Dungeons Online

"Cleo?" Krist asked. His body twitched lightly. "What happened?" The man's looks sharpened. 

Marvin in the lobby raised his eyes at the messenger. 

"Sir, I'm not really sure, just got the call from the bottom," Tom's 'cousin' passed the phone to Cleo's father. 

"Speak," Kris commanded. 

"The girl is okay," Mathew spoke to the phone. As one from the older generation, he served both with Krist and Tom's father back in the war. And with Krist on the surface, he held the front in the tunnels. "It seems little Tom is growing faster than anticipated," Mathew added in his low, raspy voice. 

"Need help?" Kris asked, getting straight to the point. 'From the feel of the situation, I guess she woke up rather abruptly,' the man thought for a second. With Mathew's assurance, he didn't need to worry about his daughter. 

Rather than that, he could pull his full attention to solving the situation. 

All at once, the world around Kris shrunk. Their entire farm became just a point on a three-dimensional map that surrounded his consciousness. in the corner of the room, the outline of the city appeared. 

"We are all right. The error will remain in their system for a while," Mathew abruptly changed the topic, moving on to the problematic parts. "Nephew claims it should flush out within an hour or so," Kris's friend added in his calm voice. 

"I will be there in a minute," Krist said, getting on the move. He ended the call and turned his face to Marvin.

The young man was sitting in the nearby room in his wheelchair. It was a part of his mission. Despite his wounds, he was a living bait once the first and soft approach of their enemy would reach the farm. And now, he was staring daggers at his father. 

"She will be okay," Kris said, releasing a deep sigh. 

"I heard so," Marvin said, softening his glare. "Still, it's better to hear it directly," he added after a moment, only to shake his head and lower his gaze back at his tool. 

"How is it going?" Kris asked, heading towards the basement. 

"We got scouts all the way into the hills," Marvin replied, touching his tablet with a finger and snapping it towards a nearby TV. 

Tom's farm looked shabby on the outside. What's more, everything visible from the outside kept the quality and rudimentary looks of the building walls. But inside, in the rooms that had no direct line of sight outside, the furnishing was modern and stylish.

A black plane suddenly appeared on the wall. Thanks to its borderless design, it perfectly imitated a part of the massive wardrobe. Even if someone were to attempt to open it, it would work as a shelf perfectly fine.

"Unless they somehow come from underground without alerting our wires, we will know at least fifteen minutes in advance," Marvin said as the black screen turned into a live bird's-eye view of the entire region. 

The microdrones that Tom used to penetrate the insides of the Dome at first now came useful as a horde of invisible eyes. 

"Make it five," Kris said, squinting his eyes. "Never expect the enemy to act the way you think they will," he lectured his son. "It tunnels your vision. Did you forget about how strong Tom managed to become?" Kris waved his phone. 

Ever since the three of the youths entered the dungeon, they somehow could make contact with Cleo. Rather than using some sort of weird tool, Tom's family simply tapped into the Online Hub's system. 

Rather than communicate directly, they managed to utilize the functionality of communicates to establish a rudimentary connection between the two parties. 

For the first part of the mission, the surface only had limited knowledge of how the mission went. In the end, Cleo was the only one connected, and she was separated from the other two. 

Ultimately, ten hours into the mission, all three of the youths came into contact. Since then, while the throughput was severely limited, two parts of the group could effectively pass some information. 

"On the bad side, having Cleo return has its positives," Kris muttered to himself. "We will finally be able to get a full picture of the situation," he added, glancing over at his son. 

"But that means cutting our link," Marvin replied without raising his eyes from the stuff he was overseeing. "Right, we got some intel from the market," he added after a second, moving his eyes on his father. "They say there is a chance of something big happening in the Hub," he said.

"Coincidence?" Kris sharply raised his sight at his son. "Wait, they shouldn't be able to locate the bug yet..." Kris suddenly smiled. "Now that I think about it, it was actually the nigh time for it to happen?" he said, moving his eyes towards the ladder hatch in the basement. 

"If we get a few more hours to clean the logs and mechanical interference, we just might be able to get away with it," Marvin smiled lightly. 

Ever since the mission began, the situation was so tense that one could cut it with a knife. Everyone entered their most focused mindset, putting the years of training and experience into motion. 

'Sweat hard, bleed little,' Marvin thought, recalling the maxim of their family. Sourced from some general from the ages past, a man who introduced the idea of increasing people's ability to decrease their casualties. 

And from the looks of things, they were close to achieving a flawless victory in that regard. 

"I'm not going to hold you any longer. Just make sure to keep tabs on the mainline," Marvin added after a moment, tapping himself on the shoulder. A small pin was attached to his shirt there. With a simple microphone and antenna, it could only connect to a nearby wireless transmitter. 

Said transmitter would then pass by a capable all the way to their center of operation in the tunnel, securing an old-type but still working military line of communication. 

"Be on the tip of your toes," Krist said, waving his hand as he headed off for the tunnel.. "You don't know what they might throw at us," he added before turning around and descending into the hidden passage.