Museum Core Chapter 13: Alpha

“Elias, we’ve got a bigger version of the rippers incoming,” Thomas said.

“Rippers?” the fairy responded, sounding disinterested.

“The monsters that just invaded!?”

“Oh yeah, the ones that died to the first room. Wonder if that’s the parent or the alpha,” Elias yawned. He was currently lying on the duiker’s back and looking two seconds away from falling asleep. And sure, he had every right to sleep in general, but couldn’t he stay awake for just a few more minutes, until the crisis had passed?

So Thomas decided to make sure of it. The duiker might be a comfortable bed for Elias, but it was also under Thomas’ complete control. So it licked him.

Luckily for the fairy, the duiker had a fairly soft tongue. Unlike, say, a big cat, whose tongues were like sandpaper, rough to the point where a single lick could rip open a human’s skin.

But soft or not, it was still a tongue bigger than the fairy’s head being dragged across his face, with predictable results.

Elias shot into the sky like a bottle rocket, cursing a blue streak as he tried to wipe himself off.

“What the fuck is your damage?” he screeched.

“Emergency,” Thomas said, sending a mental impression of a shrug along with the one-word answer. “What do we do now?”

“You see what that thing can do and adjust. The next power after spike creation is usually either boosted armor or the ability to launch them as projectiles. It’ll have the same weak spot on its underbelly that the small ones have, and since it’s bigger, you’ll have an easier time getting at it.

“And if it’s E-Rank, you can either get the wyvern to attack it from the rear or send in your boss. Claw projection should be a nice counter to a spiky defense.

“Also, you’ve got your arse-something in the corridor, where the enemy can’t dodge, so you can have it flatten the big ripper if you have to. It doesn’t matter if the big guy’s spikes can kill your monsters, momentum, and mass don’t just go away if the moving thing dies, it’ll only transform into loot a few seconds after death.

“And even if that doesn’t work, you have your boss’s room of supreme slipperiness to expose your invader’s weakness.

“You got this, you already had all the information I just gave you, and if you wake me again, it’d better be the end of the world or … or else.”

With that little speech over and done, Elias fluttered off into a hole Thomas had torn into the wall and exposed some insulation and never bothered to fix. There, he used some of the fluffier material as a bed while giving Thomas’ core the stink eye.

So, the fairy did have a brain, he just seemed to never engage it.

The Alpha Ripper, as Thomas was now calling it in his mind, began to make its way up the staircase and into the mezzanine, so he told the arsinoitherium to start charging, ready to meet the invader with a full-force bodyslam the instant it crested the top of the staircase.

But the Ripper stopped upon hearing the thundering footsteps and triggered its steel fur, hair-cloak standing on end and becoming razor sharp.

With a horrific screeching sound, the spikes scraped across the walls surrounding the Ripper, tearing into stone and locking the monster into position, leaving it stuck, a sitting duck for the arsinoitherium to plow into.

There was a loud crunch as something in the ripper’s face broke while the arsinoitherium slid down the stairs and into the spikes, well and truly wedging in the invader.

Actually, would the Ripper even have fit onto the mezzanine? Cheshire would have, as a cat, anywhere her head could fit into, her body could follow, but the Ripper didn’t look anywhere near as flexible.

With the invader stuck, he sent in the wolverines stationed on the mezzanine to scamper past the dying arsinoitherium to start tearing into the Ripper’s weak spots.

Eyes, nose, ears, stomach, dangly bits, anything and everything was fair game.

Even these so-called weak spots had an ungodly durability when compared to the offensive capability of the wolverines, given the Rank disparity, but durable and invulnerable were two very different things.

The hair on the monster’s back flattened and straightened again, repeatedly, tearing into the arsinoitherium and the walls until eventually, the thing pinning the Ripper died, dissolving into several bones and a large couple of steaks. That damn loot-setting fucking him over.

Now free, the Ripper charged again, almost casually pulverizing the wolverines underfoot … actually, that might have been a real accident, the monster didn’t seem too bright. After all, it crested the top of the stairs, tried to push itself through the narrowest part of the mezzanine, and promptly got stuck.

Wasn’t that supposed to not happen, with the Dungeon core having to be accessible?

Thomas considered asking Elias, but the fairy was currently asleep, and waking him over curiosity would be a step too far. Emergencies were fair game, as was anything urgent, really, but they did have to work together. Some courtesy was required. And if something did go wrong between now and the end of Elias’ nap, it wasn’t like hiding in the ceiling would save him from another rude awakening.

The crawlspaces that held wiring and pipes might have been inaccessible to most of his creatures, but birds could get up there, not to mention that the guinea pig-like rock hyrax would be perfectly at home in those narrow spaces.

Whenever the fairy woke, that would be Thomas’ first question, followed by him telling the fairy to dig deep and ask himself, really ask, if there was anything else important he hadn’t shared.

And the next time Elias decided to hold back vital information or forgot to share it, all courtesy would go out of the window.

