“Gary,” I said, “Get after…”
“Dark Lord?”
“Forget it. It’s too late.”
The portal had closed behind Cael, leaving no trace of the hero.
CHAPTER 3
“Remove the guts and bones and everything else,” I said. “But keep the bloodstains. They add to the aesthetic of our dungeon.”
Three kobolds blinked at me from a tunnel covered in smashed stones and flattened heroes. Wylie, Tarius, and Maginhart were technically my mining team, but I had no mining work scheduled for them today, so I had roped them into after-battle cleanup.
“Why not keep bodies there, Dark Lord?” asked Wylie. He was shorter than the kobolds he supervised, but he made up for it with a disciplinarian streak that had surprised everyone. Wylie loved work and hated slackers. This made him a great supervisor for the other kobolds, a species who famously love to shirk from work.
“Leave the bodies to rot, you mean?” I said.
“Rot smell is bad. Will make heroes scared if dungeon smells of death.”
“It would, that’s true. But with rot comes disease, and you lot may not be completely invulnerable to pathogens that come from dead heroes. I can’t have my dungeon creatures getting sick.”
“Dried blood not make us sick too?” asked Wylie.
“Good point,” agreed Tarius, one of my cleverer kobolds. He wore a white shirt upon which he had written the words ‘Hed of Dungeon Yunion’ in what looked like blood. “If rotting hero corpses could make us sick, why can’t blood? That comes from heroes too.”
“We’ll scorch the bloodstains with mana fire. That will get rid of the potential of disease while leaving the stains there for future heroes to see. Satisfied? Are you oxygen thieves done questioning my orders, or do I need to scorch you with mana fire to rid myself of the disease of your stupidity?”
“Dark Lord!” said Wylie. “Remember what we talk about?”
“What?” I said.
“Dungeon is no place for…”
“Ah. Yes. A dungeon is no place to lose your temper. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said. I’m under quite a lot of stress. Within ten seconds, I went from having Cael trapped and almost killing him, to having him flee my dungeon with a vow to return and destroy me at an unspecified later date. This turned from a regular hero-versus-core fight, to a personal vendetta.”
“Is Dark Lord in danger?” asked Wylie.
“Perhaps. The next time Cael returns, he won’t be seeking loot. He’ll want to battle his way to my core room and destroy me.”
“Then what we do?”
“I’ll be in my core room pondering that very question. Just remember what I said. Get rid of the corpses, but keep the bloodstains.”
Since I was made of gemstone and didn’t have legs, I used one of my magic pedestals to transport myself from my loot room and to my core room.
When I materialized there, I was finally alone. A mana stream bubbled in the corner of the room, while lamps cast purple and orange glows all around, lending a cozy feel to my chamber. One wall was dominated by an oak bookcase that I had bought from a merchant in Yondersun. As of now, I only had five books on it, but I planned to fix that. I had settled on a treat system for myself, where killing a hero meant I could spend gold on a new book. After killing Cael’s brothers, I could buy myself a couple of new novels. Lovely.
Settled in my core room, I checked the results from my fight with the brothers.
Heroes slain: 2
Leveled up to 14!
- Total essence increased to 1309
- Existing crafting categories expanded
- Dungeon capacity increased: 23 rooms, 29 monsters, 28 traps, 15 puzzles, 2 boss monsters
I took a second to appreciate the feeling of increased strength that this brought me. The numbers themselves were meaningless; why did I care if my core rank was level 14 or 500? The increase in essence was the key.
Essence was what I used to create monsters, traps, and puzzles in my dungeon. Every time I used up all my essence I would have to wait for it to replenish. This was where Tomlin, my essence cultivator, was important. He took care of the essence vines in another part of my dungeon. The more vines I had, the healthier they were, the quicker my essence replenished.
But it was my total essence capacity that decided what I could create. If a monster cost 5000 essence to make but my capacity was 3000, then I needed to level up until I had enough.
