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Fall of a Dungeon House: A litRPG Story (City of Masks Book 1) John Stovall
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Purge of a Dungeon House: A litRPG Story (City of Masks
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely fictional
This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review, and where permitted by law
IF YOU WANT TO BE NOTIFIED WHEN JOHN STOVALL’S NEXT BOOK RELEASES, PLEASE CONTACT HIM DIRECTLY AT
john.w.stovall@gmail.com
ISBN: 978-1-7379416-6-8
Dedication
First and foremost, always, to my wife Shami Stovall. She taught me to write, she taught me to publish, and she has made my life easier and more wonderful in all ways. Without you, there is nothing. With you, I have everything.
Secondly, to Dana Ardis, who has spent more time editing this book than anyone, and is a good friend to boot.
Thirdly, to the other members of my writers group. To Mary, Emily, and James, thank you for the efforts you put into this as well.
Fourth, to my parents, John and Gail Stovall. Your support throughout my life has been over the top, and you are the perfect parents everyone else wished they had.
Fifth, to my editors Nia Quinn and Amy Mcnulty. Thanks for doing this, I know I don’t make it easy.
Lastly, I’d like to thank John McLaughlin. I barely know Mr. McLaughlin, but he is one of about four fans that have ever reached out to me. However, some days are truly, mind-blowingly hard, and probably the worst day of my career, when I very seriously considered abandoning this book, he reached out to me to tell me he liked the portion he’d seen and wanted to read the rest. Such a small thing, yet it has made all the difference, and to a large degree that simple act of kindness is why everyone else can read this book now. Genuinely, sir, thank you.
Contents
Fall of a Dungeon House
Prologue
Chapter One
The Three Davids
Chapter Two
Additional Dramatis Personae
Chapter Three
A Truly Inciting Incident
Chapter Four
The Girl Who Turned Right Instead of Left
Chapter Five
Overly Humble Beginnings of a New Life
Chapter Six
A Peaceful Interlude
Chapter Seven
That First Trickle of Blood That Might Become a River
Chapter Eight
A Wonderful Day with New Companions
Chapter Nine
A New Face
Chapter Ten
Edging Toward Betrayal
Chapter Eleven
Loot Is the Real Reason to Be an Adventurer
Chapter Twelve
A Burgeoning Criminal Empire
Chapter Thirteen
A Diamond in the Really Rough
Chapter Fourteen
Dual-Purpose Slaughter
Chapter Fifteen Discussions
Chapter Sixteen
The House of the Verdant Cavern
Chapter Seventeen
Base Building
Chapter Eighteen
The First Name on the List
Chapter Nineteen
Anger Is Better Than Sadness
Chapter Twenty
The Bitch Came Back the Very Next Day
Chapter Twenty-One
The Dungeon of Glorious Dreams
Chapter Twenty-Two Choices
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Winnowing
Chapter Twenty-Four
Fallout
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Man Who Went Right Instead of Left
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Long Ride
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Second Name on the List
Appendix and Glossary
Dungeon House Terms
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prologue
The Price of Honor
I’ve never killed a kid before.
It was a dark and stormy night—cliché for this type of thing, Adam supposed—and the leaders of the city’s crime syndicates were meeting in an old mansion owned by one of the bosses. They had all gathered in a grand ballroom, twenty enforcer thugs and four syndicate leaders. The cold wind shook the windows, and the panes ran with water from the freezing rain outside. The thugs clumped together a little more tightly as the chill penetrated the room, even with so many bodies adding warmth.
By the good gods, I’ve fallen so far, Adam thought. He’d gone from being a mercenary sergeant of twenty years, fighting the good fight, to working as an enforcer for one of the Norhilm gangs.
Adam glanced around at his fellow goons. There were members from all four of the main crime factions here, judging by their distinct masks. There were also a few people from smaller factions he didn’t know, all in masks he didn’t recognize. Not real masks, like a dungeon family, of course, but everyone in this city copied the style of those magical masks to declare their allegiances.
But the four main gangs Adam recognized. In Norhilm, everyone recognized them—Norhilm was the kind of city where you needed to know the crime factions, for your own health.
Adam had recently returned to Norhilm, which everyone just called ‘The City,’ and he had joined the Golden Peacocks. The Golden Peacocks distinguished themselves with gold-colored masks carved to resemble a bird’s face. Metallic peacock feathers adorned the tops of the masks.
