by Robin Rhodes
He had a spell for transmutation in his codex. It wasn't really powerful, but stone was only a basic element. Stone was a basic element, and so was sand.
It took minimal mana cost for Aiden to transmute the stone which lined the walls of the dungeon into sand, and soon he was pushing his way through the walls until he got to the tunnel which led out of the dungeon.
He paused, looking back just before he left.
He loved Elizabeth. They'd been together for years. Sure, she'd just fucked some guy in front of him, but she hadn't been in her right mind. Something had obviously happened. She'd been drugged, and in this new fantasy land they lived in, anything was possible.
But this was his chance to escape. He could escape and go and fetch more resources. Go and fetch people who would help him get her back.
Right now, she was a sacrifice he had to make.
He got rid of just enough stone for him to walk through the gap, and he didn't look back until he had climbed out of the dungeon and the sun had hit his face. He looked at the hole in the ground he'd just walked out of, and it shut behind him. He had no idea where he was, or how far from the entrance he'd come. They'd been in there for hours.
His energy vanished all at once, and he collapsed to the ground. He raised his knees to his chest and buried his head between them, squeezing his eyes shut.
Elizabeth was down there, but he wasn't going to picture it. He wasn't going to imagine it.
What was happening right now didn't matter.
What mattered was finding people who could help get her back.
This dungeon needed to die.
Chapter Twelve
Elizabeth walked with Aaron's arm around her bare waist, leaning into him and letting him support her jelly legs.
A door appeared in the wall in front of them, and they went through.
There was a huge four-poster bed in the middle, and she sagged with relief, pulling out of Aaron's grip to go and lay on it. Everything hurt. Her ass was in agony, both from the brand and the fucking. She hadn't dared to touch the brand yet.
She was just avoiding thinking about it, because she knew in the back of her mind that this was all very wrong. She'd just come in front of her boyfriend while someone fucked her from behind. She'd just had something burned into her skin.
It was all wrong.
But a haze on her mind stopped her from caring.
Aaron's hand wrapped around her wrist just before she was about to launch herself into the middle of the bed, and tugged her backward. She stumbled into him, looking up.
The smile on his face was obviously fake.
"Did I tell you that you could do that?" he asked.
Her face fell. "No."
"No. I didn't. Don't do things without me telling you to, will you?"
"I won't." She had the stupid urge to add the word sir onto the end.
"Good." He released her, and she righted herself. "Go on, then. You can lie down."
She didn't need telling twice. She had to lay face-down so the bed sheets didn't touch her burned ass, but it didn't matter. She sunk into the mattress and sighed heavily.
When she wasn't dealing with a throbbing backside, this bed would be the comfiest she'd ever slept in.
Aaron sat at her side, and she jumped when he ran his fingers over her brand. "I like it," he said. "This is the perfect place. Exactly where I wanted it."
"But you won't be able to see it when I've got clothes on," she replied absently, exhaustion pulling her into sleep.
He laughed. "You won't be wearing clothes. Not ones that will be covering that ass, anyway. I want to be able to fuck it whenever I feel like."
She twinged at the thought of it, wanting to curl into a ball and hide from his attentions.
"I'll let you rest for now, though," he said, fingering the skin around his handiwork once more. "I've got some rebuilding to do. And that pathetic guy you came here with to deal with."
Chapter Thirteen
Elizabeth passed out almost immediately, and Aaron just watched her sleep for a little bit. His fingers itched to touch the brand again. It was an angry red mark on her skin. He hadn't expected it to actually burn her. He'd thought it would be a magic mark instead, but he'd actually scarred her flesh.
He buried the urge to spank her on it and hear her yelp.
He couldn't be bothered to wake her up, though. He did have other things to deal with.
Namely that man he'd just broken by fucking Elizabeth in front of.
He abandoned his avatar and returned to his core to have a look what was happening and see his stats.
When he got there, he saw what had happened. For a moment he was red hot with anger that the bastard had escaped, but maybe it would be more fun this way. Killing him would have been boring. Now he had to live with the fact his girlfriend was Aaron's slave.
That was a fate worse than death.
He rebuilt the stone wall in his chamber while browsing the options for how he was going to stop this from happening in the future. As they leveled up, the mages would be able to do the same thing to the glass he had down the center, too. He needed some kind of barrier.
It had been quick thinking on Aiden's part. Aaron doubted many would have come up with the transmute spell to get out. Maybe it wasn't worth the Credits it would take to charm the walls against transmutation this early on.
He turned his attention to his gauntlet, where Brandon's corpse still lay. It had all come together better than he could have hoped for in the end. The hallucinogens, the lizard poison Brandon hadn't seen coming, the pit beneath them.
It was far from foolproof. So many things he'd wanted to happen hadn't, and a lot of it had been down to luck. If the hallucinogens hadn't been so potent they would have made it through the gauntlet easily, and the desert was supposed to be a bigger challenge. They'd gotten through it far too quickly, hadn't had enough of their energy drained by the time they made it to the other side.
