Monster Core: A Gamelit Harem Dungeon Core

by Dante King

  It stood to reason they’d been planning this from the start; I should’ve known better than to just slip out and assume I could sneak off or kill them in the dark. But why? Why wait until I attempted to escape by summoning Von Dominus?

  They wanted my avatar. For what reason I didn’t know.

  I concentrated on my jewel glowing gently in my hand and tried to return my consciousness there, but Bertha tightened her grip, and I had to stop myself cursing at the pain. I couldn’t focus. And if I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t reattach my consciousness to the stone.

  Bertha hauled me out of the living space and into a corridor. I didn’t dare try and break through. She was too damn strong, and I didn’t have any intention of letting her rip my arm out of its socket.

  The troll turned into a bedroom illuminated by a single torch. All manner of bones hung from the walls like trophies, but the room didn’t smell like death. Instead, it almost smelled pleasant with its lavender-like scent. It wasn’t all bones and flowers, though: a poleaxe rested in the corner. The weapon’s haft was much shorter than other poleaxes I was accustomed to seeing.

  “Sit,” Bertha commanded as she gestured at a giant bed sitting in the corner.

  I glanced at the poleaxe.

  “Don’t even try it,” she warned. Effortlessly, she tore my hand open and pulled the gem free of my fingers, then shoved me onto the bed. “Behave.”

  “Thing is, that’s really not how I do things.”

  “Good,” she murmured. Her purple irises seemed to sparkle, and my attention was drawn to the cleaver at her side as she rested a knee on the mattress. Her skirt hiked up, and I couldn’t help noticing the pleasing curve of her almost-bare ass. The skin was smooth and almost gleamed in the torch’s low light.

  Bertha removed the cleaver from her belt and tossed it beside the poleaxe.

  “I’m getting mixed messages,” I told her as I eyed up the naked blade just out of arm’s length.

  Again came that jazz-singer chuckle. “Want me to explain?”

  I looked back into those eyes and resisted the urge to enthrall her then and there. Better for her to underestimate me, give me space to move, and to think.

  “That’d be thrilling,” I said.

  “I never fit in with the other trolls. There aren’t many of us left on Shadow Crag. The dungeons gave us strength, made our males potent and our females fertile. Then they were gone. It took a while, but we are weak now. All the Infernal monsters are.”

  I couldn’t help noticing the way she said fertile. Blatant, wordless propositions aside, she sounded far sharper than even her mother. She knew her terrain. She knew about dungeon cores, obviously. And she hadn’t killed me—not just yet.

  “That’s why I’m here. I’ll bring you back to your true strength.” My voice had every inch of persuasion I could muster from a lithe elvish form and years of marketing.

  “I know. But I don’t think Ma sees your presence here the same way.”

  It was about fucking time I had a stroke of luck, a gorgeous female troll who wasn’t a direct threat.

  “She doesn’t matter. You want to be strong, right? You want to grow in power? A girl like you with all that muscle? You crave it. Help me. Let’s get out of here.”

  “I can’t. At least not yet. I need something from you first.”

  “Name it.” I was making too many deals but needed to get the fuck out of here.

  “I want to become one of your dungeon’s champions. My grandpa told me all about dungeons, and how their best monsters can evolve into something far beyond their natural limits. Ever since then, I wanted to become a dungeon champion. I searched the entire realm to see whether any Infernal dungeons still existed. I found none. So, I came back to this hole in the mountain, hoping to settle down. Charlie was the only other male troll of marriage-age on Shadow Crag, and I was to wed him. But then Jeff killed him.”

  I couldn’t help but grin at that. Things were looking up for Zagorath and Von Dominus. Finally.

  “It was you?” Bertha’s purple lips curved into an impossible-to-ignore smirk. “Then I am already in your debt. Please, allow me to be your champion. I am well-versed in combat. I have been trained by the best that remains of the Infernal masters. Name a weapon, I can use it.”

  “You sure you’re actually a troll?” I laughed. “Your family either wants to eat me or sell me to a guild.”

