With more than 90% of the block surviving to get close to the Defenders, the Heliothropes managed to kill 2 of them, doing enough damage to completely snuff them out.

The following block finished the job, though only a few Elites managed to survive the attack against the trio of remaining Blaze Elementals.  Yet, it was progress of sorts. Looking at the cavern and the Breeder Ship, however, it wasn’t exactly clear what kind of progress was being made.  Yet another Commander appeared deep within the Ship, just barely visible, so he knew that they had quite a few more left to go.

This is going to be a long, long day….

Chapter 33

The Defenders that the Dungeon Cores had provided were powerful, Milton had to give them that, and they did a remarkably good job of killing Heliothropes. Unfortunately, as strong and large as they were, they couldn’t withstand the pure numbers coming out of the cavern where the Breeder Ship vomited out one after another of them without stopping.  Granted, they were killing a lot of the interdimensional murderers, but there was only so much they could do before they were brought down.

After the last of the Fire-based Defenders were killed, the Dark-based ones had their turn.  Each of the different Defenders provided by the Dark Cores had 5 of their number, the same as all of the others, but these ones were a bit scarier than the others.  Milton thought it made sense, considering that they were Dark-based, but they were frightening in an abstract way, nonetheless.

The first was apparently called a Bone Lord, which made Milton snigger a little as he thought of that powerful necromancer they had encountered soon after crash-landing on the planet.  These Bone Lords, in comparison, were much more powerful – especially when the 80-foot-tall monstrosities, made of numerous bones cobbled together to form the misshapen figure of a person, started to animate the corpses of the fallen Heliothropes that were still in good-enough shape to function.  With a wave of darkness falling over them, the bodies of their foes picked themselves up, burnt and charred as they were, and they stumbled toward the incoming formations wielding whatever weapons weren’t melted or broken from the previous engagements.

Unfortunately, none of them possessed the same sort of speed they had in life, nor did they have a glowing protective barrier.  As a result, the sheer number of them was more of a distraction and minor inconvenience that the enemy had to cut their way through, which gave the Bone Lords the opportunity to send out balls of random bones fused together, which would explode into shrapnel upon impact.  When they closed with the Heliothropes, especially the Elites, they also had a massive bone club that they used effectively against the larger, red-skinned Heliothropes.  A spinning collection of sharp bone slivers also surrounded each Lord, creating a rotating shield of projectiles, which amazingly did a good job of protecting the undead Defenders against some of both the smaller Fodder and the Soldiers.

Unfortunately, despite their strength and ability to raise the dead to fight for them, the Bone Lords were made of relatively brittle bones, and numerous strikes against their bodies were enough to tear them apart.  They attempted to rip the bones out of the fallen to use as a replacement for what was carved out of them, which worked to “heal” them, but it was just not enough.  Still, they were successful for long enough to nearly reach the next Commander before falling.

The Commander went up against a quintet of Shadowy Goliaths, whose darkness-based attacks were necrotic in nature, as well as acting as a blinding agent.  The bolts of darkness that the formless masses of light-sucking darkness flung out also had a physical aspect to them, and they hit the Commander hard enough to make it notice, even through its protective barrier.  What was interesting was that, at least minutely, the attacks from the Shadowy Goliaths did more damage to the glowing shields of the Heliothropes than any other magical attack Milton had seen thus far.  It wasn’t a huge difference, but it was something to keep in mind for the future.

With the help of another Particle Accelerator, Railguns, Lasers, magnetic launchers, and thousands of people casting damaging spells, the second Commander was killed just as it took out the third Goliath.  The Defenders, in spite of being made of shadows and darkness, could be hurt similar to the Blaze Elementals, as the invaders’ weapons passed through them but also reduced them in size.  Overall, though, the Shadowy Goliaths had done a good job until they fell another few enemy formations later.

They were replaced by something that seemed to be brought straight out of hell.  Demon Prince Zelphin was one of the largest Defenders to enter the dungeon, standing 150 feet tall, and Fred mentioned that the ones he’d seen before were another 50 feet taller in height.  Still, the red-skinned Demon was even larger than the biggest Commander they’d seen so far, and it was wielding twin swords like it knew how to use them.  Not only that, but it had a set of black leather armor that covered its torso and hips, leaving the arms and legs free to maneuver well enough.

What was impressive about the Demon Princes wasn’t their size, but the fact that they were summoners.  Dark portals appeared around them, and out shot much smaller Demons, though these ones were still 20 feet tall; Fred called these Pit Fiends, and they fell upon the smaller Fodder and Soldiers while the Princes went after the Elites.

The Princes were slower than the Heliothropes, but their attacks were devastating.  Each blow of their swords hit hard enough to launch the Elites away, even with their protective barriers, and occasionally a black-tinged fire straight from the bowels of hell exploded out from the impact, doing even more damage.  Unfortunately, they were still flesh-and-blood – even if it was demon flesh and demon blood – so they weren’t able to withstand much in the way of abuse.  A few of them lifted off the ground with their wings and attempted to attack in strafing runs, which worked well enough, and then they disappeared through a portal in front of them, only to appear back where they started.  The technique was successful for a while before the Elites got wise to the tactic and converged in the air near their flying forms, overwhelming them before they could react.

Still, they had done well enough to tear through thousands of Heliothropes, getting them that much closer to the next Commander.  Meanwhile, one room after another of Adventurers down below started to fall as they suffered from the incessant influx of Fodder and Soldiers attacking them.  Either they got tired after nearly an hour of constant fighting, they weren’t able to clear their room of corpses, or they ran out of Power; regardless of the reason, they were starting to die and get wiped out entirely, allowing the Heliothropes that were attacking them the opportunity to push further into the corridor.

The next Commander had to face Rock Giants, massive, 175-foot-tall hunks of animated rocks that were the first contribution by the Earth Cores.  The Giants were much more durable than nearly anything Milton had seen thus far, mainly because even if they had a portion of their rocky body shattered, it could pull those pieces back together to heal itself.  Eventually, they took enough damage that they fell apart, being made of pebbles at that point, but they absolutely tore through the Heliothropes with their strength and durability.

Unfortunately, the Commander was something altogether different.  Not only that, but it was the first time that there was a reaction from the massive Heliothropes that had to do with something other than the Defenders.  When a Particle Accelerator hit it, along with the Railguns, Laser Cannons, and Magnetic Launchers in the walls, as well as Plasma Bombs and Weightonite pieces from the ceiling, the Commander ignored the 2 remaining Rock Giants to enact some retribution on those that were doing more damage to it.

Moving more quickly than something of its size should be able to, at least as far as Milton was concerned, the black-skinned Heliothrope sped the few hundred feet to the left-hand wall, slamming its weapons into the Maginite blocks that were protecting the people inside, right where the Particle Accelerator was located.  The impacts of its weapons against the wall were so powerful that Milton could feel them all the way back on the viewing platform nearly 3 miles away – but the wall held up, if barely.  Cracks throughout a 200-foot section of the wall were seen, with a few that had been broken away entirely, but the special blocks somehow held against the multi-weapon strike.

Sadly, it didn’t stand up to a second strike.  Even while it was still being bombarded from multiple sources, the Commander struck again with even more force – which Milton didn’t think was possible – and turned that section of the wall into rubble, killing thousands of Adventurers and Proctans that were contained in the different hallways.  The damage was so extensive that even the rooms down below started to collapse; those that weren’t squished immediately were ultimately trapped inside to die later as they ran out of oxygen unless they were rescued.

Right now, that rescue didn’t look likely.

The Rock Giants attempted to go after the Commander, but they were too late.  After demolishing the wall that held the Accelerator – which had been doing the most damage to it – the 12-armed Heliothrope shot upwards, flinging its chain-knife out at the ceiling at the same time.  The blade of the knife punched through the thinner blocks of Maginite up top, and the Commander used it as leverage to propel it upward even faster.  When it reached the top, it was moving fast enough that its body weight was enough to crush the Maginite when it hit, but its weapons also managed to reduce an entire 300-foot-wide section of the ceiling to dust and debris.  Those up top that weren’t squished immediately rained down to their deaths with the shattered ceiling, with some of them even landing on top of the Commander.  The Weightonite falling from the ceiling was heavy enough to push the massive Heliothrope down, fortunately, and despite its protective barrier, it was unable to keep itself aloft.

The giant enemy fell 600 feet to slam into the floor of the Corridor Dungeon with a thunderous *boom*, though that wasn’t nearly enough to kill it.  Its glowing shield wasn’t even depleted yet, but before it could recover from its fall, the remaining Rock Giants were on it, smashing massive fists made of rock into it repeatedly.  With the remaining long-range fire from the other side of the corridor helping, the barrier was finally depleted before the Commander could pick itself up.

“Team 5, finish it off before it can get up.”

Milton wasn’t going to take any chances that it would be able to fight off the Giants and recover its shield.  With two-thirds of the defenses in the area smashed to pieces, with tens of thousands of dead Adventurers and a few hundred Proctans along with them, he wasn’t sure if there was enough damage to take it out.

A Particle Accelerator a bit further up the corridor fired at the downed Commander, tearing through its body even as it was bombarded by even more spells and projectiles.  The multi-pronged attack was enough to finish off the destructive Heliothrope, but Milton was getting worried.  He looked at Fred and saw the man looking at him, as well, the same sort of worried expression on his face that Milton thought was probably reflected on his own.

“That’s bad.  I thought the Maginite would withstand even the Commander’s attacks, but I was wrong,” Milton admitted.

“It would probably hold against smaller weapons and strength, but that’s… impossibly strong,” one of Fred’s friends said.  The big man in the beard and wearing black appeared as if he knew a bit about strength, based on his appearance alone.  Regnark, I believe his name is; the Shard of Dark, or so I’ve been told.  Milton hadn’t necessarily seen any hint of it yet, but he wasn’t sure anyone would lie about something like that.

Milton turned to Fred and told him, “I’ve already got the Proctans that died coming back, but the loss of the Defensive Weapons is the biggest pain right now.”

“What about the other people in there?  What if I’m not able to bring them back?”

Milton was confused.  “What do you mean?  I thought you could resurrect them by placing their souls back in their bodies and repairing their bodies?”

Fred hesitated as the Rock Giants fought against the next formation of Heliothropes, this time joined in part by the next group of Defenders.  They were a strange choice for an Earth-based Defender, but the 90-foot-tall King Crabs had sharp, stone claws that were large enough that Milton thought they might be able to cut a Commander in half.  If they were able to get through the protective barrier, of course.

The man finally answered, and when he did, the Station Core was thoroughly alarmed.  “I didn’t notice when only a few were killed, but it wasn’t something that I could miss once so many died at once.”  Fred took a deep breath.  “The Stabilizing Anchor, at least that’s what I’m assuming it is based on what you told me about it, is absorbing the souls of the dead.”

“Wait, what?!” Fred’s wife, Eisa, asked with a horrified expression on her face.  Looking around, Milton could see that it was mirrored by every other Human and Shard.  “Are you serious?  Can you pull them back?”

Fred shook his head.  “I tried once I saw it was happening, but I can’t stop it like I can the Mana that’s released after the deaths of the Defenders.  Trying to manipulate souls or Soulforce that close to the Anchor is like trying to stop a waterfall from hitting the ground by only using my hands.  It’s impossible when it’s that close.”  He waved at the nearby walls, before continuing.  “This close, I’m fairly certain I could gather them up, but any souls within a mile, perhaps a half-mile if we’re lucky, are going to be absorbed by the Anchor.”

Milton didn’t even know what to think, considering that Fred was basically saying that a few million people – if they were killed too close to the Anchor – would be lost forever.  Ever since he had found that he was able to bring the Proctans back from the dead using his Bioconversion Labs, death didn’t really matter as much as it used to for people he knew.  It sounded callous when he really thought about it, but it was the truth, nonetheless.

But would I be able to bring these people back without their souls?  Is the way I do it with my Labs essentially the same thing, only through a different method?  Those were questions he didn’t have any answers to, but he certainly would try to do it when this was all over.  Granted, they had to win first, which still wasn’t a guarantee.  The only thing that made it seem as though bringing them back via Bio Lab was possible was the fact that none of the Proctans who died had any problems queuing up back at the camp.

“Milton?  There was a minor surge of energy being pumped out toward the dimensional wound a minute or so ago.  Estimates cut the time until full stabilization by about an hour, give or take a few minutes.”

Oh, crap.  “Thanks, ALANNA.  I’ll let the others know.”

“That’s not the worst news, Fred,” Milton told everyone, catching Whisp’s eye as she stood next to him.  “Apparently, their souls are being used by the Heliothropes to further power their stabilization of the dimensional wound, bringing it closer to being fully established.”

“What does that mean, Milton?” Fred’s son, Wynk, asked.

Whisp was the one that answered for him.  “It means that we’re feeding the Anchor exactly what it needs to grow stronger.  My guess is that since Soulforce is the predominant energy of this planet, that is why the Anchor wasn’t able to grow when there were those wounds your father mentioned that he fixed.  But it isn’t just Soulforce alone that strengthens it, but the souls of people – or Dungeon Cores – that will really boost its power.”

“We’ve got to get those people out of there—” Eisa began to say, but Fred put his hand on her arm, cutting her off.

“We can’t take them out, even if they weren’t already engaged with the enemy.  Their presence is the only thing that will allow us to succeed.”

“But—”

Milton spoke up, as much as he didn’t want to get involved.  “He’s right.  Even pulling them back so that their souls don’t get sucked up immediately would undoubtedly hurt the defenses.  They are an integral part of any success we might have, and we cannot do this without them.”

Everyone was silent as they watched the fight play out between the Rock Giant and King Crabs against the Heliothropes, with the Defenders tearing through the next formation.  Milton was surprised at how quickly the Crabs could scuttle sideways, using their claws as both a shield and a battering ram.  The stone claws were extremely durable, more so than normal stone, it seemed, and they were able to physically knock even the sharp and deadly weapons of the Elites out of the way while they grabbed the red-skinned Heliothropes and then squeezed.  Caught and unable to escape despite attacking the claw holding them with their available weapons, the Elites’ protective barriers eventually drained and left them vulnerable.

Yep, just as I thought – cut them clean in half.

Eisa finally turned away and looked at their son.  “You are not going anywhere near there, you hear me?”

Wynk nodded, his face drained of color at the authoritative voice his mother used on him.  His group mates did the same.

“Okay, then.  I guess it’ll be our jobs to ensure as few die as possible, then.  We still have quite a few Defenders to go, at least, and then we have Sandra’s forces, and my own.  This will be fine, you’ll see,” Milton stated as confidently as he could.

Inside, though, he wasn’t nearly as confident as he was before they started.

Chapter 34

The Heliothropes coming out of the Breeder Ship didn’t stop, even after 3 hours of constant fighting.  Another 5 Commanders were killed over that time, along with tens of thousands of lesser Heliothropes, and the Defenders arrayed against them were finally dwindling. Four more 200-foot-wide sections of the walls were demolished, killing everyone within them, along with another large section of the ceiling; the extent to which the defenses within the first 1,000 feet out from the enemy’s cavern were diminished was devastating, as the foes had free rein over a significant portion of the Corridor Dungeon by that point.

The Defenders, which had originally been fighting within that area, were pushed back, as more and more Heliothropes emerged.  All of the Earth-based Defenders had been destroyed, with the Rock Giants, King Crabs, and Gravelers being whittled down to dust.  The Gravelers had been quite effective, as they were essentially a mass of small boulders that could move independently of each other, and the only way to kill them was to destroy every single one of them.

Then there were the Water-based Defenders, including Mega Hydras and Landshark Kings, that weren’t nearly as effective.  None of the Water Defenders even made it through a single Commander before they were destroyed, as they just couldn’t do enough damage to the protective barriers and were more vulnerable to the weapons the enemy used.

After that were the Treehemoths, the Room Shrooms, and the familiar Emerald Dragons that Micke and the others had fought in one of their first S-Rated dungeons.  These ones were much bigger compared to that one, though; it was like comparing a baby to its father.  The three of them were able to destroy a Commander and then some because of their area-of-effect attacks, which primarily consisted of acidic and poisonous clouds, which ate through the protective barriers of the Heliothropes with startling speed.  It was something Milton was going to keep in mind for the future, along with darkness-based attacks.  Unfortunately, the lot of them didn’t last much longer than that because they weren’t necessarily strong defensively against the weapons they faced.

Then there were the Defenders from the Air contingent, which were some of the most effective of all.  It wasn’t the Roc Queens, which were massive birds that were even larger than Sandra’s High Peak Rocs; they were strong, but they were also flesh and blood, leaving them highly vulnerable to the weapons of the Heliothropes.  Nor was it the Djinnish Champions, who looked like giant genies right out of some sort of animated movie; despite having an absolute plethora of long-range magical attacks, it just wasn’t enough to hold the enemy from approaching and tearing them apart.

Instead, it was the Twisting Tornadoes, which were exactly as they sounded.  A force of nature, created from rapidly circulating air and moving quickly enough to “twist” around many of the physical attacks sent their way – they were exactly what was needed to combat the Heliothropes.  The whipping winds weren’t just rushing air but had a physically slicing component to them – and they tore Fodder, Soldiers, and even Elites up like they were nothing but chaff in a field.  Only the centers, or eyes, of the Tornadoes were vulnerable, as the outer shells of nearly solid air acted as shields – and the smaller foes just couldn’t punch through it when their attacks did no damage at all.

It was only the Commanders which managed to cut through their exterior and slowly whittle down the eyes of the Tornadoes, but even then it wasn’t quick.  The massive, black-skinned enemy couldn’t use overwhelming force or superior skill to rapidly destroy the Tornadoes, because they only took a small amount of damage from a sword – even one with the same glowing barrier that covered the Commander’s body – or other weapon cutting through their forms.

“Against spells, the Tornadoes are rather weak,” Fred had noted.  “Physical attacks are nearly useless.”

