by Marc Robert
But then Rania’s scream cut through the gloom and Osman snapped back into the reality at hand!
He pulled himself back up onto his feet and blinked hard, trying to focus his eyes.
Just what was he seeing?!
Somehow, in the few moments that he had been down, the hooded figure had managed to crawl on top of the dark elf and she … she had the figure in some sort of vise-grip headlock!!!
Old Friend
Seeing the hooded figure flailing around on the verge of getting choked-out by Rania actually pleased Osman quite a bit …
The dark elf had a pretty tight grip on the raider. So tight, in fact, that the dungeon lord’s first thought was that he might actually be able to just sit this one out and enjoy the show, that Rania had it all under control and was about to make short work of this mystery figure.
But, of course, things almost immediately went sideways!
Seemingly out of nowhere, the figure got a burst of power and started elbowing the dark elf over and over and over again in the chest and ribs. Rania struggled and grunted, and she absorbed the blows, but Osman could see that her face had gone pale and that she was bleeding from the mouth.
He hadn’t really realized that, that she was in such bad shape.
And then it hit him: she hadn’t tried to cast any spells the whole time she’d been down here!
She hadn’t even been able to pull herself up onto her feet!
Osman sucked in a breath: Maybe her mana was nearly expended?! How could he have been so stupid not to realize that?
The hooded figure broke free from the dark elf’s headlock then and — instead of pulling away — violently pinned her shoulders down with its knees. Rania cried out and clawed at the figure’s face, clawing and struggling so hard that she actually managed to pull the figure’s hood away:
BOCK!
It was Osman’s friend Bock!!!
The dungeon lord’s eyes went wide …
… and his blood ran cold …
But …
… how?!
Osman’s first thought was that Bock was trolling him in the game as some kind of revenge for the fight that they had had over Kendall last Halloween. That could be it … That was MOST LIKELY it, but … but something didn’t quite sit right with him about that theory. If all this was just some sort of revenge scheme on Bock’s part, then why go to all the trouble of turning Osman into a dungeon core in the first place or, for that matter, convincing him that he was trapped inside Other Earth? Unless …
Oh no …
… no, no, no …
Bock wouldn’t do that!
No matter how angry he was — no matter how pissed off — he wouldn’t do … that!
Or …
… would he?
Osman knew now why his blood had run cold! He thought for the first time about where his body was in the real world. He should be safe and sound in one of the old Simulah kiosks at the Wellsborn Public Library. But Bock knew Osman liked to dive there. In fact, it was Bock who had suggested that Osman use the library when Osman admitted to him that he couldn’t afford to buy one of the official, Simulah-brand haptic suits with the big, white “Ö” emblazoned on the chest.
Holy shit!
Had Bock actually, physically trapped him inside the game somehow? Had he … done something to Osman’s body in the library?!
Juan “Bock” Bockhurst turned to look at the dungeon lord then, and Osman could see that it WAS indeed his old friend, but that he had the … the look of a dragon! His skin was scaly and his nose a bit mashed down — like a snake’s nose — with flaring nostril slits. His hair was thinning out, replaced by a crown of tiny horns jutting from his scalp. His teeth were razor-sharp, hellaciously pointed — needle-like — his lips just as scaly as his face, but blackened and cracked.
Osman wondered if Bock could breathe fire …
And he also wanted to know why his friend’s eyes hadn’t changed at all?
They still appeared to be normal and human, the same azure blue that Osman remembered from all the nights that they had spent staying up until the witching hour gaming.
What the hell had happened to him?!
Before Osman could ask, Bock’s long, pink tongue flicked out from between his cracked lips and he licked Rania’s face. The dark elf tried to wriggle away, struggling under Bock’s weight, but he grabbed her jaw and held her still. Then he looked Osman straight in the eye and hissed: “She’s piss!”
Wait …
… wait just a minute …
Wait a minute!
Osman had heard THAT before!!!
He had heard that exact same phrase not long ago …
But where?!
Before he could piece it together, he caught sight of Bock’s hand inching toward his belt. Osman saw the handle of a dagger there and guessed that his “friend” was just about to make good on his promise to eviscerate the dark elf.
The dungeon lord sprang into action, forgetting all about what may or may not have happened to his body in the real world and focusing only on the here and now, sprinting across the room. He was a brawler now and he was gonna bash this cretinous bastard halfway-to-hell for threatening Rania like that! He gripped the handle of his iron rod with both his hands and swung the weapon with all his might, bellowing at the top of his lungs: “JUAN!!!”
