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Chapter 173: DELTA VS HERO

Delta moved back, away from the five strange robots as they moved in deeper. They were human-shaped, but they had no features to convey any sort of assuring feeling. Blank faces made of white stone that connected to round egg-like bodies that had thin mana-paths in intricate patterns, while the limbs hung loose and boneless, more like whips than usable limbs.

Fairplay; even their murder robots were bland looking.

Delta moved down the tunnel, unable to take her eyes off the approaching threat, her arm still stinging from the attack they had done to her avatar. Just as one of the things raised a strange crossbow that 'grew' out of its hand, Lord Mushy appeared before her and let the arrow slam into his shoulder.

The arrow hit and buried deeper than any weapon her monster had encountered before, even Fairplay's seed weapon. The entire thing was made of foul Dungeon Mana that felt stale.

Not stale, Delta realized, but decayed.

Like putrid gasses given off by the rotting dead.

"Manners dictate that I welcome you, but my rage demands I destroy you," Lord Mushy announced with a deep voice as he eyed the wound on Delta's arm.

"Mushy-" Delta tried to say, but the giant Lord of Fungi shot forward, arm cocked back. One of the robots rushed forward, and they met in the entrance hall. The thing's arms cracked and crumbled as Lord Mushy pushed against it.

The thing tilted its head, and Delta had a horrible sense of something sucking on her earlobe without her consent as her Mana was drawn in through dozens of tiny marks on the thing's body. The cracks began to smooth over, and its small shoulder grew into spheres.

It began to push back against Lord Mushy with more ease.

Delta cast her fear and disgust aside so she could peer hard at the thing with her Dungeon senses.

It was so wrong, painfully wrong. It wasn't just that they were made of destroyed Dungeon Cores, but they had been 'broken' in another way too.

Dungeons absorbed things and grew in response. These things did that too, but someone had mangled the 'code' so badly that their growth aspect was out of control, changing at the slightest threat.

Delta's eyes burned, and she had to pull back.

"Lord Mushy, let's retreat and think of a plan!" she ordered. Her monster surprised her by refusing with a shake of his head.

"I will buy you time, mother. Time is of the essence, and these things have far too much on their side," he admitted as his arms began to buckle.

"Mushy," she hesitated.

"I am immortal in your Heart. You are so fragile in mine," he said, straining harder. Delta tried to yank Hero or her damn new star dragon out in a panic, but the Raid Boss monsters were tied up in so many delicate systems that she even spotted some of Nu's core pieces moving in and out of the things.

They were also tied up in the respawn mechanics for the entire Dungeon.

She could spawn a star dragon, but the only floor where she had space for it was the fourth…

"Brother," the walls spoke, indicating Maestro was watching fully.

"Dearest sibling, I require the most fantastic jaunty tune you have for my show," Mushy grimaced as the other robots began to move in.

"You always were the social butterfly between us, but this is simply outrageous. You think I'll sit here and spin some records as you battle an unwinnable fight?" Maestro demanded, and Delta clenched her hands, feeling stupidly useless.

"You won't?" Lord Mushy asked as the 'Strength' Robot finally pushed him back into a skidding slide.

"Well, of course I will. I just wanted to remind you that I'm more than a pretty face and a voice," Maestro huffed before the walls began to tremble with vibrations.

"Eyes on me, you filthy tin-can back-up dancers!" Maestro cried as trumpets and bass began to play.

"One sibling who dances at night; the other who creates in the light. You're going to feel the wrath of the Master of Mushrooms, the brothers brave, and eldest of this Dungeon," Maestro warned as the noise began to increase to uncomfortable levels, and Delta watched as the robots gained tiny little bumps on their surface to displace the vibrations.

Technically, Fran and Cois were the eldest by a day, but Delta wasn't going to nitpick.

"Tally ho!" Mushy roared and slammed his fist through the vibrating air, distorting the air as it impacted the Strength Robot and drove it back with a massive crack on its chest.

Delta turned, knowing she had been given precious time, and she wasn't going to waste it.

Getting her avatar back to the fourth floor, Delta inhaled and closed her eyes. She hadn't ever done this properly and on purpose, but she knew she had to be the one in charge of attacking these things from within.

