Chapter 89: Aftermath II

Monday, May 1st, 1:55 AM (Mountain Time)

Yellowstone Visitor Center

Bob’s bedroll lurched. He groaned and clutched at his pillow inside the room he shared with three others in Yellowstone’s Old Faithful Inn.

Damn it, Alex…

Bob took a deep breath. His childhood friend Alex had dragged him to this place. Alex became its de facto leader after their group was the first to reach the core. Since that time, he’d seen Alex twice—and both times were recruiting events for the One World Order, who effectively controlled this place through strength of arms… and Alex.

The headstrong idiot disappears for a whole week, and now… this?

A string of expletives and curses reached Bob’s ears—hissed and growled out by others who’d also been startled awake in the night.

People are working themselves half to death to keep everything afloat. The least you could do is restrain yourself, man. We need sleep! Bob sighed at his old friend’s poor timing.

The floor rumbled anew. The shaking grew more intense than it ever had when Alex was experimenting, and the muttered complaints around Bob fell silent.

Something’s wrong.

“The Inn’s old… it’s not safe here,” Travis said as he dashed from the room in terror, leaving his shoes behind.

“It survived a 7.5 earthquake in ‘59,” Bob muttered. While he wouldn’t stop in the middle of an earthquake to lace his work boots on, he wasn’t about to leave without them behind. As such, Bob was the last to exit the room.

They never plan ahead. Bob complained, rolling his eyes as he stuffed the others’ shoes into his aging backpack.

Panic helps no one. Bob thought as he trotted out through the northwest-facing doors of the wing they were housed in.

With sixteen years of experience as an Emergency Medical Technician, it took a lot to rattle Bob’s cage. He’d sorted through the aftermath of accidents, fires, floods, storms, earthquakes, and plenty of other crises. This was just one more crappy night to add to the list.

To Bob’s annoyance, hundreds were fleeing at a dead sprint past the magic lights at the general store. Dozens tripped and fell as the continuous shaking intensified. Bob shook his head as he struggled to keep his feet.

Everyone’s always in a hurry, and they never stop to—

Bob’s thought was interrupted when the darkness around him was bathed with an ominous yellow-orange light. Bob tensed. Other people screamed in terror as the glow increased, and Bob pressed his lips.

Shit. Just our luck.

Bob turned to look behind him.

If the Old Faithful Inn burns, two thousand people will have no place… to—

A visage of certain doom was climbing above the entire National Park, as superheated clouds of volcanic ash and molten rock fountained high into the atmosphere, as if blasted vertically through a fire-hose nozzle a few kilometers across, under unfathomable pressure.

That’s… it must be twenty kilometers away, and yet…

In the past thirty or so years, it had become common knowledge that Yellowstone was a ‘supervolcano.’ The last major eruption ~640,000 years ago was a Volcanic Explosivity Index 8, or VEI-8 eruption. The largest and most devastating kind possible, VEI-8 meant that more than 1,000 cubic kilometers of magma was ejected.

If one considered the devastating power of the VEI-5 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens with only a single cubic kilometer of ejecta, then Yellowstone’s last eruption was at least three orders of magnitude greater—the two events weren’t even comparable in terms of scale.

People have been saying for years that Yellowstone is overdue for its next big eruption.

That absolute worst-case scenario seemed to be happening right in front of Bob. If that were true, there would be no escape.

Then, something strange happened. The bottom of the fiery eruption column started disappearing from view, as if someone were slowly concealing it behind a shutter that rose from the Earth.

Twenty seconds after that began, whatever it was stopped rising.

What on Earth is happening?

---

[Joybean, you need to help me shut this down!]

Joy had slumped between Joe and Colonel Hart, and likely would have collapsed if not for them supporting her.

“Professor, I don’t have enough mana left in my Dungeon… It’s all gone.” Joy murmured. She seemed barely able to keep her eyes open.

