Chapter 132: 132 – Bunkerbusting

The thought of using her war-knife came to mind, but its reach really wouldn’t be much of an advantage compared to the strength enhancement of the bayonet. Pentacle was out of the question too, seeing as she didn’t have the ammo to blast through all the bugs in this chamber and have any leftover… But she had grenades and CP-T. 

Still inching her way forward, she cautiously retrieved a grenade and a phial of CP-T from her backpack, not having bothered to strap the phial belt on. Familiar with how the process went, she undid the latch and sharply twisted the piece that would open the grenade’s compartment. It let out an ear-piercing screech as she unscrewed it, rusted metal scraping against rusted metal. As quickly as her hands could move, and faster still hastened by the breath of Fog, Zefaris pulled the seal and scooped all of the compound out of the phial and into the compartment. She managed to screw the cap back on and close the latch just in time before a pair of curious drones popped out from behind a corner, alerted by the noise.

One fell to a simple stab with her bayonet, the other to blunt-force trauma using the grenade as a mace, smashing its head in with three swift whacks that made no more noise than some satisfying crunching. Other soldiers feared that even a light tap could set the grenades off, but she’d handled them enough to know that nothing short of rupturing the shell and exposing the contents to open flame could cause such a thing. 

With the bayonet in one hand and the grenade in her left, Zefaris snuck further through the maze, still trying to find her way out before she committed to her plan. On her way through that tangle of faux-trenches, she encountered three more patrols. Two groups of three drones each, both of which she eliminated without incident, and a single warrior blocking her path. This one very nearly caught sight of her, but it had fortunately just begun turning in place to pursue a different path. She eliminated it in a manner similar to the first one, jumping onto it and smashing its head with the grenade whilst she stabbed its spine to bits with the bayonet.

When at last she clambered overtop its inert body, traversed a few more zig-zag segments of trench, and leaned out past the corner, she saw not just a door, but one fortified as one would fortify a key choke-point. There wasn’t just a hive blocking the path, but one designed almost identically to actual Ikesian combat bunkers, suggesting that whoever commanded these locusts either had insider knowledge or had fought in the war to a great enough degree to figure out how the bunkers were built.

It couldn’t have been the dungeon core itself, seeing as the core couldn’t directly control locusts… Could it? “Did it get the Queen to cooperate for the sake of this one chamber?” Zefaris wondered.

It had one front entrance, blocked off by a doorman of course, with a number of windows overlooking the corridor that led up to it. These windows were manned by a type of locust she didn’t recognize, their arms fused together at the elbow into chitinous tubes from the bottoms of which hung engorged sacs, not unlike the Twitcher’s arms. They pointed these appendages out the windows into the corridor, making it obvious that they were ranged weapons. 

Zefaris knew better than to try breaching a bunker through direct fire. She adjusted her hold on the grenade’s handle for a better throw and pulled the pin, stepping out from behind the corner as she tossed it right through the window with all the might she could muster. One of the gun-bugs was fast enough to step into its trajectory, but its sheer mass and velocity knocked it over and served to do nothing but ensure the grenade would land near the Doorman, rather than bouncing about in the bunker. In the seconds before the grenade went off the other watchman bugs opened fire, and Zefaris had no choice but to duck back behind cover.

Globs of bright-yellow goop splashed against the wall and over the floor just moments after she was out of sight, a mix of steam and rancid fumes rising from them. Briefly, the consideration of putting her gas mask on crossed her mind, but there wasn’t enough time to do it properly. Thus, Zef just sucked in as much fresh air as she could and broke into a full sprint down the trench, zig-zagging as she made her way towards the bunker. She could hear dozens of footsteps reverberating through the trench for a second or so, before the grenade’s fuse finally reached its end and a thunderous detonation resounded all around, blinding light flashing out the bunker’s windows.

The Doorman’s arm-shields visibly slumped and moved backwards as it died where it stood, but there was still no gap. With who knew how many bugs right behind her Zefaris resolved to enter the bunker through the windows, squatting down and exhaling all the Fog left in her lungs to propel herself to a sufficient height. Were it not for the bayonet, she wouldn’t have reached the window, and wouldn’t have had the strength to hold on for long enough to pull herself up. When at last she squeezed through the window, an all-consuming stench of vile smoke filled her nostrils, just barely drowned out by the sweet clarity of Fog. Blindingly bright CP-T fires dappled the interior of the bunker-hive as though stars in the night sky, burning into its matter as if it were the stomach lining of a great beast.

Zefaris only got a scarce few moments before a glob of the vile liquid came flying at her, slow enough that she managed to step out of its way purely on reaction. “One of you fuckers survived, huh?” she murmured, noticing that the structure of the hive likely contained the blast. The other marksman-bug’s corpse laid exactly where it had fallen after the grenade smashed its skull, burned into pieces, having likely died from what CP-T splashed onto it rather than the blast.

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