LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 30: Heads
We get through the rat maze and the Bifork boss fight with overwhelming gunfire. At this point we're all much stronger than we were even when we started the dungeon.
While attempting to make Barbatos useful, I hit level 30 of Synergist and I got a new ability.
Double Down - Choose one of your subclass abilities and enhance its effects.
Most of my subclass abilities can't be upgraded at all. So I'm left with two real options.
Barrage Caster - You focus on small spells that can be used in quick succession. Basic attack spells cost 1 AP less, to a minimum of 1 AP.
Upgraded: Onslaught Caster - The AP reduction is instead 50%, with no minimum AP cost. Costs may now include decimal places.
Burning Chimerablood Sorcerer - Your fire spell damage increases by 25%. While in negative AP your body takes on aspects of the elemental magic you use.
Upgraded: Frost Burn Chimerablood Sorcerer - Ice spell damage also increases by 25%.
Fascinating. Maybe the system doesn't want to stack bonuses too high on a single element, or maybe the Sorcerer is supposed to be more multifaceted? I do have three ice spells, so sure, why not? I'm now a level 3 Frost Burn Chimerablood Sorcerer. Woo.
We make our way through to the 4th floor and it feels... Different.
“Those used to be smaller,” Jose points at the clothes piles of the 4th floor. They used to be 15 to 30 feet tall. Now they're 30 to maybe 50 feet tall. The 50 footers hit the ceiling making them more pillars than hills.
I check my radar and I detect something in the closest clothes dune. But there's only one thing in there. “I think this place probably changed the most because we spent the most time here,” I say. “Those dunes used to have a dozen or more shoe snakes in them each, but now I'm only picking up-” I cast Ping quickly to check other dunes. “Yeah there's only one monster per dune in there. And I think it's big.”
My team exchanges looks, take deep breaths, then lock and load weapons. They're ready for this. They're ready for anything.
Except for Barbatos. She's not ready for anything. I put her down and she curls up on a pile of socks and immediately goes to sleep.
Static Snap worked before so I'll give it another shot. It doesn't, however, work with my knives so I get five fingers sparking and run towards the nearest clothes dune. I'm about 10 feet from the dune when I hear multiple roars and the dune explodes from within, sending clothes in every direction.
A five headed snake is inside the clothes dune. It is about 20 feet tall, each head made of a dozen shoes. Each individual head is about as big as the boss shoe snake from our last visit. This particular shoe snake's heads are all made of one type of red high heels, so it looks especially pointy. I swipe at the clothes pile and the Static Snaps discharge but clearly do nothing.
Shoe Hydra. You remember how Hercules killed this thing, right?
Uh, no, I don't.
“Cut off ze heads and then treat ze necks with fire!” comes Gwen's analysis from behind me. This is all moot because in a flash I become a snack for the high heel Hydra. It bites into my midsection and I feel high heels punch into my guts. I've been working on my Toughness stat so this won't kill me. I swing my SCAR around and fire into the fleshy neck. It bleeds and the monster releases me.
“Ignore the shoe parts!” I yell. “Hit the snake flesh!” I get on my feet and dash a short distance away.
Once I'm clear my team opens up on the beast. A hundred rounds instantly burst open the mythical snake's exposed belly and the thing collapses.
Grant comes over and does an invocation that seals up my wounds. Afterwards, he says “You know my medical training isn't wasted. These spells let me mend flesh but don't tell me the best way to do it. I think having at least some medical knowledge is essential for healing magic.” He stops typing, thinks a minute, then continues. “Otherwise you could end up sealing the surface wound but ignore bleeding inside.”
I grimace. “Then I'm glad you're on the team, buddy.” He smiles and I notice the scars on his face are much smaller than they used to be. They were ragged and gross. Now they look like clean straight lines. It's actually pretty badass now. “Hey, uh quick question,” and I whisper the next part, “you been putting points into Charisma?”
He nods and types. “Charisma just treats your skin conditions, basically. I was hoping they'd help. My wife divorced me a couple years ago, so I'm single again.”
“Oh shit man, I'm so sorry.”
“Not your fault.” I look away guiltily and he types again. “I mean it, not your fault. None of it.” He taps my shoulder with the back of his fist and I look up at him. He doesn't blame me for R-32. Maybe... Maybe I shouldn't blame myself anymore either.
