Original Fiction Digging Myself In Deeper

[Bear Ribs]

Might as well move this here since it's gotten long enough to not be snippets anymore.

Day 78
“I'm hungry!” the adorable little girl with heel-length tentacle dreads complained as I dug into some stone. I was really starting to regret winding up stuck in a hole with a magical girl, a fallen angel, and gender-bent Majin Buu, at least when it came to food. I sighed and disintegrated another chunk of rock.

We'd been trapped underground for 78 days at that point. We didn't technically need to eat but that didn't mean she didn't want to, for that matter I was really wishing I could get a bite too. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me go back and explain how I came to be trapped in that pit.

I'll skip the boring bits, which is most of them. It turns out, around one in every 10.4 billion people is capable of bonding with a dungeon core and becoming a dungeon lord. Lucky me, I get to be one. That's how somebody as staggeringly un-lordly as a random wage slave like myself can wind up ruling a dungeon, the number of candidates simply isn't that vast so even a completely unqualified candidate becomes hyperqualified by virtue of an accident of birth. Lovely.

The situation is similar for divinely empowered heroes who hunt dungeon lords, with many universes producing a single hero every few decades. The gods of the multiverse, appropriately, power their heroes up to an obscene degree and wipe out fledgling dungeon lords like myself hand over fist when they can. Of course dungeon lords return the favor when they can. Apparently a hero gains a huge power boost from killing a dungeon lord, and a dungeon lord gets to Not Die Today from killing a hero. A fair system, no?

How does this lead to spending 78 days in a hole, you ask? I'm getting there.

As a consequence of being a viable dungeon lord I wound up yeeted by some ancient dungeon lord named Anastasia, trapped in her private sanctum and forcibly, well, recruited via core bonding. No, I didn't have a choice, not that I'm bitter or anything. I came out the other side with wings, horns, and a third eye in the center of my forehead.

It wasn't all bad. I also came out ripped like I was from the cover of a romance novel and about five times faster than I used to be. I terms of physical shape I'm pretty sure I was at least able to fight Captain America fairly. Of course the divine heroes I was going to be attacked by were straight out of a shounen manga so being that strong was actually... totally weaksauce. Of course it was.

I was given the option of going into debt to Anastasia in exchange for some better starting stuff and you better believe I went for it, given the odds. Normally I'd despise going into debt, I was very sparing with credit cards back home and I admit I looked down my nose at people that wound up in debt to their eyeballs from frivolous spending. This was different from wanting a nicer car or boat, this was survival. More than that, I had a sneaking suspicion that the old dungeon master “sponsoring” me was basically in it for what she could get, and if I didn't go into some debt so that she had some skin in the game I suspected I'd be thrown out. I didn't have anything she wanted except future power from my core as it grew. So debt it was.

Mostly I went for obtaining the most powerful companions, called core guardians, I could in hopes that I'd get a better initial defense, since it would take a lot of time to build a real dungeon and obtain any good monsters for that purpose.

Yes yes, 78 days in a hole, I'm almost to that point. Okay then, so I had the ability to select where I'd manifest in the world. This was really important, because if anything whacked my highly-vulnerable dungeon core, I died instantly. I could also only move my core once a year, not ideal at all since I wanted it away from pesky heroes. Further, I had to be near humans. My core was apparently half succubus or something similar; it would spawn succubi (a few other things but apparently it has some kind of succubus affinity) if I fed it power, and it generated more power when people were feeling frisky in it's territory range. So I couldn't just throw my dungeon core off in fantasy!Antarctica and forget about having to deal with people.

So I did what I took as the smart thing, and searched until I found a cavern underneath a harbor town, figuring voila, initial dungeon already built and my core safely at the deep part of the tunnel instead of right at the surface where any random farm boy could hit it with a stick. Boats of horny sailors showing up ever couple of days would supply a lot of lust and once I had enough power to start summoning, I could put some disguised succubi into the town and generate more. It seemed logical, a nice plan for what I had to work with.

I didn't realize until later the cave didn't connect to the surface. It wasn't lethal, my core gave me all kinds of magic and I was able to make lights and purify the air, but we were stuck. I also had the ability to disintegrate non-living matter so I started digging. Seventy-Eight days so far and I haven't reached the surface yet, and my assortment of really powerful companions are bored and hungry. Seventy-eight days of listening to the tentacle girl complain about hunger, the magical girl complain about being bored, and, well, the angel mostly just meditates next to my core, thank you for small blessings. The only reason I could even keep track of the date down here is because my baby core spawns a small white bird, a Caladrius, every 24 hours at the dot on midnight so I can count the days by counting the birds. I was pretty sure the tentacled girl has been eating them when nobody's looking, the count went down a couple of times. I didn't care, I'm pretty sure I remembered that the core can respawn them anyway and even if not, it was better than having her (more) unhappy. Also let me BS the other two companions about how long it had been so I didn't look as bad.