Even so, after killing thousands of Heliothropes and a full two Commanders, the Twisting Tornadoes were finally “injured” enough to disperse in a collapsing gust of wind.  Still, it was a good showing; and he could only hope that the last of the Defenders did as well.  After them, they didn’t have anything nearly as powerful to help stem the tide still pouring out of the Breeder Ship.  Whisp and ALANNA calculated that, if the Ship was completely full of Heliothropes, then they might be about halfway through them by that point, but it was also simple conjecture.  None of them knew exactly how many of their nemeses could fit inside.

Coming up for the final contribution by the Dungeon Cores were the Light-based Defenders.  The first were some Crystalline Atrocities, which looked like massive, 100-foot-tall crystal golems.  They were bipedal but didn’t look anything like a person; instead, they were clusters of different crystals that just happened to walk on two legs.

From the start, it appeared as though they wouldn’t be very effective.  They were relatively slow and lumbering, similar to the Rock Giants from the Earth-based Cores; once they closed with the Heliothropes, their power shone through.  Chunks of their bodies broke off and catapulted toward the ground as the Fodder and Soldiers approached, landing among the running formations.

These crystalline chunks did two different things upon impact with the ground.  The first was that half of them simply exploded, sending shards of sharp crystal in a wide radius, doing serious damage to the Heliothropes’ shields.  That wasn’t the end of them, however, as the shards stopped their flight at about 30 feet, and then started to rotate in a whirlwind of jagged death.  Any of the Fodder or Soldiers caught within the shardstorm were shredded, their glowing shields battered from the abuse before their bodies were likewise torn apart.

The second half of the clumps didn’t explode, but rather they formed into miniature golems that were 10 feet tall and looked vaguely similar to the original Atrocity.  They immediately attacked the Heliothropes and were quite effective, as the crystal that formed their bodies wasn’t shattered by the weapons like Milton thought it would be, but instead acted much like stone.  Only blunt weapons, such as a warhammer, were really effective against them, as a sword slice or spear stab didn’t do more than leave a line or hole in the crystals.

Then the giant Crystalline Atrocities, which topped out at about 110 feet tall, raised their vaguely recognizable arms, used an ability to form large shards of crystal in their “hands”, and shot them out with tremendous speed like bullets from a gun.  Each of the shards was nearly as big as a Fodder, and when they hit their targets, one hit was enough to take down a fully powered barrier on a Fodder, and was nearly enough to knock out one on a Soldier.  Granted, that didn’t seem too impressive compared to what Milton had seen before from other Defenders, but the kicker was that the shard bullets were being fired in strafing arcs at high speed like from some sort of minigun.

“I got to get me one of those,” Milton said after watching in awe as they killed the Heliothropes.  With the shardstorms, the small crystal golems, and the miniguns of crystal shards, they tore through the Heliothropes with glorious efficiency.  Even the Elites were no match for them, although they did attempt to shield themselves from the projectiles by crossing their weapons in front of them; all that managed to do was deplete their barriers even faster.

Of course, the next formation changed up their tactics, and instead of all the Heliothropes marching along the ground, they floated through the air at different heights and distances using their protective barriers, spreading them apart so as not to present easy targets.  This turned out to be highly effective against the Crystalline Atrocities, as they couldn’t create shardstorms or crystal golems in the air, and their rapid-fire shards could only shift so quickly between one target and the next.  They were quickly overwhelmed as a result, though they were able to use sheer physical force to kill all of the Heliothropes in that formation, with the loss of 2 of their number and heavy damage to the remaining 3.

The next formation finished the job, and then it was time for the Reflective Constructs to have a go.  These Defenders were basically large contraptions that floated above the ground, constructed of thousands of mirrors that could be angled to direct a beam of pure light at any target.  The beams that emerged from the 5 Reflective Constructs were wide, nearly the size of a Fodder, and they could be moved around to target additional Heliothropes at a fairly quick speed.  The destructive potential of the beams was seen immediately, as anything blue- or purple-skinned was almost incinerated within a second.  It was as if they were Milton’s Laser Cannons on steroids, and nothing could stand in their way; even the Elites couldn’t stand up to more than a few seconds before their barriers dropped, though they were quick to move away once they were targeted.  Help from the people in the walls and the ceiling made short work of them after that.

They were unstoppable… until they had to shut down their massive laser so that it could recharge.  Unfortunately, they weren’t able to get the attack going again by the time the next formation arrived, and mirrors certainly weren’t very durable against melee weapons.  Needless to say, they were good for a while… before they weren’t.

The final Defenders to come from the Dungeon Cores were 5 Celestial Orbs, which looked like spherical suns that floated along.  They were huge, at least 100 feet wide, meaning they took up most of the corridor, and they exuded a heat not unlike a roaring fire, though fortunately it wasn’t the same as an actual sun.  Otherwise, it might have cooked all of the people inside of the dungeon alive.

The Orbs shot out bolts of light at a rapid pace, each of them arcing across the distance so quickly that Milton could barely follow them, and they impacted the Heliothropes with great accuracy and power.  They weren’t quite as powerful as the Reflective Constructs’ laser beams, but they were able to take out a Fodder in two or three hits.

That was just a taste of what they could do, however, as they also sent out a wave of light that moved slower than the bolts of light, but they encompassed a much larger area.  To Milton, they had the look of solar flares that washed over the Heliothropes, rapidly depleting their protective barriers.  With one wave after another hitting all of the incoming enemy, they were able to wipe out an entire formation – including the Elites with an additional application of light bolts – in less than 10 seconds.

It was quite impressive, to say the least.  Unfortunately, just like a lot of the other Defenders, that ability wasn’t usable often enough to make it beneficial.  Milton assumed that they had cooldowns or something like that, which made sense for Defenders; if they could just spam something like that solar flare every time an Adventurer group got close, there would be no way to kill it.

The Celestial Orbs also had a blindingly bright flash attack, which didn’t really affect the Heliothropes if they had a barrier still active, but it certainly affected the people nearby.  Communicating with the Proctans, many of them were blinded by the attack, and most of the Adventurers near them were as well and needed to be healed.  Thankfully, Sandra had supplied thousands of Repair Drones to roam the hallways, which quickly and efficiently healed those who weren’t being healed by other magical means.

Even though the Orbs weren’t able to use their powerful attack more than once every few minutes, they were still strong enough to fight off multiple formations of Heliothropes with minimal damage; anything getting close to them had to suffer from the extreme heat they emanated, which was much stronger the closer one got to the Orbs.  Though some of them had portions of their light carved away, for the most part they had survived largely intact.

But then it was time for another Commander, and this was where they floundered.  With their ability to use their solar flare available, they unleashed the attack – to very little effect.  Milton could see that the damage to its barrier was decent, but not more than 20% or so by the time the attacks were done.  The bolts of light that attacked it in a barrage were minimally effective, as well, and they did nothing to stop the massive Heliothrope from attacking with abandon.

Shrugging off the heat, it cut cleanly through one of the Orbs and stabbed through another with multiple weapons, ripping them out and causing even more damage.  While the Defender that had been cut in half fell to the floor with a couple of reverberating *booms*, the one that had been stabbed simply moved closer to the Commander as if it was looking for a hug.

“Uh-oh.  Tell your people to get down behind a barrier!” Fred shouted, and Milton did that immediately, having them pass along the word, as well.  As the Proctans shouted for the Adventurers to get down, the wounded Celestial Orb touched the arm of the Commander and exploded like a supernova.

The explosion was so great that it shook the entire Corridor Dungeon, stretching all the way across its length and blasting into the hallways.  Milton could immediately see that the explosion had also damaged dozens of Defensive Weapons so that they wouldn’t work, which was a horrible loss to the defenses.  That wasn’t the last of the damage, though, as the wounded Orb’s explosion catalyzed a chain-reaction in the other surviving Celestial Orbs, causing them to explode as well, one right after another in quick succession.

When the land finally stopped shaking, Milton could see that the Commander hadn’t survived the quadruple detonation.  Neither had hundreds more Defensive Weapons and thousands of Adventurers and even a few Proctans.  The walls and ceiling were cracked but not crumbling, thankfully, but everything they were protecting had been so damaged or killed that they were nearly useless by that point.

“Well, that sucked.” Milton said, seeing the results of the multi-detonation.  “I was not expecting that.”

“I’m sorry, I had forgotten what that Orb was capable of when it was in danger of being killed,” Fred apologized.

“Not your fault, but that just made our job that much harder.”

With all the Defenders dead, hundreds of Defensive Weapons destroyed through the explosions, and the earlier battering by multiple Commanders, nearly a third of the Corridor Dungeons’ defenses were non-operational.  They weren’t out of the game yet, but the defenses weren’t looking good; considering that the flow from the Breeder Ship hadn’t slowed, let alone stopped, they were in for a painful few hours.

“I guess it’s our turn, now,” Fred abruptly stated, gesturing to his wife and the other Shards.  Before Milton could say anything, the man had taken off from the observation platform, accompanied by the others with him.  Milton couldn’t necessarily see the Shaping that Fred used to lift them all up into the air and fly like superheroes, but he was positive that was going on.  Despite there only being 7 of them, the Station Core had the feeling that they were nearly as powerful as any similar number of Dungeon Core Defenders.

“Good luck.”  They didn’t hear him, but he doubted they needed his encouragement.

Chapter 35

Fredwynklemossering had been eager to put the hurt on the people who had the gall to invade his world with the intent of conquering it and making them slaves, and now was the time to make that happen.  He had withheld any attacks on them before this because it was extremely difficult to manipulate Soulforce and Mana from a distance; while Mana was a little easier to control, it still felt like trying to hold onto a slippery icicle with numb fingers.  He had been able to brute-force the large globules of Mana that the Defenders left behind when they were killed through the sheer fact that he wasn’t trying to do anything other than move it.  Had he attempted to use it for some other purpose, it wouldn’t have worked so well.

The closer that he and the Shards got to the front lines, and subsequently closer to the Stabilizing Anchor that was causing all the problems with the modified Soulforce he was using for his flight Shaping, the greater the strain on his concentration.  It was so difficult to maintain the Shaping that he was forced to land them all behind the front lines of Milton’s Combat Units.

“I can’t Shape much this close to the Anchor,” he explained as they gently landed on the floor of the corridor, racing past the large, strange beasts that the Station Core controlled.  “You’re on your own from here on out.”

“Ha!  We’re never on our own, Fred; we’re a team, you know that,” Regnark said with humor in his voice.  The big man ran lightly on his feet, his pace leaving temporary shadows in his footsteps as he readied himself for battle.

For the first time since he had learned about the Heliothropes’ presence on his world, he was halfway glad that they were there.  It had been decades since he and all of the Shards had been together in one place, and he missed the camaraderie and purposefulness in a shared defense.  This time, it wasn’t about defending against the murderous minions sent out by Dungeon Cores, but instead was against an enemy unlike anything they had seen before.  Watching as these invaders had destroyed all the most powerful Defenders that could be created by Cores around the world, he knew they were an intimidating threat that they couldn’t take lightly.

“Just keep in mind that when you’re out of Mana, you’re out; I will barely be able to manipulate enough Soulforce for my own purposes,” he reminded him, seeing that all of the other Shards heard him also.  He wasn’t really worried about them, though, because they were more than capable in their own right.

“They know, Fred.  Don’t worry, we’ve got this handled.”  Eisa ran by him, already transformed into her Advanced Earth Elemental Form.  The cost to activate and maintain the transformation wasn’t exactly an insignificant expense compared to her available Earth Mana, but it was worth it for her to keep it active.  Not only would it help to protect her from harm, but she found that it also enhanced the speed at which she could create her own Defenders.  Granted, ever since she had maxed out her Shard Level years ago[17], his wife hadn’t had an opportunity to really use all of her abilities – but she was in as prime form as she’d always been.

All of the Shards had maxed out their Shard Levels at 20, giving them 139,000 Mana of their elements to utilize.  Only Deecy, the Dire Wolf guide that had helped Fred from the beginning of his adventure in the Human world, had more to play with because she had two Elemental Origins: Fire and Water.  She was like a pair of Shards all on her own, and the Wolf had already increased her size so that she was nearly as large as the Bearillas that he had seen Milton create back in his facilities.

As soon as Fred passed by the front line of Milton’s Combat Units, he reached out and pulled some Soulforce into his internal Core, filtering out a large amount of Unconverted Mana to use for some Defender blueprints.  It was difficult holding onto the clear Mana for long, but he was able to use it to create the grid-like frames that held elemental Mana; it was these blueprints that dictated the form that the Defenders would take when filled with the appropriate Mana.

In his case, he created thousands of small forms, all in the air and in the shape of flying insects.  To be more specific, Level 5 Large Wasps.  They weren’t very powerful, nor would they likely be very effective in getting through the glowing shields protecting the Heliothropes, but his job was to create a distraction for the Shards.  There were a few reasons for this, which were that their creation of Defenders was inherently much faster than his own ability, and they didn’t need an extra infusion of Mana to upkeep them like he did.  As he had no territory, which he couldn’t establish because of the Anchor, he had to infuse each Defender with more Mana in order to maintain its existence.  The more Mana that had to go inside of them, the longer it took to fully form – at least for Fred and all of the other Dungeon Cores in the world.

The Shards were much more unique.  While their more-powerful Defenders took a little time to materialize, it was practically instant compared to Fred and other Cores.  As such, they would be the big hitters for this fight, while Fred’s Defenders would be cheap and quick distractions.  It was also why he hadn’t previously created something as large as the Defenders that the local Dungeon Cores had provided, because it would take him weeks to not only filter out enough Mana to fill up a blueprint of that size or larger but also let it form.  In addition, just maintaining a blueprint that size without a territory required his full attention, which he didn’t have to give with everything else going on.

Therefore, he ended up with thousands of Level 5 Large Wasps, each of them costing 15 Nature Mana to fill up and maintain themselves through the fight.  As such, as soon as the blueprints were in place in his mind, he took even more Soulforce and passed it through his Core, separating the Nature Mana from it to start filling one blueprint after another.  The process went relatively quickly, only a few seconds for them to fully form, and he was able to fill dozens of them at a time.  Soon enough, hundreds of them had already formed overhead of the Shards as they ran forward to stand in between the Heliothropes and Milton’s Combat Units.

“Summoning Circle!”

Off to Fred’s left, Regnark – being a Dark Shard – rapidly formed a humongous, vertical Summoning Circle above his head, which was basically a portal to some sort of hell that allowed him to summon demons.  By pumping Dark Mana into the circle, demons would fly out and attack whatever he instructed them to attack.  The best part was that his most powerful summoned demons only took a few seconds to appear, though they cost a bit of Mana to bring forth.

Out of the corner of his eye, Fred watched as Dark Mana poured out from Regnark and into the Summoning Circle with tremendous speed, and seconds later, his forces started to appear.  Swarms of Lesser Imps joined Fred’s Large Wasps, but that was just the beginning; large Pit Fiends that were 12 feet tall with 30-foot-wide wingspans flew out next in their dozens, assembling at Regnark’s command.  As some of his final Mana went into the Circle, a giant, 30-foot-tall Demon Lord Laziren appeared, which was a special summons that Regnark could only perform every 24 hours and that only stuck around for 10 minutes.  When the Dark shard first received access to the Demon Lord, the cooldown for the summons was 48 hours and it was present for only 3 minutes, but his increased Shard Level had improved upon those two things over time.

“Rapid Sprouting!”

Regnark’s wife, Chareese, was next to the Dark Shard, and with her Nature Mana she started to plant large Treants directly into the stone floor of the corridor; as a result of her own increased Shard Level, she no longer required dirt to be nearby, but instead was able to plant her Defenders and Defenses into any surface.  Normally, Treants had a Maturation Time of 50 minutes, but some of the Nature Shard’s cooldown abilities could dramatically reduce the Maturation Time to only seconds.  Before too long, there were hundreds of 50-foot-tall, walking trees – which had bark stronger than steel – assembled and ready to bash apart the Heliothropes once they were in range.

“Extended Illumination!”

Just past Eisa on Fred’s other side, Roady lit up the corridor with an enormous ball of light for a few seconds, before a 100-strong army of 12-foot-tall, shiny Crystal Golems appeared, with arms that looked like sharp blades.  The Crystal Golems were a little different than normal Defenders, mainly because they were actually Form Projections from the Light Shard, which Roady could personally control as if he were one of them instead of simply giving orders.  His Extended Illumination cooldown ability allowed them to reach 5 times further away from his location, because otherwise they could only move 100 feet away.

“Avenging Tornado!”

On Roady’s other side, Ravenne used an ability to create a concentrated tornado 100 feet tall that lifted her up in the air, as if she was riding on top of it.  The Air Shard could use the powerful ability to direct the tornado where she wanted it, and it was powerfully destructive; it also didn’t have any vulnerabilities and would only dissipate after 5 minutes, if Ravenne ran out of Air Mana to maintain it, or if she cancelled it herself.

Lastly, toward the left wall, the massive Dire Wolf simply stood at the ready, as most of her abilities as a Fire and Water Shard were in the form of Defenses and what were essentially spells that could be cast at a shorter range.  Deecy was prepared to absolutely devastate the incoming Heliothropes with unrestrained aggression.

It was less than 30 seconds after they arrived when the next group of blue-skinned invaders arrived, and the team sent everything they had at them.  Fred’s Wasps zipped quickly around the Fodder, as attempts to sting them from the rear caused their barriers to flare up in response to the attack. When they turned around to cut down the flying insects, they were left vulnerable to the swarms of Lesser Imps, who threw fireballs at them from up high.  Treants, Pit Fiends, and Crystal Golems advanced and attacked the distracted front lines of the enemy, and those that were hurt got an extra infusion of health when Roady used some of his healing abilities to save them from immediate death.  After an initial exchange, which saw hundreds of Fodder dead within seconds from the onslaught of powerful Defenders, their forces backed off from the dead and temporarily retreated.

