Museum Core Chapter 109: The Other Shoe

Surprisingly enough, there were basically no issues getting his hands on the buoy. He had Jan hitch a ride with the next truck to leave the jungle, hop off once it reached the border checkpoint, run over to the commander’s office, and ask to be connected to the BPA via the secure landline he knew to have been located there.

He’d gotten Frye’s secretary, rather than the man himself, but the request had been passed along anyway.

Just which poor bastard had wound up having to head into the transformation zone, knowing there was a primordial sea monster lurking beneath, was unknown to Thomas, but it appeared the retrieval had gone flawlessly.

And a couple of days later, a man in a BPA officer walked up to the Natural History Museum’s entrance, a massive box under each arm, which he dropped onto the ground with a sigh of relief the moment he was inside.

“Delivery, courtesy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” he called out, and Thomas sent out a few monkeys to grab them.

The man frowned, freezing with the letter he’d just pulled from his jacket in his hand, looking around wildly, gaze jumping from monkey to monkey. “Uh, which one are you?”

Thomas giggled, something the courier could thankfully not hear. But he also sent in Jan, complete with his signature fedora.

“This one,” he announced and gave a little wave. “What’s that?”

“Letter,” the courier shrugged. “Your eyes only.”

Thomas picked up the proffered envelope, opened it, and skimmed the contents.

Meeting in a couple of days, attendance is very much requested but not mandatory, yadi yadi yada. That meeting would likely involve him getting yelled at, but Thomas decided he’d go anyway.

“Thank you,” he said.

Transaction done, the courier headed back out, and Thomas “ran off” with his prize, until he had it far enough from people for him to be able to absorb it.

Even as the boxes melted away into nothingness in the material world, the countless treasures within bloomed into existence within the mental universe that had begun building up within his core.

As per usual, most of the stuff he’d grabbed was, in a word, superfluous dross.

Silt he’d scooped up by accident, random fragments of houseplant that had gotten launched up into the ocean during the fight, and so on.

Granted, those were interesting in some ways, one being some kind of kelp that could be made into tea, and a couple more being spices of some sort. But beyond using them to spruce up various aquatic areas of the dungeon, he didn’t really have any plans for them.

All that being said, however, the one thing he’d wanted to get, he’d gotten, and more besides.

The flesh of the North Atlantic Anchor Beast, accompanied by the shock of his life.

The damn thing was B-Rank. On the low end, yes, but it was still solidly the powerful being he’d ever seen.

Well, unless he counted Elias, who’d been S-Rank before getting swept up in the merge. Though it was hard picturing the fairy, who was currently stuffing his face with cherries while reading a him-sized version of Lord of the Rings, as the kind of walking calamity people at that level had to be.

So, what powers did the anchor beast have?

The first one was responsible for its most obvious supernatural ability, the lightning. The system tagged it as “Integrated Technology: Power Core,” which was a pretty odd summary of what it did. The monster was bonded with the concept of a power core the same way an Anima Monk bonded with their chosen animal.

This made the monster’s body burn with power, fuelling the implants he knew it to have but couldn’t see through the sample he had, but that was only the start of things.

Because that same energy could also empower it physically, boosting the sheer strength its titanic form held even higher, and utterly bypassing any requirement of food or other sustenance.

Yet even that wasn’t the purpose for it to have this particular ability, as far as he could tell.

The ancient inhabitants of Atlantis had obviously planned ahead with regards to their defenses, and ensured that their defenses weren’t powered by a reactor that could be sabotaged or destroyed sneakily, they’d implanted it in their greatest defender, in a way that turned it into a metaphysical object that would continue working until the titan of a monster Thomas had lost so badly against was dead. Fully dead.

He was just glad that it hadn’t had any of the old weaponry to wake up, that would have made the fight downright impossible. Atlantis had to have been truly terrifying at its peak.

Then, there was the second power. It was yet another power that integrated technology; in this case, it was a Magitech Turbine, which served as both propulsion and another weapon in its arsenal.

It could produce a propulsive force at any point on its body, in any direction, a hundred times over, allowing the guardian to push itself all over the place at will, ignoring the limitations of its physiology and just in general moving around with far more fidelity than something that big should have had.

And, of course, he’d already seen the way it could create artificial currents using that ability, perhaps even to the point where they became artificial rip currents, though he hadn’t seen it ramp things up that far.

It was still more of a utility power, though.

Then, there was a power that confused him a little, since it was obviously meant to work in conjunction with the previous two powers, but said powers didn’t properly synergize with it in the sense that the trio became something greater than the sum of its parts.

