Chapter 81

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.

Dungeon Factory, Command Center.

"NOOOOOO!"

Alexandra flinched as Emilia yelled out, and before she could stop her advisor, the vampire girl ran forward, snapping her grimoire open.

An arc of energy leapt from the vampire's fingers, and golems and zombies alike exploded into a flash of light as it pierced them. The last of CQ's royal guard and the remnants of the praetorian guard were annihilated…and so were the zombies, revealing the torn corpses that had once been Emilia's maids and the manticore pup, who had fallen to the onslaught only a second or so after them. Even Jared, who had been moving to help the maids, was thrown to the ground, twitching from the arcs of energy still coursing through his body.

For a split second there was only silence. Then whatever artifact they had used to take down the maids -and Alexandra could see distinctly some kind of eery light reflecting on the walls of the hallway- started to take its toll on Emilia herself, and she fell to her knees.

Alexandra heard the twang of released crossbow bolts, and she began moving before she even realized it. But internally she knew that she was too far. Her surprise had stunned her, and she hadn't followed in the vampire girl's footstep. She watched in almost slow motion as the projectiles crossed the door's threshold, at least five arbalest bolts, gleaming with enchantments and magic to her eyes, headed straight for her advisor.

Then she felt space warp, and suddenly Emilia was thrown to the ground…and covered in particles of light as CQ's disintegrating body laid on top of her, her Crimson Shield useless without any golems to protect her, and the golems beyond the door, who had begun to move again, laid still.

Alexandra skiddled to a halt as she looked at the dying boss, and the vampire girl their daughter just saved.

Emilia was down for the count. There was no doubt about that in Alexandra's mind. But the vampire girl was still breathing, which was-

She heard the thuds of boots hitting ground, metal, and even flesh, and her rational mind vanished behind a wall of hatred as the soldiers finally came into sight, and she laid eyes upon those who had almost killed her advisor.

The first man she hit didn't even realize she was there. One second he was advancing, his eyes firmly set on the vampire advisor he'd been drilled to think of as the single greatest threat in the dungeon, ready to attack her should she even twitch.

The next a fist hit him with the force of a truck launched at supersonic speeds, aided by a spell Alexandra had not used since she had been turned into a dungeon core, the hyper powerful kinetic strike she had used against those who had attacked her party.

His body didn't fly out. It was instantly liquefied, as if he'd been a balloon of blood waiting to be popped, splashing onto the wall and painting the entire room red.

Alexandra turned towards her next target as the soldiers around her reflexively flinched in horror. It wasn't just the suddeness either, as the mind bending effect of the crimson veil descended upon them. The woman, some kind of ranger, judging by her crossbow, barely had the time to truly register that there was a threat in their midst before Alexandra grabbed her head and squeezed.

The ranger's skull popped like a melon, and the berserk dungeon core moved on to her next victim, this one, a frontline shield bearer, she simply picked up and tore in half, throwing his upper body at one of his comrades, sending him flying against the wall, before slamming his legs into another shield bearer, crushing her armor and caving her ribcage in under the impact, leaving her to suffocate in her own blood on the floor.

The soldiers knew she was in their midst know, but the crimson veil crushed their minds. Soldiers that had faced a legion of golem unshaken, seen their own comrades brought back as undead and torn to shreds over and over again, panicked.

Desperate slashes and stabs went for her, and Alexandra ignored them. She grabbed the blade of one of the shield bearers attack her, and drew him in, grabbing his body and using him as a battering ram to crush two of his comrades against the wall, killing all three of them.

Then she heard a click, and turned around. Her mind, still clouded by the unnatural wave of hate that had overcome her, belatedly recognized what the soldier -officer, if his gilded armor was anything to go buy- was holding. A revolver.

He fired. Once.

And she ignored the bullet. Her avatar jerked backward slightly under the impact, and came upon him, unleashing a roundhouse kick that sent him flying into the wall with such force the screens lining said wall exploded on impact, and the rock itself cracked.

His body fell limply to the floor, narrowly missing Jared as the golem tried, and failed, to get back up, and Alexandra spun around, looking for another target-

"That's enough!"

Alexandra looked up to see a woman covered in blood, wearing an even more gilded armor than the one of the man she had just slain, holding a second revolver…to Emilia's head.

The dungeon core's avatar froze.

"You…You're the dungeon's avatar, right? Well, listen, if you make even one more step, your advisor is dead, you hear me?"

Alexandra looked around the room, her rage ebbing away as she began to panic.

"DO YOU HEAR ME?!?" Yelled out the woman, and Alexandra closed her eyes. She went to the deepest part of her mind, and brought back a personality matrix she would have rather kept buried forever. One she had only resorted when all had seemed lost when she was kidnapped.

When she opened them, someone else was looking back at the enemy officer.

The officer recoiled slightly as she met Alexandra's eyes, and saw not the hatred and terror of a cornered animal, but the cold fire of a fanatic.

Alexandra looked around calmly, and looked back at the commander. Whoever that woman was, she clearly was the enemy's leader, as whatever had remained of her force had coalesced around her, including a handful of mages in their flowing robes, one of them holding an intricate, glowing cube, whose tendrils of energy seemed to snake towards the bodies of the maids, and Emilia herself.

