“I’m fine.” Ryuji spoke. Pushing away the hen healing him. “I’m fine Shizu. I don’t need anymore healing.”

  “Your hand is literally sizzling!”

  “That doesn’t matter.” He spat. Clenching his teeth as he willed his eyes away and tried to stand.

  “Hanako says she’s lost more than 20 people’s minds. That’s 20 deaths in the blink of an eye. No one…” He winced in pain as the pulled himself to his feet.

  “No one said the Dungeon could change so quickly. None of the Robertson files said anything like this was possible. They all said Dungeons were mostly static in their defences and that they spawned the same monsters and that most monsters on the upper levels were dumb as rocks. But that’s obviously a load of nonsense.”

  He stared down what few forces he had left.

  “Either Robertson-shi was a lazy idiot who didn’t do any proper research, which I doubt given everything else we know, or this is some kind of anomaly he wasn’t aware of. I am not in any hurry to find out which is the truth right now.”

  He gave her a hard stare, but eventually relented.

  “Damn it all. Natsuki was right all along. I’m an idiot.”

  “Yes you are.” One of the girls, Natsuki, if I had to guess, spoke up. “The literal army was here. The US army. Who, may I remind you, has a higher budget than most countries last time I checked. Sending thousands of people down to get powers each day. Those Robertson bastards were sure that the apocalypse was two and a half years away. There was no reason we couldn’t wait about until all the people of the city got powers.”

  “They would have pushed us around.” Ryuji complained. “Hushed us up. They already tried remember? We escaped out of the black site together. We know how far they’ll go to bury the truth until they have all the pieces. All it would take is a few people with better Cores and the pigs up in the government would have thought they could pressure us into anything.”

  “And the people too.” Yet another girl complained. “They would have forced everyone to register their Cores and they’d conscript anyone who was stronger than average. They would have turned them and us into weapons they could use however they wanted. But that only works if a small minority gets powers. So that’s why everyone needs to get Cores and Magic.”

  Natsuki huffed and puffed. Her eyes filled with disdain as she regarded the speaker.

  “Of course you’d rush into things Miho. Just like you to break your skull open on a brick wall.”

  She walked forwards and glared.

  “We have more than two years. You dumb hick! Two! Years! Do you know how much time two years is!? Do you know how much stronger we could have gotten in two years!?”

  Miho didn’t seem to like her tone very much. Because she stepped up and put on a face that suggested imminent violence.

  “Yeah? Well how about this Dungeon? How many more floors would it have gotten in two years? How many more monsters would have gotten to the surface and munched on innocent people?”

  “There’s only so much we can do about that!” Natsuki protested. “We’re, like, in high-school! Yeah, we got kidnapped on a hunting trip and yeah, we ended up in an American shadow prison for no good reason, but the fact that we escaped doesn’t mean we’re invincible! On the contrary! Everything we’ve learned indicates that we are all at the bottom of a very, very tall power scale. I mean…”

  She threw her arms up in exasperation.

  “We don’t even know what level we are! Or how close we are to the next level or even if we’ve been training efficiently or not! We don’t know because we haven’t been able to get our hands on those Analyzers! The plan was to take them from that gorilla and the Robertson girl and look what happened! That monster ate a bullet without flinching and downed Ryuji with one punch. He wasn’t even taking the fight seriously and he only had one Core! Versus us having two Cores. How does having two Cores even affect stats beyond the initial boost? Are we twice as strong? Doesn’t look that way to me. Are we progressing twice as fast? Possible, but we don’t have any way to confirm that. All we know is that we have twice as many Skills and two kinds of Magic to use. And that the second kind of Magic tends to be stronger than the first we got. That’s it. Presumably the second Core is a higher Stage than the first Core we got, but even that is up for debate. There are so many things we don’t know, so many things we have no idea about and things we don’t know how to investigate that coming down here was nothing less than suicidal. I…”

  She heaved, flushing. Before she then started pacing about the room. Ignoring the human furniture and the open door leading to the next room.

  “I don’t know how I let you all talk me into this. This is literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I might die here. We might all die here. No one will know what happened and if anyone ever does find out, we’ll end up being those kinds of kids who end up being laughed at over the internet for dying in stupid ways. Oh, my goodness. People will look at my obituary and laugh. They’ll all laugh at me. I can’t…. I can’t breathe. I need some air I can’t breathe!”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Miho slapped her.

  “Get ahold of yourself! You think panicking right now is gonna save you? You think going around calling us dumb is gonna help?”

  She slapped her again and Natsuki broke down crying.

  “I didn’t even want to be here!” She wept. “I followed you because I thought we were saving the world! I thought we were going to let people know the truth so they could save themselves! That’s all I ever wanted! I… oh my goodness I just realized we got a bunch of soldiers and police officers killed! Oh my gosh! We’re going to get put in jail! In regular prison! Our parents are going to know we got a bunch of people killed and that we got sent to prison! I can’t be a criminal! I can’t be a criminal! I didn’t mean for any of this to happen! I… I never wanted to fight! I wanted to do the right thing but I didn’t want this!”

  “Enough.” Ryuji’s voice cut through the noise. Silencing everyone.

  “I see now. We were too hasty. I was too hasty and my hubris got people killed.”

  He sucked in a deep, resonating breath and finally pushed off the nearby wall. Standing on his own two feet.