Her avatar began to dissolve, allowing her mind to be fully absorbed by the Dungeon itself.

Without a human shell to focus her mind, a mouth to speak, eyes to see with, and ears to hear, Delta became the air, the ground, the walls, the monsters, the space, the shadows, and all.

Delta became the Dungeon.

The Dungeon was always Delta.

---

Lord Mushy looked up as the robots continued to move around him. Only one of them had directly attacked him, the one mother dubbed 'Strength' model. It had become thick and bulky with powerful mana-spheres that allowed it to gain the strength of a dozen monsters. Each time Mushy overpowered it, it grew harder to harm.

It had an easier time beating him down in return.

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"This doesn't look good. My songs affect these things as much as Christmas music affects retail workers," Maestro admitted. A reference Mushy didn't quite get.

Maestro had always been so much more sensitive to their mother's memories, and it showed.

"Allow me to show you my power," Mushy announced as he put both hands on the ground and pulled, the soil turning to almost liquid as it ran up his arms and made a giant round object above him.

The giant pot was immensely heavy as Lord Mushy hurled it at the Strength Model. There was a sort of cracking noise like glass giving out, and the pot exploded, showing the shards had buried themselves into the Strength Model's chest pieces.

The thing wasn't quite able to heal around them until the mana in them was removed.

"…I see a weakness," Maestro announced.

"Then tell everyone. Let them all know," Lord Mushy insisted as he felt a little wobbly from the use of the untrained power. He looked down at his hand where a symbol had been carved by Cois.

He had allowed it in a fit of amusement since the goblin was usually so taciturn.

'This is your symbol! See, it looks like a pot wearing a crown!'

"Well done, my boy… you've got a bright future ahead of you," Mushy announced as the Strength Model raised one hand, the powerful fist it made aiming right for Mushy's head.

It spluttered for a moment as the air thickened in the Dungeon.

Mushy chuckled as everything went dark.

"Poor fools… I'm just the greeting man. You haven't even begun to see the true dangers ahead," he warned before he was suddenly in a strange place with white beds and soothing walls.

Nearby, a strange slime wearing a nurse's cap turned to him and gurgled.

"Oh, soup please. Toast is hard to chew with no teeth," he responded, looking around with amazement.

He wasn't sure, but as he watched the slime over the next few hours, it seemed to be growing more demonic and angrier…

Odd.

---

To Delta, these things weren't stars or asteroids, or even worlds.

They were black holes that stank of death. Anything close to them was sucked in and torn apart to fuel the distortions.

What her Mana was doing was valiant, but pointless. They were approaching this the wrong way. Forming out of the massive orange sun, Delta took everything in before looking back for a moment to see a long corona of flame that ran down the star itself, giving the oddest impression of a slitted eye.

One of the black holes was different now. It had rough edges of minerals that spun like a halo around its black spiral. A tough barrier that smashed anything drawn in. That was interesting.

The Strength Model had 'gained' characteristics.

She began to slowly move her hand in a clockwise motion. Her long and slender fingers looked inhuman in this illusion of stars and space. Close to the strength model, a new hole began to appear, a vortex spinning in the opposite direction made of dark orange Mana.

As the two began to clash, Delta caught the thinnest threads of an outside connection to the Robots.

It was too ethereal and gossamer-like for her to touch, but she took note of it as she continued to form dozens of orange vortexes around the invaders, each hole was like someone taking a thumb screw to a different part of her arms, twisting her skin until it was close to tearing.

Delta powered on through the discomfort, this sort of pain was easy to accept compared to the potential agony these things could inflict if they found her guests, , or her core.

Just as she was about to pull back, something very odd happened.

In the distance, a star she had presumed was just background imagery to this whole symbolic scene glowed a deep blue, and wisps of a familiar Mana emerged.

'Pain. I stop pain.' Foodie said with conviction.

The vortexes of orange took on slithers of white particles.

"My god, I'm salty," Delta said as she eyed the entire affair.

She pushed on, trying to understand how Foodie was reaching her from so far away…

---

Muffet had been tested numerous times. Quite often, she was the first lesson of the Dungeon to those who brought might instead of heart.

