Museum Core Chapter 131: And the Void Stares Back

“Void Beast!” Elias growled, in a way that left Thomas unsure whether it was an identification of the problem or a curse. Probably both. Actually, now that he thought about it, definitely both.

These were the things that had given the former fairy’s former home its status as a deathworld. Beings from the space between worlds that had been plentiful on that particular planet, acting as both fuel for the ascension of its inhabitants … and as an existential threat that killed millions in a good year. In a bad one … it didn’t bear thinking about.

Thomas could already feel the world around him begin to warp, his ability to spawn monsters or modify his dungeon growing weaker by the second, even with the monster not even having come out of the rift.

Mana tore out of his core as he spent it as though it was going out of style, which was, in a way, exactly what was happening. Use it or lose it, that was the name of the game.

But even as he poured out his mana to summon several Energetic Prisms and two of the canaries, all control over his inherent energies was sealed away, beyond his reach until he killed that thing … or it killed him.

There was one more thing he had to do, though. Get the handful of delvers that were still in the dungeon not just out of here, but also everyone up above, because shit was actively hitting the fan, and he needed his creatures for self-defense; he literally could not spare even a single one.

“Everybody out!” he yelled through every single living megaphone he had in his dungeon, then added, “one of Alaxia’s relics is exploding!”

The void beast was almost certainly here because he’d overdone it with the vortex controller, but he felt more than comfortable with blaming the long-dead asshole dragon for what was happening.

Thankfully, the reaction of the delvers was both immediate and, surprisingly, the right one.

People ran, some faster than others, though there were quite a few who stayed behind to make sure everyone else had left before legging it themselves.

But he was no longer paying attention to what was happening up above, not really, only his status as a dungeon letting him vaguely keep track of the surface.

The rift that had formed at the heart of the vortex manipulator was expanding now, twisting and shifting as it bulged in places, the spatial warp carving apart magical metal as though it were less durable than even tissue paper.

Thomas continued to look, to glare at it, reading himself to react to whatever was going to come out of that … yet when it happened, it came and went so quickly that he didn’t even realize what had occurred until a couple of seconds afterwards.

One moment, the vortex controller was sitting there, falling apart but still there.

The next, its fragments were embedded all over the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and in the center of the room was sitting the void beast.

It was … well, Thomas could say it existed, but that was just about all he was sure of.

A central body the size of a long-haul truck which seemed to fold in on itself while simultaneously bulging out in every way possible, countless limbs of which he could only identify maybe one in ten by name seeming to slash out into reality itself, yet somehow also invisibly tucked away within its core all the while perfectly perceviable to him … and the mouths, all those mouths … the entire beast looked as dark as a starless night, yet the inside of those mouths was far, far darker, somehow going well beyond even the absolute blackness found only in the depths of space or at the bottom of the ocean.

Then it screeched, a sound that Thomas could feel in his very soul while the monster’s surroundings shattered, the marble of the hideaway that used to be Alaxia’s detonating as though a bomb had been set off inside the material itself, and as the end that he assumed to be the “front” was raised up and a beam of … something flashed out, slicing up through the ceiling.

And for a couple of seconds, the visual of a beam of energy carving up the wall and towards the ceiling seemed to have been all that happened. Yet that was when everything to the left of the beam seemed to get pulled up, while everything on its right was yanked down.

The effect faded quickly with increased distance from the “faultline,” vanishing entirely after a couple of meters, yet the shift was done with such impossible force that everything in the center, the place where both forces tore across and alongside each other, melted into lava.

Sure, the downward-facing movement had only been by a couple of meters, enough to mess up the room a bit and make molten stone and earth dribble down, but the real chaos had happened up above, where countless tons of dirt and rock, some “normal,” some glowing cherry-red, some outright melted into lava, geysered out into the jungle that London had become.

It looked like the world’s largest bunker-buster had gone off, which might not even be too far from the truth, considering what that kind of attack might be used for.

Granted, that particular attack had only cut through a single layer of dungeon stone due to where it had been aimed … but that had still certainly been an entrance.

“How many powers do you think it has?” Thomas asked Elias.

“They’re not fixed, they endlessly change, it’s a question of how many powers they can have at a time.”

Well, that stunk.

“When this is done, you’re telling me everything,” Thomas declared as he bent his mind towards setting up his defenses, which were barely present. He’d actually subsumed much of the area around him within his influence, but he hadn’t done too much to guard it, since he’d expected all threats to be coming from the main entrance of the museum, or from above the hideaway, where he’d also placed significant defenses.

