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Chapter 180: Heartbeat

The base of the tower was made of grooved black stone. Cracks ran throughout its base and spiderwebbed up along toward its top. Arwin ran his hands over the stone, searching for a circular hole where he could put Jessen’s badge with one hand while he pulled the badge in question out of his bag with the other.

“Look for somewhere I can put this. It’s probobably a circle somewhere in the stone,” Arwin said, holding the badge up so the others could see it. “It would be really embarrassing if this isn’t actually a key and we did all this for nothing.”

“Not nothing. We saved some people,” Reya said. “And you also got a giant lizard.”

“Good point,” Arwin allowed. He held his breath and slowly crouched, scanning the ground to see if the hole was somewhere near his shins. After finding nothing, Arwin rose again and shook his head. “I’d still like to get in, though.”

Shadows slithered along the wall at his side, rising up from beneath Lillia to roll over the surface of the stone around her like a brush. The others searched as well, wrapping around the base of the tower in their search.

There was the mildly concerning possibility that the key wasn’t actually at the base of the tower, but Arwin decided to consider that after they’d actually finished looking around. He didn’t much fancy the idea of having to climb the sheer walls of the tower to find an entrance.

“Are you sure the keyhole is going to be circular?” Olive asked, poking at the tower wall with a finger. “This kind of looks a bit out of place.”

Arwin walked over to stand beside her. Olive had found a short crack in the wall that ran in a perfectly horizontal line. It was the width of his palm and just a few hairs short of chest height.

He looked at the badge in his hand, then turned it so that it was parallel with the line and held it up. The two aligned perfectly. Arwin cleared his throat. “Olive found it. I didn’t consider that you’d have to slide it in like a coin instead of pressing it against the stone.”

Everyone gathered around the keyhole.

“Are we ready to go in?” Rodrick asked. “We don’t know how deep the dungeon is. Could be more monsters up ahead.”

“Very well might be. I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if Jessen had a trap on whatever it was he’s got — or it could just be another one of the monsters he had mind controlled,” Arwin said through a huff. His magical energy was still pretty low. If they’d been alone in the dungeon, he wouldn’t have hesitated to order a rest.

Unfortunately, they weren’t. Killing two huge overloading monsters had definitely taken some power away from the dungeon, but the Dungeon Break wasn’t going to be that far off — and when the Ardent guildmembers showed back up with their reinforcements, making it into the tower would be impossible.

“I’m doing fine on magical energy,” Lillia said. “As is Olive, I’d say.”

Olive nodded and put her hand on the hilt of her sword. “Yeah. I’m ready for any fight that we need to take. If I’m honest, I’m more interested in what it is you’ve got to tell me than I am in finding out what Jessen kept here.”

Can’t blame her for that.

“I’m doing okay,” Reya offered up. “A little more than half. Enough for a fight.”

“I’m in roughly the same spot,” Rodrick said after a second of consideration. “Maybe a bit worse. I got some a good bit of energy back while we were sitting around and letting Arwin pelt the poor snake bastard with spikes. I think everyone’s just about ready to fight other than Arwin.”

“Then I think we move forward now. If anyone thinks that’s a poor idea, please speak up. I’m not immune to making mistakes as we’ve all come to see,” Arwin said. It wasn’t ideal — but if they could get inside the tower, they could at least scope out what they were dealing with. If there wasn’t anything waiting for them, a short break wasn’t out of the question.

Nobody said anything. Arwin slid Jessen’s badge into the keyhole with more than a little trepidation. It struck Arwin that it would be painfully funny if the crack wasn’t actually a keyhole and really was just a random crack, but it was too late to change their plans now.

The badge disappeared into the hole. For a moment, there was silence. Then a soft click echoed out from the wall and the badge spat back out, smacking into Arwin’s chest, dropping, and nearly hitting the ground before he scooped it out of the air.

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A small rumble shudder shook the ground around the base of the tower. They all lowered into fighting stances, preparing for the worst, and a layer of stone peeled back at the tower’s entrance.

Faint green light spilled out from within the tower from torches illuminating a path wide enough for two people to walk side by side. It only ran for a few dozen before abruptly coming to an end at a pair of large double doors within the tower.

Only a moment after the entrance to the passage had completely ground open did the stones ripple and start to slowly shut once again. The Menagerie exchanged looks amongst themselves. The entrance wasn’t closing particularly quickly, but it would be fully shut in seconds.

“Is there a hole in there to open the door from within?” Olive asked.

Arwin tossed the badge to Lillia and stepped inside to study the walls. Now that he knew what he was looking for, it only took him a moment to find it. There was an identical a slot along the passage wall.

“Yes. It’s here,” Arwin said.