That was where he wanted to spend his credits.
He returned to the gauntlet and absorbed Brandon's body, gaining the XP and credits he provided, and it pushed him over the edge into level two.
Congratulations! You are now Level Two. Your level-up bonus includes:
100 Credits
A new talent
Your avatar has gained +2 to all stats.
Mana Regen increased to 4 per minute.
Mana Pool increased to 240.
Earn 150 XP to reach the next level.
Please pick your new talent.
Aaron had spent a lot of time looking at the talent tree, and he'd decided that the ability to respawn his slaves if anything happened to them should be his next talent.
But the moment the options came up, he changed his mind and picked the improved Brand talent instead. Two slaves. He could have another Elizabeth.
It was a stupid decision, but he didn't care. He'd fucked Elizabeth raw up the ass earlier and she'd liked it.
He was going to do that to as many women as he could get his hands on.
In the desert he increased the area and added a crevasse in the middle to prevent people from being able to just walk through it in a straight line. They would have to turn at some point, and then they wouldn't be able to find their way back to door as easily. He changed the cacti so only half of them had the hallucinogens in. People stranded in the desert would have to drink or they'd die, but he didn't want to make it so hard people just died there.
He didn't really care about anything other than making it fun for him to watch.
Which was why he changed his lizard placement and type.
He got rid of the poisonous ones. They were just level one beasts, they were simple. What he picked instead were lizards whose bites had interesting effects. He increased the number whose poison worked as an aphrodisiac. He increased the number that paralyzed when they bit. He'd unlocked a new class of lizards which granted advent
urers boons, too. The lowest tier was one which gave the person it bit stat buff for a limited time. He didn't put many of those in his desert, just a couple dotted around.
With the increased area he also created a refuge near the center of the desert. It was a small hut, but inside the conditions were completely different. The heat went back to normal, and there were toilets, showers, beds, running water and food. Enough for people to properly refresh themselves and regain some energy.
He didn't put anything dangerous in there, but he wasn't going to create something like that without getting something out of it for himself. He hadn't used his Bard abilities yet for anything more than playing music in his own private room, but he installed speakers in the refuge, too. At level two he'd earned the ability to play songs which could influence people's moods.
He could change the mood at any point, but for now he played something calming.
It didn't work on himself like he'd hoped, though. He was hyped about all of this. Just a few hours and he'd taken his first slave and killed his first adventurer. He'd created an enemy—he’d done what he'd hoped, caused an influence outside of the dungeon.
Someone was walking around in the world above him with the memory of Aaron balls deep in his girlfriend.
And he found that fucking hilarious.
Keep reading for a preview of Book 2 in the Corrupted Dungeon series…
Tainted Dungeon
Chapter One
Elizabeth was groggy when she woke up, and for a minute refused to open her eyes. Something was wrong, she knew that much. These definitely weren't her threadbare old sheets beneath her, and the rush of the sleepless city wasn't pouring in through her poorly fitting windows.
Then the pain hit her. She jerked upright, eyes wide, hand immediately going to her throbbing ass cheek. She pulled it back when she touched the raised skin and flinched as the stinging rushed through her body.
"What the fuck?" she muttered, forcing herself to her feet. Her legs shook. She needed a mirror to see what had happened. Her mind was hazy with the previous day's events. "What the fuck?" She laced her fingers together to prevent herself from fingering the burn again despite knowing how much it would hurt.
There wasn't a mirror in the room. What she did find made her blood run cold, though. The large four-poster she'd woken up on had beautiful silken sheets, but attached to each post was a thin metal handcuff. It was more of a manacle than the standard handcuffs her boyfriend, Aiden, carried.
She couldn't see any normal furniture she might expect in a bedroom. No wardrobe or chest of drawers, no dressing table. Just dank stone walls with old-fashioned torches mounted instead of an electric light.
The main feature in the room was a wooden medieval stock. The contraption stood alone in front of the bed, with space for someone’s head and hands. The holes looked almost too small to fit through. If someone forced her into there, there would be no getting out.
She clutched the bedpost closest to her, and remembered everything that had happened to the world. She wasn't just Elizabeth anymore, she was Elizabeth the Healer. Everyone had changed. Everything had changed.
And she was in a dungeon. A dungeon Aiden had been determined to explore and loot. A dungeon he'd dragged her and Brandon to. And now Brandon was dead and she was trapped here.
She shut her eyes and summoned her magic, murmuring the incantation for the basic healing spell in her meager Level One arsenal and aimed it at her ass. The burning didn't decrease.
Her wound wasn't a normal wound.
She jumped when the sound of stone scraping against stone echoed through the room. Bricks were retracting into nothingness one at a time, revealing a hole in the wall. She tensed, letting go of the four-poster. She didn't need support.
