The door to the next room creaked open, revealing a massive, python-sized centipede slithering across the floor of an enclosure made of thick safety glass. The walls outside of the enclosure were lined with notes scribbled frantically in black ink. There were also panels with warning displays, one of which noted radiation levels, a meter that climbed up as the vents to the chamber opened and a mustard-colored gas was pumped into the room with the monstrous creature.

  There was another room that had several monsters, each looking like they came from the same insectoid beetle branch with clipboards next to each of their chambers.

  Nick picked up one of the clipboards, his eyes quickly noting the formula numbers and growth rates marked next to the monster. There were also notes about harvest purity from previous batches of the same formula, leaving Nick with an awful taste in his mouth as he began to see the full extent of this operation.

  The worst part was, he recognized the monsters. They were three-headed Cerberus monsters, and he had almost died to more than one of what he assumed would be the future forms of the beasts during his college years as they rampaged through the area. "Why are they trying to make them stronger? Aren’t they tough enough as is?" Seo-ah muttered.

  “Because stronger monsters mean better parts,” Nick said.

  Maria looked like she was about to cry. "Locked up in cages like this . . . It’s so cruel. Why can't we free them?"

  Nick could only look at Maria incredulously. "Free them? These aren't animals from Earth. They're monsters that will kill people if we let them loose. There's a reason there are internationally recognized laws against doing all this stuff."

  “Yeah, these are the creatures that want to wipe us off the face of the Earth,” Seo-ah said. “Forget freeing them. We should kill them now before they mutate even further.”

  “But . . .” Maria turned to Nick like he was going to help her out.

  Nick sighed, forgetting that this Maria wasn't the battle-hardened warrior that he'd known for so long. She was just barely an adult and still in high school. "It's a nice thought, Maria. But they’ll try to eat our face the moment we let them out of their cages. It’s better if we just document this and report them to the association when we leave."

  Maria nodded and then growled, "I hope these bastards get what they deserve."

  Nick, Seo-ah, and Maria continued to explore the underground lab, and they found more caged animals, experiments, and harvested monsters. The last room in the facility was empty save a heavy metal lab table in the center of the room, putting to bed any chance of finding the special starfruit nectar that Nick needed.

  "Nothing. We've found nothing," Maria complained.

  "Yeah, looks like this warehouse hasn’t received the shipments we’re looking for yet. Sorry, Nick," Seo-ah agreed.

  "It's fine. We did good finding this place, and shutting it down will hurt Yulian and his father. You can't imagine what some people will pay for live monsters or some products of these experiments."

  "It's still frustrating," Maria said, kicking over the lab table which hit the wall with a loud thud and what sounded like an echo.

  The three looked at the wall and then each other.

  "Did you hear that?" Nick asked, and the other two nodded. They pulled the table away from the wall and saw that it had broken through the drywall to reveal a metal door.

  Nick inspected the wall and saw that there were markings along its surface. He ran his hands along it and felt a faint humming.

  The lock took a few minutes to break through, but once open, it revealed a carved-stone tunnel that wound down. It opened up to a wide cavern at least forty-feet in width with a ceiling so high he couldn't see the top of it. Dead center, partially embedded in the stone floor, was a glowing blue portal.

  “This is it, isn’t it?” Seo-ah said, her eyes as wide as the portal.

  “Yeah, it looks like we found the source of the Bratva’s monsters. They must have found this cave and the portal somehow and then built everything else around it,” Nick said as he studied the portal.

  “Do you think we should go inside?” Maria asked.

  “No. For now, we retreat and prepare.” Nick looked at Maria. “I’m sorry. But this means we won’t be able to report this place. If we do, the Association will discover this dungeon and claim it for themselves.”

  “We’ll come back with a full merc team to raid the dungeon and get Nick what he needs, and then we’ll shut the lab down permanently,” Seo-ah said. “I promise.”

  Maria nodded, anger still clear on her face.

  “—ick! Ca— you —ear me?” Allen’s voice crackled over their earpieces.

  “Allen? I can barely hear you,” Nick answered and then realized the cave might be interfering with their communications. He ran up the carved stairs to the lab.

  “Nick!! Get out now!” Allen’s voice finally came through crystal clear.

  “Allen, what’s wrong?” Nick asked, holding a finger over the earpiece as he didn’t want to miss a thing.

  “I’m sorry. I tried to keep the security turned off, but something tripped a secondary system and . . .”

  The lights in the lab started to flash, and a voice started to announce something in Russian.

  “The security system just went into overdrive. They’re coming, Nick! Get out of there!”

  “Who is coming?” Nick asked.

  But he heard the loud click of every door and cage being unlocked at once and the familiar sound of metal clicking, the sound of the security bot. Only, instead of one, it sounded like hundreds were coming down to get them.

  “Everything, Nick! Everything is coming!”

