Monster Core: A Gamelit Harem Dungeon Core Read online

  “Aye! Don’t you swing that sword at me, lad. This is required. I’m about to give you a magical branding that will unlock the power of all enchantments. You will be capable of harvesting the very essence of Lilith’s monsters to increase your own power.”

  “Hmm . . .” Ralph considered the priest’s words for a second before lowering the sword. “Do as you wish.”

  Alaxon continued slicing through flesh with his finger, and Ralph winced as the priest poured a substance from a vial into the wounds. Pain unlike he’d ever known lanced through him and blurred his vision, but when the process was complete, he felt like a new man. Power ignited his veins like demonfire, the sword’s grip burning in his palms when he lifted the weapon. He could see the magic now, a blackness writhing around the blade like hell-forged serpents.

  “I have given you a branding that marks the bodies of all adventurers,” Alaxon announced.

  “Adventurer?”

  “Yes, my boy. You are now an adventurer, of a sort. At least, you bear the mark of one. There aren’t very many left in the Infernal Realm. Perhaps none. Mostly pirates, raiders, and other folk of ill repute. In fact, I once found myself in the service of one. A nasty warlord. Not the kind you want to meet. Forced me to perform this same ceremony on his army, he did.”

  “An adventurer?” Ralph repeated, heedless of the priest’s words.

  “Aye. You’ll have to learn to listen. There’s a serious quest we must complete. I have heard a new dungeon has formed at the peak of Shadow Crag. It is in its infantile stages, and together we can conquer it.”

  At that point, Ralph no longer cared whether the priest had spoken truthfully about the prophecy in his stew, or whether this weapon could only be drawn by a pure and noble spirit. He had a magical weapon in his hand and would be leaving Cothslar for more interesting pastures.

  The priest and the stableboy ventured back through the town, and the people barely paid them a second glance. Those who caught sight of the blade at Ralph’s side gaped at his new acquisition, and he couldn’t help but smile at his good fortune. Ralph imagined the entire town would celebrate when it became apparent he wouldn’t be returning, and the curse was lifted. He shook the dust from his feet as they passed the wooden fortifications.

  They journeyed into the outskirts of the Black Sands, the scorched desert stretching from Cothslar to Shadow Crag. Although they they mostly avoided encounters with the beasts and monsters lurking in the area, a sulfur gnome followed them most of the way, and it showed itself on the third day.

  Ralph charged the enemy while it was still unaware it had been caught. The Dark Reaper whistled as it passed through the air, and the gnome’s head toppled from its shoulders.

  More gnomes leaped from the sand dunes, almost materializing out of thin air. Ralph twisted away from their serrated knives and recalled the swordforms he’d practiced inside the stable. But he didn’t need to think; the Dark Reaper commanded his limbs as though it had taken full control of his body.

  Ralph’s movements were fluid, like the wind flowing through the leaves of an elm tree. He was also fast, his mind having trouble keeping up with the speed of his limbs. It took a little getting used to, but within minutes, he was able to think as fast as his body moved. The Dark Reaper sliced through the gnome ranks, and their blood splattered against Ralph’s tattered tunic. He planted his foot on a gnome’s chest and kicked it backward before delivering an upward swing that tore the creature in half.

  When the final gnome died, a cloud of black specks drifted from the corpses and siphoned into Ralph’s tattoo.

  “You are growing in power,” Alaxon said. “You will one day rule the world, my boy. The potatoes in my stew foretold it!”

  The old priest seemed unable to speak to Ralph without mentioning a great destiny or the things he’d seen in his stew. As much as Ralph wanted to believe he was chosen by Lilith, the theory was growing increasingly hard to swallow. The power he could wield with this sword, however, meant he didn’t care whether he was actually chosen by Lilith for great things. The sword alone was more than enough. It gave him direction, a purpose in life.

  Power.