He could see how this power could be downright absurd in the right circumstances, but these weren’t it.

The third power, Tech Chimera, allowed the monster to manifest its integrated technology in the real world, something that should have been downright overpowered … if it hadn’t been for the fact that the tech in question functioned much better when staying on the inside.

If it had had integrated guns or something, it would have been able to produce dozens across its body. If it had had some kind of armor, it might have been able to layer that on top of its magically reinforced body, and so on.

But the power plant would work whether it was physical or metaphysical, and the turbines would only gain the ability to chop up things that came in direct contact with the spinning blades when brought into the real world.

And none of its other powers were integrated technology; he’d briefly glanced ahead to make sure of that.

Perhaps the idea had been to bump it up to A-Rank, then give it something with better synergy?

Thomas would likely never know just what the idea behind everything had been; he just knew he didn’t see the sense in this decision.

But as comparatively lackluster as the third power had been, it was the fourth one that seriously concerned him.

It was called Inorganic Reconstruction and allowed the monster to integrate inorganic matter into itself in places where it had been wounded, then slowly transform said matter into its regular flesh. Hardly a fast process, but it still meant that the monster would be in perfect shape by the time he went to confront it again. In fact, even if he sent the Belfast out right this second, he’d almost certainly still be too late.

Which was seriously bad news in all respects, but also not an issue he could do anything about right this second.

And then, there was the final power, which Thomas was near-certain had been entirely inactive for the fight. It was called City Guardian and empowered the anchor beast based on the population of the city it was bound to, though once the binding was in place, it could not be set to target a different one.

Seeing as Atlantis was presently devoid of people and located in a place rather hostile to immigration, that power was unlikely to be usable for the foreseeable future. Good news, probably.

That was when it hit him. The anchor beast, the kaiju among kaijus, was lacking a power. One every other beast of its ilk posessed, something he’d been oh so certain it had starting the instant he’d first laid eyes on it, to the point where he’d never even properly voiced the idea even in his mind because it had been so damn obvious.

It should have had a physique power, the fundamental supernatural force that made the vast majority of super-sized monsters be able to function in a world ruled by the laws of physics.

It didn’t.

This fucking monster, in all possible senses of the word, was capable of functioning at full power, full capability, full everything, merely with its own personal strength. There was no “magic juice” holding things together; it was capable of acting through brute force alone.

Granted, that meant it was likely limited to the ocean, without the weight of the water to support it, even at B-Rank, it would likely suffer on land, especially with the buff from city guardian inactive, but at the end of the day, it was still a near-apocalyptic threat if it decided to get off its ass and attack … well, attack whatever was looking vulnerable, or perhaps like a threat to Atlantis.

All in all, he’d been pretty lucky, only a fraction of its powers had actually been applicable to the battle at hand.

But he could probably combine at least some of them with others to create something horrifying and beautiful.

Sure, City Guardian was useless on account of the dungeon not being, you know, a city, and the recovery power was too slow for high-intensity dungeon combat, especially considering that he could just spawn a new monster, but the others should be solid.

And Tech Chimera required integrated tech to work.

Thomas chose the reactor, dialed down the power as far as he could manage, and shoved it into yet another iteration of his dragon-velociraptors, one which he’d been holding at the peak of E-Rank in anticipation of experimenting with new powers.

Error: Power Core not present, [Integrated Technology: Power Core] cannot be applied

Okay, just the integration power, then, sans reactor.

Error: Power cannot be applied, [Integrated Technology] does not function on its own.

Frick. Okay, what about a purely mechanical engine and fusing that with the power at the moment of insertion?

Error: Power cannot be applied, this iteration of [Integrated Technology] requires a specific piece of technology to function.

Thomas sighed. It seemed that power would be a pain in the ass to use, not that there was much of a chance of the other integration power being much better. He checked anyway, sighed, and amused himself by messing around with a couple of raptors for a few minutes.

His latest obsession had been the concept of habitrails, those plastic tube hamster cages that let the critters roam around your room without being able to actually escape, or the risk of accidentally getting stepped on.

What he’d strung through the ceiling of his inner sanctum was … considerably bigger. And more complicated. And made from a hell of a lot more expensive materials.

Running through that while riding along in the mind of a raptor was a hell of a lot of fun.

And then, finally, he decided to bite the bullet and try out the thing he’d been avoiding the entire time. The thing he’d been terrified to attempt, not because it might go wrong, but because it had a high likelihood of crushing his hopes for an easy victory.

He tried sticking a fragment of flesh into the vortex controller, only to have it be rejected.

