Museum Core Chapter 102: Triumphant Return

Now that she’d fixed herself, Jaclyn pulled a separate bracelet from her wrist and held it up.

Robber Baron’s Loot Sack (C-Rank, legendary, consumable)

The stomach of a Void Wolf, empowered with the abilities of that same supernatural predator and infused with a dungeon core’s inner loot goblin.

It will absorb all valuables around it and keep them safe for retrieval by the core who created it.

This item starts out with a full mana pool but cannot be recharged. Once the pocket dimension is activated, it will last until it runs out of energy.

Energy draw: n/a, will last for two weeks from activation

It was sad that it wasn’t reusable, but then again, she’d seen how much mana a regular bag of holding devoured, and those things couldn’t even store a fraction of their prize. This was most likely the only way they could move this whole thing in the time they had.

Single-use items were a new thing, and judging by how recently they’d been created, Daedalus had only just figured out how to make them, but she was more than happy about being able to use them.

“Alright, you know the plan. Grab everything that looks valuable and bring it here, we need to be out of here soon.”

Jacyln pulled a small timepiece from one of her uniform’s many pockets. It was barely larger than her fingernail, and about as thick as two one-pound coins, which had been selected in the hope that its small size would allow it to survive even if she took a direct hit from a monster as powerful as the local anchor beast. And even if it didn’t … she’d brought along two more, as well as three similarly-tiny compasses. And on the off-chance that that wasn’t enough either, the others were similarly equipped.

“Ten minutes,” she said as the bracelet began to float, growing and rotating to become a massive gateway into … elsewhere. A void that would hold whatever loot they fed it until they were back in London.

“Uh, can I study the dragonflame instead?” Granger asked, gesturing at a frozen patch of fire that hung in midair nearby. To anyone else, a lethal threat; to him, an invaluable and unrepeatable research opportunity.

“Sure,” Jaclyn said, already busy hauling the dragon’s body into the storage space, only for her feet to slip, resulting in her rear end slamming into the ground with a loud “thump.”

Strength-wise, that should have been possible. Leverage-wise … not so much. And none of the skills that made that a nonissue when fighting were helping in the slightest.

“Henderson, Harjaz, come help me with this,” she called out, and the two men promptly came over, their transformations making moving the monster easy … -ish. The dragon was a hell of a lot heavier than even a fully transformed Henderson, and the ground was smooth enough that it wouldn’t have provided much traction, even if it hadn’t been covered in gemdragon-gunk.

If she’d had the option, Jaclyn would have run around nicking everything not nailed down, not only in the spire but all ground within a hundred meters, but this hadn’t been quiet. At a bare minimum, someone had to have seen that via satellite. And therefore, they needed to move.

It would be obvious that all this had most likely been a British operation, retaliation for the stupid actions of the Russian government, but that wasn’t an argument that could be reasonably brought up in the court of public opinion.

Now, if they got arrested, on the other hand, or had to fight their way out and injured or killed someone … it wouldn’t matter who’d started it, they’d be the “bad guys,” as far as the world was concerned. Every few seconds, either Gula or one of her spirits ran over, throwing something or other into the space gate.

It was done at such speeds that there was almost no chance that any of that had been properly inspected, but there was no time for that sort of thing. They were on a time limit.

But a few minutes later, with a final heave, the dragon’s corpse was finally pushed out of existence, and Jaclyn took that as her cue to start running all over the place herself … until the first voices reached her ears.

She didn’t understand them, but she could recognize the language used.

Russian.

Uh-oh.

“We’re leaving,” Jaclyn hissed at the others, hoping that her voice was only heard by her allies. With how good her senses were at present, the Russians were likely to be a lot further away than the fact that she could hear them might otherwise indicate, but that cut both ways. They might be able to hear her, too, and with how widely stats could vary, there was absolutely no way to predict how good their senses were.

At least a plan had been prepared in case the locals were quick on the draw.

She withdrew a small crystal marble from yet another pocket and threw it behind her as they ran, mentally running through the description once again.

