Dungeon Calamity Read online

  Dungeon Calamity

  Book Three of the Divine Dungeon Series

  Written by Dakota Krout

  Illustrations by Mikko Luhtasalo

  © 2017-2018 Dakota Krout. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by US copyright law.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is rated PG-13 for literary fighting, foul language, and puns unsuitable for people of all ages. It also contains advanced philosophical principles unsuitable for ethics majors.

  ~ Contents ~

  ~ Contents ~3

  ~ Acknowledgments ~5

  ~ Prologue ~6

  ~ Chapter One ~8

  ~ Chapter Two ~13

  ~ Chapter Three ~20

  ~ Chapter Four ~27

  ~ Chapter Five ~30

  ~ Chapter Six ~33

  ~ Chapter Seven ~38

  ~ Chapter Eight ~43

  ~ Chapter Nine ~49

  ~ Chapter Ten ~55

  ~ Chapter Eleven ~61

  ~ Chapter Twelve ~66

  ~ Chapter Thirteen ~72

  ~ Chapter Fourteen ~78

  ~ Chapter Fifteen ~82

  ~ Chapter Sixteen ~88

  ~ Chapter Seventeen ~92

  ~ Chapter Eighteen ~98

  ~ Chapter Nineteen ~101

  ~ Chapter Twenty ~106

  ~ Chapter Twenty-One ~111

  ~ Chapter Twenty-Two ~115

  ~ Chapter Twenty-Three ~119

  ~ Chapter Twenty-Four ~123

  ~ Chapter Twenty-Five ~129

  ~ Chapter Twenty-Six ~135

  ~ Chapter Twenty-Seven ~139

  ~ Chapter Twenty-Eight ~142

  ~ Chapter Twenty-Nine ~147

  ~ Chapter Thirty ~150

  ~ Chapter Thirty-One ~156

  ~ Chapter Thirty-Two ~162

  ~ Chapter Thirty-Three ~168

  ~ Chapter Thirty-Four ~175

  ~ Chapter Thirty-Five ~183

  ~ Chapter Thirty-Six ~189

  ~ Chapter Thirty-Seven ~193

  ~ Chapter Thirty-Eight ~199

  ~ Chapter Thirty-Nine ~204

  ~ Chapter Forty ~210

  ~ Chapter Forty-One ~214

  ~ Chapter Forty-Two ~218

  ~ Chapter Forty-Three ~222

  ~ Epilogue ~225

  ~ Afterword~227

  ~ Appendix ~228

  ~ The Completionist Chronicles ~237

  ~ Acknowledgments ~

  There are many people who have made this book possible. Firstly, thank you to all of my friends who made their way through the awful early editions of my book in order to give me advice and suggestions on storyline and descriptive writing. A special thanks to Dylan S. and Chandra S. who helped revise this story. Many thanks to both of you for your careful reading and comments!

  Some amazing fans stepped up to help cover the hidden costs of writing. So far I owe them for at least every cup of coffee that drove this book to completion! Thank you to Steven Willden, David Thompson, Nicholas Schmidt, and Samuel Landrie and all other Patreons for your support!

  Next, thank you to my wonderful wife, who not only encouraged me to write, but read through and offered detailed suggestions. You are the reason these books exist.

  Finally, to someone I haven’t met yet. My first child, Grace, will be born shortly after this book comes out. I am looking forward to meeting you very much, my adorable little deadline!

  ~ Prologue ~

  “Just ignore it, Rob. Of course you feel like you are being watched, yer in a dungeon!” The tiny human tried unsuccessfully to comfort his student. He groaned and tossed his hands into the air. “There are monsters going crazy in here, and the place is changing constantly. We just need to go through one more room, and even with my seventy percent fee, your tuition will be paid for life! We’re already on the fourth floor, might as well finish the labyrinth, right?”

  “I don’t like it.” The uncomfortable man shuddered as he felt the alien mind appraising him again. “You know I can tell when I’m being watched, and whatever this is, it is watching. It wants us dead!”

  His teacher sighed. “We just went over this. This is a dungeon. Of course everything here wants us dead, but for the money-”

  The teacher’s words were cut off as the floor beneath them shifted subtly. A feeling similar to a seesaw dropping made them stumble, and their pulses began to race! The floor dropped only another few inches when a *click* behind them made them whirl around. They were too late to retreat now, thanks to the rising stone that blocked off the five-man group’s path of retreat. All light had fled, leaving them in utter darkness and growing despair. Only sharp orders from the leader allowed them to think clearly again.

  Regaining their composure after a moment of panic, the men tightened their formation. Their eyes had begun to adjust incrementally when a glimmer of light washed over them, nearly blinding them after their immersion in darkness. Still wary, they edged toward the light. Eyes twinkling with mixed interest and caution, they walked toward the only landmark now visible. Before them lay a tablet of stone on a small, intricately carved pillar. The light fell from above and illuminated words carved deeply into the rock.

  “What does it say?”

  “Confound it! I can’t read. Rob, get over here!”

