Dungeon Lord: Abominable Creatures (The Wraith's Haunt Book 3)

by Hugo Huesca

There was a crash of a nearby window as some lowlife was thrown clear through. “It looks that way,” Jarlen said. “But my business is inside, sadly. Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

  “We are holding auditions for our next teacher,” Yumiya explained.

  Jarlen raised an eyebrow. “It looks to me like you’re starting tavern brawls all over the Citadel.”

  “The best way to find the greatest warrior in a city is to fight everyone in it.”

  “Of course.” Jarlen’s smile became a bit strained. “Do as you wish, I won’t get in your way.” She shouldered past the Monster Hunter, trusting that Lord Wraith’s pact of minionship would prevent the both of them from coming to blows. “Here, hold my umbrella,” she told Yumiya.

  The tavern brawl was reaching its climax. Most of the furniture had been torn to shreds, the floor was littered with battered nobodies gasping for air, and a kaftar was standing on a table and howling like a madman as he fought off a couple Akathunians with a table leg. Jarlen’s height—or her lack of it—came to her advantage. She walked through the chaos with no one taking notice of her.

  The bar was empty, save for a sullen man in a black suit hunched over in the corner, and a shell-shocked bartender who was cleaning a glass tankard with a dirty rag.

  “You’re missing the show,” Jarlen told the man as she sat next to him and gestured at the bartender.

  “Aren’t you too young for alcohol?” the man asked while the bartender poured some tepid ale in the tankard, then slid it over the table straight at Jarlen, who caught it without a second glance.

  She passed the tankard to the man. “For you. You look like you need it.” He ignored the gesture, his gaze lost somewhere in the distant land of memories. Behind them, someone flew through the air and crashed against the floor a few feet away from the fireplace. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Doctor Frederick.”

  “I’m not for hire, vampire. Not anymore.”

  Jarlen frowned. Had she not wanted something from him, she would’ve torn his throat out for speaking to her as if they were equals. She opened her mouth to respond, but paused as a tan halfling wearing some kind of brown tunic climbed atop the chair next to them.

  “Terribly sorry, Missy, terribly sorry. Are either of you going to drink that?” the halfling asked. Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed Frederick’s tankard and took several long gulps. “Sorry, sorry, don’t mind me, I’m just passing by.” A kaftar jumped him from the back, and the halfling absentmindedly smashed his tankard against the Monster Hunter’s forehead, spewing ale everywhere. “Alright, then. Nice meeting ya!” The halfling charged back into the fray, kicking and punching like a small tornado, which was a small marvel seeing that he was so drunk he could barely stand.

  “Anyway,” Jarlen said. “Yes, I’ve heard you refuse to perform the work that made you famous, good doctor, and that the Regent herself can’t make you reconsider. A shame, really. Good will doesn’t last forever.”

  “Let me take a look at you.” Doctor Frederick glanced at her for the first time. “Nightshade, less than two centuries old. Not your first botched regeneration, either. Recently fed. A fine undead specimen, yes. In a different time… no, in another lifetime, I could’ve crafted beautiful art out of your flesh. But those days are long gone.” He shook his head. “You don’t understand, vampire. You cannot fathom the pain that lurks in my soul, tearing at me from the inside.” He showed her his open palms. “These are the hands of an artist, but that same art killed my wife. The love of my life. How can I accept the song of scalpel and gauze when every time I close my eyes I see the fire—”

  “Excuse me, I think there’s been some kind of error,” Jarlen said. “You mistook me for someone who cares.”

  The doctor shut up. Behind them, the drunk halfling gave a howl, and shortly after Kaga sailed though the air past the bar, only inches away from Jarlen. The kaftar disappeared behind the bartender, who did his best to ignore this. There came the crash of broken glass, and then Kaga reappeared, pelt disheveled and covered in pieces of bottles, a wild look in his eyes.

  “Get me that halfling!” he bellowed as he jumped back into the fight. “We don’t leave the Netherworld without him!”