What he hadn’t done was plant sufficient defenses between him and the vortex controller because there wasn’t supposed to be any threat coming from there. All he had were three places where the corridor bulged out to form huge caverns he’d used as storage for stuff he’d pre-manifested to save on mana at the time when they were needed.

“Does it adapt?” Thomas asked as he began to funnel his creatures wherever they fit.

“Somewhat,” Elias said, moving to plant himself at the exit. “They don’t have control over what powers they get, but which ones they keep.”

“It’s a matter of ‘given enough time’ then,” Thomas observed while shifting around things to reorganize his minions. “Anything else I should know?”

He knew his telepathic voice was wavering despite all attempts to prevent that. Thankfully, Elias chose to look past that.

“Too much,” he growled. “Just … expect things to change at the drop of a hat, and don’t stop hitting it until it disintegrates into nothing. Tear it to pieces! If there’s a body left, it isn’t dead.”

Shit.

They absolutely should have had this conversation months ago, hell, they should have had it the day they stopped sniping at each other over the whole “no human can ever become a dungeon core” issue, and certainly the instant they’d started messing around with the vortex manipulator, but neither of them had ever considered that this might become an issue. It had seemed like far too much of an “old state of the world” issue … well, that had aged well.

Deep inside the hideaway a deposed draconic empress had constructed for herself, the void beast began to move, limbs that he could tell were there without being able to see them, entirely insubstantial yet perfectly capable of acting as a method of locomotion, tearing across the floor like a freight train, only suddenly be running alongside the ceiling instead, as though gravity were merely a suggestion.

In an instant, the entire corridor was flooded with thick, choking dust, and it wasn’t the monster’s fault.

No, that was courtesy of the two Canary Overseers he’d managed to spawn in, and pushed forward as far as possible, into the first room, from where they had easy access to the place where the void beast still was.

At the same time, one of the fer-de-lance snakes he’d given geokinesis closed up the corridor until all there was left was an exit the size of a dinner plate, through which one of the canaries flew, only to turn around in an instant and open a dimensional tunnel, perfectly sealing off the way forward, with the other end appearing right behind the onrushing void beast.

Normally, sealing off access to his core would have gone seriously badly, as in “don’t or die,” but fortunately, Thomas could do just about anything to this particular corridor since he had the main entrance up top.

Unfortunately, his attempts to take full advantage of this fact had fizzled out due to the interference of the beast in question.

But he could still block the path in other ways, albeit ones not as durable as dungeon walls.

And then the canary created a blob of magma, automatically igniting and detonating the vast clouds of dust all around, focused and guided by the tunnel into an incredibly powerful sledgehammer of fire and force.

Or, at the very least, that was what was racing back down the corridor at the void beast. The other was being guided by gently sloping stone, concentrated down into a singular point, right where, for that very brief instant, existed a portal. A portal whose other end was right behind the void beast’s rear end, the full power of the explosion coming in from the front also hammering into its back, but concentrated into a surface area not even a tenth the size of the corridor.

Even Thomas’ nigh omniscient dungeon sight went blurry for a brief instant, the monster vanishing in a burst of fire, flame, and flailing limbs. A quick glance also proved that the earthen wall was currently crumbling … yeah, redirecting explosions by granting an easier path forward was easier than you might think, but there’d still been a massive mismatch between the power of the explosion and the durability of the “guiderails.”

And by the time he’d come to that conclusion, he could also see what had become of the void beast.

It was … it was fine. A little smaller, perhaps, but judging by the fact that the small amount of dark matter not directly part of its body was presently melting away into nothingness, anything that had been blown off would have likely been dissolved almost entirely, and he had no idea how much of it he’d actually managed to rip off.

Yet for all that, it was clearly still alive, it somehow managed to look even more pissed, furiously glaring straight ahead, at … at him, and then it began to charge once more, hitting the remains of the earth wall like a freight train and blasting straight through.

Right into a room utterly teeming with Thomas critters, a good ninety percent of all his smaller creatures, concentrated into a single overwhelming strike for one specific reason. To force it to adapt in the way that he wanted, in preparation for the next fight.

A limb like that of a praying mantis suddenly manifested fully before the void beast, bladed appendage slashing through the space before it in a way that was strangely reminiscent of its very first attack, yet infinitely stranger.

Energy raced out in a single slash, leaving behind an infinitely thin cut so precise any object it passed through would simply slurp back together behind, a split so tiny the target would never even know it had been cut, the most fundamental attractive forces of the universe serving to hold things together the very instant things stopped actively being forced apart … except things did not stop there.