  Rob stepped forward, glancing around as the presence stared at him again. His hackles rose, and he tried to gulp air into his heaving, dehydrated lungs. He stared at the words, easily reading them but failing to understand their meaning.

  “Well?” Rob got slapped on his rear, causing goose bumps to spread over his skinny arms. “What does it say, boy?”

  “It says, ‘You have entered the trials. Trial one: Carry your weight and the rewards shall be great. Else, one for all.’ The punctuation is all funny-like. Whaddya suppose that means?” Rob rubbed his butt; that slap had been way too hard.

  “Huh. No idea. What do you think that means?” The teacher was trying to act wise, returning the question to his students, but the words came out flat.

  "I hate poems. They always mean dangerous things are about to happen. A woman getting them from a nervous love interest, bards making terrible songs, and now traps…"

  “Is the light in here getting brighter?”

  “The ceiling! Look at the ceiling!” They looked up to see the ceiling–now visible and covered in jagged metal spikes–descending slowly toward them. Rob looked around for an opening, a way out of the trap, anything! As the ceiling fell, a small section of stone lifted. The opening behind it was only spacious enough for one person to crawl through.

  “There are spots on the roof that don't have spikes! Five spots, five of us! We need to hold the ceiling up!” The teacher called loudly and calmly. The group rushed to find a spot that they could fit into; the roof was curved specifically to match the average height of adventurers. They raised their hands, and the stone came to rest in each of their palms at the same time. Grunts were elicited from the struggling men as the heavy tr
ap continued to press down until it rested upon their shoulders. Pushing and straining, they heaved and called out encouragement to each other as the minutes passed and their knees began to wobble.

  Rob started to panic as he felt a sense of satisfaction from the probing presence. “We’re going to die! It’s going to kill us no matter what we do!” The feeling of satisfaction wavered as Rob looked at the opening. It wasn’t so far away, was it? He could make it in the few seconds it would take the ceiling to fall. His fear-addled mind raced as he thought of the test. One for all, one for all… so everyone would die, or one person could survive? Rob’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t dying for these people. He barely knew them! He wouldn’t die here, not like this!

  “Rob! No! What are you doing?!” Rob heard as he dove under the spikes and crawled as fast as he could for the hole in the wall. The ceiling lowered by a few deadly inches.

  “I’m surviving!” Rob drug himself the last little way into the hole and looked around. There! There was a Rune on the floor! He placed his hand on the activation pattern and flooded it with Essence. The cries of his old team were cut off as the wall behind Rob closed off, leaving him in the small space. He waited for an exit to appear. And waited. Rob didn’t even realize when he slipped into sleep, the oxygen content too minimal to allow his panicked mind to remain awake.

  Outside the tiny room, a joyous scene was playing out.

  “It’s going up!”

  “Rob did it! He must have deactivated the trap!”

  “He did nothing but try to save himself! That must have backfired on him.” Their leader growled at the jubilant faces. “Think about it. One for all, or ‘carry your weight’. Rob thought that meant he could trade our lives to save his sorry skin, but it really meant he would die to save us.” He scoffed disparagingly. “While it is sad for him, I hope you all learned something today. This was the worst kind of self-sacrifice. Let’s get the abyss out of here.”

  “Look! A chest!”

  “Look at all those tokens! They were right about the fourth floor!”

  ~ Chapter One ~

  I was woozy, my mind felt cluttered and ‘off’ in an indefinable way. I looked around my dungeon, noting the man dancing near my Core. He was wiggling in an exceedingly creepy way, making awkward noises that would have made a human blush.

  “It’s mine! You. *wiggle* Can’t. *wiggle wiggle* Have it! *awkward hip thrusting*.

  I stammered, knowing that he couldn’t possibly hear me. Still, my frazzled nerves weren’t because of his social oddity, they were due to his ranking. His presence released a pressure that affected me all the way to my soul. There was no doubt in my mind that this man was in at least the Spiritual ranks.

  Somehow, it seemed he had heard me.

  “Damn straight I’ll take it! It’s mine! It’s all mine!” The man stopped moving around. “Glad you agreed so early. Mine. I was gonna kill you soon otherwise, and I don’t wanna do that! Ha ha! You are a strange, interesting aberration! Also, you make me chuckle.”

  My voice was trembling. What is going on? When did this filthy, overpowered man show up?

  “Now you are boring again. Oh well. Don’t worry, strange little dungeon. I’ll come back when you start doing interesting things again!” The man turned and ran at the wall. Not the door. The wall. He didn’t slow down, and as he hit the stone, it shattered from the massive pressure he was exuding. He ran in a straight line, destroying my cursed earth as he went. “Stealing my whispers! Dumbass dungeon!”

  I watched him run, creating a tunnel as he went. He eventually broke out of my labyrinth, reaching unaltered stone. He ran through this even faster, eventually popping out of the side of the mountain and entering free-fall with an echoing shout of “Wheeeeeee!”

