Monster Core 2

by Dante King

  Lucius’s leaf-bladed spear raced in for my unarmored ribs, but I dived into a quick roll, avoided the blade, and came to my feet in a flash. His eyes were filled with white-hot fury as he gazed at the fallen sorceress.

  “She was our most powerful magic-user,” Lucius spat. “Our one chance to show the Sap Lords we are worthy.”

  “Then, I suppose you have nothing left.” I pulled the Frightening Baselard from its sheath and dual-wielded the enchanted daggers in reverse grips. The magical seals on the dark blades shone with a crimson glow as they fed greedily off my avatar’s Infernal Essence. They fortified me with strength and speed far beyond this final elf.

  Lucius jumped into the air, and his spear hurtled down to pierce my chest. His leaf-shaped blade caught empty space as I slid behind him. I’d had enough of playing around, so my sneaky little blade found Lucius’s fingers and bit all the way down to the bone. His fingers dropped to the dungeon floor, but he merely grunted at the pain and picked up his spear in his left hand.

  “You…” His voice seemed to catch in his throat. “You will not win, monster.”

  “Count your friends, Lucius,” I challenged him. “Go on. Count them. You have none. I killed them all.”

  A line of sweat dripped from his blond hair and slid over his clenched jaw. His eyes didn’t leave mine as his face hardened back into an emotionless mask.

  He thought I wouldn’t be able to read his moves, but I didn’t need to see his expression to know what lay inside his head. I reached out into his mind. I’d only ever tried to Enthrall humans, half-orcs, and Infernal creatures. I didn’t think that it was going to be easy. Lucius had spent his entire life choking on the dick of pride and honor. He was made of tougher mental stuff than Ralph. All I found in the elf’s mind was an opaque wall of flawless ice.

  I couldn’t Enthrall him. Even when he was an inch away from breaking down.

  “The Sap Lords will see justice done for the members of the guild,” Lucius told me coldly as blood continued to spurt from the stumps on his right hand. “They will bring all of their power to bear on you, spawn of Lilith, and destroy you and everything you stand for.”

  “They’ll certainly try, cousin.” I figured being a Tainted Elf meant that I was a distant cousin of Lucius, and the term made him flinch as if I’d just slapped him in the face.

  Lucius lunged forward with his spear, but his movements weren’t polished and crisp anymore. I stepped easily out of the way of his blade and moved in close. I plunged a dagger into his sword arm, drove a knee into his hip, and smashed my skull into his jaw as his body flinched. His grip turned to water as I knocked the spear from his hand and kicked him to the grass.

  Lucius rolled and came back to his feet. Blood soaked his whole right hand and dripped into the grass around us. The determination in his face was something else. As much as I hated to admit it, I admired his guts. Sure, he’d thrown away the lives of his kin. Sure, he’d tried to shoot Bolnir and the Harrowbarks in the back the second they’d thrown their lot in with me.

  Lucius surprised me with a roundhouse kick at head height. I ducked under it, blocked a straight left punch, then smashed the dagger’s pommel into his face. His jaw caved in, and his right eye popped from its socket. He crashed to the ground but managed to lift himself to his knees.

  I checked my timer. I had 220 minutes left. There was no telling how deep this dungeon went or how long it would take me to kill its champions. And I would still need to coax the core’s avatar from its jeweled heart. The less time I wasted, the better. Thirty minutes had gone by in what felt like seconds.

  I sheathed one dagger, took Lucius’ head in my hand, and pressed the point beneath his chin. He reached up to push my weapon away, but he couldn’t lift his arm more than a few inches.

  “You should know something, Lucius of the Deadeye Guild,” I whispered. “To me, you’re an obstacle. You’re an invader. You’re the very thing I feed on, every day I can, to make myself stronger.” I felt a cold smile curl across my face as my knife pressed into his pale skin. “And I will always taste it. You? You’ll be eaten up by this dungeon. It will consume you, turn your very soul into more monsters and traps to kill others. Others just like you.”

  “I would never have joined you,” he rasped. “You are truly the embodiment of evil, Avatar of Zagorath.”

