Worthy Core

Xenia hovers, not quite literally, as Deylia hurries around the Floor Five 'medical center'. "How are things looking, Del?"

"They're looking like I need a moment to get ahold of the situation!" The former maid gives an exasperated sigh as she glances at the Challengers bringing in another wounded soldier. "At least I'm not the only healer on staff these days, what with all of the volunteers. While I do a preliminary triage, mind telling me what went wrong up there?"

"Wrong?" Xenia furrows her brow. "I mean, honestly I'd say things went pretty damn near perfect. We killed more than a third of them outright by turning off their stabilization enchantments, and left another third pretty unsteady on their feet to say the least. Once the ambush squads poked their heads out, it was pretty much a turkey shoot."

The rabbit-eared priestess frowns. "Then why do I have all of these injured combatants pouring in to my clinic?"

"Well...perfect doesn't mean perfect, when it comes to large scale combat. You don't just ambush three dozen people without some of them getting off shots of their own. There were archers, mages...a couple of the demons had wings, or could grow a pair. But the trade-off was about as good as you can possibly get."

As she pauses to work on magically healing a neck wound spilling blood all over one of her beds, Deylia doesn't seem quite convinced. "But why use so many mortals? Why not let monsters do the brunt of the work?"

The dungeon master crosses her arms, feeling slightly annoyed that she needs to defend her tactics from one of her own guardians. "Maybe I could fill that shaft with a few dozen monsters when I was using tier D spiders, but I bumped it up to Rabbit and Arachnos Champions for this fight. That means I couldn't have anywhere near enough for an ambush of this size. I did let them take the lead, yeah, and a number of them died too. But I needed mortal backup - and everyone who joined in was a volunteer, in case you've forgotten."

Deylia doesn't answer right away, with all of her focus on saving the man in front of her, but as she finishes stabilizing the man she bows her head towards her boss. "Of course - my apologies. It's just...I've never been part of the army, I've never had cause to see this many injured people at one time. I suppose perhaps my sense of scale is...not quite calibrated."

"Suppose it's a good thing you've never had to see it like this before...god knows I've seen it get far worse." Xenia shakes her head before pivoting back to the original topic. "But still, you are my magic medical expert around here. Any thoughts?"

Deylia takes a moment to direct one injured woman to a bed, before pointing a pair of Challenger healers towards two of the worst cases. Eventually though she finds time to answer properly. "Well...I believe everyone who's made it here should survive, assuming there's no surprise poisons or curses in these wounds. I see a few severed limbs, if the originals are recoverable we may be able to reattach them fully. So...I suppose it's not as bad as it looks." Frowning again, she turns to face Xenia. "Did everyone make it here, though?"

The reincarnator sighs. "Since I used shortcut portals to get people into and out of the ambush points, the wounded were able to evac pretty quick. But...yeah, a couple went down too fast for that. I think the Valleylanders lost an orc, and two Challengers took bad magical hits. Also a couple guys ended up falling down themselves, the spiderfolk were able to catch most of them but there was one dwarf who was...not acrobatic."

"So four casualties, then? I...suppose in military terms, that's not a bad trade-off for an entire wave of enemy soldiers. Although I'm not sure if we can make that trade more often than the Domain can."

"You're not wrong." Xenia chuckles softly to herself. "You know the fucked-up part? I don't think I'm gonna get any of the credit for this until the reset, since the 'intrusion' is still on-going, but I'm pretty sure those four are gonna count as being my kills too. Hell, probably even gonna get credit for having intruders kill each other or some shit like that. So it is all officially my fault according to at least one score card."

Deylia quickly glances around, but other than the handful of rabbit 'nurses' in the room, none of those present can see or hear the dungeon master. "That's - no one blames you for this. If there's benefits to be found even in...in death, then perhaps they would even be glad to know of it. Are...any of them guardian candidates?"

"Eh?" Xenia raises an eyebrow before shaking her head. "Oh, no, none of them 'surrendered' to me before dying, didn't even get the chance to, really. Maybe Brightsky'll want to take a look at them...but I don't think any of them were really champion candidates either. So they're just...soul store currency, I suppose."

"Well...that's something." Deylia blinks before looking back at Xenia. "If it's not...crass to say this, I imagine you must be rather, well...wealthy right now."

"Ha! Yeah, you're not wrong. I had a stockpile before all this, and then with that first attempt they made? Yeah, I've been saving a bunch of them as an ace up my sleeve, but once tonight's, uh, payout comes in, I should really get to spending some of them. Best to get some better defenses in before they push us back halfway through the dungeon."

Deylia spends a minute healing a man's burn wound, taken from a Domain fireball, before turning back towards the avatar. "Surely we don't have to worry about that any time soon though, yes? I mean, a defeat like this might push back their plans by a solid week, at least!"

Xenia responds with a thin-lipped smile. "Would be nice. But somehow I don't think we'll be that lucky..."

---

"I take full responsibility for this failure, Emissary. I should have ordered the soldiers to use the more cautious tactics we developed on the first floor, and had them spend more time searching for ambushes."

