Corsair's Prize: A LitRPG Dungeon Core Adventure (Dungeon of Evolution Book 2)

by DB King

  “What can it mean?” Isa asked quietly.

  “Probably,” Marcus said thoughtfully, “that we have to clear whatever enemies are in the chamber at the bottom of this passage before we can enter the others. We may need to come back to this starting point once we have cleared whatever’s down here.”

  His voice sounded heavy in the cold, damp passageway. His companions gathered around him, gazing down into the shadowy depths.

  The Akhians seemed a little shaken by the passage, and Marcus guessed that nothing in their tomb adventuring days had prepared them for this dank, dark passage. Akhi was a dry land of bright sun and warm sands, and even their tombs were said to be dry, with clean lines of carved stone and bright paintings on the walls. This passage felt like the opening of a monster’s lair.

  Its walls were made of wood, tangled roots all knotted together tightly to create a solid wall. The floor was the same, with wooden tendrils all knotted together and creating a dense, slightly springy mat for them to walk on. The air was cold enough that the adventurers could see their breath.

  “What do you think is down there?” Isa said quietly.

  “From the state of the walls, I’d guess some form of tree-demon,” Marcus said. “Let’s take a torch each from the walls of the entranceway. There don’t seem to be any lights on the walls down here, and it looks dark.”

  There were four torches in scones in the entrance hallway, and Marcus, Isa, and Amun took one each. They left one, casting a fitful, flickering light in the entrance to the three corridors.

  “You guys still want to do this?” Marcus asked the Akhians. “It’s not too late to back out now, and no one will think any worse of you if you do. Once we start the dungeon, we won’t be able to back out until we’re through.”

  The two warriors glanced at each other for a swift moment then looked back at Marcus. Isa shook her head. “We’ll go on,” she said. “This is strange to us, and I won’t deny that it frightens me, but I’ll see it through. I’ve never let fear of the unknown stop me before now. I won’t let it do so this time.”

  Amun nodded his agreement. “I say the same,” he said. His eyes glinted with excitement in the dimness. “I’ve never walked away from an adventure yet. This is strange to me, and I’m afraid, but I’ll follow your lead and tackle whatever this tomb… I mean, this dungeon… throws at us.”

  Marcus grinned at them both. “Well done!” he said. “They say only a man who is afraid can truly show courage. You do yourselves and your country proud by your bravery. Come on! And remember the reward of riches that the dungeon has the power to grant! We’ll get through, don’t doubt it, and there will be a valuable hoard of loot for you on the other side!”

  With that, Marcus turned and set off down the steeply descending left-hand corridor. He went in front, using Ward Detect to keep wary of traps but finding none—yet.

  The corridor dropped fast, and they had to be wary and careful of their footing. The matted roots underfoot were slick and slippery with some kind of thick ooze that stuck to their boots and made the way treacherous.

  “Take care!” Marcus said, holding up a hand to stop them. His Ward Detect had picked something up. There was danger ahead, but he couldn’t quite identify it. Usually, the Ward Detect spell would give Marcus an idea of exactly what was to be expected from a trap, but not this time. It showed him that there was some threat up ahead, but what it was he could not tell. All the same, the ward detect spell increased in experience a little, the upgrade level flashing across Marcus’s vision as he peered into the gloom.

  Spell: Ward Detect Level 3

  Level increase: 4%

  Progress to next level: 46%

  “There’s some trap ahead,” he said to his companions. “Can any of you see the trigger?”

  They all peered into the gloom. “There!” Isa said. “On the floor, in the corner—a green rune that glows out in rhythmic pulses. You see it?”

  Marcus gazed in the direction she was pointing. Gleaming in one corner of the passageway, near the floor, was a green rune. It glowed and faded with an irregular pulse.

  “That’s the trigger,” Marcus said. “We need to activate it and trigger the trap—preferably not by standing on the trigger rune.”

  They glanced at each other. “It just needs to be touched, correct?” Isa said.

