by Robin Rhodes
I miss you so much, and I love you so much. I know you must be worried, but don't be, I'll survive. I'll be here when you come back for me.
She didn't say anything about what had happened to her. Aiden had already had to witness this first-hand.
Some doubts in the back of her mind still taunted her that he wouldn't be coming back to rescue her after that. Who would come to rescue the girlfriend they'd just had to watch be fucked up the ass by another man? No one would. Five years of love down the toilet because of Aaron.
In the sudden fit of anger that seized her, she almost unlocked Delilah from the stocks just because she wanted to piss Aaron off. It didn't matter what happened to her, she could survive it. What mattered was making things as hard as possible for Aaron.
She came to her senses before that, though.
Aaron didn't care if they disobeyed. He got off on punishing them, the sadistic bastard.
She returned the phone to Delilah's top and went back to the bed. "I sent them," she confirmed.
"Them?"
"I messaged my boyfriend, too. I hope that's okay."
"Of course it is."
Elizabeth gave a small smile. Delilah was nice. Delilah was stronger than she was.
She wished Delilah hadn't had to suffer too.
She hoped that she was wrong, that they weren't about to have someone added to their ranks.
Chapter Eleven
Aaron's self-loathing stopped him from going back to Dana and Daryl until he was sure they would have finished fucking, and he went above deck instead.
His crew of orcs were milling around. He hadn't given them a destination to sail to, so they had nothing to do.
It wouldn't be that way for long.
Aaron could see the siren-filled rocks in the distance, and Dana's ship emerging from them.
It was time for a fight.
"Set sail for that ship," he called to his crew. "We're going to battle!"
They made good progress toward the adventurer's small vessel in their mobile caravel, and within no time they were almost beside it. He could see three figures on the deck, which meant Dana and Daryl were done with each other.
Now he was plagued with the question of whether it was a one-time thing, or whether their relationship would be successful. When the lizard bite wore off, would Dana be too embarrassed to tell Daryl how she really felt? Would Daryl be interested in being in a relationship with her?
He'd never liked soap operas. Why did he give a shit about any of it? He just couldn't get their faces out of his mind, the passion as they looked at each other. The connection.
He instructed his orcs to come up alongside the ship and pulled his weapons from the belt slung around his hips.
The adventurers didn't even wait for his crew to make the move. They immediately leapt for his ship as soon as they were beside each other, getting on deck and taking out orcs left, right and center.
Jason vanished as soon as he leapt to the ship, utilizing some kind of invisibility spell to assassinate orcs as they tried to batter their way through Dana to get at the healer who was keeping her health topped up. He murmured under his breath and Dana's skin seemed to glow silver. The next orc to attack got thrown so far backward he fell overboard.
They were still horribly outnumbered, though. Twelve orcs and Aaron to their three. The orcs might be stupid, but they had brute strength and soon they'd formed a kind of formation: the two tanks battled it out against Dana and the ranged orcs found grips on the rigging to loose their arrows onto the adventurers.
Dana blocked easily with her shield, and used an AoE stun to keep the tanks in place while Jason dashed in and out of DPS orcs, his daggers finding soft spots between the armor with ease.
Aaron didn't want to stand back and watch the fight play out, though.
He had his target: the healer.
He just needed to get past Dana. No one paid him any attention, they were too busy dealing with the orcs attacking. Aaron's advantage was his intelligence. He could still think like a human, something the orcs couldn't do. He climbed the rigging as well, and tried to determine whether he had the requisite agility to jump from the ropes, over Dana's head, and land behind her where Daryl looked almost bored murmuring healing spell after healing spell. He was even managing to get some damage in, casting weak DoTs on the long-range orcs. He was the only person in the party who had any range on him.
Aaron had a DoT put on him, too, but it had negligible impact. He was stronger than the orcs, and it was a pure damage DoT without any debuffs.
He'd said he wanted to buff his avatar to have a bigger impact on the fights, to put himself in an active role, and this was the first plan that had popped into his mind.
He was going to let them win, anyway. He may as well have some fun with it.
Putting his swords back in their sheaths, he took a deep breath and then made the leap. He went soaring over Dana's head from his high perch, but instead of landing gracefully like he'd hoped for, he slammed against the ground and winded himself. He traveled with such speed that he bashed into the wooden railing around the edge of the ship.
He groaned, but pulled himself up without hesitation and got his swords back in his hands. He might not have done it as gracefully as he'd hoped for, but his plan had been a success. Aaron was behind Dana and with full access to Daryl. He charged, using a move that gave him increased attack speed for ten seconds and landed blow after blow on the healer in a flurry.
The swords didn't pierce Daryl's skin, he had an armor buff active, but they forced him to turn the healing from Dana and onto himself to stop his health from getting too low.
"I need help over here!" Daryl called as Aaron landed a crit to Daryl's bicep which was so deep it cut down to the bone.
The wound was healed immediately, but Dana was struggling now. She was forced to step backward as the barrage from the orcs continued.
