This morning

  Billy explained his reasoning to Bob and Jenna over breakfast. “Think of each separate dungeon as an uncut pizza with the Core at the very center. If the stunt we are going to pull works, we will compress all those pizzas into a single giant one, cut into nineteen identical slices, each one with its own flavor.”

  Bob noticed Jenna’s grimace and wondered how many pizzas she had cooked during her various jobs at different fast food franchises.

  “What will happen with the Cores? Will they all appear in the same spot, at the center of the pizza?” he asked Billy.

  “That’s the interesting part. There are two basic rules in dungeon design: the Core always manifests as deep in the dungeon as possible, and there can be no more than one Core in the same instance,” Billy answered. “Cores must be at the center, but they also repel each other, as two of them are incompatible in the same dungeon. The dungeon will seek a balanced solution; I think all those Cores will end up being placed right at the midpoint of each slice.”

  “A balanced solution,” Bob mused. “Yes, I think it could work out like that.”

  “If the center of the pizza is up for grabs, all the Imperials will try to take it,” said Jenna, her eyes glazing as she calculated the probabilities. “It is the main strategic spot. The faction that controls it has an 87% chance of taking over the whole dungeon.”

  “But how will those Cores react?” he asked Billy. “We could be getting into a dire situation there.”

  “They will do nothing,” explained Billy. “They are slowly transforming into Tribulations. That usually implies a hibernation period. There are exceptions to the rule, but I think they will not apply here.”

  “They will remain hibernating,” he continued. “Initially.”

  Now

  The three Losers were thrown to the ground as the dungeon trembled around them. Billy had adopted his humanoid dragon form, trying not to draw much attention from any nearby imperials. He might as well have saved himself the effort, as the few Imperials they saw flew about in a disorganized manner, reeking of panic.

  Bob felt a strange pressure on his very self as reality compressed itself around them.

  He closed his eyes and tried to focus on anything else. It was a mistake. When he opened them, he found himself in the backseat of a car again, with Charlie Vanaugh at the wheel, driving it into an automatic car wash.

  “You are going to love this, trust me,” Charlie said, giving Mrs. Bob a winning smile.

  Bob screamed in panic as she saw mechanical arms wielding hammers and welding torches fall on the car, wrecking it savagely.

  When Mrs. Bob opened her eyes again, the car had transformed into a metallic sphere composed of nineteen different models.

  Mrs. Bob’s seat was in the center of the sphere. The world began gyrating around her as the sphere rolled out of the car wash. She screamed in panic, with her crotchety, eighty-year-old voice.

  Charlie cackled somewhere inside the sphere, shouting his cheesy one-liners.

  “See? I told you, you are loving it!

  …that was a big mistake... and the last!

  ... somewhere, somehow, someone is going to have his balls kicked!”

  “I based that last one on another movie,” Charlie said, turning towards Bob. “I think my version very much improves the original,” he added modestly.

  Bob opened his eyes to a very changed world.

  Miles away, Elin entered the Church of Change, the official religion of the Fluids. He had chosen to shift his myriad legs so that they could maintain speed without making any sound.

  It was a Church, after all. Respect was expected.

  Elin saw Erbora, Andara’s second in command, perched over her favourite stool, while the worms that composed her body squiggled unpleasantly under her skin.

  “Something has happened! Where is her Holiness?” Elin demanded of Erbora. While Erbora was second only to Andara, Elin was in charge of all military matters.

  “She is not to be expected. You will defer to me,” Erbora calmly answered.

  “All the dungeons have been compressed into a single one—all nineteen of them. The final battle is upon us. Whoever wins this, wins the war”, Elin almost screamed. “Where is her holiness? Seek her now!”

  “As I said, you will defer to me,” Erbora answered. “But as this is a military matter, I will defer to you,” she conceded.

  That seemed to satisfy Elin, who ran out of the Church, emitting through the hypersonic frequencies the Fluid Army uses. “All personnel to their assigned post. This is not a drill. Again, this is no drill. We are taking the center of this dungeon!”

  Erbora sighed and followed him, too. She was going to die today. All of them would.

  It would be worth it.

  As Erbora entered the fray, Boral barked orders through the ether, arranging his Committed troops and his secondary brains into overdrive, evaluating the best possible tactics for the incoming battle.

  This was it; whoever held the center of this dungeon would win this war.

