I thought about that for a moment while I flung another three new mobs at Sarah’s team. Their fighting was very impressive, and their cohesion as a team meant that they were carving through my mobs like an axe through soft cheese. I looked into my database of monsters and found that I had access to my giant spiders that had come with the Granite Cave dungeon.
“Spiders?” I suggested to Kyrine and felt her mental shrug in reply.
“Why not?” she said.
I conjured a mixed mob of spiders in the hall, and a group of archers at the back. I considered flinging a few flamethrower goblins into the mix for laughs, but I decided against it. I wanted to save that surprise for the next time they ran Granite Cave.
“This is more like it!” roared Josh. He lowered his crossbow and pulled the empty clip out, letting it fall to the floor. Then he grabbed something new from his belt. It was a block of red crystal, full of a flickering light. He snapped that into his crossbow in place of the bolt clip and began to unload on the spiders.
Sarah had taken a couple of hits in the last melee, and she retreated from the advancing spiders. Todd hefted a healing potion and threw it to her, and she popped the cap and swallowed it in one motion, the shimmering green light from it rippling over her as it took effect.
“Let’s gain a bit of ground!” She shouted, and the three adventurers charged up the hall.
The spiders were big and ungainly, and that hindered them in the hall. They were stopped from getting up to their full speed by the tables of food, and the adventurers saw this.
“The clumsy fuckers can’t climb!” laughed Josh as he saw the spiders stumble around the tables and the mess of bodies that now covered the hall.
“A barrier!” said Sarah. “Make a barrier!”
The two brothers did as she commanded, grabbing the tables and up-ending them to create a crude barricade in front of them. Food and drink smashed to the ground in front of the barrier, creating a slippery, slick mess all over the flagstones.
“All that food!” said Josh regretfully, grabbing a cake as a flight of arrows flew at them from the back of the hall.
“Heads up!” said Sarah, and they all ducked. The arrows clattered to the ground around them, sticking in the wooden table barricade and ringing off their armor.
Josh braced his crossbow against the top of the barricade and began to fire. Bolts of pure flame streamed from his weapon, leaving trails like comets behind them. He hit the archers, but he also hit the tables and the ground around them, and some of the tapestries on the wall behind the high dais.
Flames exploded everywhere the flaming bolts hit. They were like napalm—everything they stuck in exploded and burned, even stone.
“Wow! That’s impressive!” crowed Sarah.
“I’d hope so,” grunted Josh as he let off another barrage. “It cost enough!”
Another flight of arrows hissed through the smoke-blackened air as Sarah vaulted the wooden barricade, now wielding her mace.
The spiders had got to the barricade and were running up and down in frustration, unable to get over. Sarah began to swing about herself with it, raining a mess of spider bits around her with lightning speed.
“You go, boss!” yelled Todd. “Warrior’s might!”
His spell augmented her abilities, and I flung another low-level melee mob at her to give her something to do.
I was enjoying myself almost as much as the adventurers when there was a sudden urgent tugging at my attention.
“What the fuck?” I muttered.
“It’s your Personal Cultivation System,” Kyrine said.
I turned my attention away from the adventurers for a moment and brought up my PCS.
Incoming call: Tower 1: Astrid.
I answered it with a flick of my hand. I found to my surprise that my awareness was transported outside to the tower. Phantom-like, a version of my body stood in the tower beside her. She had her phone in her hand, and her binoculars fixed to her eyes, but when I appeared, she nearly dropped them.
“Holy shit, is that you Jeremy? I didn’t know you could do that!”
“Neither did I, to be honest,” I said, looking down at my transparent, ghostly hands. “Pretty cool, huh? It must happen when I’m in Sentient Dungeon mode and need to go somewhere else for a moment. What’s up?”
“I was trying to work out how to describe it to you, but I suppose you can see for yourself now that you’re here. Look.”
I turned to look where she was pointing. Shock hit me like a punch in the guts.
An army was marching on the mansion.
Chapter 20
The suburban area around the mansion was burning.
I could see smoke and flames rising from houses. Dogs were barking and people were screaming. Figures were coming up the streets all around the hill, and they were setting fires as they went. They marched like ants, packed close together. Everywhere I looked, new forces were coming up toward the mansion.
“What the fuck is this?” said Astrid, looking white faced.
“It’s the Technomancer,” I said, feeling sure. “He said before that he wasn’t going to attack until he had more strength. Well, I think he’s found it.”
I turned to my psychic connection with Kyrine and told her the situation. “How are the dungeon adventurers doing?” I asked.
“They’re winning their fight, but I’m not making it too easy for them. They’ve activated a few statues, fought some Flora Whelps and got halfway up the hall, but they’ve quite a long way to go yet.”
“Okay,” I said, “this situation is going to take a bit of management. We need to open the mansion gates
