Museum Core Chapter 17: More Visitors

“I need an avatar to talk to people directly, right?” Thomas asked. Having Elias share all his knowledge meant he should have theoretically gotten all the information he possibly could have needed, but in practice, he’d only properly retained a tiny part of the fairy’s teachings. He had vague memories of some more lessons, however not to the point where he could implement them.

But even so, he still had to ask a ton of questions. They might be requesting clarifications rather than answers, but he still had to ask them.

At least Elias had the good grace to not get upset over having to explain things twice.

“Or you could just ask me to do it, but I’m telling you right now, I’m not risking myself to lure in anyone.” The fairy grumbled.

They’d been getting along much better since he’d admitted that he wasn’t actually a good teacher … and then he’d gotten grumpy again.

This wasn’t about the issue of Elias not believing him about his past as a human, no, this was a new fight.

One that was kinda, well, sort of, actually somewhat slightly Thomas’ fault.

Of course, what he was doing would be really bad if he used it against people, but he hadn’t. And wouldn’t. Even so, the fairy seemed to regard resorting to those kinds of tactics at all as a fundamental crossing of boundaries.

***

There were worse Dungeons to be bound to, Elias reflected.

Whether or not Thomas used to be human, he certainly had human-like intelligence and could come up with some clever ideas.

That being said, he’d come up with something terrifying, intuiting one of the worst and most dangerous capabilities of Dungeons without even context clues. If he didn’t also seem to be intelligent enough to know better than to implement any of those tricks, Elias would be living in constant fear.

However, both those issues were ones that could be worked out or ignored.

Both of them were effectively immortal, unable to die from old age, and could well expect to keep living for millennia barring any stupid mistakes.

So it was good to have someone who could hold a conversation with.

The real problem here was that Thomas was on a perfect trajectory to not just make one of those mistakes, but also become the absolute worst kind of Dungeon.

He’d started actively dragging some of the creatures outside into his Dungeon for power gain.

For example, he’d had wyverns pick up small-ish prey and drop it into his domain for other creatures to finish off, as well as chase in packs of predators where possible.

To do that, he’d had a wyvern drop large chunks of flesh onto the ground near the entrance, and then, when scavengers or opportunists showed up, a wyvern would drop down between them and the tree line. With the banisters on either side, running into the museum had to look like the most reasonable option.

The gains had been significant, allowing the core to cover the entirety of the entrance hall and dug further into the archives in search of interesting patterns, but the method used was … troubling.

Elias had pointed that out, but Thomas had flat out stated that he’d keep going and he hadn’t pushed too hard in an attempt to avoid blowing up their “relationship”.

The method had only been applied to monsters so far, but those kinds of strategies being employed against sapient beings was a huge taboo, the kind of thing that would get its user destroyed by a high-ranker in short order.

Not to mention that treating people like that was just plain wrong.

But if that had been all he wanted to do, Elias would have been somewhat fine with it. Not perfectly ok, but at least willing to accept.

The real problem was that it half looked like Thomas was trying to invite people into the Dungeon by pretending to be a sanctuary. The museum’s cafe hadn’t been made part of the domain but was surrounded by it, allowing him to guard it without losing access to his Dungeon while people were inside.

He’d even made sure to absorb samples of food so he could feed his “guests”.

It would be nice if Elias could take all this at face value, but he couldn’t. Not here, not now, not after what he’d seen. They’d only known each other for a few hours, nowhere near enough time to get a proper read on each other.

He wanted to get along, he really did, but he couldn’t take a blind leap like that, not when he knew exactly what Dungeons could do if they decided to ignore the limits set by common sense and social convention.

They gained power by killing, and if they decided to go after more than those who delved into their depths of their own accord, they could grow at a terrifying rate.

Thomas might have said he was only going to use this tactic on animals, but would an immortal Dungeon Core really see humans as any better?

***

Food?

Check.

A sheltered place not covered by his domain?

Check.

Beacons’s still burning and sending up smoke signals?

Check.

Something that’s actually visible at night … urgh, dangit!

Thomas sighed. Not a single person had shown up all day, and he was getting worried. He might not be able to scout too far without losing control over whatever he used to scout, but he had been able to see far enough to tell that the jungle was massive. He could see untouched buildings in the distance, so he knew some of London was still standing, but most of the city center had been swallowed.