I just kept digging towards the surface. It was so boring.

I'm never playing Minecraft again.

Day 81

“Surely we're nearing the surface now?” Cecily, the magical girl, asked me. She was doing her best to look cute.

Granted normally that wouldn't be hard for her. She was short, busty, animated and cheerful, and had the most ludicrous blonde hair drills I'd ever encountered. But right now, she faced an uphill battle in the “looking good” field. She had bags under her eyes and she was smeared with dirt and clay, not the easiest situation to look cute in. Her hair drills were clogged with sand and she smelled like she hadn't showered in a year, rather than the eighty-one days it had been so far. Then again I probably wasn't much better.

”It's just,” she began, “I'm so tired of sleeping on the ground, can't we find some way to get something softer?”

I tried to bite back a sigh, I couldn't really blame Cecily for complaining. This sucked.

I could actually create matter, albeit slowly, but nothing living and at my current level of skill, only basically water, dirt, stone, and sand. So drinking was covered, and we didn't actually need to eat, but we still all had to sleep and a bed of sand was the best I could do.

I never agreed with Anakin Skywalker so much as my first night sleeping on a bed of sand. I'd been digging a sloping tunnel upwards for 81 days now. The boredom was immense and morale among my three companions was at an all time low.

“I know it's been a bad time. I picked a rotten spot for us to start,” I admitted, “Once we reach the surface I'm going to make sure you get a bath and a bed, and Kraken-”

“The Kraken! The Kraken!” The Kraken interrupted me, having somehow snuck up while I was examining the wall, “Don't refer to me like I'm just some ordinary creature! I'm legendary!” the Kraken puffed herself up.

Yeah, the dreadlocked girl is actually The Legendary Kraken, don't let her know I said it that way or she's liable to start demanding I use the word Legendary as part of her name, not just 'The Kraken.'

“-The Kraken,” I answered, trying to be agreeable, “Gets fed before I do anything for myself. And whatever Seraphina wants, has anybody checked on her recently?” I asked curiously.

“She's good, she was telling stories to the Sword Devils earlier,” Cecily told me with feigned cheer.

“Good, good, she... wait what? What Sword Devils?” I said, doing a passable double-take in the process.

“The baby core summoned them,” The Kraken told me as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Which, I suppose, it was. Dungeon Cores summon stuff, it's what they do, and baby cores do it without any rational thought on account of not having a human soul stapled to them.

I hadn't even gotten to explaining the baby dungeon core have I? Yeah, dungeon cores have kids and multiply like any other parasitic life form. Due to the extreme shortage of humans to bond with, there was a rather hefty surplus of extra cores waiting for a human to be born in the multiverse to bond to. In addition to stapling my soul to one of her spawn, Anastasia had also forced me to babysit another of her kids for safekeeping. Someday, she'd promised, I'd get to find a human with dungeon master potential of my own, staple it to my baby core, and extort their future power from them (not that I was going to be a jerk like that).

Of course that system was based on seniority and there were dungeon masters billions of years old floating around, so you can guess how likely it was a eighty-one-day-old dungeon master was going to be up for that privilege anytime soon, even if you defined “soon” in the geological sense. The whole system stank to high heaven. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

This left me with a problem. Being about half as smart as Clippy, the baby dungeon core spawned monsters automatically and without any sense or reason. I had a limited ability to control it so I'd set it to summoning Caladrius instead of the murderous imps it wanted, and it dutifully called one from whatever Caladrius dimension it plugged into, at midnight each day.

Which was okay but if it was also summoning Devils now we had a problem. Caladrius couldn't really make trouble, being basically magical pigeons with some limited healing power. The worst an evil Caladrius was going to do was crap on a statue and that was the kind of evil that wasn't going to bother my conscience too awful much.

Sword Devils sounded much more evil and that worried me. I hadn't really summoned anything yet because I was resolved to not be a completely evil monster and try to help people, and also because I wanted to be able to pull something tough out of my behind if a hero showed up unexpectedly the instant I reached the surface. Also since my core was powered by lust, killing people was counter-productive, I wanted them happy and frisky in order to generate more power. Sword Devils didn't seem to contribute to that.

