Dungeon Sniper

The effects were immediate. As soon as the last feeble red light of Mataki's soul left the military knife and seeped through the intestinal wall, the Queen's body started to contract and expand unstably. I could also hear a wave churning from the other end of the turbulent tunnel. I braced for the impact and—

Covered in despicable liquid, I was chucked out of the Queen's mouth. The liquid was a mixture of undigested Sand Crystallites and... blood, both of which helped dilute the acidic stomach fluid that was also in the mix.

All in all, it was not a pretty reunion or rescue, but I lived.

I wanted to sprawl on the ground and lie through the fatigue, both emotional and physical, but I knew the situation would not allow me the luxury. I rolled and collected myself, wiped the bloody, crystallic, faintly stinging fluid off my face.

As I expected, Benedikt and Elysia were inside the Dwarfighter, back to its mech form from the driller mode, and had just stopped shooting and flaming the Queen as evidenced by the smoke coming out of the gun arms.

"Kid, you're alive!" chuckled Benedikt from the c.o.c.kpit through the amplified speaker, sounding genuinely relieved.

Elysia, albeit silent, was throwing me a reproving glance, as if she would kill me if I let myself in another danger again. I nodded back at the beautiful Elfina and turned to face Olothi the Ant Queen... for the first time.

She, no, it... was not a pretty sight. At all.

It took me some time to spot her not because she was small or inconspicuous. She was huge, oh yes, as big as covering the half of the large hall that we housed a million unborn Goblin Crawler eggs. Her skin was muddy red and rough just like the dirt making up the hive, adding on to the illusion of feeling as if the entire world around me crumbling and shaking. In other words, she was so huge that I almost mistook her for the wall, crumbling and writhing in obvious pain and anger.

On top of the giant, ugly bulb of abomination, a tiny face stuck out. It had a hint of resemblance to the pretty face of a Gobliness I had seen earlier, but just a hint. Her eyes seemed bigger, but that was only because they had turned into compound eyes with many smaller, hundreds of blank, beady eyes. Her jaw was split into two mandibles, wriggling in separate rhythms and directions with bloody saliva running down below.

"MATAKI, YOU FOOL!"

The Queen's voice boomed around the hall, shaking everything in it. Dust fell off from the ceiling, and some of the eggs dropped and splashed onto the ground, with the sickening sounds of heavy splashes muted by the reverberating echo of the unearthly scream of a dying monster.

Due to some kind of pressure, one of her eyes burst and the smaller eyes burst into the air like some gory, nauseating fireworks. As if on cue, it seemed as if the control of her face, and the body, split into two: the screaming, agonized Olothi and the calm, resigned Mataki.

"This is the end, Olothi. Give in. I have seen the damage. At least, I can accompany you to the end this way."

"NEVER!"

It was truly terrifying to watch the insect-like face twisting and drooping with the ongoing soul meltdown. The mandibles had stopped moving frantically. The other eye had not popped yet, but I doubted that she, and he, were seeing anything else at this point.

"Do you still not see it? The Ant Queen gave you a poisoned Perk. It has been killing you from the inside ever since!"

"YOU ARE POISON!"

"No, my dear, I am the antidote. Embrace me, for I have come to save you."

"You better get inside the c.o.c.kpit, kid. We'll have to bail soon."

I looked up and saw that the Dwarfighter had come by my side. Benedikt lowered one of the bottom hands for me to step on and reach the upper c.o.c.kpit, where I saw Elysia scooching over to make room for me.

I put one foot on the Dwarfighter's palm, looking over the shoulder one last time to see the reunited lovers, death imposing.

"... All I wanted was for us to survive... Everyone... despised us... called us hideous... it was the only way."

Olothi was no longer screaming. Bloody tears ran down from everywhere. The voice broke off constantly. The end was almost near.

"It was the wrong way... And it was only your way."

Mataki's voice, too, sounded feeble, on the verge of flickering off.

"Pretended to be friends... but extinction too clear... Cannibalistic, hideous Goblins... always go first... a preemptive strike... self-defense..."