And considering how many people were in those areas, the potential casualties from whatever had happened were staggering.

He refused to believe that everyone who’d been in London had died in the initial catastrophe, but the odds of survivors continuing to remain among the living dropped with every passing hour. And it was nighttime, with no electricity available anywhere outside of the Dungeon. And even that wasn’t actual electricity, just some weird “it just kinda works”-field that kept the lights on.

Humans did have a form of night vision where their ability to see in darkness improved over time, Thomas knew that, but it only kicked in after around twenty minutes, wasn’t all that great, and was utterly ruined by any sign of light.

Being amidst a jungle full of nasty critters that likely could see far better practically was a death sentence.

Making people get out of their hidey holes was dangerous, but once they reached the museum, they’d be safe.

So he lit up more fires at the edges of the roof and started flashing S-O-S light signals.

And then, he settled in to wait. The Wyverns did have half-decent night vision, but it was nowhere near good enough to keep hunting, and with them having to drop prey near flames before flying back out into the darkness, they’d not be able to keep their night vision for very long.

With that done, he could either try to talk to Elias to clear the air or go do some research.

The archives were huge, seemingly endless, interwoven with the visitable museum on every level. Countless specimens ranging from tiny bones to entire skeletons and taxidermied creatures meticulously cataloged and crammed so closely together that one could easily assume spatial magic had been involved, filling a space that covered almost as much space as the exhibit area did.

At some point, Thomas would just vacuum up the entirety of the stuff and sort through the patterns he received, but that wasn’t possible just yet. Absorbing patterns did require mana, not to mention that absorbing stuff still involved no small amount of collateral damage, and he still needed to have stuff in his domain to eat it. And the archives were too huge to fully expand into just yet.

Not to mention that while he might get a whole lot of cool patterns, most of them would either be superfluous or duplicated. After all, why did he need a hundred different species of antelope when he already had the Gemsbock, a particularly capable species knowing to impale both lions and humans atop with their sharp horns when push came to shove? Why did he need every kind of rhino, as if he’d use all of them? Or what about big cats? He had tigers, both with and without saber teeth for raw power and jaguars for ambushes, he didn’t need every other type. The cheetah specifically was basically useless inside the museum.

He’d already found and eaten several ledgers, but those didn’t get him very far. Half didn’t even hold specimen descriptors that referred him to a set of reference books he didn’t have access to, a decent chunk of the rest told him to go look up the stuff on the website he clearly didn’t get access to and even so, they weren’t exactly helpful either.

The parts he had been able to decypher promised him the world, metaphorically speaking, from several very toxic animals to dinosaurs not found in the actual exhibit, but locating the relevant specimens had been beyond him.

All that being said, he had found one cool thing.

The Boomslang. Most people only knew the creature as a potion ingredient in the Harry Potter books, but it was very much real, an incredibly dangerous snake found in the southern regions of the African continent.

A green snake that liked to hang out in trees near perfectly camouflaged with a very nasty bite. Unlike most other dangerous snakes, the boomslang’s venom was almost purely hemotoxic, causing surprisingly little damage. At first. The wound would bleed more than normal, but that was about that.

In fact, most victims of the snake would, at first, assume that the bite had been a “dry bite” one meant to scare them off, so the snake hadn’t wasted any venom on them.

And then, they’d start to bleed both externally and internally, with brain hemorrhages being the most dangerous symptom, until they died.

Venom that took twenty-four hours to kill was largely useless for a Dungeon, but Thomas was planning on combining it with other tricks.

The first idea was simple, invenomate the target and then use other creatures to start cutting them up while the venom caused the wounds to bleed profusely.

And the second was meant to target those who’d actually seek to destroy his core. The scouts who’d be cataloging his defenses in preparation for an attack and weren’t being adequately secretive.

He’d turn the venom into a power to give to a creature that would only be let out to play in an emergency, have it bite the foe, and wait.

According to Elias, there were a wide variety of healing spells, each with a different effect. General healing magic might remove wounds and clean them to a certain degree, but cleansing venom or removing disease was a whole other kettle of fish, one most people didn’t “waste” mana on unless it was necessary.

