“I still don’t buy it.”
“What did he say the dungeon was called again?” asked another man.
“Corbeno’s, or something like that.”
“Sounds like a beach in South Tostaga.”
They laughed now, and Sider patiently waited it out.
“Had enough? Ready to listen to me?”
They brought their attention back to her.
“Now,” she said. “Before the slippery bugger managed to escape from us, the boy told us there was a dungeon out here somewhere. I know that it looks more desolate than a tavern after happy hour ends, but I checked with my contact at the heroes’ guild. There’s a dungeon here, alright. Not new, but also not overpowered. Rated average, by the heroes’ guild charter. The perfect place for us to train ahead of our attempt at Mount Desvaule.”
Mount Desvaule. What a word. Even mentioning the tormenting-rated dungeon was enough to knock any further thoughts of mirth from the men. They were serious now, and that was how Sider liked it.
“We have a couple of months until we try the Mount, and I wanted to conquer as many smaller dungeons as we can before then. We need to get into peak fighting shape. Alright, lads? Let’s be professional about this. The dungeon is a day and a half away from here. Let’s find it, conquer the ever-loving hell out of it, and then move on. There’s a lair in New Holden that I want to hit by next week.”
CHAPTER 10
Day followed night, as it always does. Just once, as a joke, it’d be nice to mix it up a little. You know, try out nights in a row. Or a week of days. A month of afternoons.
But the next morning was just like the ones before it, stretching back to the dawn of time. I spent this one in my dungeon.
By now, my essence vines had replenished some of the essence I’d spent constructing the arena and spawning new monsters, leaving me with a surplus to work with.
I couldn’t assault the dungeon next door until my creatures were strong enough, so I decided the best use of my time was to shore up my defenses a little. You never know when heroes might turn up. They don’t exactly blow a trumpet or anything. Well, most of them don’t.
I hopped to a new pedestal in a room north of the loot room. This newly-excavated cavern was much smaller than the arena, and its walls would stay as they were; muddy, cold, and brown.
Sandwiched between the surface door room and the loot room, and running parallel to a tunnel where I had placed two riddle doors, this room would be another problem for would-be heroes to overcome. It was linked to the maze of tunnels in the center of my dungeon, and this meant that some heroes would stumble on it, some wouldn’t. It depended on their navigational skills.
This, by the way, was a dungeon technique dubbed Chaos Walk, and it wasn’t much utilized these days.
See, most cores like to plan their dungeons out in a set route, so that heroes must overcome one room after another in a logical order. Building their dungeons this way, cores can place their most powerful monsters and traps at the early stages of their lair, to wallop the heroes as soon as they enter.
Others can leave their most powerful tools of death to the last, counting on the heroes being tired, hurt, and losing focus.
It was a logical way to construct a dungeon, but it was cliché. All the best dungeon cores were innovators, and innovation meant being prepared to screw up once in a while. To try something new.
For me, this meant having no set order in my dungeon. Heroes entered by the surface door and found themselves in a room filled with a floor tile puzzle, where one wrong step sent vampiric darts shooting out of the walls.
From there they would have to solve a riddle door, which led them to a tunnel with yet another riddle door at the end. After conquering this, they would enter that wild mess of tunnels that looped and ran to dead ends and opened up in several places at once. A real pig of a place, where getting lost was the least of a hero’s problems.
Structuring things this way meant there was no set route through my lair. One tunnel would lead to trap rooms, whereas another might lead to a bunch of monsters waiting to eat hero flesh. My logic here was that no one set of heroes would ever have the golden answer to beating me.
Sure, a hero group might fight their way to my loot room, vanquish my boss monster, and escape with their prize. But they’d never be able to draw a plan of my dungeon and sell it to other heroes, because I would simply alter my rooms. Move traps around, shuffle monsters here and there.
Chaos. That’s what the maze of tunnels was; pure, lovely, chaos.
It was as I hopped into this new room, that I received a message in my core.
Gary [Troll-Leech-Spider Melded-Monster] has leveled up to 5
I had been receiving these messages since yesterday. As the day had wound on and they got had to work in the arena, notifications piled up.
Death leveled up quickly; as a fire beetle, he was the weakest creature in the arena and he had started at level 1. It wasn’t long before he reached level 9, but each successive upgrade made the next one slower. He’d yet to achieve level 10.
Peach, meanwhile, was a jelly cube, and as such was higher on the toughness scale. In the same amount of time, he’d only hit level 6.
Gary’s level-ups came the slowest of all. He was an ex-boss monster created in my melding room, and it took a lot to beef him up. In all this time in the arena, he’d only leveled up once, and it’d be a while before the next one.
Still, it was progress. With every creature level up, my dungeon was that little bit stronger.
“Dark Lord?” said a voice.
Wylie walked into the room, dragging his feet in a ridiculously exaggerated way.
I knew what this was about. Since the escapade with the narkleer, and then digging out new tunnels and excavating new rooms for me, Wylie and his crew hadn’t had a break.
This was where I needed to be a little nicer to my people. If I overworked the miners, their progress would slow to a halt and they would risk injury. Not only that, but I was sick of hearing about unions.
