Museum Core Chapter 7: An Invasion Most Foul

Dungeons were weird, anyone who’d ever truly interacted with one knew that.

As they grew, they gained more and more quirks, from collecting certain kinds of stones to only giving out left shoes as loot.

Usually, those were harmless quirks and didn’t really do much other than provoke the occasional bout of homicidal rage in a delver who’d already been grumpy beforehand.

Which happened surprisingly often, even Elias had once broken his knuckles on a Dungeon wall during a temper tantrum, but that was just with regular quirks.

This Dungeon he was currently bound to was different.

It was a liar of mythical proportions, either that, or it was absolutely delusional.

But the worst possibility, the one that he was only slowly beginning to consider might be real, now that he wasn’t in the middle of an argument, was that the core might be telling the truth.

The multiverse was vast, and strange things happened all the time, things that flaunted the laws of both men and celestials, but even so, below the so-called rules that seemingly had more exceptions than rules, there were the ironclad foundations of reality, the laws underpinning all of existence.

People getting fused together in freak teleportation accidents was rare and usually fatal, but that was actually a fusion of two distinct objects. And that would have been obvious if it had, in fact, happened to Thomas the delusional Dungeon Core.

His own situation was quite a bit different. He’d also become something entirely different, in a “non-fusion” way, but he could still see that a combination event had happened.

He might not be able to call up his status screen, the System was either gone, or glitched so badly that it might as well be gone, but he could still check his power manually.

The eight orbs representing his power still swirled around his astral body.

Well, seven complete orbs and an eighth that had been in the process of coming into being to make him an S-Ranker not only in physical strength but also give him the magical power belonging to that lofty title.

However, this incomplete orb, and four others, belonging to ranks A through D, were dull and grey, sealed, inactive.

His E-Rank core was active, but it had changed. Once upon a time, it had held his [Bloodforge] ability, but it had shifted with his transformation, fusing with what he assumed was a Dungeon Fairy’s standard E-Rank ability, combining into something that he was finding hard to interpret, let alone activate.

It was some kind of scanning and creation power that would likely allow him to help his bonded Dungeon build defenses.

And his first power had likewise changed. Before, it had held the basics of his combat style, namely, supernatural handling of his spear, the ability to cause wounds that bled profusely with said spear, and recall a given bonded piece of gear into his hand.

Instead, he now had the ability to bond to a Dungeon, which must have automatically triggered somehow, considering that he was bonded to a Dungeon without knowingly having done so.

However, it still held echoes of his previous ability, allowing him and the Dungeon to transfer power back and forth, in addition, once he figured out how he’d be able to boost the attacks of Dungeon creatures to draw more blood.

Even so, he was still connected to his spear, despite all the changes. And the fact that he currently couldn’t use it.

As a scaling-type mythical weapon, it adjusted its strength to match the wearer, except now, from one moment to the next, it had been forced to readjust for someone incomparably weaker than its previous wielder and that would take time. A lot of time.

He’d also maintained the bond to his armor, though it was far weaker, since the bond emanated from the armor’s magic, rather than his abilities. It was also a scaling piece of gear, custom-forged for one of Dretolara’s champions, but it was less linked to him, so the adjustment would take far, far longer.

But the biggest shift had taken place in his fundamental core, referred to as the Null-Core by some. It was entirely descriptive, something that defined the holder. In his case, it used to refer to him as a human using the System of Dretolara to advance.

Now, … now he couldn’t read it fully anymore, but he could still tell that it referred to him as being “all fairy”, with some additional power related to blood and carnage that seemed to have no clear limit.

The point was, something had hit his planet, and now he was somewhere else, transfigured into a fairy, but he was still himself, at least a little.

The Dungeon Core had none of those signs, he was a Dungeon Core through and through, fully and completely, with no sign of humanity other than his claims.

It might even be a delusion. If Thomas didn’t remember his existence before the bond with Elias, then various tidbits of information he had about his world might as well have confused him into thinking he had once been human.

Honestly, it might be easier to just shut up and humor him, Elias decided. He still would keep back relevant information and not help the Dungeon become a slaughterhouse, and try to make things work out in the end. Somehow.

Hopefully, the fight wouldn’t resume once he returned to the core room.

And until then, it was time to explore this strange city.

The vegetation was clearly new, having grown over the span of hours at the most. Elias wasn’t familiar with the material used to make the roads, but it had clearly been incredibly tough and barely worn down by the elements, yet it had been shattered by plant life as it grew through. Straight through.

However, the plants he could see weren’t magical enough to do that on their own, which meant that they were just a symptom of a larger issue.

