Bone Dungeon (Elemental Dungeon #1) - A Dungeon Core LitRPG

by Jonathan Smidt

  Blake stared at the bone hand, and a dark tendril of mana flowed from his stump to it. The darkness flowed over the bones, covering them with a small layer of darkness.

  “Now,” Ryan went on, “try to attach it to your stump and will it to stay there.”

  Blake did as Ryan instructed, and when he let go of the skeletal hand, it stayed in place. It had worked.

  “There you go. Good as new.” Ryan was proud of his work, and he watched as Blake looked at his hand.

  It was staying in place, but it wasn’t moving. The knight’s brow furrowed, and after a moment, one of the fingers twitched.

  “This may take some getting used to,” Blake muttered.

  “I believe in you, Blake.”

  “Thanks.” Blake rose to his feet, grabbing his sword and sheathing it with his right hand. He picked up his shield and placed the straps on his arm, unable to move his hand to grab it.

  “Always happy to help, Blake.” Ryan’s voice started out as cheerful but took on a serious tone. “But now that I’ve helped you, mind if you help me?”

  Blake stopped moving and looked down at Erin. Once again, the fairy simply shrugged.

  “I rarely know what he’s up to.” Erin flapped her wings, and gently flew up to the air. “Oh, and Ryan? We still have things to discuss after Blake leaves.”

  Judging by her tone, Ryan knew exactly what she hadn’t forgot about. Skeletal fight club.

  To Blake, Ryan said, “I need you to tell whoever is in charge that that necromancer is planning to come back. I don’t know when, but he said he was going to come back and destroy me.”

  “Why would he come back?” Blake asked, glancing from the exit to Erin.

  “Not really sure,” Ryan said. “I may have turned down his offer to join him, and I don’t think he appreciated that. He also mentioned something about using my core to help him become even more powerful. Quite honestly, I’d rather not die. Especially not to him. So, if you could help me stay alive, that would be great.”

  Blake nodded, and looked once more at Squeaker’s body.

  “I will tell Marcus what happened. He has a group of necromancer hunters with him. I’m certain they can keep you safe.”

  Unlikely, since Sasha failed to kill Viktor last time.

  Ryan kept his thoughts to himself. Blake’s warning to Marcus would have to do.

  “In return,” Blake started, “can you help me get Todd’s body out of here? I’d like to give him a proper burial.”

  Blake’s voice cracked, and tears filled his eyes as the knight glanced at Squeaker’s mangled form. Ryan was certain that wouldn’t be the prettiest sight, but he figured he could help Blake out.

  “Sure, but I’ll need you to leave the room.” Blake’s face took on a questioning look as he glanced at Todd’s form, but the knight walked to the path that lead out of the dungeon. Blake’s aura was interfering with Ryan’s ability to absorb objects in the room, and he also didn’t want Blake to watch what he was going to do.

  Once Blake was out of the first room, Ryan absorbed Squeaker’s form. Then, using his powers, he summoned a new version of Squeaker. He tried to make the body as pristine as he could, though his powers demanded he make the body have at least a little bit of decay, since in essence, he was preparing to create a zombie. Once the new Todd was created, he left the form lying on the ground, unanimated.

  “All right, you can come back,” Ryan said through the pendant, and Blake stepped back into the room, looking with surprise at the body on the ground.

  “How did you do that?” Blake blinked with disbelief as he neared the body, leaning down to pick up Squeaker.

  “I’m a darkness dungeon,” Ryan said. “I kind of have power over these types of things.”

  Ryan could see Blake’s eyes filling with tears.

  “And I figured if you were going to give him a proper burial, his body should at least be all there.”

  “Thank you,” Blake whispered, his voice cracking.

  “No problem, buddy. One last thing,” Ryan said as Blake turned to begin his exit.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t tell anyone about me, Erin, or the Goddess.”

  Ryan figured secrecy was going to be important on those facts. Remembering how crazy the mage had gotten over just a celestial feather, he could only imagine the chaos if people found out just how sentient the dungeon was, not to mention the fact it had a celestial fairy and that a Goddess had appeared.

