Dungeon Master
Page 2
The tribe had lost many of its members, both young and old, to the constant attacking monster, in the: fields with their crops, wilderness, and even in the village itself. The elders in the village told stories of how great the power of humans had been, a generation ago. This Gason had witnessed by the deserted village the hunter often passed that was now full of monsters. The elder often lamented this fall on mankind but had no answer for how to stop it.
In Gason lifetime he had seen a drop in population of the village, as more and more dwellings were deserted. Now he thought that he would be the latest death in a long list of hunters never returning from a foraging trip.
Checking behind him for the thousand times, during the purse, he saw a slight movement in the distance, as his pursuer gain on him. He was exhausted and soon would fall down and have to wait for his death, but he would not give up yet to the inevitability of death that seems to be the common occurrence of mankind. Putting all his energy into his legs, he increases his speed marginal, but as he looked back, he saw the distance outline of the large cat approaching.
Suddenly, as he was running through the grassland, time stop as his body froze, but his mind was aware of the frozen time by some wonderous effect. As Gason psyche moved out of his body, he could see in his mind eye a representation of his body flying into the sky soaring across the grass plains, moving at the speed of the fastest bird, towards a distant mountain. He felt that his body was real, as he extended his arms like a bird glorying in the joy of flight.
The closer he got to the mountain, the high he flew above the ground as all he could see was winding rivers across the plain from this high up in the air. Moving into high clouds, his vision was obscured by the whiteness of the cloud until he suddenly broke through into the sunlight above, dazed by the intense light of the sun this high. Looking in front of him he now saw he was heading to a large plateau on the top of a mountain range. Flying closer to the plateau, Gason could see many gardens that surround grand temples all made in white stone glistening in the sunlight.
Gason approached one of the large temples on the edge of the plateau, and his body started to lower to the ground until he was passing over flower beds and fountains to land on the steps leading up the temple entrance. When he landed, he looked around curious to what was happing to him, but before he could do anything, out of the temple entrance walked a magnificent woman.
She was dressed in white robes all the way down to her ankles with a long train of fabric behind her fanning out as if it had been arranged. In her hand, she had a book that she seemed to have just looked up from with her eyes now just focusing on Gason standing open-mouthed before beauty.
Smiling she said to Gason in a gentle tone, "Welcome to the realm of the god's mortal, I have gifts for you and your kind, as we have been looking upon your troubles, with grief and want to bless you."
Gason on impulse knelt to the goddess in front of him as he was too stunned for words. She carried on with her speech and said, "The gifts are of an understanding of yourself and the world around you. This will give you the power of development as you work to gain experience and knowledge. As mankind use, this power, death will only come to them with old age as you will be resurrected when you are killed by any other means."
Gason suddenly had a vison in his mind's eye and saw:
Character Name:
Gason
1st Class
Warrior
Character Total Level*
50
Major
Strength
Fortitude
Agility
Number
100
90
20
Major
Intelligence
Charisma
Knowledge
Number
50
20
20
Minor
HP
MP
Stamina
Carry Limit
Number
590
460
110
210
Regen Sec
9
11
3
N/A
Gason wondered what it all meant, but before he could gather his senses and ask a question, he started to be pulled back into the sky away from the white temple on the plateau. Soon he found himself passing through the cloud and flighting faster and faster-being drawn into his body.
Snapping back into his body, the world started again as he came to a stop as the dust flew around his feet. Turning around, he saw the saber tiger bounding toward him getting ready for an easy kill:
Name of Monster
Level
Agility
HP
MP
Skills
Saber Tiger
20
6
100
-
-
Gason body felt full of power as if he was ten times stronger than he had before. He readied his stance for the pouncing tiger that was now only a few feet away. As if life was in slow motion, he saw the tiger back leg bunch up like springs, then expanding they propelled the tiger forward like a catapult. Seeing the direction in an instant, the tiger was leaping, Gason stepped to the side and thrust his spear into the side of the tiger's body. Hitting the heart, Gason twisted the spear collapsing the organ with the shaped tip. Blood spray out of the large hole as the dead tiger fell to the ground.
Gason looked on with a mixture of fear and joy as he wonders how the impossible had just happened. He had never heard of a single man defeating a saber tiger, to his knowledge it normally took a whole towns force of men to overcome one, normal with large casualties. Pulling out his knife, he cut the core from the base of the skull and started to butcher the animal for the items of value.
The trip to his village only took an hour of running as Gason was amazed at his endurance with every footstep. When he arrived before the log gates to the village, the guard on the top of the palisade stared at Gason in wonder with the large tiger skin draped over his shoulder.
