Bone Dungeon
Elemental Dungeon (Book 1)
Jonathan Smidt
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Epilogue
Afterword
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I would first like to thank my wife for putting up with my long hours typing away on Bone Dungeon. I also want to thank the team at Portal Books for helping bring a dream of mine to life, as well as putting up with our multi-hour long Skype sessions because I like to go off topic, bwahaha.
Chapter One
“For your sins against the church—”
Sins? In what perverse world did rushing to help someone screaming in distress count as a sin? Sheesh.
“—we hereby assign your punishment. Death!”
Death? That seemed a bit...drastic. Then again, Ryan had attacked a high inquisitor. But the man had ordered those innocent people to be beaten! There was no way the church would condone this type of action by its followers. Oh, wait – this was the church.
“Will you repent in your last moments, heathen?”
The man at Ryan’s side, clad in all white, was practically oozing distaste for him, though he had done nothing wrong. Ryan opened his mouth to speak, to protest, but his cries were muffled behind the gag they had placed on him.
Well, that’s just not fair.
“Even now, you refuse to repent. And so, as the hand of the Goddess of Justice, I set forth your sentence, and act upon it.”
The priest’s hand moved, and the blade of the guillotine came crashing down.
Damn.
Ryan’s head left his body, and he watched in awe as the whole world turned upside down. Part of him had been hoping to at least ruin the high priest’s robe with his blood, but no such luck.
Of all the branches of the church to arrive in his small town, why did it have to be the Zealots of the Light? The only sin Ryan had committed was trying to be a good man, certainly a better one than the corrupt followers of the Goddess. His eyes focused on the bright golden sun above for a moment, before his mind drifted off and his world went black.
“I am sorry, child, for the unjust end to your life,” a woman’s voice whispered in his mind.
Ryan opened his eyes, startled by the emptiness around him. Was he dead? He was pretty sure you died when your head was cut off.
“The least I can do, to atone for the sins of my followers, is grant you another life.”
Ryan glanced around, but there was no one. His body, completely intact, was simply floating in nothingness.
“Stay pure to your heart, young man, and I hope you continue to walk the path of righteousness.”
The world started to turn dark. Whatever was going on, Ryan was confused. As a heaviness filled his mind, all he could think of was how unlucky this whole ordeal had been. He wondered if he was hallucinating. But deep in his heart, he knew he really was dead.
“Wake up!” A voice, loud and shrill, pulled him from darkness.
How long had he been asleep?
“Heellloooo,” the voice continued, louder this time.
Ryan opened his eyes as visions – memories – flashed through his mind and disappeared.
Who am I?
An image of a man in white, a movement, a giant blade.
Ugh, the church. Wait, what’s a church?
“Anyone in there?” The speaker, a small, floating thing, stared at him.
She – Ryan was pretty sure it was a she – appeared to be a young woman, judging from her simple white dress and long golden hair. However, she definitely wasn’t human. Feathery wings sprouted from her back, and she glowed with a faint golden light. Ryan tried to respond but realized he couldn’t.
With a quick glance, he realized a lot of things. First, he had no mouth. Second, he was certain he didn’t have any eyes, yet he could somehow see in 360 degrees around him. Third, his body was a glowing white sphere.
Had he always been a glowing white sphere? The more he inspected himself, he realized he was made of some sort of glowing stone.
“Oh, you are awake.” The tiny woman flapped her wings in excitement. The motion sent her flying into the ceiling above Ryan. If he had a mouth, he would have laughed.
He took in his surroundings: a small, confined space, with stone and dirt all around. Was he underground? Had he always lived down there?
The woman in front of him lowered herself to his eye level – so to speak – and smiled. “What’s your name?”
Ryan?
The name came to the surface of his mind, and he clung to it. That’s right, he was definitely a Ryan! But he still had no way to speak.