Confusing Blizzard (C-Rank, legendary, consumable)

A snowglobe made from absurdly expensive materials, infused with a dungeon core’s pettiness.

When broken, it will unleash a blizzard across an area of 250 km^2, centered on the user. This blizzard will last for six hours, cover all tracks ten seconds after they are left, disrupt all external attempts to view the interior, and reduce visibility down to a mere fifty meters at most.

Energy draw: n/a, instant discharge of stored mana

In other words, zero damage, maximum confusion. Also, a truly terrifying example of what a pissed-off dungeon core could do. Granted, the item seemed to be on the very edge of what Daedalus could produce, and the effect wasn’t even damaging or destructive, but that changed very little about the fact that it affected an area slightly larger than the whole of Great Britain at once.

But all of that was a problem for other people to deal with, though her opinion on it, not that anyone other than Director Frye ever asked for it, was that they could trust in Daedalus’ self-interest, and that the dungeon core would not want to ruin his relationship with the British people and government.

Right now, going forward, the plan was simple. Run like hell, head straight north, using the compasses to navigate until they reached the sea, then go look for the Belfast.

There were several potential ways to do that, ranging from simply looking for her to using a primitive radio to call attention to themselves and trust that the ship would get to them before the Russians could. Which was likely, since Daedalus had apparently had some kind of plan to “ruin” any nearby ships, and no one save him could easily locate the source of a radio transmission that lasted for only a couple of seconds.

After all, he had a monster for that. The Russians … not so much. There was technology for that, tech that was primitive enough to work in the transformation zone to boot, but it was old, not necessarily reliable, and no one had likely trained and/or used it in decades.

Now all that was left to do was a literal marathon through an actual blizzard, with plenty of opportunities to wind up on cliffs that only revealed themselves at a point in time when it would take far too long to go around, walk into crystalized trees, fall into snowdrifts … but even Granger, their “squishy spellcaster” would be able to easily survive any of that, or climb up/over obstacles.

And so on, and so forth.

It wasn’t a question of whether or not they’d manage to leave, but how many times they found themselves in dead ends.

***

The snowdrift had looked like just another patch of ground, crystal so covered in powdery white dust that the stable surface had completely disappeared. So one moment, Jaclyn had been jogging along at a decent clip, the next, she’d found herself buried up to her nose … only to explode back out of the drift, swearing loudly as she felt ice trickling down her back, having slipped into her jacket.

Granger laughed. Henderson, who’d previously found a snowdrift with his face and was still looking incensed, didn’t.

‘Just you wait,’ she thought. ‘You’re going to wind up in one of those damn things too, eventually.’

***

Ten hours later, the ocean came into view. Jaclyn hadn’t noticed it before, but it was looking weird, the water itself having been left alone and unaltered while the ground beneath had transformed into crystal, making the bay shimmering ahead in the low light of early dawn appear like the world’s largest fancy bathtub, or maybe a millionaire’s ridiculously over the top vanity project pool. Of course, it was still snowing slightly, all the way out here, but the effect of the item had dropped off to almost nothing.

And sitting there, in the dead center of the small inlet, was the Belfast, the black hull of the submarine sitting there unmoving, waiting, a dark void in the center of all this light.

She grinned. And there it was, their way out.

One quick scan of the surrounding area later, and Jaclyn flung herself into the surf, cutting through the waves like a dolphin … she was already halfway to the sub before she realized just how cold the ocean was.

Shivering, she climbed into the hatch that opened as she closed, dripping icy water onto the deck even as a blast of magic “cleaned” her uniform, leaving her dry once again.

Behind her, Harjaz pulled himself inside as well, then mirroring her magical efforts to rid himself of the cold.

Henderson was the next to arrive, dropping out of the sky and transforming back into a human, his amusement barely hidden.

