Chapter 37: Core

Misa stood with her companions in the makeshift tent Orkas had constructed for himself, where plans and maps were laid out on the table and weapons were scattered to the side; this was his 'command center', though they'd really just lugged a table out of the village and draped a cloth over the whole thing.

Orkas had, rather predictably, exploded when told of the plan.

"You can't go into the rift alone!" he thundered. Misa glanced at Sev and the others, standing just nearby a touch awkwardly.

"I'm not alone," she said, though she should have predicted that all that would do was turn her father's fury onto the rest of her team.

"You're going to go along with this plan?" Orkas growled at them. "It's suicide. And the village still needs your help."

"Misa has a skill," Derivan answered, stepping forward. "It tells her this is the path we must take for our survival. We do not mean to abandon your village. But if this succeeds, you will not have to hold out as long against this horde."

"We have Gold rankers with us now," Orkas said. "You brought us allies. We can win this."

"A dungeon's challenges must always be difficult," Derivan said quietly. "You know this. We have brought Gold rankers in, but it will not make things easier."

"You—" Orkas started, and then stopped, letting out an explosive breath. He grit his teeth together, not saying anything for a moment; Derivan watched him almost impassively, but when he spoke, his voice had a touch of sympathy in it.

"You are worried about Misa," he said.

"I don't know her," Orkas answered. Misa frowned a bit, looking away.

"You feel like you should," Derivan said. "There is a part of her that is familiar to you."

Orkas seemed for a moment like he wanted to be angry; there was a twist to his expression as rage flashed into his eyes. But that emotion vanished just as quickly, and was replaced with simple tiredness.

"How could she not be?" he said. "I look at her, and I see traces of me. Traces of her mother. Even this skill you mention, urging her towards a path not many would walk... does that not sound familiar to you, Misa? Like a skill that Charise— that your mother has?"

Misa didn't answer for a moment. "Maybe?" she eventually said, hesitant. There was a definite similarity, but that similarity seemed distant to her. "But it's not like skills are inherited."

"No," Orkas said. "They're not. But who you are influences the skills you get, and if you were raised by someone like Charise, then you would have seen bits and pieces of her skill at work. Part of you would have learned to see things the way she does. To put things together, even when the links are not obvious. And sometimes that can turn into a skill."

"The skill's never worked properly before now," Misa said, still hesitant. "It never seemed to activate, and I wasn't sure what it did. The description isn't clear. It just says 'you know when the gate is about to fall'."

"Hasn't it?" Orkas asked. "Intuition skills are not always obvious. They can be, sometimes, in particularly crucial moments. But otherwise, they're nothing more than a guide. A voice in the back of your head."

Misa fell silent.

She'd wanted to stay at the crater where the dungeon would form, hadn't she? [Danger Sense] had been telling her to pull back, but there was another part of her that wanted to stay; a part of her that, she had reasoned, wanted to get a mana crystal of a grade that would make a difference.

She'd wanted Jerome to pay, even, until Derivan had spoken up in favor of helping him. She'd remembered, at the time, the rage she had felt shortly after she lost her village — she hadn't been kind. She hadn't been cruel, exactly, but there was an emptiness to her that echoed through everything she did, and it had taken time to patch over that hole in her heart. Even now, that wound ached.

It was still her choice, at the end of the day, whether she wanted to listen to that voice. For a long time she'd ignored it. That was what led to her endless days after her village had been lost, the time almost a blur to her now. And the first time she'd chosen to listen to it, it had led her on the path that eventually resulted in her meeting Sev and Derivan.

All things that could be a coincidence, certainly, but the thought that she carried a piece of her mother with her was a comforting one.

"Okay," Misa said. "Will you let us go, then?"

"I don't have a choice," Orkas said with a sigh. He smiled at her; it was a tired smile, but it was a smile that reached his eyes, perhaps for the first time since he'd met her. "I've never been able to stop your mother."

Misa grinned at him. "Oh, I know."

"...Should I be concerned?"

"Don't worry about it," Misa said, injecting a bit of faux-cheerfulness into her voice. She began to step out of the tent they were in, waving for her companions to follow her. "We'll see you later!"

Both of them knew that might be a lie.

Misa stopped right before she left the tent.

"Hey, dad," she said. "Orkas. Whatever you prefer right now. If it doesn't look like you can win, if it looks like you need to run... then run. Please."

Misa stared ahead as the dungeon loomed before them.

Except 'loomed' was the wrong word, really. It was quite literally stuck in a hole in the ground — there was a massive chunk cut out of the earth, like a section of the dirt had simply been erased from existence; in the center of that chunk stood a small, ellipsoidal shape. The surface of it was almost crystalline with how solid the mana was, light reflecting and refracting off of it in a way that was almost beautiful, if not for the danger it represented.

"I'm glad you told them to evacuate if they need to," Sev said quietly. "Dungeon scenario or not, it feels... wrong, to tell them to fight until their last."