I thought about it for a long moment. Then I applied my life skills as a wage slave from having too many managers and bosses giving too many instructions, specifically the skill to procrastinate on jobs that weren't immediately urgent. Until we reached the surface unexpected Devils weren't doing jack to anybody so I could safely put off doing anything about them until then.

“I'll check them out in a bit,” I decided aloud, “In the meantime I think we're getting closer to the surface, see how this section is less solid rock? There's compressed mud here instead,” I pointed to where it was oozing through cracks in the rock, wet and slick, “So we'll probably reach the surface and get everybody a hot meal and a soft bed tonight,” I declared, getting cheers from both girls.

I aimed my hands at the wall, aiming up so that the tunnel would continue to rise, and threw down another disintegration ray. The muddy wall shattered, and ten thousand gallons of salt water came through in a flood and slammed me back on my ass in a sudden deluge.

Spoiler: Current Stats

Loosely based on the "Dawn of a Demon Lord CYOA"

Monsters
81 Caladrius
2 Sword Devils

Core guardians:
The Kraken
Cecily
Seraphina
Current power generation: Avg. 88,000 per day. 7,128,000 banked.

The Build

Mutations: 3

Wings

Third Eye

Horns



Traits:

ATK XXXXXX

SPL XXXXXXxxxxxx

SPD XXXXXXxx

MOV XXXXXXxxxxxx

HEA XXXXXX

TGH XXXXXXxxxxxx

RES XXXXXX



Basic Abilities: Immortality, Status Immunity, Summon Demon Core(1/year), Creation and Removal, Matter Manipulation, Bulwark



Abilities:

Disguise, Elemental Magic, Summon, Teleportation, Contract Magic, Elemental Magic, Clone, Unique Trait(Fallen Angel:Healing Hands)



DPU Generaton: Lust



Minion Specialty: Demon



Lvl 1

x2 Caladrius

x2 Electrofin



Lvl 2

x2 Siren

x1 Sword Devil



Lvl 3

x1 Gargoyle

x1 Succubus

F Witch



Lvl 4

F Dragon F

x1 Fallen Angel



Core Guardians: The Kraken, Seraphina, F Cecily (12pts)



Demon Core Upgrades:

Territory Enhancement x2 (25km radius territory instead of 5)

Custom Minions

Incarnation Circle

Lesser Demon Core



Traps: 4

Arrow Trap

Rolling Ball Trap

Orb of Imprisonment

False Demon Core



Servants: 3

Dwarven Craftsmen

Alraune Apothecarists

Spirit Enchanters



Starting World: Scar

Title: Lord of Healing

 

[Bear Ribs]

Spoiler: Images of Characters

Spoiler: The Kraken

Spoiler: Cecily

Spoiler: Seraphina

Spoiler: Brynja and Morgus

 

[Bear Ribs]

Day 87 Con't

The shock and cold hit me immediately and though I kept my feet for a moment, I hadn't braced myself and the slick water took my feet out from under me. I hit the rock flat on my butt and washed about twenty feet back before the flow of water slowed and then ceased. It took me a long moment of staring at a wall of blue flesh, and a single gicantic eye glaring at me, before I realized what had happened.

The Kraken had saved us by switching to her monster form and cramming the tunnel full of her immense squid ass. Don't tell her I phrased it that way.

I took a bare moment to catch my breath. “Thanks,” I told The Kraken, belatedly remembering my manners, “You saved us all there.”

She didn't respond. I realized her tentacles were outside the cave so all she could really do was stare. She didn't even have eyelids to blink in that form.

“Okay,” I decided aloud. “I'm going to close up the tunnel entrance. Go ahead and scout around, then come back and tap on the wall when you know which way we need to build the tunnel to avoid water. I'll build an airlock to let you back in then.”

There wasn't any actual response as I built up a granite wall between us of course. I really, really hoped she understood what I was saying as I summoned a sheer stone face between myself and The Kraken and prepared to wait.

My waiting lasted maybe a minute before I heard voices coming from the lower section of the tunnel. My angelic guardian, Seraphina, stomped her way towards me with no small amount of aggravation on her face.

I was getting a lot of that from my True Companions recently.

At least she wasn't dirty anymore, being completely soaked through with salt water. It did interesting things to her fine white linen body wrap which I was trying hard not to notice as she fixed me with a glare.

