Zone Two — Nerissa, Durgan, Durin. Eastern sector.
The eastern approach had the lowest natural pressure of the six zones.
This was not the same as easy.
Durgan's automated systems were addressing this philosophical distinction with considerable volume. The first three eastern-approach waves were substantially addressed before reaching engagement distance — gatling turrets eleven and twelve having spent forty-five seconds making a very thorough argument against anything attempting to cross open ground from the dungeon's eastern breach.
Durgan monitored his panel with the reverent, slightly tearful attention of a craftsman watching his greatest creation operate.
"Beautiful," he said. "Precise. The optimal engagement pattern is running at exactly the projected efficiency, which, let me tell you, is something I was not certain was achievable given the variable terrain conditions, but I spent three additional days accounting for the terrain variables, and as you can see, they are *thoroughly accounted for—*"
"Turret eleven is rotating two degrees too far right," Durin said.
Durgan checked. "It's within tolerance."
"Recalibrate."
"The tolerance is—"
"Durgan."
Durgan recalibrated turret eleven.
It made an immediately audible difference in the eastern approach's outcome. Durgan looked at this result. He looked at Durin. He made the specific face of someone acknowledging a correction and deeply resenting having to acknowledge it.
"Thank you," he said, at normal volume, which for Durgan meant everyone within forty feet heard it.
"You're welcome," Durin said, at his actual normal volume.
---
The creatures reaching Zone Two's engagement distance were, by consequence of Durgan's gatling coverage, specifically the ones fast enough or indirect enough in their approach to have survived. Natural selection at five hundred rounds per second, and the result was: the most mobile and unpredictable subset of the eastern wave.
Nerissa watched them arrive.
She sat with the calm of someone who had spent her childhood being told she was too dangerous to trust and had subsequently spent her adult life proving that the danger, correctly directed, was the point.
"Anything within fifty yards of the artillery position," she said pleasantly, "participates in the eastern field experiments."
**ARTILLERY MAGIC.**
Five void projectiles materialized around her Paladin's Tears warhammer — collapsed stars in miniature, compressed void energy shaped into forms the physical world found deeply objectionable. They launched simultaneously.
They passed through the corrupted creatures' outer hides as though the hides didn't exist. Because to void magic, they didn't — the corrupted animals' resistance had developed against physical and elemental attacks, not against the categorical negation of their material existence. Void magic didn't *hit* things. It disagreed with them.
Five simultaneous interior detonations. Five corrupted creatures experienced the specific problem of no longer being coherent.
"Five," Nerissa said. She was already reshaping the next sequence.
On her left, Durin made a decision.
The decision was *close range* — because Durin's entire adult life had been spent developing his understanding of exactly one question: *what is the correct hammer for this situation?* The answer, for fast mobile targets in a confined space, was both hammers at close range, because mobility inverted in tight quarters.
**MONARCH'S DESCENT.**
His strength multiplied — not with fanfare, not with visible effect, but in the way of a mechanism being set into operation. He waded into the nearest creature cluster with both hammers in arcs that were precise rather than simply powerful. He processed eleven corrupted animals in forty-three seconds, then assessed the next group with the unhurried attention of someone for whom the question was never *can I* but *how efficiently.*
**HAMMERANG.**
Both hammers launched simultaneously in crossing arcs that converged at the midpoint — a calculation Durin made without visible thought, because his body had internalized it. The hammers spun through the next cluster of six, electricity crackling between each impact point, chain-linking through every creature they touched. They returned to his hands.
"Seventeen total," he said. "Combined."
Nerissa was tracking the secondary wave forming at the corridor's mid-point. Not at the door — deeper in. The dungeon's output rate was exceeding the corridor's flow capacity. Creatures were pressing against each other in there. The void-density was thick, concentrated, building.
"They're stacking," she said.
"Meaning when the pressure releases," Durin said, catching his hammers and checking their charge, "they come in a concentrated burst."
"Yes."
"How much time?"