“Wylie,” I said. “You and your crew can take the day off. Go howl at the moon or whatever it is kobolds do in their free time.”
Tarius and Karson, watching from the tunnel archway, let out a whoop and then scampered away.
“What doing?” asked Wylie.
“Didn’t you hear? I gave you the day off.”
“Wylie and his crew dig this room for you. Want to know what used for. Help him understand dungeon better.”
I looked at my hardworking, loyal friend with a new level of respect. He was showing curiosity, and curiosity led to innovation and understanding. There was more to Wylie than I’d thought.
“Just the usual,” I told him. “This will be a room where heroes come to die.”
“Heroes die in all room in dungeon.”
“Ah, yes. But the question is…how will they die in this particular room?”
“Or,” said Wylie. “Could be break room for miners.”
“Still harping on about that?”
“Wylie look after interests of workers.”
He was strong-minded, I’d give him that. I had to accept that with his stubbornness, came problems for me. I didn’t want a bunch of sycophantic yesmen as my dungeon supervisors, so I had to accept when these non-yesmen didn’t say yes to me.
“This isn’t to be a break room or a spa or a sauna or a retreat filled with cushions and jasmine candles. This is a place of death, Wylie. I thought you said you wanted to learn?”
“Wylie does.”
“Then listen to me. This is a lesson close to my heart, okay? It means a lot to me. I’m trying to teach you how to slaughter people.”
With my restored essence, as well as what I had left from yesterday, I had 440 essence points to spend. Luckily, that was just enough for what I needed.
Focused on the room ahead, I committed the first chunk of essence points.
Trap created: Poison Gas
Now, there were
holes dotted on each of the four walls. Not great big holes, but tiny ones, holes small enough for an ant to squeeze through.
“See those?” I told Wylie. “Holes for the gas to come out. But unless you know what you’re looking for, you’d never see them.”
Wylie walked up close to one wall, looking for the holes. That was when he saw something else.
“This?” he asked, pointing.
As part of the poison trap, part of one wall had been dug away, leaving a stone cylinder set inside the wall. Runes were drawn all over it. They were letters of an ancient language, though they translated into gibberish. The runes were purely decorative.
“This is the convertor,” I told him. “Poison traps in dungeons are self-sustaining. The stone converter will suck air from the dungeon and convert it into poison, which it will store until the trap is triggered.”
Wylie hopped up and down on the spot. “Clever!”
“That’s not all. See, Wylie, every dungeon trap is useless without a trigger. In the room near the surface doors, the trap is the vampiric darts ready to fire from the walls. The trigger is the tile puzzle I placed on the ground; one wrong step, and thwack! The heroes get shot.”
“Great, Dark Lord. Very clever. A nice trap. But what is trigger for gas?”
“Simple,” I said. “Watch.”
Wylie and I spent the next thirty minutes creating a trigger for my gas trap, after which I was almost out of essence points. During this time, just a single notification came through, telling me that Death the fire beetle had reached level 10, earning himself the hell husk ability. Way to go, Death!
After the trap and trigger were placed, however, a separate notification greeted me. This one was a heck of a lot more exciting.
“Attention, clanmates,” I said, casting my core voice through my lair. “I have an announcement to make. Thanks to your hard work, and my sterling planning, we have received some good news. Without further ado, I will let you see the message I have just received.”
I cast the message from my core and into the dungeon, where it would appear in every room and every tunnel simultaneously.
Your dungeon difficulty has increased from Average II to Average III
Bonus:
- Ability unlocked: Core Control
- Dungeon fame increased. More heroes will now come to plunder your lair!
On the scale of things, Average III wasn’t much to brag about. Then again, no core started with a dungeon worthy of the lords of the underworlds; you had to earn it.
Overseer Bolton’s dungeon, the Necrotomitlita, was rated as the best dungeon ever, and it remains the only one to achieve the ranking of Mythical III. Did Bolton’s dungeon start as Mythical-rated?
Nope!
He had to begin with a rating of Pathetic I, before taking the step to Pathetic II, Pathetic III, then Average I, and so on. The rating system ran as follows: Pathetic, Average, Hard, Challenging, Tormenting, Nightmare, Legendary, Mythical.
I wanted to match the Necrotomitlita one day. I had a long way to go, and I didn’t have the full backing of the academy that Bolton did when he was a core, but that wouldn’t stop me.
This was a small step, but it was one taken in the direction I wanted to go. It was a sign that my dungeon was becoming more murderous, and that is all a core can ask for.
I focused on the message again now that my excitement was settling down. I was pleased to see that more heroes would come to the dungeon soon, because more heroes meant leveling up, which meant more essence, more creatures and traps to craft, which in turn meant increasing my rating further.
But the most important part of this increase in rankling were three words; Ability unlocked: Core Control.
This was a fantastic ability that not every dungeon core unlocked. I supposed I had earned it thanks to the closer bond that I had with my creatures than most cores.
Who said making friends was a waste of time?
Oh, I said that once. Never mind; I had seen the error of my ways.