That’s when a tornado flashed through the next ranks with blazing-fast quickness, tossing them around like they were nothing, stripping them of most, if not all, of their protective barriers.  Deecy flashed into the fight at that point and tossed around Fireballs, Icicle Explosions, and Localized Combustion spells, which either engulfed them in flames, impaled them with slivers of ice, or made them explode.  In her Dire Wolf form, she was also fast and agile enough to fight them herself, as she darted with such speed that the Fodder were unprepared for her sharp teeth and strong jaws, her mouth big enough to bite them in half.  At the same time, she dropped Fire Walls and Icicle Rains over her back path, which activated as soon as the Heliothropes followed after her.

Needless to say, she was a whirlwind of destruction and death.

“Switch!”

His shout let the Dire Wolf know to retreat, and the Treants, Wasps, Golems, and the rest of that group advanced forward again, and the slaughter began anew.  The purple-skinned Soldiers were next after the majority of the Fodder were killed, and weren’t much harder to eliminate, though the red-skinned Elites were a bit tougher.  The much quicker and larger Heliothropes were harder to wear down, and losses to their Defenders started to mount. When they were killed, they released the Mana that went into them, though some of it was permanently lost; regardless, Fred was able to gather it up and send it shooting back towards the Shards, who then used it to create even more Defenders.

In addition, Fred continued to create more Wasps, which were actually quite effective in causing enough of a distraction that the Elites were unprepared for the swarms attacking them, and began to fall.  The team was doing well, but that was when the Commander finally entered the range to attack them.

“Eisa, are they nearly done?”

Fred didn’t really need to ask her, because he could see that they were, indeed, nearly ready.  “Yes.  Right about… now!”

A total of 8 Level 3 Rock Giants, all 120 feet tall, suddenly materialized around the Commander.  Fred moved to Eisa’s side as she fell to her knees in exhaustion, the rapid expenditure of nearly all her Earth Mana in such a short amount of time very wearying.  “Are you alright?”

She nodded, even as she stared at the Rock Giants battling against the Commander.  Each of the Giants suddenly had a shiny aura around them, which Fred knew came from Roady; the Reflective Aura was an ability he had that caused up to 50% of the damage inflicted on the Aura to be reflected upon the enemy.  With just the first few strikes of the Commander’s weapons against the Giants, it was obvious that it worked, as its shield flared brightly after each hit; however, those strikes were also devastatingly strong and came so quickly that 2 of the Rock Giants were killed within the first few seconds of the battle.

“Those things are entirely too strong, you know that?” Eisa finally said, getting up off her knees.  Fred grabbed the Mana that had been released by the deaths of the Giants and sent it into his wife; the moment the Earth Mana infused her body, she perked back up.  She wasn’t 100% recovered, but it had definitely helped.

“They are, but I’m pretty sure your Giants will kill it.”  Already, the barrier’s glow flickered away as it took even more damage from the strikes of the Giants and the reflected damage from the Aura, and it began to suffer wounds.  The next moment, the shield was back, and another 2 of Eisa’s Defenders were killed, but they managed to whittle it down enough that its attacks were doing seemingly more damage to itself than it dished out.  By the time it was killed, only 1 of the Giants was left alive, but Eisa was already working on creating more replacements.

Meanwhile, Fred kept pulling at the nearby Soulforce and converting it to Mana of different kinds, some for his own Wasp blueprints and a little for Eisa, especially after her exhaustion nearly made her collapse.  The more he did it near the Anchor, though, the more it was wearing on him; there was only so much that he could do without passing out – which had nearly happened a time or two while he had worked to create the dungeon corridor.

“Replenish what you can!  This is going to be a long day,” he shouted, and the Shards did just that.

Less than an hour later, with all but the dregs of their Mana exhausted and those dregs just keeping them alive, Fred retreated with his friends, having killed another 3 Commanders and their subordinates.  As they passed through Milton’s Combat Units, Fred was barely able to concentrate enough to use Modified Soulforce to lift them all into the air and toward the observation tower in the distance.

“That’s all we’ve got,” Fred told Milton, as soon as they set down on the platform.  He was breathing hard and just wanted to lay down from the strain of manipulating so many different energies, but he forced himself to stay upright.  Further away from the Anchor, he started to feel better, but it was going to be a little bit before he was recovered enough to do just about anything. His top priority would be to refill the Mana of the Shards, but for now, they all rested against the backside of the tower in exhaustion.

“Don’t worry, we’ll take it from here.”

Chapter 36

“Alright; let’s show them what we’ve got.”

“Brint, are you ready?”

The Proctan was currently situated in an Airborne Security Craft (ASC) with his wife, Whisp, located about halfway down the corridor.  They had left a few minutes earlier when it seemed as though Fred and the powerful Shards were on their last legs, so they were in position before they were needed.  The ASC was essentially a hovering platform with an external dome, and it had a pair of mounts that contained a single Laser Cannon Emplacement and one Railgun Penetrator for defensive purposes – but that wasn’t its main purpose.

It was for the general of Milton’s army to coordinate the battle from an elevated and relatively safe position.  From there, Brint could see and direct almost all the Combat Units that were arrayed against the Heliothropes now that the Defenders from the world’s Dungeon Cores were dead.  While the Station Core was certainly capable of doing it himself, he left most of the direction to Brint so that Milton could focus on the battle as a whole.

“Yes, I’m ready.  Moving Units forward now.”

The next phase of the battle had begun.

While not as impressive as the gigantic Defenders that had dominated the early defense of the Corridor Dungeon, Milton’s Combat Units were still powerful – and much more numerous. They also had an advantage at the start of their attack, as Fred and his friends had sent all their remaining forces in a suicide attack that had wiped out nearly another whole formation that was arriving.  This gave Brint and the Combat Units he directed the chance to prepare for the incoming Heliothropes.

Hundreds of Titanacondas and Bearillas were lined up in their own formation up front, waiting for the Fodder in the next formation to arrive.  When they were close enough, the Combat Units charged forward.  Before they clashed, however, a massive contingent of 3,000 D-Ranged Monkeys located behind the front lines leaned back before grunting as they whipped their 4 arms forward, releasing a volley of Weightonite-tipped javelins that arced up and over the Bearillas and Titanacondas.  The deadly rain of over 12,000 projectiles fell on the 1,000 Fodder and slammed into their protective barriers, eliminating most of them.  Although they were designed to soften them up for the next clash rather than to kill them, they did end up killing a few Fodder that were hit by 6 or more javelins in quick succession.

When the Bearillas and Titanacondas reached the front lines, they didn’t stop as they absolutely tore through the weakened barriers of the Fodder they were up against, taking a few injuries as a result, but killing hundreds in the first few seconds.  They continued for a few more seconds, killing as many as they could before Milton saw many of the barriers that had been drained come back up – and then they retreated just as fast as they came.

Another volley of javelins slammed into the Fodder that chased after the powerful Combat Units, killing a few more and draining shields again.  From the edges of the corridor came two waves of Qwizards, who spit out flammable projectiles that turned into sparks once they made contact with the Fodder; the quick lizards then used their Fire Affinity to turn those sparks into conflagrations that washed over the Heliothropes.  That attack didn’t do much to hurt or deplete their shields, but the hundreds of Elemental Casters in the walls and the ceiling used the flames being created to do their own damage.

Working together, the explosive force of fire being strengthened and expanded within a second was enough to nearly rival the Celestial Orbs when they detonated recently, though it was much more contained.  Needless to say, the Fodder didn’t survive the explosion, as they were wiped out to the last.

The 100 Soldiers following after got a taste of the same javelins that had helped to wipe out the Fodder, as well as another charge of Titanacondas and Bearillas.  Though one of the Titanacondas was killed during the exchange, Milton thought it was a fair trade; the rest of the Combat Units were slightly injured as they retreated, but there were multiple Healers further back that would help to patch them back up.  That was one of the advantages over the Defenders that his Combat Units enjoyed: healing, which was basically non-existent with the powerful Defenders that the Dungeon Cores had supplied.

With most of the Soldiers killed by the charge of Bearillas and Titanacondas, there were primarily only Elites left from this particular formation of Heliothropes.  Another flight of javelins weakened them only slightly, but then the D-Ranged Monkeys fell back.  Stomping past them and up to the front were Weightonite Golems, which weren’t technically Combat Units; instead, they were 50-foot-tall formations of Weightonite that were animated by a Proctan riding in a semi-protected cockpit located behind its back shoulder.  They were extremely heavy and therefore quite durable, even against the weapons of the Elites – and there were a lot of them.  A full 100 of them squared up against the few remaining Soldiers and 10 Elites from the formation, and the Heliothropes were more than happy to fight.

Of course, with a squishy target in sight, the Elites propelled themselves off the ground and aimed for the Golems’ controllers, but the Proctans were ready for that.  A crude club that was 12 feet long and 6 inches wide was held in both the Golems’ hands, and they used them to effectively swat at the Elites in the air.  The impact of the clubs against the Elites and Soldiers on the ground wasn’t enough to seriously hurt them, or even deplete their barriers, but it did something else: knock them into the air, joining the Elites, who were already airborne.

A force of Diamine Quagonlings 500-strong dove in a swarm around the 10 Elites and the few remaining Soldiers, the flying lizards slashing with their extremely sharp claws in a single pass, before flying away out of range.  One of the Quagonlings was too slow and was clipped by a sword that was flung out in defense, and it fell to the ground with a crunch as its wing was clipped.  It wasn’t killed, but it was certainly severely injured.

The Quagonling slashes took off yet another large amount of the barriers around the Elites, but they also depleted the Soldiers’ protection. Those Soldiers were then killed when spell after spell and arrow after arrow slammed into them and the larger, red-skinned targets while still suspended in the air.  The walls came alive with attacks big and small, from the weakest bolt of magical force to air blades that could slice up a Bearilla, and there was no avoiding the barrage.  The Laser Cannon Emplacements, Railgun Penetrators, and magnetic launchers joined in, stripping any remaining glowing shields from their targets and dropping the Elites to the floor approximately 100 feet below.

They never made it because they were torn apart by the maelstrom of attacks.

The next formation of Fodder was lured away to the side rooms by more Adventurers, giving Proctan Healers the opportunity to heal the injured Quagonling and resetting all of the Combat Units back into their previous positions.

“Nice job, Brint.  Only a single loss and a few minor casualties.”

The response back was pleased, but also cautious.  “Thanks.  Whisp said that they will likely adjust their tactics now, so I’m implementing Battle Plan 2.”

Milton confirmed the change.  That was exactly the reason he wanted Whisp up there with him, because while she wasn’t an expert in participating in battles, she had a whip-smart mind and could come up with battle plans on the fly.  Of course, there were already plenty of different plans up their sleeves, but having someone up there who could alter them if needed was extremely valuable.

Battle Plan 2 meant that it was Milton’s turn to participate, if only to give out orders to a wide variety of Proctans.  At this point, the Station Core was basically acting as a communication hub, as he could speak with many different people all at once.

“Be ready.  Battle Plan 2 initiating.”

He received hundreds of confirmations, and he could see through Fred’s Shaping that the word was being passed on to the Adventurers in the forward sections.  As soon as everyone was aware of the plan, hundreds of potted plants were tossed out of the walls or dropped from above.  Before their clay pots could shatter on the hard stone of the floor, cushions of air caught them and placed them down gently, spacing them out in a line all the way across the corridor.

When the remaining Soldiers – those that hadn’t been pulled away by the attacks of the side rooms full of Adventurers – and the Elites that were with them raced ahead toward the Bearillas and Titanacondas seemingly waiting for them, the Heliothropes lifted into the air just as a volley of javelins was launched by the D-Ranged Monkeys.  Having seen what had happened to the previous formation, the enemy had changed their tactics, just as expected.

But so had Brint, and by extension Milton.

As the Heliothropes flew unharmed over the javelins that rained down on them, they approached the line of potted plants along the ground as they descended back to it.  From previous experience with them, Milton and the Proctans had learned that none of the Heliothropes liked to float using their glowing barriers for long, or at least more than was absolutely necessary.  Therefore, they knew they would drop back down after avoiding the first volley, so that they could take the Bearillas and Titanacondas head-on.

“Support, now!”

All of the Support Class Proctans had the exact same ability, which was the first one they ever received: Flora Manipulation.  Utilizing their ability to manipulate plants, the hundreds of Proctans in the walls reached out to the potted plants and caused them to explode with rapid growth.  Thick, vine-like leaves that reminded Milton of an aloe plant shot up and out dozens of feet, creating a jungle-like obstacle as they grew out in multiple directions.  The Heliothropes just happened to be right in the middle of the growth when they passed by, and they were caught within the jungle of leaves.  The leaves immediately wrapped around the Soldiers and Elites and attempted to squeeze them – to little effect.  That wasn’t necessarily a surprise, given how strong the enemy was as well as their protective barriers, but the entire obstacle was more of a way to distract them.

10,000 Squirrelings – the large, squirrel-like Combat Units that Milton hated so much but were so useful, with their sharp claws and ability to scurry around obstacles such as undulating leaf-vines – emerged from behind the Bearillas and Titanacondas and descended on the jungle even as the Heliothropes easily started to cut their way free.  They weren’t prepared for hundreds of small figures to stealthily maneuver through the obstacle and attack them from every direction, swiping at them incessantly with their sharp claws.  Though dozens of the Squirrelings were killed in the process, most of them were able to scramble away from the flailing attacks of the Heliothropes with ease.

Having cut a way through most of the plants after only about 15 seconds, they were completely unprepared for the 1,000 Proctan Rogues to suddenly appear at their backs and sides, with a dozen or more ganging up on each of the Elites.

After canceling their Light Spectrum Invisibility with surprise attacks, they struck out.  Their Diamine swords did extreme amounts of damage during their attacks, depleting the barriers of every one of the Soldiers, who were consequently killed with a second follow-up strike.  The Elites staggered from the abrupt attacks but didn’t lose their glowing shields, though many of them were low as a result.

Another volley of javelins fell in a rain over the Elites as the Squirrelings and Rogues retreated using their incredible speed.  The distracting barrage of javelins was just enough damage to stagger the Elites before they could try and counterattack against the abrupt strikes of the Rogues.  It also gave the Support Class Proctans the chance to reverse the process of the plants, rapidly decaying them and removing most of the moisture, making all of the still-intact plants and scattered pieces dry and brittle.

That was when there was a brief visit by Qwizards again, who spit out sparks on the bonfire waiting to happen, and the Elemental Casters in the walls did their thing.  A massive wall of fire enveloped the Elites as the dried plants burned, and then some other Casters used their Air Affinity to feed the fire and turn it into a maelstrom of flames, pressing against the enemy amidst the firestorm.

Within a few seconds, however, all of the Elites hopped out of the fire, all but 2 of them missing their shields now, and those that had them depleted with burns all over their bodies.  It wasn’t enough to debilitate them, though, as they looked eager for revenge.

It was too bad for them when multiple Weightonite clubs came smashing down on them, pulverizing the ones that were missing their glowing barriers.  The ones that still had a sliver of their shields remaining survived slightly longer, but they were already on their back foot when they were confronted by the Weightonite Golems after emerging from the fire and were ill-prepared to defend themselves.  One got knocked back into the flames after having its barrier depleted from multiple hits, and the other one was hit to the side, where it rolled in front of 2 other Golems, who then finished the job.

With the burning wall still going strong, the next formation of Heliothropes was already approaching.  Milton already knew that Brint was going to enact Battle Plan 3, which took advantage of the fiery obstacle to dictate what the enemy would do.  Just as the Golems retreated back behind the front lines again, javelins flew through the air just in time to hit the Fodder that were attempting to float over the flaming wall.  Diamine Quagonlings dove down and struck out at the Fodder that had been hit by javelins, shredding the rest of their barriers and either killing them immediately or dropping them into a fiery death below.

Those Fodder that survived, as well as the Soldiers behind them, were hit by yet another barrage of javelins, though it was less effective because they were prepared for it.  The Casters let the fire sputter out, though they held the smoke that had been produced in the air above using their Air Affinity; when the remaining Fodder along with the Soldiers and Elites were close enough, they dropped the smoke down on them, accompanied by applications of Dark Affinity and spells from Adventurers that produced a darkening effect in an area.  A strip filled with magical darkness and smoke now blanketed a 50-foot-wide space that the Heliothropes were entering, though their glowing shields immediately started to push back that darkness a little.

A total of 2,000 Quassassins, the stealthy, large cat Combat Unit that Milton could produce, slunk through the darkness to attack the Heliothropes; while at the same time a few hundred different Necromancers along the walls animated the corpses of killed Soldiers and Elites, sending them to attack the enveloped enemy from behind. Neither of those attackers did more than annoy the Heliothropes, but they were a distraction for when the darkness fell a few seconds later and a force of 2,000 Tank Class Proctans appeared on the front lines, who attacked as soon as the area was clear.

Exchanging blows and dodging attacks, the Proctans managed to take out the Soldiers in short order, but then fled when it was just the Elites left.  While they might have been able to kill them all by themselves, they would suffer mass casualties if they were forced to fight the 20-foot-tall, red-skinned menaces.  Instead, another volley of javelins checked the Elites’ progress for a moment, allowing the Tanks to break away – and then they were lit up from the walls with more spells, lasers, charged tritanium slivers, and iron bars shot from magnetic launchers.

When they were unable to move because of the barrage, their protective barriers fell quickly, but not yet completely; in order to finish them off, the barrage stopped and the front line of Bearillas and Titanacondas surged forward again, finishing off the Elites with an overwhelming force of incredibly strong Combat Units.  A Bearilla was killed in the exchange, while many others were hurt, but they could be healed up.

“Why didn’t the attackers in the walls simply finish them off from the longer range, rather than risk them in a fight?” Fred asked.

Milton pointed at the finished battle showing through the man’s view-Shaping.  “Because of that,” he said.  The Bearillas and Titanacondas were bringing back corpses of the Heliothropes with them as they got back into position.  “They need to eat.”

“Oh.  I see.”