  Bertha sighed, and a concerned expression flooded her face. “I had a different father than Jeff. He was human. My birth was the result of the last witch doctor. He worked some magic that allowed my mother to harbor a troll-human hybrid.”

  “Can’t imagine it was easy living with your mother and Jeff.”

  “They’ve… not been kind. Beat me and teased me for being ugly. Anger’s all I’ve ever known for them, not love. I want to see them dead.”

  “Bertha, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.” I paused, saw her smile widen, then my mind flickered back to the two mountains of flesh outside and what they had planned for me. “Tell me about this guild. Jeff mentioned something about one. What do they want with my core?”

  “They’re not a guild. They’re bandits. Guilds don’t exist in this realm anymore.”

  “What about Entropy?”

  “I’ve never heard the name.”

  From Bertha’s ignorance, I figured Entropy existed in one or more of the other realms. Lilith had seemed to indicate that the guild was infamous, so the half-troll not knowing about them suggested they weren’t present in the Infernal Realm. It just meant I had to become powerful enough to draw them to me–or seek them out.

  “Tell me more about Gavin’s bandits,” I said.

  “They’re not his. He was just a member. They call themselves the Sand Pirates. They break all the rules set down by the Pantheon. They don’t care. They’ll take your core. Maybe they’ll sell you to a sorcerer who dabbles in forbidden magic. Or maybe they’ll try to break you down, take your essence, and attempt to make their own seals from it. Either way, if they come and you’re still here, it’ll mean trouble.”

  Attractive and informative. Bertha was proving to be the best thing to happen to me in the Sinarius Realms since Lilith had dragged me here.

  “Turns out, trouble is kinda my strong suit.” A thought struck me. ”Who’s Gavin?”

  “Ma’s lover. He’s a troll of considerable strength.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. How many of these scum-sucking shit-for-brains was I going to have to kill to get out of here?

  “Can you take him?” I glanced over her meager weaponry.

  “Not alone.”

  “Bertha! You be done yet?” Jeff called out from the passageway.

  “Not quite,” Bertha lifted her head to yell. “He’s just started to touch my tits!”

  I heard Jeff groan as his footsteps grew quiet in retreat.

  “He’s a prude,” Bertha explained. “He doesn’t want to walk in on his sister fucking an elf.”

  Evidently, Bertha and I were on a different planet right now—what the hell did Jeff think we were doing in here?

  “You want to… y’know, explain that?” I asked her.

  Bertha nodded. “Ma and Jeff think if you breed with me, then I will become pregnant with little dungeon core babies. They believe I could carry hundreds of tiny jewels and gain them a fortune. Stupid, I know, but they think it’ll work.”

  I decided to can every idea I had about Bertha’s mother being some kind of intellectual powerhouse. Obviously, biology wasn’t taught in troll school. Or maybe they were onto something? Magic effectively did away with all my knowledge of science, but surely sex with a dungeon core didn’t create more dungeon cores.

  That would just be ridiculous.

  Except—there was something magical about sex in this world. My Vampiric Expertise perk allowed me to gain the power of a dungeon avatar whenever I fucked or killed them. What power exactly, and to what extent, I didn’t know. But did my perk exte
nd beyond avatars? Would sleeping with Bertha also cause my power to increase?

  Whenever I killed a monster, I gained Infernal Essence, so the killing part definitely held up. But would fucking a monster also give me some kind of Essence? Sex-sence, if you will?

  I looked at the troll sitting beside me on the bed, and her expression actually became a little shy. Her cheeks turned a deep emerald, a far cry from her previous warrior demeanor.

  I had to put my chips on testing my perk with Bertha. Plus, I’d been stuck in my core for the last twenty-three hours and needed to stretch and limber up a bit, particularly if I was about to walk headfirst into a shitfest.

  Given Bertha’s muscle-laden body, however beautiful, I wondered whether my elvish one would even be capable of sustaining a romp with a half-troll.

  “We could just leave,” Bertha cut through my thoughts. “With you by my side, they wouldn’t be able to stop us.”