Yeah, that had been dumb, she should have just flown, Jaclyn agreed. Though after trudging through the snow for so long, the sparkling waters had seemed incredibly inviting. Not that she’d ever admit that …

And when the others had finally gotten onboard, the hatch clunked shut and with a low burble that was barely audible from within the sub, the Belfast sank beneath the waves.

Jaclyn looked around, making sure everyone was alright, then marched towards her cabin to get changed. And after that, she’d head straight to the mess hall. She wasn’t the biggest fan of cooking, normally, but with the ingredients available aboard, it’d have been a damn shame to not take full advantage of this opportunity … and it was shockingly easy to make wagyu steak turn out good, as long as you didn’t overcook it.

As she walked, she briefly glanced at her status sheet. It was … well, she’d gained something from that fight, but it was shockingly little for a battle against an anchor beast.

A single Class level, granting her seventy-five points that she threw into mind to bring it more into line with her Body and Spirit stats, then almost missed a step as the world around her thrummed, suddenly coming into far sharper relief, time seemingly slowing to a crawl as her alarm immediately triggered an adrenaline rush, her perception of the world switching from “normal speed, anything else would drive me crazy from boredom” to “combat” … and then she caught her balance and stumbled a couple more steps before resuming her normal walk.

Perhaps, just maybe, increasing a single stat by nearly thirty percent in a single go had been an ever-so-slightly bad idea.

Between that and her “bath” in the ocean, there was little doubt left about the fact that she was spent, and shouldn’t be in charge of anything more complicated than a child’s lemonade stand until she rested.

Things were good with the attribute increase now, though.

She’d also gained a grand total of two skill levels, one in Athletics, and a second in Situational Awareness. Both of these were now over 40, meaning each of those levels would have a massively greater impact than those before, but it seemed so little for an anchor beast, even a comparatively weak one.

Then again, this was a fight against one of the strongest beings in the world that had occurred without casualties. Perhaps it was time to count her blessings instead …

***

Six. Days.

Six days of literal torture.

That was what it had felt like to watch the Belfast slowly inch across the ocean, returning home to where he was waiting.

Creating items that he could charge himself had been rather simple, but at the same time, it’d also had quite a few issues. Namely, capacitive items weren’t the biggest fans of having multiple types of energy working within them, and despite his dungeon supposedly using “mana,” in actuality, it was different enough that him charging items for someone else to control didn’t work properly, especially when it came to someone recharging it after the fact.

So he’d come up with a workaround. Instead of faffing around with the magical item creation process for months on end, he’d created something useable. Not perfect, the end result couldn’t be controlled by the recipient with the same fidelity as most magical items, but it did let him create magical WMDs. Although these were neither weapons, nor about destruction. More “devices of mass change,” though while the exact meaning escaped him at the moment, he knew that “DMC” had an existing meaning.

In the end, he could only create “simple,” vastly overpowered items that would burn themselves out in a matter of weeks on the outside, even the loot bag was much more lacking in the longevity department than he’d hoped.

But, despite the fact that there was plenty of space for improvements, they worked. Though he’d also have to be careful handing those out, since they’d likely become national assets to be waved around in the usual international dick-measuring contest. Destabilizing that any more than he already did, than he would have even if he had just remained a way for the British to power level their military … it likely would not have ended well for him.

Not to mention that they were ridiculously expensive to make, draining his mana in its entirety for just a single one.

Now he just had to wait for the spoils of war to arrive.

Because he had, in fact, screwed up somewhere along the line. Specifically, he’d locked the loot bag to only being able to be unlocked by a dungeon core. Which, despite technically being a sub-core, at least in part, the Belfast … wasn’t.

And yes, temporarily kicking everyone off so he could absorb the loot would probably have been a bit of a logistical issue, but hardly an insurmountable one. But thanks to that small screwup, he didn’t even have the chance to make that choice.

With a sigh, Thomas projected his mind over into his newest champion. At least that was something he could do.

Seeing the world through new eyes, feeling the water flow off his hull, listening to the distant sounds of aquatic life or even just manmade machinery, carried well beyond the distance where they would have been audible above the water.