"Hush, darling. At least, this way, we will join the Cycle together, as one."

Olothi did not seem to understand Mataki's words, let alone be able to hear anything by now.

"... Who decides what is evil... I am evil... only because I lost..." breathed Olothi weakly.

Then, suddenly, all the movements came to a stop. The face, the body, the shaking hall, everything was still.

I, too, had frozen in spot ever since I had placed one foot on the Dwarfighter's hand.

"Let's go, kid. It's over," said Benedikt solemnly.

I blinked and locked eyes with the gloomy Dwarf. I nodded and climbed over with both feet on the palm—only to halt and look back again.

"The eggs—"

"Without the Queen providing nourishment, they will perish. Come on, kid, we did our part. Let's go home."

We did. And it was not an easy job. I had every right to feel accomplished, satisfied... heroic.

Was Mataki's absence still affecting me? But I had just seen how calm and welcoming he was to close his lover's death himself. If anything, I felt everything was for the best. The lost Goblin hero had finally found his home.

It was then that my eyes picked up what had been bothering.... no, alarming me all this time.

The fresh Goblin Crawler bodies that had fallen off the eggs dangling in the ceiling and splattered on the ground, they... they looked intact in most parts.

If I did not know any better, I would have guessed that these newly hatched Goblins were sleeping on the gooey Sand Crystallite puddles... and the bluish light of the crystal fluid was obviously playing tricks on my eyes because there was no way they were moving at all...

But they were. Not only the Goblin Crawlers that dropped from the ceiling looked strong and fully grown, but they were alive.

"Benedikt?"

My teeth chattered inadvertently.

"I'm seeing it, too," gulped the old Dwarf.

Elysia was the calmest one of us. She raised the gunner arms and quickly killed the half dozen Goblin Crawlers sipping the last of the crystal fluid on the ground.

"What are we waiting for? We should kill all of them while they're... still-born!" urged Elysia, aiming for the million eggs hanging by the ceiling.

"No. Not enough ammo."

"Then let's burn them. Create an improvised bomb or something!"

Benedikt stayed silent, contemplating.

"There is no hurry. We can always come back, replenish ammo, gear up for explosion—"

"They're not dead," I said abruptly.

"They're not alive either. Without the Queen, they're hardly smarter than regular ants jumping on every sweet they find—"

"No, Benedikt. The ones that were shot... the bull-rats did not go through the skin."

The Goblins shot down just seconds ago were rising up slowly, but not from pain but as if learning to walk and stand for the first time.

"No..." gasped Elysia.

"Don't just stand there. Get inside, already!"

I almost fell off the Dwarfighter's hand as Benedikt hurriedly raised it and placed it next to the upper c.o.c.kpit.

"Sorry about the smell," I apologized, pointing to my body that was still wet from the violent escape from the Queen's body.

"That's the literally the last thing I could concern myself with right now," snapped Elysia as she beckoned me to come sit next to her quickly.

I had gotten inside the c.o.c.kpit, uncomfortably squeezed next to Elysia but not unbearably.

The Dwarfighter stayed still.

"Uh, Benedikt? There was this Dwarf that kept yelling at me to hurry up just now, you know where he is?"

Benedikt's answer did not come through communication.

Instead, the lower arm of the mech was raised and pointed at a spot, just in front of the unmoving blurb of the Queen's dead body.

It was supposed to be dead.

Olothi, in her pretty, doll-like Gobliness form, was standing, carefree and nonchalant as ever.

"I may have lost," the petite mouth moved, but with a sound loud enough to ring around the tension-filled hall.

"... But my children have not."

Olothi smiled and extended her arms sideways theatrically. The Goblins that had been struggling to get up raised their heads to her direction and scuttled awkwardly toward her.

We all knew what we were looking at was a marionette of the real Olothi... and the newborn, hungry Goblin Crawlers did too.

They were not scurrying to their mother's embrace.

They were marching toward the new, defenseless food.

Olohi's incarnate giggled and squealed as she let her babies tackle her down and rip their mandibles through her guts.