Now I had core control, and my dungeon had been recognized as a higher rank. I enjoyed these thoughts, while listening to the whoops and hollers of my clanmates as they celebrated the news.
CHAPTER 11
Chief Reginal
Should I get rid of them?
That was what Chief Reginal wondered as he watched the missionaries from the Drowned-Messiah church. They had arrived days earlier and ingratiated themselves by handing out various sweet treats and salted meats, before erecting tents near the clans’ camp.
Now, they were in the process of constructing a wooden hut with some wood they had brought with them. As much as their gifts were welcome, Reginal wasn’t sure he wanted religious missionaries bothering his people while they worked.
Then again, the church had gold. That was clear as sunlight. And if, perhaps, they stayed and spent their gold by bartering with the clans, then it would be a welcome boost to the treasury.
As well as this, removing them by force would be distasteful, and lower Reginal’s standing in some of his peoples’ eyes, because they were sick of violence and bloodshed after enduring generations of it.
No, the missionaries could stay for now. They could build their little wooden church and talk about their drowned messiah until they were blue in the face, as long as their gold trickled down the right channels.
“Chief Reginal, sir, I’m sorry to interrupt you,” said a goblin.
It was Beall, a young clansman with no scars on his body, unlike most of the Eternals. His complexion was a minty green rather than the darker hue that a goblin’s skin took on as he got older.
Reginal hoped it would stay that way. Not his skin color, since there was no point fighting Mother Age, but his lack of scars. Reginal’s own body was a tapestry of war wounds that reminded him of all the lives he’d taken and clansmen he’d lost, but maybe their battles were finally over.
They were home now. They had claimed back the land that was theirs, and even though they had to share it with the Wrotuns, this victory was something all the Eternals would treasure. If they ever wrote songs about Reginal, he hoped they would mention that.
Given that the closest thing the Eternals had to a bard was that damned kobold in Beno’s dungeon, the songs were more likely to be about spiders and traps.
Devry, Reginal’s son, was sitting next to him in his wooden wheelchair. He would certainly never see any battles. Since his physical limitations were not his fault, the Eternal clan cast no shame on him. If he was simply a coward, it would be different.
So Devry would never feel the weight of a sword, but would he see feel the pressure of leadership? Reginal worried about that. It was clear Devry wanted to be chief one day, but the Eternals were a democracy, and Devry would have to win his seat. They would never shame him, but would a clan of fighters would respect one who couldn’t?
Just then, there was a snapping sound.
A clear orb was floating beside Devry, and with a sharp crack it sucked black smoke from his son’s mouth, and the orb filled with a spray of black.
This orb was almost full. Soon, it would have to be switched with a spare and then cleansed in the mana spring in the damned dungeon. Reginal insisted on doing it himself, which meant he had to suffer the core’s dark sense of humor.
Forget it. Not a problem for now.
“Beall,” said Reginal, addressing the young goblin. “A progress update, please.”
“Problems in quadrant 5x,” answered Beall. “4B is short of iron and steel. We’re getting nothing but dirt on 1c, 2c, and 3g.”
Beall looked at him expectantly. Thoughts rushed through Reginal’s head too fast for him to hold on to.
5X?
4B?
How was he supposed to remember quadrants and soil value and cores and settlement planning?
It had been so much easier when he was strategizing about how to seize control of this place. Bloodshed is a lot easier to plan than crops, and maybe Reginal would have to
admit that he was the right goblin to win this place back, but the crown of peacetime didn’t fit his misshapen, scarred head.
But then what else would he have?
“Give me a moment, Beall. I will think on this and come and find you.”
Beall walked away, leaving Reginal and his son alone.
“You know the quadrants, Pa. We practiced memorizing them.”
“When you reach my age, Devry, you’ll start to realize that the world never stops to let you catch up. It doesn’t take you getting older into account. It doesn’t care if you’re sick, sad, tired. The world is as unsympathetic as a tavern owner who just let you drain his barrels dry only to find out your purse is full of moths.”
Devry reached to a bag strapped around his chair. He rustled through dozens of rolled up papers, before settling on the right one. He spread this out on his lap, showing a map of the wasteland he had drawn, with the land divided into sections.
“It’s a simple system, Pa,” he said. “I designed it so anyone could use the map and know where stuff needs to go. 5X is here, see, and…”
His son talked on and on. Reginal should have listened to his words, but all he could think about was how proud he was of him, and how for all the gold in Xynnar he couldn’t explain where Devry’s brains had come from. His glorious noggin came with the price of a weak body that needed an alchemically treated orb to suck the sickness out of him, but nothing came for free.
“Chief Reginal! Chief Reginal!” cried Beall, sprinting back toward them.
Panic was written across his face, stretching out his skin and making his eyes look wide and wet.
“You’ve delivered me enough problems today, Beall. What’s wrong? It can’t be that bad. Come on now, your face looks like a slapped arse.”
“Visitors,” said Beall. “Four men and a woman. Tough looking buggers. They’re messing around near the entrance to one of the dungeons, stooping around like pigs sniffing truffles.”
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