  “Deal,” Blake said, and he began walking out.

  “I really do hope we can stop Viktor,” Ryan whispered as Erin made her way back to the core room.

  He watched Blake exit the dungeon with Todd’s body, heading towards the group that was rushing towards the dungeon entrance. Ryan had no idea when the necromancer would attack again, but he knew he would need to get even stronger to stop him.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  “Dungeon’s closing tonight, Blake,” Ryan sent a mental message through his crystal, giving the knight a heads-up.

  He had found the pendant allowed him to communicate with Blake all the way to the town. He wasn’t quite sure how far the pendant would allow them to communicate, but he enjoyed being able to chat with Blake when he wanted to. It had been a little over a month since Viktor’s second attack, and since then, Ryan had been steadily moving towards Gold.

  Now, thanks to the carelessness of a few stray nobles – unfortunately not A-a-ron – which resulted in a good amount of fallen high Silver and Gold guards, Ryan had the experience he needed to ascend.

  “Giving him and his group one last chance?” Erin shot him a knowing smile.

  Blake’s group was one dive away from reaching Gold themselves. Blake told him so the other day. Ryan really wanted to give his favorite knight the chance to gain the experience he needed. He also just wanted Blake and his team to do one last dive before Ryan closed the dungeon down. Last time, he had been closed for a month. He had no idea how long his Gold renovations would take.

  “Well, I’d rather his group ascend to Gold while we are building,” Ryan said. “That way, they can jump right in and see our new surprises.”

  Ryan had already been toying with ideas for his new boss mob. One thought was to see how much he could evolve his sneks, and then ascend them into boss-hood – a special present for Blake. It was just a matter of whether the mob would work. His other idea was more realistic and involved his skeletal mages.

  “You know that puts his team in more danger,” Erin warned.

  She was right. Letting Blake’s team be the first on his new floor when he turned Gold would likely present more danger to the group. However, if there was any group Ryan believed capable of thoroughly exploring his new floor, and making it out alive, it was Blake’s team.

  “I believe in him,” Ryan whispered.

  “What was that?” Erin turned her head towards Ryan’s crystal, a grin on her face. They had both come to really like Blake ever since the necromancer’s attack. Being able to speak with him, even if only when he was away from his team, made it even better.

  “I said I believe in him.”

  He hated admitting that fact, and she knew it. She was just as team Blake as he was – heck, even more. She often went out and watched him train during his nightly sessions, which was where they developed a relationship that led to late-night chats.

  “Did anyone die?” Blake’s voice resonated in the core room. Ryan had linked the crystal to his core, so when Blake spoke through his pendant, Ryan and Erin could both hear it.

  “Some noble. His guards triggered the trap and abandoned him.”

  It wasn’t the most noble way to go, but Ryan had found many of these nobles deserved such a fate. They treated their guards terribly, and many simply saw their guards as replaceable fodder. Ryan wasn’t surprised the guards had left this one to his fate.

  The worst of the nobles had been A-a-ron, but Ryan hadn’t seen him yet. He had a special trap for A-a-ron.

 
; “Well, I guess I’m glad it wasn’t an adventurer.” Blake’s voice held a tinge of sorrow. Ryan knew Blake didn’t like how Ryan needed to kill in order to gain experience.

  He’ll get over it in time, just like I did.

  “Hurry up and get your team,” Ryan sent to Blake, and turned his attention back to his dungeon.

  He had made a lot of changes since he was a low-ranked Silver dungeon.

  The first change Ryan made was introducing a shortcut to his second floor. Because the first room of his first floor was directly over his second floor’s first room, Ryan had created a staircase that connected the two. The door to this staircase, on the first floor of the dungeon, needed a special two-part key in order to open it.

  Steve dropped the first part of the key for any group that didn’t already have it. Buttercup dropped the second part. Once adventurers had both pieces of the key, they were deemed worthy by Ryan and could skip his first floor.

