“You can’t answer a question with another question.”
“I can, and I have.”
“A question isn’t an answer.”
“If the question was, what’s the stupidest question you’ve ever been asked, and my answer was the question that you already asked me, then…”
“Narkleer…” I said.
The narkleer began to laugh now. And just like a kobold’s scream, a narkleer’s laugh is a sound you have to hear to really understand. It would make a spider’s skin itch, it was so creepy.
“You don’t understand, do you, core?” he said. “I’ve had enough of this game. I was enjoying a final few seconds of existence, seeing if I could convince myself of another way to escape. But no. Talking to you has made up my mind.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I have no natural lifespan,” said the narkleer. “My years stretch out to infinity, and I have walked these halls for so long that escape, through death or otherwise, has been my dream. Here, within these walls, I was oathed so that I couldn’t harm myself. I was left here. Alone, doomed to walk these halls for eternity. Your mirrors are not a trap for me, Core. They are my escape. For they are a trap not of my own devising, and to look at them isn’t to harm myself; it will be you who has killed me.”
The narkleer reached for the sack on his head.
Thoughts rushed through my mind then. Questions, theories.
The only one I could latch on to was that I had to stop this.
“Wait,” I said.
He paused.
“You said you’ve walked these halls alone for a long time. That you’re doomed to walk them for eternity. That means you haven’t got the slightest idea what another life would be like. Wouldn’t you like to try? What if I could offer you a way to leave these halls?”
“Impossible.”
“You said you were oathed to patrol here. I presume that is a mana oath?”
“Correct.”
“Those can sometimes be broken. And as the subject of the oath, it is the law that you must have been told its terms. But…those terms also bind the maker of the oath, too.”
The narkleer scratched its bony chin. “It has been so long that I cannot remember. Let’s see…terms, hmm…oh, curse your lineage! I cannot remember.”
“Every mana oath must have terms of relinquishment. A way for both parties to end it. Yours will have something to do with this place.”
“Ah. Yes, I see…I see…I remember now. If my master was to die or leave the dungeon, my oath would be broken.”
Now we were getting somewhere. I, unfortunately, knew much more about mana oaths than I had ever wanted to, thanks to my current predicament where a mana oath forced me into servitude. The relinquishment term of my own oath was a simple and common one; my owner had to null the contract. In other words, Galatee had to call it quits.
But for the narkleer, it was slightly different. His master had to die. That meant two things.
One, his master was still alive.
Two…
“I’ll kill your master,” I said.
“You would?”
“On one condition; I become your new master in his place.”
“One deal for another, is it? I see…I see…Why would I swap one master for another?”
“Because your current master has you pacing the same dungeon tunnels over and over again. Whereas I am constantly expanding my dungeon. I even allow my clanmates to go on the surface, and I try to match a creature to its skillset rather than falling back on stereotypes. In short, I offer excellent working conditions, training on the job, with great promotion prospects. And not only that; serve me for just a decade, and I will release you.”
The narkleer was silent for a while.
“My name is Kainhelm, core. Yours?”
“Beno.”
“A pleasure, Core Beno. A blessing on your lineage. Kill my master, then, and I will accept you in his place.”
“Lovely. Who is your master?”
“My mana oath forbids me to tell you.”
“Where is he?”
“My oath forbids…”
“Curse your lineage, narkleer.”
He stared at me now, with his hollow eye sockets that held a weight of shadows behind them. Though he had no face with which to convey an expression, I felt his emotion; anger.
“Not nice, is it?” I said. “Cursing people’s lineage all the time? Curses have power, as well you know, Kainhelm. After all, one does not become a narkleer through a life of good deeds, do they? Alright, I’ll have to explore your dungeon. I’m sure your master will be around here somewhere. I’ll kill him, and that’ll be that. Job done.”
“I will be duty bound to attack anything that steps in these halls. You will need to be careful, core.”
“I know. We’ll wait until you’re off on your patrols. I’ll go now. Jelly, float over to the mirrors and knock them over. I’ll see you soon, Kainhelm.”
CHAPTER 8
All I needed to do was kill the narkleer’s master, get the beast on my side, and then find a suitable place in my dungeon for it. It sounded simple when I thought about it like that.
Oh, and I also had to think of a way to break my mana-sealed oath of ownership with Galatee, but do it in such a way that I didn’t provoke a war and set both the clans against me.
Not that I feared them attacking me. If it came to it, if I was freed from my oath not to hurt them and if they sent their best people into my dungeon, I’d leave a pile of bodies so high they’d have to use their dead loved ones as ladders just to scurry back to the surface.
But I didn’t want to do that, as much as the idea appealed to me.
See, that was the thing. Although I didn’t like being a tool for these people, I also didn’t want to leave my dungeon. I had planned every inch of it, and my clanmates had made tunnels and carved out rooms to my specifications. I had created every trap, spawned every monster. And not only that; the wilderness was so vast, that I had miles and miles of territory to expand into. For a core, this was an excellent location.
