Chapter 87: Delve 9

Sunday, April 30th, 10:02 PM (Mountain Time)

Yellowstone Dungeon

Furious, feral snarls followed Joe as he approached the room where the others waited for him. Except nobody was in the room.

“Schimpf!” Colonel Hart called, waving at Joe from the hallway outside the Dungeon Master’s room.

After Joe passed through to stand by Hart’s side and removed the plastic explosives from the last arrow to prevent accidental detonation, the Dragon Fly Enkelyn trio darted to the doorway and fired volleys of ice and fire magics down the stairs.

A man-sized badger covered in frost stumbled into the room atop the stairs. Its breathing was shallow as its limbs slowed to a halt under a continued barrage of ice magic.

While the two whitish-blue frost Dragon Flies kept up their assault and the third spewed its flames at deeper targets, the huge badger growled and gave a heave with its hind legs, but its front feet had frozen solid against the stone floor.

They snapped off.

With a pitiful moan, the badger collapsed.

Joe nocked an arrow and aimed past the stricken animal. Another gout of fire from the red Dragon Fly illuminated the scene below and Joe clenched his jaw. Dozens of badger minions had forced their way through the webs. Snouts dripped with blood where thin silken strands had cut deep, but the enemy minions seemed undeterred, and they charged.

Joe released his arrow. The badger in front crashed and rolled after its head split apart on impact. Its allies pushed the corpse along with them as they neared the top of the stairs.

Hart said, “Goblins!”

There was no time to wonder what the colonel meant as numerous spikes of stone lanced inward from the sides of the stairway.

Joe raised his eyebrows as the spikes impacted near the eyes and mouths of three badgers. The creatures’ momentum snapped off the embedded tips of those stone spears as they growled and tumbled into the Dungeon Master’s room before writhing and clawing at their faces.

“Ants!” Hart commanded.

An assortment of projectiles were fired at the stricken minions.

Sticky, clear liquid adhered to three enormous badger heads, and growls became screams as fur and flesh were melted away.

Joe fired another arrow and a badger’s head split in two, but they kept coming.

“Goblins!” Hart pointed at the stairs as another set of Badgers neared the room and the first set stretched their hind legs out and their bodies twitched.

The next round of spikes was more accurate, with some lancing directly into eyes and mouths. Two of four badgers didn’t even make it past the stairs before collapsing, while the remaining pair received the same acid treatment and the acrid smell of dissolving badger flesh mixed with the lingering tang of human waste that hung in the air.

Joe shot another badger as a few dead minion bodies tumbled back down the stairs, slowing the advancing tide.

Another gout of flame from the red Dragon Fly incinerated the wings off a trio of enemy wasps, but the insects landed atop a dead badger and crawled awkwardly toward them before twin blasts of frost stopped them cold.

Some of the goblins backed away, heads shaking as they clutched their weapons. One complained, [Not can mana.]

[Taxing is fast stoneshaping,] said another.

One final round of spikes seemed less controlled before the last trio of Rock goblins retreated.

The Dragon Flies stopped casting and darted out to the main hallway. [We must rest,] one of them said.

“Spiders!” Hart barked.

The ten-legged spider and tarantula were already clinging to the ceiling above Joe and the colonel. Ethereal-looking spheres coalesced alongside discs of distorted air, and both ripped down the stairway.

The magic projectiles shot forward. Distortions cut deep furrows into badger flesh and ethereal balls smacked with disturbingly wet crunching sounds against furry faces.

Joe released another screeching arrow that took a hapless badger through its side, then skewered a gigantic rattlesnake minion through its neck. The badger twitched in shock while the serpent writhed wildly, bludgeoning its wide head against its serpent and badger allies before an annoyed badger lashed out with its strong front claws and severed the dying snake’s head from its body.

Their efforts had paid off to some degree, as many enemy minions were felled in the opening seconds of the battle. But the growing cacophony from below made it seem like there was no end to them.

