“Which dungeon? Jahn’s or Beno’s?”
“The grumpy one.”
“Beno, then. Okay, we’ll need to get some of our people into armor, get them swords, and…”
“Not advisable,” said a voice.
Overseer Bolton had joined them, sneaking up on them in that way of his. The sunlight beamed off his bald dome, and Reginal stared at the overseer’s heavy robes and felt himself sweat. How did he walk around like that under the desert sun?
“Heroes and dungeons are part of the balance,” said Bolton, peering into the distance with his hand shielding his eyes from the sunlight.
A half-mile away, the dim figures of the intruders could be made out. Sure enough, they were scouring the area above Core Beno’s dungeon.
“Balance doesn’t mean much in a place with so much sun and so little water,” said Reginal. “It’s Lady Nature’s way of telling us things aren’t also equal. If there’s such thing as balance, then nature gave us a tightrope slicked with grease.”
“Nevertheless,” said Bolton, “You have a dungeon within your territory. Two, if we count Core Jahn, though he hasn’t satisfied the requirements for a dungeon.”
“His talents seem to lay on the surface. He’s starting to make progress, unlike Beno.”
“A curious case is our Jahn. Dimmer than a fading mana lamp, yet…”
“He’s a dud core, isn’t he?”
“If you tried to use a butter knife to chop down a tree, you would realize that though all knives are sharp and pointy, they each have their uses.”
“Fine. Jahn is good with surface things, Beno’s good at creating dungeons. Potatoes are good in a stew but taste foul if you eat them like you would an apple. Who cares? These dungeon-seekers…we didn’t invite them to our lands. Why should I let them sniff around?”
“Core Beno is making progress on his dungeon, and as such, the heroes’ guild knows of it. Once a dungeon satisfies the requirements to be labeled as such, it is impossible to prevent the guild from becoming aware. Dungeons attract heroes, and that is just the way of things. They aren’t here to bother you or your people, Reginal.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“You do not understand. Core Beno will be useful in defending your town from true invaders, yes. His dungeon creatures can also be used on the surface. But there is something else. Think about when your people and Jahn finally manage to turn this place into a true settlement. A place with taverns, armor shops, weaponsmiths, apothecaries. As beautiful as you make it, you’ll still be far away from the nearest town, which will hamper your ability to trade. Wouldn’t it be useful, then, to have a steady stream of heroes seeking you out?”
“Sounds like trouble. A bunch of warriors drinking and pissing everywhere and turning the air bluer than a goblin tavern at happy hour. And trust me, I know this because I have done all of those things.”
“Overseer Bolton means that heroes spend gold, Pa,” said Devry. Bolton smiled at the young goblin, who carried on. “Heroes drink ale and buy swords and seek out elixirs. Selling things to them would make up for not being able to trade with other towns as much.”
Bolton nodded. “When enough heroes flock to the same place, merchants are sure to follow like fleas around a donkey’s arse. Blacksmiths will seek out your land and request to trade here so that they can supply weapons to the sword-swingers. Brewers will ask if they can set up potion stalls, and soon you won’t be able to move without bumping into a trader trying to line his big, fat purse. You, as owners of the land, can insist they pay you levies and taxes.”
“A whole ecosystem based around dungeoneering…” said Devry, with wonder in his voice.
Reginal stared into the distance for a while, where the heroes seemed to have found the door to the dungeon.
“I should just let them go into the dungeon?”
Bolton nodded. “They aren’t here to cause you any mischief; even the stupidest dungeoneer won’t break the code of town civility. They’re here for the dungeon. Beno will take care of the rest.”
“And if they beat his dungeon? We’ll be missing a core.”
“Heroes beat the dungeon, not the core. They battle their way to the loot room and fight whatever is in there. Once they win their treasure, they will leave. Beno knows to keep himself hidden in his core room, so even in defeat, he will not die.”
“What if they decided to battle into his core room and kill him? I’m told it can be done.”
“You might well ask me what to do if the sun grows wings and flies away. Let’s not worry about dangers unlikely to show themselves. Beno will worry about that because it’s his job, not yours. The butcher doesn’t tell the barber how to cut hair.”
Reginal sighed. “Heroes and dungeons. Town planning. Construction. Ever feel lost, Bolton? Like the world is forgetting your name?”
“I’ve had many names, and most have been forgotten. It’s never bothered me much.”
CHAPTER 12
“Heroes!”
Tomlin sprinted down the tunnel with his voice echoing ahead of him, since sound travels much faster than a kobold’s feet.
“Pull yourself together,” I told him.
“Heroes, Dark Lord, heroes! We’re all going to die!”
“You are the most cowardly kobold I ever met. Do you have poultry ancestry in your blood?”
Tomlin leaned one arm against the wall and rested his forehead against it, catching his breath. As the first kobold I ever created, it would be both accurate and outlandish to call him my oldest friend. Cores aren’t supposed to form bonds with their creatures, you see. It makes it harder when…well, it just makes it harder.
But heroes were coming, and I didn’t have time to deal with a panic-stricken kobold ranting and raving and spreading his yellow-belly thoughts all around the dungeon. Morale is important in a place like this, especially before a battle.