“Pass control—lesser Dung—core to Ciara!” Sven appeared beside Joy and the others, flickering in and out of existence as he hovered and stared directly into Joy’s eyes. “Do—quickly, if you—chance at survival.”

“Please, take it, Professor. I never wanted to control a Dungeon in the first place…”

The instant Joy said that, I acquired access to the entirety of a very filthy Yellowstone Dungeon—its hallways and caverns rife with human waste and detritus.

<You have defeated an enemy Dungeon and assimilated its core!>

<You control 2/25 Dungeons on Earth.>

<Control all Dungeons on Earth to claim victory for Lord Auronox.>

[What? The enemy still has twenty-three Dungeons?] I complained as my stoneshaping ability became noticeably stronger with the addition of a second core.

[How is that even close to a fair fight?] Continuing to bitch, I pushed back against the hostile presence that had forced Yellowstone to erupt.

“They have twenty-three Dungeons?” Colonel Hart paled.

Joe winced. “That’s fucked…”

[You should all shelter in the Dungeon for now.]

Hart replied, “Heh. With an eruption going on, I don’t think any place in the park is safe.”

[True, but now that I have two cores, I should be able to win this.] While I only had around ten percent more power, my ability to multi-task had greatly increased with the addition of a second core.

Wielding a higher degree of control along with slightly increased potency, I gained ground against my opponent. I was winning the fight, though not as quickly as I’d hoped.

A massive eruption was already in progress. If I failed to shut that down, then everyone in the Yellowstone area would be wiped out at the very least.

It was possible to encroach on the enemy’s claimed ground much faster than before, and I used that to my advantage as I sought to cut them off from the park entirely. But gaining access to the Yellowstone Dungeon had laid bare just how difficult that would be…

Joy had done her best, but she’d failed to realize what the enemy was trying to do until it was much too late. I noticed that in the way she ran her defense—all of which was centered around protecting the Dungeon she’d controlled, rather than preventing access to the enormous volcanic hotspot lurking below. Thrown headlong into a fight of this kind with very little knowledge of how to handle a Dungeon, she’d panicked. I couldn’t fault her for that, even if it made my job much harder.

The majority of my focus centered around blocking further progress by my adversary, but I still had enough to work on the eruption itself.

I managed to narrow the gap through which the eruption raged just west of the caldera’s lake, reinforcing it with enchanted stone. Bit by bit, I squeezed it off as if closing a valve.

As if sensing what I was doing, the lion’s share of my opponent’s efforts returned to that place. The speed with which I was able to stifle the eruption slowed.

But I was winning—handily. Unless something changed, all my enemy could do was to delay the inevitable.

The surrounding stone had to be enchanted, to help contain the tremendous pressure of the eruptible magma, and stifle the inertia of so much mass that was already in motion. Every place where I enchanted the stone, my enemy’s influence and stoneshaping ability were diminished to the point where they became negligible.

The cataclysm was cut short long before its energy was exhausted.

As the eruption column lost its power, most of the superheated ash, gas, and rock did exactly what one might expect when the force keeping it aloft vanished—it slowed its ascent, then plummeted back to Earth.

That wouldn’t be a problem, except that it didn’t simply come to rest on contact.

[Dessspicable traitor…] The enemy spoke as it redirected all its effort to open a second eruption vent. Its voice gurgled with a sphinctral timbre. Its contemptuous tone seethed with something far beyond hatred.

The collapsed eruption column’s titanic downward momentum was transferred outward into a pyroclastic flow that rolled across the landscape, incinerating and burying everything in its path.

Trees were snapped off like twigs and flattened against the landscape even as they were buried by hot ash and glowing blocks of stone that caused their sap to boil.

Bison, deer, elk, bears, mountain lions, coyotes, rodents, snakes, wolves, and even birds—all made a vain effort to flee from the cloud of death rolling across the landscape, but even the fastest of them was pitifully slow by comparison. All the wild animals that had the misfortune to be within the blast zone were overwhelmed and entombed. Their flesh was cooked, and their bodily fluids boiled down into a viscous goo as water flashed to steam.