Thomas sent the boar that was still on the mezzanine to attack the Ripper, only to see it torn apart the next time the creature’s fur flexed. Not only was the concrete holding it further destroyed, but several strands of hair detached and remained in their needle-form as they were hurled like javelins, running the boar through. The narrow confines of the mezzanine might have made evading charges difficult, but it also functioned as a shooting gallery for any invaders with ranged capabilities.

Now, Thomas had a choice to make. Send in Cheshire and use his boss to crush the threat before it went through the rest of his defenses, or risk the invader reaching the boss room, right before his core room before properly engaging it.

And he had until the Ripper freed itself to make the choice, but the creature ended up making the decision for him a moment later. It finally pulled itself out of the hole and began to retreat, apparently having written off the Dungeon as a potential source of food and/or “evolutionary energy”, whatever that was.

How nice of it to offer such a nice target, now Cheshire just had to reach and kill it before it left his domain so he could get a boost as well. And if she didn’t, well, the monster still had to go, he couldn’t afford to have it come back with reinforcements.

So while the Alpha Ripper limped off, Thomas watched the giant sabertooth tiger shimmy through a narrow corridor and chuckled softly to himself. She’d never looked so much like an overgrown housecat.

Now, if the Ripper had decided to retreat at full speed, it would have definitely escaped Thomas’ domain and might even have gotten out of the museum entirely. Not that that would have helped it, he’d already told the wyvern up there to get ready and stop the escape if it came to that, but it certainly would have made things a little harder.

But no, this thing was apparently advanced enough to feel more than a little spiteful as it paused next to the corpse of a wolverine and began to urinate over it.

Maybe, just maybe, it would have fled if it had noticed the approaching Dungeon boss, but big cats were inherently sneaky.

So the first warning the Ripper got was Cheshire leaping onto its back, claws tearing through fur with their magical projections cutting deeper into the muscle underneath, specifically targeting the shoulder and hip on the Ripper’s left side.

The fur stiffened and sharpened immediately, managing to slice up Cheshire’s paws, but the sabertooth had launched herself back a split second after landing.

Whirling around, the Ripper hissed loudly, fur relaxing for a brief moment before it flexed back into full defensive mode causing a nova of spikes to go flying every which way, but only a few even landed on target, getting mostly blocked by Cheshire’s spider-web fur.

The sabertooth reared up onto her hind legs and swiped at the air, ethereal, glass-like projections flashing through the intervening space to tear bloody gauges into the Ripper’s nose, which shrank back with another hiss, turning and trying to retreat, but that only exposed its injured side and spelled its doom.

Another projected claw swipe tore into its hindleg, the attack barely blunted by the hardened fur, and with a howl of pain and fury, the Ripper collapsed onto its side. It let itself fully fall to cover its stomach and pulled in its head, apparently determined to start turtling until the sabertooth left it alone. As if that would ever happen.

Cheshire simply began to prowl around the prone monster, which was just growling without end. Either the spiked fur would time out, the ripper would drop the defense so it could unleash another nova of spikes, or the tiger would find another opening that didn’t require her to spend mana like water to fuel her claw projections.

Thomas wouldn’t have been happy with waiting out the invader, but it would have worked in due time. But Cheshire was her own person, with her own plans.

After circling the stubborn ripper for the dozenth or so time, it had either finally arrived at a plan, or decided that the ripper had gotten sufficiently complacent that an attack would land.

The tiger dropped to the ground, pushed a paw under the Ripper irrespective of the damage she was doing to herself as the razor-sharp fur carved into her leg, and waved the claws around down there. It was a poor angle for cutting into the Ripper’s gut even with the projection ability, but it worked anyway.

The invading monster, upon feeling that its defense had been breached, launched itself onto its feet. Tried, to anyway, Thomas would never know where this was supposed to have led. Or even if the injured legs would have even held out for more than a few seconds.

Cheshire’s claw flashed up and laid open the Ripper’s gut from head to stern, causing the creature to collapse back down amidst a spray of blood and guts.

It took a few minutes for the invader to finally die and Thomas’ ability to manipulate the Dungeon to return, but it did die.

So he absorbed all corpses, repopulated his defenders, and finally, briefly unsummoned and then resummoned Cheshire to restore her injured form.

And now, it was time to start revamping his defenses.

The first thing he did was remove the loot from the arsinoitherium, that way, it wouldn’t dissolve upon death and its body would jam up the corridor until he removed it.

And then, he carved out another nook at the end of the mezzanine facing the stairs for the arsinoitherium to wait in, held in by a thin layer of drywall. That way, it wouldn’t be visible from the outside, and people could dive into the Dungeon a thousand times without bad intentions, but anyone who came in with the intention of breaking his core, monsters included, would come face to face with the prehistoric hippo.

In its place, he added a second boar and a brown bear. They’d still make the gallery a deadly threat, but not completely block it. While the arsinoitherium was up there, Cheshire couldn’t get past, and it wasn’t exactly a fair enemy for regular delvers, once he got any.