Unlike the Defenders that the Dungeon Cores had provided, as well as Sandra’s Dungeon Monsters, his own Combat Units were living beings and had to eat.  Thankfully, since they were full of nanites that ruthlessly assimilated everything that was eaten, they didn’t need to defecate everywhere. If that hadn’t been the case, it would’ve made for a messy and stinky corridor.

On and on it went, with changes to the Battle Plans that followed based on the reactions of the Heliothropes.  Eventually, some of Sandra’s Dungeon Monsters were brought up to help in minor ways, but they were mainly kept separate because it was very difficult to coordinate with Echo and her team as well as Brint at the same time.  On the Station, the cooperation between Sandra’s contributions and Milton’s Combat Units was much easier because he and the Dungeon Core were in sync – and they also had far fewer components to manage all at one time.

When the next Commander approached, it was time to pull out the heavy artillery.

“Mobile Attack Squad, forward!”

Three Heavy Armor Defense Vehicles sped through the lines of Combat Units to arrive near the front.  On each of the HADVs were mounted 4 Particle Accelerators and 2 Laser Cannon Emplacements, operated by the six Proctans on board.  As soon as the Commander was within 1,000 feet, they unleashed a barrage of 12 molecular bond-destroying beams, joined by an additional one from the walls, along with dozens of lasers, charged tritanium slivers, and explosive bars coming from the magnetic launchers.  The space around the destructive beams, all focused on a single target, made the very air seem to warp and wobble, as if they were affecting the fabric of reality.  It was a bit of a worry to Milton, to be honest, because he hadn’t seen anything quite like it before, as he’d never used so many Particle Accelerators at one time.

Regardless, the Commander didn’t know what had hit it.  It attempted to block some of the attacks with its weapons, but the barrier around its form and weapons dropped so quickly from 100% to 0% that the Heliothrope was shocked – and it wasn’t the only one.  Based on the usages of the Accelerators in the past, including on the Station, he knew they were powerful, but he was surprised how a baker’s dozen of them could wipe out the glowing barrier of a Commander in less than 2 seconds.

As soon as its protection disappeared, it didn’t have time to react, as the beams – along with lasers and magnetic projectiles – tore through its strong weapons and body within seconds, slicing through its spine and head almost simultaneously.  It fell to the floor in steaming pieces of flesh that Milton could just imagine his Bearillas were salivating over.

Unfortunately, their success had a drawback.  With the swiftness of the Commander’s execution, the Proctans on the HADVs had been unprepared for such a quick resolution. As a result, they kept firing the Particle Accelerators, which shot through where the Commander had been and continued for another 1,000 feet before dispersing.  Unfortunately, this led to them hitting the ceiling above at an angle, tearing through the Maginite layer like it was nothing, killing whoever was on the other side in an instant.  Dozens of Adventurers and a few Proctans died as a result, their bodies partially (or in the cases of a few of them, completely) obliterated by the beams.  It was entirely possible that the Adventurers that had been killed in this fashion, even if they had their souls recovered, wouldn’t be able to be resurrected.  His own methods would have major trouble if the majority of the bodies weren’t there to be reprocessed.

It was a mistake that the Proctans immediately tried to remedy by shutting down the weapons, but the damage had already been done.  Now that they knew how powerful these weapons were, they would be a lot more careful next time.

“Milton, we’re down to just under a month before the dimensional wound will be stabilized.  You can’t afford to let many more of them die.”

The Station Core acknowledged ALANNA’s warning, but there wasn’t much more that could be done at the moment.  They were doing the best they could with what they had available.

“Milton, they’ve stopped streaming out of their Ship,” he heard from Fred a moment later, as the viewing portal that the man Shaped moved enough to see the cavern where they originated.  True to his words, the very last Commander had just left the Ship, though there were still at least another pair of them inside.  But apparently they had reached the limit of what could be spared outside of defending the Stabilizing Anchor, which was a good sign.

What wasn’t a good sign, though, was the fact that this last grouping of Heliothrope formations had changed tactics once again.

Chapter 37

Instead of the different Heliothrope formations arriving one at a time, they surged out of the cavern and then assembled together into one massive group.  More than that, there were enough of the smaller foes to constitute a little more than 2 full formation groupings.  Approximately 24,000 Fodder, 2,200 Soldiers, 213 Elites, and a Commander were all scrunched together; worse than that was the fact that when they got closer to the front lines of Milton’s Combat Units, most of the Fodder, Soldiers, and Elites had taken off from the ground, floating through the air at different heights.  Instead of an organized formation, it was a swarm of Heliothropes that filled the large Corridor from the ceiling to the floor.

They moved slowly for some reason, and Milton thought it might be because the Fodder couldn’t float through the air for long.  When the Commander started to smash every wall that wasn’t already destroyed, as well as the ceiling above, he realized the intent behind it.  The force of Heliothropes was going to take it cautiously and destroy every inch of the corridor as it advanced, and the screen of Heliothropes was designed to stop the deadly barrage coming from the Particle Accelerators from hitting the Commander immediately.  The Station Core had to admit that it was certainly a good plan, because there would be just enough of a delay to allow the Commander to move when the weapons fired, dodging out of the way of their path.  The screen was also more than enough to prevent any of the other lasers, spells, and projectiles from getting through, further complicating matters.

Well, crud.

“Those closest to the Heliothropes: Fire at anything you can reach, and then retreat!”

Milton expected his general order to be carried out immediately by the Proctans near the realm of destruction coming their way, but nothing happened.  He tried to mentally connect with any of them that were in danger of being destroyed, but for some reason he couldn’t find them.  For all intents and purposes, they didn’t exist; those closer to the entrance to the Corridor Dungeon, as well as Brint, were reachable, but past that… nothing.

“What’s going—oh.”

For the first time since they opened up the Heliothrope’s cavern, Milton noticed something different about the Soldiers.  The purple-skinned Heliothropes now all had a metal cylinder strapped to their chest, which he immediately recognized: They were the same items that messed up his communication with different aspects of his dungeon on Haven Station, but they seemed to be amplified to reach even further than ever before.  The Station Core wasn’t sure if it was because of the sheer number of them or some other reason, but the wave of interference was coming closer by the second.

It also meant something else.

“Brint!  Send all of the Combat Units to attack!  You’re going to lose connection with—”

It was too late to finish his communication, sadly, as he felt his connection to the Proctan fade the next moment.  It seemed Brint got the message, fortunately, as the rear ranks of the Combat Units below him started to move at a run toward the approaching horde.  When those up front didn’t shift, however, simply standing or gliding around without moving forward, Brint and Whisp took the airborne vehicle down closer to the ground.  Once they were within a few dozen feet of the closest ones, they finally started to move, as if his proximity was all that was needed.

But it didn’t work for those in the far front, which included the Bearillas and Titanacondas.  They didn’t move at all, even when Brint was literally right on top of them; Milton saw the Proctan even reach out of the airborne craft and touch them, but nothing happened.  They were essentially dead in the water, because they wouldn’t even defend themselves if they were attacked.

Not good.

Thankfully, Brint and Whisp got the word to the Weightonite Golem operators, so they were able to stride forward along with those that were able to follow Brint’s last instructions to attack, though they had to kick the unresponsive Bearillas and Titanacondas out of their way.  Brint then turned to the walls and tried to shout about firing and then fleeing, but it was so loud at that point, with the Commander destroying everything in its path that it would be a miracle if anyone heard him.

Fortunately, a miracle came true as the left-hand wall erupted sporadically with Laser Cannon fire, followed by a spattering of spells and other projectiles, until there was a barrage slamming into the forward portions of Fodder floating their way.  The right-hand wall followed suit soon afterward, but they were barely doing any damage because they were all targeting different Heliothropes.  Still, the barrage caused a number of Fodder to fall from the air as their protective barriers fell, or as they were forced to land to let them recharge after a bit of abuse.  The one Particle Accelerator left in the forward section fired and stuttered through the Fodder even as it sought out the Commander behind them all, but it was stopped by a floating wall of Elites that bunched together to block it.  Their shield percentage dropped precipitously, but they also shifted around quickly enough that none of them lost it completely.

Still, hundreds of Fodder and a few Soldiers were killed in all the attacks. But it was a bare fraction of what was still there.  Milton saw Brint flying back toward the back lines of Combat Units streaming down the corridor, until he finally came back into range.

“I did what I could, but without specific orders to retreat and organize better, they won’t be as effective.  I’m going to let Echo and the others know the same.”

“Good,” Milton approved.  “It is entirely possible that they will lose contact with them the same way Sandra does in the dungeon on the Station, so warn them of that.”

Brint sent his confirmation, and the airborne craft flew closer to where the people from Sandra’s world were situated.  They were actually all flying around on the Pegasi that he’d seen Echo utilize before, though the Dwarf, Gerold and the Gnome, Hazel were riding on the same one – and they didn’t look happy to be doing it.  The others looked relatively comfortable on their flying mounts, thankfully.

In less than a minute, the constructs and Dungeon Monsters that Sandra had sent down to help were streaming forward.  Even the smallest of the contributions were of sufficient numbers to cause some havoc: Hobgoblin Mages – basically large, spell-casting goblins – and Large, Steel-armored Sentinels – which looked like 4-foot-tall robots made of steel, wielding swords crafted by Sandra or some of her Blacksmith friends on her world, neither of which Milton had really had the chance to see in action yet.  These were also accompanied by 1,000 of the flying Sonic Blademasters, which had helped with some of the previous waves of formations, as well as 500 Stabilized Shapeshifters, all in the form of Echo and wielding the bows that reminded Milton of a combination of a compound bow and a crossbow – but with more force behind the release.  The Echo clones were riding Pegasi, as well, allowing them to move in and out of battle with surprising ease, as well as being able to fire from multiple angles.

Accompanying those Dungeon Monsters was a fleet of 20 High Peak Rocs, which had been instrumental in destroying the Stabilizing Anchor on Sandra’s world, as well as a full 5 Seed Converter Drakes that had been increased to their maximum strength and size.  With the 150 Enhanced Celestial Authorities joining them, the angels could help to thin out the floating Heliothropes comprising the screen heading their way.

For attacking from the ground, there were 200 Shadow Wyvines, the large wyvern-feline hybrid that could slink through shadows; 100 Platinum-banded Wyrms, which slithered quickly over the ground; 50 Expanded Mobile Fortifications, which could expand into a deadly mixture of swinging swords and deadly warhammers; 40 Clockwork Kings, which could provide their own armies of toy soldier-like constructs from a backpack on their backs; 20 Alloyed Defenders, which could utilize elemental energy just like the people from her world; and 5 giant Steel Colossi, which towered over any other figure in the corridor.

Lastly, there were 200 Unobtrusive Multi-access Repair Drones that could heal the other Dungeon Monsters from a distance.  If they were destroyed, they would also explode dramatically, which was a bonus.

As the Heliothropes continued to work their way down the defensive dungeon, with the Commander destroying everything it could, Milton could see multiple attacks from the walls and the ceiling from those that didn’t flee when given the chance before.  Whether it was dropping a Plasma Bomb or a sliver of Weightonite or using Railguns that had cooled down long enough to fire again, the bravery of those who stayed behind was inspiring – and hurtful at the same time.  Fred still indicated that the souls of those that died were being sucked toward the Anchor, even at the distance they were at, and their deaths would only push the dimensional wound further toward stabilization.

Hopefully it won’t be enough to get us to that point.

The clash between Milton’s Combat Units and the front part of the Heliothrope force went well for about 20 seconds before it fell apart.  Quagonlings and D-Ranged Monkeys attacked by diving or throwing javelins, which initially ate into the front ranks, but without constant instructions to retreat and attack again when it was safe, both stayed too close to the enemy to survive longer than the initial clash.  Squirrelings were slaughtered by the hundreds along with Quassassins that attacked all-out without thought to subtlety, though they did manage to overwhelm a few Fodder and kill them as a result.  The Qwizards sent out their flaming spit and were able to swarm the Fodder out front with waves of flames, but they weren’t strong enough to do more than weaken their shields by less than half.  A few were forced to land and let their barriers recharge; and of those few, only a single one died when it fell and was covered in Squirrelings that tore it apart.

The only ones that had any success were the Golems that stomped toward the Heliothropes, as they were able to withstand a lot of damage and hit the Fodder hard enough to nearly kill them with one strike of their clubs.  However, given the speed of the Heliothropes and the vulnerability of the operators on their back shoulders, it wasn’t long before they were picked off and the Golems fell to a pile of rubble.

Sandra’s Dungeon Monsters fared much better, if only because there were many more of them – and they were quite powerful on their own.  They also worked better independently, didn’t get in each other’s way, and had time for specific instructions given to them by Echo and her group before they were sent away.  The Echo clones riding Pegasi stayed near the edges of the corridor as they rained down bolt after bolt at the approaching Heliothropes. The Hobgoblin Mages also stayed out of the way on the ground by staying near the sides, where they could attack from afar with magical spells.  They were relatively weak by themselves, the equivalent of a G or F-Rated Adventurer if he was being generous, but then there were a lot of them.

The angels stuck near the ceiling and fired off bolts of light that slammed into the Fodder and were just as impactful as the projectiles fired by the Echo clones, while the High Peak Rocs opened up portals that emerged right in the middle of the Elites.  The abrupt opening of the portals didn’t cut them in half like Milton hoped they would, but instead shunted them to the side with enormous amounts of damage to their barriers, a few of which caused the red-skinned enemies to drop out of the air.  They survived because their shields regenerated before they hit the ground, but the damage was still impressive.

The Rocs emerged from the portals and immediately started to attack the Commander, stopping its progress in destroying the corridor by making it focus on them.  The attack also caused the Elites to pursue them, drawing them away from the rest of the army, which was exactly what was needed.  It was a necessary sacrifice so that the others could get to work unhindered.

Clockwork Kings and their armies of toy soldiers joined forces with the Wyvines, the Sentinels, and the Wyrms in the initial push, tearing through the lower ranks of the Fodder, which caused those Heliothropes above to come down to help.  However, weakened by the fact that they were holding themselves aloft with their protective barriers and being hit by projectiles and spells from Echo clones, angels, and Hobgoblin Mages, they were ripe for being finished off by 1,000 Sonic Blademasters that moved in quickly enough to tear them apart with their sonic-based attacks.

Behind the initial wave of Dungeon Monsters attacking the Fodder came the Expanded Mobile Fortifications, and they expanded enough to fill up the width of the corridor a few times over.  They moved forward as a group, following in the wake of the initial swarm of Clockwork Kings and the others, helping to wipe out more Fodder as they descended from above.  The Alloyed Defenders were next, moving across the ground with a speed that rivaled the Proctans, and they jumped in to fight the Soldiers that were finally moving forward to intercept the Dungeon Monsters that were attacking them.

For once, it wasn’t the Heliothropes that were the attackers – it was the Dungeon Monsters created from Sandra’s Mana.  The former defenders were tearing them apart, and despite there being thousands of Fodder, they were falling from the air like flies buzzing through a cloud of poison.  Their strategy to create a screen backfired as they had diminished glowing barriers when they were abruptly overwhelmed by powerful constructs and Dungeon Monsters along with deadly projectiles.

The Enhanced Celestial Authorities eventually ran out of enough elemental energy to fire more bolts of light, so they streamed forward with their wings and swords made of pure light, taking the fight to them.  The Echo clones moved up as the Fodder fell, reaching even more with their weapons.  When hundreds of the blue-skinned foes tried to attack them, they simply flew backwards on their Pegasi and fired in retreat, which was more than enough to end them.

It was a slaughter, but it still took a while.  The Rocs that were attacking the Commander were overwhelmed in less than a minute despite their size, speed, and maneuverability, having done a negligible amount of damage to the Commander’s barrier.  By the time they were finished off, over two-thirds of the Heliothropes had been killed, but now the Elites were coming back to help.

It was then that the massive Seed Converter Drakes, the metal dragons that had to be fed materials to grow larger, rushed in to help.  They shot through the remaining Fodder and Soldiers as if they were annoying gnats as they rushed toward the Elites, immediately using their jaws and claws to tear into them, reducing their barriers down quickly, and a few dozen of them fell within the first 15 seconds of their clash.  That, unfortunately, was the best they could do, as they were quickly overwhelmed by sheer numbers; there were originally hundreds of the red-skinned menaces, and even the metal of the dragons couldn’t hold up to constant and repeated attacks.

Still, they lived long enough to prevent the Elites from going to the aid of the others, as the last of the Fodder and Soldiers were finished off, though with devastating losses on the part of Sandra’s Dungeon Monsters.  More than half of even the most powerful of them were killed, with the Fortifications having taken the biggest beating.  Thankfully, the Repair Drones were there to help fix them up, though with how much damage they had taken, the fight would likely be over before they were fully repaired.

With the Elites now freed to attack, they fell upon the different constructs with a vengeance.  Even the powerful Alloyed Defenders couldn’t withstand their attacks for long, and while more than half of them were killed during the fight, all of Sandra’s Dungeon Monsters that had waded into the fight were killed.  All that were left were the Steel Colossi, the Hobgoblin Mages, and the Echo clones.

It wasn’t enough when the Commander stopped breaking the walls to participate in the fight at that point.  The massive Heliothrope strode forward through the Elites at the rear, pushing them out of the way, and absolutely destroyed the Colossi, who were busy with the few Elites that were attacking them.  With each strike of a sword, battleaxe, or warhammer, the massive constructs were sliced apart or battered to such a degree that they were basically piles of scrap metal by that point.

As soon as they fell, however, the Heliothropes were exposed to the Mobile Attack Squad that had been waiting for a clear shot.  All 12 Particle Accelerators fired at almost the same time, slamming into the Commander for just a second before the Elites interposed themselves in between the beams and the massive Heliothrope, allowing it to move out of the way before its barrier fell entirely.  The Elites could withstand a single beam for a few seconds before it took down their barrier, and they used that to continue and move around, trading with other Elites as their shields weakened, but it wasn’t going to be enough.  The Proctans operating the weapons only had about 20 seconds left on this current charge, and they were already moving them to hit the Commander behind them.