  Ralph pilfered the gnome corpses for anything he could use, but none of the armor pieces were large enough for him, and the weapons were useless while he carried the Dark Reaper. After a little more searching, they found a cache where the sulfur gnomes stored their treasure, and Ralph took a leather breastplate, greaves, and segmented shoulder plates. They were the first pieces of armor he’d ever owned, and they only took a few minor adjustments of the straps and buckles until they fitted him perfectly.

  When they began their journey again, Alaxon explained how to harness the magical energy gained from the kills. It was called Infernal Essence, and through his bond with the Dark Reaper, Ralph could turn it into powerful abilities. With the enchanted tattoo, he’d become an adventurer, dedicated to Lilith. Apparently, the dungeons and adventurers both served the dark goddess by their eternal conflict. For so many years, both parties had lain dormant, but Alaxon explained that a new age had come, and the eternal battle had begun against in earnest.

  It was an interesting legend, and Ralph wasn’t sure he believed it, but it served him now. Much had changed since that morning when he’d attempted to hang himself, and it was only the beginning of his path as an adventurer.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I barely noticed Bertha’s eyes widen as I excitedly hooked into my new project. I could only consume so much essence at once, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t manipulate the raw essence inside me to improve how my dungeon looked and operated.

  My gaming experience had always been fighting, leveling up, killing monsters, and raiding places. I’d never thought that building my own could be so exhilarating.

  My gem hummed again as I blasted essence into the slope in the entrance tunnel. The reflective surface of obsidian looked darker and more foreboding, so I unloaded the juice I’d sapped from the mountain and formed a huge set of stairs. The staircase was impressively broad and would suit all kinds of feet—troll, human, elf, whatever.

  I turned my attention to the tunnel’s entrance where I’d first begun my excavation process. Around the area where the small obsidian spire once rested, I drew the malleable edges of my dungeon upward, forming a simple archway with glossy obsidian. I wanted to fashion skulls into the stone, but my stone manipulation still wouldn’t allow for anything except simple geometric shapes. Would I be able to create more intricate and detailed masonry with more practice? I really hoped so because while my archway was a satisfactory entrance, it didn’t quite communicate the atmosphere of ‘doom and gloom’ I wanted adventurers to feel when they passed beneath.

  My essence counter dropped significantly after I completed the artwork, and I guessed more detailed structures cost more resources.

  Good to know.

  I couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but I channeled every last atom of Physical Essence out of my jewel and emptied my reserves to create the best possible entrance tunnel. The walls started to gleam with the polished surface of obsidian, and I fashioned stalactites into the ceiling. I wasn’t sure I could make them plummet with a mental command and impale an adventurer or two, but at least they looked cool. I added the same spikes to the archway to give the effect of bleeding thorns jutting out from the glistening black stone. It was suitable detailing for what I could manage with my low skill level.

  My dungeon wasn’t much, and I wanted something much grander and more imposing, but it was definitely more than a hole in the ground. An archway of glistening black stone.

  I retracted my consciousness from the entrance but could still feel it at the back of my mind. The wind battered the mountaintop and caressed my new design. It almost tickled.

  Now that my gem was depleted of Physical Essence, I turned my attention to the antechamber at the end of the tunnel. I needed cavernous spaces, traps, pools of boiling lava, gargoyles with glowing red eyes and blood dr
ipping from demonic eye sockets, all set into the walls.

  I felt an evil overlord chuckle ringing through my gem’s surface.

  Zagorath was finally beginning. Lilith’s plan for me was in its early stages of fruition.

  Bertha shifted from her meditative posture when I greedily ate away at the walls behind her. I divided the obsidian from the regular stone, then worked on hollowing out a space as my facets flooded with more essence.

  Time didn’t seem to have any kind of measure—I was enjoying myself too much. I made sure to keep an eye on my essence-counter this time, and before long, the size of my original chamber increased substantially. It was now thirty feet high, almost 200 feet long, and 100 feet wide. A large empty space, sure, but I would section it off into separate chambers and fill it with dungeon goodies eventually.