I take a deep breath inside my brightly lit former workplace. The air is a cool 78 degrees. The nearby clothes are splattered with Hydra blood. And I'm here with comrades.
Dozens of roars break the quiet moment, shocking us. We all look around and raise weapons. Every damn clothes dune is collapsing all at once, each one disgorging its hydra. All of the hydras are making their ways to us. We open fire.
The first five hydras fall to gunfire, but then they're on us. The sudden influx of melee oriented monsters on our gun toting squad is immediately disastrous. I pull my knives and start torching everything nearby. It's not enough. I dodge out of the way as a Hydra tries to snap me in half with a bite. I see Jose leap high, but not high enough. He shoots an electric bolt down a hydra mouth and the thing drops but another hydra snaps onto his fake leg and tears the prosthetic off.
I hear a scream and turn to see Gwen with her legs in the mouth of a work boots hydra and another of its heads about to clamp around her upper body. I spin my knives around and torch that head, then spray the body with fire for good measure.
Henry and Odysseus are back to back, firing relentlessly at hydra heads that are closing in on them. They take down one hydra only for another to take its place. Gallup pulls the pins on two of his smoke grenades and chucks them away. They cover the path the hydras are taking to get to us. None come through the smoke for a blessed few seconds as they're disoriented.
“Retreat!” I yell over the din. Jose is on his back, hip firing the rifle while charging electro shots in his pistol. I run over to him and throw him over my shoulder. He's facing behind me and keeps firing. “Diaz, get Gwen!”
I'm running for the stairs. A hydra pulls up in front of me and rears back its heads to attack. My knives bury themselves in three of the reptile's necks and my Flame Thrower fires inside of it, coming from the tips of my knives. I see the hydra glow from the inside out and smoke comes from all of its heads as it collapses. I make it to the door to the stairwell and throw Jose inside. He spins himself around so he can still shoot from the open doorway.
I head back out and immediately see a hydra coming towards our only escape route. I hear a human roar and a glowing axe blade chops off the central head of the hydra. The head falls and Diaz jumps through the empty space, briefly lands on the neck stump, then leaps off to the doorway. She's got a screaming Gwen attached to her, wrapping her arms around the badass woman's waist.
I torch the stump and am rewarded as the other heads writhe in agony and that hydra retreats. From the right side I see Grant and Gallup running over, their guns empty and hanging behind them on shoulder straps. A hydra comes in from their right and snaps at them. I think they're okay, the bite missed. Then I notice Henry's right arm is just gone. They keep running. I use Flame Thrower to ward off the other hydras, my AP hits zero and I gain flame devil horns. That's when I really go at the damn creatures. Two hydras closing in get fully immolated. The one that ate Henry's arm gets two heads burned off, but it slithers away.
Henry falls to a knee as the spurting blood leaves him drained. I send a knife over to him and shout, “hold on to it!” He grabs the knife handle with his left and I pull. The force of my pull drags him up and forward until he gets back on his feet and runs. Gwen gets shoved inside by Diaz, who forms her block shield and stands next to me. I try to torch as much of the clothes around us as possible, the heat hopefully keeping the hydras back. Henry and Odysseus finally make it to safety and we all scramble down the stairs, away from the door to the 4th floor.
We tumble out of the stairs, into the 3rd floor loading zone. We drag each other to the 3rd floor safe room. The former new employee training room is quickly stained with blood as we pull the bleeding Henry onto a folding table. Gwen's legs are messed up. Jose is missing a prosthetic but is mostly fine. I'm bleeding but can ignore it.
Grant gets to work immediately and uses a bandage to stop Henry's bleeding. Then he uses an incantation to seal the veins and muscles off, and the bleeding stops. It's still a gory stump. He turns to Gwen, whose legs are mangled. He uses a different incantation as he grabs a clearly broken leg and snaps it back into place. Gwen screams. He didn't even give her a warning. He goes to grab her other leg and she pulls her Sig Sauer on him.
We all freeze. The sound of six soldiers breathing heavily is the only noise in the room. Gwen's pistol hand shakes and she lowers the gun. She wipes away tears and cries. “Just do it quickly,” she says.
Odysseus nods and I hear the bone snap into place over the digital incantation. Then Odysseus switches to a different incantation which he plays at half speed. “We seek the respite of divine mercy.” I feel tension slip away and my cuts and stab wounds heal a bit.
