ushernet Chapter 863: Playtime’s Over
Chapter 863: Playtime’s Over
The paddling legs went still, and the enormous head swung toward her and dipped once, slow and solemn."Will you endure pain for his sake? Terrible wounds? Suffering without end?"
Another dip, deeper, and the growl that came with it rolled across the plain like an oath.
"And if something comes for him while he sleeps?"
The fissure-mouth peeled open along its seam, and what came out of it made the nearest soldiers reach for weapons they had already sheathed.
"Wonderful." Aria beamed, every trace of menace gone between one heartbeat and the next, and reached up to pat the armored plate of his cheek. "We’re going to get along just fine."
Alice went last, and unlike the others, she had clearly prepared.
She marched up to the lolling colossus, planted both fists on her hips, and tipped her chin as high as it would go.
"Listen well, Pebble." Her voice was working very hard at being stern. "I’ve read about dogs. If I’m not firm with you from the very first day, you will walk all over me for the rest of our lives. So I will be firm. Starting now."
The crown descended until six eyes like windows hovered level with the smallest person on the field, and Alice leaned back an inch before forcing herself forward again.
Pebble held perfectly still under her inspection while Alice reached up to deliver one quick, precise pat to his snout, the way one pets a stove that might be hot. "Good boy. You may guard my big brother."
His entire back half wiggled, and the resulting tremor knocked her two steps sideways. She re-planted her stance immediately and glared up at him as if she had moved on purpose.
"Bad Pebble!" she shouted.
The wiggling stopped dead, and all six eyes snapped wide at her.
The colossus twisted himself over with a haste that shook the plain, brought his crown low, and pressed his snout flat against the white floor at Alice’s feet, where he produced the smallest sound anyone had ever heard him make, a thin, contrite rumble of apology.
A creature that had challenged the entire planet was begging forgiveness from a teenage girl.
Alice kept the stern mask up another three seconds, visibly delighted underneath it, then granted him a single forgiving pat. "See that it doesn’t happen again."
Several women nearby bit down on their grins.
- sinnamon_roll99: We’re watching the thing that ate twenty dungeons get belly rubs
- TouchGrass: Day one of the apocalypse petting zoo arc
- MoonlitSinner: Scientists will study this footage for decades and learn absolutely nothing
- Kaiden’s Wife (mod): First Kai’s maid breaks the leveling system, and now the worst monster humanity ever saw purrs for him. Ordinary rules simply don’t visit His household.
"Alright, playtime’s over." Kaiden clapped, and his voice carried over the group, warm and final at once. "We’re going home."
The play left Pebble’s body in a single motion.
He rose onto all four legs with a smoothness his mass should have made impossible, crossed the distance in three measured strides that barely whispered against the floor, and planted himself at his Victor’s back.
Dense dark carapace caught the pale light along its edges, the crown locked level, and six banked-coal eyes began sweeping the colorless horizon in slow, watchful arcs above the man he guarded.
The creature that had been begging for belly rubs three seconds ago now loomed over Kaiden like a fortress that had chosen a king to stand behind, and there was nothing left in his posture for anyone to laugh at.
His women looked up at the silhouette towering at their man’s back, and one by one, matching grins spread around the group.
Every one of them had run the same math in the same heartbeat: the most terrifying thing any of them had ever fought was now standing guard over the man they loved, and the eternal job of worrying about Kaiden Grey had just gained a fortress-sized assistant.
...
The gate of the Abyssal home stood open on the white plain, and the last of the obsidian ranks were still marching through it when Kaiden led his group inside, out of the white country and into the cool dark of the Abyssal Cavern, where bare fortified rock climbed away into ceiling haze and the scars of the siege still marked the stone.
Pebble made it exactly as far as the threshold.
The Guardian stopped dead with one forepaw raised, six eyes flicking between his Victor’s retreating back and a gateway that was, at his current scale, a mouse hole, and the anxious shuffle of his weight set the whole plain trembling.
Golden script arrived before the heartbreak could.
[The Guardian is registered as a native of Dungeon #A23-6679.]
[Privilege granted: Domain Conformity. A native Guardian may scale its form to the dimensions of its home.]
The mountain folded down on itself in a rush of compressing carapace, mass pouring away into wherever the dungeon kept such things, and what trotted through the gate on four eager legs was Pebble at the size of a draft horse, which still made him the largest dog on the planet.
He held his dignified bodyguard posture for about ten meters, and then the interior of an actual dungeon reached his senses for the first time in his existence, and the dignity ended there.
The creature that had devoured twenty dungeons had never been allowed to walk inside one, because the rules of his old existence forbade such an entity from entering any domain but its own.
Now an entire domain of deep stone, strange air, and layered smells had opened to him, and he was a native of all of it.
He bolted ahead with his snout to the stone, sniffing the siege’s scorch marks, the cracked floor where the defense had held, the invisible boundary of the Safe Zone, which apparently had a smell, and one passing slime that trembled through the whole inspection.
His happy stomps rattled echoes off the Cavern walls instead of cracking continents, and every few seconds he doubled back to confirm his family was still where he had left it before racing off toward the next discovery.
The group had gone no deeper than the Safe Zone’s edge when the golden script found Kaiden again.
It carried the same formality it had worn at the very beginning, when a mountain range had first issued its challenge.
[The Dungeon Master Duel has concluded. All terms of the resolution have been executed.]
[The dimension seal has fulfilled its purpose. Disintegration: imminent.]
[All occupants and anchored domains will be restored to their points of origin.]
[Return destination: Earth.]