Heroes of Darkness: A Dark Dungeon Realm LitRPG Omnibus Collection

by Wolfe Locke

  “You should have come with me, you know?" the young elf woman called out to him with a coy smile, distracting him from the task of looting the old guildhall for everything it was worth as those newly sworn in their loyalty to him dragged away a few vagrants and beggars for interrogation who hadn't cleared out of the area yet.

  Luca would keep his eyes open; the remnants of the Legends and Chaos guilds were a problem that needed to get handled.

  "Maybe I should have," Luca admitted, though he wasn’t entirely sure he believed it. The powers he had gained from the old guild leaders when he killed them had drastically boosted his own profile. Even now, with Dominic's powers within him, he felt near unbeatable.

  As if she noticed the thought a slight frown spread across her face. "Why do you still call yourself Luca anyway? You’re not him anymore. What was it those humans wanted to call you? Seraph, wasn’t it? It would be a good fit given those wings of yours. Like some dark avenging angel."

  Luca flexed his wings in response. The feathered appendages moved much more easily than they used to as the muscles in his back developed to handle them. With the increase in his base stats, the changes in his body were easily accommodated.

  Soon he would be able to fly with ease. In regard to her questions, though, he wasn’t sure. She did have a point. He felt so far removed from the boy he had been. It was practically a lifetime ago when he was the crippled boy dying on the road.

  "Nostalgia, maybe?" he answered. "But I’m not sure. You’re right. I’ve no real reason to keep it, and Seraph does have a ring to it, even if the one who tried to give me the moniker was a bastard."

  "What about you, though?" he asked. "This is our second meeting, and yet I still don’t have a name to call you."

  She gave him a slight smile as she turned to walk back towards the city. "It’s Sadie Harmontree. Do try to stay alive out there, Seraph. Your kind doesn’t respawn like mine does."

  As Seraph looked out at the fire starting in the guildhall's upstairs, he didn't bother to tell her he planned on living forever.

  What they tried to do here, I’ll do better. I’ll be better, stronger. And no one will ever take it from me.

  Seraph looked out at the people who would make up the body of his new guild. The elves, the firsts, the monsters, I’ll defeat them all, and it starts here. Like the birds on the highway feeding, that’s what we’ll be like. Predators picking at spoils the dead leave behind.

  The Genesis Game: Volume I

  By Wolfe Locke

  A Novel of Pandemonium

  Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End

  * * *

  The man known as the Black Seraph crashed to the ground. His body skidded along the stone floor as his tattered wings hung bloody from his back, and the myriad of open wounds that covered his body bled freely through the holes and gashes of his shredded armor.

  But none of that mattered. He had made it just in time to reach his goal as the boosts from his defensive abilities deactivated, no longer able to offer protection. Every ability was on cool-down, and his mana reserves had been spent during his fight with the Demon Prince of Fire, Adramelech.

  His goal close, he needed to hurry before the forces he brought with him failed, their numbers exhausted.

  As he picked himself up off the ground, his eyes filled with dark ambition and determination. He looked only forward. He refused to look back at the devastation he had left on the battlefield. He had carved through the forces amassed against him, unleashing wave after wave of power. He refused to look back at the carnage left in the wake of his battle with Adramelech; he could only carve a path forward toward his goal.

  He couldn't risk victory for even a second to look and see if any of his vassals or any of his allies had survived. Even a moment of hesitation would be the end of him, allowing the enemies pursuing him the chance to collapse down upon on him, finally overwhelming him.

  For Seraph, all that remained was to move forward without hesitation, one step at a time as his life’s blood flowed freely from his body, his arms extended toward his goal.

  Though he couldn't see how the battle was going in his absence, he could surmise the outcome. With his advanced hearing, Seraph could pick out individual details from the battle. He could make out the sounds of warfare dying down as the men and women who had sworn to serve him died. With every death and every fatal wound, the clang of steel against steel lessened.

  One by one, their lives came abruptly to an end; the sound of their death throes was subtle but not impossible for Seraph to pick out, each muttering in the moment of their deaths some wished for Seraph to save them, a belief that he would end the battle.

  But it was not to be—though Seraph had promised to deliver victory. He knew the names of all the fallen, just as he knew the names of all who had sworn their allegiance to him, but he felt no remorse, no guilt, and no sorrow, only a determination to continue.

  "You did not die in vain," Seraph promised as he forced his damaged body to move the short distance across the ground toward his final goal, leaving a trail of fresh blood behind him. His bloody hand pressed down on the cover of a book that sat upon an altar of white marble, and Seraph knew it to be the Altar of the End. As his hand connected with the book, all the remaining sounds of the surrounding battle immediately faded into nothing, and only white noise remained.

  The sounds of monsters consuming the fallen that littered the battlefield had stopped. No more could Seraph hear the gruesome sounds of the murderous feasting—the sound of flesh tearing and bones snapping. This moment marked the beginning of the end.

  All for this moment, Seraph thought as he struggled to stand. His hand remained on the Altar as his bloody handprint pressed into the book.