"From this point, I cease to be a Queen. I... will be a goddess!"

I could only watch a part of the scene, but one of the Goblin Crawlers might have crunched at her neck completely for Olothi had stopped speaking with a particularly sickening sound of bone cracking echoing around heavily.

No. It was not the sound of some small Gobliness bone snapping. It was the sound of something bigger stirring and scratching the dirt underneath its gargantuan body.

The Ant Queen had risen again, lifeless and soulless.

"Impossible."

I could imagine Benedikt shaking on his own at his c.o.c.kpit below, because Elysia and I, too, were shaking uncontrollably.

"What's happening?" Elysia whispered, not expecting an answer but out of helplessness.

"... It's going to dig its way to another Level."

Benedikt's conclusion wrenched my stomach hard.

The Ant Queen had died when Olothi's soul imploded with Mataki's. Its body, however, was relatively intact, despite years of devouring unprocessed Sand Crystallites and pumping out millions of Goblin Crawlers.

Following Olothi's dramatic, traumatic exit was not a curtain call, but one last act that required a totally different stage, or stages.

The lifeless body of the Ant Queen became a dutiful stage director and moved its claw-like feet that had been hidden inside the massive abdomen.

First, lighting.

A blinding light shone through as the Ant Queen opened the portal that led to the other Levels. It did not, however, enter through the hole itself. It... just died as soon as she did her job and opened up a hole big enough for a hundred Goblins to enter through at once.

And that was the goal.

Whether it was because of the portal light or all the tumult the Ant Qeeun had been making through digging, the million eggs started squirming and wriggling at once. Then one by one, the Goblin Crawlers erupted from the grotesque eggs and landed onto the ground.

And... like dutiful actors true to their roles, the newly born Crawlers marched their way toward the portal.

For a second, I hoped that passing the portal would take its toll on the Goblins or bar them from entering without exchanging a soul for a soul.

... Then I realized, with horror, that these things did not possess souls, let alone hearts. The Goblins were not actors. They were part of the stage equipment for a solo performance.

Olothi had planned it all along.

And it was clear the theme of the play was terror.

"We have to stop them."

Again, it was Elysia who first came to her senses.

"... How? We're low on bull-rats, and we ran out of the flamethrower fuel a long time ago."

"I don't know, stomp them. Block the portal!"

It was one of the few rare moments that Elysia lost her cool and shot at the Goblins blindly with the few remaining bull-rats, which ran out after a short while as expected and made Elysia settle down, for now.

Meanwhile, the Goblins diligently moved their awkward bodies to the hole, by hundreds for each passing second.

I did not know which was more terrifying. That thousands of hungry, insentient Goblin army were being sent off to another Level as we spoke, or that there still remained a million more of them.

"Benedikt is right. We have to hit the base and come back more prepared. We can't do anything at this point," I said as calmly as I could.

"By the time we come back, they'll be all gone."

Elysia pointed out sharply. She looked like she wanted to shoot at the Goblins again, even if just for the sake of shooting, doing something.

"What else can we do then?" I snapped irritably, feeling helpless beyond words.

"... There is a way."

Elysia and I stared at the speaker. Benedikt's voice sounded heavier, more somber than usual.

"Good. Let's hear it," I urged impatiently as Benedikt paused again and did not speak again in extended seconds.

"First, I will have to switch the Dwarfighter's form again. Don't panic even if you feel a little squeezed," said Benedikt calmly. Too calmly.

"Don't worry. I'm getting used to being squeezed inside a c.o.c.kpit designed for one skinny Elfina in the first place."

I tried for a light joke and laughed nervously. Something in Benedikt's voice was throwing me off.

The machine parts moved around us, and soon Elysia and I were lowered to the ground, with the c.o.c.kpit sitting on a separate vehicle that looked like a motorbike.

... That looked like an emergency pod.

"Benedikt, is this—"

But before I could ask him, the vehicle rolled and raced away from the hall, retracing the tunnel we had scaled down and back toward the surface.