I concentrated, giving a mental command.
Core control activated.
I felt my consciousness lurch from my body as if a giant had grabbed my aura and ripped it out, before stuffing it down Tomlin’s mouth.
That’s right; through core control, I was now the temporary driver of a carriage named Tomlin, the cowardly kobold cultivator.
Just like when I used my core senses, the first thing to hit me was the colors and the sounds. Thanks to their wolf ancestry, kobolds see the world in a sharpness that others don’t, and they hear things like dew dripping from a room several tunnels away, and the distant swing of pickaxes and chatter of Wylie and his workers.
And the smell. Holy hells. I had core smell, just like I had core vision and the like, but I rarely found it practical, so I usually shut it off. Unfortunately, I was controlling Tomlin now, and Tomlin had no way of shutting it off.
I felt my – Tomlin’s – heart begin to race as I got used to looking at the world through his eyes, and by doing this, I realized all the avenues that had opened to me with core control.
I could walk. I could eat things. I could drink beer and taste the suds on my tongue.
I could develop an itch, and then scratch it. That was something that I strangely missed in my core body.
I could tell the others I was doing important dungeon work, but then fill a tub with hot water and lavender oil and sink into it and let the comfort carry me away.
As excited as I was, this wasn’t the time to mess around as I struggled to get used to the weight distribution of Tomlin’s body.
I took one step, and fell over, scratching my arms on the ground. It was strange, wearing this body. I supposed it was like the first time a knight strutted around in a full set of metal armor; they must find walking around with all that foreign weight quite difficult.
I got back to my feet and walked around until I began to master the art, and from there I graduated to a jog, and then to a hop, to a jump, and finally to running around in utter glee with Tomlin’s arms raised in the air, hollering like a bogbadug stung by a bee. This we
nt on for minutes before a thought hit me.
Get a grip!
Heroes were coming, and as fantastic as it felt to inhabit a body after so many years as a core, I needed to conserve this skill.
I felt strange, then. A sensation of lightness hit me.
The skill was fading.
Core control was amazing, but it had limits that I had read about back in the academy. When you first earned the ability, your stay in a creature was short. The more powerful a creature, the less time you could spend in its body. This would increase the more I leveled up, but for now, I had minutes at most.
As I felt weaker and weaker, my last act was to take several deep breaths, calming Tomlin’s pulse until the fear of the heroes was gone.
With another mental command, I left his body.
I lurched into my core again, and immediately felt a sense of restriction. Now I knew why using core control became addictive to some cores. Once you regained the sense of full-body movement, it hurt to give it up.
I had read about cores who earned the ability, and before long, it became their sole purpose in life. They lived just to use core control to inhabit another body, and when they used it up, all they would do is wait for it to replenish so they could use it again. They ignored their dungeon, ignored defending against heroes, and they soon met their end.
I was sure I had enough mental resilience to avoid that trap, but even so, I would only use core control when I absolutely needed to.
“Feel better?” I asked Tomlin.
“Tomlin…does. Strange. His fear is gone. He must be braver than he realized.”
“He must be,” I agreed. “But shouldn’t he be in the cultivation room?”
“Tomlin was taking his break when he heard the heroes. Tomlin gets a break every four-”
“Every four hours. I know, because you keep reminding me every time that you’re about to take one, and I keep telling you that I already agreed to your breaks. So, you were taking a break…”
“Tomlin decided to go to the surface to take his break in the open air. He likes to watch the clans work up above. He poked his head out of the surface door, and he saw heroes nearby, looking for the dungeon.”
“I already know they’re here,” I said.
“You already know?”
“Maginhart told me. He went to visit the tinker for a new spade, or ssspade as he would say, and he saw a group approaching from the east. Since they didn’t belong to the Eternals or Wrotuns, they could only be heroes tempted here by the prospect of defeating my dungeon.”
“Then Tomlin ran here for nothing?”
“I wouldn’t say nothing. We both know that working in the cultivation doesn’t burn many calories, does it?”
If I had eyebrows, I’d arch one of them now in a sassy kind of way while looking at his gut.
“Tomlin will go back to essence vines now. Lots of work to do.”
“You’re sloping off to avoid facing the heroes, more like. Fine, Tomlin, you scoundrel. I’ll be hopping to my core room to take care of the heroes from there. Thank you for coming to tell me.”
I hopped into my core room, where I floated on a pedestal in the center. Liquid mana from the spring in the corner of the room gently rained onto the ground, catching in the trough that would take it all the way through the labyrinth and to the Wrotuns’ cave.
There were just two doors in my core room. There used to be eight tunnels leading here, but I quickly changed that. The fewer ways to reach me here the better, because a core room is where a core makes his last stand if the heroes beat his boss monster, get their grubby mitts on his loot, and then decide they’re not done dungeoneering yet.
It rarely happens this way; most heroes depart after getting their prize. But some, the greedy and reckless ones who have a death wish, hunt for the core.
As such, I had made the two doors in my loot room riddle doors. The tunnels leading to them were trapped to the gills, meaning any hero who made it to the core room was likely to be stabbed and burned to hell, as well as mentally frazzled after dealing with my ingenious riddles.
