“How fast can you mine a new room? Nothing big; about the size of a posh lady’s shoe cupboard.”
Karson whispered to Wylie.
Wylie paced around, stroking his chin. “Hmm. Not big job, but sometimes small jobs are hardest. Might take while, Dark Lord. Can be sped up but cost more.”
I was incredulous. “What are you now, a contractor looking for a way to wheedle money out of me? I need it done in the next twenty minutes. Wylie, if Karson and Tarius drag their feet or whisper more useless advice to you, use the tongue-lashing ability you earned when you leveled up as supervisor. And if the room isn’t built before Bolton and Tomlin stop gabbing, I’ll give you a lashing of my own. And not with my tongue.”
“Somebody’s in a bad mood.”
“I’m sorry if I come across as tetchy,” I said. “I don’t mean it. I’m just under quite a lot of strain. Now if you three could just get this done, I would appreciate it greatly.”
The miners set out to the north-east part of the dungeon, where they would mine the new room for me. I pulled up my map to check on Bolton.
Phew. He was still talking to Tomlin.
Now, I just needed the most important part of my plan.
*
Overseer Bolton left Tomlin after discussing the finer points of seasonal essence growth, and whether essence vines were in fact affected by the seasons, and whether the word seasons really meant anything in a wasteland where the sun beat down on it as relentlessly as the king's guards beat the poor saps in their jail cells.
Talking with Tomlin, the only kobold he had come to regard as a friend, left him in a pleasant mood, but he shook it off and donned a mask of suspicion. Not a literal mask, but more a mindset of eyeing every inch of the dungeon and looking for the slightest hint of secrecy. Cores were as crafty as they came, so it was no surprise that the clans had sought an academy overseer to make sure theirs didn’t pull any tricks.
Heading north, Bolton detected the whiff of illusion. That should have been expected, in a dungeon, but his gut told him to follow this particular stench.
He continued northwards through the lair, using his overseer map skill to navigate the mess of passageways and tunnels in the center of the dungeon. Threading his way safely through them, stopping to take note of the new poison chamber Beno had installed, Bolton took a tunnel that spiraled north-east.
The smell is getting stronger.
It was heavy in his nostrils and strong on his tongue. The hint of secrecy wafted in the air.
Yep, there was something around here that Beno was hiding. Something he wanted to keep secret not just from heroes but from everyone else.
“I’ll unravel your secrets, Beno, you trickster scamp.”
Bolton used his overseer senses, and like turning a bath tap, he allowed more mana to flow. Now, as well as tasting and smelling the secret, he could see it. A trace of it, at least. It hung in the tunnels like a fog, colored the color of secrecy, a color that hung around most people most days, but they lacked the intuition to see it.
He walked and followed and tried to decide how much he’d tell Galatee and Reginal. It depended on the severity of the secret, he supposed.
If Beno was tricking his owners, finding a loophole in the contract, he should be punished.
But as an ex-academy student, Bolton didn’t want to see one of his old cores disciplined too harshly. He’d have to find a balance. This all depended on what he was hiding.
Finally, the smell and taste and secrecy-colored fog were strongest by one part of a tunnel wall in the north-eastern reaches of the dungeon. It was nondescript; a wall just like the rest, made of dull brown mud and greyish stone.
Channeling mana into his fingertip, Bolton rubbed the stone until he found the edges of something. Straight lines that he followed using his finger, the mana gradually unmasking an illusion.
Soon, he had uncovered a door hidden on the tunnel wall. It had a baboon’s head as a door knocker, which meant only one thing.
“’Tis morning ‘tis morning,” squeaked the baboon, “I find it quite boring. I don’t like your face; it’s a bloody disgrace.”
“A riddle door. Perfect.”
He’d already spent way too long inspecting this part of the dungeon, and he had a meeting in a town over a hundred miles away later that day. Even traveling using a portal, he’d be pressed for time. Could he hang around here answering riddles?
