POV: Casper.

  The ill feelings soon faltered and faded as we delved deeper and deeper into the depth of the earth. The first floor had been a labyrinthine expanse of tunnels that snaked and twisted up and down and left and right. With many, many forks on the road that might sometimes lead to dead ends and sometimes to deadly ambushes where dozens upon dozens of the sunflower units might be waiting for us.

  I said deadly, only because normal humans would have needed to either form up in tight formations or retreat in order to survive. Which was odd, because as far as I or Raymond knew, there had been very few casualties in the Dungeon and many of those that had actually occurred could be traced back to betrayal from greedy teammates, rather than a pummeling from monsters.

  ‘I read somewhere that they usually only come in one at a time.’ I recalled. ‘That even with numerical advantages, the monsters don’t gang up on you. Instead, they form up in nice and tight little lines. Ready to be crippled and ripped apart.’

  These ones were not doing that.

  These ones were constantly trying to surround us and to choke away any avenues of escape. These ones moved steadily with purpose and tried to close in to our flanks. The men with me closed in and did not give an inch. Using their weapons to bat away resistance and to cleave plant matter apart wherever they found it. They cleaved and they cut and they counter-charged. Moving in concert with all the swiftness of a regular party back home.

  After a few such battles, my dread regarding the men Raymond found soon turned to admiration. My own conscience admonishing me in the privacy of my own mind.

  ‘You judged them too soon.’ I told myself. ‘You thought they’d be useless. You made baseless assumptions. You know what they say about assuming.’

  After a few more hours and another 20 battles, that feeling of admonishment turned to a greater sense of surprise.

  We had all come down a long way now, and I had not heard a single complaint. Not about the heat they were no doubt feeling with all that armor while they exercised. Not about the dampness in the air which no doubt made the heat all the more unbearable. Not about the constant squealing of the animals as we fought our way deeper and deeper and not about how claustrophobic some of the corridors were becoming the deeper we went.

  Moreover, they were doing an exemplary job with rationing out our precious few resources. In all the hours we had been delving, only two of the men had taken sips of water from the canteens. And even then, the sips had been brief and shallow. Only a few gulps of cool water to stave off dehydration before moving on.

  And is if all that wasn’t enough, I hadn’t heard a single complaint about our current pace.

  Which was all the more surprising given how we hadn’t had a single break that lasted longer than a few minutes.

  Normal people would simply not have had the stamina to keep up this pace unless they’d been trained to run marathons.

  ‘Or unless they had plenty of military experience.’ I mused.

  A young-ish veteran would be of the right age to run this much and this hard before their body started failing and they would have had the training necessary to build up their endurance while carrying heavy loads.

  If they were well-disciplined, that might explain how they were able to stay in formation so well, even in the relative darkness and how none of them had broken so far.

  ‘If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought they had prior delving experience.’ I thought with some amusement.

  But no. The more likely answer was that I had underestimated my new companions and that Raymond had known his stuff after all. If things went well for these men here, he would have a fairly decent group of fighters with good Cores in his retinue. Not a thing to take lightly now that the world was going mad all around us.

  ‘And they’ll be able to train others after them too. If Raymond plays his cards right, he might even be able to create a whole new PMC out of these men before the world fully descends into anarchy.’

  The thought was oddly comforting, in that more people with good Cores getting experience and training others was just the right way to make sure humanity didn’t die out in the coming decades when the monsters grew more fearsome and most forms of non-magical wildlife either adapted or went extinct.

  In contrast, the thought of Raymond getting his hands on this much soft power would have given Carlyle a heart attack under normal circumstances.

  ‘Though I guess he has more important things to worry about.’

  My mind shifted back to the old man then. Wondering how long congress would keep him occupied.

  Raymond had sworn up and down that he’d taken care of it, but those were dubious claims.

  “Congressmen can’t be bought man.” He’d said casually over the phone. “But they are surprisingly cheap to rent out for a few months or years at a time. I’ve spread some cash around for just such an occasion. It’ll be a bipartisan inquiry. One that will get dragged out for a good few weeks at least. Just trust me on this and stay the course.”