  I hadn’t spoken for almost a minute. She’d obviously taken my thoughts to mean hesitation, or some kind of standoffish, elitist silence. The creature I’d contacted hadn’t arrived with his tribe yet, and I couldn’t bank on their presence. Fighting my way out, even with Bertha by my side, wasn’t going to end well, particularly if Gavin turned up.

  We needed reinforcements.

  By the way Bertha was ogling me, I was guessing she needed reinforcement of a different kind. I was more than happy to oblige and test the limits of my elf’s body, but still didn’t know if I could trust her. She certainly seemed honest, and I figured myself a half-decent judge of character.

  Either she was genuine in her desire to help me, or she’d betray me, but what did I have to lose? And maybe there was a chance my Vampiric Expertise would work through a little rough-and-tumble?

  It was a win-win situation.

  “Well, we wouldn’t want to miss out on disgusting Jeff, now would we?” I finally said.

  Bertha’s tongue slid out and brushed her curved lips with a soft moan. “You want to breed?”

  “As long as you don’t actually start swelling up with dungeon cores, it would be my pleasure.”

  The troll beamed, bit her lip, and stared at me. “Legends say elves are well-endowed.”

  “Couldn’t tell you. I’m usually a beautiful little stone on your mantelpiece.”

  I hadn’t exactly checked my own equipment. An hour a day of running from lunatic Infernal creatures didn’t really give you a lot of time for self-appreciation.

  I let a salacious smile cross my face as I pushed off the wall to the edge of the bed. She settled as her powerful legs curled under her, and I reached out. My fingers brushed her neck, and a subtle smile practically dripping with lust touched her full lips. She leaned her face into my palm, and I heard a playful note in her tone that I hadn’t noticed before.

  “You seem eager,” she said.

  “I like new experiences.” I slid closer as I thanked my earlier choice to pick a fast and agile creature to possess. My movements were silky and soft, and it wasn’t lost on the gorgeous creature in front of me. “Never been with a troll before.”

  “Half-troll,” she corrected.

  “And I can’t begin to tell you how much I’m glad that’s the case.” A thought occurred, and I muttered a curse. “I’m on a clock. The elf will return to the jewel in a little less than fifty minutes.”

  Bertha raised an eyebrow but moaned softly as my hand glided over her side, bare and warm and ridged with muscle. She felt incredible, brimming with savage strength and lust.

  “Do you really think you can last that long with me?” she asked.

  I chuckled in her ear, then traced a line down over her shoulder with my lips. For all her big talk, she was practically vibrating with lust and desire. “How about we see who finishes first, then you can make all the snarky comments you like.”

  “I’ll break you in half if I’m not careful,” she growled back. “You’d better be as good as your word.”

  She wasn’t kidding about her strength.

  Her hand caught my chest, pulled me to her, and tore at the neck of my tunic. I felt a couple of the fastenings give as she hauled it over my head. The cool air touched my bare chest, but all I felt was heat. Bertha shoved me, and my back hit the hard mattress. The bed creaked when she followed.

  Then her mouth was on mine.

  My only frame of reference for kissing in the Sinarius Realms was Lilith, but Bertha was another flavor entirely. Her mouth generated an intense heat, her lips were firm, and her tongue was aggressive.

  I felt her catch my wrists, and I couldn’t help but grin as pleasure exploded into my bloodstream. Her rippling thighs pinned mine into the bed, and her wet tongue slid into my mouth. I savored her taste as my tongue brushed over tiny ridges in hers.

  Bertha ground into me, her smooth voice deepening further into an animalistic growl as I sank my teeth into her lip, almost drawing blood. She pulled her mouth away from mine forcefully and straightened up, but her hips continued to move rhythmically as she pleased herself against my hardened muscle.

  I watched her grin as she placed my core in her teeth. With a vicious tug, she tore off her leather corset, freeing her breasts before tossing the clothing behind my head and leaning over me again. Her tongue flickered out and left a warm line of pleasure on my face.

