Succubus 5 (Hardcore Dungeon Core): A LitRPG Series

by A. J. Markam

  Why does that name sound familiar –

  OH FUCK.

  Now I knew where I recognized this guy from.

  He was patterned after Robert Shaw’s character Quinn from Jaws. The crusty old shark hunter who took Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss out in his boat, the Orca, to hunt down the Great White menacing Amity Island.

  Quinn met his match in the shark.

  The game version hadn’t. Not yet, anyway.

  Somehow, I didn’t think I was going to succeed where a Great White shark (or whatever the OtherWorld equivalent was) had failed.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” the Duchess hissed.

  I just looked back and forth between her and Quint. For good measure I glanced at Urik, who looked like he wanted to crucify me.

  This was not good.

  “Well?!” the Duchess demanded.

  “Uhhhh… bye,” I answered.

  Then I cast Invisibility.

  Everyone in the room roared in shock and outrage as I disappeared.

  I had 20 seconds to get the fuck out of there before the spell wore off.

  I turned back towards the entrance to the throne room, trying to figure out how to thread my way through the palace guards –

  “MAGES!” the Irish badass roared as he drew his sword with a SCHINK!

  One of the fuckers in black over in the corner waved his arms, and a blue-tinted shield went up around me, about twenty feet in diameter.

  God DAMN it!

  I was trapped, and the real Grand Inquisitor knew it.

  Actually, he’d planned it.

  Worse, he was going to use it to his advantage.

  He swung the broadsword through the air, the flat side out, trying to hit me at random. I was out of the range of the first strike, but I wasn’t going to be for long.

  There was a general hubbub and cry in the throne room –

  “QUIET!” Quintus roared, and the entire room fell silent.

  I backed up to the very edge of the Mage’s shield and crouched down, hoping I could somehow get out of this –

  But the sound of my boots on the stone floor gave me away.

  “HA!” the Irish bastard roared, then swiped low with the flat of his sword – straight at my head.

  I tried rolling out of the sword’s path, but apparently that wasn’t in the cards today.

  WHANG!

  The sword caught me in the back of the head like a metal two-by-four.

  “OWWW!” I howled as I sprawled out on the ground, stars filling my field of vision.

  I lost 5% of my hit points, and a computer window popped up:

  Stunned! 5 Second Debuff.

  Shit – I couldn’t move, and I wouldn’t be able to for five seconds!

  That was plenty of time for the real Grand Inquisitor to stomp around on the ground with one boot and find me, no matter how invisible I happened to be. As soon as he stomped on my back, he reached down, felt for my head with his glove, then grabbed my neck and hoisted me up into the air. Still invisible, I might add.

  By the time the stun debuff wore off, so had my Invisibility spell. Everyone gasped when I reappeared, my feet dangling off the ground and hands clutching at Quint’s glove at my throat.

  “A warlock,” Quint grinned. “And a piss-poor one, at that. Didn’t summon his demons… didn’t attack. Why not?”

  I wasn’t about to tell him where I’d left Stig, Alaria, Soraiya, and Fugly.

  To be perfectly accurate, even if I’d wanted to tell him, it was nigh impossible to talk with a fist crushing my windpipe.

  When I didn’t answer, Quint threw me contemptuously to the ground, where I coughed and gasped for breath.

  The Grand Inquisitor squatted down and looked at me with that lopsided grin. “Where’s the dungeon core you had yesterday, warlock?”

  “I… I don’t have it anymore,” I wheezed.

  “Don’t have it? Then where’d you put it?”

  “Up your mom’s ass,” I snarled.

  A nervous ripple ran through the court.

  The palace guard all glanced at each other, like they were wondering if the Grand Inquisitor was going to stand for that shit.

  Urik raised one eyebrow.

  And the Duchess blushed bright red… though I figured that was due to her actually having a personal history of crystals up her ass.

  All of Quint’s men, though, just smiled. Like they were waiting for the good part to begin.

  Quint chuckled. “Up my mother’s arse… that’s good, warlock. That’s good.”

  Then his face crumpled into a mask of rage, and he moved faster than I would have thought possible for a guy his size. Way faster than I could react, that was for sure.