"It's skirting the limits a little bit," Vex said. "But I think it'll work. If they're retreating after the break starts, it'll be just another part of the defensive strategy. And we're here to cut the horde off at the source."

"Can you sense anything from the dungeon?" Derivan asked.

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Vex stepped forward, pinning his gaze on the sealed dungeon. "I've never seen a sealed dungeon up close before," he said softly. "I'm not even sure a lot of studies have been done on these. There's usually other priorities, like running away."

"That's the usual sensible thing to do, yes," Sev said.

"But this is..." Vex's eyes glowed slightly again as he pushed his senses deeper into the core. He blinked once, shaking his head like he'd been smacked. "Ow. It's a lot. There's a lot in there. Compressed space, but something else. A link somewhere."

"A link?" Misa asked.

"I can't tell where it leads," Vex said, sounding slightly frustrated. "There's too much space inside."

"So we wait for it to open," Sev said.

"We wait," Misa agreed.

They didn't have to wait long.

Up close, it didn't start with a massive flash of light. It started with a crack.

A bright line of white travelled across the surface of the core, almost too painful to look at.

Then there was the sound of something shattering.

Searing light filled the air, almost enough to blast them backwards if not for the shields that Vex had placed in front of them to stop the attack. The earth shook, and it would have been enough to knock them off their feet if not for the steadying magic that Sev threaded across the four of them. A sense of wrongness pervaded the air, climbing and culminating into what felt almost like an explosion —

A dungeon break has begun.

The target of this dungeon break is the village of J'rokksur. Directions will be made available through the system. Defend the village to obtain your rewards.

Misa suppressed a growl. The message was achingly familiar. It was the message they'd all woken up to. But she shoved that to the back of her mind, and focused instead on what had happened to the sealed dungeon.

Where the core had been, there was now a rift in space. The edges of it shimmered with distorted light. The center showed a dark void, with tiny, moving dots getting closer and closer towards the edge of the portal, and getting larger with every second.

Misa recognized them. They were impossibly small, perhaps, but she still recognized them, because how could she ever forget the monsters that had devastated her home?

"Let's go," she said grimly. She didn't wait for the others to agree. She leapt, launching herself at the portal and through it before even the first monster could break through.

She landed in a field, though field was a poor word for it. Something brushed against her legs like grass, but there was nothing there when she looked; the ground was pitch-black darkness.

Misa knew immediately that she couldn't prevent every one of these monsters from reaching the portal. She knew immediately, also, that coming here and stopping the horde at the source was the right decision — because she could see their levels, now, and they were nothing like the ones they had fought before in the village. What had once been Iron monsters and Bronze elites were now up by a full tier or more; the presence of combatants across the range from Iron to Gold had changed up the math significantly.

Fortunately, they were ignoring her presence for the most part. The monsters — terrible, insectoid things that stood on two legs and swung blades with four — were marching steadily towards the gate that shone in the distance. Inside the portal it was no longer some small, three-meter-tall hole punched out of space; it was a massive, horizon-spanning thing, shining brilliant light that cast harsh shadows behind every monster.

In the distance seemed to be the source of the monsters — yet another enormous gate, though that one was not nearly as bright as the one she'd just come through. If anything, it was a void, devouring any light that dared to touch it. The monsters emerged from somewhere within, the void sticking to them like clinging shadows that fell away after a moment in the light.

Derivan, Sev, and Vex landed beside her; she heard two of them take in a sharp breath at the sight. Derivan merely lowered himself into more of a fighting stance, the light of his eyes flickering into a narrowed gaze.

"They are not attacking us," he observed after a moment.

"Not yet," Misa said grimly.

Most of the monsters were ignoring them — but not all. A few had stopped, the ones closest to them, and had begun to circle their party; a chittering growl emerged from deep within their throats as they prepared to fight. Misa's party prepared themselves, too, shields and barriers shimmering into existence in front of Vex and Derivan respectively; Sev had retreated once more to the center of the three.

Misa gripped her mace.

"We come in peace?" Sev tried.

Misa snorted. "No, we don't."

It didn't matter, because at the sound of their voices, the monsters screeched and attacked. Not intelligent, then.

That made things easier.

Her vision flickered in the dull-black of [Guard Stance], and she readied her mace. An old, old memory came to her. She'd talked about this with Orkas, and had demonstrated it as best she could; it was one thing that didn't change, even though their levels had increased.

Their patterns were still the same. And as long as those patterns were the same, she could fight. She could hold them off. She was stronger than she had ever been, and though her village was miles away, she could feel it like it was at her back.

A monster launched itself at her, and she twisted in position right before it would have landed a hit; she stepped forward in a shoulder-check, shoving it backwards, and then stomped. It jerked beneath her feet, chitin cracking as it let out a screech of anger, and scurried backwards.

It wasn't enough to kill it. But she did far more damage than she had last time, and she had her friends by her side.

"We need to get to the source and end this," she said. "Let's go."

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