Even Adam wore the gaudy mask to symbolize his allegiance. He shifted it around his face, hating the weight of the metallic feathers. Adam’s mercenary gang had worn a different kind of mask—
something more efficient. Everyone in Norhilm wore masks—they didn’t also call it the ‘City of Masks’ for nothing. Everyone.
The Golden Peacocks ran the prostitution services in the city, including a lot of the legitimate slave brothels. Adam knew they even captured and sold free citizens.
Disgusting.
But it paid the bills. And since the mercenary crew Adam had run with had kicked him out… There weren’t many other ways to come across the coin he needed.
The four leaders sat at a central table. A fifth chair stood empty.
Felix de Viennois, once a member of the de Viennois dungeon family, was the leader of the Golden Peacocks, and his fat ass sat near the middle of the table, where he could rest his elbows and the upper half of his massive body weight. Felix’s right-hand enforcer, Dimitri—that black-hearted bastard—stood just behind Felix’s chair.
And Felix was absolutely huge, both in terms of weight and height. He was six and a half feet tall, and if he hadn’t been sitting, he would’ve been the tallest man in the room. Adam had heard Felix had been caught messing around with underage girls, which was why Felix had been thrown from his house. Felix was the only one sweating in this cold ballroom, droplets running down from his bald head into the massive furred robe he wore.
Dimitri was also very tall, but unlike Felix, he was built of solid muscle and had both a head of hair and a mustache. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, his tattooed chest exposed. The tattoo was a woman’s face, weeping pink tears. Adam had heard all sorts of rumors about why Dimitri kept adding tears. Adam didn’t care for the details. Each rumor was more disturbing than the last.
The largest gang in the room wore purple masks carved to look like octopi, with wooden tentacles going back around the head to just past the temples. They were the Xeril Night, a group of Abomination worshippers that ran much of the human trafficking and kidnapping rackets in the city. They also operated illegal magic services based on death energy, including illegal leveling practices to support other criminal gangs.
They were the most reviled gang in the city, since they captured anyone they could get away with taking in order to make ‘dungeons’ for people to level in. Not a real dungeon, with a magical core that created rooms and monsters, but a fake dungeon for weaker nobles who wanted to pay for a ‘safe’ experience through a limited dungeon of lackeys. Death energy was required to level, and killing off kidnapped street rats was the main selling point of the counterfeit dungeons. Without access to real dungeons and their regenerating monsters, this was the next best thing for leveling up. It was also heinous and disgusting as far as Adam was concerned.
The leader of the Xeril Night was tall, but he was stick-thin, like a streetlamp. His mask covered his face, but long, greasy black hair fell down his back, and scars crisscrossed his arms, which were uncovered in his long, sleeveless coat. He was called ‘The Harbinger,’ but Adam didn’t know his real name.
The third criminal group, the Sunda Gang, wore orange-and-red tiger masks. Their leader, Khan, was neither stick-thin nor overly fat but rather covered in lean muscle, his pale-white skin marked with tribal tattoos. It was almost certain he was a foreigner, given his complexion and markings, but Adam didn’t know the truth of it.
Khan’s enforcer seemed more interesting than the leader. He was a thin elf, with pale skin and long, golden hair. The elf had two long daggers at his side and numerous throwing daggers around his person, as well as a wrist crossbow. Adam didn’t know who the enforcer was, but the elf moved with a deadly grace.
The last gang represented, and the one that most surprised Adam, was the Nine Sails. They were smugglers and fences and were widely regarded as honorable—some called them ‘gentleman thieves.’ Their masks were unpainted driftwood carved to look like stylized sharks.
The Nine Sails were run by Leopoldo.
Leopoldo had his mask up on top of his head, exposing his face, and was a mere five feet ten inches tall, short compared to those at the table. He had an easy demeanor, rakish, and was a very handsome man, even if he was into his fifties. He wore his salt-andpepper hair in a ponytail and had a neatly trimmed goatee. His
perfectly tailored clothing, doublet and breeches with lace at the wrists and neck, suggested he had a noble background.
His top enforcer was an extremely broad dwarf by the name of Tharkin Ironbeard, which Adam thought had to be the most dwarven name ever. The dwarf wore a ridiculous amount of leather clothing and had a bandolier with a brace of the new pistols in it.
The doors to the ballroom pushed open, and a man strode in.
He stood almost seven feet tall—even taller than the fatass, Felix —and his arms and hands were weathered but still showed great muscle. The man’s salt-and-pepper black hair was cut close to his scalp, an interesting decision that marked him as different. He wore a metallic red mask, with pins pushed into it, weeping enamel blood.