That was until the giant Heliothrope bent down, placed its equally giant battleaxe on the floor of the corridor, and then with a great heave, it proceeded to spin the weapon as it was released to skid along the ground.  It spun with such speed that it was a blur, moving along the ground and pushing dead bodies out of the way, tearing through the line of Bearillas and Titanacondas, and finally smashing into the HADVs with enough force to throw them into the air.  Fortunately, as soon as they were hit, the Particle Accelerators stopped firing, as continuing to fire would’ve caused them to wreak havoc on the walls and ceiling full of people.  The vehicles had been hit into the air around 300 feet before they descended back toward the ground, and when they hit it was obvious to Milton that all of the Accelerators had been destroyed.

Uh-oh.

That wasn’t good.  There was still a handful of Particle Accelerators along the walls, but not all of them could reach the Commander at the same time.  There were still millions of Adventurers and thousands of Proctans, but there really wasn’t anything strong enough to kill the Commander easily.  Milton had a few Molecular Disruptors that he could activate closer to the entrance, an Unstable Void, and a dozen large Plasma Bombs just in case, but even in tandem, they were all a last-ditch defense if they were forced to flee.  Even then, it might not be enough to actually kill that thing.

“I’m doing it.  There’s no other choice.”

“But—”

“I know, but if I don’t, then there’s a chance it will get out.”

Milton listened to Fred and Eisa argue for a moment before interceding.  “What are you talking about?”

They were silent for a moment before Fred hesitatingly said, “I have a way of stopping the Commander and the rest of the Elites, but it could end up destroying half of, or a good portion of, the dungeon at the same time.  Hundreds of thousands of Adventurers could die, along with your people – or perhaps even more.  The problem is that I would have to wait for them to approach a little closer, because I can’t execute such a plan this close to the Anchor.”

The words were spoken in a rush, and Milton thought about it just as quickly.  “Do it.  We’ll try and evacuate as many as possible, but you can’t wait for them all.”

Fred nodded, before turning back to his Shaping, while Milton contacted Brint.

“Brint, I’ve got something you need to do for me….”

Chapter 38

“So, the years since I brought Soulforce back have taught me a lot about Shaping and its use, but this is something from before all of that,” Fred explained to him.  “While it was originally very difficult for me to manipulate Mana the way I used to back in my youth, I’ve relearned how to do many of those things over the years – just in a slightly different way.  I haven’t really needed to do much with it lately, because most of what I need to do can be accomplished with my modified Soulforce, but sometimes I just need to go back to the basics of everything.”

Milton was only barely following the explanation, but from what he was beginning to understand, he didn’t know nearly enough about the energy of this world and how it was broken up into so many different parts.  All I really need to know is if this will work, I suppose.

The Echo clones on their Pegasi led the Elites on a merry chase around the corridor, while the Hobgoblin Mages continued to pelt them with simple spells. This pair of actions was beneficial for one major reason: it delayed the Heliothropes from advancing further down the dungeon.  This, in turn, allowed Brint to spread the word for everyone to evacuate, though that was going to be hard, considering how many of them there still were in the hallways and even in the rooms down below.  Over a million of the defenders had already been killed during the defense, but with so many more left standing, he didn’t want them to become unnecessary casualties.

The Proctans volunteered to stay, but there was no point; their sacrifice would only feed the Anchor, and that was the last thing they needed.

Unfortunately, once the Commander got involved in hunting down the Echo clones, time had run out.  With a dozen weapons to strike out, including its chain-knife, they didn’t last more than 30 seconds.  The Hobgoblins on the ground lasted an even shorter time, as they weren’t instructed to flee when attacked, and so kept casting spells until the end.

Echo and her team had already fled, and thousands of Adventurers were already running up the ramp up to the surface, but it wasn’t enough.  Even the Repair Drones, the last constructs still around, didn’t do much more than explode in the faces of the Elites when they were destroyed, and then they were headed down the corridor.  The Commander stopped destroying everything once nothing seemed to be attacking it from the walls or ceiling, so it advanced a lot more quickly than it had before.

“What I’m doing is using the different types of Mana that I just recently refilled into my Shard friends after our defense earlier, and they can extract it for my use; it’s much faster than trying to produce all 7 different kinds myself right now,” Fred continued, his face scrunched up in concentration.  The Shaping he had that allowed him to look down the dungeon disappeared, though at this point it wasn’t really needed since the Commander and Elites were now less than a mile away and quite visible.  “What I have to do is condense each of these Mana blobs of different elements as tightly as possible, before wrapping it in a thin shell of Unconverted Mana extracted from my modified Soulforce, and then send it toward where I want it to go.”  The strain in Fred’s voice was evident by that point, and he started to sweat for the first time.

“Is everyone ready?” he asked after a few moments.  When everyone said yes, he continued.  “This will cause a series of large explosions, which have to be destructive enough to get through that thing’s barrier.  Having seen what it can withstand, I hope this is enough.”  He waited another few seconds as he watched thousands more people streaming out of the hallways, but he eventually turned back and said, “I can’t wait any longer.  Here we go with some Mana Bombs.”

It sounded like some sort of fancy drink you could order at a bar, but the Mana Bombs that Fred detonated were anything but fancy.  Rather, they were extremely destructive and knocked Milton off his feet on top of the observation tower.

He saw the initial flash of light as what looked like a miniature nuclear bomb went off, centered on the chest of the Commander.  That was followed by another one a half-second later, but the shockwave of the blast 5,000 feet away was incredible. Milton nearly tumbled off the platform on top of the tower but managed to catch himself even as another 5 detonations took place, sending more shockwaves down to his location; but he weathered them well enough.

The Commander and the Elites, however, not so much.  When he was able to pick himself up and see that the others had also been flung around but looked better than he was sure he appeared from the blasts, he looked down the corridor to see absolutely no trace of the Commander or any of the Elites.  He did it!

Unfortunately, the explosions had also done incredible damage to the dungeon, blasting a spherical hole in it that was at least 800 feet across, and everything within that blast radius had been entirely disintegrated.  The late afternoon light shone down from the ceiling where the blast had blown a hole in the roof, and there was a giant pit in the floor; the hallways to either side were entirely gone, including any trace of the Maginite that had been on the walls to protect them.

As for the people in the hallways, if they were still inside of those sections, there was absolutely no trace of them.  From what Milton had observed, however, most of the people had been able to escape being directly obliterated, though the death toll for the areas just out of that range of pure destruction had to be high.

“Milton!  The countdown is nearly up!  You have less than 24 hours, give or take an hour or so, before the dimensional wound is stabilized.”

“I guess that answers that.  Fred, it worked, but we’ve got less than 24 hours.  We have to get in there and destroy the Anchor as soon as possible.  Can you do that again in that cave?”

Clearly exhausted, Fred shook his head.  “Not possible,” he admitted.  “Even if I hadn’t just strained myself by holding together my Mana Bombs, anything closer will just get pulled apart by the Anchor.  Believe me, that was my very first thought when we discovered them, but I couldn’t do it even if I was 5 feet away from that cave.”

Milton knew how difficult it had been for Fred to construct the dungeon that close to the Anchor, which was why the Station Core had needed to be the one to finish up the last stretch.  He’d had to be there himself, too, because communicating with his drones and Defensive Weapons was difficult or impossible from a long distance, the nearer they were to the Anchor.

“Well, then, we’ve got to come up with something,” Milton said, disappointed that Fred wasn’t able to do that again a bit closer.  Reaching out with his mind, he found that his communication with all the Proctans still in the tunnel was back up and working. Looking at the corridor, he realized that all the metal cylinders the Soldiers had been carrying were destroyed, along with the Commander and Elites.  That gave him an idea.

He began asking those that survived if there were still some working Defensive Weapons in the hallways, before turning to Fred.  “You mentioned that you sent the Mana from the Defenders back to their Cores, right?”  At his nod, he asked, “Are there any that are finished?”

Fred had a faraway look on his face for a moment before he looked at Milton again.  “Just a single Lava Hound.  These types of Defenders take hours and hours to create, and any of the others won’t be ready for at least another hour.  Though the travel time to get here means it will be more like 14 or 15 hours.”

“We can’t afford to wait that long.  Are any closer?  The Earth one, perhaps?”

Fred took another moment to check.  “The Rock Giant won’t finish for another few hours, but it could be here in 6 hours.”

“That’ll have to do.  I can create another few Defensive Weapons in that time, and I think that should work.”  He looked at everyone around the observation platform and included Brint and Whisp in with his plan.  “We’re going to cobble together everything we can onto a few HADVs and then use the Rock Giant to clear a path.  We’ve only got a little time to do this, so we have to get moving.”

It was a fairly loose plan, but it was the best he could do.  He had plenty of HADVs that were used to transport the people from the camp to the dungeon, but the problem was the lack of Defensive Weapons.  His Factories could produce at most 4 more of the Particle Accelerators before time was up, and the information coming in from those checking the ones in the walls told him that there were only 3 that were still operational.  There were a number of other Weapons that could be mounted on the HADVs, as well as magnetic launchers, however.  It would have to be enough.

*         *         *

Just under 6 hours later, the Rock Giant arrived and started its journey down the Corridor Dungeon, which had undergone a bit of a transformation in that time.  Milton had used an army of drones to fill in the hole that had been formed by Fred’s explosion, using parts of the walls for material because it was easier than trying to create enough with Molecular Converters.  The rest of the Adventurers had vacated the dungeon during that time, as well as most of the Proctans, though they helped to relocate Defensive Weapons from the walls and onto a fleet of vehicles.  Thankfully, the metal in the HADVs wasn’t attracted to the magnetic launchers, so even those were able to be installed on a few, which would help with the plan.  Milton also had the opportunity to create another 100 Bearillas, and they arrived just as they were ready to go, fed and eager to kill things.

He would’ve loved to bring more Proctans with him, but he was already bringing 100 of them to operate the weapons on the vehicles, and that was all he wanted to risk in case this went wrong.  Fred and the others with him volunteered to help out, but Milton refused because of the danger.

“You’re the one that can help bring these people back, so you can’t go,” he told Fred.  “As for the others, I’m hoping to avoid direct combat.  This is going to be an in-and-out operation, so there is no reason to risk yourselves.”  He failed to mention that this was a one-way ticket regardless of whether they were successful or not, and he told them to move a safe distance away so that he could regroup with everyone if they didn’t make it.

Now, Milton was following behind a single solitary Rock Giant provided by the Dungeon Cores, as it made its lumbering way toward the Heliothrope cave.  Milton was just glad that there was no reaction to anything they had been doing in the corridor, as none of the enemy had moved; he had seen the same sort of thing on Sandra’s planet when they located the Anchor there.  Whisp and ALANNA had theorized that they had some sort of minimum protection detail that they had to keep around the Anchor in order to protect it, but could send out any extras if they had them.  That seemed to be the case, as there hadn’t been any movement despite the way to freedom being essentially clear.

Milton wasn’t alone on the HADV he was driving in, thankfully, as he was there with Micke and his group.  They had remarkably survived the entire defensive action and volunteered to come with him, and he didn’t see any reason to refuse.  He had grown close to them over the years they had been searching for the Heliothropes, after all, and they deserved a chance to see this through to the end.

With 20 total vehicles bouncing over the uneven ground caused by all the fighting, as well as dodging around spent projectiles, corpses, and other debris, the end of the corridor arrived almost before he was aware of it.  As the Rock Giant ducked to get through the opening leading into the Heliothrope’s cavern – it was just that tall – Milton got his game face on.  Being this close to the Breeder Ship was a bit unnerving, but he focused himself on what needed to be done.

The first of the Fodder started to stream out of the Ship as the Giant approached, but they weren’t that big of a deal.  Only the pair of Commanders he could see inside really constituted a major threat, but Milton wasn’t planning on having them be a major factor.  As soon as the HADVs were close enough, they started to fire their Laser Cannons, Railguns, and magnetic launchers, peppering the Heliothropes with damage to their barriers that the Giant was more than happy to take advantage of by stomping on the foes, squishing them into the ground. The Bearillas that he had brought with them also streamed forth, taking the fight straight to the Fodder. Inside, the Soldiers, the Elites, and the Commander from the forward formation started to move, but that was to be expected.

“Fendle, are you ready?”

The Rogue nodded.  “Remember, I can only give you 2 seconds; we can’t allow them to destroy it before it activates,” Milton told him.

“That should be plenty of time.  If not, it’s a great day to die.”

They’ve been watching too many movies that ALANNA downloaded from Earth before I was abducted.

Fendle snuck out the back of the HADV and activated his Light Spectrum Invisibility.  The package he was carrying disappeared from sight along with him, as it extended to his possessions, and he took off toward the Breeder Ship.  That’s a brave Proctan there.  While Milton couldn’t follow him with his eyes, the connection he had with him at this distance was enough to track the Rogue as he weaved in between the Fodder and then the Soldiers as he looked for the Stabilizing Anchor.  According to where the Soulforce was being sucked into it as per Fred’s viewing portal, they had calculated that it had to be somewhere in the main area where the Heliothropes were congregating, as they wouldn’t be anywhere but where it was; they needed to guard it, after all.

Suddenly, the connection he had with Fendle started to fade.

“No!  I’m losing the connection with him—hold on!”

Milton directed the HADV to move closer, despite the danger.  He had to weave in between the Rock Giant’s legs and narrowly avoided slamming into three different Fodder and a Bearilla that was nearly knocked into his path.  He felt the connection with Fendle start to come back, but the Rogue was still moving away further into the Ship.

The vehicle slammed into a Fodder that had previously had its barrier removed, smearing him over the ground, but its spear went through one of the front slits in the HADV and stabbed him in his shoulder.  Milton ignored it as he concentrated on maneuvering the vehicle and feeling for Fendle.

“Found… fifty… ahead.”

Milton had the barest communication from the Rogue, but he was fairly certain he understood the message.  The Anchor was a further 50 feet into the Ship from where he was already at, and that meant that the Station Core had to get even closer.  Milton used his best GTA skills to avoid the Fodder still flooding out of the Breeder Ship, though fortunately most of them were focused on the Rock Giant and the distraction of the barrage of weapons’ fire coming from the vehicles.  The Proctans had permission to continue firing past when they should, because overheating was acceptable at this point in time.

A massive impact slammed into the ground only 20 feet away from his racing vehicle, the force of it bouncing the HADV into the air.  Milton felt it rotating in the air as they bounced, and he feared that it would land on its side – or worse, the top – when they hit the ground.

“Got it,” Micke said abruptly when they continued to rotate slowly, and he somehow was able to move to the hatch, open it up, and then proceed to jump off, pushing hard with his feet as he did so.  The strength of his push was great enough not only to rotate the vehicle the rest of the way so that they would land upright, but also to add another full rotation to it.  Milton didn’t see what happened to the Proctan when he jumped off, but he could only imagine that he was in the middle of the fight, making the Fodder pay dearly for facing off against him.

They landed with another small bounce – thankfully upright – and kept going, with the connection to Fendle fading in and out by the second.  Unable to avoid another Fodder, the vehicle was literally deflected off the blue-skinned Heliothrope and suffered some scratches as its melee weapons attempted to penetrate the foe’s outer shell, but the strikes were weak because of the angle.  They bounced off another Heliothrope and were sent back the direction they had been heading….

Then suddenly, they were airborne, hitting the small ramp on the edge of the Breeder Ship at full speed, which launched them at least 50 feet up in an arcing flight.  They sailed right over the Fodder and Soldiers, as well as the Elites, who looked up as they flew past.  Milton saw the black skin of the Commander through the slit in the front of the HADV, but he also saw something right behind it on the floor of the Ship.

The Stabilizing Anchor.

Fendle was standing next to it, his hand pressed against the side of the Unstable Void Defensive Weapon he had snuck inside.  As soon as Milton saw that, he sent a burst of communication to the Rogue and to the Weapon itself, giving him 2 seconds to flee.  As the Proctan took off, the vehicle slammed into the leg of the Commander, making it glow as it avoided damage.  With the impact, the spear that was already in his shoulder was forced even further in and through it, coming out the other side.  As the HADV fell to the ground after the impact, everyone was thrown around as it landed on its side.

Milton had fallen in such a way that allowed him to see through another slit in the side of the vehicle, and he saw the Commander looking down at the vehicle as it raised its weapons to finish off the little annoyance.

That was precisely when the Unstable Void activated, immediately destroying a portion of the Anchor.  That portion was enough to break it completely, because the glow around the Commander immediately disappeared.

“You did it, Milton!  The dimensional wound is closed!” ALANNA practically shouted at him.

He didn’t answer, though, because what he had seen happen to the Heliothropes on Sandra’s planet happened here.  The Commander went berserk as it roared out in what sounded like pain, while around the vehicle the Fodder, Soldiers, and Elites seemed to spasm and collapse in place.  There was another roar further back in the Ship, which Milton assumed was the other Commander.

The communication with the Proctans was back, however, and he was able to reach out to the teams that were in charge of the Particle Accelerators.

“Do it now, before it’s too late!”

Less than a second later, 7 Particle Accelerator beams slammed into the Commander up front, completely obliterating it within seconds.  The Commander in the back wasn’t as easy to hit, unfortunately, as its berserk state sped it up to a point where it was able to dodge the initial blasts, and it tossed its chain-knife out and impaled 1 of the 2 HADVs with the Accelerators.  As it pulled the vehicle back to it, the beams cut right through the Rock Giant, cutting it in half multiple times, before the Proctans shut them off.

Thankfully, before the Commander could follow up its attack on the other vehicle, they managed to target its head with the 3 Particle Accelerators it had working, obliterating it as if it had never existed.

“Fendle was right.  It’s a good day to die.  See you back on the Station, everyone,” Milton said as the last Commander collapsed on the floor of the Breeder Ship…

…a second before it all exploded.

