Corsair's Prize: A LitRPG Dungeon Core Adventure (Dungeon of Evolution Book 2)

by DB King

  Spell: Hero’s Might Level 3

  Level increase: 10%

  Progress to next level: 61%

  Spell: Fleetfoot Level 4

  Level increase: 10%

  Progress to next level: 32%

  As the updates flashed before his eyes, Marcus dodged the Corsair’s swing and leaped in, aiming a powerful mace blow at the vampire’s knees.

  With amazing agility, the Corsair jumped over Marcus’s blow and caught him by the collar, dragging him closer. The Corsair’s mouth opened, baring his snow-white fangs, ready to bite Marcus.

  “No!” Marcus yelled, flinging himself back and aiming a savage blow at the Corsair’s wrist with the mace. The blow connected. The Corsair’s wrist crumpled, and he staggered backward, grimacing in pain.

  Marcus caught his breath. He could have killed me then, he thought, but he didn’t. Instead, he tried to bite me. Why?

  He doesn’t want me dead, Marcus realized. He wants me enslaved to his will. How will he do that? By turning me into a vampire that he can control with his power. Then I will have no choice but to do his bidding.

  The terrible logic of it snapped into place. The dungeon would destroy one who used it with ill intent, but what if a dungeon master used it with no intent of his own? Surely the dungeon would not destroy the dungeon master then. It was the only way that a dungeon could be used for evil purposes. It all made total sense. He would have no will of his own. The Corsair would be free to use all of Marcus’s powers to raze Kraken City—and the rest of the known world shortly after.

  The thought appalled Marcus. He had to find some way to kill the Corsair, but how?

  Even as he watched, the vampire held out his injured left wrist. Green power flowed around him, and the wrist snapped back into place. With an evil grin, he flexed the fingers of his left hand. He had healed himself completely.

  “Surrender,” the Corsair said, “whimper and beg for your life just like your predecessor!”

  “My predecessor?” Marcus asked, catching his breath.

  The Corsair shook his head, laughing softly. “You really don’t know anything, don’t you?” The Corsair stepped forward slowly, menacingly. “And you dare challenge me!” The vampire broke into a charge.

  Marcus didn’t know if he could keep going head-to-head with the Corsair. He could only think of one thing he could do. He couldn’t summon a monster, but maybe he could open an entrance into his other dungeons, bringing the Arena dungeon into the connected system with the others. That at least might give him access to the other monsters—and it would also give him a way out.

  He concentrated, slipping into the suspended state where time was slowed completely. He felt the other dungeons clearly now, and at the same time he became aware of the battle on the docklands too. The dungeon monsters were defeating the hybrids in the dungeon system, but the battle of the docklands was going badly.

  In slow motion, the Corsair dashed toward him. Marcus reached for the pale connection that he could feel running between him and the rest of his dungeon system and pushed energy into it.

  It worked.

  As time sped up again, Marcus saw three of the doors that led off the arena slam open. With a roaring, howling noise, the dungeon battle flooded into the arena. Hybrids, smashed to pieces, missing limbs and even heads, stumbled through the doors, pursued by Marcus’s familiar dungeon monsters.

  Marcus had never been so pleased to see the bladehands in his life. The massive metallic monstrosities belched fire as they came on, slashing the hybrids that swarmed around them with their huge gold-and-iron swords and burning them with gouts of flame from their metallic jaws.

  The Corsair laughed.

  The Corsair raised his left hand and a bright light shone from his palm once again. A group of the hybrids left off fighting the bladehands and turned to charge toward Marcus, mouths ready to bite.

  The power that had been waiting for him throughout the whole battle surged forth.

  He reached out and took it.

  This was what it meant to be Eloran, the master of dungeons. It was all clear to him. There was no need to scrape at power, dividing up his resources between summoning monsters, buffing allies, and holding awareness of all the battles in his mind. That division was a human thing, and he now understood that he was no longer human. He was something else, something more. The power that he had was unlimited—no longer even a river, but a wider, expansive ocean.

  Power surged through him as he reached out and claimed what was his—the power of the Eloran, the true master of dungeons.