The man, alone, wasn’t wearing a cloak or coat to keep the cold out, and his bare arms didn’t even show goose bumps despite his rain-dampened clothing. He wore plain clothes, breeches and a shirt, and had a bag tied to the equally plain belt he wore.
Well, we have a Peacock, an Octopus, a Tiger, a Shark, and now we’ve added a Bloodmask. Fantastic.
Adam used one of his abilities, a power called Thief’s Eyes, to try to see Bloodmask’s status sheet.
Thief’s Eyes used on unknown target. 2 essence expended. Unknown target is immune to divination effects of this level.
Adam cursed to himself as the power failed. Then he felt the blood drain from his face when the man in the bloodmask turned toward him. A pair of intense, gray eyes stared at Adam through the small slits of the mask.
The man’s eyes briefly went red, and Adam felt magic pulse through him, although he couldn’t tell which ability was used. The man pointed at Adam and shook his head ‘no.’ The other gangsters surreptitiously moved away from Adam. Fortunately, Bloodmask turned back toward the main table.
He must be very high level. Most people can’t detect Thief’s Eyes.
Bloodmask pulled a chair out from under the head of the central table and sat down, the chair creaking under his weight. He sat forward, his hands resting on the table, and he glanced around at the other four faces.
It was subtle—a tilt of the eyes away, a sudden shifting in the chair, an adjustment of a mask—but Adam could tell these people, the criminal lords of the city, were afraid of Bloodmask. The sudden quiet in the room also told Adam that the other gangsters noticed it as well.
“We will destroy the Toledos during the Ascension Festival for David the Fifth,” Bloodmask stated, his voice gravelly and halfmuffled by the mask. Despite that, everyone in the grand ballroom heard the statement. It was as clear as blood on white linen.
The Ascension Festival is only three days away. Which means that’s three days till I have to kill a kid. Abominations take me.
A thug wearing a tiger mask shouted, “You mean the Ascension Festival for David the Wussy.”
There was crude laughter around the room.
Felix leaned more of his considerable weight onto the poor table. “Wait.” When the laughter continued, Felix slammed a hand on the table’s surface. “I said, wait.” All sound instantly died out. “What’re we gonna do about David the Leviathan?”
Adam shifted nervously.
David Toledo the Fourth—‘the Leviathan’—was a legend in The City. Son of the founder of the dungeon house, he’d lived for over a hundred years, the power of his magic sustaining him long past what would have been normal. He was rumored to be over Level Fifty, something unheard of, and had supposedly run all seven of The City’s dungeons until he’d found the boss monsters of each, then defeated the monsters, just to prove to the other houses that he could. Everyone just called him ‘Leviathan’ because he was powerful and his dungeon had a water theme.
“Fool,” came Bloodmask’s disdain-filled comment, and he grabbed the bag at his waist, ripped it free from the belt, and tossed it onto the table. A head rolled out, and Adam caught the stench of decay.
The head had black hair and green eyes. Distinct. Noticeable.
David the Leviathan.
The silence was almost overwhelming. The only thing Adam heard for a moment was the beating of his own heart in his ears.
Bloodmask rotated a shoulder. “I just said it was David the Fifth’s Ascension Festival. He’s ascending to the position of Dungeon Lord, something that can only happen when the previous Dungeon Lord dies!” Bloodmask snarled. “Try not to be a complete idiot. ‘Leviathan’ is no more.”
Felix nodded to Bloodmask’s comments, even though Adam knew he wouldn’t have taken that from anyone else. Who is this Bloodmask guy that he can command such fear from these extremely dangerous men?
Although, if Bloodmask killed Leviathan or commanded it be done, I suppose that makes sense.
Bloodmask raised his hand, and everyone quieted. “As I said, we will attack the Toledo Compound during the ceremony and destroy their house. David must die, and it’s imperative that his children die as well. I’ve assigned each of you jobs, and I expect them to be carried out.”
Adam fidgeted with the cuffs of his coat.
Felix had assigned Adam the ‘honorable’ duty of killing James Toledo, third son of David the Fifth—Felix wasn’t the type to get his hands dirty anymore. Adam had been delegated the task of child murder, and it ate away at his thoughts.
Bloodmask pointed at the other four leaders. “Make those brats suffer. Then behead them. I want to hear their screams filling the night.”
The sadistic statement bothered Adam at a deep level.
