Dungeons Online

Chapter 149: Breaching the dome

"Well..." Tom hesitated. For how pragmatic he was, he wasn't naive enough to believe his approach to life would be shared by everyone else in the family. 'And there is a bit of truth in what they said,' he thought, biting his lips due to this unexpected problem. 

"How about we divide your luggage amongst others?" Marvin proposed, noticing Tom's distress. "This way, you won't be just a dead weight," he added, clearly hoping to infuriate those people. 

After all, as counterproductive as it was to operate with someone emotional, it was also far easier to make them do stuff one wanted. 

"Try all you want. You won't be able to bait us," the leader of the culture-oriented faction stepped forward, crossing his arms over the straps that held his massive back. "I don't trust you guys. You would throw those treasures away on the first given opportunity," he said before shaking his head. "This is the burden that we decided to take on our own; as such, we are not going to accept your fake help in carrying it," he added, looking at both Tom and Marvin with scorn. 

"Well, whatever rocks your boat," Tom replied offhandedly, too busy with the actual danger of the migration to bother with a bunch of freaks. 

"Wait, are you sure?" Marvin stopped his friend from leaving for the deeper part of the underground path. "Are you really going to accept those deadweights?" 

"And why wouldn't I?" Tom replied, leaning his head over his shoulder in confusion. "It's not like they are more problematic than the rest. They are our family, and they are entitled to have their own beliefs and needs," Tom said before shrugging his arms. "Anyway, let's drop this topic and get moving. The longer we wait, the greater the chance that someone will find out about our move," he said before turning around and finally heading deeper into the tunnel. 

The path that used to be wide enough for a small cart to carry people over was now crowded with people. Given how every last member of Tom's family gathered in the same place, more than half of it was so densely packed with people that it made squeezing through them an actual challenge. 

In the end, the path that would take less than twenty minutes to cover while it was empty took Tom and Marvin over an hour to traverse. Yet, rather than seeing a force ready to fight whatever dangers laid on the other side of the impromptu metal barrier that acted as the masking of the entrance to the restricted area, only Cleo and her dad awaited there. 

"Where is everyone else?" Tom asked, frowning when he noticed the strange situation. 

"Spread out equally amongst the rest of the group," Cleo replied calmly, crossing her arms on her chest. "What would you need them for?" she asked, raising her eyebrows in an expression of surprise. 

"To fight in case the online hub got the news of our intentions?" Marvin replied, only to notice Tom's hand appearing on his shoulder. 

"Cleo is right," Tom said with a small smile before whipping out his spear out of nowhere. Right at the very front of the tunnel, there was just enough space for him to arm himself back without risking cutting his fellow family members on the way. "I alone should be enough to deal with whatever will stand on our path. And if anything, it's better to have armed people with the rest of the family instead," Tom added. "If we will have to hurry up, that gives us the greatest chance that if the dungeon will split us into groups, that every group will have one or two competent people in them."

"If that's what you say," Marvin said, raising his hands as he backed off only to jokingly bow and point his hand at the metal shield that blocked the end of the passage. "Women and children first, then," he joked.

"Never change, brother," Tom muttered as the edges of his mouth twitched. "Never change," he added as he approached the metal plate and pushed it aside. 

"FIRE!" 

In an instant, Tom came under an attack. Yet, given how an entire day passed since he last had to use it, his auto guard skill saved him from the bullet. 

"FUCK!" someone from behind Tom shouted when the bullet proved not to be a simple projectile but rather a shootable explosive. 

'Haste,' Tom thought, not wasting a single second. In an instant, the time flow around him slowed down, allowing him to assess the situation ahead. 

The insides of the dome that were perfectly empty when he came out of the dungeon were now swarming with opponents. 

The gate itself was surrounded from all sides by makeshift trenches filled with an entire army of armed men. The further parts of the dome had its glass windows shattered to make space for the perfectly black muzzles of the long weapons the enemy prepared. 