As for what the larger issue was … no clue. No freaking clue.

He probably should have traveled more, if he had, he might have recognized this place. Some of these plants looked oddly familiar, however, he couldn’t recognize them right this moment.

And then there were the monsters. Lizardpeople, obviously, the usual collection of elementals formed from mud, flora, or water, birds and monkeys at F- and E-Rank, but no visible apex predators. So far.

In a low-magic world, or at the very least, an area with low ambient arcane energy, this spread of power was normal. And what architecture he could see through the jungle looked low-magic.

But this place was teeming with power, more than enough for something at D- or even C-Rank to rule the roost.

Yet, this place was a little small for that, wasn’t it? Something even at the lower end of that scale would be able to obliterate a tenth of this jungle with one of their attacks, and as far as he knew, creatures didn’t like territories that could easily be destroyed by accident.

Elias sure as hell didn’t, he’d broken far too much furniture by accident to be comfortable in anything less than a high-quality house capable of surviving his little accidents.

Not that he needed to worry about that anymore, he was currently nowhere near the level of power where that was a concern, and later on, Thomas should be able to fabricate something suitably sturdy, or maybe … oh, what was that?

Elias’ wings beat furiously as he sped over to the ruins of what might have once been a bakery, the front holding a shattered glass case that might have once been heated.

Now, it just held a series of pastry pockets that smelled like meat and spices, which were currently bigger than he was. Was this what paradise was like?

After spending a few seconds making sure there was nothing dangerous around, he landed and began wolfing down the food. And just kept eating. Was it possible that fairies had no, or at the very least, vastly reduced limits as to how much they could eat? If so, that would be … amazing, in a word.

So eating was what he did, and if he hadn’t been interrupted, he might well have cleared out the entire display case.

Sadly, that was not to be.

A furious roar shook the ground, caused leaves to quake, and sent birds everywhere flying.

No, not fury, hunger.

Wait, no that wasn’t quite right either. Not if the monster was really after the Dungeon. In that case, it would be greed. Either way, this was bad.

Elias opened his mouth to let a piece of pastry that had been too big to attempt to eat drop back down, threw one last wistful glance at the display case, and took off in the direction of the Dungeon.

One might think that a single fairy was in incredible danger moving through a jungle in the middle of a stampede, but one would be wrong. Fairies might be far weaker than humans, and his current physical abilities were closer to that of an F-Rank human than something befitting his current E-Rank, but he was also tiny. All that power in a tiny package could cause devastating damage.

His wings beat furiously as he blasted through the jungle, dodging various panicked critters until the monster in question came into view.

A wyvern. Dark blue scales, two legs like those of a bird of prey, crocodile snout, leathery wings. An E-Rank monster capable of inflicting devastating damage to the few monsters Thomas had available.

The Dungeon’s current defenders might be extraordinarily powerful for non-magical creatures, most either died or gained some kind of magic before growing to the strength of that hippo and the like, but they were still not even F-Rank. This would be rough.

But thank the celestials, Elias was here to even the score. The monster was currently marching towards the entrance of the museum, still sufficiently exposed for what he was planning.

He flashed skywards, until he was around ten meters above the monster’s head, and let himself drop.

Trying to control his descent in his new body was damn difficult, but this was hardly the first time he’d played “human magic missile”.

Even so, he was too light to do any damage to the wyvern’s body, unless he was able to land this perfectly.

And he did.

His foot slammed into the wyvern’s right eyeball, which burst with a nauseating “squish” he was far too used to. And then, the clear secondary eyelid almost chopped off his leg, with him barely pulling him out of the hole in time.

The wyvern roared again, furious and in clear agony, and tried to chomp him out of the air.

Nah, bitch, gotta get back earlier than that!

Cackling madly, Elias zipped skywards, entering the museum through an open window, and hurried towards the Dungeon to warn Thomas. He could have flown right there, but that might have resulted in the wyvern chasing him at full tilt and cost the core valuable preparation time.

As things were right now, the wyvern leaped up and glared through the window, only to realize there wasn’t enough space and only beat its head against the wall a couple of times before falling back down to the ground.

As Elias entered the Dungeon’s sphere of influence, he could still hear the wyvern’s annoyed grunts and growls in the distance. It wouldn’t be long before it went right back to what it had been doing before, namely, going after the Dungeon.

Monsters going into Dungeons was bad.