  I was shaking in reaction, and I looked around myself to see what had changed. What had I been doing? I had some vague recollections of creating new traps and Mobs, collecting materials from Dale and Minya, and researching ways to find Dani… did that creepy, filthy man just mess with my memories somehow? I haven’t been this confused since I became a dungeon Core so very long ago. Just like now, my memories of that time were confusing and fragmented. I remembered a flash of a necromancer’s laugh as I was killed, and then remembering how beautiful a day it was… I shook off the confusion and focused myself. What the…? What was wrong with my floor? I had been vandalized!

  I looked around and set to fixing the place up. Had that man done all of this? There was a lot of damage in the dungeon–walls in rubble, the place littered with filth and remains, Mobs oddly mutated and damaged. Far too many Mobs, for that matter. Traps not reset? What was going on? I cleaned the place up and quickly set some short-term goals for myself. Clean the place thoroughly, fix everything that was broken, then I needed trackers–things that could live without me and still find Dani. I needed to push myself into the B-ranks. I needed to find a way to communicate outside of myself.

  Finally, and possibly most importantly, I needed to create powerful weapons that might be able to damage the inconceivably powerful people that might attack me in the future. That twisted old man had scared me badly. I focused inward and began devoting Essence to the tasks at hand. They may seem impossible right now, but each of them needed to be done. I smiled dangerously, my mind was clear and my will was strong for the first time I could remember. It was time to join–or terrify–the powers in this world.

  ~ Dale ~

  The snow crunched under his feet with each step he took, the sub-zero temperatures making the frozen crystals brittle. Dale bowed his head against the wind as it twisted around him, seemingly angry that it had been disturbed from its original flow. With each crunch, he was that much closer to his destination. He looked through frost-laden eyelashes at the changes that had been wrought in the last month. Snorting, he shook his head. Snow that had collected on him blew away as he examined the roads and stone buildings. He reflected on the usefulness of magic. This place had turned from a ragged collection of tents into something approximating a booming village. Soon, they would need to expand to keep up with the influx of people trying to strike it rich.

  A light distorted by the achromatic precipitation appeared ahead of him. Dale readjusted his fur-lined cloak and moved slightly faster, looking forward to the warmth of the tavern he was approaching. A bit of melted slush dripped down his neck, and he shivered and frowned; Dale was not looking forward to the impending conversation. He had been avoiding it for too long though. He sighed. It was now or never. The light became stronger and soon illuminated a beautifully carved, extra thick, oak door.

  Dale reached forward with snow-laden gloves and found the handle, twisting it and opening the door. His actions allowed a blast of icy wind into the tavern ahead of him. Shouting reached his ears nigh-instantly as people demanded he shut the only barrier between them and the bitter winter wind. The newly appointed Baron stepped in, pulling the door closed behind him. Ice crackled on his fur-lined boots and enough snow fell off of him to make a decently sized snowball. Dale stepped closer to the roaring bonfire in the center of the room, pulling off his cloak and gently shaking it out. A few people grumbled at him as they were hit by particles of water, but only one voice spoke up.

  “About time you showed up, you snail-slow, sandbagging bastard! I thought I was going to have to drink all this ale all by my lonesome...again! Dale looked around and caught sight of his best friend, Hans, cheerfully waving at him from a bench next to the fire.

  “Evening, Hans. Or, I guess, good morning?” It was three in the morning, and while most people would be abed, people in the C-ranks–or those with all their meridians open–only needed a few hours, at most, to have a full night's sleep. “What did you want? I want to get some sleep before you exploit me for
personal gain in the dungeon. If I try to stay awake for too long–happening too often as of late–I’ll probably fall apart.”

  Dale had been undergoing a rigorous training regimen designed by himself and a few experts to maximize his survivability as well as shape him into the best possible leader for the small community that had sprung up around the dungeon. He had just been released by his hand-to-hand combat instructor, a Moon-Elf assassin who seemed to hold a grudge against all of humanity. This day's lesson was supposed to be about Dale shaping his Essence into usable formations while under attack and emotionally flustered. In reality the training had consisted of Dale standing on a wriggly log and focusing on his Chi formations... while snowballs laced with stones had been thrown at him by exceedingly strong and accurate women. While he was naked. Dale was not in the most positive of moods right now.

  “Well, Dale, it has been a month since the swarm of infected, and you have not taken any time off from training, sending out messengers, studying math,” Hans shuddered at that last one, “and I think it is time you explained what is going on.” Having spoken, the door opened again, and the rest of Dale’s team walked in.

  Rose–a Half-Elf archer–was followed by Adam–the party’s cleric–and Tom the Barbarian. Adam was leaning on his staff and was mostly covered by a floor-length gleaming white robe. Tom naturally drew the eye of the patrons as he entered. He was wearing very little in terms of practical winter gear, mainly just what could be called either a short fur kilt or a long loincloth. He was trying out a few pieces of armor, so the patchwork set had chunks of plate mail and laminar armor intermixed. The red-haired barbarian wore no helmet, but oddly had a massive shield awkwardly strapped to his left side. Where his hand should have been was a grip that tied his shield to his body, but it was obviously uncomfortable. This was most likely due to the fact that his arm, which he had lost in the dungeon, was nearly fully regrown.