  Committed had higher stats than Fluids and were good at enduring damage. He would use a classical delayed pincer maneuver, deploying two/thirds of his troops in a frontal attack and reserving one-third, led by himself, to deliver a devastating flanking attack on the Fluids in the middle of the battle.

  The vanguard troops had already clashed with the Fluids. If they could hold for twenty minutes, victory was theirs.

  Suddenly, a minor magical item he had forgotten he had on his person began to flash. It was the magical card that Garan, that slimy traitor, had given to him as a means of communicating.

  He nearly ignored it, but on second thought, he decided to take the call.

  Garan had killed Vlas as proof of loyalty. Boral almost laughed. He knew that Garan hated his own son and had used him to win Boral’s trust.

  He had not obtained his trust, but Boral loved working with people who thought themselves smarter than him. They were so easy to dispose of.

  He checked the card. A simple message had appeared on it: “It is a trap- RUN!”

  Boral’s brains digested the information and deduced what had happened. One of them, his favourite one, located just under his left armpit, suggested an ingenious way to take advantage of the new situation. Boral loved it. A good leader turns a crisis into an opportunity.

  “Hold the rearguard,” he ordered his subordinates. “We are not advancing yet.”

  Elin watched from the heights as the Committed rearguard suddenly stopped advancing. What were they doing?

  Elin himself commanded the attack on the Committed positions. As with all wars between progressors, it would begin as a conventional battle and end up as a sped-up documentary on wildlife, as their shapes and powers fluctuated wildly, trying to adapt to the enemy and the situation.

  His discus-like shape was currently flying over a battery of Committed who had shaped their bodies into coral-like formations. Interceptors, probably.

  He used his pheromones to warn his squad, ordering them to avoid them. They were going to bomb their ground troops without getting into range of their fire.

  Suddenly, some harmless-looking beetle things Elin had taken for Healers showed their true Intent, as scores of eyes appeared on their shells and started releasing short bursts of optic energy on their squad.

  The Fluid to his side screamed as a pulse of energy struck him, setting him ablaze.

  Damn it! The Turds were getting wiser. They had never pulled that trick before.

  But they were Fluids, the true Children of Change, and they could adapt to anything the Turds could think of. He gave the order to his wind squad to gyrate on their axis, making themselves a smaller target, and release their bioattacks on the Turds.

  Down on the ground, Varsoon, the Committed in charge of the aerial defenses, saw the hallucinogenic spores fall among his carefully disguised Interceptors. One of them was hit by the gas they released and started releasing his energy pulses on his companions, giggling like a maniac, before he was struck down.

  The Pissbodies were counterattacking, and they had numbers on their side.

  He contacted Boral again, using the Ether. “Your Excellency, there are too many; we can’t hold the position anymore. We are going to be overrun in three minutes if we do not get reinforcements from the vanguard.”

  The High Exemplar of Commitment did not even bother to reply this time. What the hell was happening?

  This morning

  “Initially?” asked Bob.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Cores are incredibly territorial. The mere presence of other Cores in the same dungeon will be felt, slowly at first. As the battle progresses, the essence released by it is bound to wake at least one of the Cores. It will be like pushing a line of dominoes.

  Once the first awakens, all the others will follow,” explained Billy.

  “How will they react?” asked Jenna.

  “They will follow their instincts. All will try to occupy the center of the dungeon at the same time, destroying anything in their path, including Fluids, Committed, or other Cores.”

  Bob tried to come up with a suitably badass one-liner, something Charlie would say upon hearing of their enemies' imminent destruction.

  "Poor bastards," was the only thing that came to mind.

  Now

  Erbora and Elin fought side to side, their shapes, bodies, and minds adapting to the powerful Committed facing them. There were casualties by the dozen on both sides, but they were pushing them back. The day was theirs!

  “Ready to see a crushing defeat, Priestess?” said Elin, who would have smiled grimly if scaled octopoids could smile.

  “Yes,” answered Erbora sadly. “Ours.”

  What was she talking about? thought Elin. The Committed were falling back.

  Then he heard it, a symphony of bestial cries all around them. The ground trembled as angry Titans crawled out of it, mad with fury.

  He recognized Lamia, the Dread Spider, from one of their own dungeons, and Ferral, that crocodile thing covered with tentacles, among many others. Then they charged.

  They charged towards them.

  Billy had changed back into his humanoid form, trying to become as unobtrusive as possible. The Losers were lying low, observing the carnage.

