Prepper’s Dungeon Chapter 87: Astonishment.

  Soldiers and police officers and civilian militias kept coming down for the next two days. Bringing with them their own equipment, as before. Unlike before, these new delvers did not use their rifles first.

  No.

  They brought up bone swords and shields and spears. Arranging themselves into phalanx formations to ward off the worst of the Brutes’ assaults. They came down grudgingly and they left with a newfound respect. Both for the monsters they found and for themselves.

  Already the best of them had stats ranging from 1.2 to 1.3. Giving them enough of an edge over the regular humans around them for it to be noticeable.

  Then they went up to the surface and gorged themselves on the food I kept growing.

  The colonel had not only fed them well, but he had also taken charge of a large part of the city. Taking advantage of the declared state of emergency to arrange for food kitchens giving away the magic food for free to anyone who came. At first, he and the mayor and even the governor had worked together up on the surface to set up a system of food-aid, where people could come with their issued ID and obtain a set of rations per day.

  However, it would seem that our own efficiency in growing the food in secret and bringing them above ground had stunned even them, and they had stored a large portion and decided to give the rest away for free to anyone who came looking for extra food.

  Needless to say, people took them up on those offers.

  A lot of people.

  With even more signing up for the delving militias being formed on the behest of the disguised Saboteur and their spooky intelligence agency.

  ‘Speaking of which, this is freaking ridiculous.’ We thought with some frustration.

  Not only had the Saboteur not been outed as an obvious fraud, but all the other important people gathered around the emergency council had grown to see Herr Muller as a reliable source of information and advice.

  Granted, the colonel had reached out to his superiors time and time again as to who the frick Herr Muller was and who exactly was giving him orders.

  No one gave any clear answers. As expected. But no one seemed to care overmuch about the details right now.

  Everyone above him, even a few guys and gals from the actual CIA seemed to be of the opinion that someone must have been pulling the strings on their side and that it wasn’t a problem so long as the situation was handled.

  It would seem that all the rumors of how competent the CIA really was as a major power in the shadows were a bit overblown, to say the least. They were less akin to a bunch of shadowy geniuses huddled around a table and deciding who to kill and more akin to a bunch of overworked and underfunded monkeys poking a map with their sticks in vain hopes that the issue on hand would resolve themselves.

  Okay, so maybe that was a bit harsh, but I couldn’t help but get that impression when so many people kept taking Herr Muller, an alias that largely existed on papers, for granted.

  This had been our goal of course, but even we had not expected the ruse to work as well as it actually did.

  It was almost as if the actual intelligence agencies had convinced themselves that one of them was giving the orders, even if it wasn’t them. The rather glaring issue that none of them could figure out which one it was didn’t seem to bother them as much as it would have bothered us. Also, they decided to not probe deeper so long as Herr Muller was on their side.

  It had gotten to the point where the actual director had gotten on a video call and said, out loud, that we were doing an excellent job and following the plan really well.

  The colonel had nodded. The mayor and the governor had nodded. And of course, the Saboteur had nodded. All the while we were trying to figure out what plan the brain-dead moron was talking about.

  ‘Maybe someone told him Muller was on the payroll and that was good enough for him? Or maybe great-grandpa Carlyle pulled some strings to ease things along?’

  Regardless, the result was the same.

  Everyone had learned the basics of magic and how Cores worked and the army was currently drawing more and more personnel from abroad to go down and get powers. With allied countries demanding that their own troops get a chance to go down before the civilian militias we’d formed got their turn.

  All while no one came to tell us what was going on with Casper and the situation back in town.

  We had seen some news through the eyes of our Saboteurs, but most of it was centered around the food supply and what the existence of magic meant for the world at large.

  There were instances where a few scientists would come into some show with the look of men and women going to their executions, but they would all end with the researchers summarising the state of affairs as:

  “We have no idea what the fuck is going on. We have no idea what the fuck magic is. We’re all drinking ourselves silly as our worldview crumbles. Please send help. We don’t know, even though we can see the effects it has and we can’t account for those effects. Please send help. The guys over at the government are keeping the food flowing and they seem to know what’s going on. We would have liked to hear from them. Please send help. Please answer our calls. The results of the people coming up seem to be on track so magic really is real holy shit. Please send help. Caryle Robertson probably knows stuff but he’s not answering our calls. Please send help. Let’s wait and see how things play out. Holy shit. Monsters are real. Monsters and magic are fucking real holy shit please send help holy shit they’re real please send help holy shit…”

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  Grandpa James had not woken either. Though we had managed to stabilize his body with our new Skill. He would be furious upon waking, to be sure. But thanks to us, he would wake.

  ‘Enough.’ We chided ourselves. ‘Don’t think of that. Think back on expanding the tunnels. Expanding the underground farms. And the new aboveground farms too. Don’t worry about what’s going on beyond that. Someone will come eventually. Someone will show up to rescue us.’

  That, or Casper and any of his co-conspirators would show up. And then they would be ripped to shreds.

  We shook our heads and focused back on the delvers coming down.

  None had yet gained a Core. Though they were all trying their best. Indeed, the greatest problem right now was that the corridors that made up the first floor were not wide enough to allow for more challengers to bunch in together.

  We had tried our best to fix it, mostly by enlarging all the floors that we had created. Widening while also pushing the lower floors deeper into the earth. After Halloween, we had made sure to create yet another vertical layer of tunnels that snaked up and down and to either side. Making it into an ever wider and larger maze with even more entrances stretching out over a three-kilometer area in the city.

  At the same time, the second floor kept growing. The Sky-shrooms becoming towers of fungal matter while the rolling underground hills became more and more crowded with monsters and miniature burrows for all sorts of monsters.

  The third floor was widened too, though we began taking care to leave the individual halls as narrow and cramped as they were to keep people out.

