Monster Core: A Gamelit Harem Dungeon Core

by Dante King

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  After the final flight of wide stairs, Abby and I were on the open peak of Shadow Crag. A screech made Abby flinch toward me and catch hold of my arm. The warmth passing through me from her gloved hands sent an electric thrill down my spine, and I chuckled at the contact.

  “Easy,” I murmured in her ear. “They can’t see us.”

  “What are they?” Abby whispered back, her voice muffled by her hood and my shoulder.

  “Chained Varidus,” I told her. “They protect the peak and hunt birds, I think. A natural defense against any winged invaders. Even if Entropy sweeps down here on the wings of angels, they’d have a hell of a fight before they could even reach the entrance to Zagorath.”

  Should I capture one, for my new champion slot? The thought occurred to me, and I considered it for a long moment. Even if I did, they didn’t have the same sentience as Puck or Bertha. I hadn’t yet touched their consciousness, but a giant winged creature in the depths of my dungeon would be restricted, at least with its current size. At present, I was better off finding something smaller and more mobile. I let the thought slip to the back of my mind to reconsider later.

  We walked away from the shadows of Zagorath’s entrance, and I appraised the mountain’s peak, realizing I’d never seen it before from the perspective of my elf’s eyes. The landscape had a savage beauty about it, and as we stepped closer to an edge, the corner of the Infernal Realm became visible. Storm clouds flooded the sky in the far north, while swathes of emerald-green forests lay just beneath the horizon to the south. Did the former mark the Storm Realm while the latter marked the Nature Realm?

  I hadn’t been outside in what felt like months, and I inhaled the fresh air. As it filled my lungs, I considered my plans. I didn’t want to stay buried beneath Shadow Crag forever. All the Sinarius Realms were unchartered territories to be discovered.

  Abby’s touch on my arm brought me back to the present, and I smiled as I led her to the very edge of a flattened plateau. I sat down, letting my feet curl beneath me. Abby sat beside me after a moment.

  “Your core is safe with mine,” I said after reading her nervousness. “Besides, even if we were to fall, we could simply dissolve our avatars and have them return to our cores. Trust me—I’ve tried it.”

  “You—You’ve fallen from the mountain?” she asked.

  “Not exactly. I’ve jumped from it. With a giant leap.” I presented her with a smile, and she settled a little closer to me. Her light cloak brushed against my bare shoulder as she peered at the ocean in the east, bathed in the orange-red glow of the setting sun.

  “It’s beautiful,” she murmured.

  “Yes, it is,” I whispered as I looked over her face, half hidden by golden curls and the white curve of her hood.

  Feeling just a little reckless, I pulled at her mantle, slipping it free of her hair. She didn’t flinch at the contact; instead, she simply nestled her head on my shoulder. Her scent was like the first drops of rain on freshly-mown grass, her body radiating a gentle and constant warmth that seemed to touch my bones. Almost of its own accord, my arm slipped around her shoulder and pulled her close. My elf avatar barely felt the wind rippling across us both with the scent of brimstone and ash.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes, drinking in the beauty and the light of the Infernal Realm as the sun bathed the panoramic landscaped in a pleasing blood red.

  “This land you’re from – what is it like?” Abby asked.

  I’d barely thought about Earth since I’d arrived and chuckled at how alien it seemed to me now. “It’s… different. We don’t have anything like dungeon cores there, or goddesses, or guilds. We have carriages that power themselves, streets of concrete, buildings of steel and glass. With just a small trinket, we can talk to anyone on the other side of the world instantly. It doesn’t use magic.”

  “Telepathy?” Abby probed.

  “No. It’s just the work of human ingenuity.”

  Abby looked up at me, shocked. “How is that possible?”

  I shrugged and smiled ruefully. “We adapted to our surroundings. All of this – cores, adventurers, essence—we’d call all this impossible. But we use machines to dig out the earth, purely so we can burn minerals to power our other machines.”

  “I can’t imagine anything like that,” she muttered, turning her eyes back to the ocean. “You must miss that kind of power. Do you want to go back?”

  “No,” I answered easily. “The Sinarius Realms—they’re my home now. I don’t ever want to go back to being another minion of an invisible core that hates me, who sees me as just another number, another tool.”