As the draconic commander of the Domain's military forces kneels and bows her head to Cerise, the succubus can't help but feel that this is all wrong. A draconic bowing to a demon is rare, although it's not that which unsettles her. But rather, the fact that the officer before her is taking the blame when Cerise had just spent the last hour mentally flagellating herself for her stupidity.

She does her best to keep that out of her voice as she responds, however. "I accept your responsibility for the manner in which our troops progressed, commander, but the results were beyond what any of us could have foreseen. Even if we could have caught out the ambushes ahead of time - which is uncertain - the sabotage planted within our new equipment would have done serious damage regardless. For now, our focus must be on ensuring that this does not happen again."

"Of course, Emissary." The gray-scaled draconic rises from her kneeling position, and her tone gains a hint of anger. "Do we understand yet how exactly this sabotage occurred?"

Cerise frowns. "I've taken another look at the enchantment runes myself, but they remain as mysterious to me as ever. However, although I do not understand the technical answer to 'how', the rest is obvious. Our...consultant who provided the enchantments betrayed us. I might consider that perhaps this was only an unfortunate side effect of the way in which the magic functions, except he was caught attempting to flee north just last night, so his guilt is obvious. Apparently, Worthy or someone else within the dungeon does understand the foreign runes he uses, and was able to interpret a weakness in them. One which we could not discover during our own testing of the equipment."

Standing off to the side of the command tent, Lyota growls. "Are we going to have to throw it all out, then? It took days to get all that gear enchanted!"

"I don't wish to have our troops here left entirely unequipped. Enchantments can be broken without damaging the base material too badly, if you do it right - have our mages begin on that immediately, and remove the anti-fall runes. At least the curses..." Cerise pauses, before cursing a bit herself. "...No, we can't rely on those either. If Xenia had someone who could read the unknown runes she certainly knows how the others work, and can begin working on countermeasures to those as well. We'll have to switch over to one of the alternative curses we had on our list. Actually, several of them - if different soldiers have three or four different kinds of curse, countermeasures will be less likely to affect an entire squad."

Lyota crosses her arms, frustrated. "We're not set up to do armor crafting up here. Will we retreat back to Grassbrook?"

"Negative." The succubus's voice is firm in this, at least. "I will not have us lose Floor One and then need to retake it all over again, likely with a completely redesigned layout. The reinforcements that arrived today will be sufficient to hold their ground. However...we may need a few more days to prepare additional troops before we can begin to push forward once again."

The commander seems somewhat surprised at this. "You still wish to proceed further into the dungeon, Emissary? We could maintain our foothold and wait until more specialized units are available."

This time, Cerise's tone turns to anger. "I am not going to look the Dragonlord in the eye and tell them that we wasted a week or two, and over a hundred soldiers, simply to claim a single floor before deciding to sit on our asses!" She leans forward enough that she almost rises from her seat entirely, but eventually regains control of herself somewhat. "...We will certainly need specially trained units to reach Worthy's core, that was always the case. But I would very much like to have at least the first...four floors within our control before we have to resort to that. Can you see this done, commander?"

The draconic pauses for a while, running the math in her head. "...With the units stationed in Grassbrook, this can be done, Emissary. So long as no more floors grant us casualties like we saw today, at least. Reinforcements, including more of the 'Dungeon Legion', should be on their way as well."

"...Understandable." The demon motions for the commander to leave. "Propagate the orders to the mages, and see to it that our defensive positions on Floor One are fully resumed - and that watches are improved to prevent any ambushes like we suffered last night! The soldiers will have to hold this floor for some time."

"As you order, Emissary." The commander leaves, her wings brushing the tent flaps on her way out, and Lyota turns back towards Cerise.

"...I'm glad that you've regained some control over yourself. Still, I can tell you're agitated about this more than you show. Do you wish to speak about it?"

The succubus raises an eyebrow at her bodyguard. "Is this a fury demon thing, Lyota? You wish to help assuage my guilt?"

"Funny thing, guilt." Lyota chuckles. "If you led dozens of soldiers to their death through pure arrogance, or mismanagement, or apathy, the sin of it would have laid heavily on you. Trust me, I would know. But all I can see is the normal sort of guilt a good leader might have after a failure. This isn't your fault."

"Isn't it?" Cerise stands up and moves to pour herself a glass of wine. "I knew Xenia got her hands on some of the armor. I knew Ruckus, who helped design that armor, had attempted to flee town before it could be fully put to the test. In my arrogance, I merely assumed him to be a coward. I should have called off today's attack, had the armor thrown out, and resumed when we had more trustworthy equipment."

"And in the process wasted both the days we spent making that armor as well as the days spent making new armor. All on a hunch. Had Ruckus truly just been trying to skip town, we would have given Worthy an extra week to prepare her other defenses. I'm not a soldier, but I'm familiar with military history. Sometimes not taking action is as fatal to a war effort as taking bad action."

"You're right, you're right." Cerise sips from her glass before continuing. "But we did take a bad action. Now we just need to see if we can yet recover from it..."