  I polished the floor to a glassy sheen until it looked like black marble streaked with veins, and I did the same to the walls. While finishing the final wall, my core detected an entirely different substance—something sweet and irresistible ignited my hunger like never before. I attacked the wall instinctively, ignoring the polishing I’d done on the surface.

  I only got through the first foot and a half of rock before it gave way to a small alcove. It didn’t look like a natural pocket of air, so I guessed it had been dug out centuries ago. Maybe even millennia. Faint circles were imprinted on the wall, and extending my core’s senses revealed them to be magical seals. They were too faded by time for me to examine closely, and my core could only pick up partial lines of individual symbols.

  This had been a magical chamber of some sort, maybe a place of arcane rituals. Was this part of the reason why the trolls thought the mountain’s peak was cursed? If this had once been a place of power, then it explained the chained varidus outside that functioned as aerial defenses. Was it a palace, or a fortress of some kind?

  Then it dawned on me.

  The reason why Lilith wanted me to plant my core in this place became so very clear.

  This room was the remnant of a previous dungeon.

  My theory was further confirmed when I expanded out and found something utterly alien to the obsidian and bread-rock I’d been melting down and reforging. It was almost completely buried beneath rubble, and I consumed a little of the debris to reveal a smooth, curving, metal structure.

  I let my consciousness swirl around the thing, the floor, and the roof above it. The walls of this new chamber were now a part of my dungeon, and I could perceive them with total awareness. I manipulated them until they were smooth and structured, just like I’d done to the antechamber of Zagorath.

  Another core had carved out this space some millennia ago. But what was this object that defied my attempt at decomposition?

  “What is it?” Bertha asked after wandering over to the newly discovered room. She was staring at the tiny fraction of the object visible above the rubble, her mouth agape.

  I responded to her through MindSpeak.

  “This is the reason why your people made up those legends of a cursed magic peak. I think it’s something a previous dungeon left behind.”

  “That explains a lot,” she relayed back. “There are many strange rooms throughout the mountain, and we were always warned off them with similar tales of curses and hexes.”

  “This object could help my dungeon progress. I need to understand it,” I added.

  I tried to absorb it, but it was too difficult. The complexity of its composition prevented me from consuming the object. I simply didn’t understand enough about it, and didn’t know how to break the material’s internal tightness.

  As I ate away at the rock burying the structure, I started to apprehend it. It looked like a demonic hand of black metal with clawed fingers grasping at something that should have been between them. The hand’s craftsmanship was intricate, comprised of many tightly-bonded materials—too much detail and complexity for my core to handle. Even my total knowledge of everything inside my dungeon couldn’t quite manage this structure.

  It was arcane and powerful, that was for sure.

  But what did it do?

  Why was it here?

  I asked Bertha those same questions, and all she could offer was a shrug. She was clearly out of her element, so I didn’t begrudge her ignorance. The half-troll returned to the antechamber and resumed her meditative position.

  I wasn’t happy with leaving those questions unanswered, so took in as much as possible of the surface, before finding something on the insides of the fingers. Writing. It was alien to me, and unlike any script I’d seen back on Earth. The design looked similar to the magical seals imprinted to the cable cars leading to the mountaintop.

  This thing was powered by Infernal Essence. Maybe I could give it a whirl? I ran through the worst possible scenario in my head, imagining the demonic hand coming to life, crushing my jewel in its palm, and reducing me to dust. The more positive scenarios, however, were endless, and I’d always considered myself a risk-taker.

  Before, I’d been able to push the arcane energy into the cable car as Von Dominus. How much more capable was I in my gem form, all gorged on the stuff?

  I checked my Infernal Essence stats again.

  Current Infernal Essence Total: 1,037

  Then I pushed the energy into the complex demonic structure until it wouldn’t take anymore. It flared with boiling crimson light, and I felt Bertha suddenly break free of her meditation and sprint toward my core. Although my consciousness was still in the alcove, I could feel her callused hands snatch up my jewel.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’m unharmed. I just activated the object,” I messaged her.

