The only thing I found hard to believe was how much it had all changed. Where there was once a field of fifty tents which housed the Eternals clan members, the campsite was now blocked from view by a row of wooden houses. They were of simple construction, rather like the lodges that hunters build in woodland areas, ones designed as safe places for travelers and forest rangers to sleep.
Beside wondering where Jahn got the wood and coming up with a vague answer that the clan must have traded with the towns bordering the wasteland, another question sprang to mind.
Invaders? What invaders?
All I saw was a bunch of hard-working clansmen, laborers, crafters, and would-be farmers working on their town whilst preparing for the town naming day they had planned.
Wait a second…
It was then that I spotted Reginal and Galatee in one of the wooden houses. They were joined by a few of the elder clanspeople and were all gathered around a table. Reginal was standing up with his palms flat against the table and saying something in a heated manner. And when the chief spoke like that, boy did everyone listen. I could feel the tension in the room even from here.
Nearby, three orcish Wrotun women were lying on the roof of another lodge, using a thick lens to look into the distance. Following the direction of their lens, I finally saw the invaders.
There were some blots in the distance. I thought they were four miles away, but it may have been more; the wasteland has a habit of lying to you. Even with my enhanced core vision, it was impossible to make them out in detail because the sun was directly above and although I didn’t have eyes that it could hurt, the glare made it impossible to see particulars.
“Shadow,” I said, using my core voice on the kobold who was still in the dungeon. “You called these people invaders. How did you know that? They could be visitors. Merchants, settlers, perhaps even heroes.”
“Because they attacked a group of clansmen who were out looking for an oasis. Only Tasgario, Galatee’s assistant, made it back.”
“Where is he?”
She pointed. “With Chief Reginal and the others.”
“Can you take me to them?”
As much as I loathe being carried, I waited for Shadow to join me, and I let her take me across town and to the house, where I joined Reginal, Galatee, Tasgario, and a handful of other elders from both clans.
“Beno, about time,” said Reginal. He beckoned me over.
When Shadow moved closer, I saw a great sheet of parchment draped over the table, with a crude map of the town and surrounding wasteland drawn on it.
“Treasure hunting?” I said.
“This isn’t the time for jokes.”
“I know. I’m wondering why you didn’t alert me before now. Shadow tells me we’ve been attacked.”
“Poor Tasgario has barely got his breath back. We were about to send for you.”
“What’s the situation?” I said.
“We have a bugger with great, big balls coming to mess around in our town.”
“A brave one, eh? I suppose he’d have to be to turn up like this.”
Reginal shook his head. “No, Beno. I mean he has weird ball-shaped objects with him. Tasgario, you tell him. And make it damn snappy.”
Galatee shot Reginal a look. “Less of the attitude toward Tas.”
Reginal, rebuked, gave a small nod.
Tasgario cleared his throat. “We found the oasis. It was seven miles south, but it’s hidden by this small set of hills that's the same color as everything else, so you’d barely pay attention to them. I spotted it first, and then Trigg ran ahead screaming about how it was going to be named Trigg Falls or something stupid.”
“Skip forward, boy. Pretend our town depends on the speed of your delivery.”
“We knew not to drink the water before it’s tested, but we wet our faces and bathed in it a while. Trigg got the stupid idea that we could be the first to skinny dip in the oasis, and so we…
“Boy…”
“And that’s when the thing arrived,” said Tasgario, spitting out his words under Reginal’s glare.
“Thing?” I asked.
“A thing. A monster. A creature.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Core. Truly, I don’t.”
“You must have some idea.”
Galatee spoke for him. “We’ve shown him pictures from a monster compendium - nothing. We’ve asked him to describe it, and this thing beggars belief.”
“You’d be surprised at some of the things that exist, and yet don’t require belief in order to do so. Tell me, lad, what did it look like?” I asked.
With stutters and half-sentences shepherded along by careful prodding from me - and uncareful prodding from Reginal - the scared boy described what he had seen at the oasis. He described the creature that arrived, not alone, and killed the clan members he was with.
Galatee had been right after all; this thing was a big middle finger to belief.
“Beno?” said Reginal. “Do you know what this foul beast is?”
Galatee stared at me. Reginal stared at me. The other elders, two of whom I’d barely spoken to in my time here, stared at me. All of them looking for answers.
“A creature unlike anything mentioned in books or even the darkest dungeon stories,” I said. “Who travels around with a troll and ball-like objects and can create monsters at will. I know who this is.”
I let the silence drag out. Even in moments of crisis, I know how to put on a show.
“This is the Collector,” I said.
Tasgario blinked.
Reginal made a gesture with his hand, beckoning me to go on.
“This isn’t the reaction I expected,” I said. “You’ve never heard of him?”
“Clearly not.”
I sighed. “The Collector probably has a real name, one given to him at birth, but nobody knows it. I doubt he even knows it himself. He’s been lost to legend for decades, maybe centuries. People say he exists. There are sightings of him, even. But they’re never proven and are always discredited.”
“And this Collector…what does he collect?”