Mercy. I wonder what she's doing now. I look up as I hear laughter. It's Henry, improbably. Barbatos is on top of his chest and licking his chin. He laughs and I smile. We're all alive. We're all alive. We are going to make it out of this damn dungeon alive. We are all-
“Oh shit!” says our future president as flesh begins to pull and stretch around his stump. The muscle extends and veins reach out to grab newly growing flesh. My cat's paws are glowing and it looks at the body horror with flat curiosity. The flesh stitches itself into an upper arm, then continues to swirl and stretch and twist until a limp, boneless arm flops by Henry's side. Then he screams and we hear the clicking of bones moving into place and his arm gains its proper shape.
He looks down at the new arm. It's a different color than the rest of his dark skin. It's... A little bit orange tinted. The orange fuzzball herself jumps down off Henry, goes to a nearby trashcan, jumps inside and I hear the cat peeing on some old paperwork.
Henry speaks for all of us, and for many issues when he asks “WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?”
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Jose and Gwen can't run. They're out. Henry's new arm isn't responding to his thoughts just yet. Odysseus says something something neurons and nerves, and it'll take time but be okay in a few days or weeks. So Henry is also out.
Madeline and Odysseus are okay and in fighting shape. Most of us ran through our rifle ammo in that fight so Odysseus has two and a half clips of SCAR bullets after I give him all of mine. We also have very untested toy guns, and unfortunately “horde of hydras” is not where you test new weapons.
It's been 30 minutes since our defeat. I'm mostly recovered. And I'm starting to think that's all that matters. “Diaz, Grant, get the others to safety.” The protests start but I hold my hands up. “Not a democracy. I want you guys out before the monster reset.”
Jose starts, “Jun. You have someone to go back to.”
I smile. “I know, and I'm eager to see her again. I'm not sacrificing myself. I have a plan. If it doesn't work I'll head back down here to the safe room and come back down after the reset.”
The others protest until I tell them my plan. They think it's crazy, but also I should be able to escape if I have to. Slowly they give in to my determination and I watch them head down the stairs to the 3rd floor. I take a breath and turn back to the 4th floor stairs.
I head up and creak the door ajar. It's not what I was expecting. There's no fire, but plenty of scorched clothes. Also, the dead hydra bodies are gone due to the 30 minute corpse timer ticking over. There are piles of loot scattered about, proving that we did indeed kill... 12 of them? Not bad! That means there should be... 24 left? Yeah, I can take that many.
I pull all my determination together and cast Burning Blade three times. Three flaming swords appear in front of me and I use telekinesis to control them all. This is the entirety of my plan. To stop bringing knives to a flaming sword fight.
I step out into the 4th floor and fire a handgun at the nearest hydra, sandals hydra. The bullet makes a very tiny hole, but gets the attention I want. It heads towards me and I immediately run back into the stairs.
The thing tries to chase me and I fling my swords horizontally, as a trio of stacked blades, across its necks. Two sandals heads fall to the ground and I make another pass, chopping off two more heads. The last head turns to run but I perform a swarming chop and cut it off from three directions. 23 left.
Two more hydras are headed my way. The one in front (basketball shoes hydra) loses a head to my flying blades and actually catches fire. Fire spreads from the stump in the middle to the next two closest basketball shoe heads and the creature rears back in pain. The second closest one (flip flops hydra) gets a face full of triple Flame Thrower and I immediately realize that using flame swords as a conduit for flame throwing makes better flames. The beams of fire are bright orange, almost white hot and flip flops hydra falls. 22 left. I spin blades into basketball shoes hydra and cut off enough heads to make it bleed out. 21 left.
Three more approach and I use Flame Thrower until my AP hits zero and I get my +25% damage flame demon horns and burning fingers. Just as I suspected, the flame swords burn brighter. Red flames are now licking off the blades. I fling one sword at skate shoes hydra and cleave into its torso. I push the other two swords against the first and get all three to punch straight through leaving a bleeding hole in the monster. 20 left.
The other two (knee high boots and ankle boots) are on me and I dash straight for skate shoes hydra, using its death as a hole in their line. The two snap at my heels as my swords come back to me and I spin them like buzz saws. Five more hydras are coming at me. I buzz saw heads off knee high boots and ankle boots but they're still alive. I pull my swords to my right hand and rush ankle boots. I rake my hand across its belly using the swords like claws. 19 left.