  He scrambled up on top of me, put one knee on my chest, and placed all of his weight on it.

  I couldn’t breathe again, although for an entirely different reason this time.

  Then he grabbed my face with his glove and forced his thumb slightly into my right eye socket, threatening to poke out my eye.

  “Mmph!” I screamed, my mouth covered by his glove.

  “What was that, warlock?” he asked with a smile. “I couldn’t hear you over your vile comments about my mother’s arsehole.”

  I fucking hated this bastard.

  But I didn’t really want him to pop my eye like a grape, either.

  “Mm SMMWY!”

  “What?” he asked, leaning one ear over my head as though he couldn’t hear. “What was that, you say?”

  “Mm SORRY!” I managed to blurt out.

  He just chuckled.

  He eased up on my eyeball, though.

  We stayed like that for a few seconds, him staring at me with something between mirth and malevolent hatred. Then he gestured at his face with his free hand.

  “I see you lookin’ at my scar,” he grinned. “You want to know where I got it? I’ll tell ya.”

  He got up off my chest, and air rushed back into my lungs. I coughed and wheezed again, though Quint couldn’t care less. He was already off to the races with his story.

  “It was when I first joined the Guild as a young man. We was ridin’ back from the Plains of Tichton to Vayte. We’d just destroyed a dungeon – a long, hard, two days of work, with no sleep. And we still had another day’s ride ahead of us. We weren’t payin’ attention, and that’s how it got us.

  “It was an underground dungeon, a big bastard, that opened up and swallowed us whole. Four hunnert and ten men went into the earth. Took all of twelve seconds.”

  The words and cadence sounded vaguely familiar.

  Then I remembered this guy was patterned off of Quinn from JAWS, and it all clicked.

  Jesus.

  It was the fuckin’ Indianapolis speech.

  In the movie, Robert Shaw delivers a monologue about how he’d been on the U.S.S. Indianapolis during World War II. The ship was tasked with delivering the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, and completed its mission – but was sunk by a Japanese submarine on its return voyage. Over a thousand survivors jumped into the water, only to have to fight off sharks for five days before they were rescued. Most of the sailors didn’t make it.

  It was one of the darkest, most dramatic monologues in all of cinema… and the videogame version of Quint delivered it with the same intensity. This was no cheesy Hark Silo parody. This was a dramatic moment that was impossible to look away from. All I could do was stare at him and listen, along with the rest of the court.

  “What we didn’t know was our mission was so secret, there was no record of where we’d been. The Guild didn’t even list us overdue for two days.

  “This was a rogue dungeon, warlock. There weren’t no lanterns to make it friendly, no glowin’ crystals to see yer way by. All we had was a hunnert torches, and a couple dozen mages to cast light. The torches burned out fast. The mages didn’t last much longer. The light draws ‘em, you see. Draws the monsters.

  “Didn’t see the first one, though, for almost
half an hour. Actually, didn’t see it at all. Just heard it. When we finally did catch a glimpse, it was… an abomination. A horror the likes of which I’d never seen before. Thirteen-footer, stem to stern. No name for it. In all my days in the Guild, never seen another of its kind since. But he wasn’t the last of ‘em. There was a whole slew of things I prayed to the gods I’d never see again. I seen ‘em every once in a while, though, in my dreams. Those dreams, they’re not the pleasant kind.

  “We formed up into tight groups, warriors ‘n hunters ‘n mages on the outside, with a healer in the center. The idea was, you protect the healers, they’ll keep you alive. Well… that was the idea. Didn’t always work out that way.

  “Sometimes a creature’d get the nearest man. He’d start fightin’ and hollerin’, and sometimes that monster, he’d go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t. Sometimes he’d look right at ya, and you’d see the rogue dungeon’s foul soul reflected in those black eyes. Lifeless. Like a doll’s.

  “You know the thing about a rogue dungeon, warlock? There ain’t no cute little woodland creatures to give you coins. There’s no path forward; there’s no path back. There’s only madness. And survivin’… if you can.

