The Dungeon Shakes

The dungeon piercing wail abruptly stopped not long after it started, and Kantan could feel Veri's presence in his mind become almost completely frozen. He had never seen her react like this, so it made him stop in place as he was heading to the doorway with Lyra.

"Whats going on, why are we stopping? I thought we needed to get moving." Lyra was confused, as they were not too far away from the next room and didn't want to wait for the dungeon to send something to them.

Kantan took a moment to respond as a series of thoughts were exchanged rapidly between him and Veri. "Talk to me, what was that roar, and why are you freaking out?" If there was something scary enough to make an emerald tier dungeon core afraid, than he wanted to know about it. He knew there was no real chance of escape if something at that level wanted him dead, but if he could go under the radar and escape with Lyra than that would be the best choice.

Veri didn't respond right away, and he could tell various thoughts were running through her mind. "That shouldn't be possible. There is no way someone killed it." She seemed to be in disbelief, which let him know that she understood what that thing was.

"Come on Veri, if were in danger we need to know about it." Kantan was getting a bit frustrated, but he didn't want to make any moves until he knew what was going on.

She finally came back to reality, and his connection was flooded with information. "When I ascended to emerald rank I created a new floor to the dungeon like I normally would. I wanted this floor to be special, so I made it one big boss fight. In fact that one floor only has one room, and it takes up over half of the space I had claimed as a dungeon underneath the mountain. I spent all of the normal resources that I would on traps and smaller enemies on the boss alone. It was supposed to be a culmination of all of my efforts, the crowning achievement if you will."

Kantan was trying to process everything, but she was talking too quickly for him to really think about anything.

She continued without pause, not even needing to take a breath given she didn't need to breath at all. "It was the most powerful creature I had created, something comparable to the ruby rank. Part of the reason that I was able to transplant myself into your body was because I had been running tests and experiments on creating demon's with cores." Here she seemed to pause, giving him a moment to let it all sink in.

Kantan was shocked left and right at her explanation, but he knew it wasn't the focus of why she had suddenly freaked out. Deciding to think about the ramification later, he sent a mental cue for her to continue. "I was only successful in the past dozen years or so, but even then it wasn't like I had solved the puzzle. I had managed to install a storage gem and some rudimentary pathways for it to store and manipulate chi. It allowed it to attune to a different element than what it was created with. In this case, it was fire, while its body have been evolved through stone. While this was wonderful, it also made the creature incredibly powerful. The few tests I ran show that it could easily kill other creatures at the ruby rank, putting it on at a near emerald rank existence."

Kantan finally responded, wondering why she was bringing it up. "Okay, so that roar was from an incredibly dangerous demon. It sounds like you made it almost a decade ago, so it shouldn't have been a problem now, right?"

Veri gave a mental shake of her head, confirming that something else was the issue surrounding it. "It is not that the creature did anything specifically that caught me off guard. Its that it was killed, and the control room contacted me that someone had cleared the dungeon. Given my capabilities with artifact and rune crafting, it isn't hard to transmit data to and from the dungeon to my central core. The problem is that I can't use enough energy to access my full capabilities right now. I limited the dungeon's data flow to only essential operations like dangerous threats or overwhelmingly good opportunities."

Her words sunk in, and it was then that the magnitude of the situation clicked in his head. "Someone managed to kill a peak ruby demon? No-one in the clan is anywhere near strong enough for that. Even my grandfather is only a peak sapphire rank warrior, he couldn't even survive the creatures pressure."

Veri was quick to tag on more of her thoughts, "I don't have much information on who it was, but the person who killed the last boss made a comment right before they killed the boss." It was here that she hesitated the most, as if she didn't want to say it.

Kantan wouldn't put up with her silence though, as his curiosity and cautiousness wouldn't let the conversation end on a cliffhanger like that. "Well, what did they say?"

Veri remained hesitant, and Kantan could tell that she was intentionally hiding something. She eventually spoke though, and her answer made him even more confused. "Someone from outside the dungeon killed the demon, and as he did so, he said this." She repeated Alistar's quote where he declared his name, which left Kantan with a deep frown.

"Demon lord? Those are supposed to be fairy tails that the elders tell us about to make us behave. Even if they did exist, they were supposedly slain countless years ago." The various stories about demon lords flashed through his mind.

Kids were all warned to behave or they would be taken by the demon lords. They were boogymen that had almost brought the world to ruin through unparalleled power. It took all of humanity to fight them back, and in the end they were supposedly locked away somewhere. The parents and elders who used them as a threat would often say "If you don't act like a good boy, the demon lords will seek you out and take you away." It was always left at that though, and there was no real explanation on why they were so dangerous. Just that they were evil.

"Myth or not, a self proclaimed demon lord just destroyed the most powerful demon I have ever created. Not only that, they did it from extremely far away and in less than a minute. Even if I recalled all the power in the dungeon and tried to fight that, I am pretty sure I would still lose."

Kantan had a hard time quantifying the amount of power that the demon lord was able to use. Without having felt it, it would be like trying to picture all of the money in the world when one had only ever seen a few coins. Deciding that there wasn't much he could do about it, Kantan simply asked, "Well what does this mean for us? If they wanted you dead, it seems like you would be dead."

Veri seemed to agree, "I think your right. The dungeon has gone into autmatic lockdown mode due to the potential threat. Any door you walk through will teleport you to the entrance, like a body trying to expel contaminants or disease. I can't control that much from here, all I can do is change where the door in front of us will lead."

Kantan didn't dislike the change of plan though, as it would make it easier on him. If he didn't have to fight the guardian, than both he and Lyra were much safer. Lyra could leave the dungeon and seek out his grandfather while he remained in the dungeon to wait for help. It was then that he remembered his absent mindedness of Lyra's presence.

Quickly he looked over at her worried expression and came to a conclusion. "The dungeon is shutting down. Something big happened on the later floors and the dungeon feels threatened, so its throwing everyone out. I can stay here for obvious reasons, but you need to leave with the others."

Lyra seemed to want to know more, but Kantan was ahead of her. "There is too much to go over right away, but you can't afford to stay here too long. If the rest of the trial takers and divers are forced out and you don't return in a similar amount of time, things will appear off. Just claim that you were fighting the guardian, and just before you could finish the fight the dungeon teleported you out. From there, you need to find my grandfather and tell him what happened to me. He'll think of something to help me out."

"Are you going to be okay in here? If something dangerous happened, it might be better to come out with me. Maybe we can convince the clan not to do anything too you, especially with your grandfather to help." She didn't want to leave Kantan in the dungeon, especially if something big had happened.

Kantan shook his head in response though, "The Astaire clan are known as demon hunters, there is no way they would harbor a demon like me. If anything they would probably try to cut me open and study me, and the kingdom would back them up. Even my grandfather couldn't stop the kingdom."

Veri interrupted them, her words making Kantan frown more. "The dungeon won't stay open for long. Anyone who is still in here after that door goes away will be killed one way or another. We will be fine because you have me, but we can't protect her from the full might of the dungeon."

Kantan gave a mental thanks to her warning before he redirected his attention onto Lyra. "Time's up, dungeon is about to purge everything. I'll be fine since I have the dungeon core in me, but I can't protect you with my current strength." With that, he bent over and grabbed the back of her legs and carried her over to the door way before setting her down. "Everything will be fine, just make sure to find my grandfather."

With that he placed his hand on the door and pushed Lyra through.