by Dante King
With the two Infernal Imps battling it out, I turned my attention to Bertha. The other monsters had swarmed her, their speed worth appreciating, but she was stronger than them. If her hands found anything, a wing, an arm, a leg, she crushed them. Her emerald-colored skin was splashed with blood, streaked with brains, splattered with crushed organs.
The whole cavern reeked of blood, gore, and the magic of the imps. A thick miasma of Infernal Essence swirled in black forms before racing toward me. The dark tendrils circled around me, and then they drained into my pores like some kind of vacuum cleaner.
What the fuck?
I didn’t have time to figure out what had just happened while my champion was in the thick of battle, so I charged over to help her. As I cut through an imp’s stomach, I felt my connection with Squallish break. I fought off the imps while I pivoted to see what had happened to my enthralled creature. He lay dead on the ground beside the other Infernal Imp. Squallish had conquered his foe but died in the process.
A worthy effort; maybe I’d have considered naming a dungeon pet after him if he hadn’t come here trying to kill me.
Bertha caught the last imp as its claws tore at her hair, but then she ripped it in half in a shower of black and red, bones snapping and sinews popping. She saw me absorbing the essence, and her eyes widened. I grinned, and my eyes slid from her gorgeous form to movement behind the kitchen bench. I heard the clatter of bottles and a loud chugging noise.
Then Jeff rose up from behind the bench. He was a bloody and bruised mess with a glowing liquid oozed down his chin.
“He found Ma’s healing tonics!” Bertha said.
“I did,” Jeff replied as he wiped his maw with a grubby fist. “I be all patched-up now.”
I stared at his stomach, at the spot where only minutes ago his intestines had threatened to fall out and uncoil on the ground. It was completely healed.
“Must be some incredible potions,” I muttered to Bertha.
“I’m surprised they still work. They’ve been in there for generations.”
“I be ready for you again.” Jeff ushered us forward with a hand.
“I’ve had about enough of fucking monsters trying to stop me getting to the top of this goddamned mountain,” I said.
Jeff swayed as he waited for me to make the first move. He was surrounded by the bodies of dead imps, their black essence moving toward me. The substance seeped into my every pore and filled my Tainted Elf form with the spoils of death and destruction. The harvest brought with it an all-consuming fury and a desire for more of the delicious essence.
Was this how Lilith had gained her power?
I didn’t care to wonder. Not now. Not when there was still one last monster to slay.
Anger filled me as I considered how fucking hard it was just to get my dungeon started. I was meant to be a dungeon core, filling my floors with monsters and traps, ending the lives of hapless adventurers. Instead, I was caught in a battle between trolls and imps, and this was one troll that wouldn’t die.
I would have to remedy that.
My whole being howled for carnage, for death, for evisceration with my bare hands. I wanted to kill and rend and tear, filling the entire mountain with the inert bodies of my enemies. I wanted to drain their essence, drink all of it in, to become exactly what Lilith had said I would be—the ultimate dungeon core, the strongest in the all the Sinarius Realms.
“You steal my woman. You kill Ma.” Jeff flexed, and seemed to grow muscles on top of his muscles. “You will die. I will kill you.”
I was too consumed by battle rage to even question why Jeff considered Bertha his woman. I tossed the cleaver to my other hand as my lips spread into another charming, fanged, bloodthirsty grin.
“This is my mountain now.”
Chapter Ten
Jeff lunged in one last-ditch effort to rip me in two, but I stepped easily out of the way. My boot scraped against something on the floor, and I looked down to see my champion’s weapon of choice.
I slipped a toe under the poleaxe, then flicked it up into Bertha’s waiting hands. She caught the weapon with a savage smile as Jeff’s momentum carried him forward after I’d dodged his attack. He was still huge, still as hard as nails, and still dangerous despite having evaded death via the magical potion.