  His remaining power channeled into the artifact, his memories, and his essence written and imprinted into the pages of the book, creating in a sense a phylactery by which his memories could be passed on.

  Seraph took solace, knowing their trials were finally coming to an end. This was what they had all fought for, what they had come for, and what they died for—his few friends, his allies, his rivals, his vassals, and even his enemies fighting alongside each other under the banner of the guild he had forced them into, the guild named Carrion Crow.

  The last vestiges of humanity, a mere handful of warriors, was all that remained of the billions who had once walked the Earth. The few remaining were all great warriors of some renown.

  The true elites among elites. Surviving long after the remainder of humanity was long since destroyed and consumed. The strong consumed the weak, and life within the dungeon had been no different.

  Seraph and his guildmates had consumed many of those weaker than themselves. Their power was the result of the culmination of decades of building their strength within the dungeon and seizing the strength of those too weak to protect whatever strength they had tried to build. All joining him in this one last battle. All fighting under his guild banner.

  A battle that even with their overwhelming power—and the vast resources of the power they wielded between them—was a battle they knew they could not win.

  A battle taking place in the deepest pit within the dungeon, the Locum Malificar. The dark heart and final floor of the dungeon whose entrance had long overlooked the rest in dread anticipation, daring all those who would ascend to come and know death while promising survival if but one could claim the Altar.

  His guildmates had joined him in that darkest of pits knowing they had no hope of surviving the battle against the vast horde of Ephemeral beings that awaited them—and the army of Eldritch horrors that served them.

  Without the hope of survival, they came anyway. Some believed in him, some believed in helping humanity, some hoped for breakthroughs in their own strength, and some were unbelieving of the true danger they faced.

  Many more desired an end one way or another. Others still were brought by force or coercion—either they would fight, or they would be consumed in this final
battle. There would be no sidelines to safely watch from and hope to be the last one standing. The blight forced them forward.

  This had been the last effort of the dying race of men. A refusal to go quietly in the night. One opportunity, the only opportunity, to give one man a chance to end the game into which they had all been conscripted against their will when the world dungeon had appeared on Earth and it’s monsters forcefully began taking in people to run its halls and fight the battles within.

  This was a chance to give one man, the sum of all men, the opportunity to conquer the dungeon. This chance, this one chance, provided at the cost of their lives in promise that their lives would be renewed.

  They all knew the pursuit of victory would cost them their lives. They knew. But to them, the cause was worth that price. Many did not believe they would be resurrected but had hoped with their sacrifice humanity might live on.

  Their lives would provide a distraction as they engaged the Ephemeral in battle long enough that the man known as Black Seraph could bypass the majority of the horde and seize the Altar of the End—something that had long been rumored as a way to end the hell in which they all found themselves, and maybe even provide a chance at rebirth for all who had been lost in the dungeon since the beginning.

  And yet, the sacrifice was not enough. Even with the battle host comprised of those great warriors, those elites, it was not enough. Seraph had been forced to engage a Prince of Hell, and though he had managed to banish Adramelech to oblivion, he had been mortally wounded, his side torn open, and his heart destroyed.

  Though he was dying, Seraph was still able to move by the sheer force of his will and the capabilities of his powerful body, allowing him to evade death for a time.

  As he looked at his bloody handprint on the Altar, and as the book placed upon it ceased moving, no longer inscribing, he finally allowed himself to collapse and fall against the Altar, using it for support as his ruined body struggled to soldier on.

  Finally, it is done, the monster I made of myself has overcome them, he thought as his breathing grew more labored, and his thoughts grew hazier.

  Seraph tried to ignore the blood that was pooling beneath him and the cold that was starting to settle into his bones, but he could no longer. The sharp pain that came from his torn wings was constant. Though he did not know what would come next, he was content in his part of it. Content to wait for his reward and the end of the it all. He smiled knowing he would be considered their savior.

  As he slumped against the Altar, he closed his eyes, satisfied to finally come to a conclusion and exhausted from his efforts.

  Within that exhaustion, everything stopped. Time and space stood still. The remaining white noise that had permeated the air was gone, replaced by a cruel and unusual quiet, devoid of any signs of life. Not even the sound of the beating of his heart or the breath whooshing in his lungs could be heard.

  Covered in blood, Seraph would have thought he was dead, if not for the pain in his body. Any doubt he had that he was still alive was suspended when he reached out to touch a droplet of his blood that had fallen from his brow and hung suspended in the air, unmoving.

  This was something else, something more he realized as he got up and removed himself from the Altar and waited. He was no longer exhausted, and his wounds while unhealed did not continue to bleed. The thing he was waiting for was coming.

  The battlefield that had surrounded the Altar, the site of the final battle of humanity against its total annihilation, had disappeared.

  In its place, the battlefield seemed to have given birth to a vast expanse of endless white, and in the middle of that infinite space stood the blood-stained altar. The man who had brought about the end waited for humanity to be given what it had been promised, an end to their struggle and a chance to be reborn. A new Eden to be granted to humanity. A victory. Survival.