Jason was immediately there to respond to Daryl's request for help and aimed both daggers straight at Aaron's neck.
On the odd occasion Aaron had played healer, he'd never had someone respond that quickly to claims that he needed help. Maybe playing healer with friends would have been more fun than the odd occasion he made a healer on his own.
Jason's attacks landed, but weren't deep cuts. Aaron brought his sword up to block the attacks, and they entered into a duel.
Aaron's adrenaline pumped as they fought one on one. Aaron's stats were weaker, but not by so much he got one shot. If he managed his cooldowns better he might just be able to get some decent damage down before he was forced to back out of the fight.
He saved his attack speed buff, waiting until Jason was out of defensive abilities before using it. His biggest problem was that he had no idea what exactly the rogue could do. He could assume—there were always stealth abilities, normally some kind of vanish, poisons—but he didn't know specifics in terms of damage or cooldowns, and there could have been a wildcard thrown in there.
All he could do was focus on his own abilities, of which there weren't many. An attack speed buff, a defensive roll, an execute, and a very short silence. The silence was especially annoying because he didn't recognize any of the motions for when an ability was about to be used to silence it. His best bet was silencing to get him low enough to execute, but he wasn't sure if he'd even get into that range.
Jason knew his moves like the back of his hand. This wasn't his first dungeon. He'd obviously been practising since the Braxian Expansion hit almost a month ago. Aaron had thought his background in video games might have given him some sort of upper hand, but Jason had the advantage of that and having a month's experience in this game.
Aaron had no chance.
But he didn't give up.
He blocked and rolled and avoided most of the attacks. If he could distract Jason then it gave the orcs more time to wear Dana down. Daryl might be running out of mana soon.
Jason used a flurry attack that m
ust have taken combo points and pierced his skin in multiple places with quick shallow blows. Aaron made note of the move so he could silence it next time the animation began.
In the aftermath, when Jason had no move to use, Aaron used his attack speed buff. His arms were getting sluggish with the HP he'd lost, but he still made every blow with all his force. He hit half, but they were more shallow than the ones Jason had landed on him. Jason had the buff from Daryl that gave him bonus armor and it cut Aaron's attack damage in half.
He was still pleased with his own timing, though. If Elizabeth was here, casting heals and buffs on him, then the fight would have been more interesting.
Maybe one day their relationship would extend to that, where he could trust Elizabeth to look after him in a fight. She'd soon realize that he didn't want to hurt her, just that it was the only way to control her. She'd accept her new reality, realize that he was fair. One day she would grow to like him.
For now he was on his own, though, and he barely rolled out of the way of a combo attack from Jason.
Contrary to his hopes, Dana was making good progress through the orcs. One orc tank was dead on the ground, and another was nearly done for. Daryl was keeping her topped up to full health, but his mana was running low. He couldn't heal any of the damage Aaron had caused to Jason.
Aaron's execute worked at thirty percent HP. That was where he was aiming for. Jason currently sat on sixty percent, so it was a long way to go. He silenced Jason as he was about to use his flurry combo.
Then two arrows from the orcs positioned on the rigging that hadn't been taken care of yet struck Jason in the arm, and his health dipped another ten percent.
Instead of faltering, Jason went on the offensive, determined to take Aaron out so he could get back to killing orcs and end the fight completely. Jason easily dodged two attacks from Aaron, who was on just below forty percent health himself now, and then used the vanish Aaron had known he'd have.
He appeared behind Aaron a second later and jabbed both daggers into his lower back, forcing him to fifteen percent health and making him drop to his knees.
"Nice," he had to admit. "Well played."
Jason paused at Aaron's side, obviously surprised he could speak. "You're the dungeon master?" he asked.
Aaron nodded, though he didn't sheath his swords. He could use this to his advantage. He could get an opening to land his buffed attack speed hits and get Jason that last few percentages down to thirty so he could use his execute.
"It's a pretty cool concept," Jason said. "You know there's some policeman up at the entrance warning people off?"
"Some noob died in here when it was first opened, he must have made a complaint to the police," Aaron lied. He could use this to his advantage, too. "People will realize that's the way things work soon enough. I can't see the police maintaining any authority for much longer."
Jason relaxed his stance a little, and replied, "Right? It's great, though—"
Aaron saw his chance and took it, using his buff on his attack speed and his roll to get behind Jason. He copied the tactic which had just been used on him and got half a dozen attacks off easily. Jason's HP was lowered and his execute would work.
He was on the edge of using it, went to raise his hands to the rogue's neck so he could decapitate him in one devastating blow, when he remembered what he was supposed to be doing.
The point of these adventurers was to get the word out that his dungeon wasn't evil, that it was worth challenging.
The personal satisfaction he would get from winning this fight against Jason despite being the underdog was almost too much, he almost gave in. He went rapidly over the argument that it was still a successful dungeon run for them if two made it out alive, and it would be the two that had been fucking less than an hour ago. They'd get over it because they had each other.
His dungeon was the reason they had each other.