Bertha sprang forward and her poleaxe struck true, straight into the exposed gut of her last surviving family member. Jeff howled and thrashed suddenly, but Bertha wasn’t fast enough to evade his final move. The brother’s fist clipped the sister’s chin, and Bertha shot backward, her green form lifting six feet into the air and crashing into the last unbroken piece of furniture: her mother’s rocking chair.
A sudden bolt of fury blasted into my heart, a kind of animalistic anger filling my veins with fire. Maybe it wasn’t just Bertha’s strength I’d siphoned from our lovemaking because I now possessed a troll’s ferocity.
One rage-filled leap and I was on him.
Jeff let out a deafening bellow as he swung at me. His roar filled the cavern and seemed to shake the very walls. I dodged his fist, but his elbow smashed deep into my gut. I grunted as I slammed the cleaver down into his bicep, its blade biting all the way to the bone but stopping there. He released another roar of pain as he twisted and writhed. The poleaxe still impaled him, so his movements were impeded, and I took advantage.
I held onto the cleaver’s handle with all my might, jumped, and hauled myself up by the weapon like a handhold. I leaped over his wildly swinging arm, and my knees crashed into his chest.
Tearing the blade free, I started hacking and chopping his eyes, mouth, and throat. I targeted any spot where I could sink the broad edge. Jeff screamed on the first few strikes but quickly grew silent. My wrath wasn’t satiated yet, so I continued to strike his skull like a metronome. Jeff’s blood, skull fragments, and brain matter covered me before I ripped the blade free of his flesh a final time and tossed the weapon aside.
I doubted that cleaver would ever have an edge again after the beating I’d just given it.
My chest heaved as I doubled over and sucked in air, my muscles cramping from the constant striking, and my head pounding as the adrenaline wore off. I turned my back on the mangled remnants of the troll. And then—I heard a groan.
“By Lilith!” Bertha swore as her eyes widened, and I whirled around to see Jeff’s skull slowly piecing itself back together.
The troll-who-should-have-been-dead was a bloodied mess, but the potion must have still been in his bloodstream because his wounds were already healing. Whatever was inside those bottles must have been the most powerful invincibility potion in all the fucking realms.
Upon closer inspection, though, I realized his wounds weren’t exactly healing; the fractures in his skull were becoming covered in a glowing yellow substance. The insides of his shattered skull were still visible, and he didn’t have a whole lot of brain left, only enough to let him stand and swagger. Although now a giant lumbering vegetable, he was still dangerous.
Jeff cracked his neck and wrenched the poleaxe from his abdomen. Rather than blood, that same glowing yellow liquid gushed from his stomach. The potion. It must have brought him back to life, but I doubted it would keep him from death for very long. The way the glowing liquid seemed to only cover the wounds made me think that as soon as the potion passed through his bloodstream, he’d die.
But then again, he might only need a few seconds to kill Bertha and me.
My cleaver was still a few feet away, and I dived for it. Jeff got there before me, his entire body psyched up on the world’s greatest potion. He caught hold of the back of my tunic, giving me just a split second to decide what to do next. Punching the monster would just break my hand. Bertha was already coming toward us, but she wouldn’t be able to strike with the rolling pin in time and her poleaxe was too far away.
Beneath the acrid stench of the potion running through his veins, he reeked of blood. I reveled in the aroma of that delicious crimson lifeforce and gr
itted my teeth as I felt my fangs begin to protrude from my gums.
Then I had an idea.
My mouth raced to Jeff’s throat, and I bit down with every ounce of strength I had left. The strands of flesh in his neck gave way, and then I was drinking him. The action was instinctive, and I became like a dehydrating exile in a desert. The blood tasted sweet, hot, and tainted. Mixed with the potion, I could feel its heady effects in seconds.
Jeff’s legs gave out, but I carried his weight. The potion had infused me with enough strength to easily support his unconscious, slowly dying form. The pulse of his huge heart slowed to a crawl as I consumed him.