And within this slowed frame of time, Tom could see an entire swarm of bullets heading his way. 

Too quickly for him to dodge. 

'Idiots,' Tom thought, forcibly restraining his guard skill. Rather than moving out of the line of fire, he simply raised his arm to his eyes so that the only vital and exposed part of his body would not be shelled at. 

And then, the flurry of bullets hit. 

'Damn,' Tom thought, having troubles holding back a giggle. 'It tickles!' he complained in his mind while conjuring a set of magical spears in his left hand. 

"Move away from the entrance!" Tom turned around and shouted, taking care to utter his words as slowly as possible. Given his haste, it was still quite possible that no one would be able to understand him. 

'Huh?' Tom shrugged in surprise when he noticed that Marvin and Cleo were already long gone from the space threatened by the heavy fire of the online hub men. 

'I activated the haste the moment I came under attack, but they still...' he thought, unsure what to make out of the situation. 'Those rascals!' he ended up thinking as a small smirk creeped up on their lips. 'So that's why there was no one...' he thought when his eyes laid on the bloody body on the ground. 

In the slowed-down time, it was almost funny how the blood burst out of what was left of the man's leg with long intervals between each burst. 

Tom's soul stirred up when he realized what had just happened. 

The explosive bullet that his auto guard made him avoid didn't end up as a miss at all. 

'Those fuckers...' Tom's thoughts all disappeared. His mind cleared out as he turned his face back towards the enemy and stepped forward. 

The hail of bullets continued even though they amounted to nothing more but a tickle for Tom.

"Die!" he shouted, not expecting anyone to understand his speed-up speech. Along with his word, he gently threw his spears in to the air. 

'Domain,' he uttered in his thoughts before his weapons had the chance to fall down. At the same time, a new batch of spears continued to pour out of his hands, quickly draining the enormous pool of mana that he had. 

And then, he stepped forward. 

Spinning his spears around in several layers, Tom effectively invalidated most of the bullets. Those few who managed to sneak through the speak inferno he created would still amount to nothing more but a tickle. 

Tom moved forward with his eyes fixated on the direction where that explosive round came from. 

'Right there,' he thought, locating a single position, right below the dungeon's gate. 

It wasn't a shooter that fired that round. It was a damned anti-tank artillery piece, brought straight from the battlefield of the last world war!

"From my family, with love," Tom muttered as he summoned another magical spear. This time though, he didn't just let it float around him within the boundaries of his domains. 

He threw it right at the artillery piece. 

An energy of a thrown spear mostly depends on its speed. Obviously, the quality of the weapon, the attribute attached to it, or even another spell glued to it could make a massive difference... But Tom wasn't capable of performing any of that. Even though he could attach attributes to his spells... His magical spears were not spells but physical entities made with magic. 

That's why the only power that he could add to the spear came from its kinetic energy. Its kinetic energy was derived from the multiplication of its mass and its speed. 

And while Tom couldn't affect the mass of his magical weapon, with his haste spell still going on, he was more than capable of sending it flying at a speed far greater than any other human could consider being possible!

Tom's spear flew so fast that it easily broke through the barrier of the sound, creating a small shockwave in its wake. But, as the after product of his attack, the shockwave itself didn't amount to much. At most, it made a few people in its path flinch.

But the spear itself struck the metal stand of the massive gun so hard that rather than breaking apart, it actually started to melt!

"Wwwwwwhhhhhhhaaaaaaattttt...." the first word of the obvious curse reached Tom's ear as a petite figure jumped away from the collapsing gun. 

'There you are,' he thought, bringing forth another magical spear of his. This was the human responsible for the injury that Marvin's and Cleo's dad suffered. Not even small bumps sticking out of the woman's chest could grant her any mercy. 

"Just die..." Tom thought, reaching with his hand to the back in order to throw the spear.

Then, his auto guard made him dodge. 

An attack of a scale incomparable to any of the bullets came!