Sapient invaders normally knew not to slaughter milk cows for meat, and normally left cores alone to be able to farm them again later unless they desperately needed the burst of power breaking the core would provide, but monsters were monsters. At some point, they might wind up sapient, or gain a power for long-term strategizing, but he sincerely doubted this wyvern would see beyond its next meal or energy source.

***

“Thomas, heads up, you’ve got a wyvern incoming! E-Rank! I poked out its eye, but it’s still coming!”

The mental message would have made Thomas jump if he were able to. Elias was back, and he wasn’t bringing good news.

A horrific shattering sound echoed through the halls of the museum right on the heels of the announcement. Uh-oh.

He needed to prepare.

He’d finally found a few small birds that had likely been intended as decoration behind a wall and absorbed them but not summoned any since they hadn’t seemed very useful. But if Elias’ wyvern was anything like the mental image the word painted, it was big, and reaching its vital points, eyes especially, might be tricky.

So he summoned a few. About the size of a pigeon, these tropical birds should be able to do at least some damage when pecking at weak spots.

But that was the end of the summons, he now needed to strategize. Numbers might work in theory, but this thing was supposed to be stupidly powerful.

There was no way in hell the wyvern would fit up the stairs and into the balcony, which meant that it would have to go through the wall. That’s when it would be vulnerable.

The only time it would be vulnerable before it started munching on Thomas’ core, which meant he needed to focus his efforts on that place.

If the wyvern could smash its way right through like the Kool-Aid man, that would be a problem, but if it got stuck for even a few seconds, that was the perfect opportunity to strike.

The boar at the top of the stairs was a good start, but it was probably too light to do any real damage, so the arsinoitherium he had stashed up there would take the lead.

The jaguars jumping down should inflict serious damage.

What else, what else … Another elephant, maybe?

And how about a … his summoning power shut off.

Ah, fuck. At least he’d spent almost all of his available power before the creature had come too close.

Watching through the eyes of one of the wolverines in the corridor.

A head the size of a motorcycle sidecar, twin, backwards-facing horns adorning it, one on each side of its head, one fist-sized eyeball, and one weeping hole on prominent display. Wings large enough to serve as a sunroof for an open-air cafe were tightly folded against its back, somehow undamaged despite having been dragged through stone archways to the point where solid rock broke against them.

From head to tail, it had to be around fifteen meters long, deadly grace and explosive power combined into one terrifyingly powerful package.

“I can’t believe you put out that thing’s eye,” Thomas whispered and Elias chuckled.

“I’m tougher than I look, and eyeballs aren’t exactly known for their durability.”

The fairy still sounded somewhat nonchalant, but Thomas thought he was being ever so slightly less energetic than normal. That couldn’t be a good sign.

The wyvern began to creep forwards, and the wolverines began to snap at the monster’s legs and ankles as it passed.

In Thomas’ head, it had been a glorious showing, tiny mice working together to bring down a mighty predator.

In reality, the situation was wholly different. The wolverine might be a mighty creature in the non-magical, the sane, world, but in this new situation … teeth that could shear through flesh the same way scissors parted paper broke against scales, claws scrabbled futilely against even the thinnest parts of the wyverns hide.

That might have even continued for a while, with the wyvern ignoring the creatures that were completely unable to hurt it, but at some point, it just grew annoyed and retaliated.

It was over in a flash, the wyvern shifting its weight onto a single leg while it kicked out with the other one, as if it were a mule, reducing the wolverine to a fine mist that dyed the floor red. As it moved, its wings crashed against the ceiling, stone reduced to powder.

Looks like someone forgot how small the hallway was, heh.

Thomas’ small spark of happiness faded as he realized that the wyvern wasn’t hurt much. A small growl of pain, a far more gentle shake to get the dust off its wings, that was all the reaction it had to accidentally bashing its most fragile body part through solid rock. It might have trouble flying later on, but by the time that mattered, Thomas would most likely be dead.

The monster turned the last corner and glared at the wall of dungeon-forged rock that separated it from the chamber that held Thomas. It spared one glance up at the staircase that was the “normal” path, shook its head, and looked straight back at the wall and headbutted it.

In a sane world, a creature using its cranium to break through a wall of solid rock several centimeters thick would, at the very least, have resulted in a concussion, fatal brain damage at the worst.

In this world, the rock cracked, and the creature doing the bashing wasn’t looking damaged in the slightest. And then, it reared back and did it again. And once more, and this time, its head broke through, leaving the wyvern stuck halfway through the wall, head and neck exposed, the rest of its body still wedged into the corridor outside.

Thomas wasn’t going to get a better chance than that, so he sent the arsinoitherium in.