  “As I was saying,” Jarlen said. “I don’t care about your backstory. I’m building a quick dungeon, and I need something big and angry to put at the end. Something that won’t die the instant the Heroes look its way. Since you aren’t working at the moment, money must be tight, right? There must be some creature you’ve stashed away somewhere that you can exchange for this.” She set a heavy bag full of Vyfaras on the table. “It’s enough to pay for quite a few months of moping around looking like an idiot.”

  Doctor Frederick clenched his jaw, but his eyes remained on the bag. He glanced doubtfully at the bartender.

  “Your tab is running quite high, sir,” the bartender reminded him.

  The doctor sighed. “I may have a little something,” he told Jarlen.

  The Haunt’s Portal Chamber buzzed with activity as, a few days after their departure, the expedition returned with their hands full of loot and empty coin purses. Following the strict security measures established by Marshal Kes, the Portal was guarded by two rows of horned spider warriors and a team of elite Janitorial batblins going through a checklist as, one by one, the minions stepped out of the Portal.

  “One Bard, human,” said Strit, as Alder reached the batblin’s spot in the checkpoint. Strit checked his wooden tablet. There was a parchment with a list in it. Since he didn’t know how to write or read, someone had helpfully drawn the faces of the expedition for him. He found Alder’s visage as a rosy-cheeked male with blond hair, and scratched it. “Move along, citizen,” he said, waving the Bard in.

  “A Witch, human.” Strit marked a scratch through a drawing of girl’s face with a pointy hat on her head. “Go on.” Lavy was followed by a group of drones carrying bags and bags of loot, of all shapes and sizes. Strit could swear he saw a batblin paw jutting out of a box at some point. Once the drones were done piling the bounty against a corner of the room, they headed back into the Portal.

  After Lavy came Costel and her guard team. Strit frowned and turned to his second-in-command, Janitor Thuddle. “What number comes before five?”

  Thuddle showed Strit the extended palm of his right hand, along with a single finger from the left. “This many.”

  Strit nodded knowingly and scratched every human face in his list that wore a bucket helmet. “Don’t get yourselves in any trouble, now,” he admonished the humans as they stepped past him.

  Then the kaftar Monster Hunters arrived, and both Strit and Thuddle exchanged worried glances. What in Hogbus’ name were they supposed to do if there were more drawings than fingers on their hands? “Uh,” Strit said, thinking fast. “Is your group complete?” he asked Kaga. The kaftar leader looked a bit worse for the wear, with a black eye and a bloody nose, but he seemed otherwise cheerful. “Anyone missing that we should know about?”

  “Not at all!” Kaga said, patting the batblin on the back.

  “Very well, uh… move along, then, but we’ll keep a close eye on you,” Strit said. As the kaftar marched past, he made a show of scratching their faces one by one. Then he stopped, frowned, and turned to Thuddle once more. “Thuddle, do you know if kaftar younglings are hairless?”

  Thuddle examined the half-sized, hairless humanoid that stumbled around with the kaftar group, the figure wincing at all the sharp lights and clutching his head as if he were afraid it’d fall off of his neck. “Yes,” Thuddle said. “I reckon that’s just an ugly baby kaftar.”

  “Are you sure?” Strit asked. Thuddle had a reputation for making things up instead of admitting he had no idea what he was talking about. “He looks quite hungover to me.”

  “Well, of course,” Thuddle said, hands on his hips with an air of superiority. “Kaftar start drinking young so they stop getting hangovers when they’re adults. It’s like that story where the S
haman injected himself with a bit of spider venom, with a bit more every day, until he was completely immune.”

  Strit scratched his belly. “That makes sense.”

  Then it was time to account for the host of horned spiders, and soon enough he’d forgotten all about the kaftar.

  Hours later, by the time Strit and Thuddle were almost done, they saw the armored figure of the Dungeon Lord emerge from the Portal. He, the Marshal, and the vampire Jarlen were directing the drones as the creatures pulled on some chains. Strit watched in awe as a wagon slowly emerged from the Portal, carrying a cage so big it barely fit through the Portal.

  Some sort of creature lay inside the cage, a powerful snout framing a pair of red, shiny eyes carrying the glint of a predator. It had long horns that could impale a row of batblins without much effort. Strit saw powerful muscles at rest, stitched together as if they came from many different animals.

