"There's poison in the air! Get out of the train!"
Poison? Blood doesn't have a poison type skill and the orcs certainly don't either.
{It's not actually poison. Blood can spew her sanguine venom into the air and it's potent enough to penetrate thin membranes. Once it penetrates into your blood stream it start liquifying everything. But the effects do look like poison.}
Guess that's the way she mentioned to get the adventurers out of the train. It seems to be quite effective.
{Only because you activated the magic drive in the front engine and slowed the train down enough for her to act. But don't you want to follow the orcs and fight?}
That would be stupid. We want to make this train ours. For that we need to keep it here. Once the magic drives run out of power, I'll hit the brakes and ground them. That should give Blood and the orcs enough time to conquer the train. I just hope we can operate it later.
{Don't you worry too much. Being Y is working on it.}
Being Y is working on it? How?
"HEAR ME PUNY MORTALS! ONLY A COWARD FLEES IN THE FACE OF DANGER!"
A booming voice resounds throughout the train. Is that supposed to help us?
{You know how I said that being Y poses moral challenges to adventurers in his dungeon? This is one of them.}
So, all those who run get cursed?
{Quite the opposite, whoever stays gets cursed. Being Y's perception of morality can be a bit baffling. But he believes that running when staying won't help us the right thing to do. Sacrifice without merit has no meaning.}
So if they stood a chance against us things would be the other way around?
{Precisely.}
Thanks the gods I don't have to deal with this on a daily basis.
{Being Y objects to your derogatory remark but says he understands that debating moral complexities can be tiresome for an untrained mind.}
The magic drive finally begins to sputter out and I pull emergency brake. The trains comes to a screeching halt as the emergency brakes slam down with unexpected force. Time for me to go join the fight.
{I am afraid you are too late for that. Every adventurer on this train has been killed. And most of the fleeing ones were picked off by Blood.}
Um, what use is being Y's curse if they are all dead?
{The curse was not meant for the living. It raises the dead. Every who chose not to flee after being Y's words were heard has become an undead, forever bound to this specific train.}
That's rough. But doesn't this cost him way too much?
{Dungeon logic is weird. Creating that amount of undead would be costly but since being Y converted them through a challenge which is in line with his dungeon's working, it cost next to nothing.}
That is so overpowered. Can't he just pose more challenges?
{Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. As a minor god of justice, being Y can sense opportunities and make use of them. If he could do so at his whims that would indeed be overpowered.}
No loophole ever works the way you want it to. Anyway, do you think the stations know that we took over this train.
{Being Y blocked their long distance communication so no. What are you planning to do now?}
The train is great and all but we can't do much with it. We could try ramming other trains but they would catch on easily and just reverse their way out of there. The best use I see is to destroy or capture one of their train stations.
Using the train, we can probably get very close before they notice something being off. It might not get us inside but it will get us past their range of suppression fire.
{I agree. If you can disrupt one of the stations, train in this area won't be able to easily escape and repair themselves. That might allow us to hijack more trains.}
The thing is, if we take the orcs here with us to attack the station, no one will be able to easily take over another train unless I join them. But without them…
{Don't think too much and just attack the train station with the undead and Blood. Capturing a station will be nearly impossible for now. Just do some damage and that will do.}
If you say so.
I walk through the train and see about fourty undead adventurers standing unnaturally still. My instructor's assessment tells me that they are zombie adventurers. A special type of monster that retains all abilities of the adventurer when they were alive. These things are also immune to pain and most abnormal status effects don't do much to them either. The trade off is that their intellect has suffered a drop and they can't get stronger. In other words, they are cannon fodder.
I leave the train and see the orc chieftain discussing with a few orc shamans. They are surrounded by a bunch of orcs that look smaller than the average orc but also give off a more intimidating air.
These are newly evolved orc hijackers. I never imagined that such an evolutionary route existed but it seems the world is very flexible. They each carry a wooden spear and some of them seem to have gotten their hands on guns.
Without more ammunition they won't be able to use them for long but I can already see the confused expression on the faces of adventurers when they get shot at.
Come to think of it, is it just me or have guns and technology been more prominent recently?
{They have. The alpha plane is trying to push us harder and they found that technology can't be used by most monsters due to physical or intellectual shortcomings. However, under your influence and a convenient time of evolution, these orcs have overcome that limitation.}