These interlopers were different, perhaps not in tactics, but the results.

Only one of them stepped forward, cutting the webs and moving in, which triggered her base form. The fight had easily gone her way to start with. It got caught on webs, it struggled to even touch her.

But as the fight progressed, the robot had changed. It slimmed to an almost hourglass shape, forming a second set of smaller arms, and the webs just slid off its form. It was faster now as well, something about how its legs looked more jointed.

Mother whispered to her, or perhaps Muffet just heard her thinking aloud.

'Speed Model.'

Muffet jumped back as it sliced at her with those razor sharp 'fingers' it had, and one of her legs went flying off.

Most bothersome.

Now her perfectly mastered dance of 'Go leap off a massive cliff and perish from this mortal coil' would have to be adjusted to 'Go and die.'

Most ungraceful.

With a slow exhale, Muffet felt a change overtake her, her back cracking open like a cocoon as her new form rose up, stretching human-limbs. Her beautiful face clicked pincers and moved her radiant eight eyes all around.

She was truly the height of human beauty and spider culture. She raised one hand, feeling power growing around her fingers. With a small smile, she tried a human gesture that could convey one's deepest displeasures.

It felt glorious.

Then, she began to glow and moved like a pale wind.

The Speed Model stared down at its arm that fell off as Muffet shot past, her claws woven metal webs. It landed with a thump, and the robot ignored Muffet entirely to rush to its missing limb. Muffet raced towards it and managed to get it first, scooping it up, but the Speed Model was just behind her, and Muffet twitched as she received a massive cut to her back as she hurled the dismembered arm down the hall at Waddles, who was awake and ready.

He dove into the lake with it, and it ended up on the second floor, where Delta could absorb it.

Muffet turned slowly, and the Speed Model was 'staring' at her as the stump where its arm had been began to bubble with Mana it absorbed, forming a heavily deformed blade in its place. It was a slow process, but Muffet allowed it to happen, allowing mother to witness the process.

The blade was far more fragile than its arm. It also received new Mana far less potently.

Combined with what Lord Mushy had gathered… the plan was simple in theory.

Impale. Rip. Tear.

She raised her hands, and the robot ahead of her shifted slightly, its form becoming blurry, harder to focus on.

Muffet would make it so focused on her, it would be crushed by the next monster it met.

Any good fighter knew that overspecialization was a killer.

Once a pony did it's only trick, what else did you need to see? She moved forward, head low.

The Speed Model became a whirling wind of death, but Muffet?

Muffet took two more arms.

---

The giant statue of a rectangular screen with hands was intriguing, but Yattina felt paralyzed by choice as all around her, doors seemed to wait for her to explore.

"I should go back to the library," she decided, but when she turned, there was a very handsome stone statue of a gargoyle in front of the hall where all the food was.

How did that get there?

"Blergh," Quee muttered as he draped himself on a bench in the massive garden.

"It's so humid with Mana down here, how does anyone survive it?" he complained. That reminded Yattina to check her Mana charm, but she was surprised that it had hardly lost any power. The thing was not a great product, so she had no idea why it hadn't failed on her yet.

"Yattina?" Quee suddenly asked, and his tone was strange.

"Does Fairplay use strange robots in Dungeons?" he asked, and the question was so left-field that she needed a second to process it.

"They shouldn't. The only series we have in that sort of vein is the 'Hellion' models, but while they have a promising success rate from what I read in the reports, not my department you see, I and others brought up issues with their use," Yattina said as she examined the garden with curiosity.

There were a lot of weird gargoyles placed around the room, and in such odd places too.

"Issues?" Alpha questioned with a frown.

"Well, the Hellion series has a problem of evolving using some sort of 'Red-Code' secret material. If they hit some kind of threshold, they sort of tend to go off the rails. It's an issue, but nothing compared to the 'Progressive Tagging' Models designed for Dungeons with over a hundred floors. Those are never going to see the light of day, which is a shame because their ability to analyze things would make my job a lot easier," Yattina huffed as she shook her head.

"Off the rails, as in they explode, or off the rails, as in…" Quee trailed off, and Yattina shot them both confused looks at their intense expressions. Why did they want to know so badly?