And it would put a dampener on the blossoming love they had for each other, something Aaron was maliciously tempted by.
He resisted, though.
It was his impulsivity, his giving into his instincts without thinking things through, that had led to this mess in the first place.
For once he was going to stick to his plan and do the right thing.
He didn't use the execute—Jason didn't know he had it, didn't know that he'd thrown the fight—and allowed himself to be killed by Jason's next move. Jason unleashed the combo and killed Aaron with a number of precise blows.
Aaron had expected Jason to look annoyed at his underhanded tactic, but instead he looked impressed. "A good fight," he said. "The first dungeon I've seen with an avatar. Hopefully we'll cross paths again."
Aaron couldn't respond because his avatar was dead, but he watched from back in his dungeon core with a smile on his face. Aaron had had him. He'd given up the kill for the good of the dungeon, and its future, but he'd had Jason and he was safe in that knowledge.
Adrenaline still coursed through him, and he knew he'd made the right decision with all the changes he'd made earlier that day.
Having the more active role was infinitely satisfying, and when Aiden and Mark returned, it was going to be his own swords that got pushed through their chests, not some orc he'd spawned.
His revenge was going to be personal, and he couldn't wait.
Book Four in the Corrupted Dungeon series will be out on the 30th July… pre-order now here.
Or keep reading for a preview of the next Corrupted Dungeon book before you decide to buy, this is chapter one of Wicked Dungeon:
Chapter One
When Aaron's avatar finally respawned, he was in high spirits. Everything had gone according to plan. Things had gone better than according to plan.
If he'd fought a fair battle with those adventurers he'd have beaten them easily, but for a change he'd put the fate of the dungeon above his personal whims and it was going well.
While dead he'd checked the forums and wished he could see if anything had been posted about him. The restriction was frustrating. He didn't need to know any details, he just wanted to know if the adventurers had written about their good experience yet. He was sure they would—they were professionals, they'd known exactly what they were doing. They were the kind of people who would review every dungeon they went to, and the kind of people who would be listened to.
More listened to than the police, especially. The police were getting more and more irrelevant by the day, and they had no idea how this new world worked. Gamers were the authority now, and the people who had just left his dungeon were definitely that.
What he did do on the forums while he waited patiently for his avatar's return was to chat on the boards dedicated to Warriors Online. Most of the threads were a big nostalgia fest relating to specific aspects of the game, but there were other threads, too. He liked talking on the threads unrelated to the game that were populated by people who had played the game.
Right now he was talking to a girl about Kings in Castles, a long-running fantasy TV show that had been in the process of filming its final season when the Braxian Expansion hit. TV productions had been altered and cancelled and the TV channels were mostly plagued with reruns according to the woman he chatted to now, BethMurayama#138. No one was sure whether the final season of Kings in Castles would even be filmed, never mind aired.
You have to go and start stealing scripts. Aaron typed. I'm stuck down here as this lump of rock, I've got no chance of ever finding out if you don't.
Beth said, I'm pretty sure a single paladin can't sneak past whatever guards they've got on those scripts to take them.
I feel like gathering a party to raid the studio producing the show would be much easier than finding a party to raid a dungeon. We need to start gathering people.
You might be right. And there's no party limit on the above world. Imagine all the fans storming that building at once. They'd stand no chance.
As long as you promise you'll
get me the script. I'm going to feel cheated if my genius is used without reward.
I'd never cheat you. Maybe I could even come and give it to you in person. That'd be a fine addition to the dungeon wall, I'm sure. An original script from Kings in Castles.
Aaron's avatar respawned shortly after that, but he ignored it for a while longer to talk to Beth. He actually had things in common with her, unlike Elizabeth and Delilah, who sat in their room and refused to talk to him unless he did something to force them. It was refreshing, to just have a normal conversation.
In the end it reminded him too much of Dana and Dylan's easy interactions and he logged off and went to find his slaves before he could get into a bad mood.
They were still in the bedroom behind his dungeon core, Delilah strapped up in the stocks and Elizabeth laying on the bed staring at the ceiling.
Aaron stood for a moment, and neither of them responded. He wasn't sure Elizabeth was even aware he'd entered, but Delilah had looked up, then squarely averted her still cum-covered face, refusing to look at him.
"Elizabeth," he said.
She shut her eyes and took a deep breath for a moment before responding, "Yes?"
"Go and undo Delilah from the stocks."
Elizabeth quickly did as she was told, and Delilah slumped to the floor, all her energy depleted from being held in the contraption for hours and hours. She struggled to pull herself up off the ground and Elizabeth helped her. For a moment Aaron considered telling her to leave Delilah to do it herself, but resisted.
"We're moving," he said.
"Moving?" Delilah asked, still not having learned the same deference Elizabeth now had when she spoke to him. "Moving where?"
"Moving to a ship. It'll be your new living quarters."
"A boat?"
"Come here," he said, holding out his hands.
Elizabeth took a step forward, and Delilah dragged her back. "Don't go near him," she hissed.