Donut, too, did her job.
Before I could blink, she was out the passenger’s-side window, turning to smoke. By the time she was on the roof of the truck, the vine was dead, the GPS was shorted out, and the shield was fully down.
Before Bruna, on the other side of Dwight, had even managed to let out a bellow from the point-blank blast, Dwight’s head had been removed from his body with a single swipe of Donut’s claw.
Before the notification even arrived, Dwight’s magical horn had been removed from the unicorn’s head and placed into Donut’s inventory.
Team One, Team Sparkles, has been eliminated because... Holy shit, that was pretty badass.
Across the way, similar scenes were playing out all across the lobby. A few racers managed to get away, but they appeared to all be just theNPC-on-NPC races. The AMC Pacer of team Yokai cast something and moved right through the closed door in the hallway and disappeared.
Good for them,I thought. I hoped they’d make it. I wondered if the AI would keep its promise if they finished their heat. I wondered if they’d be “free.” I wondered what that meant, what it looked like.
It didn’t matter, I decided. That wasn’t to be our fate. Not now.
Next to us, Bruna fully recovered. Osvaldo was crouched on the back of his gnu, and he took a few steps forward, moving into the lobby. I gritted my teeth. This was going to be tricky.
He couldn’t make his move until I blew the hole. If he moved too soon, he was dead. If he moved too late, he was dead. Ifwemoved too soon, it was possible we’d kill Bruna and not him. If that happened, we were fucked.
Osvaldo was the fastest crawler in the dungeon, and he knew it. This was going to be dangerous.
“Dr. Metcalf, the hole punch ready again?” The vine had shriveled where it stood, leaving a goopy black stain on the floor. All that was left was the missile cart.
It is ready. However, it appears he has removed the shield from his creature. The crawler himself is covered with many, many shields.
“Yeah, we figured. He’s hoping we’ll attack him before we blow the ceiling. Wait until the moment I drop the roof.” We had to do this quickly. Already, I felt a slugpox boil starting to form on my back.
Karl: Donut, ready?
Donut: Ready.
Karl: Okay, guys, I’m blowing the ceiling in ten seconds. Be careful. The roof is coming down.
I took a breath, and I hit the detonator. My tail started to anxiously wag.
Ten seconds.
Five seconds.
Bam!
[ 83 ]
What happened next happened so quickly,I didn’t even see it.
I blew the floors, creating a path all the way to the roof of the building. Up there on the roof, instead of a finish line, was a clustered group of portals to the eleventh floor.
The very moment the explosion went off, Osvaldo was away, flinging himself toward the exit. He’d used hisLaunchspell with the added benefit of his supernatural dexterity.
The new rules with the containments allowed someone to pass the finish line outside their vehicles or mounts if and only if their vehicle or mount had been destroyed.
And that was the flaw in Osvaldo’s plan. He was faster than us. He would be the first through the gate. But he first had to wait until poor Bruna was dead.
I blew the roof, and as expected, he was off. It happened so fast, it looked as if he’d gone invisible.
The moment I set off the explosion, rubble and smoke rained down. These were a type of bomb I called poleaxes, and they were something I’d designed on the previous floor, though I’d never had the opportunity to use them. They were made specifically for this purpose. To breach through building floors without actually leveling the building. The whole idea had comefrom my quest to find focused explosives, something I hadn’t seen perfectly executed since that very first blast of the murder dozer on the first floor.
These charges were designed to blast up and down, but not laterally, in a cone. They would create rubble, but, as devised, they were supposed to minimize the debris, instead vaporizing everything. In my bomber’s studio, I’d created these things to blast almost perfect ten-meter circles on the floor below them and an even larger hole above, depending on how far away the ceiling was.