Ever the excellent manager, Crypto quickly had two men discreetly pick up the Old Town team’s remains after Matthew’s crew left their bodies outside the Dungeon. She of course had to alter the footage of local cameras, since three students seen carrying corpses cocooned inside magnetic tape would likely send the wrong message to lawful authorities.
The duo who picked the corpses were two of Charlie’s men; a pair of two meter tall ‘garbage disposers’ with Cockney accents and bearing expressions about as cheery as prison doors. Matthew had already seen them before, on the few occasions where the Association’s teams failed to save a Dungeon’s victims. He didn’t think he would ever get used to the sight of their delivery van.
It always spelled trouble.
“So you believe that Tarantulas has collected footage of the outside world since Saturday?” Crypto asked Matthew through the navigator after the crew returned to the Dungeon. Having cleared the first floor, they were now on their way to the central tower and the core hidden within. “This would suggest that it left this Dungeon on at least one other occasion.”
“I’m sure it did,” Matthew confirmed. “That thing is probing us for weaknesses.”
Matthew had the feeling the world would have been much better for it had he managed to shoot Tarantulas dead the moment he saw. A monster capable of intelligent reasoning was dangerous enough; one capable of restraint and premeditation presented a whole new threat.
“Yet there’s no missing person reports in the areas near the Dungeon’s entrances, and Tarantulas only attacked after you noticed its presence…” Crypto mumbled something to herself. She often did that when deep in thought. “Mmmm… would it have struck at all otherwise, I wonder…”
Matthew couldn’t explain why, but something about her tone bothered him. “Crypto?”
“I need to think about this and review the camera footage. This may be a bigger mess than any of us imagined.” Crypto quickly changed the subject. “We’ll continue the search for Tarantulas on our end, so you focus on clearing the Dungeon.”
Crypto all but hung up on her end of the line.
“Crypto’s got a master plan brewing,” Matthew told his teammates once they reached a crossroad at a hallway’s end. Three elevator doors remained closed to them right next to a map on the wall, which the group stopped near to read. It showcased nine floors connected with various elevators and their names written in garish neon lights.
<blockquote>
F1 Here!
F2 Veggie!
F3 Bread!
F4 Soda!
F5 Cheese!
F6 Treasure!
F7 Chicken!
F8 Office!
F9 Core!
</blockquote>
“Is… is the Dungeon advertising its core’s location?” Kari asked in bewilderment. “It has to be a trick.”
John shrugged his shoulders. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the map is accurate. The Dungeon was stupid enough to fall for a plastic toy card.”
“A VIP card paid with sweat, blood, and tears,” Matthew insisted. “Also, we’re stopping by the treasure room.”
“It’s clearly a trap of some kind!” Kari argued. “You don’t put that kind of stuff on a map!”
“The wallet has its reasons which reason knows nothing of,” Matthew replied while doing his best impersonation of Lao Tse… It had to be Lao Tse who said that, right? Or did a timeshift change that? “You agreed to follow my lead, and I say: Treasure!”
“Besides the fact that watching my bank account grow is one of my few pleasures in life, Maruki’s suggestion is sensible,” John said, his finger pointing at points on the map. “Each elevator only connects to one different floor, after which we have to take a new elevator leading to a different floor, and so on. The central elevator leads to the Treasure floor, the left to the Soda one, and we’ll reach the Veggie floor if we take the right one.”
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“Mmm…” Kari checked the map more attentively. “Since we’re on the Here floor, the shortest paths are: Veggie, Bread, Office, Core; Treasure, Chicken, Office, Core; Soda, Cheese, Office, Core.”
“We’ll have to fight through three intermediate floors at best, so we might as well take one path that goes through the ‘Treasure’ one,” John explained. “If the core is indeed at the top, of course.”
“Wanna bet the Boss is on the Office floor?” Matthew said. “It’s the only one we’ll always have to go through no matter what.”
“That sounds likely…” Kari sighed. “Fine, you win. Treasure floor it is.”
They stepped into the central elevator—a coffin of steel and concrete smelling of sweat and overworked employees—and then ascended upward to the tune of the Major Chicken cartoon’s opening song. Matthew knew it by heart, so he spent the climb whistling it to himself much to his teammates’ silent annoyance.
The elevator soon opened into a narrow square-shaped room. Three of its sides led to an elevator required to access another floor, including the one that the team stepped out from. A comically large reinforced blast door blocked the fourth.
