You must be this old to enter the Dungeon

59) Dead End

The hit or miss on the White Rank Twos being in a room or a real lab coat was something me and Hiram got used to, but the rooms with a pile of dead Level One bats under the desk with their Stones gnawed out of their chests, and no sign of the white bat monster that did it was a bit unnerving.

Hiram did seem to think about it, at first, but other than being disappointed we hadn’t gotten another Rank Two Stone, at the moment we had five of them split between us, he didn’t seem to care all that much. “Where do you guess they went Harry?”

I shrugged. “The ones that got Stones normally leave the Dungeon to go cause trouble according to the internet, at least until someone sets up outside and starts picking them off as soon as they leave. They must be holed up somewhere in the Dungeon…”

The Evil Monkey Dungeon had them all bunched up near the entrance when I had gone in, but there had been no sign of them doing the same in here.

So unless they had been shot down one after the other when leaving the dungeon, if they hadn’t flown free, then they would be in the only other place in a Dungeon worth mentioning after the Entrance.

“They’re all going to be waiting for us in the Core room aren’t they.”

Hiram grinned. “Good thinking Harry. We can get a lot of those Twoies all at once. I’m calling dibs if we get an odd number of them Harry. So if-”

I let him blather on while I thought things out.

If this had been any other situation, I would have been heading for the exit already. I was here to level up and get Stones picking off normal dungeon monsters, not a real fight. And even the fight against the five Whites had been pretty easy. The regular black Rank One bats had been more of an issue in fact.

The things would swoop down at us from all angles from the ledges up near the ceilings. In both the hallways and the rooms that didn’t have the White ones in them.

But the thing was, if they came down too low, the coyotes could jump up and drag them down before they could swoop back up to whip their tails at us. And if they stayed up too high… Well, the birdshot shells worked just fine on them.

The wider spread of pellets ripped them up pretty badly if we caught them closer to the ground, and if we only got them higher up near the ceiling, the damage was still bad enough to drop them to the ground.

Where they became chew toys for coyotes.

But we were stuck in here for now due to the entrance being blocked. And sooner or later we would stumble into what might be a horde of Whites guarding the Dungeon core.

Three or four wasn’t going to be an issue. I had loaded up my shotgun with buckshot to take down the Whites, while Hiram kept his loaded with bird shot for the Blacks.

...that sounds bad. Let's say Hiram is keeping his shotgun loaded with birdshot for the Rank ones instead.

I still ended up shooting some of the Ranks Ones as well since they came at us as many as four at a time every now and then, but as it turned out the White ones were worth two advancement points each.

Which is why the level up message caught me by surprise.

[ Congradulations. You now have enough advancement points to go to Level 4 ]

Hrm. “Hiram.”

He turned and grinned. Probably since I had started a conversation with him. “Whatcha need Harry?”

“I got enough to level up. But I don’t know if I want to do it in here, or not.”

He nodded, “So… You want my opinion, or you want time to think about it.”

I was surprised the guy finally knew me well enough to give me the option, and a bit annoyed that he had been around me long enough now to know I would want to think about it.

“Let’s clear out a room and then I can do it.”

Stupid old man. We could have gone back to a room we had already cleared out, but no, we had got into a rut of pushing farther and farther in. So of course the next door we opened was to the Core.

The Core room looked a lot like the other offices. Rug, desk, files, and coat hooks.

But instead of it being a long narrow room, the place was a good fifty feet deep and another fifty feet wide. And instead of a fake typewriter sitting in the middle of the desk, there was a chunk of black crystal floating there a few feet above the desktop, all lit up inside with a cold white light that pulsed like a slow heart beast, and the thing was bigger around then Wylina’s head.

Just like the monkeys and the bat, the thing felt wrong, like finding a dead mouse covered in maggot under the sink. I wanted it gone and wished that there was someone else who would deal with it.

Also, both walls on the sides of the room were lined with coat hooks, running from the front of the room to the rear.

And each set of them had a white coat hanging from them, around fourteen or so all told.

Now this would normally not be too much of an issue. Hiram could have pulled the door shut, we could have taken a moment or two to load his gun up with buckshot, planned things out, and maybe even go find another office for me to level up somewhere safe.

Heck, we could have gone hunting more Whip Tails to get Hiram leveled up too.

But when the Sabatour turned the doorknob and pushed the door open, the whole thing fell forward like a drawbridge and slammed again the floor in a cloud of dust and shattering wire inserted glass.

And all the white coats began to squirm as the White’s heads peaked out from under their wings to stare and blink at us.

As if to signal them that now was the time to attack, the Big floating Core pulsed out of its steady beat, and with a brighter glow.

All the Whites shrieked, and what sounded like every other monster still out in the rest of the Dungeon shrieked as well.

“Ah, Shit!”