  Well, he didn’t exactly admit he should have joined me, but it was the kind of compliment that made my chest blossom.

  I jerked my dagger upward, and the blade punched through his skull. The weapon’s bloody tip appeared at the top of his head, and a swift tug drew it back out. I let Lucius’s lifeless body fall to the dungeon floor.

  I moved quickly after that. I stripped the elf sorceress of her items and took a longbow, dagger, and silver chainmail from the others. I carried the equipment a few paces outside the dungeon and piled them behind a tree. I used a stack of leaves to cover them in case anyone else came upon them. I wanted her seals for later, but I didn’t know what items would be useful. I didn’t have a Mary Poppins-style magical handbag to carry items, so leaving them here would have to suffice.

  My minutes were precious, and I couldn’t spend all day searching for the dungeon core. As I entered the dungeon again, I came up with two options: either race down into the depths of the dungeon and reunite with my companions or begin my negotiations with the dungeon right here and now.

  Well, one thing seemed universal, in both my old world and the Sinarius Realms. People were much more open to negotiations when you gave them free shit.

  I stepped outside the dungeon and quickly dragged the corpses of the elves I’d slain down the stairs. I left the sorceress and her items outside, but I piled the other nine elf corpses in a heap in the center of the first room.

  I knew that the dungeon around me had heard my conversation with Lucius. It knew that I was a dungeon avatar and not an adventurer.

  And, unless I missed my guess, it was burning with curiosity to meet me.

  “Think of them as an opening to negotiations,” I said as I nodded to the pile of corpses “The other adventurers invading your other floors are under my orders. I’ll call them off when I reach them. Deactivate your traps and keep your minions from getting in my way, and we can have a conversation.”

  There was no reply.

  “My name is Von Dominus of Zagorath. And all I want is to talk.”

  When no answer came, I moved into the corridor to the next room. The passage looked innocent enough, but there was no way of knowing if the dungeon was open to negotiation. The huge pile of corpses behind me was a good start to things. I’d have appreciated such a gesture, if the situation was reversed.

  Von Dominus the Adventuring Dungeon. The title appeared in my mind, and I couldn’t help a laugh. Whatever Lilith’s machinations were, the twists of fate that continuously altered my path always kept things interesting.

  If the dungeon wasn’t willing to converse now, then I had to show her I wasn’t one to be refused.

  It was time to aggressively negotiate with a Nature Dungeon.

  Chapter Twelve

  As a dungeon core myself, I was probably in a better position to appreciate the impressive dungeon than the average adventurer who risked death every time they set foot in here.

  My surroundings in Zagorath were all stone, minerals, and what I could scavenge from the gutsy divers back home. But, here, in the Nature Realm, the core responsible for this dungeon had so much more to work with.

  I kept my eyes on the grassy floor, walls, and ceiling as I strode down the first stairwell to the Second Floor. The soft lighting of the organic lantern-lights chased away the gloom. I had to remind myself more than once that I was underground. Soft grass peppered with small white flowers carpeted the floors. The room reminded me of a closed-in clearing in a forest. Not a carnivorous creature that hungered for my flesh.

  I stepped over wolf corpses left by Ralph and the others, moved down a narrow stairwell, and entered the Third
Floor. It was a circular room with huge trees and clusters of thick ferns. I found it difficult to believe all this could be contained within the rotted corpse of a tree, so I figured this was a kind of pocket dimension.

  This was the floor Bolnir and the others had found impossible to pass. But why?

  I kept my eyes peeled for danger as I progressed but found no sign of minions or traps. There were corpses, of course, but they belonged to forest creatures. Piles and piles of corpses. Some were felled by ordinary wounds, but others bore great cavities from Puck’s shadow-spheres.

  None of those under my command had fallen, not unless the dungeon had already absorbed them.

  Nothing triggered as I moved through the dungeon’s second room. No poison spikes, thorned branches, nothing. Either the dungeon had heard my suggestion and deactivated its traps, or she was lulling me into a false sense of security.

