Apocalypse Tamer

Chapter 43: Man vs Guild

The dungeon was healing its wounds.

His group’s attack on Château Muloup had caused lasting damage. Rosemarine had savaged the façade and Vasi had bombarded the outer walls with fireballs to clear out the defenders. Broken ramparts, shattered glass and crumbling gargoyles were their legacy.

Yet the walls healed. Rifts closed on their own. Stone fragments pulled themselves back together. Red and green particles swirled around damaged areas, filling gaps, closing holes, repairing doors and statues. Damaged walls that would have taken months to restore the old-fashioned way regained their former glory in minutes.

In the early days of the apocalypse, Basil had wondered where the mass lost from crafting processes vanished to. Watching the dungeon’s self-repair ability made him wonder if the extra matter was somehow stockpiled in the dungeons and then spent to repair whatever damage they suffered. The hypothesis held on paper, though Basil shuddered to imagine the complex physics involved.

But what about the energy? Where did the unfathomable power needed for the System’s magic to function come from? The three gods of the Trimurti? Did the calories Kalki consume fuel the entire dungeon infrastructure? Would a steady diet of meat improve the process?

Basil should keep pondering these questions. It distracted him from the fact two of his allies and half his vegetables had perished in battle. It occupied his mind away from the sorrow, the guilt, the feeling he should have done better.

The only thing Basil didn’t feel guilty for, ironically, was the death of his fellow humans. He had grown desensitized to the idea of killing after slaughtering hundreds of monsters in the name of survival. He had slain and eaten sentient, sapient creatures. It would be hypocritical and racist to treat human deaths as more meaningful.

The enemy party had been monsters anyway, just on the inside.

His group advanced slowly due to Shellgirl’s lack of legs; Basil had to push her up the stepstones so she wouldn’t roll back to the bottom each time she missed a leap. The members of House Garden acted strangely too. The three survivors dragged their dead comrades’ remains around and refused to relinquish them. Basil would have attributed this behavior to mourning, if not for the strange focus in the vegetables’ eyes.

They seemed to await an event of some kind, for a lack of a better term.

The group silently reached the fourth floor of Château Muloup. They had barely fought any monsters over the course of their ascension. Most of the dungeon’s defenders perished on the walls, and the stragglers were more interested in flying away rather than fighting a losing battle. Vasi had seen Apollyon drones flee north soon after Baron Eric’s death.

That behavior surprised Basil a lot. Dungeons allowed factions to teleport troops according to the System; that was the main reason why his party had destroyed the Barthes’ Ogre Den months ago. So why didn’t the Apocalypse Force summon additional reinforcements?

Seignosse wasn’t a strategic location as far as Basil could tell. If the Apocalypse Force couldn’t afford to spare more soldiers to protect it, then it implied that they needed their soldiers elsewhere. To fight what? To fight whom?

It was either that or the Apocalypse Force simply couldn’t summon more soldiers to Château Muloup. Perhaps Baron Eric’s death had cut off the place from his masters’ wider dungeon network.

Basil guessed he would get his answers in the neurotower’s room soon enough.

The flight of stairs led the group to a lavish gallery corridor. The crimson carpet crackled under their feet. A long line of medieval knight statues holding torches faced stained glass windows representing wolves, bears, foxes, and other woodland beasts. It looked as if both sides stared at one another in defiance.

Basil absentmindedly tugged at the warm wolf pelt around his shoulder. This trophy, the Pèth harvested from Eric Lalande, was all his party had to show for their victory.

“I wonder what kind of animal you’ll turn into,” Vasi said, trying to lighten the mood. “A brave wolf perhaps?

“He will turn into a cat if God exists, or into a bear otherwise,” Plato replied immediately.

“Definitively bear,” Shellgirl added with a quiet voice. Orcine’s death had demoralized her.

“Bear King Basil!” House Garden’s members said as one. “Bear King Basil.”

