by Dante King
Gavin hauled himself back, and I retracted my spikes back into the trap. It became invisible again, merging with the surface of my dungeon floor. I figured I could reuse the trap and trigger it a second time, but I doubted the troll would be foolish enough to step onto the same spot again. Eight of the twelve stone spikes were still secured to the spring mechanism, and the other four were embedded deep within his leg. I could still feel the severed remnants of my trap as they ground against my enemy’s bones.
Another shadow-sphere crashed beneath Gavin’s feet, and he roared again. His balance had been affected by the wound in his left foot, and he was overcompensating with his right.
Well, there was only one thing to do with a wounded animal.
“Put him down,” I silently commanded my minions.
Gavin stumbled backward after Puck launched another shadow-sphere, this one smashing into his stomach, the sphere exploding into black tendrils that reached over the troll’s torso like grasping fingers. Blood splashed over my obsidian floor as Gavin swept his club in a wide arc. His movements were wild, his singular eye bulging. Bertha used the opportunity and slashed his shoulder. Her blade ripped open tendons, and even more blood spattered my floor.
“Traitor,” Gavin screamed at the half-troll. “Murdering slime. You will die!”
“Stay on him,” I conveyed to my champions. “Don’t let him breathe.”
Puck dived with his bone-white claws extended, and they tore at the troll’s face. Gavin was forced to swing recklessly with his free hand while his other used the club to keep him upright. Bertha’s poleaxe struck true again, ripping open his chest, puncturing stony skin, and spilling even more blood.
My dungeon floor was quickly turning crimson, but I loved every second of it.
“You watching this, Lilith?” My gem was gleaming brightly with bloodlust, and I hoped the goddess was witnessing this slaughter. No doubt she would be pleased.
Gavin’s pain was multiplied when another ball of Puck’s magic exploded against his chest. The troll groaned as Bertha tightened her grip, but before she could tear it free, he caught hold of the weapon. With a deafening roar, Gavin yanked the weapon free from Bertha’s hands with his fast-fading strength.
My champion stumbled forward, and she let her weapon slide free of her grasp. Gavin grinned for a split second before she barreled forward and used the momentum he’d given her. Bertha went low and smashed her shoulder into his gut, hitting him like a runaway freight train. Together, they crashed into the wall of my dungeon, and I felt the impact reverberate through every wall, and floor, and stair of it.
My hypothesis that Hell Trolls were impossibly hard to kill quickly became a solid conclusion when Gavin slammed an elbow down on Bertha’s back. She was forced to release him, but then the troll caught another shadow-sphere in the face. Whatever power had allowed the troll to shrug off the magical projectiles earlier must have faded because now the sphere enveloped his entire face like octopus tentacles.
Puck swooped in with Gavin completely unaware, while Bertha drew back her poleaxe. My two champions attacked the troll at once, Puck slashing at Gavin’s exposed neck while Bertha cleaved him in two. The halves of Gavin separated cleanly, and his severed entrails and disconnected organs splattered onto the floor.
My champions didn’t disappoint.
Bertha twirled the poleaxe in her hands as Puck blasted Gavin’s bottom half with another sphere of Infernal magic. The disfigured remnants of the troll painting my dungeon floor was the finest artwork, a fine tribute to Lilith’s honor.
I counted it the first of many, at least until I dethroned her.
Bertha caught hold of her stepfather’s head and lifted the severed torso off the blood-soaked floor. She gazed into Gavin’s single eye while her two hands gripped the head almost tenderly.
“Send Lilith Zagorath’s regards,” she said as a beautiful smile touched her savage face.
Then she slammed her hands together, and Gavin’s skull caved in, echoing like a gunshot. The sound reverberated through the suddenly-still antechamber, and Puck let out a delightful yip.
Damn, my champions were all kinds of brutal. I was a dungeon in this world’s version of hell, and I couldn’t be more pleased with how they’d taken to the job.
Bertha stood and rolled her shoulders as a sharp exhale flowed through her teeth. Puck spun chaotic circles in the air, and a savage elation filled my entire being. The feeling bathed my whole dungeon: the entrance, the floor, the stairs, and all the way to my glistening core.
Chapter Fifteen
A notification sprang into my consciousness.
Zagorath killed Gavin the Sand Pirate!
Infernal Essence + 1,000
Soul Essence + 500
My senses shifted a little, and the dungeon was bathed in darkness, illuminated by the Infernal Essence floating above Gavin’s remains. But there was another source of light that burned the color of gold. It was drifting up from the remnants of the tattoo on his back.
I drew it into my dungeon, and my gem flared. It had a different flavour to the others. Instead of the now-familiar darkness of Infernal Essence, and the robustness of Physical, it seemed to teem and bubble with a different kind of energy altogether.
It was almost intelligent.
Was this Soul Essence? I didn’t understand its function for my dungeon, but I consumed every last bit of it. The use of Soul Essence could be dealt with later.
Gavin’s body dissolved as the flesh peeled from his bones and melted into steam. His skeletal remains cracked into dust and dissipated into the obsidian floor.
It was a satisfying end for my toughest foe yet.