  Bob could not believe his eyes. “Are we really supposed to go there?” he asked Jenna.

  “We are, but not now. We wait until only one Core is left, and then we slay it. That will collapse the whole dungeon, and the Seeds will reconstruct it before the Essence can escape into the environment. Then this will be a complete victory.”

  “A partial one at most, Jenna. Look there,” Bob pointed at a spot about two miles away. Boral and one-third of his army were stationed there. They had not fallen into the trap. What were they doing? The most logical tactic would be to escape the dungeon.

  What were they waiting for?

  Erbora saw Elin go down, swallowed in mid-air by a vulture-thing. Her own body lay broken at the bottom of a trench.

  An enormous horned gorilla the size of a skyscraper looked down at her with contempt. It raised its humongous foot and proceeded to stomp Erbora.

  As the foot came down, Erbora had time for one final shout.

  “I believe, Andara, I believe.”

  The Losers watched as the two kaijus grappled, not two hundred feet away. One looked like a giant hedgehog, and the other was a cross between a python and a caterpillar.

  These two had been swinging at each other for ten minutes, and their struggle had taken them apart from the main battle and near the part of the river where they were hiding.

  Each time one of the Cores toppled the other, the impact was so great that their bodies literally jumped off the ground.

  It was during one of these crashes that Billy fell out of the minor rock depression where he was hiding. For one instant, both Cores looked at him, as if recognizing him. Then, the fight resumed.

  “Damn it!” Jenna said. “They have seen Billy!”

  “I think they are busy with each other, Jenna,” Bob said.

  “You do not understand, Bob. These things are territorial, and Billy is technically a Boss from another dungeon. I do not know who is going to win that fight, but the winner is going to go for him as soon as their brawl is over.”

  “What do we do now, Jenna?” asked a worried Billy.

  “What we always do, Billy,” Jenna answered.

  Bob sighed, “We cheat.”

  Bob’s Mind was already +6, so Jenna pumped +4 Focus and +4 Intensity points into him.

  Bob concentrated his ranged healing perk on the Hedgehog, the combatant who was clearly losing the fight. With his enhanced stats, he could feel every muscle, every bone, every cell inside its battered body.

  He gently gave them the order to start healing. Soon, the battle began to turn, and the hedgehog started punishing the snake.

  “Enough,” Jenna’s thoughts sounded inside his mind. “Now go for the other.”

  Bob repeated the operation, this time healing the snake.

  The trick was knowing when to stop and change targets.

  Jenna directed the operation with such precision that the Cores always ended each round in a little worse shape than before.

  They healed them enough so that they could keep fighting, but never to recover their full strength.

  Twenty minutes and thirty-five heals later, both Cores were a mass of wounds and broken bones that kept weakly biting each other.

  Finally, the snake died. The Hedgehog thing raised its paws and released a roar of triumph. Then it swayed, fell on its back, and died too.

  “That felt a little cheap,” Billy said, somewhat ashamed of the way they had won.

  “We are the Losers, Billy,” Jenna reminded him. “We always cheat. Even our name is a con.”

  They had to hide again as they saw Boral’s troop approach the body of the fallen titans.

  “What are they doing?” asked Billy as they seemed to practice some impromptu autopsy on the dead Cores.

  “I think they are trying to steal the progression cores inside those beasts. If the mobs have them, it stands to reason that the Cores would too,” Bob answered.

  “See there?” Jenna pointed at a Committed made up of angles and sharp surfaces, who extracted one orb the size of a basketball from the hedgehog’s skull. “It seems you were right, Bob. But what do they want them for?” she asked.

  “Nothing good,” Billy answered. “Should we try to stop them?”

  “Too many of them,” Jenna mumbled. “Besides, we have something more important to do.”

  They spent most of an hour waiting, studying the Committed and their actions.

  Suddenly, the ground started shaking again. Another Core was approaching.

  The Imperials quickly gathered their spoils and sped towards the nearest dungeon exit.

  “I think they have stolen more cores apart from those two. That is why they split their forces; they were trying to get more corpses,” whispered Bob.

  Finally, the last Core came into view. It was Bethella, the bear-like thing from the original Guzzler’s den. It was covered in wounds and limping on one of its paws.

  It had won, but the victory had been costly.

  “This is the last remaining Core, I am sure of it,” said Billy, using his Essence Sight on the wounded monster. “Bethella is the last piece holding the dungeon together. If we kill her, it falls apart.”