Once, Basil would have cracked a joke about turning into a weregoblin after eating so many of them. His lips remained close. He wasn’t in the mood for humor.

His eyes wandered to the stained windows. Basil enjoyed a wide view of the marsh outside the castle and the giant plant dragon at its doorstep. Rosemarine was treating Bugsy’s wounds with glowing light. A court of fire seeds surrounded them, watching over the corpses of Kuikui and Orcine’s severed halves.

The sight soured Basil’s stomach. Vasi had fire seeds transport the dead outside the castle until they could bury them properly, but he had the nagging feeling she did so to keep them out of mind instead.

She had failed.

“Why did he jump?” The words flowed out of Basil’s mouth on their own.

“I’m sorry?” Plato asked, his head turning in his best friend’s direction.

“Kuikui, why did he jump?” Basil asked. The question had been bugging him for a while, and he couldn’t avoid facing it any longer. He needed an answer now. “He joined us to breed with my chickens and I didn’t deliver. He mated for a night before everything went to hell. We met less than a week ago.”

Basil knew Kuikui hadn’t actually intended to take the hit for him. The velociraptor had tried to grab the dagger that slew him in midair so he could live to tell the tale. Even if he failed, he should have understood the risk involved in the maneuver.

So why did he jump?

“Are you asking me why did he jump or why did he jump for you?” Plato asked.

Basil grunted. “Does it make any difference?”

“It might,” Plato replied calmly. “I arrived after the scene, so I didn’t see it. I can only imagine. Even birds can be surprisingly brave when pushed into a corner.”

Vasi interrupted the conversation. “Don’t do it, Basil.”

“Don’t do what?” he asked.

“Mull over what happened. You’ll only blame yourself for things you had no control over.”

“Gotta agree here,” Plato said. “Did you blame yourself for René’s illness? No, because bad things happen for no reason.”

“What about the things I did have control over?” Basil asked, his voice brimming with frustration. He wasn’t angry at Plato and Vasi; he was angry at himself. “Kuikui didn’t sacrifice himself for me. He was trying to push me out of the way, to catch the dagger in his jaws. But since we never drilled for battle or tactics, his timing was off and he paid the ultimate price.”

Basil was the party’s leader. It was his job to protect his team, and when he couldn’t, to prepare them for the worst. His group never drilled for combat or discussed tactics. They winged their way through each fight, constantly improvising with little to no foresight.

Their luck had to run out at some point.

“And Orcine did die trying to save my sorry ass,” Basil pointed out. It stung all the harder considering she was the last of her family. “If I handled the knight on my own—”

“You’re wrong, Partner,” Shellgirl said with a surprisingly cold tone. “Orcine didn’t die for you. She died to avenge her family and succeeded. Don’t say otherwise. She knew the risks. Hearing you whine about her death is an insult to her dedication, do you understand?”

Basil locked eyes with Shellgirl. The clam mimic held his gaze firmly. She must have been closer to Orcine than Basil expected.

“I still bear part of the blame,” he said.

“You don’t,” Shellgirl insisted.

“I do. I’m not whining or complaining, I’m stating a fact. Orcine knew about the Revenge Perk and said we should blitzkrieg the knight before he could activate it. If we had communicated more clearly, we could have coordinated better and Orcine might have survived.”

“Or you could have both perished anyway,” Vasi pointed out. “Battles to the death never go as planned, Basil. I thought you would have learned that by now.”

“We didn’t prepare as much as we could have,” Basil replied with a grim grunt. “The Systems of your and Orcine’s worlds are incredibly similar to our own, and that knight showed that some classes roughly work the same between them.”

“You couldn’t expect to fight a fellow human with the Mercenary class,” Vasi replied. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Maybe not,” Basil conceded. “But I only ever studied the various Systems when I needed to, and never in-depth. I never paid much attention to my long-term class progression and chose them based on short-term benefits. Harvest more food, kill more goblins, improve the garden.”