Because there was a second component to that particular trick, the shift, a tiny one that misalligned things just barely enough that things could not fix themselves.

The things the edge of energy passed through simply fell apart, a neat little line of blood trickling out of the bodies of dozens of creatures before they burst apart.

Thomas had seen a lot of extremely gross things since becoming a dungeon core, but something about that had been disturbing on a fundamental level.

Though there was a small silver lining: the cut may have extended into the walls of the dungeon, but they’d withstood and kept out the sheering force, effectively nullifying the attack in its entirety.

A raptor leaped in to take a bite of the limb that had unleashed the attack, and retreated with a mouth full of black goop that was already disslving into nothingness, only for it to be reduced to paste by a single, casual, strike from the anchor beast, executed by a limb that looked like a tentacle, one that was so thick it looked more like an oil pipeline than anything belonging to a living being, which only served to give Thomas’ monsters an even bigger target, which immediately proceeded to swarm it.

And then be torn apart in a far more immediate and graphic manner than their predecessors, as a hexagonal grid of ethereal blades swept out along the tentacle. Yeah, the beast lost some more mass, but still … Thomas couldn’t call that a victory.

This was the point where anything close to it was crushed into the ground, while the dungeon monsters further back were merely sent stumbling.

A gravity field too … once again, Thomas couldn’t really celebrate, considering how many of his creatures had just died, but trying to use anti-swarm tactics and powers against what was waiting in the next room wouldn’t go well for it.

And then, finally, an ethereal shield snapped up to block the last few attacks that hit the monster.

Actually, it was more of a bouncy field of sorts that launched back things based on … it threw back anything that was light enough, based on what Thomas could see, rather than the actual power of the attack.

Once again, perfect for dealing with the small fry filling the entire room, but not the next one. And there was even an extra trick to be applied here … namely, he still had one canary flying around, which he promptly ordered to dive-bomb the void beast.

The shield caught it and began to push it back, the effect most likely being yet another kind of gravity effect, now that he was paying attention to it … but the glob of conjured lava was more than heavy enough to fall through and land on the Void Beast’s back with a loud sizzle that made even Thomas flinch.

But the canary itself was so tiny, so light, that it was hurled back as though fired out of a cannon, triggering its Dimensional Tunnel to relocate itself to the front of its opponent, yet another glob of lava “in hand,” which promptly slammed into the beast’s face with all the momentum its opponent’s own shield had imparted.

Once again, when the canary itself hit the shield, it was flung away and came in from yet another angle, with an even bigger chunk of molten rock that it had been conjuring even before it had teleported.

An edge of energy swept wide, carving futilely across the walls of the dungeon and missing the canary by a country mile, which launched yet another chunk of lava at the void beast, yet when it was bounced back the next time, the wished-for portal never revealed itself.

A spatial lock. Shit! That was just about the one power he didn’t want it to have.

Perhaps he’d overdone it a little … but looking at the furious void beast, the still-burning chunks of magma stuck in its body, and the black sludge boiling away on the ground, part of him still felt it had been worth it. He just had to convince this thing that keeping hold of that particular power wasn’t worth it.

In the distance, a series of massive explosions rang out, causing the entire dungeon to shake. Thomas grinned. It was coming. The champion that, under any even remotely normal circumstances, would not have been usable inside his dungeon. And it still wasn’t, technically.

But the Belfast’s newest form, the centipede-like “Landfast,” was more than capable of blasting open the channel the void beast had blown to the point where it could crawl down, and could then march down until its guns could be aligned with the hole, but with the straight shot from there along the corridor, onto the monster’s rear end, it could empty its guns.

Of course, the void beast spun around, glaring back the way it had come, then suddenly “slid” out of the ship’s firing arc, not really seeming to move yet changing location all the same in a way that made Thomas’ head hurt.

And then, almost lazily, it tried to smash the canary that was currently flashing around it at its top speed, aka multiple times the speed of sound. And missed. And again. And missed some more.

Thomas told the bird to keep its distance, then.

If the void beast was willing to waste its time chasing the bird, he was happy to let it.

If it didn’t, that was one more B-Rank monster he’d still have available.

The void beast did try to kill his bird for maybe ten seconds before letting it go, apparently deciding that a full power spread solidly focused around killing one very small, very mobile target.

Thomas began having the murder-tweety trigger its Dimensional Tunnel as often as it could, just to check if the spatial lock was still there.

And, all the while, the warship that wasn’t quite a warship anymore kept firing.