  The next big change Ryan had put into his dungeon, other than improving his mobs, was the introduction of roaming mobs. After Viktor’s attack, Ryan had created massive tunnels all throughout his dungeon, connecting every single room in some way with secret passages.

  Using these tunnels, Ryan had a set number of mobs that would roam around the dungeon. That meant they could attack adventurers from anywhere in the dungeon, at any time. It proved a great source of amusement for Ryan and Erin.

  Ryan’s third addition to his dungeon was the introduction of new mobs. Now that he was Silver One, Ryan had a total of 600 mob points to spend. He left his first floor the same, sitting at its sixty-five points, with the same mobs he had left it with since becoming Silver. His second floor, though, saw many mob improvements.

  First, Ryan upgraded all of his basic human skeletons to hardened skeletons. These skeletons had much harder bones reinforced with darkness mana and cost him fifteen points each. He placed two hardened skeletal fighters each in his first and second mob rooms. His third mob room on his second floor had two hardened skeletal archers, seven sneks, and an infested snakie.

  His earlier experiments with having zombie snakes become infested with the mushrooms had worked, much to his delight. The infested snakies had mushrooms where their poison glands would have been. Ryan had found combining them with different mushrooms gave them different effects. On top of that, the snakies took on the color of the mushroom that infested them.

  Red infested snakies were the deadliest, as they held an actual poison in them that would knock an adventurer out within ten minutes of being bitten. Yellow infested snakies held the same paralysis poison that infested ratbies had. Purple infested snakies, Ryan’s favorite, had the hallucinogenic property of the mushroom. Those bites led to the most interesting, and sometimes chaotic, reactions from adventurers.

  Of course, Ryan had ensured that the mobs had the chance to drop the mushrooms that could heal the bites, and many adventuring groups, at least the smart ones, had begun carrying antidote potions in case of an infested snakie bite.

  Ryan’s fourth and fifth rooms were now outfitted with even more mobs. He had been tempted to add in his skeletal mages but decided to save them for his third floor. They just seemed too strong to justify adding into his second floor.

  In his fourth room, Ryan placed three hardened skeletal fighters, and two hardened skeletal archers, for a total of seventy-five points. He then added in five sneks that could drop down from the ceiling onto adventurers, for added distractions and fear factors. And just because the thought of Blake having a snek fall onto him made him smile.

  His fifth room, still meant to be the hardest room before his boss, held four hardened skeletal fighters and four hardened skeletal archers, for a total of 120 points.

  On top of all these improved mobs, Ryan pumped 110 mob points into his roaming mobs. These mobs included six plated skrats, six bladed skuirrels, five of his two-headed sneks, and five infested snakies. The one advantage adventurers had of not skipping the first floor was there was a chance they would be attacked by the roaming mobs in a less dangerous room, rather than being ambushed on the second floor.

  The final changes to his second floor were his improvements to Buttercup’s room. First, he made the room much larger. Buttercup had incredible speed, and a good ranged attack. He wanted his boss to really be able to stretch its legs and make use of that fact.

  Ryan also needed the room to be bigger so that he could add three more mobs into the room. He had found that after groups figured out how Buttercup fought, they could easily swarm his boss mob and take Buttercup down. As such, he had decided Buttercup needed friends.

  He had first planned to add a multitude of different mobs into the room, but Erin had suggested he use the hybrid mob that he had created Buttercup from. He agreed, under the stipulation that he was naming this mob. The last thing he needed was for Erin to call them “Buttercup’s woodland friends” or something else ridiculous. As such, he named the ten-point wolf-deer hybrid skeletons horned howlers. The three of them cost a combined thirty points, and Buttercup cost fifty, making his boss room cost eighty points.

  Altogether, through all the upgrades, Ryan’s first floor cost him sixty-five points, his second-floor cost him 385 points, and his roaming mobs cost 110 points, totaling at 560 points. That left Ryan with forty points for—

  “How’s skeletal fight club going?” Erin had her cheek pressed against his crystal, a grin on her face. After her initial anger, which led to a week and a half of Erin not talking to Ryan, she had come to really enjoy skeletal fight club. Especially after Ryan convinced her it was just a strict training environment to help his mobs evolve, and definitely not a mob fight group built for Ryan’s enjoyment.