  “What is that?” he asked, instinctively taking a few steps back. He hoped the Janitors wouldn’t have to deal with an escaped… whatever that thing was.

  Jarlen smiled and patted the iron bars of the cage. “This,” she said. “Is our Boss fight.”

  21

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Test Dungeon

  The fragile light of the scented candles arranged on her window’s ledge mixed with the pale blue shine of Lisa’s computer monitor. She was in her pajamas, chomping on a cookie with one hand and working through Ivalis Online’s character selection screen with the other.

  She was home alone—her sister had gone out again, to meet with those marketing hotshots at the club. Before leaving all dolled up, Diana had suggested that Lisa could still meet up with them, if she hurried to toss on some makeup and borrowed a dress from Diana’s closet. Both of them knew it was an empty if well-intentioned offer. Lisa wasn’t a nightlife kind of gal; the music was too loud and the smoke turned her hair into a mess. Besides, why would she be out dealing with the advances of drunk assholes when she could be saving some virtual world or another?

  “Ah, keep telling yourself that’s why,” she said through a sarcastic chuckle. “Let’s pretend it isn’t because of the crippling social anxiety.”

  She cracked her knuckles and selected one of her Clerics, a test character that she wouldn’t mind losing while the new kid learned the ropes.

  The screen powered through a loading screen and then flashed white as the music of the Light’s temple began to play. Soon, Lisa glanced at her Cleric from the typical top-down perspective of most isometric RPGs. The pixelated graphics showed a checkered black-and-white floorboard and an ample vault with carved statues of the Light gods lining the walls. About a dozen other Player Characters came and went to and from the Portal built above a raised dais surrounded by golden candles, right above a huge painting of Alita, first among the gods.

  The goddess was clad in golden armor that covered her body in many layers of protection and made it seemingly impossible for her to raise her shoulders. Her white hair escaped from the back of her helmet and cascaded down her pauldrons like a snowstorm. She held Aucrath, the goddess-turned-spear, in both her hands as Alita challenged the forces of the Dark, implied by the painter by a black smudge by the corner of the landscape, right where Alita was aiming Aucrath’s tip.

  Mark arrived a few minutes after Lisa, using a low-level Fighter to test the waters, although armed with a high-level axe borrowed from his main account.

  “I hope you don’t mind losing it if shit goes sideways,” Lisa told her friend once they were done connecting through Teamspeak.

  “Yesterday I got a new one, so it’ll be okay, I hope,” Mark said. “So, how’s your Saturday night going so far, Liz?” The unmistakable sound of a soda can being popped open came through the speakers.

  “Same as yours, asshole,” Lisa said.

  “Ah, well. I was just wondering if you’d be off to some mysterious new high-roller job after getting that headhunter’s letter, you know.”

  Lisa’s smile faltered. “Actually, I haven’t talked to them at all.”

  The other Player Characters flowed around Lisa and Mark, who remained like motionless, pixelated statues as they chatted. “Really? Perhaps you’ve become attached to our magnificent Lasershark empire?” Mark asked.

  “That’s not it,” Lisa said. “It’s just… there’s something iffy about that calling card.” In fact, she’d kept it at the very end of the bottom drawer of her desk ever since she arrived home with it, and had refused to look at it twice. Something about the way Mark had described the man who’d left her that card gave her goosebumps.

  “I see,” Mark said thoughtfully. “Perhaps it’s for the best. One can never be too sure when you’re going to go for an interview and discover a familiar black couch right next to the interviewer’s desk. Although… starring in one of those videos pays better than minimum wage, right? Perhaps it is your big shot after all.”

  A few seconds later, Omar logged in.

  “Sorry?” the new kid asked, caught right in the middle of Lisa’s choice words for Mark.

  “Not you,” she said through Mark’s chuckles. She clicked on Omar’s character and confirmed it was one of Ed’s test Wizards, a mid-level one he carried around to check out new game areas. “How was the campaign, you finished it already?”

  “Sure,” Omar said. “Way too short and trope-y, but I liked it. The final battle reminded me of Final Fantasy VI because the last bad guy kept changing shapes.”

