Chapter 270 - Dungeonslayer (Patreon)

Note : And this is it ! The end of book 7 ! What did you guys think of this particular volume ?

No new chapter today, got a bit too busy for that, but I'll try to finish it soon.

Also, would you guys be interested in a book 7 retrospective and trivia, like with book 6 ?

Chapter 270

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Core Fortress

There was fleeting, single second of silence as everyone stared in shock at the red cloud that had once been their comrade.

"Move in! Go! Go! Go!" Shouted Helmgor, and training took over, as they charged in.

If there was something he knew about Old World weapons, it was this: charge them. Hit them hard, hit them fast, and more importantly hit them close. The heretics of the Old World used few melee weapons, and most of their things were meant to keep you at range.

The really potent ones also tended to be slow firing. So that gave them a shot.

He erupted into the room, and took in everything as he sprinted across, Amida by his side.

There was a fortress. A kind of giant pyramid.

A pyramid of nothing but firing positions and artillery emplacements.

He moved faster than any mortal could hope to, weaving magic around himself to enhance his movements, speed, agility, everything. He even triggered his talismans, ghosts appearing around him, trying to draw fire or attack the golems in earnest. Guardian spirits of fallen knights of his order, bound by oaths to serve even onto death.

He tried not to notice the new specter, wearing Kimitar's face.

But even with all this…his ward still screamed as plasma bolts and beams of coherent lights smashed into it.

The specters fared little better. Intangible did not mean invulnerable, and they vanished in arcs of energy and spectral sighs as ancient weapons impacted them.

Helmgor gestured, and ripped an entire chunk of the floor up into a piece of makeshift cover. Already, it was being shredded by the incoming fire, but it would buy him a few seconds, at the very least.

He used that time to focus, and throw his magic across. Remembering the battle in the room they had teleported in, he opted for fire rather than ice in his attack, trying to detonate any potential ammo.

Whips of fire so hot they were effectively plasma lashed out…and fizzled as they came crashing down against energy shields. Not the fortress', the golems'. Every. Single. One. Had personal barriers surrounding them.

Barriers that shrugged off his spell like it barely existed.

They retargeted towards him, but Emylris was back up once again.

She reached out, and blades of force slammed into the enemy. Their shields, perhaps not as strong as he had feared, screamed. Some failed, others didn't, but all were thrown back. They rallied, of course, but the archmage had already joined Helmgor, alongside Amida, while Nairi poured in ward piercing arrows from the cover of the remarkably resilient blast door.

They hit the automata. But the arrows struggled to pierce even more lightly armored joints of the golems.

Olroi was nowhere to be seen, but that was to be expected. His job was to not be seen. Even now, he had to be infiltrating the fortress.

"What now?" Asked Amida, and Helmgor opened his mouth to answer, and-

Helmgor stopped as one of the many talismans at his waist began emitting a high pitched whine.

"We got cloakers!" He yelled out, bracing for something to pounce on him. After all, that was the purpose of invisibility, to get close enough to strike, especially against someone in cover.

Unfortunately for him, he wasn't up against most enemies, and he collapsed, gripping the stump of his right arm as a particle blast ripped his limb apart, his ward exploding in a hail of shards around him. By the time he'd pinpointed its origin and blasted it with a sphere of lightning, the shooter was already gone.

"Holy crap! What the hell are these things?!?" Yelled out Amida as she joined him, her weaker, but wider range spells briefly touching something, making its camouflage flicker and allowing the baron to nail it with a lightning bolt, destroying whatever it was.

"Doesn't matter! We have to get inside! We're sitting ducks out there!" Shouted Emylris as their cover began to fail.

Helmgor quickly downed a potion, and nodded as his flesh began kitting itself back together.

"We are! On my mark!"

He never got to say mark, as the golems paused their fire, and Helmgor looked as an imposing figure in power armor, power armor themed after a maid uniform of all things, came strolling out of the fortress' depths and onto the battlements.

One of the vampire maids. Had to be. But the armor...it was Old World technology.

And it was custom made.

The baron realized the maid was holding someone. A bloody, weakly twitching body.

Olroi. The assassin was miraculously still alive, despite being pierced with so many daggers he had more in common with a porcupine than a human being.

The maid raised him up...and brought him back down, shattering the assassin's spine upon her heavily armored knee.

The assassin let out a weak gurgle of pain, blood flying from his lips as he tried to scream.

He barely even twitched as the maid threw him from the battlements, and turned away.

As she walked back into the fortress, she raised her hand, and snapped her fingers.

The golems opened fire again. And Olroi's agony ended in an instant as he was reduced to atoms by plasma fire and Gods knew what else. Then they turned back to the survivors.

"MOVE!" He simply shouted, and they leapt forward. A simple glance back told him that trying to cover Nairi for her to join them was pointless.

The elven ranger was spread over half the door, obliterated by whatever hellish weapon the cloaked foes deployed. They'd outflanked them, probably planning this from the very start.

Emylris gathered her energy as they emerged into the onslaught, and for a second, the enemy's attacks stopped, frozen in mid air.

Then, they reversed course.

It didn't annihilate the golems. But it did create enough chaos for the survivors to leap onto the battlements.

And to the baron's horror, the closest golems tossed their guns aside, and unsheathed blades bathed in energy.