Chapter 39

While Milton didn’t see the explosion for more than a second from his avatar, for once he was able to see something happening on the surface of the planet from Haven Station.  When the Breeder Ship detonated following the death of the last Commander, it had made the mountainous region blow up like a volcano was erupting.  Massive chunks of rock and dirt flew up nearly a mile into the air, completely collapsing the Corridor Dungeon and everything still in it, burying it all in rubble.

Thankfully, no more people were hurt by the explosion, as the entrance to the dungeon was nearly 3 miles away, and the debris that shot into the air didn’t travel far enough to land amongst those waiting for news of the success or failure of the team Milton had led against the Heliothropes.  Needless to say, the explosion was more than enough confirmation of success, though without his avatar on the planet, there was no way to contact anyone down there.  He only found out about their safety a few hours later as a new avatar was created on the Station and he transported his consciousness to it; it was only a matter of another hour or so when he was able to get back down to the camp that had been set up with all of his Facilities.

Another sign of success was the flood of notifications that bombarded the Station Core shortly after the explosion of the Breeder Ship.  The Combat Experience he received wasn’t nearly enough to push him to the next Combat Level, but he was now only 20 million away.

Congratulations!  Your Combat Units have defeated Fodder x145,500!  You gain (145500x50) 7,275,000 combat experience!

Congratulations!  Your Combat Units have defeated Soldier x14,550!  You gain (14550x250) 3,637,500 combat experience!

Congratulations!  Your Combat Units have defeated Elite x1,450!  You gain (1450x2500) 3,625,000 combat experience!

Congratulations!  Your Combat Units have defeated Commander x14!  You gain (14x250000) 3,500,000 combat experience![18]

While he didn’t get a Combat Level from the Combat Experience, Milton did finish the quest he had been given when they first arrived over 2 years before.

Current Average-term Goal: Repair, Recon, and ‘Radication – Complete!

- Obtain enough BMUs to repair the shuttle 1,500,000/1,500,000 – Complete!

- Search around the world for evidence of the Stabilizing Anchor – Complete!

- Eradicate all signs of Heliothropes and destroy the Anchor – Complete!

Difficulty of Goal: Hard

Timeframe: 2 years 6 months 12 days

Rewards: Saving a different dimension from a scourge of Heliothropes, +6 to Insight/Luck, Processing Power/Intelligence, and Sensor Interpretation/Perception

Congratulations!

When you reach certain milestones in your statistics, additional bonuses can be unlocked.  In this instance, when you reached 100 points in Insight/Luck, you gained these bonuses:

- Additional chances to unlock new research in various Facilities

- Receive a 15% increase to identifying new genetic mutations

The first bonus after he reached 100 in his Insight/Luck attribute was exciting, and he immediately spent some time looking for anything new that popped up throughout all of his Facilities… and was left disappointed when there was nothing.  The second bonus was also interesting, though he wasn’t exactly sure what it meant.  Regardless, he figured it might be beneficial in the future.  Now, though, he needed to meet with everyone on the planet once again.

“Well, you did it, I can’t deny that,” Fred said to him once all of the leadership was back together on the surface.  They were standing in the middle of two of the living spaces that had been constructed to house all the Adventurers.  Looking around, Milton could see that the mood – from all the people wandering around – was both somber and celebratory.  They had succeeded in defeating the Heliothropes, but the cost was somewhere in the realm of 2 million Adventurers.  Thousands of Proctans had died, as well, but they were used to it by that point.  “But there’s a problem.”

“Let me guess,” Milton responded, already assuming from Fred’s devastated expression that he knew the answer.  “The souls that were pulled into the Anchor are gone.”

He nodded, despair practically dripping from his entire frame.  “I promised myself that even if they died, I would be able to bring them back.  But without their souls floating around to put back inside their bodies, it can’t be done even if we were able to dig everyone out from the destruction.”

That was certainly an issue.  Not the digging out part, because Milton’s drones could help with that quite easily, and Fred could probably do it easily enough with his abilities now that the Anchor was gone; instead, it was the “no souls” part.  From what he understood of the process, explained to him by the man himself, the soul encapsulated everything about the person, including all of their memories, knowledge, and abilities; without that, even if Fred was able to fully repair their bodies, there would be nothing to place back into them.

Milton had to compare it to the way his advanced technology quantified and “digitized” the souls of the Proctans via the Neurological Control Units installed into them.  All that information was stored in his Station Core, and unless it was destroyed at some point, their “souls” would live forever.  His Bioconversion Labs could resurrect someone from another dimension, that much was obvious because it worked on Proctans and even Echo from Sandra’s world, but in those cases there wasn’t a soul that was reinserted into their bodies upon rebirth.  It was all done based on technology and the corpse itself.

But will it work here?  If everything that these people were was contained in their intangible souls, what would happen if we converted a body and tried to recreate it in the Labs?

His computerized mind was based a lot on science, and some parts of it immediately denied that a soul actually existed.  It was all biology, after all, so of course it should work.  However, with how important souls and Soulforce were in this dimension, he couldn’t help but think that it would make a difference.  After all, isn’t it my own soul that inhabits the Station Core?  Or is it simply an artificial consciousness that mimics my thoughts and memories?  What about Sandra?  Isn’t her own Dungeon Core a soul that was transported to its crystalline construct?

While souls may or may not exist in his own dimension, he couldn’t deny that they were a fundamental part of others.  Thinking about it that way, he was hesitant to offer to help, because he didn’t want to end up disappointing Fred and all of the Adventurers that had given their lives in defense of not just their world but their dimension.  After an entire 2 seconds of thought, which would be years for a normal Human based on his Processing Speed, Milton decided that he would regret it if he didn’t offer to at least try.

“We can try the Labs, if you like,” Milton said after his relative years of consideration.  “I can’t guarantee it will work, because of the importance of souls here in your dimension, but the least we can do is attempt it.”

“What exactly does that entail?” Eisa asked, her arm around her son, Wynk, who still appeared shell-shocked from everything that had happened.

“Well, if it is similar to what I’ve done in the past, I can bring them back, but they will have lost all their developmental progress; it would be a complete reset of anything they had accomplished as an Adventurer.  So, if they had been an S-Rated Adventurer before, they would be even less than a G-Rated noob, because I cannot replicate their SDIA and Soulstone in the Labs.”

“Noob?”

Milton chuckled.  “Just a term from my own world.  It means newbie, or novice, or any other term that means someone just starting out on their journey.”

“So, they would have their lives again, but would have to start over completely?” Eisa asked, before smiling at her husband.  “Sounds familiar.  The same thing happened when this guy turned us into Shards after our deaths.”

Wynk turned to look at his mother.  “Really?  I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about us, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to tell you now that this crisis has passed.”

Milton interrupted.  “The crisis has definitely passed here, but the fight against the Heliothropes has just begun.  Until we can find a way to stop them entirely, they will continue to attempt their incursions against other dimensions.  And if we let them keep doing that, eventually they’ll mess up and tear the dimensional fabric too far, destroying it utterly. If that were to happen, it could unravel the fabric of every dimension, ending all of existence.”

There was silence at the Station Core’s revelation.  “You didn’t tell us that before, Milton,” Fred accused Milton as if he were intentionally keeping it from everyone.

Milton shrugged.  “Yeah, well, we had a more immediate crisis to deal with, so I didn’t want to burden you with more bad news.”

“That definitely changes things, but we’ll talk about that later.  For now, I would appreciate it if you were able to try and bring my people back.”

After Fred asked for help, the actual process was fairly quick.  Quite a few bodies of dead Adventurers had been carried out when the order to flee the dungeon had been issued, so a ready subject was easy enough to find.  Just to be sure that there was no other way, Fred attempted to Shape Soulforce into bringing back to life the young woman that appeared to be some sort of Mage Class while she was alive, based on her robe; she had been pierced through the chest with a large piece of stone shrapnel, which had killed her instantly. Fred was able to repair her body, bringing it back to pristine condition; but no matter what he tried, he couldn’t locate her soul to put it back.  According to him, it was just… gone.

Milton had a few larger Molecular Converters on the surface of the planet, so there was no need to chop her up into pieces in order for her to fit in one of the portable versions; instead, they placed her corpse inside and shut the door, converting her to raw materials while also analyzing her genetic makeup.  Theoretically, he could also drop her into a Bioconversion Lab and it would dissolve her corpse before it rebuilt it, but experimentation had told him that this process was much faster.

Milton found Chavelle, the young woman’s name, on the list of available Combat Units to create in his Bioconversion Lab, but when he attempted to bring her back, there was a familiar error he’d seen before when he had been attempting to bring Echo back on Sandra’s planet.

Error!

Unable to complete Combat Unit Creation for 1 reason:

1. World Energy System Access required for identical DNA recreation

Do you wish to create generic “Human” Combat Unit?  Y/N

Thankfully, that was easy enough to accomplish, but it had to be done back on the Station.  “Hold on, I need to do something with the Biological Recombinator back on Haven Station.”

It didn’t take long for him to pull up the menu for the Recombinator, where he was able to select the World Energy System Access gene mutation.  Milton could only assume that was what allowed them to be compatible with the energy of the world, so that when they obtained an SDIA and a Soulstone, that they would operate correctly.  It was what the Proctans were missing when they obtained their own set of artifacts from the Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate; while the status screens would come up, thanks to the SDIA, they had absolutely no access to the energy that came with it.

While he was in there doing that, however, there was something that caught his attention.  The Biological Recombinator had a research section to it, but he had already unlocked all of the research previously, so he hadn’t looked at it for a long time.  Now, though, it was flashing as if wanting to get his attention.

Biological Recombinator – Research

Type

Description

Unlock Cost (# of samples)

Multi-dimensional Gene Mutation Balance

Add a balance mechanic when multiple dimension-specific gene mutations are added to a single specimen

1/2,000,000

“ALANNA, did you know about this?” he asked his AI guide.

She was in the command center and saw the same thing he was looking at on the view screens, along with a portion of the Think Tank present.  “No, not until you looked at it.  I don’t think it appeared until you started messing with the Recombinator,” she explained.  “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“I believe so.  It must have been unlocked due to my Insight/Luck bonus, and it’s definitely something to look into for the future.”

The thought had definitely crossed Milton’s mind to combine more than one dimension-specific gene into a single person, but it had been theorized that such a process could lead to devastating repercussions.  The infusion of different types of energy, either through the Power that Proctans used, the elemental energy that people from Sandra’s dimension possessed, or the usable parts of Soulforce that people from Fred’s world utilized, would likely overwhelm someone who attempted to use more than one at a time.  How it was explained to him in simple terms, thankfully by ALANNA – who knew his old Earth better than anyone, was that it was like using cleaning products to clean a bathroom; ammonia and bleach were both useful in their own right, but mixing them together could produce a deadly gas.

The same theory applied to different types of energy in a body; it was unknown how they would react to each other.  It could be harmless… or it could cause the entire body to explode.

But this meant that they might be able to combine multiple dimension-specific gene mutations together, through some sort of balance mechanic that allowed the use of multiple energies.  It was incredible, but it was also something that he couldn’t concentrate on right now, especially since he needed over 2 million unique samples to unlock the ability.  Though, if the resurrection works with the people here, I think there might just be enough to unlock it.

“Okay, I think I have everything we need,” Milton said, his focus back in the avatar on the surface of the planet.  “I had to add the gene mutation that identifies your dimension.”

“I have no idea what that means, but I suppose that doesn’t matter,” Fred said.  He was staring at the Bioconversion Lab they were next to, anticipation clear in his stance.

“Here we go.”  This time, when he selected Chavelle, there was no error.  In seconds, her body began forming in the semi-liquid substance at the top of the Lab, and a few minutes later it was done.  The new body was ejected out the bottom of the Lab in a splash of liquid into a pool of water, and soon enough Eisa was there along with two other Shards, Chareese and Ravenne, to help the woman out of the water.  As far as Milton could see, the woman seemed coherent enough to identify that she was alive, and was able to understand her name and the encouraging words spoken to her by the others.  It was a worry that everything about her would’ve been lost when her soul was consumed by the Anchor, but that part, at least, was a non-issue.

Shortly after Chavelle had been clothed and was convinced that she wasn’t in the afterlife, she was brought over to Milton, Fred, and the rest of the Shards with wide eyes, a confused expression on her face, and a little water dripping down her still-wet, shoulder-length, brown hair.

“I don’t want to keep you long, because you’re likely ravenous after being reborn like that,” Milton said to the woman softly.  She had a deer-in-headlights look to her as the Station Core spoke, and he didn’t want to spook her.  “But I just want to make sure that you feel… normal, I guess?  This was the first time I’ve been able to recreate one from your world before, so the results were unknown.”

“Y-yes, I think so.  But I’m so much weaker than I was before.  My Interface says that I’m now G-1st-Rated, rather than B-Rated.”

Wait, what?

He wasn’t the only one that was confused.  “What do you mean?  You don’t have an SDIA or a Soulstone—” Fred started to say, looking at the back of her hand where the artifact was normally found on Adventurers.

“What are you talking about?  I can pull up my Interface, though now that I’m looking at it, my Class has reverted to Unselected instead of an Illusionist.  Just like when I started with the Syndicate.”

“That’s just not… that shouldn’t be possible.”  Fred looked at Milton for an explanation, but he didn’t have one.

Whisp came to his rescue, as she usually did when he was at a loss for words.  “When the Molecular Converter first processed bodies from this world, which were some bandits that attempted to kill us, the conversion likely incorporated the entire SDIA into the gene mutation, which is how anyone is able to access the energy of this world.  Because it doesn’t necessarily record development, as that is due to the acquisition of Essence that is applied separate from the gene mutation, or so I understand.  When Chavelle was reborn, it reset her back to the original configuration before anything was changed.”

“Soooo… she has access to the SDIA without needing the SDIA or the Soulstone?” Fred asked.

Whisp nodded.  “That’s what it seems to be.  I can’t guarantee it will be the same for everyone, but there’s a greater than 99% probability that this is the case.”

Eisa abruptly addressed Chavelle.  “And what about you?  Are you fine with this being a part of you, permanently?  You won’t be able to remove it in the future if you decide not to be an Adventurer anymore.”  Milton didn’t know that the SDIA could be removed, but he supposed it was possible with the right means.

The young woman nodded and shrugged.  “It’s not really a big deal.  I actually prefer it this way, because I could never get over the fact that it was on the back of my hand; it always felt like it should be itchy, though I stopped scratching at it after the first few months after acquiring it.”

“That is good to hear.  In your opinion, would the rest of the people who died in the dungeon approve of this method?”

There was only a brief hesitation as she looked over at the Lab where she was just reborn.  “Yes, though I could’ve gone without the whole dropping naked into a pool with such an audience.”

For the first time, Milton realized that their little experiment hadn’t gone unnoticed, and there were thousands of people around the Lab, though they stayed a respectable distance away and were eerily silent.  The Station Core laughed, as he was so caught up in learning about the results of Chavelle’s rebirth that he had ignored everything else.

“Yes, I think we can do a little better in the future for everyone else.  Now, let’s get you something to eat, because you must be starving,” Milton said as he continued to chuckle, as Eisa led her toward the living quarters where she could get something to eat.

“You’re right, I’m super hungry.  Why is that?”

Whisp stepped up and took the woman’s arm companionably in her own, as she explained.  “It’s because you’ve never eaten with this body before.  There’s literally nothing in there for your body to digest.”

“Ah, that makes sense.  So, are you saying this will be the best meal of my life?”

“Yes, yes it will.  You never forget your first.”

Anything else that might have been said was lost as the Adventurers that had been silently watching broke out in a resounding cheer.  Fred mentioned that very, very few of the Adventurers that had come to help had been at Allroads after the attack decades ago, so there weren’t many of them that knew Fred could resurrect them using their free-floating souls.  They cheered at the evidence that their deaths weren’t permanent after the sacrifice they gave during the defense against the Heliothropes.

As long as Milton could find their bodies, of course.  They had a lot of work to do to bring everyone back.

Chapter 40

It took a full 2 months to fully excavate the collapsed Corridor Dungeon and recover the bodies of the fallen, as well as bring them back using the many Bioconversion Labs that were set up down on the surface – and on the Station.  With over 2 million bodies to resurrect, it would’ve taken even longer if they were just using the Labs on the surface, so many of them were reborn in the Labs on Haven Station – greeted by a welcoming party of Adventurers that had been transported up from the surface, of course.

After it was done, the required samples needed for the Multi-dimensional Gene Mutation Balance research that was part of the Biological Recombinator had been attained, opening a plethora of possibilities for the future.  It wasn’t something that Milton could spend time playing with quite yet, though, because they needed to get back to their own dimension.  While it was likely that there was still a time differential, meaning that not much time had passed while they had been away, they still needed to get back and find a way to stop the Heliothropes from doing this all again in some other dimension.

“I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done, Milton,” Fred said to him when they were starting to disassemble all the facilities on the surface.  “Before I saw those Heliothropes in action, I thought that I was the most powerful being on the planet.”

“And the most modest, obviously,” Eisa added, poking Fred in the ribs.

Ignoring her comment, he continued.  “But now I realized that there are some things that even I can’t do anything about.  It was, to put it simply, humbling.  It also made me understand that my journey isn’t quite as done as I had thought after saving the Humans and Dungeon Cores from spiraling into extinction.  I don’t know how much assistance I can be, but I—sorry, we—would love to help in any way we can with your task to stop these Heliothropes from doing this to other dimensions,” he said, gesturing toward his wife.

Milton was surprised, but he realized that he should’ve expected it.  He’d seen the isolated life Fred and Eisa had lived with their son, out of the limelight, and how the man absolutely hated overseeing the Dungeon Cores of the world as the “Great Authority”.

“We would love any help you can provide, but don’t you have a family here?  What about your responsibilities?”

He nodded.  “That’s true, but after hearing about this time-difference thing between our dimensions, I figure we’ll be able to do everything we need to before we come help.  I think 50 years or so should be plenty long enough to teach Wynk about his new abilities and to prepare the world for our departure.”