Bock looked up at the exact same moment that Osman’s rod slammed into his fat gut, knocking him clear across the cavernous room. He hit the far wall with a bone-crunching thud and fell into a heap onto the floor, {-43 HP} appearing in that puffy yellow font above his body.
Satisfied that he had successfully neutralized the threat, at least for now, Osman quickly knelt down beside the dark elf, trying to figure out how badly she was injured. He touched her arm, and then her cheek with his hand, but she didn’t respond. Her eyes had rolled back into her head and he hoped — prayed! — that she had only passed out, not died. He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if she died on his watch!
Osman removed Rania’s skeleton mask and wiped the blood from her mouth with the sleeve of his tunic. Then he scry’d her Soul Stats:
SHE WAS A MESS!
Only 1 Mana Point left … and just 3 HP.
Not quite dead, but almost!!!
And it wasn’t just her MP and HP that were perilously low; her skill trees hadn’t been optimized either! Not for quite some time, from the looks of it. There were tons of
No wonder Rania had been so incensed when I first met her, Osman thought. Her lord and master hadn’t just started overlooking her for “other, better thralls,” he had purposefully stopped cultivating her mana core. Which was just awful to see, like some malnourished dog. Osman would never treat her like that, not if he were her master.
He considered that a moment, then glanced over to where Bock lay, just to make sure that the asshole was still down for the count, but … Bock was gone!
Osman leapt to his feet and looked all around, expecting a fight. He hefted up his iron rod and called out: “Where are you, you bastard?!”
“Up here, Noddy!”
Osman’s head whipped up and he saw that Bock was climbing a rope ladder that DEFINITELY had not been there the night before. It led to a man-sized hole — which ALSO had not been there the night before! — about halfway up the rocky wall, and it was obvious that Bock was headed for that hole, hell-bent upon making his escape.
Maybe that’s for the best, the dungeon lord thought. He needed to figure out how to heal Rania right now — before it was too late — and didn’t have time to go after his old friend, no matter how much he wanted to know what exactly was going on, no matter how good it might fe
el to end the bastard right here and now. If he pursued Bock, the dark elf would die for sure.
“What’s the matter Osman, don’t have the stones to come and get me?” Bock taunted him from halfway up the ladder.
“You don’t have the stones to stay and fight?!” Osman shot back, even though he knew he didn’t have time for this kind of shit right now.
“Oh, don’t worry: I’ll be back! I’m gonna come back, and then YOU’LL be sorry!”
“We’ll see.”
“I’m gonna tell The Crafter King all about you,” Bock hissed, “He’s gonna know that you’re here now, rooted in this place. You’re not long for this world.”
Crafter King?! Osman thought. He had heard THAT before, too!
However, before he could ask Bock who that was or what he meant, his old friend hauled himself up into that man-sized hole and scuttled away without so much as another word.
The dungeon lord nodded to himself. Fair enough, he thought, fair enough!
{Congratulations, you have successfully repelled your 1st group of raiders. You have leveled up. You are now … LEVEL 3}
The joy Osman should have felt at that glorious notification was robbed from him by the dark elf being on the verge of death.
There was nothing to celebrate, not yet … he knew that!
He looked down at Rania. More blood stained her lips and she was still completely unconscious as far as Osman could tell. He knelt down beside her again and set down his iron rod and said her name. But he got no response. And then he said it again — her whole entire name — louder this time, shouting: “RANIA AHMEN’SUR!!!”
The dark elf’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of his booming voice.
She WASN’T past saving after all!
The dungeon lord let out a sigh of relief and sat down on the cold stone floor next to her, taking her head into his lap.
“Did … did you … did you kill that reeky bastard?” she murmured weakly.
Osman shook his head: “No. He got away.”
“Well … well at least … at least he didn’t get … get us … You can’t trust a dragon, you know,” she tried to laugh but only ended up coughing up more blood.
“No. No, you can’t,” Osman agreed, dabbing the blood away with the sleeve of his tunic.
“I’m gonna die … ” the dark elf whispered, “I can feel it … ”
The dungeon lord lowered his eyes. He felt helpless. He had no healing potions or phoenix feathers. A brief flicker of hope did course through him though, that those mushroom caps might have somehow respawned — perhaps while he slept, or as a special reward for successfully defending the dungeon against the fire-demon and Bock — but …
No luck!
The mushroom patch wasn’t so far from where he sat now and he stared at the three thick white stalks that remained, the red caps’ “roots” — “mycelium,” Osman remembered the word from biology class, for all the good that it did him now. He shook his head again: SO STUPID … how could he have been so stupid and … GREEDY, eating all the mushrooms like that without figuring out how to regrow them first. They were his one and only resource! If he had only taken the time to work out how to manage them, he might have been able to save the dark elf’s life with them now.