So, any increase in essence was welcome. Even more welcome, though, was something else that leveling up had brought me.
Ability unlocked: Float
[No longer bound to pedestal points, you can now travel through your dungeon, and other places, by floating in the air.]
A cheer coming from beyond the core room broke my thoughts. It seemed to emanate from the loot room and sounded suspiciously like all my dungeon creatures celebrating something. But what would they have to cheer about?
Never mind. I didn’t have time for that.
Instead, I focused back on my post-battle notifications.
So, I had earned the float ability? Well, that was a pick-me-up after a horrible few weeks.
The last time I had unlocked an ability through killing heroes and leveling up my core self, I had gained the power of core control. Core control let me assume control of my dungeon monsters for a limited time. It was incredibly useful and meant that in times of crisis, I could wield my monsters like a hero wielded a blade.
There was no arguing that in terms of dungeon effectiveness, core control was more powerful than float. So, why was I a lot more excited to earn the float power?
Until now, there were only two ways I could travel somewhere. One was by using pedestal points, which would allow me to leave one room and materialize on a pedestal in another. This limited me to traveling to rooms that already had pedestals in them, which ruled out most of Xynnar.
My second way of travel was simpler but less dignified - by being carried. What sort of diabolical evil-doer likes being carried around like a cat? No, that wasn’t for me, and as such, it meant that I was confined to my dungeon and select parts of Yondersun.
But now…
“What are you so happy about?” said a voice.
A man strode into the core room. He wore a ridiculously frilly shirt, a velvet jacket with a golden brooch clasped to the hem, silk trousers the color of sunlight, and a pair of winkle pickers that must once have belonged to a jester. As he strutted toward me, I briefly activated my core senses and was rewarded with a smell of pungent perfume. I closed my core senses just as quickly.
“Gulliver!” I said. “A nice surprise. So that was why I heard cheering in the core room.”
For some reason, my dungeon creatures loved Gulliver. I couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t that I disliked him; as humans go, he was one of my best friends. For some reason, though, my creatures acted as if a visit from Gulliver was like having a king come to town.
“The one and only,” Gulliver said. “Yes, it’s yours truly. The greatest scribe in the whole of Xynnar, the greatest lover in the land, and a rather nice guy to boot.” He flashed me a smile. “It’s good to see you, Beno! What’s got you looking so cheery?”
“You can tell that I’m in a good mood?”
“You might be made of minerals, but I know when you’re pleased. Like the times when you disembowel a poor sap in your loot room, or when you see one of your monsters tear a hero to pieces. You get excited in an innocent, rather childlike way.”
“Watch this,” I said.
I floated off my pedestal and hovered in the air three feet away from it. It was a strange feeling, being suspended like that. Having no limits on where I could move. I felt as if someone had just cut through chains holding me back.
“See? How fantastic is that?”
Gulliver said nothing and betrayed not a hint of excitement. “Well?” he said. “What am I waiting for?”
“I’m floating, Gull! I’m moving ar
ound, and I’m not on a pedestal!”
“Haven’t you always been able to float?”
“Obviously not.”
“I don’t know…I’m certain you have.”
“Well, you spent so long in my dungeon that you wrote a bloody book about it! Why not check your writings and see if there’s mentioning of me being able to float around?”
“I might just do that, Beno. While we’re on the subject of books and favors that you owe me, I need to speak to you.”
“Favors that I owe you?”
“Why, yes. For the book.”
“The book that restored your career and earned you a fat wedge of gold? The one you barely needed to write, and instead got your inspiration directly from my dungeon exploits?”
“Let’s not pretend it didn’t earn you any coins either, Beno. I was true to my word, and I paid you fair royalties.”
“Fine, you stuck to your word and didn’t try to stiff me. But today isn’t the best day to discuss that. I’m a little busy.”