Once inside the village, the process of helping the other started, with the blessing of the goddess given to every adult in the village. Over time people started to choices different classes of power, and magic was discovered. The strength of the village soared as they now started to take the fight to the monster surrounding them on all side. Adventures from the villages started to spread and travel to other human settlements and spread the blessing of the goddess and human started to push back the monster and re-establish their settlements. Over time the monster and human came to a stalemate with neither side gaining dominion over the other.
In the vision, time moved forward, and Ceras saw the world of man started to re-establish itself. Ceras saw magic develop as people explored their power and great wizard establish universities of learning. The stalemate between man and monster continued as the human world studied how to overcome this, like many years past.
A scene in his mind filled his vision; it was of thousands of wizards all in concentric circles acting out a magical spell. As this spell took time, magical energy condensed into the area, forming a small sphere full of power glowing with all the colors imaginable. To Ceras, it looked like the sphere he had placed his hand on in the dungeon. The ball of power then shot into the ground as great caverns formed in a grand labyrinth. A warrior was chosen to lead the dungeon in the work the ancients had designed it for. Underground Ceras saw the large muscular warrior touch the sphere as the unbreakable connection was made binding the dungeon to the warriors will. Over time as more dungeons were formed from offspring of the original, the monster's power started to dissipate as the humans, and the dungeons controlled the destruction.
Chapter 2 Building up a Defense of the Dungeon
Ceras mind snapped back to his body as he stood before Hidden-Caverns who said, “So since the first dungeon, it has been forever that dungeon and warrior dungeon masters have worked together.”
Hidden-Caverns said with a shocked voice, “No, that’s not correct as you must be a warrior to enable you to be a dungeon master, the magic of the dungeons was designed that way. You also look, the most warrior-like of everybody I’ve ever seen. To think about that you’re the only person I’ve seen so maybe I’m not an expert on what people look like.”
Ceras cough mentally to get the rambling dungeons attention, and then told Hidden-Caverns the story of the wisp in the forest. At the end of the story, Hidden-Caverns only said in a quiet voice, “Oh, I see.”
Then as if thinking some more he said, “Well this will be interesting, as all the memories that I’ve from the previous dungeon, in my line give no indication of how this will affect our abilities.”
Ceras said with tiredness in his voice as explaining all the time he was a wizard was getting old, “Well, I guess it will be fun to see what happens.”
” Well, we had better get on with getting some defenses for this place together. Can you show me what the dungeon looks like at the moment?” as Ceras looked around the spherical room with a serious expression.
In his mind, a three-dimensional image appeared of the dungeon, as he studied it Ceras found he could navigate around the four levels of the dungeon. As he thought of question about a different part of the displayed dungeon, he was able to gain an understanding in his mind with the help of Hidden-Caverns. They agreed to add the five-star points for the dungeon into the intelligence stat which put the energy per hour stats up which was the number of units that could be produced in an hour, taking one point per level of the creature.
Dungeon Name:
Hidden-Caverns
Total Level
1
Major
Energy per hour
Gold per day
Extent
Number
229
100
4
Major
Intelligence
Charisma
Knowledge
Number
40
20
20
During the time they had been discussing the plan, Hidden-Caverns had been creating kobolds that would need to mine the dungeon developing traps and building new areas. Now he had about one hundred and twenty kobolds working around the mine on different tasks and was about to produce monster for defense according to the plan the two had worked on.
Ceras was having a bit of a rest, suddenly Hidden-Caverns shouted in his mind, excitedly, "Incoming monster."
As Ceras stood up and started to run to entrances of the dungeon, he said in his mind, "Weren't we going to wait to start attacking the monster into the dungeon?"
Hidden-Caverns said in a tone that was slightly embarrassed, "It not something that can be turned on and off, as soon as when you activated me the signal started to be sent out to the surrounding area."
Ceras was now running up the pathway to the cavern on the second level and muttered to himself about unreliable answers from the dungeon core, but he concentrated on running as fast as he could instead of arguing with Hidden-Caverns.
"I suggest that you meet the monsters on the first level, just before you reach the spider web, as it will restrict the flow of monsters that can attack you at once. I will also have the spider kill as many as possible." Hidden-Caverns said in a cheerful tone as if he was looking forward to the fight.
Ceras was now running across the large cavern, and so he said to the voice in his mind, "What type of monsters are they and how many?"
"Their Rabid Rabbits," announced Hidden-Caverns, "but I can detect a lot of them all coming in at once."
As Hidden-Caverns said this, Ceras spied his first fluffy ball of per evil, from his viewpoint in life as they had always been the number one pest on the farm. The rabbit launched into the air going straight for his neck that was protected by the chain mail, but before it could reach its intended target, the rabbit was hit to the side of the tunnel by a flaming staff. Its body disintegrated into a pulp as it splattered across the wall of the tunnel. Step by step Caras ran up to tunnel to level one, every now and then stopping to smash a lone rabbit into the wall.