"I heard you." She said in a voice filled with cold contempt. "So, here you are, yet another round of core kidnappers. Given your level of…preparedness, and your equipment, I assume you are the follow up of the previous team?"

The commander's eyes flashed at Alexandra's tone.

"We are. And as you can see, we have been vastly more…successful."

"That, I'm afraid, remains to be seen."

"Oh really?" The commander gestured with her revolver at Emilia's fallen body. "Does it?"

"Of course!"

BLAM

The command center filled with the sound of a pistol firing, and the mage holding the artifact crumpled, his cube flickering and sparking before shutting down due to the bullet hole torn through it, as Jared held up the revolver he had picked up from the fallen lieutenant. All of the soldiers, even the commander, rounded in on him…and none of them managed to stop Alexandra, or get their weapons back onto Emilia to force her into inaction as the dungeon's avatar dived onto the ground, and smashed the button hidden underneath one of the command consoles, crushing the thin layer of rock that protected it.

For a split second, nothing happened.

Then the dungeon's final defense protocols activated.

Throughout the second floor, explosive charges, carefully inlaid into the support pillars, detonated. There weren't that many of them, and none of them were that powerful…but Alexandra knew exactly where to put them.

The ground shook…and the second floor collapsed. The entire square kilometer of it.

The mesa bent inward, and the entire dungeon went with it, even the third floor and the forges, as several cubic kilometers of rock fell down, creating an artificial earthquake of epic proportions.

Bracelets flashed with energy, and Alexandra and Emilia's bodies vanished, teleported to safety alongside CQ's sword as everything fell down into darkness.

*****

Gift froze as the sensor report was downloaded directly into his core. Even as the dungeon he was heading towards was over the horizon, the ancient systems that fed his personal warship information saw the mesa collapse…and Gift knew that he saw the destruction of the dungeon.

His eyes hardened, and throughout his ship, legions of monsters stood ready, and gun turrets the size of houses began to pivot.

Looked like he was too late to save his fellow dungeon…avenging it was then.

*****

The bunker core simply froze for a few seconds at the earthquake hit its installation. It couldn't quite estimate the power of it but…the missile he'd be warned about had hit at long last. Low level nuclear warhead, megatons at most, although with his degraded sensor net it was almost impossible to tell for sure. Regardless, whatever remained of the facility topside was almost certainly gone now, and it began moving what little security it had to the elevator shaft and the entrance to the command center. There was only one reason he hadn't been obliterated by a bunker buster: someone wanted the command center intact. And that meant that a strike team was en route. When it arrived, it would be ready.

*****

Allya looked in horror as the mesa housing the dungeon just…folded in on itself, and was thrown to her knees as the ground bent under the incredible amount of energy released.

She shook her head, looking at the battlefield around her. They had been losing, despite the heroic help of captain Calder, and virtually everyone in the town, even some adventurers and she was despairing that they would be able to hold off the onslaught. Now everyone stood there, too stunned to start fighting again as they looked at the vanished mesa.

Then she frowned as the sun rose. And her eyes went wide as she realized that not only was the sun moving too quickly, but it was hours before dawn.

The dreadnought's ward of protection flared as it deployed like a vast parachute, aided by retro thrusters, stopping the ship dead in its tracks, directly above the battlefield.

Allya had barely the time to register what was happening before the night flashed into day once more, and the ground shook again. She looked in terror as the mercenaries' artillery exploded into a wave of energy, over three dozen men and half as many artillery pieces just reduced to atoms. Then the air filled with a booming voice.

"This is Gift, dungeon core of the United Dungeon Council. Cease hostilities immediately or die. I will not repeat myself."

Then monsters began dropping from the sky.

*****

Gift frowned as he looked at the collapsed mesa. The dungeon's influence…was still there. Which meant that not only had the core's shields held, but also that the dungeon collapse hadn't been due to the dungeon core being murdered, but rather a calculated move, a last resort measure.

Gift felt a twinge of respect for whatever insane madman had devised that. It was exactly the kind of defiant gesture dungeons had done during the first United Dungeon War, when surface dwellers overwhelmed them.

It was a matter of a simple thought to activate his ship's tractor beams, and with them he began to dig, lifting out thousands of tons of rubble at a time as he scanned the ruins for even the slightest hint of life. He could dig out the core, but if the dungeon advisor was dead…He'd seen what an advisor's murder could do to a fellow dungeon core, and it was a fate he wished on no one, not even those he hated the most among the UDC.

His eyebrows rose as he detected multiple lifesigns. One, solitary was deep, very deep within the dungeon, and was encased in what appeared to be a solid box of armor, alongside…was that an avatar?

And two more, very faint vampiric life signs laid not far from what his sensors told him was the dungeon core itself.

He redirected his tractor beams and monsters accordingly…and never realized how his sensor readings stopped abruptly a few hundred meters below what had once been the dungeon proper. Or how what suspiciously looked like an elevator shaft was fully intact from the upheaval…and its lower end disappeared into the blank space without a trace.