  “Eh, for some reason they still haven’t evolved.” Ryan currently had eight basic skeletons fighting each other. Four were skeletal fighters, and four were skeletal archers. No matter how many fights they undertook, and how many they won, they still hadn’t undergone changes like his skuirrels and skrats had. He was almost beginning to wonder if human skeletons could evolve this way.

  “Laaaame.” Erin rolled off his core and spread her wings. “I wanted to see another evolution before we ascended.”

  “Well, we could go back to the evolution chamber.” Ryan started to turn his attention to it, but Erin simply shivered and shook her head.

  Last time, Ryan’s curiosity had gotten the better of him, and he decided to see what would happen if he tried to combine skeletal mages of different types. Just because he wasn’t using them on his second floor didn’t mean he couldn’t see what might happen with them, after all.

  The resulting explosion had created an earthquake that reached the town outside his dungeon and had led to a panicked message from Blake. He had quickly assured Blake he was all right and promised not to try and create such a combination again. Apparently, the earthquake had done a good amount of damage to the tavern.

  Oops.

  “We’re here.” Blake’s voice echoed across the room, and a relieved look crossed Erin’s face. It seemed they didn’t have time for mob evolutions.

  “Blake! My hero.” Erin fake-swooned as she settled atop Ryan’s core, and Ryan turned his attention to Blake and his team as they entered the dungeon.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Blake unleashed a taunt, sending a wave of dark energy into the horned howlers. Ryan had to admit the knight was cool.

  The week prior, Blake had found a way to merge his two affinities as they imbued his sword and shield, and the resulting visual effects were, for lack of a better word, awesome. His sword and shield, instead of being covered in golden or black light, were surrounded with an ever-shifting gray, mist-like mana. Blake called it ethereal mana.

  The three horned howlers turned their heads away from Matt, who had three arrows nocked in his bow, and rushed towards Blake. The knight planted himself firmly on the ground and closed his eyes.

  An instant before the three mobs smashed into him, he opened his eyes, a
nd the ethereal mana surrounding his shield erupted in all directions, creating a massive, eight-foot shield of ethereal mana in front of Blake. The taunted mobs had no chance to slow down, and they smashed into the mana shield.

  “Nice one, Blake.” Matt turned his bow towards the stunned howlers and launched three arrows, all covered in blue mana, into the mobs.

  The moment they hit, ice encased the mobs.

  “My turn.” Emily’s body flashed red, and Cynder let out a cheerful chirp before she opened her mouth, sending a solid wave of flames into the three frozen howlers. The combined heat and cold caused the mobs to literally shatter.

  “She’s sooooo cuuute,” Erin cooed at Cynder, who had flown to the ground and begun picking at the bones, looking for a suitable antler to chew on.

  “Blake is getting way too strong,” Ryan grumbled as he watched the fight.

  Blake was Silver One, but because of his dual affinity, he had twice as much mana as any of the other Silver Ones, and every knight ability he used was stronger and more impressive than any other knights Ryan had seen. Ryan was both excited and scared to see what Blake would be like when he became Gold.

  “Well, the Goddess did choose him,” Erin said.

  She was right. Just like Ryan, the Goddess had saved Blake. That meant for some reason she needed them both to get much stronger. Ryan was just jealous of how strong Blake had gotten so quickly.

  “Ya’ll going to help me any time soon?” Jack’s voice, though filled with amusement, sounded strained. The thief, in his wolfkin form, was dashing around Buttercup, launching slashes of wind into the boss whenever he got the chance.

  “What? I thought you could handle Buttercup all by yourself,” Matt laughed as he called back to Jack, and Ryan noticed the archer was grinning as he looked down at his quiver.

  “I don’t like that grin,” Ryan groaned.

  So far, Ryan had seen new skills from Blake and Jack. The way Matt was grinning, he was certain Buttercup was about to be on the receiving end of a new skill from Matt.