Interlude Part 1

Arthur hated kids, he hadn’t known it until very recently, but he now knew for sure that he really fucking hated kids.

“Come play with us daddy!” Ethereal, echoey voices of little girls came from all around him before giggling.

“Fuck off! I’m not your daddy!” he retorted angrily. Just then, a little girl leapt out of the cloying unnatural shadows from behind a musty old armchair and attacked him. Arthur didn’t hesitate in sending a blast of fire straight into the child’s face. The little girl was sent flying back into the shadows, letting out a piteous cry of pain like that of a young human girl before the screaming degenerated into something that a wounded pig or boar might make.

“That was really mean daddy! We just want to play with you!” The little girl’s voices came again punctuated with sobbing.

Arthur gritted his teeth and kept a wary eye on the shadows. Numerous footsteps from little feet and childish giggling could be heard all around him.

How did it come to this? How? He’d been at the top of his game, the strongest monster slayer in Pennsylvania, an A ranked slayer in charge of the Red Vanguard guild. He had money, women, power, fame and status, he’d had it all. And now? Well now it seemed he and his guild were getting the blame for this whole dungeon outbreak debacle instead of that crazy rich asshole who’d tried to resurrect his dead daughter.

One moment everything was fine, the next he’s getting a call from the state governor telling him to get his ass out there because there’s a dungeon outbreak coming from Evershire house dungeon. It was an old colonial style manor that had been abandoned well over a century ago but then rediscovered a little over a year ago as a brand new dungeon.

He and his guild had immediately responded to the governor’s orders and split up to defend the affected towns in the area alongside the National Guard. It was a goddamn nightmare, he’d been expecting some sort of monster swarm, maybe something exotic because dungeons are weird like that. But what he got instead was thousands of identical looking seven or eight year old little girls in cutesy floral dresses killing and eating civilians and soldiers. They looked perfectly normal and adorable right up until they got close to you and then their mouths would open too wide, splitting their heads apart to reveal seemingly endless rows of razor sharp fangs. When he’d first seen the horror of it all, he’d thought he was hallucinating and that it was some sort of chemical attack affecting his mind. But then one of the little monsters literally bit his ankle and he roasted the creature out of reflex, that was when he realised he wasn’t hallucinating.

“Daddy why?”

The creatures weren’t particularly powerful, but they weren’t weak either. Just one of the little monsters was perfectly capable of overpowering a strong grown man who hadn’t done any cultivation. And there was far more than one, it was estimated to be approximately ten thousand or more of the little nightmares that had broken out of the dungeon. Each of the several towns that had been attacked saw a huge death toll and once the monsters were eradicated, it was found that more than half the people in each town had been killed. That wasn’t even counting the death toll amongst the National Guard. Those civilians that had survived were abandoning their homes for safer areas.

Arthur sighed bitterly, now here he was, in the belly of the beast. After being screamed at by the State Governor for failure of duty and gross negligence and some other bullshit, because somebody needs to be blamed right? He’d been forced to lead what was left of his guild into Evershire house.

The vast majority of his guild was dead, almost a hundred brave souls and three quarters of them were dead, all because some crazy bastard had more money than sense. They’d done their duty, it didn’t matter what the Governor and the press had to say about it, they’d done their damn duty but they were getting the blame for it all because the dungeon was technically in their territory. What were they supposed to have done? It wasn’t their dungeon, they didn’t have jurisdiction over it, legally they couldn’t even have approached the gated compound surrounding the dungeon so just what the fuck were they suppose to have done differently!!

Arthur wordlessly yelled out in frustration, kicking a nearby old table and smashing it to splinters with his armoured boot. The childish giggling surrounding him redoubled, though the little monsters were keeping their distance for now.

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to keep calm. Getting angry again wouldn’t help matters.

“You okay boss?” someone asked behind him. It was Marvin, old dependable Marvin. He’d been with Arthur ever since he’d founded the guild two years ago. A steady hand with a shotgun and a solid earth element user, he was the perfect man to watch a guy’s back.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine, sorry about that,” Arthur assured him. He looked at the rest of his squad, what was left of his guild, tired but determined gazes stared back at him, many of them were sporting injuries from the days of fighting. None of them had slept properly for days now, ever since the dungeon outbreak had begun up to when they’d practically been forced to do this dungeon delve. But they’d stuck with him, never wavering, loyal to the last.

The governor wanted the dungeon scoured and for Arthur and his guild to find the ‘dungeon core’, the thing that was supposed to control and power the dungeon. Removing or destroying it was supposed to render a dungeon powerless. Only, a dungeon core was supposed to be a theoretical item at the moment, it was only rumoured to exist. No dungeon core had ever been seen or confirmed to even exist. So just what the hell were they even doing here? Why the government couldn’t just nuke this place he had no idea.

