The bag he’d placed on the pressure tile must have been filled with stones that weighed as much as he did, but paradoxically were light enough for him to carry. Putting these on the tile had rendered the trap useless.
Damn it. I was so, so close.
Then again, Cael and his brothers were still outnumbered. I could still defeat them. This wasn’t the time to give up.
“Gary? Tear out his spine and strangle him with it, if you would be so kind.”
My giant spider-troll rushed toward Cael with his teeth bared, his face a picture of bestial hunger.
“Fight, Death, Kill,” I said. “Pincer him into pieces.”
From the other side of the loot room, three beetles perked up, pointing their antennae in the air. Fight, Death, and Kill were the size of dogs, with oil-black skin and pincers sharp enough to shave iron.
They charged into battle, screaming their own names at the top of their voices.
“Fight!”
“Death!
“Kill!”
Cael unsheathed his sword and held it upright until its blade caught the glow from the mana lamps scattered around the room. Taking a phoenix feather from his satchel, he used the feather tip to draw on the blade, just above the hilt. Red light spread over his etchings, forming a glowing lightning bolt on the metal.
I had seen him do something similar on one of his previous trips to my dungeon, where he used the feather to draw a shield shape on his chest piece. Back then, it had given him a shimmering field of energy that protected him and his brothers.
What was this new effect? Drawing something on his sword meant it would be an offensive ability. That was the problem with wartificers like Cael; their powers went either way.
It was too late for me to change tactics now. Gary bore down on Cael with a roar, his leech legs raised in the air to display all their razor teeth.
Cael pointed his sword at Gary’s abdomen. Gary’s roars were met with a crackling sound.
Light flashed once, twice, three times as a bolt of lightning left the sword’s tip, smashing into Gary and sending him flying across the room.
Cael’s brothers, still incapacitated yet watching the scene, coughed as they breathed in the stench of burning troll-spider.
Three cries drowned out the crackle of flames and Gary’s whimpers.
“Fight!”
“Death!”
“Kill!”
My beetles surrounded Cael. Waves of flame lapped over their husks as they activated their hell husk abilities.
“Fight!”
“Death!”
“K-”
There were three more flashes, followed by three crashing sounds like the roar of an angry god.
When the light faded, my beetles were scattered across the room, unmoving. Steam rose from their husks and made spirals on its way to the ceiling.
Cael’s had just incapacitated four creatures with that wartificer ability of his. Damn this miserable hero to the deepest hell in the underworld!
Knowing I couldn’t win, it was time for damage limitation.
“Gary, can you move?” I said.
“Just about, my good chap,” he groaned.
“Then get out of there. Brecht, you too. We’re done. Retreat.”
Brecht tugged a leather cord strapped around his shoulder, making his tambourine swing around so that it rested against his back.
“What about Fight, Death, and Kill?” he said.
I eyed my beetles, battered and smoldering yet showing signs of life with little twitches of their feelers.
“The heroes won’t care about them now,” I said. “Not when they’ve won the loot. Get out of there. No point risking your life on another defeat.”
Brecht lumbered out of the loot room, followed by Gary. This left the heroes alone in the cavern, with no creatures to stop them from taking the loot in the center.
Cael drew his dagger. Using his phoenix feather, he etched a set of rune letters on it. He approached his brothers and made cutting motions in the air around them, as though snapping invisible string. With a crackle of mana, his dagger broke his brothers free of their paralysis.
The shortest and youngest hero stretched his arms out now, pacing around the room. “Ah, it feels good to walk again!” he said. “Well done, Cael.”
Cael shrugged. “Pah. It was nothing, really. You would have done the same.”
“I’m not a wartificer like you.”
“You’d have thought of something. You’re not as dumb as you pretend to be,” answered Cael, smiling at his brother.
While his brothers checked the various chamber alcoves for signs of monsters, Cael took a golden vase from the treasure chest and held it aloft.
“Behold!” he shouted, using his best hero voice. “The dungeon loot is ours again!”