With the Infernal Essence I’d gained, I tended to the wounds of Puck and Bertha. I discovered I could continue the healing process while centering my mind elsewhere. It was a strange kind of split-consciousness, as though my mind might one day be capable of being truly in multiple places at once. I suspected I’d continue to grow in power until that was the case, but for now, I had what remained of Gavin’s gear to consume.
I cast my senses over his remarkable mace.
Acquired Item!
Savage Mace of Dark Agility
Rarity: Magic
Damage Type: Infernal
Seals: Swiftness
Swiftness channels the essence inside a wielder and increases their speed.
I almost chuckled at the name and wondered who cataloged these items. Did Lilith have some divine assistant who’d grown a little too fond of naming weapons with sinister adjectives? Despite my flippancy, the mace was nothing to laugh at.
It was a stout, powerful weapon, loaded with a hellish energy. I’d witnessed firsthand the power the seal could provide its wielder. The magical source was the rune I’d noticed carved near the mace’s stone head. I examined how the weapon fitted together, the way it’d been fastened, the exact weight and dimensions, and the craftsmanship. It was a rough weapon, but infinitely more advanced than the stone I’d spent hours digesting and understanding.
My jewel’s stomach had all the room in the world now, so I started to consume it. The molecules from the rock lifted into the air, soared toward my jewel, and shifted behind my core’s hard surfaces. The mace’s stone head was simple to digest and carried almost no taste. In fact, it was almost bland, but I enjoyed it all the same. I paused at the part of the stone where the rune was drawn, and decided I’d save it for last. I imagined the taste would be incredible, and I never ate dessert before dinner.
Leaving the thin slice of enchanted rock untouched, I started to devour the wooden haft. I was only a few bites in before I had to stop and reflect on the experience. The wood was unlike anything I’d seen on Earth, and it seemed to have an almost purple sheen. It carried a flavor distinct from rocks, and the oiled and well-cared-for handle haft almost tasted like an aged whiskey. I imagined the tree it had come from, this visualization only enhancing the flavor.
This wooden handle was the first substance
I’d consumed that had actually been alive once. The tingle over my core wasn’t quite electric, but seemed to hum all the same, as if the memories of organic life still shimmered through its molecules. The final speck of wood entered my core, and I brimmed with pleasure.
It was a meal even the head chef of Hell’s Kitchen would have appreciated.
Zagorath Consumed a Savage Mace
Physical Essence +100
Finally, a blueprint of the stone-headed weapon blazed into my consciousness, clear as daylight. Incredibly simple, but still far more complex and advanced than anything I’d consumed before.
I understood it.
I knew then that if I wished to reconstruct such a weapon, I would simply have to channel my Physical Essence and an identical replica would come to life. It was a kind of infused knowledge, the same knowledge I had used to construct my Spring Trap.
Satisfied with this skill acquisition, I moved onto the sliver of rock marked with the Swiftness seal. Shimmering with Infernal essence, its purpose became clear to me as I slowly consumed its edges. The seal was a conduit that would feed from a stream of near-constant energy. In the case of monsters, it would be the Infernal Essence inside them. My avatar would use that same essence as well as the magic existing within my dungeon core. Gavin, on the other hand, had used the substance contained within his magical branding: Soul Essence. I wasn’t sure how Gavin had acquired the tattoo, but Bertha had mentioned it was the mark of a Sand Pirate.
I moved onto the leather scraps of Gavin’s clothing. All that was left were tattered remnants of something resembling an Ancient Roman battle skirt. The texture was tough and carried a salty taste. Like the wood I’d consumed, it brought a sensation of organic life, specifically the cow-like creature the leather had been harvested from. In the case of the battle skirt, I could consume its Physical Essence but couldn’t learn the details of its construction. I figured the brokenness of the item prevented me from complete understanding, and that my ‘infused knowledge’ skill required an item to be whole.
Well, at least I could make old scraps of leather.
Leather pieces were often used to craft items in games, so maybe they would prove useful?
Zagorath Acquired Crafting Material
Leather Scraps
When the scraps dissolved, there was a tiny trinket in the shape of a bat left in their place. I hadn’t noticed it before since it was so small, and it almost looked like a D&D miniature.
Puck snatched up the device before I could consume it. “This is pretty, Master.”
He had obviously fully healed and returned to his annoying ways. “Keep hold of it for now. I have something else I want to do.”
I cast my sight over Bertha and looked at her with pride. She and Puck had both fought valiantly. Their healing had cost a total of 150 Infernal Essence, but they had earned far more. They both deserved a reward.
While I was more than happy to fulfil the position as evil overlord, I knew rewards worked better for morale than intimidation alone. If the trinket Puck was holding turned out to be nothing other than a keepsake, I would allow him to keep it. I figured Bertha would prefer a more personal approach to being rewarded.
I had just consumed a mace of great power, and Bertha could always add another two-handed item to her arsenal. She had told me she’d been trained with many weapons, but it would probably be easier to enchant her poleaxe with the Swiftness rune. A burst of extra speed certainly wouldn’t go amiss inside my dungeon. Enchanting her weapon would benefit me at the same time, but I genuinely wanted to thank her for her service.