Anyone who’s ever taken a spill down the stairs knows how quickly momentum can build when going down them at full speed.

A two-ton, prehistoric hippopotamus, sporting twin horns the size of traffic cones thundering down a staircase it barely fit down had a hell of a lot more momentum than a person.

It crashed into the wyvern’s side, squashing it against the wall opposite the stairs while it still had its head stuck through the hole in the wall.

Enough strength to smash through solid rock the wyvern might have had, but it was in the worst possible position to leverage said strength. The beast’s legs were squashed between the floor and several tons of muscle and blubber.

It almost certainly had enough strength to kick itself free, that fact was a near certainty. But something lying on the side of one’s legs was incredibly difficult to bring one’s strength to bear against.

“PILE ON!” Thomas mentally roared, and every monster charged.

The first to arrive was one of the small tropical birds, going right for the beast’s remaining eye. It pecked at it for perhaps half a second before being flung back amidst a shower of blood and feathers.

Wait, what had just happened? The wyvern hadn’t moved, it hadn’t headbutted the bird or anything, the animal’s head had just … popped.

The second bird suffered the same fate, and this time, Thomas caught what happened.

Just how powerful did a creature have to be to decapitate a bird by blinking? And it wasn’t even the heavy, armored-looking eyelids that shredded Thomas’ monsters, but the see-through, third one, what was that called again?

“Not matters right now” eyelid, probably.

So, unless one was a former peak existence of the multiverse like Elias, with the appropriate level of skill, attacking that eye as a small creature was doomed to failure.

But a few little tweeties hadn’t been the full extent of Thomas’ attack.

The first jaguar plummeted from the ceiling, claws out and aiming right for the eyeball.

A simple jerk of the wyvern’s head managed to save its eyesight from the initial attack, but not the followup of the big cat grabbing onto the monster’s head and beginning to gnaw on it.

Somehow, even with the arsinotherium sitting on its chest and a big cat hanging off its skull, it managed to still avoid the second jaguar.

By the time the rhino the wyvern was trashing like mad, head whipping from side to side to shake off the cats, but it was still mostly fine.

The arsenotherium was wedged between the ceiling and the wyvern, almost impossible to toss away, even in the face of the wyvern’s monstrous strength, but it was getting shredded.

All the wyvern was doing was taking the only action it could. Extend leg, pull leg back, over and over, its scales acting like a titanic rasp, skin, flesh, and even bone getting torn apart layer by layer. Oh, that looked painful.

The ground on the other side of the wall was getting slick with blood and other, even more disgusting, liquids. Even without his dungeon senses, Thomas could quite easily tell when his creature was done for.

Meanwhile, both of the jaguars gnawing on the wyvern’s head had gotten crushed at some point.

However, just because the creature pinning it down was dead didn’t mean that the wyvern was getting free anytime soon.

Almost every creature Thomas had was trying to pile on, when one fell, the next stepped in, a never-ending crush of bodies stomping right on the invader’s head, neck, and throat.

Trapped, only able to move its head, the wyvern fought like a berserker.

An elephant stumbled back on three legs, the fourth very clearly broken.

A boar sent flying through the air, a few drops of blood on its tusks the only evidence that it had done anything at all.

Ten seconds passed, then twenty, as the number of Thomas’ defenders fell steadily. Every second, he expected to feel the burst of energy of the monster dying. It didn’t matter how strong something was, having an elephant stomp on its head should do at least some damage … right?

After thirty seconds, the last of his animals was thrown away as the wyvern rose to its feet, two more headbutts expanding the hole in the wall to the point where it could walk through. It was utterly caked in blook, having literally stood up through the body of the arsinoitherium, but it looked still fairly fine. Pissed off, covered in scratches, and down an eye, but fine.

Thomas made the elephant charge, it stumbling forwards awkwardly on three legs, but it didn’t get in more than a single slap with the trunk before the wyvern bit through its neck.

The last few small fries were stomped into the ground over the course of a few seconds, though the wyvern did seem oddly inaccurate as it did so.

Facing it were his last two defenders.

A hippopotamus and a sabertooth tiger. Thomas hadn’t wanted to bet everything on a single attack, no matter how good its chances at success might have been. Two more animals in the mix, trying to crush the wyvern while it was stuck there, wouldn’t have made much of a difference. But now that that fight had ended and the wyvern was still alive, these two might make the difference between victory and defeat. Besides, there’s always been the risk of the monster whipping out some kind of nasty area attack and obliterating his forces. Hell, the way it had swung around its head practically counted as an AOE.