“Dungeon cores. At the academy, they talk about him like he’s the Grimoire Goblin or the Hacksack Troll who steals children in fables. I honestly thought that he was a story made up by the overseers to keep us alert. That maybe there was a glimmer of truth about, say, a hero who beat a dungeon and didn’t kill the core but instead tried to steal him. I thought it was one of those stories where a seed of truth gets planted in the wrong garden and grows into an untameable thorn bush.”
“This…Collector…has come for you and Jahn, then. Clearly that is the case,” said Reginal.
“I suppose.”
“You don’t seem scared.”
“We’re forged so that we entirely lack that feeling, Reginal. I understand danger perfectly, but I don’t have the associated clouding of the mind.”
“We’ll drive this feckless kidneywipe away. I’ve fought enough battles in my life, but I can have one more. Call it my great send-off. Though, it will hardly be a battle. We outnumber this creature immensely.”
“He has a troll,” said Galatee.
I sighed. “The troll isn’t your problem. Didn’t you listen to Tasgario? He has half a dozen dungeon cores with him. That’s the only thing they can be if they’re conjuring monsters.”
“How do you know they are the ones creating monsters?”
“The Collector isn’t exactly pulling them out of his rump, is he? His cores are probably brimming with essence, and that makes them just a little bit dangerous. Galatee, I could construct a monster right now that would take a dozen clansmen to kill. Imagine six of me.”
“I shudder to think. But what danger do they pose, really? After all, you’ve proven you can’t create things unless you are in your dungeon.”
“That’s beside the point. His cores might be a higher level than me. Even if they’re lower, they have already proven they can spawn thing
s in the wasteland, as evidenced by the monster that killed Tasgario’s friends.”
“So, these six cores…they could create enough monsters to overwhelm us?”
“I’m afraid it’s a possibility,” I said. “And think about this. Your people are tired from labor; you work them harder than gnomes in an iron mine, and you have a whole bunch of them still resting after their shift. The creatures made by the cores will be fresher than a bear after six months hibernation on a duck feather mattress.”
Reginal pounded the table. “On our naming day, of all days! Damn this all for a three-billed duck. Galatee, I see no other choice here.”
A look passed between them.
“I agree,” she said.
“Then we will surrender Jahn and Beno to this collector. Then he will need nothing from us, and so he will leave.”
“What?” Galatee said. “That wasn’t my intention at all. I thought you wanted to fight? That’s the Reginal I know. Not the sniveling gutbag who proposes that we trade with invaders.”
“Before any battle, you weigh your weapons. Think about it, Gal. I mean, Galatee. The only core we have that can create things on the surface is Core Jahn, who’s as useful in a fight as a sword made from a pixie’s dreams.”
I’d had enough of this. I wouldn’t let them even contemplate handing me over.
“Surface or not, it doesn’t matter. Stop thinking like a green-cheeked recruit on his first skirmish. Really, Reginal, I expected better.”
“Excuse me? Shall I fetch the whip?”
“Fetch it. Get Gal here to slap your arse with it, if that’s what you enjoy. I’m a free core now, Reggie, and if you come near me with that whip, I’ll spawn a creature so vile it’ll haunt every dream you have for the rest of your life.”
“Enough!” shouted Galatee, clearly ready to explode.
I composed myself. “Although I can only create monsters in my dungeon, those creatures can go to the surface. I can control the battle from my lair.”
Reginal nodded. “Fine. And my people aren’t so battle rusty that they’ve forgotten how to use their axes.”
Galatee smiled. Not a pleasant smile, but a darker one. “Finally, we are speaking like warriors, and not bickering like boys. We fought your people for decades, before the unification, Reginal. I am glad we are one clan now, but truth be told, I missed the fight, in a way.”
“Then we’re agreed. We’ll drive this bugger off our land.”
“Shadow,” I said. “Take me to the dungeon, please. I want you to send Edgar and the others out. Fly a lap over the Collector and get a better sense of the cores with him, and I’ll watch. I need to know their shapes, their colors, everything.”
*
The raven soared across the sun-kissed sky, swooping through the windless air and covering three miles with barely any effort, finally hovering close enough above the invaders that I could now see them in detail.
I watched through Edgar’s eyes, and below us, I saw a motley gang steadily advancing across the wasteland. There was a great big troll, not much shorter than an oak tree and just as wide, adorned in steel armor that must have taken a dozen dwarves several months to fashion. He carried a giant axe that could have felled a castle, which he gripped in his right hand. Beads of sweat fell from his brow and down his face, disappearing where his armor joined his neck. His steps were lumbering, and his expression made it clear not just how much he hated the sun, but how much he hated wearing a metal chassis as he walked under it.
Next to him was that old core’s fable, the Collector himself. I had heard the stories and I had seen the illustrations in the academy library. I had seen him mentioned both in books that presented as empirical truth, and ones that made clear they were tall tales. Unfortunately, both truth and fable agreed on one thing; the Collector was a disgusting creature. If I had created him myself, I would have been proud enough to crow about his loathsomeness from the rooftops.