Ashamed of himself, he looked down at her.
But she was smiling up at him.
She reached up and touched his cheek with her ashen hand as she had touched it just after he had broken that charm spell she’d cast upon him on the road to The White Keep.
Their minds were still linked: vaguely, but truly …
Her smile widened. “Don’t feel bad, Osman Spar,” Rania whispered, “You’re like me now: a mana-eater. I understand!”
Osman almost broke down in tears when she said that, but then he realized: he had the 39 Mana Points from devouring the fire-demon’s soul! Well, 39 minus the 9 he had lost from all the damage that Plex took, and minus another 5 from casting the {Imbue} spell to counter Bock’s magic bolt. So, only 25 MP now, but … that was something! Maybe with that, he could cast {Imbue} to regrow the red caps?
The dungeon lord started to feel a bit hopeful!
Or …
… or better yet! Maybe he could just infuse his mana directly into Rania’s body using his own two hands …
It was worth a try!
Without another word or even any kind of warning, he cleared his throat and placed his palms on the dark elf’s breasts.
Rania gasped and wriggled around a little, arching one eyebrow at Osman.
She hadn’t expected that!
Nooooo … she hadn’t expected that AT ALL!
The dungeon lord was suddenly acutely aware of how little she was actually wearing: only that skimpy cotton loin cloth, which barely covered her crotch, and the minuscule chainmail bralet over her gorgeous mounds.
The dark elf wriggled around again, pressing her tits firmly against the palms of his hands through the thin metal mesh of her bralet. Her nipples stiffened. Osman could feel them stiffening through the chainmail and it was turning him on.
“Whatever you’re gonna do,” she whispered, “Do it!”
Perhaps THIS was what the {Imbue} spell was actually meant for!!! the dungeon lord thought.
Before he even knew that he was speaking, he began speaking in The Forked Tongue, reciting the words forwards and backwards, and forwards again — gleichzeitig — a ball of pure blue mana coalescing inside himself, at the site of his solar plexus, growing in size and intensity with each passing second — becoming a deeper, and deeper, and deeper shade of blue — until it spooled up entirely and broke free of its internal orbit, arcing down both of Osman’s arms at once, passing through the palms of his hands and into Rania’s quivering breasts, reinvigorating her core.
Her hips bucked when the wave of mana thrust into her, and she cried out in ecstasy, gripping the dungeon lord’s wrists with her hands, pulling him down on top of her curvaceous body.
{±6 MP} hovered just over their tangled bodies in that gleaming green font before bursting apart and showering down upon them like pixelated confetti accompanied by that cha-ching! sound effect.
“Do it again … ” Raina begged: “You can do THAT to me as much as you want!”
Osman started to try and calculate the math for that in his head, but then the dark elf kissed him full on the mouth, her lips warm and wet against his own lips. And he … he kissed her back! He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.
This was good!
This felt RIGHT!
“Heal me, and keep on healing me,” Rainia whispered, “Until I cum!”
Hearing the dark elf say the word “cum” made Osman extremely, EXTREMELY horny. Like maybe hornier than he’d ever been before in his whole entire life. He wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe cause he’d just actually saved Rania’s soul and almost given her a whopping orgasm all at the same time.
Yeah!
Yeah okay, THAT was probably it!
They began to kiss some more and Osman could feel the dark elf’s hand straying down between her legs. Was she …
… was she gonna touch herself?
Or was she just going to yank her loin cloth to one side maybe, for easy access?
… or BOTH?!
Probably freakin’ both …
However, she did neither of those two things. Instead, the dark elf began rubbing the dungeon lord’s cock through the loose fabric of his trousers, murmuring: “You feel sooo good!” She grinned her fanged little grin and Osman’s lips parted to respond, but he couldn’t make the words. It felt so awesome how she was stroking him, he just couldn’t make them.
“You’re a brawler now,” Rania blurted: “I really like that!”
She continued stroking his shaft through his pants and Osman realized she didn’t really mean for him to talk, or answer, or respond, or whatever. So instead he leaned down into her and nipped at her earlobe — lightly, with his teeth — and then a little harder, sucking
on her ear and making her squirm before starting to seriously kiss her neck.
Rania’s hips bucked again when he did that and she spread her legs wide open for him, moaning. “You’re gonna make me cum all over myself,” she said, “I’m getting SOOO wet!”
Twenty-four hours ago, Osman would have thought that this was some sort of super-elaborate honeytrap set to snuff him out completely. But he trusted Rania now more than ever; after all, now they were both on the same side. They were both infernals! Which meant they both suffered from the same … addiction.