He shouldn’t have agreed to come here, he should’ve just told the governor to go fuck himself and save what was left of his guild, consequences be damned.

“I…” he tried to speak to his team, to reassure them or bolster their morale or…something, but the words wouldn’t come.

“It's fine Arty, we’re with you,” one of his slayers spoke up with a quiet but firm voice. Natasha, she’d only been in the guild a few months but she’d quickly risen through the ranks. One of the less powerful of his guild members overall, but the fact that she’d survived the fighting so far spoke of her increasing skill and power.

He nodded gratefully and turned back to lead them further into the haunted mansion. They were going to survive this, he swore it to himself in determination, they would live through this, all of them.

Due to the nature of the dungeon, there was nothing valuable here to loot or harvest. Normally that wouldn’t be a good thing and right now it was neither here nor there but it only reminded him of another bitter loss the guild had taken.

Tyrone, the guild’s only lightning cultivator, he’d barely lasted ten minutes when they hit the first town before he’d gotten himself killed by a swarm of the little creatures. Killed and eaten by a swarm of little girl monsters, what a way to go, poor Tyrone.

Arthur felt bad for the guy but dammit! It’d taken them months just to find a lightning cultivator willing to join the guild and get him trained up only for him to get killed just like that!? One of his first proper fights and he goes down. Why couldn’t they find a guy like that Jack Errant fella from the UK instead? The first ever lightning cultivator that the Brits are so smug about. According to the rumours, Errant had been taking dangerous solo hunts straight from the get go and coming out on top each time.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Tyrone’s heart had been in the right place, he’d been enthusiastic about becoming a monster slayer but he didn’t quite have the knack for combat. Before the breakout, Arthur had been thinking about asking Tyrone to only serve as the guild’s attuner, recovering loot for them and taking a backseat when it came to fighting. But when it all went down, things had just spiralled and he’d lost track of things a little.

Tyrone’s death put the guild at a major disadvantage financially, lightning cultivators were worth their weight in gold these days, massively increasing the amount of monster loot a slayer team could recover from a hunt. All the other guilds in Pennsylvania had one, their main competitor, the Bestial Ashes guild, had two. The Red Vanguards would lag behind the other guilds in earnings, losing their top spot, not that that really mattered anymore. Surviving the day took precedence for now.

But now that Tyrone was dead, they’d still have to find another lightning cultivator, which would probably take them months again. And that was if there was even still a guild at all after this nightmare came to an end.

Arthur led his guild down a long dark corridor, lit dimly by antique wall sconces which barely illuminated the worn and faded wallpaper or creaky wooden floor boards. Needless to say, the dungeon was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. The exterior of the dungeon simply appeared to be a three storey colonial house, still looking old and dilapidated from its century long abandonment. But inside was a dark maze of corridors and rooms filled with antique furniture, creepy paintings, baroque mirrors and carnivorous monsters in the shape of little girls. It was like every haunted house horror movie come to life.

The creatures that lurked in the many shadows surrounding them started up some sort of fucked up nursery rhyme, though they sung it in soft, sibilant whispers. Fuck this place.

The slayers all possessed torches and flares which helped a little with the darkness but not much. The darkness and shadows that surrounded them were not natural, they resisted the light, rejecting it or absorbing it, not allowing it to penetrate very far. The harsh lights of the torches and flares only made the darkness recede a little. In truth it probably made things a little worse because it made their shadows dance madly across the walls and ceiling, only adding to the numerous sinister figures that stalked the corners of their eyes.

For the next several hours the Red Vanguard guild explored the haunted house style dungeon, carving their way through the monstrous facsimiles of little girls. They were even attacked by several mimics of various shapes and sizes. Along with the monsters and creepy decor, were traps galore; trip wires, pit traps under fake floors, hidden mounted crossbows, pressurised acid, hidden spring blades and more. However, the Red Vanguard guild was plenty experienced with clearing dungeons by now and traps were nothing new to them, nor was disarming or safely setting them off.

Eventually, they reached a large door at the bottom of a set of stairs. They went through it and found themselves in what appeared to be a large basement filled with piles of junk. Stacks of old furniture and antique looking items were piled high all over the place. As always, the whispering, giggling and pitter patter of little feet surrounded them, always just out of sight within the everpresent shadows all around.

The slayers of the Red Vanguard guild filtered in and got ready for yet another fight, soon enough they were attacked from all sides. With vicious inhuman screams, the little monsters leapt from the shadows all at once, pouncing on them from atop piles of junk and from the ceiling above.