  He could control every aspect of the dungeons. There was nothing he could not do.

  With a twist of his will, he caused Arena champions to appear in front of the attacking hybrids. There was no limit on his summoning ability anymore. The champions slammed into the attacking hybrids with a wet slap of heavy hammers on hybrid flesh. Bone crunched. One champion fell, but the others beat the advancing hybrids into bloody pulp with their hammers.

  Marcus took off, as the Corsair looked around in sudden realization that something had changed. Marcus looked at the heavily clouded sky. He raised a hand. He would cause the weather to change, the sun to shine down on his arena—killing every vampire on the docklands, hybrids and Corsair alike. Marcus would have his revenge on the brutes that had tried to ravage his city, and on their vampire master.

  “No,” said a voice.

  Marcus turned his head.

  Standing in the air beside him was the ragged figure, the mysterious stranger he had seen before. This time, he was close, close enough to reach out and touch. The figure was a man, pale and drawn-looking, tall and with deep set eyes full of an immense weariness.

  “No,” the man said again. “Think before you act. This is your greatest test so far, Marcus. Do not make my mistake, I implore you. Think about what you do, and why you do it!”

  The words were like a dousing of cold water on Marcus’s righteous anger. Revenge. That had been his only thought, to make them all die and have his revenge. But the mysterious ragged man was right. He could do better than that. In fact, he could do much better.

  A slow smile spread across Marcus’s face, and the ragged stranger nodded slowly, returning his smile. “That’s right,” the man said, in a quiet voice that seemed to ring inside Marcus’s head. “You can do better than revenge.”

  The figure was gone just as quickly as he had appeared.

  Marcus let his awareness expand until it took in the whole dungeon system and the battle up above. Hybrids were pouring up the streets of Kraken City now. The scorpion raged through the docklands, sending the defenders fleeing in every direction. More and more hybrids were pouring from the ships, but the flow was lessening slightly. Marcus expanded even more, until his awareness—his very will—reached out and touched every single hybrid in the dungeons or up above. There were thousands of them, but the tendrils of his magic flowed out and locked onto every single one.

  He took a breath, held it, channeling all the power of the Eloran through them into a mighty spell.

  “Cleansing Light!”

  The spell gushed into every one of the Corsair’s hybrids. The effect was more dramatic than Marcus could have hoped for. From the decks of the Corsair’s fleet to the depths of the dungeons, from the docklands to the dark streets of Kraken City, the hybrids changed.

  They weren’t the vicious monsters intent on killing anymore. They were people—they were human. They’d become half-vampires, half-human. As with Anja, all of them had known full human lives before they had turned, and now that human aspect slammed back into place, driving the evil from them.

  They fell to their knees or stopped where they stood, dropping their hands to their sides and looking around in confusion.

  In the dungeon, Marcus recalled the Arena champions that he had summoned from their attack. The huge, masked figures lumbered back toward him and stood by his side, and Marcus smiled as a changed status update showed itself for the Cleansing
Light spell he had just used.

  Spell: Cleansing Light

  Level: Eloran

  No further upgrades possible

  He had done it. For now, at least, he had summoned the full power of the Eloran to himself, and there was no greater magic that he could achieve.

  “No,” the Corsair muttered. “No!”

  The Corsair held up his left hand and tried to use his power to control the hybrids in the dungeon, but it didn’t work. “It cannot be! How… How can you do this? How can this be happening?”

  He charged through the crowd toward Marcus, and only then did Marcus use the other ability that now lay at his fingertips. He breathed out slowly, and the weather changed. The clouds parted and the rain vanished—and from the sky above, a bright, soft light like the light of a new dawn shone down on the arena.

  The hybrids, no longer in their vampiric form, were unaffected—but the Corsair was still a vampire. He stumbled in his charge and stopped, looking up. He shaded his eyes.

  “Oh,” he said quietly, and his face changed. Everyone in the chamber turned to watch.

  Smoke rose from him, twisting up around his cuffs and from the edges of his boots. He fell to his knees. He looked down at himself, at the sky, and at Marcus. He opened his mouth, as the smoke thickened around him.

