Dungeon Desolation (The Divine Dungeon Book 4)

by Dakota Krout

  Dale flinched as his instructor’s voice rang through the swirling snow. “Nice try with the aura, Dale. With that level of detail, you will only be able to fool humans up to the D-ranks if you are lucky. Most others won’t bother to see who is trying to sneak around; they will just blast the area.”

  Dale felt a chill that had nothing to do with the bitter air. He hadn’t even thought about what would happen if someone did see him. Anyone that would care would probably do exactly what the Elf had said and blast the oddity to kill a presumed thief. He grumbled a bit but dropped his camouflage aura completely.

  “Excellent!” Dale was anxious about how cheerful the Elf seemed to be. “Today, we are going to be working on your perception. I love perception training; it gives me free rein to say ‘you should have seen that coming’. Your test tonight, Dale, is a game I like to call ‘monster or snowman’. If you get too close to a monster without attacking it, the creature will attack you. Hmm. Let me clarify. It’ll actually attack you either way, but you’ll get the first blow in. If you smash just a regular snowman… well, why ruin the surprise? You have until dawn. Then all the monsters that might be in there go free.”

  Dale stared at the field stuffed full of snowmen. How close did the Elf say he could get? …He didn’t say, did he? Dale moved forward a few more steps, then activated his Essence sight. The field lit up in swirling colors, but… it all looked like snow. Just snow. There were no distinguishing auras, nor were there any differences in the snowmen that he could see. He was just going to need to get closer and see what happened. Stepping next to one of the Snowmen, Dale stared at it, waiting for any sign of movement, any change in the immobile effigy.

  When nothing jumped at him, Dale slowly got closer to a second Snowman. He kept an eye on the first, just in case there was a creature in there waiting to ambush him. Dale got to the third… fourth… soon he was surrounded on all sides by smiling snowmen. Were there no monsters? Was it all a trick to get him to attack something when he shouldn’t? The Elf hadn’t been overly fond of moral lessons so far - did that snowman just move? Dale stared at it, waiting for any sign at all that it had actually moved. There! It had moved… or the falling snow was messing with his eyes. Either was possible.

  Dale decided that it was time to take a chance. He was pretty sure this one had moved, and he was going to run out of time if he did nothing. Nonchalantly acting as if he were approaching a different snowman, Dale whipped to the side and smashed his target with as much force as he could muster. The middle section of the snowman scattered into snow, and the top chunk fell to the ground. A blue light momentarily appeared over the site of his demolition, and he heard the Elf chuckle.

  “That was a bad idea. I’m surprised and pleased that you waited until you were near the center. Bad for you, though; this is going to be entertaining.” Dale still couldn’t see the Elf, but he had a sick feeling in his stomach about this training. He staggered forward as a chunk of ice slammed into his back, then whirled around to see who had thrown it. Nothing appeared in his vision. No enemies, no monsters. Another chunk of snow-covered ice flew into his face like an obese homing pigeon.

  Still, he couldn’t see where it had come from. The only things visible were the snowmen. Who… had all turned to face him. Their smiles had also turned into frowns, which freaked him out more than he had a valid reason for. He heard a slight sound and dodged to the side. A chunk of ice sailed past him, slamming into another snowman and destroying its head. Another Elven chuckle, “Oh-ho! This is going to be fun.”

  Dale had to hold back a biting comment toward his ‘teacher’. If he yelled at the Elf to teach him directly, the Elf would. Specifically, he would teach Dale ‘respect’ and beat him severely. It had already happened twice, and Dale was very interested in keeping that number as low as possible. Also, he had other things on his mind now. He was hearing the sound of something cutting through the air again, so he lashed out and shattered an ice ball with his right fist. As he felt the ice give way, another missile struck him, catching him right in the ear and making him yelp like a kicked dog.

  As he recovered, he expanded his aura away from him in a diffuse cloud, one of the first things he had ever been taught to do. As two more ice balls flew at him, they entered his aura with the same feeling as someone pulling on his hair. Dale was able to get out of the way of the ice but winced as they once again impacted snowmen. He was fairly sure he knew what was going on: as more snowmen were broken and shouldn’t have been, the remaining ones would conjure balls of ice equivalent to the amount destroyed.

  Of the two snowmen that had taken a blow, one puffed into powder and released a blue glow while the other exploded with a sibilant *hiss*, expelling a dozen snakes that began slithering through the snow to him. Huh. It looked like there were monsters in some of them, after all. Dale was having a hard time keeping up with the current threats, as the snakes had spread out and were gliding toward him while he was forced to defend against three balls of ice every second. He slipped to the side as a snake lunged at him, punching out and smashing its head.

  Dale almost got bitten while wincing as he realized that he had just given the dungeon a new type of monster, one that was particularly scary to a majority of humans.

  “Busy… Cal!” Dale managed to get out as he slew the remainder of the snakes, taking the impact of an ice-ball without bothering to dodge.