“Dare I be so bold as to inquire,” she asked in a too-sweet voice, “Why I was immersed in cold seawater while taking my rest, and now the Dungeon Core and the first thirty cubits of tunnel, as well as our beds and rooms, are all underwater?” she asked, turning more acerbic as the sentence continued.

“Well,” I hedged slightly, realizing I didn't have anything good to say, “The good news is we broke out of the bedrock. The bad news is, we hit ocean floor instead of surface.” Her eyes grew larger and more outraged, “But I've got The Kraken checking the ocean right now!” I hastened to add, “She'll find the fastest course to the surface so we're not going to be digging blindly anymore!”

Seraphina fixed with me A Look. A Withering Look. Not the kind of look your parents gave you when you forgot to empty the dishwasher. The kind of look your stern but kind college English teacher gives you when you turn in your essay and it's only a half page long, the letters are an inch high and it's written in crayon.

“You have been digging blindly? You had not an actual plan?” she asked. I could sense her temper growing greatly inside her.

“Well all the stone looks the same, I couldn't tell which way to go just from-” I started to excuse myself.

“YOU CAN ASTRALLY PROJECT!” she yelled at me, “You could have left your body any time and checked for the most auspicious route! There was no reason to dig a tunnel for months with not an idea where you were going!”

“I-” I had completely forgotten that. In my defense... no really there was no defense. I'd been handed a huge stack of abilities with a ten-minute crash course from Anastasia and I'd just gone with the easiest thing to remember, figuring I'd work the rest out once the immediate problem and being stuck underground was solved. And that had made it worse.

“I don't have any excuse,” I finally admitted, “I've been foolish. I should have spent more time learning what I can do.” I bowed my head, “I'm sorry.”

I didn't really see anything since I was looking at my feet but I could hear a wet squelch as she shifted position. “Cecily?” she asked, “Can you please go check that the Caladrius and Sword Devils have found a dry place to sit?”

“What? Shouldn't have already done that themselves?” Cecily asked rather cluelessly. I looked up and saw Seraphina turn The Look on Cecily.

“I mean, yeah I'll double check that,” Cecily said belatedly, waterlogged hair-drills bobbing limply as she darted back down the tunnel.

Seraphina turned back towards me and smiled, just a little. Then she pulled me into a hug. She was wet but so was I, and she was soft and warm.

“You are doing this all wrong,” she murmured in my ear.

“I know,” I admitted, “I'm going to work harder-”

“No, that is what you are doing wrong,” she interrupted, “You are working. A Dungeon Lord does not do his own digging, He uses contracts to call up rock-eating slimes or giant worms or some similar beast, and his creatures do the working. A Dungeon Lord does not do so much work he has not the time to think up plans to deal with problems later.”

I sighed again, but I didn't speak. It was good... just to touch somebody else and be held after all these things had gone wrong so much the last two months.

“You were a worker before weren't you, doing as commanded?” she asked shrewdly. I nodded. “You cannot do so anymore,” she continued, “You are not the worker, you are the ruler, the boss, he who makes the plans. You need to make a plan. Instead you have put things off so you can do more work, have you not? Right now you have but focused on getting the dungeon to reach the surface?”

“Yeah,” I murmured back.

“So you did ignore everything else so you could continue to dig,” she pried, “And planned to deal with other problems later? You must not do so again. What manner of creature might you call up to dig for you?”

I thought over my contracts. Mermaids. Succubi. Electric Piranhas. Sword Devils. Gargoyles. Caladrius. Alraune.... Dwarves.

“I can summon Dwarves,” I suggested, “But they use so much energy to summon,” I thought it over. I had a rough feel for my Five Dwarves would eat about three days of gathered power.

“You need must use your resources wisely,” she agreed, “But a large treasure of stored energy will do you not one bit of good when a hero slays us all because we had not any defenses nor an army to break their siege. If you have have a coin yet be too afraid to ever spend it, you truly have no coin at all. Listen and think on my words. But too, I am the guardian and you the Lord here. Your decision I will follow, yet think about it before you start digging again, please?”

And with that, the somewhat soggy angel let me go and went back down.

I conjured up a block of stone to sit on and thought about it for several minutes. As I did, suddenly the lust in the town above vanished. I can feel it as the power accumulates, a pleasant feeling and yes, tinged with lust as the townspeople's randy feelings are turned into power. And now it was slowed to a tiny trickle instead of the stream I'd had before.

I had to fight down panic for a long moment. Had the town been sacked? Was it being destroyed by an enemy right now and I'd never have any energy coming in again? This wasn't a good time to call Dwarves at all! I might need that power later.

