by DB King
Marcus sat up, a puzzled look on his face. “The spells are great, of course, but does that mean that I will never be able to get any gold from the dungeons? How on earth am I supposed to be able to attain riches or power from the dungeons if I can’t take anything out?”
She chuckled. “That’s where your ability to attract adventurers becomes essential. You bring adventurers in, and they bring the gold out. When they do, you take your cut. You are the dungeon master, and it’s up to you who gets to run the dungeons. You’ll have to build relationships with teams of dungeon adventurers and take a percentage of their winnings every time they run the dungeons.”
“I see,” Marcus said with an air of satisfaction. “That means that the dungeon runners get a lot of benefit from it in the short term, but over the long term I get a steady flow of income, based on how many runners I’m able to attract.”
“Exactly,” Ella replied. “The thing about the dungeons is that they need adventurers to run them. When a team fights monsters, they expend physical energy, mana, or even life force within the dungeon. The dungeons absorb that energy and use it to power new evolutions. You saw how your own fighting of the bladehand caused the grove chamber to upgrade?”
“That’s right. And I achieved Dungeon Master Level 2 and 20% progress toward the next chamber.”
“That will not work every time. As you get closer to 100% progress, it gets harder and harder to do it yourself. You need teams of adventurers fighting in the dungeons running to create, for example, a new chamber or a new set of monsters.”
“So does that mean that every time adventurers run the dungeon, I’ll have an opportunity to make some new evolution happen?”
“At the beginning, certainly. The adventurers are the power source for dungeon evolutions. Once you level up more, it will take more dungeon runs to achieve the next level and create the new dungeons.”
“And there’s something else,” said Marcus. “At the moment, the supply of gold for coins is very limited in Kraken City, and it’s jealously guarded by the high nobles. Most of the merchant classes are only able to use silver coins, and the poorest people are lucky if they can get their hands on copper groats. If dungeon adventurers start being able to bring gold out into the city’s economy, it may bring the power of wealth out of the hands of the high nobles and into the hands of the wider population of the city.”
Ella nodded. “Dungeons certainly tend to have disruptive effects on the economies of the worlds where they exist. We talked about that before, with the situation over in Doran. That’s why they’re not keen on having dungeons in the Kingdom. You’ll need to be careful, and try to establish yourself quickly as the dungeon master. It’s only a matter of time before the high nobles of Kraken get wind of what’s going on and decide to interfere.”
“There’s Diremage Xeron to think of too,” Marcus said thoughtfully. “He must have known what the abilities of a grove faerie were before he bought one. You were meant to give him the ability to create evolution dungeons, there’s no doubt about it. Once he hears that there are adventurer teams in the city getting lots of gold and loot, he’ll draw the connection pretty quickly and start to hunt for the dungeon.”
Ella nodded again. “The quicker we make a start getting the loyalty of adventurer teams, the better. I bet that Xeron will be expecting whoever stole his faerie to try to escape Kraken City. He’ll be watching the ports, but he won’t be expecting the dungeons to be set up in the Underway.”
“He’ll probably have eyes on the thieves guild as well,” mused Marcus. “Well, we’ll take advantage of that and find some adventurers first thing tomorrow.”
There was a good pile of firewood stacked up by the tree, and Marcus got up and removed the cooking spit, placing it out of the way before building the fire up into a crackling blaze. The sky was dark now, and many stars were dotting the deep darkness of the night above them. A pale moon was rising over one side of the grove.
“I’m tired!” Marcus said with a sudden yawn. “Time seems to pass strangely in here, and the time of day seems to change with how I’m feeling, rather than the other way round. Anyway, I think I’ll get some sleep.”
With that, he rolled himself in his blanket and went to sleep.
When he awoke it was bright again, feeling like early morning in the grove. Ella was still asleep, resting in her favorite perch among the higher branches of the biggest tree.