“Do we really need to make the kids suffer?” Adam asked before he even gave the statement any thought.
Felix glanced over at him. “Adam, the ‘kid’—James—is nineteen. I’m sure you can handle it.”
“Is this the enforcer you assigned the job of killing James Toledo?” Bloodmask asked, standing from his chair and taking a few steps toward Adam. “Who is he?”
The gangsters in the room all moved away from Adam as Bloodmask approached him.
“He’s a veteran soldier, milord, Level Ten and very talented,” Felix said, taking out a lace handkerchief and mopping at his brow despite the chill in the room. “And an Entropy user. He just joined us, but I know Adam can handle the job.”
“Interesting,” Bloodmask said, focused fully on Adam. “Now that Leviathan is dead, David the Fifth and his children need to be eliminated before the dungeon can be claimed by someone else. Me.”
The Toledo family has done well and justly by the Vered Empire, at least compared to most of the noble houses, especially The City ones…
“I can see indecision written in your body, veteran,” Bloodmask said, looking at him. “Do you have a comment?”
Adam hesitated. I was honorable, once, before gambling, lust, and foolishness drove me to this point. I should at least try to avoid this final fall to the Abominations…
“The Toledo family isn’t that bad, as nobles go. Perhaps—”
There was a blur of movement, and Adam found himself lifted off his feet by the arm stuck through his chest, looking down into Bloodmask’s eyes, and everything was wrong, and the light was fading. There was a hatred in those eyes, which bored into his. Adam couldn’t say anything, couldn’t move, could barely think anything other than a hazy I’m dying.
Bloodmask held Adam’s gaze. “That was the last straw. I have other agents who can handle killing James Toledo for me. The Toledos will die on the night of David’s Ascension. They will suffer. I’ll make sure of it.”
He flung his arm to the side, and Adam flew into the wall opposite the table, hearing the faint cheers at Bloodmask’s pronouncement. Blackness.
Elsewhere, a goddess desperately tried to change the probable outcomes in her part of the world. The last cataclysm had required direct intervention, and far too much power expenditure, from the gods of the Light, and she and her fellow gods hadn’t recovered yet. The Dark was winning, their gods and goddesses having planned better, it seemed.
Like most gods, she could see the strands of what the mortals called ‘fate’—but really, it was just probability She had chosen eight champions and spent small amounts of power to subtly give them some chance of success, all around the territory she was responsible for. A mere eight champions, and one left to choose, to keep the darkness from falling on the territory she was supposed to protect: the nine continents of the Endless Ocean.
She was about to choose her ninth—and last—champion, when she felt the change. A low-order probability event had occurred… A soldier who had fallen to evil and then decided to try to redeem himself. But he’d died in the process. But the death of the fallen mercenary, Adam, meant that rather than a competent warrior trying to kill someone, a reluctant student would be doing it instead.
This unlikely path had left an opening for the target to survive… one that her enemy likely hadn’t anticipated. It was a long shot, and the goddess seriously considered whether she would even want that young man—James Toledo—as her champion. The Dark called to him as well, and his soul balanced between good and evil, although he didn’t know it yet.
But the goddess was desperate, and the boy was her previous defeated champion’s grandson. The Leviathan had come close, closer than any of her other champions, and his grandson might have the same potential. And perhaps even gods could feel nostalgia.
She looked at fate, seeing the paths that were most likely, combinations that might give her what she needed to stave off utter disaster. A path that might work, and might pass beneath the notice of the enemy, at least until her new champion could fight for himself, was hard to find. She looked and finally saw a path that might work.
With the last of her power, she altered the strands of fate, just two small changes.
First, a pen’s position subtly shifted so the flailing of a young woman would knock it under the foot of her abuser. Second, an emaciated but ambitious street urchin, with unusual potential, would choose to turn right instead of left, going down a different street than she normally would, running into the goddess’s chosen champion.
I’ve done all I can for this champion. The odds James survives even a couple years are extremely low, but maybe, just maybe, this one can do what’s needed and save us all.
Chapter One
The Three Davids
The sound of music and merriment from the West Ballroom grated on James’s nerves, like a sword scraping along rocks.
I know it’s Dad’s Ascension Festival, but this is also Granddad’s funeral! He was ‘Leviathan,’ for the good gods’ sakes— they could show some proper respect!
Sadness threatened to overwhelm him, but James pushed it away. You hadn’t seen him for two years, James, he told himself. Does him being dead really change that much?