“Then we might as well,” Reya said, striding right into the passage. Arwin and the others hurried after her, and Lillia handed Arwin back the badge once she’d entered. They stood still for a second as the stone shut behind them, completely blocking out the dungeon at their backs.

“Well… we can take a quick break now,” Rodrick whispered.

“Just not too long. We’re safe from other adventurers now, but I really don’t want to be stuck in the dungeon if there’s a Dungeon Break.”

“We’ve already killed two strong monsters,” Olive said. “We should have a lot more time, right?”

“Never bet against some moron being able to kill himself. Or a bunch of morons being able to kill themselves. With the amount of magical energy this dungeon has in it, it’s basically a beacon to all the monsters in the area. A bunch of them are going to head over here to cut a piece of the pie for themselves, so we can’t assume the dungeon will remain cleared for long.”

Awin dismissed his armor and sat down. He crossed his legs beneath himself, resting against the wall and letting his eyes drift shut to gather back as much energy as he could in the short time that he had.

Minutes slipped by. It didn’t feel like nearly long enough, but he rose ten minutes later, shaking his hands off and shifting from one foot to the other to get the blood flowing once again. The others all gathered themselves and stood as well.

He had a little under half of his magical energy remaining. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to be enough. The risk of sitting around and waiting for another thirty or forty minutes to get the majority of his power back wasn’t worth the risk of getting caught in a Dungeon Break.

“Everyone ready?” Arwin asked as he approached the doors, summoning his armor back over his body.

They all nodded. He pressed his hands against the doors and shoved them. They moved with surprising ease, gliding across the stone and opening to reveal a large circular chamber. Arwin’s nostrils were instantly assaulted with the smell of rotting meat.

Dozens if not hundreds monster parts were scattered across the ground in various states of decay. Large limbs hung suspended from hooks in the air, and several dead monsters laid in cages throughout the room, thin and starved.

In the center of the room was a large stone altar. Long strands of shimmering thread ran from a metal box upon it and stretched out all over the room. Arwin suppressed a retch and stepped further into the room, watching the ground and stepping carefully to make sure he didn’t trigger a tripwire or pressure plate.

He worked his way a few steps into the room and looked up. The ceiling of the tower hung far above him, vanishing into the darkness before he could make out where it ended. His lips pressed thin and he turned his gaze back to the room.

“Godspit,” Lillia muttered, the disgust clear in her voice as she looked around. “What is this awful place?”

“It looks like Jessen was experimenting on monsters,” Arwin said, feeling every bit repulsed as Lillia sounded. “But how did he manage to convert such a huge portion of the dungeon to his own workspace?”

“What was he even planning to do here?” Anna asked. “Was he trying to make some form of flesh golem to control with his magic?”

The rest of the Menagerie all stepped into the room, keeping to a tight formation. Arwin summoned Verdant Blaze to his hands. The room put him on edge and it wasn’t difficult to guess why.

The back of Arwin’s neck prickled as he spotted a stretched wing in the corner of the room. It had been pinned in an open position against the wall. “The Wyrms. It would have been hard to control a horde, but why waste material? After killing them, if he managed to take parts from them and stick them together, he could have a really powerful monster.”

“That’s assuming he would be able to reanimate the corpse,” Rodrick said. “How’s he meant to do that?”

A faint, distant thump caught the edges of Arwin’s attention. A loud bang echoed through the room as the doors slammed shut behind them and the box on the altar collapsed to reveal a head-sized heart suspended from an iron spike, the strings running throughout the room all connected to it.

“Shit,” Arwin snarled, dismissing Verdant Blaze and summoning the Prism’s Vengeance. He reared back and hurled the spear-sized arrow at the heart. The weapon streaked through the air, but a large chunk of flesh dropped from the ceiling and intercepted the blow, stopping the spear before it could reach the heart.

Scraps of monster whirled past them, pulled by threads, and slammed into the heart. Squelches, loud and wet, echoed one after the other in a sickening symphony. Mismatched limbs attached themselves to a shoddy corpse as the thumps from the heart at the abomination’s core grew louder.

A shudder shook the monster and it jerked awake. Three arms jutted out of its body, each one from a different beast. One ended in claws, the other a huge paw, while the third looked disturbingly human.

Two large, rotting feet crashed to the ground as the monster rose. It was notably lacking a head, but the Mesh didn’t seem to find that a major problem to its continued existence.

The thumping grew louder still until it was a thunderous roar that echoed through the room like the drums of war.

[Overloading Flesh Abomination — Journeyman 9]

Well, I can’t say we didn’t see this coming.

The abomination’s heartbeat ringing in his ears, Arwin charged to meet Jessen’s last monster.