Apocalypse Tamer - Chapter 70: Man vs Shadows

Chapter 70: Man vs Shadows

The UNESCO House had seen better days.

Once a respected beacon of culture in a city famous for it, the building had been turned into a dusty Egyptian museum. The walls had aged centuries in the span of weeks, their ocher paint crumbling in some places. Oak shelves and furniture formed a rich Baroque decor covered in dust. Oil lamp flames flickered on the ceiling

Since the central elevator had transformed into a pillar of stones and bricks, the party was forced to explore the ground floor instead of moving straight to the summit. Plato followed the smell of old books and dusty paper, swiftly leading the ground to a vast underground library. Massive rows of shelves full of grimoires, scrolls, and other documents sprawled out before the group.

“So many books,” Shellgirl said. “It’s even bigger than Dax’s library!”

“The UNESCO public archives,” Basil whispered upon recognizing the room. “Bugsy, do you sense any threats?”

“Not on this floor, Boss,” the centimagma replied. “But I sense vibrations above us.”

“Enemies?” Vasi asked sharply.

“No, I don’t think so. It’s more diffused, like…” Bugsy squinted. “Like our house’s generators.”

Basil frowned in confusion. The dungeon’s power had removed any electrical system from the UNESCO building, from lightswitches to computers. Why would an Egyptian tomb cosplay require electricity?

“Let’s follow these noises,” Basil said. “They should lead us upstairs. Be on your guard, other ghosts might jump at us through the walls.”

“Can we take a few of these books?” Shellgirl pointed at the shelves of scrolls. “It just feels sad to leave these books behind. Some of them are spellbooks, no, even better… they’re treasures.”

“Careful, Shellgirl,” Vasi warned. “I sense magic in the air.”

“Traps?” Basil asked warily.

“Of course there are traps,” Plato deadpanned. “Look at this place!”

“Perhaps,” Vasi replied. “I wouldn’t rush in. Give me a few minutes to secure the area first.”

Basil nodded. They had survived a cave-in already, he was in no hurry to trigger another. “All right, let’s check this room carefully before proceeding. I’ll use that time to report to Neria.”

“Don’t forget to assign your levels too, Partner,” Shellgirl suggested with a grin. “More power, less headaches.”

A wise suggestion. Considering the number of undead monsters lurking in the area, Basil decided to progress further into his Deathknight class.

Deathknight of the Sepulchre Level 3&4 Stat Gains: +2 STR, +1 AGI, +2 VIT, +1 SKI, +2 MAG, +1 INT, +2 CHA, +1 LCK. You earned 60 HP and 30 SP.

Death’s Banner I (Active): [Support], 10 SP per minute. Your faith empowers your party members, granting a [Deadslayer] effect (x3 damage against Undead types) to their attacks. Additionally, your allies are immune to the [Terror], [Zombie], and [Insta-Death] ailments so long as they benefit from [Death’s Banner].

This ability will affect your Guild.

Basil had hoped for a Soulbound weapon upgrade, but his new Perk more than made up for the disappointment. If they had any sense, their undead foes would stay right in their graves.

The group split up to explore the library. Vasi and Shellgirl reviewed the shelves, with the former quickly deactivating trap hieroglyphs protecting the books; Plato and Bugsy advanced carefully around the room, checking its walls; and Rosemarine faithfully guarded the rear. Basil opened his Logs subsystem and swiftly contacted Neria. The Major, Zachariel, and their team remained on standby in preparation for the Incursion, but they stood ready to assist the Bohens if needed.

BASIL: We’re inside the UNESCO building. Place looks empty, but the path to the catacombs is cut of. We can’t retreat anymore.

NERIA: Shit. Need a distraction? We can bombard the pyramid from outside, make a ruckus so you can slip through in the chaos.

BASIL: Thanks, but not yet. They haven’t sent a big group to intercept us so far, so they don’t consider us an urgent threat yet.

NERIA: All right, I’m on standby if you need assistance from outside the Pyramid. How’s UNESCO from the inside?

BASIL: Packed with dust and books.

NERIA: Extract everything you can through the Guild Inventory. Since UNESCO cooperated with Dismaker Labs to install the servers, any document–shipment deliveries, contracts, blueprints–could help us. Grab them all.

BASIL: All? There are hundreds of books in this place, maybe thousands. How are we supposed to identify those that matter from the rest?

NERIA: Don’t bother. Send them all. We’ll ship them immediately to safehouses for investigation and sort them out on our end.

BASIL: Roger that, stay in touch.

Thank God the army would take over administrative duties. Basil loathed those from the bottom of his heart.