Fred spoke about 50 years like it was nothing, but if ALANNA and the Think Tank were right about the passage of time being different in this current dimension, that was the equivalent of something like a few minutes in his own. The way he talked about it, though, it was almost as if he knew about—

“Whisp, did you tell him about the dimensional portal on the Station that leads to Sandra’s world?”

He had taken pains to keep that fact a relative secret up to this point, because he didn’t want to put her in danger.  All Fred and the people of this world should know was that she was another Dungeon Core with a Human form.

She looked directly at him with a straight face and said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”  Milton chuckled out loud.

“Liar.  Whatever.  Do you think you can make another one?”

Instead of answering, she moved out of the way of where she had been standing, and a familiar box was sitting on the ground behind her.  Switching back to verbal speech instead of mentally communicating with her, he said, “It looks like you’ve worked all this out without me.  Are you positive it won’t interfere with Sandra’s?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay, then.”  Turning to Fred, who was trying to suppress a grin, he held his hand out to shake the man’s hand.  “I guess that it’s a deal.  As soon as we’re done packing up and finished with our preparations, we’ll be heading back home.  Did Whisp explain how this thing works?” he asked, gesturing to the portal box.

“She did.”

“Very good.  Now, go spend time with your son, because he looks eager to pick your brain about all of this new stuff happening with him.”  It almost sounded like he was talking about the boy going through puberty, but this was a whole different kind of change happening with his body.

“I will do that.  And thank you again for everything,” he said, before turning away.

Eisa stayed a moment and hugged him briefly before backing up and speaking softly to him.  “Thank you for saving our world, but more importantly to me, thank you for bringing life back into my husband.  Ever since he thought he fulfilled his ‘purpose’, he’s been just going through life without any direction.  Wynk helped to fill the void where his purpose had been, but Fred had been a bit lost since our son joined the Syndicate.  Joining you on your journey will give him a chance to work toward another important goal, which I think he really needs.”

“I’m glad I could help.  I always appreciate new allies, because the task to defeat the Heliothropes already seems impossible.  With help, though, who knows what’s possible?”

“That’s very true.  Fred is used to doing the impossible, so I have high hopes that we’ll succeed.”  With that, she turned away and joined her husband and son.

When Milton was on the freighter heading back up to the Station, which was full of physical materials that had been originally brought down to the surface, he asked Whisp, “Are you sure this is wise?  Won’t the energy from his world leak into the Station?”

“Yes, it will, and I know what you’re thinking.”

“Oh, yeah, and what is that?”

“You’re thinking that the Soulforce will do the same thing to the Station’s systems as it does on the surface – or worse, the upper atmosphere.”

That was exactly what Milton was thinking, so he just nodded.

“You don’t have to worry,” she reassured him.  “We’ve done extensive tests while we were trying to develop a way to work around the restrictions, and the reason we were never successful was due to the sheer concentration of the Soulforce surrounding the planet.  The energy was so thick that it was nearly impossible to cut through it, like a fog on a humid night. The atmosphere acted like an insulator, keeping it contained but also increasing the concentration of the energy around the planet rather than letting most of it escape into space.

“Some of it escaped anyway, which was contained within the solar system by some other force we don’t understand; this was why it was impossible to see within the systems and planets unless we were already inside of them. They acted like a foggy window that only revealed what was inside when we “wiped” the fog away by getting close enough.

“But there is no shield around Haven Station to contain and concentrate the energy, because it doesn’t exist in our dimension.  It is possible that it might develop eventually, as that seems like a property of this Soulforce, but we estimate that it could take thousands of years, if it ever does.”

Milton vaguely understood what she was trying to say, but he had to take her word for it.  A mental confirmation from ALANNA let him know that she had approved of this whole thing behind his back, so she must be convinced that it was safe.

It took another day or so to convert all of their Available resources back to physical representations, so that they could reuse them when they moved dimensions.  It was a pain, but he’d rather not leave anything in the other dimension if he could help it.  Theoretically, if Fred established a link through the portal, he could probably access it that way, but there was no telling when that might be.

“Take us back to the traveling dimension and head to the quadrant we were at before we left,” Milton instructed Whisp as soon as they were ready to depart.  He wanted to assess what had happened while they were away, because they had left that section of space a bit strained for food after the Fursinal’s farm planet was destroyed by the Heliothropes as a way to draw Milton out into a trap.

“Activating the trans-dimensional drive now.”

The transition was always interesting in an awkward way as it felt like his avatar was being squeezed through a tight hole; but fortunately, most everyone on the Station had learned to adapt to the feeling.  There were a few that still passed out, but they were all warned and well taken care of before the transition.

Just as the transition finished, Milton was already moving toward the portal room with Sandra on his arm, the feeling of her close to him a welcome relief after being away for so long.  While he had visited plenty of times, his mind had always been on the search for the Heliothropes; now that they had been dealt with on Fred’s planet, he felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.  There was still the problem of them in his own dimension, but that issue was so large that it didn’t even bog his mind down anymore. It was a larger problem that needed to be addressed soon, but it wasn’t as urgent as their previous problem finding the enemy on a massive planet that played havoc with all his advanced technology.

Only 10 minutes after they had arrived in the traveling dimension, the box that Whisp had placed in the room erupted in another portal, identical to Sandra’s.  There was a *whoosh* of air as the two dimensions stabilized the air pressure between them, and Milton could see Fred and Eisa through the portal, though they both looked different.  The powerful Fred appeared younger, as if he had found the fountain of youth somewhere, and he looked like he was in his low 20’s rather than looking like a parent of an 18-year-old son.  Eisa appeared just as young, but there was an excitement in her face and an exuberance in her frame that was hard to fake.

Behind them was Wynk, who was the most changed of everyone – and Milton barely recognized him.  He was much larger than he had been when he had last seen him a few days ago, and his face had an ageless quality to it that made it difficult to pinpoint exactly how old he was.  His appearance said, “30-year-old, rugged mountaineer”, but if it was indeed 50 years since Milton had been there last, then he was nearing 70 years old.  Regardless, he looked like he could be Fred’s father and not the other way around.

Aside from their appearance, Milton sent his awareness around the Station as much as he could, looking for anything that might have been negatively affected by the sudden connection with the energy emanating from Fred’s dimension.  There was nothing wrong, as far as he could tell, which he supposed meant that Whisp and ALANNA had been right: It was safe for the Soulforce to pass through the portal.

“Welcome!  It appears as though the years have treated you all kindly.”

Fred came through the portal with his wife on his arm, shaking Milton’s hand vigorously.  “They definitely have.  I’m leaving Wynk in charge of things while we’re here, as he’s come a long way since you last saw him.”

The no-longer-young man grinned through the portal, his perfectly white teeth a contrast to his tanned complexion.  “I’ll treat this place right, have no fear.  Now, don’t forget to enjoy your vacation.”

Milton raised an eyebrow.  “Vacation?”

Fred laughed, the first time the Station Core had seen him look so carefree.  “Yes.  He’s taken over my duties with the Dungeon Cores as the Great Authority, but he’s only agreed to it for a few decades while we’re away on vacation.”  In an aside, nearly a whisper, he said, “Between you and me, Wynk’s much more suited to the position, so I hope he lets me retire after this, rather than forcing me back to work.”

“I heard that.  We’ll see when the time comes, father.  For now, I’ve got to get back to work delving through some S-Rated dungeons with my group.  I’ll see you later; communicate with me if you need anything!”  Suddenly, Wynk disappeared in a flash, and Milton realized that he had been looking at a Shaping of Fred’s son, rather than him being there in the flesh.

“We already said our goodbyes earlier, so don’t mind him,” Eisa explained.  “The portal is underground, out of the way of anyone stumbling upon it accidentally, so it was difficult for him to come in person.”  Eisa abruptly walked forward and embraced Sandra in a hug, who looked uncomfortable at the sudden action.  “You must be Sandra!  I remember Milton talking about you all the time while he was with us, so it feels like I already know you.”

Sandra seemed to feel a little more comfortable as Eisa backed up, and she even smirked at the other woman’s words.  “I hope it was all good stuff.”  Milton rolled his eyes, as he knew she had listened in to all his conversations while he was on the planet.

“Oh, most definitely.  I can certainly see why he is so smitten with you,” Eisa responded, laughing along with Sandra at some sort of joke that Milton didn’t understand in the slightest.  He looked at Fred and the man seemed equally confused, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Is this what it’s like when married couples get together?  Are we going to play board games and share stories of our exploits from when we were younger?

It was unfamiliar territory for him, especially the thought of being married to Sandra, and it appeared as though it was just as unfamiliar to Sandra.  Other than the Adventurers that had been reborn on the Station and then sent back to the surface of Fred’s world, these were technically the first Humans on board.  It was one thing to have friends among the Proctans or one of the many other races in the residence Ring, but there was nothing like having people that looked like you to interact with on a daily basis.  Granted, both Sandra and Fred were technically Dungeon Cores with Human bodies, while Milton was a Station Core using an artificial avatar that looked like a pale Proctan with smaller eyes and ears, but that didn’t really matter.  They were similar enough that the differences were basically nonexistent.

“Shall we give you the full tour?” Milton asked.  “I hope you’ll be amazed at what we’ve been able to put together in this place.”

“We’d love that, thank you,” Eisa said, taking Sandra’s arm like they were long-lost friends.  Sandra still looked slightly uncomfortable at the contact by someone other than Milton, but she was warming up to the vivacious Earth Shard.  With a shrug, Fred fell in beside the Station Core’s avatar as they left the portal room behind them.

“First, we’ll see the command center and make our way around the Residence Ring, but I’m eager to see what you think of our dungeon down below,” Milton said, explaining where they were going as they went, while Sandra and Eisa giggled at some joke behind them.

The Station Core couldn’t help but smile at the sound of Sandra making friends.  And perhaps I’ve made a new friend in Fred here, and not just an ally?  Only time would tell, but he had a feeling this was the beginning of an extremely beneficial relationship.

The End

Author’s Note

Thank you for reading Core Convergence!

Fred has now joined up!  I had a blast introducing Milton to the planet in Dungeon World, where he met Fredwynklemossering and others that were part of that series.  With the introduction of Fred and Eisa, the Station Core and Sandra can really start to make a difference against the Heliothropes.

I’m excited for the next installment, which I’m hoping to have out by the end of the year.  The next one will have a lot more of Milton’s own dimension and the fight against their mutual enemy, as they expand their capabilities and discover some additional ways to improve themselves – and make their abilities much more deadly in the process.  But will it be enough?  Or will they need some additional help, such as from a certain fairy, perhaps?  We’ll just have to wait and see!

Again, thank you for reading, and I implore you to consider leaving a review – I love 5-star ones!  Reviews make it more likely that others will pick up a good book and read it!

If you enjoy dungeon core, dungeon corps, dungeon master, dungeon lord, dungeonlit, or any other type of dungeon-themed stories and content, check out the Dungeon Corps Facebook group, where you can find all sorts of dungeon content.

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Also, on Amazon, check out the LitRPG storefront for a large selection of LitRPG, GameLit, and Dungeon Core books from the biggest authors in the genre!

If you would like to contact me with any questions, comments, or suggestions for future books you would like to see, you can reach me at jonathanbrooksauthor@gmail.com.

Visit my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/jonathanbrooksauthor and become a patron for as little as $2 a month!  As a patron, you have access to my current works-in-progress, which I update with (unedited) chapters every Friday.  So, if you can’t wait to find out what happens next in one of my series, this is the place for you!

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Books by Jonathan Brooks

Glendaria Awakens Trilogy

Dungeon Player (Audiobook available)

Dungeon Crisis (Audiobook available)

Dungeon Guild (Audiobook available)

Glendaria Awakens Trilogy Compilation w/bonus material (Audiobook available)

Uniworld Online Trilogy (2nd Edition)

The Song Maiden (Audiobook available)

The Song Mistress (Audiobook available)

The Song Matron (Audiobook available)

Uniworld Online Trilogy Compilation (Audiobook available)

Station Cores Series

The Station Core (Audiobook available)

The Quizard Mountains (Audiobook available)

The Guardian Guild (Audiobook available)

The Kingdom Rises (Audiobook available)

The Other Core (Audiobook available)

Station Cores Compilation Complete: Books 1-5 (Audiobook available)

Spirit Cores Series

Core of Fear (Audiobook available)

Children of Fear (Audiobook available)

Carnival of Fear (Audiobook available)

Community of Fear

Dungeon World Series

Dungeon World (Audiobook available)

Dungeon World 2 (Audiobook available)

Dungeon World 3 (Audiobook available)

Dungeon World 4 (Audiobook available)

Dungeon World 5 (Audiobook available)

Dungeon World Box Set: Books 1-5 (Audiobook available)

Dungeon Crafting Series

The Crafter’s Dungeon (Audiobook available)

The Crafter’s Defense (Audiobook available)

The Crafter’s Dilemma (Audiobook available)

The Crafter’s Darkness (Audiobook available)

The Crafter’s Dominion (Audiobook available)

The Crafter’s Dynasty (Audiobook available)

Dungeon Crafting Series: Books 1 – 3 (Audiobook available)

Dungeon Crafting Series: Books 4 – 6 (Audiobook available)

The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Series

The Dungeon Fairy (Audiobook available)

The Dungeon Fairy: Two Choices (Audiobook available)

The Dungeon Fairy: Three Lives (Audiobook available)

The Dungeon Fairy: Four Days (Audiobook available)

The Dungeon Fairy: Box Set Books 1-4 (Audiobook available)

Serious Probabilities Series

Dungeon of Chance: Even Odds (Audiobook available)

Dungeon of Chance: Double or Nothing (Audiobook available)

Dungeon of Chance: All-in (Audiobook available)

Dungeon of Chance Complete Series: Books 1-3

The Body’s Dungeon (with Jeffrey “Falcon” Logue)

Bio Dungeon: Symbiote (Audiobook available)

Bio Dungeon: Parasyte (Audiobook available)

Bio Dungeon: Hemostasis (Audiobook available)

Bio Dungeon Omnibus (Audiobook available)

Tales of Dungeons Anthology

Tales of Dungeons Vol. 2

Tales of Dungeons Vol. 3

Tales of Dungeons All Hallows 2020

Dimensional Dungeon Cores

Core Establishment (Audiobook available)

Core Construction (Audiobook available)

Core Convergence

Holiday Dungeon Core

Christmas Core (Audiobook available)

Valentine Core (Audiobook available)

Easter Core (Audiobook available)

Independence Core (Audiobook available)

Halloween Core

Time Core

Frozen Time

[1]

Available Resources

Resource Type

# of Units

Basic Earth

0

Basic Gravel

0

Basic Metal

0

Focusing Crystals

0

Pure Water

0

Organic Material

0

Biological Mass

0

[2]

Core Status

Name:

Milton Frederick

Type:

Station Core Prototype 3-B

Combat Level:

27

Experience:

116091157/182089500

Reactor Type:

Zero-point Energy

Reactor Output:

550%

Current Statistics/Attributes

Reactor Power/Strength:

110

Processing Power/Intelligence:

130

Structural Integrity/Constitution:

110

Ingenuity/Wisdom:

150

Processing Speed/Agility:

130

Communication/Charisma:

137

Insight/Luck:

94

Sensor Interpretation/Perception

133

[3]

Available Resources

Resource Type

# of Units

Basic Earth

15

Basic Gravel

3

Basic Metal

6127

Focusing Crystals

0

Pure Water

12

Organic Material

312

Biological Mass

30879

[4]

Tier Two Abilities (Tank)

Self-Regeneration

Use Power to heal yourself

Bad Touch Suite

Negatively affect targets on touch

Tier Three Abilities (Tank)

Low-Light Visibility

See better in the dark

AOE Cloud Suite

Produce clouds of detrimental effects

Tier Four Abilities (Tank)

Self-Levitation

Lift oneself off the ground

Pheromonal Taunt

Exude pheromones that invite attack

Tier Five Abilities (Tank)

Force Field Generation

Create a protective force field

Flesh Manipulation – Self

Manipulate own flesh and bone

Tier Six Abilities (Tank)

Water Breathing

Breathe underwater

Force Blast

Channel Power into a forceful blast attack

Tier Seven Abilities (Tank)

Limited Precognition

Determine what might happen in the future

Telekinesis

Manipulate non-animate objects

Tier Eight Abilities (Tank)

Ability Mimic

Mimic another’s abilities (reduced effectiveness)

Pain Immunity

Eliminate pain in oneself

[5]

Tier Two Abilities (Rogue)

Low-Light Visibility

See better in the dark

Bad Touch Suite

Negatively affect targets on touch

Tier Three Abilities (Rogue)

Light Spectrum Invisibility

Become invisible to normal light spectrum

Telekinesis

Manipulate non-animate objects

Tier Four Abilities (Rogue)

Self-Levitation

Lift oneself off the ground

Beast Control

Tame and control beasts

Tier Five Abilities (Rogue)

Intangibility

Pass through solid objects

Limited Precognition

Determine what might happen in the future

Tier Six Abilities (Rogue)

Scent Nullifier

Nullify all scents around your person

Basic Elemental Suite

Manipulate the elements

Tier Seven Abilities (Rogue)

Flesh Manipulation – Self

Manipulate own flesh and bone

Grey Area Suite

Access Light and Dark affinities

Tier Eight Abilities (Rogue)

Ability Mimic

Mimic another’s abilities (reduced effectiveness)

Sacrificial Touch

All H and P is converted into a lethal strike

[6]

Tier Two Abilities (Caster)

Intelligence Boost

Boosts your Intelligence

Grey Area Suite

Access Light and Dark affinities

Tier Three Abilities (Caster)

Telekinesis

Manipulate non-animate objects

Enchanting

Imbue objects with a particular effect

Tier Four Abilities (Caster)

Self-Levitation

Lift oneself off the ground

AOE Cloud Suite

Produce clouds of detrimental effects

Tier Five Abilities (Caster)