No, I reasoned with myself and realized I was just rationalizing what I'd been doing. Whatever was hitting the town, I needed to be able to reach it to do anything about it. I reached deeply into the Dungeon Core, and began the summoning.

I had a limited ability to guide the summons by visualizing what I wanted. The Dungeon Core would, being completely broken in terms of physics, scour hundreds of multiverses and then it would laze out and pick whatever was closest (whatever that means when you're talking about a multiversal summon). The more I specified what I wanted, the harder the core had to work to find a suitable summon, and the more likely it was going to pull a literal genie mode on me to punish me for making it work harder.

My focus thus needed to be what I wanted but no extraneous details. Hardworking, loyal, non-murderous, willing to work for a Dungeon Lord, crafters...



Brynja Waffletoaster ducked under a burning beam and crawled beneath the smoke. The entire city was burning, the only reason the fire spread was slowing down was because there wasn't enough air left to feed the flames anymore. She couldn't tell where they were going, she just followed Morgus' hindquarters as he led away from the slaughter.

There was a grinding noise as another of the accursed spider golems crawled over the debris and rubbish of a ruined shop, and Brynja stopped, not even daring to breathe. It took forever, so long for the construct to turn and move away and she was shaking before she had to gasp for breath.



Suddenly Morgus swore heartily and changed direction, and the tiny group of Dwarves moved into a mostly-intact home with it's door smashed in.

“What happened?” Brynja asked as they huddled in the dark.

“I were heading for the Postern Gate, the small one that lets out into the mountainside,” Morgus admitted grimly, “It's just down the street from here, I thought it was small enough to go unnoticed. But those damned constructs are guarding it. We're stuck here. There's no way out of this.”

Brynja huddled beneath the smoke, miserable as Morgus gazed through a crack in the wall. “Is there any other gate?” she whispered finally.

“Across the city. We'd never make it,” Morgus whispered back, voice grim. “Alright then, I'm going to make a dash to draw them away. When I do, if the golems chase me, the rest of ye rush through the gate and keep going.”

“You'll never make it,” Brynja protested.

“True enough, but if a one of us is alive in an hour it'll be great luck. Better a slim chance for a few then none for many,” Morgus told her roughly.

And then he burst through the shattered doorway, yelling his head off as he ran on his stubby legs, and he'd made it barely ten meters before a long wicked leg was thrust clear through his body, and Brynja screamed as she ran blindly behind him and there was blood splashed in her eyes, and then everything seemed to suddenly slow down as she felt a pull from inside herself and something like a message from a god.

Do You Accept The Contract?

Somehow things were moving so, so slowly that she could see the blood droplets floating through the air as she came to understand what was offered, that they could all leave, but they'd be enslaved, and she accepted it at once because anything was better-

With a thump, Brynja fell on her face onto cold wet stone and heard thumps behind her as the others came too. She lifted up her head, and saw Morgus body lying pale as blood pooled underneath him and she screamed again. Then her vision was overcome with feathers and fluttering white birds.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Day 86
It had been several days since I'd summoned the Dwarves. I'd never been so glad I set the baby core to summoning magical pigeons, one Dwarf had been dying and the others suffering from various wounds and smoke inhalation from whatever disaster I'd pulled them from. They didn't want to talk about it.

I'd made a critical error in my summoning, and not specified that any of my Dwarves were miners, only crafters of some kind. Apparently the idea that all Dwarves were miners and blacksmiths was just a stereotype, and a rather insulting one. So it was a bit of a bust getting people to dig me out, though they lived in a mined-out mountain apparently, and had some experience with the underground life anyway. Basically rather than obtain a set of automotive engineers, I'd picked up a handful of people who changed their own oil. It would have been worse.

I had an old married couple of redheaded bakers named Brynja and Morgus (with Waffletoaster as their last name of all things), a gruff glass blower named Jorn Emberplume, a calm and collected leatherworker named Angrus Tannerhide, and a lumberjack with arms thicker than my thighs named Thalya Axehand. I wasn't sure if Thalya actually had breasts or simply pectoral muscles so massively developed a Minotaur would feel envy.

At any rate, they were gathered along with the rest of my associates, ready for our first team meeting. This was going to be a novel experience. For whatever reason, a while after the lust in the town had dropped to almost nothing, it had spiked hugely and remained there for a couple of days before slowing back down to the middlin' level it had been at before. So I was happy about that. Other things? Well, that's what the meeting was for.