He should leave this for another day, but he had to know what Beno was hiding.
“Spit it out, then. What’s your riddle?”
“What belongs to you, but other people use it more than you?”
It took Bolton a millisecond to dredge his list of riddle solutions from his memory palace. “Your name.”
“Correct. I would also have accepted your favorite pair of pantaloons or brogues, as any human with siblings can attest. As a riddle door with four brothers, it was always a problem. You may enter.”
Putting aside the idea of a riddle door wearing pantaloons, he watched as the baboon door swung open, revealing a small room, perhaps five by five feet, with an ornamental box sitting in the middle.
“Core Beno?” called Bolton. “I want you here this instant.”
“Why? I can see you from here,” Beno answered.
Bolton gave a smug grin. “Then you will see that I have uncovered a secret. Tell me, Beno, if I open this box here, will I find secret loot? Or will I see something that you tried to hide from me, and by proxy, First-Leaf Galatee and Chief Reginal?”
“You got me there, you devious swine,” Beno said.
Bolton raised a finger. “Never try to pull the wool over an overseer’s eyes. We can see through wool, you know.”
He ran his finger over the box, but his channeled mana revealed no traps, no surprises.
“Let’s see what’s you’re hiding, then,” he said.
He unhooked the latch and pushed back the lid.
There was a bang.
A banner shot out of the box and unraveled, then hovered in mid-air.
A cake was flung out of the box, and it also hovered in midair.
The banner was covered in multi-colored writing, and the cake had words written with icing on the top. Both the banner and cake read the same things, and Bolton couldn’t help but smile.
HAPPY RESSUECRCTION DAY, OVERSEER BOLTON!
Bolton shook his fist in the air, unable to contain his grin. This might have been the first time anyone had remembered.
“Beno, you scamp! I wasted most of my inspection time to find this bloody cake!”
CHAPTER 21
The Collector
“A horse strolls into a tavern,” the Collector said, sitting twenty feet in the air upon a throne made of bones, “and the gentleman whose job is to serve beer and perform general housekeeping within the establishment, says ‘Why the morose look upon your visage?’”
The Collector waited for the sounds to come, the sounds that beings make when faced with words ordered in such a way as to provoke amusement.
The beings beneath The Collector, way below in the courtyard of the ruined castle it called home, didn’t laugh. Nineteen sentients had heard its arrangement of words but hadn’t provided a single satisfactory sound.
“Fetch me the whip,” the Collector said, clicking its fingers.
The courtyard erupted into a sound called laughter now. Lots of versions of it, from high-pitched ones that sounded like someone cleaning a window with a cloth, to deep ones like barrels rolling over cobblestones.
“Enough,” it said.
As the noise died down and was replaced by the moan of a breeze threading through the ruins, the Collector looked at its audience.
“Honest feedback, please. Do not be worried; I shan’t get upset. What was wrong in my telling of humorous events?”
“It’s a common joke,” said one voice. “But you told it in a way as to rob its humor.”
“Too wordy by far,” said another voice. “Gentleman who
serves beer should be bartender or innkeeper.”
A third voice added, “And morose look upon your visage removes the crux of the joke. Long face is an expression meaning sad or upset, and horses have long faces. That is why it works.”
The Collector stroked one of its five chins. “The humor is not the talking horse?”
“No.”
“Nor its downcast mood?”
“Not exactly. It’s the expression of it.”
One of his collection spoke up. “You are all incorrect. The joke is that a human tavern is ill-equipped to cater to horse patrons, and the innkeeper would likely refuse service.”
“Wrong. The horse would take up no more room than a band of miners, a group of heroes, or a crowd of friends. Why would an innkeeper, a businessman, refuse his coin? If the horse had gold, he would find both service and refreshment.”
The sentients in his collection broke into a chorus of bickering, and the Collector tuned it out. It put three of its hands to its forehead. “Damn it all to buggery. I will never master this.”