  “Let’s kill her, then,” said Jenna, always pragmatic.

  Billy swam to the bottom of the river, performed a couple of Draws, and returned to the surface. He had built his dragon form on four Wands, granting him extra armor, health, and resilience.

  The enormous beast that climbed out of the river had little to do with the elegant oriental dragon they had ridden before. Its squat body moved slowly on four powerful legs, as if a mountain had decided to take an evening stroll along the river.

  Bethella roared as soon as she saw it. She was a Core, with seven evolutions, probably the equivalent of a Beli with seventy Arcana. Billy only had forty-nine, but he had a team with him.

  Bethella charged at him, and Billy hit her full in the face with a blast of acidic sludge.

  The Seven of Dooms

  Requires the Fold of the Suit of Drakes.

  Swords: Each Sword spent allows the dragon to release a single attack with a thick acidic spray, also usable underwater. The more Swords spent, the more powerful the attack.

  Wand: Each Wand held in the Hand grants the acidic spray a poisonous toxin that does damage over time. The more Wands, the more powerful the toxin.

  Cups: Spend cups to make the Dragon’s blood poisonous for a minute.

  Coins: Coins can be exchanged for any other suit.

  Billy had spent his four cards on swords, making this a single, but potent attack.

  For one instant, Bob could see Bethella’s skull being eaten away by the acid. Then the skull fell from her neck, and a new head grew atop it.

  Bethella was also a Progressor, and progressors were full of surprises.

  “Perhaps I should have spent more cards on Wands,” Billy said over the blood link.

  “It is too late for that, now—try to keep her occupied,” she answered.

  Bob felt her mind linking with him again.

  He used his enhanced Mind Stats to deliver powerful plasma bolts against the Core. Whenever they hit, Bethella’s scaly skin broke into pieces, and the flesh beneath was seared, but she regenerated from her wounds faster than they could inflict them.

  Billy’s dragon form was highly durable, but he was taking a terrible beating.

  “There is only one way to win this, Jenna, do it, as we discussed before,” Billy said through the link.

  Jenna swore. She took one medicinal pill from her flask and turned to Bob. “You know what you have to do.”

  Jenna curled her body into a ball.

  Bob summoned an enormous, aqueous arm and grabbed Jenna in it. His magical arm still counted as physical contact, so Jenna could still enhance it.

  Jenna swallowed the Pill that Bob had created for her.

  Medicinal Pill of Physical Meridians (Tastecraft 3): Adds +3 to Body for ten seconds when ingested. Requires rank three alchemical ingredients.

  Her body gained three extra points. By squeezing her Mind and Spirit, she could reach +6 tertiary stats for a second, which, with the compound interest formula applied to her stats, meant thousands of times above the human average. Ten seconds left.

  Bethella finally clamped her jaws on Billy’s neck, breaking it and instantly killing him. Eight seconds left.

  The Core roared in anger as the ten explosive charges Billy had bought exploded, taking half her armored skin with it. Five seconds left.

  Body +6, Resilience +6, Density +6

  Bob threw Jenna, still curled up like a ball.

  Wind Kisses the Ball + Spheric Polyvalence + Air Friction turned Jenna into an incandescent bullet. She hit Bethella's exposed flesh and sank inside it like a knife into butter. Three seconds left.

  Jenna changed her stats: Body +6, Might +6, Large +6

  Bethella stopped roaring in anger and began to squeal in pain. A giant Jenna, easily twice as tall as the Core, erupted from inside, tearing Bethella apart—a female titan, covered in blood and gore.

  She had time to deliver a booming challenge before the effects of the pills ended, and she shrank back to standard size.

  Scores of scholars later studied these words for generations, seeking their hidden meaning. None succeeded.

  “I know it was you, Wu Na. It was your bloody luck. You are trying to get even for Morton.”

  The dungeon disintegrated around them, but the symbiotic seeds did their job, holding the essence together and transforming it into a permanent symbiotic mega-dungeon, easily as big as one of Belona’s districts.

  New Belona was born.

  Bob watched the new dungeon with satisfaction. The war is won, he thought.

  Andara had successfully done her part. She was the only one who understood what was really happening and knew how to change it. The war is won, she thought.

  Boral contemplated the six major progression cores he had obtained from the corpses of six of the core beasts. He would not have dared to do this before- it would have crippled his own dungeons. He had turned a moment of crisis into victory. The war is won, he thought.