Maybe I could try something even more ambitious?
“Bertha, give me your poleaxe,” I commanded.
She looked puzzled but laid it dutifully on the floor. I pounced on the weapon with my mind. With my new understanding of the wooden handle, my plan would easily come to fruition. The metal blade, however, would prove far more difficult.
I touched the substance and realized it was formed in flames from a liquid but was still simply another kind of stone I hadn’t yet tasted. I gnawed at it as I figured out the dimensions, the thickness of the blade, the tightly-bonded atoms that gave it its strength, its sharpness, and its killing power.
A moment later, I had it, and my whole dungeon shook with excitement as the form of the poleaxe suddenly illuminated my consciousness. I had yet another blueprint, another thing I could form from raw Physical Essence. The long weapon vanished into essence as I consumed it, and Bertha cried out.
“Master, what are you—”
“Patience,” I chided her, grinning to myself.
Zagorath Consumed an Iron Poleaxe
Physical Essence +200
Curiously, the amount of Physical Essence I’d earned from consuming Bertha’s poleaxe was far greater than what I’d gained from Gavin’s mace. I pondered this for a moment before coming to the conclusion that absorbing metal yielded much more than regular stone, or even wood.
My plan for Bertha’s new weapon was only halfway complete, so I asked her to lay down her cleaver. The half-troll looked like I’d just asked for her soul, but didn’t hesitate. She placed it where the poleaxe had been a moment before, and I latched onto it.
It was a different blueprint for a different make of weapon. It wasn’t dissimilar to the poleaxe, but smaller, lighter, and designed with another purpose. I made short work of the cleaver and siphoned the essence into my dungeon’s pool of resources.
Then I formed a new kind of weapon requiring only slight tweaks; my understanding of weaponsmithing was rudimentary to say the least, and I didn’t have infused knowledge of anything except a combination of the two weapons I’d consumed. The new design was shining bright and crystal clear in my mind, and I stashed it into my gem’s consciousness using an old memory trick from my marketing days.
The first two-thirds of my plan complete, I started to recall the blueprint for the Swiftness rune, and a notification window appeared.
Weapon Enchantment - Swiftness Sigil
Required essences: Infernal (750)
I poured Infernal and Physical Essence together, swirling them in my consciousness like a mad storm of magic and atoms. I had a single design in mind, and I focused my will on its completion.
The floor of my antechamber turned to liquid for a moment, then a new weapon arose from it. It was the same length and weight as Bertha’s favored tool of death, but the spike at the top was a little longer, and its blade a little wider. The combination of poleaxe and cleaver was something I couldn’t quite categorize, but I no longer needed to when a box flashed across my mind.
Acquired Item!
Savage Halberd of Dark Agility
Rarity: Magic
Damage Type: Infernal
Seals: Swiftness
Swiftness channels the essence inside a wielder and increases their speed.
My jewel glowed as I read the text for the completed seal. I’d accomplished my plan, and here was a weapon that was the culmination of our battle.
Bertha cradled the weapon in her palms and stared at it in wonder. As her hands closed around it, I witnessed her own Infernal Essence sliding into the weapon. The arcane energy continued to fill the rune until the whole weapon brimmed with a crackling and dangerous darkness. Bertha’s face split into a joyous expression that was even better than her savage grin during combat.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, almost to herself.
Puck whipped around it and just about exploded with excitement.
“Master, it is beautiful. Your dungeon is ready. We slay and bite and maul all who come to us. We drink them down like blood from a squirrel’s throat.”
I chuckled. “We’re not done yet. Show me the trinket you took.”
Puck displayed the item in his open hand, and it looked so much larger in his tiny palm. His face contorted a little, as though he wasn’t quite ready to give up his prize. With a flick of thought, I regathered my consciousness and focused on the item. It was
caked in rust and mold, but beneath was the effigy of a fanged bat fashioned out of a black metal.
I allowed my consciousness to delve into the object’s construction to try and divine its use. As my mind wrapped around the charm’s form, I realized something. It was too complex, far too complex to be a simple thing I could turn to Physical Essence.
“What is it, Master?” Puck asked.
“Something that might be too valuable for you to keep,” I transmitted back.
As I focused on it, appreciating its complexity, I was reminded of something.
It was made of the same substance as the soul forge.
I sent my consciousness to the machine that was holding my gem and confirmed my revelation. “Puck, why do you want to keep the trinket?” I silently questioned my champion.
“It feels familiar. I believe my tribe had something similar in their cave.”
“Something similar?”
“A model of an imp. It is said to be the key to restoring our dwindling population. We knew not how, but that was what they said.”
“Hmm . . .” I ran through a dozen theories in my head before landing upon a single one: if the soul forge birthed monsters, and an effigy like this bat could be the key to restoring a population, then maybe—
I was too excited to even finish the thought. I commanded Puck to bring the bat trinket to the soul forge and place the object into the center of the machine’s open palm. The small effigy almost seemed to sing as Puck flew across the antechamber and into the alcove. While my senses focused on the soul forge, I was reminded of Lilith’s own hand. It almost looked identical.