A great thudding sound came from somewhere beyond the ruins. The Collector stared down at its courtyard, where the grass was littered with loose stones, ones that had come from the wreckage of walls that had formed a castle forecourt.
It knew not which king it had once belonged to, nor what had befallen them. The only thing about the castle’s past that had interested the Collector was the underground burial chamber, which it had raided to construct its giant throne of bones.
The thudding sounds belonged to Milark, a stone troll whom the Collector had chanced upon in the Five-Clove forest. The Collector had just added another sentient to its collection and was taking a stroll to celebrate, when it heard a sobbing sound.
Sticking its tongue out and tasting the sound in the air, the Collector followed it only to find a hulking great troll sitting upon a rock and crying like a baby with a slapped posterior.
After conversing, the Collector learned that Milark’s tribe had abandoned him, on account of his club foot that he dragged behind him, which slowed him to such a point that even trolls found it too sluggish.
Milark’s story tasted foul as the Collector listened to it, and as such, it extended an offer of continued acquaintance with possible affection, which he was told common folk referred to as friendship.
The Collector understood Milark’s troubles all too well. Though Milark had parents once, and he knew his ancestry, they were still alike. The Collector had nobody, had never known the kindness of a parent. His creation was as much a mystery to the rest of the world as it was to him, and no amount of torturing various historians, healers, mages, and scribes had ever brough him closer to the truth.
The only truth he ever received was from a mind-healer.
“You collect because it makes you real,” the woman said, gesturing at the Collector’s various arms and legs he’d grafted to his body. “Every new appendage confirms your existence.”
The Collector had agreed with her, and he’d taken her brain to see if he could profit from it, but alas it did not graft as well as arms and legs and wings did, and no amount of artificery would help.
And so, the Collector carried on collecting, and it was a happy sort of life, even if he never felt fulfilled and always needed the next prize.
“Milark,” said the Collector, watching its friend stroll into the ruins. “I was just entertaining my collection. You know what, my friend? I think I have almost mastered it. Another achievement to strike from the list; that makes it comedy, acting, dancing, and jousting all ticked off. I wonder what I will turn my hands to next.”
Milark stood underneath the great throne and nodded to the Collector’s collection gathered in a semi-circle around it. His face showed neutrality, but it had not always been so. When he had first come to live in the castle ruins, Milark found the Collector’s collection distasteful.
“Somethin’ ya should read, m’lord,” said Milark.
He held a book in his hand. The Collector peered down from its throne and looked at it. The book’s leather cover tasted old, but the pages tasted quite new on his tongue. Freshly printed, no doubt by artificery. The advancement of artificery had heralded a new age in Xynnar, where mana-drenched books could transmit the words within them halfway across the world. The Collector didn’t trust it. When words were easy to spread, they became cheap.
“A book, Milark?”
“M’lord has a keen eye. A book you should read, methinks.”
“Pass it here.”
Milark lifted the book, glanced at the throne twenty feet in the air, too high even for a troll.
“I was talking to my collection,” said the Collector. “One of them learned telekinesis before I took him. Come on now; pass it.”
Nothing happened.
“Fetch my whip,” said the Collector. “The one with the blue gemstone, if you please.”
This time, the book rose through the air, landing perfectly in his palm. Lacking a title on the cover, the tome gave nothing of its contents away. The Collector licked both the thumbs on its right hand and flicked onto the first page, where it saw its title.
“Totemly Brilliant – The Ballad of Beno Versus the Beasts. What is this, Milark, another of your fancies?”
“It’s from that poncy bugger scribe. We met ‘im once, remember? Gullyiard or summat like that.”
“Ah, Gulliver Shaw,” said the Collector. “Warscribe, as I recall. This is not a fable, then?”
“It’s a true account, m’lord. ‘E’s staying with a dungeon core in the wasteland, and it took out a whole bloody roost of werewolves.”