Amida didn't stand a chance, and the knight screamed as the blades shattered her ward, and sliced her parrying sword like it was made out of butter.

She didn't live long enough to utter a second scream. But she did buy her comrades time.

They managed to push through and into the opening the maid had used, emerging into an empty hallway. Emylris reached out, and collapsed it behind them.

They stopped, panting for a second…before whirling around as they heard a set of slow, measured steps.

A golem stepped into the hallway from a side passage. He was unlike anything the baron had ever seen. Seemingly old and worn, yet equipped in technology beyond his understanding.

And pistols. Pistols of every type and shape imaginable were strapped around his body.

The golem put his hands on the pistols by his side, clearly his primary arms, and waited.

Helmgor leapt-

And hit the wall, thrown back by a bolt of energy, the golem having unholstered his guns and shot him before he'd even seen it happen.

Emylris charged to his rescue. Chains of energy lashed out, but they only wrapped around the golem's barrier.

The archmage poured more power in, and the barrier failed…but to do so, she had to divert her power from her own shield.

The golem blasted her head clean off as the chains closed in.

He didn't even twitch as the bindings shredded him into scrap metal.

Helmgor stood there, panting. A single look told him that his archmage was beyond saving. Even if he resurrected her, she wouldn't be able to fight for days, at least.

He pushed onward. And the same dread that he had felt previously returned.

There were no golems. No one rushing to intercept him.

Just empty hallways, in a fortress that looked like nothing else he'd ever seen.

He passed by rooms filled with strange machines. Armories, laden with weapons of the Old World in quantities beyond his worst nightmares.

He saw a glimpse of a workshop, filled with half assembled weapons and prototypes, strange shapes and holograms flickering in the distance.

Finally, he passed by what looked like personal quarters. Bedrooms, libraries, all with doors left wide open.

And his path lead him to a single closed door.

It swung open, and he stepped into the room.

In front of him was a giantess in shining armor. She looked like the Goddess of War returned to Alcheryos standing before a throne all the more impressive in its simplicity.

He would have guessed it was the dungeon's boss…except that the so called 'Crimson Queen' flanked her, clad in Old World armor, accompanied by the advisor and both maids, similarly protected.

And around them, golems. Golems wielding every ancient, heretical weapon imaginable.

Helmgor reached back with his newly regenerated arm, and pulled out the spear. It felt heavier than the whole world in his hands.

He raised it to attack, and-

The dungeon core's avatar, for that is what it had to be, was suddenly the only thing in the room. He felt terror, terror like he'd never felt before, and could taste her rage.

And beyond it…cold. Cold beyond anything he could imagine. Colder than even the duchess' own black, rotten soul. A cold that somehow burned with a passion that outshined the stars.

He saw things. A world ablaze. Mushroom clouds rising into the skies. Leviathans of metal and technology dancing in the void, flinging the fury of the universe at each other.

Visions of apocalypse. Of the Great Night and its horrors.

He let go of the spear, and fell to his knees.

"Do it." He simply said.

The dungeon core's avatar raised her hand, magical energy pooling around her.

And oblivion took him.

*****

Alexandra lowered her hand, as she gazed at what little was left of the man that had lead the commandos attacking her.

He had been no threat by that point. Once they'd made it inside, they were all dead. She'd simply allowed him in before taking his life.

Even if he had managed to power through her Crimson Haze, her avatar's innate ability, the room was nothing but wards and shields, designed to become her last stand should she need it. It even included tractor beams and a whole panoply of more mundane forms of point defence, should someone had the capacity to pierce through energy barriers. And her golems would have annihilated him before he could throw.

She stepped off the raised dais her command throne was on, and looked at the spear. She picked it up, and showed it to Emilia.

"This. This is not Old World technology, isn't it?" The vampire shook her head. "Then my dear…please explain to me why the assassins that came after me wielded weapons meant for the angels of the God of Fire."

*****

The Custodian of the Flame gazed at the hologram in the center of the room.

"They failed." He said simply, and the Adjudicator nodded.

"They have. We have received the update from the control programs. The core's artillery and null weapons overcame them in the end."

The Custodian nodded, slowly.

"Very well."

The Church had not initiated the guild and UDC's venture…but they had not prevented it, either.

Why would they? After all, if that dungeon core was so important to the God of Light, he could protect her himself.

They would not have shed any tears. Wouldn't now either.

"The guild and council have violated the edicts. They have sought to murder a dungeon core, and appropriated weapons of the Seraphim."

Worse, they'd found a spear of the Seraphim Honor Guard.

Where they had found one of the weapons of the God of Fire's bodyguards, those they had been drawn from for their mission, the Custodians would dearly like to know.

Thankfully, the dungeon core had attempted to absorb it, and received nothing in return. Some secrets were better left hidden.

"Shall we begin?"

"Yes. Start the first phase of the Purge. They will become our anvil. The fall of the Eris Empire will be the hammer. The cleansing flame shall bathe the world once more."

"Yes my lord. Glory be His Name."

"And Glory be His Pyre."

The Adjudicator bowed and left.

An era would end. Another would begin.

But mankind would endure. Always.

Because that was the deal. Like it had always been.

And as long as Alcheryos remained contained, at human and angelic hands…

The universe would know peace.

No cost was to great to accomplish that.

END OF BOOK 7