  There was silence in Dale’s head for a moment.

  “How do you find the ones with monsters in them? Dale quickly demanded, thinking that the dungeon seemed to be in a good mood tonight.

 

  “I really don’t.” Dale finished off the last snake; luckily the cold had been affecting it pretty heavily, and it was moving rather slowly. Two more snowmen had been hit, so five ice balls were flying at him from various angles every second or so.

  Cal’s words resonated deeply with Dale, and he shifted his mindset on the spot. Sometimes what you thought you needed to look for was what led you in the wrong direction!

  His aura was already extended, so he hurried through the field, testing each snowman. If it felt blank and not like snow, he blasted it. He was running out of time and not from dwindling night. Dale had already been shivering at the start of this exercise, but every fifth snowman that was broken without a monster inside added a ball of water that coated him in freezing cold liquid if it hit him. He wanted nothing more than to shift his aura to a fiery shield and bring it close to his skin, but that would make it impossible for him to determine if there were monsters nearby.

  “You missed one!” the Elf called with delight. This threw Dale off, as the Elf had been silent for over a half hour. A set of snowmen fell over as a creature pulled itself out of the ground, bellowing a guttural *honk* at the lone fighter. Dale froze in place, shocked at the sight of a giant grey and white goose charging at him while flapping its wings. It didn’t sound like a bird; it sounded like pure evil.

  Hearing the dungeon giving out compliments about trap-making made Dale nervous; it was going to be getting ideas from this. Dale ran at the goose, needing to stop it. The creature was larger than he was, and it kept smashing aside snowmen. The air around Dale was now so thick with chunks of ice that he was sprinting and zig-zagging just to avoid being pelted to death. In fact… Dale dove at the
goose as it tried to peck him. Beak him? No, peck was the right word. The cobra chicken honked in pain as it was clobbered by an ice storm, and Dale grabbed its legs and clamped down to make sure it couldn’t escape or expose him.

  He only felt a little bad as the ice beat it to death for him, especially with the noises it was making, but as soon as it went limp, the ice attacks abated. Pushing the goose off of him, Dale stood up and came face-to-face with his instructor. “Excellent progress tonight, Dale. You are truly one of those students that can’t be taught in a classroom environment; you need to feel and understand why we ask you to do the things we do. You should go rest up, and as for those nasty bruises… maybe put some ice on them?”

  The Elf turned away while chortling and vanished amongst the wreckage of a great snow war. Dale stared after him with hollow eyes. “…I’d like to try a classroom. How do you know this is the best method?”

  The dungeon paused as Dale surveyed the field once again. When there was no response, the snowmen vanished, as did the snakes and goose. Dale shook his head, remembering how when he had been walking over here he had thought he was ready for anything. Who was prepared for snake-stuffed snowmen? Is anyone ever really ready for an angry goose?

  Chapter Twenty-five

  After eating all the new creatures and snow, I looked around Mountaindale and saw that the precipitation was not just in the training area. We had been in an almost tropical location recently, so I had forgotten to continuously absorb what was landing on me. I fixed that and looked around for Dani. She had been mysteriously absent for a few days, ‘training’ Grace. Every time I’d try to see what was going on, she would tell me that it was none of my business or that I didn’t need to know.

  Today was no different. I poked my mind into the room they were in and looked around in shock. The stone boundaries of the room - the walls, floor, and ceiling - were twisted, malformed, and charred in places. I looked over to see Dani bobbing in place, praising Grace. “Good job, sweetheart! Try once more; see if you can get that stone to shape into a spike this time.”

  As soon as my voice was heard, Grace turned a happy pink and started flying around in circles.

  Dani though… she turned red. “Get out! This is important training for Dungeon Wisps! Are you a Dungeon Wisp? Do you want us to send Grace off unprepared when she finds a good dungeon to bond to?” I recoiled from those words.

  Grace zipped around, not quite understanding what was going on. I whispered the next part,

  “You will not, and you will get out!” She did… something, and my vision of the room disappeared.

  I shouted down the hallway.

  A muffled reply drifted back to me, “Our Mana! What’s yours is mine!”

  I grumbled nonsensical words and looked around for something to break. My eyes landed on Artillery Bob.

  Artillery Bob looked up from the huge chunk of opal a few other Bobs were chiseling. He wiped his brow and nodded. “They are looking good, Great Spirit. My only concern is the Mana that you are planning to power them with. I’m not certain she can take the stress!”

  I understood his concerns, but he needed to do this.

  Artillery Bob stood straighter, eyes shining as he saluted. “I will make it so, Great Spirit!”

  I drifted away slowly. I was making a series of infernal cannons to try and hurt the S-ranker if he ever tried to absorb more of my dungeon, but there was no guarantee that they would work against the powerful being. I only had hope and, soon, cannons. For now though, our interests were beginning to align. I wanted to attack the necromancers that had taken Dani hostage, but the fact of the matter was that I was too weak to do so. This ‘Barry’ seemed to think I would be an essential factor in the war, but I didn’t see how.