The slayers were ready however, and met the creatures with blades and bullets, with blasts of fire, wind, water and earth. After a short but vicious fight, the creatures were dealt with, though two more of the Arthur’s guild members had lost their lives in doing so.

Arthur watched with regret as Gerald and Isabella dissolved into multicoloured vapour and light, as he was doing so, one of his slayers called for his attention and pointed to something at the far end of the basement area. Another door, different from what they’d seen so far, illuminated by a dozen or so mounted elk or deer antlers that held burning candles at the tips of the tines. Strangely, the mounted antlers were placed all around the doorway, all around the sides and above it too, as if to highlight and call attention to the door, it stood out starkly and eerily amongst the surrounding darkness.

“So are we supposed to go in then? Do you suppose that's the boss’s room?” a slayer asked in scepticism.

Arthur sighed tiredly. “Looks like it, I doubt we’ll achieve much by exploring the rest of the house. Let's go.”

They all walked over to the door, warily keeping an eye out for any more ambushes. Their boots stomped across the creaking wooden floors. Just as Arther neared the door, it opened very slightly by itself, letting out a small creaking noise. He rolled his eyes, far past the point of being creeped out or frightened by the dungeon’s shenanigans.

Rather than hesitantly and slowly opening the door, he booted it open, with a crash the door splintered and he paused for a second.

WHOOSH

Yep, a large spring blade sliced through the air just where his neck would’ve been if he’d stepped through the door normally. Nasty, but unoriginal.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” he muttered. Then he turned back to the others. “Grab some junk from those piles and start throwing it in the room, I want to trigger as many traps as we can before we go in, and Sarah, throw in a couple of flares would ya?” he told them.

A woman nodded and stepped forward to throw some lit flares through the door whilst the rest of the guild grabbed various chairs, small tables, boxes and other pieces of furniture to also throw through the door.

However, a minute after they began to do that, someone let out a shocked cry of surprise.

“Whoa! Shit! Help!” someone cried out from behind a pile of junk.

Arthur snapped around from where he’d been observing the guild’s progress in setting off the traps waiting for them beyond the doorway and saw one of his slayers stumbling backwards towards them. Following him looked to be a large ornate oak wardrobe, however the doors to the wardrobe suddenly burst open and a bewildering array of barb covered fleshy tentacles burst outwards and wrapped around the unfortunate slayer. He was immediately dragged inside the wardrobe and its doors snapped shut, it rattled for a second as the slayer inside screamed in pain and terror before the screams suddenly stopped. Copious amounts of blood oozed out of the seams of the murderous piece of furniture, forming a pool beneath it.

All around them, the piles of junk and detritus began to shift and move on their own.

“Mimics!” someone cried.

“Flares! Get some more light in here!” Arthur ordered.

Several slayers threw flares into the darkness around them, providing a little more illumination, allowing them to see the figures that approached them. It was like a scene from the animated movie ‘The Beauty and the Beast’, when all the furniture was alive and animated because they were actually real people turned into chairs, closets and teaspoons and the like. Except these things didn’t look like they wanted to give people makeovers, prepare banquets or burst into song.

Arthur snarled and readied his warhammer as he looked at all the teeth and tentacles amongst the mahogany and oak. Then he saw in the shadows behind the mimics, more little girl monsters, giggling and shrieking in bloodlust. He thought about it for a moment. If he and his guild simply retreated into the next room, the monsters would follow and if that really was the boss room then that was probably them done for.

“Fuck it! Jenny, Aron, Ursula! Let's toast ‘em!” he cried out, getting a flame ready.

Without waiting for confirmation, he sent out a large plume of fire through his hands and waved it back and forth like a flame thrower. After a second's hesitation, the others joined him and together they ignited a massive conflagration, the mimics and little girl monsters caught fire and let out inhuman shrieks of pain as they burned. The mimics especially, made for good kindling, Arthur observed with satisfaction.

It was no longer quite so dark anymore, not only had the monsters and mimic caught fire, but also the piles of junk, the wooden walls and ceiling appeared to be catching on fire. Smoke and cinders were rapidly filling the area around them.

“Should we put it out, boss?” one of his water cultivators asked in concern.

Arthur watched a mimic in the shape of a wardrobe scream, its tentacles flailing impotently, the wooden panelling hung loosely in broken pieces revealing the purple flesh beneath as it cooked.

“Nah, let ‘em burn. We’ll put it out on the way back. For now, let's go.” Arthur led the Red Vanguard guild away from the scene, and through the door into the next chamber.