  “The monsters, when they came at us… they didn’t even seem to be livin’. Not till they bit ya, and you hear that terrible screamin’. Feel that hot spray of blood. The floor turns wet and slippery, and no matter how hard you fight, those monsters keep comin’… and they rip ya to pieces.

  “By the end of that first night in the dungeon, we lost fifty men. I don’t know how many monsters we killed – maybe a couple hunnert. I do know how many men we lost, though. Averaged two an hour. Mostly the mages, first. Then darkness.

  “Next day, warlock, or what I figured was the next day, I bumped into a friend of mine. Hovart Rodrickson from Clevalla. Hunter. Been in the Guild just a year, like me. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up… and he rolled over, just the top of him, easy as you please, like a child’s toy. He’d been bitten in half below the waist.

  “Three days later, the cavalry finally arrived. A thousand members of the Guild come out to look for us. A master hunter picked up the trail – a young feller, no older than you. He found our horses’ tracks, and figured out where we’d went into the ground. Anyway, they went into that rogue dungeon – not to kill it, mind you, just to rescue us. That was the time I was most frightened… waitin’ for my turn to get pulled out.”

  Quint pointed at the scar over his face.

  “Somethin’ sliced me as they was haulin’ me up. Took my vision with it. Guess they wanted to leave me somethin’ to remember ‘em by.

  “Four hunnert and ten men went into the ground, warlock. Eighty-seven come out. The dungeon took the rest.”

  I just lay there on the ground, staring up at him in terrified wonder.

  “We came back a week later to that rogue dungeon. All 2000 men in the guild. Would’ve gave it a little somethin’ to remember of my own – if we hadn’t killed it dead.”

  Quint squatted down threateningly close to me. “Know how rogue dungeons start? Same as any other. Just a tiny crystal in the ground… but it goes bad. Don’t know why. What we do know is that when somebody fucks with the crystal in its beginnin’ stages, it’s far more apt to go rogue.

  “So maybe now you can see why I’m concerned when a man comes around lyin’ and sayin’ he’s a Grand Inquisitor of the Dungeon Guild, carryin’ a dungeon core… and yet when we apprehend him, he ain’t carryin’ it on him. Makes me wonder what he’s doin’ with that crystal. One of them fuckers goes rogue, it can kill an awful lot of people. Like those three hunnert and 23 of my brothers in the Guild who died. So I’m gonna ask you again, warlock. Where is it?”

  I really didn’t have a good lie ready, so I just came up with one that was halfway true.

  “I dropped it in the dungeon somewhere.”

  There was a strangled cry from the Duchess. When I looked over, both she and Urik looked horrifically alarmed.

  Quint, though, looked amused. “Dropped it in the dungeon, didja? Now that’s unfortunate.”

  Why it was unfortunate for anybody but me, I had no idea – and I didn’t think Quint gave a shit about my misfortune.

  I was about to ask what the big deal was when Urik waddled over hastily.

  “Grand Inquisitor, I’m going to need to speak with the warlock for a moment in private.”

  “I’m questionin’ him, Emissary,” Quint snapped.

  “As we all can see, and you’ve yielded magnificent results, but I have to speak with him.”

  Quint stood and drew himself up to his full height. “Don’t go fuckin’ around in what ain’t your business, Emissary.”

  If Urik was intimidated, he didn’t show it at all. In fact, if anything, Quint’s display of dominance only raised the dwarf’s hackles.

  “I’ll remind you, Grand Inquisitor, that the Guild may have authority inside a dungeon – but we aren’t inside a dungeon,” Urik snarled. “Which means the Church of Eternity has jurisdiction here.”

  “It is my castle, Emissary!” the Duchess yelled from the dais.

  “AND IT IS THE CHURCH’S REALM!” Urik roared at her before continuing to stare down Quint. “Now, Grand Inquisitor… kindly STEP BACK.”

  Quint looked like he wanted to kill the dwarf – but he merely grumbled, “One minute, Emissary,” and retreated back towards his men.

  The Duchess, meanwhile, was coming down the steps of the dais as fast as she could maneuver in her oversized gown.

  I looked up at Urik and whispered, “Thanks. Look, about our deal – ”

  “You fucked my nuns!” the dwarf hissed.