“Everyone, store all the books you can in the Guild Inventory,” Basil relayed the demand. “Any of them could be important.”

“You don’t need to ask me twice,” Shellgirl replied greedily as she grabbed one book after another, the documents vanishing in her inventory. “Oh, business records! I’m always looking to study those!”

“Grab anything from 2020 and onward in priority,” Basil ordered. “Doubly so if it mentions Dismaker Labs.”

“Mister, can I sing a battle song?” Rosemarine pleaded. “I’m bored.”

This gave Basil an idea. He summoned Kalki’s conch shell from his inventory, and started playing notes as Rosemarine hummed words to herself. “Bloodshed was my delight,” she sang softly, “Bloodshed my heart of ice… bloodshed was my heart of ash!”

A pity Rosemarine couldn’t access classes. She would make an excellent bard. As the conch shell melody echoed in the library hall, an arrow of light materialized above Basil’s head. It pointed west, slightly inclined towards the ceiling.

“Diagonal…” Basil whispered in shock, interrupting his song. “It’s diagonal.”

“Boss?” Bugsy asked in confusion.

“Kalki is in this building,” Basil explained, pointing at the arrow. “If he were far above us in the pyramid, this tracker would look almost entirely vertical. The fact that it does not mean that he’s in one of the floors above us.”

“From that angle, he must be on the seventh floor or close,” Vasi guessed. “What’s on this floor?”

“A panoramic restaurant according to the maps,” Basil answered. “But that was before the building became a dungeon. It could be a jail now for all that we know.”

“Guys, check this!” Plato shouted. He and Bugsy had stopped in front of an unremarkable stone wall. “This is the way upstairs!”

“You’ve found a secret passage?” Shellgirl asked with a frown. “I don’t see anything.”

“I thought merchants could smell falsehood from a mile away?” Plato taunted her back. “Look and learn.”

The cat raised a paw and touched the wall. His fingers phased through ocher bricks as if they didn’t exist.

“An illusion?” Vasi asked, whistling. “I didn’t even detect it. How did you find out, oh king of cats?”

“I’m immune to illusions,” Plato replied with pride. “I don’t see a wall, I see stairs.”

“Congratulations, Plato, you’re now our stairfinder general,” Basil mused. “Don’t abuse your privilege.”

“If you find any hidden chests, I’ll let you keep a ten percent finder fee,” Shellgirl added with a grin. She had finished storing all documents she could get her hands on, leaving the shelves empty. Since the number of stolen books surpassed the Guild Inventory storage capacity, Basil suspected that Neria removed them as soon as they appeared in her System folder.

“Fifty fifty,” Plato insisted, causing Shellgirl to choke in outrage. “What’s the point of having a monopoly if you can’t fix your prices?”

Basil rolled his eyes as his teammates argued over their ‘rates’ and swiftly walked through the illusory wall. A spiraling staircase of stone awaited him on the other side, illuminated by the faint light of torches.

The path led to the first floor and then the second, but the Bohens stopped for neither. They continued to ascend as far as the staircase allowed.

Plato, who had joined Basil at the team’s vanguard, suddenly froze in place. His reaction put the rest of the team on their guard. “You hear something?” Basil whispered, his halberd ready to strike on a moment’s notice.

“Unfortunately, I do,” Plato replied with an annoyed sigh. “I hear hippie music.”

Basil’s heart skipped a beat. He applied his ear to the nearest wall, closed his eyes, and focused. A flute melody echoed in the distance, barely audible. Without his high Skill stat, he probably wouldn’t have been able to notice it through the stone.

“A flute song,” Basil whispered. He had already heard this particular melody back in the Barthes. “Kalki’s song.”

It had taken them many months, but at long last the party had caught up to their old friend.

Unfortunately, the stairway stopped before they could reach the right floor. The steps of stone led the group to an archway of red bricks, with the number four written above it. “The fourth floor,” Basil said. “The secretariat.”

“I hear footsteps, Boss,” Bugsy warned, his antennae touching the ground in alarm. “Heavy steps. A big, big creature awaits us ahead.”

“They’ve rolled out the red carpet for us,” Vasi guessed with a smile. “Let’s not disappoint them. They’ve gone through the hassle of preparing a fine ambush.”

“I hope I can bite our next meal,” Rosemarine said. “When I evolve again, I will eat their souls.”

“My new Perk should help with that,” Basil said. “Death’s Banner.”

A shadowy aura materialized around him, before swiftly spreading to the rest of his party. Vasi followed through with the Hasten spell, Plato with his Mirage buff, and Shellgirl with Motivate. The enhancements empowered the team for battle.

