Edgemont had not taken a day off in over four centuries. He frankly didn’t know what to do with a day off work – there were just so many things to manage. Still, he decided that it was time that he stepped away from the station for the day as he could monitor everything from his own ship as well as he could from his workstation.
His mind made up, he boarded his ship and instructed the captain to take him planetside. He would visit his estate and see how well it had been curated in the ten generations of workers that maintained it in his absence. The only question in his mind was whether to warn his butler or not.
After careful consideration that took the entire time his ship spent getting clearance and departing, he decided that he was in a good mood and would let his butler know he was coming. He placed the call which was answered with less than a second’s delay. He smiled inwardly – it seemed that the breeding for this staff had run true.
“Good day sir. How may I be of assistance?”
“Good day, Wellsley. I am coming down to the surface for the day. Do make sure everything is prepared for me.”
“Of course sir. Is it just you, or should we prepare for guests.”
“Oh, gods no. No guests. I’m not ruining my day away from the station with other people.”
“Very well sir, I am tracking your ship and note your arrival in thirteen minutes. Everything will be ready for your arrival.”
“Thank you, Wellsley.”
Edgemont settled into his seat and enjoyed the short trip home.
Duke took another look around the office to make sure there was nothing about it that seemed familiar before he pushed his senses outward to scan the area. His DUNGEON SENSE permeated the area and gave him quite the surprise. He was not in an office building, he was on some sort of space station, but not a station on any scale he had ever imagined.
The station was huge, set up like some enormously stylized gyroscopic sphere with concentric and stacked rings, both vertical and horizontal, that somehow all ringed a central nexus. There were connecting arms that crossed each layer, but what really struck Duke was the vast scale of the place. The station was nearly one thousand kilometers across – it was a scale of construction that Duke was having difficulty comprehending.
To compound it, there were people and creatures of all races everywhere on the station. It was too much information for him to easily process even with his six thousand points of reason. He knew that if he put his mind to it, he could sort through it all, but he wasn’t sure what he was dealing with in the immediate.
OK, to run it down quickly, I’m on an impossibly large space station that at least has some Syndicate presence if not complete control. There are more people on here than I want to be responsible for killing in any way shape or form. I’m in an office where apparently my head was a trophy so whoever did that needs to die. But there’s not a single picture in this office.
Duke walked around to the front of the desk and smiled. There was, as always in a corporate setting, a nameplate affixed to the desk. Alpho Nonetes. At least I know the bastard’s name if not what he looks like or where he is. I could just wait for him to come into the office, I suppose. Not my most active of moves, but possibly my best choice. I guess I can keep building this Dungeon Core while I wait.
Duke paused in his thoughts as a realization hit him, “I lost my bag of cores. Dammit!”
Ater the initial shock of losing all those cores, he performed a more thorough inspection of the office. Visually, there wasn’t much beyond the interface on the desk, so he switched to his SENSE MAGIC Ability. With that Ability active, things all over the room started to light up, even the walls themselves. He saw several points of more intense magic throughout the room embedded in the walls behind the fa?ade that the walls showed.
With a grimace that turned into a wry smile, Duke switched to MANA DRAIN and began to drain the Mana in the area. At first, it was just ambient Mana in the room, but the more he focused on the Ability, the more he was able to start pulling from the magical devices surrounding him. He drained the stored Mana from each and every device around the room, but he continued to pull. There was a strange level of resistance as he pulled, as if he was being directly opposed.
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Duke pulled even harder, putting the full focus of his will into the effort and he felt the resistance break like a rain-swollen dam. At first it was an additional trickle of Mana, then it began to build until it flooded him from all sides. His SENSE MAGIC Ability finally showed him what was happening. There had been a number of devices somehow shielded from detection deeply embedded in the walls of the office. He had pulled the Mana from the shielding, from the devices themselves, and lastly, he pulled the Mana from the underlying runescripts, destroying them utterly.