  The fourth floor was left more or less as it was designed, with the only change being the spider lairs being grown over the side tunnels leading to the surface warehouses and the adjacent underground farms.

  As for the rest, we began growing out the fifth floor. Filling it with a soggy, filthy layer of water that went up to a human’s knees. Complete with localized pools of microbial acid and a constant poison mist that rolled across the entire floor like a gently purple cloud of constant death.

  The water was also filled with leeches and swimming Burrower Roaches, and smaller colonies of piranha like fish that darted through the waters like a thousand tiny needles rushing in every direction. And of course, I grew massive mangrove trees throughout the floor and filled the branches with Sniperlings.

  All to support the Swarm Harpies that made their nests on the rocky ridges nestled across the walls as they descended.

  We had been in the middle of designing the sixth floor, when we stopped to consider what exactly we were doing.

  ‘What are the chances that anyone will make it down here? Especially before we get some kind of rescue from the surface?’

  We looked back at the delvers coming down.

  Ranks upon ranks moved up room by room and thrust out their spears in concert. Ranks upon ranks kept their rifles by their sides or on their backs instead of firing them outright.

  Those who were descending for the first time were always skeptical. Always nervous for what was about to happen. Their hands shaking while their eyes kept going back to the holstered rifles and their sidearms.

  In contrast, those who came back for the second of third time were stepping confidently through the darkness. Almost eager in the way they trudged about towards the brutes.

  ‘They know they will get stronger.’ We thought. ‘But they do not know what kind of monsters are found on the deeper floors. They have heard that there is someone upon high that knows what’s going on and they have not seen another monster like the Distraction for a couple of days. They have come to think they will only get stronger and the monsters they will find will only get weaker in comparison. They aren’t pushing themselves as hard because they think they’re making good time.’

  To be fair, they were making good time. Especially given how many different people were coming down and spreading in all directions to take kills away from them.

  ‘All while we keep making more and more food and expanding the underground farms. This could be considered a resounding success. We are doing everything we wanted to do. We are helping everyone we wanted to help. We are even growing so much food that the colonel is diverting the surplus to storage or to neighbouring cities. We are getting away with everything we wanted to do and managing to make the impact we wanted to make.’

  We knew this was true.

  Though we could not say why we felt so uneasy.

  ‘More.’ We growled. ‘We have to do more.’

  We could not say whether the little whisper came from the side of Elsie, or from the side of Pool-Cecil. But we all knew it was true regardless.

  ‘Wait, what is this feeling?’

  We refocused our attention on the surface. Long enough to see through the Muller Saboteur’s eyes in the command tent.

  Colonel Lander was up and moving. The bags under his eyes looking as if they too had bags underneath them. For any other man, the exhaustion and the constant briefings and status updates would have proven lethal.

  For the colonel, it all seemed to gather more and more tightly into his chest. Like a growing ulcer or tumor that would one day kill the person they were attached to.

  ‘Yet the man keeps moving regardless.’

  “Thank you for coming Mr. Hanamura.” The colonel began speaking once more. His voice coming across like a half-strangled whisper.

  “We’re all very thankful for the assistance you provided when the… uh… spider thing was escaping. I trust you’ve been given the medal already?”

  “Hmnph!” The man snorted. Throwing his hands back to rustle his long trench coat. “I have received the medal. Though it doesn’t make up for the months that I spent trapped in Alaska.”

  “Yes.” The colonel allowed. “I have been made aware that your detention was slightly less than legal. However, you will also understand where we were coming from. People being able to shoot lightning from their fingers isn’t something that happens often. That and we had no idea what monsters were at the time. We needed to make sure you weren’t radioactive or infested with some kind of uber-parasite or whatever else.”

  “Normal people get quarantined in hospitals. Not black sites.” The man countered. “But I have received your apologies and I don’t intend to press charges at the moment. What’s important right now is talking about the food and the monsters.”

  “Yes of course. So…”

  “So where is the food coming from?” Ryuji demanded.

  “It is being delivered into towns from our own storehouses.” The colonel said bluntly. “I am afraid I am not at liberty to discuss anymore details than that.”

  “No. I don’t suppose you would be.” Ryuji spat. “In that case, I will ask for something else.”

  Colonel Lander gestured for him to continue.

  “How far into the Dungeon have we managed to get?”

  “The third floor.” The colonel replied cooly. Relaying the information the Muller spy had provided.

  “I see. And how far down does it go?”

  “No idea.” He said. “Mr. Muller doesn’t know either, so we’re in a bit of a pinch when it comes to information. Perhaps we will be able to find out more after some of our boys get these Cores everyone’s talking about and we manage to form up a more complete expedition.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Ryuji spoke. “Give me as many men as you can spare as backup and have them follow me and mine. We’ll go down as far as we can and defeat the Dungeon.”

  The colonel raised an eyebrow.

  “I see. No offence sir, but how do you suppose you will gat all the way down there without more in the way of backup? Forgive me if I’m wrong, but there will probably be other things down there just as dangerous as the Spider-Dragon. How will you deal with them without having more helicopters to crash into them?”

  “Not easily.” The younger man allowed. “But we have a secret weapon. Something that will allow us to get much stronger than your own men and much stronger than the men Carlyle Robertson-shi has been keeping for himself.”

  He didn’t need to say it. The Saboteur could sense the new additions at this distance and we could confirm the presences using our connection.

  Our minds were stunned into silence. Eyes nearly popping out from our respective skulls.

  “We will win where they failed, because we have a way for people to get multiple Cores at once.”

  Ryuji Hanamura then pulled up that same skull t-shirt and showed off his torso. Where two different gems were embedded without hurting him in the slightest.

  “Let us go down, Lander-san and we will give you the Dungeon itself.”