In other words, unless the targetted people were borderline paranoid, they’d have a very short window between the symptoms becoming obvious and, well, death.

His ultimate master plan was to grab a variety of venomous creatures and create specialized toxin-delivering monsters.

What he needed was neurotoxins, which would not just kill, but also severely weaken the victim prior to death. Of course, that effect would be rather obvious and the venom would be cleansed if possible, but it would still be a nasty trick.

The Black Mamba or Inland Taipan were what he was shooting for, if available, but he was sure he’d find something suitable eventually. If nothing else, most sea snakes had incredibly quick-acting venom that had evolved to kill its victims before they were lost in the currents. But he didn’t have any of those either.

Furthermore, if he found something suitable, he’d also be using snakes whose venom focused on destroying tissues around the bite.

… When he really thought about it, he could see why Elias was being so weird about him pushing boundaries. They might be stuck together, but they didn’t share a brain, nor were they capable of telepath, so Thomas’ statements of “I’m not going to do anything crazy” had to be taken on faith.

Given enough time and unlimited access to the museum’s archives, he could create some incredibly deadly monsters.

But he had neither, in fact, he had far too little of ei- …

Thomas’ train of thought stuttered to a halt as he felt a new presence enter his domain.

And immediately stumble back out, likely scared off by the tiger that had just walked past the door.

How had he missed that? He had creatures up on the roof watching out for any incoming … the fires. Those damn fires. Of course, anything nearby would have crappy night vision. And the small figure that had briefly entered had been wearing rather dark clothing, which couldn’t have helped matters.

A kid, probably.

“Elias, could you head towards the entrance? I think I accidentally scared off a survivor looking for help.”

“I don’t think a place full of a thousand deadly predators is a good place to get help,” Elias grumbled.

Part of Thomas wanted to fight this out here and now, but he knew that by the time he didn’t have the time.

Thankfully, the survivor outside was a kid, and, well, kids could be more than a little stupid. They might be generally cleverer and more perceptive than adults gave them credit for, but they were still not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

So he summoned another tiger right in front of the door, in full view of anyone outside. But not a regular tiger, the terrifying killing machine that could tear a grown man apart with casual ease, but one still in its infancy. A tiny, cute, adorable baby that wouldn’t have been able to survive one day out in the wild without protection flopped onto the marble floor of the entranceway with a high-pitched “mrow”.

Any adult seeing a baby tiger immediately after spotting a grown-up one would know that getting anywhere near the baby was a terrible idea. That wouldn’t necessarily prevent them from trying to pet the tiger cub, but still, most adults would at least be aware of the threat.

As for kids …

“Kitty!”

And that was that.

The kid had turned after hearing the tiger cub, seen it, and immediately ran after it into the darkness of the museum’s entrance.

Thomas sniggered as he viewed the scene from his perspective high above.

The kid wasn’t paying attention to anything other than the “kitty” it was chasing, utterly ignorant of everything around it, including the various monsters currently hiding up on the balcony and behind pillars.

Depending on the framing, that scene could have belonged to either a comedy or horror movie.

A comedic supercut of all the obvious hiding spots being overlooked could be funny, but between the danger the creatures radiated and the bloodshed of the last few hours, Thomas couldn’t help but feel apprehensive.

The tiger cub flopped onto its back once it had reached the middle of the cafe and just looked at the kid, waiting. And once the kid was inside, one of the jaguars emerged from hiding and pulled down the security shutters.

Locking a six-to-eight-year-old in a room, alone, was probably not the most responsible thing Thomas had ever done, but he couldn’t afford to have the kid in the Dungeon, disrupting his control. And keeping it inside without doing anything traumatizing would be … tough.

“Lea? Lea? Where did you run? This isn’t a game!”

Oh, crap, the kid hadn’t been alone, and the mother was currently ringing the dinner bell for anything in hearing range. And getting her inside wouldn’t be nearly as easy.

***

“Elias, I need your help.”

Elias didn’t respond. He wasn’t going to lure someone in.

“There’s a lady out there who’s going to be eaten.”

So instead, the Dungeon’s going to eat her?