Marcus walked to the pool to wash. The water was cold, and he took off his shirt to rub the invigorating water across his chest and his neck, and splash it on his face. When he had dressed again, he walked back to the grove and ate some of the leftover bread and meat from the night before. It was almost as good in the morning as it had been the night before, and Marcus was delighted to find that the grove had provided them with a pot of honey and a pot of soft butter.
Ella woke while he was eating, flying down sleepily to take some bread and honey.
Once they’d broken their fast, Marcus stood and stretched. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last night,” he said. “About adventurers, and bringing them in to run the dungeon.”
“Oh, yes?” Ella said with interest. She was buckling on a short, well-made sword that seemed to have come with her hunter’s garb, taking bites of bread and honey as she did so.
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “There’s a place not far from the docks. It’s a big open plaza that’s known as a gathering place for the duelists.”
“The duelists?” Ella asked, sounding interested. “Who are they?”
Marcus shrugged. “They’re… well, they’re duelists! Young men who look for fame and riches by dueling with other fighters. They’ll do it for honor—they all have very sensitive honor—but they’ll often be hired by wealthy people to settle disputes.”
“That sounds a bit… crazy,” Ella commented with a smile.
Marcus laughed. “I guess it is a bit. Say, for example, two merchants have a dispute over some point of honor—a sale gone bad, maybe, or an accusation of cheating. One might challenge the other to a duel, but neither of them are fighters. Instead of fighting, they’ll each appoint a champion from one of the duelist guilds. The man whose champion wins will receive a handsome payment, and a lot of honor and respect from his fellows.”
“And you think these guys might be a good prospect as dungeon adventurers?”
Marcus nodded. “They’re all crazy about fighting. They gather in the duelist’s square most evenings to drink and fight and play games of chance. They all train together during the day, and in the evening it’s all about trials of strength and dexterity. Sometimes they end up dueling each other to the death, but most of the time they will wrestle or box to settle their disputes. Yes, they’re good fighters, and hungry for gold and honor.”
Ella grinned at him. “Sounds like they might be the ideal candidates. But if you’re going to recruit them, you’ll need to be able to move your dungeon chambers around.” She finished her bread, licking the last of the honey and butter off her fingers. “Come on, let me show you how to move the dungeon chambers.”
“That would be good,” Marcus said. “I certainly don’t want to be bringing a bunch of armed duelists all the way down here. The Gutter Gang would be less than impressed!”
“Yes, there’s no need for anything like that. You can carry the dungeon chambers in your hand if you need to. You can place the entrance just about anywhere so long as it’s underground—an entrance can be created on the walls, the floor, or even the ceiling of any underground chamber or passage. Come on, I’ll show you how it works.”
The grove had not gotten any bigger overnight, but the two trees looked as if they had put on a season’s worth of new growth while Marcus and Ella had slept. The grass was tall and lush green, and a sweet scent rose up from it as they walked across the meadow toward the cliff edge.
“You can lift the chambers individually,” Ella explained as they went, “so you don’t have to treat one dungeon as a singl
e entity. You can carry the chambers, move them, and even combine them. That’ll become more relevant once you have more chambers and monsters to play with, but it’s good for you to start now with the basics.”
She certainly sounded like she knew what she was talking about, so Marcus just nodded and waited to see how this would work. He had no idea how on earth you could lift a dungeon chamber, but if he was learning anything from this experience, it was how to take wild new developments in his stride.
“It’s really easy,” Ella assured him as they came to the thick ivy curtain covering the entrance to the dungeon. “Stand at the entrance and look through your spells, you should find one that works for this.”
Marcus did so, and sure enough, at the bottom of the list there was a new spell:
Detach Crucible Chamber
He laughed. “That easy?” he asked as he activated the spell.
“It’s that easy,” Ella agreed.
As soon as the spell had been activated, there was a rumbling sound, as if the earth was quaking inside the cliff. Light shone through the ivy curtain.
“Hold out your hand and get ready,” Ella warned.
