Heroes of Darkness: A Dark Dungeon Realm LitRPG Omnibus Collection

by Wolfe Locke

  “And now it’s our turn.” His voice dropped low, drawing them in. Seraph’s voice grew somber as he fed on their energy and built up their morale. “We march on the elves, and we march on the rest of our enemies. Anyone who has not stood with us is against us, and tonight we take control from them forever.”

  Seraph made a fist and put it over his heart as he examined the members of his guild, looking each one in the eye in acknowledgment and respect. Each stood a little straighter as Seraph calmed their nerves. The gesture was for their benefit, and they appreciated it. As for Seraph, he knew they would fight that much harder for him.

  With a nod to all of his Lieutenants, Seraph ordered the operation to commence. The group dispersed as they all began to move out in their teams, each heading off into the night to engage with their targets.

  Climbing up onto the rocks, Seraph spread his wings, the black feathers symbolic of the guild, as he watched them all go, hanging back in a position of overwatch until the last of his guild members had passed beyond his line of sight. Ensuring, too, that he was not seen by any of them before jumping off the rock and swapping out the outfit of guild leader and donning the more straightforward uniform of a regular member of Carrion Crow.

  Even his wings were hidden by a magical glamour as he walked down the hill in front of the guild headquarters. Seraph would not put his men in danger and not join the fight too. Zoldos could handle the command node on his own. The man was an anomaly like that—his Hand of the Zephyr ability allowed him to manage data at a rate no one else could keep up with. If he had any talent with the blade he would have been unbeatable, but it was not to be, and Seraph benefitted from this. For functional tasks, Zoldos had proven better than Seraph at the day to day management and command oversight. It was better for Seraph to be the field, even if it was in disguise.

  His blood pounding as adrenalin flooded his veins, Seraph broke out into a light run. Careful to avoid making too much noise or strain his stamina prematurely, he made sure to keep to the hillside path that led through the forested area around the Guildhall rather than trudge through the underbrush and low-hanging branches.

  Approaching the edge of the tree line, he slowed his movement to a crawl, keeping his profile low as he approached the first set of buildings on the outskirts of Hometown. Seraph decided against going down the main road, careful in his mannerisms to prevent garnering unwanted attention. He wanted to avoid anyone questioning why a lone soldier of Carrion Crow would be traveling alone as the city lay in chaos.

  Seraph turned instead and walked down the alley behind the buildings to stop, listen, and observe. The streets were full of noises as people ran by, their own pressing concerns better concealment than the shadows he had retreated into. This was a night of tears and pain as cries for mercy went ignored—many who had opposed him and the growth of humanity in the dungeon. From everywhere around him, he could hear the sounds of fighting.

  Seraph allowed himself a smile, and though he was excited to group up with his guildmates and fight alongside them under cover of his disguise, providing him a measure of anonymity, he resisted. Seraph knew it was not his time yet to join the fight, and when he did, it would not be under the guise of a lowly foot soldier. The most powerful of the elves had not yet revealed themselves, and Seraph’s power would be needed to intercede and cut them off to ensure his men were not annihilated.

  Their complete victory was close—as close as they had ever come in these last few years—but the possibility of losing still existed. Seraph knew that victory tonight was not guaranteed. To reach the point where this coup, this insurgency was possible, had been trying, and prior success was owed more to luck than any of the efforts of he and his men.

  Seraph and a few of his most trusted Lieutenants had arranged for accidents and committed assassinations of some of the Elven leaders and a few of their elite soldiers, tossing the bodies into the Gehena Pits to prevent respawn and the spread of information. If the Elves had been allowed to group together, the entirety of Carrion Crow would have been repealed and destroyed. Seraph was powerful, but not even he could take on so many who were similarly strong.

  Sometimes, when brute force fails, the subtle knife can find a way, thought Seraph as he looked up at the moon and waited.

  The sound of feet running down the alleyway interrupted his thoughts, and he turned to face the newcomer, pulling his sword from its sheath and stepping out into the road to block off escape. But, as the man approached, the light revealed details of his face. Seraph could see this was no elf. It was a man wearing the emblem of the Legends Guild, and in his arms, he carried an injured child.

  Seraph stepped out of his way and disappeared into the shadows as tears ran down the man’s face as he ran towards whatever safety he could find. The dungeon could be a harsh teacher, thought Seraph. Many learn the hard way that the healing of the dungeon did not work during times like these when control of an area was being contested.

  Concealed within the darkness, Seraph allowed the man to pass unmolested, only to watch as the man put the injured child down behind a stack of boxes and told the child, “They won’t come to get you here. They’re all running too. Please, please be alive when I get back; I’m going to get you the help you need. I promise I’ll be back. There shouldn’t be any elves here anymore.” As the child wept, the man pressed his finger against the child’s lips as a sign to be quiet before running away into the night.

