“Fine,” huffed Gulliver. “You’ve wheedled it out of me. Your cores are renowned wheedlers, and you can consider me wheelded. Just twenty moons hither, I found myself in the employ of Duke Canbridshire. The duke’s reputation wasn’t golden, and he needed a scribe’s touch upon his legend. The usual stuff; I would follow the duke and write tales of his deeds, embellishing them to cast him in a good light. Pah. You might as well ask me to cast a swamp boar in a good light.
In my unfettered access to the duke’s life, I came to know his family quite well. His delightful children. His wife, Nalena, who was both beautiful and kind, with a soul as golden as sunlight. But the duke was a horrid toad; a vile man, selfish and cruel, with no respect nor love for anyone.
Nalena and I became friends, and soon, I knew I could not in all good scribalistic faith, use my words to bolster this prat’s legend. See, the duke was betraying his good lady almost nightly, inviting wenches and trollops into his bed, while his wife slept just down the hall.
I had enough when I had published one book of his life and asked for payment, only to be met with a sneer. Right, I thought. I’ll fix you.
So, I published a second volume. This was a tell-all of the duke; his cruelty, his complete betrayal of his lovely wife. I knew this could ruin me; a scribe lives on keeping the confidence of his subjects, especially if he is a scribe to the nobles. I knew that by helping the woman I would gut my own reputation, but what could I do? The lovely woman was being made a mockery, and people had to know.
The second I sent this new volume to Inky Mick, my days turned dark. The duke became both loathed and laughed at, and he swore to destroy me. He sent his men to find me, while circulating rumors about my character.
That was how I found myself both disgraced and in hiding, fearing for my life. My reputation ruined by the duke’s slurs, and a mark upon my pretty head. Soon after, I was in a tavern, disguised as a trader in need of an ale, when the doors were flung open and a teenager ran in. His face was white as cow’s milk, his eyes as wide as the moon. He started ranting about a dungeon in the wasteland, and a core who had murdered his friends. I smelled a story, and a way to lie low until the duke grew bored of persecuting me. And that, my friend, is how I find myself before you.
Now, can you trust me, core? Or as I said; should I strip to my skin and prove I don’t have a crossbow wedged betwixt my arse cheeks?”
“That won’t be necessary. Let’s try this out, Gulliver,” I said.
CHAPTER 3
And that was how I, a dungeon core trained to kill heroes, made a friend. The thing about Gulliver was that he had this manner about him; a sort of attentiveness and ease that made him good to talk to. I supposed that came with being a scribe; he was used to making his subjects speak.
But through our chats, I discovered a scribe who was genuinely interested in the subject of dungeons. In fact, he was fascinated with all aspects of dungeon building and in learning about the creatures who lurked within it.
Not only that, but he had no qualms about heroes meeting their demise down here. My monsters didn’t scare him, nor did my traps. I saw now how he had made a good warscribe; fear didn’t have a grip on him. Or was it the other way around? Had following an army into battle knocked the fear out of him?
It was on one morning, while we discussed the heroes I had recently dispatched, that I heard the infamous kobold scream.
Now, it isn’t a pretty sound. A kobold’s scream is similar to what you would hear if you walked past a punishment pit in one of the underworlds. A noise somewhere between a metal claw scraping down a slate, and a baboon having its tender parts dipped in burning oil.
I heard this sound four days after I had slaughtered four heroes in my dungeon.
Demons Below, what a day that was, when a bunch of simple-minded sword swingers had waltzed into my dungeon, swinging their hips and strutting around like they owned the place.
I hadn’t expected a party of heroes to find me all the way out here in the wasteland, but lo and behold, they’d discovered my lair, and I knew I had to make the most of it.
I had torn them apart like crusty bread.
Or, my monsters had. It’s important to give credit where it’s due, but small difference, I suppose. If a blacksmith uses a hammer to make a sword, you don’t give the hammer all the praise, do you?
At any rate, it was the most fun I’d had in a while. After slaughtering a rogue, ranger, knight, and a mage, a glorious message appeared.