He also added two more wolverines to hide under benches and behind display cases. It was a trick he’d already pulled in the gallery, but unlike the gallery, he’d started adding lightbulbs to the mezzanine.

Somehow, he was able to summon them in the “currently has electricity flowing through it” state that saw them being lit, and have them stay lit. That had been a real headscratcher until he’d experimented with removing some of the filters on his vision and saw ambient magical energy flowing into them. But when he experimented with spawning one at the edge of his domain and having a wolverine push it out, the light immediately died.

So no ever-burning lightbulbs, damn. Those would have made for one hell of a loot drop.

Thomas also replaced the monsters in the first main room, removing the various big monsters with 3 Alpha Rippers, which the accompanying information confirmed was indeed what they were called. They shared the regular Steelfur Rippers’ ability to turn their fur into deadly defenses, and with E-Rank, they’d gained the ability to start hurling those spikes.

In a narrow corridor, even if there wasn’t much space for the other guy to dodge, only a few would go towards the enemy.

However, in a big room, these rippers would be squad-killers, multiple overlapping domes of lethal projectiles being hard to completely avoid. After the first two “rooms” being mostly about single-target attacks, this place would spread out damage, making sure that even those who’d thus far avoided getting hit, like ranged damage dealers or support-type people got hit.

Not to mention that there was nothing keeping Cheshire in the boss room. If need be, he could hurl the souped-up sabertooth tiger at the invaders while they were licking their wounds and preparing to challenge the boss, catching them with their pants down.

He also had three jaguars up amidst the whale skeletons on the ceiling, likewise ready to pounce on weakened individuals.

In the meanwhile, the roof gained two more jaguars and a second wyvern to expand the number of sentinels and emergency strikers he had at the ready.

And with all of that done, he was able to get to the actual fun part. Well, fun parts.

Firstly, killing multiple F- and one E-Rank opponent gave him a significant potential increase to his domain, which he spent to reach all the way through the Mammal Gallery and from there, to the entrance hall. He couldn’t get far enough to actually claim it, but it gave him more space to play with and let him look at the door, which felt good. There had to be other entrances, he knew that, but those should be closed even if they weren’t locked, like the emergency exits and the potential freight entrance(s), but that was the main, obvious one.

And secondly, he went as far into the archives as possible.

He was also a stone’s throw away from the dinosaur section, but he’d decided to ignore it in favor of the archives since as far as he could recall, the dinos in there were the big, impressive ones, too big to really function in the areas he’d currently subsumed into his Dungeon.

The archives, on the other hand, would have a large number of specimens packed into a small area and they should be more reasonably sized. Besides, the creatures he wanted might be there, while he knew for a fact he wouldn’t find them with the Dinosaurs.

He wanted a monkey to use as an avatar, yes, but he also wanted creatures with interesting biological features to borrow and later turn into powers.

Venom and/or poison, active camouflage, interesting methods of locomotion, cool natural defenses, and the like. That being said, he was pretty sure there were countless other cool features he wouldn’t even know he needed until he found them.

And finally, time to play Doctor Frankenstein with the wolverines.

Before his mind’s eye, he could see the pattern seem to split, having not just the standard wolverine pattern without any powers, but also a second pattern partially overlapping with the standard one, which seemed to be a hair’s breadth from separating fully while burning with potential. In other words, he’d be able to create a whole new kind of creature and if he didn’t like the result, he could always train the species up again and create a new variant.

Overall, he had several ideas.

The first two were based on the Rock Hyraxes. They looked like big guinea pigs with little vampire fangs, though they were actually closely related to elephants and could apparently get really aggressive.

One of the powers he could draw on was simple, their ability to fit through cracks in the cliffs they lived in. Overcharging the concept would give the wolverines flexibility that would let them squeeze basically into every nook and cranny in the museum and use them to attack from unexpected spots they really should not have been able to hide in.

The second power would be related to their feet, which were shaped to form an approximation of a vacuum seal when placed on solid surfaces to help them climb and when supernaturally amplified, it should let the wolverines climb walls and potentially even climb on ceilings.

The third was borrowed from the whales, most of which were colored dark blue on the top and white on the bottom, allowing them to blend into the ocean when viewed from above and not stand out when observed from below by not contrasting with the sky as much. It wasn’t a full adaptive camouflage ability like what he’d have been able to get from a cuttlefish and the like, but the supernatural enhancement should turn it into one.

And the fourth was simple. Something based on the various bits of metal he’d absorbed, to give them teeth and claws like blades while reinforcing all their bones. It really was basic, but a simple and straightforward power wasn’t necessarily bad.   

All four ideas were already prepared in his mind, but he’d run them by Elias in the morning. After all, he might have something intelligent to add.

And until then, he started eating every part of the archives he could reach.

But even as he grew in strength, slowly but surely, he was fully aware of the fact that there were likely far nastier creatures out there. He could only hope that anything D-Rank and above had bigger fish to fry than little old him.