Then the next shell from the Belfast reached the rear of the beast, vanished, and reappeared in front of it, flying all the way down the corridor until it hit the bend at the far end of the path between the hideaway and the dungeon, barely a hundred meters from Thomas’ core room.

Way too close.

But, on the plus side, that was a power with a niche application that it was now stuck with until it could swap it out. The spatial lock still affected Thomas’ creatures, though

Thomas told his living ship to stick to its secondaries at that, forcing his opponent to keep blocking while also minimizing the danger to himself.

The void beast blundered into the next room, mouths roaring, only to be greeted by a hail of energy beams from all his Energetic Prisms, searing off limbs that were sufficiently manifested, and plunging straight through to vaporize parts of the main body when the targeted ones were too ethereal.

A good ten percent of its body simply vanished, blown apart so violently, into such tiny pieces, that the goop faded near-instantly.

Then the next salvo hit, though the void beast managed to refract that energy, seemingly wrapping itself in a cage of light that scorched off a few limbs but left the main body alone, only for a massive shockwave to wash out, shattering the living lenses like the glass they were made from.

The void beast let out a screetching, discordant sound that still somehow managed to convey the sense of it having been a satisfied huff. Apparently, it had decided that all the smoke filling the room was courtesy of the white hot beings of glass scattered around the place, wreathed in flame and firing energy beams.

It had been wrong about that. Oh so wrong.

Cheshire erupted from the smoke generated by her newest power like an amber-colored missile, flashing past and tearing out half a dozen limbs simply by biting down on them and janking, while her claws ripped open the void beast’s flank, scattering black ichor everywhere.

The monster spun, carving another line in reality and missing by several meters. Chances were it’d adapt in some way, likely a perception ability of some stripe, but any kind of adaptation would mean dropping a different power. Or filling up another slot.

But even so, the smoke wasn’t just generated matter, but actively designed to screw with enemy vision and hide the creature within. Bypassing it wouldn’t be easy.

Cheshire flashed past again, and this time, countless limbs reached out for her, trying to rip her apart, but before they could reach her, a bolt of lightning ripped through them, then spun around in the form of a tiger-human hybrid as Jack made his entrance.

The weretiger was wrapped head to toe in armor made from dragonscale, with intricate gauntlets from B-Rank steel covering his paws, ending in massive claws that slid over the champion’s own, wrapping them in a layer of metal protection and magic, as well as granting him quite a few powers, including the ability to project the edges of his claws outwards.

Dozens of limbs were carved off and vanished into nothingness, but when more appeared to attack the impudent dungeon monster, Cheshire flashed past yet again, distracting the void beast for the barest of instants, which was nevertheless enough time for Jack to turn back into a bolt of lightning and escape along a path that conviniently obliterated quite a few of the less durable limbs.

And then the next strike tore down its other side, but when the void beast tried to retaliate, Dexter’s massive fist slammed into its side like a wrecking ball, actually launching it across the room.

Normally, Cheshire was the only creature capable of operating in her smoke screen, but Thomas was cheating shamelessly. Well, not “cheating,” exactly, but using his localized semi-omniscience let him guide his three champions, despite only one of them actually being able to see.

There was actually an extra advantage that wasn’t immediately obvious. Dexter’s limited accuracy meant that he wasn’t nearly as accurate as he could have been, which was building up his Bloodlust power, which would massively increase the power of the next blow that hit cleanly.

When Jack attacked again, the intruder managed to have a tangle of limbs in just the right, or wrong, as it were, place, ready to impale and crush him, but in response, he simply transformed into his regular tiger form. Not only was he naturally a lot quicker on all fours, but he was also covered in leather armor enchanted to do precisely two things: make him tough, and make him fast. Barely a handful of limbs even managed to touch him, but those failed to even leave a scratch … apparently, the beast had finally given up its “void slash” ability.

Things went on like that for a good forty seconds.

Of course, the void beast began to respond, sliding itself out of the way of some attacks, and responding to others in a way that clearly proved that it was now able to see, yet the canary now managed to open its first portal since the beast had entered the second room.

Time to bring this home.

Thomas had Cheshire banish her smoke while Jack came to a stop in the far corner and transformed into his human form for the first time in the entire fight.

While his hybrid form had been designed for savage power and lethality, and his animal form for raw speed and survivability, human Jack was all about magic, namely the cryokinesis of his namesake, wrapped in the robes of a mage that boosted his cold magic to the utmost, and a massive staff of solid diamond, wrapped in steel and enchanted to be able focus any ice channeled through it down to an impossibly fine point.