You have leveled up to 7!
- Total essence increased to 615
- Existing crafting categories expanded
- Dungeon capacity increased: 18 rooms, 22 traps, 12 puzzles, 20 monsters, 2 boss monsters
- Maginhart [Kobold, Miner] is upgraded to lvl 21!
- Maginhart [Kobold, Miner] has gained weapon proficiency: crossbow
- Gary [Melded Monster] is upgraded to lvl 4
Finally! It had been bloody ages since I had last advanced my core level.
Given that I can only do so by murdering things, and with the lack of things to murder around here, I was resigned to waiting a while before I could do it.
But it had finally happened, and now I was a level 7. Super.
Not only had leveling up increased my total essence, which was what I needed to use to create things in my dungeon, but it had also expanded my crafting categories, giving me access to new things.
New puzzles to confuse heroes.
New traps to snare them.
New monsters to kill them with.
The only thing I had been unsure of about the entire saga was letting the young lad go. I mean, he looked like he was about to wet himself all over my lovely dungeon tiles, but it wasn’t through a sense of pity or cleanliness that I spared him.
No, you see, I had a problem.
As I mentioned, I could only level up my core stats, and thus get more essence and more things to craft, by killing things in my dungeon.
Sure, I could find rats and moles and other creatures to slaughter, but it wouldn’t level me up anywhere near as fast as when I kill heroes. To a dungeon core, in terms of leveling up, killing heroes is like pouring oil into a fire and sending the flames crazy.
The only problem was that right now, my dungeon was in a remote wasteland, far away from most hero guilds. Although the guilds had ways of knowing when dungeons had opened up, mine was so distant and had so low a difficulty and loot rating, that it was hardly worth the journey here.
No heroes traveling here, means few chances to level up. See my problem?
So, I considered letting the boy live a form of advertising. I pictured him journeying back home, and finally stumbling back into town as a traumatized, blood-soaked mess.
He’d spill his story to his people, and word would spread about the big, bad dungeon in the wasteland. Before you know it, I’d be up to my metaphorical elbows in heroes’ blood.
Happy days!
But right now, I didn’t hear the sound of heroes traipsing into my lair.
No.
Today, my thoughts were broken by the sound of a kobold screaming.
“Heroes, do you think?” said Gulliver. “What do you say? The scent of misplaced bravery and barely hidden fear is in the air.”
“It always smells like that down here. Come on.”
With a mental command, I traveled through my dungeon, past the alchemy chamber and monster melding room, until I reached the most eastern part of the labyrinth.
Here, I materialized on a pedestal. This room was a mess even for a dungeon, which should tell you something about its state. Gulliver arrived not long after. He was red in the face and clearly had dashed through the tunnels to try and beat me here. Yet when he entered the room, he did so with the biggest strut he could manage, while humming a tune.
“What a mess,” he said. “Looks like a troll’s guest parlor.”
Debris was sitting in great big piles. Mini hills of mud, stone, and clay heaped over by one wal
l, and smaller piles of iron, selenium, and zinc ores opposite them. Mana lamps glowed on the walls, spreading light over a room littered with mice bones completely stripped of flesh. It looked like a truly disturbed cat had loaded up on barbiturate-laced catnip and gone on a killing spree. But no, this was just the remnants of my kobold mining crew’s lunch break. They couldn’t get enough of grilled mouse.
My mining crew was over by the most eastern wall, though I couldn’t see any reason for one of them to have screamed so loudly. The team comprised of five kobold miners led by my friend Wylie, who I had recently promoted to supervisor after the last one, a delightful young lad named Warrane, had to quit.
Wylie was a little short on brains the same way most cats are a little short of loyalty, but he was one of the hardest workers I had ever seen. As a hard worker myself, that made me like him. Not only that, but he was loyal, and he truly, truly loved mining. I’m sure that when he slept, his most beloved dreams involved him swinging a pickaxe in a never-ending labyrinth of clay and asphalt.