  This prompted a brief but passionate discussion about which Final Fantasy game had been the best one. Ryan arrived during Mark’s passionate speech about Cloud and Sephiroth’s secret relationship. When the “Rylan Silverblade” name on the friend list turned green, both Mark and Lisa shut up as if caught by the effects of a mute spell.

  “Ah, good,” Ryan’s smug voice came from Lisa’s headphones, sounding slurred. “Everyone’s here. Saves me the trouble of herding cats.” He laughed to himself.

  Is he drunk? Lisa thought, frowning. It was a Saturday night, and Ryan was rich. Sometimes, she wondered what would prompt a guy like him to spend his weekends forcing people he didn’t even like to play with him, when it was clear he had time to have a social life, if he chose to.

  “Hey, Boss,” said Omar. “What are we going to kill tonight?”

  You don’t have to lick his boots at every chance. One on one, she thought that Omar was okay. But his constant need to earn Ryan’s approval was getting on her nerves. A few more days like that and she guessed she’d try to avoid the two of them altogether.

  “Well,” Ryan said, drawing the word a lot longer than it needed be. “I just got a notification on my phone. Remember that Undercity storyline that hadn’t moved along in months? Apparently there’s a new dungeon that just popped up.”

  “Finally!” Omar said. Lisa was fairly certain he had no idea what Ryan was talking about.

  “Yup. I reckon if we hurry through the Portal, we’ll be the first to take a bite out of that sweet XP,” Ryan went on. “Most other assholes in the forums are grinding in the far North, I think. Fighting a werewolf insurrection or something lame like that.”

  “Werewolves aren’t lame,” Mark complained quietly through a private chat with Lisa.

  “I mean…” she said. “They are everywhere in Starevos. There’s no way to grind for items without aggroing like five clans at once.”

  Despite it all, she was interested in Undercity’s storyline. It was clear from out little information had trickled out in the last few months that the payoff to it would be something big.

  “Screw werewolves,” Omar said, agreeing with Ryan.

  “Alright, then,” he said. Rylan Silverblade III headed for the Portal, followed by Ed’s former Wizard. “Enough chitchat. All of you losers ready? Remember, new guy, stay behind me and do everything I say. You’ll be fine.”

  They found the dungeon not long after leaving the second Portal, the one that threw them out of the temple and into the city o
f Constantina, where they used the Light-provided vendors to stock up on healing potions and new weapons for their characters. Ivalis Online featured a weapon-degradation system, which was strange given the other game-play features it lacked, but by now every remaining player had accepted that Pantheon did pretty much anything they liked and ignored most feedback.

  The other thing that Pantheon hadn’t added was an active compass, which always made finding the Quests and dungeons a pain in the ass, but the community had learned to make do by sharing coordinates and landmarks. In this case, the dungeon’s entrance was hidden behind a waterfall that led to a pristine river with a nasty current hiding underneath.

  “Isn’t there a secret exit we can use instead?” Omar asked, while the other three discussed how they’d bypass the river to reach the curtain of water.

  “That’s not how it works,” said Mark patiently. “If we knew where the secret entrance was, we’d be using that one instead and this would be the secret exit.” His stout dwarf character kept a safe distance from the river. With his heavy plate armor, he’d sink like a rock and end up teleported back into the temple, a hefty gold coin fee automatically deducted from his inventory. “Besides, if you take too long to attack, sometimes they just collapse the entire dungeon and move the minions elsewhere.”

  “How annoying,” Omar muttered. “I wonder what the developers thought when adding that feature.”

  “It’s probably for realism,” said Lisa. “But never mind that. Your character specs in ice magic, right?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Lisa suggested they use the Wizard’s magic to freeze a path into the waterfall. “There’s one Wizard daily, sleet dragon breath, that freezes everything in a straight line. It should have enough range, hopefully.”

  “What a waste of time,” Ryan said with a dismissive snort. “We haven’t even started looting and you’re already wasting a daily? Whatever. I’ll wait for you inside. Last one in gets to be the loot mule!” His Rogue climbed up the wet, moss-covered scarp like it was nothing, and disappeared under the waterfall in mere seconds, a feat that none of the rest of the team could imitate, since Lisa’s Cleric had Spirit as her main attribute, and the Wizard obviously used Mind. Agility simply wasn’t their thing.