So he tried growing a heart from the fragment at hand, except that not only did the high-rank material soak up magical energy like nobody’s business and even if he hadn’t hurriedly shut off the flow of power, he’d have likely made a huge mess as the organ would have been bigger than the chamber and gotten crushed like a steak pressed through a pinhole.

He had the watermelon-sized fragment he’d already made carried towards the machine, which gave an angry beep and rejected it.

That hadn’t worked; that much was both obvious and to be expected. But why hadn’t it worked?

So he asked the one person who was likely to know.

“You need the whole thing,” Elias shrugged. “Recreating the entirety of an anchor beast, metaphysical weight included, isn’t going to be as easy as just getting your hands on a handful of cells. Kill it, grab an important organ or a part of one, absorb that, and then you’ll probably be able to get away with it. But not fragments.”

“Fudge,” Thomas muttered and moved on. “So, how do we kill this thing?”

Not that he’d be making the attempt anytime soon, mind you, but it was never too early to start planning.

“You could trick it into absorbing something made out of crystal, then use the crystal dragon’s power to attack it from the inside,” Elias suggested.

“I’d have to hurt it and then back up for long enough for it to feel comfortable ‘eating’,” Thomas pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s going to be a problem,” Elias said. “But if lose the next fight, you could kick its ass on the third try.”

“If I attack before the crystal fully gets turned into flesh,” Thomas sighed. “Timing’s going to be tight, but it’s a great idea.”

In terms of what power to use, he’d have to go with either heat or cold. Heat would allow him to pour energy into the monster’s body until something overheated and exploded, though the efficacy of that trick heavily depended on how quickly he could pour energy inside. He’d have to do some experiments. And for optimal damage, he’d have to get the crystal deep. An explosion just underneath the skin would likely cause much of the force to be deflected outwards, into the ocean, the very instant the flesh there tore.

Cold, in the meanwhile, was less inherently damaging, but as he’d already seen, flesh that had been frozen solid then being moved would inflict significant damage.

Both were solid options, and he had the time, so he’d be creating both versions.

“What about channeling the crystal transmutation power through it?” Thomas asked.

“Won’t work, power difference,” Elias said. “But you could scatter smaller crystals and use them to transform patches of ground into ‘portals’ you can attack through.”

The fairy strode up to one of the core room’s walls, which was currently home to three large glass cases, each containing a scale model of one of the Belfast’s forms.

“You should probably also start creating more creatures with that Arcanum Core power your ship came with,” Elias suggested. “And then maybe add in some variants of the power that give them even more energy to fuel enchantments with. You won’t be able to use their power directly, but as living mana batteries, they’ll be able to take a lot of the burden off you in the next fight.”

“Yeah …” Thomas possessed a raptor just so that he could thoughtfully tap his chin. That required a surprising amount of flexibility, but he managed it.

If he could modify the layout of the magazines on the Belfast, and add some pipes to them so he could have the magic monsters, whatever he ended up choosing, run through and charge the enchantments … well, he’d still have to make and enchant the munitions, but he wouldn’t have to fuel them, which should massively cut down on the energy requirements of fighting a running battle.

But what if he didn’t have to fight the battle at all?

What if he just stayed at the surface and started dropping depth charges?

Well, it would immediately surge upwards and try to crush him.

That didn’t have to be the end of that particular idea, however. How about placing a whole bunch of depth charges up top, attached to buoys, and cut them loose as his opening salvo, after all his energy had regenerated?

Yep, that sounded good.

Which just brought him to his monsters. He’d need bigger ones, which would be achieved by somehow getting the Kronosaurus pattern to C. And he needed something to deal with that lightning, which he’d achieve via living lightning rods. For that, he’d use yet another iteration of the catsharks, this one holding a variant of fulgurkinesis that would suck in all the lightning in the vincinity and either push it back out into the water as heat, or use it to blow themselves up, effectively turning the anchor beast’s own attacks against it, assuming they were close enough.

And so on. How long had he been at this?

Thomas glanced at the clock in the corner of his core room and winced. He’d been at this all night.

That had been fun. But now, he had something else to do. Get yelled at over “provoking” the anchor beast. Which he maybe, theoretically, possibly deserved.

***

“Before we start this, I’d like to make three things clear,” Thomas began.

They were in a reasonably upscale meeting room, simply but tastefully decorated, and he was sitting across from three people.

Director Frye, Prime Minister Hawkins, and a man who’d been introduced as Brigadier General Greene, a name that Thomas recognized as belonging to the BPA’s military liaison.