For the thousandth time since the Braxian Expansion, she wished she'd picked a combat class instead of a supportive one.
A man stepped through the gap. Clad in a basic, rough-spun tunic and pants in muted colors, he strolled into the room as though he was in total control. His hair was brown and windswept, though they were far underground. His blue eyes seemed friendly at first, and when their gazes met something in Elizabeth relaxed.
The tension seeped out of her shoulders and the panicked frown she'd had on her face disappeared for a moment as the beginnings of a smile formed on her lips.
And then he stepped fully into the light and yesterday's events came back to her in one horrific collection of images exploding in her mind.
She'd fucked this guy. Not only that, but she'd fucked him in front of Aiden. She pressed her hands to her mouth. "Aiden," she whispered, tears gathering in her eyes. "Oh my God. What have I done?"
She knew what she'd done. The real question was why had she done it? She loved Aiden. Even if she didn't... fucking some stranger who had just led to the death of her best friend in front of Aiden wouldn't have been how she chose to show it.
Aaron grinned. "You remember everything?" he asked. "I wasn't sure how it would work, with memory."
"What did you do to me?" She took a step backward even though he was still across the room.
"I just used my abilities, that's all. You don't have anything to be scared of."
"Nothing to be scared of!" She laughed and stopped herself just before falling into hysterics. She just needed to avoid thinking about it, just needed to avoid thinking about how last night he'd been inside her—about how good it had felt at the time. She could still feel the pleasant ache in her muscles of a night well-spent, could remember the intense convulsions of her body, the way she could barely stand as her orgasm had coursed through her.
"It's up to you whether you have to suffer here or not," he replied with a shrug of his shoulder, as though he was talking about whether she wanted milk in her coffee or not. "I'm not going to be unfair to you."
"What did you do to me?" she asked again. She needed to know if he could do it again. She looked at his large frame and bulky muscles and knew that he wouldn't need spells to be able to take whatever he wanted from her anyway.
"I told you, I used my abilities. I charmed you. There's nothing more to it than that."
She wasn't going to get anything specific out of him. She had no idea what the options for dungeon core were at character selection. He could have been able to do anything.
"I want you to let me go." She tipped her head back and stared straight at him, daring to look into the blue eyes she now realized had a cold edge to them. "I want to get out."
He smiled back, and she knew it should have been friendly but it was too forced, too self-serving. "I want you to get onto the bed."
Her immediate reaction was to listen to him. Something in-built urged her to obey like it was a reflex, to just do what he said without question.
But this wasn't yesterday and whatever he was using on her wasn't preventing her from thinking for herself anymore. "No," she said, folding her arms and trying to ignore how pathetic she looked, still clad in her underwear, the brand on her ass continuing to throb.
Aaron's smile dropped off his face. "I just explained how this was going to work. Either you obey me, or I will make you suffer."
Chapter Two
Aiden almost crashed the car three times on the way back to the city, unable to rid the image of Elizabeth and the dungeon master from his mind.
Sometimes, when he came close to ramming into the trees at the side of the road he wasn't sure it was worth pulling away at the last second.
Then his rage would return, he'd straighten the car, and remind himself that he wasn't going to do anything until he'd taken down the bastard that had his girlfriend. Things might have changed in the world, but his purpose had not. He was still going to punish people who were criminals, even if he wasn't a criminal in the traditional sense.
This was better, even, than hunting criminals the way he had his entire life.
Now he didn't have to put them through the court
system, to risk witness intimidation or not enough physical evidence even though Aiden knew the bastard had done it. Now he could take the law into his own hands. Now he could deliver real justice.
And that meant this bastard was going to get a knife to the throat.
As soon as Aiden figured out exactly how he could kill a living dungeon, anyway. He doubted that just killing the avatar—as satisfying as that would be—would actually kill the dungeon. He had a lot of reading of the Braxian Expansion's guidebook to do.
He'd taken in a perfect party to that dungeon, even if they had all been low level, and he had lost two people in there. He needed to recruit some other people to start reading the guidebook, too. Next time he went into that hellhole, he was going in with a team that couldn't lose. He was going to rescue his girlfriend—he refused to even think about the fact she might not be alive anymore—and he was going to destroy the bastard who thought that just because the laws of the universe had changed a little it meant he could do whatever the fuck he wanted.
That was never how the world worked.
It was never how the world was going to work.
He pulled up to his precinct and hopped out of the car, walking inside and finding some of the lower ranked officers sitting at their desks interviewing suspects. It was just like it always had been. They were still attempting to keep order, even if their guns weren't effective like they used to be. It was a work in progress. People were starting to figure out how they could use their new abilities to avoid the traditional methods of confinement. That was how it had come to Aiden to use the transmute spell to escape his confinement in the dungeon—a criminal they'd had incarcerated had done the same thing only days ago.
The police were adapting, too, though. Special cells with magical walls preventing such spells being used for escape were being crafted slowly but surely.