This was something that heroes tended to do, the whole holding treasure aloft thing. Stupid, if you ask me. The sensible thing would be to cram their loot in their satchels and get out of the dungeon.
But I couldn’t capitalize on their arrogance today, because I just didn’t have the creature numbers to do so. Those damned brothers had raided my dungeon five times in the last four weeks. They had battered my beasts, trashed my traps, and made my puzzles look like they’d been designed by blind, pacifist monks.
With Gary, Fight, Death and Kill all injured, that meant most of my combat-worthy monsters were hurt. The last five raids had really pummelled my dungeon mates, and I didn’t have anyone else I could send in to fight.
Brecht stomped into my core room, unslung his tambourine, and threw it against the wall.
“Demons’ arses!” he said. “They have an answer for everything! Make new monsters, Dark Lord. Make them now. As many as you can. Do it now, damn it, Core Beno! What are you waiting for?”
“Brecht, there’s a time for anger, but there’s never a time for insolence. You will not speak to me like that.”
“It isn’t you fighting them out there, is it?”
“Don’t forget that I made you, Brecht,” I said, “And I can unmake you easier than you can blink. Don’t test me, not now when I’m ready to snap.”
Brecht didn’t say a word, though his lips moved like he was chewing on poisoned oak. Finally, he looked up at me. “Sorry, Dark Lord. I beg your pardon.”
“You don’t need my pardon. We’re all stressed, and I appreciate what you’ve done so far. Just do not push my understanding too far.”
“I would still ask,” said Brecht, “that you don’t let them leave with the loot this time. Create more monsters and stop them before they escape.”
I sighed. “If only I could. I need essence to create new monsters, and the last five dungeon raids have drained me dry.”
“Send Shadow to fight them. Or Gore, Needles, Peach, Rusty. Send anyone, Damn it! I mean…if you please, Dark Lord.”
“Shadow’s still recovering from last week’s raid. Same with Needles, Rusty, and every damn creature in this miserable dungeon. No, Brecht. Sometimes you have to chew on defeat and swallow it down, even if it makes you sick to your guts.”
Brecht collected his tambourine from by the wall, rubbed dirt from the skin, and slung it back around his neck. “With your leave, I will check on Gary, Fight, Death, Kill, and then I will have some rest.”
“Very well, Brecht. Thank you for your efforts today.”
And so, I could only watch as Brecht left my core room at the same time as the Pickering brothers departed from my dungeon for the fifth time.
Two of them still had their swords drawn, while Cael had sheathed his, and instead carried a vase in one hand and a silver heirloom plate in the other. The eldest brother whistled a cheery tune, while Cael and his younger brother chatted to each other.
The youngest brother was a wiry lad who his older brothers relied on to disarm my traps. As with any hero who spends enough time fiddling with traps, he was missing a finger on his right hand.
“We should give this dungeon a rest f
or a while don’t you think, Cael?” he said.
Cael shook his head. “Nonsense. I want to enjoy a few nights in a tavern with an ever-flowing supply of ale and women, and then we’ll be back to loot it again.”
“You know what they say about drawing too much water from the same well,” said the eldest.
“Aye, you just dig another hole and then everyone’s happy. Look, if we keep hitting the dungeon before the core gets a chance to fill it with new monsters and traps and other horrible stuff, he’ll always be weak. Easy prey. Easy loot.”
“Or he might stop providin’ loot. They can do that, you know. The core might shut its dungeon.”
Cael ran his hand through his scraggy brown-grey hair, briefly showing a pointed ear that hinted at elf ancestry. He was the leader of the bunch. Tall, still quite young, and in possession of all his digits. He was heavyset but in a strong sort of way, rather than seeming out of shape. His coat trailed to his knees, and he always had the collar turned up so that it covered his cheeks. No doubt he thought it made him look mysterious, or something. On his waist were two swords that I had come to know very well: a short dagger for close-quarters fights, and a sword for more traditional combat.
