Chapter 80 | Leaving The Dungeon
Every operator in the room attacked their keyboards like warriors battling in ancient times.
Minutes crawled past like hours as they tried to figure out a solution.
Rachel stood near the back, her hands clenched at her sides, her face flushed red.
She could not hear what the operators were saying anymore as she focused on Dexter who wasthe screen. There were about 30 Armored Bears that had rushed towards them!
Still, Dexter hadn’t move at this point but his teammates were getting injured.
"BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!"
The screen displaying Dexter’s dungeon suddenly went black!
The Head Supervisor face turned extremely dark and he slammed both hands onto the nearest desk.
"What is happening? Is there someone in this building actively sabotaging us? Find them. Find whoever is doing this. We need a scapegoat if this goes wrong. If an Ashford dies here, someone will answer for it. Find a name."
The room descended into controlled chaos.
Operators shouted over one another. Security personnel made calls. The blonde girl beside Rachel was typing so fast her fingers were a blur.
Ten minutes passed.
Ten minutes of black screen and rising panic and the suffocating weight of a family name that could end careers and lives with equal indifference.
Then a voice sharply cut through the noise.
"Sir. I fixed it."
The Head Supervisor spun toward the speaker, a young man at the far right terminal who was staring at his screen with wide, disbelieving eyes. "Activate instant teleportation immediately."
The young man hesitated. His fingers hovered over his keyboard. "Sir, I was not able to restore the instant teleportation function. The sabotage there is too thorough. But I was able to find a weakness in the arc seal on the physical door. I exploited it and forced the arc open. That is the only thing I could do."
The Head Supervisor roared.
"Call the medics to follow me!"
He walked past everyone and headed straight into the elevator. Rachel followed and Two guards Pek Superhumans followed her. They descended in silence.
The lead guard placed his palm on the access panel.
The door opened with a puff sound.
The Head Supervisor did not wait for the guards to go first. He stepped through the arc and into the dimensional zone, and Rachel was right behind him.
They emerged into the clearing and they stopped dead in their tracks, stunned.
Dexter stood in the center of a wide, open space, his chest rising and falling ss he panted.
Blood covered him from head to toe, soaking his clothes, streaked his arms, and dripped from his fingertips onto the grass beneath his feet.
In his left hand, he held the head of a massive beast. The skull was thick, encased in plates of bone armor that gleamed dully in the pale light of the dimensional zone.
It was the head of the seventh tier armored bear. The boss beast. The alpha.
Around Dexter, spread across the clearing in every direction, were the corpses of thirty armored bears.
Some were fourth tier. Some were fifth tier. A handful were sixth tier.
All of them were dead. Sliced, apart, crushed, or simply burnt. The ground was filled with sword scars and craters.
Dexter’s teammates lay scattered behind him.
Marcos was conscious but barely, clutching his left arm, which hung from his shoulder by nothing but tendon and a thin strip of flesh.
Gregor was on his back, a long, savage claw mark carved across his chest, the wound was so deep his white bones could be seen.
Lena lay face down, as a matching claw mark running the full length of her back, her breathing shallow and irregular.
Fiona was sitting upright, which was more than could be said for the others, but her face was utterly bloodless. Her eyes were half closed and her body swayed slightly where she sat.
She had pushed her time dilation ability to its absolute limit, making her look as though she was halfway to death’s door.
Nobody spoke for a long moment.
But Rachel moved.
She walked past the Head Supervisor, past the corpses and the blood and the devastation, and she threw her arms around Dexter.
Dexter went rigid and his mind went blank.
The massive head slipped from his grip and hit the ground with a heavy, wet thud that shook the earth slightly. He stood there with his arms at his sides, unsure of what to do, as Rachel pressed her face against his blood-soaked chest.
"Thank goodness you are alright," she said, her voice muffled against him. "Thank God. Thank goodness you are alright. Are you really alright? Whose blood is this? Is this your blood? Do you need medical attention?"
Dexter cleared his throat awkwardly. "I do not need medical attention. It is not my blood. It is the blood of the beasts."
He gently tilted his head toward his fallen teammates. "But the others are injured. They need medical attention immediately."
Rachel pulled back and finally looked at the ground around them. She glanced indifferently at the others injured. She didn’t care for them so it wasn’t her problem. She was only concerned about Dexter.
The Head Supervisor approached Dexter and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. "It is good that you are alright. We apologize for what happened. The malfunction, the failure of the extraction system, all of it. We take full responsibility."
Dexter frowned. "What actually hap..."
"What the fuck happened?" Marcus roared from the ground, his face twisted in pain and fury. "What the fuck actually happened? Where the hell were you people? We were almost killed in there! You said this was a controlled dungeon! This does not look fucking controlled to me! It went way out of control! I am suing you! I am telling my father to sue every single person in this fucking establishment!"
The Head Supervisor did not flinch. "It was not a malfunction. It was an intentional sabotage. Someone deliberately tampered with the extraction watches, the protection bubbles, and the wave progression system. We have not yet identified the responsible party, but the director himself will personally oversee the investigation. You will receive a full explanation and compensation for what you have endured."