“My dear kobold,” said Gulliver, bowing theatrically. “Well met. How are we on this especially dark and dreary day?”
Wylie looked at Gulliver, and then me. His eyes were panicked, and he seemed tense.
“Wylie, what did I teach you?” asked Gulliver. “Remember? About being a gentleman?”
The kobold scratched his head. He gave a short, awkward bow. “Well…met,” he grunted.
“Wylie, what’s wrong?” I asked. “I heard screaming.”
The kobolds around Wylie, most of them taller than him and slightly more intelligent, glanced at their supervisor and then looked away. They did that thing where people act so inconspicuous, that it looks incredibly spicuous.
Is spicuous the opposite of inconspicuous?
Whatever. Right now I felt more suspicious than a policeman investigating a pie theft and seeing his main suspect’s hands covered in gravy.
“Wylie…” I began. “You’re hiding something from me. Do we need to talk about truth and honesty again?”
“No, Dark Lord.”
“Then what did we say about honesty?” I asked.
Wylie looked at the ground, ashamed. “A dungeon is no place for lies.”
“Good. Then you better tell me why I just heard what can only be the sound of a kobold having his guts ripped out.”
Wylie nodded at his workers. “Stand aside for Dark Lord! Let Dark Lord see hole.”
The miners parted for me, revealing a void in the wall behind them. It was just large enough for a kobold to squeeze through. It was the beginnings of a tunnel that the kobolds had made on my orders, since I had instructed them to start mining in the eastern area.
They had made great progress in expanding my dungeon, but they had barely touched this wall, and now they were hiding the hole from me.
Hmm. This was suspicious alright.
“When my workers hide things from me,” I said, “It makes me think silly thoughts. Ones that involve my boss monster getting a kobold snack.”
Wylie scratched his chin. “Wylie made mistake, Dark Lord. Small mistake.”
“And…?”
“I am new supervisor. Smallest of mistakes could cost job.”
I felt a little bad for my friend then. True, I had been reluctant to give him the supervisor role on account of his muted intelligence, but I felt cruel judging him that way. So I had decided it was better to have a little faith in him. Give him a chance to prove himself.
Besides, it was a lesson to the other kobolds in my dungeon. A sign that I would reward loyalty and hard work. Intelligence didn’t count for much if you were disloyal, lazy, and showed no dedication. I needed creatures who were ready to sweat for my dungeon, especially with the things I had planned in the future.
“Wylie, I’m not going to strip you of your title because of a little mistake. Anyone who says they learned something without making mistakes is a liar, and you need to see errors not as catastrophes, but as stepping-stones that let you climb higher. The world has made people so worried to mess up, but messing up is part of learning. Now, what’s the little mistake that you’re so worried about?”
“Dylan was disemboweled, Dark Lord.”
“Disemboweled,” repeated Gulliver, while writing in his book. “Fascinating. Bowels should never be disem’d. That is a rule I live by.”
I brought up my list of dungeon monsters, and sure enough, I had lost a kobold miner.
Monsters List [11/18]
Tomlin [Kobold] [Cultivator Lvl 7]
Wylie [Kobold supervisor] [Miner Lvl 9]
Shadow [Scout] [Lvl7]
Maginhart [Kobold] [Miner Lvl 20]
Miner Karson [Kobold] [Miner Lvl 19]
Miner Tarius [Kobold] [Miner Lvl 15]
Brecht [Kobold] [Bard Lvl 15]
Gary [Troll-Leech-Spider Melded-Monster Lvl4]
Mushroom-guy [Boss monster]
Fire Beetles x2
Damn it. I now had 11 monsters in my dungeon, where I used to have 12. I studied the list, and I was saddened when I realized whose bowels had been disem’d.
You’d think that with so many monsters in my lair, and with most of them being kobolds who looked similar to one another, I wouldn’t know their names.
Not so. I made sure I knew my creatures - my clanmates - very well. After all, what kind of leader doesn’t know whether his people prefer grilled mouse or roasted rat? Lute music or heavy bard? I made sure to get to know my people.