There was a second power in play as well, however. Fractal Strikes, which let him attack through crystals, which the Energetic Prisms had turned into when they’d died.

Now, being dungeon creatures, their bodies should have vanished. They hadn’t, because upon their death, they’d dropped their look, which was several massive chunks of glass that had shattered upon hitting the ground.

A human delver might have smelled a rat at that, but the trap wouldn’t have been obvious even to them, as they’d be lacking sufficient knowledge on Jack’s abilities.

But the Void Beast hadn’t even paid attention to that.

All it was doing was generating a slowing field, attempting to lock down Cheshire, while focusing on growing bigger and stranger limbs, nets of knotted muscle fiber, and spiked flails of flesh and bone …

“Fuck yes!” Thomas yelled as he triggered the attack he’d been setting up the entire time.

While Jack’s entire form was wrapped in a miniature blizzard, blades of ice hurled into the glass shards that surrounded him to emerge beneath the void beast like an inverse guillotine, Dexter threw a simple punch.

A simple, straight, punch that flashed through a tear in the fabric of reality as he triggered his own Dimensional Tunnel simultaneously with discharging every single stack Bloodlust had built up to increase his offensive power to the utmost, with the attack coming out straight at the monster’s back, right above the interlocked blades of ice that were coming up to meet it.

In the end, it wound up working like an actual guillotine. Blades cutting from below, an inexorable weight pressing down from above, compressing the monster and forcing it into the cutting edges underneath.

Yet it did not bisect the void beast, not completely, not until Cheshire flashed past once more, claws tearing the final strip of “flesh” keeping it together as though it were tissue paper.

And the entire monster went limp.

Thomas immediately yelled at his champions to dive for cover, Elias’ warning about it still being a threat as long as any part of it remained ringing in his ears. Just in time.

Jack threw up a massive wall of ice between him and the invader, then transformed into his well-protected tiger form, and Cheshire flashed through the intervening distance and hid with him, but Dexter was still at the entrance and far, far slower. Even as he opened a dimensional tunnel to get the hell out of the way, the smaller “half” of the void beast ballooned like a massive boil on the fabric of reality and washed out in a wave of utter darkness.

Everything it touched corroded and disintegrated, the sacrifice of the monster’s own flesh somehow managing to slowly destroy even dungeon-made stone, wiping Dexter from existence and barely being slowed by Jack’s ice wall, obliterating the weretiger a handful of seconds later. But it had been enough for Cheshire to survive, though the void beast didn’t seem to be paying attention to what was left of the room, instead choosing to make its way into the next room.

That was when Elias started to drag the tip of his spear across the wall of the core room, leaving behind one cut after another. Cuts that began to bleed.

“What?” was the only question that Thomas could even think to ask.

“I need blood to fuel my attacks, and now that I have my B-Rank power again, I can get it,” Elias said, without pausing or even slowing his actions.

Thomas realized that some of his mana was draining from his core to fuel that, but it wasn’t like he’d been able to use it for any other purpose.

He instead turned his attention on the last room, which held Jan, every larger creature he’d managed to get down here, and a whole lot of crates waiting to be filled with material.

Now, he couldn’t grant Jan any extra toys to play with since his core itself was blocked, thereby rendering the fact that he could directly spawn stuff in the monkey’s pockets a moot point, but he always kept his ambassador well stocked.

Thomas glared at the void beast.

Die.

Sadly, his looks couldn’t kill, so he’d have to rely on his creatures to do the job.

Another swarm attacked, but this one was much more like a coordinated army than the initial zerg rush.

A t-rex biting down on limbs and yanking, a scolosaurus hammering its tail club into the void beast’s body to push it the other way and inflict even more damage …

Camarasuruses blundered in the path of attacks, physically shouldering aside the void beast despite being barely C-Rank, elephants acting as living shields, and a above it all stood Jan, hanging from a ceiling light, telekinetically hurling summoning tokens into the main body of the monster like artillery shells, where they’d immediately expand into whatever creatures they were meant to call into reality, tearing the flesh around them to bits in the process and then ripping even more wounds open as they fought and died.

Piece by piece was torn off the void beast while it lashed out with countless separate powers, switching seemingly at the drop of a hat, both incredibly powerful single-target attacks hitting home like sledgehammers, and similarly overcharged defenses stopped even charging t-rexes cold.