The Collector was like an abomination created by the lord of abominations, and then cast out for being too abominable. He wasn’t just a collector of cores, it seemed, but a collector of limbs and body parts, with various arms, legs, fingers, and toes taken from humans, orcs, gnomes, and other such species, and then somehow grafted to his body and made to function.
I could sense the fear inside Edgar now, and this transmitted to the other ravens, who flew much closer together than they normally would.
“Stay calm,” I said using my most relaxing voice, which wasn’t all too calming given that I am a dungeon core.
Traveling with the Collector were six dungeon cores, with three on either side of him. They moved on wooden platforms with wheels at the bottom, which seemed to roll forward of their own accord. It must have been some sort of artificery.
I wanted one. Badly. But that was for another time.
“Get a little closer,” I told Edgar.
The raven flew as low as he dared, which still left plenty of distance between him and the invaders.
I saw the cores in more detail now. Their construction was gem-based, like Jahn and me, but it was clear they weren’t from the academy. In the same way humans from different regions can sometimes tell one another apart, I knew that I shared no forgeship with these cores.
So…where had the Collector collected them from?
“Get a little lower, plea-” I began.
With a snap of light, four beings emerged around a golden, nugget-shaped core.
The figures took form as the core worked with the essence inside him, and soon, a flock of creatures took to the skies. These were monstrous things. If mother nature had made them, you’d have said she had taken a blow to the head that day. It would have been a great injustice to all birds to label them such; these things were like lizards given wings, but nothing at all like dragons.
The ravens packed closer together now, flying with at barely a wingspan apart. The flying lizards rushed through the air, their wings – lined with spikes, obviously – flapping like a giant clapping his hands together.
“Retreat,” I told Edgar. “Get back to the dungeon. I’ve seen enough.”
As the ravens swopped in an arc to face the dungeon way behind them, a ball of green fire shot from one lizard, smashing into a raven and sending him to the ground amidst a chorus of cries and mad flutters of his wings.
His raven mates squawked but they didn’t stop, and I felt a core’s version of anger; that being a steely determination to smash this Collector and his demented cores into the dirt.
“Shadow,” I said, projecting my core voice across the wasteland at to the dungeon, where the kobold waited at the surface door. “If the fight is on the surface, it will be a slaughter. Jahn can’t cope, and the clans certainly can’t. Not when these cores start sprouting kobolds from their orifices. Tell them to get to their cavern underground and seal themselves in.”
“Chief Reginal won’t like that. The invaders will destroy the town.”
“No, the Collector is here for me. That’s his whole thing, you see - he collects cores. Warn Reginal, then get yourself back into the dungeon. I’ll lead our new friend to my lair. My hallowed halls and gloomy passageways will be the last thing he sees. The only thing he’ll collect from me is a cart ride to the underworld, where he can sip tea with Mother Death. I heard she makes a lovely cake.”
CHAPTER 31
A bard, a shaman, a scout, two boss monsters, three fire beetles, three kobold miners, a troll-spider-leech hybrid, a drownjack, two jellies, four ravens and a duck, five puppies, a cowardly essence cultivator, and, of course, a narkleer.
It didn’t sound like much of an army, really. Then again, only a fool needs an army to win a war. That’s where all those lords and dukes and kings and queens go wrong. They assume that whoever has the most shivering soldiers lined up on their side of the battle, will win.
Tell that to the great city of Talzin, brought to its knees by a rat infected with the blackboil disease. And to the kingdom of Russyanov, lost t
o history when a baker left his oven unattended. What about Great Silus, renowned through Xynnar as a warrior with no equal, who died when he scratched his palm on a rusty nail and thought himself too strong to succumb to tetanus?
I was the rat. I was the blackened bread in the baker’s oven that grew into a blaze. I was the nail, covered in deadly bacteria just aching to spread into someone’s bloodstream.
Yes, the Collector could bring an army, and I still wouldn’t have cared.
“You seem worried, my friend,” said Gulliver. He sat on the core room floor and leaned against a wall, with one arm behind his back as though he was relaxing against an oak tree in a flowering meadow.
“I never look worried.”
“You do, you swine. I’ve spent enough time with you to tell. You get all short with your words and you bluster around giving orders to your minions.”
“Do you have the slightest idea what’s going on, Gull?”
He shrugged. “Another hero here for the slaughter, no?”
“This is no hero. In less than an hour, the Collector and a bunch of subservient cores will be invading my dungeon.”
The scribe held an ink-stained finger up and had a ‘got you!’ look on his face. “You have told me time and time again that a hero is merely…let’s see if I get this right…‘One who is not a core or monster, and finds their way into the core’s dungeon by their own means, for their own motives.’”
“Your point?”
“That the Collector, by classification, is a hero. And the cores coming with him will be heroes, too.”
“Ah, I see what you mean. Pull me up on semantics, today of all days. Fine, Gull, this will be a rare case where a core is a hero. Well done, very clever.”
“I don’t say this to display my enormous wit, my friend. I say it to remind you of something; whatever walks through the surface doors and down the slope to your dungeon, is nothing but a hero. And slaughtering heroes is what you do.”
“I told you; I’m not worried. I don’t need a pep talk.”
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 58