I spin around just in time to block knee high boots hydra but blocking throws me back into the collapsing body of its friend. Seeing me pinned, knee high boots tries to snap my head off but I block at the last second with two Fluid Fists. I see the boots through wobbly blue liquid as I bring my fists up to block and the surreal moment burns into my brain.
I grab a boot and cast Hydrate. Knee high boots retreats as it fills with water. I send my fluid fists after it, which does nothing but does free my hands. There are five surrounding me now. I throw my swords left as I dash behind their trajectory. The swords punch tip first into the leftmost neck of sensible flats hydra and the swords stick there. I jump and swing off a sword, pulling it through the neck as I go. I hit the ground and keep running. That's when I realize just how fast I am. At 45 Agility I am faster than any human alive pre-Dracosys. Hydras snap behind me but I quickly discover that I can actually outrun them. I turn to face the fastest one, kids penny loafers hydra, and throw an Explosive Mote at it. The small fire orb hits the hydra dead on and it explodes apart. 18 left.
I can feel my ears bleeding. Blood is trickling down my nose. That was too much all at once. That was over the -30 AP line I figured was my limit. I pull one of my two Dr Pepper cans from my inventory and chug as I run along the south wall. My AP recovers and my horns dissolve into ash. Can't have that, so I turn and burn, using Flame Thrower on men's athletic sandals hydra until my AP dips below zero and my firepower enhancing horns return. Men's athletic sandals hydra falls to the flames. 17 left.
I pull my swords back to me as I run and then throw them at red pumps hydra. Two swords miss as the hydra goes low and one sticks in it. I use Flame Thrower from that sword and fire cuts the head off and sears another. I pull my swords back as I reach the south west corner of the room and realize I'm about to be trapped as seven hydras close in. I finish off the Dr Pepper and my horns disappear but just as quickly I pull two Explosive Motes and chuck them to the north. One blows apart toddler slip-ons hydra. 16 left. The other blows a hole in a hill of clothes and I dash through it to empty space. Hydras chase me and my horns form once again. I hold a sword in each hand and push them both forward mentally. The added momentum lets me leap 30 feet forward at a tremendous rate.
I have a few seconds of breathing room and take in the situation. I'm now in the north west corner. There are 16 hydras and... Not a damn one between me and the 5th floor stairs. I book it and run as fast as I can. High tops hydra gets close to my escape path but I send swords to cut him and a couple of his heads fly off. I see knee high boots hydra nearby, with Hydrate water still pouring out of it. I decide to be a dick. I make a hand full of Static Snaps, get close and dip my electrified hand into his pool of water. The electricity dances through the liquid, hits the hydra and knee high boots goes down. 15 left and I turn, hit the door running and am halfway up the stairs before another hydra even comes close to catching up with me.
I stop there on the steps and fall over, exhausted. I'm panting. My head feels awful. My legs are strained. My nose is bleeding. But I'm fucking alive. I made it through.
Just then Barbatos appears with a pop from a little swirl of fire. She can apparently teleport to my location. I had left her with Henry Gallup but I guess she missed me. She meows and I'm betting it's the “feed me” meow. I scratch her head as I lay on my back. “Okay girl, no problem. Next stop is the pet department.”
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Dossier VR-3378, Viktor Roshenko
Roshenko has been a Kremlin agent for a long time. He is known to be responsible for 14 assassinations of journalists, rights workers and aspiring politicians. His methods are classic cold war. He uses gadgets, guns disguised as ordinary items and poisons delivered in ingenious manners. He is also known as a crack shot with a silenced handgun and an expert martial artist. He was, in some circles, called the Russian James Bond.
When the Kremlin turned into a dungeon Roshenko went in not for personal gain, but to rescue his President. It took him four days but he eventually emerged with President Solkova and came out with apparently a plethora of unique weapons and items. He has since been seen across the world in various places, sometimes even being seen in more than one place at the same time. He is known to be extremely dangerous and if left unchecked may prove a threat to global stability.
Viktor Roshenko
Alias: Specter
Age: 38
Height: 5 foot 11 inches
Build: average
Skin: pale white
Hair: short, dyed black, usually wears a bowler hat.
Tattoo: Lenin on his right shoulder.
Wears large gold rings on his index and middle fingers, on both hands.
Wears black or dark grey business suits.
Class: Operative