“Firstly, I didn’t just ‘sneak off’ and poke the bear, I announced my intentions, waited in case I was told to back off, and was about as careful as I could have been, considering the circumstances.

“Secondly, I wasn’t the first person to visit the transformation zone; it was already awake.

“And thirdly, now that we, collectively, gotten the relevant information about the situation, I will, of course, act on it … by sitting put until told otherwise, the monster attacks targets outside the transformation zone, or we otherwise reach a point where the threat is rendered moot due to my relative strenght, however, I won’t make that kind of judgement on my own, I will, of course, ask for and act accordingly to input.”

They were all intelligent people here, or at least they should have been, considering the positions they held; none of that save for the third point should have had to be said. But the reminder was still hopefully going to help.

“Why didn’t you retreat when the monster appeared? Or immediately activate the self-destruct?” Greene asked. Thomas assumed that meant he’d be the designated bad cop here.

“Because it was already pissed off, and at the very least, hurting it should have kept it from going after the fleet, or generally doing something crazy. If I’d just detonated the Belfast, it could have easily assumed the submarine to be a missile launched by the fleet.”

Or at least that was the excuse he’d come up with. The truth was that he simply hadn’t thought of it, even though he definitely should have. He’d seen the monster rise and decided to go ahead and try to kill it.

“What about leading it back, away from the fleet?”

Urgh.

That was mostly how this went for the next several minutes.

Eventually, though, Frye broke into the conversation.

“Considering that the beehive has well and truly been kicked now, what we really need to be focusing on is getting ready to fight an aquatic threat. I believe we could both use some practice in that arena. For example, the arena behind the Natural History Museum seems like it could be extremely useful …”

The idea he was proposing did have merit, as Thomas needed to level his critters and the BPA could use some training in fighting underwater monstrosities … except there was absolutely no reason why they couldn’t use this as an opportunity to powerlevel everyone.

“I suppose getting me to agree to that is the entire reason this meeting is happening?” Thomas asked, demonstrating that he’d seen through the plan, then shrugged. “Okay, we can do that. But I also need some more aquatic samples …”

And once the negotiations were done, they began talking about the battle itself, and discussing what had and hadn’t worked.

“But at least we know it can be hurt,” Hawkins commented, who’d been largely holding back, likely in an attempt to avoid offending Thomas and preserve their generally amiable relationship.

Thomas sighed. Saying this might somewhat dent his ability to come off as “in control of the situation,” but it probably needed to be said.

“What I did was the equivalent of tricking a grizzly bear into blundering into a briar patch. It won’t have enjoyed the process, but it won’t have taken any serious or lasting damage either. The next time anyone comes at it, it’ll have to be with enough power to kill it for good.”

“We also need to remember how big that thing is,” Greene pointed out. “The transformation zone might have replaced a lot of the ocean floor with water, and the walls of the crater break up a lot of the waves that thing creates whenever it moves, but between it and whatever explosions are set off down there, a battle could easily wind up causing tsunamis up here.”

“Thank you,” Thomas said.

“So, in conclusion, we need to hit that thing with overwhelming force and kill it as quickly as possible … but any big attack could destroy coastlines up and down the Atlantic?” Hawkins hung his head and sighed. “Cor Blimey.”

Frye looked over at Thomas at that. “Would you be willing to coordinate an assault on the guardian with forces beyond the BPA?”

“I’m always willing to deal with people who deal with me in good faith,” Thomas shrugged. “And if someone has any good ideas, I’ll happily hear them out. I …”

Frye’s phone rang, earning him glares from everyone.

“If the call’s getting through, it’s impo- …” he began to explain, but Hawkin’s phone rang with a sound like an air raid siren.

Thomas grimaced. This clearly was pretty bad, if it warranted an emergency call for the country’s leader and the guy who was responsible for dealing with supernatural threats.

Both men answered the calls and mostly just listened, their replies being one-word sentences that offered no meaning to anyone, only able to hear their side of the conversation.

But it was the director of the BPA who hung up first.

“Unfortunately, we’re going to have to deal with this thing, sooner or later,” Frye said as he put the phone back into his pocket and rose to his feet. “And based on that call, I’d say our timeline is shorter than any of us expected.”

“What was that about?” Thomas asked, unable to contain his curiosity.

“The anchor beast in the American zone has decided to leave, and is making a real mess of things,” he said as he began to walk out of the room. “I’ll send them whatever help I can; feel free to continue this without me.”

Spoiler alert, they didn’t. Everyone just went wherever they needed to go to feel like they were contributing something to the situation.