Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 793: The Siege Begins

The Skyfiends dropped their riders at the first defensive line and swept back up into the Cavern’s ceiling haze, joining the wing reserve Kaiden had staged overhead.

Kaiden stepped off his mount onto abyssal stone.

They were at the chokehold where the Cavern narrowed into the corridor’s throat, set deeper in from the gate with the Safe Zone’s hundred-meter circle visible across the Cavern’s open span ahead of them. Everything past the Safe Zone was his to shape. Everything inside it was untouchable ground by system rule, for as long as it took the enemy to walk out of the bubble.

Vespera’s shadow lattice had already braided itself through every vertical surface around him, a wall of dark cables waiting for weight to test them. Scarlet stood a half step off the lattice’s right edge with her twin red-gold lances held in overwatch, gate in her line of fire.

Past them, further back into the throat, his first rank of Monoliths stood planted in heavy stacked plating, the rest of the Maulfiend line in ambush formation behind the tanks. Deeper still, past the corridor and the Sink and into the Verdant, Taigi and the Dungeon-Born held the green as the final fallback line between any breach and his home.

The rest of his women found their positions around him as the Skyfiends cleared overhead.

He pulled the 3D map open in front of him with a flick of will.

The dungeon rendered wide in the air, translucent, rotating slow. The Abyssal Cavern with its Safe Zone around the gate. The two paths diverging into their hostile ecosystems. The Verdant stretching the long span to the far end of the domain.

Every creature marker lit where he had placed it. The Nightclaw line holding the corridor’s upper vault past the first ambush chamber, Gorefiends tucked in ceiling cover, Nightshrouds folded into the darker crevices with their disorient loads already banked.

Deeper, the magma channel ran bright with Melty and her five sisters threading the molten rivers, Dreadwyrms primed for burst-breath, the Magmashapers reading terrain, the Pyremother settled lower in the brood-pool with her minions drifting around her in slow currents.

Every marker was in its spot.

’Good... Things didn’t get messed up just now.’

For one breath, the domain held.

Then the gate moved.

The seal that had held the outer world away gave inward a fraction, dimensional pressure easing against the abyssal stone by a hair, and a silhouette cleared the threshold into the Safe Zone.

Four-legged, squat, scaled in dark gray chitin with a hooked mouthpart that clicked once as it found stone under its feet. Its head swept the dim cavern air in a slow arc, four eyes catching the ambient glow and giving it back flat.

A scavenger-type Kaiden had killed a dozen variants of across different ecosystems in his awakened career. Mid-sixties at a glance. Disposable template.

Not the top shelf.

The system answered the thought before he had finished it.

[Siege Phase 1: Begin.]

[Duration: 2 hours, or until threshold conditions are met.]

[Attacker objective: Claim 75% of defender’s dungeon ground.]

[Defender objective: Eliminate 100% of the attacker’s forces.]

[Dungeon Ground Held: 100%. Enemy Forces Eliminated: 0%.]

[No force regeneration this phase.]

The corner of Kaiden’s mouth pulled inward.

’...Phase 1?’

The overlay pulsed once against his awareness.

’There are phases?’

[Sometimes.]

Kaiden let his head tip back a quarter inch against nothing in particular.

’...Great.’

Past the Safe Zone’s edge, the scavengers kept coming. A second one cleared the gate a beat after the first, then three more, then eight. A pack of lower-level pups scuttled through behind them with oversized claws, low fifties range. A line of bipedal striders next, mid eighties, heavier than anything in front of them but still not the kind of template you led with. A cluster of blind serpents pooled in after them in the high sixties, hunters by vibration, pushed through on the same surge.

The Safe Zone started to fill. By rule, the defenders could only watch as the swarm gathered inside the bubble.

Luna tipped her head sideways at the gathering swarm, Stormblade tapping once against her knee.

"Seriously...? Where’s the good stuff?"

"He’s not sending it," Kaiden said.

"Looks like a probe wave." Nyx spoke from a step behind without looking up from her own overlay. "He’s testing what we’ve got before he commits anything expensive. Gotta be sparse if forces don’t regenerate for two whole hours."

Bastet had drifted closer to the edge of the chokehold’s front line, her amber gaze fixed on the swarm across the Cavern’s span.

Her ears twitched once, slow.

"I think..."

That pulled Kaiden’s attention over.

Bastet kept her eyes on the gate, eyes narrowed tightly.

"Possibly he is testing us, Master. But this creature is not built the way you are built. I have said so already: it does not invest or strategize. It absorbs, and it spawns."

She lifted one hand, palm angled out toward the filling Safe Zone.

"But perhaps I was wrong... This clearly looks like strategy to me, even if instinctual and basic."

Her lower lip caught once between her teeth.

The composed queen held her posture but the shame came through under it anyway. Her first read had called the Claimant a brute, and the gap between brute and strategist was ground her friends and her Master were going to have to cross with her.

The weight of that misjudgment landed under her ribs before it reached her face.

Kaiden caught it and turned toward her.

His free hand lifted, and he found the base of one of her feline ears, rubbing once in the slow familiar way she liked. The gold strand the Sin Fusion had threaded through her black hair brushed against his thumb.

"Dumb brute or genius strategist, it does not matter. We’ll prevail either way."

Her amber eyes closed for a breath under his hand and she allowed her head to tilt sideways, leaning into the touch.

When her eyes opened again, the worry had retreated. The Manifestation of Dominion caught herself, the composed queen back in place, and gave him one small nod against his palm.

Then her lips pulled into a wild, sadistic grin.

She turned her head toward the gate with her ear still under his hand.

"...How dare you make me show such a hideous side of me in front of Master, you hideous creature?"

Her tail slashed once behind her as her chin lifted.

"I’ll pulverize you all!"

Sadistic kitten mode has been activated!

Kaiden’s mouth twitched at the corner as the Safe Zone counter on his overlay crossed forty. Forty-three. Forty-nine.

At fifty-two, the front of the swarm found the edge of the untouchable ground and pushed past it.

The first scavenger crossed into the Abyssal Cavern’s kill zone at a loping four-legged gait, hooked mouthpart clicking against the stone.

Scarlet’s heat had already banked into a lance at her right palm, red-gold light compressing.

Vespera’s shadow rolled up over the lance before it could fire and pressed the energy back into Scarlet’s palm.

"...Are you serious?!"

"Hold."

Vespera’s red gaze had found Kaiden.

"The most sensible counter strategy is this."

Kaiden read it before she’d finished the sentence.

They were facing down a probe wave of the lowest level monsters.

He gave his mother one slow nod.