Crushed

Atlas fled through the halls of the third floor, dodging left and right as chunks of stone were torn from the walls and thrown by the avatar. Monsters tried to stand in its path, but the golem was in no mood to deal with them, tossing several primed monster cores from its stash to clear blockades, and ones remaining after Atlas passed were crushed by the avatar and reclaimed for respawning further down the golem's path. Atlas didn't have time to question why the monsters of the floor were much more varied than other floors.

The avatar's stride was much longer than Atlas', and all it could do was expend energy to take control and shape the floor and walls into obstacles to slow it down. While it seemed composed on the outside, it was lamenting internally.

'𝘐 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘹, 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘰 𝘮𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘴𝘬?'

'𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘱𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘦.'

'𝘔𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦 𝘐 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘣𝘪𝘨 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯.'

A few thoughts spun through its mind, it certainly couldn't defeat the avatar as it is, but the avatar would catch it if it started focusing on moulding itself. Atlas sighed; it had no one but itself to blame for this situation, even if it didn't know what it was doing at the time of melding into the wall and stealing energy. It started thinking back, trying to find something that could alleviate the situation, at least long enough to do something about the difference in size.

A sentence popped up from just before he descended for the first time.

'His soul mutated and gained something similar to a uniqueness based on stealth.'

'𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩, 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘢 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦, 𝘴𝘰 𝘐 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘰𝘯 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵?'

It realized a possible course of action and started preparing for it immediately, looking for side rooms or anything that it could hide in. Atlas would have to disable the avatar's sight long enough to slip away and likely would only have a single chance at it. The golem could only hope that the avatar had its sight based on the head, which should be the case given how it was acting.

Atlas had to expend energy carefully, trying to increase its pool to the point where it could take control of stone high enough on the walls to attack the avatar's face. This led to a few close calls with the avatar's feet coming down on top of where Atlas stood, forcing it to jump or roll away.

"𝗣𝗘𝗦𝗧! 𝗖𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗘 𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗥 𝗙𝗢𝗢𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗛𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗦!" The stone giant shouted as it ripped a chunk of the wall out and threw it at the annoyance fleeing from it.

"Do you have to be so loud?!" Atlas shouted back, its voice barely heard above the thunderous steps of the avatar.

"𝗬𝗢𝗨'𝗩𝗘 𝗡𝗢 𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧 𝗧𝗢 𝗦𝗣𝗘𝗔𝗞, 𝗟𝗘𝗘𝗖𝗛!" The avatar bellowed back, shaking the walls with sheer volume.

Atlas felt like its ears were bleeding, which was weird since it didn't have any ears. It double-checked its status and nodded; it should have enough energy to attempt its plan now. Atlas turned a corner and slammed its fist into the wall, pouring energy inwards and upwards. The avatar turned the corner just as Atlas' control reached the height of the avatar's head.

"Eat this!" The golem shouted, perhaps a bit too excited to strike back at this overbearing enemy. From floor to roof, the entire corner of the turn detached from the wall and wrapped around the avatar like a stone snake. The 'head' of the stone snake smashed into the avatar's head repeatedly before tightly wrapping around it.

The avatar's sight was indeed blocked by the stone snake, however...

'𝘈𝘩.' Was all Atlas could think as a massive leg of the avatar swung forward, giving the golem a taste of what Vaud felt, but far worse. The foot snapped Atlas' body in half and sent it flying down the hallway; its lower half impacted a lizardman, killing the lizardman on the spot while its upper half continued flying for a distance.

The sudden distance cut the connection between its own core and the lower half, causing the legs to crumble without any energy to hold them together. Atlas smashed into a wall at the end of the hallway and fell to the ground, cracked and broken. The avatar quickly gained control of the stone snake, put it back in its place on the wall, and began marching towards the broken golem.

"𝗙𝗢𝗢𝗟!" It shouted as it stepped on remains of the golem's legs, grinding them to dust.

Seeing the avatar already on the way, Atlas began expending energy to repair its fractures, but it was out of energy; nothing happened. The golem could only hold itself together using two arms while using the other two to try and crawl away.

"𝗬𝗢𝗨 𝗖𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗥𝗨𝗡!" The avatar shouted, striding forward at a comfortable pace now that the pest before it could barely move. Monsters of all variety formed a perimeter to watch the spectacle of the apex predator of the floor put down the anomaly that had been a thorn in the side of the first few floors of the labyrinth.

Atlas' ears were ringing, or whatever it used to hear, and its sight was uneven. A fracture running down the middle of its face displaced the left and right sides of its head, and its body was beginning to fall apart.

'𝘐𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘵? 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰?

The golem lamented, why was it sent to this Labyrinth where it couldn't grow freely?

No, that's just life, it remembered; whether here or in its past world, nobody could get a foothold in life without paying the price.

Atlas turned to look at the avatar, now towering over it; it couldn't even think of a good reason why the Dungeon Core sent the avatar after it. Sure it stole some energy from the Labyrinth, but with the sheer scale and the ridiculous space magic making several branching floors, wouldn't it just be a drop in a bucket to the Dungeon Core?

But in reality, those in power don't need a good reason, and they'll trample the poor and unlucky just for looking at them wrong.

"Fuck you," Atlas spat, a final defiant cry as the avatar's foot came crashing down on the broken golem. Then it came down again, and again, and again. The avatar made sure to grind the parasite to dust to ensure it was gone.

...

After half a minute of wanton destruction of the floor, the avatar could no longer sense the parasite and stopped. It gingerly picked up the spatial storage ring and snorted; the parasite stole so many monster cores. It funnelled in a tiny bit of energy and released all the monster cores onto the floor before recycling them back into energy for the dungeon to use. The artifacts were also reabsorbed, sent off to serve as rewards for real challengers as the gods ordained, not some defective monster.

The avatar looked at the vast array of armaments the parasite had created; some were quite interesting. At the very least, it could count this as not a complete loss, and the Dungeon Core could analyze these and better arm the monsters wandering the floors. With the show over, the monsters went back to wandering the halls, the strong barrier at the entrance of the floor returned to normal, and the avatar was recycled to get back some of the energy the Dungeon Core exhausted to cause an energy river phenomenon.

The Dungeon Core went into a stasis mode; having two energy rivers in one month had depleted nearly all of its energy, and as for why the first one triggered by itself, it would have to figure that out after it woke up.

-⚪-

Back on the surface, the perimeter around the Labyrinth entrance began to dissolve. The mages confirmed the large-scale energy movements had ceased, and Dean, who had slipped inside against orders, came out and confirmed that the shaking and shouting in the lower floors had also stopped.

Like the first time, a quest was published by the guild to go down and document any changes that had occurred as a result of the energy river phenomenon and find the source of the tremors and shouts.

It wasn't too long before the mages who went in confirmed through the cross-reference of the movements of energy that the Dungeon Core had entered a sleep state, the first time that the Labyrinth dungeon has done so. While smaller dungeons had been confirmed to do so if they were put under duress, to have the Dungeon Core of the dungeon that let the city thrive caused worry and panic to spread. But to the relief of everyone, the spatial magic, along with everything else in the dungeon, still operated normally.

With the dungeon spawning monsters and bosses on auto-pilot instead of micro-managing, the adventurers actually managed to delve deeper. For some reason, a group managed to find a complete map of the second floor on one of the branching third floors, engraved on a large stone tablet that seemed to have been thrown into a side-room. The group became popular because they freely published the information, greatly increasing the efficiency and survivability of exploring the second floor.