Marcus did as she instructed. The ivy curtain shimmered and vanished, but the stone below was churning like boiling water. Marcus braced his feet against the ground and kept his hand outstretched, awaiting whatever came next. The boiling stone bubbled like a thick gray liquid, light blazing out from it. The light coalesced into a single beam then blasted from the wall into Marcus’s hand.
“Wow! Look at that!” exclaimed Marcus in amazement. A sudden warm, hard weight filled his hand. He looked down to find that he was holding a sphere made of thick clear glass, four inches across and slightly flattened at the base. The base was decorated with a fine tracery of metals—part gold, and part iron. Inside the sphere, an opaque gray mist stirred.
Marcus was holding a dungeon chamber in his hand.
Chapter 10
“This is great,” Marcus said. He held up the sphere and examined it. The opaque gray mist swirled as he moved it from side to side. “And I can do this with any of the chambers? Pick them up, move them around, place them wherever I want?”
“So long as there’s nobody in them, of course,” Ella pointed out. They both laughed at that.
“Yeah,” said Marcus, “I don’t think I’d like to be inside a dungeon when it got lifted and moved around. Right, in that case I’m going to leave this grove chamber here—there’s nothing to fight in here, after all, so it’s better to stay here as a base—and I’ll take the bladehand chamber with me to the edge of the Underway, where there’s an exit near the Duelists’ Plaza. It shouldn’t take too much to get some duelists to come in and fight the bladehand.”
“I can’t wait to see how you manage it,” Ella said with a smile.
“Oh, you’ll come with me?”
“Sure, if you don’t mind. I’d like to see a bit more of Kraken City. I can always use my stealth powers if I need to get out of sight.”
They left the grove chamber in place, and Marcus spoke the spell to close the entrance and hide it from any eyes except his. He looked at the blank wall, satisfied. To his magically enhanced senses, he could see that there was a dungeon hidden behind the wall. No one else would be able to see, though.
With great care, Marcus tucked the glass sphere that held the Bladehand dungeon away in a fold of his cloak with great care. The glass looked sturdy enough, but he wouldn’t take any chances. When he looked up, he found Ella smiling at him as she hovered in the air.
“What’re you grinning at?” he asked.
“I keep forgetting how little you know about the dungeons,” she said, stifling a chuckle. “The dungeon containers,” she continued. “You probably don’t realize… of course, how could you?”
“That’s okay, no need to rub it in,” said Marcus jokingly. “What about the container?”
“It’s completely indestructible.”
Marcus laughed, reaching into his robe and pulling the sphere out again. “This? Completely indestructible?”
She nodded. “That’s right. Completely. No one has ever managed to find a way to destroy them, and believe me, people have tried.”
Marcus looked at the glass sphere. It was an effort, but he forced himself to hold it out on the palm of his hand and drop it to the floor. It fell straight down and hit the ground with a dull thud. Unexpectedly, it didn’t bounce. It hit the ground and lay there entirely still, as if it was made of a much heavier substance than it seemed to be.
When he picked it up, Marcus was amazed and delighted to find that it was exactly the same as it had been before.
“Even if you took it and hit it with a heavy sledgehammer, it wouldn’t even dent it,” Ella said quietly. “Believe me, there is a tale of a dungeon master who once exposed a rival’s dungeon chamber to dragon fire. It didn’t make a mark.”
Marcus was thoughtful for a moment as the two of them turned and began to walk down the corridor back to the Gutter Gang’s main chamber. “Does that mean that the dungeons themselves are indestructible?” he asked after a while.
“Only in that form,” she replied. “You can take dungeons apart, destroy them, or swap their elements about, or change them, but only from inside. You will have the spells to do so, or you’ll develop them as you advance. But when they are contained in a sphere, nothing can be removed or added.”
“I guess they will still evolve though?” Marcus asked. “And, for example, the bladehand I destroyed in my own test run of the chamber will respawn even though the dungeon is in this form?”