  I wished I shared his optimism. Alas, Carlyle had never been one to get too tied up in politics. Partly because he had me slitting the throats of anyone that became too problematic and partly because he too knew how to rent out the right politicians for the right price at the right time to make it work.

  In fact, the reality that he hadn’t vanished from the public eye yet was a small miracle as far as I was concerned.

  ‘Then again, you did underestimate Raymond’s men.’ I chided myself.

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to underestimate Raymond the same way.’

  I nodded to myself and continued walking. Down past the series of broken doors and scattered furniture that marked the spot Ryuji and the other survivors had described in their fevered recollections.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  ‘They died here.’ I thought silently. ‘This place killed them when the gnome-wasp hybrids came around.’

  Well, that and the spores.

  I looked back at the men on instinct and then did my best to snap my head back quickly without arousing too much suspicion.

  The spores Cecil had let out did not care in the slightest what kinds of precautions you had in place or what kind of filters you used in your gas masks. During testing, the things had chewed right through the very best materials that Raymond had produced. And so it was decided that bothering with them was a fool’s errand.

  The only way to make sure you didn’t die from them, would be to actually find Cecil and explain that the plan had mostly been dreamt up by his uncle. And that he and his aunt wanted to see him back home safely. Then you’d have to hope against hope that Cecil would be calm enough to actually remove them from your body. Rather than, say, removing your lungs through your asshole.

  I shook my head quickly and determined to keep pushing on.

  ‘There’s nothing I could have done for these men and Raymond supposedly explained the risks. No reason to dwell on them right now.’

  I would be fine with my level of course, but if Cecil should prove a bit more… aggressive then previously thought then…

  ‘Then they will all die. Screaming. Right alongside Ryuji and his girlfriends and the few others we were able to rescue in time.’

  I pushed past a series of doors and came out into a plain filled with green grasses. With towering Sky Shrooms reminiscent of those in the Dunstonberry Dungeon. Fungal matter reaching up into the false sky with wanton ambition.

  I felt something coming towards me and my limbs and my Magic sprung into action.

  I dodged on instinct. Teleporting a few meters away just in time to avoid a volley of bullet-shaped seeds flying past. These bullets flew past the open door and hit only empty air. The other men having stood a few ways back instead of following me.

  Perhaps it had been a lucky guess or perhaps it had been some soldier’s instinct. Or perhaps it had been some measure of fatigue finally catching up to them. It didn’t matter.

  The men were safe and so were the animals. So I turned around and made to find the origin of the assault.

  ‘Ugh!’ I groaned internally. ‘Green Bean shooters. The same kind that Cecil first made when he was still getting a hold of his powers.’

  They were easy enough to kill, but the problem was finding them when they were camouflaged. The things could more or less completely deflate themselves and retreat into the tiniest crevices and scars in the stone along the walls and the false ceiling above.

  All it took was a casual glance in the wrong direction or an inspection that wasn’t as thorough as it should have been and you’d find yourself being sniped.

  The things had not been strong enough to pierce my skin back then, but it never hurt to be careful.

  I lowered my profile and began to teleport over and over about the place. Keepings my eyes drifting about quickly between targets in order to find the origin of the fire.

  ‘Where are you.’ I thought with mounting irritation. ‘Where are you?’

  I followed the original direction of the volley, knowing full well that they could and would lure me away in order to snipe me in the back. So I had to look out for the original shooters, as well as any number of other entrenched shooters who might be looking out to get an easy kill.

  At the same time, I cursed Cecil in my mind.

  ‘Damn you kid! How did you think putting these things here was a good idea!? They almost killed your friends back when you brought them down to the fourth! It took a long freaking time for Russell to find them all and tear them out! How did you think normal humans would fare against these kinds of things!?’

  In the mind of a normal human from the city above us, they would be going from a somewhat tense series of melee engagements to suddenly finding themselves in the middle of a gunfight against nearly invisible snipers. Ones who would happily keep shooting until they were killed and who would then re-grow to keep shooting long after that.

  I made another jump, when another monster leapt at me.

  It was a…

  ‘A Ripper?’

  I was so confused that I flinched. Stopping for less than a single second when the thing leapt at me.