  Chapter 26

  Semion sat in a warped, creaking chair in an unceremonious office building on the edge of town. In front of him was a large leather-bound ledger, the current year written in big letters on the spine, and a stack of papers seven inches high to his right. Each paper contained a detailed list of revenue, expenses, total profits, and itemized assets as well as when and where they came from or when and where they went.

  “How much longer is that going to take?” Yulian asked, causing Semion to glance over at the worthless child waiting for him on the couch.

  “I shouldn’t even have to be doing this. You should be doing this, learning the business, building the skills needed to take over my position one day. By the time I was your age, I had been doing this for my father for a decade,” Semion replied, not even looking up to see if Yulian would bite at the offer.

  He had already tried to teach his son the books, to ingrain in the boy the importance of understanding them, but the child took too much after his mother. He saw common thugs on street corners, female flesh, fast loaded trucks, and unmarked guns and thought that was what it meant to be Bratva. That was what earned one a place in the family, but none of that would ever matter without the books, which were the shield that kept the gold badges from dressing his men in orange suits, that kept the businesses running, that told him what to invest in and when to invest in it. Everything that was Bratva lived and died on the black lines and boxes that populated the leather-bound ledger, a record that only Semion and two other people knew how to read.

  As he picked up another piece of paper from the stack, smiling a little as he saw even more profits he could add into the brown book, he was interrupted by a knock at his door.

  “Umm . . . excuse me, sir,” the young woman began even as she continued to knock on the already-cracked door. “There is an urgent call on line three for you.”

  Semion’s left eye nearly flinched in frustration at the interruption. He wanted to yell at the woman. He had told her dozens of times to never open the door without permission, and she wasn’t stupid, yet here she was.

  “Thank you, Himeko,” Semion said as he picked up the phone. “This is Semion Serebryakov.”

  “Boss,” a strained voice came through. “Boss, we have an emergency at the special warehouse."

  The phrase “special warehouse” immediately got Semion's attention. It was the primary source of his growing wealth and the reason he had been able to accumulate resources so much faster than the other lieutenants. He worried that if the authorities found it, he would lose control of it. "What is the issue? Has one of the 'products' escaped?"

  "Uh, no, sir. I believe we have intruders."

  "The Dungeon Oversight Association? The police? One of the other lieutenants?"

  "No. It looks like it's a bunch of kids. I don’t think they’re even out of high school."

  Semion sighed in relief. It wasn't the first time curious teenagers had found the place and tried to use it for their own hormonal purposes. "You had me worried. Let the security bots we installed chase them away."

  "The security system isn't working, sir, and one of the teens is the one you had us looking for, the Gallows boy."

  At the mention of the Gallows boy, Semion felt rage boil up inside him. He had been looking for this kid, Nick Gallows, for weeks, and he'd been avoiding them like a ghost while Semion’s businesses were hit by mercenaries the boy had hired. Now he had finally found them, and Semion was ready to take his revenge.

  "Good. Tell the security system to destroy everything. Burn it so thoroughly that when we call the insurance company to cover the damages, their investigator won’t have even an inkling of an idea of what was inside that warehouse. If that boy found it, his grandfather won’t have a problem finding it either, so we’ll need to destroy everything and open it up again after we’ve cleared the threats," he said slowly. "Also, gather my men, and we will head to the warehouse. I will personally make sure that the Gallows boy is taken care of."

  Semion hung up the phone and watched as his men gathered their weapons and prepared for war. He smiled at the thought of how much he would be able to extort from Evan’s father once he eliminated the nuisance and how much easier it would be to set his son up with Jennifer after the fiancé her grandfather had found was disposed of. Soon they would reach the warehouse, and there would be no escape from what was coming. Nick Gallows was going to see his worst nightmares come alive in ways he couldn't begin to imagine.

  As the driver pulled up to the warehouse, Semion found himself pleased with how fast his men and the security system worked. While he could see the warehouse burning and the structure collapsing, the large mana-fields were stopping any of the smoke from going out and signaling to nearby people or fire departments that there was an issue. It would only take a single press of the button when he was ready, but then, and only then, would the mana-field descend and the smoke go into the sky in just the right, controlled way that would signal nearby authorities.

  Until then though, he could use the built-in system meant to allow them to have enough time to hide or destroy evidence to take his time dealing with the intruders at his own convenience.

  “Boss, we got here as quick as we could, but it was already too late,” one of the men began the second Semion’s car door opened.

  “I know you did,” Semion replied, taking note of how fast each of the three men that had shown up before him jumped to task without being told to and how good a job they’d done. In this case, he could already see that one of them had managed to snag one of the intruders, a young, clean-cut kid still wet behind the ears. Borya had tied the boy's arms up and was dragging him with one hand while holding a gadget with another. “Who is the kid?”

  “His name is Allen Hughes. He’s the one who had compromised our security,” Borya explained. “He was using this device . . . I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “Save the device in your inventory then. We’ll have to reverse-engineer it later,” Semion noted, not recognizing the machine either. “As for the kid, hmm.”

  “No matter what you say, I’m not talking!” Allen spat out, fighting against his captor for a moment despite the fact that Semion hadn’t even asked him a question.