  “And you don’t think Lilith is using you in the same way?”

  “She leaves me to my own devices,” I told her. “Can’t say the same for my old life.”

  “She left you to figure it all out alone. No pixie, no soul forge, nothing.” Abby shook her head. “And still you’re already this strong. Lilith is lucky to have you.”

  I didn’t say anything to that but heard a stupid sentence emerging from my mouth.

  “What are pixies like?” I regretted saying it as soon as it blurted its way into the air. I looked at Abby and just hoped she hadn’t been hurt, but she gave my hand a reassuring touch.

  “It’s not a problem,” she said, picking up on my unease. “I miss Gadrili so very much, but I have made peace with her death.” Abby sighed. “I don’t mind explaining the things Lilith should have taught you… if it helps.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  Abby swallowed a lump in her throat and continued. “Pixies are servants of the pantheon. They guide dungeons through their growth, teaching them their first constructs, how to excavate, and how to drain essence. In other words, teaching them everything you seem to do via instinct.” She shook her head. “It took me years just to get strong enough to build a basic trap or to channel my essence into creating a minion. And you did it in a week.”

  “Exactly how long did it take you?” I asked. She was still gazing at me wide-eyed like I was some kind of marvel she couldn’t quite comprehend.

  Abby sighed. “Almost eighty… ninety years!”

  I stared at her incredulously. Almost a century? She was a century old, and still couldn’t defend her dungeon from adventurers? Lilith must’ve broken more than just her treaty with the gods. She’d infused me with knowledge of my capabilities right from the beginning. The Infernal Goddess hadn’t been fucking around, not in the slightest. She lusted after power, craved it. I wondered if that was the Infernal Realm’s most dominant quality— usurping, overtaking, conquering?

  “You’ll grow just as strong, Abby,” I told her after a moment. “We’ll find you another dungeon and protect it. You’ll become so strong that Cirylia can’t ignore you. But no more museums in the sky, okay? You’ll need to start killing if you want to become powerful.”

  “I suppose I can change my ways,” she said with a wry smile. Then she sighed, and her head found its way onto my shoulder again. “I’m so glad I met you, Dom.”

  “Pleasure’s all mine,” I replied.

  I seized the moment, lowered my head so my mouth could reach hers, and pressed my lips to hers. Abby froze for a second, then relaxed into the touch of our soft first kiss. Her smooth flesh seemed to fill my blood with electricity; it tingled to kiss her, but after a moment, it turned into something else.

  The beautiful avatar’s hands found my face, and then she was leaning into me, her mouth hungrily consuming mine. My pulse raced as Abby’s hands traced over my chest’s taut muscle and pulled me closer. My bare skin pressed against the supple curves of her cleavage, and the tingling sensation became even more intense, overpowering and all-encompassing.

  After a long moment, she pulled away from me and resting her forehead against mine. Her face was flushed, bright blue eyes sparkling. I could see the need in her eyes, the desire, the feeling of wanting to find comfort in my elf’s avatar.

  “Wan
t to stop?” I asked her.

  “No,” she breathed, her hair tickling my cheek. “Please…”

  “You sure?” I whispered back, my elf’s rolling tone seductive.

  In reply, her mouth found mine again and I moved. Catching her under the arms, I pulled her to me and rolled away from the cliff to the hard ground of the mountaintop. My agile fingers unclasped her cloak, baring her collarbone and neck, and spreading the material out wide on the ground, like a blanket. Abby fell onto it, those electric-blue eyes suddenly burning with all the passion I’d longed to see in her.

  When I came to her, it was different from before, different from anything I’d ever experienced. Her desire was clear, but she wasn’t aggressive. Her kisses were soft and pleasing and desperate, and I took care not to slice her open with my fangs as I pressed my mouth into hers. I savored the electricity that seemed to ripple through every inch of her flesh as I peppered her neck with kisses and tickled her skin all over with the tip of my tongue.

  Abby’s hands found my neck, and she pulled herself closer to me. My hands slipped under her arms and searched for the fastenings to her tight corset. I didn’t need to be in my core form to figure out how they worked. In moments, I pried the garment free and let it fall to the broken slate of the ground.