Nerissa ran the calculation against what she'd already seen exiting the corridor. "Ninety seconds," she said. "Then a large burst."
Ninety seconds.
Durgan looked at his panel.
He looked at the corridor.
He made a sound — a compressed syllable that contained an entire decision. His hands moved across the panel at the speed of someone who had been waiting for a reason to do this for the last three hours.
"**BOMBS AWAY, PUNKS!**"
**ARTILLERY BARRAGE.**
Pandora's Box transformed — three-barreled howitzer emerging from its housing with the specific inevitability of something built for precisely this moment, now performing it. Each barrel wider than a man's torso. Elevation angles set in the time it took Durgan's hands to complete the motion. Trajectories calculated, loaded, confirmed.
In the ninety-second window before the dungeon's pressure burst, the eastern corridor received one hundred and seventy shells.
The burst came right on schedule — a dense, compressed wave of corrupted animals, fast and disoriented from the sustained pressure behind them, moving hard through the corridor mouth—
Into a field that had been restructured into something they hadn't anticipated.
The burst ran into the consequences of the barrage. Creatures accelerated by pressure found that the corridor exit led somewhere significantly worse than containment.
"One hundred and fifty-eight in the burst," Durgan said, watching his panel, slightly breathless from the experience of watching his engineering validated in real-time. "Turrets adding — turret twelve is at forty-three additional since last count—"
"Zone total," Nerissa said.
Durgan added. "Two hundred and thirty-one. Two hundred and—" He paused. "Two hundred and thirty-four. Three were mine from the fifth void projectile sequence that I launched during the secondary scan—"
"Two hundred and thirty-four," Durin confirmed.
"I said thirty-four," Durgan said.
"You said thirty-one first."
"I WAS ADDING—"
"Zone total is two hundred and thirty-four," Nerissa closed the discussion. Then her eyes shifted. "New formation at the corridor junction. Three larger animals. Corrupted predator class, different from what we've seen. They're using the smaller creatures as concealment."
Durin looked. The three larger shapes moved differently from everything else — slower, more deliberate, using the chaos around them as cover. "They're hunting," he said. "Looking for the command position."
"Yes," Nerissa said.
"Mine?" Durin asked.
"No," she said.
She raised Paladin's Tears. Slammed the massive warhammer into the ground. And the void opened.
**REVERSE POLARITY: SINGULARITY.**
Not a sphere — a *singularity.* The distinction between a sphere and a singularity was the distinction between a lake and a drain: they could hold the same water, but only one of them had an opinion about where that water was going. The void-glass disc in her palm pulsed white. The space where the three larger corrupted predators stood developed a gravitational conviction about their position.
The conviction was negative. The conviction was immediate.
The three monsters were pulled toward the singularity with the force of a collapsed star conducting an argument they could not participate in.
They did not survive the argument.
The singularity held for three seconds.
Nerissa released it. Absorbed the void energy. Looked at the space where three large corrupted predators had been.
"Three," she said.
Durgan stared at the space. Slowly, he looked at Nerissa. His expression had arrived somewhere past normal admiration and was occupying a region that had no previous tenant.
"That," he said, at completely normal volume, which meant something, "is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen that I did not build."
Nerissa blinked. Looked at him. Looked at the space. "Thank you, Durgan."
"I mean that very sincerely."
"I know you do."
"Zone total is two hundred and thirty-seven," Durin said.
"Two hundred and thirty-seven," Nerissa confirmed.
"And it's still early," Durgan said, already recalibrating the howitzer's targeting for the next window. His beard was sparking at an intensity that was going to be a problem for anyone standing within four feet if he kept increasing enthusiasm at the current rate.
"Durgan," Nerissa said.
"Yes?"
"Ground your beard before you ignite yourself."
"IT'S UNDER CONTROL."
"It absolutely isn't."
"IT'S ENTHUSIASM. IT GROUNDS ITSELF EVENTUALLY."
Durin said nothing, which was the loudest possible response.
---To be Continued...