They say you can judge a hero’s experience by the scars on his face. This implies that the more scars a hero has, the more experienced he is. I found that to be ridiculous and nonsensical. A man with burns all over his skin might have plenty of experience with fire, but that was hardly something to be praised.
A better way of looking at it was that heroes with wounds all over their faces were careless, and careless heroes die in dungeons eventually. Cael’s scar-free face, however, didn’t hint at carelessness.
“Every time we’ve come back,” he said, “the core has had fresh traps, monsters, and loot waiting for us. You know why? Because he’s vainer than a peacock in mating season. We’ve got him on the hook. This core wants to beat us, and he’ll keep fighting until he does. How does he ensure that we keep coming back? By keeping that lovely loot chest filled with gleaming treasure. Plus, every time we return, he’s a little bit weaker, which suits us, doesn’t it? We’ll keep coming back and plundering loot until he’s got nothing left to give, and then we’ll be off.”
“The heroes’ guild won’t like that, Cael. It’s frowned up to run a dungeon dry.”
“They can frown until they’re blue in the arse; I don’t care. We pay our guild levies, and what do we get for it?”
“They tell us when new dungeons get made. An’ they let us use their smithy and apothecary.”
“Aye at a cost. I suppose they say the discount is the benefit of being in the guild. Pah.”
“All the same, there’s a reason we let dungeons have time to restock. An’ there’s a reason we never kill a core. If we squeeze the dungeon too hard, it’ll run dry. No more loot. An’ if we kill the core, same thing.”
“Aye, well I like the feeling of gold in my purse. Don’t worry, my lad. This dungeon wants to beat us. It’s not gonna stop until it does, and that means there will always be loot.”
After the heroes left the dungeon, I spoke to Tomlin. “They’re not wrong. I’m on a losing streak, Tomlin my friend. Five times these sword-swinging schmucks have beaten me. I’ve tried everything. New traps. New monsters, new puzzles. I’m worried I’ve met my match.”
“Is your well of ideas running dry, dark lord?”
“It’s so dry that rats are nesting at the bottom of it. I’m beginning to think it’s me, you know. That I’ve become too predictable. Or maybe heroes are just getting stronger these days.”
“You could shut dungeon. Stop heroes from coming in. Take more time to get ready.”
“I notice you didn’t correct me about my predictability, Tomlin. Do you think I am becoming stale?”
“Dark Lord, things that work in past do not always work in future. When Tomlin go to surface town last week, he speaks to a healer. He and Tomlin talk, and Tomlin learns about treatments for disease.”
“Oh? I didn’t know you wanted to be a healer.”
“Tomlin is in charge of growing Dark Lord’s essence vines. Sometimes vines can die when parasites grow, and Tomlin must treat them. But parasites get used to treatment, and become resistant. It is same with treatment for illnesses sometimes. Healer told me this.”
“Heroes are the parasites, and my dungeon of death is the treatment. I like that, Tomlin.”
The kobold gave me a mischievous smile. “So perhaps Dark Lord should close dungeon for a while. While he develops new…treatments.”
“I could do that, but there’s every chance that the three brothers will move on to another dungeon, without me having defeated them.”
“Would be so bad?”
“Five times they’ve taken loot from me. Imagine if there was a parasite attacking the essence vines, and no matter what you tried, it kept surviving. Would you give up and let it run amok over every essence leaf?”
“No, Dark Lord,” admitted Tomlin.
“I can’t let this go unanswered. If the Pickerings move on to another town, to another dungeon, they’ll do it in the knowledge that they bested me every single time. Word will spread, and my dungeon reputation, such as it is, will plummet.”
“Pride is leading Dark Lord down a dark path.”
“This isn’t pride. Do you really think that of me, Tomlin? That I’m so pathetic I’d let pride keep a hold on me? No, I like to think I can rise above it. This is much more than boring, basic pride. This is an intense desire to show these heroes that I can utterly destroy them.”
Tomlin gave me a kindly stare. Coming from a kobold, a creature of wolf and lizard ancestry, it was quite a sight.
