Tier Five Dungeon: Mycopolis

  Objective: Defeat the Nodes (0/3)

  Objective: Defeat the Network (0/3)

  Objective: Survive (0/1)

  Completion: 0%

  Activation Code: The dungeon’s boss will only become active once certain conditions are met.

  Labyrinthine: This dungeon cannot be mapped and is constantly shifting.

  Singular: This higher-Tier dungeon has only one floor, with an alternative layout.

  Gauntlet: Dungeon monsters respawn quickly. They do not drop experience orbs until the dungeon is cleared.

  Environmental Hazard: This dungeon’s denizens are not its only threat.

  Tori and I were inside the dungeon for less than fifteen seconds.

  In that time, the fungus coating the tunnel walls was already growing toward us, reaching out like neon-colored fingers. Spores filled the air around them, pressing in toward the entrance, and the one quick, abortive breath was enough to convince me that the stink of wet soil and rotting wood wasn’t a good smell. I grabbed Tori’s wrist and dragged her back through the portal—which, thankfully, wasn’t sealed.

  “What was that, Hal?” she asked.

  “That was a trap. The dungeon’s built to kill anyone who goes in unprepared. We got lucky—if it had had the exit seal rule, we’d have been in real trouble.” I spat on the ground, then blew my nose out. “I think we’re okay, but we’re going to need to take this slow.”

  “So, are we retreating? Is this like the Stronghold?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” I took a breath. It didn’t feel like my lungs had anything weird in them, but I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure on that. “I think we’re strong enough to handle this one, but not if we go in unprepared. Let me see what I’ve got…”

  I didn’t have much. With the mecha and ammunition, my inventory only had a small pile of Voltsmithing parts. I spread it all out on the misty cavern floor. Then I shook my head. “Okay. This build’s going to be weird, but I think I can rig up the things we need. Your job is to keep watch. That’s it. I’ll be a half-hour or so.”

  Then I cracked my knuckles and got to work.

  I’d pulled a couple of air filters out of one of the SUVs I’d disassembled to build the Runners from. They weighed essentially nothing, but they also wouldn’t do the job I needed them to do by themselves. Air filters for a car were much different than gas masks for a person, after all. The gaps in the filters were just too big; I’d need to do something with them to make them work. But that was fine. The filters were a good starting point.

  My first thought was liquid Charge, but the biggest problem with that was that, to make it work, I’d need Hearts—or I’d need to be able to jump-start the process. I didn’t have my lab, and I only had a few Hearts to do the electrical-to-liquid conversion. Even with Remote Voltsmithing, I couldn’t protect both Tori and myself that way. That left me with electric, energized Charge as my only power source.

  I had six of it.

  But I also had seventeen Charge I hadn’t absorbed from the gear we’d picked up. I consumed a pair of purple boots and a gauntlet we’d gotten from the Hitchcock’s Nightmare dungeon, giving me twenty-three Charge to work with—eleven per item, with one left over.

  That’d be plenty. The device I wanted to make wasn’t complicated, after all. Two Charge batteries—the smallest ones I had. A pair of Mana Coils. Plenty of wiring, and a loop of conduit that fit over Tori’s face, and mine, from chin to nose. That was the hardest part; I had to bend it to fit perfectly, then use rubber seals and gaskets to make the fit even tighter.

  Once that was done, and the non-Charged wires were set up in a rough dome across the loop, it was just a matter of fitting as much air filter material as possible inside of it, then using the Mana Coil, battery, and Charge-bearing wires to pour energy through the mask. It wasn’t a gas mask at all. Not really. Instead, it actively destroyed everything passing through the air filters. In fact, it might’ve been too good at that.

  Core of Armor, my new skill, seemed to work on this kind of defense, not just on making things harder to physically hurt. The conduit and wire mesh grew more solid as I finished, and it took a surprising amount of filter to fill up the space between our faces and the wire-grid dome.

  “Try this on,” I said, handing Tori’s to her. “Give it a few breaths, make sure you’re still getting air.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not a Guinea Pig, Hal.” But she put it on, sucked in a few breaths, and closed her eyes.

  “What?” I asked. “You good?”

  “Yeah,” she said. Her voice was muffled and faint. I had to lean in a little closer as she repeated herself a little more loudly. “Yeah, I’m good! It just…well, it stinks in here.”

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  I nodded. “Okay. Take it off. I’ll give mine a try next. Thanks for being a Guinea Pig.”

  “Shut up.” She pulled the mask off and handed it to me as I adjusted mine.

  The mask fit tight enough that it pinched my skin, but I ignored it. Instead, I sucked in a breath, then coughed. “Yep, that’s pretty bad!” The air—and it was definitely air, with all the oxygen I’d need to survive—smelled like ozone and charred ditch weeds, and it was hot. I took a few more breaths of the superheated air, feeling around the mask’s edges for any leakage. Then I nodded.

  “So, they’re good to go, then? Not going to try to fix that stink?” Tori asked. “Or the heat.”

  “I don’t have the stuff to add in a cooling system, and I’m not sure it’d help. And without a better filter, we’re not fixing the smell, either. These’ll keep us alive in there. That’s good enough.” I hadn’t taken mine off. On the seventh or eighth breath, it started smelling a little better. Either that, or I was going nose-blind to it.

  “Fine.” Tori crossed her arms and headed for the portal. I pulled up my status to see what I had left.