But he didn’t believe it, and his mind kept going back to all the time they’d spent together. James remembered Granddad helping him bandage a slashed knee as a child and telling him to be strong before the healers had come. He remembered going over maps of his adventures in his granddad’s study, learning politics and the theory of magic across Granddad’s large desk. The sword lessons, over and over.
His granddad had had over fifty living grandchildren, but James had always been his favorite.
And Granddad had always been James’s favorite.
Tears came to James’s eyes and he wiped them away. I can’t cry. I still need to talk to Anna later when she comes over.
That was a mystery as well. His girlfriend, the beautiful and talented Anna—Annette de Viennois, technically—had been missing from everything for weeks. She hadn’t been at the parties of the dungeon families, she hadn’t been attending her classes at Highcastle Academy, and she hadn’t responded to his summons beyond begging off seeing him.
The disrespectful merriment coming from the ballroom continued.
James was antsy and irritated and hungry, since in the excitement, he’d forgotten to eat again. He walked over to the window of his
second-story room, opening it and letting the air in. The chill winter air swept inside, carrying a bit of the rain. It wasn’t cold enough to snow, and the rain was unusually annoying.
James gazed out at the fancy gardens of the Toledo Estate through the rain. The statues of dolphins and fish that graced the garden—symbols of his family’s dungeon—normally soothed him, but somehow, even those seemed frivolous and stupid on this terrible night. James leaned out, his hands on the foot-wide ledge that ran around the house’s second story, and looked down at the thick bushes beneath his window.
What am I even doing? James shut the window and backed away from the cold and dark outside, toward the toasty center of his room.
A heavy knocking came at his door.
That can’t be Anna. Her knocks are far daintier.
James opened the door, only to be confronted by his older brother, Damien, a near match for James in appearance. Damien had the same six feet and three inches in height, black hair, and green eyes that James sported, although he was a bit less muscled than James, and a tad flabby
Damien also wore the same outfit as James, the formal apparel of the Toledo family. It was a dark blue doublet with lace at the cuffs and neck and a similarly dark blue pair of breeches. For some reason, Damien didn’t have his family mask on, however, or even at his belt. James, by contrast, still wore his Highcastle trainee belt and had his family mask hanging from it, which was a dark blue and wooden. The mask was carved to resemble waves and included a sea serpent around three-fourths of it. Thinking of the strange absence of Damien’s mask, James touched his own mask. James felt the comforting pulse of compatible magic from it.
Damien was usually quite agreeable, closer in personality to their mutual older brother, David the Sixth.
But right now, his brother’s brow was furrowed, and his face twisted in a scowl.
“What’s up?” James asked.
Damien just glowered at him. “Dad wants to see you in his study.”
“You mean Granddad’s study?”
“Dad’s now, James,” Damien said with a sneer. “Get used to it.”
“All right, no big deal.” James took a deep breath as his eyes misted a bit. “By the way, you, um, doing okay? You’ve been weird lately.”
“What are you, my girlfriend?” Damien said, narrowing his eyes. “Why do you care whether or not I’m doing okay?”
“Well, I’m your brother, so I thought that was reason enough. Plus, you’re normally a cool guy We’ve had a lot of good times. But lately, you’ve been a bit of a prick.” James smoothed his hair back, anger starting to rise.
“You look fine. I’m sure Anna can’t wait to hike her skirt up for you,” Damien said, his face returning to a half-sneer.
Fine, we’ll ignore your feelings, then, jackass.
“Hey, bite your tongue,” James said, forcing a laugh. “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.”
Damien gave a single bark of a laugh and raised an eyebrow at James. “Uh-huh. For now, she is. Well, hurry up and go see Dad, little brother. I want to go see whom I can convince to hike their skirts up for me.”
Damien waved him down the hall and then strode off toward the ballroom.
James went in the other direction down the hall, so distracted by his thoughts, he bumped into one of the family busts that adorned the hall, almost knocking it off its stand but catching it as it tipped over. I wonder what Dad wants? he thought, carefully placing the marble bust of Hilda Toledo, his great-aunt, back on the stand that had her adventuring deeds carved in it. I’m not gonna mess up his ceremony or anything. Sheesh.
Worried that Anna might show up while he was gone, James hurried down the hallway, focusing to make sure he didn’t knock any other busts over. He reached the large, wooden double doors, carved with sailing scenes and sea serpents, and pulled one open.