It was exhausting and thrilling in equal measure. He had never used that Ability at anywhere near that level of focus, duration, and power before. The notification that he had pushed the Ability into Adept rank was a welcome surprise. Thankfully, the lights in the room were not magic so the room remained lit.
He sat down in the chair and propped his feet up on the desk and decided to split his time while waiting between two things, DUNGEON CORE CREATION and STASIS. He figured that he could level up the STASIS Ability fairly quickly and he needed to completely change the design of the dungeon he was building. His first approach had been to create one that would outwardly expand rapidly and destroy the building he was in but now that he knew he was in a vast space station, he had to change that plan.
He shaped the Dungeon Core in an entirely different direction. Instead of increasing the external size, he was designing it to fit a much smaller profile. It took no more than ten minutes to finish perfectly crafting it to his design. Having grown tired of waiting for whoever occupied this office to show up, he planted the dungeon.
Over the course of the next minute, the dungeon entrance took shape, perfectly covering the area Duke had designed it for. It was completely indistinguishable from the area it covered which caused Duke to smile with self-satisfaction.
Tier Nine…deal with that, asshole. Whoever you are! Now to get going back to what I was doing before I was brought here.
Duke used his COSMIC NAVIGATION Ability to map out where he was and realized that it would take him three full jumps to get back to Teldin. The question in his mind was whether that was where he should really head right now. He knew that he had destroyed the harvesting fleet he had encountered but he had a strong suspicion that there were more out there. He decided to head for Teldin and reassess things when he got there.
The inspection tour had taken Alpho most of the day and he knew that he only hit upon the highlights. The station was just too big to get around in a week, let alone a single day. But he knew that he had hit the most important parts and gave his workers a dose of “boss motivation.” His AURA of IMPORTANCE that came with his Corporate Leader Class helped with this immensely. The workers would produce more for the next few weeks out of fear if nothing else. He had made no threats but his mere presence was an implied threat. Everyone in the Syndicate knew what an inspection tour meant. The smart ones responded accordingly with increased production. The foolish ones found out why the smart ones stepped up their game.
He stepped into his office tired but satisfied, closing his door behind him so that he could let his “official” appearance fall and relax for a bit. Wiping his face in his hands, Alpho leaned against the edge of his desk with a sense of accomplishment. He had risen to this level quickly. He had been hand-picked for this role even and he knew, without a doubt, that the meeting with Rynis had proven that his star was on the rise. He was on top of the world and things were only getting better!
A decision quickly made, he swung around his desk and opened the left drawer to pull out a celebratory bottle of the finest Janat which had been given to him by his first boss as a gift for his successful future. She had told him to open it and have a drink when he felt like he had earned it. There was no doubt in his mind that he had earned it now. As he poured himself a glass, something felt off. He couldn’t put a finger on it, but something did not feel right.
He put the bottle down and took a look around his office. Everything beyond his desk seemed normal, not that there was much to that part of the office. He hadn’t even bothered to hang anything on the walls yet. All he had was his display behind him with his ultimate trophy the crowning jewel of his growing collection of victories. He turned around to look at it once more and it was gone!
He frantically looked around. Had it fallen off the shelf? That’s when it struck him. He had unconsciously noticed that it was missing but he was so focused on getting his celebratory drink that it hadn’t registered to his consciousness. In a panic, he slammed the desk’s interface to life…only nothing happened. It was dead. He tried a second, a third, and even a fourth time to activate it with no result whatsoever.
He called out to Edgemont but received no reply. The realization that he had insisted the man take the day off rung through his memory – he would have to take care of this himself! In an adrenaline-fueled rush, he yanked open his office door to see only darkness. Had the entire area lost power somehow?
An enormous dark red hand flashed out of the darkness, its black claws only visible in the light of the office as they closed around Alpho’s chest and pulled him straight into the dungeon he had opened, superimposed over the office door. The door clicked shut before Alpho’s scream could even begin.