When Jeff finally stopped twitching, I pulled my fangs free from his throat and stood, squaring my shoulders as my muscles expanded with new life. The potion was quickly fading, whatever magic it contained having already been expended on Jeff’s resurrection. It had invigorated me, but my wounds from the battle with the imps and trolls remained. Cuts, bruises, and aching muscles made themselves known in a painful chorus.
“Oh, my,” Bertha said as she came over to me and wiped her brother’s blood from my mouth. “You really are a Tainted Elf.”
“That was a first,” I said with a shrug. “At least I can say Jeff was worth something. Where the fuck did your Ma get that potion from? Why didn’t she just sell it? I imagine it would have been worth a lot of coins or whatever your currency is here. And she definitely needed currency. She wouldn’t have tried to sell me if that weren’t the case.”
“Ma was . . . eccentric. None of the bottles beneath her bench were labeled, and Jeff could just as easily have downed a poison.”
“Right.” I marched over to the cupboard beneath the bench, bent over, and inspected the shelves. They were all empty, the bottles that had been inside now lying shattered on the ground, their contents gathered in a pool of various glowing liquids, just like a kid’s finger painting.
Well, they might have been destroyed, but at least now I knew the capabilities of the magical potions in this world. I’d ensure none of my enemies ever got the chance to down one.
I heard a steady rushing sound, and I expected to see yet more monsters to kill when I looked up. Instead, I saw Infernal Essence bleeding free of Jeff’s corpse and floating toward me. The black mist washed over me before seeping deep into my avatar. I looked down at my hands, dripping with blood and viscera, to see the shallow wounds from the imps fading, closing, far more quickly than they should’ve been.
Was this another Vampiric Expertise perk?
Had to be. There was no other explanation for it. I could feel nothing of the potion in my body anymore, but my senses were greater and my strength had increased from only seconds before. My only explanation was that the Tainted Elf grew stronger on more blood, more chaos, and more carnage. As a long-dead creature from the Infernal Realms, that wouldn’t have surprised me one bit.
I walked out from behind the kitchen bench and looked at the grotto-turned-bloodied-battlefield.
Jeff’s corpse had crumbled, his flesh wasted away, and only bleached bones were now visible. I wasn’t sure whether my bloodsucking routine or the potion had done it to him. I felt no ill-effects myself from the potion so it must have been the former. Imp carcasses formed a carpet of flesh and bone, and my feet squelched in blood as I returned to Bertha.
She stood over her ma’s corpse, a wistful look in her eye.
“Do you regret this?” I asked. “Do you regret becoming my champion?”
“That is one decision I will never regret.” She turned to me and smiled, but I didn’t overlook the moisture in her eyes. Sure, she was a warrior, abused by her mother and brother, but it had probably still hurt to play this part in their deaths.
I glanced at my timer.
Fuck.
Less than ten minutes left.
A cascade of windows finally appeared in my vision.
Von Dominus killed Squallish the Infernal Imp!
Infernal Essence +150
Von Dominus killed Oltop the Infernal Imp!
Infernal Essence +150
Von Dominus killed Ma the Hell Troll!
Infernal Essence +100
Von Dominus killed Jeff the Hell Troll!
Infernal Essence +200
Von Dominus killed Lesser Imps x 20!
Infernal Essence +400
I didn’t have anything to spend my essence on yet, but now I had nothing impeding my journey to the mountaintop, so I could spend big as soon as I started my dungeon. I wasn’t sure what I could use the essence on, but figured there’d be a bunch of cool dungeon-specific items I could build.
The notifications had counted the Infernal Imp that Squallish had killed, so it seemed that any time an Enthralled creature slew something, it counted toward my own kill tally.
Neat.
Now it was time to scale Shadow Crag.
I grabbed Bertha’s poleaxe and gave it to her. “You all right?”
She nodded, her eyes wide with awe. “And you?”
I glanced over my skin again. Even the burns seemed to have faded where they should’ve been scalded and blistered. I offered her my hand; she took it with eagerness.
