The subway train was already full when it reached them. They crammed inside like personal space wasn’t a concern. The tight quarters proved beneficial when the train accelerated forward. Instead of falling over, the crowd compressed itself a little. Soon they were hurtling forward at close to the speed of sound, moving inexorably closer to one of six pces on this world that monsters were actively pulled into existence.

  Their journey ended with lots of braking as they entered a hectic station with bright lights and lots of yellow signs with blocky bck lettering. Hector didn’t need to bother with the signs because the crowd exiting the train were all moving him in the direction he was supposed to go. They marched right past the one that read ‘st chance to turn back’.

  A moving sidewalk carried them through a long tunnel. It was solid rock to each side, while above there were gun turrets with barrels pointed in the direction they were going. A warning from the System told Hector he would be entering the dungeon soon. The sidewalk ended and he walked under his own power towards the darkness ahead. The air grew slightly cooler.

  The walls opened up to each side and Hector felt a slight gravitonic push when he stepped too close to one side. When Conrad’s suit lights came on, Hector turned on the light clipped to his chest and slipped on his night goggles. They were a little better than his naked eyes. Around them was the sound of weapons being drawn and readied.

  The Arahant who carried a cymore spoke then to the stream of bodies around them. “Everyone avoid the Xian. He will draw the monsters to him with the stink of his cosmic energy.”

  Conrad’s rifle was up and firing in an instant.

  For a moment, Hector thought his companion had attacked a fellow delver. Then he saw a giant arachnid colpse to the ground and dissolve into fetid goop that stained the hard-packed dirt and gravel of the ground. Conrad clipped his mask and goggles into pce. “Come along, Hector. We’re not hugging the walls like some others prefer.”

  Hector pushed some power to his aura just in case something was waiting in the dark and trotted forward. The various groups were separating to some extent. Many were following the wall to the left or right. Some were running in straight lines, their paths veering to one side or the other.

  Wings fpped from above. Conrad’s limited mobility due to his bulky armor became obvious for the first time as he struggled to get in a position to shoot overhead. Hector squinted into the sky. A massive vulture came into sight, illuminated by multiple parties.

  He pushed his domain out and formed a tight cable of force. A second ter, he whipped it forward. The tip cracked in the air and the vulture’s head exploded into a rain of miasmic viscera. The vulture body hit the ground hard and began to rapidly decay. Hector turned to make eye contact with the trio of swordsmen. “You guys should probably stick close to the wall.”

  “Damn Xian savages.” The words were a standard curse for Hector’s kind, but the voice speaking them held a note of exasperated respect.

  Hector followed the infrared-enhanced form of Conrad into the darkness. The nerves he’d been feeling had calmed somewhat. He was blooded in the dungeon now. Not only had he proven himself capable in front of naysayers, he’d gotten a feel for how his domain was shaping up as a weapon. Quite capable.

  The nd around them was hard cy, harder rock, and occasional stretches of sand. It was mostly ft along their path, but he could see hills and depressions at the edge of their lights. As he looked one way, there was a sudden scuffling and something smmed Hector to the ground.

  Above him, a maned lion crouched, extended cws descending towards his face. Hector fred his aura and the cws did nothing more than impact on his barrier. At least that was the extent of their effect on his flesh. He saw his goggles fly apart to both sides.

  Multiple shots echoed and the monster colpsed onto Hector.

  “Get out of there before it turns to juice!”

  Hector obeyed the shout and threw the corpse free. He scrambled to his feet in an instant and turned in slow circles, trying to keep his eyes on everything all at once. He’d lost the night vision goggles and his head mp, but otherwise hadn’t been impacted by the attack.

  Conrad steadied him with a hand. “Calm down, man. That was a lot closer than we like, but you’re unharmed. Monsters usually charge in directly instead of stalking us like prey.”

  “Why the hell isn’t this pce lighted? I can barely see anything.”

  “It had lights on the dome when they built it, actually. The monsters attacked them.”

  Hector shivered when he imagined flying monsters breaching the dome and escaping to terrorize Promise City. His eyes were still desperately searching the darkness. At that moment, he longed for the mental sense of Volithur. Anything to let him detect threats before they attacked.

  “Hector, you need to master yourself.”

  “I’m fine,” he snapped. “I just need to be able to see.”

  Conrad nodded in acceptance of the cim. “Since the limited light is your problem, we will switch positions. You take the lead and I will keep watch over our sides and rear.”

  An icy stab of shame pierced Hector’s heart. He might not be an expert on Jinn material science, but he didn’t think Conrad would have emerged as unscathed as he from the lion’s ambush. Yet he knew he couldn’t operate effectively with the panic drowning his rationality. The darkness, breached only by the small puddles of light they projected, perfectly replicated a horror movie jump-scare environment.

  “That would be better,” he said, hating the weakness he’d discovered in himself.

  “In case of multiple opponents, we fight back to back. Agreed?”

  “Agreed. Thanks, Conrad.”

  “Take lead then. I’ll call out for navigation.”