The drawback was that the nearest towns were miles away, which meant few heroes would come here by chance. That didn’t matter. As my dungeon grew in prestige and difficulty rating, sword-swingers would seek it out.
That reminds me of that old saying; ‘If a dungeon opens in a forest and a hero doesn’t come scurrying along, was it ever a dungeon at all?’
I didn’t want to leave this place, nor did I wish harm on the Wrotuns or Eternals. So, if this dungeon truly belonged to me, and if their surface town flourished at the same time, it could only be a good thing.
Anyway, one problem at once.
The way I saw it, capturing the narkleer could be key to earning my freedom. I had a vague idea of how I would use him for that, but there was no point getting wrapped up in it until I had actually won Kainhelm to my side.
But did I really want to kill another core?
I mean, another dungeon right next door to mine. What were the chances? Well, there’s a popular adage about lightning and the frequency of its strikes, yet I knew for a fact that a blacksmith in village called Great Yarn, in the north, was written into the history books after being struck five times. The thing about probabilities is that an event may have long odds, but they are never zero.
Besides, there were good reasons to make a dungeon out here. One, this was a vast spread of unclaimed land. That’s about as rare as a sailor with all his teeth, here in Xynnar where lords and dukes gobble everything up.
And what if the dungeon core was a security system, here to protect something? It made sense. If you wanted to keep something safe and hidden, why not do it underground in the middle of nowhere, and have a core watch over it?
So…what was hidden next door to me?
I couldn’t send any of my kobolds back through the hole for fear of triggering something and waking the core. No, I needed to keep surprise on my side, and we could only
go back through when we were to battle it.
Would I kill a fellow core, when it came down to it?
I probably wouldn’t have a choice.
I couldn’t continue building my dungeon with the knowledge that a strange core was next door. It was too much of a danger.
Added to that, cores can be incredibly hostile, especially older ones. While I’m a friendly sort of fellow, most cores instincts are to stab, crush, and disembowel first, and exchange pleasantries later. Aggression and propensity to violence are woven into us so they become instinct, and as well as that, a core can gain a great deal by slaughtering a compatriot. Afterall, when a core dies, his creatures need a need master. His dungeon needs a new owner.
Put two cores, bred for destruction and with capability of empathy removed, next to each other, and what’s going to happen? Human beings supposedly have empathy by the bucketload, yet they’re always slicing each other’s heads off.
No, if I wanted safety, a narkleer, and eventually freedom, the core next door had to go. If I could satisfy my curiosity about its origins before I killed it then great, if not, then my safety was the most important thing.
The last question to answer was, did I tell the people above about my discovery?
The answer was easy; no.
If Galatee directly asked me, then I wouldn’t have a choice. She was my owner, until I fixed that, and I could not refuse to supply requested information.
But lying by omission?
Easily done. If the clans didn’t know about my discovery, I could use it against them somehow. I just needed to figure a way.
I pedestal-hopped to the loot room. Not only was it the largest room, which was because most loot rooms served as a climactic battle in a dungeon and thus needed more space for the carnage, but it was also a great place to think.
The loot room was curved and the walls were high, and I always came here to ponder on things, and I imagined my thoughts seeping out of me and bouncing around the room, growing in strength.
It helped. Soon, I had planned a few things.
“Wylie,” I said, casting my voice through the dungeon. “I need you and the other miners.”
It took the kobolds longer than usual to join me, and at first, I was a little miffed at their insolence. My anger quickly dispersed when I saw them.
They were a state. Their faces looked unusually pale, and they lumbered in like a bunch of barbarians the morning after a debauched birthday party. Tarius had vomit in his beard, and Karson’s topknot was a mess.
“How long was I gone?” I said. “Surely not long enough that you all decided to toast my farewell?”
“Feel sick, Dark Lord,” said Wylie.
Ah. The anger in his voice was gone, and I understood what was wrong with them. It was a hangover from the anger dust they had eaten. Now that it had left their system, their inner organs were displaying anger of their own.
“Cheer up,” I told them. “Everyone has felt like this once in a while. Do you know the cure? A nice big dose of hard work.”
“Work, Dark Lord?”
“Yes. That thing where I give an order, and you carry it out. Remember it?”
Tarius muttered something about unions, but I chose to ignore it. The truth was that I did feel a little bad that I was the one who’d made them eat anger dust and forced them to confront a monster, but I couldn’t afford empathy right now. What kind of dungeon core gave his creatures time off because they felt poorly?
“The narkleer couldn’t confirm it because of a stupid oath, but I’m almost certain there is another dungeon core residing next to us. A neighbor, if you will. Now, to win the narkleer to our side, we have to slaughter his master.”
“Kill another core?” said Karson. “Can you do that? Isn’t it…uh…coreicide?”
“Once we leave the academy, there’s nothing to prevent one core from battling another. In fact, many cores enjoy it. Think about the cores that are taken into the service of kings and queens and lords and all the other noble twits. It would be no good having a core in charge of a battalion if he couldn’t smash another army’s core to pieces.”
