Chapter 212 - Contingency Plan

Kolt lost his cool. He rushed at Sebastian and pulled his face towards him. The news they received was too much for him to handle. Johnny and Nina together managed to pull him off Sebastian who was still under Natasha's spell. Meanwhile, Arnold was stunned into silence. He couldn't believe how much hatred these bastards had inside them.

'They would do all this... Just to get rid of me?' He thought, 'They are willing to kill over four million people just to get rid of me?'

There was no way they were doing this because he killed a few of them back in the transdimensional dungeon. This was something more than that. Arnold needed a lot of answers but first and foremost he had to stop their contingency plan before it was too late.

Adrenaline filled his weak body. We walked up to Sebastian and kicked him with surprising strength. Sebastian momentarily snapped out of Natasha's spell due to the sudden shock, but Natasha quickly used the spell on him once again.

Arnold wasn't done yet. He pulled him back up and asked, "Where is it?"

"Where's... What?" Sebastian mumbled like a drunk monk. 

"TELL ME WHERE THE FCK IS THAT DUNGEON!"

"I... don't... know..."

"WHEN WILL THE BREAK HAPPEN?"

"Any... moment... now..."

Arnold didn't believe it but deep down he knew no one could lie while under Natasha's influence. Sebastian just knew about the plan. Nothing more. Arnold let him go and rushed out of the room. There was no time to waste. 

"Where the fck do I look for a dungeon in 1300 km square area of Los Angeles!?" (Author's Note: 1300 km² = approx 502 square miles) 

He had never been so desperate before for anything. His mind couldn't focus on the task at hand. The longer he thought about it, the fuzzier his head became. Yet needed to think. To focus. 

'Is it even possible to intentionally cause a dungeon break?'

The obvious answer was no. But when he thought about it... there was a possibility. The monsters inside a dungeon were forced to remain inside due to the presence of a barrier. This barrier was fuelled by the Xenoic energy present inside the dungeon. The energy is slowly consumed by the barrier and once there was no Xenoic energy remaining inside the dungeon, the barrier collapses allowing the monsters to escape from their prison and kill everything in sight. This situation is referred to as the dungeon break.

The consumption of Xenoic energy was a slow process which allowed the humans to prepare for the worst but, theoretically, if someone could somehow manage to hasten the process of consumption then they could potentially cause a dungeon break as they please. 

But so far humanity had only managed to build a device to read xenoic energy and not a device which could extract the energy from a dungeon itself. This was the same device which was used to measure the rank of a dungeon. And as far as Arnold was aware, Talos was the only one who had been successful in developing an instrument to extract energy from beast crystals. 

This was the most probable method anyone would use to cause a dungeon break. However, this wasn't the only way. 

In most cases, the dungeon boss itself was bounded inside the 'boss room'. However, if it somehow managed to break through that room, it was certain that the boss would kill the rest on the monsters inside. Upon killing them, the boss might proceed to eat their corpses or their beast crystals to be specific and as a result, mutate.

If this happened then in most of the cases the boss would gain enough strength to break through the Xenoic energy barrier and cause a dungeon break. This incident was uncommon but not unheard of. 

However, Arnold doubted this was the case right now. He had various reasons to believe so. First, it was impossible to get to the boss room without killing the monsters inside the dungeon.

However, someone could debate on this saying, "What if they killed the monsters and leave the beast crystals inside the boss room?"

The answer to this was simple. The boss would be more interested in the humans who brought the beast crystals rather than the crystals themselves as the boss would like to 'hunt' rather than be 'served' by someone else. 

Second, even if someone managed to reach to the boss room without killing the other monsters, the boss would, then again, be more interested in the ones who managed to get to it rather than the rest of monsters. 

And lastly, the third reason. Even if they managed to cause a dungeon break this way, it wouldn't be much of a disaster. Why? Because if this happened, only the boss monster would be able to get out of the dungeon and no matter how strong it may be, it would fall under the concentrated attacks of numerous warriors. Surely a few would die by the boss's hands but the casualties wouldn't be nearly as high as they would have been if all of the monsters had broken out of the dungeon by themselves. Since the Wolves wanted to cause as much death and destruction as they could, thus they wouldn't opt to go for this way. 

Thinking all this calmed Arnold down a bit. But he wasn't going to do nothing and sit idly. The others soon came rushing out of the room. 

"That bastard?" He asked them. 

"Back to sleep." Nina replied, "Natasha is taking care of him."

"Okay. Now listen up."

He had a plan. But first, they would need to locate this dungeon. He was 90% sure the said dungeon was within the city. Actually, he was 100% sure of it. It was the only way for the Wolves to cause most destruction and death. If only he knew the exact location, the wolves would be done for. But First things first.

If he wanted to locate the dungeon, he would need Syndicate's help as they were the only ones to possess a geoscanner powerful enough to scan the entire city in a matter of a few seconds. But for that, he would have to make them aware of the situation first. He could use void travel to do so. Sadly, neither he nor his summons had spent much time there hence it wasn't possible to use void travel to travel there. 

However, he had Cerberus. 

He quickly summoned Cerberus along with the rest of the lava hounds out. Once he was done he instructed Cerberus to transform into his chimera form, which the fastest among all of his summons. Hell, he could even outrun a Lamborghini at its max speed. After that, he turned his attention towards Nina. 

"Nina, I need you to ride along with Cerberus to the HQ and make them scan the city as well as the outskirts for any anomalies. I'm asking you to do this because you are the most flexib- I mean athletic person among us so it wouldn't be much of an issue." Arnold said, "Although Talos is already trying to reestablish contact, I'm not sure how long it will take. Either way, I need him to do something else for me."

"Got it." Nina jumped onto Cerberus without wasting a moment and rode off in the darkness. 

Arnold then instructed the remaining hounds to look around the city for the same, as they were the best at tracking something down. Once all of it was taken care of, he called Talos. 

"Yes, master?" His voice echoed on the other side. 

"Leave whatever you are doing to humans and come back now. I have a special task for you."