Dungeon Raider System

Now that Uriel had what he came for, his first instinct was to grab whatever he could carry and then run away.

His mystical sense didn't alert him of anything in the vicinity, but he knew that some cryptids didn't emit a field of disruption or flux signature while they were on standby and unfortunately, this didn't mean they were weak as even the titan cryptid didn't emit a signal whenever it disappeared on the ground.

'The door was closed when I arrived and broke it, this means that whatever cryptid entered this place is either able to cross through walls or it's still in here.' With a clear mind, he pondered the possibilities as he scanned the room thinking that some creature might jump him at the first opportunity.

The many gadgets on Fermi's table remained the same, the containers were in disarray but that wasn't unusual as the professor was a known hoarder and apparently, the word 'order' had a different meaning to the old professor. After a few seconds, Uriel arrived at the conclusion that the only place a cryptid could hide was in the huge pile of junk that Fermi called his treasure.

He grabbed his revolver and cocked the hammer, aiming it at the general direction of the junk pile as he walked forward until he was at arm's reach. While most hunters would feel safer at a distance, but Uriel was better suited for melee since his fighting style was based on speed rather than strength.

A clanking sound behind him prompted Uriel to turn his head only to find a small device clashing against the wall. "It's just the Vroomba..." Uriel let out in relief, only to be grabbed from behind by four brazen limbs that threatened to tear him apart. He couldn't so much as see his attacker, let alone fight back.

The searing pain of his limbs being pulled apart to keep him immobilized made Uriel curse the minute he decided to come by himself.

If only he waited for just a few hours, Luna and Medusa would have been by his side. But hindsight wasn't going to help him, screaming and shouting wouldn't help either. The only thing that could potentially save him was the revolver still nesting on his hand.

He started firing shot after shot until the chamber was empty, then stored the revolver inside his museum and made it appear on his other gun to repeat the process after the gun was reloaded.

He hoped that, by firing his gun at random directions a bullet would eventually bounce off and hit his attacker, though what he didn't realize was that the bullets were piercing through the walls like they were made of glass and the same applied to all the gadgets and pieces of equipment laying around in the floor, the tables and even those hanged on the ceiling.

"Stop! Stop you punk!" Fermi's voice resounded from behind Uriel, but he knew better than to stop struggling just because someone asked him to. It took Fermi a while to realize this and by the time he let Uriel go, the damage has already been caused. "What have you done!?"

"You attacked me!" Uriel let out in a growl before even turning back to see the professor.

"Not before you stole from me! My research, my precious gadgets, even the spare parts I meant to use, they're all broken!" Fermi's voice sounded pitiful, but his appearance was even worse.

Instead of the chubby professor with a prominent belly and a benign face, Uriel saw the pale figure of a skinny man with arms as thin as twigs. His face, deprived of his healthy pink cheeks now seemed elongated and dry. The worst part was his mustache, now long and dirty like giving him a rabid look.

"What happened to you?"

"Someone broke inside my workshop, that's what happened," The professor let out in a scoff, his teary eyes still grieving the loss of so many valuables.

"I'm sorry, but the workshop was sealed and the blood..."

"It was a strategy to keep looters away. If they think I'm dead, they won't see me coming from behind," Fermi explained as a mechanical arm placed his lens in front of his eye to inspect Uriel's phone. "what kind of device is this? Did it really consume a full tier 3 battery?"

"It's just my smartphone," Uriel replied shortly to keep the professor from prying into his business, but then he thought it better and continued. "For some odd reason it keeps needing more energy. It's only filled to about 35%... huh? It seems I'm wrong, it's 30% now."

"Interesting... really interesting. This is Samsong's prototype smartphone, it was sold for a limited period of time and very few people managed to get their hands on it."

"I know, it must have been really expensive."

"How much do you want for it?" Fermi said as he attempted to snatch the device from Uriel's hand. In response, Uriel simply made it disappear inside his trait, leaving the old man pouting.

"I'm sorry to say this, Professor, but you can't stay here anymore. Grab anything you can carry and let's get out of here."

"Impossible, I'm on the verge of a groundbreaking discovery, I might have found the nature of cryptid's field of disruption. You must understand how important... do you happen to have something to eat?" Fermi started speaking of his research, but got lost in the middle of the sentence since he was too hungry to continue speaking.

Noticing this, Uriel decided to buy some snacks from his souvenir shop and hand them to the professor who thanked him profusely and proceeded to speak with his mouth full of chips.

"So, you can summon a weapon and food... interesting fact, did you know that traits that can materialize objects use flux energy to break the balance between matter and energy? Yes, yes...

you probably noticed it too, the matter you materialize returns to you in the form of energy once you cancel the summon," The professor spoke excitedly causing a rapidfire of crumbs all over the place, prompting Uriel to take a step back and nod pretending he knew what he was talking about, but the professor didn't stop. "I guess my question is, why don't you use two guns?

You clearly have enough flux to do so."

"I can't because it's a unique artifact."

"Nonsense! You don't summon an actual item, what you're doing is just materializing a copy of said weapon."

Just out of curiosity, Uriel decided to try and summon two magnums, but just as he expected it was impossible. Instead of another revolver, it simply shifted hands.

"See? I can't do it."

"I see, then your trait is to actually summon from another dimension. Well, at least I won't lose any calories when you cancel the summon of these snacks." The professor chuckled and then fell silent with a blank stare. His mood then shifted so suddenly it made him seem like a madman, not that it was unexpected from someone who was already considered an eccentric before the city fell.

"We need to find Pangeotis."

"I know he's your friend, but..."

"It's not that, we really do need to find him. He took part of my research with him to present it to the Celes company. We must recover it!"

"You must not know about what happened to the city, but..."

"Oh, I know everything that happened. We must gather the government officials, we must..." Fermi continued speaking compulsively and Uriel felt he had no choice but to knock the professor out, though as soon as he tried to land a blow to the back of his head one of the brass arms blocked the attack. "Are you not listening to a word I'm saying? If you keep acting like a punk I might have to fail you."

To say Uriel was flabbergasted would be an understatement. Now that humans weren't in control of the former megacity of Texas, there was no college anymore and grades didn't matter anymore. It was difficult to follow Fermi's logic, but he decided to play along thinking that maybe eccentricity finally turned into madness.

"Fine, but all the professors are required to head over to the new facilities. Professor Lamar is there already."

"That incompetent kid!? How come no one even noticed me?" The professor fumbled a few words and proceeded to pack a few 'essentials' for the trip.

With that done, Uriel was finally able to lead the professor to the former Cryptid hunting agency where Medusa and Luna were already waiting for him to return to the dungeon.

Although they failed on the mission Cassandra entrusted them with, it wasn't a waste of time. Now all they needed was to focus some of their energy into finding a new food source and mass producing it inside the dungeon.

However, in spite of Fermi's apparent insanity, Uriel couldn't shake what he said out of his mind and he wondered if rescuing Pangeotis should be a priority to him. After all, he was one of his favorite professors back when life was simpler and losing him would also mean losing all of his knowledge. It would be nothing short of a loss for humanity as a species, or so he thought.