“Oh, yes,” Ella said. “Being in their portable form doesn’t stop the dungeons evolving or resetting after a run. Actually, their portable form can end up being the most convenient. An advanced dungeon master who had many chambers at his disposal might choose to keep them all—or most of them—in their portable form. There’s the legend of the master of dungeon masters, Tarla the Bold, who had a tower where he kept thousands of dungeon spheres like the one you hold there. He knew every one and could lay his hand on whichever one he required at a moment’s notice.”
They reached the main chamber. Marcus looked around, greeting the other members of the gang and making small talk. As he looked around, he became aware that things were a little different. It took him a moment to put his finger on what it was, but then it hit him. It was their eyes, he thought. Their eyes, and their faces.
Jen Jackletooth, an older woman and a veteran of the Gutter Gang, was talking to him about the rumors of a ratmen alliance with the Sewer Slayers, and the dangers this might pose to the gang. Marcus was nodding along as she spoke, and then it hit him. She looked great.
Like most of the Gutter Gang, Jen was a haggard woman, with all the marks of a difficult and long life etched on her face. But all that was changed. Her eyes were bright, her speech was steady and crisp. She still had the gray in her hair and the wrinkles around her eyes, but she looked well-nourished. Her back was straight, and when she laughed, her voice rang out clear and bright, and she showed a row of strong, white teeth. She’d need a new nickname, he thought. Jackletooth no more.
It was the teeth that did it. He almost fell over, but he contained himself and looked at the rest of the gang. Nothing seemed different at first, but then he looked closer, and there it was again—everyone’s health and appearance had improved. Teeth that had been yellowed and cracked were straight and bright. Faces that had been care-worn and gray were smooth and healthy-looking, backs that had been bent were straight, and voices that had croaked like dying frogs now echoed in the chamber as the Gutter Gang laughed and spoke together.
“You okay there, Marcus?” Jen asked, probably seeing that Marcus had drifted off.
“Yes, yes, sorry,” he said distractedly. “But Jen, how are you feeling?”
“You know,” she said after giving him an odd look for a moment. “Actually, I feel fantastic! Can’t account for it. We’ve had some better food recently, sinc
e you gave Jay his cut of that big score of yours, but not that much. I can’t account for it! Well, good luck on your mission and watch out for ratmen and Sewer Slayers!”
She turned and walked briskly away, whistling a tune.
Marcus turned to Ella. He opened and closed his mouth, not knowing what to say. Ella was covering her mouth to stifle a laugh at his amazement.
“Did you see that?” he demanded in a whisper. “Look at them! Do you see?”
“I see,” she said in a low voice. “Didn’t I tell you that your presence would level up the people around you? This is what you’re seeing. The magic means that they won’t be too surprised, which is just as well because people can sometimes find it rather disturbing, but yes, this is how your presence affects them. Those around you, those you care about, they will get better, healthier, stronger, faster. The longer it goes on, the slower it will happen—they won’t just keep getting healthier indefinitely—but you can expect those around you to hit a baseline of good health and strength pretty quickly.”
Marcus was just about to speak when a wet nose flipped his hand and he looked down to see a dog standing there. A dog. Not Hammer, surely? Hammer had been fat, sleepy-eyed, with gray in his muzzle and thinning patches on his ample rump. This dog rippled with lean muscle under a shining, glossy coat, and his eyes were bright and alert.
“Hammer?” Marcus asked in disbelief.
“Hey Marcus,” replied the dog casually. “We going somewhere?”
“Sure,” Marcus said, “but how are you doing? Everything all right?”
“Oh yeah,” said the dog, turning away. “I feel twice the dog I was the other day. No idea why. I guess this new adventurous life must just suit me! Come on, I fancy an adventure.”
Marcus looked at Ella, who raised a finger to her lips and grinned. Hammer, the picture of canine health, trotted to the exit from the main chamber and turned his head, looking at them inquiringly.
With a shake of the head and a smile, Marcus followed him. Ella, flying close by Marcus’s shoulder, followed along with a smile.