  “That’s good. I hate chatty brats,” Semion chuckled at the boy’s response. “Let’s just bring the kid with us. We can deal with the bait after we catch the prey.”

  “Yes, boss.” Borya awkwardly lowered his head before yanking on Allen’s restraints and pulling him back toward the still-burning warehouse.

  Cracking his knuckles, Semion couldn’t help but smile as he walked toward the dungeon. It had been a long time since he had dealt with a problem personally, and he was rather looking forward to it.

  Chapter 27

  Semion sat in a warped, creaking chair in an unceremonious office building on the edge of town. In front of him was a large leather-bound ledger, the current year written in big letters on the spine, and a stack of papers seven inches high to his right. Each paper contained a detailed list of revenue, expenses, total profits, and itemized assets as well as when and where they came from or when and where they went.

  “How much longer is that going to take?” Yulian asked, causing Semion to glance over at the worthless child waiting for him on the couch.

  “I shouldn’t even have to be doing this. You should be doing this, learning the business, building the skills needed to take over my position one day. By the time I was your age, I had been doing this for my father for a decade,” Semion replied, not even looking up to see if Yulian would bite at the offer.

  He had already tried to teach his son the books, to ingrain in the boy the importance of understanding them, but the child took too much after his mother. He saw common thugs on street corners, female flesh, fast loaded trucks, and unmarked guns and thought that was what it meant to be Bratva. That was what earned one a place in the family, but none of that would ever matter without the books, which were the shield that kept the gold badges from dressing his men in orange suits, that kept the businesses running, that told him what to invest in and when to invest in it. Everything that was Bratva lived and died on the black lines and boxes that populated the leather-bound ledger, a record that only Semion and two other people knew how to read.

  As he picked up another piece of paper from the stack, smiling a little as he saw even more profits he could add into the brown book, he was interrupted by a knock at his door.

  “Umm . . . excuse me, sir,” the young woman began even as she continued to knock on the already-cracked door. “There is an urgent call on line three for you.”

  Semion’s left eye nearly flinched in frustration at the interruption. He wanted to yell at the woman. He had told her dozens of times to never open the door without permission, and she wasn’t stupid, yet here she was.

  “Thank you, Himeko,” Semion said as he picked up the phone. “This is Semion Serebryakov.”

  “Boss,” a strained voice came through. “Boss, we have an emergency at the special warehouse."

  The phrase “special warehouse” immediately got Semion's attention. It was the primary source of his growing wealth and the reason he had been able to accumulate resources so much faster than the other lieutenants. He worried that if the authorities found it, he would lose control of it. "What is the issue? Has one of the 'products' escaped?"

  "Uh, no, sir. I believe we have intruders."

  "The Dungeon Oversight Association? The police? One of the other lieutenants?"

  "No. It looks like it's a bunch of kids. I don’t think they’re even out of high school."

  Semion sighed in relief. It wasn't the first time curious teenagers had found the place and tried to use it for their own hormonal purposes. "You had me worried. Let the security bots we installed chase them away."

  "The security system isn't working, sir, and one of the teens is the one you had us looking for, the Gallows boy."

  At the mention of the Gallows boy, Semion felt rage boil up inside him. He had been looking for this kid, Nick Gallows, for weeks, and he'd been avoiding them like a ghost while Semion’s businesses were hit by mercenaries the boy had hired. Now he had finally found them, and Semion was ready to take his revenge.

  "Good. Tell the security system to destroy everything. Burn it so thoroughly that when we call the insurance company to cover the damages, their investigator won’t have even an inkling of an idea of what was inside that warehouse. If that boy found it, his grandfather won’t have a problem finding it either, so we’ll need to destroy everything and open it up again after we’ve cleared the threats," he said slowly. "Also, gather my men, and we will head to the warehouse. I will personally make sure that the Gallows boy is taken care of."

  Semion hung up the phone and watched as his men gathered their weapons and prepared for war. He smiled at the thought of how much he would be able to extort from Evan’s father once he eliminated the nuisance and how much easier it would be to set his son up with Jennifer after the fiancé her grandfather had found was disposed of. Soon they would reach the warehouse, and there would be no escape from what was coming. Nick Gallows was going to see his worst nightmares come alive in ways he couldn't begin to imagine.

  As the driver pulled up to the warehouse, Semion found himself pleased with how fast his men and the security system worked. While he could see the warehouse burning and the structure collapsing, the large mana-fields were stopping any of the smoke from going out and signaling to nearby people or fire departments that there was an issue. It would only take a single press of the button when he was ready, but then, and only then, would the mana-field descend and the smoke go into the sky in just the right, controlled way that would signal nearby authorities.

  Until then though, he could use the built-in system meant to allow them to have enough time to hide or destroy evidence to take his time dealing with the intruders at his own convenience.

  “Boss, we got here as quick as we could, but it was already too late,” one of the men began the second Semion’s car door opened.