  I knew the dungeon was watching my descent toward her heart. I didn’t need to be a core to know that. I could feel the tension in the air that came with being followed as I moved across the Third Floor.

  I found an exit behind a fern and pulled aside the giant leaves to enter a stairwell that led to the dungeon’s Fourth Floor. This was much the same as the last, except the ferns had neon-purple leaves, and the trees glowed with emerald-green veins.

  Human blood had been splashed across the grass. The unmistakable scent of Ralph and the Harrowbark brothers lingered here. I saw corpses of giant bears with horns on either sides of their heads and wondered how great the battle must have been. I wanted to take it slow and examine everything, but I didn’t have the time.

  I came across no traps or minions, so I figured the dungeon was holding back. Did she want to speak with me? It certainly seemed that way.

  Each step I took was strengthening my suspicion that the dungeon wanted to meet me. Surely, it would have triggered a trap by now if she wanted me dead?

  Bolnir had said the dungeon possessed four floors in total, so where was the core? Was it hiding within a tree trunk somewhere? There had to be a hundred trees in this room, and the core could be in any one of them.

  There was no sign of my champions either, so I figured this wasn’t the only room on this floor. My time was quickly running out. When I thought I would spend the rest of my minutes searching fruitlessly, a tree suddenly illuminated, brighter than all the others. I rushed over to it, half-expecting to see a minion burst from behind the bark. Instead, a rectangular outline the size of a door showed on the trunk, and like a door, it swung open.

  “Thanks,” I said aloud. “I take it you want to talk?”

  There was no answer, but I walked through the trunk, and an enormous space opened up before me.

  A small stream raced over smooth stones and bisected the huge chamber. Trees, ferns, flowers, and herbs filled the space. I figured this area contained ingredients for potions and poultices, a forager’s heaven. Unlike Zagorath, which offered only rewards in the form of equipment, this dungeon provided powerful adventurers with raw materials.

  There were countless blind spots throughout the cavernous space. This wasn’t a symmetrical, easy-to-figure-out floor for your average adventurer. It looked like the world above the dungeon. It was a chaotic, ages-old space that had grown independent of contact from the outside world. The white noise of the stream made it difficult to pinpoint any sudden movements. I’d have placed a minion in the ferns, ready to leap out of the cover of the undergrowth and chew off someone’s face. Except this place seemed genuine in its purpose: a reward for adventurers who’d gotten this far.

  As I passed the plants, I snatched at a few innocent-looking ones and removed their flowers and leaves. I chose the ones that didn’t look like they’d suddenly sprout teeth and chomp on my fingers, but I had no guarantee they could be used to create anything worthwhile. Still, I wasn’t about to dive a dungeon and leave empty-handed.

  I came to the stream and started through the ankle-deep water, half expecting a killer trout to zip out and latch onto my face. Nothing presented itself. It was simply an idyllic walk through the dungeon. It almost felt like a stroll through the world’s most impressive nature park. Except it started with a deadly trek through a beast-infested forest.

  After I crossed the stream and walked across the grass on the other side, I found signs of my companions’ progress. Sharp blades had sliced a path through the greenery. More blood was splattered on a few leaves, and someone had removed a few small plants from the ground.

  The uprooting had been clearly intentional, so it definitely hadn’t been Ralph or Puck. If they were like me and assumed some of these plants could have been useful, they wouldn’t have gone to lengths to select certain ones. It had to be Bolnir or the Harrowbarks who’d taken the planets. They were familiar with this dungeon and the flora that grew within it.

  I followed the path that the others had made and resisted the urge to channel David Attenborough.

  “This room is quite the reward,” I said aloud. “If only I knew more about your realm, I could pick the best plants to harvest. I’m running short on time, and I’d like to speak with you before I have to return home.”

  The way out was an opening that had been hidden by a curtain of ivy. Until the others had slashed their way through it, of course.

  I checked my timer and saw 200 minutes remaining. I’d probably beaten a record by crossing all four floors in only 20 minutes, but then I hadn’t needed to deal with any minions and traps.