The study held over four thousand tomes and scrolls. On one wall was a large window overlooking the gardens. A huge desk dominated the center—a desk large enough to have three to four people working at it. Currently, it had just James’s dad and oldest
brother, David the Fifth and David the Sixth respectively, resting in chairs in front of it.
But the thing that caught James’s attention was the lack of clutter on the desk. James knew that his grandfather had liked to spread maps out on it, and he’d had numerous objects that James had never understood on it most of the time as well.
Years ago, there had been an absolutely huge glass globe that had purple sparkles at random points on it, including one in Norhilm. Most of the globe had been blank but for the tiny segment with the nine continents known to the empire, of course, since no one had sailed the Endless Ocean and lived to tell of it. Despite that, there had still been purple sparkles at random points on the blank surfaces of the remainder of it. There had also been a massive tome with a glowing slug creature on the cover. The slug creature had glowed with a slight pinkish light. It had creeped James out.
At the age of ten, James had asked his grandfather why he hadn’t had more things like magic swords and famous armor to celebrate his many victories in battle.
“Power matters a great deal,” his grandfather had said, putting his hand on James’s shoulder. “Power is the ability to shape the future as you desire—in my case, and I hope one day yours, a future that will be good for all the people of the Vered Empire. But wishing for the trappings of power, without the substance, is a hideous path. A magic sword adds to my power in the hands of a loyal retainer, but it adds nothing to my power on the wall.”
“So you should never show off?” James had asked.
“There are times and places,” his grandfather had answered. “Most of them for people who have trouble judging your power. A throne room for the populace who might see you occasionally, a diplomatic reception hall for foreigners of importance who aren’t familiar with me, or perhaps a parade for the commoners. But in this room, my study, I only see family members, my closest retainers, and other Dungeon Lords. Two are on my side, and the third would consider the display tiresome and evidence of weakness.”
Granddad had smiled, a hard smile, different than his usual one. “The only real beneficiary would be my own ego. What I have here,
now, on this desk”—his grandfather had waved his hands at the globe, the book, and a few maps—“benefits my knowledge—far more important.”
That had been a long time ago.
Right now, all of Granddad’s things were pushed into the corners of the room. Only three things were on the desk. Two were volumes of his grandfather’s journals, which James had never read so much as a page of, to his disappointment. The third was a small, steel chest that glowed with runes James recognized. They were runes to prevent opening by anyone other than a dungeon-descended family member. He’d seen them on a few family vaults in other castles and mansions as well.
“Hey, little brother,” said James’s oldest brother. “You look a bit out of it.”
James looked at his brother, David, heir to the family and the dungeon. He’d almost forgotten that David was there. David sat in the chair, relaxed and confident, one leg crossed over the other. He, too, was wearing a doublet and breeches in Toledo sapphire, and his own six-foot-four height topped James. He had an easy smile that always made James relax.
His father got up and stood slightly behind David, one hand on the side of his chair.
His father had managed to move without making a noise, which was true for most situations—his father was simply easy to overlook. James’s dad had a slightly hunched posture, only stood about five and a half feet tall, even when standing straight, and seemed to shrink away from attention and bolt from loud noises. He also wore the family’s colors, but he had a looser-fitting robe and picked at it nervously.
James knew something had happened to his father when his father had been a child, although the details had never been made clear to him. All he knew was that his father was a shadow of a man when compared to Granddad—the Leviathan.
Fortunately for the family, David the Sixth seemed destined to take after ‘Leviathan’ and not his dad.
Privately, James was amazed his mom had gone through with the marriage to his father. She spent most of her time at her original family’s estate and only visited her family occasionally. That made it even more impressive that they’d managed to conceive four children. Some thought James’s mother had been cheating, but the perks of each of the children didn’t lie—each child was a potential Dungeon Lord. Although his parents had taken their sweet time about having children, James had numerous cousins older than him, from his dad’s younger brothers, who were far more prolific.
Of course, only James’s brother, David, would become an actual Dungeon Lord, since the title and powers of Dungeon Lord passed in a family line, to the currently oldest living child of the previous Lord.
“Hey, um, David, Dad, what’s going on?” James asked, moving into the room and taking one of the other chairs around the desk. I hope this doesn’t take too long. Anna could be here at any moment.
“I’ve… a lot to tell you, son,” his dad said slowly. Curse it!
“About what, Dad?” James asked.
“About… a lot. But I guess I should start with the most basic. I’m not going to ascend to the head of the house today. I’m going to pass the leadership of the house to your brother, David the Sixth.”
James straightened. By the good gods!
