Monster Mansion 2 Read online

  Monster Mansion 2

  Dante King

  Copyright © 2021 by Dante King

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

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  Chapter 1

  The black Chrysler purred smoothly as I drove it up the wide suburban streets toward the mansion. The neighborhood was deserted, and that was no surprise. I glanced at the readout on the LED dashboard clock. It was 3am.

  All was quiet in the car. Astrid, Belinda, and Selena—the three government agents who had become my teammates—sat silently, each absorbed in their thoughts. Belinda and Selena, sitting in the back seats, had both dropped off to sleep. Astrid, sitting in the seat beside me, stared out the passenger side window.

  I glanced over at her. Her beautiful face was drawn with pain, and her hands cradled her injured leg. Her ice blonde hair was drawn back into a tight ponytail, and her pale blue eyes gazed off into the night.

  Astrid was a lycan, a beastkin woman descended from the Outworlders of Eosor. Her appearance was that of a beautiful human female, except for the two wolf-like ears that rose out from the top of her head, and the bushy tail that was currently tucked neatly away behind her. In battle, she had the ability to transform into a monstrous werewolf with deadly speed and ferocious teeth and claws.

  She was wearing her battle dress—a leather jumpsuit that hugged her figure, showing off her lithe curves, and was low cut to show off her round, firm breasts. Astrid was a stunning woman, and though we’d only known each other for less than a month, we had grown close.

  “Hey Astrid,” I said softly. “How are you feeling? How’s your leg?”

  “Sore,” she admitted through gritted teeth, glancing at me. She grimaced. “I can’t believe I let that monster get close enough to hit me with its Acid Breath attack.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it,” I reassured her. “You did great. All three of you did. Once we get back to the mansion, Kyrine will have a healing potion for you that’ll sort you right out.”

  Astrid nodded, smiling at me. “You’re right, Jeremy. It hurts just now but Kyrine will make it better quickly. And it was worth it. That was a hell of a fight. It could have been a lot worse than a burn on my leg.”

  It had been a hell of a fight. We had headed into the woods in pursuit of a Putrefied Cobra, a horrifically mutated magical beast, in the hopes of retrieving the creature core. We had won the fight, and harvested the core, but it had been a close call and had taken all of us giving it everything we had to win. We’d all learned a lot.

  Astrid lapsed into silence for a minute, then spoke again. “You know, Jeremy,” she said thoughtfully, “since you bonded with Kyrine, she’s become a lot less unpredictable. I was afraid of her before, but now that you’re here, I’m less afraid of her. I’m actually beginning to like her.”

  I chuckled. “You’d have to be crazy not to be at least a bit afraid of her. After all, she is an incredibly powerful and ancient dungeon spirit. I’m impressed that you managed to establish a relationship with her in the first place.”

  “It was difficult at first, but once she realized that our mission was to find her a Keeper and so restore her to her full power, she understood that it was in her best interests to help us out.”

  “And you’ve succeeded in that mission,” I said.

  I was the dungeon spirit’s new Keeper. Kyrine had rejected several candidates before I’d been found. By a fluke of genetics, I was an almost full-blooded Keeper, a descendent of the ancient Eosorean race. My role now was to bond with the dungeons and guide their progression to higher levels of power and complexity.

  The dungeons were conscious, living beings who manifested as physical spaces like cave networks, castles, or ancient temple complexes. Kyrine’s dungeon manifestation was a sprawling, opulent mansion set in massive overgrown grounds and existing hidden within a quiet suburb here on the outskirts of the city. Magic cloaked the mansion, and unless Kyrine willed it, nobody would notice its presence.

  For many years, the dungeons that had escaped Eosor had lain hidden here on Earth in a kind of stasis, with nobody even aware of their existence. Now, they had begun to awaken again. The shadowy Extra Dimensional Intelligence agency had been tasked with finding Keepers to bond with the dungeons and guide their progression.

  I had been completely ignorant of any of this until a week ago, when Astrid and her fellow agents, Belinda and Selena, had burst into my life. They were Extra Dimensional Intelligence agents, and their mission was to see me bonded to Kyrine, the monster mansion. One day, I’d just been Jeremy Parker, assistant in a dingy enchantment shop in the city. Now, I was Jeremy Parker, Dungeon Keeper.

  I was no stranger to magic of course—nobody was nowadays—but the things I’d seen since I’d met the agents and the dungeon were entirely new to me.

  Since Gateway Day over a century ago, when the portal had opened between Earth and Eosor, magic had changed the course of human history. Through the portal had come the first Outworlders, magical races fleeing the destruction of their world at the hands of the Fateweaver. The Outworlders had sought refuge on Earth, and they had brought their magic with them.

  In the decades that followed, Outworlder magic had become a catalyst for change and innovation in human society. Human cultivators harnessed the magic to become powerful spell-casters. Magic was utilized in industry, powering and enhancing everything from cars to computers to stereos and anything else you could imagine.