Item Shaping

Shape natural materials

Force Field Generation

Create a protective force field

Tier Six Abilities (Caster)

Object Animation

Animate normally inanimate objects

Flora Manipulation

Influence living plants

Tier Seven Abilities (Caster)

Inanimate Object Teleportation

Teleport an object from one place to another

Atmokinesis

Manipulate localized atmospheric conditions

Tier Eight Abilities (Caster)

Ability Mimic

Mimic another’s abilities (reduced effectiveness)

Spatial Void Affinity

Manipulate spatial voids

[7]

Tier Two Abilities (Support)

Beast Control

Tame and control beasts

AOE Cloud Suite

Produce clouds of detrimental effects

Tier Three Abilities (Support)

Physical Boost Suite

Boosts your physical characteristics

Item Shaping

Shape natural materials

Tier Four Abilities (Support)

Limited Precognition

Determine what might happen in the future

Temporal Distortion

Create a temporal distortion on target

Tier Five Abilities (Support)

Neural Uplink (Limited)

Control non-sentient Combat Units

Physical Boost – On Touch Suite

Boosts others’ physical attributes on touch

Tier Six Abilities (Support)

Healing Touch

Heal others upon touch

Basic Elemental Suite

Manipulate the elements

Tier Seven Abilities (Support)

Object Animation

Animate normally inanimate objects

Atmokinesis

Manipulate localized atmospheric conditions

Tier Eight Abilities (Support)

Ability Mimic

Mimic another’s abilities (reduced effectiveness)

Primal Scream

Use large amount of Power to deafen all

[8]

Tier Two Abilities (Healer)

Intelligence Boost

Boosts your Intelligence

Physical Boost – On Touch Suite

Boosts others’ physical attributes on touch

Tier Three Abilities (Healer)

Self-Regeneration – On Touch

Give another the ability to self-regenerate

Force Field Generation

Create a protective force field

Tier Four Abilities (Healer)

Charisma Boost

Boosts your Charisma

Intelligence Boost – On Touch

Boosts others’ Intelligence attribute on touch

Tier Five Abilities (Healer)

Charisma Boost – On Touch

Boosts others’ Charisma attribute on touch

Flora Manipulation

Influence living plants

Tier Six Abilities (Healer)

Light Spectrum Invisibility

Become invisible to normal light spectrum

Blinding Light

Direct light towards a target’s eyes, blinding them

Tier Seven Abilities (Healer)

Physical Boost Suite

Boosts your physical characteristics

Self-Regeneration

Use Power to heal yourself

Tier Eight Abilities (Healer)

Temporal Distortion

Create a temporal distortion on target

Vampiric Siphon

Siphon another’s Health on touch and add to yours

[9]

Core Status

Name:

Milton Frederick

Type:

Station Core Prototype 3-B

Combat Level:

27

Experience:

116091742/182089500

Reactor Type:

Zero-point Energy

Reactor Output:

550%

Current Statistics/Attributes

Reactor Power/Strength:

110

Processing Power/Intelligence:

130

Structural Integrity/Constitution:

110

Ingenuity/Wisdom:

150

Processing Speed/Agility:

130

Communication/Charisma:

137

Insight/Luck:

94

Sensor Interpretation/Perception

133

[10]

Available Resources

Resource Type

# of Units

Basic Earth

110

Basic Gravel

43

Basic Metal

15098

Focusing Crystals

0

Pure Water

8652

Organic Material

3143

Biological Mass

28645

[11]

Available Resources

Resource Type

# of Units

Basic Earth

110

Basic Gravel

43

Basic Metal

225809

Focusing Crystals

0

Pure Water

21548

Organic Material

4587

Biological Mass

32144

[12]

Dungeon Adventurer Syndicate Interface

Name: Wynk Howells

Class: Fighter

Rating: G-10th

Essence Needed to Rate-up: 2446

Total Essence: 99854

Available Essence to Distribute: 2594

Body: 13 (0/40960)

Brawn: 13 (0/40960)

Mind: 10 (0/5120)

Vitality: 160/160

Stamina: 160/160

Power: 50/50

Base Physical Attack: 13

Base Physical Defense: 13

Power Regen Rate: 0.5/min

Mana

Current Mana to Expel: 54/190

Elemental Affinities (Current Available Mana)

Fire: 3% Stage 2 (Fire Mana: 15)

Water: 2% Stage 2 (Water Mana: 15)

Nature: 4% Stage 2 (Nature Mana: 15)

Earth: 14% Stage 2 (Earth Mana: 16)

Dark: 2% Stage 2 (Dark Mana: 15)

Light: 1% Stage 2 (Light Mana: 15)

Air: 1% Stage 1 (Air Mana: 1)

Elemental Abilities

Fire: Flame Edge (1 Fire Mana/second)

Water: Ice Shield (1 Water Mana/second)

Nature: Root (3 Nature Mana/second)

Earth: Stoneskin (2 Earth Mana/second)

Dark: Blinding Darkness (5 Dark Mana per use)

Light: Healing Surge (15 Light Mana per use, Cooldown: 5 days)

Class Traits (Fighter)

Your available Vitality is increased by your Body Stat

Your Stamina is increased by your Brawn Stat

Your pain threshold is increased

Class Abilities (Fighter)

Double Strike 3 – 0/9000

Block 3 – 0/9000

Taunting Shout 2 – 0/3000

Slam 2 – 0/3000

Flurry 2 – 0/3000

Enrage 2 – 0/3000

[13]

Facility Fabrication

Name

Description

Cost

(Basic Metal Units)

Power Requirements

(% of Reactor Output)

Ore Refinery

Refines ore, providing 2X more usable Basic Metal Units

40,000 (10,000 with bonuses)

1.5% (0% if located within 5 miles of Station Core)

Bioconversion Lab

Allows for the creation of larger Combat Units

30,000 (7,500 with bonuses)

1% (0% if located within 5 miles of Station Core)

Bioconversion Lab (Upgraded)

Allows for the creation of extra-large Combat Units

80,000 (20,000 with bonuses) Requires: Bioconversion Lab

2% (0% if located within 5 miles of Station Core)

Advanced Bioconversion Laboratory (Upgraded)

Allows for the creation of Giant Combat Units

5,000,000 (1,250,000 with bonuses) Requires: Bioconversion Lab (Upgraded)

20% (ambient energy too little for power requirements)

Biological Recombinator

Experiment with different types of units, recombining the DNA from multiple sources to form hybrids

50,000 (12,500 with bonuses)

1.5% (0% if located within 5 miles of Station Core)

Defensive Weaponry Factory

Creates high-tech defensive weaponry that is powered by your Core

45,000 (11,250 with bonuses)

2% (0% if located within 5 miles of Station Core)

Drone Assembly Plant

Creates and repairs non-combat drones and sensor orbs.

35,000 (8,750 with Ing/Wis stat)

2% (0% if located within 5 miles of Station Core)

Geothermal Transmutation Station

Converts geothermal energy into Ambient Power

200,000 (50,000 with bonuses), 200 Focusing Crystals (120 with bonus)

N/A: Requires Power Generator – Portable (2)

Rapid Coalification Facility

Rapidly Converts Organic material into Coal using intense heat and pressure

150,000 (37,500 with bonuses), 150 Focusing Crystals (90 with bonus)

4% (0% if located within 5 miles of Station Core)

Destructive Distillery

Destroys materials and changes them into various substances needed by the Molecular Converter to produce certain other materials

150,000 (37,500 with bonuses)

Requires: Rapid Coalification Facility

4% (0% if located within 5 miles of Station Core)

Planetary Bombardment Dome

Primarily for defense, this dome can encompass your entire fortification and prevent most off-planet bombardments from reaching the ground

700,000 (175,000 with bonuses), 700 Focusing Crystals (420 with bonus)

30% when activated (ambient energy too little for power requirements)

Vehicle Assembly Plant

Produce various armored vehicles for use by your Combat Units

200,000 (50,000 with bonuses)

5% (0% if located within 5 miles of Station Core)

Cybernetic/Synthetic Organism Factory

Allows for the creation of synthetic-based Combat Units

1,000,000 (250,000 with bonuses) 1,000 Focusing Crystals (600 with Bonus)

Requires: Destructive Distillery

5% (0% if located within 5 miles of Station Core)

Space Transport Dock

Create space-worthy transport vehicles for use in space

3,000,000 (750,000 with bonuses) 3,000 Focusing Crystals (1800 with bonus)

Requires: Planetary Bombardment Dome

40% (ambient energy too little for power requirements)

PPPPPP

Produces Power Providers

20,000,000 (Not affected by bonuses)

5% (0% if located within 5 miles of Station Core)

Hemispheric Zero-Point Energy Reactor

The Hemispheric Zero-Point Energy Reactor is designed to provide ambient power to an entire hemisphere of an average-sized planet; it also has a max Reactor Output of 300% for facilities unable to be powered by ambient power levels; additionally, it acts as a depository for knowledge and contains a rudimentary neural network for access to Station Core systems

2,000,000,000 (not affected by bonuses)

N/A

[14]

Cybernetic/Synthetic Organism Factory

Product Name

Description

Cost Range (Basic Metal Units)

Cost Range (Organic Material)

Cost Range (Biological Mass)

Biomechanical Component – Legs & Arms

Replaces the legs and arms of a Combat Unit and interfaces directly into either an organic or cybernetic brain.  Increases Agility moderately.

1 – 50

N/A

1 – 200

Biomechanical Component – Feet & Hands

Replaces the feet and hands of a Combat Unit and interfaces directly into either an organic or cybernetic brain.  Increases Strength and Attack moderately.

1 – 25

N/A

1 - 100

Biomechanical Component -- Torso

Replaces the torso of a Combat Unit and interfaces directly into either an organic or cybernetic brain.  Increases Constitution moderately.

2 – 100

N/A

1 - 400

Cybernetic Component – Eyes

Replaces the eyes of a Combat Unit and requires a cybernetic brain for interfacing.  Increases Perception significantly and provides available information on targets.  Powered physical boosts have no effect.

1 – 5

1 – 20

N/A

Cybernetic Component – Ears

Replaces the ears of a Combat Unit and requires a cybernetic brain for interfacing.  Increases Perception significantly.  Powered physical boosts have no effect.

1 – 5

1 – 20

N/A

Cybernetic Component – Nose

Replaces the nose of a Combat Unit and requires a cybernetic brain for interfacing.  Increases Perception significantly.  Powered physical boosts have no effect.

1 – 5

1 – 20

N/A

Cybernetic Component – Brain

Required for other cybernetic components, the cybernetic brain provides enhanced tactics adopted from other Combat Units.  Increases Intelligence significantly.  Powered Intelligence boosts have no effect.

1 – 20

1 - 40

N/A

Fully Synthetic Base Specimen Replicant (Non-sentient)

Create a fully synthetic replicant of a non-sentient Combat Unit up to 2000 Biological Mass Units in size.  Replicated base specimens share most characteristics, but Power is not one of them.

3 – 800

12 - 3200

N/A

Fully Synthetic Replicant (Proctan)

Create a fully synthetic replicant of a Proctan body of your choice.  Replicants can have slightly increased statistics, but do not share the ability to use Power in any form.

375 - 450

1500 - 1800

N/A

Powered Cybernetic Exoskeleton (Proctan)

A Powered Cybernetic Exoskeleton is an external form of armor for a Proctan body that provides moderate boosts in Strength and Constitution, but a significant decrease in Agility.  Requires a cybernetic brain for proper interfacing.

18750 – 22500

75000 - 90000

N/A

[15]

Portable Power-Providing-Pack Production Plant (PPPPPP) Build List

Name

Type

Description

Cost

Tiny Portable Pack

Individual

These Portable Packs can be held against the skin of an individual Combat Unit or implanted directly into the skin.  Provides a constant regeneration of Power at the rate of 10 per second.  Each Tiny Portable Pack will continue to provide Power for up to 10 years.

1 Basic Metal Unit

Small Stationary Pack

Small Reservoir

These Small Stationary Packs are useful for placing inside a small reservoir of water to convert the water into what is commonly referred to as Power Potion.  The Small Pack is best utilized in water less than 100 cubic feet, or approximately 750 gallons.  Each Small Stationary Pack will continue to provide Power for up to 50 years.

1,000 Basic Metal Units

Large Stationary Pack

Large Reservoir

These Large Stationary Packs are useful for placing inside a large reservoir of water to convert the water into what is commonly referred to as Power Potion.  The Large Pack is best utilized in water less than 5,000 cubic feet, or approximately 37,500 gallons.  Each Large Stationary Pack will continue to provide Power for up to 50 years.

50,000 Basic Metal Units

Mobile Provider

Mobile Unit

The Mobile Provider is a unique amalgamation of different parts.  It combines a ground-based drone with a modified Portable Power Generator to provide Combat Units that possess a Portable Pack within a 100-foot radius a boost to their Power regeneration rate up to 20X depending on proximity.

100,000 Basic Metal Units

[16]

Vehicle Assembly Plant

Vehicle Name

Description

Cost (Basic Metal Units)

Cost (Organic Material)

Single Combat Unit Transport

A small, four-wheeled open transport vehicle capable of holding a single sentient Combat Unit.  Can only be controlled by the single Combat Unit.

400 (200 with bonuses)

5000 (2500 with bonuses)

Multiple Combat Unit Transport

A larger, eight-wheeled closed transport vehicle capable of holding up to a dozen sentient Combat Units.  Can be controlled by the Station Core or by a single Combat Unit.

2000 (1000 with bonuses)

25000 (12500 with bonuses)

Front-line Transports

These long transports can be set up on micro-tracks to funnel Combat Units to the front line of your defense.  Holds up to 60 sentient Combat Units per vehicle and can only be controlled by the Station Core.  Micro-tracks are 10 BMUs per mile.

5000 (2500 with bonuses)

75000 (37500 with bonuses)

Light Armor Scout Vehicle

A small, lightly armored closed scouting vehicle with a single, light-duty optional defensive weapon mount.  Fits up to two sentient Combat Units and can be controlled by the Station Core or by a single Combat Unit.

800 (400 with bonuses)

10000 (5000 with bonuses)

Heavy Armor Defense Vehicle

A large, heavily armored closed vehicle designed for protecting embattled areas with six mounts for heavy defensive weapons.  Can fit up to six sentient Combat units and can only be controlled by the Station Core.

10000 (5000 with bonuses)

150000 (75000 with bonuses)

Aquatic Light Armor Sentry Submarine

This sentry submarine is lightly armored, which allows it to move through aquatic environments very quickly.  Can fit two sentient Combat Units and can be controlled by the Station Core or a single Combat Unit.

800 (400 with bonuses)

10000 (5000 with bonuses)

Aquatic Heavy Armor Guard Station

These aquatic powerhouses are heavily armored, which limits their movement to little more than a crawl.  However, with a dozen mounts for heavy defensive weapons, they can defend a location with efficiency.  Can fit up to a dozen sentient Combat Units and can only be controlled by the Station Core.

15000 (7500 with bonuses)

200000 (100000 with bonuses)

Airborne Patrol Glider

These fast, lightweight, unarmored powered gliders can fit and only be operated by a single sentient Combat Unit for patrol purposes.  No defensive weapons.

300 (150 with bonuses)

4500 (2250 with bonuses)

Airborne Security Craft

This aircraft is lightly armored, with two mounts for lightweight defensive weapons.  Can fit up to two sentient Combat Units and can be controlled by the Station Core or a single Combat Unit.

1500 (750 with bonuses)

20000 (10000 with bonuses)

[17]

Shard Status

Eisa Howells

Elemental Origin: Earth

Shard Level: 20

Next Mana Threshold: Max

Earth Mana: 138000/139000

Defender Creation Options

Goblin Gnome (Level 1 Base Cost: 4 Earth Mana)

Pebble Snake (Level 1 Base Cost: 5 Earth Mana)

Rockworm (Level 1 Base Cost: 10 Earth Mana)

Stone Golem (Level 1 Base Cost: 25 Earth Mana)

Boulder Troll (Level 1 Base Cost: 50 Earth Mana)

Shifting Sand Elemental (Level 1 Base Cost: 60 Earth Mana)

Crystal Scorpion (Level 1 Base Cost: 125 Earth Mana)

Iron Sentinel (Level 1 Base Cost: 150 Earth Mana)

Crevice Spider (Level 1 Base Cost: 200 Earth Mana)

Golden Sphinx (Level 1 Base Cost: 250 Earth Mana)

Shattered Ogre (Level 1 Base Cost: 500 Earth Mana)

Viscous Dirt Elemental (Level 1 Base Cost: 1000 Earth Mana)

Crag Wyrm (Level 1 Base Cost: 2500 Earth Mana)

Rock Giant (Level 1 Base Cost: 5000 Earth Mana)

Special Abilities

Advanced Earth Elemental Form (Activation Cost: 1000 Earth Mana, Upkeep Cost: 50 Mana per minute)

Earth’s Renewal (Activation Cost: 5 Earth Mana, Upkeep Cost: 1-5 Mana per minute)

Stone Barrier (Base Activation Cost: 50 Earth Mana, Cooldown: 10 minutes)

Shattering Schist (Base Cost: 200 Earth Mana)

Earthen Bastion (Base Activation Cost: 500 Earth Mana, Cooldown: 60 minutes)

Quake (Base Cost: 1000 Earth Mana)

Spike Impalement (Base Cost: 1500 Earth Mana)

[18]

Core Status

Name:

Milton Frederick

Type:

Station Core Prototype 3-B

Combat Level:

27

Experience:

162548756/182089500

Reactor Type:

Zero-point Energy

Reactor Output:

550%

Current Statistics/Attributes

Reactor Power/Strength:

110

Processing Power/Intelligence:

136

Structural Integrity/Constitution:

110

Ingenuity/Wisdom:

150

Processing Speed/Agility:

130

Communication/Charisma:

137

Insight/Luck:

100

Sensor Interpretation/Perception

139