"What's going on, Benedikt? It's moving on its own!"

"It's not. I made it go away... and there should be enough fuel for you to get to the lab. Once you get there, wash up, freshen up, make yourself comfortable... and don't wait for me."

My heart sank at the last words.

"Tell me how to stop this thing. What are you planning—no, whatever it is, stop. Let us go back and we'll get out of here together."

I was already fearing for the worst.

"... Remember when you asked me whether I had a nuclear bomb?" came Benedikt's relaxed, casual voice. Too relaxed and casual for the circ.u.mstance.

The voice of the determined, the suicidal.

I dreaded to answer back, but I ended up straining a response.

"You lied."

I was shaking more now than I was watching the Ant Queen digging the portal hole. Elysia felt my trembling and placed her arms around me. She, too, knew what was happening.

"Of course I lied! A genius like me, I figured out everything once Alpha explained to me the basic concepts. He explained it way better than you did, kid, by the way."

Benedikt sounded cheerful enough, and that made me even sadder, madder.

"What the f.u.c.k are you thinking, Benedikt!"

"A lot of things. Old memories, inventions still on paper at my desk, how stupid I was to store only one beer in this cooler."

A sound of beer cap popping followed by a loud gulp and an appreciative sigh filled the otherwise silent communication.

"... So there's a nuclear bomb."

"I'm sitting on it right now, kiddo."

"Why? Why are you sitting on it? No one sits on a nuclear bomb! You stay as far away from nuclear bombs!"

"Normally, that's the case. But in this case, I made it so that it has to go off manually. And only by me."

The vehicle had almost reached the surface now. I could see the light from above through a tiny hole. It was near sunset, but the looks of it.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," I crossed my head, feeling like crying.

"You're right. Creating this thing was the stupidest decision I've ever made... And that's why I'm dying with it. To protect its secret. This world will never see a nuclear bomb ever again."

"Why do you have to die? You can still be alive and just keep your mouth shut about it. That way no one knows about it."

"I know, kid. I know about it, and I will be prompted to use it... just like now. It's a good thing that I'm using it for goodwill."

"F.u.c.k you, Benedikt. F.u.c.k your heroic shit and just get back out here. We can always plan something else."

There was a pause. I could picture Benedikt savoring his last beer, waiting for the long, hard-winded nuclear bomb activation to go off slowly, surely.

"Heroes die only once like everyone else. The only difference is that heroes die to protect others," said Benedikt finally, musingly.

"Bullshit."

If I were crying then, I was not trying to stop it.

"I've been a coward for too long, kid. This has been my home too. Let me have this one."

I swallowed and looked away from the speaker as if Benedikt were there too.

The vehicle had reached the top and raced toward the setting sun. I let the soft sunray singe my eyes before talking to the speaker again.

"You owe me a story, Benedikt. You told me you were going to tell me everything about Alpha."

Benedikt did not say anything for a while.

"There's a video I want you to watch. Just say 'play the video' once you're down at the lab. It's voice-activated, and if it matters to you, filmed in high definition so you can count my wrinkles if I were standing right in front of you. Everything I know is in that video, so enjoy."

Benedikt chuckled weakly before gulping down another sip of beer.

"... You knew you were not going to make it back. That's why you made the video?"

"Well, a genius is someone who always prepares beforehand... but I knew it was going to be a tough fight. But we did fight good, no? You certainly did your part, kid. I'm proud of you."

I could not say anything.

A faint, but definite, beeping sound could be heard over the speaker.

The time was near.

"So, anyway, thanks for putting up with the grumpy old Dwarf the past few days, kids. I—I thought I was old enough to be all right without company by now, but I can't say it hasn't been fun here and there."

The beeping sound intensified. Elysia tensed, and I did too.

"You are a hero, Benedikt," I said solemnly, swallowing with difficulty.

Beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeep—

"... Nah, you can call me 'Ben' now, son."

And the communication went dead, followed by a numbing, deafening explosion below and an unearthly seism that shook every air out of the body.

The war was over.