Using my core vision, I viewed my dungeon from an angle way above, so that I could see each room, each tunnel, and all my creatures at the same time.
Time to strategize.
I needed to beat these despicable heroes. Not that any core likes to lose, but it does happen. Some cores, when they don’t want to lose too many of their creatures, even take a defeat on purpose, locking most of their monsters in the core room with them and hoping the heroes take their loot and bugger off.
But I needed to get stronger. I needed to level up to increase my essence points and dungeon capacity, and then I could create more creatures for my army. Before long, I wanted my arena chocked full of kobolds and trolls training to become killers.
At the same time, I couldn’t afford to lose too many monsters at once. My dungeon was still in its infancy, and if this hero clan killed too many of my creatures during their dungeon dive, it would be like starting from scratch.
So, I had to plan my attack carefully. Inflict maximum pain for the minimum of losses.
“Shadow,” I said, projecting my core voice to the loot room, where the sneaky kobold was doing stomach crunches. “I need you just beyond the surface door room.”
“I am the welcome party?” she said.
“No, sending you to welcome something would be like greeting a gooseophobe by gifting them a gaggle of geese. Here’s what I need you to do. And the rest of you, listen carefully because your orders are coming soon…”
The heroes entered via the surface door at the far north of my dungeon, walking into the first room in a single file.
I watched them strut in, four bare-chested men following a woman who wore a tight shirt with a studded leather waistcoat. The men took orders from the lady, that was plain enough, and they each wore necklaces around their neck. Links of sturdy chain with a stone threaded through.
There was something about the necklaces that prodded my curiosity, but I couldn’t say what. Had I read about them somewhere?
Never mind.
Heroes were here! Hot, fresh, and ready to get slaughtered.
It was one of those rare times when I actually felt something. Excitement crashed through me, almost as if my core was a cliffside and the tension and anticipation were the tide beating against it.
I felt joyous, like a blacksmith ready to hammer metal into shape, like a bard strumming a new lute, like a troll ready to test out his new warhammer on someone’s skull.
Time to kill some heroes!
CHAPTER 13
Sider and the Four versus Core Beno
Sider held up her right hand. Four sets of feet stopped walking, and her men waited behind her. Say what you wanted about their love for swilling beer and bare-knuckle fighting, but they fell in line when it mattered.
She looked around, taking in her surroundings. This dungeon was as silent and gloomy as most of the ones you’d find in Xynnar. Her dungeoneering experience came into play as she scanned the very first room to try and glean as much information about the core as possible.
Most heroes weren’t as patient as her. As soon as they set foot in a dungeon they got loot-crazy, and they stalked around like mad pigeons gobbling up breadcrumbs, relying on their swordsmanship and magic to get them out of trouble.
Sider wasn’t like that. She took her time. She used her senses. Not all heroes believed it, but this kind of thing was just as important as spending hours swinging your sword or shooting fireballs at straw dummies.
Yes, every core was different, and you had to try and think like them if you wanted to get through their dungeon. So…what about this core?
Well, there were no monsters in the first room. That meant the core was cautious. Rather than leave the initial chamber in darkness, which a lot of cores did under the stupid notion that heroes – people committed to finding underground lairs – were scared of the dark, this core lit the place up with mana lamps.
Most telling, though, was what Sider saw in the room before her.
“See that?” she said.
Pumphrey shrugged. “A tile puzzle. Cheeks will sort it in a jiffy.”
There, spread out over the ground in the first room in the dungeon, was a series of multi-colored tiles. Sider looked at the ceiling, seeing no hint of hidden compartments there, which meant nothing was likely to attack from above. Then again, that was the whole point of them being hidden, so that people couldn’t just look up and spot them.
“Seabright,” she said. “Check the ceiling for illusions.”
Seabright, who wore his hair tied back with dozens of pins and made a habit of seeking out new pins whenever they visited a town, took a glass jar from his satchel. He grabbed some blue dust from it and threw it toward the ceiling. The dust rained back down, most of it landing on Sider’s shoulders.
“We’re clear,” he said.
Sider brushed the dust from her coat. “Thanks. Let’s see what else we have to deal with.”
The presence of a tile puzzle here in the first chamber suggested that this core preferred cunning over brawn. Sider wasn’t too worried about that, despite her party being weighted slightly toward combat.
“Let’s be as careful as a priest sneaking out of a pleasure house in the middle of the night. I’m not getting suckered by a trap again; I had to pay 200 gold for a healer to patch me up last time. Okay, what have we got? We know that the tiles will trigger a trap. Dainty toes and eagle eyes, boys,” she said.
When she looked at the walls, she felt a stirring in her gut. If this were a morning after a night of heavy drinking, she’d ignore gut stirs. But in the depths of a dungeon, she paid her bowels great heed. This was heroes’ instinct yelling at her.
“Okay,” she said, edging closer to where the tiles began. “A tile puzzle with something in the walls ready to strike if we get it wrong. It’s brain time, come on. What’s the answer to the puzzle, and what’s the trap?”
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