  He met Marcus’s eyes, and a smile twisted his mouth. “Pathetic.” He tried to get back onto his feet, but his body trembled. “You think this pathetic magic is enough to—”

  “No,” Marcus said. “Not yet.”

  Marcus breathed in. He focused on the dungeon’s weather, raising the intensity of the sunlight in the arena.

  The Corsair fell back down again. A steady flame crept across his skin, burning his skin like paper.

  The vampire laughed. “You remind me of him, you know,” he said, smoke trailing from his mouth.

  “Who?” Marcus asked.

  “Eloran,” the Corsair said. “Right before his dungeons turned on him. Right before I raised his dungeon monsters against him.” The Corsair coughed. “I was no more than these bladed monsters you have, once.”

  Marcus’s eyes widened. “You were a dungeon monster?!”

  “I was,” the Corsair said. “And I was loyal to my master, to Eloran, until…” The Corsair’s arm, now burnt to ash, broke off. “… until he started using us like mere playthings for his amusement! Like cattle!” The Corsair’s voice was raspy and hollow now. “So I led the monsters against him. And we killed him, just as he had killed us a thousand times over.”

  The Corsair collapsed, and ash plumed around what remained of his body. “Mark my words, dungeon master: your dungeons will turn on you, and you will perish as brutally as that bastard Eloran.” The fire raced up the last bit of unburnt flesh. “Mark my words, Marcus of the Underway. Your final hour is near…”

  The Corsair screamed one final time before his body was reduced to ash. The wind teased at what remained of the Corsair. The arena was silent.

  The Corsair had been defeated. Marcus had won.

  Chapter 29

  The power of the Eloran was at Marcus’s fingertips now. He did not have to look far to find the power to open a new entrance from the Arena back out onto the docklands. The gate from the arena opened and Marcus found that a flight of broad stone steps now ran from the gate up to a square opening in the floor of the docks.

  He moved up the stairs and the hybrids, looking dazed, followed him out. Above, he found that a pale light had broken through the clouds. The docklands were in chaos. Fires burned on every side and the rubble of smashed buildings was scattered across the cobblestones. The air was bitter with the smell of smoke.

  The fires that had burned through the ships in the wharves had nearly all gone out. Marcus looked over the water and shook his head.

  “It’ll take a long time to clear that up,” he muttered, “and I don’t think even the power of the Eloran will be much help in rebuilding the lost ships.”

  Figures moved around on the docks. When the hybrids had stopped attacking, the defenders had stopped fighting them. Now, confused people wandered around the docks, talking and calling to one another. There was nobody near Marcus, and he remained unnoticed.

  As he turned away from the water, he looked at the hybrids who were following him. Those with life-threatening injuries had died when their vampire abilities had been expunged, but there were many more who remained alive. They looked at him in mute confusion, gazing around the docks with wide eyes and open mouths, trying to take in what had happened.

  Marcus sighed. This was going to take a long time to explain.

  He heard a high-pitched shout. A small figure flew through the air toward him. It was Ella, and she was followed by Kairn the dwarf.

  “Marcus!” she cried. “I didn’t know what had happened to you. I was so worried! But then I felt the immense power rushing through the dungeons, and I knew you’d unlocked the next level of the dungeon power! Oh, I’m so glad you’re not hurt.”

  Marcus grinned at her enthusiasm. “I’m pretty glad I’m not hurt myself, Ella,” he said.

  Kairn gripped his hand in a firm shake. “It was incredible,” he said in his gruff voice. “The hybrids just stopped fighting. They just stopped, as one. Most of them just stood there, staring about as if they had no idea what had just happened. Some fell on their knees and begged for mercy, and others fainted dead away. I’m sorry to say that several were killed by the defenders after they had surrendered, but we managed to stop an outright massacre.”

  “What about the scorpion monster?” Marcus asked.

  “While we were fighting it, it froze, as if it was… asleep,” Kairn said. “When we approached it, it scurried off. It caused a lot of damage in the process, but it didn’t seem hostile. It seemed almost like a dog who’d lost its owner.”

  “What?” Marcus said. “Do we know where it is?”

