CRACK!

  CRACK!

  “Ooomph!” John cried out.

  “Youch!” Gunther agreed.

  Despite their cries, neither made much sound. On account of the cement bricks cracking open on their heads.

  Now, I was of the opinion that my actions were a mercy.

  After all, I was not all that angry at these two men, nor at any of the soldiers or police officers accompanying the fool and his hens. They did not know. They couldn’t have known. Ignorance wouldn’t save them, but I was not about to expend too much effort in their deaths.

  Furthermore, my connection to the girl had… smoothened out some of my own thirst for blood. At the very least, I thought that there should not be pain if the person had not directly harmed me or if I stood to gain nothing.

  Better for them to die here, in relative peace, than for them to have to experience everything I was going to throw at those that actually deserved it.

  I fully believed the bricks, carried by gravity, would be more than enough to kill even a fully developed level 1, let alone two guys without Cores of their own.

  Yet, sadly. I did not account for their thicker than average skull density. And so, the two survived.

  “Wowzers guys! You sure can take a beating!” The gnomish head said. “Not like I should be surprised. Not as if either of you are good for anything else. Yes sir! Your dads were both right for beating you! Only way cretins like you would ever learn anything!”

  Gunther tried to move, now free of John’s grasp, but all he managed were a few confused gestures as he fought through the concussion.

  “Heehoo! Heehoo! Heehoo!” Another gnomish voice called out. “Watch out below!”

  John managed to duck out of the way, so that the brick didn’t hit him. His own brain somehow managing to fight through the daze.

  Gunther was not so fortunate.

  CRACK!

  The brick hit him square on the forehead.

  Again.

  Now ripping even more skin around his face and leaving a rectangular mark where the mineral’s speed and friction tore at him as the brick cracked.

  “Aaaagahhhaaaaglreaaaagleargle.” Gunther spoke. Drool dripping from the side of his mouth as the gnomish head laughed out in the distance.

  “Gunther!” John cried out. Moving through the blur to hold his friend close.

  “Gunther! Gunther! Stay with me! You can’t let them get to you Gunther!”

  I assumed he meant the gnomes, and not the two cement bricks I’d just dropped. Because if he did mean the bricks well…. A little late for that.

  “You have to stay with me!” John kept calling out.

  “Auuwaaa.” Gunther spoke. Raising his right hand and wobbling it past John’s head.

  “What is it Gunther? What is it!?”

  “Auuwaaa.” Gunther repeated. “Auuwaaa! Aaaauuuuwaaaaaa!”

  John turned his head just in time to hear the whistle of brick through air. He moved out of the way once more and the third brick cracked against Gunther’s skull with an “OOOOMMPPHH!” and a “CRACK!”

  Gunther’s eyes rolled within his skull. Not managing to focus on anything.

  “Gunther! Stay with me Gunther! I’ll get you out of here!” John began to pull him towards one of the corners. Away from the exits.

  “Auuwaaa. Auuwaaa! Aaaauuuuwaaaaaa! Auuwaaa! Aaaauuuuwaaaaaa!” Gunther cried out again. His empty eyes somehow managing to spot the other chutes.

  I don’t know whether he heard the whistle.

  CRACK!

  His limbs went limp.

  Yet, miraculously, he still wasn’t dead. Which either meant that I had completely misjudged the weight and volume of those bricks or… or that Gunther was some kind of circus freak with a skull thicker than most military helmets.

  Regardless, he lived and so did John.

  ‘Poor fools.’ I thought.

  The gnomes giggled all around them. Their conical heads poking out of doorways and snickering.

  “Lookie here lads!”

  Lookie here ladies!”

  “It’s flat head Gunther and killjoy John!”

  “One drove his parents away and one drove his kids away!”

  “Together they’ll drive everyone away!”

  “Hahahahahahahaha!”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Hahahahahahahaha!”

  “Hahahahahahahaha!”

  “Shut up!” John bellowed. Now drawing his service weapon.

  “Come out here you bastards! I’ll kill you all!”

  The gnomes did not oblige him. Instead, they each darted away with more mockery. Going through the trapped passages with impunity to check on the others.

  I followed suit and allowed my perspective to shift.

  “This way Fergus.” Becca spoke softly. “You can’t let them get to you. You can’t stop.”

  Fergus was not able to speak through the agony. His flesh still seared and blistering through the helmet.

  He was gasping. Taking quick shallow breaths as he tried to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Sadly, that meant that he wasn’t paying too much attention on other matters. Such as how the air smelled or how his pain was slowly feeling more distant.

  “Come on! We have to keep moving! We can’t let the bastards win!”

  Becca was brave. Headstrong. She cared for Fergus, that much was clear.

  It was too bad that in her haste, she had not noticed the sedative wafting through the air. The way it slowed down her reactions ever so slowly.

  If her senses had not been dulled, she might have seen the beartrap. Even with it being as hidden as it was. Covered by a thin layer of sand.

  The contraption snapped and took off her leg at the knee. She screamed, as did Fergus when she lost her grip on him.

  Neither of them heard the bricks.

  Yet curiously, they too kept moving. Somehow.

  Which meant the bricks really weren’t working as well as they should have been anymore.

  I grumbled a bit and opened up a fissure up on the surface. One that swallowed some wrecks off the street and saw them rushing down with all the power gravity could bestow.

  Two Pontiacs later and the job was finally finished.

  And that was a mercy in and of itself.

  They both stopped moving then, before the gnomes buzzing around the trapped and bloody hallways found their bodies.

  ‘17 down. Not bad. Not great.’ I mused.

  I moved my attention over to where the reporter was. Her form growing furry and swift and deadly as she grew a scorpion tail at the backside of her hips.