  Almost delicately, she placed my core onto her pillow. My only free hand found her ass and gripped her while my fingers dug into her powerful muscle, her salacious smile growing wider as she kissed me again.

  The half-troll’s hand traveled south under my trousers and tightened.

  My breath caught in my throat, and her eyes sparkled with mischief as she looked into mine.

  “I was right about you,” she whispered. “And I give you five minutes.”

  Chapter Eight

  I wasn’t sure exactly how long we had been at it since checking my timer was probably impolite, but I was on the cusp of outlasting Bertha. The half-troll’s hair was starting to escape its braid, and the dark brown strands tickled my hip as she leaned back. Her whole body trembled from her release, and her bottom lip quivered with ecstasy.

  My back curved upward as my own hellish avatar exploded with pleasure, electric heat blasting through every limb, through every fiber of my being. My core vibrated and shuddered on the pillow behind my head. The jewel glowed with a bright crimson light that mixed with the shadows cast by the torch.

  For a moment, I felt my consciousness flux and flicker between the gem and the elf. I detected a potent essence swirling inside Bertha before that same essence flooded into me. Delirium ensnared me and left me feeling as if I was halfway between a dream and waking. The essence was slowly moving out of the bare creature straddling me and into my avatar.

  But it didn’t stop there.

  It pumped through my veins like a shot of adrenaline and then siphoned into my core. A rush of power enveloped me, and I was seeing through both my avatar and my jewel at the same time. The entire room became completely known to me, an infusion of true knowledge right down to the atomic level.

  Was this the Vampiric Expertise?

  Bertha’s hair brushed my cheek, my face splitting into a satisfied smirk as the sensation faded. My senses returned from their omnipresent state as my consciousness reattached itself to Von Dominus.

  Something had changed.

  The elf had felt agile before with his sharp senses and sharper reflexes, but now his body felt more powerful, somehow. Every sinuous strand of muscle snaking under my skin brimmed with heat and strength. Lilith hadn’t been lying to me; I really could take the perks from the females I decided to sleep with. Bertha wasn’t a dungeon core, but the same power that radiated from every inch of her was now mine.

  “You said you don’t have a lot of time before you return to your jewel.” Bertha panted, slipped off my lap, and dropped beside me on the earth-moulded mattress. “We should leave.”

  Bertha was the first woman who hadn’t wanted to kiss and
cuddle after sex. In a way, I was a bit disappointed, but she was right. Every second I lay here, I was wasting time. We needed to move. I had trouble even lifting a hand since my mind was still reeling from the sex. Holy shit, that had been something else.

  I forced myself upright, and the daze of my climax lifted. Rather than feeling exhausted, every part of me burst with energy.

  I was spoiling for a fight.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” I chuckled as she started to collect her clothes from around the room.

  Bertha’s eyes narrowed as she looked at me. “What is it?”

  “I’m going to enthrall you. You think you can kill Jeff and Ma if they get in your way, but they’re your family, and you could hesitate. If I join my mind with yours, you won’t even think twice. Better for you, better for me.”

  “I’ll do it,” Bertha said without hesitation.

  I rolled over onto my side, placed a hand on either side of her face, and held her head in my hands. My gaze locked onto hers just as it had with Lilith and Charlie, and I reached out with my elf’s mind. I found her mind deep within her pupils, lost inside a miasma of hurt and violence. She was a mess of emotions and traumatic experiences, but she would be my mess. My vision became almost completely clouded in crimson as I touched her soul.

  Charm test . . . Success!

  Bertha the Hell Troll successfully Captured!

  Hell Troll / Human (Black Sands)

  Name: Bertha

  Core: Infernal

  Rarity: Common

  Possible Evolutions: 2 (Cave Troll, War Troll)

  “I’m yours now . . . Master.”

  “My gaze didn’t enthrall you,” I said. “It captured you.”

  “I’m yours. Your champion. Forever sealed to your core.”

  I hadn’t even started building my dungeon yet, and I already had a champion. I was itching to eke out my existence as a collection of floors filled with traps and monsters on the mountain’s peak, but first I needed to escape this grotto.