  “You believe it safe?”

  “I’m not really sure. I think it’s powerful, and I wanted to test it.”

  Yeah, maybe it was a little stupid trying to take the mysterious object of great power for a spin…

  A fluttering of wings disturbing the air within my entrance told me Puck had returned. Good. Maybe he had some idea of what this thing was. I didn’t know anything aside from the fact it fed on Infernal Essence. It’d eaten up almost half of it but hadn’t done anything else.

  “Master!” the imp declared after he flew into the alcove. “You’ve found a soul forge!”

  “Explain?” I asked silently, forcing myself to curb my enthusiasm.

  The name sounded like the perfect upgrade, the perfect addition to Zagorath. I remembered soul forges were mentioned in the Infernal Champion class, but I still had no idea what they did. The name soul forge sure sounded important, though.

  I checked my timer for Von Dominus and found he’d been ready to spawn for a while now. After the all-pervading consciousness of the dungeon and the spaces within it, I almost felt loath to leave my jewel, but it’d make conversing easier.

  I spawned the elf and slipped into his consciousness.

  Bertha smiled at my avatar form. The lustful curl of her lips was already telling me she’d been waiting a while for Von Dominus to show up. Puck did a weird bowing-flying-dancing routine that didn’t make any kind of sense to me, but my heart swelled with warmth for a minute. Here I was, finally. Things felt right. My champions were by my side, and the beginning of a dungeon stood at my back.

  And I had an ancient relic of a bygone dungeon glowing in front of me. With the simpler sight of my elf, I stared at the glowing machine; I couldn’t describe it as anything other than that. It didn’t have the aesthetics of what might exist in a steampunk world—there were no mental cogs or steam-powered engines. It wasn’t quite modern either since it bore no digital screens or microchips.

  Describing a clawed hand made of metal as a machine might have sounded inaccurate, but I got the feeling it had been constructed with the singular purpose of multiple parts working together to perform a particular task. I’d memorized the definition of ‘machines’ while I was the marketing rep for a startup company, and it had stuck.

  “The soul forge,” I said to Puck
. “Explain it.”

  “This is Lilith’s womb!” The imp almost had an aneurysm in his excitement.

  Bertha leaned against the entrance of the small chamber, my jewel glowing between her fingers as she watched us. She seemed happy to let Puck take the lead. Damn imp was cannoning around the small chamber so hard that he looked like he was going to explode from happiness.

  “The origin of all life for Infernal creatures,” he said. “The dark goddess must have left it here for her Viceroy, so he may conquer all of Shadow Crag.”

  Well, I doubted Lilith had buried the soul forge beneath the mountaintop for me to find. It was more likely she’d led me to the graveyard of an ancient dungeon.

  I looked to Bertha, whose mouth had turned into a massive grin. She gave a half-shrug and nodded at Puck. “Calm down, cretin, and explain it to Master properly.”

  The imp halted, his wings beating furiously, and beamed at me. “Your creatures, Master! I have only heard tell of the legends. My tribe holds them to be true.”

  “What legends?” I asked.

  “The soul forge is where all life for Infernal creatures originates.”

  “From a single object?”

  “No, there are many forges. Or at least there were. And you have found one! Master, you are most excellent.”

  “I appreciate the praise, but you’re not telling me how to work the thing.”

  “I am afraid I do not know that, Master. What I do know is that the goddess presented dungeons with soul forges, and through these objects, monsters were born. We were a gift to the dungeons, and when their power grew, so did our numbers. We spread far and wide, to grow in power and serve the will of Lilith.”

  “That’s quite the bit of lore,” I said. “Still doesn’t tell me how to use a soul forge. I’m lost.”

  Puck’s mouth snapped shut, and he descended upon the object. His claws traced the outlines of the runes, and the forge flickered in response every time the imp got close to it. The machine was hungry for Infernal Essence, that much was obvious.