  Seraph watched and waited for the man to be gone before reaching into his spacial pocket for medical supplies and moving to help. “Hey, kiddo,” said Seraph. “I’m going to put this gauze on you; it’ll help to stabilize your injury until you can get healed. What’s your name, anyway?”

  The child didn’t respond for a minute as if debating in his head whether he should say anything.

  “Kiddo, I just saved your life. Don’t waste that,” chided Seraph with a low laugh, his words blunt but lacking his usual menace.

  The child understood the undertone of the threat levied his way. “It’s Reverend.”

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Gradually, Seraph began to regain his consciousness, his head pounding from the worst headache he had likely ever experienced in this life and the previous one. The pain seemed to be infinitely worse than any wound he had received—a list that included the very injuries he had died from.

  Thankfully, though, the lights in the room were all now back on. The room itself had reset sometime while Seraph had been unconscious. The sun appeared to have begun setting, allowing Seraph some measure of comfort to fend off the pain in his head.

  “Ah, you’re awake,” said Jack. “Thanks for whatever you did back there and everything; I’m fairly positive that without your assistance the magic would have failed, and I know I would have died if you hadn’t stepped in and taken the reins from me. I think you took it as hard as I did, though.”

  Seraph gritted his teeth, trying to force the pain down as he turned towards the man, the effort causing the pain in his head to unfurl. The short attempt nearly enough to render him unconscious again.

  “Hey now, no need for any of that, Seraph; don’t strain yourself.” Jack laughed as he sat cross-legged near Seraph’s outstretched body. “I’ve been awake a while now. Watching over you, I might add. You can take all the time you need to pull yourself together. I want you to remember this moment though, Seraph, so that you know we're on the same team now. I could have killed you while you slept; I could maybe even still kill you now while you're incapacitated and struggling, but I didn’t, and I don’t want to. Do you know why?”

  Seraph looked at the man for signs of mania, deception, or some sort of madness and saw none of them. Maybe he had misjudged Jack’s character. If so, Seraph’s appraisal of the man increased, as did a measure of begrudging respect. Seraph had no idea why Jack had left him alive if the man had been considering killing him. The consequences of their pact w
ere currently inconsequential, and the longer they remained together, the harsher breaking the covenant would be.

  “I don’t know,” said Seraph curiously. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Because you’re the ticket, man,” replied Jack, his face serious. “You know this place in a way no one else does. I thought about it when you were passed out, and I thought about some of the things you said. You have the Restart ability, but you said you didn’t remember me. I don’t think that you’re a liar, which leaves me with one conclusion: being around you has changed my fate. I have to acknowledge that. The only conclusion is that I’m alive somehow because of you, because this time you crossed my path, and if that's the cause, and I think it is, it makes the most sense for me to stay close to you.”

  Seraph couldn’t fault the man’s logic. “Thanks?” Seraph said awkwardly, unused to the bluntness of others and the openness of selfish motivations other than his own. What Jack had said was likely correct—it was something Seraph hadn’t considered himself yet. But the implications were there. Seraph now knew that as the timelines diverged, things would become different quickly, and the things he had known would eventually no longer matter—except for maybe the most rudimentary facts.

  “But is that it, Jack? You had an epiphany, and now you want to team up?” Seraph asked pointedly, already satisfied with the answer, but choosing to press to see if more was behind it. “What’s different now?”

  Jack’s posture slumped, a dejected look on his face. “I just want to live, man. I don’t want to die here, and I think you can help keep me alive,” he responded.

  I can use this, thought Seraph with clarity, realizing his headache had passed. Soon, very soon, the World Dungeon would be out of its beta phase and would emerge from the bowels of the Earth. In those early days, hundreds to thousands of people would flood the lower floors and die in scores.

  In his first life, Seraph had been young, naive, impulsive, and volatile, and he had contributed to the unrest that had beset Hometown. This time things would be different, but Seraph realized he would need a mouthpiece to do many of those things, and that was a part Seraph couldn’t play himself if he intended to be an agent of change for the betterment of Hometown.

  “I don’t disagree with your thinking on this, Jack,” replied Seraph as there was room in this for both of them to get what they wanted. “But I’m going to need something from you. Something that’s going to benefit both of us in the short-term and in the long-term. When I form the guild, I need you to take on the appearance of being its leader. It doesn’t matter how old my mind is when I've got the body of a child. That's all anyone will see, and the things I need to do are best left independent of a guild.

  Jack nodded. “I can do that; I get it. You’ve got the Children of the Corn thing going on, and nobody is going to be into that.”

  Seraph glared but didn’t respond as he reached into his spacial pocket and placed the Pin of the Hometown Hero on Jack’s chest before moving to change the subject. “We need to get moving out of here, though, while time is still an advantage for us. I doubt we have much longer before the World Dungeon emerges and exposes itself to the public. We want to be first because just as there were advantages to being first through the tutorial, there are advantages for being the first to form a guild.”