  Oh. I think I do understand; it is because I can fly. They can use me as a mobile teleportation pad. They could be fighting on the eastern front, then five minutes later, have their entire force anywhere that they wanted. I was a huge, miraculous… wagon. They were going to use me as a troop transport, but at the same time, I had trouble believing that. I thoroughly doubted that they would be hanging around on me; I would either be their grand entrance… or their desperate escape plan. Uh-oh. I didn’t like that thought at all. Would they run away and leave me as a treasure to be collected? Was I going to be the spoils of war?

  The reason these thoughts were on my mind? That one was pretty simple: we were approaching the main Guild encampment. I couldn’t see it directly, but I had Navigation Bob for that. I needed to adjust my far-sight Runes and make a projection for myself. From this point forward, we were going to be having an active role in the second ‘great necromantic’ war. According to Bob, even now there were several people flying toward us, leaving vapor trails in the sky as they broke the sound barrier. Please be Guild members, please be Guild members…

  They touched down on me, remarking with good cheer on the density of Essence on my surface. Whew! I wanted to thank them and brag a bit, but my good cheer at their appearance vanished as Barry stepped out of a building and began moving toward them imperiously. As I glared at him, he looked around and grinned. “Oh, dear. I seem to have gained the dungeon’s animosity. Whatever shall I do?”

  Let’s see… two A-ranked Mages and an S-ranker. Hopefully, this one isn’t a cesspit of a person like Barry is. He seemed to be the person who was going to do the talking, and as soon as the first oily words were out of his mouth, I cringed away. “Ah, Barry! So good to see you. Truly a pleasure, as always.”

  Huh. Was this guy bound to the law of butt kissing? He continued speaking, and I tried not to judge him by his opening lines. At least he seemed to be getting serious. “Our outpost is set up, and we are waiting on Shield Wardens and the Church to get their troops here. Until that point, I am temporarily in charge of our forces.”

  “Oh? You are in charge? ‘Opportunistic Lord’ Hendric?” Barry sneered at the opposing S-ranker, who paled at hearing his hated nickname. “I have the highest standing in the guild, I have the highest cultivation, and I-”

  “You want to be in charge? You?” Hendric sneered right back at Barry. “You think they would trust you more, ‘Battalion Devouring Bartholomew’? At least the troops know that I am trying to help them, and I won’t eat the people pledged to me for a slight boost in my own power.”

  “You dare repeat that name to my face?” Barry clenched his fists, the ground around him shuddering and cracking as his emotions ran wild. “They were already dead; they just didn’t know it! The corrupting mist had lain over them all night! They would have dissolved painfully and horrifically as the sun rose; I made it quick! There are hardly any who know the truth of this matter and spreading these falsehoods is grounds for me to destroy you!”

  “You made it quick?” Hendric scoffed. “What of their souls?”

  “They were delicious.” Barry’s smile and shift in attitude were obviously not the reactions Hendric had been expecting, and the bloodlust washing over the area caused the A-ranked Mages to fall back. “You will cede control of this outpost to me, or I will take it.”

  Hendric struggled for a few moments, then rolled his eyes. “Fine! Take it, you abyssal psychopath! The regional Guildlord will be here tomorrow anyway, so enjoy your power over others while you can.”

  “I will. Let’s start with you.” Barry pointed at an area off to the right of the camp. “I need a place for this mountain. Check for anyone alive down there, since you obviously care so much about the fate of fishies and the
like. Anything down there will be crushed, and it is unlikely that we will be mobilizing for any length of time. I don’t want this thing spotted until it is too late for the corpse lovers to do anything about it.”

  Interesting. Landing may actually be of benefit to me, though I was loathe to do it without good reason. Without the need to stay afloat, I could rebuild my Essence reserves and finish tasks in days that had been projected to be completed in weeks. I informed Navigation Bob of our destination, and he altered our path slightly so that we would land gently on the specified area.

  “See how well-trained I already have this dungeon?” I was taken aback as I heard Barry bragging. “I merely tell you where it will go, and it does the rest. Just wait until you see the improvements I made for our troops.”

  For that comment alone, I would make sure this man was a casualty in the war.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I was as nervous as a new father as my mountain was set down on the plain.

  Navigation Bob was sweating heavily as he tried to follow my orders. I felt a little bad, but at the same time, it would take a tremendous amount of effort to reattach a part of Mountaindale that was not directly a part of the dungeon, such as the lake at the base. If that cracked or the water sloshed out, it was gone until I finally extended the dungeon proper to that point. “I am doing my best, Great Spirit. This is our first attempt at setting the dungeon down and not just getting close, so please bear with me.”

 

  “I have it well-handled, I think,” Bob cautiously interrupted me. “Why don’t you go check on other things and leave this to the people who can see where they are going?”