Walter was right, Basil had spread his classes too thin. His party outnumbered Lalande’s group by more than three to one with equal levels, and they still suffered casualties because the enemy had better Perks. Without counting the knight’s Bodyguard-powered teleportation and Revenge, Lucine Lalande’s Poisoner abilities had cut many lives short.

If he had put his utility levels in Runesmith, Gardener, Alchemist, and Fisherman into Berserker, what powers would have Basil unlocked by now?

“I need to take it seriously from now on,” Basil decided. “The Trimurti System’s inner workings, elemental affinities, my class planning… I need to figure it all out. The knight was right, my build is all over the place.”

Vasi crossed her arms and studied him closely. He could tell she thought he was too hard on himself, but held her tongue.

“If you’re really serious about this,” she finally said, “I can give you a crash course on my world’s System when we find the time to sit and talk peacefully. There are enough similarities between it and this planet’s Trimurti System to provide insight. But I would consider what you want to become if I were you, Basil.”

“What do I want to become?” Basil frowned. She sounded like self-help book crap. “I know who I am.”

“You misunderstood me,” Vasi replied calmly. “The reason your build is ‘all over the place’ as you say, is because you’re trying to do too many things at once. You want to become the lone warrior fearlessly charging into the fray, the crafter, the monster tamer… you can either dedicate yourself to one path and excel in it, or try them all halfway.”

Shellgirl nodded in approval. “I want to become rich, Partner. Vasi wants to stare into the abyss of magic and watch it blink. We drew strength and focus from our goals.”

“And so will you, Basil,” Vasi whispered. “Once you decide in which direction you want to go.”

Basil pondered the witch’s word and wisdom. She had a point, many of his classes lacked synergy. Berserker was a powerful warrior class, but one that thrived on loneliness. His Warp Spasm Perk made him as much of an asset as a liability to his party in a fight. It complemented Runesmith and Technomancer, true, but it didn’t fit well with Tamer and Gardener. These two encouraged Basil to recruit allies and to fight in a team.

All his classes had served him well so far. Yet for his team’s sake, he would have to let a few fall by the wayside.

Basil folded these questions in a corner of his mind. The group had reached a tall wooden door at the end of the corridor. A horned wolf’s skull loomed over the frame, its eyes burning with hellfire.

Plato hissed, his rapier unsheathed. “I smell a bug close by.”

Basil’s wariness turned to fury. He smashed the door to pieces with his halberd and stepped into the next room with murderous intent.

The corridor beyond the threshold lacked any window or decoration. Its architecture immediately reminded Basil of the Ogre Den’s depths. The castle’s stones turned into paper-thin layers of otherworldly metal covered in golden circuitry. Colorful pulses of energy traveled through cables embedded in the ground and tall ceiling. Energy particles floated in the air in increasing concentration the further the group advanced. The neurotower’s room awaited them at the end.

So did Apollyon.

A single drone stood in the vast central tower of Château Muloup. The walls twisted into a spiral of circuits surrounding a colossal black steel monolith. The dungeon’s server was five times the size of the late Ogre Den’s, so huge that its shadow loomed over the entire group. Pulsating cables larger than Basil himself thrummed at its feet and streams of particles erupted from its summit. A crimson barrier of energy protected the machine.

“So you survived,” buzzed the drone. The bug was no different from its siblings, green and no stronger than level 10. Yet its shadow belonged to a larger creature, a malevolent insect with colossal cannons for shoulders. The Horseman of Famine Apollyon spoke through his thrall’s mandibles. “A pity. Humans make for disappointing soldiers.”

Basil barely resisted the urge to behead the creature; barely. Only his wariness of a trap and concern for his comrades stayed his hand. His teammates formed a half-circle around the Horseman’s puppet, ready to tear him to pieces.josei

Apollyon showed no fear. Why would he? After all, his true body was safe somewhere beyond Basil’s grasp. Killing the drone wouldn’t even give the party experience points.