“Dark Lord will find way to flay them alive and tear out organs. Tomlin has faith in him.”
“Thanks, Tomlin. That’s very nice. It makes me feel better.”
“Tomlin must go back to cultivation room now. Essence vines need tending.”
“Don’t tell the others about our conversation,” I said. “Morale is low enough as it is. We’ll let Gary, Fight, Death, and Kill heal from their wounds, and we’ll rethink and regroup. I’ll end these no-good heroes if it’s the last thing I do.”
After our conversation, I did what has rarely ever failed me in times of need; I got to work. My old classmates and instructors at the Dungeon Core Academy might have had many descriptions for me, but they would never have denied that I work hard.
It was a hindrance to my social life back then. While the other students were having the dungeons core equivalent of parties, I surrounded myself with piles of books from the academy library. Tomes on critters, beasts, traps, puzzles. I soaked it in until my head felt ready to burst. Figuratively, of course, since I lack a head and thus cannot burst it.
Despite all my studies, it seemed that I still had work to do. No matter how big a core’s dungeon was, no matter how many creatures they had, there was always a hero who could undo all their progress.
Over the next few days, I worked like never before, denying myself even my favorite pastime of reading adventure books. I dredged my memories of everything I had ever learned in the dungeon core academy.
“The problem is,” I told Fight, Death, and Kill, who were keeping me company in my core room while they recovered from their wounds. “that Cael is a wartificer. He can use that stupid feather of his to etch runemarks on his blades, giving them different effects. Lightning bolts, fire, ice. He can do the same with his armor too. Why is that such a problem, you ask? It means that he can change his battle tactics in an instant.”
“Fight!”
“Death!”
“Kill!”
“Yep,” I said. “Exactly what I was thinking. I’ll have to come up with a trap he can’t scribble his way out of.”
I made plans. I scrapped plans. I looked at new ones from every possible angle. I schemed, connived, plotted, hatched. The idea of defeating Cael and his brothers utterly consumed me until I could think of nothing
else.
When I was finally settled on a ruse, I set about making what I needed for it to work. The sun rose and slept three times on the wasteland above while I worked, but none of its rays touched us down in the dungeon.
Visitors from Yondersun, the town above my lair, came to visit every so often while I worked. The braver townsfolk enjoyed touring my dungeon, and I allowed them to visit some of the trap-free chambers and speak to my monsters. It wasn’t ideal, but I had no choice. Given my proximity to the town, I needed to maintain good relations with them. Especially since there was a growing movement called the No-Cores, who seemed to hate having a dungeon beneath their town.
My creatures who were not recovering from injuries labored the hours away, constructing new dungeon tunnels and training in the arena to get into better fighting shape. All the while, I studied and worked, scheming and concocting and planning until I knew how to beat the brothers.
Eventually, I had constructed a trap that absolutely had to wipe out the three brothers. If it didn’t, then what use was I? I might as well fill my dungeon with cement.
On the fourth day after my defeat, a kobold scampered into my core room. He was short, with toned arms and legs from a lifetime of mining. A pickaxe was tied to a strap on his belt. He had a mischievous look on his face even though he was far from a mischievous creature. In fact, he was one of my most loyal and trusted dungeon mates, even if he wasn’t the brightest.
“Wylie!” I said. “Always a pleasure to see my mining supervisor.”
“They here, Dark Lord. Heroes here!”
“The brothers?”
“Wylie does not know family history.”
“Are they stupid-looking? Do they resemble one another?”
“That them! Yes!”
Though a core’s feelings are muted at best and generally non-existent, I felt a flicker of excitement then. Or was it nerves?
“It’s time. Everyone knows the plan. Spread the word, Wylie. I want everyone ready, alert, and raring to tear the Pickerings limb from limb. Sharpen your claws! File your teeth! We’ll strip their skin and rip out their bones.”
“Uh…yes, Dark Magnificence,” said Wylie, slowly backing out of the room.
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 63