  “How do you find out how much time we have left?” asked Jack curiously.

  “You ask,” responded Seraph. “Notification request: what time is it? How long have I been in the dungeon, and how much time remains until the Dungeon emerges?”

  When the notification appeared before his eyes, Seraph read it out loud so that Jack could know the information for himself.

  Notification: The current time is 16:42 Dungeon Time. You have been in the Dungeon 75 Hours and 42 Minutes. Approximately 6 Earth hours have passed since you entered the Dungeon. The dungeon will emerge in 76 Hours and 18 Minutes Dungeon Time at approximately 4:00 A.M. Earth Time.

  “You know what that means, right, Jack?” asked Seraph, hoping the man could keep up with his chain of thought. Shaking his head, Jack admitted he had no idea.

  “It means we’ve got three days in which to form the guild and cement ourselves as the leadership of humanity within the World Dungeon. Three days to prove that we belong at the cornerstone of governance,” explained Seraph. “We need to get down into town if we’re going to do the guild unlock quest. Where's Rosebud?”

  “That’s a pretty fast-moving timeline; do you think we can really do it?” responded Jack. “And who’s Rosebud?”

  Seraph looked at Jack and then around the room. “Rosebud is what I named the thing from the Nether that we summoned into the body of Alexander, and yes, I think we can do it. We have to if we want to stay ahead and stay alive.”

  “Oh,” responded Jack flatly. “Alright, I’m trusting you, and yeah, the creepy happy-mask face guy, I had to send him outside to wait. I didn’t like the way he kept looking at me. I instructed him to run back in here and let me know if anyone was coming.”

  “That was a good idea; you did well,” complimented Seraph. “Wording is important with these pets; you could have just as easily told him to guard the area instead of watching and informing you if anyone approached. If the former, Rosebud would have likely tried to kill anyone that came close, and if whoever that was survived, they would have come for you.”

  Jack swallowed, noticeably paler. “I’ll keep that in mind. These pets are very literally orientated, aren’t they?”

  “No, they’re not,” responded Seraph, “But they do obey their nature, and the more vicious ones tend to look for ways to maim and kill. Rosebud isn’t a dog. It’s one of many kinds of Nether demon that we managed to conjure and enchant into the reanimated flesh of a player I killed. Don’t forget that.”

  As if responding to his name, Rosebud walked through the door without being noticed, as if materializing from the shadows. The pet turned to Seraph and nodded, saying, “Cousin,” before acknowledging Jack and reporting. “Master, I have done as you have instructed. There is currently an elf woman approaching.” The white mask turned into a hideous upturned smile, the eye slits narrowing. “Would you like me to waylay her?

  Seraph interrupted, “You don’t. Most of the elves could destroy Rosebud, and then after that, they would have all the excuse they needed to track us down and kill us while there’s still a level gap. This elf woman will be here soon, then we will figure out what to do next.”

  “Yes, Master,” responded Rosebud, a hint of disappointment in its voice.

  Chapter 5: Nightfall

  * * *

  Jack paced about nervously, anxiety beginning to set in over the uncertainty of the elf heading their way—and whatever the elf’s purpose was. The lull in the conversation allowed Seraph a moment to himself—a moment he used to try to clear his mind and think of what their next move should be. He was intelligent, not omniscient, of the first days in the World Dungeon; Seraph had little knowledge to pull from. It was not until the dungeon emerged that he had been tossed into it.

  As they paced, the strange monstrosity, Rosebud, stood at attention, never leaving Jack’s side, an invisible tether keeping the two of them close. Its white grin fixated on the door while the slits of its yellow eyes split their attention between its master and the entry point of the room.

  “Think,” Seraph told himself as Jack’s anxiety spread to him, and he joined in with the pacing. “I need to start a guild, and I have less than three days to make it happen. I’ll need to seize a guildhall to do it. The Halls of Justice is the one that would best serve my purposes to try and implement some rule of law and control in Hometown. Everything else is secondary. If I can’t make this happen, I won’t have the means to try and prevent or counter Wormwood—much less any of the other power-hungry players I need to concern myself with.”

  Rosebud’s head abruptly snapped with a loud crack, looking towards the exit with both of his eyes. “The elf is here,” Rosebud announc
ed as his eyes narrowed, shifting dark as his frame thinned, an aura of aggression and menace rolling off him toward the opening door, his arms extending like blades.

  “Hold, Rosebud. Do not attack,” said Seraph, feeling a strange unease as his own gaze fell on the door. Unease about the future, unease about the past. Things were moving at a rapid pace, and he did not know how long it would be before he would get the chance to sit down and plot out his next steps. Seraph had not planned far into the future. The critical uncertainty did not sit well with him.

  Through the doorway walked a familiar elf woman—Sadie, the one who had been assigned as his dungeon guide and had been in charge of Phase I of the tutorial. One of the few elves Seraph had not been directly responsible for killing.