The woman stared at him in silence. After a long while, she shook her head, laughing. “Oh, that’s right. I have to complete our bond first.” Her body started to glow brighter, and she leaned forward, wrapping her arms around him. Their two lights blended, and she gently kissed the top of his stone.
In that instant, Ryan felt a flash of energy rush through him, the light emanating from him filling the room. At th
e same time, he felt a strange stream of thoughts — a consciousness — in his mind. Reaching out internally, he saw the woman shudder as he engaged it.
“Hello?” he thought to her.
She beamed. “Hello!” Her voice was filled with excitement.
“Who are you?” Ryan was thoroughly confused about what exactly was going on. One moment he was in darkness, and now this.
“Oh, of course you don’t know. Sorry, I’m just as new to all of this as you are.” She fluttered around him, suddenly nervous. “My name is Erin.”
“Ryan.” He projected his name through their bond.
They sat there for a moment, Erin’s face growing steadily redder. The continued silence started to feel awkward, and it didn’t seem like Erin was going to be the one to break it.
“So, Erin, what exactly are you? And more importantly, what am I?” For some reason, he had no idea. Strange.
“Well, I am a celestial fairy.” She spread her wings wide, beaming with pride. “And you, Ryan, are a dungeon.”
Chapter Two
A dungeon? What does that mean?
For a fleeting moment, Ryan’s mind screamed that this was wrong, but then the thought vanished.
“Technically, you are a dungeon core.” Erin pulled his attention back to her. “You are a soul, trapped inside of a magical gem.”
My soul is trapped?
“What was I before?”
Erin waved her hand across his ‘face’. “Not important.”
He thought it was important.
“What is important,” she said, “is that we get to work.”
“Don’t you think we’re moving a bit fast?” Ryan’s mind was spinning, and Erin wasn’t doing a good job at explaining anything.
“Fast? Fast?!” she wailed. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been stuck in this cramped dirty hole??”
He didn’t. In fact, he really didn’t have any sense of time in their hole.
“Uhm, considering I just ‘woke’ up, and have no recollection of anything before then, I’m going to say no.”
The fairy crossed her arms and wings across her chest, annoyed.
“No need to be sarcastic,” she sighed. “For your information, the Goddess of Justice sent me down here over a month ago.”
“Goddess of Justice?”
“Yes, the deity that rules over righteousness and justice in the world. The best goddess there is!”
The memory of a voice tickled across Ryan’s mind before it too was eaten by the darkness. He was getting tired of these memories being stolen away.
“She sent me down here,” Erin continued, “telling me a new dungeon was about to be born.”
“Me?”
“Yes. Though I didn’t realize you would be asleep for a month.”
“Well, you could have tried to wake me up.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing? Ugh, try to keep up.” Well, now she was just being mean.
“I’m sorry, Erin, I really am.” He sent a small feeling of comfort through their bond, which reminded him: “Say, what is this ‘bond’ between us? What did you do?”
She flew off the ground, humming softly. It was apparent she had a lot of unspent energy. “Dungeon cores require a fairy to link with them in order to grow. The dungeon core serves as the heart of the dungeon and is responsible for creating everything within it. As a fairy, my task is to guide you, to ensure you grow at an appropriate pace, and live a long and prosperous life.”
“Seems tedious. What do you get out of it?” Ryan couldn’t believe she would willingly just help him for no reason. The world didn’t work that way. Strange. Where is this bias coming from?
“Through our bond, I can share in your power. The stronger you get, the more powerful I become as well. Once I’ve bonded to you, I can no longer draw mana from the world on my own, so I need you to help me survive.”
“What’s mana?”
Erin huffed again at his question. They really weren’t getting very far.
“Do I have to explain every little thing to you right this instant?”
“Well, isn’t that your job?”
She opened her mouth, but stopped, thinking for a second. “I mean, you’re not wrong.”
She flew over and sat back atop his head. He could tell now he was indeed in some sort of gem, with his inner light making it appear to glow white.