  This had not always been an easy integration. Magic was open to abuse, and the Outworlder races often faced hostility from humans, and even from each other. Eosor, their home world, had been a very different place from Earth, and old resentments and interracial feuds were difficult things to lay aside. As the decades had passed, however, Outworlders were mostly integrated into human society, and their magic had become an integral part of the world.

  After an initial period of unregulated magic use, governments around the world recognized the damage that magic could cause in the wrong hands. In some countries, magic had been outlawed altogether, but in the US, a level cap was enforced on cultivators themselves and also on the magical goods they could create and use.

  This was a bit of a bummer, but at the same time most people accepted that it needed to be that way, and it was better than not being allowed to be into magic at all.

  It was now 120 years since Gateway Day. Now, the world was going to change again. The Fateweaver had arisen once more. He had destroyed Eosor, and now he was coming for Earth. The Eosoreans, extraordinarily powerful cultivators on their homeworld, had not been able to defeat him, and that meant that Earth was in trouble—here, most people were limited to cultivation to a maximum of Level 3. The Fateweaver had defeated level 100 cultivators.

  And that was where the dungeons came in. Dungeons thrive on expended mana. To get this, they attract adventurers to the dungeon with the promise of satisfying fights and valuable loot. Adventurers get to upgrade their powers, and the dungeon does the same. This would be the only way for cultivators on Earth to become powerful enough to defeat the Fateweaver.

  Of course, none of this was widespread knowledge. As far as I knew, only me, the dungeons, and some elements of the government such as the EDI knew about the impending threat and the need to rapidly create an army of powerful magic users. How the hell that would be implemented I didn’t know. Thankfully, I figured that wasn’t my problem just now.

  I returned my attention to the road. I was looking forward to getting back to the mansion. Since I’d arrived and bonded with the dungeon, Kyrine had revealed her humanoid avatar, a breathtakingly beautiful female who existed within the walls of the mansion. She was a lusty creature with large appetites and an insatiable desire to please. Our bonding had involved some of the best sex I’d ever had in my life, as well as the transfer of her summoning powers to me. Once we got back to the mansion, I was looking forward to absorbing the Cobra core I’d h
arvested from our last battle and testing my new summoning power.

  “Here we are,” I said as the outer wall of the mansion slid into view before me. “Belinda, Selena, wake up. We’re home.”

  In the back seat, the two other agents roused themselves. Belinda was a powerful psycher. The psychers were an Outworlder race who had mysterious powers of mind control. I’d already seen Belinda transform herself into a cloud of black fog and flay the flesh from her enemies. Her hair was made of long, purple tentacles that looked a bit like dreadlocks. Her eyes were dark and her expression thoughtful. Of the three agents, she was probably the one who I knew the least.

  Selena, the third agent, had lived as my housemate for a year before revealing herself as an EDI agent. She was a cat-girl, a feline Outworlder. She had a long, expressive tail, longer than Astrid’s curling wolf tail. Her hair was black and straight, and her face was kind of cat-like despite being human in all other respects. Black-furred cat’s ears poked from the top of her head.

  Selena’s job had been to make sure that I was the Keeper they were looking for, and she had played her part brilliantly. I’d had no idea. When I found out, it had strained our friendship for a while. Ultimately, though, life as a Keeper was going to be amazing. It sure beat living in a crappy apartment and working the nine to five. I was happy with the way things had gone, and so I didn’t want to hold a grudge against Selena. I’d made that clear to her, much to her relief. We would continue to be friends.

  Belinda got out of the car and approached the big, wrought-iron gate in the high white wall that surrounded the mansion. She held up a keycard against the reader by the gate, and the gate swung noiselessly open. Belinda jumped back in, and I turned the Chrysler into the wide white driveway and began to drive slowly up toward the mansion.

  The heavy gate swung smoothly closed behind us.

  “So, how’d you like the car?” asked Selena. It was her car, taken out of storage now that she no longer had to masquerade as my poor housemate. She’d suggested that I should drive it back from our mission, and I was more than happy to give it a go.

  “It’s great,” I said as I steered the big vehicle smoothly up the drive. “Runs like a dream. I can see why you like it. It must have sucked leaving it in storage while we were living together.”

  “It did,” she said, “but I had no choice. The mission had to come first.”

  I nodded. That was something I understood. At first, I’d been skeptical about becoming the mansion’s Keeper, and about working with the EDI. Now, though, I understood that it was a matter of duty. The mansion was going to help protect the country—and the planet—from destruction at the hands of the Fateweaver. That was a higher purpose, and sometimes in the pursuit of such things, one has to make some sacrifices.

  The mansion’s façade was eerie as it loomed up pale out of the darkness. It looked like a haunted house, all trailing ivy and peeling white paintwork. Inside, it was plush and welcoming, but the outside needed renovation. When I had a chance, I would ask Kyrine about it. I’d like to see the outside of the mansion spruced up a bit.