“Yes, I had a chat with Wylie before I came to see you. He was taking a wheelbarrow full of body parts outside, and the tunnel leading to your loot room is drenched in blood. Business is good, I take it? Lots of heroes coming to visit?”
“Not exactly.”
“It was rather a lot of blood, Beno.”
“It isn’t that a lot of heroes have come. It’s the same hero who’s visited several times. The bugger kept defeating me and making off with my loot.”
“He didn’t look like he’d made off with anything to me,” said Gulliver. “Not judging by the pile of flesh in the wheelbarrow.”
“Let me start at the beginning.”
I explained everything to Gulliver, starting with Cael and his brothers’ first appearance in my dungeon, the subsequent times they beat me, my hard work and new plan to get my own back, and ending with Cael’s vow of revenge.
Gulliver drummed his chin. “Hmm. You have a hero who is very capable, experienced, and has vowed to not just take loot from you, but to destroy you personally. Quite a quandary. Quite a quandary indeed. An awful quandary to be in.”
“Would you stop saying quandary?”
“Perhaps it would be better to have an old pal stick around for a while. Someone to run ideas by, someone to give you dollops of sage advice.”
“Let me guess; you need to write another book.”
“Ah, Beno. Always so cynical.”
“I’ll go one step further in my guess, then. Despite the success of the last book that you wrote about my exploits, you’ve wasted a mountain of gold, you’re broke, and you need to write another.”
“This dungeon is having a negative effect on you, Beno. It’s giving you a dim view of the world. Why so skeptical? Why not give your friend the benefit of the doubt? Is it completely impossible that I might have come to visit you for friendship’s sake?”
“Fine. I suppose I have misjudged you before now, and you proved me wrong. I’m sorry, Gulliver.”
“Apology accepted. Now, I have gotten myself into quite a lot of debt. I need gold, and that means I need to write another book. Hence, I need stuff to put in that book. So, chum, I’m going to hang around for a while and see if anything happens that’s worthy of another of my genius tomes. Since you have something going on with this Cael fellow, perhaps you could use the advice of one as seasoned and experienced as me? I used to be a warscribe, after all. First, how do we know this Cael fellow will even come back? People say things they don’t mean in the heat of the moment.”
“I killed his brothers, Gull.”
“All’s fair with heroes and dungeons. Everyone knows the risks they take when they creep into a tomb. If they don’t, then natural selection wins again. When Cael calms down, he might realize it’s best to write this off as a bad day, and find another dungeon to raid.”
“This is a matter of honor for him. He swore a vow and everything.”
“Ah. He’s one of those heroes, is he? The vowing kind. Right. So what’s the plan?”
“Three options, as I see it,” I said. “One, I leave this dungeon and open a new one far, far away.”
“Rather cowardly, Beno. Doesn’t sound like you.”
“No, but if we’re considering options, let’s consider them all. And…that’s done. Option one is considered and thus rejected. So that leaves me two choices; either pack my dungeon to the gills with creatures and traps to make it stronger than ever before, or…”
“Pack it with puppies and treats and make him think he’s got the wrong address?”
“Or, instead of waiting for Cael to show up here, I go hunting for him. Right now, he’s alone, tired, and injured. It’s the perfect time to strike, and he won’t expect it. Who has ever heard of a dungeon core leaving his dungeon and going hunting for heroes?”
“Ah. You might be on to something! I once served as Duke Kester’s warscribe back when he tried to spread civility to the remote settlements in the far west, across the river of Tanyor. Never mind that the civilizations out there are thousands of years older than ours and far more civil than some jumped-up duke…but anyway, we were crossing through dense jungle to shave a day off our travel time, when we were beset by vine reavers. Big, ugly, horrible beasts that love nothing more than to tear a man apart. Disgusting, bloodthirsty creatures. No offense to you or your dungeon monsters, Beno.”
“None taken,” I said. “I’m proud to have my beasts compared to vine weavers.”
“Reavers. Vine weavers are something else entirely.”