  Her breasts were perfectly sized, pale, and soft. I caressed her pink nipples and noticed them tinge with blue as they hardened to my fingertips’ touch. Bluish veins surfaced beneath her skin as she moaned. Her musical tones met my elven ears like a symphony of pleasure, sending desire burning through my veins.

  I needed her, needed to hear more of that instinctive song.

  My mouth returned to her neck, her delicate fingers tightening into the hard muscle of my elf’s back, fingernails threatening to slice into my flesh. The leather of her boot wound its way around the curvature of my lower back, the toe-tips just teasing into my spine and urging me closer as our chests pressed into each other. I marveled at the uniqueness of the electric zing pumping bolts of desire right through my body.

  My hand slid down off her breast, down her side, to find its way to her knee-length boots. Effortlessly, I removed the first boot as she kissed my face and my ear. A rumbling snarl slipped free of my throat as I found the other one, slipped it off, and dropped it beside the first. Abby’s face shone like a bright cherry and I kissed her again. I brought our hips together, Abby responding by pressing herself deeper into me. A musical moan bled through our kiss, lost to the wind of Shadow Crag.

  Her hands slid off my back, caught my ass, and hauled me closer; she wanted more of that pressure, more of that pleasure—but there were still barriers between us.

  Abby’s silky stockings had to come next, and I somehow slid them down almost without noticing, dropping them both in a tangled heap beside her cast-aside boots. Milky thighs clamped, then, around my hips, demanding more of me. I chuckled, leaning in tighter against her skin as I kissed her again, tugging off those opera gloves of sky blue, leaving them on the blanket beside her halo of golden hair.

  Her tongue slid easily past my fangs, and I caressed it as a musical moan slipped through my barely-parted lips, making my own vocal cords buzz from the sheer force of it all and from the absolute hum of electricity still surging between us both and increasing by the second. The blonde’s hands scrambled as they tried to tear my trousers down with urgency; she would have ripped them quite to shreds if I hadn’t helped her out by resting my own hand on top of hers to slow her, then assisting her to unfasten them.

  But—for the time being at least – she left them on, my clothing just lying open and ready to remove later if we wanted to. I had felt the brief, deft touch of a light finger across my manhood before she pulled away, electrified instead by our shared kiss. It seemed to be enough and I wouldn’t push it; she was leading me now, and I enjoyed every second of it. There were no longer any barriers between us both.

  I didn’t chuckle at her clumsiness, nor did I draw attention to it at all. Instead, now she had me near naked and exactly as she wanted me, I pulled away from her mouth and kissed my way down over the swell of her chest and smooth, sublime stomach. Abby watched me almost shyly as she squirmed with passion, and her eyes silently communicated her need for more—as if she dared not speak the words.

  With my elf’s dexterous hands and her arched back, it didn’t make much effort to tug off the last of her clothing, leaving her naked, vulnerable, and thrilling under me. I kissed lower, sliding between her thighs until I found the very nub of her warm, slick center.

  Abby’s whole body trembled as my tongue skimmed over her, flicking and then lingering, flicking and lingering. Every inch, everything I could taste of her, was as sweet as dew on a soft winter’s morning. The addictive flavor of her made my tongue pulsate with eagerness, Abby’s low and beautiful moan reaching a new pitch as she twisted and squirmed in pleasure. Her fingers clamped firmly into my hair and forced me further into her. I used everything in the elf’s repertoire as I savored and pleased her, forgetting all else in the world.

  In a matter of minutes, her whole body was shuddering violently as if her blood had turned to lightning, and I felt the static crackle. Glancing up, I saw her eyes blazing with blue energy, her now wild hair still fizzing and popping as it moved in the atmosphere, seemingly of its own accord. Her breast heaved with pleasure while her hardened nipples had transformed into the brightest blue.

  Deep below, in the chambers of Zagorath, I knew that our jewels were both flickering and blazing bright simultaneously on that dull metal plinth. It was an undeniable, amazing synchronicity that I hoped might never end.