  [Hal Riley] [Class - Voltsmith] [Level - 82, Rank Two]

  [Stats]

  ?Body - 45 (+5)

  ?Awareness - 52

  ?Charge - 3/143 (+15) (140 Used)

  Stat Points Available: 0

  [Class Skill - Decharge/Recharge - Drain the charge from magic items to power your own creations]

  [Class Skill - Remote Voltsmithing - Use your Voltsmithing to empower Creations even when others are using them—or when no one is.]

  [Class Skill - Core of Armor - Focus your Voltsmithing into stronger, more reactive defenses, including shields, barriers, and reinforced armor.]

  [Skill - Spellcoding - Transfer spells from Tomes to Spellscrolls, allowing weaker versions to be cast with Charge instead of Mana]

  Items

  ?Voltsmith’s Mech Upgrade Zero (70/70 Charge)

  ?Voltsmith’s Grasp Upgrade Two (45/45 Charge) - Rail Gun Module

  ?Air-Charge Filter (10 Charge)

  ?Warrior’s Sheath (Winged Bowstring)

  Remote Voltsmithing

  ?The Explorer (5 Charge)

  ?Air-Charge Filter (10 Charge)

  It wasn’t much; I’d have to hope the mech, gas mask, and Tori’s spells would give us what we needed for the Tier Five dungeon. I climbed into the mech’s cockpit, crammed my legs against the foot pedals, and followed her inside.

  As I spent a little more time inside of it, I realized that the Mycopolis was beautiful.

  It wasn’t the mist in the air that glowed a dozen different shades of reds, greens, pinks, and yellows. It wasn’t the way that electrical-looking pulses of light traveled across the lattice of fungal growth on the ceiling, almost fifteen feet over the mech’s head. And it wasn’t the monsters—that was for sure.

  Fungal Surge: Level Seventy-Eight Monster (Rank One)

  The thing looked like a mound of earth, piled up in the center of the path until its bulk almost blocked the way forward entirely. Mushrooms and colored growths bulged from the earth in countless small lumps; the whole thing looked almost tumor-like.

  “Alright,” Tori said into her mask. “Something to fight.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything as she rushed toward the monster, then skidded to a stop on the mossy floor. “Why isn’t it moving?” she asked.

  “I have no idea, Tori.” I stomped forward. Sure enough, the Fungal Surge didn’t even react. It didn’t move a muscle—in fact, it probably didn’t have any.

  “Well, I’m going to make it.” She cast Push and slammed the spell into the massive pile of earth. It jiggled kind of like a platter of Jell-O at Christmas dinner, but other than that, it didn’t—

  No.

  It was reacting. As Tori cast again, Charge resonance built in the air. I stomped forward, a massive metal arm swinging out and pushing her aside, as the entire flank of the mound blew out.

  I’d seen video footage of Mount Saint Helens erupting in high school. The way the entire side of the mountain seemed to collapse, and then the gigantic explosion that pushed that collapsed earth and rock outward. The sheer violence of the initial blast—and then the shockwaves that leveled entire forests.

  Fortunately, the Fungal Surge was only twelve feet tall, not thousands. But the collapse and explosion were a lot like Mount Saint Helens’s eruption. Probably two thousand pounds of soil, gravel, and fungal chunks slammed into the mech’s front armor as I jammed a fist into the ground. It poured through the open viewport, filling up the cockpit to my waist, and I lost control of the machine from the legs down.

  And, when it finally stopped, the Fungal Surge slowly reformed around the massive, glowing scar in its side until the yellow-orange light inside of it disappeared. “Tori, you good?” I asked.

  “Yep. Thanks for that. You?” she asked.

  “Nope. I need to get out and clean up in here before I can move it again,” I said. “But before that, I saw the thing’s core. It’s pretty deep in, and I don’t think there’s any way to kill it without breaking it up. So, we either trigger its attack again and hope it doesn’t flatten you, me, or the mech…or…”

  “Or?” Tori asked.

  I explained what I wanted from her, and she nodded. “I can do that.”

  “Great. If this works, it’s going to be messy. On three. Count it down.”

  “One,” Tori said.

  I lowered the grenade launcher and loaded a high-explosive battery bomb—the kind with plenty of battery acid and minimal shrapnel—into the barrel.

  “Two.” Tori braced herself. The timing part would all be on her; that’s why she was the counter. If I could, I’d let her fire the grenade herself, too.

  “Three.”

  My finger tightened. Charge flowed. The grenade launcher coughed as the battery bomb crossed the ten feet or so between the barrel and the monster. It hit. The moment it did, it started detonating.

  But before it could, Tori used Gravity Well, locking it to the monster’s hill-like flank. A Push landed right behind that, slamming a lid on the ongoing explosion. Then, moving as quickly as she could, Tori dropped the Gravity Well.

  The explosion had nowhere to go. The Gravity Well had held the bomb in place, and the Push had given it even more pressure from above. She maintained that Push even as the Gravity Well faded. The path of least resistance was from side to side—but the path of second-least resistance was straight down. We’d improvised, in a messy sort of way, a shaped explosive.

  So, while fire and acid spewed across the monster’s flank, some of it got driven deep into the thing’s insides. Most of that was almost certainly getting absorbed by the wet dirt, but some of it had to be making it to its final destination.

  A moment later, the entire dirt pile faded away, leaving behind a glowing green Minecraft orb.

  “Well, that was anticlimactic,” Tori said, an air of annoyance in her voice.

  “Speak for yourself,” I said. Then I opened the mech’s cockpit, and dirt, fungus, and rocks tumbled to the ground below as Tori laughed at me.