  Whereas most of the other passages had been drowned in silence, this particular one was filled with her echoing screams. That, and the sound of her claws raking the walls.

  “I’ll rip you apart!” She roared after the gnomes. “You’ll see! You’ll all see! I’ll tear you limb from limb and eat your liver raw!”

  She was shouting very vigorously and looking rather wolfish for someone who was presumably not the Detroit Cannibal.

  ‘All that, and level 3 to boot. Too bad for anyone who went up against her before.’

  I allowed myself a moment to imagine what a fight between her and a random person off the street would have looked like.

  Even in cases where the presumed victim had a shotgun and a few grenades laying around, it wouldn’t have been a fair fight.

  To top it all off, someone of that level was the most dangerous person in the Dungeon by far, save I and the child and the girl and the still-comatose James Robertson.

  I told the gnomes to lure her in further. Past the couches and the tables and slabs of obsidian placed where televisions would have been.

  The new designs were able to buzz silently when they wanted to or they could be as loud as chainsaws when the need arose for intimidation. Right now, those insectile wings made the gnomish heads seem as though they were floating through the air at high speeds.

  It also meant they didn’t bump into anything in their way or trigger any of the traps laid out on the floor.

  The solid ground slowly gave way to slick black tar. One filled with the same flesh-eating microbes that I’d found under Korea. With strong strands of black algae that would rise up to snatch and drown anything that brushed past them.

  Her wolfish paws sank into the muck. Slowing her down one heartbeat at a time as the plant matter shivered and coiled themselves around her ankles, before her awesome might made her rip herself off from the places where her feet and clawed hands landed.

  Her mouth snapped at the air, much like Gunther’s own had done. Trying to rip and tear the gnomes in front of her. All while the scorpion-like tail swung about in the air. Rearing like a serpent. Alert and ready to strike.

  The giggling gnome kept flying out of reach, though I don’t think the fact that it was using wings instead of feet registered in her mind.

  She kept dashing through the muck like a force of nature now unleashed. Barreling past all obstacles placed before her.

  Those thick hairy arms crushed wood and stone. Boulders big and small and all the many types of furniture I’d placed inside the small maze to disorient delvers.

  Many of those were rigged to blow, with their inner parts being filled with dormant chemicals that would ignite once they came in contact with oxygen or with sticky, glue-like acids that would cling on to the delvers’ bodies.

  All this and more happened to Jane the reporter, but none of my attacks seemed to grab her attention or otherwise slow her down.

  I then allowed water to rain down from the ceiling. Drenching her body more and more as I opened more crevices to spew out torrents of pressurized water. I could not make it so that the pressure was potent enough to slice a leveled person in half, yet, but I was hoping to slow her down some more just the same.

  It worked. More or less.

  Her legs were now sloshing through ankle-deep water as the sticky fluids below her became more and more diluted. Before she knew it, the water was up to her thighs and less than a minute later, the water was at her hips.

  The gnomes were not deterred. In fact, they left entirely through more open crevices on the ceiling that led to adjacent passaged. Their wings making it so that none of the polluted water had touched them from below.

  Jane the cannibal saw that, despite the darkness and she roared as her legs exploded with force. Her body trying to twist itself into the small aperture as her snout kept snapping at the air inside the hole.

  Thusly, she was unprepared when I sealed the other end of the small crevice before then filling it with pressurized water.

  “Grrragahraghregelelrerrgergelrergle!” She said. I think.

  Her lungs filling with fluids due to how open her mouth was.

  She dropped backwards. Vomiting and gasping for air as her limbs flailed about for dear life.

  It was then that I decided to [Spawn] more monsters beside her and below her.

  A few Freezers, Lamia variants that I had not used for a long, long time due to how ineffective they were compared to the regular shooting units I was more accustomed to, with some Shockers as backup.

  Oh, and a few Piranha-men. A special variant with thick layers of insulating, grounding fat and natural rubber. Just to be on the safe side.

  The Freezers were the first to act, dropping the ambient temperature by more than 10 degrees at a stroke. The chemical reaction forcing the edges of the flooded tunnel to crackle and snap as ice crystals formed where water met stone.

  Jane shivered, but countered the effort my making her fur thicker and forcing her chest to expand in all directions as the sides of her body turned into gills. She followed that up by growing an additional set of arms and clawing at the ceiling once more. Now trying to dig herself out with savage claws, or perhaps trying to open a hole through which the water could be drained.

  ‘Wrong move, but A-plus for effort.’

  The Shockers went next and their efforts made what little air remained shiver, as the water was reheated. Lightning arcing through all the molecules to fizzle and turn the river into steam.

  The Freezers were stunned by the friendly fire, the shockers were paralyzed and slightly winded for a few seconds, the Piranha-men were only slightly bothered.

  Jane the Detroit Cannibal… was not so lucky.

  “Oooooooohhhh!!! OOoooooohhh!!!! Oooaaoaoaoaaahhh!!!!”

  Her mouth kept making sounds as more and more water fell. The river now sizzling and bubbling around her as purple lights shone from beneath. The wetness in her fur sizzling into steam as her muscles seized and spasmed.

  “EEEEEEKKKK!!! OOOAAOAaoaoaoao!!!! AAAAoooaoaoaoaaa!!! WHEEEAAOAOAAAA!!!!”

  All her hairs stood on end. Her eyes rolling back in to her head as… for the briefest of moments, I and all my units could see her skeleton.

  “WAAAAAAA!! WAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! WEOAA!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOOOOOAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”

  Her hands, which had stiffened up so much, finally let go of the ceiling, and she dropped into the bacteria-filled, monster infested waters below.

  “Aaaahhh….”