The Dwarves filed in and sat at the low stone table I'd made, which was more of a stone slab with smaller slabs to sit on, followed by The Kraken, Seraphina, and the Sword Devils I hadn't had time to get acquainted with yet. Cecily showed up last. I have a significant influence on my dungeon creatures, especially the brainless ones. I hadn't actually considered that, which was why I was surprised when nearly a hundred pigeons flew in and landed on us all for the meeting.

Morgus' resigned glare was almost a physical thing as a row of Caladrius took up residence on his head and shoulders.

“Okay,” I began uncertainly, “I'll start with the good news. Based on The Kraken's investigations at sea, we found the best route to the surface,” this was a complete lie and I suspect everybody but the Kraken knew it. She'd come back in a great mood from her swim but the best she managed was “shore's that way.” as far as finding out route. I'd followed Seraphina's advice and used astral projection to find a better path. “We've located a natural cave so I'm aiming the tunnel there, so that we won't disturb the ground when we emerge and draw any unwanted attention.”

There was a patter of polite applause, more enthusiastic from Cecily and Seraphina while the Dwarves weren't that interested yet.

“I'll be making a trip to the surface as soon as we reach it and bring Cecily with me on the first trip to look at the town and check that there's no suspicion of our presence. Seraphina will get a turn afterwards and then The Kraken so that we've all had a chance to leave the dungeon.”

“Why am I last?” the Kraken asked, puffing up her cheeks and looking irritable.

“You already got to leave, brat,” Cecily shot back.

I slammed my hand down on the table when I saw The Kraken open her mouth to answer. The end of the table broke off, because of course it did, and the meeting was briefly paused for me to get the rock splinters out of my lap. I felt so lordly at that moment.

“Well then,” Morgus began once his turn to talk came up, “We been preparing a bit of a model for our city. Angrus, Jorn!”

The two scooted out and returned with a clay model in a ridiculous amount of detail. Apparently even outside their specialties, Dwarves know how to craft.

“This straight tunnel to the surface be useless to defend with,” Morgus declared bluntly, “We'll be expanding the dungeon core chamber to a large cylinder, with open walkways that must be crossed high above at these positions. Narrow dangerous stairways without railings will run on the inside and outside connecting to the walkways like so, forcing any would-be looter to have to cross near a mile just to walk up the sides.”

The model was exquisite, and I loved the ideas he was presenting.

“You've indicated you can summon up flying gargoyles so these will live inside and work to push any intruder off into a fall. The bottom will be filled with water and have aggressive sea life in it.”

He moved to the other side of the model and pointed to a pair of circular chambers, one with a high round wall that blocked it off from the rest of the dungeon. “This will be a Moon Pool suitable for allowing The Kraken access to the ocean. To keep the moon pool from flooding the lower levels, we'll need a lock. This circular design is foolproof, the entire structure rotates and there's only one door so it's impossible to open both sides at once. We'll put in windows of glass made by Gentleman Emberplume and enchanted to resist breakage, so that if some foolish robbers think to sneak past the Kraken and get inside that way, we can see them coming and lock down the lock,” he paused a bit at what I hoped was an unintentional pun, before moving on sheepishly, ““And finally the Dwarven quarter, not enough room on the model for it, but it will go here,” he gestured to the right of the map, “Extending out twelve kilometers, with sixty levels heading towards the surface first, then extending down once expansions needed,” he concluded.

I'm pretty sure my jaw was hanging at that point. “Sixty levels?” I asked, “How many Dwarves do expect we'll need?”

Morgus fixed me with a stern glare, “Today there's five of course. But later I expect there'll be more than that as operations expand, you need specialists in many trades to handle all the needs of a dungeon. You have to plan these kinds of things out, otherwise in a few hundred years you wind up with a mess of tunnels overlapping each other and an inefficient maze where no work can get done. It's a huge mess.”

I closed my mouth and sat back a moment. It was really just hitting me in that moment where I was and what was going on. For months I'd been focused on just getting through the next few days, just getting to the surface and planning then, and here the Dwarves were sussing out what their expansion plans should be two hundred years from now.

It was really starting to dawn on me how horribly unqualified I was for this job. I mean, I'd always known I wasn't exactly evil overlord material but the fact that even the cheap low-level minions were leaving me in the dirt was... less than gratifying. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

“I'll take that under advisement,” I finally prevaricated, “Lets get a more thorough plan drawn up and do this again in a week. Is there any other business?”