Because of my all-encompassing vision and the enormous area of land that I’d claimed, I bore witness to the deaths of untold thousands of large animals along with millions of rodents and insects.

[Sssee what you’ve done!]

I saw no point in responding to an enemy trying to lay the blame for its crimes at my feet. Instead, I expended almost half my available mana to shape a tremendous v-shaped wall of enchanted stone to turn the pyroclastic flow aside and protect the Visitor Center’s population along with any animals in that vicinity.

Pure rage flowed from my enemy in place of words, as the barrier rose smoothly—a mere twenty centimeters thick. I could feel the opposing Dungeon’s bitter frustration when it failed miserably in an attempt to knock my wall down. Even a series of granite spikes more than a meter thick, grown from a few spots where the enemy still held ground and stabbed at my protective barrier with tremendous speed, merely splashed against the enchanted stone I’d made and provided me with more materials to claim.

It seemed the survivors, whether allies or not, would be spared the worst—at least, in the short-term. Volcanic ash and gases would still blanket the area—poisoning the air and water.

Shit. The scale of the required clean-up operation was daunting—and I was the only one who could stand between affected communities and a gruesome outcome.

I’d have to claim an enormous area. My plan to finish my ninth floor so that I could build out the tenth would have to wait.

I have no choice, and—oh, no you don’t!

With a better handle on my containment efforts and nearly the entire park’s surface claimed by me, I noticed and responded immediately when my opponent tried to open another vent to the west of the one I’d closed.

That process repeated four more times, but I staved off the enemy Dungeon’s efforts so completely that it began to retreat.

“Mudball, follow the enemy’s trail back to its Dungeon. Find its location!” Sven appeared by my original core.

[I’ll try.]

For almost a full minute, I followed what could only be described as the “smell” of the enemy Dungeon as it pulled back from the park. I was disturbed to find that its trail led southwest, toward Rexburg and Idaho Falls.

Unfortunately, the enemy Dungeon must have realized I was in pursuit because, somehow, its scent disappeared without a trace.

[The enemy Dungeon retreated too fast for me to follow.]

“Hm.” Sven scratched his scaly chin. “Something may have happened to its core.”

[What does that mean for us?] I asked, while absorbing swathes of pyroclastic flow debris and extending my wall.

“It depends.”

[On what?]

“Whether I’m right, and, if I am, on who or what is now in control of it…”

[This Dungeon’s voice was… disturbing. It reminded me of sounds made by people who have bronchitis—if the person speaking only knew how to hate.]

Sven took a deep breath and sighed. “Demons.”

[Those things again.] I seethed at the memory of two writhing masses of unkempt biology attempting to burrow into my girls.

“Demons are true servants of chaos. The enemy will summon as many of their ilk as they can. Thankfully, doing so is costly, and demons cannot revive in the same way as minions.”

[That’s good.] The pyroclastic flow had run its course at last, and I busied myself absorbing the superheated tephra along its edge, including any trees or plants that had caught fire. The last thing the park needed was a forest fire on top of everything else. Ash was already raining down over the survivors.

“Not as good as you think.” Sven shook his head. “Demons are devious mind and soul-affecting beings. The more of them the enemy has, the easier it becomes to deceive a population and sway them into compliance.”

[Similar to Karen and Tony?]

“Demons are worse. They lack a moral compass. Those two had some sense of human morality—even if it was unbalanced. Demons bring out the very worst in others, by forcefully encouraging them to follow their animal instincts above all else.”

[So, there might have been demons present in Santa Cruz since the war began?]

“Considering all that has happened, and based on your memories from before the conflict began, there were likely demons present on this world for several years before the war.”

[The other Dragon began Its attack that long ago?]

“Probably so.”