  “That’s right,” Marcus replied.

  Isa nodded. Carefully, she stepped toward the rune and held out her spear so that the full length of it was stretched toward the rune. She held the spear by the end of the shaft and stretched out her long arm, putting as much distance between her and the rune as possible.

  Carefully, she tapped the tip of her spear blade on the green rune.

  Isa leaped back as her spear sprang into the air, as if the triggered rune had kicked it up. She kept her grip on it, but the force of the spring back threw her off balance.

  As soon as the spear touched the rune, the network of tree roots that made up the passage opened, and a gaping pit was revealed. Unlike the previous incarnation of the Harpy dungeon’s pit trap, this was not just an opening filled with spikes.

  “It’s a mouth!” he said as he leaned closer to look.

  The gaping opening covered half the wall and most of the floor, and instead of spikes, it was filled with teeth. The inside of the opening glistened, and there was a throat disappearing away downward behind thick gums bristling with a triple row of sharp teeth. Instead of a tongue, a nest of tentacles like snakes writhed in the bottom of the pit. As Marcus approached and peered over the edge, the tentacle-tongues whipped out and grabbed at him

  “Ugh!” Marcus leaped back as the tentacles lashed around in the air and snapped back inside, and the mouth closed. A chomping noise came from.

  “How can we get past this?” Amun asked.

  “Well, let’s not give up just yet,” Marcus said. “I’ve had some success using fire against this kind of thing, but I’m reluctant to use up one of our torches if I can avoid it. Wait until the mouth opens again.”

  Marcus counted in his head. When he reached fifteen, there was a horrible swallowing noise before the mouth opened again, the tongues ready to yank their prey down to be chewed and swallowed.

  “It has no eyes,” Marcus said. “It’s activated by the feeling of something standing on the edge of the lips. The tongues come out and grab at the potential prey and pull it down to be chewed. You noticed that it went on to chew and swallow despite there not being anything in the trap to actually eat?”

  “What do you draw from that?” Isa asked.

  “Simply that it’s running on an automated cycle. It’s only responding to its environment in the most primitive of ways. What I want to know is if that cycle is broken by a second activation of the trap during the chewing cycle.”

  Gingerly, Marcus stepped forward again. This time, he was ready for the tongues to come whipping out from the pit, and he leaped backward as soon as it happened. As before, the horrible mouth snapped shut and chewed.

  Marcus stepped forward and put his foot on the edge of the closed lips. Nothing happened. The chewing sound from below continued. Marcus put his full weight on the edge of the trap. Again, nothing.

  A sound came from within the pit. A swallowing noise. Marcus stepped back and turned to his friends with a smile as the pit opened up again.

  “You see?” he said. “We need to trigger this trap and cross while it’s chewing. We should have about fifteen or twenty seconds, which should be enough for us all to cross. Ready?”

  The Akhians glanced at each other then looked at Marcus and nodded, their faces grim and set. “You’ll be fine,” Marcus said. “Just follow my lead.”

  When the horrible mouth opened again, they enacted their plan. Marcus took a step to the edge, dodging back as the tentacle-tongues whipped out and swept the lips of the trap amd yanked back in as the lips slammed closed.

  “Now!” he said, and sprinted across the trap to the other side. Isa and Amun didn�
�t hesitate, but followed close behind him, and Ella flew above them, as high above the trap as she could manage without banging her head off the ceiling.

  When they had crossed, Amun and Isa looked at each other and at Marcus with nervous smiles. They were both breathing hard. Behind them, there was a wet swallowing noise and the pit snapped open again

  “Woah,” Amun said. He bent double, leaning one hand on his knee and putting a hand on his heart. He took a moment to catch his breath and laughed. “How Jacob would tease us if he saw us now, Isa,” he said shakily. “But I’ve never seen a trap like that before. That pit will haunt my dreams!”