“I believe they are called a pride of werewolves, not a roost.”
“Right y’ar. You’re so clever, m’lord.”
One of the collection sighed and muttered, not quite under its breath. “It’s a wolf pack, you absolute idiot.”
The Collector pretended it couldn’t hear. Threats aside, it was in no mood to actually use physical punishment. Doing so always cast a grim light on the rest of its day.
Milark shuffled nervously on the spot.
“You want to ask me something, but you hold back,” said the Collector.
The great stone troll blushed, the rocky skin on his cheeks flushing slightly red. “There’s a fox cub in the forest over yonder,” he said. “Lost its mam and pa. I’s seen it wanderin’ alone. Can I…”
The Collector sighed. “Yes, you can have it, as long as you can coax it to you. But no more stray animals after that, okay Milark? You must have twenty pets now, and that’s enough for anyone. Wild animals are a great responsibility.”
“I takes good care of them.”
“I know you do, and it’s clear how much they love you, but enough’s enough. The fox cub is to be your last.”
“You’re so kind m’lord.”
The Collector wanted to smile at the praise, but he didn’t. The last time he had smiled at someone with both lips, their face had turned white, they fainted, and the Collector had to carry them all the way home to their village. There, he was chased away by fifteen men, three women, and two dogs, all of them wielding pitchforks. Except for the dogs, of course.
“Now, a core in the wasteland, you say? I will have to read this. If the account is true, it may be worth a trip, Milark. After all, I cannot pass up a chance at adding to my collection, can I?”
Both Milark and the Collector stared at the collection then, and the Collector couldn’t help but feel proud about all the dungeon cores it had already gathered.
One had come willingly, and he had paid for another, but the rest? Those were the most satisfying. The rest he had dragged screaming from their dungeons.
CHAPTER 22
It turned out that five ravens made quite a din as they swooped through the arena, gliding under the stone ceiling and sweeping past the battle murals carved into the walls.
“A grating sound,” said Gulliver, joining me. “Sounds like the reception I received when
I published ‘A Grave Matter; 1000 Jokes to Use at a Loved-One’s Funeral.’”
“Gulliver, meet my raven strike squad. Five corvid combatants led by Edgar, who I deemed to be the cleverest.”
Gulliver watched the birds looping in the air, attacking the straw dummies at the end of the arena by hovering overhead then swooping down to peck them with their beaks. The dummies, straw versions of men, women, and children, suffered the attacks silently, but it gave me an idea of how effective my newly created creatures could be.
Not very.
“You know, life in a dungeon core isn’t as I expected,” said Gulliver. “Killing heroes, messing around with their corpses, sure. Distasteful, perhaps, but understandable given your rather twisted mind. But bird watching?”
“They aren’t great fighters, I’ll admit that. I created them as a scouting unit. Shadow will be in charge of them. They can cover much more distance than poor saps who have to walk around on their legs, and they are black enough to blend into the shadows.”
“So that’s how you’ve spent the last few days. Teaching birds how to spy.”
“I created the ravens and had them train in the arena for a while. It’s helped their offensive abilities some, but they’ll never be great weapons for me. Better to use them for reconnaissance. Don’t ask a one-armed man to climb a ladder.”
“Excuse me?”
“We all have our limitations, Gull. The phrase anything is possible was created by dreamers trying to kid themselves that one day, they’ll stop spending their nights in the tavern and go kill a dragon and become rich and famous. No, better to welcome your limitations like an old friend, and then together, find a purpose that truly suits you. Some of us may never climb mountains, so better to concentrate on conquering our own, personal hills. There’s a reason the clan decided that Jahn will build on the surface, while I stay here in my dungeon.”
“You can’t do what Jahn does, can you?”
“I’m not perfect.”
“Yet the world makes us think we should strive to be, and in the striving, we doom ourselves to failure. I understand, Beno.”
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 52