“What? Why?” he asked. “No offense, David. I know you’ll make a great leader.”
“I get it,” his brother said, giving a huge laugh. “I’m not offended— that was my own reaction when he told me a few minutes ago.”
It’s not funny! “I mean, what about my children, Dad? I know you can’t be the leader forever, but if I have children first, they’ll still be dungeon descended, but if you pass it to David now, that won’t happen. Also, can you pass it? I thought if you died, then your oldest child with the Dungeon Lord perk got it.”
Dad picked at his robe and then reached down and subtly adjusted the position of one journal on the table. “That won’t, um, won’t be a problem. I can go to the dungeon heart and abandon my claim there. Then the dungeon will treat me as if I had died. Also, the child thing won’t be a problem for you. That brings me to the second part of the
discussion, I guess. You know your granddad was killed, right?”
“Why are you bringing up what happened to Granddad?” James yelled, standing from his chair. “Yeah, of course I know Granddad was killed… No one ever explained, really, how he died. But it was pretty obvious.”
“Well, your granddad was, um, he was working on stuff,” his dad said. “He was on his way home from his most, um, important mission, when he was assassinated.”
“Assassinated?” James reiterated, surprised. “I assumed some crazy monster had finally gotten him.” Why would someone want to kill Leviathan?
“Yeah,” his dad answered, still fiddling with the journal. “He was killed because of what he was doing. He was working to oppose the Abominations and the Dark. A horrible thing—most of the attackers were spawn, powerful spawn. And a woman was leading them. Uncle Benjamin was seriously wounded, and only through pure chance did your Uncle Luke walk in at the right moment to fight off the wounded attackers and save your granddad’s journals. We’re having a, um, closed casket ceremony because the spawn stole granddad’s head.”
Dad’s hand shook, but he took a deep breath and calmed himself.
“But your granddad was specifically, um, trying to, um, make a second house for us—well, the biggest thing he was doing was, um, getting stuff ready for you, James. He wanted you to be the, um, ‘true heir’ to the house.”
“Which means?” James asked, his irritation fading beneath his confused horror. “I mean, David is inheriting the Dungeon Lord position—and early, to boot. A lot of what you just said was confusing.”
“Um, well, I just mean that your granddad found another dungeon core, and he meant you to have it.”
James felt like his heart had missed a beat. “What?”
His dad reached over and touched the rune-covered chest, which glowed slightly and then opened up. Inside was a perfect crystal dodecahedron that glowed with a slight turquoise light.
James leaned over the desk and gazed at the gem longingly. “I thought dungeon cores glowed with a white light?”
David laughed again, and now James understood why everything was funny. I’m making out like a bandit on this, even if I wish they wouldn’t talk about Granddad’s death so much. If this is a dungeon core, I get to be an actual Dungeon Lord, not just dungeon descended.
Anna’s gonna be so impressed.
David stood from his chair and leaned over the desk as well, staring at the gem. “You’re going to be doing even better than me, brother. That’s a Tier-2 Dungeon Core—something I didn’t even know existed before a few hours ago.”
“Why me?” James asked, still a bit confused but with wild, rising jubilation. “Why not Damien? He’s next in line.”
His dad joined them all in staring at the core. “Your granddad wanted to make the perfect house, powerful enough to change fate and stop what he thought was coming. First, he hunted for a core—a prize claimed only about every fifty years by anyone in the entire Empire of Vered. But he found this, an advanced core, first of its kind to our knowledge, instead. But when you were born, and he learned of your unique Overlord perk, he hatched a modified plan. That was two-thirds of the puzzle, the puzzle to make you the greatest Dungeon Lord alive.”
Now I know why I was Granddad’s favorite. Although I’m pretty positive he had real affection for me as well.
“I’m going to be the most powerful Dungeon Lord,” James said, his voice and the room feeling distant as his imagination raced with all the possibilities, the future glory. He reached into the chest to take the gem and claim his destiny.
Chapter Two Additional Dramatis Personae
David grabbed James’s hand. “Hey, don’t fuck it all up now, My-All-Powerful-Dungeon-Lord. Dad said two-thirds of the puzzle—we still need a dungeon boss for it, or it’ll absorb the nearest monster that qualifies and be extremely weak.”
James took his hand back, his cheeks heating. Of course.
“Right, yeah, sorry,” James said. “Did Granddad, by any chance, take care of that as well?”