“Talk to other core, maybe?” asked Wylie. “Ask to leave?”
“Out of the question. I’ve been thinking about it, you see. The decoration we saw in the dungeon, the Corenaissance style, was used by a very particular kind of core. Ones not taught by the academy, actually. The cores who practiced this style were known as the most bloodthirsty in history, renowned for their lust for death and murder.”
“Don’t you lust for death and murder?” asked Tarius.
“I enjoy it, but I don’t lust for it. Our friend next door is likely in a kind of stasis right now, by my guess. His dungeon seems to be completely closed off from the outside world, which means that nobody could try and conquer it. When a core has nothing to do for such a long time, they can hibernate, rather like a bear.”
“So sneak in and kill,” said Wylie.
“If only. He will have left failsafes; triggers that warn him when someone gets too close to his core room. No, there will be a battle one way or the other. When cores meet in the wild, there’s always a fight. We’re like silverback gorillas beating our chests. Lions strutting over the plains, our manes majestic and wild.
We can’t help it you see, boys. When a being lives in darkness, when it spends its life living and breathing destruction, it's hard to flip between states of peace and violence. Blood seeps into your being. Death dominates your thoughts. I’m relatively new, for a core, so I can keep my temperament. But the core next door…if he wakes, and if he realizes that another core is nearby, his first instinct will be to destroy me. So, we’ll destroy him first, and we’ll nab his narkleer for our trouble.”
“Perhaps we should look the other way,” said Karson. “Why risk losing?”
“Because the reward is too great. Do you know how often one gets the chance to win a narkleer to their side? You’d have better odds of getting struck by a lightning bolt made of meteorites while surfing down a double rainbow, it’s so rare. I can’t pass up a chance to grow stronger. Having the narkleer on our side would elevate my dungeon way beyond my core level.”
“Then what we do?” said Wylie.
“I’m glad you asked. Pull yourselves together, and get ready to work. We have stuff to make.”
Most dungeon cores, unless your name is Jahn, don’t just build things willy-nilly. In the academy, we are trained to think like grandmaster chess players, planning our moves far in advance.
We are also taught to do so quickly, since the more popular dungeons must face one party of heroes after another, with very little preparation time.
As such, I had stretched my mental muscles and pursued hundreds of avenues of thought, before finally finding a path to follow. I knew what I needed to do to strengthen my dungeon and prepare to fight the core next door.
First, I had Wylie and his crew dig a passageway. Just north of the loot room was a great maze of tunnels, filled with dead ends and looping paths which were designed to confuse and fatigue heroes before they found their way to the loot room.
From the side of this maze, Wylie’s crew created a tunnel that stretched east for a while, before opening out into a new room. This was a rectangular room 40 x 40 feet, second only to my loot room in size.
Following the completion of the tunnels and room, I received a message.
Maginhart [Kobold] has reached mining Lvl 22!
Karson [Kobold] has reached mining Lvl 20!
Tarius [Kobold] has reached mining Lvl 16!
Wylie [Kobold] has reached supervisor lvl 10!
- Skill unlocked: Tongue lashing
[Your supervisor can issue a tongue lashing to his workers, motivating them to work twice as hard for 1-minute x worker level.]
Satisfied with my miners’ skill increases, I created a pedestal in the corner of my new room and then hopped into it.
“Not much to look at. Let’s change that.”
&
nbsp; Right now, the room was barer than a naked priest’s fleshy bottom. Just mud walls with chunks of stone here and there, and a dirt floor free of titles or decoration. No doors, no traps, nothing.
Not to matter. Soon, this would become one of the most important rooms in my dungeon. I accessed my room crafting list.
Essence growing room [Cost 80]
Specialized insect and fungi larder [Cost 100]
Melding room [Cost 120]
Alchemy Chamber [Cost 250]
*New* Arena [Cost 400]
I had unlocked the arena when I had slaughtered the heroes and leveled up to 7. Gaining access to the arena was important because it would elevate the overall difficulty rating of my dungeon. This would attract more heroes for me to murder, as well as making my dungeon a better place to murder them in.
I accessed the essence within myself and then, picturing an arena in my head, gave a mental command.
Essence left me, and the room transformed before my eyes. The walls turned to stone, and on this stone were carvings depicting hordes of monsters locked in battle with humans. Sword-wielding kobolds, goblins holding spears, and even a one-eyed behemoth adorned in battle armor. A little decorative for my tastes, but the stone mural came with the arena, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.
At one end of the room, there were six full-sized straw dummies shaped like men, women, and children, each with faces painted on them in what appeared to be blood.
At the other end were targets, rather like archery targets except with a sheen that indicated they were treated to withstand spell damage, too. On these targets, innocent creatures were drawn for magic users to aim at; a cute lamb, an adorable puppy, and an endearing little rabbit.
The floor was now lined with straw, making it look a little like a barn. Only, the straw was there to soak up blood, sweat, and all the other fluids that tend to leak from people’s bodies when they pummel each other.
“Beautiful,” I said.
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 42