by Nick Harrow
Table of Contents
Summary
Shadow Alley Press Mailing List
Chapter 1 – A Bloody Mess
Chapter 2 – King Rathokhetra
Chapter 3 – Bloody Bones
Chapter 4 – Soketra CSI
Chapter 5 – Going Down
Chapter 6 – The Hunt
Chapter 7 – Three Problems
Chapter 8 – Gnomes on the Rage
Chapter 9 – A Trinket
Chapter 10 – Snake Girls
Chapter 11 – Goats and Sheep
Chapter 12 – An Example
Chapter 13 – Amber Death
Chapter 14 — Iron Exchange
Chapter 15 – A Polite Conversation
Chapter 16 – Secrets
Chapter 17 – Work Hard
Chapter 18 – Gathering Forces
Chapter 19 – The Waiting Game
Chapter 20 – Play Hard
Chapter 21 – The Jump
Chapter 22 – Feathers and Scales
Chapter 23 – What Was in the Boxes
Chapter 24 – Against the Wall
Chapter 25 – Kez Strikes Again
Chapter 26 – A Drink Before Bed
Chapter 27 – An Angel Calls
Chapter 28 – Inkolanas
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About the Author
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Summary
ESTABLISH A SETTLEMENT. Build your defenses. Go to war.
Clay Knight never asked to be Lord Rathokhetra, and he certainly never wanted to rule his own city. But when his dungeon's advancement is blocked by the need for a support village, Clay has to claim the Kahtsinka Oasis and lead it to prosperity.
He also has to contend with unhappy merchants, persistent beggars, a satyr who won't take no for an answer, and threatening emissaries from the far-off King of Kyth.
With trouble brewing both inside and outside his city's walls, Clay must forge unlikely alliances with enemies old and new, all while watching over his fierce female guardians and mastering his strange new dungeon lord abilities.
Read the third installment in the bestselling Dungeon Bringer series now for a triple shot of unique base building, brutal bad guys, and ferocious monster girls!
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Chapter 1 – A Bloody Mess
THE KAHTSINKA OASIS was a goddamned wreck.
A massive crater, its edges as raw and ragged as an open wound, marred the landscape to the northeast of the oasis’s heart. That ugly, blackened hole marked the spot where Kezakazek’s sabotage had blown the Raiders Guild’s magical gate straight to hell. The rest of the damage had been inflicted by the raiders, who’d set the buildings around the oasis ablaze after we’d rebuffed their attacks. Those fires had run wild and transformed the massive circus tent the raiders had used as their home base into an ashen cobweb stretched over the burned-out husks of buildings perched at the water’s eastern edge. The remnants of the ancient clay structures that had lined the north and south shores of the deep waters hunkered in the soot like cracked and blackened teeth in diseased gums. A thick layer of black ash choked the oasis pool at the village’s center and poisoned the water.
But the raiders had saved their worst for the western edge of the village where the wahket had lived. The clay buildings there weren’t simply stained with soot; they’d been smashed to rubble. The mouths of the caves where the cat women had once lived were scorched black as empty eye sockets, and the handful of walls the adventurers had left upright were covered in crude graffiti that made my blood boil.
“If you hadn’t run when you did...” I took Nephket’s hand and forced the words past the knot of white-hot rage in my throat. “If they’d caught you...”
Nephket squeezed my fingers and leaned her head against my shoulder.
“But we did, and they didn’t. We beat them, and they’ll never find their way back to Soketra again.” The priestess sounded like we were looking at a glass of spilled wine, not the ruin of the place her people had called home for centuries. “Soon, the oasis will be more glorious than it ever was.”
That was the kicker. Until I’d made the oasis mine and turned it into a respectable place to live, my dungeon was one hundred percent cockblocked from further advancement. I could still gain ka, and the ka refinery in what used to be Delsinia’s dungeon produced a steady five motes each day, but I couldn’t raise the dungeon’s level to unlock more powerful abilities. And, while the oasis was a mess, it was the only choice I had unless I wanted to roam around outside my dungeon looking for another settlement with my core in tow. That seemed like a recipe for disaster.
“I am not cleaning up this mess,” Kezakazek muttered, irritated that I’d dragged her out of Kozerek’s library to get some fresh air. “Why can’t we just move somewhere more pleasant? We can go anywhere we want with the Solamantic Web.”
Delsinia shook her head at the suggestion, and the bone chains that served as her clothing clattered like a skeleton’s chuckle.
“Nephket knows this place,” she said. “And this is Lord Rathokhetra’s domain. Why would we abandon it for unknown dangers?”
“Because it’s a shithole,” Kezakazek said with a dangerously sweet smile. “There are a thousand better places we could find to call home.”
“It just needs a little love,” Zillah said. She hooked her arm around the drow’s shoulders and pulled her close. “We’ll build you a cute little wizard’s tower with a torture chamber in the basement. Think how much fun we could have in a private dungeon.”
Nephket shot me a glance, and I felt her thoughts flit through mine. She was glad the rest of my guardians got along, but the relationship between Zillah and Kezakazek gave her pause. The pair of them were dark reflections of one another, and their idea of fun tended to leave behind a trail of bodies. And some of those corpses might end up half-eaten.