  I stared at him in shock.

  I didn’t exactly think that was the most pressing thing to deal with at the moment.

  “Um – ”

  “You fucked my NUNS!” Urik seethed. “You agreed to the deal, you fucked my nuns, and all along you were lying about who you WERE!”

  “Look, I – ”

  “You little NUN-fucker!”

  Suddenly another computer window popped up.

  You have failed the quest ‘Game of Boners!’

  You will not gain any gold or Experience Points.

  God damn it.

  I wasn’t going to get a single solitary copper out of this whole clusterfuck…

  Right about then, the Duchess came running over.

  I guess I was a Duchess-fucker, too.

  “YOU – warlock!” she snapped. “You have a great deal to answer for!”

  I struggled to my feet. “Look, I know what we, uh, talked about – ”

  She interrupted in a voice on the edge of hysteria.

  “Talked about?! We didn’t talk about anything! There was no talking of any kind! Certainly no – no – bribe!” she spat.

  “Bribe?!” Urik said in a fake dramatic voice. “What bribe?!”

  I was reminded of the line from the police chief in Casablanca: I am shocked – SHOCKED – to find that gambling is going on in here! (Immediately after which he gets handed his winnings from the casino’s cashier and says, “Oh, thank you very much.”)

  “There was no bribe!” the Duchess shrieked as she turned bright red.

  “I demand an investigation!” Urik cried out.

  I was getting a little sick of his hypocrisy.

  “There wasn’t a bribe,” I said pointedly, “just like you didn’t bribe me, either.”

  The dwarf cleared his throat. “…ahem. Perhaps an investigation isn’t warranted, after all.”

  Now it was the Duchess’s turn to be outraged. She turned on Urik and demanded, “What did you bribe him wi– ”

  “ENOUGH!” Quint roared.

  The Duchess, Urik, and I all jumped.

  Quint stalked towards me slowly from the ranks of his black-robed thugs.

  “You are hereby charged with the unauthorized possession of a dungeon core, warlock – ”

  Quint glared at the Du
chess and Urik.

  “ – which is a matter solely under the authority of the Dungeon Guild, and not subject to the whims of any other secular or ecclesiastical authority!”

  Both the Duchess and Urik started to speak, but Quint just bellowed over them, “And the punishment is DEATH! How do you PLEAD?”

  As he said that last part, Quint drew his oversized longsword with a metallic SCCHHHINK!

  Both the Duchess and Urik quickly stepped away from me.

  Didn’t want to be found guilty by association, I guess.

  I swallowed hard as I stared at the gleaming blade. “Uh… not guilty?”

  “Numerous witnesses have said you were wearing the dungeon core in question, and that you used it to impersonate a Grand Inquisitor of the Dungeon Guild, which is also PUNISHABLE BY DEATH!”

  I held up one finger. “To be fair, everybody just assumed I was a Grand Inquisitor. I never said I was.”

  “Yes you did,” said the paladin who had escorted me from the stables. “You said it to me not 20 minutes ago.”

  I gave him an Eat shit and DIE look.

  “So heard and acknowledged!” Quint shouted. “Tell us what has happened to the dungeon core, or the sentence shall be carried out immediately!”

  “I told you, I dropped it in the dungeon!”

  There was another gasp from the court.

  “What?!” I yelled at everybody. “What’s so shocking about that?!”

  “Because, boy,” Quint said with a savage grin, “it is well known that the presence of two dungeon cores in close proximity will cause both of them to go rogue. You have effectively doomed the city of Vos.”

  I stared at him.

  Deek hadn’t seemed to be going crazy.

  Neither had Alaria.

  Except maybe from boredom about her lessons.

  But I couldn’t exactly tell everybody else that, since I would be admitting I hadn’t lost the dungeon core – and I would also be giving away its exact location.

  “As such,” Quint continued, “I and my 200 brothers of the Guild here in Vos shall immediately enter the dungeon and wipe its core from existence.”

  “No!” the Duchess screamed.

  “No!” Urik yelled.

  “HELL TO THE NAW!” a familiar voice boomed out.

  Everyone froze, their eyes wide.