You must be this old to enter the Dungeon

62) A good day to Die Hard.

It was a good thing that one of the things I had put into my storage was a can of spray lubricant.

Between that and a roll of duct tape, you could either get just about anything you needed to loosen loose and anything you wanted to stay in place to stay.

We needed the lube for the five wheels of the chair from the office room to make sure it rolled all the way to the center of the Dungeon Core’s room.

Fortunately, Hiram had his own rolls of duct tape, his was a bright red instead of the normal gray, which he used to secure a can of kerosine, the four wine bottles filled with a mix of gasoline and shredded styrofoam cups, and several typewriters worth of keys, as well as the metal bars with the backward letters on their ends.

Hirum put all of that together along with the block of plastic explosive that he had taken from the elevator shaft and my phone.

“I’m sorry Harry, but I replaced my phone with a fancy new one so I need your old one to make this work. Besides, the video I need to review to make this work is on my phone.”

I glared at him for a good long moment, but I passed my phone over. I guess I believed this was still better than going in shooting.

He grinned as he took my flip phone from me. “Don’t worry I can pull the SIM card so you don’t lose your numbers.”

I huffed at him. Like anyone with a lick of sense didn’t write all their numbers down somewhere.

Technology fails, and phones can get lost or stolen.

I’m not sure what all he did that involved cracking open my phone and wiring stuff together, but in the end, we had what he called, “The John Maclaine Elevator Greeting.” that the two of us carried over the fallen door at the entrance to the Core room and then shoved toward the middle, before turning around and nearly bumping into each other as we rushed back out the door, and then split off to either side.

“Cover your ears!” I ran toward where I had managed to convince the coyotes to wait instead of following me into the room, slapping both hands over my ears as I went.

The chair had looked like it was going to come up short of where the several white lab coats that had remained in the Core room were hanging up at the far end of the room, all clustered around the Core, but as Hiram put it. “I got everything I had on me that goes boom and sticks to stuff as it burns. If this doesn’t do it, then at least when we go in it will just be to finish off whatever still screaming.”

When I had turned to run, the chair was rolling to a stop twenty five feet in. But when I turned around after the sound of the explosion and the flash of light from behind me, I could see splatters of something burning as it dotted the floor outside the Core room and on the wall across the doorway.

As I felt the warmth fade from my ears I could hear as well as see Hiram laughing as he stood on the other side of the flames, his happy face lit up from below by the flickering light of the fire before him.

All that, along with the new scar going across his face, and I think I finally understood why he had been given his class.

I gave him a thumbs up.

Then we made our way into the room with me leading the way holding up the mini fire extinguisher Beryl had made me buy all those years ago. The label said was expired and needed to be replaced, but as it seemed to be working just fine it only proved that expiration dates are all scams.

Two of the Whites were still twitching, but neither one of them was screaming, just hissing weakly.

I put a load of buckshot into one’s face from about ten feet away, then walked over and finished off the other one as well.

Hiram nodded at me with a grin, “Yeah. No reason to make them suffer.”

After a moment, I nodded back at him. I mean, yeah. I didn’t want them to suffer, but I did want them dead. And it would be hard to cut the stones out of their chests while they were struggling and trying to bite me.

I finished up cutting out the last of the Stones from the dead Whites and rubbed them clean with some torn up rags I had made from the real lab coats we had come across here and there.

Stepping up beside Hiram, I wordlessly handed off half of them to him in a plastic shopping bag, which he took and made vanish as he continued to stare at the floating head sized glowing crystal, which pulsed slowly in place as hovered in the air above the desk.

I nodded at it. “Figure it killed off all its black ones trying to make more Whites?”

The Grinning man nodded and smiled. “I want to see what happens if we take the Core out with us.”

I blinked, then shrugged. “Alright.”

Why not?

The thing wouldn’t move, even with both of us tugging and pushing at it. Heck, we couldn’t even get the thing to spin around in place.

And touching it… hurt. Like it was coated in a mild acid.

I didn’t think it would work from the start, which is the only reason I agreed to try.

Hirum glared at it once more before huffing and turning to me as he slowly grinned. “I guess we break it then.”

I held my hand out toward the stone while stepping aside. “I think you’re the only reason we’re getting the chance, the points are all yours.”

He took a bow and began reloading his shotgun with solid slugs. I turned around to get clear of flying shards of crystal and herded the coyotes back as well.

The first shot made the thing spin and begin pulsing more quickly. The second shot put a crack in it.

Hiram yelled as he loaded up his next shot. “They really love the number five Harry, it doesn’t matter if you punch the thing or shoot it with the biggest gun around. Five hits does the job.

Two more shots made the thing spin and droop down nearly to the desk as more cracks appeared and shards flew away to vanish in mid-air. The Sabatour waited as it rose, wobbling, back to its former position before he raised his shotgun back to his shoulder.

The last shot shattered it, all the pieces flying apart only to come to a slow stop in the air around where it had once stood, then fade.

[ You have participated in the destruction of a Dungeon Core. 5 Advancement points awarded. ]