“Your objection to my plan is duly noted, Kez, but I need a settlement to call my own, and I don’t have time to go flitting all over the many worlds to find one. The oasis is where I’m hanging my hat for the time being, so let’s worry about getting this place cleaned up first, and then we can build Happy Fun Time Palaces for everyone.” I watched Kez’s eyes to make sure my veto hadn’t set off her temper, but they stayed their usual cold and distant selves. That, at least, was one bit of good news for me.
My core hummed above my right shoulder, a subtle reminder that it was time to spend some ka and make the magic happen.
“Cross your fingers. I’m not sure how this works.”
The five of us looked down on the oasis from the top of a hill a hundred yards north of my main dungeon. The solo experiments I’d performed over the days since we’d defeated Kozerek had confirmed that my basic dungeon lord senses worked while I was outside the dungeon, but only if my core was nearby. I couldn’t use any of the abilities I’d purchased out here, but I wouldn’t need those for what came next.
I focused my dungeon sight on the terrain ahead of me, and the now-familiar blue grid spread over the home of the wahket and the surrounding terrain. Most of the grid remained cold and blue, but the outline of the oasis took on a solid, golden hue.
So far, so good.
“Mine,” I thought to myself, and purchased the Settlement ability with twenty of the one hundred and forty-one ka stored in my core. It was an expensive investment, and my core let out a pained whine as the energy rushed out of it, but I had to spend it if I e
ver wanted to see sixth level.
<<<>>>
SETTLEMENT
Cost: 20 motes of ka
Limit: One per core
Spawn: N/A
Combinable: N/A
Type: Cultivation
Description: When this ability is unlocked, the dungeon lord may claim a single settlement within one mile of his primary dungeon. The settlement's territory must fall entirely within the boundaries of steles controlled by the dungeon lord.
This basic settlement includes only rudimentary features and the capacity for five build points for upgrades. Additional build points must be purchased by the dungeon lord, with a variable cost based on the number of upgrades previously purchased.
Dungeon lords may use The Dungeon’s Visage and The Dungeon Speaks abilities within the settlement’s boundaries. Additional abilities may be unlocked at higher levels based on purchased settlement upgrades.
A settlement's level can be no greater than its associated dungeon's level +1.
The associated dungeon's level can be no greater than the settlement's current level.
<<<>>>
As the ka drained out of my core, the perimeter’s golden glow oozed inward and flowed over the oasis like warm honey. It outlined a square chunk of land a couple thousand feet on a side, as well as a narrow, golden path that led from the mouth of my dungeon, through the hills, to the edge of my new settlement. A few seconds later, the glow faded from my sight, but I felt powerful ties to the busted-up little village. The settlement was part of my territory, as much as my tomb and the undead playground I’d taken from Delsinia. I’d forged a bond to this place, one nearly as strong as the ties to my familiar or my dungeons.
And what I felt through that connection to the Kahtsinka Oasis whipped through me like a desert cyclone that fanned the embers of my rage into an inferno.
The Raiders Guild had destroyed the home of my priestess and her people. If they thought they’d already paid for their foolishness, they were mistaken. The debt they owed me could be measured only in their blood, and its interest in their shattered bones. I’d stack the corpses of raiders to the sky, I’d—
Shit, there it was again. Lord Rathokhetra’s imperious rage might have served him well during his conquest of Soketra and the worlds beyond, but that wasn’t how I worked. It took more effort every day to shove the old snake back into his hole at the back of my brain, and there were still times when scattered words or thoughts reached my mind from his dark lair. I needed to find a way to get the old bastard out of my head once and for all.
“Never,” Rathokhetra moaned with a voice as dry and dead as the desert wind.
The Settlement ability had opened the Tablet of Conquest to me, and I reviewed it with a wary eye. My job as a dungeon lord required a lot of calculations and math, and running a village threatened to add a lot more of both to my already overfilled plate of obligations.
Fortunately, it didn’t turn out to be as much of a pain in the ass as I’d feared.
<<<>>>
The Tablet of Conquest
First Settlement
The Kahtsinka Oasis (0-Level Settlement)
Current Status: Defenseless
Improvements
Martial: 0
Defenses: 0
Agrarian: 0
Education: 0
Religion: 0
Mercantile: 0
Build Points: 0
Current Build Point Cost: 100 gold pieces
Maximum Build Points: 5
Build Points to Next Settlement Level: 5
Invested Build Points: 0
<<<>>>
The information on the tablet was hardly exhaustive, but I understood it well enough. I had to buy build points with gold pieces, I couldn’t buy more than five at a time, and I’d need to spend five build points to raise the settlement to level one. Seeing as how I had to get my settlement to level six before I could advance my dungeon again, and the cost of build points increased based on how many I’d already purchased, this could very quickly turn into an expensive venture.
Before I could delve much more deeply into Dungeon Lord Economics 101, however, my familiar’s voice dragged my attention away from the tablet and back to the real world.