  Kairn shook his head. “The beast’s as big as a house, but it can be slippery if it needs to. It was spotted scurrying all over Kraken City, last seen heading to the nobles’ part of the city.” Kairn pursed his lips. “Rest assured, my friend. We will find it, and we will kill it.”

  “Indeed. We have to take care of it before it tears through the city. It’s no dog. Keep me up to date with the scouts’ reports.” Marcus glanced up at the lightening sky. “What about Max and Daya, the vampires?”

  “They’ve gone to ground,” Kairn said with a smile. “There’s an entrance to the Underway not far from here, and they’ve hidden in that to avoid the sun.”

  “And what about the others? Anja? Ben? The Akhians? Is everybody okay?”

  Kairn nodded. “Just about. Some injuries, of course, but nothing too serious. Anja has been leading a team to round up all the hybrids and bring them together further down the docks.” Kairn pointed again, and Marcus looked and saw a crowd gathering off to his right.

  He nodded. “Good,” he said. “I think there will be some difficulties explaining everything to them. I don’t know how long they have been asleep, but I think the Corsair’s power kept them in a kind of hypnosis, so they probably won’t remember much.”

  “Pardon me, sir,” someone said behind Marcus, “but I do actually remember quite a bit.”

  Marcus looked for the source of the voice. Behind him, there was a man standing. He had clearly been one of the hybrids—he was pale and worn out, and his clothes were black and ragged. He was barefoot. Despite his appearance, Marcus saw that he was actually a well-made fellow, with a strong jaw and a high brow, and light, alert eyes.

  Looking at the other hybrids who clustered behind the man, Marcus realized now that they had all changed when they became human again. Before, their faces had all shared a uniform blankness and chalky white color, but now they looked like individuals again, despite their identical clothing. Men and women, older people and young people, folk with blonde hair and dark hair, tall and short people. The folk mostly looked like Sun Islanders, with the tanned skin and dark hair
that went with those people, but some were blonde haired, blue-eyed folks from the Kingdom of Doran or the dark-skinned and dark-eyed people of the land of Akhi.

  “Who are you, then?” Marcus asked of the tall man who had addressed him.

  “My name was Kaiso… in my old life. I was a man of the Isles of the Sun. A long time ago, me and my fellows joined in the Corsair’s rebellion against the oppression of the vampires in the Isles of the Sun. When we were defeated and driven back, we went to the Dark Isles, some days’ sail away from the Isles of the Sun. They are named for the black rock cliffs that make up their coastline, and the black sand of their beaches, but there is no arable land there so nobody ever inhabited them. We went deep into the caves in those islands, hundreds of us, and there the Corsair said he would cast a spell over us to help us sleep. One day, he promised, we could arise again and take what was ours.”

  The others behind Kaiso nodded their agreement. Marcus listened with rapt attention as Kaiso continued speaking. “We slept long—I don’t know how long exactly, but it must’ve been at least a century. When we awoke, the coasts had changed and the cliffs had receded and changed shape, and that takes a long, long time to happen. The Corsair woke us up and he said that now was our time to rise again, but then he used his magic and we… we became… well, you know what we became.”

  “Yes,” Marcus said, “you became puppets under his command.”

  “We were under his spell,” Kaiso agreed, “and the curse of the hybrids was activated in us, making us worse than beasts in our viciousness. We… We did not want that. None of us wanted that. The whole point of our rebellion was to avoid being such terrible creatures. We wanted to never be activated as vampires, we wanted to remain human. But the Corsair used us and cast his spells on us, and now he has used us to attack your city and kill your folk.”

  Kaiso shook his head sadly, but Kairn stepped in. Unexpectedly, he had a broad smile on his face. “Actually,” he said, “you didn’t kill many of the Kraken City folk at all. Many have been injured, and there have been a few deaths, of course, but mostly the folk were well armored and avoided being killed. There have been perhaps forty deaths, which out of the thousands who turned out for the battle is not that bad. If Marcus here hadn’t turned the tide, it might have been a different story, but there it is. I think everyone will understand that you were under the influence of evil magic. You cannot be blamed for actions you took under the Corsair’s control.”