The Bohens walked into the next room. Basil half-expected cramped offices and old desks, and instead walked straight into a strange art gallery. A massive exposition wing around fifteen meters wide and nine meters tall sprawled before them, its opaque, tempered glass walls covered in burning hieroglyphs; from its sheer size, this part of the building incorporated both the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors. Marble statues of Egyptian deities, from Horus to Anubis, stood in rows around a carpeted line. They watched the group in silence, still and sinister.

Plato sighed. “The statues are going to wake up and attack us, aren’t they?”

“At least the Venus of Milo is armless,” Basil mused. “Bugsy, Rosemarine, wreck them all.”

“On it, Boss!” Bugsy replied.

“Yes, Mister!” Rosemarine added with enthusiasm. The two monsters immediately started tossing the statues from their pedestals, with Shellgirl wincing at each act of destruction. Although the task caused a lot of ruckus, better safe than sorry.

None of the statues fought back.

Basil carefully walked inside the gallery and noticed a bright red light at the end of it. The gallery linked up with two others at a crossroads, which was probably the center of the three-sided UNESCO building. A stream of red particles surged from the ground and to the ceiling above, so intense that Basil could barely see anything past it. When he approached closely enough, he noticed the shadow of a black tower beyond the forcefield.

“The neurotower,” Basil guessed. “This is the forcefield protecting it.”

“That’s impossible, it’s not even the entire structure!” Shellgirl replied. “The server would have to be colossal!”

“Hypathia told us that this dungeon served as a special node in the server network,” Vasi pointed out. Her eyes darted to the ceiling. “The neurotower must reach all the way to the Pyramid.”

Was Kalki trying to sabotage it? Basil could hear his melody through the ceiling. He glanced at his allies, who had finished breaking all the statues without issues. “Bugsy, you said you heard footsteps?”

“I do, Boss.” Bugsy glanced at the ceiling. “It’s right above us and moving in our direction.”

“Then let’s check the room for a pass–” Basil couldn’t finish his sentence. His eyes had noticed movement near the forcefield.

The little white girl from before had appeared again. Her specter materialized in front of the forcefield, before flickering away within seconds. She was gone in a blink.

“Now this is getting creepy,” Plato commented. “Was that supposed to spook us?”

“I’m not sure,” Basil replied with a frown. “I don’t like–”

“Boss, above you–”

The ceiling collapsed before Bugsy could utter his warning.

Fueled by Vasi’s Hasten spell, Basil and his allies immediately dispersed across the exposition wing. Debris collapsed from a hole above their heads and a colossal beast fell through it. The monster landed in the middle of the Bohens in a cloud of dust and a cataclysmic noise, the floor trembling from the impact.

When Basil wiped away the dust in his eyes, a massive hound stood before him. A dog more than twelve meters long and four meters tall loomed over him, its three heads roaring as one. Its eyes burned with hellfire, its fangs were made of sharpened steel. The fur was black as a starless night and its howl echoed with the sound of cackling thunder.

Cerberus

Level 37 [Beast/Demon]

Faction: Metal Olympus (Psychopomps).

Here was the miniboss. “I knew it would be a dog,” Basil heard Plato complain. “I knew it.”

And the Cerberus didn’t come without reinforcements. Shadows rose from the broken statues in the form of humanoid monsters; creatures of solid darkness with jackals’ heads and khopesh weapons.

Minions of Anubis

Level 28 [Beast/Undead]

Faction: Metal Olympus (Psychopomps).

Basil roared and charged into the fray.

The room immediately devolved into chaos. Cerberus attempted to trample Bugsy and Rosemarine, who swiftly dodged. Plato leaped around the room, bouncing off walls and unleashed sharp blades of wind at the minions of Anubis. Vasi summoned her broom, grabbed Shellgirl, and carried her into the air to bombard Cerberus from above. The monstrous hound retaliated by breathing hellfire with his three mouths, forcing his enemies to run around the room or hide behind the debris.

Basil’s halberd clashed with a minion’s khopesh, shattering it and slaying the creature in one strike. Perhaps identifying him as the greatest danger, the other lesser monsters immediately swarmed him from all sides. Basil counted dozens of them, but it mattered not how many of them he slew. More popped up and prevented him from helping his allies.

“Out of my way!” Basil snarled as he wiped out three shadows in one strike. “I’ll slaughter each and every one of you!”

“This intrusion ends here.”

Basil looked up as a new challenger entered the fray.