He stayed like that, watching, observing, for a few minutes before withdrawing back into himself, and his core. It might have been a fascinating and otherworldly experience, but simultaneously quite same-y, with very little variation from moment to moment.

It would almost certainly be different once he was closer to home, but right now, it was just … water, without any big fish or interesting features on the bottom of the ocean, the Belfast was simply too deep at the moment.

Soon, it’d be home.

Soon.

***

The Belfast slid into the River Thames with little fanfare. If there’d been an announcement or any kind of warning, there’d likely have been no shortage of looky-loos, but this had been kept low-key. The sub’s presence might have been largely removed from the “operation” in Russia, but not shouting about its having left the city from the rooftops still seemed like a good precaution … at least until someone noticed that that fact had been hidden, grew understandably suspicious and made a mountain of what could have just been a molehill, though it was far closer to Mount Everest than anything else.

Sure, there were a handful of people on the banks of the river who saw the ship and pointed, snapping pictures and the like, but that had been inevitable.

And soon enough, the English countryside was replaced by the jungle of the transformation zone, then rapidly being replaced by the large, concrete, swimming pool-looking basin that he’d built to house the Belfast.

From there, he just had to kick out the humans, apply a few small improvements the engineers had come up with, and then send it back out to explore the ocean floor. Specifically, he wanted to poke his nose into the North Atlantic zone, see if there was something cool there.

Messing with the ship was certainly something to distract himself from the glacial pace at which the loot was being delivered.

***

And now, it was here. Finally.

… the victorious humans and orcs were here too, of course, but right in that moment, Thomas only had eyes for the leather bracelet around Deputy Director Abrams’ wrist.

“Congratulations, everyone!” he announced via yet another one of his raptors, which had fast become his favorite avatar for when Jan was unavailable. “I’m sure you’ve got to be itching to get back to your homes, but if you feel like it, I’ve prepared some interesting fights in the arena out back, and I think you’ll like some of the changes I made to the dungeon …”

‘… but I’d prefer to be able to take my time looking through all the loot,’ he mentally added.

“I think I’ll get going, thank you,” Abrams said, pulling the storage item off her wrist. “What do I do with this?”

“Just toss it on the ground,” Thomas announced. “I’ll absorb it once you’re clear.”

Then, belatedly, he added “Thank you.”

She threw it towards the raptor in an underhanded toss, gave a single wave goodbye, spun on her heels, and walked out. “Have fun!”

The others left right on her heels, leaving Thomas alone with his prize. His precious.

Taking it was almost anticlimactic, he reached out towards the Robber Baron’s Loot Sack with his power, and it crumbled away into nothingness in an instant, seemingly having vanished … but only on the material plane.

He hadn’t even been paying attention to that part of the process, not truly, instead casting his awareness into the very depths of his core, where all the countless new patterns he’d just gained were appearing.

From countless different flecks of crystal that had been stuck to the various stored bits and pieces, he gained several varieties of, well, crystal. It was similar to many different kinds of clear quartz, new and interesting, but ultimately not valuable.

Then, there were countless different bits and pieces that were simple, enchanted, items. Nothing he couldn’t have made himself, but there were several things that he’d never have thought to make himself. Such as what seemed to be the magical equivalent of a credit card, or rather, a bank card.

A large, coin-shaped crystal token that would keep track of the amount of effort the holder had put into doing something “for the common good” and then equate that with a certain “value” that would then be discharged once the act of valor was rewarded.

Or something.

Ultimately, the tokens were a part of a much larger structure meant to encourage good deeds and the like, since “charged” tokens would then be able to be displayed/traded in for proper renumeration, at which point whichever authority was responsible for it would give you magical items or money or the like.