The two sword devils at the end of the table stirred slightly and looked at each other a moment. The smaller one made a wheezing noise like a rusting hinge squealing, then managed to forge.

“Our will be honored to be yours weapons what time you are a left,” it finally managed to get out in a voice like a pile of old chains being dragged down a road. Now that I thought about it, even if the limited times I'd seen them, they hardly ever talked.

“Okay,” I agreed immediately. I really hoped I'd actually parsed that right and they just wanted me to carry them when I left. Otherwise who knew what I'd just agreed to?

Day 87
This was it. I'd astrally projected to the surface a bit earlier and seen that dawn would come in about two hours. With most everybody asleep, that meant we could exit the cave without drawing attention and reach the harbor town at daybreak.

“Ready?” I asked.

Cecily bounced excitedly, “Yes yes, let's get out, I want to see the sky again!”

I gave her an indulgent chuckle and disintegrated the last foot of stone between us and the cave. There was a thump as something fell in the darkness, and I created a small floating fireball the size of a golf ball to act as a light.

The gloom retreated sharply and I realized I was looking down at someone's naked back, crisscrossed with wounds and dried blood and mud, and inhaled sharply in surprise. I smelled sweat, and blood, and then there was a scream and a tide of green flesh and too many teeth and shining steel as the inhabitants of the cave charged us.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Took a few days to draw up a map so I could have a firm idea of where things are and what travel times look like. I'm no @Culsu but I think it came out alright. The red dot represents the current location of the Dungeon Core, and the red ring the range of territory it can influence and draw power from (approx. 15 mile, 25km radius)

 

[Culsu]

Took a few days to draw up a map so I could have a firm idea of where things are and what travel times look like. I'm no @Culsu but I think it came out alright. The red dot represents the current location of the Dungeon Core, and the red ring the range of territory it can influence and draw power from (approx. 15 mile, 25km radius)

Thumbs up for this! Every map that conveys the information it's supposed to show clearly is a good map in my book!

 

[Zero]

How long you been working on this.

 

[Bear Ribs]

How long you been working on this.

A little under two weeks for the story itself. The map was about three days on and off. I'm trying to break my bad habit of endlessly revising and rewriting stuff instead of daring to post it so I'm forcing myself to just throw out whatever I write with minimal editing for this story.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I thrust out my arm to stave off something green-skinned and screaming as it charged me. There was a wet crunching sound, and I felt warm on my arm, and something pulsed wetly next to my arm a moment and then stopped. I realized with a sense of horror that I'd punched completely through it's chest and felt it's heart stop. It was an orc, pig-nosed and ugly and I watched it die on the end of my arm.

I felt myself shoved aside lightly as Cecily ghosted past me. She was so fast, I could barely see it. Another muscular orc lunged towards her, and then it's jaw was hanging loose and it's neck was broken. I'd barely been able to see her backhand as a blur.

She killed a second and a third in as many seconds and then another was was coming at me, with a huge crude stone ax in it's hands. It raised the ax up and it was slow, painfully so. I hadn't really realized just how strong the Dungeon Core had made me until then. I punched the Orc's throat and it's head came off before it had completely the swing. There were many shouts and roars now and I realized the cave was far vaster than I'd thought, you could seat a small army inside, that number of Orcs was flooding in from outside. An outpost?

A third one was before me and I took it's head off with a chop to the neck. I turned back towards Cecily, who had half a dozen dead bodies at her feet by then. She was doing something complex in the brief moment before my world turned white. I slammed into the rough stone of the cave wall and heard nothing but a loud ringing in my ears for a long moment.

Honestly I'd forgotten just who Cecily really was. She was the cute one of our group, petite and cheerful even when things were grim and we were all stuck in a hole for months on end. She was also one of my core guardians, people who were meant to be “Final Boss” material. Cecily in particular was a magic girl and the patron saint of collateral damage.

I hadn't understood what that meant until she killed an entire army of orcs, as as my eyes cleared and I could see again, I realized the light wasn't getting dimmer, because she'd literally blown the mountainside away and now the cave was a whole lot shallower what with the forward two-thirds of it now being at the bottom of a canyon.

Thus ended my first battle. Underwhelming? That's why I'd gone with several of the most powerful summons I could possibly get. Battles for your life might sound good in fiction but curbstomps were more what I wanted when my own life was on the line. I was happy with Cecily's performance and I could only hope The Kraken and Seraphina would do so well.

“...” I realized Cecily was saying something but my ears were still ringing.