  "Seraph," said an anguished voice—a voice for whom Seraph could not place the location of its origin. “This thing you have done is no victory. How can there be victory in all this death? Victory was never meant to be the reward, only survival. Your brothers and sisters lay dead on the field where they have fallen, and beneath them, I see the mountains of corpses piled from the innumerable inglorious dead. How can this be?

  How could you have failed so spectacularly? I have promised humanity a new Eden, if only they would reach my Altar, but they are no more. I cannot reverse extinction. I was trying to save you from Wormwood. To prepare you. This thing you have done to yourself … the dead number in the billions … and how many of those billions have been sacrificed on the Altar of your ambition to be stronger. I cannot bring back the dead that you have murdered. I cannot bring back those you have killed.”

  Furious, Seraph looked around, still not seeing the source of the voice as he raised his arms in anger and summoned a black flame that spread out from him in waves. The flame would burn anything that it touched, and he directed it in all directions, yet the source of the voice remained unharmed. “Why do you do this, Seraph?”

  “I know you; I know who you are! Dungeon! Spirit! Monster! Amarath!” shouted Seraph in anger. “Who are you to judge me? How many have you killed? Yet, you dare to judge us for what we have done and had to do when you have trapped us here to play your game, and yet I have won your game. I have conquered your floors, one by one. I have slain your monsters and your minions. It is done, and it is over.

  I have reached your Altar and claimed it as my own. I am the last, and no more will come after me. No more will die here to feed the engine of your insatiable appetites. You owe me what you have promised, spirit. You have long promised a new Eden and salvation for humanity, did you not say if only but one would claim the Altar as ours?

  I have done this; my hand is imprinted on the book of the Altar. My story is inscribed in its pages. Restore my friends to life as I know you can and let us be free of you.”

  “I am what I am, human. A Lord of Pandemonium who sought to prepare you for the Calamity to come. You have won nothing. I have long promised since the very first day when I opened my halls that I would provide a new Eden for humanity, if humanity would but reach my Altar.

  Humanity is dead, human, and you, not I, have killed them, through your negligence, your apathy, and your contempt. You confused your power, assuming this strength to be your own, yet it is mine. From within my dungeon, you have found this strength. I have extended to you my power, and yet you denied the same to so many others. You have confused my power with your own.

  "It is within the halls of my creation you have wandered these many years as you sought refuge from the apocalypse and the calamity that has been unleashed upon the Earth. A calamity I tried to save you from. The blight is not of me. And yet you have denied the same refuge to others. How many people did you condemn to die when the blight overtook the world? Do they number in the thousands or the millions? Innocents whose only offense was that they were weaker than you.

  I have every reason to judge you. You who have been petty, you who have been vile, and you who has taken and stolen. You who had the strength to protect the defenseless and the broken and chose not to. You who were known as the Black Seraph, the Angel of Genocide. You who have killed more humans than ever died in my halls."

  Seraph roared in anger as dark mana overtook his body, and he took on a terrible visage as he grew many times his size as the darkness made him a veritable avatar of destruction, the power radiating out from him far greater than any he had ever shown before. "You would defy me, dungeon? I am primordial and power incarnate."

  "You are nothing," said the Spirit of the Dungeon, and with those words came a power that eclipsed that of what Seraph had just shown. In an instant, his dark mana was stripped away, his body changed into mere vapor, and the wings he had been so proud of were torn from his body until all that remained was the shell of a man underneath.

  A man crippled, heavily wounded, and only alive because time had stopped.

  "A poor imitation i
s what you are. I choose you to be the vessel of my power, you are nothing. I am judgment, and my judgment of your kind remains the same. I made the dungeon as a trial—a trial you have failed. A trial your guildmates for whose lives you begged has failed.

  I have given humanity every opportunity to overcome their existence, and all I have witnessed has been the suffering you bring upon each other.

  "I forced this confrontation with annihilation, and yet humanity refused to do what survival required, which was to raise one another up. To strengthen each other as only iron may sharpen iron, and as only the strong may serve alongside the strong.

  Yet, where is your army, you who were once billions? I counted humanity as numerous as the grains of sand along the ocean, but so few among you survived till the end. You numbered in the billions, but only hundreds have survived, and of those hundreds who marched on the Locum Maleficar today, only you, Seraph, remain.

  Only you survive, and yet soon you too will be gone to join the others in death when you succumb to these mortal wounds. This is no victory, Seraph. You have doomed yourself. Nobody remains to fight against Aeon, the true enemy."

  The man humbled and cowed begged; he could not die like this. "Spirit, dungeon, please, this cannot be how it ends. The others they followed me, they trusted me. It was my idea to hoard power, just as it was my idea that left them all dead on the field.

  I thought this would work. We just wanted it to be over and thought that by ending it everything would go back to being as it was. We wanted our lives back. Please, what can I do? Take my life, take everything, but please spare the rest.