"They hit an evolving loop function. Drain everything in the immediate area of mana to fuel the process, and when they run out, they explode with dangerous force," she explained patiently.

Silence was their response, and Yattina tried to assure them with a smile.

"Only an idiot would employ them. They need massive work and a dozen permissions to even be worked on," she promised them.

Still, it wasn't like the He-Ro units or the Pro-Tag ones were the worst. She was obligated not to mention the theoretical designs the company wanted to make.

The Courageous Regent model.

Singular model.

Her stomach twisted, but while she was not under contract not to talk about it since she had no core to be contracted with… they had ways of knowing if one spoke about a project or not.

"What's behind this door?" she announced and threw it open to reveal a massive dark blue skinned demon with burning eyes and an aura that reeked of sulfur and bacon.

They stared at each other.

"Nice eye," the demon grunted.

"Nice beard," was all she could reply with.

The tension was awkward, so Yattina did what any sane person would do.

She got so stressed she caused a spontaneous nosebleed that rocketed out of her nose like a defensive weapon.

There was a long pause.

"We should grab a drink," the demon said, looking impressed.

Not the response Yattina had hoped for, honestly.

---

Delta tried to make sense of the arm she had absorbed, but it was hurting her mind. The core piece inside, the robots themselves, were almost designed to be growing and evolving bombs. There was no logic in place to go 'enough.' They consumed and gorged until they could find no more food.

Getting inside them was growing easier as they continued to adapt. While her Mana was used and torn apart, their make-up was still used as the foundation for the robots' upgrades. It was there she made a horrible discovery.

The shards weren't dead as she first thought. They were akin to an unfortunate person in a vegetative state, unresponsive to any stimuli, except they kept working. What was worse was that she saw how the constant Mana surges were causing the tips of the shard to grow.

These weren't pieces of a Dungeon Core.

These were cuttings.

Like Delta needed anymore provocation to destroy these things.

But there was a silver lining.

These machines were only resistant to her when 'active'. She followed the gossamer thread connection to the He-Ro models outside, where she found dozens more waiting.

Delta held her hand out and closed her eyes.

"Rest," she said with sorrow, and every inactive model had its core shattered. The act of releasing the shards didn't do anything other than put an end to a disgusting existence. If they were alive, sentient, and able to learn as individuals, Delta would have saved them.

These were just broken brain matter stuck on loops with no self to govern it.

Wait… Delta blinked at that thought.

If the Core itself wasn't giving the orders to the He-Ros themselves, what was? She gave them another look, using the Speed Model as her sample as it was the most developed, looking closer to a space hurricane than a black hole now.

In the robot's body, moving around the core, was a weird flat piece of metal. It took a lot of effort, but Delta saw it had been stamped with a symbol.

A sort of 'T' with its left arm cut off. A weird 'r'.

Delta knew that symbol.

It was on her front door.

Gamma.

She tried to examine it, but it had a power not unlike her own to repel and see.

"What are you?" she asked it.

'I am that which is left behind. I am that which is left behind. I am that which is left behind.'

"Are you Gamma?" she yelled, frustrated with all of this.

'I am that which is left behind. I am that which will surpass. I am that which will leave behind.'

"I don't understand," Delta whispered.

'To be discarded, or to discard. A sword cannot change its nature. I am that which is left behind. I am that which will use you to surpass. I am that which was left behind. I am that which was left behind number 255.'

Delta moved her massive symbolic hands together, cracking her knuckles.

"You may not be one of my kids, but I'll educate you all the same," she warned as the air became charged.

"School's in session, and today's lesson is on how badly you done goofed," she added.

'I am that which-'

"-is about to get a butt-whooping. I know, you may be able to replicate a Dungeon and Gamma in one form, but I am Delta… I don't replicate. I break," she said, and her aura began to grow.

'I will upgrade. I will evolve-'

"With CDs?" Delta asked suddenly. It threw the sentient, but not quite alive fragment off.

'CDs? I do not-'

Delta hurled a wave of spinning salty Mana at the robots that ignited the stars all around her.

"CEEDEEZNUTS!"

The war was on.