“How about we work out your powers as I explain some things?”
“Sounds good.”
If Erin needed Ryan to provide this ‘mana’ to survive, he should probably get some. He couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of being alone in this hole.
Oh, poor Erin.
“Mana is the very energy that runs the world. Everything contains some form of mana. You could say it is the lifeblood of existence.”
Makes perfect sense… not.
“Ambient mana exists lightly in the air,” explained Erin, “and you will use mana in every aspect of your life as a dungeon core.”
“All right, so magical energy, floating around, that I can use. Easy enough.”
Erin sent an annoyed jolt through their bond at the interruption, then continued.
“As a dungeon core, you can use your mana to spread your influence into anything you touch. By doing this, a dungeon core is able to slowly build and carve out a desirable shape, or body, for the dungeon. As you grow stronger, the amount of mana you can use, along with how quickly it returns, will increase.”
She flew over to the wall, just outside the range of his white light.
“I want you to focus on the energy within you and spread it forward to this wall.”
Ryan closed his ‘eyes’, focusing within. She was right, he could feel a strange power that seemed to stir within. Gently, he reached out to it, and it eagerly jumped towards him, like a pet happy its owner had returned. It filled him with an almost intoxicating warmth.
“Good, now extend that energy towards—”
Ryan was only half listening to her as he focused on the spot she had indicated. He urged the energy towards her, letting it go, and it leapt from him. Erin’s scream a second later brought him back to his senses.
“Ryan!” The wall Erin had been hovering beside was now a crater, the rubble and surrounding rock glowing slightly.
“Did I do it?” He could ‘feel’ that area now and could see everything around it as if he was in it.
“Well… you did. But you can’t just unleash random bursts of mana!”
Oops.
“You have to gently reach out with it, otherwise you risk blowing everything up around you, including me.”
Her left wing did seem to be smoking just a bit, and perhaps missing a feather or two.
“Right. Whoops. Well, now that we have that out of the way, what’s next?” He found this whole mana use thing very exciting, yet oddly draining.
“Well, now we slowly spread your influence. It’s going to take a lot of mana to get to the first level of true dungeonhood.”
Chapter Three
It took Ryan a whole day to spread his influence into a three-foot sphere around himself. Erin mentioned the measurement to him, noting his core was equal to the size of a human fist. He had no reference for that, so he ignored it.
“So, what do we do from here?”
He floated in the chamber, the latent mana in his body keeping him suspended, while Erin flew around, enjoying the new space. The entire room glowed with a pure white energy, and Ryan could feel more mana slowly filling him.
Erin had explained to him that currently his mana capacity was low, meaning he would have to take multiple breaks as he worked. As such, it took him the whole day to create his small space. At least the larger he got, the more mana he would be able to absorb, and the larger the area he would be able to work on before needing to take a break to recharge.
“Well, this is a good start.” Erin landed atop him – a favorite spot of hers, it seemed. “But we’re going to need to g
et a lot bigger.”
“You mean I’m going to.” She really hadn’t done anything, other than complain about how slow Ryan was. He may have ‘accidentally’ blasted through a piece of rock near her when she had started to annoy him. That stopped her complaining.
“Don’t be like that, Ryan, I’m helping too.” She sent a hurt feeling through the bond.
“Nagging isn’t helping.” He sent her a chuckle as he felt her anger rise. “But I think I am ready for the next step towards dungeonhood.” He was more comfortable with his mana and had definitely become faster at shaping the earth around him. He’d also noted that as he expanded, he seemed to absorb the broken dirt and rock, instantly gaining an understanding of the material. He needed to ask Erin about that.
“Are you listening?”
Oops. He had zoned her out. What had she been saying? Quick, divert.
“You have such pretty wings.” He watched her face as she blushed and stuttered, her face turning red for a moment.
Bone Dungeon (Elemental Dungeon #1) - A Dungeon Core LitRPG Page 1