When he was at the spider's webs, he already could see several rabbits caught in the webbing, as the spider attacked them with poison fangs, injecting the poison turning the rabbit's body green. As he looked, he could see that through sheer force of numbers, the aggressive fur balls were starting to make channels in the web as more started to break through in the rest of the dungeon.
Ceras started to us his staff more like a brush as if he sweeping the rabbits when they came through the web. He had such a powerful hit with his staff; he did not need to use his full force in each blow, so it limited his use of his stamina. As the attack of rabbits continued, he switched over to magic to allow his stamina to build to its maximum level, and then for a time allowed his MP to increase as he just fought with his staff.
After tens of minutes of working in this manner, he expected to see the wall on the side of the tunnel full of rabbit body, but when he glanced in that direction, he saw a glow on a few bodies as their power and elements were absorbed into the dungeon.
Hidden-Caverns said, "As monster are killed in the dungeon their power can be used which enables us to both increases in experience and produce more monsters or items for the dungeon."
Ceras was too busy to say anything back, as he swatted at a particularly fierce rabbit that seems to want to take apart his calf muscle. The flood of rabbits started to increase suddenly a section of the web, holding them back broke. Ceras found himself fighting rabbits on all side, with his staff and feet as he kicked every rabbit around him.
His high agility now came into to use as he was able to coordinate his body in an efficient manner, turning this body and staff into a rabbit slicing and bashing machine. Even with his whirl-wind attacking, some of the rabbits made it through to attack his body with savage bites, and at first, he could only feel the pressure on his chain mail armor, but as the flood got greater, they found exposed skin to sink their fangs into his flesh.
As the seemingly never-ending flood of attacking rabbits continued, Ceras stamina started to drain as the blood from many small wounds flowed down his face and hands. Once his stamina was empty, he again resorted to magic to burn the attacking rabbit. For the next half an hour the process of recharging one ability while using the other continued as he decimated the horde of rabbits, but Ceras found that over time he was not getting up to the maximum magical power and stamina he had started the fight with.
When the rabbit flood continued, and he was starting to have nothing to draw from for magic or stamina abilities, to help him in the bunny fight, he was starting to get worried, thinking that he could be eaten by the massive amount of rabbits, which would not be a present way to die.
In his mind, he was able to see when he had no more magic or stamina and started to have to rely on his own human strength along. He was still able to swing the staff as he had before, with the quick motion, but now his hits were softer than before only knocking the rabbits to the side mostly wounding them, for them to only return for another attack.
"I could do with some help here," said Ceras to Hidden-Caverns as he moved to swat several more rabbits that were trying to jump for exposed parts of his body with their mouths full open showing their large incisors.
"Fall back to the bottom of the corridor, I've got some monsters to stop them." said the voice of Hidden-Caverns in a mild manner as if nothing was happening of any importance's.
With the last bit of energy, he had he twisted around and ran full speed down the corridor towards the large cavern below. He could feel the bites of the rabid rabbits on his back as he armors defected their incisors from causing any damage, but he could see some bounces ahead of him.
As Ceras ran through the switch back downwards, he suddenly came to a surprising sight of five Banshee all hov
ering like ethereal beings in the air above him, to which his first thought was I'm dead.
"Run under them, you idiot," shouted Hidden-Caverns in his mind with an exasperated voice, "there on our side."
Ceras obeyed the demanding voice as he ran under the floating Banshee with their horrific expression on their face that had white hair pulled tight skin with their mouths open ready to scream at the plague of rabbits following Ceras. As soon as he had slid under the Banshees and stopped on the other side all five of the Banshee let out a powerful sonic wave of energy directed towards the horde of a fluffy monster bent on shredding anything in their way into small pieces. As he watched the effect of the sonic screams on the rabbit, he was horrified with what happened, even though the personnel had no love for the evil balls of fluffy fury he felt sorry for them this time. The area in front of the five horrific women just became a red mist that seemed to get thick as time went on, great drops of blood started to form on the tunnel walls flowing together into pools of blood that had a glow of light around them as the energy was absorbed into the dungeon.
"Why the hell did you not do that to start with?" Ceras said with a voice of anger at Hidden-Caverns, "it would have saved me all the trouble I just had!"
"I need some time to create the monster, and it looked like you were so enjoying yourself playing splat the bunny," said Hidden-Caverns with a sarcastic tone as the blood bath continued. "Anyway, get up we've got work to do to protect this place. We're going to having a lot more serious monster come than some fluffy bunnies."