“I know.”
“You were making a joke? Beno, you have really changed!”
“Come on, do you think there’s a creature out there that I don’t know about?” I said. “I read every creature book in the Dungeon Core Academy.”
“Nobody likes a show-off, Beno. Anyway, we fled from them. All 200 of the duke’s soldiers running through the jungle like cats fleeing a broom. It didn’t matter how fast we ran; the reavers caught us and destroyed half our host before the first night was through.
We spent all that night discussing it, coming up with plans to get out of the jungle, to outrun these beasts who could sprint faster than a cheetah with its arse on fire. We had nothing. Not a single plan.
And then…we decided to just face them. To brandish our swords, to cast a few spells, and at least go down fighting. Do you know what happened? At the first sight of us taking the fight to them, the reavers ran away! They had rarely encountered men, you see. They certainly had never come across an animal that ceased behaving like prey and instead acted like a predator.
That’s why this might actually work, Beno. Nobody likes it when their opponent doesn’t act the way they expect. I say you’re right; let’s chase this Cael fella, hunt him down, and you can do your whole slaughter thing. What’s stopping you?”
“For one, even on his own, Cael is no joke. He’s a wartificer. They get their powers by having scars gouged onto their bodies, and they draw the shape of their scars on their weapons and armor when they need to wield their powers. Getting even one wartificer scar is excruciating, I’m told. So far I’ve seen Cael use at least five different runemarks. He’s not averse to discomfort.”
“Pain threshold or not, he can still die.”
“Which leads me to my next problem. See, throughout my life as a dungeon core, through tons of fights with heroes, I’ve always ascribed to one rule; to kill someone, you need to know where they are.”
“Ah. Cael left via a portal.”
“Exactly. He used a portal stone, which means he could be anywhere in Xynnar. Although I can leave my dungeon now that I can float, the further away I am, the more vulnerable I become. My essence use outside the dungeon is weak at best, which means I can’t create more monsters when I leave it.”
“And you don’t want to be wandering around Xynnar asking every arse-scratching merchant or commoner excuse me, have you seen a hero named Cael?”
“That’s the size of it. I need
to know where this cabbage brain is.”
“Well, Beno my friend, there exist in this fine world a thing called towns, though you might not realize it. In those towns are people called merchants, who offer goods and services in exchange for recompense. Some of those merchants…”
“Spare me the wit, Gull. I had enough of it reading your last book.”
Gulliver sighed. “Such disregard for language. You have no culture, Beno. If you want it said simply, then fine. Here it is. There’s a town fifty miles away, Hogsfeate, where a mage named Hardere lives. Among his many services, he can trace a person even if they hop through a dozen portals. Moneylenders utilize his services quite a lot. Unless you bribe him to refuse service to moneylenders first, of course. Not that I’m speaking from experience. But anyway, you just need some of your target’s blood, and Hardere will do the rest.”
“Blood? That’s good news! I have lots of it.”
“Not his brothers’ blood, Beno. Cael’s.”
“Yes? I have lots of that, too. He might have beaten me and taken my loot every time he came here, but I never made it easy. Let me check some of my bloodstains; I’m sure one belongs to him. Wylie has been keeping track of them, it’s something of a hobby for him.”
“There, you see? Good old Gulliver comes to visit, and all your problems are solved.”
“Not quite.”
“No? We’ll go to Hogsfeate, track Cael, and then you can murder him before he has a chance to recover, get stronger, and come back for you.”
“It won’t be that easy, Gull.”
“No? I thought I explained it well enough.”
“I told you; away from my dungeon, I can barely use my essence. I certainly can’t use it to create monsters. That means I’ll need to take an army of creatures with me once I know where he is. So far, Cael has been too strong for any of my monsters. I’ll need something new. A creature he can’t beat.”
“Why not conjure one while you’re in your dungeon, and then bring it to Hogsfeate with you?”
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