“Almost,” David said. Then his voice got faux serious, and he straightened to his full height and looked downward at James. “But you’re not having greatness completely served up on a platter for you, brother. You’ll have to work for it a bit, apparently. So very tragic.”
James hit him on the arm, and David fell back into his chair, pretending to be wounded and then laughing.
“Prick,” James said.
“Quit fooling around, boys. We’ve got, um, things to do,” Dad said. “Our guests are, um, waiting for us.”
A tremor went through James’s dad, and he fiddled with the journal again, but he kept speaking. “Your grandad decided to go, well, um, insane, in my opinion, when he went questing for a high-quality boss monster. He found an Abomination slowly dying over the centuries since the last cataclysm, and he made a deal. It agreed to become the boss monster of the dungeon, here in Norhilm. But the Abomination is still on the continent of Nazgrin, near the village of Jalto. All that’s left to happen is for you to meet it, to finalize the deal with it, and then we have to transport it back.”
James was shocked. An Abomination?! “I thought Granddad was fighting against the Abominations… Why ally with one?”
Abominations were the greatest agents of the Dark, the physical forms of evil. They’d been responsible for the last cataclysm of the world. Many of the Abominations had perished in the final wars of that last cataclysm, but many remained, wounded but nearly indestructible, in the deep or forgotten places of the earth.
“As the master of the dungeon, you’d control its powers,” Dad said. “Use the Abomination’s powers against the servants of the Dark.”
“Theoretically,” came David’s aside.
“Right, well, um, the point is, after the ceremony, we need to plan an expedition to recover the Abomination and bring it to The City, and you need to make a dungeon.”
“And get a new mask and color scheme, brother,” David said. “It’s a shame, since blue suits you.”
“And you’re okay with this?” James asked, turning to David.
“Yeah,” David said, his smile coming easily to his face. “I’ll help get you established, and some members of the house will join you to give you a foundation. Trust me.”
“What about Damien though? Is he going to be okay with this?” James liked Damien and was worried how he’d react to this. He’s a lot of fun, I remember years of playing ‘Clear the Dungeon’ with him as children.
“It has to be you,” Dad said. “Your granddad was originally going to give it to your uncle Luke, if it doesn’t go to you it goes to him.”
James nodded. I’m going to be a Dungeon Lord and found a new house! This can’t actually be true.
A couple of times, James had fantasized about his older brothers being killed in some freak accident so he could be the Dungeon Lord… and now he was going to get to be one without anyone having to be hurt!
Life is too good!
“Well, um, take the journals and go study them,” Dad said. “Granddad laid it all out in them. All the reasons he was doing this, his journey, all of it.”
“You mind if I take the first journal and read it?” David asked. “This is all new to me frankly, so I’d like to know why as well.”
James turned to Dad. “You did say earlier that the second journal had everything about the Abomination, right?”
Dad nodded. “Yes, that makes sense. David, you take the first one. James, you take the second.”
James reached for the journal, then hesitated. “Dad, why didn’t I know any of this?”
Dad hesitated for a long time, tremors running through his hands. Finally, he spoke. “You all know I’m… um… not the man I could be. I was… attacked, by a spawn, when I was a boy. On a trip out of town, my first adventure with your grandfather. A Mind spawn appeared. No one knows how it got into my cabin or on the ship. It was a spawn of fear, and it put me in a nightmare world for a few minutes, but it felt like years in my head, and I saw, and felt, terrible things. My own body was slowly roasted and then pulled apart and eaten bit by bit, my friends and family slain before my eyes or violated by creatures of indescribable horror. I still remember all of it, like it’s a wound in my mind that can’t ever heal.”
Spawn were the lesser servants of the Dark, beings of corrupted magic created by the Abominations. They ranged in power, but all were malignant creatures of evil that wanted to corrupt or destroy the mortal races.
Tears rolled down Dad’s cheeks, and his whole body shook. David walked up and hugged him. “It’s okay, Dad. You did good by us. I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.”
James nodded, ashamed at himself for never really asking his father what had happened to him.
“I just… I just prefer to stay here, in the safety of our compound, with all of our magical rituals so I don’t have to worry about hostile magic or the spawn getting in,” his dad said, still trembling, although it was waning “Those rituals have been built up over years, and anyone attacking us would be very hard-pressed indeed… and no spawn could survive it. Their powers wouldn’t work. Essence can’t be used by anyone except our family in here, and spawn are almost always pure essence.”
James felt the magic of those rituals wherever he was in the house, like a protective blanket—that was his perk ‘Tied to Magic’ at