  Isa clapped him on the shoulder and he stood up, turning to look at Marcus and nodding. “This is an impressive place. Let’s go further, dungeon master. I’m keen to see what else your dungeon has to offer!”

  They carried on down the passage. As they did so, it became narrow and got warmer.

  Marcus, in the lead, saw a green light shining from an opening at the end of the passage. We’ve found it, he thought, the first dungeon chamber.

  “There it is,” he murmured to his companions, pointing down toward the end of the chamber. “The passage is narrow, so we’ll have to go in one at a time. I’ll lead the way. Come on, let’s find some monsters to fight.”

  Chapter 21

  Crouching, they followed Marcus down the narrow passage to the entrance of the dungeon chamber. Marcus looked through, but he could only see a corner of the chamber beyond. It was too gloomy for him to make anything out for certain.

  He braced himself for an attack and slipped the entrance, Ella coming behind him. Amun and Isa followed, with Amun in the lead. As Marcus’s feet hit the ground, he heard a whistling noise from behind.

  Instinct made him enter the augmentation view. Time slowed, and his feet were rooted to the spot, but the rest of his body could move normally. Ella was affected in the same way, though Isa and Amun were slowed right down the same as the rest of the environment.

  Marcus turned toward the source of the whistling. A flight of javelins were arcing through the air toward him and his friends. There were seven of them, and they were all at about the same stage of flight. They were moving through the air slowly now that he was in his augmentation view, but they were definitely still moving.

  “They’re all aimed at me!” Marcus said. “Ella, can you see the source?”

  “No,” Ella replied, glancing around. “They seem to have come from those trees over there but I can’t see any sign of anyone throwing them.”

  Marcus looked where the faerie was pointing. They were in a dark corner of a dense wood, and the entrance to the dungeon came out from the roots of an enormous tree.

  “Those javelins are going to be on me in a moment,” Marcus said. “Here’s hoping this works!”

  As the Javelins approached him slowly through the air, Marcus ducked and they passed overhead. He grabbed one of them out of the air and swept it hard across the others. As if his touching them had brought them into the augmentation view’s time with him, they clattered to the floor at what seemed like a regular speed.

  Glancing around for the source of the attack, Marcus gathered them up and left the augmentation view.

  “Look out!” he shouted to Amun and Isa. “Move away from the entrance! This way!”

  They sprang after him, even as a second volley of javelins appeared from the shade of the trees opposite the entrance. This time, the javelins fell to the ground or thudded into the wood around the entrance, quivering where they stood out from the thick tree roots. Marcus was relieved that Amun and Isa had moved out of the way quickly enough.

  The adventurers stood, waiting for another volley, but it seemed that the javelins were only triggered by a person exiting from the tree root passage. Now that no one else was coming out, no more javelin volleys were triggered.

  “Hey,” Amun said, “I’ll take a few of these. I’m a good shot with a javelin.”

  “Me too,” Isa said. Together, the two Akhian adventurers moved to the tree root entrance and gathered up the javelins.

  “These are well-made,” Amun commented as he looked at them. They were straight, and the points were tipped with bright steel. Marcus had gathered seven, and the second volley had also been of seven. The three of them divided up the javelins between them, Marcus taking four and the Akhians taking five each.

  That done, they turned to face the dungeon chamber.

  It was a dark woodland setting, and yet it had little resemblance to a normal woodland above ground. In fact, it was more like an underground dungeon than it was like a forest. The branches of the trees above meshed together to form a solid roof. The trees on either side were packed so closely together that they formed an impenetrable wall.

  The path below their feet was carpeted with a thick mulch, as if countless millennia of dark leaves had fallen to the ground in this shadowy forest. A green light permeated the wood, as if rising like steam from the ground. It was an unhealthy light, an almost rotten, corpse-like light, and Marcus was very glad of the flaming torch in his hand that cast a wide circle of warm, natural radiance through the nightmarish woodland.

  “Let’s press ahead,” he said. “Stick close to me, and be ready for anything.”