  I stepped through the opening, and the sounds of battle filled my ears. Familiar voices hurled inventive curses amidst the clash of steel and ringing impacts. It sounded as if my adventurers were still in the game.

  This room resembled a mystical grotto with silver ferns sprouting from the ground and shining with moon-like light. Small waterfalls emptied into shallow pools, and orange moss covered wooden statues carved in the likeness of a beautiful goddess.

  In the center of the room was a grassy clearing where my adventurers battled two giant trees. Vines and branches whipped my crew as they struggled to gain the upperhand.

  Ralph was, as usual, on the offensive. His new glaive shone in his hand as he sliced at the attacking vines. He scored strikes on the trunks of the monsters, and green blood rippled free of their bark-like skin. But the moment their roots touched the water in the pools at their feet, the wounds closed over and rapidly healed. The giant trees only seemed to grow angrier and stronger, even as Puck’s shadow-magic raced into their newly opened flesh.

  What a curious kind of minion. I wanted one.

  “Men, fall back!” I shouted.

  Ralph and Puck moved immediately, but Quinn wrapped an arm around his brother, Vaughn, who looked like he’d shattered a leg. Bolnir delivered a final axe-chop to a tree before he joined the others as they clustered around me. The tree-creatures slowly advanced, taking their time to heal their wounds in the pools of water. The tree monsters weren’t in any hurry. We’d leave or die eventually.

  “You survived, then,” Bolnir said from beside me.

  “You doubted me?” I replied.

  “Maybe,” the dwarf answered. “But you’ve proven me wrong. Now, there’s something else I want to know. How the fuck are we supposed to kill these devils?”

  “We don’t,” I answered. “You’re leaving. Ralph, go with the others back to Elderwood House. Puck, I’ll meet you at the travel stone when I’m done here. ”

  “Master, with all due respect,” Puck interjected as he hurled yet another shadow-sphere at the living tree-creatures, “I’m not sure even you are capable of charming a living tree into a mood to fornicate.”

  I laughed. “Who said anything about fornication?”

  “You’re all… fucking… insane,” Vaughn said as he struggled to breathe. I added a few broken ribs to his list of injuries.

  I slapped Bolnir’s armored shoulder. “Go back to Elderwood House. Take charge and explain that the elves turned against you and tried to kill you. See to your
fellow guild members.”

  Bolnir’s expression hardened. “I’ve not yet had my fill of essence.”

  “This is but one dungeon, my friend. There are others that you will soon be able to dive, with our help. Vaughn needs assistance. See that he’s guided to safety.”

  “Master,” Puck said, but I cut him off sharply.

  “No arguments. Go.”

  “Oh, Eveline fuck it all,” Bolnir muttered. “We’ll go. Here, give me your arm, lad.” He caught Vaughn’s other arm. “You’d better know what you’re doing, elf.”

  “Have I led you astray yet?”

  The dwarf just grunted. With Quinn’s help, Bolnir hauled the injured Harrowbark brother toward the exit.

  “You will conquer this dungeon,” Ralph said to me. It was clearly a statement and not a question. He had absolute faith in my powers.

  “I will,” I answered.

  Ralph’s eyes shone bright green with flecks of scarlet. The sight made me smile. There was truly something valuable in Ralph Kraus. Every task and fight made him stronger. He was a remarkably impressive specimen of the Sinarius Realms.

  “Leave now,” I said. “Ensure my will is carried out at Elderwood House.”

  “Yes, Master,” he replied.

  Ralph tore his eyes away from the tree-monsters before us and cursed under his breath as he ran up the stairs. Puck shot after him and left me alone with two hungry trees and a dungeon core.

  I was alone on the dungeon’s deepest floor.

  The tree-creatures were growing ever closer. Their vines snared out and snapped at the air like bullwhips.

  “Call off your champions!” I called out. “Let’s talk, you and I—one dungeon to another.” My Tainted Elf’s velvety tones echoed impressively through the silvery gloom.

  The towering tree-monsters didn’t halt, but they changed their path. They separated, circled around to my rear, and settled themselves in front of the room’s exit. Branches and vines intertwined between them until they created an organic wall that blocked my way out.