“What?” I asked as the ringing in my ears cleared. I made a mental note not to go into a cave with Cecily ever again. And not to let her fight the enemy anywhere near the Dungeon Core.

“I said another enemy defeated!” Cecily cheered for herself, “Those Orcs were no challenge for an ally of justice! We can rest easy knowing... knowing... oh no.”

I followed her eyes. I didn't see anything for a moment except a pile of broken rocks where I'd been standing a moment before. Then I saw the hand, and remembered the body that had been trapped when we emerged. I moved the slab of rock off and saw a young dirty-blonde boy with his neck bent at an angle necks don't bend at naturally.

“No... not again, no no,” she was moaning to herself as I picked myself up and crawled to the rubble. I felt the hand sticking out. No pulse. I tried forcing some of my healing power into it. I hadn't actually ever used it before but from what Anastasia had said, I was good at healing, prodigy level apparently.

Of course I knew I couldn't raise the dead. I felt the hand a moment more. I looked up at Cecily, shaking with her eyes wide. She'd stayed cheerful for so long and now, all the strength and happiness I'd seen was gone and all that was left was a hollow shell, a broken porcelain doll.

“The body's cold,” I lied to her, “He must have been dead long before we got there.”

At that point there was a moist, organic popping sound as the body's head twisted and the broken neck fused back, and the corpse suddenly inhaled with a loud gasp of air. Color began to flood into his face and the lash marks and cuts across the body faded into purple bruises, then green ones, then healthy flesh.

I began to get an inkling of what Anastasia meant by prodigy at that point. I'd been dubbed the Lord of Healing and, well, now it was clear just what that meant.

Cecily's eyes were practically glowing and her grim shaking was replaced with a bouncing joy as she dashed at me and hugged me.

“You saved him!”

I saw a bit of respect in Cecily's eyes that had been missing all the months we'd been trapped underground. It felt good. I even remembered to hastily close off the hole leading to the dungeon while the boy was still distracted with breathing again.

“What happened?” He asked in a rather groggy voice as I finished adding a slab of granite behind his head.

“You were dead and we-” Cecily began.

“Dying,” I corrected hastily. I wasn't quite sure how rare that grade of healing magic was but just in case resurrections were super-rare I wanted to avoid accidentally drawing unwanted attention. “I'm Bear Ribs, this is Cecily. She fought off the Orcs and I did the healing.”

“I'm... Colton,” he said slowly. He had an accent that was faintly similar to what I'd remembered from Tennessee, though just a bit exotic compared to the Appalachians. “D'yu... do you have any water?”

I paused a moment. I didn't have a thing on me but my clothes and the two Sword Devils riding on my hips, who I hadn't thought to draw against the Orcs. But then I remembered I could create water, and cupped my hands together and filled them. I was learning and wasn't forgetting my powers nearly as often anymore.

Water spilled down Colton's face as he drank. He made a face.

“You're a wizard?” He asked after a moment, “And a priest?”

“Ah,” I hestitated a long moment. The local dieties, I wouldn't dignify any of the social parasites by calling them gods, really, really didn't like beings like myself. So needless to say, I didn't want to draw attention by announcing myself as some huckster's priest.

“Something like that,” Cecily prevaricated, saving me the trouble.

“Where are you from?” I asked to draw the conversation away from that touchy subject, “We're new to the area and still finding our way.”

Colton stared at us a long moment more. “I figured you'd been sent, well, new huh?” he paused, shifted, “I was with a scouting party out of Fort Scarbrough, we got ambushed and the rest of the squad was wiped out. You're a long way from home if'n you just wander through orc territory without any plan. They've pushed all through these mountains.”

“We'll be careful,” I promised, “Let's get you home then.”

“And we'll do some justice and good while we're here too! These orcs don't stand a chance!” Cecily informed him with great cheer and enthusiasm.

Colton just grunted and started to walk towards the cave entrance, and we followed. “Well not that I'm not grateful, but this place is dangerous, these Orcs have killed plenty of adventurers, you won't last long unless-”

He trailed off as he reached the cave mouth and stared. I stepped up next to him and looked myself. The pile of freshly shattered stone tore a great ugly scar through the scrub and trees of the mountainside, fresh and white. Colton reached over and touched the freshly chipped stone of the wall.

“Maybe y'll last a little while longer,” he acknowledged.

 

[Ariel Schnee]

I thrust out my arm to stave off something green-skinned and screaming as it charged me.

I really hope to see more soon!^_^