[You think demons assisted the One World Order?]

“No, Mudball. It is likely that demons created the One World Order.”

[That’s disturbing.]

“Considering what your President told me about the safeguards that nuclear-armed nations had—only the corruption of numerous demons could cause such a catastrophic breakdown of security across so many levels of government and military personnel at the same time.”

[I don’t like it, but everything’s starting to make sense.]

“Sadly, yes. I believe I understand why our Lord was barred from informing us about too much. There are several approaches that Dragons may use during a contest for a low-grade world. One of them involves an early start, making use of numerous but expendable beings—like demons. In those cases, the opposing Dragon may opt for a similar strategy or one of several others.”

[It seems unfair that the other side got started years before we could.]

“All is fair in war, Mudball, so long as the Dragons involved do not violate the laws of Their kind.”

[Okay, Scaly… So, what’s our advantage? Do we even have one?] With the potential forest fires dealt with, while talking with Sven, I followed the ashfall through the mountains and claimed land as quickly as I could, so that my Dungeon could purify the toxic chemicals.

“You are a massive advantage—a true sapient Dungeon is far superior to sentient Dungeons that must be controlled by others. So long as you do not fall behind, you will be so powerful that you’ll be untouchable.”

[Considering what I’ve seen from the Yellowstone Dungeon, that’s not difficult to believe. So, I just need to keep building more floors?]

“Yes and no.”

[What’s the no-part?]

“Because the enemy is working to exterminate uncompliant humans everywhere they can, you must also seek to prevent the other Dungeons from claiming too much of Earth’s surface. That means claiming it for yourself and fighting to overwhelm and subdue other Dungeons where you find them.”

[Hm. Things were bad in the first part of this fight, but it was much easier after I gained a second core.]

“You are lucky it was only a single demon-controlled Dungeon that opposed you. If it had been two or more…” Sven shook his head.

[I can see how that would be problematic.]

“No, it would be much worse than simply problematic. You might have been destroyed if they forced their way back here.”

[You don’t think all the enemy Dungeons know where we are?]

“If they did, you would face certain annihilation.”

[Shit.]

“Indeed. Stay your course. Protect who you can, and continue to increase your mana production. Make use of that second core. Your ability to multi-task should have improved drastically following its acquisition.”

[Yeah. It’s pretty convenient. I’ve been cleaning up the Visitor Center at Yellowstone while continuing to claim the surrounding land as we held this conversation.]

“Excellent. More cores will mean further expansion of that capability. When you reach ten floors, you’ll also earn a handy little ability that I’ve no doubt you will appreciate. But do your best to avoid distraction from what must be done. You are fighting two against twenty-three. The only reason you haven’t lost is that most of the enemy Dungeons don’t know where you are. The other side of that coin is that you also don’t know where they are.”

[Reconnaissance is going to be important.]

“Information is always important, Mudball. See your President about that. Some of his people have… intriguing ideas.”

[Oh! The second core doubled my maximum count for minions, residents, and traps! It also added the totals from the other Dungeon to mine. That’s sub-optimal, given how underwhelming some of the other Dungeon’s minions are.]

“Indeed. Each additional core you control will add the same amount of capacity as your original core. Three cores will offer three times the capacity, and so-on. It will increase based on the number of floors you have. But beware… other Dungeons can absorb their fellows as well. If one of the enemy Dungeons manages to absorb the rest before you can find them, you will have little chance to win. Keep in mind that the enemy wants this to happen. They’ll fight you but not each other. Once one of their Dungeons asserts dominance, any of its allied Dungeons will yield control as soon as they find each other.”

[Crap. They’re already reaching across the world to connect.]

“Precisely. Do your best to prevent that.”

---

Floors: 9

Cores: 2

(1.5x multi-tasking, 1.1x minion, trap, and stoneshaping power.)

Minions: 1531/2520

Residents: 15/56

Denizens: 10.12M

Traps: 55/90