A cloaked shadow descended from the hole in the ceiling and floated above Cerberus. The creature appeared as if made of darkness just like the minions of Anubis, but deeper, more sinister. Where the lesser monsters were tough as stone, the new entity was as vaporous and ethereal as blackened mist. Neither solid nor gaseous, this being’s substance shouldn’t exist in the world. Basil could tell so on a deep, instinctual level. It didn’t belong.

The living shadow took a shape between a bat and a humanoid. Basil recognized spikes on its shoulders, vague hints of a horned helm, and darkened wings. The most disturbing part of its body was also the most mundane: two bloodshot and all-too-human eyes opened where the head should be, looking down on Basil from above. They were not burning flames or otherworldly orbs, no; they were two normal eyes staring at Basil in a sea of otherworldly darkness.

“I am your host, the pharaoh of this pyramid.” The shadow declared with two voices: one deep as a festering grave, the other a faint whisper. “I am Pluto, Lord of the Netherworld.”

Basil introduced himself by summoning his laser pistol and shooting the shadow in the head. The light burst went through the creature and hit the shattered ceiling on the other side. Dungeon particles were already gathering to repair the damage done to the architecture.

“An illusion, Leroy?” Basil taunted him. “How brave of you!”

“I can see him!” Plato shouted a warning as he dodged a blast of fire from Cerberus. “He’s real!”

Then why couldn’t I hit him? Basil gritted his teeth as he figured it out. Only his halberd could hit incorporeal targets, and Pluto remained far behind its range.

“So my suspicions were correct.” The false god’s red eyes glanced at Rosemarine, Bugsy, and Plato. “You are the people who slew Hypathia and Tamura, aren’t you? Have you come to take my life too?”

“That depends.” Basil raised his halberd and pointed it at the floating shadow. He had to goad him into getting close and personal; “Where are the children you’ve abducted?”

“Safe from vicious men-at-arms such as yourself,” Pluto replied with venom. “This is the abode of the innocent and the peaceful dead. You do not belong here.”

“And you do?” Basil snarled as he parried a minion’s swing aiming for his head and cut it down in retaliation. “How many people have you oligarchs killed when you summoned the System? Your hands are drenched in blood! Your daughter would be ashamed of you!”

It saddened Basil to speak such cold words, but he meant them. Whatever loss Leroy had suffered, it didn’t justify all the horrors he had unleashed upon the world.

“What nonsense is this?” To Basil’s confusion, Pluto’s shadow showed no anger. If anything, the false god appeared confused. “Can’t you hear my Celia’s voice? Even now, she whispers to me. I can feel her love, a pure love that burns like the sun.”

He’s not like the others, Basil realized. Tamura and Hypathia breathed greed and pride, but they kept their heads on their shoulders. The glint of madness in Leroy’s eyes told another story. He’s deranged.

“Ah, Celia, I see it now. Yes, you are right.” The shadow observed Basil with frightening intensity. The fact his eyes were the only part of his ‘body’ moving only made Pluto all the more disturbing. “You are no common robber driven by greed. I see it in your heart. You have lost people too, and in your pain and anger you lash out at me. I should not condemn you so hastily, you poor misguided man.”

The shadow descended upon Basil as his minions dispersed. Basil raised his halberd, expecting a duel.

“Rejoice, Basil Bohen,” the false god whispered softly. “I forgive you.”

Sometimes, words could cut deeper than swords. Basil’s blood boiled in his veins. His vision turned red, and his halberd burned as if to echo his fury.

“You forgive me?” The sheer nerve of that man made Basil want to puke. “You? Forgiving me? For what, not killing you earlier?”

“I forgive your violence against me, and your misspent life of sin. I absolve you. I welcome you into a pure, better world.” Pluto’s shadowy wings expanded, their darkness enveloping Basil from all sides. “Where you shall suffer no more! Sin: Sloth!”

Realizing the danger, Basil immediately fled. But even his hastened legs couldn’t outrun the gathering shadows. They spread to the ground under his feet, and he tripped on an obstacle he couldn’t see. Basil snarled and hacked at the darkness with his halberd. Pluto hissed in response, but the sea of darkness only expanded further.

“Basil!” Vasi shouted. She turned her broom to rescue her boyfriend, with Shellgirl firing ice pearls at Pluto. The projectiles vanished in the dark as if absorbed by it.

“I’m coming!” Plato dashed at his best friend faster than the wind. He jumped into the darkness, swiping at Pluto’s encroaching darkness. “Don’t you dare touch him!”

It was for naught. Plato vanished in the shadows, and Pluto’s darkness soon enveloped Basil as well. The false god’s eyes closed until the blackness remained.

Man and cat were dragged into the night, and then they were gone.