Yet it was shrinking rapidly, its core “torso” rapidly becoming a smaller part of its overall volume than the tangle of writhing limbs and it pulled itself up into a more humanoid form, a blob of darkness the size of an oil drum rising above a series of spiderlegs and tentacles while a series of blades and clawed limbs began to bristle off its main body.

And the final tyrannosaurus fell to that form, skull shattered from the inside, from where a limb had punched in through an eyesocket and expanded inside.

But since both he and Thomas were entirely certain that the monster’s abilities were entirely bent towards fighting titans, Elias charged in, while Cheshire and the last canary finally followed from the last room.

***

The last almost two years had been rewarding in their own right, but also beyond confusing. Yet, dangerous as it was, the fact that there was a void beast now present was … oddly rewarding, actually.

No, rewarding would be killing the damn thing; fighting it was merely, strange as it sounded, comfortably familiar.

Of course, he was normally fighting alongside human companions, rather than a gigantic, long-extinct, tiger and a murderously powerful pet bird, but somehow, that barely entered the equation.

The Spear of Longinus lay heavily in his right hand while he raised his left towards the void beast, all the blood he’d literally gotten from the stone of the dungeon sweeping towards it like a tidal wave.

All save for the small amount needed to fuel his own boosting ability as he overcharged his body.

And then he forged bloody blades out of what was left and began hammering them home between the limbs, trying to intercept them, and even as the monster tried to focus on and block him, Cheshire flashed past, claws laying open its back, more goop splattering across the ground and immediately boiling away.

Of course, then the void beast tried to go after the tiger, only for a massive chunk of molten rock to smash into it from above, crushing it into the ground in a sizzling pile.

Unfortunately, it had kept one of its net-arms, though, and snatched the canary out of the air at that point and crushed it.

But that still created a very expanded limb that provided the perfect target for Cheshire, the saber-tooth tiger flashing away with the whole thing in her jaws.

Somehow, the monster decided that the best thing to do was to focus on Elias now, whirling around and charging.

And what did he do?

He flung himself straight at the monster, spear raised, while a massive insectile limb that looked like a spear meant to slay dragons was raised to meet him and launched forward … he let it strike.

Elias hissed in pain as the chitin spike tore through him, but the void beast had made the mistake its kind always did. They realized that beings of “normal” reality couldn’t reshape their bodies like they could; they were actually very attached to every part of themselves and entirely incapable of conceptualizing why someone might want to deliberately take damage. Not in time to react to any kind of sufficiently “suicidal” attack, even though the usual self-sacrifice strikes were typically conducted by people capable of surviving the experience.

But this particular creature had made one further mistake. It had forgotten to add the crossguard to the boarspear, so to speak.

The claw that had skewered him had been so sharp that it had punched clean through his torso with barely any resistance and kept going, while his momentum carried him along it, right at the beast’s torso, from a direction where absolutely no defenses had been built, and ram his spear straight into the monster’s torso, spending every last bit of mana to use Crimson Link, massively boosting the force of the strike based on every single time he’d already hit his enemy, Bloody Conversion triggering to draw blood from whatever he struck, irrespective of whether or not the target could actually bleed, crimson blood forming within the anchor beast and instantly hardening, forming into blades that blossomed into a flower of swords that rent the beast apart from the inside out.

And then the monster dissolved, vanishing like water on a hot stone, dropping him into the weapons he’d conjured. Though he immediately liquefied them and fell into a pool of its lifeblood instead and immediately absorbed it, applying Sanguine Overclock to his regeneration rather than strength to close his wounds in seconds, including the whole through his torso.

Elias leaned back with a happy sigh. Done.

***

“Wait, where did it go?” Thomas asked, feeling himself panic at the thought that the monster had somehow teleported away. He certainly hadn’t gotten the pattern or anything like that from its body.

“It’s dead,” Elias responded, a massive grin stretching across his face.

“But I didn’t get the pattern,” Thomas insisted.

“They’re glitches in reality, they’re endlessly changing in any and all ways something could possibly change. Of course you can’t get the pattern,” Elias said.

“Yeah, that tracks …”

Thomas groaned internally and did the closest thing to leaning back that he could achieve as a dungeon core, which involved releasing all his grasp on his mana and simply letting himself fall back into his core, immersing himself amidst the sea of his absorbed materials, not looking at anything in particular, simply staring up at the caleidoscope of pretty patterns.

He’d stay like this for however long the world would let him …

*******************************************************************************One more chapter. 

Also, minor retcon: Jack's power to project attacks via crystals isn't limited just to ice, it's ability to work with regular crystals just got severely curtailed due to Thomas shifting the power to work with ice.