It could be cool, but depending on how it registered “good deeds,” it might cause people to do something dumb. Or, even if it was perfect in interpreting the spirit of a “good deed,” what if it was the definition that the alien race who had enchanted the token would have given? Not to mention how anyone seeking to empower their token might interfere with law enforcement …

And so on, and so forth. All in all, a cool concept, but not one that could work in the world Thomas actually lived in. Or any world that contained people with any degree of imagination, really, since it was almost inevitable that someone would start to game the system, and then what were you left with? A whole bunch of “heroes” who, on paper, had practically saved the world and deserved a commensurate reward … all the while having just killed a handful of rats or something.

The enchantment certainly didn’t seem to have the necessary “wisdom” to parse out the complexities of real-world situations.

With the items looked over, he could finally move on to the main event. The anchor beast itself.

It was, well, a freaking dragon, a full, proper, bestial one, free from any potential for disrupting the ambient mana in the dungeon, or the ethical considerations of unleashing a fully sapient being within his dungeon.

The gemdragon was huge, physically powerful, and held four entirely new powers.

A physique, obviously, but one that would actually be really useful since it would let Thomas create living rocks without needing to first build a statue and then slapping on an animating spirit, not to mention that such a creature would be able to regenerate by consuming more of what it was made from. Useful.

The second power … less so. It would only work with the physique, allowing any users of it to draw out the power of whatever gem a given monster was made out of. Assuming it was made from gems, of course. Versatile, but in a way that would require him to build his creature around it.

As an enchantment, on the other hand, it would be pretty useful. Take a gem, any gem, toss this on, and presto: the holder was a mage!

… which he immediately tried out, only for the sapphire he’d chosen to promptly explode in the hand of the monkey he’d had try it out. It was yet another variant of the capuchin, though this branch had been given the Arcanum Core power that the Belfast had started with, that allowed it to power enchantments.

“I think you might need to start with a better base material. A lot better,” Elias commented. “As in a rank or two above the item you’re trying to create. And C-Rank at a minimum.”

Thomas winced. That’d certainly fix the issue, but it would also take a while to reach the point where he could create those kinds of materials.

“Alright, shelving that for later,” he said, and proceeded to look at the next two powers.

First, there was the crystal shell, that he’d heard everyone endlessly bitch about on the way back. It massively increased the defenses and staying power of any creature that held it, even against people holding magic items specifically designed to counter it.

In other words, it would have been perfect for a dungeon boss, except that both of the champions he used for this purpose had already gotten their powers for C-Rank. Cheshire had her foresight/reflexes, and as for Dexter, he’d been given one of the Hunger’s powers, the same one that fuelled the Ring of Rampage and Ring of the Houndmaster.

The power for his attacks to steadily grow in power and accuracy until one hit clean had just synergized too well with the seemingly infinite reach of the rubber-limbed giant sloth.

And as for the final power of the dragon, well, it was another one that he’d have to build a room around, but that was fine. After all, “building” was easy for a dungeon.

Being able to project magic attacks from crystaline surfaces, in a room that was effectively a mirror maze made from crystals or the like … so powerful it almost felt illegal.

In fact, Thomas added a new chamber behind Cheshire’s room and earmarked that for the dragon. It wasn’t a champion, capable of retaining memories and learning and growing and generally becoming far more powerful than what it had started out as, but it had been a beast from the start.

Though this whole affair did make him consider what he wanted his B-Rank champion to be … why not turn it into a mage of some variety? Crystal projection for battlefield control, gemdragon physique to grant it the ability to transform nearby surfaces so attacks could be projected through them, add on Arcanum Core to use however many magic gems he managed to produce, and then … Telekinetic Cloak for defense and point-blank attacks, maybe?

Also, this would be his B-Rank champion so it’d have a fifth power slot, but to be honest, Thomas had no idea what kind of power he wanted to add on top of everything else … but this was still an entirely theoretical exercise, he didn’t need a concrete anwer right this moment.

And then, he could finally move on to the final part of the process. Slotting the third anchor beast heart into the vortex controller.

Two monsters needed to die, five transformation areas to pick from, five months to make the choice in.

Now, how the hell could he convince the governments of the world to act with sufficient speed to actually solve things? Or cajole the Brits to act on their own and fix this regardless of whom it would piss off?