  Hector moved in the direction indicated by Conrad’s gesture. His breathing calmed as he consciously limited his area of concern to what was directly before him. It was more manageable just worrying about a single lit sector. He heard Conrad following from behind as much by his voice as his feet. The man spoke in low, slow tones.

  “Monster cooperation is limited when it exists at all. They never fight among themselves and will trail others if they can’t sense any native targets. The herds they form won’t make effective use of their numbers because their only motivating factor is a desire to destroy us. They consider one another no more relevant than background details. They will trip over their peers and bump each other off course when leaping for the kill.”

  The calm words did a lot to bring Hector back to a stable mental state. He kept his eyes trained on his area of responsibility as they advanced. In the distance, he could make out a reddish glow. Conrad steered Hector towards it, ciming that he could tell from its apparent luminosity that it was a minor rift.

  Monsters appeared at random intervals, rushing forward like mindless zombies. Hector kept his head and shed with his cables at the ones within his field of view. When he heard Conrad firing his rifle, he would call back to ask if there was a problem. There never was. The monsters he syed didn’t possess particurly suitable forms for combat. A horse was the most dangerous of them because it closed the distance so quickly. There was a koa that made Hector realize just how random monsters could be.

  Bit by bit, the experience became normalized to him. His panic had gone, leaving behind only an enhanced alertness, as if he’d drank too much coffee and gotten the jitters. When they arrived at the rift, they found it no bigger than ten feet across. Beneath it stood a number of monsters as still as statues. There was a giant ant, a mountainous goril, a buffalo, a small pack of wolves, and a rge number of wedge-headed vipers coiled to strike.

  The immobile opponents came to life suddenly and their eyes snapped to Hector. As if their roles had been reversed, Hector froze like a statue.

  Fortunately, Conrad did not. “Fire in the hole!”

  A bright fsh and boom of thunder.

  Then the horde of beasts stormed forward. Hector’s whip to the charging buffalo’s head didn’t penetrate the bone. He seized the horns with his domain and twisted its head to make the beast charge past him. Then Hector snapped a cable of force into the goril’s face. In the intensity of the moment, everything was supernaturally clear and he saw the resulting line of trauma split an eyelid and devastate the orb beneath.

  A snake appeared out of nowhere, flying for Hector. He dodged to the side, caught the tail as the creature flew past, and yanked it back hard so it bounced off the hard ground before him. Hector stomped his foot on the neck to hold it in pce as he turned his attention to the rest of the scene.

  The giant ant had lost multiple legs in the initial explosion and slowly dragged itself forward. The wolves were nothing but scattered body parts in the aftermath of the grenade. So many Vipers were slithering forward. More immediately relevant, the goril hadn’t stopped its approach. Rifle shots were burning off patches of fur, but the beast seemed dangerously resistant to any real damage.

  Hector prioritized. The goril had to go first. A quick gnce over his shoulder confirmed that the buffalo had yet to slow down enough to turn around for another charge. He shot out a cable of force to take out the goril’s other eye and the beast punched out to stop the attack.

  That took him by surprise. He hadn’t even known that monsters could see his cables and this one went a step further by blocking his attack. Hector improvised and wrapped that cable around the goril’s wrist. He formed a second cable and seized the other arm. Then he yanked the arms away so he could nd a strike on the uncovered face.

  Such was the pn, at least. The goril fought back, overpowering the maximum pull Hector could exert with his cables. He was down to seventy-five percent energy reserves after being completely full on entry to the dungeon, so this was becoming quite concerning.

  “Cover me!” Conrad dropped his rifle to let it hang from the shoulder strap, pulled his pistol, and fired five rounds. Each one exploded on impact into a white-hot inferno that kept burning for several seconds. The goril took hits to the gut, chest, and face.

  Hector dragged a cable across the ground to toss several approaching vipers further away from Conrad. When he gnced back, the goril was on the ground, miasma venting from its mortal wounds. Conrad holstered his pistol and began firing the psma rifle once more, this time focusing on the giant ant.

  “Hector, eliminate the snakes! They’re smaller and faster targets than I prefer!”

  He worried about the buffalo but decided to trust that Conrad had the rear covered. Hector cracked a cable against the head of the nearest viper, which was pinned beneath his boot. The beast had struggled mightily all this time, but it was no rger than the animal whose form it had stolen. Its quick death let Hector turn his attention to the others.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the ant twitch as bolts of psma did damage. Its determined crawl grew progressively slower and wobblier. Meanwhile, Hector swatted down with a single rge cable to immobilize three vipers at once. He then went for head shots with a second cable. The squirmy bastards made his attempts to brain them feel like pying whack-a-mole. He didn’t manage to kill any of the three before he had to shift his attention.

  “Buffalo incoming!”

  Hector spun, formed his cables, and used the horns to steer once more. His opponent was ready this time and the thick neck resisted his efforts. In an instant, Hector switched strategies. The snakes were leaping forward from one side and the buffalo approaching like an oncoming truck. He seized Conrad about the waist and fired cosmic energy from the bottoms of his feet.

  They unched into the air, avoiding the threats closing in from all directions.

  “Get us down! Down, down, down!”