Episode IV: A new Dope

Episode IV: A new Dope

It is a period of survival war.

Demonic World Bosses, striking

from open positions all around

constantly seek victory

against the human Guardians

of Speranza city.

During the siege, the defenders'

Dungeon Core managed to

prepare secret plans to an

ultimate weapon, the

BRICKS WINDOWS, an armored

spider Mecha with enough

power to destroy an entire...

something? (not yet tested!)

Besieged by the Infernali's

sinister monsters, Princess

Skip (HEY!) races to battle aboard her (HEY!!)

new Mecha, custodian of the

seed of Yggdrasil that can save

humanity and restore

peace on Earth...

Seconds later, it struck. A shield made of linked hexagons appeared in front of the demon and the shaped charge triggered. The explosion inside the bloated head of the projectile forced the metal in the middle forward by applying pressure from all sides. The projectile broke the shield and vaporized the demon's head.

> For killing level 150 Damniablo, you gained 5 Experience Points. You gained 35 Dungeon Mana.

Whoa. These guys gave Experience points? I had to farm them! Only 2,800 boss monsters to level! The low amount of Dungeon Mana was due to the distance to the kill. Most of the Mana was lost along the way.

The death of one of its officers sent the Demon army into a frenzy. The Jabberwocks expanded their portals, allowing more of the lesser ones to come through. Some Damniablos made a move to go forward but a Wobby Dick moaned and they went back to their positions. They were meant to defend the Jabberwocks and the summoning portals, not to fight back.

Welp, their loss. The super-Gauss cannon fired again. This time, five shields appeared in front of the Damniablo. The projectile pierced through three and cracked the fourth. No damage whatsoever was caused. But two could play this game. I changed the calibration on the railgun coil controller. Then, using the buff from Fire for Effect, I fired two shells with only a few seconds of interval.

Once again the shields sprang in front of my target. Five of them. They knew it was one more than they needed to defend their fellow Damniablo. The shell did the same as before but it only broke three shields. The fourth held. Right after, the second shell impacted two shields, blowing the ground behind my very dead target.

> For killing level 155 Damniablo, you gained 11 Experience Points. You gained 39 Dungeon Mana.

Yes! Look, eleven Experience Points for one kill! It's heating up! Not.

I had adjusted the Railgun to fire the first shell with slightly less speed than the second, timing them to reach the target within a few dozen milliseconds of each other. I needed to calibrate the angle and stuff but it wasn't too hard. On the next target, they layered ten shields. I could barely see the target behind all those superimposed translucent hexagons. Before the shells reached the target, one laser cannon on each of Bricks Windows arms fired at the target, overwhelming the shields. Each laser removed two shields and then the shells struck home.

> For killing level 152 Damniablo, you gained 7 Experience Points. You gained 39 Dungeon Mana.

> Your knowledge and training improved your Command and Conquer Skill to rank IV The weapons and equipment of units under your command degrade (6*Rank)% slower.

We could do this all day. Or all year, depending on how many kills to level I needed. Also, the Skill ranks really helped. Despite minute, the improvements with each rank were noticeable.

*

*

A Wobby Dick floated five hundred feet above the ground, three miles ahead of the Jabberwocks. The damn tentacle monsters hadn't moved even when I scored a hit on one of them, blowing up one of the heads. I think their focus is entirely on the portals. After I did some real damage to their forces with that, the damn demon whale swam in the air.

That's cheating!

They also started porting out some demon giraffes with stiff necks and a head that looked like Junji Ito had blended a Venus fly trap, a shark, and a leech all at once. Six green leaves full of teeth that opened to reveal a hole going down all the way to the monster's torso. Yeah, the Cannoraffe was the Infernali biological artillery unit. Why were all of them perversions of Earth animals? Or were the Earth's animals not as original to this planet as we thought?

The damn Cannoraffes worked like this. It lowered its head, ate one of the lesser Infernali lying around, then spat a ball of chitin and flesh that vaguely resembled the eaten monster. A volley of thirty such cannonballs flew my way and I had no wish to see what it could do or test Bricks Windows' armor. I erected a hemisphere of steel and infused it to become Dungeon walls, leaving an opening at the back to keep the "access the Core" rule. The dome sank into the earth with each blast as the cannonballs exploded against the reinforced steel. At the end of the volley, the dome was pressing on Bricks Windows' cannons.

Under the cover of the armored floating whale, the battalion of Cannoraffes and several Damniablos marched forward in an organized formation. The lesser Infernali kept rushing past them but not in the middle. They couldn't or wouldn't control the lesser demons but obviously could direct and give basic instructions to them. This group was coming... straight at me.

Good. I worried that they would attempt an assault on the city. I dissolved the shield. The eldritch giraffes couldn't shoot with the whale covering them but I also had a poor line of sight for a ballistic shot and no range for direct ones. I fired some laser shots to probe their defenses. The Damniablos cast their shields moments after the laser was fired. Some energy passed through but it was milliseconds of exposure. While it did some damage to the target before the shield went up, it was superficial.

I couldn't commit to a more direct approach before I determined what the Wobby Dicks did. So far I only saw them rein in the Damniablos by moaning. Which out of context sound like some BDSM shit. But no, it's all PG-13. Using the main flying Railgun, I fired some shots at the whale. Shields appeared to defend and I noted it came from the Damniablos below.

Okay. Let's see who has more juice. I issued the commands to Dungeon Automation, eating ten slots of rules temporarily.