  As her shudders gradually began to subside, I lingered a moment, still and calm, feeling her whole body tightening and jolting; only then did I dare to withdraw my tongue. Desperate, then, her hands raced back to my trousers once more and I could hear her breathing heaving, labored and intense. I was taken aback for a second; she had just enjoyed her own thrill already, hadn’t she? I confessed to myself that I wasn’t quite sure, only knowing she was still eager to continue. And I was only too happy to oblige.

  In a second, she had me, all of me now. The trousers were off, finally, with no more awkward fumbling; she had known exactly what to do to complete her mission, her lithe bare legs unable to wait any longer and wrapping themselves tenderly yet insistently around the small of my back as they pulled and urged me into her smooth, warm, wetness.

  We shifted slowly and almost silently together, relishing. Not a word passed between us; we continued to immerse ourselves in our own private language, our bodies moving as if we were one. Her eyes were closed, and a curve of a smile danced across her plump lips.

  My consciousness flickered, Zagorath seeming to hum. My dungeon communicated our passion through every level, through every brick, all the way into my core. My dungeon heart now blazed and skipped, enveloped in scarlet light, glowing brighter than it ever had. I felt every ounce of essence—Physical, Infernal, and Soul—all coming together as one, suddenly fusing with Abby’s own.

  Our dual and yet singular resources swirled through each other as we lay together just drinking in the moment, my avatar finally driving into her firm and fast.

  Her moans became louder, eventually boosting to a fever pitch as she leaned back. The avatar’s delicate face was a picture of ecstasy while her eyes and hair sizzled with lightning, bright blue and shockingly—almost frighteningly—potent. Beautiful, beautiful Abby.

  Then, an entirely foreign essence suddenly flooded my consciousness. It was nothing at all like the scarlet-and-black Infernal energy I was used to. No. This essence crazed and shimmered along every edge of my gem, racing back and forth. It was quick, energetic, and potent in an entirely different and confusing way.

  And then I knew it for certain this time; Abby was climaxing, a spasming, explosive movement that lit her whole body up like a lightning pylon and blasted through my elf, causing his muscles to contract. My own release washed through me with a snarling roa
r of unfettered lust and passion. Our consciousnesses once more seemed to meld, and, for a second, I could’ve sworn I could feel everything—the inside of her core, her avatar’s senses, and the lingering tremors of our fulfilled passion—both as she felt it, and as I did.

  In the distance, outside the range of my core’s consciousness, came a demonic female laugh of delight.

  25

  Interlude

  Ralph left the mountain behind him, starting out on the blasted volcanic sands. Despite everything—all of the fake prophecy, Alaxon admitting he was a conniving, lying piece of shit—a brutal death had still claimed the old priest. Grief clawed at Ralph’s heart and mixed with the Infernal Essence, demanding release, begging to be unleashed.

  He slowed and fell wearily beneath a lone gnarled tree. The mace he’d been handed from the dungeon’s half-troll still shone with essence. The weapon seemed hungry for more blood as it twinkled in the last of the light gradually sinking its way over the world.

  Ralph cursed with every harsh word he’d ever learned, blaspheming Lilith, his luck, and everything about that smiling vampire.

  Why had the accursed elf spared him? Why had he spoken of the dungeon as though he owned it? These were unanswered questions that only made Ralph’s mood darken further.

  Zagorath. It should have been the beginning, but it’d ended everything.

  His dreams. His hopes. Everything.

  Without Alaxon, what the fuck was he supposed to do?

  He couldn’t return to Cothslar, to their contempt and their belief he was a curse. Anger flooded and coiled inside his body, and he struck the tree. It crunched in response, a tiny crack splitting it, right down the middle. Even without his beloved Dark Reaper, the Infernal Essence coursing through his veins gave him incredible strength. Yet even the sword’s power hadn’t been enough to kill the half-troll or her dungeon master.

  As Ralph nestled on the brittle undergrowth, he stubbornly refused to cry. Only a week ago, he would have bawled until his eyes ran dry, but now things were different. He was harder, stronger, and more accustomed to defeat. Yet he still couldn’t rid his ears of the sound of Alaxon’s demise as the false priest’s form was impaled, crushed, and ground into the hard obsidian of the dungeon.