“Fall back! After everyone’s out, I need Nita and the other spiders to seal off this doorway!” Hart bellowed.

Joe and the Enkelyn moved through, and the spiders set to work.

Seconds later, it was clear that while it was effective against the wasp-like minions, silk from the Enkelyn spiders wasn’t up to the task of stopping the badgers, whose claws tore through it with contemptuous ease.

But when they reached Nita’s silk, it was the badger claws that suffered instead—hard keratin was sliced away in much the same manner as cheese when pressed against a thin steel wire.

Siobhán’s imposing familiar finished weaving a zigzag pattern across the doorway, then returned to her mistress.

Any badger that tried to breach Nita’s silk lines soon limped away to nurse its inevitable injuries. Nita’s barrier allowed Joe to slay a dozen more badgers over the course of forty seconds—until the first snake slithered between the strands of Nita’s silk with contemptuous ease, followed by numerous others.

Joy dashed forward and sent a fist at the oversized rattlesnakes, summoning a cascade of temporary frost spikes that lanced through five serpents in an instant. Scales, bones, muscle, and sinew were pierced and flash-frozen by Joy’s attack. The spikes of frost disappeared a half-second after she struck, leaving behind five twitching corpses.

When another wave of snakes followed, Joy swung again, and the cold seemed to linger much longer on the ground afterward, deterring further serpents from exiting. But Joy stumbled backward.

“You okay, Peterson?” Joe asked.

“I’m good,” said Joy as she squinted and hugged her stomach. “It’s just… taxing.”

“Schimpf and Peterson, to me,” Hart ordered from behind a meter-high stone barrier he’d ordered the goblins to make across the wide hallway from the Dungeon Master’s room.

Joe and Joy vaulted over the barrier to join the others, and dogs and goblins moved smoothly away to avoid being stepped on.

Colonel Hart pointed at a peculiar vertical hole set into the top of the goblin-made wall and said, “Hearing protection. Schimpf, bring out the XM 250 and the Ma Deuce.”

“Roger that.” Joe grinned.

While Siobhán and Joy inserted earplugs, Joe removed one light and one heavy machine gun from his storage along with several containers holding belts of .50BMG or 6.8x51mm ammunition.

“Enkelyn, keep the enemy away from our position,” said Hart as he loaded a belt into the light machine gun.

Joe took out the pintle rod out of the tripod and mounted the Ma Deuce heavy machine gun into the hole atop the wall. There was a lot of play since the pintle was smaller than the hole, but Joe was so strong that he’d be able to take most of the recoil with his hands. The mount was only there to make it easier for him to aim.

Hart aimed over the wall beside Joe and said, “Peterson, like we practiced on the beach. Keep the barrels cool.”

“Aye, sir,” Joy replied wearily. She flicked the barrel of Hart’s small machine gun with one finger, but used three fingers against the much larger barrel of Joe’s heavy machine gun. Each weapon’s barrel frosted over just a little.

Several discs of distorted air shrieked down and sliced three snakes apart as Hart began firing at the writhing mass of minions beyond Nita’s silk.

Joe pulled the charging handle back twice to load the first round, then took aim at the enemy and pressed the butterfly trigger down with his thumbs. The satisfying sound and feel of 400 rounds per minute made Joe grin as his short, carefully aimed bursts mowed enemy minions down like grass.

But the heavy machine gun also tore through Nita’s silk and left the doorway open. Luckily, with both weapons operating and the Enkelyn assisting every so often, they tore through the remaining enemy minions in less than three minutes.

Colonel Hart did his part with the much smaller XM 250, likely scoring close to 100 kills, but Joe’s tally was easily six times that or more with the heavy machine gun.

By the time the last enemy minion stopped charging when its insides were liquefied as a short burst of .50BMG slugs disrupted its flesh at over 900 meters per second, the Dungeon Master’s room looked like something out of an extreme horror film. Mutilated and blood-soaked furry carcasses were piled so high, the final badger was barely able to climb over and push between the bodies of the dead in an effort to reach Joe and the others.