  They didn’t have to go far before the wood put them through their paces.

  They followed the path around a bend and found themselves in a wide clearing. The trees above opened out, and a black sky was pricked by a few stars above them. In the middle of the clearing a bonfire blazed, and it was encircled by figures, robed in dark cloth with deep hoods covering their faces.

  Amun drew his sword and took up his fighting stance, and Isa dropped into a crouch and raised her spear. Marcus moved a little away from them—they were obviously used to fighting beside each other and he didn’t want to cramp them. He drew his sword but kept his torch in his left hand. Despite the light from the central bonfire, Marcus knew that fire was often an effective weapon against dungeon monsters, so a flaming torch could be more than just a light source in a fight like this.

  Ella moved out of the way, ready to cast a magic augmentation on him if he needed it.

  They stood, waiting, for a long moment. With a sudden shout, the figures around the fire raised their hands in the air. The bonfire stirred. In a burst of sparks, something dashed out from depths of the flames.

  It was a humanoid figure, seven feet tall and faceless, with great curling horns like those of a ram, and a long, spiked tail. The whole body of the creature seemed to be made of flame—and it trailed flames behind it as it charged.

  Behind it, there was a ringing of steel. Steel flashed as the hooded figures drew their swords, ready for the fight. They charged up behind the fire demon, and the demon’s light revealed what their hoods had been hiding: they were wooden, Marcus saw. They looked like crude carvings of people, with faces that had slits for mouths, and two blank, black holes for eyes. Their heads were round like cannonballs, and their strange voices creaked like branches rubbing together in the wind.

  Marcus blasted Elemental Water at the fire demon but it dodged, whipping like a fire in the wind. He braced for a counterattack, but the creature did not attack him. Instead, it lunged at Isa and Amun as they stood side-by-side. Since the spell had been ineffective, Marcus received only the smallest increase from its use.

  Elemental Ability: Water

  Current Mastery Level: Apprentice

  Level increase: 1%

  Progress to Journeyman level: 36%

  The bright light of the creature’s flames were mirrored in the Akhians’ gleaming golden armor, and flashed in the gemstones that adorned their breastplates and their gauntlets. Their dark faces glowed in the firelight. Isa’s long braids swung out and whipped around her body as she dived in to strike with her long spear.

  Marcus was doubtful that her spear would be effective against this creature—but it seemed vulnerable. It hissed like a snake and dodged to the side to avoid the blow. Isa
was no amateur with her spear, however, and she moved with the monster as if she had expected its trick. She didn’t pull the extended spear back. Instead, she moved her arm as if she was holding a whip, lashing the blade to the side and slashing the fire demon across the chest with the edge of the blade.

  The monster let out a scream, and where the spear scored its chest flame poured out of a bright slash like blood from a wound.

  Marcus saw movement from the corner of his eye and realized that two of the wooden men from the fireside had approached him. Another two were circling around toward Amun while Isa was engaged with the fire demon.

  With a swift step back and to the side, Marcus closed the distance between him and the two wooden men. They raised their weapons to engage this unexpected move, but Marcus was quick and brutal with them. He did not engage them in any fancy back-and-forth. Taking a lesson from Dirk and Anja’s katana work in the Pirate’s Cove dungeon, Marcus stepped in close with the enemy, getting under their guard and using everything at his disposal to dispatch them as quickly as possible.

  He brought his knee up sharply into the first wooden man’s groin. From the choking gasp that came from the creature’s mouth, these creatures certainly shared that particular delicate spot with other beings. Marcus followed up with three sharp jabs to the creature’s face with the pommel of his sword. The wooden man fell back, and Marcus spun, his sword at head height, to drive the blade with all his strength into the face of the second approaching wooden man.

  As he yanked the blade out, the wooden man toppled backward with a groan, and dark blood fountained from the hole in its face where the sword had pierced. Marcus smiled. So, they bleed, do they? he thought. Perhaps this dungeon can be another possibility for my vampires to explore.