“Oh, my lord,” Nephket said, her voice a breathy whisper. “What have you done?”
A flash of panic stabbed through my chest, and I shoved the Tablet of Conquest aside to get a better look at the oasis.
“What?” I asked. “Did I break something?”
“Nooo,” Kezakazek said. “Very much the opposite. Holy shit.”
“Wow, boss,” Zillah said with a wry chuckle. “Just...wow.”
“Most impressive,” Delsinia said. She wrapped her cool fingers around my left hand and smiled up at me.
My brain searched for one of my trademarked witty comebacks, but it was too bamboozled by what lay below us to come up with anything coherent, much less funny.
The polluted waters of the oasis had been restored to their pristine, sapphire beauty. The waters were so still and smooth they formed a perfect mirror that reflected the sky in such detail it looked as if the valley’s bowl held the sky itself.
The raiders’ ruined carnival tent and the wahket’s blasted buildings were gone, replaced by a string of square, flat-topped brick buildings that surrounded the deep blue waters like polished stones in a colorful necklace. There were only a few dozen new structures, but it was still amazing to see tidy cubes of saffron yellow and cornflower blue where before there had been only ruin.
But that wasn’t was what had astonished my guardians.
It was all the new people that had freaked them out.
Humanoid figures strolled along the edge of the oasis, ambled through the spaces between the buildings, and went about their business as calmly as if they’d been there for years, not seconds. There were even some children down there, and I watched them chase after little shapes that could have been cats, or maybe puppies. Their youthful laughter carried over the hills like the tinkling of wind chimes, and despite my confusion I couldn’t help but smile at the sound.
What in the actual fuck had I done?
“Huh,” I said with my usual eloquence. “I didn’t expect that.”
“Can we keep them?” Kezakazek asked. She batted her eyes at me and licked her lips. “They look delightful. Just think of all the—”
“No,” I said. “You can’t—I mean, yes, we’re going to let them stay here, but they aren’t property.”
“That is not technically true,” Delsinia said. “You made them. They belong to you. Do with them as you will. Slaves should be honored to serve in whatever way their master wishes.”
“Fun,” Zillah said. “I want two of the little ones. I’ll train them to fight, and they can braid my hair and polish my chitin. They will be the most murderous little things. I can’t wait! Also, I would very much like to eat the fat one down there.”
“You can’t make the children your servants, and you can’t eat them. Or the adults. Or the pets,” I said.
I wasn’t even sure the figures I saw were real people. They might have been nothing more than an illusion to make the settlement seem real. Though why the dungeon lord powers that be thought that was necessary was beyond me. I scanned the Settlement ability’s description and the Tablet of Conquest one more time, but they offered no further clues as to what in the hell had happened.
For the thousandth time, I cursed whoever had made these uninformative dungeon lord tablets. They gave me just enough knowledge to make really weird shit happen, but not enough to understand how or why or even what the hell was really going on.
“How should we proceed?” Nephket asked, her voice tight with nerves or excitement. It was hard to tell which.
“I guess we should go down and talk to them,” I said. And then to Kezakazek and Zillah I added, “Don’t scare anyone, all right?”
“Me?” the drow asked, her hand on her chest. “I would never.”
“Who would be afraid of me?” Zillah asked as she followed me down the hill. “I’m fucking adorable. And if they try to run away, I’ll grab them, and hug them, and squeeze them until their guts come out their butts.”
As we descended into the valley, a thousand thoughts chased themselves around the inside of my skull. Forming dungeon rooms out of nothing was cool, sure. Making a bunch of rad armor out of treasure was boss as hell. Shit, even summoning guardians from the misty wastes of some other plane of existence kicked ass.
But creating people out of thin air?
That felt weird.
And it just kept getting weirder.
A little kid with more freckles on his face than bare skin pointed up at us as we made our way down the winding path to the edge of the oasis. He tugged on his mother’s skirts, but she ignored him in favor of eyeballing whatever was in the basket she carried on one hip. Frustrated, the little boy practically screamed at his mother. I couldn’t make out the words he shouted, but his high-pitched, excited tone carried to us on the wind.
The boy’s mother chided him and pulled her dress out of his grubby hand, but the little bastard didn’t give up. When he tugged on her clothes a second time, the woman snatched his hand away and wagged her finger at him like she was about to paddle his ass red. But the boy’s excitement and curiosity outweighed his fear of a spanking, and he stabbed his finger at us and gabbled excitedly at his mother.
With an exasperated shrug, his mom shielded her eyes against the morning sun with one hand and looked up the hill. The instant her eyes locked on us, the woman dropped her basket and went into pure survival mode.
She snatched the kid into her arms as if she’d just seen a hungry bear and let loose cries of alarm that echoed off the water.
“Goddamnit,” I groused. “That’s a shitty first impression to make.”
“The common people are easily alarmed,” Delsinia said with a shrug. “They will bend the knee once they realize who you are. You may have to make an example of one or two—”
“Clay doesn’t want to rule through fear,” Nephket said, her voice as sharp and brittle as an obsidian blade. “That is the old way. He wants—”