The coppery reek of animal blood was thick in the now-humid air, and Joe felt Siobhán spike with nausea just before she emptied her stomach.

Like Joe, Colonel Hart had seen the aftermath of numerous battlefields, and although his face was grim, he kept it together. To Joe’s surprise, so did Joy. The willowy blonde’s expression in the face of such carnage was pure determination.

Impressive, Peterson. Joe raised an eyebrow at Joy when she leaped over their low wall and began throwing carcasses aside.

After packing up the machine guns, Joe joined Joy and they pushed the bodies aside. Their tremendous physical strength allowed them to toss hundreds of human-sized bodies aside and push their way down the stairwell, plowing a path through the pile. Then everyone headed down the stairs again, flanked by the spider Enkelyn and the Dragon Flies.

Siobhán stopped to double over and retch again after passing by the last of the ruined badger and snake bodies. By the time she recovered, the ten-legged spider Enkelyn was returning to formation with the others after securing a few wasps that had only been trapped by one or two strands of sticky silk.

The sight of more than 100 wasps caught in the webs was disturbing, to say the least—especially considering the horrible pain Joe had felt when he was stung after first discovering this place. More than a hundred buzzed and strained furiously to escape. And each attempt seemed like it was made in Joe’s direction.

Joe grimaced, and a second later, he felt Siobhán’s small hands gently grasp his left forearm despite the blood that coated it. From what he could feel from her through their bond, Joe knew there was a lot Siobhán wanted to say. But instead, she pressed her lips, then squeezed his arm a bit harder for a moment as she locked her gentle gaze onto his.

Sparing a wink for Siobhán, Joe returned his attention to their task, and her hands released his arm.

Frost breath from the two whitish Dragon Flies silenced every last wasp in seconds—though those Enkelyn fluttered to the stone floor and twitched there.

[We may have… overdone it,] one of them said.

“Oh, no!” Siobhán darted forward and gently scooped both of them up. Her worry was palpable through their connection with Joe as she cradled the huge, alien insects.

“Good initiative, Killarney,” said Colonel Hart. Then he raised his voice. “I want everyone to stick together and follow her example. Many of you are on the verge of mana exhaustion like those two. Be frugal with your magic unless there’s no other option.”

[You are all surprisingly kind for humans,] the tarantula Enkelyn noted. Several other Enkelyn echoed her sentiment.

“You’re part of my team,” said Colonel Hart as they continued down the hallway.

The path curved to the left and down at around a seven percent grade, then continued like that for some distance. To either side, deep trenches were half-filled with animal feces and urine. The stench was horrific, and Siobhán’s nausea made Joe’s worse.

If not for our empowered bodies, we’d have a much harder time with this.

They passed into a larger cavern at last, and the vile stench from before was displaced by the reek of pure sulfur. The ceiling was set with several large lightstones. From the presence of finely detailed stalactites and stalagmites, it was clear this cave probably existed long before the Dungeon was created.

The path between stalagmites on the floor was difficult to discern, along with exactly where they should go—until Joy reached out to touch something beside her.

“Sir, I think I’ve found—” Joy stiffened and became silent as her body glowed with ominous red light.

---

When she touched the huge faceted gem that refracted blood-red light, Joy received a message from The Voice as the world slowed to a crawl around her.

<You have entered a contest of wills for this Dungeon’s core.>

But aside from the feeling that time had effectively stopped, she felt nothing. There was no other consciousness pushing back against hers.

She stared at the fist-sized, uncut gemstone.

Joy wondered, Should I just… take this thing?

A tremendous influx of power rushed into Joy’s spirit and made her stiffen as something crawled across her consciousness just before a splitting headache made her double over in pain.

[-LIE DOWN AND DIE, PREY.-] The thought was more a concept than proper words, but that exact meaning slammed into Joy along with the agony that assaulted her brain.

Childhood memories were dredged up and replayed for Joy, clearer than they’d been in years.