“Step back, peons,” Matthew said as he cracked his knuckles. “It’s time for a hole-up.”
“We don’t have to open that door though,” Kari pointed out. “We can take the elevator on our left to reach the Chicken floor.”
“A locked blast door isn’t a decoration, Kari; it’s a challenge.” Matthew placed his hand against the door and quickly opened a hole into the structure. The Dungeon virulently fought back with the zeal of a corporate accountant desperate to protect the company’s bank account, but it yielded nonetheless.
The hole opened the way into a very large and sparsely decorated room. Only a single dome of glass stood atop a pedestal in the center under a set of spotlights; all under the watchful gaze of dozens of automated turrets stuck in the walls.
“Can you see what’s under the glass, Kari?” Matthew asked after failing to do so himself.
“I can’t see the outline past the reflecting glass,” Kari replied. Her Key gave her supernatural visual acuity, but it couldn’t see through obstacles. “The treasure doesn’t have a Flux signature, so it’s not magical at least.”
“Let’s see if it’s worth the trouble,” John said. He opened his bag, grabbed a can of soda, and then tossed it into the vault chamber.
A hundred bullets tore it to shreds before it even hit the ground.
“Well, we tried,” John said as he immediately turned his back on the trapped vault. “Let’s move on.”
Matthew was tempted to taunt him about chickening out, but merely staring at the vault room sent his Doom Sense into overdrive. Taking a single step into that room would kill him, no questions about that.
However, it only took Kari a glance at the room to figure out a plan. “Okay, here’s what we can do,” she said, pointing a finger at the vault’s ceiling. “We move upstairs to the Chicken floor above, and then Matthew can open a hole right above the treasure. We’ll just have to fish it out with a rope afterward.”
John didn’t look convinced. “Wouldn’t the rope risk triggering the turrets?”
Kari shook her head. “My Key lets me see the microwaves used by the motion sensors. There aren’t any too close to the treasure, probably so the turrets can’t accidentally destroy it. I guess this vault is an exact replica of an existing one.”
“Easy peasy, then,” Matthew said as he took a step towards the correct elevator, only for his Doom Sense to buzz up. “Or not.”
“You’re detecting danger?” Kari guessed.
“Yup.” Matthew opened the elevator to find nothing waiting there, only for the feeling of incoming danger to grow when his finger wandered to the button. “I’m pretty sure the chickens will ambush us on the next floor.”
“And there’s only one way in.” John scowled and pondered the obvious problem. “They’ll shoot us the moment the elevator’s doors open, and digging a hole from below would only give them a vantage point from which to shoot at us.”
“I could remove my eyepatch the moment we reach the next floor,” Matthew suggested. “Bullets and chicken will both come flying in.”
“Are you crazy? You want to open a black hole in a narrow space like an elevator?” John immediately shot down the idea. “You’ll kill us all!”
“Oh, I know.” Kari snapped her fingers. “Matthew, could you lend us some of your stored luck?”
“Huh?” Her question took Matthew aback. “Lend you my luck?”
“That’s not how it works?” Kari asked with a frown on her face. “You’ve stockpiled fortune with your Lucky Star spell, no? Then you should be able to lend us some of it. We would have an easy time fighting through the ambush if all their guns jam at once.”
Her plan would have been incredible, had his Lucky Star actually been using good fortune like a currency which Matthew could trade. The spell instead treated it like karma: by only suffering misfortune for a certain amount of time, he thus invited an overwhelming, focused shot of good fortune later in order to right the scales. The best he could do would be to expand Lucky Star’s effect to his allies, but then they would suffer from mis… misfortune…
They would suffer from misfortune!
“Ha…” A bellowing, maniacal laugh arose from Matthew’s throat as a brilliant idea just crossed his mind. “Hahahahaha!”
“Matthew?” Kari squinted at him in concern. “Matthew, are you alright?”
“I think you finally broke him,” John quipped.
“You wish!” Matthew replied as he grabbed Kari by the shoulders, much to her shock and distress. “Kari, you are a genius! I should listen to you and spend more time thinking about optimizing my spells! I can’t believe I never thought about that!”
“Y-you’ve found how to share your luck with us?” Kari stammered.
“Oh no, I’m not going to share my luck.” Matthew’s smile widened into a wide smirk of pure glee. “We’re going to steal the monsters’ own!”