My whole body was still brimming with energy. Whether or not it was the blood I’d drunk, the Infernal Essence my avatar had absorbed from the monsters around me, or the leftover adrenaline, I didn’t know. I easily pulled my champion to me, and we kissed in a heady concoction of passion and lingering battle-lust, as I savored the taste of my new champion.
There was a clatter outside, and I swore under my breath as I grabbed my cleaver and prepared for another round. Another Infernal Imp fluttered through a broken window, its purple mark down its back not quite as distinct as the others.
“Want to do the honors?” I asked Bertha.
“There’s no need!” the imp cried out. “I’m not here for trouble.”
I recognized that voice. “You’re the one who said you’d rescue me, aren’t you?”
“Indeed,” the imp answered. “I asked my kin for help. We live in the caverns beneath the Black Sands, so it took some time to get here. Unfortunately, I was delayed. Squallish and Oltop would not let me leave, and they ensnared me. They said they would try to destroy you. The Sand Pirates have poisoned their minds. They do not believe a dungeon core returning to our realm would be good for the monsters.”
“Them and everybody else, apparently,” I said. “You’re not interested in using me for your own benefit?”
“No,” he answered. “Well, not precisely.”
“I promised you would get to plunder my dungeon if you rescued me. You did a pretty shitty job of that.”
“Oh . . .”
I glanced around the practical abattoir the whole cave had become. “I asked for your help, Imp, not for a harder fight against my captors.”
“Forgive me, Master, but I couldn’t sway them. And have they not paid for their mistakes?” The imp flew into the room and hovered above the imp corpses. A devilish smile crossed his face, and a little cackle burst from his lungs. “Thank the Goddess!”
“You’re quite the familicidal little bastard, aren’t you?” I asked the imp.
Both Bertha and the imp harbored a strong hatred for their families. It seemed like finding disgruntled family members and turning them against their own was becoming my shtick. Back on Earth, I’d heard people get called homewreckers, but this was something else.
“This was the worst day of my life until I witnessed this glorious display of the Goddess’s hand!” The imp looked like he was about to leap free from his skin and do a little dance around the corpses.
“Lilith didn’t do much,” I said.
“Tell me, can your dungeon have another champion?” the imp asked me.
I recalled my dungeon creation screen from what felt like months ago, remembering I could have two champions. Our deal had been negotiated on the basis this Infernal Imp would destroy my captors. And, in a manner of speaking, his tribe had done just
that—by giving us the opportunity to do it ourselves.
The lone survivor of the tribe fluttered closer, his voice taking on a pleading tone. “I’m incredibly useful. And incredibly loyal. This troll will require so much time and effort to maintain, yet I am so easily swayed by your allure.”
“Bertha chose to be my first champion,” I challenged him, “And she didn’t almost get me killed while doing it.”
I paused and thought over the possibilities. My timer was still ticking down, and even if the imp was no Bertha, I did need minions to protect my core. There was no telling when Gavin or the guilds would arrive to throw yet another spanner in the works.
“What can you do, Imp?” I asked finally.
“I throw shadow-spheres. Fly. Negotiate.”
They were all things that weren’t Bertha’s strong suit. I needed a balance—magic, mobility, strength, cunning, and fast talkers. Between Bertha, this Infernal Imp, and myself, I’d at least have a headstart on consolidating my power as a dungeon core.
“You speak of Lilith. The trolls—and apparently the imps, if you’re not lying to me—have abandoned her. She named me Viceroy. I understand your plight, and that the power of the Infernal monsters is waning. Yet you still worship Lilith. And you saw fit to bring me aid, of a kind, in my time of need. You will be rewarded with your wish. Consider yourself my champion, Imp.”
“You are the Infernal Goddess’s Viceroy?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve struck up something of an understanding.”
Something about this imp was bringing out my whole evil overlord schtick way too much. Still, it was good practice. The monsters here seemed to respond well to it and took me more seriously when I cranked it up to maximum.