  “It’s a mistake that will haunt me for the rest of my life, but it was my mistake. I made the call. I will bear the responsibility. If the Colonel Lander-san or anyone else in charge wants to put us in jail, I’ll claim all responsibility and say it was my call to make and that I dragged you all here against your will.”

  Miho whirled snarling.

  “That’s a load of nonsense!”

  “Yeah!” Shizu and Hanako agreed. “We all decided to come here together! To help! We’re not gonna let you get hung out to dry!”

  “Yeah! What they said!” Another girl whose name I didn’t know spoke out. “We’ve come all this way together! We’ve fought off secret agents and actual, literal monsters to get here! We’ve dodged bullets and assassins and spooky men in suits trying to kidnap us again! We can’t let it end like this! We can still make it! We can still push through and conquer the Dungeon and stop all the monsters from getting to the surface!”

  The maiden without a name reddened.

  “We can still save the world!”

  That statement hushed all the other onlookers. Though I could not truly say what kind of thoughts were running through their heads at that precise moment.

  No.

  My thoughts and attention were completely taken by all the gnomes I had buzzing around. All the new units I was birthing. All the plots the Saboteurs were weaving up on the surface on my command.

  Oh, and the bricks.

  The two dozen bricks still falling from chutes and crevices in the ceilings of all those labyrinthine rooms.

  More and more found the heads of soldiers. Cracking skulls open like eggshells. One more found Gunther’s skull and failed to crush it. Two found their way into the chamber the youths were occupying.

  Now, several people would have different accounts as to what was the last thing to pass through the unnamed maiden’s head.

  Some would say it was love for the man in the trench coat.

  Others would say, it was the natural sense of righteousness she felt for humanity at large.

  Yet I knew the answer was different.

  The last thing to go through her head, was a heavy chunk of stone.

  CRACK!!

  The first one smashed her skull into a bloody ruin.

  CRACK!!!!

  The second send yet another shock through her torso. Shattering her ribcage and making her arms waggle in mid-air for half a heartbeat. Almost as if she were being controlled by a puppeteer in her final moments.

  But then they dropped downwards. And became drenched in her life’s blood as it flowed down to the greedy ground below.

  Ryuji and the rest of his group stared. Uncomprehending.

  Their mouths slack and unmoving as they watched the broken corpse begin to cool.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!” One of the girls screeched. And then, like a dam breaking, they were all screeching along as well. Losing themselves in the horror in front of them.

  Little did they know, their problems were only starting.

  Giggles sounded out from the doorway. The distinct cry of gnomes.

  Then, faces popped out. One, two, three, five, seven…

  More and more conical skulls coming together to mock the group before them.

  “Oh my goodness! Did you see that boys!”

  “I did! I did! It’s like she had the final destination curse or something! Her skull popped like a balloon!”

  “Nah! Balloons don’t pop like that folks! Her head popped like one of those cherry goo filled doughnuts when you stuff them too much. One bite is all it takes for cherry goo to fly all over the place!”

  “Oh yeah! And wasn’t that a nice speech at the end. So nice it gave me tinnitus!”

  “Yeah yeah! Going on about saving the world and the power of friendship and ugh! I think I got a hernia just from thinking about how much effort that was going to be! I better take a shot of Russian tap water to mask the image of Casper pulling their strings!”

  “And boy is he doing a lot of pulling! My word! That man’s neck and shoulders must be stiff as steel support beams with how hard he’s carrying this stupid group of losers!”

  “Yeah! No kidding! It’s so hard watching these bozos go on and on about the power of friendship when they’re really all a bunch of fat, out of shape losers wearing skimpy cosplay outfits to mask their daddy issues!”

  “You said it pal! My gag reflex acted up so much just now I thought I was watching live footage from a big pony convention!”

  “Power of love!? Try the power of soap once in a while. You’ll thank me later.”

  “Oh please, as if these guys knew what soap was. They probably sniff it twice and think it’s a new type of candy to shove down their gullets to get another boost of sugar and dopamine to distract themselves from the agony of their continued existence.”

  “At least this new girl doesn’t need to do any of that. She just needs a new group of enthusiastic janitors sharing one big shovel to get all those bits of brain off the floor before they stain the carpet!”

  One of the girls babbled something incoherently. Hands grasping the sides of her head.

  Then she screamed and wailed and threw her hands at the doorway. Shattering the stone to reveal the bodies of the gnomes hiding behind the barrier.

  While the heads had remained true to what I knew of gnomes, the bodies had been modified to fit my purposes.

  Aside from the buzzing wings, the rest of the body below the neck was also reminiscent of an insect. More specifically, that of an emerald cockroach wasp.

  With vibrant, gem-like shells and thick corded muscles underneath.

  Oh, and the injectors. One could not forget about the injectors.

  Indeed, several of the emerald gnomes laughed and cackled as they drifted away. Wings buzzing with malice as their eyes kept track of their victims.

  “Look at them guys! They’re still in shock!”

  “I think they’re impressed by our impressive tools boys!”

  “Yeah! I bet they’ve never seen ones as big as ours!”

  All the gnomes laughed maliciously.

  “Hold on boys, I think they think they’re a bunch of stingers.” Another gnome piped up. His rosy cheeks reddening even further, as if he was a teen that just heard his first raunchy joke.

  “They’re not.” Yet another gnome explained. “They’re ovipositors.”

  They all laughed at once. Their sounds echoing up and down the adjacent halls. Drowning out all other noise.

  After that, they begun their advance once more. Eyes wide with expectation, as drool dripped down from the sides of their mouths.