Apocalypse: Generic System by Macronomicon (shoe dog free ebook TXT) 📕

Despite her fairly decent stats and level, they’d unanimously decided to leave Casey behind, since none of them were particularly interested in being responsible for orphaning the baby.

There was, perhaps, also an unspoken agreement that an unpredictable teen incapable of accurately weighing risk could do more harm than good. Jeb wasn’t sure, because it was unspoken.

They weren’t leaving Casey entirely defenseless, however.

Jeb had made her several mannequins out of wood with metal blades sticking out of their hands. Casey was able to bring these simple golems to life to provide her with meat-shields in case she was attacked. He also created a more advanced squirt gun for her. He’d taken the magical metal that composed the tip of the Penetrator and used that to make the nozzle of the water laser. The body of the water gun itself was nearly a hundred pounds to help the young girl deal with the recoil.

Thankfully, Casey’s inhuman Body made carrying it possible, if a little awkward.

With those defenses in place, they felt comfortable leaving the young woman by herself for the majority of the day while they dipped their toes in the Grave of the Titan.

Jeb stood in front of the massive entrance, breathing in the faint scent of sulfur from deeper inside.

It smelled like ass.

“Ron, if you wouldn’t mind?” Jeb said, getting out of the way.

“You heard ‘em boys.” Ron said to his host of zombies.

As one, the hundreds of zombies with Ron lurched forward and began tearing down the hallway, with specific instructions to spread out and murder the shit out of anything that wasn’t human.

“Let’s give them…a five minute headstart,” Jeb said, leaning against the stone door.

Nobody ever said they had to fight fair against the dungeon. If the zombies could trigger any traps and kill or weaken the inhabitants, then why not?

Jeb wasn’t going to begrudge Ron the extra levels. It was a simple matter of Ron being able to delegate more effectively.

All of the people here could beat Ron in a fight, anyway.

After chatting for the equivalent of a couple smoke breaks, Jeb nodded to the two Courvars.

Both of them were wearing heavy armor, heavy weapons, and looked ready to throw down. They entered the dungeon, followed by Jeb and Ron, flanked by Jessica with a bow and the Death knight.

Jess being the most mobile and with the highest Nerve, was more than able to both watch their backs and step in if necessary. The Death Knight was the last line of defense, responsible for keeping their exit clear and staying behind to buy them time if necessary.

Ron and Jeb were the squishies, so they were safely ensconced between Jess and the heavies.

Standard formation, according to Ron.

You have entered a Dungeon!

Grave of the Titan.

As they walked, the hall gradually shifted from a well-chiseled entrance to a craggy, rough tunnel leading into the heart of the mountain.

The light level gradually became dimmer and dimmer until Jeb pulled out the BSF and created a single point of brilliant blue fire above their heads.

Only fifty feet or so in, they came across the first triggered trap.

It was a patch of discolored floor radiating a tremendous amount of heat. Rising out of the top of it was a single crispy limb of one of Ron’s zombies, slowly smouldering.

When Brett poked the discolored stone with his weapon, it cracked apart easily, revealing molten rock underneath it.

It was like quicksand, except lava. Anyone carelessly stepping onto the seemingly solid surface would get dunked in lava. Generally not survivable, but with the System…who knew? Still, no one was eager to be the first to test it out.

“Let’s keep our eyes open,” Jeb said. “There’s no guarantee the zombies got all of them.”

Bret and Amanda nodded, tapping the floor with their weapons as they cautiously made their way around the death-pit.

Jeb was scanning the walls and ceiling for hidden threats when he felt a yank on his legs, collapsing him sideways onto the ground with a grunt.

Time seemed to slow as he looked down and spotted a cherry-red tentacle wrapped around his feet. Well, foot and pegleg. The tentacle was about as thick as his arm, and led back to the lava trap.

It was reeling him in.

Before Jeb could react, Jessica stepped in and bisected the appendage, causing it to leak molten blood on the ground. There was something like a muffled squeal that vibrated through the stone floor, and the remaining tentacle quickly withdrew.

Jeb’s armored pants were smoldering and he felt a distinct amount of heat through them as he kicked the severed tentacle off his legs.

Jeb levered himself back to a standing position, staring at the rapidly re-darkening skin of rock over the lava.

“Well,” he said, panting. “That’s a thing.”

Jeb reached into his bag of rocks and pulled out a relatively flat one.

Mystic trigger.

He designed the trap to send spikes of telekinetic force downward in a wide cone, should a tentacle move within three feet of it. Hopefully it would kill the offending creature or convince it to fuck off.

“Suck on that,” Jeb said, tossing the rock with a light spin to make sure it landed right side up. It landed with a splat and floated on top of the lava, slowly heating.

Hopefully the triggers don’t get destroyed when the rock melts. I guess we’ll have to experiment with that.

They kept moving. The hall suddenly opened up into a massive chamber that was swelteringly hot.  It formed a massive dome above them that was pockmarked with jagged stone and somehow bore lines of molten rock tracing the sides of the chamber like veins.

Maybe they are veins. Jeb thought. If it was real magma running through the walls like that, he could hardly picture this room being as stable as