“You wasted your time,” Apollyon buzzed. “This place is of no importance to our goal. Our work is done. We destroyed crops and poisoned wells. The region will starve, its people will wither. What we didn’t devour, the winds of winter will freeze to death. This dungeon means nothing to us anymore.”

“Then why did your troops fight so hard to defend it?” Plato taunted him. “Unless you treat them so terribly that they would rather die to us?”

To Basil’s surprise, Apollyon actually nodded in agreement. “We Horsemen care not whether our troops win or lose. So long as blood flows, levels will rise. You think strength will be your salvation, but you are wrong. It will be the key that shall unlock Earth’s doors to us.”

Basil’s jaw clenched in fury. Megabug and his ilk were scouts. The real armies of the Apocalypse Force remained trapped beyond the level barrier, so it mattered little whether they perished. The surviving population would grow in levels over time and trigger a new Incursion.

It was a vicious cycle. The stronger Basil and his team became, the higher the threats they would eventually face.

“So go ahead,” Apollyon taunted them. “Claim this place as your own. We will retake it in due time and our troops will gain more experience from your corpses.”

“Did you come here to gloat?” Basil snickered. “You’re wasting your time and ours.”

“And he’s lying.” Vasi smiled at the bug, though her lips didn’t reach her eyes. “Even if this dungeon isn’t important to him, it makes more sense for him to destroy it rather than abandoning it to us. The fact he can’t bypass the barrier suggests his servant’s death blocked his faction from controlling this place. It’s not that he won’t send reinforcements to protect it; it’s that he can’t.”

Vasi’s smirk widened even further.

“Am I right, or am I right?” she asked.

The Apollyon vessel hissed in response. Vasi had guessed correctly. And much like every sore loser, the Horseman of Famine threatened Basil’s group with retaliation. “The barrier is weakening a little more every day. Each death makes this world more worthy of our presence. In time I will cross over into this lush, verdant planet myself, and when I grace it with my full power…”

Apollyon’s vessel locked eyes with Basil.

“We will see how brave you are then, Bohen.”

Basil raised his halberd for the kill, but screams froze him in place.

House Garden’s members, both the living and the dead, glowed all at the same time. Basil recognized the glow of incoming metamorphosis, yet this one was clearly different. The five vegetables’ shining forms merged together into a single mass.

This is what they had been waiting for, Basil guessed as he raised a hand to protect himself from the light. But how could they all meet transformation criteria at the same time? Only when the process finished did Basil understand what happened.

The single creature that emerged from the light rivaled Bugsy in size and combined elements of all House Garden members. Two slices of pumpkin with ghastly red eyes and sharp teeth closed on a ring of fried onion, strawberry pieces, and a steak of black beans. A tongue in the middle of the maw salivated with blood-colored tomato sauce. The beast lacked legs or hands, and instead floated in the air through the sheer power of its will. Basil immediately identified the creature’s true nature.

A burger.

A giant, vegetarian burger with vicious red eyes and teeth powerful enough to split a man in half, but a burger all the same. The beast that was once House Garden roared with hunger; and even Basil, a dedicated carnivore, couldn’t help but stare in awe at its tasty beauty.

The Apollyon drone looked up at the creature and whispered a small, soft word.

“Oh.”

The monstrous burger’s jaws closed on its torso and bisected it at the waist. The creature chewed hungrily under the amazed eyes of his allies. Its tongue grabbed what little remained of Apollyon’s incarnation in an instant and swallowed it whole.

“What the hell just happened?” Plato asked. The cat sounded a little terrified. “Can food… Can food eat us back?”

Basil wondered too. A burger-themed evolution made sense for garden vegetables, especially considering the constant oppression they suffered from vegan predators; nature was bound to strike back at one point. Yet House Garden’s members seemed to have merged rather than transforming individually.

The System swiftly answered his question.

Astonishingly, the corpses of the Strawboogie Berry and Onion Spider had merged with their living brethren. Monsters could undergo metamorphosis post-mortem, at least as part of a fusion.

The implications were… startling, to say the least.