  “You’re home,” said Kyrine’s voice in my head.

  I jolted slightly, startled. I still hadn’t fully gotten used to her ability to speak directly inside my mind.

  “We are,” I replied. “Astrid’s hurt. Can you create a healing potion for her?”

  “Of course!” said Kyrine, sounding worried. “Bring her straight inside!”

  I parked at the foot of the flight of broad marble steps that climbed up to the great double doors of the mansion’s main entrance. Belinda and Selena got out, and they came round to open Astrid’s door and help her out. I jumped out and took the steps two at a time to open the mansion door.

  Astrid was gritting her teeth as her friends helped her up the steps. As the three women approached, I grabbed the door handles and flung the doors open, revealing the warm candle-lit entrance hall.

  “Kyrine?” I said out loud into the empty hall.

  There was shimmering in the air before me, and the beautiful dungeon avatar appeared. She was dressed in a figure-hugging red dress, her small bare feet visible below the hem. The dress showed me the tops of her breasts, and I could tell she was naked underneath from the way her nipples stretched the fabric.

  Apart from her dark red irises, she looked in every way like a human, and yet there was something indefinably different about her. She was not a regular human at all, but the physical manifestation of the powerful dungeon core that lay at the heart of the mansion.

  Kyrine looked me up and down, then a light came into her dark red eyes. “You have something for me,” she stated. It was not a question.

  “A core,” I said, “harvested from a monster we fought.”

  She nodded. “I can feel its presence,” she said, then took a step toward me and turned her face up to kiss me. She was a little shorter than I was, and I leaned down to meet her lips.

  A jolt of fire rushed through me with that connection, and Kyrine smiled wickedly as we broke the kiss. Now was not the time to follow that up, however. Astrid needed our help.

  Kyrine turned to the three agents as they stepped through the doorway into the mansion. At a wave of Kyrine’s hand, the doors swung closed, shutting out the night. There was a click of a lock.

  The entrance hall was warm and bright with the light of a thousand candles, hanging from huge candelabras from the high-vaulted ceiling. It was paneled in dark, old fashioned wood, and the floor was carpeted with thick red rugs. Around the edges of the entrance hall were suits of Eosorean armor on stands, paintings of landscapes and castles, and low couches and comfortable chairs.

  I grabbed one of these chairs and hauled it over to the door. Selena and Belinda helped Astrid sit down in it.

  “Oh, my dear,” said Kyrine, her voice full of concern and affection, “your poor leg!”

  Astrid smiled at her. It was not so long ago the agent had been terrified of the dungeon avatar, and it did my heart good to see the genuine affection forming between them.

  Kyrine crouched in front of Astrid, then reached out her hands and held them over Astrid’s left leg. There was a faint hissing noise, and the tattered leg of Astrid’s jumpsuit disappeared up to the middle of her thigh, turning into a faint gray powder which was absorbed into Kyrine’s palms. Next, Kyrine did the same with Astrid’s knee-high black leather boot, absorbing it into her hands.

  Astrid’s leg had been badly burned by the Cobra’s Acid Breath, and the pale skin was blistered and raw where the acid had connected. Kyrine nodded her head thoughtfully as she looked at the wound. “Yes, I have just the thing for this. Give me a moment.”

  Kyrine closed her eyes and held her hands out, palms upward this time. Above her hands, the air shimmered. Black and gray swirls of dust appeared and coalesced into a shape. Color rippled through it as it solidified.

  It was a squat bottle, the size and shape of an ink bottle, filled with a dark red liquid and stopped with a fat cork. Kyrine blinked her eyes open and held out the potion to Astrid, who took it gratefully. Belinda and Selena watched in frank amazement, and I guessed they’d never seen Kyrine manifest an item like that before.

  “Thank you, Kyrine,” Astrid said breathlessly, taking the bottle, pulling the cork, and tipping the contents into her mouth.

  A red swirling mist began to whirl like a vortex around Astrid’s body before separating into two distinct strands, like a DNA helix. Red light shone from her wounded limb. Astrid suddenly arched her back in her chair and moaned as if filled with sexual pleasure. I glanced at Kyrine and found that she was licking her lips, her eyes fixed on the effect that her potion was having on Astrid.

  When Astrid collapsed back in the chair, gasping and smiling, we all looked at her left leg. The burns and blisters were gone, the flesh healed. The skin was as firm and complete as it had been before.

  Astrid lifted her leg and wiggled her foot experimentally. “It’s completely healed!” she exclaimed, jumping up and hugging Kyrine.

  Kyrine laughed, and the other agents laughed too, clapping Astrid on the back and congratulating Kyrine. I smiled. It felt good to see the agents and the dungeon getting comfortable with each other.