So now, I saw that our unfortunate newly-gutless kobold miner was indeed Dylan. Damn it.
Not that I would be happy to lose any of them, but Dylan was an eager learner, who I had begun to suspect had talents that lay not in mining, but maybe in my alchemy chamber. He had also started reading book 1 in the Soul Bard boxset I had procured the last time the Wrotun people had sent wagons out to trade. Dylan was a good guy.
“Wylie,” I said. “I’m assuming Dylan wasn’t killed by the simple act of digging a hole. I know conditions are dangerous here – and I have resolved to buy you all flame-resistant gloves and pickaxe-proof boots, by the way – but miners don’t die simply by making a tunnel.”
“That’s right, Dark Lord.”
I carried on. “Since bowels don’t fall out of bodies on their own, I’m guessing that something living or undead killed Dylan.”
“I never knew cores were such masters of logical thought,” said Gulliver.
Ignoring him, I carried on. “And because there is no blood on this side of the room, I would hazard a guess that it happened on the other side of that hole.”
A kobold named Maginhart faced me. He was a miner who I had asked to train in the subskill of using a crossbow. Right now, Maginhart was a celebrity among the kobolds in my dungeon, after recently killing a rogue.
His kill count wasn’t the only thing to separate him from the others. Kobolds are a mixture of wolf and lizard, with most of them inheriting more of the wolf side. They walk upright, and they are surprisingly friendly, given that their appearance makes them look murderous.
Whenever I create a kobold, their appearance is completely outside of my control. Maginhart had inherited more of the lizard side of his species, giving him a long, thin tongue that stuck outside his lips as though his mouth wasn’t big enough for it. It rattled when he breathed.
“Thisss kobold hopesss you will, in future, protect your minersss’ interestsss againssst workplace hazardsss,” he said.
“We should unionize,” said Karson, a miner who was probably the only kobold in existence who styled his mane of wolf hair into a top knot. The other kobolds mocked him but truth be told, he had style.
Unions. Insurrection. Disembowelment. I didn’t like the sound of this.
I’d never heard of dungeon creatures unionizing before, but then again, who had expected members of the League of Necromancers to form a union? It caused a stir at the time, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. If that happened, then this could happen.<
br />
“Unionize!” cried Gulliver. “Yes, there is no greater story than that of the downtrodden rising up, and treading on those who once stomped them underfoot. It would make for a fascinating tale. Shove a red hot poker up the backside of your oppressor.”
“If by oppressor you mean me, you’re overstepping your mark, Gull,” I said. Then I addressed the kobolds. “A union? Are you mad? Conditions in my dungeon couldn’t be safer. I swear, I treat you lot like kings.”
“You work us to the bone, Dark Lord.”
“You gasbags don’t know how easy you have it. Some cores don’t care about their kobolds at all; they work them until their bones literally break. Me? I’m the nicest core you’ll ever meet. This place might as well be called the Fungeon!”
Just then, I heard a cracking sound from the ceiling. A rock dislodged, landing on Karson’s foot. He screamed, though not in the same way as poor Dylan.
“That must have hurt,” said Gull. “Not to worry, Karson; conditions in this dungeon couldn’t be better!”
Karson hopped around, grunting in pain while his top knot flopped this way and that.
“Ahem. A union is a great idea,” I said, nodding in what I hoped was a sagely manner. “You would get a union representative to sit in our disciplinary meetings, listening carefully but ultimately being useless. Of course, you’d have to find a way to settle union fees, which will be tough given that I don’t pay you. I’m sure you geniuses would find a way around that. And the worst thing of all, is that I can’t do anything about you joining a union, can I? I would be helpless. Lost. A dungeon master enslaved to his creatures.”
“Hear that? Sounds great!” said Tarius, a miner kobold who was best friends with Karson. Lacking the required hair to emulate his buddy’s top knot, Tarius had grown a mustache and goatee that made him look less like a figure of fashion, and more like a kobold who enjoyed hiding in bushes near and spying through people’s windows.
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 36