“I guess they had a beef to settle,” Basil joked. The sight of a giant hamburger chewing Apollyon’s vessel to death filled him with dark glee. The Veggie Burgerlord belched proudly, having left nothing of its victim behind. “Good burger.”

Basil petted it on the pumpkin slices and heard the Veggie Burgerlord bark like a dog in response. Come to think of it, he had never given names to House Garden’s vegetables before…

Inspiration suddenly struck him like lightning.

“Ronald,” Basil decided. “Colonel Ronald McVeggie.”

Tasty. Intimidating. Popular.

Vasi and Shellgirl exchanged a glance. “You’ll get used to it,” said the latter.

Vasi raised a finger as if to ask a question, lowered it, and then crossed her arms with a skeptical look. As for Plato, he would rather lick his ass rather than comment. Basil shouldered their silent criticism with pride, as did his new pet.

With Apollyon gone and the party close, the crimson barrier around the neurotower collapsed into nothingness. A screen appeared before Basil’s eyes.

Basil had read the same text when he destroyed the Ogre Den. He had blown up the place back then rather than risk constant raids and possible attacks on his house. The realization that a dungeon’s destruction could delay Incursions had only strengthened his resolve.

But Basil’s home was gone. A few of his friends were dead. And Basil had sworn eternal war upon the Apocalypse Force. If conquering dungeons and using its resources to attack foes was the nature of the game, then Basil would play to win.

“I’ll claim it,” he said.

Of course there was a catch.

“We need to select a Boss,” Basil declared, his lips curling in frustration. “But they’ll have to stay inside the castle for life and can’t level up normally.”

“I’ll pass,” Vasi said immediately.

“Me too.” Shellgirl put her slimy hands behind her head. “Don’t get me wrong, I would love a new HQ, but I would rather stay in touch with the customers. Keep my ear close to the ground.”

“Mmm…” Plato briefly seemed to consider it. “I love the idea of sleeping all day inside a warm, well-protected litter, but I know you Basil. Left to yourself, you would screw up and die within days.”

“Thank you for your concern,” Basil deadpanned.

“You’re welcome.”

Ronald barked like a dog and hopped in front of Basil. In its—His? Her? Did burgers have gender?—eyes, Basil saw the burning desire to prove its worth.

“Will you throw yourself into the grill if I ask it of you?” Basil asked with gravitas. Ronald licked its fangs in response. “If only Bulgaria had more meals of your calorie caliber.”

With Kuikui’s death, Basil’s party was one member short. He added Ronald to his team and selected it as the new Boss. A red aura briefly flared to life around the creature before disappearing just as quickly. The crimson barrier reformed around the neurotower, protecting it from danger.

Now they were reaching the truly interesting part.

“How does a guild work?” Basil asked.

“Common inventory?” Shellgirl choked behind Basil. It appeared the dungeon had sent the same notice to all party members. Her eyes lit up with greed. “Vote for me! Shellgirl for Guildmaster!”

Ronald snapped its jaws at Shellgirl, making her squeal and retreat inside her shell.

“King Basil for guildmaster!” Ronald snarled with a deep, inhuman voice. “King Basil toastie for life!”

“Sorry Shellgirl, I can’t trust you with the shinies. You’ll just pilfer them.” Plato raised a paw. “My vote is for Basil.”

Shellgirl’s eyes peeked in her shell’s slit and looked at Vasi with insistence. The witch rolled her eyes in exasperation. She chose the same as any boomer.

“I’ll abstain,” Vasi said with a shrug.

“Treachery!” Shellgirl complained from inside her hideout. “Fence-sitter!”

Alas, democracy had spoken and Basil was invested with new responsibilities.

Basil considered half a dozen names before settling on one. A title that would forever remind Apollyon and his ilk of their odious sin.

Basil grinned cruelly. The great neighborhood crusade had now officially begun. He would take back Europe, one dungeon at a time.

Today’s slaughter was only the beginning.