Elias sighed. Still, if the lady was going to die anyway, there wasn’t a downside to luring her inside.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Just tell her that her kid is in the cafe and that she should hurry in there because the defenses won’t work while she’s lingering.”

“And?” Elias pressed.

“What?” Thomas responded.

“Is her kid in the cafe?”

“Yeah, I locked her inside because I can’t really herd her with monsters that are going to make her pee her pants,” Thomas said, voice growing urgent. “Hurry up before someone eats her mother.”

Shit. If the mother and child were still alive in the morning, Elias would have to do some serious apologizing.

In theory, maybe, hypothetically, possibly, this might all be a part of some seriously complicated, long-term, plan, but that idea was growing increasingly unlikely. Borderline moronic, really.

The idea that Thomas had once been human still sounded utterly ridiculous, but honestly, if Elias ignored all the things about it that made absolutely zero sense, he could at least see some clues pointing towards it being true.

And then what?

Dungeon cores at his current Rank were mostly animalistic, with significant animal cunning, capable of handling being stuck in a rock without much to do for days or even weeks on end. But a person was liable to go nuts within the first twelve or so hours where nothing happened.

What was Elias supposed to do, put on a puppet show?

He sniggered at that thought.

Elias of the Crimson Sea, Pride of Dretolara, Wielder of the Sanctified Lance, and now … Dungeon Entertainer.

Maybe that was something for their visitors to do. If he could find them.

“LEA!”

Ah, there she was. That had been easy.

Elias fluttered over to her … and was promptly ignored. Rude. He was right here, in front of her eyes, what kind of blind baseline hu- … the kind who made up the entirety of this planet’s population according to Thomas.

“Hello,” he began. He didn’t know the local customs, but that seemed like a safe enough opening.

“Who’s there?” the lady yelped, spinning around with her hands raised, flailing wildly.

“Over here,” Elias told her, flying back towards the entrance, where some of the firelight reflected off his wings. He could create his own light, but the crimson aura his powers could create would probably have scared her off.

“A FAIRY!?”

Oh no, was this one of those worlds where fairies were evil tricksters?

“Yeah, but don’t hold that against me,” Elias said. “Your daughter’s inside, safe, I’ll lead you to her.”

“Oh my God, thank you!”

The woman began to move to hug him but stopped as she realized that the size difference made a full-body hug tricky.

So Elias flew towards the cafe.

“The owner locked the door to make sure she didn’t wander off,” he explained. “There are several magical defenses in place and it’s not a safe space for a toddler to be in.”

“She’s seven,” the woman corrected.

“Still not old enough to make this safe,” Elias sighed.

He could see the countless unspoken questions burning on her tongue, pushed down by her worry for her daughter.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to open the door yourself,” he said, waving his hands to demonstrate the size difference.

She did, and was immediately greeted by a teary eyed kid.

“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?” the woman screamed as she whirled around, protectively stepping in front of her child.

Elias shrugged. “We locked her in a room, that might have been scary?”

He really didn’t know, though locking the child up might have been the best option of a whole lot of bad ones.

But before he needed to escape the righteous wrath of an enraged parent, the kid sobbed something about a missing cat.

“Oh, I think the tiger cub might have run off after she played too rough with it,” Thomas informed him. “I’m going to keep it away to make sure it doesn’t scratch her, I don’t want her getting hurt without having any doctors around.”

That was probably a good idea. Inside the confines of the Dungeon, Thomas had absolute control over his creatures. One could tapdance on a tiger’s balls and not even get growled at while it was being held still. Outside the Dungeon though, giving any kind of complex orders was difficult, and constantly suppressing the most basic self-defense instincts of a living being would be night impossible.

“She says her cat ran away,” the woman turned to him, sounding puzzled.

“She was given a cat to keep her company, but she was a little rough with it,” Elias explained. “Please, stay in this room and eat the food, we have more than you could possibly eat, we’re trying to get law enforcement to come get you as soon as possible.”

“Thank you,” the woman whispered while she patted the head of her child, which was currently clinging to her leg, no longer crying but still looking supremely upset.

So he got out of there as quickly as possible.

… Only to get sent straight back in.

“Can you ask her what happened out there?” Thomas told him.

Ah, fuck!