Thomas’ final two defenders spread out, each hugging an opposite wall so the wyvern couldn’t simultaneously face both of them.

Weirdly enough, the monster’s head immediately snapped around to the hippo, glaring in its general direction while seemingly ignoring the tiger.

… if Thomas had still had hands, he’d have facepalmed. Of course! The single eye that the monster had remaining hadn’t been completely obliterated, but now that he looked at it closely, he could still see that it had been damaged to the point of near-uselessness.

It was questionable if the creature could even see at all. Certainly, it had fully focussed on the louder animal the instant it’d started moving but it was completely ignoring the tiger. Big as it was, the sabertooth was still, well, a cat, and it could sneak around like one. The perfect weapon to use against a blinded opponent … except all the vulnerable parts were on the wrong end of the monster.

This would have been the part where his knowledge ended, where his plans failed due to his unfamiliarity with his opponent … but he had a wyvern pattern, courtesy of Elias. Too high-ranked to use, but the information it gave was invaluable.

You see, a wyvern’s tail was surprisingly weak for something attached to a E-ranked monster, evolved to stabilize its flight, not be used as a weapon.

The hippo froze for a long moment, even holding its breath to avoid making noise, while the sabertooth’s claws unsheathed with a soft “schnick”. That wasn’t enough to draw the wyvern’s attention, but the unholy screech of said claws tearing through the carpet and getting dragged across the floor did.

In an instant, the wyvern whirled, and the only reason the sabertooth wasn’t chomped in half was that it leaped back the instant it had made the noise.

At the same time, the hippo reared on its hind legs and chomped down on the tail now waving in its face, locking the appendage down. Try this on any of the wyvern’s other appendages, and it would have failed miserably.

But the tail didn’t have to be strong, so it wasn’t. Sure, getting hit by it would still hurt like hell and leave the mother of all welts, but it lacked the bone-obliterating strength of the monster’s legs and wings. It was also not exactly built to be pulled on.

With a roar of pain, the wyvern tried to spin around, only to come up short as it realized how much damage the sudden movement was doing to its tail. It couldn’t just whirl around anymore.

A slower method of turning, gently twisting until the hippo was in chomping distance of its fangs.

It seemed like that would be the end of Thomas’ hippopotamus, but in that brief moment of careful movement, the head’s movement was slow, predictable.

The sabertooth moved like lighting, opening its mouth as wide as it would go to clear as much possible for its twin teeth, and drove one of them into the wyvern’s barely functioning eye.

It burst in a spray of disgusting liquids and shattered the thin bone behind it until the tiger’s gums touched the wyvern’s skull. As the monster howled in pain, Thomas’s creature threw itself off it, the tooth snapping off in the process.

Unfortunately, unlike what the television claimed, even brain injuries weren’t necessarily instantly fatal.

While Thomas’ animals retreated, the wyvern went on a blind rampage smashing into walls, obliterating the hippo by complete accident and the sabertooth only managed to save itself by scampering onto the balcony.

After almost a full minute, the wyvern slumped onto the ground, sides heaving.

“Is it dead?” Thomas asked.

“Definitely not,” Elias scoffed, “That injury might be fatal eventually, but tell that tiger to go kill it.”

And that’s exactly what the sabertooth did. It jumped forward, paw smashing into the back of the tooth and driving it so deep into the wyvern’s skull that it almost completely vanished.

With one final spasm, the invader fell still.

Unfortunately, said spasm flung the sabertooth into the bottom of the balcony with enough force to break its spine, causing it to fall back to the ground with a pained whimper.

“Ok, don’t make that poor cat suffer more than it needs to,” Elias ordered, “Remember how I told you you’ll be able to create boss monsters later? I think our little cat is a good candidate.”

“How do I do that?” Thomas growled. Knowing that it was possible was useful, but that knowledge was utterly useless unless Elias gave a proper explanation.

“Just focus on it? Absorb it, and try to contain its temperament in the pattern so you can promote it.”

So it was that simple, he just hadn’t been able to tell it would work before he learned about it. What the fuck was wrong with this world? Just existing in it made him constantly question his sanity.

It worked, though, and the sabertooth vanished in a flash of light, removing the last living creature other than Thomas and Elias. All that was left was the slow drip-drip-drip of blood coming from the top stairs.

But they’d won. And in the center of his core, a big cat lay curled up, appearing slightly confused but mostly fine, relaxing.

Don’t you worry, cat, you’re going to be just fine,” Thomas mentally sent at it, not sure if that would work, but he was it perk up at the sound of his voice. “Give me a bit, then I’m going to give you a proper reward.”