  A normal Ripper would have shattered its fangs on my skin.

  This one actually managed to clamp down and press those fangs a few millimetres inwards. A single canine drawing a small trickle of blood.

  I swung my arm. Hard.

  Sending the thing flying across the grasslands even as three volleys from three different directions found me. Shredding my suit to ribbons as they impacted over and over again with all the force of anti-tank rounds.

  I was about to teleport away, when I felt other things snaking up my legs. Sharp thorny vines that failed to penetrate my skin, but that still felt itchy and uncomfortable as they tried to entangle me. I kicked out, or at least I tried to. But I could not position myself in the right way to find the proper leverage.

  I teleported again.

  Taking some of the vines with me, but otherwise managing to get away cleanly.

  I heard a roar and felt my stomach dropping as I looked back to where the men had been standing. Rippers who I could now see were made of green vines comingling with Foxes whose tails ended in serpent heads. Green-brown gorillas and bears made of leaves and bark following close behind.

  Just like the ones I had first seen Cecil create during that night in Alaska.

  ‘They will all die!’ I realized. Now rushing to teleport into the exit of the first floor. Hoping I could at least rescue a few of them before they died.

  “Cecil!” I shouted. Hoping against hope that he was listening. As I knew he could do through his monsters “Don’t kill those men! They’re friends! We’re all friends! We’re here to save you!”

  I was teleporting immediately after. Looking to grab a few men and disappear immediately after and when I appeared at the other end I saw… I saw the men.

  With their torsos sliced open at the middle. Showing not red blood trickling down or intestines falling to the earth, but solid, dry, green spaces. Emptied of their contents. Their hands clasping heavy-looking green shotguns.

  Their eyes found me in the same second as my eyes found them.

  They fired. All at once. The ceiling collapsing in on itself at the very same moment and dropping tons upon tons of compressed rock on top of me.

  The bullets did not penetrate the skin, though they did stagger me. The weight of the ceiling did a whole lot more. Dust entering my lungs seconds before I managed to teleport away.

  Even then, I did not appear on the surface, as I’d intended. Instead, I was on the green plains again, badgers made of tree bark rushing up from the ground to bite down at my limbs before trying to tunnel backwards into the dirt.

  The Sky Shrooms seemed to be bleeding all around me. Their red juices exploding from the fungal matter of their pale trunks.

  I coughed.

  My mind swirling.

  ‘Red?’ I thought distantly. Feeling that couldn’t be right. ‘Red? No. Sky Shroom juices aren’t red. What’s… what is happening?’

  Then I recalled the men and their open stomachs and the absence of the animals.

  “Cecil! Cecil! The men! Where! Where are the real…!?”

  “Dead.” A slithering thing spoke out loud. Walking on two heavy rear legs and clutching a massive plant-like organ with its four forelimbs.

  It had an extremely pronounced, ridged forehead that now glowed with ambient Magic. Its sides flanked by three more smaller units.

  “They tasted like honey as I devoured them.”

  I tried to teleport away, but the effort sent me into the air, above one of the mushrooms. My body tumbling down the falling red waterslide of jelly as my nostrils flared with the acrid scent. My mind taking everywhere and nowhere in that instant.

  I saw James again. And Charles. Both staring daggers at me. Judging me for my betrayal.

  “My aren’t you a fun one.” The monster laughed. “Guess Elsie wasn’t overselling the potency of the Sky Shrooms’ juices. Though I suppose my little alterations did help. Tell me, traitor. How would you like to die?”

  I tried to teleport again, but my mind sent me into a puddle instead. Vines snaking up my limbs again to ensnare me.

  I tried to lift myself. To clear away the panic, but all I could focus on were the faces of Charles and James. All I could think about was their voices. I tried to drown them out, but a swirl of pleasure cut into me at the same time.

  My mind recalling the birth of my children. The day I met my wife for the first time. The sound of her laugh.

  The memory, tasted to sweet, that it became bitter. I vomited and my vomit was red as blood. Human blood. With sickly green spots here and there.

  “You aren’t going to get away that easily, traitor.” Three more voices called out. “We have had a great deal of time to prepare for the likes of you, after all.”