She found herself swimming at Megan Beagley’s house at the age of seven. Joy always hated the times when her mom would go on dates—it meant she had to stay with Megan—her mom’s best friend. Just like Joy’s mother Sarah, Megan was a single mother who cared more about having fun with men than watching her child.

Ryan Beagley. That name seemed to slither through Joy’s thoughts. While most kids got along with Ryan, he’d been the cruelest boy at her school, as far as Joy was concerned. Three years older and two grades higher than her, he’d tried to make Joy take her panties and play doctor with him.

After Joy rebuffed his attempts and told his mother, Ryan was always cruel to Joy. What made it worse was that Ryan’s mother told Joy she’d imagined it. On top of that, Megan never had a genuine smile for Joy again.

The particular scene on repeat in Joy’s mind was the time when Megan had gone out to see her boyfriend, leaving Ryan to look after Joy with no adult supervision. Ryan and two of his closest friends pushed Joy into the pool before she could change into her swimsuit. Then they teased and beat her incessantly with pool noodles each time she surfaced for air, calling her Bull-shitterson.

Ryan and his friends had spread the rumor at school that Joy was a compulsive liar. Somehow, despite that she was no more deceptive or untruthful than any of the other kids, the cruel nickname had stuck.

The worst part of it all was that any time Ryan was completely alone with Joy at one of their houses, he would pretend to be nice. And that would always end in one of two ways; with him asking her to let him stick his hand down her pants, or telling her to touch him. Every time, it was under the guise of playing doctor. And Joy never gave in. A few times, Ryan had tried to force himself on Joy, but she was already tall for her age and was able to fight him off.

Despite that Ryan was never successful in forcing Joy to do anything she didn’t want to do in that way, the memories were still awful, and the time when Ryan and his buddies beat her with the pool noodles was the worst. They weren’t hitting playfully—more than once, Joy had inhaled water down the wrong tube, and still, the boys wouldn’t stop.

Ryan’s mother was quite wealthy following her second divorce settlement, and most of the neighborhood kids in the Westlake area kissed Ryan’s ass because of that. So, they went along with anything and everything he told them to do. The assault went on for what seemed like an eternity to Joy, though it was likely ten or fifteen minutes in real-time. The pool noodles didn’t leave bruises, but the boys struck together, knocking Joy’s head down whenever she surfaced to breathe.

Joy shuddered inside at that memory. She might’ve drowned if Megan hadn’t come home early. Of course, Ryan’s mom didn’t believe Joy. The boys all claimed that Joy jumped in herself in an effort to get them all in trouble. Ryan was his mom’s little angel who could do no wrong. Thankfully, that was the last time Megan allowed Joy at her home.

All the way through high school, Ryan did everything in his power to make Joy’s life hell. The torment didn’t end until Joy attended UCSC and met Siobhán, Rihelah, and Professor O’Connor—her first real friends.

That vivid, painful memory stoked a fire of Rage inside Joy. Coupled with the physical agony in her skull, it made her see red, and Joy lashed back at whatever had forced her to relive such painful experiences.

[-NO!-] Joy flared every ounce of her willpower. [-GET OUT OF MY MIND!-]

The headache vanished along with that crawling presence.

<You have won control over a Basic D-Rank Dungeon and supplanted the previous Dungeon Master.>

<All residents have been automatically removed.>

<All minions are now under your control.>

<While you are a Dungeon Master, you gain the Stoneshaping ability, and you may create traps and spawn points for minions in areas connected to your Dungeon. These actions cost mana.>

<Speak ‘menu’ to list your available options for minions and traps.>

<Your controlled Dungeon gains mana when non-minion creatures die inside it, and when creatures harvest its resources.>

<Beware: Should you ever choose to give up control of this Wild Sentient Dungeon, its core will become hostile.>

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Floors: 9

Minions: 917/1260

Residents: 15/28

Denizens: 8.73M

Traps: 25/45